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English Men of Letters
Edited by John Morley
ADDISON
by
W. J. COURTHOPE
Harper & Brothers Publishers New York and London 1902
* * * * *
ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS.
EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.
JOHNSON Leslie Stephen. GIBBON J. C. Morison. SCOTT R. H. Hutton. SHELLEY J. A. Symonds. HUME T. H. Huxley. GOLDSMITH William Black. DEFOE William Minto. BURNS J. C. Shairp. SPENSER R. W. Church. THACKERAY Anthony Trollope. BURKE John Morley. MILTON Mark Pattison. HAWTHORNE Henry James, Jr. SOUTHEY E. Dowden. CHAUCER A. W. Ward. BUNYAN J. A. Froude. COWPER Goldwin Smith. POPE Leslie Stephen. BYRON John Nichol. LOCKE Thomas Fowler. WORDSWORTH F. Myers. DRYDEN G. Saintsbury. LANDOR Sidney Colvin. DE QUINCEY David Masson. LAMB Alfred Ainger. BENTLEY R. C. Jebb. DICKENS A. W. Ward. GRAY E. W. Gosse. SWIFT Leslie Stephen. STERNE H. D. Traill. MACAULAY J. Cotter Morison. FIELDING Austin Dobson. SHERIDAN Mrs. Oliphant. ADDISON W. J. Courthope. BACON R. W. Church. COLERIDGE H. D. Traill. SIR PHILIP SIDNEY J. A. Symonds. KEATS Sidney Colvin. CARLYLE John Nichol.
12mo, Cloth, 75 cents per volume.
_Other volumes in preparation._
PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.
_Any of the above works will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price._
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I. THE STATE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY AND LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION 1
CHAPTER II. ADDISON'S FAMILY AND EDUCATION 21
CHAPTER III. ADDISON ON HIS TRAVELS 38
CHAPTER IV. HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE 53
CHAPTER V. THE "TATLER" AND "SPECTATOR" 78
CHAPTER VI. "CATO" 110
CHAPTER VII. ADDISON'S QUARREL WITH POPE 125
CHAPTER VIII. THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE 139
CHAPTER IX. THE GENIUS OF ADDISON 153
ADDISON.
CHAPTER I.
THE STATE OF ENGLISH SOCIETY AND LETTERS AFTER THE RESTORATION.
Of the four English men of letters whose writings most fully embody the spirit of the eighteenth century, the one who provides the biographer with the scantiest materials is Addison. In his _Journal to Stella_, his social verses, and his letters to his friends, we have a vivid picture of those relations with women and that protracted suffering which invest with such tragic interest the history of Swift. Pope, by the publication of his own correspondence, has enabled us, in a way that he never intended, to understand the strange moral twist which distorted a nature by no means devoid of noble instincts. Johnson was fortunate in the companionship of perhaps the best biographer who ever lived. But of the real life and character of Addison scarcely any contemporary record remains. The formal narrative prefixed to his works by Tickell is, by that writer's own admission, little more than a bibliography. Steele, who might have told us more than any man about his boyhood and his manner of life in London, had become estranged from his old friend before his death. No writer has taken the trouble to preserve any account of the wit and wisdom that enlivened the "little senate" at Button's. His own letters are, as a rule, compositions as finished as his papers in the _Spectator_. Those features in his character which excite the greatest interest have been delineated by the hand of an enemy--an enemy who possessed an unrivalled power of satirical portrait-painting, and was restrained by no regard for truth from creating in the public mind such impressions about others as might serve to heighten the favourable opinion of himself.
This absence of dramatic incident in Addison's life would lead us naturally to conclude that he was deficient in the energy and passion which cause a powerful nature to leave a mark upon its age. Yet such a judgment would certainly be erroneous. Shy and reserved as he was, the unanimous verdict of his most illustrious contemporaries is decisive as to the respect and admiration which he excited among them. The man who could exert so potent an influence over the mercurial Steele, who could fascinate the haughty and cynical intellect of Swift, whose conversation, by the admission of his satirist Pope, had in it something more charming than that of any other man; of whom it was said that he might have been chosen king if he wished it; such a man, though to the coarse perception of Mandeville he might have seemed no more than "a parson in a tye-wig," can hardly have been deficient in force of character.
Nor would it have been possible for a writer distinguished by mere elegance and refinement to leave a lasting impress on the literature and society of his country. In one generation after another, men representing opposing elements of rank, class, interest, and taste, have agreed in acknowledging Addison's extraordinary merits. "Whoever wishes," says Johnson--at the end of a biography strongly coloured with the prepossessions of a semi-Jacobite Tory--"whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison." "Such a mark of national respect," says Macaulay, the best representative of middle-class opinion in the present century, speaking of the statue erected to Addison in Westminster Abbey, "was due to the unsullied statesman, to the accomplished scholar, to the master of pure English eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and manners. It was due, above all, to the great satirist who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it; who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform, and who reconciled wit and virtue after a long and disastrous separation, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism."
This verdict of a great critic is accepted by an age to which the grounds of it are, perhaps, not very apparent. The author of any ideal creation--a poem, a drama, or a novel--has an imprescriptible property in the fame of his work. But to harmonise conflicting social elements, to bring order out of chaos in the sphere of criticism, to form right ways of thinking about questions of morals, taste, and breeding, are operations of which the credit, though it is certainly to be ascribed to particular individuals, is generally absorbed by society itself. Macaulay's eulogy is as just as it is eloquent, but the pages of the _Spectator_ alone will hardly show the reader why Addison should be so highly praised for having reconciled wit with virtue. Nor, looking at him as a critic, will it appear a great achievement to have pointed out to English society the beauties of _Paradise Lost_, unless it be remembered that the taste of the preceding generation still influenced Addison's contemporaries, and that in that generation Cowley was accounted a greater poet than Milton.
To estimate Addison at his real value we must regard him as the chief architect of Public Opinion in the eighteenth century. But here again we are met by an initial difficulty, because it has become almost a commonplace of contemporary criticism to represent the eighteenth century as a period of sheer destruction. It is tacitly assumed by a school of distinguished philosophical writers that we have arrived at a stage in the world's history in which it is possible to take a positive and scientific view of human affairs. As it is of course necessary that from such a system all belief in the supernatural shall be jealously excluded, it has not seemed impossible to write the history of Thought itself in the eighteenth century. And in tracing the course of this supposed continuous stream it is natural that all the great English writers of the period should be described as in one way or another helping to pull down, or vainly to strengthen, the theological barriers erected by centuries of bigotry against the irresistible tide of enlightened progress.
It would be of course entirely out of place to discuss here the merits of this new school of history. Those who consider that, whatever glimpses we may obtain of the law and order of the universe, man is, as he always has been and always will be, a mystery to himself, will hardly allow that the operations of the human spirit can be traced in the dissecting-room. But it is, in any case, obvious that to treat the great _imaginative_ writers of any age as if they were only mechanical agents in an evolution of thought is to do them grave injustice. Such writers are, above all things, creative. Their first aim is to "show the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." No work of the eighteenth century, composed in a consciously destructive spirit, has taken its place among the acknowledged classics of the language. Even the _Tale of a Tub_ is to be regarded as a satire upon the aberrations of theologians from right reason, not upon the principles of Christianity itself. The _Essay on Man_ has, no doubt, logically a tendency towards Deism, but nobody ever read the poem for the sake of its philosophy; and it is well known that Pope was much alarmed when it was pointed out to him that his conclusions might be represented as incompatible with the doctrines of revealed religion.
The truth indeed seems to be the exact converse of what is alleged by the scientific historians. So far from the eighteenth century in England being an age of destructive analysis, its energies were chiefly devoted to political, social, and literary reconstruction. Whatever revolution in faith and manners the English nation had undergone had been the work of the two preceding centuries, and though the historic foundations of society remained untouched, the whole form of the superstructure had been profoundly modified.
"So tenacious are we," said Burke, towards the close of the last century, "of our old ecclesiastical modes and fashions of institution that very little change has been made in them since the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, adhering in this particular as in all else to our old settled maxim never entirely nor at once to depart from antiquity. We found these institutions on the whole favourable to morality and discipline, and we thought they were susceptible of amendment without altering the ground. We thought they were capable of receiving and meliorating, and, above all, of preserving the accessories of science and literature as the order of Providence should successively produce them. And after all, with this Gothic and monkish education (for such it is the groundwork), we may put in our claim to as ample and early a share in all the improvements in science, in arts, and in literature which have illuminated the modern world as any other nation in Europe. We think one main cause of this improvement was our not despising the patrimony of knowledge which was left us by our forefathers."
All this is, in substance, true of our political as well as our ecclesiastical institutions. And yet, when Burke wrote, the great feudal and mediæval structure of England had been so transformed by the Wars of the Roses, the Reformation, the Rebellion, and the Revolution, that its ancient outlines were barely visible. In so far, therefore, as his words seem to imply that the social evolution he describes was produced by an imperceptible and almost mechanical process of national instinct, the impression they tend to create is entirely erroneous.
If we have been hitherto saved from such corruption as undermined the republics of Italy, from the religious wars that so long enfeebled and divided Germany, and from the Revolution that has severed modern France from her ancient history, thanks for this are due partly, no doubt, to favouring conditions of nature and society, but quite as much to the genius of great individuals who prepared the mind of the nation for the gradual assimilation of new ideas. Thus Langland and Wycliffe and their numerous followers, long before the Reformation, had so familiarised the minds of the people with their ideas of the Christian religion that the Sovereign was able to assume the Headship of the Church without the shock of a social convulsion. Fresh feelings and instincts grew up in the hearts of whole classes of the nation without at first producing any change in outward habits of life, and even without arousing a sense of their logical incongruity. These mixed ideas were constantly brought before the imagination in the works of the poets. Shakespeare abounds with passages in which, side by side with the old feudal, monarchical, catholic, and patriotic instincts of Englishmen, we find the sentiments of the Italian Renaissance. Spenser conveys Puritan doctrines sometimes by the mouth of shepherds, whose originals he had found in Theocritus and Virgil; sometimes under allegorical forms derived from books of chivalry and the ceremonial of the Catholic Church. Milton, the most rigidly Calvinistic of all the English poets in his opinions, is also the most severely classical in his style.
It was the task of Addison to carry on the reconciling traditions of our literature. It is his praise to have accomplished his task under conditions far more difficult than any that his predecessors had experienced. What they had done was to give instinctive and characteristic expression to the floating ideas of the society about them; what Addison and his contemporaries did was to found a public opinion by a conscious effort of reason and persuasion. Before the Civil Wars there had been at least no visible breach in the principle of Authority in Church and State. At the beginning of the eighteenth century constituted authority had been recently overthrown; one king had been beheaded, another had been expelled; the Episcopalian form of Church Government had been violently displaced in favour of the Presbyterian, and had been with almost equal violence restored. Whole classes of the population had been drawn into opposing camps during the Civil War, and still stood confronting each other with all the harsh antagonism of sentiment inherited from that conflict. Such a bare summary alone is sufficient to indicate the nature of the difficulties Addison had to encounter in his efforts to harmonise public opinion; but a more detailed examination of the state of society after the Restoration is required to place in its full light the extraordinary merits of the success that he achieved.
There was, to begin with, a vehement opposition between town and country. In the country the old ideas of Feudalism, modified by circumstances, but vigorous and deep-rooted, still prevailed. True, the military system of land-tenure had disappeared with the Restoration, but it was not so with the relations of life, and the habits of thought and feeling which the system had created. The features of surviving Feudalism have been inimitably preserved for us in the character of Sir Roger de Coverley. Living in the patriarchal fashion, in the midst of tenants and retainers, who looked up to him as their chief, and for whose welfare and protection he considered himself responsible, the country gentleman valued above all things the principle of Loyalty. To the moneyed classes in the towns he was instinctively opposed; he regarded their interests, both social and commercial, as contrary to his own; he looked with dislike and suspicion on the economical principles of government and conduct on which these classes naturally rely. Even the younger sons of county families had in Addison's day abandoned the custom, common enough in the feudal times, of seeking their fortune in trade. Many a Will Wimble now spent his whole life in the country, training dogs for his neighbours, fishing their streams, making whips for their young heirs, and even garters for their wives and daughters.[1]
The country gentlemen were confirmed in these ideas by the difficulties of communication. During his visit to Sir Roger de Coverley the _Spectator_ observed the extreme slowness with which fashions penetrated into the country; and he noticed, too, that party spirit was much more violent there than in the towns. The learning of the clergy, many of whom resided with the country squires as chaplains, was of course enlisted on the Tory side, and supplied it with arguments which the body of the party might perhaps have found it difficult to discover, or at least to express, for themselves. For Tory tastes undoubtedly lay generally rather in the direction of sport than of books. Sir Roger seems to be as much above the average level of his class as Squire Western is certainly below it: perhaps the Tory fox-hunter of the _Freeholder_, though somewhat satirically painted, is a fair representative of the society which had its headquarters at the October Club, and whose favourite poet was Tom D'Urfey.
The commercial and professional classes, from whom the Whigs derived their chief support, of course predominated in the towns, and their larger opportunities of association gave them an influence in affairs which compensated for their inferiority in numbers. They lacked, however, what the country party possessed, a generous ideal of life. Though many of them were connected with the Presbyterian system, their common sense made them revolt from its rigidity, while at the same time their economical principles failed to supply them with any standard that could satisfy the imagination. Sir Andrew Freeport excites in us less interest than any member of the Spectator's Club. There was not yet constituted among the upper middle classes that mixed conception of good feeling, good breeding, and good taste which we now attach to the name of "gentleman."
Two main currents of opinion divided the country, to one of which a man was obliged to surrender himself if he wished to enjoy the pleasures of organised society. One of these was Puritanism, but this was undoubtedly the less popular, or at least the less fashionable. A protracted experience of Roundhead tyranny under the Long Parliament had inclined the nation to believe that almost any form of Government was preferable to that of the Saints. The Puritan, no longer the mere sectarian, as in the days of Elizabeth and James I., somewhat ridiculous in the extravagance of his opinions, but respectable from the constancy with which he maintained them, had ruled over them as a taskmaster, and had forced them, as far as he could by military violence, to practise the asceticism to which monks and nuns had voluntarily submitted themselves. The most innocent as well as the most brutal diversions of the people were sacrificed to his spiritual pride. As Macaulay well says, he hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. The tendency of his creed was, in fact, anti-social. Beauty in his eyes was a snare, and pleasure a sin; the only mode of social intercourse which he approved was a sermon.
On the other hand, the habits of the Court, which gave the tone to all polite society, were almost equally distasteful to the instincts of the people. It was inevitable that the inclinations of Charles II. should be violently opposed to every sentiment of the Puritans. While he was in the power of the Scots he had been forced into feigned compliance with Presbyterian rites; the Puritans had put his father to death, and had condemned himself to many years of exile and hardship in Catholic countries. He had returned to his own land half French in his political and religious sympathies, and entirely so in his literary tastes. To convert and to corrupt those of his subjects who immediately surrounded him was an easy matter. "All by the king's example lived and loved." Poets, painters, and actors were forward to promote principles viewed with favour by their sovereign and not at all disagreeable to themselves. An ingenious philosopher elevated Absolutism into an intellectual and moral system, the consequence of which was to encourage the powerful in the indulgence of every selfish instinct. As the Puritans had oppressed the country with a system of inhuman religion and transcendental morality, so now, in order to get as far from Puritanism as possible, it seemed necessary for every one aspiring to be thought a gentleman to avow himself an atheist or a debauchee.
The ideas of the man in the mode after the Restoration are excellently hit off in one of the fictitious letters in the _Spectator_:
"I am now between fifty and sixty, and had the honour to be well with the first men of taste and gallantry in the joyous reign of Charles the Second. As for yourself, Mr. Spectator, you seem with the utmost arrogance to undermine the very fundamentals upon which we conducted ourselves. It is monstrous to set up for a man of wit and yet deny that honour in a woman is anything but peevishness, that inclination is not the best rule of life, or virtue and vice anything else but health and disease. We had no more to do but to put a lady in a good humour, and all we could wish followed of course. Then, again, your Tully and your discourses of another life are the very bane of mirth and good humour. Prythee, don't value thyself on thy reason at that exorbitant rate and the dignity of human nature; take my word for it, a setting dog has as good reason as any man in England."[2]
While opinions, which from different sides struck at the very roots of society, prevailed both in the fashionable and religious portions of the community, it was inevitable that Taste should be hopelessly corrupt. All the artistic and literary forms which the Court favoured were of the romantic order, but it was romance from which beauty and vitality had utterly disappeared. Of the two great principles of ancient chivalry, Love and Honour, the last notes of which are heard in the lyrics of Lovelace and Montrose, one was now held to be non-existent, and the other was utterly perverted. The feudal spirit had surrounded woman with an atmosphere of mystical devotion, but in the reign of Charles II. the passion of love was subjected to the torturing treatment then known as "wit." Cowley and Waller seem to think that when a man is in love the energy of his feelings is best shown by discovering resemblances between his mistress and those objects in nature to which she is apparently most unlike.
The ideal of Woman, as she is represented in the _Spectator_, adding grace, charity, and refinement to domestic life, had still to be created. The king himself, the presumed mirror of good taste, was notoriously under the control of his numerous mistresses; and the highest notion of love which he could conceive was gallantry. French romances were therefore generally in vogue. All the casuistry of love which had been elaborated by Mademoiselle de Scudery was reproduced with improvements by Mrs. Aphra Behn. At the same time, as usually happens in diseased societies, there was a general longing to cultivate the simplicity of the Golden Age, and the consequence was that no person, even in the lower grades of society, who pretended to any reading, ever thought of making love in his own person. The proper tone of feeling was not acquired till he had invested himself with the pastoral attributes of Damon and Celadon, and had addressed his future wife as Amarantha or Phyllis.
The tragedies of the period illustrate this general inclination to spurious romance. If ever there was a time when the ideal of monarchy was degraded, and the instincts of chivalrous action discouraged, it was in the reign of Charles II. Absorbed as he was in the pursuit of pleasure, the king scarcely attempted to conceal his weariness when obliged to attend to affairs of State. He allowed the Dutch fleet to approach his capital and to burn his own ships of war on the Thames; he sold Dunkirk to the French; hardly any action in his life evinces any sense of patriotism or honour. And yet we have only to glance at Johnson's _Life of Dryden_ to see how all the tragedies of the time turn on the great characters, the great actions, the great sufferings of princes. The Elizabethan drama had exhibited man in every degree of life and with every variety of character; the playwright of the Restoration seldom descended below such themes as the conquest of Mexico or Granada, the fortunes of the Great Mogul, and the fate of Hannibal. This monotony of subject was doubtless in part the result of policy, for in pitying the fortunes of Montezuma the imagination of the spectator insensibly recalled those of Charles the Second.
Everything in these tragedies is unreal, strained, and affected. In order to remove them as far as possible from the language of ordinary life they are written in rhyme, while the astonishment of the audience is raised with big swelling words, which vainly seek to hide the absence of genuine feeling. The heroes tear their passion to tatters because they think it heroic to do so; their flights into the sublime generally drop into the ridiculous; instead of holding up the mirror to nature, their object is to depart as far as possible from common sense. Nothing exhibits more characteristically the utterly artificial feeling, both of the dramatists and the spectators, than the habit which then prevailed of dismissing the audience after a tragic play with a witty epilogue. On one occasion, Nell Gwynne, in the character of St. Catherine, was, at the end of the play, left for dead upon the stage. Her body having to be removed, the actress suddenly started to her feet, exclaiming,
"Hold! are you mad? you damned confounded dog, I am to rise and speak the epilogue!"[3]
By way of compensation, however, the writers of the period poured forth their real feelings without reserve in their comedies. So great, indeed, is the gulf that separates our own manners from theirs, that some critics have endeavoured to defend the comic dramatists of the Restoration against the moralists on the ground that their representations of Nature are entirely devoid of reality. Charles Lamb, who loved all curiosities, and the Caroline comedians among the number, says of them:
"They are a world of themselves almost as much as fairy-land. Take one of their characters, male or female (with few exceptions they are alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire, because in a modern play I am to judge of the right and the wrong. The standard of _police_ is the measure of _political justice_. The atmosphere will blight it; it cannot live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has no business, from which it must needs fall headlong--as dizzy and incapable of making a stand as a Swedenborgian bad spirit that has wandered unawares into his sphere of Good Men or Angels. But in its own world do we feel the creature is so very bad? The Fainalls and Mirabels, the Dorimants and Lady Touchwoods, in their own sphere do not offend my moral sense; in fact, they do not appeal to it at all. They seem engaged in their proper element. They break through no laws or conscientious restraints. They know of none. They have got out of Christendom into the land of-what shall I call it?--of cuckoldry--the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is duty and the manners perfect freedom. It is altogether a speculative scene of things, which has no reference whatever to the world that is."
This is a very happy description of the manner in which the plays of Etherege, Shadwell, Wycherley, and Congreve affect us to-day; and it is no doubt superfluous to expend much moral indignation on works which have long since lost their power to charm: comedies in which the reader finds neither the horseplay of Aristophanes, nor the nature of Terence, nor the poetry of Shakespeare; in which there is not a single character that arouses interest, or a situation that spontaneously provokes laughter; in which the complications of plot are produced by the devices of fine gentlemen for making cuckolds of citizens, and the artifices of wives to dupe their husbands; in which the profuse wit of the dialogue might excite admiration, if it were possible to feel the smallest interest in the occasion that produced it. But to argue that these plays never represented any state of existing society is a paradox which chooses to leave out of account the contemporary attack on the stage made by Jeremy Collier, the admissions of Dryden, and all those valuable glimpses into the manners of our ancestors which are afforded by the prologues of the period.
It is sufficient to quote against Lamb the witty and severe criticism of Steele in the _Spectator_, upon Etherege's _Man of the Mode_:
"It cannot be denied but that the negligence of everything which engages the attention of the sober and valuable part of mankind appears very well drawn in this piece. But it is denied that it is necessary to the character of a fine gentleman that he should in that manner trample upon all order and decency. As for the character of Dorimant, it is more of a coxcomb than that of Fopling. He says of one of his companions that a good correspondence between them is their mutual interest. Speaking of that friend, he declares their being much together 'makes the women think the better of his understanding, and judge more favourably of my reputation. It makes him pass upon some for a man of very good sense, and me upon others for a very civil person.' This whole celebrated piece is a perfect contradiction to good manners, good sense, and common honesty; and as there is nothing in it but what is built upon the ruin of virtue and innocence, according to the notion of virtue in this comedy, I take the shoemaker to be in reality the fine gentleman of the play; for it seems he is an atheist, if we may depend upon his character as given by the orange-woman, who is herself far from being the lowest in the play. She says of a fine man who is Dorimant's companion, 'there is not such another heathen in the town except the shoemaker.' His pretension to be the hero of the drama appears still more in his own description of his way of living with his lady. 'There is,' says he, 'never a man in the town lives more like a gentleman with his wife than I do. I never mind her motions; she never inquires into mine. We speak to one another civilly; hate one another heartily; and, because it is vulgar to lie and soak together, we have each of us our several settle-beds.'
"That of 'soaking together' is as good as if Dorimant had spoken it himself; and I think, since he puts human nature in as ugly a form as the circumstances will bear, and is a staunch unbeliever, he is very much wronged in having no part of the good fortune bestowed in the last act. To speak plain of this whole work, I think nothing but being lost to a sense of innocence and virtue can make any one see this comedy without observing more frequent occasion to move sorrow and indignation than mirth and laughter. At the same time I allow it to be nature, but it is nature in its utmost corruption and degeneracy."[4]
The truth is, that the stage after the Restoration reflects only too faithfully the manners and the sentiments of the only society which at that period could boast of anything like organisation. The press, which now enables public opinion to exercise so powerful a control over the manners of the times, had then scarcely an existence. No standard of female honour restrained the license of wit and debauchery. If the clergy were shocked at the propagation of ideas so contrary to the whole spirit of Christianity, their natural impulse to reprove them was checked by the fear that an apparent condemnation of the practices of the Court might end in the triumph of their old enemies, the Puritans. All the elements of an old and decaying form of society that tended to atheism, cynicism, and dissolute living, exhibited themselves, therefore, in naked shamelessness on the stage. The audiences in the theatres were equally devoid of good manners and good taste; they did not hesitate to interrupt the actors in the midst of a serious play, while they loudly applauded their obscene allusions. So gross was the character of comic dialogue that women could not venture to appear at a comedy without masks, and under these circumstances the theatre became the natural centre for assignations. In such an atmosphere women readily cast off all modesty and reserve; indeed, the choicest indecencies of the times are to be found in the epilogues to the plays, which were always assigned to the female actors.
It at first sight seems remarkable that a society inveterately corrupt should have contained in itself such powers of purification and vitality as to discard the literary garbage of the Restoration period in favour of the refined sobriety which characterises the writers of Queen Anne's reign. But, in fact, the spread of the infection was confined within certain well-marked limits. The Court moved in a sphere apart, and was altogether too light and frivolous to exert a decided moral influence on the great body of the nation. The country gentlemen, busied on their estates, came seldom to town; the citizens, the lawyers, and the members of the other professions steadily avoided the theatre, and regarded with equal contempt the moral and literary excesses of the courtiers. Among this class, unrepresented at present in the world of letters, except, perhaps, by antiquarians like Selden, the foundations of sound taste were being silently laid. The readers of the nation had hitherto been almost limited to the nobility. Books were generally published by subscription, and were dependent for their success on the favour with which they were received by the courtiers. But, after the subsidence of the Civil War, the nation began to make rapid strides in wealth and refinement, and the moneyed classes sought for intellectual amusement in their leisure hours. Authors by degrees found that they might look for readers beyond the select circle of their aristocratic patrons; and the book-seller, who had hitherto calculated his profits merely by the commission he might obtain on the sale of books, soon perceived that they were becoming valuable as property. The reign of Charles II. is remarkable not only for the great increase in the number of the licensed printers in London, but for the appearance of the first of the race of modern publishers, Jacob Tonson.
The portion of society whose tastes the publishers undertook to satisfy was chiefly interested in history, poetry, and criticism. It was this for which Dryden composed his _Miscellany_, this to which he addressed the admirable critical essays which precede his _Translations from the Latin Poets_ and his _Versifications of Chaucer_, and this which afterwards gave the main support to the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. Ignorant of the writings of the great classical authors, as well as of the usages of polite society, these men were nevertheless robust and manly in their ideas, and were eager to form for themselves a correct standard of taste by reference to the best authorities. Though they turned with repugnance from the playhouse and from the morals of the Court, they could not avoid being insensibly affected by the tone of grace and elegance which prevailed in Court circles. And in this respect, if in no other, our gratitude is due to the Caroline dramatists, who may justly claim to be the founders of the _social_ prose style in English literature. Before them English prose had been employed, no doubt, with music and majesty by many writers; but the style of these is scarcely representative; they had used the language for their own elevated purposes, without, however, attempting to give it that balanced fineness and subtlety which makes it a fitting instrument for conveying the complex ideas of an advanced stage of society. Dryden, Wycherley, and their followers, impelled by the taste of the Court to study the French language, brought to English composition a nicer standard of logic and a more choice selection of language, while the necessity of pleasing their audiences with brilliant dialogue made them careful to give their sentences that well-poised structure which Addison afterwards carried to perfection in the _Spectator_.
By this brief sketch the reader may be enabled to judge of the distracted state of society, both in politics and taste, in the reign of Charles II. On the one side, the Monarchical element in the Constitution was represented by the Court Party, flushed with the recent restoration; retaining the old ideas and principles of absolutism which had prevailed under James I., without being able to perceive their inapplicability to the existing nature of things; feeding its imagination alternately on sentiments derived from the decayed spirit of chivalry, and on artistic representations of fashionable debauchery in its most open form--a party which, while it fortunately preserved the traditions of wit, elegance, and gaiety of style, seemed unaware that these qualities could be put to any other use than the mitigation of an intolerable _ennui_. On the other side, the rising power of Democracy found its representatives in austere Republicans opposed to all institutions in Church and State that seemed to obstruct their own abstract principles of government; gloomy fanatics, who, with an intense intellectual appreciation of eternal principles of religion and morality, sought to sacrifice to their system the most permanent and even innocent instincts of human nature. Between the two extreme parties was the unorganised body of the nation, grouped round old customs and institutions, rapidly growing in wealth and numbers, conscious of the rise in their midst of new social principles, but perplexed how to reconcile these with time-honoured methods of religious, political, and literary thought. To lay the foundations of sound opinion among the people at large; to prove that reconciliation was possible between principles hitherto exhibited only in mutual antagonism; to show that under the English Constitution monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy might all be harmonised, that humanity was not absolutely incompatible with religion or morality with art, was the task of the statesmen, and still more of the men of letters, of the early part of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER II.
ADDISON'S FAMILY AND EDUCATION.
Joseph Addison was born on the 1st of May, 1672. He was the eldest son of Lancelot Addison, at the time of his birth rector of Milston, near Amesbury, in Wiltshire, and afterwards Dean of Lichfield. His father was a man of character and accomplishments. Educated at Oxford, while that University was under the control of the famous Puritan Visitation, he made no secret of his contempt for principles to which he was forced to submit, or of his preferences for Monarchy and Episcopacy. His boldness was not agreeable to the University authorities, and being forced to leave Oxford, he maintained himself for a time near Petworth, in Sussex, by acting as chaplain or tutor in families attached to the Royalist cause. After the Restoration he obtained the appointment of chaplain to the garrison of Dunkirk, and when that town was ceded to France in 1662, he was removed in a similar capacity to Tangier. Here he remained eight years, but, venturing on a visit to England, his post was bestowed upon another, and he would have been left without resources had not one of his friends presented him with the living of Milston, valued at £120 a year. With the courage of his order he thereupon took a wife, Jane, daughter of Dr. Nathaniel Gulston, and sister of William Gulston, Bishop of Bristol, by whom he had six children, three sons and three daughters, all born at Milston. In 1675 he was made a prebendary of Salisbury Cathedral and Chaplain-in-Ordinary to the King; and in 1683 he was promoted to the Deanery of Lichfield, as a reward for his services at Tangier, and out of consideration of losses which he had sustained by a fire at Milston. His literary reputation stood high, and it is said that he would have been made a bishop, if his old zeal for legitimacy had not prompted him to manifest in the Convocation of 1689 his hostility to the Revolution. He died in 1703.
Lancelot was a writer at once voluminous and lively. In the latter part of his life he produced several treatises on theological subjects, the most popular of which was called _An Introduction to the Sacrament_. This book passed through many editions. The doctrine it contains leans rather to the Low Church side. But much the most characteristic of his writings were his works on Mahommedanism and Judaism, the results of his studies during his residence in Barbary. These show not only considerable industry and research and powers of shrewd observation, but that genuine literary faculty which enables a writer to leave upon a subject of a general nature the impression of his own character. While there is nothing forced or exaggerated in his historical style, a vein of allegory runs through the narrative of the _Revolutions of the Kingdoms of Fez and Morocco_, which must have had a piquant flavour for the orthodox English reader of that day. Recollections of the Protectorate would have taken nothing of its vividness from the portrait of the Moorish priest who "began to grow into reputation with the people by reason of his high pretensions to piety and fervent zeal for their law, illustrated by a stubborn rigidity of conversation and outward sanctity of life." When the Zeriffe, with ambitious designs on the throne, sent his sons on a pilgrimage to Mecca, the religious buffooneries practised by the young men must have recalled to the reader circumstances more recent and personal than those which the author was apparently describing. "Much was the reverence and reputation of holiness which they thereby acquired among the superstitious people, who could hardly be kept from kissing their garments and adoring them as saints, while they failed not in their parts, but acted as much devotion as high contemplative looks, deep sighs, tragical gestures, and other passionate interjections of holiness could express. 'Allah, allah!' was their doleful note, their sustenance the people's alms." And when these impostors had inveigled the King of Fez into a religious war, the description of those who "mistrusted their own safety, and began, but too late, to repent their approving of an armed hypocrisy," was not more applicable to the rulers of Barbary than to the people of England. "Puffed up with their successes, they forgot their obedience, and these saints denied the king the fifth part of their spoils.... By which it appeared that they took up arms, not out of love for their country and zeal for their religion, but out of desire of rule." There is, indeed, nothing in these utterances which need have prevented the writer from consistently promoting the Revolution of 1688; yet his principles seem to have carried him far in the opposite direction; and it is interesting to remember that the assertor in Convocation of the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right was the father of the author of the _Whig Examiner_ and the _Freeholder_. However decidedly Joseph may have dissented from his father's political creed, we know that he entertained admiration and respect for his memory, and that death alone prevented him from completing the monument afterwards erected in Lancelot's honour in Lichfield Cathedral.
Of Addison's mother nothing of importance is recorded. His second brother, Gulston, became Governor of Fort St. George, in the East Indies; and the third, Lancelot, followed in Joseph's footsteps so far as to obtain a Fellowship at Magdalen College, Oxford. His sisters, Jane and Anna, died young; but Dorothy was twice married, and Swift records in her honour that she was "a kind of wit, and very like her brother." We may readily believe that a writer so lively as Lancelot would have had clever children, but Steele was perhaps carried away by the zeal of friendship or the love of epigram when he said, in his dedication to the _Drummer_: "Mr. Dean Addison left behind him four children, each of whom, for excellent talents and singular perfections, was as much above the ordinary world as their brother Joseph was above them." But that Steele had a sincere admiration for the whole family is sufficiently shown by his using them as an example in one of his early _Tatlers_:
"I remember among all my acquaintance but one man whom I have thought to live with his children with equanimity and a good grace. He had three sons and one daughter, whom he bred with all the care imaginable in a liberal and ingenuous way. I have often heard him say he had the weakness to love one much better than the other, but that he took as much pains to correct that as any other criminal passion that could arise in his mind. His method was to make it the only pretension in his children to his favour to be kind to each other, and he would tell them that he who was the best brother he would reckon the best son. This turned their thoughts into an emulation for the superiority in kind and tender affection towards each other. The boys behaved themselves very early with a manly friendship; and their sister, instead of the gross familiarities and impertinent freedoms in behaviour usual in other houses, was always treated by them with as much complaisance as any other young lady of their acquaintance. It was an unspeakable pleasure to visit or sit at a meal in that family. I have often seen the old man's heart flow at his eyes with joy upon occasions which would appear indifferent to such as were strangers to the turn of his mind; but a very slight accident, wherein he saw his children's good-will to one another, created in him the god-like pleasure of loving them because they loved each other. This great command of himself in hiding his first impulse to partiality at last improved to a steady justice towards them, and that which at first was but an expedient to correct his weakness was afterwards the measure of his virtue."[5]
This, no doubt, is the set description of a moralist, and to an age in which the liberty of manners has grown into something like license it may savour of formalism and priggishness; but when we remember that the writer was one of the most warm-hearted of men, and that the subject of his panegyric was himself, full of vivacity and impulse, it must be admitted that the picture which it gives us of the Addison family in the rectory of Milston is a particularly amiable one.
Though the eighteenth century had little of that feeling for natural beauty which distinguishes our own, a man of Addison's imagination could hardly fail to be impressed by the character of the scenery in which his childhood was passed. No one who has travelled on a summer's day across Salisbury plain, with its vast canopy of sky and its open tracts of undulating downland, relieved by no shadows except such as are thrown by the passing cloud, the grazing sheep, and the great circle of Stonehenge, will forget the delightful sense of refreshment and repose produced by the descent into the valley of the Avon. The sounds of human life rising fro |
41496-8 | m the villages after the long solitude of the plain, the shade of the deep woods, the coolness of the river, like all streams rising in the chalk, clear and peaceful, are equally delicious to the sense and the imagination. It was, doubtless, the recollection of these scenes that inspired Addison in his paraphrase of the twenty-third Psalm:
"The Lord my pasture shall prepare, And feed me with a shepherd's care.
* * * * *
When in the sultry glebe I faint, Or on the thirsty mountain pant, To fertile vales and dewy meads My weary wandering steps he leads, Where peaceful rivers, soft and slow, Amid the verdant landscape flow."
At Amesbury he was first sent to school, his master being one Nash; and here, too, he probably met with the first recorded adventure of his life. It is said that having committed some fault, and being fearful of the consequences, he ran away from school, and, taking up his abode in a hollow tree, maintained himself as he could till he was discovered and brought back to his parents. He was removed from Amesbury to Salisbury, and thence to the Grammar School at Lichfield, where he is said to have been the leader in a "barring out." From Lichfield he passed to the Charter House, then under the charge of Dr. Ellis, a man of taste and scholarship. The Charter House at that period was, after Westminster, the best-known school in England, and here was laid the foundation of that sound classical taste which perfected the style of the essays in the _Spectator_.
Macaulay labours with much force and ingenuity to prove that Addison's classical acquirements were only superficial, and, in his usual epigrammatic manner, hazards the opinion that "his knowledge of Greek, though doubtless such as was, in his time, thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently less than that which many lads now carry away every year from Eton and Rugby." That Addison was not a scholar of the class of Bentley or Porson may be readily admitted. But many scattered allusions in his works prove that his acquaintance with the Greek poets of every period, if cursory, was wide and intelligent: he was sufficiently master of the language thoroughly to understand the spirit of what he read; he undertook while at Oxford a translation of Herodotus, and one of the papers in the _Spectator_ is a direct imitation of a _jeu d'esprit_ of Lucian's. The Eton or Rugby boy who, in these days, with a normal appetite for cricket and football, acquired an equal knowledge of Greek literature, would certainly be somewhat of a prodigy.
No doubt, however, Addison's knowledge of the Latin poets was, as Macaulay infers, far more extensive and profound. It would have been strange had it been otherwise. The influence of the classical side of the Italian Renaissance was now at its height, and wherever those ideas became paramount Latin composition was held in at least as much esteem as poetry in the vernacular. Especially was this the case in England, where certain affinities of character and temperament made it easy for writers to adopt Roman habits of thought. Latin verse composition soon took firm root in the public schools and universities, so that clever boys of the period were tolerably familiar with most of the minor Roman poets. Pope, in the Fourth Book of the _Dunciad_, vehemently attacked the tradition as confining the mind to the study of words rather than of things; but he had himself had no experience of a public school, and only those who fail to appreciate the influence of Latin verse composition on the style of our own greatest orators, and of poets like Milton and Gray, will be inclined to undervalue it as an instrument of social and literary training.
Proficiency in this art may at least be said to have laid the foundation of Addison's fortunes. Leaving the Charter House in 1687, at the early age of fifteen, he was entered at Queen's College, Oxford, and remained a member of that society for two years, when a copy of his Latin verses fell into the hands of Dr. Lancaster, then Fellow and afterwards Provost of the College. Struck with their excellence, Lancaster used his influence to obtain for him a demyship at Magdalen. The subject of this fortunate set of verses was "Inauguratio Regis Gulielmi," from which fact we may reasonably infer that even in his boyhood his mind had acquired a Whig bias. Whatever inclination he may have had in this direction would have been confirmed by the associations of his new college. The fluctuations of opinion in Magdalen had been frequent and extraordinary. Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign it was notorious for its Calvinism, but under the Chancellorship of Laud it appears to have adopted, with equal ardour, the cause of Arminianism, for it was among the colleges that offered the stoutest opposition to the Puritan visitors in 1647-48. The despotic tendencies of James II., however, again cooled its loyalty, and its spirited resistance to the king's order for the election of a Roman Catholic President had given a mortal blow to the Stuart dynasty. Hough was now President, but in consequence of the dispute with the king there had been no election of demies in 1688, so that twice the usual number was chosen in the following year, and the occasion was distinguished by the name of the "golden election." From Magdalen Addison proceeded to his master's degree in 1693; the College elected him probationary Fellow in 1697, and actual Fellow the year after. He retained his Fellowship till 1711.
Of his tastes, habits, and friendships at Oxford there are few records. Among his acquaintance were Boulter, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin--whose memory is unenviably perpetuated, in company with Ambrose Phillips, in Pope's _Epistle to Arbuthnot_,
"Does not one table Bavius still admit, Still to one Bishop Phillips seem a wit?"--
and possibly the famous Sacheverell.[6] He is said to have shown in the society of Magdalen some of the shyness that afterwards distinguished him; he kept late hours, and read chiefly after dinner. The walk under the well-known elms by the Cherwell is still connected with his name. Though he probably acted as tutor in the college, the greater part of his quiet life at the University was doubtless occupied in study. A proof of his early maturity is seen in the fact that, in his nineteenth year, a young man of birth and fortune, Mr. Rushout, who was being educated at Magdalen, was placed under his charge.
His reputation as a scholar and a man of taste soon extended itself to the world of letters in London. In 1693, being then in his twenty-second year, he wrote his _Account of the Greatest English Poets_; and about the same time he addressed a short copy of verses to Dryden, complimenting him on the enduring vigour of his poetical faculty, as shown in his translations of Virgil and other Latin poets, some of which had recently appeared in Tonson's _Miscellany_. The old poet appears to have been highly gratified, and to have welcomed the advances thus made to him, for he returned Addison's compliment by bestowing high and not unmerited praise on the translation of the Fourth Book of the _Georgics_, which the latter soon after undertook, and by printing, as a preface to his own translation, a discourse written by Addison on the _Georgics_, as well as arguments to most of the books of the _Æneid_.
Through Dryden, no doubt, he became acquainted with Jacob Tonson. The father of English publishing had for some time been a well-known figure in the literary world. He had purchased the copyright of _Paradise Lost_; he had associated himself with Dryden in publishing before the Revolution two volumes of _Miscellanies_; encouraged by the success which these obtained, he put the poet, in 1693, on some translations of Juvenal and Persius, and two new volumes of _Miscellanies_; while in 1697 he urged him to undertake a translation of the whole of the works of Virgil. Observing how strongly the public taste set towards the great classical writers, he was anxious to employ men of ability in the work of turning them into English; and it appears from existing correspondence that he engaged Addison, while the latter was at Oxford, to superintend a translation of Herodotus. He also suggested a translation of Ovid. Addison undertook to procure coadjutors for the work of translating the Greek historian. He himself actually translated the books called _Polymnia_ and _Urania_, but for some unexplained reason the work was never published. For Ovid he seems, on the whole, to have had less inclination. At Tonson's instance he translated the Second Book of the _Metamorphoses_, which was first printed in the volume of _Miscellanies_ that appeared in 1697; but he wrote to the publisher that "Ovid had so many silly stories with his good ones that he was more tedious to translate than a better poet would be." His study of Ovid, however, was of the greatest use in developing his critical faculty; the excesses and want of judgment in that poet forced him to reflect, and his observations on the style of his author anticipate his excellent remarks on the difference between True and False Wit in the sixty-second number of the _Spectator_.
Whoever, indeed, compares these notes with the _Essay on the Georgics_, and with the opinions expressed in the _Account of the English Poets_, will be convinced that the foundations of his critical method were laid at this period (1697). In the _Essay on the Georgics_ he seems to be timid in the presence of Virgil's superiority; his _Account of the English Poets_, besides being impregnated with the principles of taste prevalent after the Restoration, shows deficient powers of perception and appreciation. The name of Shakespeare is not mentioned in it, Dryden and Congreve alone being selected to represent the drama. Chaucer is described as "a merry bard," whose humour has become obsolete through time and change; while the rich pictorial fancy of the _Faery Queen_ is thus described:
"Old Spenser next, warmed with poetic rage, In ancient tales amused a barbarous age-- An age that yet uncultivate and rude, Where'er the poet's fancy led pursued, Through pathless fields and unfrequented floods, To dens of dragons and enchanted woods. But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore, Can charm an understanding age no more; The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, While the dull moral lies too plain below."
According to Pope--always a suspicious witness where Addison is concerned--he had not read Spenser when he wrote this criticism on him.[7]
Milton, as a legitimate successor of the classics, is of course appreciated, but not at all after the elaborate fashion of the _Spectator_; to Dryden, the most distinguished poet of the day, deserved compliments are paid, but their value is lessened by the exaggerated opinion which the writer entertains of Cowley, who is described as a "mighty genius," and is praised for the inexhaustible riches of his imagination. Throughout the poem, in fact, we observe a remarkable confusion of various veins of thought; an unjust depreciation of the Gothic grandeur of the older English poets; a just admiration for the Greek and Roman authors; a sense of the necessity of good sense and regularity in writings composed for an "understanding age;" and at the same time a lingering taste for the forced invention and far-fetched conceits that mark the decay of the spirit of mediæval chivalry.
With the judgments expressed in this performance it is instructive to compare such criticisms on Shakespeare as we find in No. 42 of the _Spectator_, the papers on "Chevy Chase" (73, 74), and particularly the following passage:
"As true wit consists in the resemblance of ideas, and false wit in the resemblance of words, according to the foregoing instances, there is another kind of wit which consists partly in the resemblance of ideas and partly in the resemblance of words, which, for distinction's sake, I shall call mixed wit. This kind of wit is that which abounds in Cowley more than in any author that ever wrote. Mr. Waller has likewise a great deal of it. Mr. Dryden is very sparing in it. Milton has a genius much above it. _Spenser is in the same class with Milton._ The Italians even in their epic poetry are full of it. Monsieur Boileau, who formed himself upon the ancient poets, has everywhere rejected it with scorn. If we look after mixed wit among the Greeks, we shall find it nowhere but in the epigrammatists. There are, indeed, some strokes of it in the little poem ascribed to Musæus, which by that, as well as many other marks, betrays itself to be a modern composition. If we look into the Latin writers we find none of this mixed wit in Virgil, Lucretius, or Catullus; very little in Horace, but a great deal of it in Ovid, and scarce anything else in Martial."
The stepping-stone from the immaturity of the early criticisms in the _Account of the Greatest English Poets_ to the finished ease of the _Spectator_ is to be found in the notes to the translation of Ovid.[8]
The time came when he was obliged to form a decision affecting the entire course of his life. Tonson, who had a wide acquaintance, no doubt introduced him to Congreve and the leading men of letters in London, and through them he was presented to Somers and Montague. Those ministers perhaps persuaded him, as a point of etiquette, to write, in 1695, his _Address to King William_, a poem composed in a vein of orthodox hyperbole, all of which must have been completely thrown away on that most unpoetical of monarchs. Yet in spite of those seductions Addison lingered at Oxford. To retain his Fellowship it was necessary for him to take orders. Had he done so, there can be no doubt that his literary skill and his value as a political partizan would have opened for him a road to the highest preferment. At that time the clergy were far from thinking it unbecoming to their cloth to fight in the political arena or to take part in journalism. Swift would have been advanced to a bishopric, as a reward for his political services, if it had not been for the prejudice entertained towards him by Queen Anne; Boulter, rector of St. Saviour's, Southwark, having made himself conspicuous by editing a paper called the _Freethinker_, was raised to the Primacy of Ireland; Hoadley, the notorious Bishop of Bangor, edited the _London Journal_; the honours that were awarded to two men of such second-rate intellectual capacity would hardly have been denied to Addison. He was inclined in this direction by the example and advice of his father, who was now Dean of Lichfield, and who was urgent on his son to rid himself of the pecuniary embarrassments in which he was involved by embracing the Church as a profession. A few years before he had himself seemed to look upon the Church as his future sphere. In his _Account of the Greatest English Poets_ he says:
"I leave the arts of poetry and verse To them that practise them with more success. Of greater truths I'll now propose to tell, And so at once, dear friend and muse, farewell."
Had he followed up his intention we might have known the name of Addison as that of an artful controversialist, and perhaps as a famous writer of sermons; but we should, in all probability, have never heard of the _Spectator_.
Fortunately for English letters, other influences prevailed to give a different direction to his fortunes. It is true that Tickell, Addison's earliest biographer, states that his determination not to take orders was the result of his own habitual self-distrust, and of a fear of the responsibilities which the clerical office would involve. But Steele, who was better acquainted with his friend's private history, on reading Tickell's Memoir, addressed a letter to Congreve on the subject, in which he says:
"These, you know very well, were not the reasons which made Mr. Addison turn his thoughts to the civil world; and, as you were the instrument of his becoming acquainted with Lord Halifax, I doubt not but you remember the warm instances that noble lord made to the head of the College not to insist upon Mr. Addison's going into orders. His arguments were founded upon the general pravity and corruption of men of business, who wanted liberal education. And I remember, as if I had read the letter yesterday, that my lord ended with a compliment that, however he might be represented as a friend to the Church, he never would do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out of it."
No doubt the real motive of the interest in Addison shown by Lord Halifax, at that time known as Charles Montague, was an anxiety which he shared with all the leading statesmen of the period, and of which more will be said presently, to secure for his party the services of the ablest writers. Finding his _protégé_ as yet hardly qualified to transact affairs of State, he joined with Lord Somers, who had also fixed his eyes on Addison, in soliciting for him from the Crown, in 1699, a pension of £300 a year, which might enable him to supplement his literary accomplishments with the practical experience of travel. Addison naturally embraced the offer. He looked forward to studying the political institutions of foreign countries, to seeing the spots of which he had read in his favourite classical authors, and to meeting the most famous men of letters on the Continent.
It is characteristic both of his own tastes and of his age that he seems to have thought his best passport to intellectual society abroad would be his Latin poems. His verses on the _Peace of Ryswick_, written in 1697 and dedicated to Montague, had already procured him great reputation, and had been praised by Edmund Smith--a high authority--as "the best Latin poem since the _Æneid_." This gave him the opportunity of collecting his various compositions of the same kind, and in 1699 he published from the Sheldonian Press a second volume of the _Musæ Anglicanæ_--the first having appeared in 1691--containing poems by various Oxford scholars. Among the contributors were Hannes, one of the many scholarly physicians of the period; J. Philips, the author of the _Splendid Shilling_; and Alsop, a prominent antagonist of Bentley, whose Horatian humour is celebrated by Pope in the _Dunciad_.[9]
But the most interesting of the names in the volume is that of the once celebrated Edmond, commonly called "Rag," Smith, author of the _Ode on the Death of Dr. Pocock_, who seems to have been among Addison's intimate acquaintance, and deserves to be recollected in connection with him on account of a certain similarity in their genius and the extraordinary difference in their fortunes. "Rag" was a man of fine accomplishments and graceful humour, but, like other scholars of the same class, indolent and licentious. In spite of great indulgence extended to him by the authorities of Christ Church, he was expelled from the University in consequence of his irregularities. His friends stood by him, and, through the interest of Addison, a proposal was made to him to undertake a history of the Revolution, which, however, from political scruples he felt himself obliged to decline. Like Addison, he wrote a tragedy modelled on classical lines; but, as it had no political significance, it only pleased the critics, without, like "Cato," interesting the public. Like Addison, too, he had an opportunity of profiting by the patronage of Halifax, but laziness or whim prevented him from keeping an appointment which the latter had made with him, and caused him to miss a place worth £300 a year. Addison, by his own exertions, rose to posts of honour and profit, and towards the close of his life became Secretary of State. Smith envied his advancement, and, ignoring the fact that his own failure was entirely due to himself, murmured at fortune for leaving him in poverty. Yet he estimated his wants at £600 a year, and died of indulgence when he can scarcely have been more than forty years of age.
Addison's compositions in the _Musæ Anglicanæ_ are eight in number. All of them are distinguished by the ease and flow of the versification, but they are generally wanting in originality. The best of them is the _Pygmæo-Gerano-Machia_, which is also interesting as showing traces of that rich vein of humour which Addison worked out in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_. The mock-heroic style in prose and verse was sedulously cultivated in England throughout the eighteenth century. Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Fielding, developed it in various forms; but Addison's Latin poem is perhaps the first composition in which the fine fancy and invention afterwards shown in the _Rape of the Lock_ and _Gulliver's Travels_ conspicuously displayed itself.
A literary success of this kind at that epoch gave a writer a wider reputation than he could gain by compositions in his own language. Armed, therefore, with copies of the _Musæ Anglicanæ_ for presentation to scholars, and with Halifax's recommendatory letters to men of political distinction, Addison started for the Continent.
CHAPTER III.
ADDISON ON HIS TRAVELS.
Travelling in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries involved an amount of thought and precaution which would have seemed inconvenient to the tourist accustomed to abandon himself to the authority of guide-books, couriers, and railway companies. By ardent spirits like Roderick Random it was regarded as the sphere of enterprise and fortune, and not without reason, in days when adventures were to be met with on almost every road in the country, and in the streets and inns of the towns. The graver portion of society, on the other hand, considered it as part of the regular course of education through which every young man of position ought to pass before entering into active life. French was the universally recognised language of diplomacy. French manners and conversation were considered to be the best school for politeness, while Italy was held in the highest respect by the northern nations as the source of revived art and letters. Some of the most distinguished Englishmen of the time looked, it is true, with little favour on this fashionable training. "Lord Cowper," says Spence, on the information of Dr. Conybeare, "on his death-bed ordered that his son should never travel (it is by the absolute desire of the Queen that he does). He ordered this from a good deal of observation on its effects; he had found that there was little to be hoped, and much to be feared, from travelling. Atwell, who is the young lord's tutor abroad, gives but a very discouraging account of it, too, in his letters, and seems to think that people are sent out too young, and are too hasty to find any great good from it."
On some of the stronger and more enthusiastic minds the chief effect of the grand tour was to produce a violent hatred of all foreign manners. Dennis, the critic, for instance, who, after leaving Cambridge, spent some time on the Continent, returned with a confirmed dislike to the French, and ostentatiously displayed in his writings how much he held "dragoons and wooden shoes in scorn;" and it is amusing to find Addison at a later date making his Tory fox-hunter declare this anti-Gallican temper to be the main fruits of foreign travel.
But, in general, what was intended to be a school for manners and political instruction proved rather a source of unsettlement and dissipation; and the vigorous and glowing lines in which Pope makes the tutor describe to Dullness the doings of the "young Æneas" abroad, may be taken as a faithful picture of the travelled pupil of the period:
"Intrepid then o'er seas and land he flew; Europe he saw, and Europe saw him too. There all thy gifts and graces we display, Thou, only thou, directing all our way! To where the Seine, obsequious as she runs, Pours at great Bourbon's feet her silken sons; Or Tyber, now no longer Roman, rolls, Vain of Italian arts, Italian souls: To happy convents bosomed deep in vines, Where slumber abbots purple as their wines: To isles of fragrance, lily-silvered vales, Diffusing languor in the panting gales: To lands of singing or of dancing slaves, Love-whispering woods, and lute-resounding waves. But chief her shrine where naked Venus keeps, And Cupids ride the lion of the deeps; Where, eased of fleets, the Adriatic main Wafts the smooth eunuch and enamoured swain. Led by my hand, he sauntered Europe round, And gathered every vice on Christian ground; Saw every court, heard every king declare His royal sense of operas or the fair; The stews and palace equally explored, Intrigued with glory, and with spirit whored; Tried all _hors-d'oeuvres_, all liqueurs defined, Judicious drank, and greatly daring dined; Dropped the dull lumber of the Latin store, Spoiled his own language, and acquired no more; All classic learning lost on classic ground; And last turned air, the echo of a sound."
It is needless to say that Addison's experiences of travel were of a very different kind. He left England in his twenty-eighth year, with a mind well equipped from a study of the best authors, and with the intention of qualifying himself for political employment at home, after familiarising himself with the languages and manners of foreign countries. His sojourn abroad extended over four years, and his experience was more than usually varied and comprehensive. Crossing from Dover to Calais, some time in the summer of 1699, he spent nearly eighteen months in France making himself master of the language. In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles for a tour in Italy, and visited in succession the following places: Monaco, Genoa, Pavia, Milan, Brescia, Verona, Padua, Venice, Ferrara, Ravenna, Rimini, S. Marino, Pesaro, Fano, Sinigaglia, Ancona, Loreto, Rome (where, as it was his intention to return, he only visited St. Peter's and the Pantheon), Naples, Capri, whence he came back to Rome by sea, the various towns in the neighbourhood of Rome, Siena, Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca, Florence, Bologna, Modena, Parma, and Turin. Thus, in the course of this journey, which lasted exactly a twelvemonth, he twice crossed the Apennines, and made acquaintance with all the more important cities in the northern part of the Peninsula. In December, 1701, he passed over Mont Cenis to Geneva, proceeding then by Fribourg, Berne, Soleure, Zurich, St. Gall, Linden, Insbruck, Hall, to Vienna, where he arrived in the autumn of 1702. After making a brief stay in the Austrian capital he turned his face homewards, and having visited the Protestant cities of Germany, and made a rather longer stay in Hamburg than in any other, he reached Holland in the spring of 1703, and remained in that country till his return to England, some time in the autumn of the same year.
During his journey he made notes for his _Remarks on Italy_, which he published immediately on his return home, and he amused himself, while crossing Mont Cenis, with composing his _Letter to Lord Halifax_, which contains, perhaps, the best verses he ever wrote. Though the ground over which he passed was well trodden, and though he possessed none of the special knowledge which gives value to the observations of travellers like Arthur Young, yet his remarks on the people and places he saw are the product of an original mind, and his illustrations of his route from the Latin poets are remarkably happy and graceful. It is interesting, also, to observe how many of the thoughts and suggestions which occurred to him on the road are afterwards worked up into papers for the _Spectator_.
When Addison landed in France, in 1699, the power of Louis XIV., so long the determined enemy of the English Revolution of 1688, had passed its climax. The Peace of Ryswick, by which the hopes of the Jacobites were finally demolished, was two years old. The king, disappointed in his dreams of boundless military glory, had fallen into a fit of devotion, and Addison, arriving from England with a very imperfect knowledge of the language, was astonished to find the whole of French literature saturated with the royal taste. "As for the state of learning," says he, in a letter to Montague, dated August, 1699, "there is no book comes out at present that has not something in it of an air of devotion. Dacier has bin forced to prove his Plato a very good Christian before he ventures upon his translation, and has so far comply'd with y{e} tast of the age that his whole book is overrun with texts of Scripture, and y{e} notion of præ-existence, supposed to be stolen from two verses of y{e} prophets. Nay, y{e} humour is grown so universal that it is got among y{e} poets, who are every day publishing Lives of Saints and Legends in Rhime."
Finding, perhaps, that the conversation at the capital was not very congenial to his taste, he seems to have hurried on to Blois, a town then noted for the purity with which its inhabitants spoke the French language, and where he had determined to make his temporary abode. His only record of his first impressions of Paris is a casual criticism of "y{e} King's Statue that is lately set up in the Place Vendome." He visited, however, both Versailles and Fontainebleau, and the preference which he gives to the latter (in a letter to Congreve) is interesting, as anticipating that taste for natural as opposed to artificial beauty which he afterwards expressed in the _Spectator_.
"I don't believe, as good a poet as you are, that you can make finer Lanskips than those about the King's houses, or with all yo{r} descriptions build a more magnificent palace than Versailles. I am, however, so singular as to prefer Fontainebleau to the rest. It is situated among rocks and woods that give you a fine variety of Savage prospects. The King has Humoured the Genius of the place, and only made of so much art as is necessary to Help and regulate Nature, without reforming her too much. The Cascades seem to break through the Clefts and Cracks of Rocks that are covered over with Moss, and look as if they were piled upon one another by Accident. There is an artificial wildness in the Meadows, Walks, and Canals, and y{e} Garden, instead of a Wall, is Fenced on the Lower End by a Natural Mound of Rock-work that strikes the eye very agreeably. For my part, I think there is something more charming in these rude heaps of Stone than in so many Statues, and wou'd as soon see a River winding through Woods and Meadows as when it is tossed up in such a variety of figures at Versailles."[10]
Here and there, too, his correspondence exhibits traces of that delicate vein of ridicule in which he is without a rival, as in the following inimitable description of Le Brun's paintings at Versailles:
"The painter has represented his most Xtian Majesty under y{e} figure of Jupiter throwing thunderbolts all about the ceiling, and striking terror into y{e} Danube and Rhine, that lie astonished and blasted a little above the Cornice."
Of his life at Blois a very slight sketch has been preserved by the Abbe Philippeaux, one of the many gossipping informants from whom Spence collected his anecdotes:
"Mr. Addison stayed above a year at Blois. He would rise as early as between two and three in summer, and lie abed till between eleven and twelve in the depth of winter. He was untalkative while here, and often thoughtful; sometimes so lost in thought that I have come into his room and have stayed five minutes there before he has known anything of it. He had his masters generally at supper with him, kept very little company beside, and had no amour whilst here that I know of, and I think I should have known it if he had had any."
The following characteristic letter to a gentleman of Blois, with whom he seems to have had an altercation, is interesting as showing the mixture of coolness and dignity, the "blood and judgment well commingled" which Hamlet praised in Horatio, and which are conspicuous in all Addison's actions as well as in his writings:
"Sir,--I am always as slow in making an Enemy as a Friend, and am therefore very ready to come to an Accommodation with you; but as for any satisfaction, I don't think it is due on either side when y{e} Affront is mutual. You know very well that according to y{e} opinion of y{e} world a man would as soon be called a Knave as a Fool, and I believe most people w{d} be rather thought to want Legs than Brains. But I suppose whatever we said in y{e} heat of discourse is not y{e} real opinion we have of each other, since otherwise you would have scorned to subscribe yourself as I do at present, S{r}, y{r} very, etc.
A. Mons{r} L'Espagnol, Blois, 10{br} 1699."
The length of Addison's sojourn at Blois seems to have been partly caused by the difficulty he experienced, owing to the defectiveness of his memory, in mastering the language. Finding himself at last able to converse easily, he returned to Paris some time in the autumn of 1700, in order to see a little of polite society there before starting on his travels in Italy. He found the best company in the capital among the men of letters, and he makes especial mention of Malebranche, whom he describes as solicitous about the adequate rendering of his works into English; and of Boileau, who, having now survived almost all his literary friends, seems, in his conversation with Addison, to have been even more than usually splenetic in his judgments on his contemporaries. The old poet and critic was, however, propitiated with the present of the _Musæ Anglicanæ_; and, according to Tickell, said "that he did not question there were excellent compositions in the native language of a country that possessed the Roman genius in so eminent a degree."
In general, Addison's remarks on the French character are not complimentary. He found the vanity of the people so elated by the elevation of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Spain that they were insupportable, and he felt no reluctance to quit France for Italy. His observations on the national manners, as seen at Blois, are characteristic:
"Truly, by what I have yet seen, they are the Happiest nation in the world. 'Tis not in the pow'r of Want or Slavery to make 'em miserable. There is nothing to be met with in the Country but Mirth and Poverty. Ev'ry one sings, laughs, and starves. Their Conversation is generally Agreeable; for if they have any Wit or Sense they are sure to show it. They never mend upon a Second meeting, but use all the freedom and familiarity at first Sight that a long Intimacy or Abundance of wine can scarce draw from an Englishman. Their Women are perfect Mistresses in this Art of showing themselves to the best Advantage. They are always gay and sprightly, and set off y{e} worst faces in Europe with y{e} best airs. Ev'ry one knows how to give herself as charming a look and posture as S{r} Godfrey Kneller c{d} draw her in."[11]
He embarked from Marseilles for Genoa in December, 1700, having as his companion Edward Wortley Montague, whom Pope satirises under the various names of Shylock, Worldly, and Avidien. It is unnecessary to follow him step by step in his travels, but the reader of his _Letter to Lord Halifax_ may still enjoy the delight and enthusiasm to which he gives utterance on finding himself among the scenes described in his favourite authors:
"Poetic fields encompass me around, And still I seem to tread on classic ground; For here the Muse so oft her harp has strung, That not a mountain rears its head unsung; Renowned in verse each shady thicket grows, And every stream in heavenly numbers flows."[12]
The phrase "classic ground," which has become proverbial, is first used in these verses, and, as will have been observed, Pope repeats it with evident reference to the above passage in his satire on the travels of the "young Æneas." Addison seems to have carried the Latin poets with him, and his quotations from them are abundant and apposite. When he is driven into the harbour at Monaco, he remembers Lucan's description of its safety and shelter; as he passes under Monte Circeo, he feels that Virgil's description of Æneas's voyage by the same spot can never be sufficiently admired; he recalls, as he crosses the Apennines, the fine lines of Claudian recording the march of Honorius from Ravenna to Rome; and he delights to think that at the falls of the Velino he can still see the "angry goddess" of the _Æneid_ (Alecto) "thus sinking, as it were, in a tempest, and plunging herself into Hell" amidst such a scene of horror and confusion.
His enthusiastic appreciation of the classics, which caused him in judging any work of art to look, in the first place, for regularity of design and simplicity of effect, shows it self characteristically in his remarks on the Lombard and German styles of architecture in Italy. Of Milan Cathedral he speaks without much admiration, but he was impressed with the wonders of the Certosa near Pavia. "I saw," says he, "between Pavia and Milan the convent of the Carthusians, which is very spacious and beautiful. Their church is very fine and curiously adorned, _but_ of a Gothic structure." His most interesting criticism, however, is that on the Duomo at Siena:
"When a man sees the prodigious pains and expense that our forefathers have been at in these barbarous buildings, one cannot but fancy to himself what miracles of architecture they would have left us had they only been instructed in the right way; for, when the devotion of those ages was much warmer than that of the present, and the riches of the people much more at the disposal of the priests, there was so much money consumed on these Gothic cathedrals as would have finished a greater variety of noble buildings than have been raised either before or since that time. One would wonder to see the vast labour that has been laid out on this single cathedral. The very spouts are loaden with ornaments, the windows are formed like so many scenes of perspective, with a multitude of little pillars retiring behind one another, the great columns are finely engraven with fruits and foliage, that run twisting about them from the very top to the bottom; the whole body of the church is chequered with different lays of black and white marble, the pavement curiously cut out in designs and Scripture stories, and the front covered with such a variety of figures, and overrun with so many mazes and little labyrinths of sculpture, that nothing in the world can make a prettier show to those who prefer false beauties and _affected ornaments_ to a noble and majestic simplicity."[13]
Addison had not reached that large liberality in criticism afterwards attained by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, while insisting that in all art there was but _one_ true style, nevertheless allowed very high merit to what he called the _characteristic_ styles. Sir Joshua would never have fallen into the error of imputing affectation to such simple and honest workmen as the early architects of Northern Italy. The effects of Addison's classical training are also very visible in his descriptions of natural scenery. There is in these nothing of that craving melancholy produced by a sense of the infinity of nature which came into vogue after the French Revolution; no projection of the feelings of the spectator into the external scene on which he gazes; nor, on the other hand, is there any attempt to rival the art of the painter by presenting a landscape in words instead of in colours. He looks on nature with the same clear sight as the Greek and Roman writers, and in describing a scene he selects those particulars in it which he thinks best adapted to arouse pleasurable images in the mind of the reader. Take, for instance, the following excellent description of his passage over the Apennines:
"The fatigue of our crossing the Apennines, and of our whole journey from Loretto to Rome, was very agreeably relieved by the variety of scenes we passed through. For, not to mention the rude prospect of rocks rising one above another, of the deep gutters worn in the sides of them by torrents of rain and snow-water, or the long channels of sand winding about their bottoms that are sometimes filled with so many rivers, we saw in six days' travelling the several seasons of the year in their beauty and perfection. We were sometimes shivering on the top of a bleak mountain, and a little while afterwards basking in a warm valley, covered with violets and almond-trees in blossom, the bees already swarming over them, though but in the month of February. Sometimes our road led us through groves of olives, or by gardens of oranges, or into several hollow apartments among the rocks and mountains, that look like so many natural greenhouses, as being always shaded with a great variety of trees and shrubs that never lose their verdure."[14]
Though his thoughts during his travels were largely occupied with objects chiefly interesting to his taste and imagination, and though he busied himself with such compositions as the _Epistle from Italy_, the _Dialogue on Medals_, and the first four acts of _Cato_, he did not forget that his experience was intended to qualify him for taking part in the affairs of State. And when he reached Geneva, in December, 1701, the door to a political career seemed to be on the point of opening. He there learned, as Tickell informs us, that he had been selected to attend the army under Prince Eugene as secretary from the King. He accordingly waited in the city for official confirmation of this intelligence; but his hopes were doomed to disappointment. William III. died in March, 1702; Halifax, on whom Addison's prospects chiefly depended, was struck off the Privy Council by Queen Anne; and the travelling pension ceased with the life of the sovereign who had granted it. Henceforth he had to trust to his own resources; and though the loss of his pension does not seem to have compelled him at once to turn homewards, as he continued on his route to Vienna, yet an incident that occurred towards the close of his travels shows that he was prepared to eke out his income by undertaking work that would have been naturally irksome to him.
At Rotterdam, on his return towards England, he met with Jacob Tonson, the bookseller, for whom, as has been said, he had already done some work as a translator. Tonson was one of the founders of the Kit-Kat Club, and in that capacity was brought into frequent and intimate connection with the Whig magnates of the day. Among these was the Duke of Somerset, who, through his wife, then high in Queen Anne's favour, exercised considerable influence on the course of affairs. The Duke required a tutor for his son, Lord Hertford, and Tonson recommended Addison. On the Duke's approval of the recommendation, the bookseller seems to have communicated with Addison, who expressed himself, in general terms, as willing to undertake the charge of Lord Hertford, but desired to know more particulars about his engagement. These were furnished by the Duke in a letter to Tonson, and they are certainly a very curious illustration of the manners of the period. "I ought," says his Grace, "to enter into that affair more freely and more plainly, and tell you what I propose, and what I hope he will comply with--viz., I desire he may be more on the account of a companion in my son's travels than as a governor, and that as such I shall account him: my meaning is, that neither lodging, travelling, nor diet shall cost him sixpence, and over and above that my son shall present him at the year's end with a hundred guineas, as long as he is pleased to continue in that service to my son, by his personal attendance and advice, in what he finds necessary during his time of travelling."
To this not very tempting proposal Addison replied: "I have lately received one or two advantageous offers of y{e} same nature, but as I should be very ambitious of executing any of your Grace's commands, so I can't think of taking y{e} like employ from any other hands. As for y{e} recompense that is proposed to me, I must take the liberty to assure your Grace that I should not see my account in it, but in y{e} hope that I have to recommend myself to your Grace's favour and approbation." This reply proved highly offensive to the Duke, who seems to have considered his own offer a magnificent one. "Your letter of the 16th," he writes to Tonson, on June 22, 1703, "with one from Mr. Addison, came safe to me. You say he will give me an account of his readiness of complying with my proposal. I will set down his own words, which are thus: 'As for the recompense that is proposed to me, I must confess I can by no means see my account in it,' etc. All the other parts of his letter are compliments to me, which he thought he was bound in good breeding to write, and as such I have taken them, and no otherwise; and now I leave you to judge how ready he is to comply with my proposal. Therefore, I have wrote by this first post to prevent his coming to England on my account, and have told him plainly that I must look for another, which I cannot be long a-finding."
Addison's principal biographer, Miss Aikin, expresses great contempt for the niggardliness of the Duke, and says that, "Addison must often have congratulated himself in the sequel on that exertion of proper spirit by which he had escaped from wasting, in an attendance little better than servile, three precious years, which he found means of employing so much more to his own honour and satisfaction, and to the advantage of the public." Mean as the Duke's offer was, it is nevertheless plain that Addison really intended to accept it, and, this being so, he can scarcely be congratulated on having on this occasion displayed his usual tact and felicity. Two courses appear to have been open to him. He might either have simply declined the offer "as not finding his account in it," or he might have accepted it in view of the future advantages which he hoped to derive from the Duke's "favour and approbation;" in which case he should have said nothing about finding the "recompense" proposed insufficient. By the course that he took he contrived to miss an appointment which he seems to have made up his mind to accept, and he offended an influential statesman whose favour he was anxious to secure.
To his pecuniary embarrassments was soon added domestic loss. At Amsterdam he received news of his father's death, and it may be supposed that the private business in which he must have been involved in consequence of this event brought him to England, where he arrived some time in the autumn of 1703.
CHAPTER IV.
HIS EMPLOYMENT IN AFFAIRS OF STATE.
Addison's fortunes were now at their lowest ebb. The party from which he had looked for preferment was out of office; his chief political patron was in particular discredit at Court; his means were so reduced that he was forced to adopt a style of living not much more splendid than that of the poorest inhabitants of Grub Street. Yet within three years of his return to England he was promoted to be an Under-Secretary of State--a post from which he mounted to one position of honour after another till his final retirement from political life. That he was able to take advantage of the opportunity that offered itself was owing to his own genius and capacity; the opportunity was the fruit of circumstances which had produced an entire revolution in the position of English men of letters.
Through the greater part of Charles II.'s reign the profession of literature was miserably degraded. It is true that the King himself, a man of wit and taste, was not slow in his appreciation of art; but he was by his character insensible to what was serious or elevated, and the poetry of gallantry, which he preferred, was quite within reach of the courtiers by whom he was surrounded. Rochester, Buckingham, Sedley, and Dorset are among the principal poetical names of the period; all of them being well qualified to shine in verse, the chief requirements of which were a certain grace of manner, an air of fashionable breeding, and a complete disregard of the laws of decency. Besides these "songs by persons of quality," the principal entertainment was provided by the drama. But the stage, seldom a lucrative profession, was then crowded with writers whose fertile, if not very lofty, invention kept down the price of plays. Otway, the most successful dramatist of his time, died in a state of indigence, and as some say, almost of starvation, while playwrights of less ability, if the house was ill-attended on the third night, when the poet received all the profits of the performance, were forced, as Oldham says, "to starve or live in tatters all the year."[15]
Periodical literature, in the shape of journals and magazines, had as yet no existence; nor could the satirical poet or the pamphleteer find his remuneration in controversial writing the strong reaction against Puritanism having raised the monarchy to a position in which it was practically secure against the assaults of all its enemies. The author of the most brilliant satire of the period, who had used all the powers of a rich imagination to discredit the Puritan and Republican cause, was paid with nothing more solid than admiration, and died neglected and in want.
"The wretch, at summing up his misspent days, Found nothing left but poverty and praise! Of all his gains by verse he could not save Enough to purchase flannel and a grave! Reduced to want he in due time fell sick, Was fain to die, and be interred on tick; And well might bless the fever that was sent To rid him hence, and his worse fate prevent."[16]
In the latter part of this reign, however, a new combination of circumstances produced a great change in the character of English literature and in the position of its professors. The struggle of Parties recommenced. Wearied with the intolerable rule of the Saints, the nation had been at first glad to leave its newly-restored King to his pleasures, but, as the memories of the Commonwealth became fainter, the people watched with a growing feeling of disgust the selfishness and extravagance of the Court, while the scandalous sale of Dunkirk and the sight of the Dutch fleet on the Thames made them think of the patriotic energies which Cromwell had succeeded in arousing. At the same time the thinly-disguised inclination of the King to Popery, and the avowed opinions of his brother, raised a general feeling of alarm for the Protestant liberties of the nation. On the other hand, the Puritans, taught moderation by adversity, exhibited the really religious side of their character, and attracted towards themselves a considerable portion of the aristocracy, as well as of the commercial and professional classes in the metropolis--a combination of interests which helped to form the nucleus of the Whig party. The clergy and the landed proprietors, who had been the chief sufferers from Parliamentary rule, naturally adhered to the Court, and were nicknamed by their opponents Tories. Violent party conflicts ensued, marked by such incidents as the Test Act, the Exclusion Bill, the intrigues of Monmouth, the Popish Plot, and the trial and acquittal of Shaftesbury on the charge of high treason.
Finding his position no longer so easy as at his restoration, Charles naturally bethought him of calling literature to his assistance. The stage, being completely under his control, seemed the readiest instrument for his purpose; the order went forth, and an astonishing display of monarchical fervour in all the chief dramatists of the time--Otway, Dryden, Lee, and Crowne--was the result. Shadwell, who was himself inclined to the Whig interest, laments the change:
"The stage, like old Rump pulpits, is become The scene of News, a furious Party's drum."
But the political influence of the drama and the audience to which it appealed being necessarily limited, the King sought for more powerful literary artillery, and he found it in the serviceable genius of Dryden, whose satirical and controversial poems date from this period. The wide popularity of _Absalom and Achitophel_, written against Monmouth and Shaftesbury; of _The Medal_, satirising the acquittal of Shaftesbury; of _The Hind and Panther_, composed to advance the Romanising projects of James II.; points to the vast influence exercised by literature in the party struggle. Nevertheless, in spite of all that Dryden had done for the Royal cause, in spite of the fact that he himself had more than once appealed to the poet for assistance, the ingratitude or levity of Charles was so inveterate that he let the poet's services go almost unrequited. Dryden, it is true, held the posts of Laureate and Royal Historiographer, but his salary was always in arrears, and the letter which he addressed to Rochester, First Lord of the Treasury, asking for six months' payment of what was due to him, tells its own story.
James II. cared nothing for literature, and was probably too dull of apprehension to understand the incalculable service that Dryden had rendered to his cause. He showed his appreciation of the Poet-Laureate's genius by deducting £100 from the salary which his brother had promised him, and by cutting off from the emoluments of the office the time-honoured butt of canary!
Under William III. the complexion of affairs again altered. The Court, in the old sense of the word, ceased to be a paramount influence in literature. William III. derived his authority from Parliament; he knew that he must support it mainly by his sword and his statesmanship. A stranger to England, its manners and its language, he showed little disposition to encourage letters. Pope, indeed, maliciously suggests that he had the bad taste to admire the poetry of Blackmore, whom he knighted; but, as a matter of fact, the honour was conferred on the worthy Sir Richard in consequence of his distinction in medicine, and he himself bears witness to William's contempt for poetry.
"Reverse of Louis he, example rare, Loved to deserve the praise he could not bear. He shunned the acclamations of the throng, And always coldly heard the poet's song. Hence the great King the Muses did neglect, And the mere poet met with small respect."[17]
Such political verse as we find in this reign generally consists, like Halifax's _Epistle to Lord Dorset_, or Addison's own _Address to King William_, of hyperbolical flattery. Opposition was extinct, for both parties had for the moment united to promote the Revolution, and the only discordant notes amid the chorus of adulation proceeded from Jacobite writers concealed in the garrets and cellars of Grub Street. Such an atmosphere was not favorable to the production of literature of an elevated or even of a characteristic order.
Addison's return to England coincided most happily with another remarkable turn of the tide. Leaning decidedly to the Tory party, who were now strongly leavened with the Jacobite element, Anne had not long succeeded to the throne before she seized an opportunity for dismissing the Whig Ministry whom she found in possession of office. The Whigs, equally alarmed at the influence acquired by their rivals, and at the danger which threatened the Protestant succession, neglected no effort to counterbalance the loss of their sovereign's favour by strengthening their credit with the people. Having been trained in a school which had at least qualified them to appreciate the influence of style, the aristocratic leaders of the party were well aware of the advantages they would derive by attracting to themselves the services of the ablest writers of the day. Hence they made it their policy to mingle with men of letters on an equal footing, and to hold out to them an expectation of a share in the advantages to be reaped from the overthrow of their rivals.
The result of this union of forces was a great increase in the number of literary-political clubs. In its half-aristocratic, half-democratic constitution the club was the natural product of enlarged political freedom, and helped to extend the organisation of polite opinion beyond the narrow orbit of Court society. Addison himself, in his simple style, points out the nature of the fundamental principle of Association which he observed in operation all around him. "When a set of men find themselves agree in any particular, though never so trivial, they establish themselves into a kind of fraternity, and meet once or twice a week upon the account of such a fantastic resemblance."[18] Among these societies, in the first years of the eighteenth century, the most celebrated was, perhaps, the Kit-Kat Club. It consisted of thirty-nine of the leading men of the Whig party; and, though many of these were of the highest rank, it is a characteristic fact that the founder of the club should have been the bookseller Jacob Tonson. It was probably through his influence, joined to that of Halifax, that Addison was elected a member of the society soon after his return to England. Among its prominent members was the Duke of Somerset, the first meeting between whom and Addison, after the correspondence that had passed between them, must have been somewhat embarrassing. The club assembled at one Christopher Catt's, a pastry-cook, who gave his name both to the society and the mutton-pies which were its ordinary entertainment. Each member was compelled to select a lady as his toast, and the verses which he composed in her honour were engraved on the wine-glasses belonging to the club. Addison chose the Countess of Manchester, whose acquaintance he had made in Paris, and complimented her in the following lines:
"While haughty Gallia's dames, that spread O'er their pale cheeks an artful red, Beheld this beauteous stranger there, In native charms divinely fair, Confusion in their looks they showed, And with unborrowed blushes glowed."
Circumstances seemed now to be conspiring in favour of the Whigs. The Tories, whose strength lay mainly in the Jacobite element, were jealous of Marlborough's ascendency over the Queen; on the other hand, the Duchess of Marlborough, who was rapidly acquiring the chief place in Anne's affections, intrigued in favour of the opposite faction. In spite, too, of her Tory predilections, the Queen, finding her throne menaced by the ambition of Louis XIV., was compelled in self-defence to look for support to the party which had most vigorously identified itself with the principles of the Revolution. She bestowed her unreserved confidence on Marlborough, and he, in order to counterbalance the influence of the Jacobites, threw himself into the arms of the Whigs. Being named Captain-General in 1704, he undertook the campaign which he brought to so glorious a conclusion on the 2d of August in that year at the battle of Blenheim.
Godolphin, who, in the absence of Marlborough, occupied the chief place in the Ministry, moved perhaps by patriotic feeling, and no doubt also by a sense of the advantage which his party would derive from this great victory, was anxious that it should be commemorated in adequate verse. He accordingly applied to Halifax as the person to whom the _sacer vates_ required for the occasion would probably be known. Halifax has had the misfortune to have his character transmitted to posterity by two poets who hated him either on public or private grounds. Swift describes him as the would-be "Mæcenas of the nation," but insinuates that he neglected the wants of the poets whom he patronised:
"Himself as rich as fifty Jews, Was easy though they wanted shoes."
Pope also satirises the vanity and meanness of his disposition in the well-known character of Bufo. Such portraits, though they are justified to some extent by evidence coming from other quarters, are not to be too strictly examined as if they bore the stamp of historic truth. It is, at any rate, certain that Halifax always proved himself a warm and zealous friend to Addison, and when Godolphin applied to him for a poet to celebrate Blenheim, he answered that, though acquainted with a person who possessed every qualification for the task, he could not ask him to undertake it. Being pressed for his reasons, he replied "that while too many fools and blockheads were maintained in their pride and luxury at the public expense, such men as were really an honour to their age and country were shamefully suffered to languish in obscurity; that, for his own share, he would never desire any gentleman of parts and learning to employ his time in celebrating a Ministry who had neither the justice nor the generosity to make it worth his while." In answer to this the Lord Treasurer assured Halifax that any person whom he might name as equal to the required task, should have no cause to repent of having rendered his assistance; whereupon Halifax mentioned Addison, but stipulated that all advances to the latter must come from Godolphin himself. Accordingly, Boyle, Chancellor of the Exchequer, afterwards Lord Carleton, was despatched on the embassy, and, if Pope is to be trusted, found Addison lodged up three pair of stairs over a small shop. He opened to him the subject, and informed him that, in return for the service that was expected of him, he was instructed to offer him a Commissionership of Appeal in the Excise, as a pledge of more considerable advancement in the future. The fruits of this negotiation were _The Campaign_.
Warton disposes of the merits of _The Campaign_ with the cavalier criticism, so often since repeated, that it is merely "a gazette in rhyme." In one sense the judgment is no doubt just. As a poem, _The Campaign_ shows neither loftiness of invention nor enthusiasm of personal feeling, and it cannot therefore be ranked with such an ode as Horace's _Qualem ministrum_, or with Pope's very fine _Epistle_ to the Earl of Oxford after his disgrace. Its methodical narrative style is scarcely misrepresented by Warton's sarcastic description of it; but it should be remembered that this style was adopted by Addison with deliberate intention. "Thus," says he, in the conclusion of the poem,
"Thus would I fain Britannia's wars rehearse In the smooth records of a faithful verse; That, if such numbers can o'er time prevail, May tell posterity the wondrous tale. When actions unadorned are faint and weak Cities and countries must be taught to speak; Gods may descend in factions from the skies, And rivers from their oozy beds arise; Fiction may deck the truth with spurious rays, And round the hero cast a borrowed blaze. Marlbro's exploits appear divinely bright, And proudly shine in their own native light; Raised in themselves their genuine charms they boast, And those that paint them truest praise them most."
The design here avowed is certainly not poetical, but it is eminently business-like and extremely well adapted to the end in view. What Godolphin wanted was a set of complimentary verses on Marlborough. Addison, with infinite tact, declares that the highest compliment that can be paid to the hero is to recite his actions in their unadorned grandeur. This happy turn of flattery shows how far he had advanced in literary skill since he wrote his address _To the King_. He had then excused himself for the inadequate celebration of William's deeds on the plea that, great though these might be, they were too near the poet's own time to be seen in proper focus. A thousand years hence, he suggests, some Homer may be inspired by the theme, "and Boyne be sung when it has ceased to flow." This could not have been very consolatory to a mortal craving for contemporary applause, and the apology offered in _The Campaign_ for the prosaic treatment of the subject is far more dexterous. Bearing in mind the fact that it was written to order, and that the poet deliberately declined to avail himself of the aid of fiction, we must allow that the construction of the poem exhibits both art and dignity. The allusion to the vast slaughter at Blenheim, in the opening paragraph--
"Rivers of blood I see and hills of slain, An Iliad rising out of one campaign"--
is not very fortunate; but the lines describing the ambition of Louis XIV. are weighty and dignified, and the couplet indicating, through the single image of the Danube, the vast extent of the French encroachments, shows how thoroughly Addison was imbued with the spirit of classical poetry:
"The rising Danube its long race began, And half its course through the new conquests ran."
With equal felicity he describes the position and intervention of England, seizing at the same time the opportunity for a panegyric on her free institutions:
"Thrice happy Britain, from the kingdoms rent To sit the guardian of the Continent! That sees her bravest sons advanced so high And flourishing so near her prince's eye; Thy favourites grow not up by fortune's sport, Or from the crimes and follies of a court: On the firm basis of desert they rise, From long-tried faith and friendship's holy ties, Their sovereign's well-distinguished smiles they share, Her ornaments in peace, her strength in war; The nation thanks them with a public voice, By showers of blessings Heaven approves their choice; Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost, And factions strive who shall applaud them most."
He proceeds in a stream of calm and equal verse, enlivened by dexterous allusions and occasional happy turns of expression, to describe the scenery of the Moselle; the march between the Maese and the Danube; the heat to which the army was exposed; the arrival on the Neckar; and the track of devastation left by the French armies. The meeting between Marlborough and Eugene inspires him again to raise his style:
"Great souls by instinct to each other turn, Demand alliance, and in friendship burn, A sudden friendship, while with outstretched rays They meet each other mingling blaze with blaze. Polished in courts, and hardened in the field, Renowned for conquest, and in council skilled, Their courage dwells not in a troubled flood Of mounting spirits and fermenting blood; Lodged in the soul, with virtue overruled, Inflamed by reason, and by reason cooled, In hours of peace content to be unknown, And only in the field of battle shown: To souls like these in mutual friendship joined Heaven dares entrust the cause of human kind."
The celebrated passage describing Marlborough's conduct at Blenheim is certainly the finest in the poem:
"'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved That in the shock of charging hosts unmoved, Amidst confusion, horror, and despair, Examined all the dreadful scenes of war; In peaceful thought the field of death surveyed, To fainting squadrons sent the timely aid, Inspired repulsed battalions to engage, And taught the doubtful battle where to rage. So when an angel by divine command With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past, Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; And pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform, Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm."
Johnson makes some characteristic criticisms on this simile, which indeed, he maintains, is not a simile, but "an exemplification." He says: "Marlborough is so like the angel in the poem that the action of both is almost the same, and performed by both in the same manner. Marlborough 'teaches the battle to rage;' the angel 'directs the storm;' Marlborough is 'unmoved in peaceful thought;' the angel is 'calm and serene;' Marlborough stands 'unmoved amid the shock of hosts;' the angel rides 'calm in the whirlwind.' The lines on Marlborough are just and noble; but the simile gives almost the same images a second time."
This judgment would be unimpeachable if the force of the simile lay solely in the likeness between Marlborough and the angel, but it is evident that equal stress is to be laid on the resemblance between the battle and the storm. It was Addison's intention to raise in the mind of the reader the noblest possible idea of composure and design in the midst of confusion: to do this he selected an angel as the minister of the divine purpose, and a storm as the symbol of fury and devastation; and, in order to heighten his effect, he recalls with true art the violence of the particular tempest which had recently ravaged the country. Johnson has noticed the close similarity between the persons of Marlborough and the angel; but he has exaggerated the resemblance between the actions in which they are severally engaged.
_The Campaign_ completely fulfilled the purpose for which it was written. It strengthened the position of the Whig Ministry, and secured for its author the advancement that had been promised him. Early in 1706 Addison, on the recommendation of Lord Godolphin, was promoted from the Commissionership of Appeals in Excise to be Under-Secretary of State to Sir Charles Hedges. The latter was one of the few Tories who had retained their position in the Ministry since the restoration of the Whigs to the favour of their sovereign, and he, too, shortly vanished from the stage like his more distinguished friends, making way for the Earl of Sunderland, a staunch Whig, and son-in-law to the Duke of Marlborough.
Addison's duties as Under-Secretary were probably not particularly arduous. In 1705 he was permitted to attend Lord Halifax to the Court of Hanover, whither the latter was sent to carry the Act for the Naturalisation of the Electress Sophia. The mission also included Vanbrugh, who, as Clarencieux King-at-Arms, was charged to invest the Elector with the Order of the Garter; the party thus constituted affording a remarkable illustration of the influence exercised by literature over the politics of the period. Addison must have obtained during this journey considerable insight into the nature of England's foreign policy, as, besides establishing the closest relations with Hanover, Halifax was also instructed to form an alliance with the United Provinces for securing the succession of the House of Brunswick to the English throne.
In the meantime his imagination was not idle. After helping Steele in the composition of his _Tender Husband_, which was acted in 1705, he found time for engaging in a fresh literary enterprise of his own. The principles of operatic music, which had long been developed in Italy, had been slow in making their way to this country. Their introduction had been delayed partly by the French prejudices of Charles II., but more, perhaps, by the strong insular tastes of the people, and by the vigorous forms of the native drama. What the untutored English audience liked best to hear was a well-marked tune, sung in a fine natural way: the kind of music which was in vogue on the stage till the end of the seventeenth century was simply the regular drama interspersed with airs; _recitative_ was unknown; and there was no attempt to cultivate the voice according to the methods practised in the Italian schools. But with the increase of wealth and travel more exacting tastes began to prevail; Italian singers appeared on the stage and exhibited to the audience capacities of voice of which they had hitherto had no experience. In 1705 was acted at the Haymarket _Arsinoe_, the first opera constructed in England on avowedly Italian principles. The words were still in English, but the dialogue was throughout in _recitative_. The composer was Thomas Clayton, who, though a man entirely devoid of genius, had travelled in Italy, and was eager to turn to account the experience which he had acquired. In spite of |
41496-8 | its badness _Arsinoe_ greatly impressed the public taste; and it was soon followed by _Camilla_, a version of an opera by Bononcini, portions of which were sung in Italian, and portions in English--an absurdity on which Addison justly comments in a number of the _Spectator_. His remarks on the consequences of translating the Italian operas are equally humorous and just.
"As there was no great danger," says he, "of hurting the sense of these extraordinary pieces, our authors would often make words of their own which were entirely foreign to the meaning of the passages they pretended to translate; their chief care being to make the numbers of the English verse answer to those of the Italian, that both of them might go to the same tune. Thus the famous song in _Camilla_,
'Barbara si t'intendo,' etc. 'Barbarous woman, yes, I know your meaning,'
which expresses the resentment of an angry lover, was translated into that English lamentation,
'Frail are a lover's hopes,' etc.
And it was pleasant enough to see the most refined persons of the British nation dying away and languishing to notes that were filled with the spirit of rage and indignation. It happened also very frequently where the sense was rightly translated; the necessary transposition of words, which were drawn out of the phrase of one tongue into that of another, made the music appear very absurd in one tongue that was very natural in the other. I remember an Italian verse that ran thus, word for word:
'And turned my rage into pity,'
which the English, for rhyme's sake, translated,
'And into pity turned my rage.'
By this means the soft notes that were adapted to pity in the Italian fell upon the word 'rage' in the English; and the angry sounds that were turned to rage in the original were made to express pity in the translation. It oftentimes happened likewise that the finest notes in the air fell upon the most insignificant word in the sentence. I have known the word 'and' pursued through the whole gamut; have been entertained with many a melodious 'the;' and have heard the most beautiful graces, quavers, and divisions bestowed upon 'then,' 'for,' and 'from,' to the eternal honour of our English particles."[19]
Perceiving these radical defects, Addison seems to have been ambitious of showing by example how they might be remedied. "The great success this opera (_Arsinoe_) met with produced," says he, "some attempts of forming pieces upon Italian plans, which should give a more natural and reasonable entertainment than what can be met with in the elaborate trifles of that nation. This alarmed the poetasters and fiddlers of the town, who were used to deal in a more ordinary kind of ware, and therefore laid down an established rule, which is received as such to this day, 'That nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.'"[20] The allusion to the failure of the writer's own opera of _Rosamond_ is unmistakable. The piece was performed on the 2d of April, 1706, but was coldly received, and after two or three representations was withdrawn.
The reasons which the _Spectator_ assigns for the catastrophe betray rather the self-love of the author than the clear perception of the critic. _Rosamond_ failed because, in the first place, it was very bad as a musical composition. Misled by the favour with which _Arsinoe_ was received, Addison seems to have regarded Clayton as a great musician, and he put his poem into the hands of the latter, thinking that his score would be as superior to that of _Arsinoe_ as his own poetry was to the words of that opera. Clayton, however, had no genius, and only succeeded in producing what Sir John Hawkins, quoting with approbation the words of another critic, calls "a confused chaos of music, the only merit of which is its shortness."[21]
But it may be doubted whether in any case the most skilful composer could have produced music of a high order adapted to the poetry of _Rosamond_. The play is neither a tragedy, a comedy, nor a melodrama. It seems that Eleanor did not really poison Fair Rosamond, but only administered to her a sleeping potion, and, as she takes care to explain to the King,
"The bowl with drowsy juices filled, From cold Egyptian drugs distilled, In borrowed death has closed her eyes."
This information proves highly satisfactory to the King, not only because he is gratified to find that Rosamond is not dead, but also because, even before discovering her supposed dead body, he had resolved, in consequence of a dream sent to him by his guardian angel, to terminate the relations existing between them. The Queen and he accordingly arrange, in a business-like manner, that Rosamond shall be quietly removed in her trance to a nunnery; a reconciliation is then effected between the husband and wife, who, as we are led to suppose, live happily ever after.
The main motive of the opera in Addison's mind appears to have been the desire of complimenting the Marlborough family. It is dedicated to the Duchess; the warlike character of Henry naturally recalls the prowess of the great modern captain; and the King is consoled by his guardian angel for the loss of Fair Rosamond with a vision of the future glories of Blenheim:
"To calm thy grief and lull thy cares, Look up and see What, after long revolving years, Thy bower shall be! When time its beauties shall deface, And only with its ruins grace The future prospect of the place! Behold the glorious pile ascending, Columns swelling, arches bending, Domes in awful pomp arising, Art in curious strokes surprising, Foes in figured fights contending, Behold the glorious pile ascending."
This is graceful enough, but it scarcely offers material for music of a serious kind. Nor can the Court have been greatly impressed by the compliment paid to its morality, as contrasted with that of Charles II., conveyed as it was by the mouth of Grideline, one of the comic characters in the piece--
"Since conjugal passion Is come into fashion, And marriage so blest on the throne is, Like a Venus I'll shine, Be fond and be fine, And Sir Trusty shall be my Adonis."
The ill success of _Rosamond_ confirmed Addison's dislike to the Italian opera, which he displayed both in his grave and humorous papers on the subject in the _Spectator_. The disquisition upon the various actors of the lion in _Hydaspes_ is one of his happiest inspirations; but his serious criticisms are, as a rule, only just in so far as they are directed against the dramatic absurdities of the Italian opera. As to his technical qualifications as a critic of music, it will be sufficient to cite the opinion of Dr. Burney: "To judges of music nothing more need be said of Mr. Addison's abilities to decide concerning the comparative degrees of national excellence in the art, and the merit of particular masters, than his predilection for the productions of Clayton, and insensibility to the force and originality of Handel's compositions in _Rinaldo_."[22]
In December, 1708, the Earl of Sunderland was displaced to make room for the Tory Lord Dartmouth, and Addison, as Under-Secretary, following the fortunes of his superior, found himself again without employment. Fortunately for him the Earl of Wharton was almost immediately afterwards made Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and offered him the lucrative post of Secretary. The Earl, who was subsequently created a Marquis, was the father of the famous Duke satirised in Pope's first _Moral Essay_; he was in every respect the opposite of Addison--a vehement Republican, a sceptic, unprincipled in his morals, venal in his methods of Government. He was nevertheless a man of the finest talents, and seems to have possessed the power of gaining personal ascendency over his companions by a profound knowledge of character. An acquaintance with Addison, doubtless commencing at the Kit-Kat Club, of which both were members, had convinced him that the latter had eminent qualifications for the task, which the Secretary's post would involve, of dealing with men of very various conditions. Of the feelings with which Addison on his side regarded the Earl we have no record. "It is reasonable to suppose," says Johnson, "that he counteracted, as far as he was able, the malignant and blasting influence of the Lieutenant; and that, at least, by his intervention some good was done and some mischief prevented." Not a shadow of an imputation, at any rate, rests upon his own conduct as Secretary. He appears to have acted strictly on that conception of public duty which he defines in one of his papers in the _Spectator_. Speaking of the marks of a corrupt official, "Such an one," he declares, "is the man who, upon any pretence whatsoever, receives more than what is the stated and unquestioned fee of his office. Gratifications, tokens of thankfulness, despatch money, and the like specious terms, are the pretences under which corruption very frequently shelters itself. An honest man will, however, look on all these methods as unjustifiable, and will enjoy himself better in a moderate fortune, that is gained with honour and reputation, than in an overgrown estate that is cankered with the acquisitions of rapine and exaction. Were all our offices discharged with such an inflexible integrity, we should not see men in all ages, who grow up to exorbitant wealth, with the abilities which are to be met with in an ordinary mechanic."[23] His friends perhaps considered that his impartiality was somewhat overstrained, since he always declined to remit the customary fees in their favour. "For," said he, "I may have forty friends, whose fees may be two guineas a-piece; then I lose eighty guineas, and my friends gain but two a-piece."
He took with him as his own Secretary, Eustace Budgell, who was related to him, and for whom he seems to have felt a warm affection. Budgell was a man of considerable literary ability, and was the writer of the various papers in the _Spectator_ signed "X," some of which succeed happily in imitating Addison's style. While he was under his friend's guidance his career was fairly successful, but his temper was violent, and when, at a later period of his life, he served in Ireland under a new Lieutenant and another Secretary, he became involved in disputes which led to his dismissal. A furious pamphlet against the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Bolton, published by him in spite of Addison's remonstrances, only complicated his position, and from this period his fortunes steadily declined. He lost largely in the South Sea Scheme; spent considerable sums in a vain endeavour to obtain a seat in Parliament; and at last came under the influence of his kinsman, Tindal, the well-known deist, whose will he is accused of having falsified. With his usual infelicity he happened to rouse the resentment of Pope, and was treated in consequence to one of the deadly couplets with which that great poet was in the habit of repaying real or supposed injuries:
"Let Budgell charge low Grub Street on his quill, And write whate'er he pleased--except his will."
The lines were memorable, and were doubtless often quoted, and the wretched man finding his life insupportable, ended it by drowning himself in the Thames.
During his residence in Ireland Addison firmly cemented his friendship with Swift, whose acquaintance he had probably made after _The Campaign_ had given him a leading position in the Whig party, on the side of which the sympathies of both were then enlisted. Swift's admiration for Addison was warm and generous. When the latter was on the point of embarking on his new duties, Swift wrote to a common friend, Colonel Hunter, "Mr. Addison is hurrying away for Ireland, and I pray too much business may not spoil _le plus honnete homme du monde_." To Archbishop King he wrote: "Mr. Addison, who goes over our first secretary, is a most excellent person, and being my intimate friend I shall use all my credit to set him right in his notions of persons and things." Addison's duties took him occasionally to England, and during one of his visits Swift writes to him from Ireland: "I am convinced that whatever Government come over you will find all marks of kindness from any parliament here with respect to your employment, the Tories contending with the Whigs which should speak best of you. In short, if you will come over again when you are at leisure we will raise an army and make you King of Ireland. Can you think so meanly of a kingdom as not to be pleased that every creature in it, who hath one grain of worth, has a veneration for you?" In his _Journal to Stella_ he says, under date of October 12, 1710: "Mr. Addison's election has passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if he had a mind to be chosen king he would hardly be refused." On his side Addison's feelings were equally warm. He presented Swift with a copy of his _Remarks on Several Parts of Italy_, inscribing it--"To the most agreeable companion, the truest friend, and the greatest genius of his age."
This friendship, founded on mutual respect, was destined to be impaired by political differences. In 1710 the credit of the Whig Ministry had been greatly undermined by the combined craft of Harley and Mrs. Masham, and Swift, who was anxious as to his position, on coming over to England to press his claims on Somers and Halifax, found that they were unable to help him. He appears to have considered that their want of power proceeded from want of will; at any rate, he made advances to Harley, which were of course gladly received. The Ministry were at this time being hard pressed by the _Examiner_, under the conduct of Prior, and at their instance Addison started the _Whig Examiner_ in their defence. Though this paper was written effectively and with admirable temper, party polemics were little to the taste of its author, and, after five numbers, it ceased to exist on the 8th of October. Swift, now eager for the triumph of the Tories, expresses his delight to Stella by informing her, in the words of a Tory song, that "it was down among the dead men." He himself wrote the first of his _Examiners_ on the 2d of the following November, and the crushing blows with which he followed it up did much to hasten the downfall of the Ministry. As was natural, Addison was somewhat displeased at his friend's defection. In December Swift writes to Stella, "Mr. Addison and I are as different as black and white, and I believe our friendship will go off by this d---- business of party. He cannot bear seeing me fall in so with the Ministry; but I love him still as much as ever, though we seldom meet." In January, 1710-11, he says: "I called at the coffee-house, where I had not been in a week, and talked coldly awhile with Mr. Addison; all our friendship and dearness are off; we are civil acquaintance, talk words, of course, of when we shall meet, and that's all. Is it not odd?" Many similar entries follow; but on June 26, 1711, the record is: "Mr. Addison and I talked as usual, and as if we had seen one another yesterday." And on September 14, he observes: "This evening I met Addison and pastoral Philips in the Park, and supped with them in Addison's lodgings. We were very good company, and I yet know no man half so agreeable to me as he is. I sat with them till twelve."
It was perhaps through the influence of Swift, who spoke warmly with the Tory Ministry on behalf of Addison, that the latter, on the downfall of the Whigs in the autumn of 1710, was for some time suffered to retain the Keepership of the Records in Bermingham's Tower, an Irish place which had been bestowed upon him by the Queen as a special mark of the esteem with which she regarded him, and which appears to have been worth £400 a year.[24] In other respects his fortunes were greatly altered by the change of Ministry. "I have within this twelvemonth," he writes to Wortley on the 21st of July, 1711, "lost a place of £2000 per ann., an estate in the Indies worth £14,000, and, what is worse than all the rest, my mistress.[25] Hear this and wonder at my philosophy! I find they are going to take away my Irish place from me too; to which I must add that I have just resigned my fellowship, and that stocks sink every day." In spite of these losses his circumstances were materially different from those in which he found himself after the fall of the previous Whig Ministry in 1702. Before the close of the year 1711 he was able to buy the estate of Bilton, near Rugby, for £10,000. Part of the purchase money was probably provided from what he had saved while he was Irish Secretary, and had invested in the funds; and part was, no doubt, made up from the profits of the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. Miss Aikin says that a portion was advanced by his brother Gulston; but this seems to be an error. Two years before, the Governor of Fort St. George had died, leaving him his executor and residuary legatee. This is no doubt "the estate in the Indies" to which he refers in his letter to Wortley, but he had as yet derived no benefit from it. His brother had left his affairs in great confusion; the trustees were careless or dishonest; and though about £600 was remitted to him in the shape of diamonds in 1713, the liquidation was not complete till 1716, when only a small moiety of the sum bequeathed to him came into his hands.[26]
CHAPTER V.
THE _TATLER_ AND _SPECTATOR_.
The career of Addison, as described in the preceding chapters, has exemplified the great change effected in the position of men of letters in England by the Restoration and the Revolution; it is now time to exhibit him in his most characteristic light, and to show the remarkable service the eighteenth century essayists performed for English society in creating an organised public opinion. It is difficult for ourselves, who look on the action of the periodical press as part of the regular machinery of life, to appreciate the magnitude of the task accomplished by Addison and Steele in the pages of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_. Every day, week, month, and quarter now sees the issue of a vast number of journals and magazines intended to form the opinion of every order and section of society; but in the reign of Queen Anne the only centres of society that existed were the Court, with the aristocracy that revolved about it, and the clubs and coffee-houses, in which the commercial and professional classes met to discuss matters of general interest. The _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ were the first organs in which an attempt was made to give form and consistency to the opinion arising out of this social contact. But we should form a very erroneous idea of the character of these publications if we regarded them as the sudden productions of individual genius, written in satisfaction of a mere temporary taste. Like all masterpieces in art and literature, they mark the final stage of a long and painful journey, and the merit of their inventors consists largely in the judgment with which they profited by the experience of many predecessors.
The first newspaper published in Europe was the _Gazzetta_ of Venice, which was written in manuscript, and read aloud at certain places in the city, to supply information to the people during the war with the Turks in 1536. In England it was not till the reign of Elizabeth that the increased facilities of communication and the growth of wealth caused the purveyance of news to become a profitable employment. Towards the end of the sixteenth century newsmongers began to issue little pamphlets reporting extraordinary intelligence, but not issued at regular periods. The titles of these publications, which are all of them that survive, show that the arts with which the framers of the placards of our own newspapers endeavour to attract attention are of venerable antiquity: "Wonderful and Strange newes out of Suffolke and Essex, where it rained wheat the space of six or seven miles" (1583); "Lamentable newes out of Monmouthshire, containinge the wonderfull and fearfull accounts of the great overflowing of the waters in the said countrye" (1607).[27]
In 1622 one Nathaniel Butter began to publish a newspaper bearing a fixed title and appearing at stated intervals. It was called the _Weekly Newes from Italy and Germanie, etc._, and was said to be printed for _Mercurius Britannicus_. This novelty provided much food for merriment to the poets, and Ben Jonson in his _Staple of News_ satirises Butter, under the name of Nathaniel, in a passage which the curious reader will do well to consult, as it shows the low estimation in which newspapers were then held.[28]
Though it might appear from Jonson's dialogue that the newspapers of that day contained many items of domestic intelligence, such was scarcely the case. Butter and his contemporaries, as was natural to men who confined themselves to the publication of news without attempting to form opinion, obtained their materials almost entirely from abroad, whereby they at once aroused more vividly the imagination of their readers, and doubtless gave more scope to their own invention. Besides, they were not at liberty to retail home news of that political kind which would have been of the greatest interest to the public. For a long time the evanescent character of the newspaper allowed it to escape the attention of the licenser, but the growing demand for this sort of reading at last brought it under supervision, and so strict was the control exercised over even the reports of foreign intelligence that its weekly appearance was frequently interrupted.
In 1641, however, the Star-chamber was abolished, and the heated political atmosphere of the times generated a new species of journal, in which we find the first attempt to influence opinion through the periodical press. This was the newspaper known under the generic title of _Mercury_. Many weekly publications of this name appeared during the Civil Wars on the side of both King and Parliament, _Mercurius Anlicus_ being the representative organ of the Royalist cause, and _Mercurius Pragmaticus_ and _Mercurius Politicus_ of the Republicans. Party animosities were thus kept alive, and proved so inconvenient to the Government that the Parliament interfered to curtail the liberty of the press. In 1647 an ordinance passed the House of Lords, prohibiting any person from "making, writing, printing, selling, publishing, or uttering, or causing to be made, any book, sheet, or sheets of news whatsoever, except the same be licensed by both or either House of Parliament, with the name of the author, printer, and licenser affixed." In spite of this prohibition, which was renewed by Act of Parliament in 1662, many unlicensed periodicals continued to appear, till in 1663 the Government, finding their repressive measures insufficient, resolved to grapple with the difficulty by monopolising the right to publish news.
The author of this new project was the well-known Roger L'Estrange, who in 1663 obtained a patent assigning to him "all the sole privilege of writing, printing, and publishing all Narratives, Advertisements, Mercuries, Intelligencers, Diurnals, and other books of public intelligence." L'Estrange's journal was called the _Public Intelligencer_; it was published once a week, and in its form was a rude anticipation of the modern newspaper, containing as it did an obituary, reports of the proceedings in Parliament and in the Court of Claims, a list of the circuits of the judges, of sheriffs, Lent preachers, etc. After being continued for two years it gave place first, in 1665, to the _Oxford Gazette_, published at Oxford, whither the Court had retired during the plague; and in 1666 to the _London Gazette_, which was under the immediate control of an Under-Secretary of State. The office of Gazetteer became henceforth a regular ministerial appointment, and was viewed with different eyes according as men were affected towards the Government. Steele, who held it, says of it: "My next appearance as a writer was in the quality of the lowest Minister of State--to wit, in the office of Gazetteer; where I worked faithfully according to order, without ever erring against the rule observed by all Ministers, to keep that paper very innocent and very insipid." Pope, on the other hand, who regarded it as an organ published to influence opinion in favour of the Government, is constant in his attacks upon it, and has immortalised it in the memorable lines in the _Dunciad_ beginning, "Next plunged a feeble but a desperate pack," etc.
In 1679 the Licensing Act passed in 1662 expired, and the Parliament declined to renew it. The Court was thus left without protection against the expression of public opinion, which was daily becoming more bold and outspoken. In his extremity the King fell back on the servility of the judges, and, having procured from them an opinion that the publishing of any printed matter without license was contrary to the common law, he issued his famous Proclamation (in 1680) "to prohibit and forbid all persons whatsoever to print or publish any news, book, or pamphlets of news, not licensed by his Majesty's authority."
Disregard of the proclamation was treated as a breach of the peace, and many persons were punished accordingly. This severity produced the effect intended. The voice of the periodical press was stifled, and the _London Gazette_ was left almost in exclusive possession of the field of news. When Monmouth landed in 1685 the King managed to obtain from Parliament a renewal of the Licensing Act for seven years, and even after the Revolution of 1688 several attempts were made by the Ministerial Whigs to prolong or to renew the operation of the Act. In spite, however, of the violence of the organs of "Grub Street," which had grown up under it, these attempts were unsuccessful; it was justly felt that it was wiser to leave falsehood and scurrility to be gradually corrected by public opinion, as speaking through an unfettered press, than to attack them by a law which they had proved themselves able to defy. From 1682 the freedom of the press may therefore be said to date, and the lapse of the Licensing Act was the signal for a remarkable outburst of journalistic enterprise and invention. Not only did the newspapers devoted to the report of foreign intelligence reappear in greatly increased numbers, but, whereas the old _Mercuries_ had never been published more than once in the same week, the new comers made their appearance twice and sometimes even three times. In 1702 was printed the first daily newspaper, _The Daily Courant_. It could only at starting provide material to cover one side of a half sheet of paper; but the other side was very soon covered with printed matter, in which form its existence was prolonged till 1735.
The development of party government of course encouraged the controversial capacities of the journalist, and many notorious, and some famous names are now found among the combatants in the political arena. On the side of the Whigs the most redoubtable champions were Daniel Defoe, of the _Review_, who was twice imprisoned and once set in the pillory for his political writings; John Tutchin, of the _Observator_; and Ridpath, of the _Flying Post_--all of whom have obtained places in the _Dunciad_. The old Tories appear to have been satisfied during the early part of Queen Anne's reign with prosecuting the newspapers that attacked them; but Harley, who understood the power of the press, engaged Prior to harass the Whigs in the _Examiner_, and was afterwards dexterous enough to secure the invaluable assistance of Swift for the same paper. In opposition to the _Examiner_ in its early days the Whigs, as has been said, started the _Whig Examiner_, under the auspices of Addison, so that the two great historical parties had their cases stated by the two greatest prose-writers of the first half of the eighteenth century.
Beside the Quidnunc and the party politician, another class of reader now appeared demanding aliment in the press. Men of active and curious minds, with a little leisure and a large love of discussion, loungers at Will's or at the Grecian Coffee-Houses, were anxious to have their doubts on all subjects resolved by a printed oracle. Their tastes were gratified by the ingenuity of John Dunton, whose strange account of his _Life and Errors_ throws a strong light on the literary history of this period. In 1690 Dunton published his _Athenian Gazette_, the name of which he afterwards altered to the _Athenian Mercury_. The object of this paper was to answer questions put to the editor by the public. These were of all kinds--on religion, casuistry, love, literature, and manners--no question being too subtle or absurd to extract a reply from the conductor of the paper. The _Athenian Mercury_ seems to have been read by as many distinguished men of the period as _Notes and Queries_ in our own time, and there can be no doubt that the quaint humours it originated gave the first hint to the inventors of the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_.
Advertisements were inserted in the newspapers at a comparatively early period of their existence. The editor acted as middleman between the advertiser and the public, and made his announcements in a style of easy frankness which will appear to the modern reader extremely refreshing. Thus, in the "Collection for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade" (1682), there are the following:
"If I can meet with a sober man that has a counter-tenor voice, I can help him to a place worth thirty pound the year or more.
"If any noble or other gentleman wants a porter that is very lusty, comely, and six foot high and two inches, I can help.
"I want a complete young man that will wear a livery, to wait on a very valuable gentleman; but he must know how to play on a violin or flute.
"I want a genteel footman that can play on the violin, to wait on a person of honour."[29]
Everything was now prepared for the production of a class of newspaper designed to form and direct public opinion on rational principles. The press was emancipated from State control; a reading public had constituted itself out of the _habitués_ of the coffee-houses and clubs; nothing was wanted but an inventive genius to adapt the materials at his disposal to the circumstances of the time. The required hero was not long in making his appearance.
Richard Steele, the son of an official under the Irish Government, was, above all things, "a creature of ebullient heart." Impulse and sentiment were with him always far stronger motives of action than reason, principle, or even interest. He left Oxford, without taking a degree, from an ardent desire to serve in the army, thereby sacrificing his prospect of succeeding to a family estate; his extravagance and dissipation while serving in the cavalry were notorious; yet this did not dull the clearness of his moral perceptions, for it was while his excesses were at their height that he dedicated to his commanding officer, Lord Cutts, his _Christian Hero_. Vehement in his political, as in all other feelings, he did not hesitate to resign the office he held under the Tory Government in 1711 in order to attack it for what he considered its treachery to the country; but he was equally outspoken, and with equal disadvantage to himself, when he found himself at a later period in disagreement with the Whigs. He had great fertility of invention, strong natural humour, true though uncultivated taste, and inexhaustible human sympathy.
His varied experience had made him well acquainted with life and character, and in his office of Gazetteer he had had an opportunity of watching the eccentricities of the public taste, which, now emancipated from restraint, began vaguely to feel after new ideals. That, under such circumstances, he should have formed the design of treating current events from a humorous point of view was only natural, but he was indebted for the form of his newspaper to the most original genius of the age. Swift had early in the eighteenth century exercised his ironical vein by treating the everyday occurrences of life in a mock-heroic style. Among his pieces of this kind that were most successful in catching the public taste were the humorous predictions of the death of Partridge, the astrologer, signed with the name of Isaac Bickerstaff. Steele, seizing on the name and character of Partridge's fictitious rival, turned him with much pleasantry into the editor of a new journal, the design of which he makes Isaac describe as follows:
"The state of conversation and business in this town having long been perplexed with Pretenders in both kinds, in order to open men's minds against such abuses, it appeared no unprofitable undertaking to publish a Paper, which should observe upon the manners of the pleasurable, as well as the busy part of mankind. To make this generally read, it seemed the most proper method to form it by way of a Letter of Intelligence, consisting of such parts as might gratify the curiosity of persons of all conditions and of each sex.... The general purposes of this Paper is to expose the false arts of life, to pull off the disguises of cunning, vanity, and affectation, and to recommend a general simplicity in our dress, our discourse, and our behaviour."[30]
The name of the _Tatler_, Isaac informs us, was "invented in honour of the fair sex," for whose entertainment the new paper was largely designed. It appeared three times a week, and its price was a penny, though it seems that the first number, published April 12, 1709, was distributed _gratis_ as an advertisement. In order to make the contents of the paper varied it was divided into five portions, of which the editor gives the following account:
"All accounts of Gallantry, Pleasure, and Entertainment, shall be under the article of White's Chocolate-House; Poetry under that of Will's Coffee-House; Learning under the title of Grecian; Foreign and Domestic News you will have from Saint James' Coffee-House; and what else I have to offer on any other subject shall be dated from my own apartment."[31]
In this division we see the importance of the coffee-houses as the natural centres of intelligence and opinion. Of the four houses mentioned, St. James' and White's, both of them in St. James' Street, were the chief haunts of statesmen and men of fashion, and the latter had acquired an infamous notoriety for the ruinous gambling of its _habitués_. Will's, in Russell Street, Covent Garden, kept up the reputation which it had procured in Dryden's time as the favourite meeting-place of men of letters; while the Grecian, in Devereux Court in the Strand, which was the oldest coffee-house in London, afforded a convenient _rendezvous_ for the learned Templars. At starting, the design announced in the first number was adhered to with tolerable fidelity. The paper dated from St. James' Coffee-House was always devoted to the recital of foreign news; that from Will's either criticised the current dramas, or contained a copy of verses from some author of repute, or a piece of general literary criticism; the latest gossip at White's was reproduced in a fictitious form and with added colour. Advertisements were also inserted; and half a sheet of the paper was left blank, in order that at the last moment the most recent intelligence might be added in manuscript, after the manner of the contemporary news-letters. In all these respects the character of the newspaper was preserved; but in the method of treating news adopted by the editor there was a constant tendency to subordinate matter of fact to the elements of humour, fiction, and sentiment. In his survey of the manners of the time, Isaac, as an astrologer, was assisted by a familiar spirit, named Pa |
41496-8 | colet, who revealed to him the motives and secrets of men; his sister, Mrs. Jenny Distaff, was occasionally deputed to produce the paper from the wizard's "own apartment;" and Kidney, the waiter at St. James' Coffee-House, was humorously represented as the chief authority in all matters of foreign intelligence.
The mottoes assumed by the _Tatler_ at different periods of its existence mark the stages of its development. On its first appearance, when Steele seems to have intended it to be little more than a lively record of news, the motto placed at the head of each paper was
"Quidquid agunt homines, nostri est farrago libelli."
It soon became evident, however, that its true function was not merely to report the actions of men, but to discuss the propriety of their actions; and by the time that sufficient material had accumulated to constitute a volume, the essayists felt themselves justified in appropriating the words used by Pliny in the preface to his _Natural History_:
"Nemo apud nos qui idem tentaverit: equidem sentio peculiarem in studiis causam corum esse, qui difficultatibus victis, utilitatem juvandi, protulerunt gratiæ placendi. Res ardua vetustis novitatem dare, novis auctoritatem, obsoletis nitorem, fastidiis gratiam, dubiis fidem, omnibus vero naturam, et naturæ suæ omnia. Itaque NON ASSECUTIS _voluisse_, abunde pulchrum atque magnificum est."
The disguise of the mock astrologer proved very useful to Steele in his character of moralist. It enabled him to give free utterance to his better feelings, without the risk of incurring the charge of inconsistency or hypocrisy, and nothing can be more honourable to him than the open manner in which he acknowledges his own unfitness for the position of a moralist: "I shall not carry my humility so far," says he, "as to call myself a vicious man, but at the same time must confess my life is at best but pardonable. With no greater character than this, a man would make but an indifferent progress in attacking prevailing and fashionable vices, which Mr. Bickerstaff has done with a freedom of spirit that would have lost both its beauty and efficacy had it been pretended to by Mr. Steele."[32]
As Steele cannot claim the sole merit of having invented the form of the _Tatler_, so, too, it must be remembered that he could never have addressed society in the high moral tone assumed by Bickerstaff if the road had not been prepared for him by others. One name among his predecessors stands out with a special title to honourable record. Since the Restoration the chief school of manners had been the stage, and the flagrant example of immorality set by the Court had been bettered by the invention of the comic dramatists of the period. Indecency was the fashion; religion and sobriety were identified by the polite world with Puritanism and hypocrisy. Even the Church had not yet ventured to say a word in behalf of virtue against the prevailing taste, and when at last a clergyman raised his voice on behalf of the principles which he professed, the blow which he dealt to his antagonists was the more damaging because it was entirely unexpected. Jeremy Collier was not only a Tory but a Jacobite, not only a High Churchman but a Nonjuror, who had been outlawed for his fidelity to the principles of Legitimism; and that such a man should have published the _Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage_, reflecting, as the book did, in the strongest manner on the manners of the fallen dynasty, was as astounding as thunder from a clear sky. Collier, however, was a man of sincere piety, whose mind was for the moment occupied only by the overwhelming danger of the evil which he proposed to attack. It is true that his method of attack was cumbrous, and that his conclusions were far too sweeping and often unjust; nevertheless, the general truth of his criticisms was felt to be irresistible. Congreve and Vanbrugh each attempted an apology for their profession; both, however, showed their perception of the weakness of their position by correcting or recasting scenes in their comedies to which Collier had objected. Dryden accepted the reproof in a nobler spirit. Even while he had pandered to the tastes of the times, he had been conscious of his treachery to the cause of true art, and had broken out in a fine passage in his _Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killigrew_:
"O gracious God! how far have we Profaned thy heavenly gift of poesy! Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, Debased to each obscene and impious use!
* * * * *
"O wretched we! why were we hurried down This lubrique and adulterous age (Nay, added fat pollutions of our own) To increase the streaming ordure of the stage?"
When Collier attacked him he bent his head in submission. "In many things," says he, "he has taxed me justly, and I have pleaded guilty to all thought and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, or immorality, and retract them. If he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as I have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance."[33]
The first blow against fashionable immorality having been boldly struck, was followed up systematically. In 1690 was founded "The Society for the Reformation of Manners," which published every year an account of the progress made in suppressing profaneness and debauchery by its means. It continued its operations till 1738, and during its existence prosecuted, according to its own calculations, 101,683 persons. William III. showed himself prompt to encourage the movement which his subjects had begun. The _London Gazette_ of 27th February, 1698-99, contains a report of the following remarkable order:
"His Majesty being informed, That, notwithstanding an order made the 4th of June, 1697, by the Earl of Sunderland, then Lord Chamberlain of His Majesty's Household, to prevent the Prophaneness and Immorality of the Stage, several Plays have been lately acted containing expressions contrary to Religion and Good Manners: and whereas the Master of the Revels has represented, That, in contempt of the said order, the actors do often neglect to leave out such Prophane and Indecent expressions as he has thought proper to be omitted. These are therefore to signifie his Majesty's pleasure, that you do not hereafter presume to act anything in any play contrary to Religion and Good Manners as you shall answer it at your utmost peril. Given under my Hand this 18th of February, 1698. In the eleventh year of his Majesty's reign."
It is difficult to realise, in reading the terms of this order, that only thirteen years had elapsed since the death of Charles II., and undoubtedly a very large share of the credit due for such a revolution in the public taste is to be assigned to Collier. Collier, however, did nothing in a literary or artistic sense to improve the character of English literature. His severity, uncompromising as that of the Puritans, inspired Vice with terror, but could not plead with persuasion on behalf of Virtue; his sweeping conclusions struck at the roots of Art as well as of Immorality. He sought to destroy the drama and kindred pleasures of the Imagination, not to reform them. What the age needed was a writer to satisfy its natural desires for healthy and rational amusement, and Steele, with his strongly-developed twofold character, was the man of all others to bridge over the chasm between irreligious licentiousness and Puritanical rigidity. Driven headlong on one side of his nature towards all the tastes and pleasures which absorbed the Court of Charles II., his heart in the midst of his dissipation never ceased to approve of whatever was great, noble, and generous. He has described himself with much feeling in his disquisition on the _Rake_, a character which he says many men are desirous of assuming without any natural qualifications for supporting it:
"A Rake," says he, "is a man always to be pitied; and if he lives one day is certainly reclaimed; for his faults proceed not from choice or inclination, but from strong passions and appetites, which are in youth too violent for the curb of reason, good sense, good manners, and good nature; all which he must have by nature and education before he can be allowed to be or to have been of this order.... His desires run away with him through the strength and force of a lively imagination, which hurries him on to unlawful pleasures before reason has power to come in to his rescue."
That impulsiveness of feeling which is here described, and which was the cause of so many of Steele's failings in real life, made him the most powerful and persuasive advocate of Virtue in fiction. Of all the imaginative English essayists he is the most truly natural. His large heart seems to rush out in sympathy with any tale of sorrow or exhibition of magnanimity; and even in criticism, his true natural instinct, joined to his constitutional enthusiasm, often raises his judgments to a level with those of Addison himself, as in his excellent essay in the _Spectator_ on Raphael's cartoons. Examples of these characteristics in his style are to be found in the _Story of Unnion and Valentine_,[34] and in the fine paper describing two tragedies of real life;[35] in the series of papers on duelling, occasioned by a duel into which he was himself forced against his own inclination;[36] and in the sound advice which Isaac gives to his half-sister Jenny on the morrow of her marriage.[37] Perhaps, however, the chivalry and generosity of feeling which make Steele's writings so attractive are most apparent in the delightful paper containing the letter of Serjeant Hall from the camp before Mons. After pointing out to his readers the admirable features in the serjeant's simple letter, Steele concludes as follows:
"If we consider the heap of an army, utterly out of all prospect of rising and preferment, as they certainly are, and such great things executed by them, it is hard to account for the motive of their gallantry. But to me, who was a cadet at the battle of Coldstream, in Scotland, when Monk charged at the head of the regiment now called Coldstream, from the victory of that day--I remember it as well as if it were yesterday; I stood on the left of old West, who I believe is now at Chelsea--I say to me, who know very well this part of mankind, I take the gallantry of private soldiers to proceed from the same, if not from a nobler, impulse than that of gentlemen and officers. They have the same taste of being acceptable to their friends, and go through the difficulties of that profession by the same irresistible charm of fellowship and the communication of joys and sorrows which quickens the relish of pleasure and abates the anguish of pain. Add to this that they have the same regard to fame, though they do not expect so great a share as men above them hope for; but I will engage Serjeant Hall would die ten thousand deaths rather than that a word should be spoken at the Red Lettice, or any part of the Butcher Row, in prejudice to his courage or honesty. If you will have my opinion, then, of the Serjeant's letter, I pronounce the style to be mixed, but truly epistolary; the sentiment relating to his own wound in the sublime; the postscript of Pegg Hartwell in the gay; and the whole the picture of the bravest sort of men, that is to say, a man of great courage and small hopes."[38]
With such excellences of style and sentiment it is no wonder that the _Tatler_ rapidly established itself in public favour. It was a novel experience for the general reader to be provided three times a week with entertainment that pleased his imagination without offending his sense of decency or his religious instincts. But a new hand shortly appeared in the _Tatler_, which was destined to carry the art of periodical essay-writing to a perfection beside which even the humour of Steele appears rude and unpolished. Addison and Steele had been friends since boyhood. They had been contemporaries at the Charter House, and, as we have seen, Steele had sometimes spent his holidays in the parsonage of Addison's father. He was a postmaster at Merton about the same time that his friend was a Fellow of Magdalen. The admiration which he conceived for the hero of his boyhood lasted, as so often happens, through life; he exhibited his veneration for him in all places, and even when Addison indulged his humour at his expense he showed no resentment. Addison, on his side, seems to have treated Steele with a kind of gracious condescension. The latter was one of the few intimate friends to whom he unbent in conversation; and while he was Under-Secretary of State he aided him in the production of _The Tender Husband_, which was dedicated to him by the author. Of this play Steele afterwards declared with characteristic impulse that many of the most admired passages were the work of his friend, and that he "thought very meanly of himself that he had never publicly avowed it."
The authorship of the _Tatler_ was at first kept secret to all the world. It is said that the hand of Steele discovered itself to Addison on reading in the fifth number a remark which he remembered to have himself made to Steele on the judgment of Virgil, as shown in the appellation of "Dux Trojanus," which the Latin poet assigns to Æneas, when describing his adventure with Dido in the cave, in the place of the usual epithet of "pius" or "pater." Thereupon he offered his services as a contributor, and these were of course gladly accepted. The first paper sent by Addison to the _Tatler_ was No. 18, wherein is displayed that inimitable art which makes a man appear infinitely ridiculous by the ironical commendation of his offences against right, reason, and good taste. The subject is the approaching peace with France, and it is noticeable that the article of foreign news, which had been treated in previous _Tatlers_ with complete seriousness, is here for the first time invested with an air of pleasantry. The distress of the news-writers at the prospect of peace is thus described:
"There is another sort of gentlemen whom I am much more concerned for, and that is the ingenious fraternity of which I have the honour to be an unworthy member; I mean the news-writers of Great Britain, whether Post-men or Post-boys, or by what other name or title soever dignified or distinguished. The case of these gentlemen is, I think, more hard than that of the soldiers, considering that they have taken more towns and fought more battles. They have been upon parties and skirmishes when our armies have lain still, and given the general assault to many a place when the besiegers were quiet in their trenches. They have made us masters of several strong towns many weeks before our generals could do it, and completed victories when our greatest captains have been glad to come off with a drawn battle. Where Prince Eugene has slain his thousands Boyer has slain his ten thousands. This gentleman can indeed be never enough commended for his courage and intrepidity during this whole war: he has laid about him with an inexpressible fury, and, like offended Marius of ancient Rome, made such havoc among his countrymen as must be the work of two or three ages to repair.... It is impossible for this ingenious sort of men to subsist after a peace: every one remembers the shifts they were driven to in the reign of King Charles the Second, when they could not furnish out a single paper of news without lighting up a comet in Germany or a fire in Moscow. There scarce appeared a letter without a paragraph on an earthquake. Prodigies were grown so familiar that they had lost their name, as a great poet of that age has it. I remember Mr. Dyer, who is justly looked upon by all the foxhunters in the nation as the greatest statesman our country has produced, was particularly famous for dealing in whales, in so much that in five months' time (for I had the curiosity to examine his letters on that occasion) he brought three into the mouth of the river Thames, besides two porpusses and a sturgeon."
The appearance of Addison as a regular contributor to the _Tatler_ gradually brought about a revolution in the character of the paper. For some time longer, indeed, articles continued to be dated from the different coffee-houses, but only slight efforts were made to distinguish the materials furnished from White's, Will's, or Isaac's own apartment. When the hundredth number was reached a fresh address is given at Shere Lane, where the astrologer lived, and henceforward the papers from White's and Will's grow extremely rare; those from the Grecian may be said to disappear; and the foreign intelligence, dated from St. James', whenever it is inserted, which is seldom, is as often as not made the text of a literary disquisition. Allegories become frequent, and the letters sent, or supposed to be sent, to Isaac at his home address furnish the material for many numbers. The Essay, in fact, or that part of the newspaper which goes to form public opinion, preponderates greatly over that portion which is devoted to the report of news. Spence quotes from a Mr. Chute: "I have heard Sir Richard Steele say that, though he had a greater share in the _Tatlers_ than in the _Spectators_, he thought the news article in the first of these was what contributed much to their success."[39] Chute, however, seems to speak with a certain grudge against Addison, and the statement ascribed by him to Steele is intrinsically improbable. It is not very likely that, as the proprietor of the _Tatler_, he would have dispensed with any element in it that contributed to its popularity, yet after No. 100 the news articles are seldom found. The truth is that Steele recognised the superiority of Addison's style, and with his usual quickness accommodated the form of his journal to the genius of the new contributor.
"I have only one gentleman," says he, in the preface to the _Tatler_, "who will be nameless, to thank for any frequent assistance to me, which indeed it would have been barbarous in him to have denied to one with whom he has lived in intimacy from childhood, considering the great ease with which he is able to despatch the most entertaining pieces of this nature. This good office he performed with such force of genius, humour, wit, and learning that I fared like a distressed prince who calls in a powerful neighbour to his aid; I was undone by my own auxiliary; when I had once called him in I could not subsist without dependence on him."
With his usual enthusiastic generosity, Steele, in this passage, unduly depreciates his own merits to exalt the genius of his friend. A comparison of the amount of material furnished to the _Tatler_ by Addison and Steele respectively shows that out of 271 numbers the latter contributed 188 and the former only 42. Nor is the disparity in quantity entirely balanced by the superior quality of Addison's papers. Though it was, doubtless, his fine workmanship and admirable method which carried to perfection the style of writing initiated in the _Tatler_, yet there is scarcely a department of essay-writing developed in the _Spectator_ which does not trace its origin to Steele. It is Steele who first ventures to raise his voice against the prevailing dramatic taste of the age on behalf of the superior morality and art of Shakespeare's plays.
"Of all men living," says he, in the eighth _Tatler_, "I pity players (who must be men of good understanding to be capable of being such) that they are obliged to repeat and assume proper gestures for representing things of which their reason must be ashamed, and which they must disdain their audience for approving. The amendment of these low gratifications is only to be made by people of condition, by encouraging the noble representation of the noble characters drawn by Shakespeare and others, from whence it is impossible to return without strong impressions of honour and humanity. On these occasions distress is laid before us with all its causes and consequences, and our resentment placed according to the merit of the person afflicted. Were dramas of this nature more acceptable to the taste of the town, men who have genius would bend their studies to excel in them."
Steele, too, it was who attacked, with all the vigour of which he was capable, the fashionable vice of gambling. So severe were his comments on this subject in the _Tatler_ that he raised against himself the fierce resentment of the whole community of sharpers, though he was fortunate enough at the same time to enlist the sympathies of the better part of society. "Lord Forbes," says Mr. Nichols, the antiquary, in his notes to the _Tatler_, "happened to be in company with the two military gentlemen just mentioned" (Major-General Davenport and Brigadier Bisset) "in St. James' Coffee-House when two or three well-dressed men, all unknown to his lordship or his company, came into the room, and in a public, outrageous manner abused Captain Steele as the author of the _Tatler_. One of them, with great audacity and vehemence, swore that he would cut Steele's throat or teach him better manners. 'In this country,' said Lord Forbes, 'you will find it easier to cut a purse than to cut a throat.' His brother officers instantly joined with his lordship and turned the cut-throats out of the coffee-house with every mark of disgrace."[40]
The practice of duelling, also, which had hitherto passed unreproved, was censured by Steele in a series of papers in the _Tatler_, which seemed to have been written on an occasion when, having been forced to fight much against his will, he had the misfortune dangerously to wound his antagonist.[41] The sketches of character studied from life, and the letters from fictitious correspondents, both of which form so noticeable a feature in the _Spectator_, appear roughly, but yet distinctly, drafted in the _Tatler_. Even the papers of literary criticism, afterwards so fully elaborated by Addison, are anticipated by his friend, who may fairly claim the honour to have been the first to speak with adequate respect of the genius of Milton.[42] In a word, whatever was perfected by Addison was begun by Steele; if the one has for ever associated his name with the _Spectator_, the other may justly appropriate the credit of the _Tatler_, a work which bears to its successor the same kind of relation that the frescoes of Masaccio bear, in point of dramatic feeling and style, to those of Raphael; the later productions deserving honour for finish of execution, the earlier for priority of invention.
The _Tatler_ was published till the 2d of January, 1710-11, and was discontinued, according to Steele's own account, because the public had penetrated his disguise, and he was therefore no longer able to preach with effect in the person of Bickerstaff. It may be doubted whether this was his real motive for abandoning the paper. He had been long known as its conductor; and that his readers had shown no disinclination to listen to him is proved, not only by the large circulation of each number of the _Tatler_, but by the extensive sale of the successive volumes of the collected papers at the high price of a guinea apiece. He was, in all probability, led to drop the publication by finding that the political element that the paper contained was a source of embarrassment to him. His sympathies were vehemently Whig; the _Tatler_ from the beginning had celebrated the virtues of Marlborough and his friends, both directly and under cover of fiction; and he had been rewarded for his services with a commissionership of the Stamp-office. When the Whig Ministry fell in 1710, Harley, setting a just value on the abilities of Steele, left him in the enjoyment of his office and expressed his desire to serve him in any other way. Under these circumstances, Steele no doubt felt it incumbent on him to discontinue a paper which, both from its design and its traditions, would have tempted him into the expression of his political partialities.
For two months, therefore, "the censorship of Great Britain," as he himself expressed it, "remained in commission," until Addison and he once more returned to discharge the duties of the office in the _Spectator_, the first number of which was published on the 1st of March, 1710-11. The _Tatler_ had only been issued three times a week, but the conductors of the new paper were now so confident in their own resources and in the favour of the public that they undertook to bring out one number daily. The new paper at once exhibited the impress of Addison's genius, which had gradually transformed the character of the _Tatler_ itself. The latter was originally, in every sense of the word, a newspaper, but the Spectator from the first indulged his humour at the expense of the clubs of Quidnuncs.
"There is," says he, "another set of men that I must likewise lay a claim to as being altogether unfurnished with ideas till the business and conversation of the day has supplied them. I have often considered these poor souls with an eye of great commiseration when I have heard them asking the first man they have met with whether there was any news stirring, and by that means gathering together materials for thinking. These needy persons do not know what to talk of till about twelve o'clock in the morning; for by that time they are pretty good judges of the weather, know which way the wind sets, and whether the Dutch mail be come in. As they lie at the mercy of the first man they meet, and are grave or impertinent all the day long, according to the notions which they have imbibed in the morning, I would earnestly entreat them not to stir out of their chambers till they have read this paper; and do promise them that I will daily instil into them such sound and wholesome sentiments as shall have a good effect on their conversation for the ensuing twelve hours."[43]
For these, and other men of leisure, a kind of paper differing from the _Tatler_, which proposed only to retail the various species of gossip in the coffee-houses, was required, and the new entertainment was provided by the original design of an imaginary club, consisting of several ideal types of character grouped round the central figure of the Spectator. They represent considerable classes or sections of the community, and are, as a rule, men of strongly marked opinions, prejudices, and foibles, which furnish inexhaustible matter of comment to the Spectator himself, who delivers the judgments of reason and common-sense. Sir Roger de Coverley, with his simplicity, his high sense of honour, and his old-world reminiscences, reflects the country gentleman of the best kind; Sir Andrew Freeport expresses the opinions of the enterprising, hard-headed, and rather hard-hearted moneyed interest; Captain Sentry speaks for the army; the Templar for the world of taste and learning; the clergyman for theology and philosophy; while Will Honeycomb, the elderly man of fashion, gives the Spectator many opportunities for criticizing the traditions of morality and breeding surviving from the days of the Restoration. Thus, instead of the division of places which determined the arrangement of the _Tatler_, the different subjects treated in the _Spectator_ are distributed among a variety of persons: the Templar is substituted for the Grecian Coffee-House and Will's; Will Honeycomb takes the place of White's; and Captain Sentry, whose appearances are rare, stands for the more voluminous article on foreign intelligence published in the old periodical, under the head of St. James's. The Spectator himself finds a natural prototype in Isaac Bickerstaff, but his character is drawn with a far greater finish and delicacy, and is much more essential to the design of the paper which he conducts, than was that of the old astrologer.
The aim of the Spectator was to establish a rational standard of conduct in morals, manners, art, and literature.
"Since," says he in one of his early numbers, "I have raised to myself so great an audience, I shall spare no pains to make their instruction agreeable and their diversion useful. For which reason I shall endeavour to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age has fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a single day sprouts up in follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous culture. It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses."[44]
Johnson, in his _Life of Addison_, says that the task undertaken in the _Spectator_ was "first attempted by Casa in his book of _Manners_, and Castiglione in his _Courtier_; two books yet celebrated in Italy for purity and elegance, and which, if they are now less read, are neglected only because they have effected that reformation which their authors intended, and their precepts now are no longer wanted." He afterwards praises the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ by saying that they "adjusted, like Casa, the unsettled practice of daily intercourse by propriety and politeness, and, like La Bruyère, exhibited the characters and manners of the age." This commendation scarcely does justice to the work of Addison and Steele. Casa, a man equally distinguished for profligacy and politeness, merely codified in his _Galateo_ the laws of good manners which prevailed in his age. He is the Lord Chesterfield of Italy. Castiglione gives instructions to the young courtier how to behave in such a manner as to make himself agreeable to his prince. La Bruyère's characters are no doubt the literary models of those which appear in the _Spectator_. But La Bruyère merely described what he saw, with admirable wit, urbanity, and scholarship, but without any of the earnestness of a moral reformer. He could never have conceived the character of Sir Roger de Coverley; and, though he was ready enough to satirise the follies of society as an observer from the outside, to bring "philosophy out of closets and libraries, to dwell in clubs and assemblies," was far from being his ambition. He would probably have thought the publication of a newspaper scarcely consistent with his position as a gentleman.
A very large portion of the _Spectator_ is devoted to reflections on the manners of women. Addison saw clearly how important a part the female sex was destined to play in the formation of English taste and manners. Removed from the pedestal of enthusiastic devotion on which they had been placed during the feudal ages, women were treated under the Restoration as mere playthings and luxuries. As manners became more decent they found themselves secured in their emancipated position but destitute of serious and rational employment. It was Addison's object, therefore, to enlist the aid of female genius in softening, refining, and moderating the gross and conflicting tastes of a half-civilised society.
"There are none," he says, "to whom this paper will be more useful than to the female world. I have often thought there has not been sufficient pains taken in finding out proper employments and diversions for the fair ones. Their amusements seem contrived for them, rather as they are women than as they are reasonable creatures, and are more adapted to the sex than to the species. The toilet is their great scene of business, and the right adjustment of their hair the principal employment of their lives. The sorting of a suit of ribands is reckoned a very good morning's work; and if they make an excursion to a mercer's or a toy shop, so great a fatigue makes them unfit for anything else all the day after. Their more serious occupations are sewing and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery the preparations of jellies and sweetmeats. This, I say, is the state of ordinary women, though I know there are multitudes of those of a more elevated life and conversation that move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind of awe and respect, as well as of love, into their male beholders. I hope to increase the number of these by publishing this daily paper, which I shall always endeavour to make an innocent, if not an improving entertainment, and by that means, at least, divert the minds of my female readers from greater trifles."[45]
To some of the vigorous spirits of the age the mild and social character of the _Spectator's_ satire did not commend itself. Swift, who had contributed several papers to the _Tatler_ while it was in its infancy, found it too feminine for his taste. "I will not meddle with the _Spectator_," says he in his _Journal to Stella_, "let him _fair sex_ it to the world's end." Personal pique, however, may have done as much as a differing taste to depreciate the _Spectator_ in the eyes of the author of the _Tale of a Tub_, for he elsewhere acknowledges its merits. "The _Spectator_," he writes to Stella, "is written by Steele, with Addison's help; it is often very pretty.... But I never see him (Steele) or Addison." That part of the public to whom the paper was specially addressed read it with keen relish. In the ninety-second number a correspondent, signing herself "Leonora,"[46] writes:
"Mr. Spectator,--Your paper is a part of my tea-equipage; and my servant knows my humour so well that, calling for my breakfast this morning (it being past my usual hour), she answered, the _Spectator_ was not yet come in, but the tea-kettle boiled, and she expected it every moment."
In a subsequent number "Thomas Trusty" writes:
"I constantly peruse your paper as I smoke my morning's pipe (though I can't forbear reading the motto before I fill and light), and really it gives a grateful relish to every whiff; each paragraph is fraught either with useful or delightful notions, and I never fail of being highly diverted or improved. The variety of your subjects surprises me as much as a box of pictures did formerly, in which there was only one face, that by pulling some pieces of isinglass over it was changed into a grave senator or a merry-andrew, a polished lady or a nun, a beau or a blackamoor, a prude or a coquette, a country squire or a conjuror, with many other different representations very entertaining (as you are), though still the same at the bottom."[47]
The _Spectator_ was read in all parts of the country.
"I must confess," says Addison, as his task was drawing to an end, "that I am not a little gratified and obliged by that concern which appears in this great city upon my present design of laying down this paper. It is likewise with much satisfaction that I find some of the most outlying parts of the kingdom alarmed upon this occasion, having received letters to expostulate with me about it from several of my readers of the remotest boroughs of Great Britain."[48]
With how keen an interest the public entered into the humour of the paper is shown by the following letter, signed "Philo-Spec:"
"I was this morning in a company of your well-wishers, when we read over, with great satisfaction, Tully's observations on action adapted to the British theatre, though, by the way, we were very sorry to find that you have disposed of another member of your club. Poor Sir Roger is dead, and the worthy clergyman dying; Captain Sentry has taken possession of a fair estate; Will Honeycomb has married a farmer's daughter; and the Templar withdraws himself into the business of his own profession."[49]
It is no wonder that readers anticipated with regret the dissolution of a society that had provided them with so much delicate entertainment. Admirably as the club was designed for maintaining that variety of treatment on which Mr. Trusty comments in the letter quoted above, the execution of the design is deserving of even greater admiration. The skill with which the grave speculations of the _Spectator_ are contrasted with the lively observations of Will Honeycomb on the fashions of the age, and these again are diversified with papers descriptive of character or adorned with fiction, while the letters from the public outside form a running commentary on the conduct of the paper, cannot be justly appreciated without a certain effort of thought. But it may safely be said that, to have provided society day after day, for more than two years, with a species of entertainment which, nearly two centuries later, retains all its old power to interest and delight, is an achievement unique in the history of literature. Even apart from the exquisite art displayed in their grouping, the matter of many of the essays in the _Spectator_ is still valuable. The vivid descriptions of contemporary manners, the inimitable series of sketches of Sir Roger de Coverley, the criticisms in the papers on _True and False Wit_ and Milton's _Paradise Lost_, have scarcely less significance for ourselves than for the society for which they were immediately written.
Addison's own papers were 274 in number, as against 236 contributed by Steele. They were, as a rule, signed with one of the four letters C. L. I. O., either because, as Tickell seems to hint in his _Elegy_, they composed the name of one of the Muses, or, as later scholars have conjectured, because they were respectively written from four different localities--viz., Chelsea, London, Islington, and the Office.
The sale of the _Spectator_ was doubtless very large relatively to the number of readers in Queen Anne's reign. Johnson, indeed, computes the number sold daily to have been only sixteen hundred and eighty, but he seems to have overlooked what Addison himself says on the subject very shortly after the paper had been started: "My publisher tells me that there are already three thousand of them distributed every day."[50] This number must have gone on increasing with the growing reputation of the _Spectator_. When the Preface of the _Four Sermons_ of Dr. Fleetwood, Bishop of Llandaff, was suppressed by order of the House of Commons, the _Spectator_ printed it in its 384th number, thus conveying, as the Bishop said in a letter to Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, "fourteen thousand copies of the condemned preface into people's hands that would otherwise have never seen or heard of it." Making allowance for the extraordinary character of the number, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the usual daily issue of the _Spectator_ to readers in all parts of the kingdom would, towards the close of its career, have reached ten thousand copies. The separate papers were afterwards collected into octavo volumes, which were sold, like the volumes of the _Tatler_, for a guinea apiece. Steele tells us that more than nine thousand copies of each volume were sold off.[51]
Nothing could have been better timed than the appearance of the _Spectator_; it may indeed be doubted whether it could have been produced with success at any other period. Had it been projected earlier, while Addison was still in office, his thoughts would have been diverted to other subjects, and he would have been unlikely to survey the world with quite impartial eyes; had the publication been delayed it would have come before the public when the balance of all minds was disturbed by the dangers of the political situation. The difficulty of preserving neutrality under such circumstances was soon shown by the fate of the _Guardian_. Shortly after the _Spectator_ was discontinued this new paper was designed by the fertile invention of Steele, with every intention of keeping it, like its predecessor, free from the entanglements of party. But it had not proceeded beyond the forty-first number when the vehement partizanship of Steele was excited by the Tory _Examiner_; in the 128th number appeared a letter, signed "An English Tory," calling for the demolition of Dunkirk, while soon afterwards, finding that his political feelings were hampered by the design on which the _Guardian_ was conducted, he dropped it and replaced it with a paper called the _Englishman_. Addison himself, who had been a frequent contributor to the _Guardian_, did not aid in the _Englishman_, of the violent party tone of which he strongly disapproved. A few years afterwards the old friends and coadjutors in the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ found themselves maintaining an angry controversy in the opposing pages of the _Old Whig_ and the _Plebeian_.
CHAPTER VI.
_CATO._
It is a peculiarity in Addison's life that Fortune, as if conspiring with the happiness of his genius, constantly furnished him with favourable opportunities for the exercise of his powers. The pension granted him by Halifax enabled him, while he was yet a young man, to add to his knowledge of classical literature an intimate acquaintance with the languages and governments of the chief European states. When his fortunes were at the lowest ebb on his return from his travels, his introduction to Godolphin by Halifax, the consequence of which was _The Campaign_, procured him at once celebrity and advancement. The appearance of the _Tatler_, though due entirely to the invention of Steele, prepared the way for development of the genius that prevailed in the _Spectator_. But the climax of Addison's good fortune was certainly the successful production of _Cato_, a play which, on its own merits, might have been read with interest by the scholars of the time, but which could scarcely have succeeded on the stage if it had not been appropriated and made part of our national life by the violence of political passion.
Addison had not the genius of a dramatist. The grace, the irony, the fastidious refinement which give him such an unrivalled capacity in describing and criticising the humours of men as a _spectator_ did not qualify him for imaginative sympathy with their actions and passions. But, like most men of ability in that period, his thoughts were drawn towards the stage, and even in Dryden's lifetime he had sent him a play in manuscript, asking him to use his interest to obtain its performance. The old poet returned it, we are told, "with many commendations, but with an expression of his opinion that on the stage it would not meet with its deserved success." Addison, nevertheless, persevered in his attempts, and during his travels he wrote four acts of the tragedy of _Cato_, the design of which, according to Tickell, he had formed while he was at Oxford, though he certainly borrowed many incidents in the play from a tragedy on the same subject which he saw performed at Venice.[52] It is characteristic, however, of the undramatic mood in which he executed his task that the last act was not written till shortly before the performance of the play, many years later. As early as 1703 the drama was shown to Cibber by Steele, who said that "whatever spirit Mr. Addison had shown in his writing it, he doubted that he would ever have courage enough to let his _Cato_ stand the censure of an English audience; that it had only been the amusement of his leisure hours in Italy, and was never intended for the stage." He seems to have remained of the same opinion on the very eve of the performance of the play. "When Mr. Addison," says Pope, as reported by Spence, "had finished his _Cato_ he brought it to me, desired to have my sincere opinion of it, and left it with me for three or four days. I gave him my opinion of it sincerely, which was, 'that I thought he had better not act it, and that he would get reputation enough by only printing it.' This I said as thinking the lines well written, but the piece not theatrical enough. Some time after Mr. Addison said 'that his own opinion was the same with mine, but that some particular friends of his, whom he could not disoblige, insisted on its being acted.'"[53]
Undoubtedly, Pope was right in principle, and anybody who reads the thirty-ninth paper in the _Spectator_ may see not only that Addison was out of sympathy with the traditions of the English stage, but that his whole turn of thought disqualified him from comprehending the motives of dramatic composition. "The modern drama," says he, "excels that of Greece and Rome in the intricacy and disposition of the fable--but, what a Christian writer would be ashamed to own, falls infinitely short of it in the moral part of the performance." And the entire drift of the criticism that follows relates to the thought, the sentiment, and the expression of the modern drama, rather than to the really essential question, the nature of the action. It is false criticism to say that the greatest dramas of Shakespeare fail in morality as compared with those of the Greek tragedians. That the manner in which the moral is conveyed is different in each case is of course true, since the subjects of Greek tragedy were selected from Greek mythology, and were treated by Æschylus and Sophocles, at all events, in a religious spirit, whereas the plays of Shakespeare are only indirectly Christian, and produce their effect by an appeal to the individual conscience. None the less is it the case that _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, and _Lear_ have for modern audiences a far deeper moral meaning than the _Agamemnon_ or the _Oedipus Tyrannus_. The tragic motive in Greek tragedy is the impotence of man in the face of moral law or necessity; in Shakespeare's tragedies it is the corruption of the will, some sin of the individual against the law of God, which brings its own punishment. There was nothing in this principle of which a Christian dramatist need have been ashamed; and as regards Shakespeare, at any rate, it is evident that Addison's criticism is unjust.
It is, however, by no means undeserved in its application to the class of plays which grew up after the Restoration. Under that _régime_ the moral spirit of the Shakesperian drama entirely disappears. The king, whose temper was averse to tragedy, and whose taste had been formed on French models, desired to see every play end happily. "I am going to end a piece," writes Roger, Earl of Orrery, to a friend, "in the French style, because I have heard the King declare that he preferred their manner to our own." The greatest tragedies of the Elizabethan age were transformed to suit this new fashion; even King Lear obtained a happy deliverance from his sufferings in satisfaction of the requirements of an effeminate Court. Addison very wittily ridicules this false taste in the fortieth number of the _Spectator_. He is not less felicitous in his remarks on the sentiments and the style of the Caroline drama, though he does not sufficiently discriminate his censure, which he bestows equally on the dramatists of the Restoration and on Shakespeare. Two main characteristics appear in all the productions of the former epoch--the monarchical spirit and the fashion of gallantry. The names of the plays speak for themselves: on the one hand, _The Indian Emperor_, _Aurengzebe_, _The Indian Queen_, _The Conquest of Granada_, _The Fate of Hannibal_; on the other, _Secret Love_, _Tyrannic Love_, _Love and Vengeance_, _The Rival Queens_, _Theodosius, or the Power of Love_, and numberless others of the same kind. In the one set of dramas the poet sought to arouse the passion of pity by exhibiting the downfall of persons of high estate; in the other he appealed to the sentiment of romantic passion. Such were the fruits of that taste for French romance which was encouraged by Charles II., and which sought to disguise the absence of genuine emotion by the turgid bombast of its sentiment and the epigrammatic declamation of its rhymed verse.
At the same time, the taste of the nation having been once turned into French channels, a remedy for these defects was naturally sought for from French sources; and just as the school of Racine and Boileau set its face against the extravagances of the romantic coteries, so Addison and his English followers, adopting the principles of the French classicists, applied them to the reformation of the English theatre. Hence arose a great revival of respect for the poetical doctrines of Aristotle, regard for the unities of time and place, attention to the proprieties of sentiment and diction--in a word, for all those characteristics of style afterwards summed up in the phrase "correctness."
This habit of thought, useful as an antidote to extravagance, was not fertile as a motive of dramatic production. Addison worked with strict and conscious attention to his critical principles: the consequence is that his _Cato_, though superficially "correct," is a passionless and mechanical play. He had combated with reason the "ridiculous doctrine in modern criticism, that writers of tragedy are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice."[54] But his reasoning led him on to deny that the idea of justice is an essential element in tragedy. "We find," says he, "that good and evil happen alike to all men on this side the grave; and, as the principal design of tragedy is to raise commiseration and terror in the minds of the audience, we shall defeat this great end if we always make virtue and innocence happy and successful.... The ancient writers of tragedy treated men in their plays as they are dealt with in the world, by making virtue sometimes happy and sometimes miserable, as they found it in the fable which they made choice of, or as it might affect their audience in the most agreeable manner."[55] But it is certain that the fable which the two greatest of the Greek tragedians "made choice of" was always of a religious nature, and that the idea of Justice was never absent from it; it is also certain that Retribution is a vital element in all the tragedies of Shakespeare. The notion that the essence of tragedy consists in the spectacle of a good man struggling with adversity is a conception derived through the French from the Roman Stoics; it is not found in the works of the greatest tragic poets.
This, however, was Addison's central motive, and this is what Pope, in his famous Prologue, assigns to him as his chief praise:
"Our author shuns by vulgar springs to move The hero's glory or the virgin's love; In pitying love we but our weakness show, And wild ambition well deserves its woe. Here tears shall flow from a more generous cause, Such tears as patriots shed for dying laws: He bids your breasts with ancient ardour rise, And calls forth Roman drops from British eyes. Virtue confessed in human shape he draws-- What Plato thought, and godlike Cato was: No common object to your sight displays, But what with pleasure heav'n itself surveys; A brave man struggling in the storms of fate, And greatly falling with a falling state."
A falling state offers a tragic spectacle to the thought and the reason, but not one that can be represented on the stage so as to move the passions of the spectators. The character of Cato, as exhibited by Addison, is an abstraction, round which a number of other lay figures are skilfully grouped for the delivery of lofty and appropriate sentiments. Juba, the virtuous young prince of Numidia, the admirer of Cato's virtue, Portius and Marcus, Cato's virtuous sons, and Marcia, his virtuous daughter, are all equally admirable and equally lifeless. Johnson's criticism of the play leaves little to be said:
"About things," he observes, "on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right; and of _Cato_ it has not been unjustly determined that it is rather a poem in dialogue than a drama, rather a succession of just sentiments in elegant language than a representation of natural affections, or of any state probable or possible in human life. Nothing here 'excites or assuages emotion;' here is 'no magical power of raising fantastic terror or wild anxiety.' The events are expected without solicitude, and are remembered without joy or sorrow. Of the agents we have no care; we consider not what they are doing or what they are suffering; we wish only to know what they have to say. Cato is a being above our solicitude; a man of whom the gods take care, and whom we leave to their care with heedless confidence. To the rest neither gods nor men can have much attention, for there is not one among them that strongly attracts either affection or esteem. But they are made the vehicles of such sentiments and such expressions that there is scarcely a scene in the play which the reader does not wish to impress upon his memory."
To this it may be added that, from the essentially undramatic bent of Addison's genius, whenever he contrives a train of incident he manages to make it a little absurd. Dennis has pointed out with considerable humour the consequences of his conscientious adherence to the unity of place, whereby every species of action in the play--love-making, conspiracy, debating, and fighting--is made to take place in the "large hall in the governor's palace of Utica." It is strange that Addison's keen sense of the ridiculous, which inspired so happily his criticisms on the allegorical paintings at Versailles,[56] should not have shown him the incongruities which Dennis discerned; but, in truth, they pervade the atmosphere of the whole play. All the actors--the distracted lovers, the good young man, Juba, and the blundering conspirator, Sempronius--seem to be oppressed with an uneasy consciousness that they have a character to sustain, and are not confident of coming up to what is expected of them. This is especially the case with Portius, a pragmatic young Roman, whose praiseworthy but futile attempts to unite the qualities of Stoical fortitude, romantic passion, and fraternal loyalty, exhibit him in a position of almost comic embarrassment. According to Pope, "the love part was flung in after, to comply with the popular taste;" but the removal of these scenes would make the play so remarkably barren of incident that it is a little difficult to credit the statement.
The deficiencies of _Cato_ as an acting play were, however, more than counterbalanced by the violence of party spirit, which insisted on investing the comparatively tame sentiments assigned to the Roman champions of liberty with a pointed modern application. In 1713 the rage of the contending factions was at its highest point. The Tories were suspected, not without reason, of designs against the Act of Settlement; the Whigs, on the other hand, were still suffering in public opinion from the charge of having, for their own advantage, protracted the war with Louis XIV. Marlborough had been accused in 1711 of receiving bribes while commander-in-chief, and had been dismissed from all his employments. Disappointment, envy, revenge, and no doubt a genuine apprehension for the public safety, inspired the attacks of the Whigs upon their rivals; and when it was known that Addison had in his drawers an unfinished play on so promising a subject as _Cato_, great pressure was put upon him by his friends to complete it for the stage. Somewhat unwillingly, apparently, he roused himself to the task. So small, indeed, was his inclination for it, that he is said in the first instance to have asked Hughes, afterwards author of the _Siege of Damascus_, to write a fifth act for him. Hughes undertook to do so, but on returning a few days afterwards with his own performance, he found that Addison had himself finished the play. In spite of the judgment of the critics, _Cato_ was quickly hurried off for rehearsal, doubtless with many fears on the part of the author. His anxieties during this period must have been great. "I was this morning," writes Swift to Stella on the 6th of April, "at ten, at the rehearsal of Mr. Addison's play, called _Cato_, which is to be acted on Friday. There was not half a score of us to see it. We stood on the stage, and it was foolish enough to see the actors prompted every moment, and the poet directing them, and the drab that acts Cato's daughter (Mrs. Oldfield) out in the midst of a passionate part, and then calling out, 'What's next?'"
Mrs. Oldfield not only occasionally forgot the poet's text, she also criticised it. She seems to have objected to the original draft of a speech of Portius in the second scene of the third act; and Pope, whose advice Addison appears to have frequently asked, suggested the present reading:
"Fixt in astonishment, I gaze upon thee Like one just blasted by a stroke from heaven Who pants for breath, and _stiffens, yet alive_, In dreadful looks: a monument of wrath."[57]
Pope also proposed the alteration of the last line in the play from
"And oh, 'twas this that ended Cato's life,"
to
"And robs the guilty world of Cato's life;"
and he was generally the cause of many modifications. "I believe," said he to Spence, "Mr. Addison did not leave a word unchanged that I objected to in his _Cato_."[58]
On the 13th of April the play was ready for performance, and contemporary accounts give a vivid picture of the eagerness of the public, the excitement of parties, and the apprehensions of the author. "On our first night of acting it," says Cibber, in his Apology, speaking of the subsequent representation at Oxford, "our house was, in a manner, invested, and entrance demanded by twelve o'clock at noon; and before one it was not wide enough for many who came too late for their places. The same crowds continued for three days together--an uncommon curiosity in that place; and the death of Cato triumphed over the injuries of Cæsar everywhere." The prologue--a very fine one--was contributed by Pope; the epilogue--written, according to the execrable taste fashionable after the Restoration, in a comic vein--by Garth. As to the performance itself, a very lively record of the effect it produced remains in Pope's letter to Trumbull of the 30th April, 1713:
"Cato was not so much the wonder of Rome in his days as he is of Britain in ours; and though all the foolish industry possible had been used to make it thought a party play, yet what the author said of another may the most properly be applied to him on this occasion:
'Envy itself is dumb, in wonder lost, And factions strive who shall applaud him most!'[59]
The numerous and violent claps of the Whig party on the one side of the theatre were echoed back by the Tories on the other, while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than the head. This was the case, too, with the Prologue-writer, who was clapped into a staunch Whig at the end of every two lines. I believe you have heard that, after all the applauses of the opposite faction, my Lord Bolingbroke sent for Booth, who played Cato, into the box, between one of the acts, and presented him with fifty guineas, in acknowledgment, as he expressed it, for defending the cause of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. The Whigs are unwilling to be distanced this way, and therefore design a present to the same Cato very speedily; in the meantime they are getting ready as good a sentence as the former on their side; so betwixt them it is probable that Cato (as Dr. Garth expressed it) may have something to live upon after he dies."
The Queen herself partook, or feigned to partake, of the general enthusiasm, and expressed a wish that the play should be dedicated to her. This honour had, however, been already designed by the poet for the Duchess of Marlborough, so that, finding himself unable under the circumstances to fulfil his intentions, he decided to leave the play without any dedication. _Cato_ ran for the then unprecedented period of thirty-five nights. Addison appears to have behaved with great liberality to the actors, and, at Oxford, to have handed over to them all the profits of the first night's performance; while they in return, Cibber tells us, thought themselves "obliged to spare no pains in the proper decorations" of the piece.
The fame of _Cato_ spread from England to the Continent. It was twice translated into Italian, twice into French, and once into Latin; a French and a German imitation of it were also published. Voltaire, to whom Shakespeare appeared no better than an inspired barbarian, praises it in the highest terms. "_The first English writer who composed a regular tragedy_ and infused a spirit of elegance through every part of it was," says he, "the illustrious Mr. Addison. His _Cato_ is a masterpiece, both with regard to the diction and the harmony and beauty of the numbers. The character of Cato is, in my opinion, greatly superior to that of Cornelia in the _Pompey_ of Corneille, for Cato is great without anything of fustian, and Cornelia, who besides is not a necessary character, tends sometimes to bombast." Even he, however, could not put up with the love-scenes:
"Addison l'a déjà tenté; C'étoit le poëte des sâges, Mais il étoit trop concerté, Et dans son Caton si vanté Les deux filles en vérité, Sont d'insipides personages. Imitez du grand Addison Seulement ce qu'il a de bon."
There were, of course, not wanting voices of detraction. A graduate of Oxford attacked _Cato_ in a pamphlet entitled _Mr. Addison turned Tory_, in which the party spirit of the play was censured. Dr. Sewell, a well-known physician of the day--afterwards satirised by Pope as "Sanguine Sewell"--undertook Addison's defence, and showed that he owed his success to the poetical, and not to the political, merits of his drama. A much more formidable critic appeared in John Dennis, a specimen of whose criticism on _Cato_ is preserved in Johnson's _Life_, and who, it must be owned, went a great deal nearer the mark in his judgment than did Voltaire. Dennis had many of the qualities of a good critic. Though his judgment was often overborne by his passion, he generally contrived to fasten on the weak points of the works which he criticised, and he at once detected the undramatic character of _Cato_. His ridicule of the absurdities arising out of Addison's rigid observance of the unity of place is extremely humorous and quite unanswerable. But, as usual, he spoiled his case by the violence and want of discrimination in his censure, which betrayed too plainly the personal feelings of the writer. It is said that Dennis was offended with Addison for not having adequately exhibited his talents in the _Spectator_ when mention was made of his works; and he certainly did complain in a published letter that Addison had chosen to quote a couplet from his translation of Boileau in preference to another from a poem on the battle of Ramilies, which he himself thought better of. But the fact seems to have been overlooked that Dennis had other grounds for resentment. In the 40th number of the _Spectator_ the writer speaks of "a ridiculous doctrine of modern criticism, that they (tragic writers) are obliged to an equal distribution of rewards and punishments, and an impartial execution of poetical justice." This was a plain stroke at Dennis, who was a well-known advocate of the doctrine; and a considerable portion of the critic's gall was therefore expended on Addison's violation of the supposed rule in _Cato_.
Looking at _Cato_ from Voltaire's point of view--which was Addison's own--and having regard to the spirit of elegance infused through every part of it, there is much to admire in the play. It is full of pointed sentences, such as--
"'Tis not in mortals to command success, But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it."
It has also many fine descriptive passages, the best of which, perhaps, occurs in the dialogue between Syphax and Juba respecting civilised and barbarian virtues:
"Believe me, prince, there's not an African That traverses our vast Numidian deserts In quest of prey, and lives upon his bow, But better practises these boasted virtues. Coarse are his meals, the fortune of the chase; Amidst the running streams he slakes his thirst, Toils all the day, and at th' approach of night On the first friendly bank he throws him down, Or rests his head upon a rock till morn-- Then rises fresh, pursues his wonted game, And if the following day he chance to find A new repast, or an untasted spring, Blesses his stars, and thinks it luxury."
But in all those parts of the poem where action and not ornament is demanded, we seem to perceive the work of a poet who was constantly thinking of what his characters ought to say in the situation, rather than of one who was actually living with them in the situation itself. Take Sempronius' speech to Syphax, describing the horrors of the conspirator's position:
"Remember, Syphax, we must work in haste: Oh think what anxious moments pass between The birth of plots and their last fatal period. Oh! 'tis a dreadful interval of time, Filled up with horror all, and big with death! Destruction hangs on every word we speak, On every thought, till the concluding stroke Determines all, and closes our design."
Compare with this the language of real tragedy, the soliloquy of Brutus in _Julius Cæsar_, on which Addison apparently meant to improve:
"Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream: The genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council; and the state of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection."
These two passages are good examples of the French and English ideals of dramatic diction, though the lines from _Cato_ are more figurative than is usual in that play. Addison deliberately aimed at this French manner. "I must observe," says he, "that when our thoughts are great and just they are often obscured by the sounding phrases, hard metaphors, and forced expressions in which they are clothed. Shakespeare is often very faulty in this particular."[60] Certainly he is; but who does not see that, in spite of his metaphoric style, the speech of Brutus just quoted is far simpler and more natural than the elegant "correctness" of Sempronius.
CHAPTER VII.
ADDISON'S QUARREL WITH POPE.
It has been said that with _Cato_ the good fortune of Addison reached its climax. After his triumph in the theatre, though he filled great offices in the State and wedded "a noble wife," his political success was marred by disagreements with one of his oldest friends; while with the Countess of Warwick, if we are to believe Pope, he "married discord." Added to which he was unlucky enough to incur the enmity of the most poignant and vindictive of satiric poets, and a certain shadow has been for ever thrown over his character by the famous verses on "Atticus." It will be convenient in this chapter to investigate, as far as is possible, the truth as to the quarrel between Pope and Addison. The latter has hitherto been at a certain disadvantage with the public, since the facts of the case were entirely furnished by Pope, and, though his account was dissected with great acuteness by Blackstone in the _Biographia Britannica_, the partizans of the poet were still able to plead that his uncontradicted statements could not be disposed of by mere considerations of probability.
Pope's account of his final rupture with Addison is reported by Spence as follows: "Philips seems to have been encouraged to abuse me in coffee-houses and conversations. Gildon wrote a thing about Wycherley in which he had abused both me and my relations very grossly. Lord Warwick himself told me one day 'that it was in vain for me to endeavour to be well with Mr. Addison; that his jealous temper would never admit of a settled friendship between us; and, to convince me of what he had said, assured me that Addison had encouraged Gildon to publish those scandals, and had given him ten guineas after they were published.' The next day, while I was heated with what I had heard, I wrote a letter to Mr. Addison to let him know 'that I was not unacquainted with this behaviour of his; that, if I was to speak severely of him in return for it, it should not be in such a dirty way; that I would rather tell him himself fairly of his faults and allow his good qualities; and that it should be something in the following manner.' I then subjoined the first sketch of what has since been called my satire on Addison. He used me very civilly ever after; and never did me any injustice, that I know of, from that time to his death, which was about three years after."[61]
Such was the story told by Pope in his own defence against the charge that he had written and circulated the lines on Addison after the latter's death. In confirmation of his evidence, and in proof of his own good feeling for and open dealing with Addison, he inserted in the so-called authorised edition of his correspondence in 1737 several letters written apparently to Addison, while in what he pretended to be the surreptitious edition of 1735 appeared a letter to Craggs, written in July, 1715, which, as it contained many of the phrases and expressions used in the character of Atticus, created an impression in the mind of the public that both letter and verses were written about the same time. No suspicion as to the genuineness of this correspondence was raised till the discovery of the Caryll letters, which first revealed the fact that most of the pretended letters to Addison had been really addressed to Caryll; that there had been, in fact, no correspondence between Pope and Addison; and that, therefore, in all probability, the letter to Craggs was also a fictitious composition, inserted in the so-called surreptitious volume of 1735 to establish the credit of Pope's own story.
We must accordingly put aside, as undeserving of credence, the poet's ingeniously constructed charge, at any rate in the particular shape in which it is preferred, and must endeavour to form for ourselves such a judgment as is rendered probable by the acknowledged facts of the case. What is indisputable is that in 1715 a rupture took place between Addison and Pope, in consequence of the injury which the translator of the _Iliad_ conceived himself to have suffered from the countenance given to Tickell's rival performance; and that in 1723 we find the first mention of the satire upon Addison in a letter from Atterbury to Pope. The question is, what blame attaches to Addison for his conduct in the matter of the two translations; and what is the amount of truth in Pope's story respecting the composition of the verses on Atticus.
Pope made Addison's acquaintance in the year 1712. On the 20th of December, 1711, Addison had noticed Pope's _Art of Criticism_ in the 253d number of the _Spectator_--partly, no doubt, in consequence of his perception of the merits of the poem, but probably at the particular instigation of Steele, whose acquaintance with Pope may have been due to the common friendship of both with Caryll. The praise bestowed on the _Essay_ (as it was afterwards called) was of the finest and most liberal kind, and was the more welcome because it was preceded by a censure conveyed with admirable delicacy on "the strokes of ill-nature" which the poem contained. Pope was naturally exceedingly pleased, and wrote to Steele a letter of thanks under the impression that the latter was the writer of the paper, a misapprehension which Steele at once hastened to correct. "The paper," says he, "was written by one with whom I will make you acquainted--which is the best return I can make to you for your favour."
These words were doubtless used by Steele in the warmth of his affection for Addison, but they also express the general estimation in which the latter was then held. He had recently established his man Button in a coffee-house in Covent Garden, where, surrounded by his little senate, Budgell, Tickell, Carey, and Philips, he ruled supreme over the world of taste and letters. Something, no doubt, of the spirit of the coterie pervaded the select assembly. Addison could always find a word of condescending praise for his followers in the pages of the _Spectator_; he corrected their plays and mended their prologues; and they on their side paid back their patron with unbounded reverence, perhaps justifying the satirical allusion of the poet to the "applause" so grateful to the ear of Atticus:
"While wits and Templars every sentence raise, And wonder with a foolish face of praise."
Pope, according to his own account, was admitted to the society, and left it, as he said, because he found it sit too far into the night for his health. It may, however, be suspected that the natures of the author of the _Dunciad_ and of the creator of Sir Roger de Coverley, though touching each other at many points, were far from naturally congenial; that the essayist was well aware that the man who could write the _Essay on Criticism_ had a higher capacity for poetry than either himself or any of his followers; and that the poet, on his side, conscious of great if undeveloped powers, was inclined to resent the air of patronage with which he was treated by the King of Button's. Certain it is that the praise of Pope by Addison in number 253 of the _Spectator_ is qualified (though by no means unjustly), and that he is not spoken of with the same warmth as Tickell and Ambrose Philips in number 523. "Addison," said Pope to Spence, "seemed to value himself more upon his poetry than upon his prose, though he wrote the latter with such particular ease, fluency, and happiness."[62] This often happens; and perhaps the uneasy consciousness that, in spite of the reputation which his _Campaign_ had secured for him, he was really inferior to such men as John Philips and Tickell, made Addison touchy at the idea of the entire circle being outshone by a new candidate for poetical fame.
Whatever jealousy, however, existed between the two was carefully suppressed during the first year of their acquaintance. Pope showed Addison the first draft of the _Rape of the Lock_, and, according to Warburton (whose account must be received with suspicion), imparted to him his design of adding the fairy machinery. If Addison really endeavoured to dissuade the poet from making this exquisite addition, the latter was on his side anxious that _Cato_, which, as has been said, was shown to him after its completion, should not be presented on the stage; and his advice, if tested by the result, would have been quite as open as Addison's to an unfavourable construction. He wrote, however, for the play the famous Prologue which Steele inserted, with many compliments, in the _Guardian_. But not long afterwards the effect of the compliments was spoiled by the comparatively cold mention of Pope's _Pastorals_ in the same paper that contained a glowing panegyric on the _Pastorals_ of Ambrose Philips. In revenge, Pope wrote his paper commending Philips' performance and depreciating his own, the irony of which, it is said, escaping the notice of Steele, was inserted by him in the _Guardian_, much to the amusement of Addison and more to the disgust of Philips.
The occasion on which Pope's pique against Addison began to develop into bitter resentment is sufficiently indicated by the date which the poet assigns to the first letter in the concocted correspondence--viz., July 20, 1713. This letter (which is taken, with a few slight alterations of names, from one written to Caryll on November 19, 1712) opens as follows:
"I am more joyed at your return than I should be at that of the sun, so much as I wish for him this melancholy wet season; but it has a fate too like yours to be displeasing to owls and obscure animals who cannot bear his lustre. What puts me in mind of these night-birds was John Dennis, whom I think you are best revenged upon, as the sun was in the fable upon those bats and beastly birds above mentioned, only by shining on. I am so far from esteeming it any misfortune, that I congratulate you upon having your share in that which all the great men and all the good men that ever lived have had their part of--envy and calumny. To be uncensured and to be obscure is the same thing. You may conclude from what I here say that it was never in my thoughts to have offered you my pen in any direct reply to such a critic, but only in some little raillery, not in defence of you, but in contempt of him."
The allusion is to the squib called _Dr. Norris' Narrative of the Frenzy of John Dennis_, which, it appears, was shown to Addison by Pope before its appearance, and after the publication of which Addison caused Steele to write to Lintot in the following terms:
"Mr. Lintot,--Mr. Addison desired me to tell you that he wholly disapproves the manner of treating Mr. Dennis in a little pamphlet by way of Mr. Norris' account. When he thinks fit to take notice of Mr. Dennis' objections to his writings, he will do it in a way Mr. Dennis shall have no just reason to complain of. But when the papers above mentioned were offered to be communicated to him he said he could not, either in honour or conscience, be privy to such a treatment, and was sorry to hear of it.--I am, sir, your very humble servant."
Pope's motive in writing the pamphlet was, as Johnson says, "to give his resentment full play without appearing to revenge himself" for the attack which Dennis had made on his own poems. Addison doubtless divined the truth; but the wording of the letter which he caused a third person to write to Lintot certainly seems studiously offensive to Pope, who had, professedly at any rate, placed his pen at his service, and who had connected his own name with _Cato_ by the fine Prologue he had written in its praise. Lintot would of course have shown Pope Steele's letter, and we may be sure that the lofty tone taken by Addison in speaking of the pamphlet would have rankled bitterly in the poet's mind.
At the same time Philips, who was naturally enraged with Pope on account of the ridicule with which the latter had covered his _Pastorals_, endeavoured to widen the breach by spreading a report that Pope had entered into a conspiracy to write against the Whigs, and to undermine the reputation of Addison. Addison seems to have lent a ready ear to these accusations. At any rate Pope thought so; for when the good-natured painter Jervas sought to bring about a composition, he wrote to him (27th August, 1714):
"What you mentioned of the friendly office you endeavoured to do betwixt Mr. Addison and me deserves acknowledgment on my part. You thoroughly know my regard to his character, and my propensity to testify it by all ways in my power. You as thoroughly know the scandalous meanness of that proceeding, which was used by Philips, to make a man I so highly value suspect my disposition towards him. But as, after all, Mr. Addison must be the judge in what regards himself, and has seemed to be no very just one to me, so I must own to you I expect nothing but civility from him, how much soever I wish for his friendship. As for any offices of real kindness or service which it is in his power to do me, I should be ashamed to receive them from any man who had no better opinion of my morals than to think me a party man, nor of my temper than to believe me capable of maligning or envying another's reputation as a poet. So I leave it to time to convince him as to both, to show him the shallow depths of those half-witted creatures who misinformed him, and to prove that I am incapable of endeavouring to lessen a person whom I would be proud to imitate, and therefore ashamed to flatter. In a word, Mr. Addison is sure of my respect at all times, and of my real friendship whenever he shall think fit to know me for what I am."
It is evident, from the tone of this letter, that all the materials for a violent quarrel were in existence. On the one side was Addison, with probably an instinctive dislike of Pope's character, intensified by the injurious reports circulated against Pope in the "little senate" at Button's; with a nature somewhat cold and reserved; and with something of literary jealousy, partly arising from a sense of what was due to his acknowledged supremacy, and partly from a perception that there had appeared a very formidable "brother near the throne." On the side of Pope there was an eager sensitiveness, ever craving for recognition and praise, with an abnormal irritability prone to watch for, and reluctant to forgive, anything in the shape of a slight or an injury. Slights and injuries he already deemed himself to have received, and accordingly, when Tickell, in 1715, published his translation of the First Book of the _Iliad_ at the same time with his own translation of the first four books, his smothered resentment broke into a blaze at what he imagined to be a conspiracy to damage his poetical reputation. Many years afterwards, when the quarrel between Addison and himself had become notorious, he arranged his version of it for the public in a manner which is, indeed, far from assisting us to a knowledge of the truth, but which enables us to understand very clearly what was passing in his own mind at the time.
The subscription for Pope's translation of the _Iliad_ was set on foot in November, 1713. On the 10th October, 1714, having two books completed, he wished to submit them--or at any rate he told the public so in 1735--to Addison's judgment. This was at a date when, as he informed Spence, "there had been a coldness between Mr. Addison and me" for some time. According to the letter which appears in his published correspondence, he wrote to Addison on the subject as follows:
"I have been acquainted by one of my friends, who omits no opportunities of gratifying me, that you have lately been pleased to speak of me in a manner which nothing but the real respect I have for you can deserve. May I hope that some late malevolences have lost their effect?... As to what you have said of me I shall never believe that the author of _Cato_ can speak one thing and think another. As a proof that I account you sincere, I beg a favour of you: it is that you would look over the two first books of my translation of Homer, which are in the hands of Lord Halifax. I am sensible how much the reputation of any poetical work will depend upon the character you give it. It is therefore some evidence of the trust I repose in your good will when I give you this opportunity of speaking ill of me with justice, and yet expect you will tell me your truest thoughts at the same time you tell others your most favourable ones."[63]
Whether the facts reported in this letter were as fictitious as we have a right to assume the letter itself to be, it is impossible to say; Pope at any rate told Spence the following story, which is clearly meant to fall in with the evidence of the correspondence:
"On his meeting me there (Button's Coffee-House) he took me aside and said he should be glad to dine with me at such a tavern if I would stay till those people (Budgell and Philips) were gone. We went accordingly, and after dinner Mr. Addison said 'that he had wanted for some time to talk with me: that his friend Tickell had formerly, while at Oxford, translated the first book of the _Iliad_. That he now designed to print it, and had desired him to look it over: he must therefore beg that I would not desire him to look over my first book, because, if he did, it would have the air of double dealing.' I assured him that I did not take it ill of Mr. Tickell that he was going to publish his translation; that he certainly had as much right to translate any author as myself; and that publishing both was entering on a fair stage. I then added 'that I would not desire him to look over my first book of the _Iliad_, because he had looked over Mr. Tickell's, but could wish to have the benefit of his observations on my second, which I had then finished, and which Mr. Tickell had not touched upon.' Accordingly, I sent him the second book the next morning; and in a few days he returned it with very high commendation. Soon after it was generally known that Mr. Tickell was publishing the first book of the _Iliad_ I met Dr. Young in the street, and, upon our falling into that subject, the doctor expressed a great deal of surprise at Tickell's having such a translation by him so long. He said that it was inconceivable to him, and that there must be some mistake in the matter; that he and Tickell were so intimately acquainted at Oxford that each used to communicate to the other whatever verses they wrote, even to the least things; that Tickell could not have been busied in so long a work there without his knowing something of the matter; and that he had never heard a single word of it till this occasion."[64]
It is scarcely necessary to say that, after the light that has been thrown on Pope's character by the detection of the frauds he practised in the publication of his correspondence, it is impossible to give any credence to the tales he poured into Spence's ear, tending to blacken Addison's character and to exalt his own. Tickell's MS. of the translation is in existence, and all the evidence tends to show that he was really the author of it. But the above statement may be taken to reflect accurately enough the rage, the resentment, and the suspicion which disturbed Pope's own mind on the appearance of the rival translation. We can scarcely doubt that it was this, and this alone, which roused him to such glowing indignation and inspired him to write the character of Atticus. When the verses were made public, after Addison's death, he probably perceived that the public would not consider the evidence for Addison's collusion with Tickell to be sufficiently strong to afford a justification for the bitterness of the satire. It was necessary to advance some stronger plea for such retaliation, especially as rumour confidently asserted that the lines had not been written till after Addison was dead. Hence the story told by Pope to Spence, proving first that the lines were not only written during Addison's lifetime, but were actually sent to Addison himself; and secondly, that they were only composed after the strongest evidence had been afforded to the poet of his rival's malignant disposition towards him. Hence, too, the publication in 1735 of the letter to Craggs, which, containing as it did many of the phrases and metaphors employed in the verses, seemed to supply indirect evidence that both were written about the same period.
With regard to Pope's story, it is not too much to say that it entirely breaks down on examination. He professes to give it on the authority of Lord Warwick himself, reckoning, of course, that the evidence of Addison's own step-son would be conclusive with the public. But Addison was not married to the Countess of Warwick till August, 1716; and in the previous May he had bestowed the most liberal praise on Pope's translation in one of his papers in the _Freeholder_. For Lord Warwick, therefore, to argue at that date that Addison's "_jealous temper_ could never admit of a settled friendship" between him and Pope was out of the question. If, on the other hand, Lord Warwick told his story to Pope before his mother's marriage, the difficulty is equally great. The letter to Craggs, which, if it was ever sent to the latter at all, must obviously have been written in the same "heat" which prompted the satire on Atticus, is dated July 15, 1715. This fits in well enough with the date of the dispute about the rival translations of the _Iliad_, but not with Lord Warwick's story, for Wycherley, after whose death Gildon, we are told, was hired by Addison to abuse Pope, did not die till the December of that year.
Again, the internal evidence of the character itself points to the fact that, when it was first composed, its "heat" was not caused by any information the poet had received of a transaction between Addison and Gildon. The following is the first published version of the satire:
"If Dennis writes and rails in furious pet I'll answer Dennis when I am in debt. If meagre Gildon draw his meaner quill, I wish the man a dinner and sit still. But should there _One_ whose better stars conspire To form a bard, and raise a genius higher, Blest with each talent and each art to please, And born to live, converse, and write with ease; Should such a one, resolved to reign alone, Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne, View him with jealous yet with scornful eyes, Hate him for arts that caused himself to rise, Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering teach the rest to sneer; Alike reserved to blame or to commend, A timorous foe and a suspicious friend, Fearing e'en fools, by flatterers besieged, And so obliging that he ne'er obliged; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint the fault, and hesitate dislike, _Who when two wits on rival themes contest, Approves of both, but likes the worst the best_: Like Cato, give his little senate laws And sits attentive to his own applause; While wits and templars every sentence praise And wonder with a foolish face of praise: Who would not laugh if such a man there be? Who would not weep if Addison were he?"
There is sufficient corroborative evidence to allow us to believe that these lines were actually written, as Pope says, during Addison's lifetime; and if they were, the character of the satire would naturally suggest that its motive was Addison's supposed conduct in the matter of the two translations of the _Iliad_. There is nothing in them to indicate any connection in the poet's mind between Gildon and Addison; on the other hand, the allusion to the "two wits" shows the special grievance that formed the basis, in his imagination, of the whole character. Afterwards we find that "meaner quill" is replaced by "_venal_ quill;" and the couplet about the rival translations is suppressed. The inference is plain. When Pope was charged with having written the character after Addison's death, he found himself obliged, in self-defence, to furnish a moral justification for the satire; and, after his own unfortunate manner, he proceeded to build up for himself a position on a number of systematic falsehoods. His story was probably so far true that the character was really written while Addison was alive; on the other hand, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the entire statement about Gildon and Lord Warwick is fabulous; and, as the assertion that the lines were sent to Addison immediately after their composition is associated with these myths, this, too, may fairly be dismissed as equally undeserving of belief.
As to the truth of the character of Atticus, however, it by no means follows, because Pope's account of its origin is false, that the portrait itself is altogether untrue. The partizans of Addison endeavour to prove that it is throughout malicious and unjust. But no one can fail to perceive that the character itself is a very extraordinary picture of human nature; and there is no reason to suppose that Addison was superior to the weaknesses of his kind. On the contrary, there is independent evidence to show that he was strongly influenced by that literary jealousy which makes the groundwork of the ideal character. This the piercing intelligence of Pope no doubt plainly discerned; his inflamed imagination built up on this foundation the wonderful fabric that has ever since continued to enchant the world. The reader who is acquainted with his own heart will probably not find much difficulty in determining what elements in the character are derived from the substantial truth of nature, and what are to be ascribed to the exaggerated perceptions of Genius.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LAST YEARS OF HIS LIFE.
The representation of _Cato_ on the stage was a turning point in the political fortunes of the Whigs. In the same month the Queen announced, on the meeting of Parliament, the signature of the Treaty of Utrecht. Whatever were the merits or demerits of the policy embodied in this instrument, it offered many points of attack to a compact and vigorous Opposition. The most salient of these was, perhaps, the alleged sacrifice of British commercial interests through the incompetence or corruption of the negotiators, and on this question the Whigs accordingly raised vehement and reiterated debates. Addison aided his political friends with an ingenious pamphlet on the subject, called _The late Trial and Conviction of Count Tariff_, containing a narrative of the lawsuit between the Count and Goodman Fact, which is written with much spirit and pleasantry. It is said that he also took the field in answer to the Address to the Queen from the magistrates of Dunkirk, wherein Her Majesty was requested to waive the execution of the article in the Treaty providing for the demolition of the harbour and fortifications of that town; but if he wrote on the subject the pamphlet has not been preserved by Tickell. His old friend Steele was meanwhile involving himself in difficulties through the heat and impetuosity of his party passions. After the painful abstinence from partizanship imposed on him by the scheme of the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ he had founded the _Guardian_ on similar lines, and had carried it on in a nonpolitical spirit up to the 128th number, when his Whig feelings could restrain themselves no longer, and he inserted a letter signed by "An English Tory," demanding the immediate demolition of Dunkirk. Soon afterwards he published a pamphlet called _The Crisis_, to excite the apprehensions of the nation with regard to the Protestant succession, and, dropping the _Guardian_, started the _Englishman_, a political paper of extreme Whig views. He further irritated the Tory majority in Parliament by supporting the proposal of Sir Thomas Hanmer, as Speaker of the House of Commons, in a speech violently reflecting on the rejected Bill for a Treaty of Commerce with France. A complaint was brought before the House against the _Crisis_, and two numbers of the _Englishman_, and Steele was ordered to attend and answer for his conduct. After the charge had been preferred against him, he asked for time to arrange his defence; and this being granted him, after a warm debate, he reappeared in his place a few days later, and made a long and able speech, which is said to have been prepared for him by Addison, acting under the instructions of the Kit-Kat Club. It did not, however, save him from being expelled from the House.
Addison himself stood aloof, as far as was possible, from the heated atmosphere of party, occupying his time chiefly with the execution of literary designs. In 1713 he began a work on the Evidences of Christianity, which he never finished, and in the last half of the year 1714 he completed the eighth volume of the _Spectator_. So moderate was his political attitude that Bolingbroke was not without hopes of bringing him over to the Tory side; an interview, however, convinced him that it was useless to dream of converting Addison's steady constitutional principle to his own ambitious schemes.
The condition of the Tory party was indeed rapidly becoming desperate. Its leaders were at open variance with each other. Oxford, a veteran intriguer, was desirous of combining with the Whigs; the more daring and brilliant Bolingbroke aimed at the restoration of the exiled Stuarts. His influence, joined to natural family affection, prevailed with the Queen, who was persuaded to deprive Oxford of the Treasurer's staff. But her health was undermined, and a furious and indecent dispute between the two Tory leaders in her own presence completely prostrated her. She was carried from the Council, and sinking into a state of unconsciousness from which she never recovered, died on the 1st of August, 1714.
Meantime the Whigs were united and prepared. On the meeting of the Council, George I. was proclaimed King without opposition: Lord-Justices were authorised to administer affairs provisionally, and Addison was appointed their Secretary. It is said, though on no good authority, that having, in discharge of his office, to announce to George I. the death of the Queen, Addison was embarrassed in his choice of phrases for the occasion, and that the duty to which the best writer in the _Spectator_ proved unequal was performed by a common clerk. Had Addison been quite unfamiliar with public life this story would have been more credible, but his experience in Ireland must have made him acquainted with the peculiarities of official English; and some surviving specimens of his public correspondence prove him to have been a sufficient master in the art of saying nothing in a magnificent way.
On the arrival of the King in England, the Earl of Sunderland was appointed to succeed the Duke of Shrewsbury as Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, and he once more offered Addison the post of Chief Secretary. In that office the latter continued till the Earl's resignation of the Lord-Lieutenancy in August, 1715. It would appear to have been less lucrative to him than when he previously held it, and, indeed, than he himself had expected; the cause of this deficiency being, as he states, "his Lordship's absence from that kingdom, and his not being qualified to give out military commissions."[65] He is said, nevertheless, to have shown the strictest probity and honour in his official dealings, and some of his extant correspondence (the authenticity of which, however, is guaranteed only by the unsatisfactory testimony of Curll) shows him to have declined, in a very high-minded manner, a present of money, evidently intended to secure his interest on behalf of an applicant. He seems to have been in London almost as much as in Dublin during his tenure of office, and he found time in the midst of his public business to compose another play for the stage.
There appears to be no good reason for doubting that _The Drummer_ was the work of Addison. It is true that it was not included by Tickell in his edition of his friend's writings; and Steele, in the letter to Congreve which he prefixed to the second edition of the play, only says that Addison sent for him when he was a patentee of Drury Lane Theatre, and told him "that a gentleman then in the room had written a play which he was sure I should like, but it was to be a secret; and he knew I would take as much pains, since he recommended it, as I would for him." But Steele could, under such circumstances, hardly have been deceived as to the real authorship of the play, and if confirmatory evidence is required, it is furnished by Theobald, who tells us that Addison informed him that he had taken the character of Vellum, the steward, from Fletcher's _Scornful Lady_. Addison was probably not anxious himself to assert his right of paternity to the play. It was acted at Drury Lane, and, the name of the author being unknown, was coldly received; a second performance of it after Addison's death, when the authorship was proclaimed, was naturally more successful; but, in fact, the piece is, like _Cato_, a standing proof of Addison's deficiency in dramatic genius. The plot is poor and trivial; nor does the dialogue, though it shows in many passages traces of its author's peculiar vein of humour, make amends by its brilliancy for the tameness of the dramatic situation.
He was soon, however, called upon to employ his pen on a task better suited to his powers. In September, 1715, there was a rising in Scotland and in the North of England on behalf of the Pretender. The rebellion was put down with little difficulty, but the position of the House of Brunswick was far more precarious than on the surface it seemed to be. It could count, no doubt, on the loyalty of a House of Commons elected when the Tories were momentarily stunned by the death of Queen Anne, on the faith of the army, and on the support of the moneyed interest. On the other hand, the two most important classes in the kingdom--the landed proprietors and the clergy--were generally hostile to the new _régime_, and the influence exercised by the latter was of course exceedingly great in days when the pulpit was still the chief instrument in the formation of public opinion. The weight of some powerful writer was urgently needed on the Whig side, and Addison--who in the preceding August had been obliged to vacate his office of Secretary in consequence of the resignation of the Lord-Lieutenant--was by common consent indicated as the man best qualified for the task. There were indeed hot political partizans who questioned his capacity. Steele said that "the Government had made choice of a lute when they ought to have taken a trumpet." But if by the "trumpet" he was modestly alluding to himself, it may very well be doubted if the objects of the Government would have been attained by employing the services of the author of the _Englishman_. What was wanted was not party invective, but the calm persuasiveness of reason; a pen that could _prove_ to all Tory country gentlemen and thoroughgoing High Churchmen that the Protestant succession was indispensable to the safety of the principles which each respectively considered to be of vital importance. This was the task which lay before Addison, and which he accomplished with consummate skill in the _Freeholder_.
The name of the new paper was selected by him in order to suggest that property was the basis of liberty; and his main argument, which he introduces under constantly varying forms, is that there could be no safety for property under a line of monarchs who claimed the dispensing power, and no security for the liberties of the Church under kings of an alien religion. In order to secure variety of treatment, the exact social position of the _Freeholder_ is not defined:
"At the same time that I declare I am a freeholder I do not exclude myself from any other title. A freeholder may be either a voter or a knight of the shire, a wit or a fox-hunter, a scholar or a soldier, an alderman or a courtier, a patriot or a stock-jobber. But I choose to be distinguished by this denomination, as the freeholder is the basis of all other titles. Dignities may be grafted upon it, but this is the substantial stock that conveys to them their life, taste, and beauty, and without which they are blossoms that would fall away with every shake of wind."[66]
By this means he was able to impart liveliness to his theme, which he diversifies by philosophical disquisition; by good-natured satire on the prejudices of the country gentlemen; by frequent papers on his favourite subject, "the fair sex;" and by occasional glances at literature. Though his avowed object was to prove the superiority of the Whig over the Tory theory of the Constitution, his "native moderation" never deserts him, and he often lets his disgust at the stupidity of faction, and his preference for social over political writing, appear in the midst of his argument. The best papers in the series are undoubtedly the "Memoirs of a Preston Rebel" and the "Tory Foxhunter," both of which are full of the exquisite humour that distinguishes the sketches of Sir Roger de Coverley. The _Freeholder_ was only continued for six months (December 23, 1715, to June 9, 1716), being published every Friday and Monday, and being completed in fifty-five numbers. In the last number the essayist described the nature of his work, and gave his reasons for discontinuing it:
"It would not be difficult to continue a paper of this kind if one were disposed to resume the same subjects and weary out the reader with the same thoughts in a different phrase, or to ramble through the cause of Whig and Tory without any certain aim or method in every particular discourse. Such a practice in political writers is like that of some preachers taken notice of by Dr. South, who, being prepared only upon two or three points of doctrine, run the same round with their audience from one end of the year to the other, and are always forced to tell them, by way of preface, 'These are particulars of so great importance that they cannot be sufficiently inculcated.' To avoid this method of tautology, I have endeavoured to make every paper a distinct essay upon some particular subject, without deviating into points foreign to the tenor of each discourse. They are, indeed, most of them essays upon Government, but with a view to the present situation of affairs in Great Britain, so that, if they have the good fortune to live longer than works of this nature generally do, future readers may see in them the complexion of the times in which they were written. However, as there is no employment so irksome as that of transcribing out of one's self next to that of transcribing out of others, I shall let drop the work, since there do not occur to me any material points arising from our present situation which I have not already touched upon."
It was probably in reward for his services in publishing the _Freeholder_ that he was made one of the Commissioners for Trade and Colonies. Soon after his appointment to this office he married Charlotte, Countess of Warwick, daughter of Sir Thomas Myddleton, of Chirk Castle, Denbighshire. His attachment to the Countess is said to have begun years before; and this seems not unlikely, for, though the story of his having been tutor to the young Earl is obviously groundless, two charming letters of his to the latter are in existence which show that as early as 1708 he took a strong interest in the family. These letters, which are written entirely on the subject of birds, may, of course, have been inspired merely by an affection for the boy himself; but it is not unreasonable to suppose that the writer felt a yet stronger interest in the mother, though her indifference, or his natural diffidence, led him to disguise his feelings; perhaps, indeed, the episode of Sir Roger de Coverley's love passage with the cruel widow may be founded on personal experience. We have seen him in 1711 reporting to a friend that the loss of his place had involved that of his mistress. Possibly the same hard-hearted mistress condescended to relent when she saw her former lover once more on the road to high State preferment.
Report says that the marriage was not a happy one. The tradition, however, like so many others about the same person, seems to have been derived from Pope, who, in his _Epistle to Arbuthnot_, congratulates himself--with an evident glance at Addison--on "not marrying discord with a noble wife." An innuendo of this kind, and coming from such a quarter, ought not to be accepted as evidence without some corroboration; and the only corroboration which is forthcoming is a letter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who writes from Constantinople in 1717: "I received the news of Mr. Addison's being declared Secretary of State with the less surprise in that I know the post was offered to him before. At that time he declined it; and I really believe he would have done well to decline it now. Such a post as that and such a wife as the Countess do not seem to be, in prudence, eligible for a man that is asthmatic, and we may see the day when he will be glad to resign them both." Lady Mary, however, does not hint that Addison was _then_ living unhappily with his wife; her expressions seem to be inspired rather by her own sharp wit and a personal dislike of the Countess than by any knowledge of discord in the household. On the other hand, Addison speaks of his wife in a way which is scarcely consistent with what Johnson calls "uncontradicted report." On March 20th, 1718, he writes to Swift: "Whenever you see England your company will be the most acceptable in the world at Holland House, where you are highly esteemed by Lady Warwick and the young Lord." A henpecked husband would hardly have invited the Dean of St. Patrick's to be the witness of his domestic discomfort. Nor do the terms of his will, dated only a month before his death, indicate that he regarded his wife with feelings other than those of affection and respect: "I do make and ordain my said dear wife executrix of this my last will; and I do appoint her to be guardian of my dear child, Charlotte Addison, until she shall attain her age of one-and-twenty, being well assured that she will take due care of her education, and provide for her in case she live to be married." On the whole, it seems reasonable to put positive evidence of this kind against those vague rumours of domestic unhappiness which, however unsubstantial, are so easily propagated and so readily believed.
In April, 1717, the dissensions between the two sections of the Whig Cabinet, led respectively by Townshend and Sunderland, reached a climax, and Townshend being worsted, Sunderland became Prime Minister. He at once appointed his old subordinate one of the Secretaries of State, and Addison filled the office for eleven months. "It is universally confessed," says Johnson, "that he was unequal to the duties of his place." Here again the "universal confession" dwindles on examination to something very different. As far as his conduct in administration required to be defended in Parliament, his inaptitude for the place was no doubt conspicuous. He had been elected member of Parliament for Lostwithiel in 1708, and when that election was set aside he was chosen for Malmesbury, a seat which he retained for the rest of his life. He made, however, but one effort to address the House, when, being confused with the cheers which greeted him, he was unable to complete his sentence, and, resuming his seat, never again opened his lips.
But in other respects the evidence of his official incapacity seems to proceed solely from his enemies. "Mr. Addison," said Pope to Spence, "could not give out a common order in writing from his endeavouring always to word it too finely. He had too beautiful an imagination to make a man of business."[67] Copies of official letters and despatches written by Addison are, however, in existence, and prove him to have been a sufficient master of a business style, so that, though his lack of ability as a speaker may well have impaired his efficiency as a member of the Government, Johnson has little warrant for saying that "_finding by experience his own inability_, he was forced to solicit his dismission with a pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year." As a matter of fact, Addison's own petition to the King and his private correspondence prove with sufficient clearness that his resignation was caused entirely by his failing health; while the congratulatory Latin verses addressed to him by Vincent Bourne, on his recovery from one of his seizures of asthma, show that his illness was of the most serious nature.
He resigned his post, however, in March, 1718, with cheerful alacrity, and appears to have looked forward to an active period of literary work, for we are told that he meditated a tragedy on the death of Socrates, as well as the completion of his book on the Evidences of Christianity. But this was not to be; the exigencies of the Ministry in the following year demanded the services of his pen. A Peerage Bill, introduced by Sunderland, the effect of which was to cause the sovereign to divest himself of his prerogative of creating fresh peers, had been vehemently attacked by Steele in a pamphlet called the _Plebeian_, published March 14, 1719, which Addison undertook to answer in the _Old Whig_ (March 19). The _Plebeian_ returned to the attack with spirit and with some acrimony in two numbers published March 29th and 30th, and the _Old Whig_ made a somewhat contemptuous reply on April 2nd. "Every reader," says Johnson, "surely must regret that these two illustrious friends, after so many years passed in confidence and endearment, in unity of interest, conformity of opinion, and fellowship of study, should finally part in acrimonious opposition. Such a controversy was 'Bellum plusquam _civile_,' as Lucan expresses it. Why could not faction find other advocates? But among the uncertainties of the human state we are doomed to number the instability of friendship."
The rupture seems the more painful when we find Steele, in his third and last _Plebeian_, published April 6th, taunting his opponent with his tardiness in taking the field, at the very moment when his former friend and school-fellow--unknown to him of course--was dying. Asthma, the old enemy that had driven Addison from office, had returned; dropsy supervened, and he died, 17th June, 1719, at Holland House, at the early age of forty-seven. We may imagine the grief, contrition, and remorse that must have torn the affectionate heart of Steele when he had found he had been vexing the last hours of one whom, in spite of all their differences, he loved so well. He had always regarded Addison with almost religious reverence, which did not yield even to acts of severity on his friend's part that would have estranged the feelings of men of a disposition less simple and impulsive. Addison had once lent him £1000 to build a house at Hampton Court, instructing his lawyer to recover the amount when due. On Steele's failure to repay the money, his friend ordered the house and furniture to be sold and the balance to be paid to Steele, writing to him at the same time that he had taken the step to arouse him from his lethargy. B. Victor, the actor, a friend of Steele, who is the authority for the story, says that Steele accepted the reproof with "philosophical composure," and that the incident caused no diminution in their friendship. Political differences at last produced a coldness between them, and in 1717 Steele writes to his wife, "I ask no favour of Mr. Secretary Addison." Great must have been the revulsion of feeling in a man of his nature when he learned that death had now rendered impossible the renewal of the old associations. All the love, admiration, and enthusiasm for Addison, which his heart and memory still preserved, broke out in the letter to Congreve which he prefixed to _The Drummer_.
Of the closing scene of Addison's life we know little except on rumour. A report was current in Johnson's time, and reached the antiquary John Nichols at the close of the last century, that his life was shortened by over-drinking. But as usual the scandal, when traced to its source, seems to originate with Pope, who told Spence that he himself was once one of the circle at Button's, and left it because he found that their prolonged sittings were injuring his health. It is highly probable that Addison's phlegmatic temperament required to be aroused by wine into conversational activity, and that he was able to drink more than most of his companions without being affected by it; but to suppose that he indulged a sensual appetite to excess is contrary alike to all that we know of his character and to the direct evidence of Bishop Berkeley, who, writing of the first performance of _Cato_, says: "I was present with Mr. Addison and a few more friends in a side box, where we had a table and two or three flasks of Burgundy and champagne, with which the author (who is a very sober man) thought it necessary to support his spirits."
Another story, told on the same questionable authority, represents him as having sent on his death-bed for Gay, and asked his forgiveness for some injury which he said he had done him, but which he did not specify. From the more trustworthy report of Young we learn that he asked to see the Earl of Warwick, and said to him, "See in what peace a Christian can die:" words which are supposed to explain the allusion of the lines in Tickell's elegy--
"He taught us how to live and (oh! too high The price of knowledge) taught us how to die."
His body, after lying in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, was buried by night in Westminster Abbey. The service was performed by Atterbury, and the scene is described by Tickell in a fine passage, probably inspired by a still finer one written by his own rival and his friend's satirist:
"Can I forget the dismal night that gave My soul's best part for ever to the grave? How silent did his old companions tread, By midnight lamps, the mansions of the dead, Through breathing statues, then unheeded things, Through rows of warriors, and through walks of kings! What awe did the slow solemn march inspire, The pealing organ, and the pausing choir; The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid, And the last words that dust to dust conveyed! While speechless o'er the closing grave we bend, Accept these tears, thou dear departed friend! Oh gone for ever; take this last adieu, And sleep in peace next thy loved Montague."[68]
He left by the Countess of Warwick one daughter, who lived in his old house at Bilton, and died unmarried in 1797.
CHAPTER IX.
THE GENIUS OF ADDISON.
Such is Addison's history, which, scanty as it is, goes far towards justifying the glowing panegyric bestowed by Macaulay on "the unsullied statesman, the accomplished scholar, the consummate painter of life and manners, the great satirist who alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it; who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social reform; and who reconciled wit and virtue after a long and painful separation, during which wit had been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism." It is wanting, no doubt, in romantic incident and personal interest, but the same may be said of the life of Scott; and what do we know of the personality of Homer and Shakespeare? The real life of these writers is to be found in their work; and there, too, though on a different level and in a different shape, are we to look for the character of the creator of Sir Roger de Coverley. But, while it seems possible to divine the personal tastes and feelings of Shakespeare and Scott under a hundred different ideal forms of their own invention, it is not in these that the genius of Addison most characteristically embodies itself. Did his reputation rest on _Rosamond_ or _Cato_ or _The Campaign_, his name would be little better known to us than any among that crowd of mediocrities who have been immortalised in Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_. The work of Addison consisted in building up a public opinion which, in spite of its durable solidity, seems, like the great Gothic cathedrals, to absorb into itself the individuality of the architect. A vigorous effort of thought is required to perceive how strong this individuality must have been. We have to reflect on the ease with which, even in these days when the foundations of all authority are called in question, we form judgments on questions of morals, breeding, and taste, and then to dwell in imagination on the state of conflict in all mat |
41496-8 | ters religious, moral, and artistic, which prevailed in the period between the Restoration and the succession of the House of Hanover. To whom do we owe the comparative harmony we enjoy? Undoubtedly to the authors of the _Spectator_, and first among these, by universal consent, to Addison.
Addison's own disposition seems to have been of that rare and admirable sort which Hamlet praised in Horatio:
"Thou hast been As one in suffering all that suffers nothing: A man that Fortune's buffets and rewards Has ta'en with equal thanks; and blessed are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled That they are not a pipe for Fortune's finger To sound what stop she please."
These lines fittingly describe the patient serenity and dignified independence with which Addison worked his way amid great hardships and difficulties to the highest position in the State; but they have a yet more honourable application to the task he performed of reconciling the social dissensions of his countrymen. "The blood and judgment well commingled" are visible in the standard of conduct which he held up for Englishmen in his writings, as well as in his use of the weapon of ridicule against all aberrations from good breeding and common-sense. Those only will estimate him at his true worth who will give, what Johnson says is his due, "their days and nights" to the study of the _Spectator_. But from the general reader less must be expected; and as the first chapter of this volume has been devoted to a brief view of the disorder of society with which Addison had to deal, it may be fitting in the last to indicate some of the main points in which he is to be regarded as the reconciler of parties and the founder of public opinion.
I have shown how, after the final subversion by the Civil War of the old-fashioned Catholic and Feudal standards of social life, two opposing ideals of conduct remained harshly confronting each other in the respective moral codes of the Court and the Puritans. The victorious Puritans, averse to all the pleasures of sense and intolerant of the most harmless of natural instincts, had oppressed the nation with a religious despotism. The nation, groaning under the yoke, brought back its banished monarch, but was soon shocked to find sensual Pleasure exalted into a worship, and Impiety into a creed. Though civil war had ceased, the two parties maintained a truceless conflict of opinion: the Puritan proscribing all amusement because it was patronised by the godless malignants; the courtiers holding that no gentleman could be religious or strict in his morals without becoming tainted with the cant of the Roundheads. This harsh antagonism of sentiment is humorously illustrated by the excellent Sir Roger, who is made to moralise on the stupidity of party violence by recalling an incident of his own boyhood:
"The worthy knight, being but a stripling, had occasion to inquire which was the way to St. Anne's Lane, upon which the person whom he spoke to, instead of answering his question, called him a young Popish cur, and asked him who made Anne a saint. The boy, being in some confusion, inquired of the next he met which was the way to Anne's Lane; but was called a prick-eared cur for his pains, and, instead of being shown the way, was told that she had been a saint before he was born, and would be one after he was hanged. 'Upon this,' says Sir Roger, 'I did not think it fit to repeat the former question, but going into every lane of the neighbourhood, asked what they called the name of that lane.'"[69]
It was Addison's aim to prove to the contending parties what a large extent of ground they might occupy in common. He showed the courtiers, in a form of light literature which pleased their imagination, and with a grace and charm of manner that they were well qualified to appreciate, that true religion was not opposed to good breeding. To this class in particular he addressed his papers on Devotion,[70] on Prayer,[71] on Faith,[72] on Temporal and Eternal Happiness.[73] On the other hand, he brought his raillery to bear on the super-solemnity of the trading and professional classes, in whom the spirit of Puritanism was most prevalent. "About an age ago," says he, "it was the fashion in England for every one that would be thought religious to throw as much sanctity as possible into his face, and, in particular, to abstain from all appearances of mirth and pleasantry, which were looked upon as the marks of a carnal mind. The saint was of a sorrowful countenance, and generally eaten up with spleen and melancholy."[74]
It was doubtless for the benefit of this class that he wrote his three Essays on Cheerfulness,[75] in which the gloom of the Puritan creed is corrected by arguments founded on Natural Religion.
"The cheerfulness of heart," he observes in a charming passage, "which springs up in us from the survey of Nature's works is an admirable preparation for gratitude. The mind has gone a great way towards praise and thanksgiving that is filled with such secret gladness--a grateful reflection on the Supreme Cause who produces it, sanctifies it in the soul, and gives it its proper value. Such an habitual disposition of mind consecrates every field and wood, turns an ordinary walk into a morning or evening sacrifice, and will improve those transient gleams of joy, which naturally brighten up and refresh the soul on such occasions, into an inviolable and perpetual state of bliss and happiness."
The same qualities appear in his dramatic criticisms. The corruption of the stage was to the Puritan, or the Puritanic moralist, not so much the effect as the cause of the corruption of society. To Jeremy Collier and his imitators the theatre in all its manifestations is equally abominable: they see no difference between Shakespeare and Wycherley. Dryden, who bowed before Collier's rebuke with a penitent dignity that does him high honour, yet rallies him with humour on this point:
"Perhaps the Parson stretched a point too far When with our Theatres he waged a war; He tells you that this very Moral Age Received the first infection from the Stage; But sure a banisht Court with Lewdness fraught The seeds of open Vice returning brought; Thus lodged (as vice by great example thrives) It first debauched the daughters and the wives."
Dryden was quite right. The Court after the Restoration was for the moment the sole school of manners; and the dramatists only reflected on the stage the inverted ideas which were accepted in society as the standard of good breeding. All sentiments founded on reverence for religion or the family or honourable industry, were banished from the drama because they were unacceptable at Court. The idea of virtue in a married woman would have seemed prodigious to Shadwell or Wycherley; Vanbrugh had no scruples in presenting to an audience a drunken parson in Sir John Brute; the merchant or tradesman seemed, like Congreve's Alderman Fondlewife, to exist solely that their wives might be seduced by men of fashion. Addison and his disciples saw that these unnatural creations of the theatre were the product of the corruption of society, and that it was men, not institutions, that needed reform. Steele, always the first to feel a generous impulse, took the lead in raising the tone of stage morality in a paper which, characteristically enough, was suggested by some reflections on a passage in one of his own plays.[76] He followed up his attack by an admirable criticism, part of which has been already quoted, on Etherege's _Man in the Mode_, the hero of which, Sir Fopling Flutter, who had long been the model of young men of wit and fashion, he shows to be "a direct knave in his designs and a clown in his language."[77]
As usual, Addison improves the opportunity which Steele affords him, and with his grave irony exposes the ridiculous principle of the fashionable comedy by a simple statement of fact:
"Cuckoldom," says he, "is the basis of most of our modern plays. If an alderman appears upon the stage you may be sure it is in order to be cuckolded. An husband that is a little grave or elderly generally meets with the same fate. Knights and baronets, country squires, and justices of the quorum, come up to town for no other purpose. I have seen poor Dogget cuckolded in all these capacities. In short, our English writers are as frequently severe upon this innocent, unhappy creature, commonly known by the name of a cuckold, as the ancient comic writers were upon an eating parasite or a vainglorious soldier.
"... I have sometimes thought of compiling a system of ethics out of the writings of these corrupt poets, under the title of Stage Morality; but I have been diverted from this thought by a project which has been executed by an ingenious gentleman of my acquaintance. He has composed, it seems, the history of a young fellow who has taken all his notions of the world from the stage, and who has directed himself in every circumstance of his life and conversation by the maxims and examples of the fine gentleman in English comedies. If I can prevail upon him to give me a copy of this new-fashioned novel, I will bestow on it a place in my works, and question not but it may have as good an effect upon the drama as Don Quixote had upon romance."[78]
Nothing could be more skilful than this. Collier's invective no doubt produced a momentary flutter among the dramatists, who, however, soon found they had little to fear from arguments which appealed only to that serious portion of society which did not frequent the theatre. But Addison's penetrating wit, founded as it was on truth and reason, was appreciated by the fashionable world. Dorimant and Sir Fopling Flutter felt ashamed of themselves. The cuckold disappeared from the stage. In society itself marriage no longer appeared ridiculous.
"It is my custom," says the _Spectator_ in one of his late papers, "to take frequent opportunities of inquiring from time to time what success my speculations meet with in the town. I am glad to find, in particular, that my discourses on marriage have been well received. A friend of mine gives me to understand, from Doctors' Commons, that more licenses have been taken out there of late than usual. I am likewise informed of several pretty fellows who have resolved to commence heads of families by the first favourable opportunity. One of them writes me word that he is ready to enter into the bonds of matrimony provided I will give it him under my hand (as I now do) that a man may show his face in good company after he is married, and that he need not be ashamed to treat a woman with kindness who puts herself into his power for life."[79]
So, too, in politics, it was not to be expected that Addison's moderation should exercise a restraining influence on the violence of Parliamentary parties. But in helping to form a reasonable public opinion in the more reflective part of the nation at large, his efforts could not have been unavailing. He was a steady and consistent supporter of the Whig party, and Bolingbroke found that, in spite of his mildness, his principles were proof against all the seductions of interest. He was, in fact, a Whig in the sense in which all the best political writers in our literature, to whichever party they may have nominally belonged--Bolingbroke, Swift, and Canning, as much as Somers and Burke--would have avowed themselves Whigs; as one, that is to say, who desired above all things to maintain the constitution of his country. He attached himself to the Whigs of his period because he saw in them, as the associated defenders of the liberties of the Parliament, the best counterpoise to the still preponderant power of the Crown. But he would have repudiated as vigorously as Burke the democratic principles to which Fox, under the stimulus of party spirit, committed the Whig connection at the outbreak of the French Revolution; and for that stupid and ferocious spirit, generated by party, which would deny to opponents even the appearance of virtue and intelligence, no man had a more wholesome contempt. Page after page of the _Spectator_ shows that Addison perceived as clearly as Swift the theoretical absurdity of the party system, and tolerated it only as an evil inseparable from the imperfection of human nature and free institutions. He regarded it as the parent of hypocrisy and self-deception.
"Intemperate zeal, bigotry, and persecution for any party or opinion, how praiseworthy soever they may appear to weak men of our own principles, produce infinite calamities among mankind, and are highly criminal in their own nature; and yet how many persons, eminent for piety, suffer such monstrous and absurd principles of action to take root in their minds under the colour of virtues! For my own part, I must own I never yet knew any party so just and reasonable that a man could follow it in its height and violence and at the same time be innocent."[80]
As to party-writing, he considered it identical with lying.
"A man," says he, "is looked upon as bereft of common-sense that gives credit to the relations of party-writers; nay, his own friends shake their heads at him and consider him in no other light than as an officious tool or a well-meaning idiot. When it was formerly the fashion to husband a lie and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency it generally did execution, and was not a little useful to the faction that made use of it; but at present every man is upon his guard: the artifice has been too often repeated to take effect."[81]
Sir Roger de Coverley "often closes his narrative with reflections on the mischief that parties do in the country."
"There cannot," says the _Spectator_ himself, "a greater judgment befall a country than such a dreadful spirit of division as rends a government into two distinct people, and makes them greater strangers and more averse to one another than if they were actually two different nations. The effects of such a division are pernicious to the last degree, not only with regard to those advantages which they give the common enemy, but to those private evils which they produce in the heart of almost every particular person. This influence is very fatal both to men's morals and to their understandings; it sinks the virtue of a nation, and not only so, but destroys even common-sense."[82]
Nothing in the work of Addison is more suggestive of the just and well-balanced character of his genius than his papers on Women. It has been already said that the seventeenth century exhibits the decay of the Feudal Ideal. The passionate adoration with which women were regarded in the age of chivalry degenerated after the Restoration into a habit of insipid gallantry or of brutal license. Men of fashion found no mean for their affections between a Sacharissa and a Duchess of Cleveland, while the domestic standard of the time reduced the remainder of the sex to the position of virtuous but uninteresting household drudges. Of woman, as the companion and the helpmate of man, the source of all the grace and refinements of social intercourse, no trace is to be found in the literature of the Restoration except in the Eve of Milton's still unstudied poem: it is not too much to say that she was the creation of the _Spectator_.
The feminine ideal, at which the essayists of the period aimed, is very well described by Steele in a style which he imitated from Addison:
"The other day," he writes, in the character of a fictitious female correspondent, "we were several of us at a tea-table, and, according to custom and your own advice, had the _Spectator_ read among us. It was that paper wherein you are pleased to treat with great freedom that character which you call a woman's man. We gave up all the kinds you have mentioned except those who, you say, are our constant visitants. I was upon the occasion commissioned by the company to write to you and tell you 'that we shall not part with the men we have at present until the men of sense think fit to relieve them and give us their company in their stead.' You cannot imagine but we love to hear reason and good sense better than the ribaldry we are at present entertained with, but we must have company, and among us very inconsiderable is better than none at all. We are made for the cements of society, and come into the world to create relations amongst mankind, and solitude is an unnatural being to us."[83]
In contrast with the character of the writer of this letter--a type which is always recurring in the _Spectator_--modest and unaffected, but at the same time shrewd, witty, and refined, are introduced very eccentric specimens of womanhood, all tending to illustrate the derangement of the social order--the masculine woman, the learned woman, the female politician, besides those that more properly belong to the nature of the sex, the prude and the coquette. A very graceful example of Addison's peculiar humour is found in his satire on that false ambition in women which prompts them to imitate the manners of men:
"The girls of quality," he writes, describing the customs of the Republic of Women, "from six to twelve years old, were put to public schools, where they learned to box and play at cudgels, with several other accomplishments of the same nature, so that nothing was more usual than to see a little miss returning home at night with a broken pate, or two or three teeth knocked out of her head. They were afterwards taught to ride the great horse, to shoot, dart, or sling, and listed themselves into several companies in order to perfect themselves in military exercises. No woman was to be married till she had killed her man. The ladies of fashion used to play with young lions instead of lap-dogs; and when they had made any parties of diversion, instead of entertaining themselves at ombre and piquet, they would wrestle and pitch the bar for a whole afternoon together. There was never any such thing as a blush seen or a sigh heard in the whole commonwealth."[84]
The amazon was a type of womanhood peculiarly distasteful to Addison, whose humour delighted itself with all the curiosities and refinements of feminine caprice--the fan, the powder-box, and the petticoat. Nothing can more characteristically suggest the exquisiteness of his fancy than a comparison of Swift's verses on a _Lady's Dressing-Room_ with the following, which evidently gave Pope a hint for one of the happiest passages in _The Rape of the Lock_:
"The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of a hundred climates. The muff and the fan come together from the different ends of the earth. The scarf is sent from the torrid zone, and the tippet from beneath the Pole. The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, and the diamond necklace out of the bowels of Indostan."[85]
To turn to Addison's artistic genius, the crowning evidence of his powers is the design and the execution of the _Spectator_. Many writers, and among them Macaulay, have credited Steele with the invention of the _Spectator_ as well as of the _Tatler_; but I think that a close examination of the opening papers in the former will not only prove, almost to demonstration, that on this occasion Steele was acting as the lieutenant of his friend, but will also show the admirable artfulness of the means by which Addison executed his intention. The purpose of the _Spectator_ is described in the tenth number, which is by Addison:
"I shall endeavour," said he, "to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality, that my readers may, if possible, both ways find their account in the speculation of the day. And to the end that their virtue and discretion may not be short, transient, intermitting starts of thought, I have resolved to refresh their memories from day to day till I have recovered them out of that desperate state of vice and folly into which the age has fallen."
That is to say, his design was "to hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature," so that the conscience of society might recognise in a dramatic form the character of its lapses from virtue and reason. The indispensable instrument for the execution of this design was the _Spectator_ himself, the silent embodiment of right reason and good taste, who is obviously the conception of Addison.
"I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artizan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband, or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy, business, and diversion of others better than those who are engaged in them, as standers-by discover blots which are apt to escape those who are in the game. I never espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories unless I shall be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. In short, I have acted in all the parts of my life as a looker-on, which is the character I intend to preserve in this paper."
In order, however, to give this somewhat inanimate figure life and action, he is represented as the principal member of a club, his associates consisting of various representatives of the chief "interests" of society. We can scarcely doubt that the club was part of the original and central conception of the work; and if this be so, a new light is thrown on some of the features in the characters of the _Spectator_ which have hitherto rather perplexed the critics.
"The _Spectator's_ friends," says Macaulay, "were first sketched by Steele. Four of the club--the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, and the merchant--were uninteresting figures, fit only for a background. But the other two--an old country baronet and an old town rake--though not delineated with a very delicate pencil, had some good strokes. Addison took the rude outlines into his own hands, retouched them, coloured them, and is in truth the creator of the Sir Roger de Coverley and the Will Honeycomb with whom we are all familiar."
This is a very misleading account of the matter. It implies that the characters in the _Spectator_ were mere casual conceptions of Steele's; that Addison knew nothing about them till he saw Steele's rough draft; and that he, and he alone, is the creator of the finished character of Sir Roger de Coverley. But, as a matter of fact, the character of Sir Roger is full of contradictions and inconsistencies; and the want of unity which it presents is easily explained by the fact that it is the work of four different hands. Sixteen papers on the subject were contributed by Addison, seven by Steele, three by Budgell, and one by Tickell. Had Sir Roger been, as Macaulay seems to suggest, merely the stray phantom of Steele's imagination, it is very unlikely that so many different painters should have busied themselves with his portrait. But he was from the first intended to be a _type_ of a country gentleman, just as much as Don Quixote was an imaginative representation of many Spanish gentlemen whose brains had been turned by the reading of romances. In both cases the type of character was so common and so truly conceived as to lend itself easily to the treatment of writers who approached it with various conceptions and very unequal degrees of skill. Any critic, therefore, who regards Sir Roger de Coverley as the abstract conception of a single mind is certain to misconceive the character. This error lies at the root of Johnson's description of the knight:
"Of the characters," says he, "feigned or exhibited in the _Spectator_, the favourite of Addison was Sir Roger de Coverley, of whom he had formed a very delicate and discriminated idea, which he would not suffer to be violated; and therefore when Steele had shown him innocently picking up a girl in the Temple and taking her to a tavern, he drew upon himself so much of his friend's indignation that he was forced to appease him by a promise of forbearing Sir Roger for the time to come.... It may be doubted whether Addison ever filled up his original delineation. He describes his knight as having his imagination somewhat warped; but of this perversion he has made very little use. The irregularities in Sir Roger's conduct seem not so much the effects of a mind deviating from the beaten track of life, by the perpetual pressure of some overwhelming idea, as of habitual rusticity and that negligence which solitary grandeur naturally generates. The variable weather of the mind, the flying vapours of incipient madness, which from time to time cloud reason without eclipsing it, it requires so much nicety to exhibit, that Addison seems to have been deterred from prosecuting his own design."
But Addison never had any design of the kind. Steele, indeed, describes Sir Roger in the second number of the _Spectator_ as "a gentleman that is very singular in his behaviour," but he added that "his singularities proceed from his good sense, and are contradictions to the manners of the world, only, as he thinks, the world is in the wrong." Addison regarded the knight from a different point of view. "My friend Sir Roger," he says, "amidst all his good qualities is _something of a humourist_; his virtues as well as imperfections are, as it were, tinged by a certain extravagance which makes them particularly his, and distinguishes them from those of other men. This cast of mind, as it is generally very innocent in itself, so it renders his conversation highly agreeable and more delightful than the same degree of sense and virtue would appear in their common and ordinary colours."
The fact is, as I have already said, that it had evidently been predetermined by the designers of the _Spectator_ that the Club should consist of certain recognised and familiar types; the different writers, in turns, worked on these types, each for his own purpose and according to the bent of his own genius. Steele gave the first sketch of Sir Roger in a few rough but vigorous strokes, which were afterwards greatly refined and altered by Addison. In Steele's hands the knight appears indeed as a country squire, but he has also a town-house in Soho Square, then the most fashionable part of London. He had apparently been originally "a fine gentleman," and only acquired his old-fashioned rusticity of manners in consequence of a disappointment in love. All his oddities date from this adventure, though his heart has outlived the effects of it. "There is," we are told, "such a mirthful cast in his behaviour that he is rather beloved than esteemed." Steele's imagination had evidently been chiefly caught by the humour of Sir Roger's love affair, which is made to reflect the romantic cast of poetry affected after the Restoration, and forms the subject of two papers in the series; in two others--recording respectively the knight's kindness to his servants, and his remarks on the portraits of his ancestors--the writer takes up the idea of Addison; while another gives an account of a dispute between Sir Roger and Sir Andrew Freeport on the merits of the moneyed interest. Addison, on the other hand, had formed a far finer conception of the character of the country gentleman, and one that approaches the portrait of Don Quixote. As a humourist he perceived the incongruous position in modern society of one nourished in the beliefs, principles, and traditions of the old feudal world; and hence, whenever the knight is brought into contact with modern ideas, he invests his observations, as the _Spectator_ says, with "a certain extravagance" which constitutes their charm. Such are the papers describing his behaviour at church, his inclination to believe in witchcraft, and his Tory principles; such, in another vein, are his criticisms in the theatre, his opinions of Spring Gardens, and his delightful reflections on the tombs in Westminster Abbey. But Addison was also fully alive to the beauty and nobility of the feudal idea, which he brings out with great animation in the various papers describing the patriarchal relations existing between Sir Roger and his servants, retainers, and tenants, closing the series with the truly pathetic account of the knight's death. It is to be observed that he drops altogether Steele's idea of Sir Roger having once been a man of fashion, which is indeed discarded by Steele himself when co-operating with his friend on the picture of country life. Addison also quite disregards Steele's original hint about "the humble desires" of his hero; and he only once makes incidental mention of the widow.
Budgell contributed three papers on the subject--two in imitation of Addison; one describing a fox-hunt, and the other giving Sir Roger's opinion on beards; the third, in imitation of Steele, showing Sir Roger's state of mind on hearing of the addresses of Sir David Dundrum to the widow. The number of the _Spectator_ which is said to have so greatly displeased Addison was written, not, as Johnson says, by Steele, but by Tickell. It goes far to confirm my supposition that the characters of the Club had been agreed upon beforehand. The trait which Tickell describes would have been natural enough in an ordinary country gentleman, though it was inconsistent with the fine development of Sir Roger's character in the hands of Addison.
In his capacity of critic Addison has been variously judged, and, it may be added, generally undervalued. We find that Johnson's contemporaries were reluctant to allow him the name of critic. "His criticism," Johnson explains, "is condemned as tentative or experimental rather than scientific; and he is considered as deciding by taste rather than by principles." But if Aristotle is right in saying that the virtuous man is the standard of virtue, the man of sound instincts and perceptions ought certainly to be accepted as a standard in the more debatable region of taste. There can, at any rate, be no doubt that Addison's artistic judgments, founded on instinct, were frequently much nearer the mark than Johnson's, though these were based on principle. Again, Macaulay says, "The least valuable of Addison's contributions to the _Spectator_ are, in the judgment of our age, his critical papers;" but he adds, patronisingly, "The very worst of them is creditable to him when the character of the school in which he had been trained is fairly considered. The best of them were much too good for his readers. In truth, he was not so far behind our generation as he was before his own." By "the school in which he had been trained," Macaulay doubtless meant the critical traditions established by Boileau and Bouhours, and he would have justified the disparagement implied in his reference to them by pointing to the pedantic intolerance and narrowness of view which these traditions encouraged. But in all matters of this kind there is loss and gain. If Addison's generation was much more insensible than our own to a large portion of imaginative truth, it had a far keener perception of the laws and limits of expression; and, granted that Voltaire was wrong in regarding Shakespeare as an "inspired barbarian," he would never have made the mistake which critics now make every day of mistaking nonsense for poetry.
But it may well be questioned if Addison's criticism is only "tentative and experimental." The end of criticism is surely to produce a habit of reasoning rightly on matters of taste and imagination; and, with the exception of Sir Joshua Reynolds, no English critic has accomplished more in this direction than Addison. Before his time Dryden had scattered over a number of prefaces various critical remarks, admirably felicitous in thought and racy in expression. But he had made no attempt to write upon the subject systematically; and in practice he gave himself up without an effort to satisfy the tastes which a corrupt Court had formed, partly on the "false wit" of Cowley's following, partly on the extravagance and conceit of the French school of Romance. Addison, on the other hand, set himself to correct this depraved fashion by establishing in England, on a larger and more liberal basis, the standards of good breeding and common-sense which Boileau had already popularised in France. Nothing can be more just and discriminating than his papers on the difference between true and false wit.[86] He was the first to endeavour to define the limits of art and taste in his essays on the _Pleasures of the Imagination_;[87] and though his theory on the subject is obviously superficial, it sufficiently proves that his method of reasoning on questions of taste was much more than "tentative and experimental." "I could wish," he says, "there were authors who, beside the mechanical rules which a man of very little taste may discourse upon, would enter into the very spirit and soul of fine writing, and show us the several sources of that pleasure which rises in the mind on the perusal of a noble work." His studies of the French drama prevented him from appreciating the great Elizabethan school of tragedy, yet many stray remarks in the _Spectator_ show how deeply he was impressed by the greatness of Shakespeare's genius, while his criticisms on Tragedy did much to banish the tumid extravagance of the romantic style. His papers on Milton achieved the triumph of making a practically unknown poem one of the most popular classics in the language, and he was more than half a century before his age in his appreciation of the beauties of the English ballads. In fact, finding English taste in hopeless confusion, he left it in admirable order; and to those who are inclined to depreciate his powers as a critic the following observations of Johnson--not a very favourable judge--may be commended:
"It is not uncommon for those who have grown wise by the labour of others to add a little of their own, and overlook their masters. Addison is now despised by some who perhaps would never have seen his defects but by the light he afforded them. That he always wrote as he would write now cannot be affirmed; his instructions were such as the characters of his readers made proper. That general knowledge which now circulates in common talk was in his time rarely to be found. Men not professing learning were not ashamed of ignorance; and in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured. His purpose was to infuse literary curiosity by gentle and unsuspected conveyance into the gay, the idle, and the wealthy; he therefore presented knowledge in the most alluring form, not lofty and austere, but accessible and familiar. When he showed them their defects, he showed them likewise that they might be easily supplied. His attempt succeeded; inquiry awakened and comprehension expanded. An emulation of intellectual elegance was excited, and from this time to our own life has been gradually exalted, and conversation purified and enlarged."[88]
The essence of Addison's humour is irony. "One slight lineament of his character," says Johnson, "Swift has preserved. It was his practice, when he found any man invincibly wrong, to flatter his opinions by acquiescence and sink him yet deeper to absurdity." The same characteristic manifests itself in his writings under a great variety of forms. Sometimes it appears in the seemingly logical premises from which he draws an obviously absurd conclusion, as for instance:
"If in a multitude of counsellors there is safety, we ought to think ourselves the securest nation in the world. Most of our garrets are inhabited by statesmen, who watch over the liberties of their country, and make a shift to keep themselves from starving by taking into their care the properties of all their fellow-subjects."[89]
On other occasions he ridicules some fashion of taste by a perfectly grave and simple description of its object. Perhaps the most admirable specimen of this oblique manner is his satire on the Italian opera in the number of the _Spectator_ describing the various lions who had fought on the stage with Nicolini. This highly-finished paper deserves to be quoted _in extenso_:
"There is nothing of late years has afforded matter of greater amusement to the town than Signor Nicolini's combat with a lion in the Haymarket, which has been very often exhibited to the general satisfaction of most of the nobility and gentry in the kingdom of Great Britain. Upon the first rumour of this intended combat it was confidently affirmed, and is still believed by many in both galleries, that there would be a tame lion sent from the tower every opera in order to be killed by Hydaspes. This report, though altogether groundless, so universally prevailed in the upper regions of the playhouse, that some of the refined politicians in those parts of the audience gave it out in a whisper that the lion was a cousin-german of the tiger who made his appearance in King William's days, and that the stage would be supplied with lions at the public expense during the whole session. Many, likewise, were the conjectures of the treatment which this lion was to meet with at the hands of Signor Nicolini; some supposed that he was to subdue him in recitativo, as Orpheus used to serve the wild beasts in his time, and afterwards to knock him on the head; some fancied that the lion would not pretend to lay his paws upon the hero, by reason of the received opinion that a lion will not hurt a virgin; several, who pretended to have seen the opera in Italy, had informed their friends that the lion was to act a part in High Dutch, and roar twice or thrice to a thorough-bass before he fell at the feet of Hydaspes. To clear up a matter that was so variously reported, I have made it my business to examine whether this pretended lion is really the savage he appears to be or only a counterfeit.
"But, before I communicate my discoveries, I must acquaint the public that upon my walking behind the scenes last winter, as I was thinking upon something else, I accidentally jostled against an enormous animal that extremely startled me, and, upon my nearer survey of it, appeared to be a lion rampant. The lion, seeing me very much surprised, told me, in a gentle voice, that I might come by him if I pleased; 'for,' says he, 'I do not intend to hurt anybody.' I thanked him very kindly and passed by him, and in a little time after saw him leap upon the stage and act his part with very great applause. It has been observed by several that the lion has changed his manner of acting twice or thrice since his first appearance; which will not seem strange when I acquaint my reader that the lion has been changed upon the audience three several times. The first lion was a candle-snuffer, who, being a fellow of testy, choleric temper, overdid his part, and would not suffer himself to be killed so easily as he ought to have done; besides, it was observed of him that he became more surly every time he came out of the lion; and having dropped some words in ordinary conversation as if he had not fought his best, and that he suffered himself to be thrown on his back in the scuffle, and that he could wrestle with Mr. Nicolini for what he pleased out of his lion's skin, it was thought proper to discard him; and it is verily believed to this day that, had he been brought upon the stage another time, he would certainly have done mischief. Besides, it was objected against the first lion that he reared himself so high upon his hinder paws and walked in so erect a posture that he looked more like an old man than a lion.
"The second lion was a tailor by trade, who belonged to the playhouse, and had the character of a mild and peaceable man in his profession. If the former was too furious, this was too sheepish for his part, insomuch that, after a short, modest walk upon the stage, he would fall at the first touch of Hydaspes, without grappling with him and giving him an opportunity of showing his variety of Italian trips. It is said, indeed, that he once gave him a rip in his flesh-coloured doublet; but this was only to make work for himself in his private character of a tailor. I must not omit that it was this second lion who treated me with so much humanity behind the scenes.
"The acting lion at present is, as I am informed, a country gentleman, who does it for his diversion, but desires his name may be concealed. He says, very handsomely in his own excuse, that he does not act for gain; that he indulges an innocent pleasure in it; and that it is better to pass away an evening in this manner than in gaming and drinking; but he says at the same time, with a very agreeable raillery upon himself, that, if his name were known, the ill-natured world might call him 'the ass in the lion's skin.' This gentleman's temper is made out of such a happy mixture of the mild and the choleric that he outdoes both his predecessors, and has drawn together greater audiences than have been known in the memory of man.
"I must not conclude my narrative without taking notice of a groundless report that has been raised to a gentleman's disadvantage of whom I must declare myself an admirer; namely, that Signor Nicolini and the lion have been seen sitting peaceably by one another and smoking a pipe together behind the scenes; by which their common enemies would insinuate that it is but a sham combat which they represent upon the stage; but upon inquiry I find that, if any such correspondence has passed between them, it was not till the combat was over, when the lion was to be looked on as dead, according to the received rules of the drama. Besides, this is what is practised every day in Westminster Hall, where nothing is more usual than to see a couple of lawyers who have been tearing each other to pieces in the court embracing one another as soon as they are out of it."[90]
In a somewhat different vein, the ridicule cast by the _Spectator_ on the fashions of his day, by anticipating the judgment of posterity on himself, is equally happy:
"As for his speculations, notwithstanding the several obsolete words and obscure phrases of the age in which he lived, we still understand enough of them to see the diversions and characters of the English nation in his time; not but that we are to make allowance for the mirth and humour of the author, who has doubtless strained many representations of things beyond the truth. For, if we must interpret his words in their literal meaning, we must suppose that women of the first quality used to pass away whole mornings at a puppet show; that they attested their principles by their patches; that an audience would sit out an evening to hear a dramatical performance written in a language which they did not understand; that chairs and flowerpots were introduced as actors upon the British stage; that a promiscuous assembly of men and women were allowed to meet at midnight in masks within the verge of the Court; with many improbabilities of the like nature. We must, therefore, in these and in the like cases, suppose that these remote hints and allusions aimed at some certain follies which were then in vogue, and which at present we have not any notion of."[91]
His power of ridiculing keenly without malignity is of course best shown in his character of Sir Roger de Coverley, whose delightful simplicity of mind is made the medium of much good-natured satire on the manners of the Tory country gentlemen of the period. One of the most exquisite touches is the description of the extraordinary conversion of a dissenter by the Act against Occasional Conformity.
"He (Sir Roger) then launched out into praise of the late Act of Parliament for securing the Church of England, and told me with great satisfaction that he believed it already began to take effect, for that a rigid dissenter who chanced to dine in his house on Christmas day had been observed to eat very plentifully of his plum-porridge."[92]
The mixture of fashionable contempt for book-learning, blended with shrewd mother-wit, is well represented in the character of Will Honeycomb, who "had the discretion not to go out of his depth, and had often a certain way of making his real ignorance appear a seeming one." One of Will's happiest flights is on the subject of ancient looking-glasses. "Nay," says he, "I remember Mr. Dryden in his _Ovid_ tells us of a swinging fellow called Polypheme, that made use of the sea for his looking-glass, and could never dress himself to advantage but in a calm."
Budgell, Steele, and Addison seem all to have worked on the character of Will Honeycomb, which, however, presents none of the inconsistencies that appear in the portrait of Sir Roger de Coverley. Addison was evidently pleased with it, and in his own inimitable ironic manner gave it its finishing touches by making Will, in his character of a fashionable gallant, write two letters scoffing at wedlock and then marry a farmer's daughter. The conclusion of the letter in which he announces his fate to the _Spectator_ is an admirable specimen of Addison's humour:
"As for your fine women I need not tell thee that I know them. I have had my share in their graces; but no more of that. It shall be my business hereafter to live the life of an honest man, and to act as becomes the master of a family. I question not but I shall draw upon me the raillery of the town, and be treated to the tune of "The Marriage-hater Matched;" but I am prepared for it. I have been as witty as others in my time. To tell thee truly, I saw such a tribe of fashionable young fluttering coxcombs shot up that I do not think my post of an _homme de ruelle_ any longer tenable. I felt a certain stiffness in my limbs which entirely destroyed the jauntiness of air I was once master of. Besides, for I must now confess my age to thee, I have been eight-and-forty above these twelve years. Since my retirement into the country will make a vacancy in the Club, I could wish that you would fill up my place with my friend Tom Dapperwit. He has an infinite deal of fire, and knows the town. For my own part, as I have said before, I shall endeavour to live hereafter suitable to a man in my station, as a prudent head of a family, a good husband, a careful father (when it shall so happen), and as
"Your most sincere friend and humble servant, "WILLIAM HONEYCOMB."[93]
I have already alluded to the delight with which the fancy of Addison played round the caprices of female attire. The following--an extract from the paper on the "fair sex" which specially roused the spleen of Swift--is a good specimen of his style when in this vein:
"To return to our female heads. The ladies have been for some time in a kind of moulting season with regard to that part of their dress, having cast great quantities of ribbon, lace, and cambric, and in some measure reduced that part of the human figure to the beautiful globular form which is natural to it. We have for a great while expected what kind of ornament would be substituted in the place of those antiquated commodes. But our female projectors were all the last summer so taken up with the improvement of their petticoats that they had not time to attend to anything else; but having at length sufficiently adorned their lower parts, they now begin to turn their thoughts upon the other extremity, as well remembering the old kitchen proverb, 'that if you light your fire at both ends, the middle will shift for itself.'"[94]
Addison may be said to have almost created and wholly perfected English prose as an instrument for the expression of _social_ thought. Prose had of course been written in many different manners before his time. Bacon, Cowley, and Temple had composed essays; Hooker, Sir Thomas Browne, Hobbes, and Locke philosophical treatises; Milton controversial pamphlets; Dryden critical prefaces; Raleigh and Clarendon histories; Taylor, Barrow, South, and Tillotson sermons. But it cannot be said that any of these had founded a prose style which, besides being a reflection of the mind of the writer, could be taken as representing the genius and character of the nation. They write as if they were thinking apart from their audience, or as if they were speaking to it either from an inferior or superior position. The essayists had taken as their model Montaigne, and their style is therefore stamped, so to speak, with the character of soliloquy; the preachers, who perhaps did more than any writers to guide the genius of the language, naturally addressed their hearers with the authority of their office; Milton, even in controversy, rises from the natural sublimity of his mind to heights of eloquence to which the ordinary idioms of society could not have borne him; while Dryden, using the language with a raciness and rhythm probably unequalled in our literature, nevertheless exhibits in his prefaces an air of deference towards the various patrons he addresses. Moreover, many of the earlier prose writers had aimed at standards of diction which were inconsistent with the genius of the English tongue. Bacon, for instance, disfigures his style with the witty antitheses which found favour with the Elizabethan and early Stuart writers; Hooker, Milton, and Browne construct their sentences on a Latin model, which, though it often gives a certain dignity of manner, prevents anything like ease, simplicity, and lucidity of expression. Thus Hooker delights in inversions; both he and Milton protract their periods by the insertion of many subordinate clauses; and Browne "projicit ampullas et sesquipedalia verba" till the Saxon element seems almost eliminated from his style.
Addison took features of his style from almost all his predecessors: he assumes the characters of essayist, moralist, philosopher, and critic, but he blends them all together in his new capacity of journalist. He had accepted the public as his judges; and he writes as if some critical representative of the public were at his elbow, putting to the test of reason every sentiment and every expression. Warton tells us, in his _Essay on Pope_, that Addison was so fastidious in composition that he would often stop the press to alter a preposition or conjunction; and this evidence is corroborated in a very curious and interesting manner by the MS. of some of Addison's essays, discovered by Mr. Dykes Campbell in 1858.[95] A sentence in one of the papers on the _Pleasures of the Imagination_ shows, by the various stages through which it passed before its form seemed satisfactory to the writer, what nice attention he gave to the balance, rhythm, and lucidity of his periods. In its original shape the sentence was written thus:
"For this reason we find the poets always crying up a Country Life; where Nature is left to herself, and appears to y{e} best advantage."
This is rather bald, and the MS. is accordingly corrected as follows:
"For this reason we find all Fancifull men, and y{e} poets in particular, still in love with a Country Life; where Nature is left to herself, and furnishes out all y{e} variety of Scenes y{t} are most delightful to y{e} Imagination."
The text as it stands is this:
"For this reason we always find the poet in love with a country life, where nature appears in the greatest perfection, and furnishes out all those scenes that are most apt to delight the imagination."[96]
This is certainly the best, both in point of sense and sound. Addison perceived that there was a certain contradiction in the idea of Nature being "left to herself," and at the same time _furnishing_ scenes for the pleasure of the imagination; he therefore imparted the notion of design by striking out the former phrase and substituting "seen in perfection;" and he emphasised the idea by afterwards changing "delightful" into the stronger phrase "apt to delight." The improvement of the rhythm of the sentence in its final form is obvious.
With so much elaboration of style it is natural that there should be in Addison's essays a disappearance of that egotism which is a characteristic--and a charming one--of Montaigne; his moralising is natural, for the age required it, but is free from the censoriousness of the preacher; his critical and philosophical papers all assume an intelligence in his reader equal to his own.
This perfection of breeding in writing is an art which vanishes with the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_. Other critics, other humourists have made their mark in English literature, but no second Addison has appeared. Johnson took him for his model so far as to convey lessons of morality to the public by means of periodical essays. But he confesses that he addressed his audience in tones of "dictatorial instruction;" and any one who compares the ponderous sententiousness and the elaborate antithesis of the _Rambler_ with the light and rhythmical periods of the _Spectator_ will perceive that the spirit of preaching is gaining ground on the genius of conversation. Charles Lamb, again, has passages which, for mere delicacy of humour, are equal to anything in Addison's writings. But the superiority of Addison consists in this, that he expresses the humour of the life about him, while Lamb is driven to look at its oddities from outside. He is not, like Addison, a moralist or a satirist; the latter indeed performed his task so thoroughly that the turbulent license of Mohocks, Tityre Tus, and such like brotherhoods, gradually disappeared before the advance of a tame and orderly public opinion. To Lamb, looking back on the primitive stages of society from a safe distance, vice itself seemed pardonable because picturesque, much in the same way as travellers began to admire the loneliness and the grandeur of nature when they were relieved from apprehensions for the safety of their purses and their necks. His humour is that of a sentimentalist; it dwells on odd nooks and corners, and describes quaint survivals in men and things. For our own age, when all that is picturesque in society is being levelled by a dull utilitarianism, this vein of eccentric imagination has a special charm, but the taste is likely to be a transient one. Mrs. Battle will amuse so long as this generation remembers the ways of its grandmothers: two generations hence the point of its humour will probably be lost. But the figure of Sir Roger de Coverley, though it belongs to a bygone stage of society, is as durable as human nature itself, and, while the language lasts, the exquisite beauty of the colours in which it is preserved will excite the same kind of pleasure. Scarcely below the portrait of the good knight will be ranked the character of his friend and biographer, the silent Spectator of men. A grateful posterity, remembering what it owes to him, will continue to assign him the reputation he coveted: "It was said of Socrates that he brought Philosophy down from heaven to inhabit among men; and I shall be ambitious to have it said of me that I have brought Philosophy out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell at clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses."
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Spectator_, No. 108.
[2] _Spectator_, No. 158.
[3] _Spectator_, No. 341.
[4] _Spectator_, No. 65.
[5] _Tatler_, No. 25.
[6] A note in the edition of Johnson's _Lives of the Poets_, published in 1801, states, on the authority of a "Lady in Wiltshire," who derived her information from a Mr. Stephens, a Fellow of Magdalen and a contemporary of Addison's, that the Henry Sacheverell to whom Addison dedicated his _Account of the Greatest English Poets_ was not the well-known divine, but a personal friend of Addison's, who died young, having written a _History of the Isle of Man_.
[7] _Spence's Anecdotes_, p. 50.
[8] Compare the _Notes on the Metamorphoses_, Fab. v. (Tickell's edition, vol. vi. p. 183), where the substance of the above passage is found in embryo.
[9] _Dunciad_, Book iv. 224.
[10] Compare _Spectator_, 414. "I do not know whether I am singular in my opinion, but for my part I would rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches, rather than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure; and cannot but fancy that an orchard in flower looks infinitely more delightful than all the little labyrinths of the finished parterre."
[11] Letter to the Right Honourable Charles Montague, Esq., Blois, 10{br} 1699.
[12] Letter from Italy to Lord Halifax.
[13] Addison's _Works_ (Tickell's edition), vol. v. p. 301.
[14] Addison's _Works_ (Tickell's edition), vol. v. p. 213.
[15] Oldham's Satire _Dissuading from Poetry_.
[16] Oldham's Satire _Dissuading from Poetry_.
[17] Blackmore, _The Kit-Kats_.
[18] _Spectator_, No. 9.
[19] _Spectator_, No. 18.
[20] _Spectator_, No. 18.
[21] Sir John Hawkins' _History of Music_, vol. v. p. 137.
[22] Burney's _History of Music_, vol. iv. p. 203.
[23] _Spectator_, No. 469.
[24] Fourth Drapier's Letter.
[25] Who the "mistress" was cannot be certainly ascertained. See, however, p. 146.
[26] Egerton MSS., British Museum (1972).
[27] Andrews' _History of British Journalism_.
[28] _Staple of News_, Act I. Scene 2.
[29] Andrews' _History of British Journalism_.
[30] _Tatler_, No. 1.
[31] _Ibid._
[32] _Tatler_, No. 271.
[33] _Preface to the Fables._
[34] _Tatler_, No. 5.
[35] _Ib._, No. 82.
[36] _Ib._, Nos. 25, 26, 28, 29, 38, 39.
[37] _Ib._, No. 85.
[38] _Tatler_, No. 87.
[39] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 325.
[40] _Tatler_, vol. iv. p. 545 (Nichols' edition).
[41] See p. 93, note 3.
[42] _Tatler_, No. 6.
[43] _Spectator_, No. 10.
[44] _Spectator_, No. 10.
[45] _Spectator_, No. 10.
[46] The writer was a Miss Shepherd.
[47] _Spectator_, No. 134.
[48] _Spectator_, No. 553.
[49] _Ibid._, No. 542.
[50] _Spectator_, No. 10.
[51] _Spectator_, No. 555.
[52] See Addison's _Works_ (Tickell's edition), vol. v. p. 187.
[53] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 196.
[54] _Spectator_, No. 40.
[55] _Spectator_, No. 40.
[56] See p. 43.
[57] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 151.
[58] _Ibid._
[59] These lines are to be found in _The Campaign_, see p. 66.
[60] _Spectator_, No. 39.
[61] Spence's _Anecdotes_, pp. 148, 149.
[62] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 257.
[63] Pope's _Works_, Elwin and Courthope's edition, vol. vi. p. 408.
[64] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 146.
[65] Addison's Memorial to the King.
[66] _Freeholder_, No. 1.
[67] Spence's _Anecdotes_, p. 175.
[68] Tickell's _Elegy_. Compare Pope's _Eloisa to Abelard_, v. 107.
[69] _Spectator_, No. 125.
[70] _Ibid._, vol. iii., Nos. 201, 207.
[71] _Ibid._, No. 391.
[72] _Ibid._, No. 465.
[73] _Ibid._, No. 575.
[74] _Ibid._, No. 494.
[75] _Ibid_, Nos. 381, 387, 393.
[76] _Spectator_, No. 51.
[77] _Ibid._, No. 65.
[78] _Spectator_, No. 446.
[79] _Spectator_, No. 525 (by Hughes).
[80] _Spectator_, No. 399.
[81] _Ibid._, No. 507.
[82] _Spectator_, No. 125.
[83] _Spectator_, No. 158.
[84] _Ibid._, No. 434.
[85] _Spectator_, No. 69.
[86] _Spectator_, Nos. 58-63, inclusive.
[87] _Ibid._, Nos. 411-421, inclusive.
[88] _Life of Addison._
[89] _Spectator_, No. 556.
[90] _Spectator_, No. 13.
[91] _Spectator_, No. 101.
[92] _Ibid._, No. 269.
[93] _Spectator_, No. 530.
[94] _Ibid._, No. 265.
[95] I have to thank Mr. Campbell for his kindness and courtesy in sending me the volume containing this collection.
[96] _Spectator_, No. 414. |
7529-0 | Produced by Eve Sobol
THE REVERBERATOR
By Henry James
I
“I guess my daughter’s in here,” the old man said leading the way into the little salon de lecture. He was not of the most advanced age, but that is the way George Flack considered him, and indeed he looked older than he was. George Flack had found him sitting in the court of the hotel--he sat a great deal in the court of the hotel--and had gone up to him with characteristic directness and asked him for Miss Francina. Poor Mr. Dosson had with the greatest docility disposed himself to wait on the young man: he had as a matter of course risen and made his way across the court to announce to his child that she had a visitor. He looked submissive, almost servile, as he preceded the visitor, thrusting his head forward in his quest; but it was not in Mr. Flack’s line to notice that sort of thing. He accepted the old gentleman’s good offices as he would have accepted those of a waiter, conveying no hint of an attention paid also to himself. An observer of these two persons would have assured himself that the degree to which Mr. Dosson thought it natural any one should want to see his daughter was only equalled by the degree to which the young man thought it natural her father should take trouble to produce her. There was a superfluous drapery in the doorway of the salon de lecture, which Mr. Dosson pushed aside while George Flack stepped in after him.
The reading-room of the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham was none too ample, and had seemed to Mr. Dosson from the first to consist principally of a highly-polished floor on the bareness of which it was easy for a relaxed elderly American to slip. It was composed further, to his perception, of a table with a green velvet cloth, of a fireplace with a great deal of fringe and no fire, of a window with a great deal of curtain and no light, and of the Figaro, which he couldn’t read, and the New York Herald, which he had already read. A single person was just now in possession of these conveniences--a young lady who sat with her back to the window, looking straight before her into the conventional room. She was dressed as for the street; her empty hands rested upon the arms of her chair--she had withdrawn her long gloves, which were lying in her lap--and she seemed to be doing nothing as hard as she could. Her face was so much in shadow as to be barely distinguishable; nevertheless the young man had a disappointed cry as soon as he saw her. “Why, it ain’t Miss Francie--it’s Miss Delia!”
“Well, I guess we can fix that,” said Mr. Dosson, wandering further into the room and drawing his feet over the floor without lifting them. Whatever he did he ever seemed to wander: he had an impermanent transitory air, an aspect of weary yet patient non-arrival, even when he sat, as he was capable of sitting for hours, in the court of the inn. As he glanced down at the two newspapers in their desert of green velvet he raised a hopeless uninterested glass to his eye. “Delia dear, where’s your little sister?”
Delia made no movement whatever, nor did any expression, so far as could be perceived, pass over her large young face. She only ejaculated: “Why, Mr. Flack, where did you drop from?”
“Well, this is a good place to meet,” her father remarked, as if mildly, and as a mere passing suggestion, to deprecate explanations.
“Any place is good where one meets old friends,” said George Flack, looking also at the newspapers. He examined the date of the American sheet and then put it down. “Well, how do you like Paris?” he subsequently went on to the young lady.
“We quite enjoy it; but of course we’re familiar now.”
“Well, I was in hopes I could show you something,” Mr. Flack said.
“I guess they’ve seen most everything,” Mr. Dosson observed.
“Well, we’ve seen more than you!” exclaimed his daughter.
“Well, I’ve seen a good deal--just sitting there.”
A person with delicate ear might have suspected Mr. Dosson of a tendency to “setting”; but he would pronounce the same word in a different manner at different times.
“Well, in Paris you can see everything,” said the young man. “I’m quite enthusiastic about Paris.”
“Haven’t you been here before?” Miss Delia asked.
“Oh yes, but it’s ever fresh. And how is Miss Francie?”
“She’s all right. She has gone upstairs to get something. I guess we’re going out again.”
“It’s very attractive for the young,” Mr. Dosson pleaded to the visitor.
“Well then, I’m one of the young. Do you mind if I go with you?” Mr. Flack continued to the girl.
“It’ll seem like old times, on the deck,” she replied. “We’re going to the Bon Marche.”
“Why don’t you go to the Louvre? That’s the place for YOU.”
“We’ve just come from there: we’ve had quite a morning.”
“Well, it’s a good place,” the visitor a trifle dryly opined.
“It’s good for some things but it doesn’t come up to my idea for others.”
“Oh they’ve seen everything,” said Mr. Dosson. Then he added: “I guess I’ll go and call Francie.”
“Well, tell her to hurry,” Miss Delia returned, swinging a glove in each hand.
“She knows my pace,” Mr. Flack remarked.
“I should think she would, the way you raced!” the girl returned with memories of the Umbria. “I hope you don’t expect to rush round Paris that way.”
“I always rush. I live in a rush. That’s the way to get through.”
“Well, I AM through, I guess,” said Mr. Dosson philosophically.
“Well, I ain’t!” his daughter declared with decision.
“Well, you must come round often,” he continued to their friend as a leave-taking.
“Oh, I’ll come round! I’ll have to rush, but I’ll do it.”
“I’ll send down Francie.” And Francie’s father crept away.
“And please give her some more money!” her sister called after him.
“Does she keep the money?” George Flack enquired.
“KEEP it?” Mr. Dosson stopped as he pushed aside the portiere. “Oh you innocent young man!”
“I guess it’s the first time you were ever called innocent!” cried Delia, left alone with the visitor.
“Well, I WAS--before I came to Paris.”
“Well, I can’t see that it has hurt US. We ain’t a speck extravagant.”
“Wouldn’t you have a right to be?”
“I don’t think any one has a right to be,” Miss Dosson returned incorruptibly.
The young man, who had seated himself, looked at her a moment.
“That’s the way you used to talk.”
“Well, I haven’t changed.”
“And Miss Francie--has she?”
“Well, you’ll see,” said Delia Dosson, beginning to draw on her gloves.
Her companion watched her, leaning forward with his elbows on the arms of his chair and his hands interlocked. At last he said interrogatively: “Bon Marche?”
“No, I got them in a little place I know.”
“Well, they’re Paris anyway.”
“Of course they’re Paris. But you can get gloves anywhere.”
“You must show me the little place anyhow,” Mr. Flack continued sociably. And he observed further and with the same friendliness: “The old gentleman seems all there.”
“Oh he’s the dearest of the dear.”
“He’s a real gentleman--of the old stamp,” said George Flack.
“Well, what should you think our father would be?”
“I should think he’d be delighted!”
“Well, he is, when we carry out our plans.”
“And what are they--your plans?” asked the young man.
“Oh I never tell them.”
“How then does he know whether you carry them out?”
“Well, I guess he’d know it if we didn’t,” said the girl.
“I remember how secretive you were last year. You kept everything to yourself.”
“Well, I know what I want,” the young lady pursued.
He watched her button one of her gloves deftly, using a hairpin released from some mysterious office under her bonnet. There was a moment’s silence, after which they looked up at each other. “I’ve an idea you don’t want me,” said George Flack.
“Oh yes, I do--as a friend.”
“Of all the mean ways of trying to get rid of a man that’s the meanest!” he rang out.
“Where’s the meanness when I suppose you’re not so ridiculous as to wish to be anything more!”
“More to your sister, do you mean--or to yourself?”
“My sister IS myself--I haven’t got any other,” said Delia Dosson.
“Any other sister?”
“Don’t be idiotic. Are you still in the same business?” the girl went on.
“Well, I forget which one I WAS in.”
“Why, something to do with that newspaper--don’t you remember?”
“Yes, but it isn’t that paper any more--it’s a different one.”
“Do you go round for news--in the same way?”
“Well, I try to get the people what they want. It’s hard work,” said the young man.
“Well, I suppose if you didn’t some one else would. They will have it, won’t they?”
“Yes, they will have it.” The wants of the people, however, appeared at the present moment to interest Mr. Flack less than his own. He looked at his watch and remarked that the old gentleman didn’t seem to have much authority.
“What do you mean by that?” the girl asked.
“Why with Miss Francie. She’s taking her time, or rather, I mean, she’s taking mine.”
“Well, if you expect to do anything with her you must give her plenty of that,” Delia returned.
“All right: I’ll give her all I have.” And Miss Dosson’s interlocutor leaned back in his chair with folded arms, as to signify how much, if it came to that, she might have to count with his patience. But she sat there easy and empty, giving no sign and fearing no future. He was the first indeed to turn again to restlessness: at the end of a few moments he asked the young lady if she didn’t suppose her father had told her sister who it was.
“Do you think that’s all that’s required?” she made answer with cold gaiety. But she added more familiarly: “Probably that’s the reason. She’s so shy.”
“Oh yes--she used to look it.”
“No, that’s her peculiarity, that she never looks it and yet suffers everything.”
“Well, you make it up for her then, Miss Delia,” the young man ventured to declare. “You don’t suffer much.”
“No, for Francie I’m all there. I guess I could act for her.”
He had a pause. “You act for her too much. If it wasn’t for you I think I could do something.”
“Well, you’ve got to kill me first!” Delia Dosson replied.
“I’ll come down on you somehow in the Reverberator” he went on.
But the threat left her calm. “Oh that’s not what the people want.”
“No, unfortunately they don’t care anything about MY affairs.”
“Well, we do: we’re kinder than most, Francie and I,” said the girl. “But we desire to keep your affairs quite distinct from ours.”
“Oh your--yours: if I could only discover what they are!” cried George Flack. And during the rest of the time that they waited the young journalist tried to find out. If an observer had chanced to be present for the quarter of an hour that elapsed, and had had any attention to give to these vulgar young persons, he would have wondered perhaps at there being so much mystery on one side and so much curiosity on the other--wondered at least at the elaboration of inscrutable projects on the part of a girl who looked to the casual eye as if she were stolidly passive. Fidelia Dosson, whose name had been shortened, was twenty-five years old and had a large white face, in which the eyes were far apart. Her forehead was high but her mouth was small, her hair was light and colourless and a certain inelegant thickness of figure made her appear shorter than she was. Elegance indeed had not been her natural portion, and the Bon Marche and other establishments had to make up for that. To a casual sister’s eye they would scarce have appeared to have acquitted themselves of their office, but even a woman wouldn’t have guessed how little Fidelia cared. She always looked the same; all the contrivances of Paris couldn’t fill out that blank, and she held them, for herself, in no manner of esteem. It was a plain clean round pattern face, marked for recognition among so many only perhaps by a small figure, the sprig on a china plate, that might have denoted deep obstinacy; and yet, with its settled smoothness, it was neither stupid nor hard. It was as calm as a room kept dusted and aired for candid earnest occasions, the meeting of unanimous committees and the discussion of flourishing businesses. If she had been a young man--and she had a little the head of one--it would probably have been thought of her that she was likely to become a Doctor or a Judge.
An observer would have gathered, further, that Mr. Flack’s acquaintance with Mr. Dosson and his daughters had had its origin in his crossing the Atlantic eastward in their company more than a year before, and in some slight association immediately after disembarking, but that each party had come and gone a good deal since then--come and gone however without meeting again. It was to be inferred that in this interval Miss Dosson had led her father and sister back to their native land and had then a second time directed their course to Europe. This was a new departure, said Mr. Flack, or rather a new arrival: he understood that it wasn’t, as he called it, the same old visit. She didn’t repudiate the accusation, launched by her companion as if it might have been embarrassing, of having spent her time at home in Boston, and even in a suburban quarter of it: she confessed that as Bostonians they had been capable of that. But now they had come abroad for longer--ever so much: what they had gone home for was to make arrangements for a European stay of which the limits were not to be told. So far as this particular future opened out to her she freely acknowledged it. It appeared to meet with George Flack’s approval--he also had a big undertaking on that side and it might require years, so that it would be pleasant to have his friends right there. He knew his way round in Paris--or any place like that--much better than round Boston; if they had been poked away in one of those clever suburbs they would have been lost to him.
“Oh, well, you’ll see as much as you want of us--the way you’ll have to take us,” Delia Dosson said: which led the young man to ask which that way was and to guess he had never known but one way to take anything--which was just as it came. “Oh well, you’ll see what you’ll make of it,” the girl returned; and she would give for the present no further explanation of her somewhat chilling speech. In spite if it however she professed an interest in Mr. Flack’s announced undertaking--an interest springing apparently from an interest in the personage himself. The man of wonderments and measurements we have smuggled into the scene would have gathered that Miss Dosson’s attention was founded on a conception of Mr. Flack’s intrinsic brilliancy. Would his own impression have justified that?--would he have found such a conception contagious? I forbear to ridicule the thought, for that would saddle me with the care of showing what right our officious observer might have had to his particular standard. Let us therefore simply note that George Flack had grounds for looming publicly large to an uninformed young woman. He was connected, as she supposed, with literature, and wasn’t a sympathy with literature one of the many engaging attributes of her so generally attractive little sister? If Mr. Flack was a writer Francie was a reader: hadn’t a trail of forgotten Tauchnitzes marked the former line of travel of the party of three? The elder girl grabbed at them on leaving hotels and railway-carriages, but usually found that she had brought odd volumes. She considered however that as a family they had an intellectual link with the young journalist, and would have been surprised if she had heard the advantage of his acquaintance questioned.
Mr. Flack’s appearance was not so much a property of his own as a prejudice or a fixed liability of those who looked at him: whoever they might be what they saw mainly in him was that they had seen him before. And, oddly enough, this recognition carried with it in general no ability to remember--that is to recall--him: you couldn’t conveniently have prefigured him, and it was only when you were conscious of him that you knew you had already somehow paid for it. To carry him in your mind you must have liked him very much, for no other sentiment, not even aversion, would have taught you what distinguished him in his group: aversion in especial would have made you aware only of what confounded him. He was not a specific person, but had beyond even Delia Dosson, in whom we have facially noted it, the quality of the sample or advertisement, the air of representing a “line of goods” for which there is a steady popular demand. You would scarce have expected him to be individually designated: a number, like that of the day’s newspaper, would have served all his, or at least all your purpose, and you would have vaguely supposed the number high--somewhere up in the millions. As every copy of the newspaper answers to its name, Miss Dosson’s visitor would have been quite adequately marked as “young commercial American.” Let me add that among the accidents of his appearance was that of its sometimes striking other young commercial Americans as fine. He was twenty-seven years old and had a small square head, a light grey overcoat and in his right forefinger a curious natural crook which might have availed, under pressure, to identify him. But for the convenience of society he ought always to have worn something conspicuous--a green hat or a yellow necktie. His undertaking was to obtain material in Europe for an American “society-paper.”
If it be objected to all this that when Francie Dosson at last came in she addressed him as if she easily placed him, the answer is that she had been notified by her father--and more punctually than was indicated by the manner of her response. “Well, the way you DO turn up,” she said, smiling and holding out her left hand to him: in the other hand, or the hollow of her slim right arm, she had a lumpish parcel. Though she had made him wait she was clearly very glad to see him there; and she as evidently required and enjoyed a great deal of that sort of indulgence. Her sister’s attitude would have told you so even if her own appearance had not. There was that in her manner to the young man--a perceptible but indefinable shade--which seemed to legitimate the oddity of his having asked in particular for her, asked as if he wished to see her to the exclusion of her father and sister: the note of a special pleasure which might have implied a special relation. And yet a spectator looking from Mr. George Flack to Miss Francie Dosson would have been much at a loss to guess what special relation could exist between them. The girl was exceedingly, extraordinarily pretty, all exempt from traceable likeness to her sister; and there was a brightness in her--a still and scattered radiance--which was quite distinct from what is called animation. Rather tall than short, fine slender erect, with an airy lightness of hand and foot, she yet gave no impression of quick movement, of abundant chatter, of excitable nerves and irrepressible life--no hint of arriving at her typical American grace in the most usual way. She was pretty without emphasis and as might almost have been said without point, and your fancy that a little stiffness would have improved her was at once qualified by the question of what her softness would have made of it. There was nothing in her, however, to confirm the implication that she had rushed about the deck of a Cunarder with a newspaper-man. She was as straight as a wand and as true as a gem; her neck was long and her grey eyes had colour; and from the ripple of her dark brown hair to the curve of her unaffirmative chin every line in her face was happy and pure. She had a weak pipe of a voice and inconceivabilities of ignorance.
Delia got up, and they came out of the little reading-room--this young lady remarking to her sister that she hoped she had brought down all the things. “Well, I had a fiendish hunt for them--we’ve got so many,” Francie replied with a strange want of articulation. “There were a few dozens of the pocket-handkerchiefs I couldn’t find; but I guess I’ve got most of them and most of the gloves.”
“Well, what are you carting them about for?” George Flack enquired, taking the parcel from her. “You had better let me handle them. Do you buy pocket-handkerchiefs by the hundred?”
“Well, it only makes fifty apiece,” Francie yieldingly smiled. “They ain’t really nice--we’re going to change them.”
“Oh I won’t be mixed up with that--you can’t work that game on these Frenchmen!” the young man stated.
“Oh with Francie they’ll take anything back,” Delia Dosson declared. “They just love her, all over.”
“Well, they’re like me then,” said Mr. Flack with friendly cheer. “I’LL take her back if she’ll come.”
“Well, I don’t think I’m ready quite yet,” the girl replied. “But I hope very much we shall cross with you again.”
“Talk about crossing--it’s on these boulevards we want a life-preserver!” Delia loudly commented. They had passed out of the hotel and the wide vista of the Rue de la Paix stretched up and down. There were many vehicles.
“Won’t this thing do? I’ll tie it to either of you,” George Flack said, holding out his bundle. “I suppose they won’t kill you if they love you,” he went on to the object of his preference.
“Well, you’ve got to know me first,” she answered, laughing and looking for a chance, while they waited to pass over.
“I didn’t know you when I was struck.” He applied his disengaged hand to her elbow and propelled her across the street. She took no notice of his observation, and Delia asked her, on the other side, whether their father had given her that money. She replied that he had given her loads--she felt as if he had made his will; which led George Flack to say that he wished the old gentleman was HIS father.
“Why you don’t mean to say you want to be our brother!” Francie prattled as they went down the Rue de la Paix.
“I should like to be Miss Delia’s, if you can make that out,” he laughed.
“Well then suppose you prove it by calling me a cab,” Miss Delia returned. “I presume you and Francie don’t take this for a promenade-deck.”
“Don’t she feel rich?” George Flack demanded of Francie. “But we do require a cart for our goods”; and he hailed a little yellow carriage, which presently drew up beside the pavement. The three got into it and, still emitting innocent pleasantries, proceeded on their way, while at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham Mr. Dosson wandered down into the court again and took his place in his customary chair.
II
The court was roofed with glass; the April air was mild; the cry of women selling violets came in from the street and, mingling with the rich hum of Paris, seemed to bring with it faintly the odour of the flowers. There were other odours in the place, warm succulent and Parisian, which ranged from fried fish to burnt sugar; and there were many things besides: little tables for the post-prandial coffee; piles of luggage inscribed (after the initials or frequently the name) R. P. Scudamore or D. Jackson Hodge, Philadelphia Pa., or St. Louis Mo.; rattles of unregarded bells, flittings of tray-bearing waiters, conversations with the second-floor windows of admonitory landladies, arrivals of young women with coffinlike bandboxes covered with black oil-cloth and depending from a strap, sallyings-forth of persons staying and arrivals just afterwards of other persons to see them; together with vague prostrations on benches of tired heads of American families. It was to this last element that Mr. Dosson himself in some degree contributed, but it must be added that he had not the extremely bereft and exhausted appearance of certain of his fellows. There was an air of ruminant resignation, of habitual accommodation in him; but you would have guessed that he was enjoying a holiday rather than aching for a truce, and he was not so enfeebled but that he was able to get up from time to time and stroll through the porte cochere to have a look at the street.
He gazed up and down for five minutes with his hands in his pockets, and then came back; that appeared to content him; he asked for little and had no restlessness that these small excursions wouldn’t assuage. He looked at the heaped-up luggage, at the tinkling bells, at the young women from the lingere, at the repudiated visitors, at everything but the other American parents. Something in his breast told him that he knew all about these. It’s not upon each other that the animals in the same cage, in a zoological collection, most turn their eyes. There was a silent sociability in him and a superficial fineness of grain that helped to account for his daughter Francie’s various delicacies. He was fair and spare and had no figure; you would have seen in a moment that the question of how he should hold himself had never in his life occurred to him. He never held himself at all; providence held him rather--and very loosely--by an invisible string at the end of which he seemed gently to dangle and waver. His face was so smooth that his thin light whiskers, which grew only far back, scarcely seemed native to his cheeks: they might have been attached there for some harmless purpose of comedy or disguise. He looked for the most part as if he were thinking over, without exactly understanding it, something rather droll that had just occurred; if his eyes wandered his attention rested, just as it hurried, quite as little. His feet were remarkably small, and his clothes, in which light colours predominated, were visibly the work of a French tailor: he was an American who still held the tradition that it is in Paris a man dresses himself best. His hat would have looked odd in Bond Street or the Fifth Avenue, and his necktie was loose and flowing.
Mr. Dosson, it may further be noted, was a person of the simplest composition, a character as cipherable as a sum of two figures. He had a native financial faculty of the finest order, a gift as direct as a beautiful tenor voice, which had enabled him, without the aid of particular strength of will or keenness of ambition, to build up a large fortune while he was still of middle age. He had a genius for happy speculation, the quick unerring instinct of a “good thing”; and as he sat there idle amused contented, on the edge of the Parisian street, he might very well have passed for some rare performer who had sung his song or played his trick and had nothing to do till the next call. And he had grown rich not because he was ravenous or hard, but simply because he had an ear, not to term it a nose. He could make out the tune in the discord of the market-place; he could smell success far up the wind. The second factor in his little addition was that he was an unassuming father. He had no tastes, no acquirements, no curiosities, and his daughters represented all society for him. He thought much more and much oftener of these young ladies than of his bank-shares and railway-stock; they crowned much more his sense of accumulated property. He never compared them with other girls; he only compared his present self with what he would have been without them. His view of them was perfectly simple. Delia had a greater direct knowledge of life and Francie a wider acquaintance with literature and art. Mr. Dosson had not perhaps a full perception of his younger daughter’s beauty: he would scarcely have pretended to judge of that, more than he would of a valuable picture or vase, but he believed she was cultivated up to the eyes. He had a recollection of tremendous school-bills and, in later days, during their travels, of the way she was always leaving books behind her. Moreover wasn’t her French so good that he couldn’t understand it?
The two girls, at any rate, formed the breeze in his sail and the only directing determinant force he knew; when anything happened--and he was under the impression that things DID happen--they were there for it to have happened TO. Without them in short, as he felt, he would have been the tail without the kite. The wind rose and fell of course; there were lulls and there were gales; there were intervals during which he simply floated in quiet waters--cast anchor and waited. This appeared to be one of them now; but he could be patient, knowing that he should soon again inhale the brine and feel the dip of his prow. When his daughters were out for any time the occasion affected him as a “weather-breeder”--the wind would be then, as a kind of consequence, GOING to rise; but their now being out with a remarkably bright young man only sweetened the temporary calm. That belonged to their superior life, and Mr. Dosson never doubted that George M. Flack was remarkably bright. He represented the newspaper, and the newspaper for this man of genial assumptions represented--well, all other representations whatever. To know Delia and Francie thus attended by an editor or a correspondent was really to see them dancing in the central glow. This is doubtless why Mr. Dosson had slightly more than usual his air of recovering slowly from a pleasant surprise. The vision to which I allude hung before him, at a convenient distance, and melted into other bright confused aspects: reminiscences of Mr. Flack in other relations--on the ship, on the deck, at the hotel at Liverpool, and in the cars. Whitney Dosson was a loyal father, but he would have thought himself simple had he not had two or three strong convictions: one of which was that the children should never go out with a gentleman they hadn’t seen before. The sense of their having, and his having, seen Mr. Flack before was comfortable to him now: it made mere placidity of his personally foregoing the young man’s society in favour of Delia and Francie. He had not hitherto been perfectly satisfied that the streets and shops, the general immensity of Paris, were just the safest place for young ladies alone. But the company of a helpful gentleman ensured safety--a gentleman who would be helpful by the fact of his knowing so much and having it all right there. If a big newspaper told you everything there was in the world every morning, that was what a big newspaper-man would have to know, and Mr. Dosson had never supposed there was anything left to know when such voices as Mr. Flack’s and that of his organ had daily been heard. In the absence of such happy chances--and in one way or another they kept occurring--his girls might have seemed lonely, which was not the way he struck himself. They were his company but he scarcely theirs; it was as if they belonged to him more than he to them.
They were out a long time, but he felt no anxiety, as he reflected that Mr. Flack’s very profession would somehow make everything turn out to their profit. The bright French afternoon waned without bringing them back, yet Mr. Dosson still revolved about the court till he might have been taken for a valet de place hoping to pick up custom. The landlady smiled at him sometimes as she passed and re-passed, and even ventured to remark disinterestedly that it was a pity to waste such a lovely day indoors--not to take a turn and see what was going on in Paris. But Mr. Dosson had no sense of waste: that came to him much more when he was confronted with historical monuments or beauties of nature or art, which affected him as the talk of people naming others, naming friends of theirs, whom he had never heard of: then he was aware of a degree of waste for the others, as if somebody lost something--but never when he lounged in that simplifying yet so comprehensive way in the court. It wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner--THAT historic fact was not beyond his measure--when Delia and Francie at last met his view, still accompanied by Mr. Flack and sauntering in, at a little distance from each other, with a jaded air which was not in the least a tribute to his possible solicitude. They dropped into chairs and joked with each other, mingling sociability and languor, on the subject of what they had seen and done--a question into which he felt as yet the delicacy of enquiring. But they had evidently done a good deal and had a good time: an impression sufficient to rescue Mr. Dosson personally from the consciousness of failure. “Won’t you just step in and take dinner with us?” he asked of the young man with a friendliness to which everything appeared to minister.
“Well, that’s a handsome offer,” George Flack replied while Delia put it on record that they had each eaten about thirty cakes.
“Well, I wondered what you were doing so long. But never mind your cakes. It’s twenty minutes past six, and the table d’hote’s on time.”
“You don’t mean to say you dine at the table d’hote!” Mr. Flack cried.
“Why, don’t you like that?”--and Francie’s candour of appeal to their comrade’s taste was celestial.
“Well, it isn’t what you must build on when you come to Paris. Too many flowerpots and chickens’ legs.”
“Well, would you like one of these restaurants?” asked Mr. Dosson. “_I_ don’t care--if you show us a good one.”
“Oh I’ll show you a good one--don’t you worry.” Mr. Flack’s tone was ever that of keeping the poor gentleman mildly but firmly in his place.
“Well, you’ve got to order the dinner then,” said Francie.
“Well, you’ll see how I could do it!” He towered over her in the pride of this feat.
“He has got an interest in some place,” Delia declared. “He has taken us to ever so many stores where he gets his commission.”
“Well, I’d pay you to take them round,” said Mr. Dosson; and with much agreeable trifling of this kind it was agreed that they should sally forth for the evening meal under Mr. Flack’s guidance.
If he had easily convinced them on this occasion that that was a more original proceeding than worrying those old bones, as he called it, at the hotel, he convinced them of other things besides in the course of the following month and by the aid of profuse attentions. What he mainly made clear to them was that it was really most kind of a young man who had so many big things on his mind to find sympathy for questions, for issues, he used to call them, that could occupy the telegraph and the press so little as theirs. He came every day to set them in the right path, pointing out its charms to them in a way that made them feel how much they had been in the wrong. It made them feel indeed that they didn’t know anything about anything, even about such a matter as ordering shoes--an art in which they had vaguely supposed themselves rather strong. He had in fact great knowledge, which was wonderfully various, and he knew as many people as they knew few. He had appointments--very often with celebrities--for every hour of the day, and memoranda, sometimes in shorthand, on tablets with elastic straps, with which he dazzled the simple folk at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham, whose social life, of narrow range, consisted mainly in reading the lists of Americans who “registered” at the bankers’ and at Galignani’s. Delia Dosson in particular had a trick of poring solemnly over these records which exasperated Mr. Flack, who skimmed them and found what he wanted in the flash of an eye: she kept the others waiting while she satisfied herself that Mr. and Mrs. D. S. Rosenheim and Miss Cora Rosenheim and Master Samuel Rosenheim had “left for Brussels.”
Mr. Flack was wonderful on all occasions in finding what he wanted--which, as we know, was what he believed the public wanted--and Delia was the only one of the party with whom he was sometimes a little sharp. He had embraced from the first the idea that she was his enemy, and he alluded to it with almost tiresome frequency, though always in a humorous fearless strain. Even more than by her fashion of hanging over the registers she provoked him by appearing to find their little party not sufficient to itself, by wishing, as he expressed it, to work in new stuff. He might have been easy, however, for he had sufficient chance to observe how it was always the fate of the Dossons to miss their friends. They were continually looking out for reunions and combinations that never came off, hearing that people had been in Paris only after they had gone away, or feeling convinced that they were there but not to be found through their not having registered, or wondering whether they should overtake them if they should go to Dresden, and then making up their minds to start for Dresden only to learn at the eleventh hour, through some accident, that the hunted game had “left for” Biarritz even as the Rosenheims for Brussels. “We know plenty of people if we could only come across them,” Delia had more than once observed: she scanned the Continent with a wondering baffled gaze and talked of the unsatisfactory way in which friends at home would “write out” that other friends were “somewhere in Europe.” She expressed the wish that such correspondents as that might be in a place that was not at all vague. Two or three times people had called at the hotel when they were out and had left cards for them without an address and superscribed with some mocking dash of the pencil--“So sorry to miss you!” or “Off to-morrow!” The girl sat looking at these cards, handling them and turning them over for a quarter of an hour at a time; she produced them days afterwards, brooding upon them afresh as if they were a mystic clue. George Flack generally knew where they were, the people who were “somewhere in Europe.” Such knowledge came to him by a kind of intuition, by the voices of the air, by indefinable and unteachable processes. But he held his peace on purpose; he didn’t want any outsiders; he thought their little party just right. Mr. Dosson’s place in the scheme of Providence was to “go” with Delia while he himself “went” with Francie, and nothing would have induced George Flack to disfigure that equation. The young man was professionally so occupied with other people’s affairs that it should doubtless be mentioned to his praise that he still managed to have affairs--or at least an affair--of his own. That affair was Francie Dosson, and he was pleased to perceive how little SHE cared what had become of Mr. and Mrs. Rosenheim and Master Samuel and Miss Cora. He counted all the things she didn’t care about--her soft inadvertent eyes helped him to do that; and they footed up so, as he would have said, that they gave him the rich sense of a free field. If she had so few interests there was the greater possibility that a young man of bold conceptions and cheerful manners might become one. She had usually the air of waiting for something, with a pretty listlessness or an amused resignation, while tender shy indefinite little fancies hummed in her brain. Thus she would perhaps recognise in him the reward of patience. George Flack was aware that he exposed his friends to considerable fatigue: he brought them back pale and taciturn from suburban excursions and from wanderings often rather aimless and casual among the boulevards and avenues of the town. He regarded them at such times with complacency however, for these were hours of diminished resistance: he had an idea that he should be able eventually to circumvent Delia if he only could catch her some day sufficiently, that is physically, prostrate. He liked to make them all feel helpless and dependent, and this was not difficult with people who were so modest and artless, so unconscious of the boundless power of wealth. Sentiment, in our young man, was not a scruple nor a source of weakness; but he thought it really touching, the little these good people knew of what they could do with their money. They had in their hands a weapon of infinite range and yet were incapable of firing a shot for themselves. They had a sort of social humility; it appeared never to have occurred to them that, added to their loveliness, their money gave them a value. This used to strike George Flack on certain occasions when he came back to find them in the places where he had dropped them while he rushed off to give a turn to one of his screws. They never played him false, never wearied of waiting; always sat patient and submissive, usually at a cafe to which he had introduced them or in a row of chairs on the boulevard, on the level expanse of the Tuileries or in the Champs Elysees.
He introduced them to many cafes, in different parts of Paris, being careful to choose those which in his view young ladies might frequent with propriety, and there were two or three in the neighbourhood of their hotel where they became frequent and familiar figures. As the late spring days grew warmer and brighter they mainly camped out on the “terrace,” amid the array of small tables at the door of the establishment, where Mr. Flack, on the return, could descry them from afar at their post and in the very same postures to which he had appointed them. They complained of no satiety in watching the many-coloured movement of the Parisian streets; and if some of the features in the panorama were base they were only so in a version that the social culture of our friends was incapable of supplying. George Flack considered that he was rendering a positive service to Mr. Dosson: wouldn’t the old gentleman have sat all day in the court anyway? and wasn’t the boulevard better than the court? It was his theory too that he nattered and caressed Miss Francie’s father, for there was no one to whom he had furnished more copious details about the affairs, the projects and prospects, of the Reverberator. He had left no doubt in the old gentleman’s mind as to the race he himself intended to run, and Mr. Dosson used to say to him every day, the first thing, “Well, where have you got to now?”--quite as if he took a real interest. George Flack reported his interviews, that is his reportings, to which Delia and Francie gave attention only in case they knew something of the persons on whom the young emissary of the Reverberator had conferred this distinction; whereas Mr. Dosson listened, with his tolerant interposition of “Is that so?” and “Well, that’s good,” just as submissively when he heard of the celebrity in question for the first time.
In conversation with his daughters Mr. Flack was frequently the theme, though introduced much more by the young ladies than by himself, and especially by Delia, who announced at an early period that she knew what he wanted and that it wasn’t in the least what SHE wanted. She amplified this statement very soon--at least as regards her interpretation of Mr. Flack’s designs: a certain mystery still hung about her own, which, as she intimated, had much more to recommend them. Delia’s vision of the danger as well as the advantage of being a pretty girl was closely connected, as was natural, with the idea of an “engagement”: this idea was in a manner complete in itself--her imagination failed in the oddest way to carry it into the next stage. She wanted her sister to be engaged but wanted her not at all to be married, and had clearly never made up her mind as to how Francie was to enjoy both the peril and the shelter. It was a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet to her knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows; if her conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligibly it would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind--a dim theory that a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia’s conception of what such a trial might consis |
7529-0 | t of was strangely innocent: it was made up of calls and walks and buggy-drives, and above all of being, in the light of these exhibitions, the theme of tongues and subject to the great imputation. It had never in life occurred to her withal that a succession of lovers, or just even a repetition of experiments, may have anything to say to a young lady’s delicacy. She felt herself a born old maid and never dreamed of a lover of her own--he would have been dreadfully in her way; but she dreamed of love as something in its nature essentially refined. All the same she discriminated; it did lead to something after all, and she desired that for Francie it shouldn’t lead to a union with Mr. Flack. She looked at such a union under the influence of that other view which she kept as yet to herself but was prepared to produce so soon as the right occasion should come up; giving her sister to understand that she would never speak to her again should this young man be allowed to suppose--! Which was where she always paused, plunging again into impressive reticence.
“To suppose what?” Francie would ask as if she were totally unacquainted--which indeed she really was--with the suppositions of young men.
“Well, you’ll see--when he begins to say things you won’t like!” This sounded ominous on Delia’s part, yet her anxiety was really but thin: otherwise she would have risen against the custom adopted by Mr. Flack of perpetually coming round. She would have given her attention--though it struggled in general unsuccessfully with all this side of their life--to some prompt means of getting away from Paris. She expressed to her father what in her view the correspondent of the Reverberator was “after”; but without, it must be added, gaining from him the sense of it as a connexion in which he could be greatly worked up. This indeed was not of importance, thanks to her inner faith that Francie would never really do anything--that is would never really like anything--her nearest relatives didn’t like. Her sister’s docility was a great comfort to Delia, the more that she herself, taking it always for granted, was the first to profit by it. She liked and disliked certain things much more than her junior did either; and Francie cultivated the convenience of her reasons, having so few of her own. They served--Delia’s reasons--for Mr. Dosson as well, so that Francie was not guilty of any particular irreverence in regarding her sister rather than her father as the controller of her fate. A fate was rather an unwieldy and terrible treasure, which it relieved her that some kind person should undertake to administer. Delia had somehow got hold of hers first--before even her father, and ever so much before Mr. Flack; and it lay with Delia to make any change. She couldn’t have accepted any gentleman as a party to an engagement--which was somehow as far as her imagination went--without reference to Delia, any more than she could have done up her hair without a glass. The only action taken by Mr. Dosson on his elder daughter’s admonitions was to convert the general issue, as Mr. Flack would have called it, to a theme for daily pleasantry. He was fond, in his intercourse with his children, of some small usual joke, some humorous refrain; and what could have been more in the line of true domestic sport than a little gentle but unintermitted raillery on Francie’s conquest? Mr. Flack’s attributive intentions became a theme of indulgent parental chaff, and the girl was neither dazzled nor annoyed by the freedom of all this tribute. “Well, he HAS told us about half we know,” she used to reply with an air of the judicious that the undetected observer I am perpetually moved to invoke would have found indescribably quaint.
Among the items of knowledge for which they were indebted to him floated the fact that this was the very best time in the young lady’s life to have her portrait painted and the best place in the world to have it done well; also that he knew a “lovely artist,” a young American of extraordinary talent, who would be delighted to undertake the job. He led his trio to this gentleman’s studio, where they saw several pictures that opened to them the strange gates of mystification. Francie protested that she didn’t want to be done in THAT style, and Delia declared that she would as soon have her sister shown up in a magic lantern. They had had the fortune not to find Mr. Waterlow at home, so that they were free to express themselves and the pictures were shown them by his servant. They looked at them as they looked at bonnets and confections when they went to expensive shops; as if it were a question, among so many specimens, of the style and colour they would choose. Mr. Waterlow’s productions took their place for the most part in the category of those creations known to ladies as frights, and our friends retired with the lowest opinion of the young American master. George Flack told them however that they couldn’t get out of it, inasmuch as he had already written home to the Reverberator that Francie was to sit. They accepted this somehow as a kind of supernatural sign that she would have to, for they believed everything they ever heard quoted from a newspaper. Moreover Mr. Flack explained to them that it would be idiotic to miss such an opportunity to get something at once precious and cheap; for it was well known that impressionism was going to be the art of the future, and Charles Waterlow was a rising impressionist. It was a new system altogether and the latest improvement in art. They didn’t want to go back, they wanted to go forward, and he would give them an article that would fetch five times the money in about five years--which somehow, as he put it, seemed a very short time, though it would have seemed immense for anything else. They were not in search of a bargain, but they allowed themselves to be inoculated with any reason they thought would be characteristic of informed people; and he even convinced them after a little that when once they had got used to impressionism they would never look at anything else. Mr. Waterlow was the man, among the young, and he had no interest in praising him, because he was not a personal friend: his reputation was advancing with strides, and any one with any sense would want to secure something before the rush.
III
The young ladies consented to return to the Avenue des Villiers; and this time they found the celebrity of the future. He was smoking cigarettes with a friend while coffee was served to the two gentlemen--it was just after luncheon--on a vast divan covered with scrappy oriental rugs and cushions; it looked, Francie thought, as if the artist had set up a carpet-shop in a corner. He struck her as very pleasant; and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the young lady ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn’t like and who had already come too often to his studio to pick up “glimpses” (the painter wondered how in the world he had picked HER up), this charming candidate for portraiture rose on the spot before Charles Waterlow as a precious model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the same impression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyes off her while her own rested afresh on several finished and unfinished canvases. This gentleman asked of his friend at the end of five minutes the favour of an introduction to her; in consequence of which Francie learned that his name--she thought it singular--was Gaston Probert. Mr. Probert was a kind-eyed smiling youth who fingered the points of his moustache; he was represented by Mr. Waterlow as an American, but he pronounced the American language--so at least it seemed to Francie--as if it had been French.
After she had quitted the studio with Delia and Mr. Flack--her father on this occasion not being of the party--the two young men, falling back on their divan, broke into expressions of aesthetic rapture, gave it to each other that the girl had qualities--oh but qualities and a charm of line! They remained there an hour, studying these rare properties through the smoke of their cigarettes. You would have gathered from their conversation--though as regards much of it only perhaps with the aid of a grammar and dictionary--that the young lady had been endowed with plastic treasures, that is with physical graces, of the highest order, of which she was evidently quite unconscious. Before this, however, Mr. Waterlow had come to an understanding with his visitors--it had been settled that Miss Francina should sit for him at his first hour of leisure. Unfortunately that hour hovered before him as still rather distant--he was unable to make a definite appointment. He had sitters on his hands, he had at least three portraits to finish before going to Spain. He adverted with bitterness to the journey to Spain--a little excursion laid out precisely with his friend Probert for the last weeks of the spring, the first of the southern summer, the time of the long days and the real light. Gaston Probert re-echoed his regrets, for though he had no business with Miss Francina, whose name he yet liked, he also wanted to see her again. They half-agreed to give up Spain--they had after all been there before--so that Waterlow might take the girl in hand without delay, the moment he had knocked off his present work. This amendment broke down indeed, for other considerations came up and the artist resigned himself to the arrangement on which the young women had quitted him: he thought it so characteristic of their nationality that they should settle a matter of that sort for themselves. This was simply that they should come back in the autumn, when he should be comparatively free: then there would be a margin and they might all take their time. At present, before long--by the time he should be ready--the question of the pretty one’s leaving Paris for the summer would be sure to rise, and that would be a tiresome interruption. The pretty one clearly liked Paris, she had no plans for the autumn and only wanted a reason to come back about the twentieth of September. Mr. Waterlow remarked humorously that she evidently bossed the shop. Meanwhile, before starting for Spain, he would see her as often as possible--his eye would take possession of her.
His companion envied his eye, even expressed jealousy of his eye. It was perhaps as a step towards establishing his right to jealousy that Mr. Probert left a card upon the Miss Dossons at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham, having first ascertained that such a proceeding would not, by the young American sisters, be regarded as an unwarrantable liberty. Gaston Probert was an American who had never been in America and was obliged to take counsel on such an emergency as that. He knew that in Paris young men didn’t call at hotels on blameless maids, but he also knew that blameless maids, unattended by a parent, didn’t visit young men in studios; and he had no guide, no light he could trust--none save the wisdom of his friend Waterlow, which was for the most part communicated to him in a derisive and misleading form. Waterlow, who was after all himself an ornament of the French, and the very French, school, jeered at the other’s want of native instinct, at the way he never knew by which end to take hold of a compatriot. Poor Probert was obliged to confess to his terrible paucity of practice, and that in the great medley of aliens and brothers--and even more of sisters--he couldn’t tell which was which. He would have had a country and countrymen, to say nothing of countrywomen, if he could; but that matter had never been properly settled for him, and it’s one there’s ever a great difficulty in a gentleman’s settling for himself. Born in Paris, he had been brought up altogether on French lines, in a family that French society had irrecoverably absorbed. His father, a Carolinian and a Catholic, was a Gallomaniac of the old American type. His three sisters had married Frenchmen, and one of them lived in Brittany while the others were ostensibly seated in Touraine. His only brother had fallen, during the Terrible Year, in defence of their adopted country. Yet Gaston, though he had had an old Legitimist marquis for godfather, was not legally one of its children; his mother had, on her death-bed, extorted from him the promise that he wouldn’t take service in its armies; she considered, after the death of her elder son--Gaston, in 1870, had been a boy of ten--that the family had sacrificed enough on the altar of sympathy.
The young man therefore, between two stools, had no clear sitting-place: he wanted to be as American as he could and yet not less French than he was; he was afraid to give up the little that he was and find that what he might be was less--he shrank from a flying leap which might drop him in the middle of the sea. At the same time he thought himself sure that the only way to know how it feels to be an American is to try it, and he had had many a purpose of making the pious pilgrimage. His family however had been so completely Gallicised that the affairs of each member of it were the affairs of all the rest, and his father, his sisters and his brothers-in-law had not yet begun sufficiently to regard this scheme as their own for him to feel it substantially his. It was a family in which there was no individual but only a collective property. Meanwhile he tried, as I say, by affronting minor perils, and especially by going a good deal to see Charles Waterlow in the Avenue de Villiers, whom he believed to be his dearest friend, formed for his affection by Monsieur Carolus. He had an idea that in this manner he kept himself in touch with his countrymen; and he had never pitched his endeavour so high as in leaving that card on the Misses Dosson. He was in search of freshness, but he needn’t have gone far: he would have had but to turn his lantern on his own young breast to find a considerable store of it. Like many of his dawdling coaevals he gave much attention to art, lived as much as possible in that more select world where it is a positive duty not to bustle. To make up for his want of talent he espoused the talent of others--that is of several--and was as sensitive and conscientious about them as he might have been about himself. He defended certain of Waterlow’s purples and greens as he would have defended his own honour, and there was a genius or two, not yet fully acclaimed by the vulgar, in regard to whom he had convictions that belonged almost to the undiscussable part of life. He had not, for himself, any very high sense of performance, but what kept it down particularly was his untractable hand, the fact that, such as they were, Waterlow’s purples and greens, for instance, were far beyond him. If he hadn’t failed there other failures wouldn’t have mattered, not even that of not having a country; and it was on the occasion of his friend’s agreement to paint that strange lovely girl, whom he liked so much and whose companions he didn’t like, that he felt supremely without a vocation. Freshness was in HER at least, if he had only been organised for catching it. He prayed earnestly, in relation to such a triumph, for a providential re-enforcement of Waterlow’s sense of that source of charm. If Waterlow had a fault it was that his freshnesses were sometimes too crude.
He avenged himself for the artist’s profanation of his first attempt to approach Miss Francie by indulging at the end of another week in a second. He went about six o’clock, when he supposed she would have returned from her day’s wanderings, and his prudence was rewarded by the sight of the young lady sitting in the court of the hotel with her father and sister. Mr. Dosson was new to Gaston Probert, but the young man might have been a naturalist visiting a rank country with a net of such narrow meshes as to let no creature of the air escape. The little party was as usual expecting Mr. Flack at any moment, and they had collected downstairs, so that he might pick them up easily. They had, on the first floor, an expensive parlour, decorated in white and gold, with sofas of crimson damask; but there was something lonely in that grandeur and the place had become mainly a receptacle for their tall trunks, with a half-emptied paper of chocolates or marrons glaces on every table. After young Probert’s first call his name was often on the lips of the simple trio, and Mr. Dosson grew still more jocose, making nothing of a secret of his perception that Francie hit the bull’s-eye “every time.” Mr. Waterlow had returned their visit, but that was rather a matter of course, since it was they who had gone after him. They had not gone after the other one; it was he who had come after them. When he entered the hotel, as they sat there, this pursuit and its probable motive became startlingly vivid.
Delia had taken the matter much more seriously than her father; she said there was ever so much she wanted to find out. She mused upon these mysteries visibly, but with no great advance, and she appealed for assistance to George Flack, with a candour which he appreciated and returned. If he really knew anything he ought to know at least who Mr. Probert was; and she spoke as if it would be in the natural course that as soon as he should find out he would put it for them somehow into his paper. Mr. Flack promised to “nose round”; he said the best plan would be that the results should “come back” to her in the Reverberator; it might have been gathered from him that “the people over there”--in other words the mass of their compatriots--wouldn’t be unpersuadable that they wanted about a column on Mr. Probert. His researches were to prove none the less fruitless, for in spite of the vivid fact the girl was able to give him as a starting-point, the fact that their new acquaintance had spent his whole life in Paris, the young journalist couldn’t scare up a single person who had even heard of him. He had questioned up and down and all over the place, from the Rue Scribe to the far end of Chaillot, and he knew people who knew others who knew every member of the American colony; that select settled body, which haunted poor Delia’s imagination, glittered and re-echoed there in a hundred tormenting roundabout glimpses. That was where she wanted to “get” Francie, as she said to herself; she wanted to get her right in there. She believed the members of this society to constitute a little kingdom of the blest; and she used to drive through the Avenue Gabriel, the Rue de Marignan and the wide vistas which radiate from the Arch of Triumph and are always changing their names, on purpose to send up wistful glances to the windows--she had learned that all this was the happy quarter--of the enviable but unapproachable colonists. She saw these privileged mortals, as she supposed, in almost every victoria that made a languid lady with a pretty head dash past her, and she had no idea how little honour this theory sometimes did her expatriated countrywomen. Her plan was already made to be on the field again the next winter and take it up seriously, this question of getting Francie in.
When Mr. Flack remarked that young Probert’s net couldn’t be either the rose or anything near it, since they had shed no petal, at any general shake, on the path of the oldest inhabitant, Delia had a flash of inspiration, an intellectual flight that she herself didn’t measure at the time. She asked if that didn’t perhaps prove on the contrary quite the opposite--that they were just THE cream and beyond all others. Wasn’t there a kind of inner, very FAR in, circle, and wouldn’t they be somewhere about the centre of that? George Flack almost quivered at this weird hit as from one of the blind, for he guessed on the spot that Delia Dosson had, as he would have said, got there.
“Why, do you mean one of those families that have worked down so far you can’t find where they went in?”--that was the phrase in which he recognised the truth of the girl’s grope. Delia’s fixed eyes assented, and after a moment of cogitation George Flack broke out: “That’s the kind of family we want to handle!”
“Well, perhaps they won’t want to be handled,” Delia had returned with a still wilder and more remarkable play of inspiration. “You had better find out,” she had added.
The chance to find out might have seemed to present itself after Mr. Probert had walked in that confiding way into the hotel; for his arrival had been followed a quarter of an hour later by that of the representative of the Reverberator. Gaston had liked the way they treated him--though demonstrative it was not artificial. Mr. Dosson had said they had been hoping he would come round again, and Delia had remarked that she supposed he had had quite a journey--Paris was so big; and had urged his acceptance of a glass of wine or a cup of tea. Mentioning that that wasn’t the place where they usually received--she liked to hear herself talk of “receiving”--she led the party up to her white-and-gold saloon, where they should be so much more private: she liked also to hear herself talk of privacy. They sat on the red silk chairs and she hoped Mr. Probert would at least taste a sugared chestnut or a chocolate; and when he declined, pleading the imminence of the dinner-hour, she sighed: “Well, I suppose you’re so used to them--to the best--living so long over here.” The allusion to the dinner-hour led Mr. Dosson to the frank hope that he would go round and dine with them without ceremony; they were expecting a friend--he generally settled it for them--who was coming to take them round.
“And then we’re going to the circus,” Francie said, speaking for the first time.
If she had not spoken before she had done something still more to the purpose; she had removed any shade of doubt that might have lingered in the young man’s spirit as to her charm of line. He was aware that the education of Paris, acting upon a natural aptitude, had opened him much--rendered him perhaps even morbidly sensitive--to impressions of this order; the society of artists, the talk of studios, the attentive study of beautiful works, the sight of a thousand forms of curious research and experiment, had produced in his mind a new sense, the exercise of which was a conscious enjoyment and the supreme gratification of which, on several occasions, had given him as many indelible memories. He had once said to his friend Waterlow: “I don’t know whether it’s a confession of a very poor life, but the most important things that have happened to me in this world have been simply half a dozen visual impressions--things that happened through my eyes.”
“Ah malheureux, you’re lost!” the painter had exclaimed in answer to this, and without even taking the trouble to explain his ominous speech. Gaston Probert however had not been frightened by it, and he continued to be thankful for the sensitive plate that nature had lodged in his brain and that culture had brought to so high a polish. The experience of the eye was doubtless not everything, but it was so much gained, so much saved, in a world in which other treasures were apt to slip through one’s fingers; and above all it had the merit that so many things gave it and that nothing could take it away. He had noted in a moment how straight Francie Dosson gave it; and now, seeing her a second time, he felt her promote it in a degree which made acquaintance with her one of those “important” facts of which he had spoken to Charles Waterlow. It was in the case of such an accident as this that he felt the value of his Parisian education. It made him revel in his modern sense.
It was therefore not directly the prospect of the circus that induced him to accept Mr. Dosson’s invitation; nor was it even the charm exerted by the girl’s appearing, in the few words she uttered, to appeal to him for herself. It was his feeling that on the edge of the glittering ring her type would attach him to her, to her only, and that if he knew it was rare she herself didn’t. He liked to be intensely conscious, but liked others not to be. It seemed to him at this moment, after he had told Mr. Dosson he should be delighted to spend the evening with them, that he was indeed trying hard to measure how it would feel to recover the national tie; he had jumped on the ship, he was pitching away to the west. He had led his sister, Mme. de Brecourt, to expect that he would dine with her--she was having a little party; so that if she could see the people to whom, without a scruple, with a quick sense of refreshment and freedom, he now sacrificed her! He knew who was coming to his sister’s in the Place Beauvau: Mme. d’Outreville and M. de Grospre, old M. Courageau, Mme. de Drives, Lord and Lady Trantum, Mile de Saintonge; but he was fascinated by the idea of the contrast between what he preferred and what he gave up. His life had long been wanting--painfully wanting--in the element of contrast, and here was a chance to bring it in. He saw it come in powerfully with Mr. Flack, after Miss Dosson had proposed they should walk off without their initiator. Her father didn’t favour this suggestion; he said “We want a double good dinner to-day and Mr. Flack has got to order it.” Upon this Delia had asked the visitor if HE couldn’t order--a Frenchman like him; and Francie had interrupted, before he could answer the question, “Well, ARE you a Frenchman? That’s just the point, ain’t it?” Gaston Probert replied that he had no wish but to be a citizen of HER country, and the elder sister asked him if he knew many Americans in Paris. He was obliged to confess he knew almost none, but hastened to add he was eager to go on now he had taken such a charming start.
“Oh we ain’t anything--if you mean that,” Delia said. “If you go on you’ll go on beyond us.”
“We ain’t anything here, my dear, but we’re a good deal at home,” Mr. Dosson jocosely interjected.
“I think we’re very nice anywhere!” Francie exclaimed; upon which Gaston Probert declared that they were as delightful as possible. It was in these amenities that George Flack found them engaged; but there was none the less a certain eagerness in his greeting of the other guest, as if he had it in mind to ask him how soon he could give him half an hour. I hasten to add that with the turn the occasion presently took the correspondent of the Reverberator dropped the conception of making the young man “talk” for the benefit of the subscribers to that journal. They all went out together, and the impulse to pick up something, usually so irresistible in George Flack’s mind, suffered an odd check. He found himself wanting to handle his fellow visitor in a sense other than the professional. Mr. Probert talked very little to Francie, but though Mr. Flack didn’t know that on a first occasion he would have thought this aggressive, even rather brutal, he knew it was for Francie, and Francie alone, that the fifth member of the party was there. He said to himself suddenly and in perfect sincerity that it was a mean class anyway, the people for whom their own country wasn’t good enough. He didn’t go so far, however, when they were seated at the admirable establishment of M. Durand in the Place de la Madeleine, as to order a bad dinner to spite his competitor; nor did he, to spoil this gentleman’s amusement, take uncomfortable seats at the pretty circus in the Champs Elysees to which, at half-past eight o’clock, the company was conveyed--it was a drive of but five minutes--in a couple of cabs. The occasion therefore was superficially smooth, and he could see that the sense of being disagreeable to an American newspaper-man was not needed to make his nondescript rival enjoy it. That gentleman did indeed hate his crude accent and vulgar laugh and above all the lamblike submission to him of their friends. Mr. Flack was acute enough for an important observation: he cherished it and promised himself to bring it to the notice of his clinging charges. Their imperturbable guest professed a great desire to be of service to the young ladies--to do what would help them to be happy in Paris; but he gave no hint of the intention that would contribute most to such a result, the bringing them in contact with the other members, especially with the female members, of his family. George Flack knew nothing about the matter, but he required for purposes of argument that Mr. Probert’s family should have female members, and it was lucky for him that his assumption was just. He grasped in advance the effect with which he should impress it on Francie and Delia--but notably on Delia, who would then herself impress it on Francie--that it would be time for their French friend to talk when he had brought his mother round. BUT HE NEVER WOULD--they might bet their pile on that! He never did, in the strange sequel--having, poor young man, no mother to bring. Moreover he was quite mum--as Delia phrased it to herself--about Mme. de Brecourt and Mme. de Cliche: such, Miss Dosson learned from Charles Waterlow, were the names of his two sisters who had houses in Paris--gleaning at the same time the information that one of these ladies was a marquise and the other a comtesse. She was less exasperated by their non-appearance than Mr. Flack had hoped, and it didn’t prevent an excursion to dine at Saint-Germain a week after the evening spent at the circus, which included both the new admirers. It also as a matter of course included Mr. Flack, for though the party had been proposed in the first instance by Charles Waterlow, who wished to multiply opportunities for studying his future sitter, Mr. Dosson had characteristically constituted himself host and administrator, with the young journalist as his deputy. He liked to invite people and to pay for them, and disliked to be invited and paid for. He was never inwardly content on any occasion unless a great deal of money was spent, and he could be sure enough of the large amount only when he himself spent it. He was too simple for conceit or for pride of purse, but always felt any arrangements shabby and sneaking as to which the expense hadn’t been referred to him. He never named what he paid for anything. Also Delia had made him understand that if they should go to Saint-Germain as guests of the artist and his friend Mr. Flack wouldn’t be of the company: she was sure those gentlemen wouldn’t rope HIM in. In fact she was too sure, for, though enjoying him not at all, Charles Waterlow would on this occasion have made a point of expressing by an act of courtesy his sense of obligation to a man who had brought him such a subject. Delia’s hint however was all-sufficient for her father; he would have thought it a gross breach of friendly loyalty to take part in a festival not graced by Mr. Flack’s presence. His idea of loyalty was that he should scarcely smoke a cigar unless his friend was there to take another, and he felt rather mean if he went round alone to get shaved. As regards Saint-Germain he took over the project while George Flack telegraphed for a table on the terrace at the Pavilion Henri Quatre. Mr. Dosson had by this time learned to trust the European manager of the Reverberator to spend his money almost as he himself would.
IV
Delia had broken out the evening they took Mr. Probert to the circus; she had apostrophised Francie as they each sat in a red-damask chair after ascending to their apartments. They had bade their companions farewell at the door of the hotel and the two gentlemen had walked off in different directions. But upstairs they had instinctively not separated; they dropped into the first places and sat looking at each other and at the highly-decorated lamps that burned night after night in their empty saloon. “Well, I want to know when you’re going to stop,” Delia said to her sister, speaking as if this remark were a continuation, which it was not, of something they had lately been saying.
“Stop what?” asked Francie, reaching forward for a marron.
“Stop carrying-on the way you do--with Mr. Flack.”
Francie stared while she consumed her marron; then she replied in her small flat patient voice: “Why, Delia Dosson, how can you be so foolish?”
“Father, I wish you’d speak to her. Francie, I ain’t foolish,” Delia submitted.
“What do you want me to say to her?” Mr. Dosson enquired. “I guess I’ve said about all I know.”
“Well, that’s in fun. I want you to speak to her in earnest.”
“I guess there’s no one in earnest but you,” Francie remarked. “These ain’t so good as the last.”
“NO, and there won’t be if you don’t look out. There’s something you can do if you’ll just keep quiet. If you can’t tell difference of style, well, I can!” Delia cried.
“What’s the difference of style?” asked Mr. Dosson. But before this question could be answered Francie protested against the charge of “carrying-on.” Quiet? Wasn’t she as quiet as a Quaker meeting? Delia replied that a girl wasn’t quiet so long as she didn’t keep others so; and she wanted to know what her sister proposed to do about Mr. Flack. “Why don’t you take him and let Francie take the other?” Mr. Dosson continued.
“That’s just what I’m after--to make her take the other,” said his elder daughter.
“Take him--how do you mean?” Francie returned.
“Oh you know how.”
“Yes, I guess you know how!” Mr. Dosson laughed with an absence of prejudice that might have been deplored in a parent.
“Do you want to stay in Europe or not? that’s what _I_ want to know,” Delia pursued to her sister. “If you want to go bang home you’re taking the right way to do it.”
“What has that got to do with it?” Mr. Dosson audibly wondered.
“Should you like so much to reside at that place--where is it?--where his paper’s published? That’s where you’ll have to pull up sooner or later,” Delia declaimed.
“Do you want to stay right here in Europe, father?” Francie said with her small sweet weariness.
“It depends on what you mean by staying right here. I want to go right home SOME time.”
“Well then you’ve got to go without Mr. Probert,” Delia made answer with decision. “If you think he wants to live over there--”
“Why Delia, he wants dreadfully to go--he told me so himself,” Francie argued with passionless pauses.
“Yes, and when he gets there he’ll want to come back. I thought you were so much interested in Paris.”
“My poor child, I AM interested!” smiled Francie. “Ain’t I interested, father?”
“Well, I don’t know how you could act differently to show it.”
“Well, I do then,” said Delia. “And if you don’t make Mr. Flack understand _I_ will.”
“Oh I guess he understands--he’s so bright,” Francie vaguely pleaded.
“Yes, I guess he does--he IS bright,” said Mr. Dosson. “Good-night, chickens,” he added; and wandered off to a couch of untroubled repose.
His daughters sat up half an hour later, but not by the wish of the younger girl. She was always passive, however, always docile when Delia was, as she said, on the war-path, and though she had none of her sister’s insistence she was courageous in suffering. She thought Delia whipped her up too much, but there was that in her which would have prevented her ever running away. She could smile and smile for an hour without irritation, making even pacific answers, though all the while it hurt her to be heavily exhorted, much as it would have done to be violently pushed. She knew Delia loved her--not loving herself meanwhile a bit--as no one else in the world probably ever would; but there was something funny in such plans for her--plans of ambition which could only involve a “fuss.” The real answer to anything, to everything her sister might say at these hours of urgency was: “Oh if you want to make out that people are thinking of me or that they ever will, you ought to remember that no one can possibly think of me half as much as you do. Therefore if there’s to be any comfort for either of us we had both much better just go on as we are.” She didn’t however on this occasion meet her constant companion with that syllogism, because a formidable force seemed to lurk in the great contention that the star of matrimony for the American girl was now shining in the east--in England and France and Italy. They had only to look round anywhere to see it: what did they hear of every day in the week but of the engagement of somebody no better than they to some count or some lord? Delia dwelt on the evident truth that it was in that vast vague section of the globe to which she never alluded save as “over here” that the American girl was now called upon to play, under providence, her part. When Francie made the point that Mr. Probert was neither a count nor a lord her sister rejoined that she didn’t care whether he was or not. To this Francie replied that she herself didn’t care, but that Delia ought to for consistency.
“Well, he’s a prince compared with Mr. Flack,” Delia declared.
“He hasn’t the same ability; not half.”
“He has the ability to have three sisters who are just the sort of people I want you to know.”
“What good will they do me?” Francie asked. “They’ll hate me. Before they could turn round I should do something--in perfect innocence--that they’d think monstrous.”
“Well, what would that matter if HE liked you?”
“Oh but he wouldn’t then! He’d hate me too.”
“Then all you’ve got to do is not to do it,” Delia concluded.
“Oh but I should--every time,” her sister went on.
Delia looked at her a moment. “What ARE you talking about?”
“Yes, what am I? It’s disgusting!” And Francie sprang up.
“I’m sorry you have such thoughts,” said Delia sententiously.
“It’s disgusting to talk about a gentleman--and his sisters and his society and everything else--before he has scarcely looked at you.”
“It’s disgusting if he isn’t just dying; but it isn’t if he is.”
“Well, I’ll make him skip!” Francie went on with a sudden approach to sharpness.
“Oh you’re worse than father!” her sister cried, giving her a push as they went to bed.
They reached Saint-Germain with their companions nearly an hour before the time it had been agreed they had best dine; the purpose of this being to enable them to enjoy with what remained of daylight a stroll on the celebrated terrace and a study of the magnificent view. The evening was splendid and the atmosphere favourable to these impressions; the grass was vivid on the broad walk beside the parapet, the park and forest were fresh and leafy and the prettiest golden light hung over the curving Seine and the far-spreading city. The hill which forms the terrace stretched down among the vineyards, with the poles delicate yet in their bareness, to the river, and the prospect was spotted here and there with the red legs of the little sauntering soldiers of the garrison. How it came, after Delia’s warning in regard to her carrying-on--especially as she hadn’t failed to feel the weight of her sister’s wisdom--Francie couldn’t have told herself: certain it is that before ten minutes had elapsed she became aware, first, that the evening wouldn’t pass without Mr. Flack’s taking in some way, and for a certain time, peculiar possession of her; and then that he was already doing so, that he had drawn her away from the others, who were stopping behind to appreciate the view, that he made her walk faster, and that he had ended by interposing such a distance that she was practically alone with him. This was what he wanted, but it was not all; she saw he now wanted a great many other things. The large perspective of the terrace stretched away before them--Mr. Probert had said it was in the grand style--and he was determined to make her walk to the end. She felt sorry for his ideas--she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; they were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to protest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free bold spirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague soft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who had not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked to be let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned against the parapet, that he walked too fast; and she looked back at their companions, whom she expected to see, under pressure from Delia, following at the highest speed. But they were not following; they still stood together there, only looking, attentively enough, at the couple who had left them. Delia would wave a parasol, beckon her back, send Mr. Waterlow to bring her; Francie invoked from one moment to another some such appeal as that. But no appeal came; none at least but the odd spectacle, presently, of an agitation of the group, which, evidently under Delia’s direction, turned round and retraced its steps. Francie guessed in a moment what was meant by that; it was the most definite signal her sister could have given. It made her feel that Delia counted on her, but to such a different end, just as poor Mr. Flack did, just as Delia wished to persuade her that Mr. Probert did. The girl gave a sigh, looking up with troubled eyes at her companion and at the figure of herself as the subject of contending policies. Such a thankless bored evasive little subject as she felt herself! What Delia had said in turning away was--“Yes, I’m watching you, and I depend on you to finish him up. Stay there with him, go off with him--I’ll allow you half an hour if necessary: only settle him once for all. It’s very kind of me to give you this chance, and in return for it I expect you to be able to tell me this evening that he has his answer. Shut him up!”
Francie didn’t in the least dislike Mr. Flack. Interested as I am in presenting her favourably to the reader I am yet obliged as a veracious historian to admit that she believed him as “bright” as her father had originally pronounced him and as any young man she was likely to meet. She had no other measure for distinction in young men but their brightness; she had never been present at any imputation of ability or power that this term didn’t seem to cover. In many a girl so great a kindness might have been fanned to something of a flame by the breath of close criticism. I probably exaggerate little the perversity of pretty girls in saying that our young woman might at this moment have answered her sister with: “No, I wasn’t in love with him, but somehow, since you’re so very disgusted, I foresee that I shall be if he presses me.” It is doubtless difficult to say more for Francie’s simplicity of character than that she felt no need of encouraging Mr. Flack in order to prove to herself that she wasn’t bullied. She didn’t care whether she were bullied or not, and she was perfectly capable of letting Delia believe her to have carried mildness to the point of giving up a man she had a secret sentiment for in order to oblige a relative who fairly brooded with devotion. She wasn’t clear herself as to whether it mightn’t be so; her pride, what she had of it, lay in an undistributed inert form quite at the bottom of her heart, and she had never yet thought of a dignified theory to cover her want of uppishness. She felt as she looked up at Mr. Flack that she didn’t care even if he should think she sacrificed him to a childish docility. His bright eyes were hard, as if he could almost guess how cynical she was, and she turned her own again toward her retreating companions. “They’re going to dinner; we oughtn’t to be dawdling here,” she said.
“Well, if they’re going to dinner they’ll have to eat the napkins. I ordered it and I know when it’ll be ready,” George Flack answered. “Besides, they’re not going to dinner, they’re going to walk in the park. Don’t you worry, we shan’t lose them. I wish we could!” the young man added in his boldest gayest manner.
“You wish we could?”
“I should like to feel you just under my particular protection and no other.”
“Well, I don’t know what the dangers are,” said Francie, setting herself in motion again. She went after the others, but at the end of a few steps he stopped her again.
“You won’t have confidence. I wish you’d believe what I tell you.”
“You haven’t told me anything.” And she turned her back to him, looking away at the splendid view. “I do love the scenery,” she added in a moment.
“Well, leave it alone a little--it won’t run away! I want to tell you something about myself, if I could flatter myself you’d take any interest in it.” He had thrust the raised point of his cane into the low wall of the terrace, and he leaned on the knob, screwing the other end gently round with both hands.
“I’ll take an interest if I can understand,” said Francie.
“You can understand right enough if you’ll try. I got to-day some news from America,” he went on, “that I like awfully. The Reverberator has taken a jump.”
This was not what Francie had expected, but it was better. “Taken a jump?”
“It has gone straight up. It’s in the second hundred thousand.”
“Hundred thousand dollars?” said Francie.
“No, Miss Francie, copies. That’s the circulation. But the dollars are footing up too.”
“And do they all come to you?”
“Precious few of them! I wish they did. It’s a sweet property.”
“Then it isn’t yours?” she asked, turning round to him. It was an impulse of sympathy that made her look at him now, for she already knew how much he had the success of his newspaper at heart. He had once told her he loved the Reverberator as he had loved his first jack-knife.
“Mine? You don’t mean to say you suppose I own it!” George Flack shouted. The light projected upon her innocence by his tone was so strong that the girl blushed, and he went on more tenderly: “It’s a pretty sight, the way you and your sister take that sort of thing for granted. Do you think property grows on you like a moustache? Well, it seems as if it had, on your father. If I owned the Reverberator I wouldn’t be stumping round here; I’d give my attention to another branch of the business. That is I’d give my attention to all, but I wouldn’t go round with the delivery-cart. Still, I’m going to capture the blamed thing, and I want you to help me,” the young man went on; “that’s just what I wanted to speak to you about. It’s a big proposition as it stands, but I mean to make it bigger: the most universal society-paper the world has seen. That’s where the future lies, and the man who sees it first is the man who’ll make his pile. It’s a field for enlightened enterprise that hasn’t yet begun to be worked.” He continued, glowing as if on a sudden with his idea, and one of his knowing eyes half-closed itself for an emphasis habitual with him when he talked consecutively. The effect of this would have been droll to a listener, the note of the prospectus mingling with the question of his more intimate hope. But it was not droll to Francie; she only thought it, or supposed it, a proof of the way Mr. Flack saw everything on a stupendous scale. “There are ten thousand things to do that haven’t been done, and I’m going to do them. The society-news of every quarter of the globe, furnished by the prominent members themselves--oh THEY can be fixed, you’ll see!--from day to day and from hour to hour and served up hot at every breakfast-table in the United States: that’s what the American people want and that’s what the American people are going to have. I wouldn’t say it to every one, but I don’t mind telling you, that I consider my guess as good as the next man’s on what’s going to be required in future over there. I’m going for the inside view, the choice bits, the chronique intime, as they say here; what the people want’s just what ain’t told, and I’m going to tell it. Oh they’re bound to have the plums! That’s about played out, anyway, the idea of sticking up a sign of ‘private’ and ‘hands off’ and ‘no thoroughfare’ and thinking you can keep the place to yourself. You ain’t going to be able any longer to monopolise any fact of general interest, and it ain’t going to be right you should; it ain’t going to continue to be possible to keep out anywhere the light of the Press. Now what I’m going to do is to set up the biggest lamp yet made and make it shine all over the place. We’ll see who’s private then, and whose hands are off, and who’ll frustrate the People--the People THAT WANTS TO KNOW. That’s a sign of the American people that they DO want to know, and it’s the sign of George P. Flack,” the young man pursued with a rising spirit, “that he’s going to help them. But I’ll make the touchy folks crowd in THEMSELVES with their information, and as I tell you, Miss Francie, it’s a job in which you can give me a lovely lift.”
“Well, I don’t see how,” said Francie candidly. “I haven’t got any choice bits or any facts of general interest.” She spoke gaily because she was relieved; she thought she had in truth a glimpse of what he wanted of her. It was something better than she had feared. Since he didn’t own the great newspaper--her view of such possibilities was of the dimmest--he desired to possess himself of it, and she sufficiently grasped the idea that money was needed for that. She further seemed to make out that he presented himself to her, that he hovered about her and pressed on her, as moneyless, and that this brought them round by a vague but comfortable transition to a helpful remembrance that her father was not. The remaining divination, silently achieved, was quick and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum required and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn’t for the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd had she meditated on it. There was nothing simpler to Francie than the idea of putting her hand into her father’s pocket, and she felt that even Delia would be glad to appease their persecutor by this casual gesture. I must add unfortunately that her alarm came back to her from his look as he replied: “Do you mean to say you don’t know, after all I’ve done?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’ve done.”
“Haven’t I tried--all I know--to make you like me?”
“Oh dear, I do like you!” cried Francie; “but how will that help you?”
“It will help me if you’ll understand how I love you.”
“Well, I won’t understand!” replied the girl as she walked off.
He followed her; they went on together in silence and then he said: “Do you mean to say you haven’t found that out?”
“Oh I don’t find things out--I ain’t an editor!” Francie gaily quavered.
“You draw me out and then you gibe at me,” Mr. Flack returned.
“I didn’t draw you out. Why, couldn’t you see me just strain to get away?”
“Don’t you sympathise then with my ideas?”
“Of course I do, Mr. Flack; I think your ideas splendid,” said Francie, who hadn’t in the least taken them in.
“Well then why won’t you work with me? Your affection, your brightness, your faith--to say nothing of your matchless beauty--would be everything to me.”
“I’m very sorry, but I can’t, I can’t!” she protested.
“You could if you would, quick enough.”
“Well then I won’t!” And as soon as these words were spoken, as if to mitigate something of their asperity, she made her other point. “You must remember that I never said I would--nor anything like it; not one little wee mite. I thought you just wanted me to speak to poppa.”
“Of course I supposed you’d do that,” he allowed.
“I mean about your paper.”
“About my paper?”
“So as he could give you the money--to do what you want.”
“Lord, you’re too sweet!” George Flack cried with an illumined stare. “Do you suppose I’d ever touch a cent of your father’s money?”--a speech not rankly hypocritical, inasmuch as the young man, who made his own discriminations, had never been guilty, and proposed to himself never to be, of the indelicacy of tugging at his potential father-in-law’s purse-strings with his own hand. He had talked to Mr. Dosson by the hour about his master-plan of making the touchy folks themselves fall into line, but had never dreamed this man would subsidise him as an interesting struggler. The only character in which he could expect it would be that of Francie’s accepted suitor, and then the liberality would have Francie and not himself for its object. This reasoning naturally didn’t lessen his impatience to take on the happy character, so that his love of his profession and his appreciation of the girl at his side now ached together in his breast with the same disappointment. She saw that her words had touched him like a lash; they made him for a moment flush to his eyes. This caused her own colour to rise--she could scarcely have said why--and she hurried along again. He kept close to her; he argued with her; he besought her to think it over, assuring her he had brains, heart and material proofs of a college education. To this she replied that if he didn’t leave her alone she should cry--and how would he like that, to bring her back in such a state to the others? He answered “Damn the others!” but it didn’t help his case, and at last he broke out: “Will you just tell me this, then--is it because you’ve promised Miss Delia?” Francie returned that she hadn’t promised Miss Delia anything, and her companion went on: “Of course I know what she has got in her head: she wants to get you into the smart set--the grand monde, as they call it here; but I didn’t suppose you’d let her fix your life for you. You were very different before HE turned up.”
“She never fixed anything for me. I haven’t got any life and I don’t want to have any,” Francie veraciously pleaded. “And I don’t know who you’re talking about either!”
“The man without a country. HE’LL pass you in--that’s what your sister wants.”
“You oughtn’t to abuse him, because it was you that presented him,” the girl pronounced.
“I never presented him! I’d like to kick him.”
“We should never have seen him if it hadn’t been for you,” she maintained.
“That’s a fact, but it doesn’t make me love him any better. He’s the poorest kind there is.”
“I don’t care anything about his kind.”
“That’s a pity if you’re going to marry him right off! How could I know that when I took you up there?”
“Good-bye, Mr. Flack,” said Francie, trying to gain ground from him.
This attempt was of course vain, and after a moment he resumed: “Will you keep me as a friend?”
“Why Mr. Flack, OF COURSE I will!” cried the easy creature.
“All right,” he replied; and they presently overtook their companions.
V
Gaston Probert made his plan, confiding it only to his friend Waterlow whose help indeed he needed to carry it out. These revelations cost him something, for the ornament of the merciless school, as it might have been called, found his predicament amusing and made no scruple of showing it. Gaston was too much in love, however, to be upset by a bad joke or two. This fact is the more noteworthy as he knew that Waterlow scoffed at him for a purpose--had a view of the good to be done him by throwing him on the defensive. The French tradition, or a grimacing ghost of it, was in Waterlow’s “manner,” but it had not made its mark on his view of the relations of a young man of spirit with parents and pastors. He mixed his colours, as might have been said, with the general sense of France, but his early American immunities and serenities could still swell his sail in any “vital” discussion with a friend in whose life the principle of authority played so large a part. He accused Probert of being afraid of his sisters, which was an effective way--and he knew it--of alluding to the rigidity of the conception of the family among people who had adopted and had even to Waterlow’s sense, as the phrase is, improved upon the “Latin” ideal. That did injustice--and this the artist also knew--to the delicate nature of the bond uniting the different members of the house of Probert, who were each for all and all for each. Family feeling among them was not a tyranny but a religion, and in regard to Mesdames de Brecourt, de Cliche and de Douves what Gaston most feared was that he might seem to them not to love them enough. None the less Charles Waterlow, who thought he had charming parts, held that the best way hadn’t been taken to make a man of him, and the zeal with which the painter appeared to have proposed to repair that mistake was founded in esteem, though it sometimes flowered in freedom. Waterlow combined in odd fashion many of the forms of the Parisian studio with the moral and social ideas of Brooklyn Long Island, where the seeds of his strictness had been sown.
Gaston Probert desired nothing better than to be a man; what worried him--and it is perhaps a proof that his instinct was gravely at fault--was a certain vagueness as to the constituents of that character. He should approximate more nearly, as it seemed to him, to the brute were he to sacrifice in such an effort the decencies and pieties--holy things all of them--in which he had been reared. It was very well for Waterlow to say that to be a “real” man it was necessary to be a little of a brute; his friend was willing, in theory, to assent even to that. The difficulty was in application, in practice--as to which the painter declared that all would be easy if such account hadn’t to be taken of the marquise, the comtesse and--what was the other one?--the princess. These young amenities were exchanged between the pair--while Gaston explained, almost as eagerly as if he were scoring a point, that the other one was only a baronne--during that brief journey to Spain of which mention has already been made, during the later weeks of the summer, after their return (the friends then spent a fortnight together on the coast of Brittany), and above all during the autumn, when they were settled in Paris for the winter, when Mr. Dosson had reappeared, according to the engagement with his daughters, when the sittings for the portrait had multiplied (the painter was unscrupulous as to the number he demanded), and the work itself, born under a happy star, seemed to take more and more the turn of a great thing. It was at Granada that Gaston had really broken out; there, one balmy night, he had dropped into his comrade’s ear that he would marry Francina Dosson or would never marry at all. The declaration was the more striking as it had come after such an interval; many days had elapsed since their separation from the young lady and many new and beautiful objects appealed to them. It appeared that the smitten youth had been thinking of her all the while, and he let his friend know that it was the dinner at Saint-Germain that had finished him. What she had been there Waterlow himself had seen: he wouldn’t controvert the lucid proposition that she showed a “cutting” equal to any Greek gem.
In November, in Paris--it was months and weeks before the artist began to please himself--Gaston came often to the Avenue de Villiers toward the end of a sitting and, till it was finished, not to disturb the lovely model, cultivated conversation with the elder sister: the representative of the Proberts was capable of that. Delia was always there of course, but Mr. Dosson had not once turned up and the newspaper-man happily appeared to have faded from view. The new aspirant learned in fact from Miss Dosson that a crisis in the history of his journal had recalled Mr. Flack to the seat of that publication. When the young ladies had gone--and when he didn’t go with them; he accompanied them not rarely--the visitor was almost lyrical in his appreciation of his friend’s work; he had no jealousy of the act of appropriation that rendered possible in its turn such an act of handing over, of which the canvas constituted the field. He was sure Waterlow painted the girl too well to be in love with her and that if he himself could have dealt with her in that fashion he mightn’t have wanted to deal in any other. She bloomed there on the easel with all the purity of life, and the artist had caught the very secret of her beauty. It was exactly the way in which her lover would have chosen to see her shown, and yet it had required a perfectly independent hand. Gaston mused on this mystery and somehow felt proud of the picture and responsible for it, though it was no more his property as yet than the young lady herself. When in December he put before Waterlow his plan of campaign the latter made a comment. “I’ll do anything in the world you like--anything you think will help you--but it passes me, my dear fellow, why in the world you don’t go to them and say: ‘I’ve seen a girl who is as good as cake and pretty as fire, she exactly suits me, I’ve taken time to think of it and I know what I want; therefore I propose to make her my wife. If you happen to like her so much the better; if you don’t be so good as to keep it to yourselves.’ That’s much the most excellent way. Why in the name of goodness all these mysteries and machinations?”
“Oh you don’t understand, you don’t understand!” sighed Gaston, who had never pulled so long a face. “One can’t break with one’s traditions in an hour, especially when there’s so much in them that one likes. I shan’t love her more if they like her, but I shall love THEM more, and I care about that. You talk as a man who has nothing to consider. I’ve everything to consider--and I’m glad I have. My pleasure in marrying her will be double if my father and my sisters accept her, and I shall greatly enjoy working out the business of bringing them round.”
There were moments when Charles Waterlow resented the very vocabulary of his friend; he hated to hear a man talk about the “acceptance” by any one but himself of the woman he loved. One’s own acceptance--of one’s bliss--in such a case ended the matter, and the effort to bring round those who gave her the cold shoulder was scarcely consistent with the highest spirit. Young Probert explained that of course he felt his relatives would only have to know Francina to like her, to delight in her, yet also that to know her they would first have to make her acquaintance. This was the delicate point, for social commerce with such malheureux as Mr. Dosson and Delia was not in the least in their usual line and it was impossible to disconnect the poor girl from her appendages. Therefore the whole question must be approached by an oblique movement--it would never do to march straight up. The wedge should have a narrow end, which Gaston now made sure he had found. His sister Susan was another name for this subtle engine; he would break her in first and she would help him to break in the others. She was his favourite relation, his intimate friend--the most modern, the most Parisian and inflammable member of the family. She had no suite dans les idees, but she had perceptions, had imagination and humour, and was capable of generosity, of enthusiasm and even of blind infatuation. She had in fact taken two or three plunges of her own and ought to allow for those of others. She wouldn’t like the Dossons superficially any better than his father or than Margaret or than Jane--he called these ladies by their English names, but for themselves, their husbands, their friends and each other they were Suzanne, Marguerite and Jeanne; but there was a good chance of his gaining her to his side. She was as fond of beauty and of the arts as he--this was one of their bonds of union. She appreciated highly Charles Waterlow’s talent and there had been talk of her deciding to sit to him. It was true her husband viewed the project with so much colder an eye that it had not been carried out.
According to Gaston’s plan she was to come to the Avenue de Villiers to see what the artist had done for Miss Francie; her brother was to have worked upon her in advance by his careful rhapsodies, bearing wholly on the achievement itself, the dazzling example of Waterlow’s powers, and not on the young lady, whom he was not to let her know at first that he had so much as seen. Just at the last, just before her visit, he was to mention to her that he had met the girl--at the studio--and that she was as remarkable in her way as the picture. Seeing the picture and hearing this, Mme. de Brecourt, as a disinterested lover of charming impressions, and above all as an easy prey at all times to a rabid curiosity, would express a desire also to enjoy a sight of so rare a creature; on which Waterlow might pronounce it all arrangeable if she would but come in some day when Miss Francie should sit. He would give her two or three dates and Gaston would see that she didn’t let the opportunity pass. She would return alone--this time he wouldn’t go with her--and she would be as taken as could be hoped or needed. Everything much depended on that, but it couldn’t fail. The girl would have to take her, but the girl |
7529-0 | could be trusted, especially if she didn’t know who the demonstrative French lady was, with her fine plain face, her hair so blond as to be nearly white, her vividly red lips and protuberant light-coloured eyes. Their host was to do no introducing and to reveal the visitor’s identity only after she had gone. That was a condition indeed this participant grumbled at; he called the whole business an odious comedy, though his friend knew that if he undertook it he would acquit himself honourably. After Mme. de Brecourt had been captivated--the question of how Francie would be affected received in advance no consideration--her brother would throw off the mask and convince her that she must now work with him. Another meeting would be managed for her with the girl--in which each would appear in her proper character; and in short the plot would thicken.
Gaston’s forecast of his difficulties showed how finely he could analyse; but that was not rare enough in any French connexion to make his friend stare. He brought Suzanne de Brecourt, she was enchanted with the portrait of the little American, and the rest of the drama began to follow in its order. Mme. de Brecourt raved to Waterlow’s face--she had no opinions behind people’s backs--about his mastery of his craft; she could dispose the floral tributes of homage with a hand of practice all her own. She was the reverse of egotistic and never spoke of herself; her success in life sprang from a much wiser adoption of pronouns. Waterlow, who liked her and had long wanted to paint her ugliness--it was a gold-mine of charm--had two opinions about her: one of which was that she knew a hundred times less than she thought, and even than her brother thought, of what she talked about; and the other that she was after all not such a humbug as she seemed. She passed in her family for a rank radical, a bold Bohemian; she picked up expressions out of newspapers and at the petits theatres, but her hands and feet were celebrated, and her behaviour was not. That of her sisters, as well, had never been disastrously exposed.
“But she must be charming, your young lady,” she said to Gaston while she turned her head this way and that as she stood before Francie’s image. “She’s a little Renaissance statuette cast in silver, something of Jean Goujon or Germain Pilon.” The young men exchanged a glance, for this struck them as the happiest comparison, and Gaston replied in a detached way that the girl was well worth seeing.
He went in to have a cup of tea with his sister on the day he knew she would have paid her second visit to the studio, and the first words she greeted him with were: “But she’s admirable--votre petite--admirable, admirable!” There was a lady calling in the Place Beauvau at the moment--old Mme. d’Outreville--who naturally asked for news of the object of such enthusiasm. Gaston suffered Susan to answer all questions and was attentive to her account of the new beauty. She described his young friend almost as well as he would have done, from the point of view of her type, her graces, her plastic value, using various technical and critical terms to which the old lady listened in silence, solemnly, rather coldly, as if she thought such talk much of a galimatias: she belonged to the old-fashioned school and held a pretty person sufficiently catalogued when it had been said she had a dazzling complexion or the finest eyes in the world.
“Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette merveille?” she enquired; to which Mme. de Brecourt made answer that it was a little American her brother had somewhere dug up. “And what do you propose to do with it, may one ask?” Mme. d’Outreville demanded, looking at Gaston with an eye that seemed to read his secret and that brought him for half a minute to the point of breaking out: “I propose to marry it--there!” But he contained himself, only pleading for the present his wish to ascertain the uses to which she was adapted; meanwhile, he added, there was nothing he so much liked as to look at her, in the measure in which she would allow him. “Ah that may take you far!” their visitor cried as she got up to go; and the young man glanced at his sister to see if she too were ironic. But she seemed almost awkwardly free from alarm; if she had been suspicious it would have been easier to make his confession. When he came back from accompanying their old friend Outreville to her carriage he asked her if Waterlow’s charming sitter had known who she was and if she had been frightened. Mme. de Brecourt stared; she evidently thought that kind of sensibility implied an initiation--and into dangers--which a little American accidentally encountered couldn’t possibly have. “Why should she be frightened? She wouldn’t be even if she had known who I was; much less therefore when I was nothing for her.”
“Oh you weren’t nothing for her!” the brooding youth declared; and when his sister rejoined that he was trop aimable he brought out his lurking fact. He had seen the lovely creature more often than he had mentioned; he had particularly wished that SHE should see her. Now he wanted his father and Jane and Margaret to do the same, and above all he wanted them to like her even as she, Susan, liked her. He was delighted she had been taken--he had been so taken himself. Mme. de Brecourt protested that she had reserved her independence of judgement, and he answered that if she thought Miss Dosson repulsive he might have expressed it in another way. When she begged him to tell her what he was talking about and what he wanted them all to do with the child he said: “I want you to treat her kindly, tenderly, for such as you see her I’m thinking of bringing her into the family.”
“Mercy on us--you haven’t proposed for her?” cried Mme. de Brecourt.
“No, but I’ve sounded her sister as to THEIR dispositions, and she tells me that if I present myself there will be no difficulty.”
“Her sister?--the awful little woman with the big head?”
“Her head’s rather out of drawing, but it isn’t a part of the affair. She’s very inoffensive; she would be devoted to me.”
“For heaven’s sake then keep quiet. She’s as common as a dressmaker’s bill.”
“Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie. You couldn’t find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie’s exquisite, and now you’ll be so good as to stick to that. Come--feel it all; since you HAVE such a free mind.”
“Do you call her by her little name like that?” Mme. de Brecourt asked, giving him another cup of tea.
“Only to you. She’s perfectly simple. It’s impossible to imagine anything better. And think of the delight of having that charming object before one’s eyes--always, always! It makes a different look-out for life.”
Mme. Brecourt’s lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had carried a pair of horns. “My poor child, what are you thinking of? You can’t pick up a wife like that--the first little American that comes along. You know I hoped you wouldn’t marry at all--what a pity I think it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss--what’s her name?--Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won’t. We can’t DO that sort of thing!”
“I shall marry her then,” the young man returned, “without your leave given!”
“Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval--you’ve always had it, you’re used to it and depend on it, it’s a part of your life--you’ll hate her like poison at the end of a month.”
“I don’t care then. I shall have always had my month.”
“And she--poor thing?”
“Poor thing exactly! You’ll begin to pity her, and that will make you cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you find out how adorable she is. Then you’ll like her, then you’ll love her, then you’ll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right thing for ME, I’ve had, and we shall all be happy together again.”
“But how can you possibly know, with such people,” Mme. de Brecourt demanded, “what you’ve got hold of?”
“By having a feeling for what’s really, what’s delicately good and charming. You pretend to have it, and yet in such a case as this you try to be stupid. Give that up; you might as well first as last, for the girl’s an exquisite fact, she’ll PREVAIL, and it will be better to accept her than to let her accept you.”
Mme. de Brecourt asked him if Miss Dosson had a fortune, and he said he knew nothing about that. Her father certainly must be rich, but he didn’t mean to ask for a penny with her. American fortunes moreover were the last things to count upon; a truth of which they had seen too many examples. To this his sister had replied: “Papa will never listen to that.”
“Listen to what?”
“To your not finding out, to your not asking for settlements--comme cela se fait.”
“Pardon me, papa will find out for himself; and he’ll know perfectly whether to ask or whether to leave it alone. That’s the sort of thing he does know. And he knows quite as well that I’m very difficult to place.”
“You’ll be difficult, my dear, if we lose you,” Mme. de Brecourt laughed, “to replace!”
“Always at any rate to find a wife for. I’m neither fish nor flesh. I’ve no country, no career, no future; I offer nothing; I bring nothing. What position under the sun do I confer? There’s a fatuity in our talking as if we could make grand terms. You and the others are well enough: qui prend mari prend pays, and you’ve names about which your husbands take a great stand. But papa and I--I ask you!”
“As a family nous sommes tres-bien,” said Mme. de Brecourt. “You know what we are--it doesn’t need any explanation. We’re as good as anything there is and have always been thought so. You might do anything you like.”
“Well, I shall never like to marry--when it comes to that--a Frenchwoman.”
“Thank you, my dear”--and Mme. de Brecourt tossed her head.
“No sister of mine’s really French,” returned the young man.
“No brother of mine’s really mad. Marry whomever you like,” Susan went on; “only let her be the best of her kind. Let her be at least a gentlewoman. Trust me, I’ve studied life. That’s the only thing that’s safe.”
“Francie’s the equal of the first lady in the land.”
“With that sister--with that hat? Never--never!”
“What’s the matter with her hat?”
“The sister’s told a story. It was a document--it described them, it classed them. And such a PATOIS as they speak!”
“My dear, her English is quite as good as yours. You don’t even know how bad yours is,” the young man went on with assurance.
“Well, I don’t say ‘Parus’ and I never asked an Englishman to marry me. You know what our feelings are,” his companion as ardently pursued; “our convictions, our susceptibilities. We may be wrong, we may be hollow, we may be pretentious, we mayn’t be able to say on what it all rests; but there we are, and the fact’s insurmountable. It’s simply impossible for us to live with vulgar people. It’s a defect, no doubt; it’s an immense inconvenience, and in the days we live in it’s sadly against one’s interest. But we’re made like that and we must understand ourselves. It’s of the very essence of our nature, and of yours exactly as much as of mine or of that of the others. Don’t make a mistake about it--you’ll prepare for yourself a bitter future. I know what becomes of us. We suffer, we go through tortures, we die!”
The accent of passionate prophecy was in this lady’s voice, but her brother made her no immediate answer, only indulging restlessly in several turns about the room. At last he took up his hat. “I shall come to an understanding with her to-morrow, and the next day, about this hour, I shall bring her to see you. Meanwhile please say nothing to any one.”
Mme. de Brecourt’s eyes lingered on him; he had grasped the knob of the door. “What do you mean by her father’s being certainly rich? That’s such a vague term. What do you suppose his fortune to be?”
“Ah that’s a question SHE would never ask!” her brother cried as he left her.
VI
The next morning he found himself seated on one of the red-satin sofas beside Mr. Dosson in this gentleman’s private room at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham. Delia and Francie had established their father in the old quarters; they expected to finish the winter in Paris, but had not taken independent apartments, for they had an idea that when you lived that way it was grand but lonely--you didn’t meet people on the staircase. The temperature was now such as to deprive the good gentleman of his usual resource of sitting in the court, and he had not yet discovered an effective substitute for this recreation. Without Mr. Flack, at the cafes, he felt too much a non-consumer. But he was patient and ruminant; young Probert grew to like him and tried to invent amusements for him; took him to see the great markets, the sewers and the Bank of France, and put him, with the lushest disinterestedness, in the way of acquiring a beautiful pair of horses, which Mr. Dosson, little as he resembles a sporting character, found it a great resource, on fine afternoons, to drive with a highly scientific hand and from a smart Americaine, in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reading-room at the bankers’ where he spent hours engaged in a manner best known to himself, and he shared the great interest, the constant topic of his daughters--the portrait that was going forward in the Avenue de Villiers.
This was the subject round which the thoughts of these young ladies clustered and their activity revolved; it gave free play to their faculty for endless repetition, for monotonous insistence, for vague and aimless discussion. On leaving Mme. de Brecourt Francie’s lover had written to Delia that he desired half an hour’s private conversation with her father on the morrow at half-past eleven; his impatience forbade him to wait for a more canonical hour. He asked her to be so good as to arrange that Mr. Dosson should be there to receive him and to keep Francie out of the way. Delia acquitted herself to the letter.
“Well, sir, what have you got to show?” asked Francie’s father, leaning far back on the sofa and moving nothing but his head, and that very little, toward his interlocutor. Gaston was placed sidewise, a hand on each knee, almost facing him, on the edge of the seat.
“To show, sir--what do you mean?”
“What do you do for a living? How do you subsist?”
“Oh comfortably enough. Of course it would be remiss in you not to satisfy yourself on that point. My income’s derived from three sources. First some property left me by my dear mother. Second a legacy from my poor brother--he had inherited a small fortune from an old relation of ours who took a great fancy to him (he went to America to see her) which he divided among the four of us in the will he made at the time of the War.”’
“The war--what war?” asked Mr. Dosson.
“Why the Franco-German--”
“Oh THAT old war!” And Mr. Dosson almost laughed. “Well?” he mildly continued.
“Then my father’s so good as to make me a decent allowance; and some day I shall have more--from him.”
Mr. Dosson appeared to think these things over. “Why, you seem to have fixed it so you live mostly on other folks.”
“I shall never attempt to live on you, sir!” This was spoken with some vivacity by our young man; he felt the next moment that he had said something that might provoke a retort. But his companion showed no sharpness.
“Well, I guess there won’t be any trouble about that. And what does my daughter say?”
“I haven’t spoken to her yet.”
“Haven’t spoken to the person most interested?”
“I thought it more orthodox to break ground with you first.”
“Well, when I was after Mrs. Dosson I guess I spoke to her quick enough,” Francie’s father just a little dryly stated. There was an element of reproach in this and Gaston was mystified, for the question about his means a moment before had been in the nature of a challenge.
“How will you feel if she won’t have you after you’ve exposed yourself this way to me?” Mr. Dosson went on.
“Well, I’ve a sort of confidence. It may be vain, but God grant not! I think she likes me personally, but what I’m afraid of is that she may consider she knows too little about me. She has never seen my people--she doesn’t know what may be before her.”
“Do you mean your family--the folks at home?” said Mr. Dosson. “Don’t you believe that. Delia has moused around--SHE has found out. Delia’s thorough!”
“Well, we’re very simple kindly respectable people, as you’ll see in a day or two for yourself. My father and sisters will do themselves the honour to wait upon you,” the young man announced with a temerity the sense of which made his voice tremble.
“We shall be very happy to see them, sir,” his host cheerfully returned. “Well now, let’s see,” the good gentleman socially mused. “Don’t you expect to embrace any regular occupation?”
Gaston smiled at him as from depths. “Have YOU anything of that sort, sir?”
“Well, you have me there!” Mr. Dosson resignedly sighed. “It doesn’t seem as if I required anything, I’m looked after so well. The fact is the girls support me.”
“I shall not expect Miss Francie to support me,” said Gaston Probert.
“You’re prepared to enable her to live in the style to which she’s accustomed?” And his friend turned on him an eye as of quite patient speculation.
“Well, I don’t think she’ll miss anything. That is if she does she’ll find other things instead.”
“I presume she’ll miss Delia, and even me a little,” it occurred to Mr. Dosson to mention.
“Oh it’s easy to prevent that,” the young man threw off.
“Well, of course we shall be on hand.” After which Mr. Dosson continued to follow the subject as at the same respectful distance. “You’ll continue to reside in Paris?”
“I’ll live anywhere in the world she likes. Of course my people are here--that’s a great tie. I’m not without hope that it may--with time--become a reason for your daughter,” Gaston handsomely wound up.
“Oh any reason’ll do where Paris is concerned. Take some lunch?” Mr. Dosson added, looking at his watch.
They rose to their feet, but before they had gone many steps--the meals of this amiable family were now served in an adjoining room--the young man stopped his companion. “I can’t tell you how kind I think it--the way you treat me, and how I’m touched by your confidence. You take me just as I am, with no recommendation beyond my own word.”
“Well, Mr. Probert,” said his host, “if we didn’t like you we wouldn’t smile on you. Recommendations in that case wouldn’t be any good. And since we do like you there ain’t any call for them either. I trust my daughters; if I didn’t I’d have stayed at home. And if I trust them, and they trust you, it’s the same as if _I_ trusted you, ain’t it?”
“I guess it is!” Gaston delightedly smiled.
His companion laid a hand on the door, but paused a moment. “Now are you very sure?”
“I thought I was, but you make me nervous.”
“Because there was a gentleman here last year--I’d have put my money on HIM.”
Gaston wondered. “A gentleman--last year?”
“Mr. Flack. You met him surely. A very fine man. I thought he rather hit it off with her.”
“Seigneur Dieu!” Gaston Probert murmured under his breath.
Mr. Dosson had opened the door; he made his companion pass into the small dining-room where the table was spread for the noonday breakfast. “Where are the chickens?” he disappointedly asked. His visitor at first supposed him to have missed a customary dish from the board, but recognised the next moment his usual designation of his daughters. These young ladies presently came in, but Francie looked away from the suitor for her hand. The suggestion just dropped by her father had given him a shock--the idea of the newspaper-man’s personal success with so rare a creature was inconceivable--but her charming way of avoiding his eye convinced him he had nothing to really fear from Mr. Flack.
That night--it had been an exciting day--Delia remarked to her sister that of course she could draw back; upon which as Francie repeated the expression with her so markedly looser grasp, “You can send him a note saying you won’t,” Delia explained.
“Won’t marry him?”
“Gracious, no! Won’t go to see his sister. You can tell him it’s her place to come to see you first.”
“Oh I don’t care,” said Francie wearily.
Delia judged this with all her weight. “Is that the way you answered him when he asked you?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. He could tell you best.”
“If you were to speak to ME that way I guess I’d have said ‘Oh well, if you don’t want it any more than that--!’”
“Well, I wish it WAS you,” said Francie.
“That Mr. Probert was me?”
“No--that you were the one he’s after.”
“Francie Dosson, are you thinking of Mr. Flack?” her sister suddenly broke out.
“No, not much.”
“Well then what’s the matter?”
“You’ve ideas and opinions; you know whose place it is and what’s due and what ain’t. You could meet them all,” Francie opined.
But Delia was indifferent to this tribute. “Why how can you say, when that’s just what I’m trying to find out!”
“It doesn’t matter anyway; it will never come off,” Francie went on.
“What do you mean by that?”
“He’ll give me up in a few weeks. I’ll be sure to do something.”
“Do something--?”
“Well, that will break the charm,” Francie sighed with the sweetest feeblest fatalism.
“If you say that again I shall think you do it on purpose!” Delia declared. “ARE you thinking of George Flack?” she repeated in a moment.
“Oh do leave him alone!” Francie answered in one of her rare irritations.
“Then why are you so queer?”
“Oh I’m tired!”--and the girl turned impatiently away. And this was the simple truth; she was tired of the consideration her sister saw fit to devote to the question of Gaston’s not having, since their return to Paris, brought the old folks, as they used to say at home, to see them. She was overdone with Delia’s theories on this subject, which varied, from the view that he was keeping his intercourse with his American friends unguessed by them because they were uncompromising in their grandeur, to the presumption that that grandeur would descend some day upon the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham and carry Francie away in a blaze of glory. Sometimes Delia played in her earnest way with the idea that they ought to make certain of Gaston’s omissions the ground of a challenge; at other times she gave her reasons for judging that they ought to take no notice of them. Francie, in this connexion, had neither doctrine nor instinct of her own; and now she was all at once happy and uneasy, all at once in love and in doubt and in fear and in a state of native indifference. Her lover had dwelt to her but little on his domestic circle, and she had noticed this circumstance the more because of a remark dropped by Charles Waterlow to the effect that he and his father were great friends: the word seemed to her odd in that application. She knew he saw that gentleman and the types of high fashion, as she supposed, Mr. Probert’s daughters, very often, and she therefore took for granted that they knew he saw her. But the most he had done was to say they would come and see her like a shot if once they should believe they could trust her. She had wanted to know what he meant by their trusting her, and he had explained that it would seem to them too good to be true--that she should be kind to HIM: something exactly of that sort was what they dreamed of for him. But they had dreamed before and been disappointed and were now on their guard. From the moment they should feel they were on solid ground they would join hands and dance round her. Francie’s answer to this ingenuity was that she didn’t know what he was talking about, and he indulged in no attempt on that occasion to render his meaning more clear; the consequence of which was that he felt he bore as yet with an insufficient mass, he cut, to be plain, a poor figure. His uneasiness had not passed away, for many things in truth were dark to him. He couldn’t see his father fraternising with Mr. Dosson, he couldn’t see Margaret and Jane recognising an alliance in which Delia was one of the allies. He had answered for them because that was the only thing to do, and this only just failed to be criminally reckless. What saved it was the hope he founded upon Mme. de Brecourt and the sense of how well he could answer to the others for Francie. He considered that Susan had in her first judgement of his young lady committed herself; she had really taken her in, and her subsequent protest when she found what was in his heart had been a denial which he would make her in turn deny. The girl’s slow sweetness once acting, she would come round. A simple interview with Francie would suffice for this result--by the end of half an hour she should be an enthusiastic convert. By the end of an hour she would believe she herself had invented the match--had discovered the pearl. He would pack her off to the others as the author of the plan; she would take it all upon herself, would represent him even as hanging a little back. SHE would do nothing of that sort, but would boast of her superior flair, and would so enjoy the comedy as to forget she had resisted him even a moment. The young man had a high sense of honour but was ready in this forecast for fifty fibs.
VII
It may as well be said at once that his prevision was soon made good and that in the course of a fortnight old Mr. Probert and his daughters alighted successively at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham. Francie’s visit with her intended to Mme. de Brecourt bore exactly the fruit her admirer had foretold and was followed the very next day by a call from this lady. She took the girl out with her in her carriage and kept her the whole afternoon, driving her half over Paris, chattering with her, kissing her, delighting in her, telling her they were already sisters, paying her compliments that made Francie envy her art of saying things as she had never heard things said--for the excellent reason, among many, that she had never known such things COULD be. After she had dropped her charge this critic rushed off to her father’s, reflecting with pleasure that at that hour she should probably find her sister Marguerite there. Mme. de Cliche was with their parent in fact--she had three days in the week for coming to the Cours la Reine; she sat near him in the firelight, telling him presumably her troubles, for, Maxime de Cliche having proved not quite the pearl they had originally supposed, Mme. de Brecourt knew what Marguerite did whenever she took that little ottoman and drew it close to the paternal chair: she gave way to her favourite vice, that of dolefulness, which lengthened her long face more: it was unbecoming if she only knew it. The family was intensely united, as we see; but that didn’t prevent Mme. de Brecourt’s having a certain sympathy for Maxime: he too was one of themselves, and she asked herself what SHE would have done had she been a well-constituted man with a wife whose cheeks were like decks in a high sea. It was the twilight hour in the winter days, before the lamps, that especially brought her out; then she began her long stories about her complicated cares, to which her father listened with angelic patience. Mme. de Brecourt liked his particular room in the old house in the Cours la Reine; it reminded her of her mother’s life and her young days and her dead brother and the feelings connected with her first going into the world. Alphonse and she had had an apartment, by her father’s kindness, under the roof that covered in associations as the door of a linen-closet preserves herbaceous scents, so that she continued to pop in and out, full of her fresh impressions of society, just as she had done when she was a girl. She broke into her sister’s confidences now; she announced her trouvaille and did battle for it bravely.
Five days later--there had been lively work in the meantime; Gaston turned so pale at moments that she feared it would all result in a mortal illness for him, and Marguerite shed gallons of tears--Mr. Probert went to see the Dossons with his son. Mme. de Brecourt paid them another visit, a real official affair as she deemed it, accompanied by her husband; and the Baron de Douves and his wife, written to by Gaston, by his father and by Margaret and Susan, came up from the country full of anxious participation. M. de Douves was the person who took the family, all round, most seriously and who most deprecated any sign of crude or precipitate action. He was a very small black gentleman with thick eyebrows and high heels--in the country and the mud he wore sabots with straw in them--who was suspected by his friends of believing that he looked like Louis XIV. It is perhaps a proof that something of the quality of this monarch was really recognised in him that no one had ever ventured to clear up this point by a question. “La famille c’est moi” appeared to be his tacit formula, and he carried his umbrella--he had very bad ones, Gaston thought--with something of a sceptral air. Mme. de Brecourt went so far as to believe that his wife, in confirmation of this, took herself for a species of Mme. de Maintenon: she had lapsed into a provincial existence as she might have harked back to the seventeenth century; the world she lived in seemed about as far away. She was the largest, heaviest member of the family, and in the Vendee was thought majestic despite the old clothes she fondly affected and which added to her look of having come down from a remote past or reverted to it. She was at bottom an excellent woman, but she wrote roy and foy like her husband, and the action of her mind was wholly restricted to questions of relationship and alliance. She had extraordinary patience of research and tenacity of grasp for a clue, and viewed people solely in the light projected upon them by others; that is not as good or wicked, ugly or handsome, wise or foolish, but as grandsons, nephews, uncles and aunts, brothers and sisters-in-law, cousins and second cousins. You might have supposed, to listen to her, that human beings were susceptible of no attribute but that of a dwindling or thickening consanguinity. There was a certain expectation that she would leave rather formidable memoirs. In Mme. de Brecourt’s eyes this pair were very shabby, they didn’t payer de mine--they fairly smelt of their province; “but for the reality of the thing,” she often said to herself, “they’re worth all of us. We’re diluted and they’re pure, and any one with an eye would see it.” “The thing” was the legitimist principle, the ancient faith and even a little the right, the unconscious, grand air.
The Marquis de Cliche did his duty with his wife, who mopped the decks, as Susan said, for the occasion, and was entertained in the red-satin drawing-room by Mr. Dosson, Delia and Francie. Mr. Dosson had wanted and proposed to be somewhere else when he heard of the approach of Gaston’s relations, and the fond youth had to instruct him that this wouldn’t do. The apartment in question had had a range of vision, but had probably never witnessed stranger doings than these laudable social efforts. Gaston was taught to feel that his family had made a great sacrifice for him, but in a very few days he said to himself that now they knew the worst he was safe. They made the sacrifice, they definitely agreed to it, but they thought proper he should measure the full extent of it. “Gaston must never, never, never be allowed to forget what we’ve done for him:” Mme. de Brecourt told him that Marguerite de Cliche had expressed herself in that sense at one of the family conclaves from which he was absent. These high commissions sat for several days with great frequency, and the young man could feel that if there was help for him in discussion his case was promising. He flattered himself that he showed infinite patience and tact, and his expenditure of the latter quality in particular was in itself his only reward, for it was impossible he should tell Francie what arts he had to practise for her. He liked to think however that he practised them successfully; for he held that it was by such arts the civilised man is distinguished from the savage. What they cost him was made up simply in this--that his private irritation produced a degree of adoptive heat in regard to Mr. Dosson and Delia, whom he could neither justify nor coherently account for nor make people like, but whom he had ended after so many days of familiar intercourse by liking extremely himself. The way to get on |
7529-0 | with them--it was an immense simplification--was just to love them: one could do that even if one couldn’t converse with them. He succeeded in making Mme. de Brecourt seize this nuance; she embraced the idea with her quick inflammability. “Yes,” she said, “we must insist on their positive, not on their negative merits: their infinite generosity, their untutored, their intensely native and instinctive delicacy. Ah their charming primitive instincts--we must work those!” And the brother and sister excited each other magnanimously to this undertaking. Sometimes, it must be added, they exchanged a look that seemed to sound with a slight alarm the depth of their responsibility.
On the day Mr. Probert called at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham with his son the pair walked away together, back to the Cours la Reine, without immediate comments. The only words uttered were three or four of Mr. Probert’s, with Gaston’s rejoinder, as they crossed the Place de la Concorde.
“We should have to have them to dinner.” The young man noted his father’s conditional, as if his assent to the strange alliance were not yet complete; but he guessed all the same that the sight of them had not made a difference for the worse: they had let the old gentleman down more easily than was to have been feared. The call had had above all the immense luck that it hadn’t been noisy--a confusion of underbred sounds; which was very happy, for Mr. Probert was particular in this: he could bear French noise but couldn’t for the life of him bear American. As for English he maintained that there was no such thing: England was a country with the straw down in all the thoroughfares of talk. Mr. Dosson had scarcely spoken and yet had remained perfectly placid, which was exactly what Gaston would have chosen. No hauteur could have matched it--he had gone so little out of his way. Francie’s lover knew moreover--though he was a little disappointed that no charmed exclamation should have been dropped as they quitted the hotel--that the girl’s rare spell had worked: it was impossible the old man shouldn’t have liked her.
“Ah do ask them, and let it be very soon,” he replied. “They’ll like it so much.”
“And whom can they meet--who can meet THEM?”
“Only the family--all of us: au complet. Other people we can have later.”
“All of us au complet--that makes eight. And the three of THEM,” said Mr. Probert. Then he added: “Poor creatures!” The fine ironic humane sound of it gave Gaston much pleasure; he passed his hand into his father’s arm. It promised well; it made the intelligent, the tender allowance for the dear little Dossons confronted with a row of fierce French critics, judged by standards they had never even heard of. The meeting of the two parents had not made the problem of their commerce any more clear; but our youth was reminded afresh by his elder’s hinted pity, his breathed charity, of the latent liberality that was really what he had built on. The dear old governor, goodness knew, had prejudices and superstitions, but if they were numerous, and some of them very curious, they were not rigid. He had also such nice inconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such humorous deviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short an old darling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always safe. When they reached the house in the Cours la Reine Mr. Probert said: “I think you told me you’re dining out.”
“Yes, with our friends.”
“‘Our friends’? Comme vous y allez! Come in and see me then on your return; but not later than half-past ten.”
From this the young man saw he had swallowed the dose; if he had found it refuse to go down he would have cried for relief without delay. This reflexion was highly agreeable, for Gaston perfectly knew how little he himself would have enjoyed a struggle. He would have carried it through, but he couldn’t bear to think of that, and the sense of the further arguments he was spared made him feel at peace with all the world. The dinner at the hotel became the gayest of banquets in honour of this state of things, especially as Francie and Delia raved, as they said, about his poppa.
“Well, I expected something nice, but he goes far beyond!” Delia declared. “That’s my idea of a real gentleman.”
“Ah for that--!” said Gaston.
“He’s too sweet for anything. I’m not a bit afraid of him,” Francie contributed.
“Why in the world should you be?”
“Well, I am of you,” the girl professed.
“Much you show it!” her lover returned.
“Yes, I am,” she insisted, “at the bottom of all.”
“Well, that’s what a lady should be--afraid of her lord and master.”
“Well, I don’t know; I’m more afraid than that. You’ll see.”
“I wish you were afraid of talking nonsense,” said happy Gaston.
Mr. Dosson made no observation whatever about their grave bland visitor; he listened in genial unprejudiced silence. It was a sign of his prospective son-in-law’s perfect comprehension of him that Gaston knew this silence not to be in any degree restrictive: it didn’t at all mean he hadn’t been pleased. Mr. Dosson had nothing to say because nothing had been given him; he hadn’t, like his so differently-appointed young friend, a sensitive plate for a brain, and the important events of his life had never been personal impressions. His mind had had absolutely no history with which anything occurring in the present connexion could be continuous, and Mr. Probert’s appearance had neither founded a state nor produced a revolution. If the young man had asked him how he liked his father he would have said at the most: “Oh I guess he’s all right!” But what was more touchingly candid even than this in Gaston’s view was the attitude of the good gentleman and his daughters toward the others, Mesdames de Douves, de Brecourt and de Cliche and their husbands, who had now all filed before them. They believed the ladies and the gentlemen alike to have covered them with frank endearments, to have been artlessly and gushingly glad to make their acquaintance. They had not in the least seen what was manner, the minimum of decent profession, and what the subtle resignation of old races who have known a long historical discipline and have conventional forms and tortuous channels and grimacing masks for their impulses--forms resembling singularly little the feelings themselves. Francie took people at their word when they told her that the whole maniere d’etre of her family inspired them with an irresistible sympathy: that was a speech of which Mme. de Cliche had been capable, speaking as if for all the Proberts and for the old noblesse of France. It wouldn’t have occurred to the girl that such things need have been said as for mere frilling and finish. Her lover, whose life affected her as a picture, of high price in itself but set in a frame too big and too heavy for it, and who therefore might have taken for granted any amount of gilding, yet made his reflexions on it now; he noticed how a manner might be a very misleading symbol, might cover pitfalls and bottomless gulfs, when it had reached that perfection and corresponded so little to fact. What he had wanted was that his people should be as easy as they could see their way to being, but with such a high standard of compliment where after all was sincerity? And without sincerity how could people get on together when it came to their settling down to common life? Then the Dossons might have surprises, and the surprises would be painful in proportion as their present innocence was great. As to the high standard itself there was no manner of doubt: there ought to be preserved examples of that perfection.
VIII
When on coming home again this evening, meanwhile, he complied with his father’s request by returning to the room in which the old man habitually sat, Mr. Probert laid down his book and kept on his glasses. “Of course you’ll continue to live with me. You’ll understand that I don’t consent to your going away. You’ll have the rooms occupied at first by Susan and Alphonse.”
Gaston noted with pleasure the transition from the conditional to the future tense, and also the circumstance that his father had been lost in a book according to his now confirmed custom of evening ease. This proved him not too much off the hinge. He read a great deal, and very serious books; works about the origin of things--of man, of institutions, of speech, of religion. This habit he had taken up more particularly since the circle of his social life had contracted. He sat there alone, turning his pages softly, contentedly, with the lamplight shining on his refined old head and embroidered dressing-gown. He had used of old to be out every night in the week--Gaston was perfectly aware that to many dull people he must even have appeared a little frivolous. He was essentially a social creature and indeed--except perhaps poor Jane in her damp old castle in Brittany--they were all social creatures. That was doubtless part of the reason why the family had acclimatised itself in France. They had affinities with a society of conversation; they liked general talk and old high salons, slightly tarnished and dim, containing precious relics, where winged words flew about through a circle round the fire and some clever person, before the chimney-piece, held or challenged the others. That figure, Gaston knew, especially in the days before he could see for himself, had very often been his father, the lightest and most amiable specimen of the type that enjoyed easy possession of the hearth-rug. People left it to him; he was so transparent, like a glass screen, and he never triumphed in debate. His word on most subjects was not felt to be the last (it was usually not more conclusive than a shrugging inarticulate resignation, an “Ah you know, what will you have?”); but he had been none the less a part of the very prestige of some dozen good houses, most of them over the river, in the conservative faubourg, and several to-day profaned shrines, cold and desolate hearths. These had made up Mr. Probert’s pleasant world--a world not too small for him and yet not too large, though some of them supposed themselves great institutions. Gaston knew the succession of events that had helped to make a difference, the most salient of which were the death of his brother, the death of his mother, and above all perhaps the demise of Mme. de Marignac, to whom the old boy used still to go three or four evenings out of the seven and sometimes even in the morning besides. Gaston fully measured the place she had held in his father’s life and affection, and the terms on which they had grown up together--her people had been friends of his grandfather when that fine old Southern worthy came, a widower with a young son and several negroes, to take his pleasure in Paris in the time of Louis Philippe--and the devoted part she had played in marrying his sisters. He was quite aware that her friendship and all its exertions were often mentioned as explaining their position, so remarkable in a society in which they had begun after all as outsiders. But he would have guessed, even if he had not been told, what his father said to that. To offer the Proberts a position was to carry water to the fountain; they hadn’t left their own behind them in Carolina; it had been large enough to stretch across the sea. As to what it was in Carolina there was no need of being explicit. This adoptive Parisian was by nature presupposing, but he was admirably urbane--that was why they let him talk so before the fire; he was the oracle persuasive, the conciliatory voice--and after the death of his wife and of Mme. de Marignac, who had been her friend too, the young man’s mother’s, he was gentler, if more detached, than before. Gaston had already felt him to care in consequence less for everything--except indeed for the true faith, to which he drew still closer--and this increase of indifference doubtless helped to explain his present charming accommodation.
“We shall be thankful for any rooms you may give us,” his son said. “We shall fill out the house a little, and won’t that be rather an improvement, shrunken as you and I have become?”
“You’ll fill it out a good deal, I suppose, with Mr. Dosson and the other girl.”
“Ah Francie won’t give up her father and sister, certainly; and what should you think of her if she did? But they’re not intrusive; they’re essentially modest people; they won’t put themselves upon us. They have great natural discretion,” Gaston declared.
“Do you answer for that? Susan does; she’s always assuring one of it,” Mr. Probert said. “The father has so much that he wouldn’t even speak to me.”
“He didn’t, poor dear man, know what to say.”
“How then shall I know what to say to HIM?”
“Ah you always know!” Gaston smiled.
“How will that help us if he doesn’t know what to answer?”
“You’ll draw him out. He’s full of a funny little shade of bonhomie.”
“Well, I won’t quarrel with your bonhomme,” said Mr. Probert--“if he’s silent there are much worse faults; nor yet with the fat young lady, though she’s evidently vulgar--even if you call it perhaps too a funny little shade. It’s not for ourselves I’m afraid; it’s for them. They’ll be very unhappy.”
“Never, never!” said Gaston. “They’re too simple. They’ll remain so. They’re not morbid nor suspicious. And don’t you like Francie? You haven’t told me so,” he added in a moment.
“She talks about ‘Parus,’ my dear boy.”
“Ah to Susan too that seemed the great barrier. But she has got over it. I mean Susan has got over the barrier. We shall make her speak French; she has a real disposition for it; her French is already almost as good as her English.”
“That oughtn’t to be difficult. What will you have? Of course she’s very pretty and I’m sure she’s good. But I won’t tell you she is a marvel, because you must remember--you young fellows think your own point of view and your own experience everything--that I’ve seen beauties without number. I’ve known the most charming women of our time--women of an order to which Miss Francie, con rispetto parlando, will never begin to belong. I’m difficult about women--how can I help it? Therefore when you pick up a little American girl at an inn and bring her to us as a miracle, feel how standards alter. J’ai vu mieux que ca, mon cher. However, I accept everything to-day, as you know; when once one has lost one’s enthusiasm everything’s the same and one might as well perish by the sword as by famine.”
“I hoped she’d fascinate you on the spot,” Gaston rather ruefully remarked.
“‘Fascinate’--the language you fellows use! How many times in one’s life is one likely to be fascinated?”
“Well, she’ll charm you yet.”
“She’ll never know at least that she doesn’t: I’ll engage for that,” said Mr. Probert handsomely.
“Ah be sincere with her, father--she’s worth it!” his son broke out.
When the elder man took that tone, the tone of vast experience and a fastidiousness justified by ineffable recollections, our friend was more provoked than he could say, though he was also considerably amused, for he had a good while since, made up his mind about the element of rather stupid convention in it. It was fatuous to miss so little the fine perceptions one didn’t have: so far from its showing experience it showed a sad simplicity not to FEEL Francie Dosson. He thanked God she was just the sort of imponderable infinite quantity, such as there were no stupid terms for, that he did feel. He didn’t know what old frumps his father might have frequented--the style of 1830, with long curls in front, a vapid simper, a Scotch plaid dress and a corsage, in a point suggestive of twenty whalebones, coming down to the knees--but he could remember Mme. de Marignac’s Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, with Sundays and other days thrown in, and the taste that prevailed in that milieu: the books they admired, the verses they read and recited, the pictures, great heaven! they thought good, and the three busts of the lady of the house in different corners (as a Diana, a Druidess and a Croyante: her shoulders were supposed to make up for her head), effigies the public ridicule attaching to which to-day would--even the least bad, Canova’s--make their authors burrow in holes for shame.
“And what else is she worth?” Mr. Probert asked after a momentary hesitation.
“How do you mean, what else?”
“Her immense prospects, that’s what Susan has been putting forward. Susan’s insistence on them was mainly what brought over Jane. Do you mind my speaking of them?”
Gaston was obliged to recognise privately the importance of Jane’s having been brought over, but he hated to hear it spoken of as if he were under an obligation to it. “To whom, sir?” he asked.
“Oh only to you.”
“You can’t do less than Mr. Dosson. As I told you, he waived the question of money and he was splendid. We can’t be more mercenary than he.”
“He waived the question of his own, you mean?” said Mr. Probert.
“Yes, and of yours. But it will be all right.” The young man flattered himself that this was as near as he was willing to go to any view of pecuniary convenience.
“Well, it’s your affair--or your sisters’,” his father returned.
“It’s their idea that we see where we are and that we make the best of it.”
“It’s very good of them to make the best of it and I should think they’d be tired of their own chatter,” Gaston impatiently sighed.
Mr. Probert looked at him a moment in vague surprise, but only said: “I think they are. However, the period of discussion’s closed. We’ve taken the jump.” He then added as to put the matter a little less dryly: “Alphonse and Maxime are quite of your opinion.”
“Of my opinion?”
“That she’s charming.”
“Confound them then, I’m not of theirs!” The form of this rejoinder was childishly perverse, and it made Mr. Probert stare again; but it belonged to one of the reasons for which his children regarded him as an old darling that Gaston could suppose him after an instant to embrace it. The old man said nothing, but took up his book, and his son, who had been standing before the fire, went out of the room. His abstention from protest at Gaston’s petulance was the more generous as he was capable, for his part, of feeling it to make for a greater amenity in the whole connexion that ces messieurs should like the little girl at the hotel. Gaston didn’t care a straw what it made for, and would have seen himself in bondage indeed had he given a second thought to the question. This was especially the case as his father’s mention of the approval of two of his brothers-in-law appeared to point to a possible disapproval on the part of the third. Francie’s lover cared as little whether she displeased M. de Brecourt as he cared whether she pleased Maxime and Raoul. Mr. Probert continued to read, and in a few moments Gaston was with him again. He had expressed surprise, just before, at the wealth of discussion his sisters had been ready to expend in his interest, but he managed to convey now that there was still a point of a certain importance to be made. “It seems rather odd to me that you should all appear to accept the step I’M about to take as a necessity disagreeable at the best, when I myself hold that I’ve been so exceedingly fortunate.”
Mr. Probert lowered his book accommodatingly and rested his eyes on the fire. “You won’t be content till we’re enthusiastic. She seems an amiable girl certainly, and in that you’re fortunate.”
“I don’t think you can tell me what would be better--what you’d have preferred,” the young man said.
“What I should have preferred? In the first place you must remember that I wasn’t madly impatient to see you married.”
“I can imagine that, and yet I can’t imagine that as things have turned out you shouldn’t be struck with my felicity. To get something so charming and to get it of our own species!” Gaston explained.
“Of our own species? Tudieu!” said his father, looking up.
“Surely it’s infinitely fresher and more amusing for me to marry an American. There’s a sad want of freshness--there’s even a provinciality--in the way we’ve Gallicised.”
“Against Americans I’ve nothing to say; some of them are the best thing the world contains. That’s precisely why one can choose. They’re far from doing all like that.”
“Like what, dear father?”
“Comme ces gens-la. You know that if they were French, being otherwise what they are, one wouldn’t look at them.”
“Indeed one would; they would be such rare curiosities.”
“Well, perhaps they’ll do for queer fish,” said Mr. Probert with a little conclusive sigh.
“Yes, let them pass at that. They’ll surprise you.”
“Not too much, I hope!” cried the old man, opening his volume again.
The complexity of things among the Proberts, it needn’t nevertheless startle us to learn, was such as to make it impossible for Gaston to proceed to the celebration of his nuptial, with all the needful circumstances of material preparation and social support, before some three months should have expired. He chafed however but moderately under this condition, for he remembered it would give Francie time to endear herself to his whole circle. It would also have advantages for the Dossons; it would enable them to establish by simple but effective arts some modus vivendi with that rigid body. It would in short help every one to get used to everything. Mr. Dosson’s designs and Delia’s took no articulate form; what was mainly clear to Gaston was that his future wife’s relatives had as yet no sense of disconnexion. He knew that Mr. Dosson would do whatever Delia liked and that Delia would like to “start” her sister--this whether or no she expected to be present at the rest of the race. Mr. Probert notified Mr. Dosson of what he proposed to “do” for his son, and Mr. Dosson appeared more quietly amused than anything else at the news. He announced in return no intentions in regard to Francie, and his strange silence was the cause of another convocation of the house of Probert. Here Mme. de Brecourt’s bold front won another victory; she maintained, as she let her brother know, that it was too late for any policy but a policy of confidence. “Lord help us, is that what they call confidence?” the young man gasped, guessing the way they all had looked at each other; and he wondered how they would look next at poor Mr. Dosson himself. Fortunately he could always fall back, for reassurance, on the perfection of their “forms”; though indeed he thoroughly knew that these forms would never appear so striking as on the day--should such a day fatally come--of their meddling too much.
Mr. Probert’s property was altogether in the United States: he resembled other discriminating persons for whom the only good taste in America was the taste of invested and paying capital. The provisions he was engaging to make for his son’s marriage rendered advisable some attention, on the spot, to interests with the management of which he was acquainted only by report. It had long been his conviction that his affairs beyond the sea needed looking into; they had gone on and on for years too far from the master’s eye. He had thought of making the journey in the cause of that vigilance, but now he was too old and too tired and the effort had become impossible. There was nothing therefore but for Gaston to go, and go quickly, though the time so little fostered his absence from Paris. The duty was none the less laid upon him and the question practically faced; then everything yielded to the consideration that he had best wait till after his marriage, when he might be so auspiciously accompanied by his wife. Francie would be in many ways so propitious an introducer. This abatement would have taken effect had not a call for an equal energy on Mr. Dosson’s part suddenly appeared to reach and to move that gentleman. He had business on the other side, he announced, to attend to, though his starting for New York presented difficulties, since he couldn’t in such a situation leave his daughters alone. Not only would such a proceeding have given scandal to the Proberts, but Gaston learned, with much surprise and not a little amusement, that Delia, in consequence of changes now finely wrought in her personal philosophy, wouldn’t have felt his doing so square with propriety. The young man was able to put it to her that nothing would be simpler than, in the interval, for Francie to go and stay with Susan or Margaret; she herself in that case would be free to accompany her father. But Delia declared at this that nothing would induce her to budge from Paris till she had seen her sister through, and Gaston shrank from proposing that she too should spend five weeks in the Place Beauvau or the Rue de Lille. There was moreover a slight element of the mystifying for him in the perverse unsociable way in which Francie took up a position of marked disfavour as yet to any “visiting.” AFTER, if he liked, but not till then. And she wouldn’t at the moment give the reasons of her refusal; it was only very positive and even quite passionate.
All this left her troubled suitor no alternative but to say to Mr. Dosson: “I’m not, my dear sir, such a fool as I look. If you’ll coach me properly, and trust me, why shouldn’t I rush across and transact your business as well as my father’s?” Strange as it appeared, Francie offered herself as accepting this separation from her lover, which would last six or seven weeks, rather than accept the hospitality of any member of his family. Mr. Dosson, on his side, was grateful for the solution; he remarked “Well, sir, you’ve got a big brain” at the end of a morning they spent with papers and pencils; and on this Gaston made his preparations to sail. Before he left Paris Francie, to do her justice, confided to him that her objection to going in such an intimate way even to Mme. de Brecourt’s had been founded on a fear that in close quarters she might do something that would make them all despise her. Gaston replied, in the first place, ardently, that this was the very delirium of delicacy, and that he wanted to know in the second if she expected never to be at close quarters with “tous les siens.” “Ah yes, but then it will be safer,” she pleaded; “then we shall be married and by so much, shan’t we? be beyond harm.” In rejoinder to which he had simply kissed her; the passage taking place three days before her lover took ship. What further befell in the brief interval was that, stopping for a last word at the Hotel de l’Univers et the Cheltenham on his way to catch the night express to London--he was to sail from Liverpool--Gaston found Mr. George Flack sitting in the red-satin saloon. The correspondent of the Reverberator had come back.
IX
Mr. Flack’s relations with his old friends didn’t indeed, after his return, take on the familiarity and frequency of their intercourse a year before: he was the first to refer to the marked change in the situation. They had got into the high set and they didn’t care about the past: he alluded to the past as if it had been rich in mutual vows, in pledges now repudiated.
“What’s the matter all the same? Won’t you come round there with us some day?” Mr. Dosson asked; not having perceived for himself any reason why the young journalist shouldn’t be a welcome and easy presence in the Cours la Reine.
Delia wanted to know what Mr. Flack was talking about: didn’t he know a lot of people that they didn’t know and wasn’t it natural they should have their own society? The young man’s treatment of the question was humorous, and it was with Delia that the discussion mainly went forward. When he maintained that the Dossons had shamelessly “shed” him Mr. Dosson returned “Well, I guess you’ll grow again!” And Francie made the point that it was no use for him to pose as a martyr, since he knew perfectly well that with all the celebrated people he saw and the way he flew round he had the most enchanting time. She was aware of being a good deal less accessible than the previous spring, for Mesdames de Brecourt and de Cliche--the former indeed more than the latter--occupied many of her hours. In spite of her having held off, to Gaston, from a premature intimacy with his sisters, she spent whole days in their company--they had so much to tell her of how her new life would shape, and it seemed mostly very pleasant--and she thought nothing could be nicer than that in these intervals he should give himself to her father, and even to Delia, as had been his wont.
But the flaw of a certain insincerity in Mr. Flack’s nature was suggested by his present tendency to rare visits. He evidently didn’t care for her father in himself, and though this mild parent always took what was set before him and never made fusses she is sure he felt their old companion to have fallen away. There were no more wanderings in public places, no more tryings of new cafes. Mr. Dosson used to look sometimes as he had looked of old when George Flack “located” them somewhere--as if he expected to see their heated benefactor rush back to them with his drab overcoat flying in the wind; but this appearance usually and rather touchingly subsided. He at any rate missed Gaston because Gaston had this winter so often ordered his dinner for him; and his society was not, to make it up, sought by the count and the marquis, whose mastery of English was small and their other distractions great. Mr. Probert, it was true, had shown something of a conversible spirit; he had come twice to the hotel since his son’s departure and had said, smiling and reproachful, “You neglect us, you neglect us, my dear sir!” The good man had not understood what was meant by this till Delia explained after the visitor had withdrawn, and even then the remedy for the neglect, administered two or three days later, had not borne any copious fruit. Mr. Dosson called alone, instructed by his daughter, in the Cours la Reine, but Mr. Probert was not at home. He only left a card on which Delia had superscribed in advance, almost with the legibility of print, the words “So sorry!” Her father had told her he would give in the card if she wanted, but would have nothing to do with the writing. There was a discussion as to whether Mr. Probert’s remark was an allusion to a deficiency of politeness on the article of his sons-in-law. Oughtn’t Mr. Dosson perhaps to call personally, and not simply through the medium of the visits paid by his daughters to their wives, on Messieurs de Brecourt and de Cliche? Once when this subject came up in George Flack’s presence the old man said he would go round if Mr. Flack would accompany him. “All right, we’ll go right along!” Mr. Flack had responded, and this inspiration had become a living fact qualified only by the “mercy,” to Delia Dosson, that the other two gentlemen were not at home. “Suppose they SHOULD get in?” she had said lugubriously to her sister.
“Well, what if they do?” Francie had asked.
“Why the count and the marquis won’t be interested in Mr. Flack.”
“Well then perhaps he’ll be interested in them. He can write something about them. They’ll like that.”
“Do you think they would?” Delia had solemnly weighed it.
“Why, yes, if he should say fine things.”
“They do like fine things,” Delia had conceded. “They get off so many themselves. Only the way Mr. Flack does it’s a different style.”
“Well, people like to be praised in any style.”
“That’s so,” Delia had continued to brood.
One afternoon, coming in about three o’clock, Mr. Flack found Francie alone. She had expressed a wish after luncheon for a couple of hours of independence: intending to write to Gaston, and having accidentally missed a post, she had determined her letter should be of double its usual length. Her companions had respected her claim for solitude, Mr. Dosson taking himself off to his daily session in the reading-room of the American bank and Delia--the girls had now at their command a landau as massive as the coach of an ambassador--driving away to the dressmaker’s, a frequent errand, to superintend and urge forward the progress of her sister’s wedding-clothes. Francie was not skilled in composition; she wrote slowly and had in thus addressing her lover much the same sense of sore tension she supposed she should have in standing at the altar with him. Her father and Delia had a theory that when she shut herself up that way she poured forth pages that would testify to her costly culture. When George Flack was ushered in at all events she was still bent over her blotting-book at one of the gilded tables, and there was an inkstain on her pointed forefinger. It was no disloyalty to Gaston, but only at the most an echo as of the sweetness of “recess time” in old school mornings that made her glad to see her visitor.
She hadn’t quite known how to finish her letter, in the infinite of the bright propriety of her having written it, but Mr. Flack seemed to set a practical human limit.
“I wouldn’t have ventured,” he observed on entering, “to propose this, but I guess I can do with it now it’s come.”
“What can you do with?” she asked, wiping her pen.
“Well this happy chance. Just you and me together.”
“I don’t know what it’s a chance for.”
“Well, for me to be a little less miserable for a quarter of an hour. It makes me so to see you look so happy.”
“It makes you miserable?”--Francie took it gaily but guardedly.
“You ought to understand--when I say something so noble.” And settling himself on the sofa Mr. Flack continued: “Well, how do you get on without Mr. Probert?”
“Very well indeed, thank you.” The tone in which the girl spoke was not an encouragement to free pleasantry, so that if he continued his enquiries it was with as much circumspection as he had perhaps ever in his life recognised himself as having to apply to a given occasion. He was eminently capable of the sense that it wasn’t in his interest to strike her as indiscreet and profane; he only wanted still to appear a real reliable “gentleman friend.” At the same time he was not indifferent to the profit for him of her noticing in him a sense as of a good fellow once badly “sold,” which would always give him a certain pull on what he called to himself her lovely character. “Well, you’re in the real ‘grand’ old monde now, I suppose,” he resumed at last, not with an air of undue derision--rather with a kind of contemporary but detached wistfulness.
“Oh I’m not in anything; I’m just where I’ve always been.”
“I’m sorry; I hoped you’d tell me a good lot about it,” said Mr. Flack, not with levity.
“You think too much of that. What do you want to know so much about it for?”
Well, he took some trouble for his reason. “Dear Miss Francie, a poor devil of a journalist who has to get his living by studying-up things has to think TOO much, sometimes, in order to think, or at any rate to do, enough. We find out what we can--AS we can, you see.”
She did seem to catch in it the note of pathos. “What do you want to study-up?”
“Everything! I take in everything. It all depends on my opportunity. I try and learn--I try and improve. Every one has something to tell--or to sell; and I listen and watch--well, for what I can drink in or can buy. I hoped YOU’D have something to tell--for I’m not talking now of anything but THAT. I don’t believe but what you’ve seen a good deal of new life. You won’t pretend they ain’t working you right in, charming as you are.”
“Do you mean if they’ve been kind and sweet to me? They’ve been very kind and sweet,” Francie mid. “They want to do even more than I’ll let them.”
“Ah why won’t you let them?” George Flack asked almost coaxingly.
“Well, I do, when it comes to anything,” the girl went on. “You can’t resist them really; they’ve got such lovely ways.”
“I should like to hear you talk right out about their ways,” her companion observed after a silence.
“Oh I could talk out right enough if once I were to begin. But I don’t see why it should interest you.”
“Don’t I care immensely for everything that concerns you? Didn’t I tell you that once?”--he put it very straight.
“Well, you were foolish ever, and you’d be foolish to say it again,” Francie replied.
“Oh I don’t want to say anything, I’ve had my lesson. But I could listen to you all day.” Francie gave an exclamation of impatience and incredulity, and Mr. Flack pursued: “Don’t you remember what you told me that time we had that talk at Saint-Germain, on the terrace? You said I might remain your friend.”
“Well, that’s all right,” said the girl.
“Then ain’t we interested in the development of our friends--in their impressions, their situations and adventures? Especially a person like me, who has got to know life whether he wants to or no--who has got to know the world.”
“Do you mean to say I could teach you about life?” Francie beautifully gaped.
“About some kinds certainly. You know a lot of people it’s difficult to get at unless one takes some extraordinary measures, as you’ve done.”
“What do you mean? What measures have I done?”
“Well, THEY have--to get right hold of you--and its the same thing. Pouncing on you, to secure you first--I call that energetic, and don’t you think I ought to know?” smiled Mr. Flack with much meaning. “I thought _I_ was energetic, but they got in ahead of me. They’re a society apart, and they must be very curious.”
“Yes, they’re very curious,” Francie admitted with a resigned sigh. Then she said: “Do you want to put them in the paper?”
George Flack cast about--the air of the question was so candid, suggested so complete an exemption From prejudice. “Oh I’m very careful about what I put in the paper. I want everything, as I told you; Don’t you remember the sketch I gave you of my ideals? But I want it in the right way and of the right brand. If I can’t get it in the shape I like it I don’t want it at all; first-rate first-hand information, straight from the tap, is what I’m after. I don’t want to hear what some one or other thinks that some one or other was told that some one or other believed or said; and above all I don’t want to print it. There’s plenty of that flowing in, and the best part of the job’s to keep it out. People just yearn to come in; they make love to me for it all over the place; there’s the biggest crowd at the door. But I say to them: ‘You’ve got to do something first, then I’ll see; or at any rate you’ve got to BE something!’”
“We sometimes see the Reverberator. You’ve some fine pieces,” Francie humanely replied.
“Sometimes only? Don’t they send it to the old gentleman--the weekly edition? I thought I had fixed that,” said George Flack.
“I don’t know; it’s usually lying round. But Delia reads it more than I; she reads pieces aloud. I like to read books; I read as many as I can.”
“Well, it’s all literature,” said Mr. Flack; “it’s all the press, the great institution of our time. Some of the finest books have come out first in the papers. It’s the history of the age.”
“I see you’ve got the same aspirations,” Francie remarked kindly.
“The same aspirations?”
“Those you told me about that day at Saint-Germain.”
“Oh I keep forgetting that I ever broke out to you that way. Everything’s so changed.”
“Are you the proprietor of the paper now?” the girl went on, determined not to catch this sentimental echo.
“What do you care? It wouldn’t even be delicate in me to tell you; for I DO remember the way you said you’d try and get your father to help me. Don’t say you’ve forgotten it, because you almost made me cry. Anyway, that isn’t the sort of help I want now and it wasn’t the sort of help I meant to ask you for then. I want sympathy and interest; I want some one to say to me once in a while ‘Keep up your old heart, Mr. Flack; you’ll come out all right.’ You see I’m a working-man and I don’t pretend to be anything else,” Francie’s companion went on. “I don’t live on the accumulations of my ancestors. What I have I earn--what I am I’ve fought for: I’m a real old travailleur, as they say here. I rejoice in it, but there’s one dark spot in it all the same.”
“And what’s that?” Francie decided not quite at once to ask.
“That it makes you ashamed of me.”
“Oh how can you say?” And she got up as if a sense of oppression, of vague discomfort, had come over her. Her visitor troubled such peace as she had lately arrived at.
“You wouldn’t be ashamed to go round with me?”
“Round where?”
“Well, anywhere: just to have one more walk. The very last.” George Flack had got up too and stood there looking at her with his bright eyes, his hands in the pockets of his overcoat. As she hesitated he continued: “Then I’m not such a friend after all.”
She rested her eyes a moment on the carpet; then raising them: “Where would you like to go?”
“You could render me a service--a real service--without any inconvenience probably to yourself. Isn’t your portrait finished?”
“Yes, but he won’t give it up.”
“Who won’t give it up?”
“Why Mr. Waterlow. He wants to keep it near him to look at it in case he should take a fancy to change it. But I hope he won’t change it--it’s so lovely as it is!” Francie made a mild joke of saying.
“I hear it’s magnificent and I want to see it,” said George Flack.
“Then why don’t you go?”
“I’ll go if you’ll take me; that’s the service you can render me.”
“Why I thought you went everywhere--into the palaces of kings!” Francie cried.
“I go where I’m welcome, not where I ain’t. I don’t want to push into that studio alone; he doesn’t want me round. Oh you needn’t protest,” the young man went on; “if a fellow’s made sensitive he has got to stay so. I feel those things in the shade of a tone of voice. He doesn’t like newspaper-men. Some people don’t, you know. I ought to tell you that frankly.”
Francie considered again, but looking this time at her visitor. “Why if it hadn’t been for you “--I’m afraid she said “hadn’t have been”--“I’d never have sat to him.”
Mr. Flack smiled at her in silence for a little. “If it hadn’t been for me I think you’d never have met your future husband.”
“Perhaps not,” said Francie; and suddenly she blushed red, rather to her companion’s surprise.
“I only say that to remind you that after all I’ve a right to ask you to show me this one little favour. Let me drive with you to-morrow, or next day or any day, to the Avenue de Villiers, and I shall regard myself as amply repaid. With you I shan’t be afraid to go in, for you’ve a right to take any one you like to see your picture. That’s the rule here.”
“Oh the day you’re afraid, Mr. Flack--!” Francie laughed without fear. She had been much struck by his reminder of what they all owed him; for he truly had been their initiator, the instrument, under providence, that had opened a great new interest to them, and as she was more listless about almost anything than at the sight of a person wronged she winced at his describing himself as disavowed or made light of after the prize was gained. Her mind had not lingered on her personal indebtedness to him, for it was not in the nature of her mind to linger; but at present she was glad to spring quickly, at the first word, into the attitude of acknowledgement. It had the effect of simplification after too multiplied an appeal--it brought up her spirits.
“Of course I must be quite square with you,” the young man said in a tone that struck her as “higher,” somehow, than any she had ever heard him use. “If I want to see the picture it’s because I want to write about it. The whole thing will go bang into the Reverberator. You must understand that in advance. I wouldn’t write about it without seeing it. We don’t DO that”--and Mr. Flack appeared to speak proudly again for his organ.
“J’espere bien!” said Francie, who was getting on famously with her French. “Of course if you praise him Mr. Waterlow will like it.”
“I don’t know that he cares for my praise and I don’t care much whether HE likes it or not. For you to like it’s the principal thing--we must do with that.”
“Oh I shall be awfully proud.”
“I shall speak of you personally--I shall say you’re the prettiest girl that has ever come over.”
“You may say what you like,” Francie returned. “It will be immense fun to be in the newspapers. Come for me at this hour day after to-morrow.”
“You’re too kind,” said George Flack, taking up his hat. He smoothed it down a moment with his glove; then he said: “I wonder if you’ll mind our going alone?”
“Alone?”
“I mean just you and me.”
“Oh don’t you be afraid! Father and Delia have seen it about thirty times.”
“That’ll be first-rate. And it will help me to feel, more than anything else could make me do, that we’re still old friends. I couldn’t bear the end of THAT. I’ll come at 3.15,” Mr. Flack went on, but without even yet taking his departure. He asked two or three questions about the hotel, whether it were as good as last year and there were many people in it and they could keep their rooms warm; then pursued suddenly, on a different plane and scarcely waiting for the girl’s answer: “And now for instance are they very bigoted? That’s one of the things I should like to know.”
“Very bigoted?”
“Ain’t they tremendous Catholics--always talking about the Holy Father; what they call here the throne and the altar? And don’t they want the throne too? I mean Mr. Probert, the old gentleman,” Mr. Flack added. “And those grand ladies and all the rest of them.”
“They’re very religious,” said Francie. “They’re the most religious people I ever saw. They just adore the Holy Father. They know him personally quite well. They’re always going down to Rome.”
“And do they mean to introduce you to him?”
“How do you mean, to introduce me?”
“Why to make you a Catholic, to take you also down to Rome.”
“Oh we’re going to Rome for our voyage de noces!” said Francie gaily. “Just for a peep.”
“And won’t you have to have a Catholic marriage if They won’t consent to a Protestant one.”
“We’re going to have a lovely one, just like one that Mme. de Brecourt took me to see at the Madeleine.”
“And will it be at the Madeleine, too?”
“Yes, unless we have it at Notre Dame.”
“And how will your father and sister like that?”
“Our having it at Notre Dame?”
“Yes, or at the Madeleine. Your not having it at the American church.”
“Oh Delia wants it at the best place,” said Francie simply. Then she added: “And you know poppa ain’t much on religion.”
“Well now that’s what I call a genuine fact, the sort I was talking about,” Mr. Flack replied. Whereupon he at last took himself off, repeating that he would come in two days later, at 3.15 sharp.
Francie gave an account of his visit to her sister, on the return of the latter young lady, and mentioned the agreement they had come to in relation to the drive. Delia brooded on it a while like a sitting hen, so little did she know that it was right (“as” it was right Delia usually said) that Francie should be so intimate with other gentlemen after she was engaged.
“Intimate? You wouldn’t think it’s very intimate if you were to see me!” Francie cried with amusement.
“I’m sure I don’t want to see you,” Delia declared--the sharpness of which made her sister suddenly strenuous.
“Delia Dosson, do you realise that if it hadn’t been for Mr. Flack we would never have had that picture, and that if it hadn’t been for that picture I should never have got engaged?”
“It would have been better if you hadn’t, if that’s the way you’re going to behave. Nothing would induce me to go with you.”
This was what suited Francie, but she was nevertheless struck by Delia’s rigour. “I’m only going to take him to see Mr. Waterlow.”
“Has he become all of a sudden too shy to go alone?”
“Well, you know Mr. Waterlow has a prejudice against him and has made him feel it. You know Gaston told us so.”
“He told us HE couldn’t bear him; that’s what he told us,” said Delia.
“All the more reason I should be kind to him. Why Delia, do realise,” Francie went on.
“That’s just what I do,” returned the elder girl; “but things that are very different from those you want me to. You have queer reasons.”
“I’ve others too that you may like better. He wants to put a piece in the paper about it.”
“About your picture?”
“Yes, and about me. All about the whole thing.”
Delia stared a moment. “Well, I hope it will be a good one!” she said with a groan of oppression as from the crushing majesty of their fate.
X
When Francie, two days later, passed with Mr. Flack into Charles Waterlow’s studio she found Mme. de Cliche before the great canvas. She enjoyed every positive sign that the Proberts took an interest in her, and this was a considerable symptom, Gaston’s second sister’s coming all that way--she lived over by the Invalides--to look at the portrait once more. Francie knew she had seen it at an earlier stage; the work had excited curiosity and discussion among the Proberts from the first of their making her acquaintance, when they went into considerations about it which had not occurred to the original and her companions--frequently as, to our knowledge, these good people had conversed on the subject. Gaston had told her that opinions differed much in the family as to the merit of the work, and that Margaret, precisely, had gone so far as to say that it might be a masterpiece of tone but didn’t make her look like a lady. His father on the other hand had no objection to offer to the character in which it represented her, but he didn’t think it well painted. “Regardez-moi ca, et ca, et ca, je vous demande!” he had exclaimed, making little dashes at the canvas with his glove, toward mystifying spots, on occasions when the artist was not at hand. The Proberts always fell into French when they spoke on a question of art. “Poor dear papa, he only understands le vieux jeu!” Gaston had explained, and he had still further to expound what he meant by the old game. The brand-newness of Charles Waterlow’s game had already been a bewilderment to Mr. Probert.
Francie remembered now--she had forgotten it--Margaret de Cliche’s having told her she meant to come again. She hoped the marquise thought by this time that, on canvas at least, she looked a little more like a lady. Mme. de Cliche smiled at her at any rate and kissed her, as if in fact there could be no mistake. She smiled also at Mr. Flack, on Francie’s introducing him, and only looked grave when, after she had asked where the others were--the papa and the grande soeur--the girl replied that she hadn’t the least idea: her party consisted only of herself and Mr. Flack. Then Mme. de Cliche’s grace stiffened, taking on a shade that brought back Francie’s sense that she was the individual, among all Gaston’s belongings, who had pleased her least from the first. Mme. de Douves was superficially more formidable, but with her the second impression was comparatively comforting. It was just this second impression of the marquise that was not. There were perhaps others behind it, but the girl hadn’t yet arrived at them. Mr. Waterlow mightn’t have been very much prepossessed with Mr. Flack, but he was none the less perfectly civil to him and took much trouble to show him the work he had in hand, dragging out canvases, changing lights, moving him off to see things at the other end of the great room. While the two gentlemen were at a distance Mme. de Cliche expressed to Francie the conviction that she would allow her to see her home: on which Francie replied that she was not going home, but was going somewhere else with Mr. Flack. And she explained, as if it simplified the matter, that this gentleman was a big editor. Her sister-in-law that was to be echoed the term and Francie developed her explanation. He was not the only big editor, but one of the many big editors, of an enormous American paper. He was going to publish an article--as big, as enormous, as all the rest of the business--about her portrait. Gaston knew him perfectly: it was Mr. Flack who had been the cause of Gaston’s being presented to her. Mme. de Cliche looked across at him as if the inadequacy of the cause projected an unfavourable light upon an effect hitherto perhaps not exactly measured; she appealed as to whether Francie thought Gaston would like her to drive about Paris alone with one of ces messieurs. “I’m sure I don’t know. I never asked him!” said Francie. “He ought to want me to be polite to a person who did so much for us.” Soon after this Mme. de Cliche retired with no fresh sign of any sense of the existence of Mr. Flack, though he stood in her path as she approached the door. She didn’t kiss our young lady again, and the girl observed that her leave-taking consisted of the simple words “Adieu mademoiselle.” She had already noted that in proportion as the Proberts became majestic they became articulately French. She and Mr. Flack remained in the studio but a short time longer, and when they were seated in the carriage again, at the door--they had come in Mr. Dosson’s open landau--her companion said “And now where shall we go?” He spoke as if on their way from the hotel he hadn’t touched upon the pleasant vision of a little turn in the Bois. He had insisted then that the day was made on purpose, the air full of spring. At present he seemed to wish to give himself the pleasure of making his companion choose that particular alternative. But she only answered rather impatiently:
“Wherever you like, wherever you like!” And she sat there swaying her parasol, looking about her, giving no order.
“Au Bois,” said George Flack to the coachman, leaning back on the soft cushions. For a few moments after the carriage had taken its easy elastic start they were silent; but he soon began again. “Was that lady one of your new relatives?”
“Do you mean one of Mr. Probert’s old ones? She’s his sister.”
“Is there any particular reason in that why she shouldn’t say good-morning to me?”
“She didn’t want you to remain with me. She doesn’t like you to go round with me. She wanted to carry me off.”
“What has she got against me?” Mr. Flack asked with a kind of portentous calm.
Francie seemed to consider a little. “Oh it’s these funny French ideas.”
“Funny? Some of them are very base,” said George Flack.
His companion made no answer; she only turned her eyes to right and left, admiring the splendid day and shining city. The great architectural vista was fair: the tall houses, with their polished shop-fronts, their balconies, their signs with accented letters, seemed to make a glitter of gilt and crystal as they rose in the sunny air. The colour of everything was cool and pretty and the sound of everything gay; the sense of a costly spectacle was everywhere. “Well, I like Paris anyway!” Francie exhaled at last with her little harmonising flatness.
“It’s lucky for you, since you’ve got to live here.”
“I haven’t got to; there’s no obligation. We haven’t settled anything about that.”
“Hasn’t that lady settled it for you?”
“Yes, very likely she has,” said Francie placidly enough. “I don’t like her so well as the others.”
“You like the others very much?”
“Of course I do. So would you if they had made so much of you.”
“That one at the studio didn’t make much of me, certainly,” Mr. Flack declared.
“Yes, she’s the most haughty,” Francie allowed.
“Well, what is it all about?” her friend demanded. “Who are they anyway?”
“Oh it would take me three hours to tell you,” the girl cheerfully sighed. “They go back a thousand years.”
“Well, we’ve GOT a thousand years--I mean three hours.” And George Flack settled himself more on his cushions and inhaled the pleasant air. “I AM getting something out of this drive, Miss Francie,” he went on. “It’s many a day since I’ve been to the old Bois. I don’t fool round much in woods.”
Francie replied candidly that for her too the occasion was most agreeable, and Mr. Flack pursued, looking round him with his hard smile, irrelevantly but sociably: “Yes, these French ideas! I don’t see how you can stand them. Those they have about young ladies are horrid.”
“Well, they tell me you like them better after you’re married.”
“Why after they’re married they’re worse--I mean the ideas. Every one knows that.”
“Well, they can make you like anything, the way they talk,” Francie said.
“And do they talk a great deal?”
“Well, I should think so. They don’t do much else, and all about the queerest things--things I never heard of.”
“Ah THAT I’ll bet my life on!” Mr. Flack returned with understanding.
“Of course,” his companion obligingly proceeded, “‘ve had most conversation with Mr. Probert.”
“The old gentleman?”
“No, very little with him. I mean with Gaston. But it’s not he that has told me most--it’s Mme. de Brecourt. She’s great on life, on THEIR life--it’s very interesting. She has told me all their histories, all their troubles and complications.”
“Complications?” Mr. Flack threw off. “That’s what she calls them. It seems very different from America. It’s just like a beautiful story--they have such strange feelings. But there are things you can see--without being told.”
“What sort of things?”
“Well, like Mme. de Cliche’s--” But Francie paused as if for a word.
Her friend was prompt with assistance. “Do you mean her complications?”
“Yes, and her husband’s. She has terrible ones. That’s why one must forgive her if she’s rather peculiar. She’s very unhappy.”
“Do you mean through her husband?”
“Yes, he likes other ladies better. He flirts with Mme. de Brives.”
Mr. Flack’s hand closed over it. “Mme. de Brives?”
“Yes, she’s lovely,” said Francie. “She ain’t very young, but she’s fearfully attractive. And he used to go every day to have tea with Mme. de Villepreux. Mme. de Cliche can’t bear Mme. de Villepreux.”
“Well, he seems a kind of MEAN man,” George Flack moralised.
“Oh his mother was very bad. That was one thing they had against the marriage.”
“Who had?--against what marriage?”
“When Maggie Probert became engaged.”
“Is that what they call her--Maggie?”
“Her brother does; but every one else calls her Margot. Old Mme. de Cliche had a horrid reputation. Every one hated her.”
“Except those, I suppose, who liked her too much!” Mr. Flack permitted himself to guess. “And who’s Mme. de Villepreux?” he proceeded.
“She’s the daughter of Mme. de Marignac.”
“And who’s THAT old sinner?” the young man asked.
“Oh I guess she’s dead,” said Francie. “She used to be a great friend of Mr. Probert--of Gaston’s father.”
“He used to go to tea with her?”
“Almost every day. Susan says he has never been the same since her death.”
“The way they do come out with ‘em!” Mr. Flack chuckled. “And who the mischief’s Susan?”
“Why Mme. de Brecourt. Mr. Probert just loved Mme. de Marignac. Mme. de Villepreux isn’t so nice as her mother. She was brought up with the Proberts, like a sister, and now she carries on with Maxime.”
“With Maxime?”
“That’s M. de Cliche.”
“Oh I see--I see!” and George Flack engulfed it. They had reached the top of the Champs Elysees and were passing below the wondrous arch to which that gentle eminence forms a pedestal and which looks down even on splendid Paris from its immensity and across at the vain mask of the Tuileries and the river-moated Louvre and the twin towers of Notre Dame painted blue by the distance. The confluence of carriages--a sounding stream in which our friends became engaged--rolled into the large avenue leading to the Bois de Boulogne. Mr. Flack evidently enjoyed the scene; he gazed about him at their neighbours, at the villas and gardens on either hand; he took in the prospect of the far-stretching brown boskages and smooth alleys of the wood, of the hour they had yet to spend there, of the rest of Francie’s pleasant prattle, of the place near the lake where they could alight and walk a little; even of the bench where they might sit down. “I see, I see,” he repeated with appreciation. “You make me feel quite as if I were in the grand old monde.”
XI
One day at noon, shortly before the time for which Gaston had announced his return, a note was brought Francie from Mme. de Brecourt. It caused her some agitation, though it contained a clause intended to guard her against vain fears. “Please come to me the moment you’ve received this--I’ve sent the carriage. I’ll explain when you get here what I want to see you about. Nothing has happened to Gaston. We are all here.” The coupe from the Place Beauvau was waiting at the door of the hotel, and the girl had but a hurried conference with her father and sister--if conference it could be called in which vagueness on the one side melted into blankness on the other. “It’s for something bad--something bad,” Francie none the less said while she tied her bonnet, though she was unable to think what it could be. Delia, who looked a good deal scared, offered to accompany her; on which Mr. Dosson made the first remark of a practical character in which he had indulged in relation to his daughter’s alliance.
“No you won’t--no you won’t, my dear. They may whistle for Francie, but let them see that they can’t whistle for all of us.” It was the first sign he had given of being jealous of the dignity of the Dossons. That question had never troubled him.
“I know what it is,” said Delia while she arranged her sister’s garments. “They want to talk about religion. They’ve got the priests; there’s some bishop or perhaps some cardinal. They want to baptise you.”
“Then you’d better take a waterproof!” Francie’s father called after her as she flitted away.
She wondered, rolling toward the Place Beauvau, what they were all there for; that announcement balanced against the reassurance conveyed in the phrase about Gaston. She liked them individually, but in their collective form they made her uneasy. In their family parties there was always something of the tribunal. Mme. de Brecourt came out to meet her in the vestibule, drawing her quickly into a small room--not the salon; Francie knew it as her hostess’s “own room,” a lovely boudoir--in which, considerably to the girl’s relief, the rest of the family were not assembled. Yet she guessed in a moment that they were near at hand--they were waiting. Susan looked flushed and strange; she had a queer smile; she kissed her as if she didn’t know she was doing it. She laughed as she greeted her, but her laugh was extravagant; it was a different demonstration every way from any Francie had hitherto had to reckon with. By the time our young lady had noted these things she was sitting beside her on a sofa and Mme. de Brecourt had her hand, which she held so tight that it almost hurt her. Susan’s eyes were in their nature salient, but on this occasion they seemed to have started out of her head.
“We’re upside down--terribly agitated. A thunderbolt has fallen on the house.”
“What’s the matter--what’s the matter?” Francie asked, pale and with parted lips. She had a sudden wild idea that Gaston might have found out in America that her father had no money, had lost it all; that it had been stolen during their long absence. But would he cast her off for that?
“You must understand the closeness of our union with you from our sending for you this way--the first, the only person--in a crisis. Our joys are your joys and our indignations are yours.”
“What IS the matter, PLEASE?” the girl repeated. Their “indignations” opened up a gulf; it flashed upon her, with a shock of mortification for the belated idea, that something would have come out: a piece in the paper, from Mr. Flack, about her portrait and even a little about herself. But that was only more mystifying, for certainly Mr. Flack could only have published something pleasant--something to be proud of. Had he by some incredible perversity or treachery stated that the picture was bad, or even that SHE was? She grew dizzy, remembering how she had refused him, and how little he had liked it, that day at Saint-Germain. But they had made that up over and over, especially when they sat so long on a bench together (the time they drove) in the Bois de Boulogne.
“Oh the most awful thing; a newspaper sent this morning from America to my father--containing two horrible columns of vulgar lies and scandal about our family, about all of us, about you, about your picture, about poor Marguerite, calling her ‘Margot,’ about Maxime and Leonie de Villepreux, saying he’s her lover, about all our affairs, about Gaston, about your marriage, about your sister and your dresses and your dimples, about our darling father, whose history it professes to relate in the most ignoble, the most revolting terms. Papa’s in the most awful state!” and Mme. de Brecourt panted to take breath. She had spoken with the volubility of horror and passion. “You’re outraged with us and you must suffer with us,” she went on. “But who has done it? Who has done it? Who has done it?”
“Why Mr. Flack--Mr. Flack!” Francie quickly replied. She was appalled, overwhelmed; but her foremost feeling was the wish not to appear to disavow her knowledge.
“Mr. Flack? do you mean that awful person--? He ought to be shot, he ought to be burnt alive. Maxime will kill him, Maxime’s in an unspeakable rage. Everything’s at end, we’ve been served up to the rabble, we shall have to leave Paris. How could he know such things?--and they all so infamously false!” The poor woman poured forth her woe in questions, contradictions, lamentations; she didn’t know what to ask first, against what to protest. “Do you mean that wretch Marguerite saw you with at Mr. Waterlow’s? Oh Francie, what has happened? She had a feeling then, a dreadful foreboding. She saw you afterwards--walking with him--in the Bois.”
“Well, I didn’t see her,” the girl said.
“You were talking with him--you were too absorbed: that’s what Margot remembers. Oh Francie, Francie!” wailed Mme. de Brecourt, whose distress was pitiful.
“She tried to interfere at the studio, but I wouldn’t let her. He’s an old friend--a friend of poppa’s--and I like him very much. What my father allows, that’s not for others to criticise!” Francie continued. She was frightened, extremely frightened, at her companion’s air of tragedy and at the dreadful consequences she alluded to, consequences of an act she herself didn’t know, couldn’t comprehend nor measure yet. But there was an instinct of bravery in her which threw her into blind defence, defence even of George Flack, though it was a part of her consternation that on her too he should have practised a surprise--it would appear to be some self-seeking deception.
“Oh how can you bear with such brutes, how can your father--? What devil has he paid to tattle to him?”
“You scare me awfully--you terrify me,” the girl could but plead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen it, I don’t understand it. Of course I’ve talked to Mr. Flack.”
“Oh Francie, don’t say it--don’t SAY it! Dear child, you haven’t talked to him in that fashion: vulgar horrors and such a language!” Mme. de Brecourt came nearer, took both her hands now, drew her closer, seemed to supplicate her for some disproof, some antidote to the nightmare. “You shall see the paper; they’ve got it in the other room--the most disgusting sheet. Margot’s reading it to her husband; he can’t read English, if you can call it English: such a style of the gutter! Papa tried to translate it to Maxime, but he couldn’t, he was too sick. There’s a quantity about Mme. de Marignac--imagine only! And a quantity about Jeanne and Raoul and their economies in the country. When they see it in Brittany--heaven preserve us!”
Francie had turned very white; she looked for a minute at the carpet. “And what does it say about me?”
“Some trash about your being the great American beauty, with the most odious details, and your having made a match among the ‘rare old exclusives.’ And the strangest stuff about your father--his having gone into a ‘store’ at the age of twelve. And something about your poor sister--heaven help us! And a sketch of our career in Paris, as they call it, and the way we’ve pushed and got on and our ridiculous pretensions. And a passage about Blanche de Douves, Raoul’s sister, who had that disease--what do they call it?--that she used to steal things in shops: do you see them reading THAT? And how did he know such a thing? It’s ages ago, it’s dead and buried!”
“You told me, you told me yourself,” said Francie quickly. She turned red the instant she had spoken.
“Don’t say it’s YOU--don’t, don’t, my darling!” cried Mme. de Brecourt, who had stared and glared at her. “That’s what I want, that’s what you must do, that’s what I see you this way for first alone. I’ve answered for you, you know; you must repudiate the remotest connexion; you must deny it up to the hilt. Margot suspects you--she has got that idea--she has given it to the others. I’ve told them they ought to be ashamed, that it’s an outrage to all we know you and love you for. I’ve done everything for the last hour to protect you. I’m your godmother, you know, and you mustn’t disappoint me. You’re incapable, and you must say so, face to face, to my father. Think of Gaston, cherie; HE’LL have seen it over there, alone, far from us all. Think of HIS horror and of HIS anguish and of HIS faith, of what HE would expect of you.” Mme. de Brecourt hurried on, and her companion’s bewilderment deepened to see how the tears had risen to her eyes and were pouring down her cheeks. “You must say to my father, face to face, that you’re incapable--that you’re stainless.”
“Stainless?” Francie bleated it like a bewildered interrogative lamb. But the sheep-dog had to be faced. “Of course I knew he wanted to write a piece about the picture--and about my marriage.”
“About your marriage--of course you knew? Then, wretched girl, you’re at the bottom of ALL!” cried Mme. de Brecourt, flinging herself away, falling back on the sofa, prostrate there and covering her face with her hands.
“He told me--he told me when I went with him to the studio!” Francie asseverated loud. “But he seems to have printed more.”
“MORE? I should think so!” And Mme. de Brecourt rebounded, standing before her. “And you LET him--about yourself? You gave him preposterous facts?”
“I told him--I told him--I don’t know what. It was for his paper--he wants everything. It’s a very fine paper,” said the girl.
“A very fine paper?” Mme. de Brecourt flushed, with parted lips. “Have you SEEN, have you touched the hideous sheet? Ah my brother, my brother!” she quavered again, turning away.
“If your brother were here you wouldn’t talk to me this way--he’d protect me, Gaston would!” cried Francie, on her feet, seizing her little muff and moving to the door.
“Go away, go away or they’ll kill you!” her friend went on excitedly. “After all I’ve done for you--after the way I’ve lied for you!” And she sobbed, trying to repress her sobs.
Francie, at this, broke out into a torrent of tears. “I’ll go home. Poppa, poppa!” she almost shrieked, reaching the door.
“Oh your father--he has been a nice father, bringing you up in such ideas!” These words followed her with infinite scorn, but almost as Mme. de Brecourt uttered them, struck by a sound, she sprang after the girl, seized her, drew her back and held her a moment listening before she could pass out. “Hush--hush--they’re coming in here, they’re too anxious! Deny--deny it--say you know nothing! Your sister must have said things--and such things: say it all comes from HER!”
“Oh you dreadful--is that what YOU do?” cried Francie, shaking herself free. The door opened as she spoke and Mme. de Brecourt walked quickly to the window, turning her back. Mme. de Cliche was there and Mr. Probert and M. de Brecourt and M. de Cliche. They entered in silence and M. de Brecourt, coming last, closed the door softly behind him. Francie had never been in a court of justice, but if she had had that experience these four persons would have reminded her of the jury filing back into their box with their verdict. They all looked at her hard as she stood in the middle of the room; Mme. de Brecourt gazed out of the window, wiping her tears; Mme. de Cliche grasped a newspaper, crumpled and partly folded. Francie got a quick impression, moving her eyes from one face to another, that old Mr. Probert was the worst; his mild ravaged expression was terrible. He was the one who looked at her least; he went to the fireplace and leaned on the mantel with his head in his hands. He seemed ten years older.
“Ah mademoiselle, mademoiselle, mademoiselle!” said Maxime de Cliche slowly, impressively, in a tone of the most respectful but most poignant reproach.
“Have you seen it--have they sent it to you--?” his wife asked, thrusting the paper toward her. “It’s quite at your service!” But as Francie neither spoke nor took it she tossed it upon the sofa, where, as it opened, falling, the girl read the name of the Reverberator. Mme. de Cliche carried her head very far aloft.
“She has nothing to do with it--it’s just as I told you--she’s overwhelmed,” said Mme. de Brecourt, remaining at the window.
“You’d do well to read it--it’s worth the trouble,” Alphonse de Brecourt remarked, going over to his wife. Francie saw him kiss her as he noted her tears. She was angry at her own; she choked and swallowed them; they seemed somehow to put her in the wrong.
“Have you had no idea that any such monstrosity would be perpetrated?” Mme. de Cliche went on, coming nearer to her. She had a manner of forced calmness--as if she wished it to be understood that she was one of those who could be reasonable under any provocation, though she were trembling within--which made Francie draw back. “C’est pourtant rempli de choses--which we know you to have been told of--by what folly, great heaven! It’s right and left--no one’s spared--it’s a deluge of the lowest insult. My sister perhaps will have told you of the apprehensions I had--I couldn’t resist them, though I thought of nothing so awful as this, God knows--the day I met you at Mr. Waterlow’s with your journalist.”
“I’ve told her everything--don’t you see she’s aneantie? Let her go, let her go!” cried Mme. de Brecourt all distrustfully and still at the window.
“Ah your journalist, your journalist, mademoiselle!” said Maxime de Cliche. “I’m very sorry to have to say anything in regard to any friend of yours that can give you so little pleasure; but I promise myself the satisfaction of administering him with these hands a dressing he won’t forget, if I may trouble you so far as to ask you to let him know it!”
M. de Cliche fingered the points of his moustache; he diffused some powerful scent; his eyes were dreadful to Francie. She wished Mr. Probert would say something kind to her; but she had now determined to be strong. They were ever so many against one; Gaston was far away and she felt heroic. “If you mean Mr. Flack--I don’t know what you mean,” she said as composedly as possible to M. de Cliche. “Mr. Flack has gone to London.”
At this M. de Brecourt gave a free laugh and his brother-in-law replied: “Ah it’s easy to go to London.”
“They like such things there; they do them more and more. It’s as bad as America!” Mme. de Cliche declared.
“Why have you sent for me--what do you all want me to do? You might explain--I’m only an American girl!” said Francie, whose being only an American girl didn’t prevent her pretty head from holding itself now as high as Mme. de Cliche’s.
Mme. de Brecourt came back to her quickly, laying her hand on her arm. “You’re very nervous--you’d much better go home. I’ll explain everything to them--I’ll make them understand. The carriage is here--it had orders to wait.”
“I’m not in the least nervous, but I’ve made you all so,” Francie brought out with the highest spirit.
“I defend you, my dear young lady--I insist that you’re only a wretched victim like ourselves,” M. de Brecourt remarked, approaching her with a smile. “I see the hand of a woman in it, you know,” he went on to the others; “for there are strokes of a vulgarity that a man doesn’t sink to--he can’t, his very organisation prevents him--even if he be the dernier des goujats. But please don’t doubt that I’ve maintained that woman not to be you.”
“The way you talk! _I_ don’t know how to write,” Francie impatiently quavered.
“My poor child, when one knows you as I do--!” murmured Mme. de Brecourt with an arm round her.
“There’s a lady who helps him--Mr. Flack has told me so,” the girl continued. “She’s a literary lady--here in Paris--she writes what he tells her. I think her name’s Miss Topping, but she calls herself Florine--or Dorine,” Francie added.
“Miss Dosson, you’re too rare!” Marguerite de Cliche exclaimed, giving a long moan of pain which ended in an incongruous laugh. “Then you’ve been three to it,” she went on; “that accounts for its perfection!”
Francie disengaged herself again from Mme. de Brecourt and went to Mr. Probert, who stood looking down at the fire with his back to her. “Mr. Probert, I’m very sorry for what I’ve done to distress you; I had no idea you’d all feel so badly. I didn’t mean any harm. I thought you’d like it.”
The old man turned a little, bending his eyes on her, but without taking her hand as she had hoped. Usually when they met he kissed her. He didn’t look angry now, he only looked very ill. A strange, inarticulate sound, a chorus of amazement and mirth, came from the others when she said she thought they’d like it; and indeed poor Francie was far from being able to measure the droll effect of that speech. “Like it--LIKE IT?” said Mr. Probert, staring at her as if a little afraid of her.
“What do you mean? She admits--she admits!” Mme. de Cliche exulted to her sister. “Did you arrange it all that day in the Bois--to punish me for having tried to separate you?” she pursued to the poor child, who stood gazing up piteously at the old man.
“I don’t know what he has published--I haven’t seen it--I don’t understand. I thought it was only to be a piece about me,” she said to him.
“‘About me’!” M. de Cliche repeated in English. “Elle est divine!” He turned away, raising his shoulders and hands and then letting them fall.
Mme. de Brecourt had picked up the newspaper; she rolled it together, saying to Francie that she must take it home, take it home immediately--then she’d see. She only seemed to wish to get her out of the room. But Mr. Probert had fixed their flushed little guest with his sick stare. “You gave information for that? You desired it?”
“Why _I_ didn’t desire it--but Mr. Flack did.”
“Why do you know such ruffians? Where was your father?” the old man groaned.
“I thought he’d just be nice about my picture and give pleasure to Mr. Waterlow,” Francie went on. “I thought he’d just speak about my being engaged and give a little account; so many people in America would be interested.”
“So many people in America--that’s just the dreadful thought, my dear,” said Mme. de Brecourt kindly. “Foyons, put it in your muff and tell us what you think of it.” And she continued to thrust forward the scandalous journal.
But Francie took no notice of it; she looked round from Mr. Probert at the others. “I told Gaston I’d certainly do something you wouldn’t like.”
“Well, he’ll believe it now!” cried Mme. de Cliche.
“My poor child, do you think he’ll like it any better?” asked Mme. de Brecourt.
Francie turned upon her beautiful dilated eyes in which a world of new wonders and fears had suddenly got itself reflected. “He’ll see it over there--he has seen it now.”
“Oh my dear, you’ll have news of him. Don’t be afraid!” broke in high derision from Mme. de Cliche.
“Did HE send you the paper?” her young friend went on to Mr. Probert.
“It was not directed in his hand,” M. de Brecourt pronounced. “There was some stamp on the band--it came from the office.”
“Mr. Flack--is that his hideous name?--must have seen to that,” Mme. de Brecourt suggested.
“Or perhaps Florine,” M. de Cliche interposed. “I should like to get hold of Florine!”
“I DID--I did tell him so!” Francie repeated with all her fevered candour, alluding to her statement of a moment before and speaking as if she thought the circumstance detracted from the offence.
“So did I--so did we all!” said Mme. de Cliche.
“And will he suffer--as you suffer?” Francie continued, appealing to Mr. Probert.
“Suffer, suffer? He’ll die!” cried the old man. “However, I won’t answer for him; he’ll tell you himself, when he returns.”
“He’ll die?” echoed Francie with the eyes of a child at the pantomime who has found the climax turning to demons or monsters or too much gunpowder.
“He’ll never return--how can he show himself?” said Mme. de Cliche.
“That’s not true--he’ll come back to stand by me!” the girl flashed out.
“How couldn’t you feel us to be the last--the very last?” asked Mr. Probert with great gentleness. “How couldn’t you feel my poor son to be the last--?”
“C’est un sens qui lui manque!” shrilled implacably Mme. de Cliche.
“Let her go, papa--do let her go home,” Mme. de Brecourt pleaded. “Surely. That’s the only place for her to-day,” the elder sister continued.
“Yes, my child--you oughtn’t to be here. It’s your father--he ought to understand,” said Mr. Probert.
“For God’s sake don’t send for him--let it all stop!” And Mme. de Cliche made wild gestures.
Francie looked at her as she had never looked at any one in her life, and then said: “Good-bye, Mr. Probert--good-bye, Susan.”
“Give her your arm--take her to the carriage,” she heard Mme. de Brecourt growl to her husband. She got to the door she hardly knew how--she was only conscious that Susan held her once more long enough to kiss her. Poor Susan wanted to comfort her; that showed how bad--feeling as she did--she believed the whole business would yet be. It would be bad because Gaston, Gaston--! Francie didn’t complete that thought, yet only Gaston was in her mind as she hurried to the carriage. M. de Brecourt hurried beside her; she wouldn’t take his arm. But he opened the door for her and as she got in she heard him murmur in the strangest and most unexpected manner: “You’re charming, mademoiselle--charming, charming!”
XII
Her absence had not been long and when she re-entered the familiar salon at the hotel she found her father and sister sitting there together as if they had timed her by their watches, a prey, both of them, to curiosity and suspense. Mr. Dosson however gave no sign of impatience; he only looked at her in silence through the smoke of his cigar--he profaned the red satin splendour with perpetual fumes--as she burst into the room. An irruption she made of her desired reappearance; she rushed to one of the tables, flinging down her muff and gloves, while Delia, who had sprung up as she came in, caught her closely and glared into her face with a “Francie Dosson, what HAVE you been through?” Francie said nothing at first, only shutting her eyes and letting her sister do what she would with her. “She has been crying, poppa--she HAS,” Delia almost shouted, pulling her down upon a sofa and fairly shaking her as she continued. “Will you please tell? I’ve been perfectly wild! Yes you have, you dreadful--!” the elder girl insisted, kissing her on the eyes. They opened at this compassionate pressure and Francie rested their troubled light on her father, who had now risen to his feet and stood with his back to the fire.
“Why, chicken,” said Mr. Dosson, “you look as if you had had quite a worry.”
“I told you I should--I told you, I told you!” Francie broke out with a trembling voice. “And now it’s come!”
“You don’t mean to say you’ve DONE anything?” cried Delia, very white.
“It’s all over, it’s all over!” With which Francie’s face braved denial.
“Are you crazy, Francie?” Delia demanded. “I’m sure you look as if you were.”
“Ain’t you going to be married, childie?” asked Mr. Dosson all considerately, but coming nearer to her.
Francie sprang up, releasing herself from her sister, and threw her arms round him. “Will you take me away, poppa? will you take me right straight away?”
“Of course I will, my precious. I’ll take you anywhere. I don’t want anything--it wasn’t MY idea!” And Mr. Dosson and Delia looked at each other while the girl pressed her face upon his shoulder.
“I never heard such trash--you can’t behave that way! Has he got engaged to some one else--in America?” Delia threw out.
“Why if it’s over it’s over. I guess it’s all right,” said Mr. Dosson, kissing his younger daughter. “I’ll go back or I’ll go on. I’ll go anywhere you like.”
“You won’t have your daughters insulted, I presume!” Delia cried. “If you don’t tell me this moment what has happened,” she pursued to her sister, “I’ll drive straight round there and make THEM.”
“HAVE they insulted you, sweetie?” asked the old man, bending over his child, who simply leaned on him with her hidden face and no sound of tears. Francie raised her head, turning round to their companion. “Did I ever tell you anything else--did I ever believe in it for an hour?”
“Oh well, if you’ve done it on purpose to triumph over me we might as well go home, certainly. But I guess,” Delia added, “you had better just wait till Gaston comes.”
“It will be worse when he comes--if he thinks the same as they do.”
“HAVE they insulted you--have they?” Mr. Dosson repeated while the smoke of his cigar, curling round the question, gave him the air of putting it with placidity.
“They think I’ve insulted THEM--they’re in an awful state--they’re almost dead. Mr. Flack has put it into the paper--everything, I don’t know what--and they think it’s too wicked. They were all there together--all at me at once, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. I never saw people so affected.”
Delia’s face grew big with her stare. “So affected?”
“Ah yes, I guess there’s a good deal OF THAT,” said Mr. Dosson.
“It’s too real--too terrible; you don’t understand. It’s all printed there--that they’re immoral, and everything about them; everything that’s private and dreadful,” Francie explained.
“Immoral, is that so?” Mr. Dosson threw off.
“And about me too, and about Gaston and my marriage, and all sorts of personalities, and all the names, and Mme. de Villepreux, and everything. It’s all printed there and they’ve read it. It says one of them steals.”
“Will you be so good as to tell me what you’re talking about?” Delia enquired sternly. “Where is it printed and what have we got to do with it?”
“Some one sent it, and I told Mr. Flack.”
“Do you mean HIS paper? Oh the horrid ape!” Delia cried with passion.
“Do they mind so what they see in the papers?” asked Mr. Dosson. “I guess they haven’t seen what I’ve seen. Why there used to be things about ME--”
“Well, it IS about us too--about every one. They think it’s the same as if I wrote it,” Francie ruefully mentioned.
“Well, you know what you COULD do!” And Mr. Dosson beamed at her for common cheer.
“Do you mean that piece about your picture--that you told me about when you went with him again to see it?” Delia demanded.
“Oh I don’t know what piece it is; I haven’t seen it.”
“Haven’t seen it? Didn’t they show it to you?”
“Yes, but I couldn’t read it. Mme. de Brecourt wanted me to take it--but I left it behind.”
“Well, that’s LIKE you--like the Tauchnitzes littering up our track. I’ll be bound I’d see it,” Delia declared. “Hasn’t it come, doesn’t it always come?”
“I guess we haven’t had the last--unless it’s somewhere round,” said Mr. Dosson.
“Poppa, go out and get it--you can buy it on the boulevard!” Delia continued. “Francie, what DID you want to tell him?”
“I didn’t know. I was just conversing. He seemed to take so much interest,” Francie pleaded.
“Oh he’s a deep one!” groaned Delia.
“Well, if folks are immoral you can’t keep it out of the papers--and I don’t know as you ought to want to,” Mr. Dosson remarked. “If they ARE I’m glad to know it, lovey.” And he gave his younger daughter a glance apparently intended to show that in this case he should know what to do.
But Francie was looking at her sister as if her attention had been arrested. “How do you mean--‘a deep one’?”
“Why he wanted to break it off, the fiend!”
Francie stared; then a deeper flush leapt to her face, already mottled as with the fine footprints of the Proberts, dancing for pain. “To break off my engagement?”
“Yes, just that. But I’ll be hanged if he shall. Poppa, will you allow that?”
“Allow what?”
“Why Mr. Flack’s vile interference. You won’t let him do as he likes with us, I suppose, will you?”
“It’s all done--it’s all done!” said Francie. The tears had suddenly started into her eyes again.
“Well, he’s so smart that it IS likely he’s too smart,” her father allowed. “But what did they want you to do about it?--that’s what _I_ want to know?”
“They wanted me to say I knew nothing about it--but I couldn’t.”
“But you didn’t and you don’t--if you haven’t even read it!” Delia almost yelled.
“Where IS the d---d thing?” their companion asked, looking helplessly about him.
“On the boulevard, at the very first of those kiosks you come to. That old woman has it--the one who speaks English--she always has it. Do go and get it--DO!” And Delia pushed him, looked for his hat for him.
“I knew he wanted to print something and I can’t say I didn’t!” Francie said. “I thought he’d crack up my portrait and that Mr. Waterlow would like that, and Gaston and every one. And he talked to me about the paper--he’s always doing that and always was--and I didn’t see the harm. But even just knowing him--they think that’s vile.”
“Well, I should hope we can know whom we like!”--and Delia bounced fairly round as from the force of her high spirit.
Mr. Dosson had put on his hat--he was going out for the paper. “Why he kept us alive last year,” he uttered in tribute.
“Well, he seems to have killed us now,” Delia cried.
“Well, don’t give up an old friend,” her father urged with his hand on the door. “And don’t back down on anything you’ve done.”
“Lord, what a fuss about an old newspaper!” Delia went on in her exasperation. “It must be about two weeks old anyway. Didn’t they ever see a society-paper before?”
“They can’t have seen much,” said Mr. Dosson. He paused still with his hand on the door. “Don’t you worry--Gaston will make it all right.”
“Gaston?--it will kill Gaston!”
“Is that what they say?” Delia demanded.
“Gaston will never look at me again.”
“Well then he’ll have to look at ME,” said Mr. Dosson.
“Do you mean that he’ll give you up--he’ll be so CRAWLING?” Delia went on.
“They say he’s just the one who’ll feel it most. But I’m the one who does that,” said Francie with a strange smile.
“They’re stuffing you with lies--because THEY don’t like it. He’ll be tender and true,” Delia glared.
“When THEY hate me?--Never!” And Francie shook her head slowly, still with her smile of softness. “That’s what he cared for most--to make them like me.”
“And isn’t he a gentleman, I should like to know?” asked Delia.
“Yes, and that’s why I won’t marry him--if I’ve injured him.”
“Shucks! he has seen the papers over there. You wait till he comes,” Mr. Dosson enjoined, passing out of the room.
The girls remained there together and after a moment Delia resumed. “Well, he has got to fix it--that’s one thing I can tell you.”
“Who has got to fix it?”
“Why that villainous man. He has got to publish another piece saying it’s all false or all a mistake.”
“Yes, you’d better make him,” said Francie with a weak laugh. “You’d better go after him--down to Nice.”
“You don’t mean to say he’s gone down to Nice?”
“Didn’t he say he was going there as soon as he came back from London--going right through without stopping?”
“I don’t know but he did,” said Delia. Then she added: “The mean coward!”
“Why do you say that? He can’t hide at Nice--they can find him there.”
“Are they going after him?”
“They want to shoot him--to stab him, I don’t know what--those men.”
“Well, I wish they would,” said Delia.
“They’d better shoot me. I shall defend him. I shall protect him,” Francie went on.
“How can you protect him? You shall never speak to him again!” her sister engaged.
Francie had a pause. “I can protect him without speaking to him. I can tell the simple truth--that he didn’t print a word but what I told him.”
“I’d like to see him not!” Delia fairly hooted. “When did he grow so particular? He fixed it up,” she said with assurance. “They always do in the papers--they’d be ashamed if they didn’t. Well now he has got to bring out a piece praising them up--praising them to the skies: that’s what he has got to do!” she wound up with decision.
“Praising them up? They’ll hate that worse,” Francie returned musingly.
Delia stared. “What on earth then do they want?”
Francie had sunk to the sofa; her eyes were fixed on the carpet. She gave no reply to this question but presently said: “We had better go to-morrow, the first hour that’s possible.”
“Go where? Do you mean to Nice?”
“I don’t care where. Anywhere to get away.”
“Before Gaston comes--without seeing him?”
“I don’t want to see him. When they were all ranting and raving at me just now I wished he was there--I told them so. But now I don’t feel like that--I can never see him again.”
“I don’t suppose YOU’RE crazy, are you?” Delia returned.
“I can’t tell him it wasn’t me--I can’t, I can’t!” her companion went on.
Delia planted herself in front of her. “Francie Dosson, if you’re going to tell him you’ve done anything wrong you might as well stop before you begin. Didn’t you hear how poppa put it?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Francie said listlessly.
“‘Don’t give up an old friend--there’s nothing on earth so mean.’ Now isn’t Gaston Probert an old friend?”
“It will be very simple--he’ll give me up.”
“Then he’ll be worse than a worm.”
“Not in the least--he’ll give me up as he took me. He’d never have asked me to marry him if he hadn’t been able to get THEM to accept me: he thinks everything in life of THEM. If they cast me off now he’ll do just the same. He’ll have to choose between us, and when it comes to that he’ll never choose me.”
“He’ll never choose Mr. Flack, if that’s what you mean--if you’re going to identify yourself so with HIM!”
“Oh I wish he’d never been born!” Francie wailed; after which she suddenly shivered. And then she added that she was sick--she was going to bed, and her sister took her off to her room.
Mr. Dosson that afternoon, sitting by his younger daughter’s bedside, read the dreadful “piece” out to both his children from the copy of the Reverberator he had secured on the boulevard. It is a remarkable fact that as a family they were rather disappointed in this composition, in which their curiosity found less to repay it than it had expected, their resentment against Mr. Flack less to stimulate it, their fluttering effort to take the point of view of the Proberts less to sustain it, and their acceptance of the promulgation of Francie’s innocent remarks as a natural incident of the life of the day less to make them reconsider it. The letter from Paris appeared lively, “chatty,” highly calculated to please, and so far as the personalities contained in it were concerned Mr. Dosson wanted to know if they weren’t aware over here of the charges brought every day against the most prominent men in Boston. “If there was anything in that style they might talk,” he said; and he scanned the effusion afresh with a certain surprise at not finding in it some imputation of pecuniary malversation. The effect of an acquaintance with the text was to depress Delia, who didn’t exactly see what there was in it to take back or explain away. However, she was aware there were some points they didn’t understand, and doubtless these were the scandalous places--the things that had so worked up the Proberts. But why should they have minded if other people didn’t understand the allusions (these were peculiar, but peculiarly incomprehensible) any better than she did? The whole thing struck Francie herself as infinitely less lurid than Mme. de Brecourt’s account of it, and the part about her own situation and her beautiful picture seemed to make even less of the subject than it easily might have done. It was scanty, it was “skimpy,” and if Mr. Waterlow was offended it wouldn’t be because they had published too much about him. It was nevertheless clear to her that there were a lot of things SHE hadn’t told Mr. Flack, as well as a great many she had: perhaps those were the things that lady had put in--Florine or Dorine--the one she had mentioned at Mme. de Brecourt’s.
All the same, if the communication in the Reverberator let them down, at the hotel, more gently than had seemed likely and bristled so much less than was to have been feared with explanations of the anguish of the Proberts, this didn’t diminish the girl’s sense of responsibility nor make the case a whit less grave. It only showed how sensitive and fastidious the Proberts were and therefore with what difficulty they would come round to condonation. Moreover Francie made another reflexion as she lay there--for Delia kept her in bed nearly three days, feeling this to be for the moment at any rate an effectual reply to any absurd heroics about leaving Paris. Perhaps they had got “case-hardened” Francie said to herself; perhaps they had read so many such bad things that they had lost the delicacy of their palate, as people were said to do who lived on food too violently spiced. Then, very weak and vague and passive as she was now, in the bedimmed room, in the soft Parisian bed and with Delia treating her as much as possible like a sick person, she thought of the lively and chatty letters they had always seen in the papers and wondered if they ALL meant a violation of sanctities, a convulsion of homes, a burning of smitten faces, a rupture of girls’ engagements. It was present to her as an agreeable negative, I must add, that her father and sister took no strenuous view of her responsibility or of their own: they neither brought the matter home to her as a crime nor made her worse through her feeling them anxiously understate their blame. There was a pleasant cheerful helplessness in her father on this head as on every other. There could be no more discussion among them on such a question than there had ever been, for none was needed to show that for these candid minds the newspapers and all they contained were a part of the general fatality of things, of the recurrent freshness of the universe, coming out like the sun in the morning or the stars at night or the wind and the weather at all times.
The thing that worried Francie most while Delia kept her in bed was the apprehension of what her father might do; but this was not a fear of what he might do to Mr. Flack. He would go round perhaps to Mr. Probert’s or to Mme. de Brecourt’s and reprimand them for having made things so rough to his “chicken.” It was true she had scarcely ever seen him reprimand any one for anything; but on the other hand nothing like this had ever happened before to her or to Delia. They had made each other cry once or twice, but no one else had ever made them, and no one had ever broken out on them that way and frightened them half to death. Francie wanted her father not to go round; she had a sense that those other people had somehow stores of comparison, of propriety, of superiority, in any discussion, which he couldn’t command. She wanted nothing done and no communication to pass--only a proud unbickering silence on the part of the Dossons. If the Proberts made a noise and they made none it would be they who would have the best appearance. Moreover now, with each elapsing day, she felt she did wish to see Gaston about it. Her desire was to wait, counting the hours, so that she might just clearly explain, saying two or three things. Perhaps these things wouldn’t make it better--very likely they wouldn’t; but at any rate nothing would have been done in the interval, at least on her part and her father’s and Delia’s, to make it worse. She told her father that she wouldn’t, as Delia put it, “want to have him” go round, and was in some degree relieved at perceiving that he didn’t seem very clear as to what it was open to him to say to their alienated friends. He wasn’t afraid but was uncertain. His relation to almost everything that had happened to them as a family from a good while back was a sense of the absence of precedents, and precedents were particularly absent now, for he had never before seen a lot of people in a rage about a piece in the paper.
Delia also reassured her; she said she’d see to it that poppa didn’t sneak round. She communicated to her indeed that he hadn’t the smallest doubt that Gaston, in a few days, would blow them up--all THEM down there--much higher than they had blown her, and that he was very sorry he had let her go down herself on that sort of summons. It was for her and the rest to come to Francie and to him, and if they had anything practical to say they’d arrive in a body yet. If Mr. Dosson had the sense of his daughter’s having been roughly handled he derived some of the consolation of amusement from his persistent humorous view of the Proberts as a “body.” If they were consistent with their character or with their complaint they would move en masse upon the hotel, and he hung about at home a good deal as if to wait for them. Delia intimated to her sister that this vision cheered them up as they sat, they two, in the red salon while Francie was in bed. Of course it didn’t exhilarate this young lady, and she even looked for no brighter side now. She knew almost nothing but her sharp little ache of suspense, her presentiment of Gaston’s horror, which grew all the while. Delia remarked to her once that he would have seen lots of society-papers over there, he would have become familiar; but this only suggested to the girl--she had at present strange new moments and impulses of quick reasoning--that they would only prepare him to be disgusted, not to be indifferent. His disgust would be colder than anything she had ever known and would complete her knowledge of him--make her understand him properly for the first time. She would just meet it as briefly as possible; it would wind up the business, close the incident, and all would be over.
He didn’t write; that proved it in advance; there had now been two or three mails without a letter. He had seen the paper in Boston or in New York and it had simply struck him dumb. It was very well for Delia to say that of course he didn’t write when he was on the ocean: how could they get his letters even if he did? There had been time before--before he sailed; though Delia represented that people never wrote then. They were ever so much too busy at the last and were going to see their correspondents in a few days anyway. The only missives that came to Francie were a copy of the Reverberator, addressed in Mr. Flack’s hand and with a great inkmark on the margin of the fatal letter, and three intense pages from Mme. de Brecourt, received forty-eight hours after the scene at her house. This lady expressed herself as follows:
MY DEAR FRANCIE--I felt very badly after you had gone yesterday morning, and I had twenty minds to go and see you. But we’ve talked it over conscientiously and it appears to us that we’ve no right to take any such step till Gaston arrives. The situation isn’t exclusively ours but belongs to him as well, and we feel we ought to make it over to him in as simple and compact a form as possible. Therefore, as we regard it, we had better not touch it (it’s so delicate, isn’t it, my poor child?) but leave it just as it is. They think I even exceed my powers in writing you these simple lines, and that once your participation has been constatee (which was the only advantage of that dreadful scene) EVERYTHING should stop. But I’ve liked you, Francie, I’ve believed in you, and I don’t wish you to be able to say that in spite of the thunderbolt you’ve drawn down on us I’ve not treated you with tenderness. It’s a thunderbolt indeed, my poor and innocent but disastrous little friend! We’re hearing more of it already--the horrible Republican papers here have (AS WE KNOW) already got hold of the unspeakable sheet and are preparing to reproduce the article: that is such parts of it as they may put forward (with innuendoes and sous-entendus to eke out the rest) without exposing themselves to a suit for defamation. Poor Leonie de Villepreux has been with us constantly and Jeanne and her husband have telegraphed that we may expect them day after to-morrow. They are evidently immensely emotionnes, for they almost never telegraph. They wish so to receive Gaston. We have determined all the same to be intensely QUIET, and that will be sure to be his view. Alphonse and Maxime now recognise that it’s best to leave Mr. Flack alone, hard as it is to keep one’s hands off him. Have you anything to lui faire dire--to my precious brother when he arrives? But it’s foolish of me to ask you that, for you had much better not answer this. You will no doubt have an opportunity to say to him--whatever, my dear Francie, you CAN say! It will matter comparatively little that you may never be able to say it to your friend with every allowance SUZANNE DE BRECOURT.
Francie looked at this letter and tossed it away without reading it. Delia picked it up, read it to her father, who didn’t understand it, and kept it in her possession, poring over it as Mr. Flack had seen her pore over the cards that were left while she was out or over the registers of American travellers. They knew of Gaston’s arrival by his telegraphing from Havre (he came back by the French line) and he mentioned the hour--“about dinner-time”--at which he should reach Paris. Delia, after dinner, made her father take her to the circus so that Francie should be left alone to receive her intended, who would be sure to hurry round in the course of the evening. The girl herself expressed no preference whatever on this point, and the idea was one of Delia’s masterly ones, her flashes of inspiration. There was never any difficulty about imposing such conceptions on poppa. But at half-past ten, when they returned, the young man had not appeared, and Francie remained only long enough to say “I told you so!” with a white face and march off to her room with her candle. She locked herself in and her sister couldn’t get at her that night. It was another of Delia’s inspirations not to try, after she had felt that the door was fast. She forbore, in the exercise of a great discretion, but she herself for the ensuing hours slept no wink. Nevertheless the next morning, as early as ten o’clock, she had the energy to drag her father out to the banker’s and to keep him out two hours. It would be inconceivable now that Gaston shouldn’t turn up before dejeuner. He did turn up; about eleven o’clock he came in and found Francie alone. She noticed, for strangeness, that he was very pale at the same time that he was sunburnt; also that he didn’t for an instant smile at her. It was very certain there was no bright flicker in her own face, and they had the most singular, the most unnatural meeting. He only said as he arrived: “I couldn’t come last evening; they made it impossible; they were all there and we were up till three o’clock this morning.” He looked as if he had been through terrible things, and it wasn’t simply the strain of his attention to so much business in America. What passed next she couldn’t remember afterwards; it seemed but a few seconds before he said to her slowly, holding her hand--before this he had pressed his lips to hers silently--“Is it true, Francie, what they say (and they swear to it!) that YOU told that blackguard those horrors; that that infamous letter’s only a report of YOUR talk?”
“I told him everything--it’s all me, ME, ME!” the girl replied exaltedly, without pretending to hesitate an instant as to what he might mean.
Gaston looked at her with deep eyes, then walked straight away to the window and remained there in silence. She herself said nothing more. At last the young man went on: “And I who insisted to them that there was no natural delicacy like yours!”
“Well, you’ll never need to insist about anything any more!” she cried. And with this she dashed out of the room by the nearest door. When Delia and Mr. Dosson returned the red salon was empty and Francie was again locked in her room. But this time her sister for |
7529-0 | ced an entrance.
XIII
Mr. Dosson, as we know, was, almost more than anything else, loosely contemplative, and the present occasion could only minister to that side of his nature, especially as, so far at least as his observation of his daughters went, it had not urged him into uncontrollable movement. But the truth is that the intensity, or rather the continuity, of his meditations did engender an act not perceived by these young ladies, though its consequences presently became definite enough. While he waited for the Proberts to arrive in a phalanx and noted that they failed to do so he had plenty of time to ask himself--and also to ask Delia--questions about Mr. Flack. So far as they were addressed to his daughter they were promptly answered, for Delia had been ready from the first, as we have seen, to pronounce upon the conduct of the young journalist. Her view of it was clearer every hour; there was a difference however in the course of action which she judged this view to demand. At first he was to have been blown up sky-high for the mess he had got them into--profitless as the process might be and vain the satisfaction; he was to have been scourged with the sharpest lashes the sense of violated confidence could inflict. At present he was not to be touched with a ten-foot pole, but rather cut dead, cast off and ignored, let alone to his dying day: Delia quickly caught at this for the right grand way of showing displeasure. Such was the manner in which she characterised it in her frequent conversations with her father, if that can be called conversation which consisted of his serenely smoking while she poured forth arguments that kept repetition abreast of variety. The same cause will according to application produce effects without sameness: as a mark of which truth the catastrophe that made Delia express freely the hope she might never again see so much as the end of Mr. Flack’s nose had just the opposite action on her parent. The best balm for his mystification would have been to let his eyes sociably travel over his young friend’s whole person; this would have been to deal again with quantities and forces he could measure and in terms he could understand. If indeed the difference had been pushed further the girl would have kept the field, for she had the advantage of being able to motive her attitude, to which Mr. Dosson could have opposed but an indefensible, in fact an inarticulate, laxity. She had touched on her deepest conviction in saying to Francie that the correspondent of the Reverberator had played them that trick on purpose to get them into such trouble with the Proberts that he might see his own hopes bloom again in the heat of their disaster. This had many of the appearances of a strained interpretation, but that didn’t prevent Delia from placing it before her father several times an hour. It mattered little that he should remark in return that he didn’t see what good it could do Mr. Flack that Francie--and he and Delia, for all he could guess--should be disgusted with him: to Mr. Dosson’s mind that was such a queer way of reasoning. Delia maintained that she understood perfectly, though she couldn’t explain--and at any rate she didn’t want the manoeuvring creature to come flying back from Nice. She didn’t want him to know there had been a scandal, that they had a grievance against him, that any one had so much as heard of his article or cared what he published or didn’t publish; above all she didn’t want him to know that the Proberts had cooled off. She didn’t want him to dream he could have had such effects. Mixed up with this high rigour on Miss Dosson’s part was the oddest secret complacency of reflexion that in consequence of what Mr. Flack HAD published the great American community was in a position to know with what fine folks Francie and she were associated. She hoped that some of the people who used only to call when they were “off to-morrow” would take the lesson to heart.
While she glowed with this consolation as well as with the resentment for which it was required her father quietly addressed a few words by letter to their young friend in the south. This communication was not of a minatory order; it expressed on the contrary the loose sociability which was the essence of the good gentleman’s nature. He wanted to see Mr. Flack, to talk the whole thing over, and the desire to hold him to an account would play but a small part in the interview. It commended itself much more to him that the touchiness of the Proberts should be a sign of a family of cranks--so little did any experience of his own match it--than that a newspaper-man had misbehaved in trying to turn out an attractive piece. As the newspaper-man happened to be the person with whom he had most consorted for some time back he felt drawn to him in presence of a new problem, and somehow it didn’t seem to Mr. Dosson to disqualify him as a source of comfort that it was just he who had been the fountain of injury. The injury wouldn’t be there if the Proberts didn’t point to it with a thousand ringers. Moreover Mr. Dosson couldn’t turn his back at such short notice on a man who had smoked so many of his cigars, ordered so many of his dinners and helped him so handsomely to spend his money: such acts constituted a bond, and when there was a bond people gave it a little jerk in time of trouble. His letter to Nice was the little jerk.
The morning after Francie had passed with such an air from Gaston’s sight and left him planted in the salon--he had remained ten minutes, to see if she would reappear, and then had marched out of the hotel--she received by the first post a letter from him, written the evening before. It conveyed his deep regret that their meeting that day should have been of so painful, so unnatural a character, and the hope that she didn’t consider, as her strange behaviour had seemed to suggest, that SHE had anything to complain of. There was too much he wanted to say, and above all too much he wanted to ask, for him to consent to the indefinite postponement of a necessary interview. There were explanations, assurances, de part et d’autre, with which it was manifestly impossible that either of them should dispense. He would therefore propose that she should see him again, and not be wanting in patience to that end, late on the morrow. He didn’t propose an earlier moment because his hands were terribly full at home. Frankly speaking, the state of things there was of the worst. Jane and her husband had just arrived and had made him a violent, an unexpected scene. Two of the French newspapers had got hold of the article and had given the most perfidious extracts. His father hadn’t stirred out of the house, hadn’t put his foot inside a club, for more than a week. Marguerite and Maxime were immediately to start for England on an indefinite absence. They couldn’t face their life in Paris. For himself he was in the breach, fighting hard and making, on her behalf, asseverations it was impossible for him to believe, in spite of the dreadful defiant confession she had appeared to throw at him in the morning, that she wouldn’t virtually confirm. He would come in as soon after nine as possible; the day up to that time would be stiff in the Cours la Reine, and he begged her in the meantime not to doubt of his perfect tenderness. So far from her having caused it at all to shrink, he had never yet felt her to have, in his affection, such a treasure of indulgence to draw upon.
A couple of hours after the receipt of this manifesto Francie lay on one of the satin sofas with her eyes closed and her hand clinched upon it in her pocket. Delia sat hard by with a needle in her fingers, certain morsels of silk and ribbon in her lap, several pins in her mouth, and her attention turning constantly from her work to her sister’s face. The weather was now so completely vernal that Mr. Dosson was able to haunt the court, and he had lately resumed this practice, in which he was presumably at the present moment absorbed. Delia had lowered her needle and was making sure if her companion were awake--she had been perfectly still for so long--when her glance was drawn to the door, which she heard pushed open. Mr. Flack stood there, looking from one to the other of the young ladies as to see which would be most agreeably surprised by his visit.
“I saw your father downstairs--he says it’s all right,” said the journalist, advancing with a brave grin. “He told me to come straight up--I had quite a talk with him.”
“All right--ALL RIGHT?” Delia Dosson repeated, springing up. “Yes indeed--I should say so!” Then she checked herself, asking in another manner: “Is that so? poppa sent you up?” And then in still another: “Well, have you had a good time at Nice?”
“You’d better all come right down and see. It’s lovely down there. If you’ll come down I’ll go right back. I guess you want a change,” Mr. Flack went on. He spoke to Delia but he looked at Francie, who showed she had not been asleep by the quick consciousness with which she raised herself on her sofa. She gazed at the visitor with parted lips, but uttered no word. He barely faltered, coming toward her with his conscious grimace and his hand out. His knowing eyes were more knowing than ever, but had an odd appearance of being smaller, like penetrating points. “Your father has told me all about it. Did you ever hear of anything so cheap?”
“All about what?--all about what?” said Delia, whose attempt to represent happy ignorance was menaced by an intromission of ferocity. She might succeed in appearing ignorant, but could scarcely succeed in appearing kind. Francie had risen to her feet and had suffered Mr. Flack to possess himself for a moment of her hand, but neither of them had asked the young man to sit down. “I thought you were going to stay a month at Nice?” Delia continued.
“Well, I was, but your father’s letter started me up.”
“Father’s letter?”
“He wrote me about the row--didn’t you know it? Then I broke. You didn’t suppose I was going to stay down there when there were such times up here.”
“Gracious!” Delia panted.
“Is it pleasant at Nice? Is it very gay? Isn’t it very hot now?” Francie rather limply asked.
“Oh it’s all right. But I haven’t come up here to crow about Nice, have I?”
“Why not, if we want you to?”--Delia spoke up.
Mr. Flack looked at her for a moment very hard, in the whites of the eyes; then he replied, turning back to her sister: “Anything YOU like, Miss Francie. With you one subject’s as good as another. Can’t we sit down? Can’t we be comfortable?” he added.
“Comfortable? of course we can!” cried Delia, but she remained erect while Francie sank upon the sofa again and their companion took possession of the nearest chair.
“Do you remember what I told you once, that the people WILL have the plums?” George Flack asked with a hard buoyancy of the younger girl.
She looked an instant as if she were trying to recollect what he had told her; and then said, more remotely, “DID father write to you?”
“Of course he did. That’s why I’m here.”
“Poor father, sometimes he doesn’t know WHAT to do!” Delia threw in with violence.
“He told me the Reverberator has raised a breeze. I guessed that for myself when I saw the way the papers here were after it. That thing will go the rounds, you’ll see. What brought me was learning from him that they HAVE got their backs up.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” Delia Dosson rang out.
Mr. Flack turned his eyes on her own as he had done a moment before; Francie sat there serious, looking hard at the carpet. “What game are you trying, Miss Delia? It ain’t true YOU care what I wrote, is it?” he pursued, addressing himself again to Francie.
After a moment she raised her eyes. “Did you write it yourself?”
“What do you care what he wrote--or what does any one care?” Delia again interposed.
“It has done the paper more good than anything--every one’s so interested,” said Mr. Flack in the tone of reasonable explanation. “And you don’t feel you’ve anything to complain of, do you?” he added to Francie kindly.
“Do you mean because I told you?”
“Why certainly. Didn’t it all spring out of that lovely drive and that walk up in the Bois we had--when you took me up to see your portrait? Didn’t you understand that I wanted you to know that the public would appreciate a column or two about Mr. Waterlow’s new picture, and about you as the subject of it, and about your being engaged to a member of the grand old monde, and about what was going on in the grand old monde, which would naturally attract attention through that? Why Miss Francie,” Mr. Flack ever so blandly pursued, “you regularly TALKED as if you did.”
“Did I talk a great deal?” asked Francie.
“Why most freely--it was too lovely. We had a real grand old jaw. Don’t you remember when we sat there in the Bois?”
“Oh rubbish!” Delia panted.
“Yes, and Mme. de Cliche passed.”
“And you told me she was scandalised. And we had to laugh,” he reminded her--“it struck us as so idiotic. I said it was a high old POSE, and I knew what to think of it. Your father tells me she’s scandalised now--she and all the rest of them--at the sight of their names at last in a REAL newspaper. Well now, if you want to know, it’s a bigger pose than ever, and, as I said just now, it’s too damned cheap. It’s THIN--that’s what it is; and if it were genuine it wouldn’t count. They pretend to be shocked because it looks exclusive, but in point of fact they like it first-rate.”
“Are you talking about that old piece in the paper? Mercy, wasn’t that dead and buried days and days ago?” Delia quavered afresh. She hovered there in dismay as well as in displeasure, upset by the news that her father had summoned Mr. Flack to Paris, which struck her almost as a treachery, since it seemed to denote a plan. A plan, and an uncommunicated plan, on Mr. Dosson’s part was unnatural and alarming; and there was further provocation in his appearing to shirk the responsibility of it by not having come up at such a moment with his accomplice. Delia was impatient to know what he wanted anyway. Did he want to drag them down again to such commonness--ah she felt the commonness now!--even though it COULD hustle? Did he want to put Mr. Flack forward, with a feeble flourish that didn’t answer one of their questions, as a substitute for the alienated Gaston? If she hadn’t been afraid that something still more uncanny than anything that had happened yet might come to pass between her two companions in case of her leaving them together she would have darted down to the court to appease her conjectures, to challenge her father and tell him how particularly pleased she should be if he wouldn’t put in his oar. She felt liberated, however, the next moment, for something occurred that struck her as a sure proof of the state of her sister’s spirit.
“Do you know the view I take of the matter, according to what your father has told me?” Mr. Flack enquired. “I don’t mean it was he gave me the tip; I guess I’ve seen enough over here by this time to have worked it out. They’re scandalised all right--they’re blue with horror and have never heard of anything so dreadful. Miss Francie,” her visitor roared, “that ain’t good enough for you and me. They know what’s in the papers every day of their lives and they know how it got there. They ain’t like the fellow in the story--who was he?--who couldn’t think how the apples got into the dumplings. They’re just grabbing a pretext to break because--because, well, they don’t think you’re blue blood. They’re delighted to strike a pretext they can work, and they’re all cackling over the egg it has taken so many hens of ‘em to lay. That’s MY diagnosis if you want to know.”
“Oh--how can you say such a thing?” Francie returned with a tremor in her voice that struck her sister. Her eyes met Delia’s at the same moment, and this young woman’s heart bounded with the sense that she was safe. Mr. Flack’s power to hustle presumed too far--though Mr. Dosson had crude notions about the licence of the press she felt, even as an untutored woman, what a false step he was now taking--and it seemed to her that Francie, who was not impressed (the particular light in her eyes now showed it) could be trusted to allow him no benefit.
“What does it matter what he says, my dear?” she interposed. “Do make him drop the subject--he’s talking very wild. I’m going down to see what poppa means--I never heard of anything so flat!” At the door she paused a moment to add mutely, by mere facial force: “Now just wipe him out, mind!” It was the same injunction she had launched at her from afar that day, a year before, when they all dined at Saint-Germain, and she could remember how effective it had then been. The next moment she flirted out.
As soon as she had gone Mr. Flack moved nearer to Francie. “Now look here, you’re not going back on me, are you?”
“Going back on you--what do you mean?”
“Ain’t we together in this thing? WHY sure! We’re CLOSE together, Miss Francie!”
“Together--together?” Francie repeated with charming wan but not at all tender eyes on him.
“Don’t you remember what I said to you--just as straight as my course always is--before we went up there, before our lovely drive? I stated to you that I felt--that I always feel--my great hearty hungry public behind me.”
“Oh yes, I understood--it was all for you to work it up. I told them so. I never denied it,” Francie brought forth.
“You told them so?”
“When they were all crying and going on. I told them I knew it--I told them I gave you the tip as you call it.”
She felt Mr. Flack fix her all alarmingly as she spoke these words; then he was still nearer to her--he had taken her hand. “Ah you’re too sweet!” She disengaged her hand and in the effort she sprang up; but he, rising too, seemed to press always nearer--she had a sense (it was disagreeable) that he was demonstrative--so that she retreated a little before him. “They were all there roaring and raging, trying to make you believe you had outraged them?”
“All but young Mr. Probert. Certainly they don’t like it,” she said at her distance.
“The cowards!” George Flack after a moment remarked. “And where was young Mr. Probert?” he then demanded.
“He was away--I’ve told you--in America.”
“Ah yes, your father told me. But now he’s back doesn’t he like it either?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Flack,” Francie answered with impatience.
“Well I do then. He’s a coward too--he’ll do what his poppa tells him, and the countess and the duchess and his French brothers-in-law from whom he takes lessons: he’ll just back down, he’ll give you up.”
“I can’t talk with you about that,” said Francie.
“Why not? why is he such a sacred subject, when we ARE together? You can’t alter that,” her visitor insisted. “It was too lovely your standing up for me--your not denying me!”
“You put in things I never said. It seems to me it was very different,” she freely contended.
“Everything IS different when it’s printed. What else would be the good of the papers? Besides, it wasn’t I; it was a lady who helps me here--you’ve heard me speak of her: Miss Topping. She wants so much to know you--she wants to talk with you.”
“And will she publish THAT?” Francie asked with unstudied effect.
Mr. Flack stared a moment. “Lord, how they’ve worked on you! And do YOU think it’s bad?”
“Do I think what’s bad?”
“Why the letter we’re talking about.”
“Well--I didn’t see the point of so much.”
He waited a little, interestedly. “Do you think I took any advantage?”
She made no answer at first, but after a moment said in a tone he had never heard from her: “Why do you come here this way? Why do you ask me such questions?”
He hesitated; after which he broke out: “Because I love you. Don’t you know that?”
“Oh PLEASE don’t!” she almost moaned, turning away.
But he was launched now and he let himself go. “Why won’t you understand it--why won’t you understand the rest? Don’t you see how it has worked round--the heartless brutes they’ve turned into, and the way OUR life, yours and mine, is bound to be the same? Don’t you see the damned sneaking scorn with which they treat you and that _I_ only want to do anything in the world for you?”
Francie’s white face, very quiet now, let all this pass without a sign of satisfaction. Her only response was presently to say: “Why did you ask me so many questions that day?”
“Because I always ask questions--it’s my nature and my business to ask them. Haven’t you always seen me ask you and ask every one all I could? Don’t you know they’re the very foundation of my work? I thought you sympathised with my work so much--you used to tell me you did.”
“Well, I did,” she allowed.
“You put it in the dead past, I see. You don’t then any more?”
If this remark was on her visitor’s part the sign of a rare assurance the girl’s cold mildness was still unruffled by it. She considered, she even smiled; then she replied: “Oh yes I do--only not so much.”
“They HAVE worked on you; but I should have thought they’d have disgusted you. I don’t care--even a little sympathy will do: whatever you’ve got left.” He paused, looking at her, but it was a speech she had nothing for; so he went on: “There was no obligation for you to answer my questions--you might have shut me up that day with a word.”
“Really?” she asked with all her grave good faith in her face. “I thought I HAD to--for fear I should appear ungrateful.”
“Ungrateful?”
“Why to you--after what you had done. Don’t you remember that it was you who introduced us--?” And she paused with a fatigued delicacy.
“Not to those snobs who are screaming like frightened peacocks. I beg your pardon--I haven’t THAT on my conscience!” Mr. Flack quite grandly declared.
“Well, you introduced us to Mr. Waterlow and he introduced us to--to his friends,” she explained, colouring, as if it were a fault for the inexactness caused by her magnanimity. “That’s why I thought I ought to tell you what you’d like.”
“Why, do you suppose if I’d known where that first visit of ours to Waterlow was going to bring you out I’d have taken you within fifty miles--?” He stopped suddenly; then in another tone: “Jerusalem, there’s no one like you! And you told them it was all YOU?”
“Never mind what I told them.”
“Miss Francie,” said George Flack, “if you’ll marry me I’ll never ask a question again. I’ll go into some other business.”
“Then you didn’t do it on purpose?” Francie asked.
“On purpose?”
“To get me into a quarrel with them--so that I might be free again.”
“Well, of all the blamed ideas--!” the young man gasped. “YOUR pure mind never gave birth to that--it was your sister’s.”
“Wasn’t it natural it should occur to me, since if, as you say, you’d never consciously have been the means--”
“Ah but I WAS the means!” Mr. Flack interrupted. “We must go, after all, by what DID happen.”
“Well, I thanked you when I drove with you and let you draw me out. So we’re square, aren’t we?” The term Francie used was a colloquialism generally associated with levity, but her face, as she spoke, was none the less deeply serious--serious even to pain.
“We’re square?” he repeated.
“I don’t think you ought to ask for anything more. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye? Never!” cried George Flack, who flushed with his defeat to a degree that spoke strangely of his hopes.
Something in the way she repeated her “Goodbye!” betrayed her impression of this, and not a little withal that so much confidence left her unflattered. “Do go away!” she broke out.
“Well, I’ll come back very soon”--and he took up his hat.
“Please don’t--I don’t like it.” She had now contrived to put a wide space between them.
“Oh you tormentress!” he groaned. He went toward the door, but before he reached it turned round.
“Will you tell me this anyway? ARE you going to marry the lot--after this?”
“Do you want to put that in the paper?”
“Of course I do--and say you said it!” Mr. Flack held up his head.
They stood looking at each other across the large room. “Well then--I ain’t. There!”
“That’s all right,” he said as he went out.
XIV
When Gaston Probert came that evening he was received by Dosson and Delia, and when he asked where Francie might be was told by the latter that she would show herself in half an hour. Francie had instructed her sister that as their friend would have, first of all, information to give their father about the business he had transacted in America he wouldn’t care for a lot of women in the room. When Delia reported this speech to Mr. Dosson that gentleman protested that he wasn’t in any hurry for the business; what he wanted to find out most was whether Mr. Probert had a good time--whether he had liked it over there. Gaston might have liked it, but he didn’t look as if he had had a very good time. His face told of reverses, of suffering; and Delia declared to him that if she hadn’t received his assurance to the contrary she would have believed he was right down sick. He allowed that he had been very sick at sea and was still feeling the effect of it, but insisted that there was nothing the matter with him now. He sat for some time with Mr. Dosson and Delia, and never once alluded to the cloud that hung over their relations. The girl had schooled her father to a waiting attitude on this point, and the manner in which she had descended on him in the morning, after Mr. Flack had come upstairs, was a lesson he wasn’t likely soon to forget. It had been impressed on him that she was indeed wiser than he could pretend to be, and he was now mindful that he mustn’t speak of the “piece in the paper” unless young Probert should speak of it first. When Delia rushed down to him in the court she began by asking him categorically whom he had wished to do good to by sending Mr. Flack up to their parlour. To Francie or to her? Why the way they felt then, they detested his very name. To Mr. Flack himself? Why he had simply exposed him to the biggest snub he had ever got in his life.
“Well, hanged if I understand!” poor Mr. Dosson had said. “I thought you liked the piece--you think it’s so queer THEY don’t like it.” “They,” in the parlance of the Dossons, now never meant anything but the Proberts in congress assembled.
“I don’t think anything’s queer but you!” Delia had retorted; and she had let her father know that she had left Francie in the very act of “handling” Mr. Flack.
“Is that so?” the old gentleman had quavered in an impotence that made him wince with a sense of meanness--meanness to his bold initiator of so many Parisian hours.
Francie’s visitor came down a few minutes later and passed through the court and out of the hotel without looking at them. Mr. Dosson had been going to call after him, but Delia checked him with a violent pinch. The unsociable manner of the young journalist’s departure deepened Mr. Dosson’s dull ache over the mystery of things. I think this may be said to have been the only incident in the whole business that gave him a personal pang. He remembered how many of his cigars he had smoked with Mr. Flack and how universal a participant he had made him. This haughtiness struck him as the failure of friendship--not the publication of details about the Proberts. Interwoven with Mr. Dosson’s nature was the view that if these people had done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he couldn’t pity them, and that if they hadn’t done them there was no need of making such a rumpus about other people’s knowing. It was therefore, in spite of the young man’s rough exit, still in the tone of American condonation that he had observed to Delia: “He says that’s what they like over there and that it stands to reason that if you start a paper you’ve got to give them what they like. If you want the people with you, you’ve got to be with the people.”
“Well, there are a good many people in the world. I don’t think the Proberts are with us much.”
“Oh he doesn’t mean them,” said Mr. Dosson.
“Well, I do!” cried Delia.
At one of the ormolu tables, near a lamp with a pink shade, Gaston insisted on making at least a partial statement. He didn’t say that he might never have another chance, but Delia felt with despair that this idea was in his mind. He was very gentle, very polite, but distinctly cold, she thought; he was intensely depressed and for half an hour uttered not the least little pleasantry. There was no particular occasion for that when he talked about “preferred bonds” with her father. This was a language Delia couldn’t translate, though she had heard it from childhood. He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson, records of the mission of which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dosson pushed them into the drawer of the ormolu table with the remark that he guessed they were all right. Now, after the fact, he appeared to attach but little importance to Gaston’s achievements--an attitude which Delia perceived to be slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Delia understood it: she had an instinctive sense that her father knew a great deal more than Gaston could tell him even about the work he had committed to him, and also that there was in such punctual settlements an eagerness, a literalism, totally foreign to Mr. Dosson’s domestic habits and to which he would even have imputed a certain pettifogging provinciality--treatable however with dry humour. If Gaston had cooled off he wanted at least to be able to say that he had rendered them services in America; but now her father, for the moment at least, scarcely appeared to think his services worth speaking of: an incident that left him with more of the responsibility for his cooling. What Mr. Dosson wanted to know was how everything had struck him over there, especially the Pickett Building and the parlour-cars and Niagara and the hotels he had instructed him to go to, giving him an introduction in two or three cases to the gentleman in charge of the office. It was in relation to these themes that Gaston was guilty of a want of spring, as the girl phrased it to herself; that he could produce no appreciative expression. He declared however, repeatedly, that it was a most extraordinary country--most extraordinary and far beyond anything he had had any conception of. “Of course I didn’t like EVERYTHING,” he said, “any more than I like everything anywhere.”
“Well, what didn’t you like?” Mr. Dosson enquired, at this, after a short silence.
Gaston Probert made his choice. “Well, the light for instance.”
“The light--the electric?”
“No, the solar! I thought it rather hard, too much like the scratching of a slate-pencil.” As Mr. Dosson hereupon looked vague and rather as if the reference were to some enterprise (a great lamp company) of which he had not heard--conveying a suggestion that he was perhaps staying away too long, Gaston immediately added: “I really think Francie might come in. I wrote to her that I wanted particularly to see her.”
“I’ll go and call her--I’ll make her come,” said Delia at the door. She left her companions together and Gaston returned to the subject of Mr. Munster, Mr. Dosson’s former partner, to whom he had taken a letter and who had shown him every sort of civility. Mr. Dosson was pleased at this; nevertheless he broke out suddenly:
“Look here, you know; if you’ve got anything to say that you don’t think very acceptable you had better say it to ME.” Gaston changed colour, but his reply was checked by Delia’s quick return. She brought the news that her sister would be obliged if he would go into the little dining-room--he would find her there. She had something for his ear that she could mention only in private. It was very comfortable; there was a lamp and a fire. “Well, I guess she CAN take care of herself!” Mr. Dosson, at this, commented with a laugh. “What does she want to say to him?” he asked when Gaston had passed out.
“Gracious knows! She won’t tell me. But it’s too flat, at his age, to live in such terror.”
“In such terror?”
“Why of your father. You’ve got to choose.”
“How, to choose?”
“Why if there’s a person you like and he doesn’t like.”
“You mean you can’t choose your father,” said Mr. Dosson thoughtfully.
“Of course you can’t.”
“Well then please don’t like any one. But perhaps _I_ should like him,” he added, faithful to his easier philosophy.
“I guess you’d have to,” said Delia.
In the small salle-a-manger, when Gaston went in, Francie was standing by the empty table, and as soon as she saw him she began.
“You can’t say I didn’t tell you I should do something. I did nothing else from the first--I mean but tell you. So you were warned again and again. You knew what to expect.”
“Ah don’t say THAT again; if you knew how it acts on my nerves!” the young man groaned. “You speak as if you had done it on purpose--to carry out your absurd threat.”
“Well, what does it matter when it’s all over?”
“It’s not all over. Would to God it were!”
The girl stared. “Don’t you know what I sent for you to come in here for? To bid you good-bye.”
He held her an instant as if in unbelievable view, and then “Francie, what on earth has got into you?” he broke out. “What deviltry, what poison?” It would have been strange and sad to an observer, the opposition of these young figures, so fresh, so candid, so meant for confidence, but now standing apart and looking at each other in a wan defiance that hardened their faces.
“Don’t they despise me--don’t they hate me? You do yourself! Certainly you’ll be glad for me to break off and spare you decisions and troubles impossible to you.”
“I don’t understand; it’s like some hideous dream!” Gaston Probert cried. “You act as if you were doing something for a wager, and you make it worse by your talk. I don’t believe it--I don’t believe a word of it.”
“What don’t you believe?” she asked.
“That you told him--that you told him knowingly. If you’ll take that back (it’s too monstrous!) if you’ll deny it and give me your assurance that you were practised upon and surprised, everything can still be arranged.”
“Do you want me to lie?” asked Francie Dosson. “I thought you’d like pleasant words.”
“Oh Francie, Francie!” moaned the wretched youth with tears in his eyes.
“What can be arranged? What do you mean by everything?” she went on.
“Why they’ll accept it; they’ll ask for nothing more. It’s your participation they can’t forgive.”
“THEY can’t? Why do you talk to me of ‘them’? I’m not engaged to ‘them’!” she said with a shrill little laugh.
“Oh Francie _I_ am! And it’s they who are buried beneath that filthy rubbish!”
She flushed at this characterisation of Mr. Flack’s epistle, but returned as with more gravity: “I’m very sorry--very sorry indeed. But evidently I’m not delicate.”
He looked at her, helpless and bitter. “It’s not the newspapers in your country that would have made you so. Lord, they’re too incredible! And the ladies have them on their tables.”
“You told me we couldn’t here--that the Paris ones are too bad,” said Francie.
“Bad they are, God knows; but they’ve never published anything like that--poured forth such a flood of impudence on decent quiet people who only want to be left alone.”
Francie sank to a chair by the table as if she were too tired to stand longer, and with her arms spread out on the lamplit plush she looked up at him. “Was it there you saw it?”
He was on his feet opposite, and she made at this moment the odd reflexion that she had never “realised” he had such fine lovely uplifted eyebrows. “Yes, a few days before I sailed. I hated them from the moment I got there--I looked at them very little. But that was a chance. I opened the paper in the hall of an hotel--there was a big marble floor and spittoons!--and my eyes fell on that horror. It made me ill.”
“Did you think it was me?” she patiently gaped.
“About as soon as I supposed it was my father. But I was too mystified, too tormented.”
“Then why didn’t you write to me, if you didn’t think it was me?”
“Write to you? I wrote to you every three days,” he cried.
“Not after that.”
“Well, I may have omitted a post at the last--I thought it might be Delia,” Gaston added in a moment.
“Oh she didn’t want me to do it--the day I went with him, the day I told him. She tried to prevent me,” Francie insisted.
“Would to God then she had!” he wailed.
“Haven’t you told them she’s delicate too?” she asked in her strange tone.
He made no answer to this; he only continued: “What power, in heaven’s name, has he got over you? What spell has he worked?”
“He’s a gay old friend--he helped us ever so much when we were first in Paris.”
“But, my dearest child, what ‘gaieties,’ what friends--what a man to know!”
“If we hadn’t known him we shouldn’t have known YOU. Remember it was Mr. Flack who brought us that day to Mr. Waterlow’s.”
“Oh you’d have come some other way,” said Gaston, who made nothing of that.
“Not in the least. We knew nothing about any other way. He helped us in everything--he showed us everything. That was why I told him--when he asked me. I liked him for what he had done.”
Gaston, who had now also seated himself, listened to this attentively. “I see. It was a kind of delicacy.”
“Oh a ‘kind’!” She desperately smiled.
He remained a little with his eyes on her face. “Was it for me?”
“Of course it was for you.”
“Ah how strange you are!” he cried with tenderness. “Such contradictions--on s’y perd. I wish you’d say that to THEM, that way. Everything would be right.”
“Never, never!” said the girl. “I’ve wronged them, and nothing will ever be the same again. It was fatal. If I felt as they do I too would loathe the person who should have done such a thing. It doesn’t seem to me so bad--the thing in the paper; but you know best. You must go back to them. You know best,” she repeated.
“They were the last, the last people in France, to do it to. The sense of desecration, of pollution, you see”--he explained as if for conscience.
“Oh you needn’t tell me--I saw them all there!” she answered.
“It must have been a dreadful scene. But you DIDN’T brave them, did you?”
“Brave them--what are you talking about? To you that idea’s incredible!” she then hopelessly sighed.
But he wouldn’t have this. “No, no--I can imagine cases.” He clearly had SOME vision of independence, though he looked awful about it.
“But this isn’t a case, hey?” she demanded. “Well then go back to them--go back,” she repeated. At this he half-threw himself across the table to seize her hands, but she drew away and, as he came nearer, pushed her chair back, springing up. “You know you didn’t come here to tell me you’re ready to give them up.”
“To give them up?” He only echoed it with all his woe at first. “I’ve been battling with them till I’m ready to drop. You don’t know how they feel--how they MUST feel.”
“Oh yes I do. All this has made me older, every hour.”
“It has made you--so extraordinarily!--more beautiful,” said Gaston Probert.
“I don’t care. Nothing will induce me to consent to any sacrifice.”
“Some sacrifice there must be. Give me time--give me time, I’ll manage it. I only wish they hadn’t seen you there in the Bois.”
“In the Bois?”
“That Marguerite hadn’t seen you--with that lying blackguard. That’s the image they can’t get over.”
Well, it was as if it had been the thing she had got herself most prepared for--so that she must speak accordingly. “I see you can’t either, Gaston. Anyhow I WAS there and I felt it all right. That’s all I can say. You must take me as I am,” said Francie Dosson.
“Don’t--don’t; you infuriate me!” he pleaded, frowning.
She had seemed to soften, but she was in a sudden flame again. “Of course I do, and I shall do it again. We’re too terribly different. Everything makes you so. You CAN’T give them up--ever, ever. Good-bye--good-bye! That’s all I wanted to tell you.”
“I’ll go and throttle him!” the young man almost howled.
“Very well, go! Good-bye.” She had stepped quickly to the door and had already opened it, vanishing as she had done the other time.
“Francie, Francie!” he supplicated, following her into the passage. The door was not the one that led to the salon; it communicated with the other apartments. The girl had plunged into these--he already heard her push a sharp bolt. Presently he went away without taking leave of Mr. Dosson and Delia.
“Why he acts just like Mr. Flack,” said the old man when they discovered that the interview in the dining-room had come to an end.
The next day was a bad one for Charles Waterlow, his work in the Avenue de Villiers being terribly interrupted. Gaston Probert invited himself to breakfast at noon and remained till the time at which the artist usually went out--an extravagance partly justified by the previous separation of several weeks. During these three or four hours Gaston walked up and down the studio while Waterlow either sat or stood before his easel. He put his host vastly out and acted on his nerves, but this easy genius was patient with him by reason of much pity, feeling the occasion indeed more of a crisis in the history of the troubled youth than the settlement of one question would make it. Waterlow’s compassion was slightly tinged with contempt, for there was being settled above all, it seemed to him, and, alas, in the wrong sense, the question of his poor friend’s character. Gaston was in a fever; he broke out into passionate pleas--he relapsed into gloomy silences. He roamed about continually, his hands in his pockets and his hair in a tangle; he could take neither a decision nor a momentary rest. It struck his companion more than ever before that he was after all essentially a foreigner; he had the foreign sensibility, the sentimental candour, the need for sympathy, the communicative despair. A true young Anglo-Saxon would have buttoned himself up in his embarrassment and been dry and awkward and capable, and, however conscious of a pressure, unconscious of a drama; whereas Gaston was effusive and appealing and ridiculous and graceful--natural above all and egotistical. Indeed a true young Anglo-Saxon wouldn’t have known the particular acuteness of such a quandary, for he wouldn’t have parted to such an extent with his freedom of spirit. It was the fact of this surrender on his visitor’s part that excited Waterlow’s secret scorn: family feeling was all very well, but to see it triumph as a superstition calling for the blood-sacrifice made him feel he would as soon be a blackamoor on his knees before a fetish. He now measured for the first time the root it had taken in Gaston’s nature. To act like a man the hope of the Proberts must pull up the root, even if the operation should be terribly painful, should be attended with cries and tears and contortions, with baffling scruples and a sense of sacrilege, the sense of siding with strangers against his own flesh and blood. Now and again he broke out: “And if you should see her as she looks just now--she’s too lovely, too touching!--you’d see how right I was originally, when I found her such a revelation of that rare type, the French Renaissance, you know, the one we talked about.” But he reverted with at least equal frequency to the oppression he seemed unable to throw off, the idea of something done of cruel purpose and malice, with a refinement of outrage: such an accident to THEM, of all people on earth, the very last, the least thinkable, those who, he verily believed, would feel it more than any family in the world. When Waterlow asked what made them of so exceptionally fine a fibre he could only answer that they just happened to be--not enviably, if one would; it was his father’s influence and example, his very genius, the worship of privacy and good manners, a hatred of all the new familiarities and profanations. The artist sought to know further, at last and rather wearily, what in two words was the practical question his friend desired he should consider. Whether he should be justified in throwing the girl over--was that the issue?
“Gracious goodness, no! For what sort of sneak do you take me? She made a mistake, but any innocent young creature might do that. It’s whether it strikes you I should be justified in throwing THEM over.”
“It depends upon the sense you attach to justification.”
“I mean should I be miserably unhappy? Would it be in their power to make me so?”
“To try--certainly, if they’re capable of anything so nasty. The only fair play for them is to let you alone,” Waterlow wound up.
“Ah, they won’t do that--they like me too much!” Gaston ingenuously cried.
“It’s an odd way of liking! The best way to show their love will be to let you marry where your affections, and so many other charming things, are involved.”
“Certainly--only they question the charming things. They feel she represents, poor little dear, such dangers, such vulgarities, such possibilities of doing other dreadful things, that it’s upon THEM--I mean on those things--my happiness would be shattered.”
“Well,” the elder man rather dryly said, “if you yourself have no secrets for persuading them of the contrary I’m afraid I can’t teach you one.”
“Yes, I ought to do it myself,” Gaston allowed in the candour of his meditations. Then he went on in his torment of hesitation: “They never believed in her from the first. My father was perfectly definite about it. At heart they never accepted her; they only pretended to do so because I guaranteed her INSTINCTS--that’s what I did, heaven help me! and that she was incapable of doing a thing that could ever displease them. Then no sooner was my back turned than she perpetrated that!”
“That was your folly,” Waterlow remarked, painting away.
“My folly--to turn my back?”
“No, no--to guarantee.”
“My dear fellow, wouldn’t you?”--and Gaston stared.
“Never in the world.”
“You’d have thought her capable--?”
“Capabilissima! And I shouldn’t have cared.”
“Do you think her then capable of breaking out again in some new way that’s as bad?”
“I shouldn’t care if she was. That’s the least of all questions.”
“The least?”
“Ah don’t you see, wretched youth,” cried the artist, pausing from his work and looking up--“don’t you see that the question of her possibilities is as nothing compared to that of yours? She’s the sweetest young thing I ever saw; but even if she happened not to be I should still urge you to marry her, in simple self-preservation.”
Gaston kept echoing. “In self-preservation?”
“To save from destruction the last scrap of your independence. That’s a much more important matter even than not treating her shabbily. They’re doing their best to kill you morally--to render you incapable of individual life.”
Gaston was immensely struck. “They are--they are!” he declared with enthusiasm.
“Well then, if you believe it, for heaven’s sake go and marry her to-morrow!” Waterlow threw down his implements and added: “And come out of this--into the air.”
Gaston, however, was planted in his path on the way to the door. “And if she goes again and does the very same?”
“The very same--?” Waterlow thought.
“I mean something else as barbarous and as hard to bear.”
“Well,” said Waterlow, “you’ll at least have got rid of your family.”
“Yes, if she lets me in again I shall be glad they’re not there! They’re right, pourtant, they’re right,” Gaston went on, passing out of the studio with his friend.
“They’re right?”
“It was unimaginable that she should.”
“Yes, thank heaven! It was the finger of providence--providence taking you off your guard to give you your chance.” This was ingenious, but, though he could glow for a moment in response to it, Francie’s lover--if lover he may in his so infirm aspect be called--looked as if he mistrusted it, thought it slightly sophistical. What really shook him however was his companion’s saying to him in the vestibule, when they had taken their hats and sticks and were on the point of going out: “Lord, man, how can you be so impenetrably dense? Don’t you see that she’s really of the softest finest material that breathes, that she’s a perfect flower of plasticity, that everything you may have an apprehension about will drop away from her like the dead leaves from a rose and that you may make of her any perfect and enchanting thing you yourself have the wit to conceive?”
“Ah my dear friend!”--and poor Gaston, with another of his revulsions, panted for gratitude.
“The limit will be yours, not hers,” Waterlow added.
“No, no, I’ve done with limits,” his friend ecstatically cried.
That evening at ten o’clock Gaston presented himself at the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham and requested the German waiter to introduce him into the dining-room attached to Mr. Dosson’s apartments and then go and tell Miss Francina he awaited her there.
“Oh you’ll be better there than in the zalon--they’ve villed it with their luccatch,” said the man, who always addressed him in an intention of English and wasn’t ignorant of the tie that united the visitor to the amiable American family, or perhaps even of the modifications it had lately undergone.
“With their luggage?”
“They leave to-morrow morning--ach I don’t think they themselves know for where, sir.”
“Please then say to Miss Francina that I’ve called on the most urgent business and am extraordinarily pressed.”
The special ardour possessing Gaston at that moment belonged to the order of the communicative, but perhaps the vividness with which the waiter placed this exhibition of it before the young lady is better explained by the fact that her lover slipped a five-franc piece into his hand. She at any rate entered his place of patience sooner than Gaston had ventured to hope, though she corrected her promptitude a little by stopping short and drawing back when she saw how pale he was and how he looked as if he had been crying.
“I’ve chosen--I’ve chosen,” he said expressively, smiling at her in denial of these indications.
“You’ve chosen?”
“I’ve had to give them up. But I like it so better than having to give YOU up! I took you first with their assent. That was well enough--it was worth trying for. But now I take you without it. We can live that way too.”
“Ah I’m not worth it. You give up too much!” Francie returned. “We’re going away--it’s all over.” She averted herself quickly, as if to carry out her meaning, but he caught her more quickly still and held her--held her fast and long. She had only freed herself when her father and sister broke in from the salon, attracted apparently by the audible commotion.
“Oh I thought you had at least knocked over the lamp!” Delia exclaimed.
“You must take me with you if you’re going away, Mr. Dosson,” Gaston said. “I’ll start whenever you like.”
“All right--where shall we go?” that amiable man asked.
“Hadn’t you decided that?”
“Well, the girls said they’d tell me.”
“We were going home,” Francie brought out.
“No we weren’t--not a wee mite!” Delia professed.
“Oh not THERE” Gaston murmured, with a look of anguish at Francie.
“Well, when you’ve fixed it you can take the tickets,” Mr. Dosson observed with detachment.
“To some place where there are no newspapers, darling,” Gaston went on.
“I guess you’ll have hard work to find one,” Mr. Dosson pursued.
“Dear me, we needn’t read them any more. We wouldn’t have read that one if your family hadn’t forced us,” Delia said to her prospective brother-in-law.
“Well, I shall never be forced--I shall never again in my life look at one,” he very gravely declared.
“You’ll see, sir,--you’ll have to!” Mr. Dosson cheerfully persisted.
“No, you’ll tell us enough.”
Francie had kept her eyes on the ground; the others were all now rather unnaturally smiling. “Won’t they forgive me ever?” she asked, looking up.
“Yes, perfectly, if you can persuade me not to stick to you. But in that case what good will their forgiveness do you?”
“Well, perhaps it’s better to pay for it,” the girl went on.
“To pay for it?”
“By suffering something. For it WAS dreadful,” she solemnly gloomily said.
“Oh for all you’ll suffer--!” Gaston protested, shining down on her.
“It was for you--only for you, as I told you,” Francie returned.
“Yes, don’t tell me again--I don’t like that explanation! I ought to let you know that my father now declines to do anything for me,” the young man added to Mr. Dosson.
“To do anything for you?”
“To make me any allowance.”
“Well, that makes me feel better. We don’t want your father’s money, you know,” this more soothable parent said with his mild sturdiness.
“There’ll be enough for all; especially if we economise in newspapers”--Delia carried it elegantly off.
“Well, I don’t know, after all--the Reverberator came for nothing,” her father as gaily returned.
“Don’t you be afraid he’ll ever send it now!” she shouted in her return of confidence.
“I’m very sorry--because they were all lovely,” Francie went on to Gaston with sad eyes.
“Let us wait to say that till they come back to us,” he answered somewhat sententiously. He really cared little at this moment whether his relatives were lovely or not.
“I’m sure you won’t have to wait long!” Delia remarked with the same cheerfulness.
“‘Till they come back’?” Mr. Dosson repeated. “Ah they can’t come back now, sir. We won’t take them in!” The words fell from his lips with a fine unexpected austerity which imposed itself, producing a momentary silence, and it is a sign of Gaston’s complete emancipation that he didn’t in his heart resent this image of eventual favours denied his race. The resentment was rather Delia’s, but she kept it to herself, for she was capable of reflecting with complacency that the key of the house would after all be hers, so that she could open the door for the Proberts if the Proberts should knock. Now that her sister’s marriage was really to take place her consciousness that the American people would have been resoundingly told so was still more agreeable. The party left the Hotel de l’Univers et de Cheltenham on the morrow, but it appeared to the German waiter, as he accepted another five-franc piece from the happy and now reckless Gaston, that they were even yet not at all clear as to where they were going.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Reverberator, by Henry James |
25056-8 | Produced by David Widger
THE BROTHERS-IN-LAW: A TALE OF THE EQUATORIAL ISLANDS, and THE BRASS GUN OF THE BUCCANEERS
From "The Tapu Of Banderah and Other Stories"
By Louis Becke
C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.
1901
THE BROTHERS-IN-LAW: A TALE OF THE EQUATORIAL ISLANDS
"There," said Tâvita the teacher, pointing with his paddle to a long, narrow peninsula which stretched out into the shallow waters of the lagoon, "there, that is the place where the battle was fought. In those days a village of thirty houses or more stood there; now no one liveth there, and only sometimes do the people come here to gather cocoanuts."
The White Man nodded. "'Tis a fair place to look upon. Let us land and rest awhile, for the sun is hot."
The native pastor swung the bow of the canoe round towards the shore, and presently the little craft glided gently upon the hard, white sand, and the two men got out, walked up to the grove of cocoa-palms, and sat down under their shade to rest and smoke until the sun lost some of its fierce intensity and they could proceed on their journey homeward to the principal village.
The White Man was the one trader living in Peru,{*} the native was a Samoan, and one of the oldest and bravest missionaries in the Pacific. For twenty years he had dwelt among the wild, intractable, and savage people of Peru--twenty years of almost daily peril, for in those days the warlike people of the Gilbert Group resented the coming of the few native teachers scattered throughout the archipelago, and only Tavita's undaunted courage and genial disposition had preserved the lives of himself and his family. Such influence as he now possessed was due, not to his persistent attempts to preach Christianity, but to his reputation for integrity of conduct and his skill as a fisherman and carpenter.
* Francis Island, or Peru, is one of the largest atolls of the Gilbert Group in the South Pacific, about one hundred and twenty miles south of the Equator
The White Man and he were firm friends, and that day they had been down to the north end of the lagoon to collect a canoe load of the eggs of a small species of tern which frequented the uninhabited portion of the island in myriad swarms.
Presently, as they sat and smoked, and lazily watched a swarm of the silvery mullet called _kanae_ disporting themselves on the glassy surface of the lagoon, the White Man said--
"Who were these white men, Tâvita, who fought in the battle?"
"Hast never heard the story?" inquired the teacher in Samoan.
The trader shook his head. "Only some of it--a little from one, a little from another."
"Then listen," said Tâvita, re-filling his pipe and leaning his broad back against the bole of a cocoa-palm.
*****
"It was nineteen years ago, and I had been living on the island but a year. In those days there were many white men in these islands. Some were traders, some were but _papalagi tafea_{*} who spent their days in idleness, drunkenness, and debauchery, casting aside all pride and living like these savage people, with but a girdle of grass around their naked waists, their hands ever imbued in the blood of their fellow white men or that of the men of the land.
* Beachcombers.
"Here, on this island, were two traders and many beachcombers. One of the traders was a man named Carter, the other was named West Carter the people called 'Karta,' the other by his fore name, which was 'Simi' (Jim). They came here together in a whaleship from the Bonin Islands with their wives--two sisters, who were Portuguese half-castes, and both very beautiful women. Carter's wife had no children; West, who was the younger man, and who had married the younger sister, had two. Both brought many thousands of dollars worth of trade with them to buy cocoanut oil, for in those days these natives here did not make copra as they do now--they made oil from the nuts.
"Karta built a house on the north end of the island, where there is the best anchorage for ships, West chose to remain on the lee side where he had landed, and bought a house near to mine. In quite a few days we became friends, and almost every night we would meet and talk, and his children and mine played together. He was quite a young man, and had been, he told me, the third mate of an English ship which was cast away on the Bonin Islands four years before, where he had met Karta, who was a trader there, and whose wife's sister he married.
"One day they heard from the captain of a whaleship that there was much money to be made on this island of Peru, for although there were many beachcombers living here there was no trader to whom the people could sell their oil. So that was why they came here.
"Now, althoug |
25056-8 | h these two men were married to two sisters, there was but little love between them, and then as time went on came distrust, and then hatred, born out of Karta's jealousy and wicked heart; but until they came to live here on Peru there had been no bad blood--not even enough to cause a bitter word, though even then the younger man did not like Karta, who was a man of violent temper, unfaithful to his wife, and rude and insulting in his manner to most men, white or brown. And Serena, his wife, hated him, but made no sign.
"As time went on, both men prospered, for there was much oil to be had, and at the end of the first year a schooner came from Sydney and bought it I went on board with Simi, after the oil had been rafted off to the ship's side. Karta, too, came on board to be paid for his oil. He had been drinking much grog and his face was flushed and angry. With him were three beachcombers whose foul language and insolent demeanour angered both the captain and Simi, who were quiet men. There were six or seven of these beachcombers living on the island, and they all disliked Simi, who would have none of their company; but in Karta's house they were made welcome. Night after night they would gather there and drink and gamble, for some of them had bags of dollars, for dissolute and idle as they were for the most of their time they could make money easily by acting as interpreters for the natives, to the captains of the whaleships, or as pilots to the trading vessels sailing northward to the Marshall Islands.
"The captain paid Simi partly in money and partly in trade goods, for the two hundred casks of oil he bought, and then Simi and I turned to go on shore. Karta had scarce spoken ten words to Simi, who yet bore him no ill-will, although for many months tales had come to us of the evil life he led and the insults he put upon his wife Serena.
"But after he had bidden farewell to the captain, Simi held out his hand to his brother-in-law and said--'My wife Luisa sendeth love and greetings to Serena. Is she in good health?'
"Karta would not take the hand held out to him.
"'What is that to thee or thy wife either?' he answered rudely. 'Look to thy own business and meddle not with mine.'
"Simi's face grew red with anger, but he spoke quietly and reproved his brother-in-law for his rude speech. 'Why insult me needlessly before so many strangers?' he said. 'What harm have I or my wife Luisa ever done to thee?'
"'Curse thee and Luisa, thy wife,' said Karta again; 'she and thee, aye, and Serena too, are well matched, for ye be all cunning sneaks and fit company for that fat-faced Samoan psalm-singer who stands beside thee.'
"At these words the three beachcombers laughed, and when they saw that Simi made no answer, but turned aside from Karta in contempt, one of them called him a coward.
"He turned upon him quickly. 'Thou liest, thou drunken, useless cumberer of the earth,' he said, looking at him scornfully; 'no coward am I, nor a noisy boaster like thee. This is no place for us to quarrel. But say such a thing to me on the beach if ye dare.'
"'He is my friend/ said Karta, speaking with drunken rage, and thrusting his face into Simi's, 'he is as good a man as thee any day. To strike him or any one of us thou art afraid, thou cat-hearted coward and miser.'
"Simi clenched his hands, but suddenly thrust them into his pockets and looked at the captain and the officers of the ship.
"'This is no place for me,' he again said in a low voice; 'come, Tavita, let us go,' and without even raising his eyes to Karta and the three other men he went out of the cabin.
"That night he, Luisa, and I and my wife sat talking; and in the fulness of her anger at the insults heaped upon her husband, Luisa told us of some things.
"'This man Karta hateth both my sister and myself, as well as my husband. He hateth me because that it was I whom he desired to marry, four years ago; but I feared him too much to become his wife, for even in those days I knew him to be a drunkard and a gambler, and a licentious man. Then although she loved him not my sister Serena became his wife, for he was a man of good property, and promised to give over his evil ways and be a good husband to her. And he hateth her and would gladly see her dead, for she hath borne him no children. He is for ever flinging cruel words at her, and hath said to her before me that a childless man is a thing of scorn and disgrace even to the savage people of this island. And he makes no secret of his wickedness with other women. That is why my sister Serena is dull and heavy-minded; for she is eaten up with grief and shame.'
"'That is true,' said Simi, 'I have known this for a year past, for when he is drunk he cannot conceal his thoughts. And he is full of anger against me because I have nought in common with him. I am neither a drinker of grog nor a gambler, and have suffered from him what I would suffer from no other man. I am no brawler, but yet 'tis hard to bear.'
*****
"Just as dawn came, and I was sunk in slumber, I heard a footstep outside my door, and then Simi called to me. 'Bring thy wife to my house quickly,' he said, 'evil work hath been done in the night.'
"My wife and I followed him, and when we entered we saw Luisa his wife kneeling beside a couch and weeping over Serena, who lay still and quiet as if dead.
"'Look,' he said sternly, 'look what that devil hath done!'
"He lifted Serena's left arm--the bone was broken in two places, above and below the elbow.
"We set to work quickly, and fitting the broken bones in place we bound her arm up in stiff, smooth strips of the spathe of the cocoanut tree, and then washed and dressed her feet, which were cut and bleeding, for she had walked barefooted, and clothed only in her night-dress, all the way from the north end of the island, which is nearly two leagues from my house.
"After she had drunk some coffee and eaten a little food she became stronger, and told us all that had befallen her.
"'Karta and the three other white men came back from the ship when it was long past midnight, and I knew by the noise they made that they had all been drinking grog. I heard them talking and laughing and saying that thou, Simi, were a paltry coward; and then one of them--he who is called Joe--said that he would one day end thee with a bullet and take Luisa to wife, as so fine a woman deserved a better man than a cur for a husband. And Karta--Karta my husband--laughed and said that that could not be, for he meant to take thee, Luisa, for himself when he had ridden himself of me. His shameless words stung me, and I wept silently as I lay there, and pressed my hands to my ears to shut out their foul talk and blasphemies.
"'Suddenly I heard my husband's voice as he rose from the table and came towards the sleeping room. He threw open the door and bade me come out and put food before him and his friends.
"'I rose at his bidding, for his face terrified me--it was the face of a devil--and began to clothe myself. He tore the dress f |
25056-8 | rom my hands and cursed me, and bade me go as I stood. In my fear I sprang to the window and tried to tear down the cane lattice-work so as to escape from the house and the shame he sought to put upon me. He seized me by the waist and tried to tear me away, but I was strong--strong with the strength of a man. Then it was that he went mad, for he took up a heavy _paua_ stick and struck me twice on the arm. And had it not been that the other white men came in and dragged him away from me, crying shame on him, and throwing him down upon the floor, I would now be dead.
"'I lay quiet for a little time and then rising to my feet looked out into the big room, where the three men were still holding my husband down. One of them bade me run for my life, for Karta, he said, had gone mad with grog.
"'I feared to seek aid from any of the natives, for they, too, dread Karta at such times; so I walked and ran, sometimes along the beach, sometimes through the bush till I came here. That is all.'
* * * * *
"That morning the head man in our village caused the shell to sound,{*} to call the people together so that they might hear from Simi the story of the shame put upon his wife's sister and upon himself and his house. As the people gathered around the _moniep_{**} and the head men sat down inside, the captain of the ship came on shore, and great was his anger when he heard the tale.
* A conch-shell.
** The council house.
"'Let this poor woman come to my ship,' he said; 'her life here is not safe with such a man as that. For I know his utter vileness and cruelty to her. With me she shall be safe and well cared for, and if she so wishes she shall come with me to Fiji where my wife liveth, and her life will be a life of peace.'
"So Serena was put in the ship's boat, and Luisa went with her to remain on board till the ship sailed, which would be in three days. Then Simi and the head men talked together in the council house, and they made a law and sent a message to Karta. This was the message they sent to him: 'Because of the evil thou hast done and of the shame thou hast put upon the sister of the wife of our white man, come no more to this town. If thou comest then will there be war between thy town and ours, and we will burn the houses and harry and slay thee and the seven other white men, and all men of thy town who side with thee, and make slaves of the women and children. This is our last word.'
"A swift messenger was sent. Before the sun was in mid-heaven he returned, crying out as he ran, 'War is the answer of Karta and his village. War and death to Simi and to us all are his words; and to Luisa, the wife of the white man, he sendeth this message: "Prepare a feast for thy new husband, for he cometh to take thee away from one who cannot stand against him."'
"In those days there were seven hundred fighting men in our town, and a great clamour arose. Spears and clubs and muskets and hatchets were seized, the armour of stout cinnet which covered a man from head to foot was put on, women filled baskets with smooth stones for the slings; and long before sundown the warriors set out, with Simi and the head men leading them, to meet their enemies mid-way--at this very place where we now sit. For this narrow strip of land hath been the fighting-ground of Peru from the old, old times long before I was born, and my years are three score and seven.
"The night was dark, but Simi and his people, when they reached this place, some by land and some in canoes, lit great fire |
25056-8 | s on the beach and dug trenches in the sand very quickly, behind which all those who carried muskets were placed, to fire into the enemy's canoes as they paddled along the narrow passage to the landing place. Karta and his white friends and the people of their town had more than two hundred muskets, whilst our village had less than fifty. But they were strong of heart and waited eagerly for the fight.
"Just before sunrise we saw them coming. There were over one hundred canoes, each carrying five or six men. Karta and the beachcombers were leading in a whaleboat, which was being rowed very swiftly. When within rifle-shot she grounded.
"As they leapt out of the boat, rifles in hand, they were followed by their natives, but our people fired a volley together, and two of the white men and many of their people fell dead in the shallow water. Then Simi and twenty of our best men leapt out of their trenches and dashed into the water to meet them. Karta was in advance of them all, and when he saw Simi he raised his rifle and fired. The bullet missed the white man but killed a native behind him. Then Karta, throwing away his rifle, took two pistols from his belt and shot twice at Simi who was now quite close to him. These bullets, too, did Simi no harm, for taking a steady aim at his foe he shot him through the body, and as Karta fell upon his side one of our people leapt on him and held his head under the water till there was no more life in his wicked heart.
"The fight was soon ended, for seeing three of their number killed so quickly, the rest of the white men ran back to their boat and tried to float her again; and then Simi, taking a shot-gun loaded with slugs from one of his men, ran up to them and shot dead the one named Joe. The other white men he let escape, for all their followers were now paddling off or swimming to the other side of the lagoon, and Simi was no lover of bloodshed.
"That day the people at the north end sent a message for peace, and peace was made, for our people had lost but one man killed, so the thing was ended well for us.
"Serena came back from the ship, for now that Karta was dead she had no fear. The three white men who were spared soon left Peru in a whale-ship, for they feared to remain.
"Simi and his wife and children and Serena did not long stay with us, for he sold his house and boats to a new trader who came to the island about a month after the fight, and they went away to live at a place in Fiji called Yasawa. They were very good to me and mine, and I was sore in my heart to see the ship sail away with them, and at night I felt very lonely for a long time, knowing that I should see them no more."
THE BRASS GUN OF THE BUCCANEERS
Challoner was a trader at Jakoits Harbour in Ponapé, one of the loveliest of the great Caroline Archipelago in the North Pacific. He was a quiet but determined-looking man of fifty, and at the time of this story had been living on Ponapé for over five years. Unlike the generality of the white men who were settled on the island, he never carried arms and never entered into any of the disputes that too often occurred among them and ended in bloodshed.
Many of his neighbours were scoundrels and ruffians of the deepest dye--deserters from whale-ships and men-of-war, or escaped criminals from California and the Australian colonies. Some of these earned a living by trading with the natives for turtle-shell and cocoanut oil, others were simply beachcombers, who attached themselves to the leading chiefs and gave their services to them in war time, receiving in return houses and land, and spending their lives in time of peace in the wildest dissipation and excesses.
In those days the American whaling fleet made Jakoits and the other three harbours on the beautiful island their rendezvous before sailing northward to the coasts of Japan and Siberia. Sometimes there would be as many as thirty ships arrive within a week of each other, carrying from thirty to forty hands each; and these, when given liberty by their captains, at once associated with the beachcombing element, and turned an island paradise into a hell during their stay on shore.
There was among these beachcombers a man named Larmer. He was of Herculean stature and strength, and was, in a manner, their leader. It was his habit in his drunken moments to vaunt of the bloody deeds which he had perpetrated during his crime-stained career in the Pacific Islands. For the lives of natives he had absolutely no regard, and had committed so many murders in the Gilbert Islands that he had been forcibly taken on board a whaler by the few white men living there, and threatened with instant death if he returned.
The whaleship landed him on Ponapé, and his presence soon became a curse. Being possessed of plenty of arms and ammunition, he soon gained the friendship of a native chief ruling over the western district of the island, and his savage nature at once showed itself by his offering to destroy the inhabitants of a little island named Pàkin, who had in some way offended this chief. His offer was accepted, and, accompanied by five ruffianly whites and some hundreds of natives, the unfortunate people were surprised and butchered. Elated with this achievement, Larmer returned to Ponapé, and, during the orgy which took place to celebrate the massacre, he shot dead one of his white companions who had displeased him over some trifling matter.
The news was brought by a native to Challoner, who with a fellow-trader and several local chiefs was sitting outside his house smoking and enjoying the cool of the evening, and watching the flashing torches of a number of canoes catching flying fish beyond the barrier reef. Neither of them felt surprised, and Challoner remarked to the native that it was good to know that one bad and useless man was dead, but that it would be better still to hear that the man who slaughtered a whole community in cold blood was dead also.
"I wouldn't have said that if I were you," said Dawson, the other trader, nervously; "that fellow Larmer is bound to hear of it."
"I am quite prepared," Challoner replied quietly, "as you know, Dawson. Things cannot go on like this. I have never killed a man in my life, but to kill such a brute as Larmer would be a good action."
The distance between Challoner's place and Kiti, where Larmer dwelt with his villainous associates, was but ten miles. Yet, although Larmer had now been living on the island for a year, Challoner had only once met and spoken to him.
*****
During a visit which he (Challoner) had made to a little harbour called Metalanim, he had explored some very ancient ruins there, which were generally believed by the white uneducated traders to have been constructed by the old buccaneers, though the most learned antiquarians confess themselves puzzled to solve the mystery of their existence. But that these ruins had been used as a _depot_ or refuge of some sort by those who sailed the North Pacific more than two hundred years ago was evident, for many traces of their occupancy by Europeans had been found by the few white men who had visited them.
It was Challoner's fortune to discover amid the mass of tangled vines and creepers that grew all over the walls, and even down in the curious chambers, an old brass cannon. With the aid of some of his native friends he succeeded in dragging it forth and conveying it in his boat to his house, where, upon cleaning it, he found it bore the Spanish arms over the date of its casting in Manila, in the year 1716. Much interested in this, he refused to sell the gun to several whaleship captains, who each wanted to buy it. He would sell it, he thought, to better advantage by sending it to Australia or Europe.
Soon after its discovery he had set his people to work to clean and polish it One day he saw coming towards him a man, who from his huge figure he knew must be Larmer, the beachcomber.
"I say, boss," said the man roughly, "let's have a look at that cannon you've found, will yar?"
"There it is," said Challoner quietly, pointing to his boat-house, but not deigning to accompany the beachcomber and show him the weapon.
Larmer made a brief but keen inspection, and then walked into the trader's room and, unasked, sat down.
"It's as good as new," he said. "What do you want for it?"
"I will not sell it," replied the trader coldly, eyeing the beachcomber steadily, "at least to no one in Ponapé. There is too free a display of and use of arms here as it is," and he looked pointedly at the brace of heavy Colt's revolvers in his visitor's belt.
A scowl darkened Larmer's face. "I'll give you a hundred dollars for the thing," he said. "I want it, and I mean to have it" And he rose and dashed his huge hand down upon the table.
Challoner was unarmed, but his face betrayed neither fear nor any other emotion. He was standing with his back to the doorway of his bedroom. A thick curtain of navy blue calico concealed the interior of this room from the view of any one in the living room, and Larmer had seen no one but the trader about.
For some few seconds there was silence; the beachcomber, with his clenched fist still on the table, was trying to discover whether the man before him was intimidated. Challoner stood unmoved.
"Yes," began Larmer again, "I want that cannon. Sru, the chief of Kiti, an' me is going on a little war-party again. But I'll pay you for it."
"And I tell you that I won't sell it. Least of all to a man like you, who would use it for murder."
The beachcomber's hand went to his belt--and stayed there, as the trader stepped aside from the doorway and he saw a rifle pointed at his heart. It was held by the trader's wife.
"Put up your hands," said Challoner, with a contemptuous laugh. "And now listen to me. I want no quarrel with you--don't force one on me. Now clear out."
Without a word the baffled man turned away. But the look of savage hatred that gleamed in his fierce eyes told Challoner that he had made a dangerous enemy. And only a few days passed before he heard from the natives that Larmer said he would have his revenge--and the brass gun as well--before many months were over.
But the trader, though apparently taking no heed, was yet watchful. His influence with the natives of the Jakoits district was great, for they both liked and trusted him as a just and honourable man, and he knew that they would rally round him if Larmer attempted either to carry off the gun or do harm to him.
For some months matters went on at Jakoits very quietly, and the last of the whaling fleet having sailed, Challoner and Dawson went about their usual work again, such as trading along the coast in their whaleboats and storing their cocoanut oil in readiness for the _Mocassin_, the trading ship which visited them once a year, and was now due.
Although living only a few miles apart from each other, the two did not very often meet, but Challoner was one day surprised to see Dawson's boat pulling into the beach, for he had had a visit from his friend only the previous evening. The moment the boat touched the sand Dawson jumped out, and Challoner at once saw by the anxious expression on his face that something was wrong.
He soon learnt Dawson's news, which was bad enough. The _Mocassin_ had run ashore in the night at a place five miles away from Dawson's village, and it was feared she would become a total wreck unless she could be lightened and floated over the reef into smooth water. The captain had sent an urgent message for aid, and in less than half an hour the two men were on their way to the wreck, accompanied by nearly every male native in Challoner's village.
Towards sunset on the following day, just as the b |
25056-8 | oats were in sight, returning from the wreck, Tiaru, the trader's wife, with her one child and some of her female relatives, were coming from their bathe in the sea, when they heard screams from the village, and presently some terrified women fled past them, calling out that Larmer and another white man and a number of their native allies were carrying away the brass gun. In an instant the young wife gave the babe to a woman near her, and darted towards her husband's house. A number of women and children, encouraged by her presence, ran to alarm the approaching boats.
In front of the trader's house Larmer and another beachcomber were directing a score of Kiti natives how to sling the heavy gun between two stout poles. A sentry stood on guard at the gate of Challoner's fence, but Tiaru dashed his crossed musket aside, and then sprang into the midst of her husband's enemies.
"Set down the gun," she panted indignantly, "ye coward men of Rôan Kiti, and ye white men thieves, who only dare to come and steal when there are but women to meet and fight with thee."
Larmer laughed.
"Get out o' this, you meddling fool," he said in English, and then, calling to the natives to hasten ere it grew dark, he took no further notice of the woman before him. Then, as they prepared to raise their burden by a united effort upon their naked shoulders, Tiaru sprang into the house and quickly reappeared with a heavy knife in her hand. Twisting her lithe body from the grasp of one of the beachcombers, with flaming eyes she burst in amongst the gun carriers and began slashing at the strips of green bark with which the cannon was lashed to the poles.
"Curse you!" said Larmer fiercely, striding forward and seizing her by her long hair. "Take away her knife, Watty, quick!" And he dragged her head back with brutal strength--to release his hold with a cry of savage fury as the woman turned upon him and with a swift stroke severed the fingers of his left hand. Again she raised her hand as Larmer drew a pistol and shot her through the body. She fell without a cry upon the gun beneath.
"By ------, you've done it now!" said the man
Watty. "Look there! There's all our natives running away. We're as good as dead men if we stay here five minutes longer. I'm off anyway"; and then, hurriedly binding up his companion's bleeding hand, he disappeared into the surrounding forest after his native allies.
For a few moments Larmer stood irresolute, looking first at the body of the woman lying across the gun, then at his wounded hand. Already the shouts of Challoner's natives sounded near, and he knew that the boats had reached the beach. The gun, which had cost him so dear, must be abandoned, but he would take a further revenge upon its owner. He ran quickly to a fire which burned dimly in Challoner's cooking-house, lit a bunch of dried palm leaves, and thrust it into the thatch of the dwelling-house. Then he struck into the jungle.
As Challoner, followed by Dawson and the men of Jakoits village, rushed along the narrow path that led to his house, they heard the roar and crackle of the flames; when they gained the open they saw the bright light shining on the old cannon, whose polished brass was stained and streaked with red. Tiaru lay across the breech, dead.
*****
For nearly two days Challoner and his natives followed the tracks of the murderer into the heart of the mountain forest of Ponapé. Dawson and another party had left early the same night for the Rôan Kiti coast, where they landed and formed a cordon, which it would be impossible for Larmer to pass.
Watty, his fellow-scoundrel, was captured early next morning. He had lost his way and was lying asleep beside a fire on the banks of a small stream.
He was promptly shot by Dawson. Larmer was to be taken alive.
Meanwhile Challoner and his men pressed steadily on, driving their prey before them. At noon on the second day they caught sight of his huge figure ascending a rocky spur, and a party of natives ran swiftly to its base and hid at the margin of a small, deep pool. Challoner knew that his man wanted a drink, and would soon descend the spur to get it.
For some hours not a sound broke the silence, then a stone rolled down, and presently Larmer's head appeared above a boulder. He looked carefully round, and then, finding all quiet, began the descent. On the very edge of the pool he again stopped and listened, holding his pistol at full cock. His left hand was slung to his chest by a piece of green hibiscus bark, which was passed round his neck and roughly tied.
The silence all around him was reassuring, but he still held out the pistol as he bent his knees to drink. Ere his lips could touch the water two half-naked figures sprang upon him and bore him down. He was too weak to resist.
"Do not bind him," said Challoner, "but tie his right hand behind his back."
Larmer turned his bloodshot eyes upon the trader, but said nothing.
"Give him a drink."
A native placed a gourd of water to his lips. He drank greedily. Then, in silence, Challoner and his men began their march back.
*****
At sunset the people of Jakoits gathered together in front of the blackened space whereon the trader's house had stood. Raised on four heavy blocks of stone was the still blood-stained cannon, and bound with his back to its muzzle was Larmer.
Challoner made a sign, the brown-skinned men and women moved quickly apart in two parties, one on each side of the gun. Then Rul, the chief of the Jakoits* village, advanced with a lighted stick, touched the priming, and sprang aside. A sheet of flame leaped out, a bursting roar pealed through the leafy forest aisles, and Challoner had avenged his murdered wife.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers, by Louis Becke |
48941-8 | Produced by Brian Coe, Moti Ben-Ari and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
TRUE STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR
TRUE STORIES OF THE GREAT WAR
TALES OF ADVENTURE--HEROIC DEEDS--EXPLOITS TOLD BY THE SOLDIERS, OFFICERS, NURSES, DIPLOMATS, EYE WITNESSES
_Collected in Six Volumes From Official and Authoritative Sources_ (_See Introductory to Volume I_)
VOLUME II
Editor-in-Chief FRANCIS TREVELYAN MILLER (Litt. D., LL.D.) Editor of The Search-Light Library
1917 REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY NEW YORK
Copyright, 1917, by REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANY
CONTENTS
This collection of stories for VOLUME II has been selected by the Board of Editors, according to the plan outlined in "Introductory" to Volume I for preserving the "Best Stories of the War" from the most authentic sources in Europe and America. These pages record 144 personal adventures and episodes told by twenty-four Diplomatists, Attachées, Aviators, Naval Officers, French Mothers, German Spies, Soldiers and Eye-Witnesses. Full credit is given in every instance to the original source.
VOLUME II--TWENTY-FOUR STORY-TELLERS--144 EPISODES
"BEHIND THE SCENES IN WARRING GERMANY" 1
Told by Edward Lyell Fox (Permission of Robert M. McBride and Company)
THE "EMDEN"--AN EPIC OF THE GREAT WAR 24
EXPERIENCES ABOARD A GALLANT LITTLE FIGHTING SHIP Told by Kapitanleutnant Hellmuth Von Mücke (Permission of Ritter and Company)
"THE WAY OF THE CROSS"--A TRAGEDY OF THE RUSSIANS 45
THE MILLIONS WHO HAVE BECOME BEGGARS Told by V. Doroshevitch (Permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons)
THE NOTEBOOK OF AN ATTACHÉ IN THE EMBASSY AT PARIS 61
A DISPATCH-BEARER IN THE AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC SERVICE Told by Eric Fisher Wood (Permission of The Century Company)
'NEATH VERDUN--BEHIND THE CROWN PRINCE'S ARMY 79
Told by Lieutenant Maurice Genevoix (Permission of Frederick A. Stokes Company)
ON THE ANZAC TRAIL--WITH THE FIGHTING AUSTRALASIANS 101
ADVENTURES OF A NEW ZEALAND SAPPER Told by "Anzac" (Name Suppressed) (Permission of J. B. Lippincott Company)
WITH BOTHA'S ARMY IN GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA 121
ON THE ROAD TO CAPETOWN Told by J. P. Kay Robinson (Permission of E. P. Dutton and Company)
LAST WORDS OF A "SOLDIER AND DRAMATIST" 140
LETTERS OF HAROLD CHAPIN (Permission of John Lane Company)
THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE--PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF AN AMERICAN WAR CORRESPONDENT 158
Told by Stanley Washburn (Permission of Doubleday, Page and Company)
A FRENCH MOTHER IN WAR TIME 170
BEING THE JOURNAL OF MADAME EDOUARD DRUMONT Translated by Grace E. Bevir (Permission of Longmans, Green and Company)
"THE FALL OF TSINGTAU"--THE WAR IN THE FAR EAST 186
WITH THE JAPANESE IN THE ORIENT Told by Jefferson Jones (Permission of Houghton, Mifflin and Company)
WITH MY REGIMENT--BRITONS ON THE FIELD OF HONOR 195
FIGHTING FROM THE AISNE TO LA BASSEE Told by a "Platoon Commander" (Permission of J. B. Lippincott Company)
THE STORY OF COUNT SEILERN 204
A TRAGEDY OF THE HAPSBURGS (Permission of Wide World)
TURNING HEAVENS INTO HELL--EXPLOITS OF CANADIAN FLYING CORPS 228
BATTLE IN AIR WITH ONE HUNDRED AEROPLANES Told by Officer of Royal Canadian Flying Corps (Permission of New York Herald)
"THE LEGION OF DEATH"--WOMEN SOLDIERS ON THE FIRING-LINE 235
HOW THE RUSSIAN, SERBIAN, AND GERMAN WOMEN GO TO WAR Told by Officers and Eye-Witnesses from the Battlefields
THE TALE OF THE "TARA" OFF THE AFRICAN COAST 253
RESCUED BY "TANKS IN THE DESERT" Told by Survivors, set down by Lewis R. Freeman (Permission of Wide World)
THE WHITE SILENCE--WINTER IN THE CARPATHIANS 274
IN THE SNOW-CLAD MOUNTAINS WITH THE AUSTRIANS Told by Ludwig Bauer (Permission of New Yorker Staats-Zeitung and New York Tribune)
"MY TEN YEARS OF INTRIGUE IN THE KAISER'S SECRET SERVICE" 282
THE PLOT TO DYNAMITE THE WELLAND CANAL Told by Horst Von Der Goltz (Permission of Robert M. McBride and Company and New York World)
REAL-LIFE ROMANCES OF THE WAR 298
Told by Malcolm Savage Treacher (Permission of Wide World)
THE IRISHMEN OF THE FIGHTING TENTH AT MACEDONIA 326
Told by One of the Fighting Irishmen (Permission of London Weekly Despatch)
THE ARTIFICIAL VOLCANO 334
AN INCIDENT OF THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN IN THE DOLOMITES Told by Capitano Z----, of the Royal Italian Engineers (Permission of Wide World)
LAST HOURS OF EDITH CAVELL ON NIGHT OF EXECUTION 342
EXPERIENCE OF AMERICAN DIPLOMAT IN EFFORT TO SAVE LIFE OF ENGLISH NURSE Told by Hugh Gibson (Permission of World's Work)
A BAYONET CHARGE IN PICARDY 353
Told by a British Army Captain (Permission of Current History)
THE SLAUGHTER AT DOUAUMONT 359
Told by a French Soldier
[Illustration: British Official Photo, by International Film Service. BASEBALL PLAYERS AND CRICKETERS MAKE GOOD GRENADE THROWERS _Position No. 1 in Bombing_]
[Illustration: THE HELL OF "LIQUID FIRE" WHICH HAS BECOME A REGULAR PART OF WAR]
AN AMERICAN "BEHIND THE SCENES IN WARRING GERMANY"
_Told by Edward Lyell Fox, Special Correspondent with the Kaiser's Armies and in Berlin_
This vivid and authentic narrative covering five months of thrilling experience with the Kaiser's Armies in France, Belgium, Austria, Russia and Germany, is the first hand impressions of an American writer whose special credentials from the German Government enabled him to go everywhere and see everything through official courtesies not extended to other observers in the field. Mr. Fox has interviewed the Kings of Bavaria and Saxony, the Crown Prince, General von Hindenberg, the Governor General of Belgium, and the President of the Reichstag. He has witnessed the campaigning at close range in the trenches at Arras and Ypres, has lived with the German officers at headquarters, has surveyed the battlefield from an aeroplane and a Zeppelin and has enjoyed the unique sensations of scouting under the sea in a submarine, and as a final unprecedented experience has covered with an official escort the whole length of General von Hindenberg's battle line in Russia. One chapter of his experiences is here recorded from his book: "Behind the Scenes in Warring Germany," by courtesy of his publishers, _Robert M. McBride and Company_, New York: Copyright 1915.
[1] I--STORY OF A NIGHT ON THE BALTIC SEA
In the lingering twilight, the Baltic's choppy swells turned dark and over the bow I saw a vague gray strip of land--Germany! I was at the gateway of war.
For two hours the railway ferry had plowed between the mines that strew the way to Denmark with potential death, and as slowly the houses of Warnemunde appeared in shadow against the darkening day, some one touched my arm.
"Safe now."
He was the courier. He had traveled with me from New York to Copenhagen, a bland, reserved young man, with a caution beyond his years. I had come to know he was making the trip as a German courier, and he was an American with no Teutonic blood in his veins! Knowing the ropes, he had suggested that he see me through to Berlin.
"It's good we came over the Baltic," he remarked, "instead of making that long trip through Jutland. We save eight hours."
"Yes," I agreed, "nothing like slipping in the back door."
And being new to it then, and being very conscious of certain letters I carried, and of the power implied in the documents which I knew he carried, I wondered what the frontier guard would do. During the two hours we ferried from the Danish shore the passengers talked in a troubled way of military search given every one at Warnemunde and I smiled to myself in a reassuring way. Yes, they would be searched, poor devils!... But the courier and I? I wondered if the German Lieutenant at Warnemunde would ask us to take coffee with him. I even took out my watch. No, it could hardly be done, for by the time the soldiers had finished searching all these passengers the train would be leaving. Too bad! Coffee and a chat with some other lieutenant, then.
"Yes," the courier was saying as the ferry docked and we caught, under the glint of the sentries' rifles, a glimpse of the _Landwehr_ red and blue, "it will be so easy here--just a formality, whereas if we had taken the other route it no doubt would have been harder. You see," he explained, "when a train crosses the Kiel canal a soldier is posted in every compartment, the window shades are pulled down and the passengers are warned not to look out on penalty of instant death. Of course that is necessary for military reasons. Naturally the whole inspection at that frontier is more severe because of the Kiel canal."
By this time the big boat had been made fast to a long railroad pier and as we crossed the gang plank we made out in the bluish haze of an arc lamp, a line of soldiers who seemed to be herding the passengers into what appeared to be a long wooden shed newly built. Crowds are the same the world over, so no one held back, all pushing, luggage and passports in hand, into the frame structure built, I realized, for purposes of military inspection.
II--STORY OF THE GUARDS AT GATES TO GERMANY
Sluggishly the mass moved forward. Presently I saw it divide half-way down the room, to pause before two openings at which six soldiers waited, like ticket takers in a circus. I was near enough now to observe the lantern light dimly shining upon two crude desk tops, slanting down from the wall which gave entrance through a doorway to a larger room beyond; and everywhere gleamed the glint of gun barrels, the red and blue or gray of military hats, while an increasing flow of German, punctuated with "_Donnerwetter!_" and "_Das ist genug_," was heard above the shuffle of feet and the thumping of trunks and bags on the counters in the room beyond. I wondered what two men in civilian clothes were doing among the soldiers; I saw them dart about, notebooks in hand. Later I learned more of these men who seemed to have it in their power to make the passengers they challenged either comfortable or uncomfortable.
And then it was my turn. Having seen the passenger in front throw both hands over his head, unconsciously inviting the kind of search given a criminal, I decided such submissiveness a blunder. As I expected, the soldier was a perfectly sane human being who did not begin punching a revolver against me--which certain printed words I had read in New York implied was the usual prelude to a German searching party--rather this soldier most courteously asked to see my wallet. I gave it to him. I would have given him anything. Our coöperation was perfect. There was no need for me to bring my exhaustive knowledge of the German language into play. Talking fluently with my hands, now and then uttering "_danke_," I tried to assist his search, meanwhile hopelessly looking about for the courier. I was depending not only upon his fluent German but also upon his superior knowledge of the situation to help me to pass serenely through this ordeal. Alas, the crowd hid him.
Suddenly my soldier grunted something. Until now we had been getting along splendidly and I could not conceal my surprise when he took from my wallet a handful of letters and stared at them in bewilderment. The more he stared the more his regard for me seemed to vanish. Although he could not understand English he could recognize a proper name, for the letters bore the addresses of decidedly influential men in Germany. They challenged his suspicion. Thoroughly puzzled he opened the letters and tried to read them. When he compared my passport with a letter I saw his face light up. I realized that he had recognized my name in the contents. Whereupon, greatly relieved, assured now that everything was all right, I held out my hand for both letters and wallet. Not yet. A rumble of words and the soldier called one of those busy civilians with the notebooks.
This person spoke a little English. The letters interested him. Where had I found them?... My spine began to feel cold. I replied that they had been given me in New York and remembering that I had the courier to rely on, I suggested that they have a word with him. It was then that I heard an excited deluge of words and, glancing over my shoulder, I observed that the courier was thoroughly flanked and surrounded by five _Landwehr_ who apparently were much in earnest about something. Concluding that some cog had slipped I racked my wits to make the best of what was rapidly becoming a difficult situation.
The soldier having turned me over to the civilian I noticed several suspicious glances in my direction, and blessed the luck that had impelled me to go to the American Legation and the German Consulate in Copenhagen for visés. That the civilian who was taking such an interest in me belonged to the secret service, I was certain. I appealed to his sense of discretion.
"Your passport seems all right," he thoughtfully observed, and opened a little book. "Where are you going?"
I told him to Hamburg but could not tell him where I would stay, for the excellent reason that not the name of a single Hamburg hotel was known to me.
"Only for a few days, though," I said, adding hopefully; "after that I go to Berlin to Hotel Adlon."
As fast as his pencil could move he wrote the address in his book.
"These letters," he said reluctantly, tapping them on his hand, "I must take now. If everything is all right, they will be sent to you in Berlin."
"But it is important that I have them," I protested, "they are my introductions. You cannot tell me how long I may have to wait for them? You can see from them that I am a responsible person known to your people."
"I know," he replied, "but they are written in English, and to bring letters written in English into Germany is forbidden. I am sorry."
He was thus politely relieving me of all my credentials when I happened to think that in my inner waistcoat pocket lay a letter I had yet to show them--a communication so important to me that I had kept it separate from the others. Moreover I remembered it was sealed and that properly used it might save the day. It was worth a trial.
Realizing that the thing had to be staged I impressively drew the police spy aside and employing the familiar "stage business" of side glances and exaggerated caution I slowly took the note--it was a mere letter of introduction to the Foreign Office--from my waistcoat. If the soldier's eyes had opened wide at the other addresses, the police agent's now fairly bulged. Handing him the envelope I pointed to what was typed in the upper left-hand corner--_Kaiserliche Deutsche Botschaft, Washington, D. C._--and simply said "_Verstehen sie?_"
He _verstehened_. Being an underling he understood so well that after a few moments he returned all the letters he had appropriated and instantly changing his manner, he facilitated the rest of the inspection. After my baggage was examined by more soldiers (and those soldiers did their duty, even going through the pockets of clothes in my trunks) I was told I might go.
"_Gute reise_," the police agent called--"Good journey."
Although treated with all courtesy I was afraid somebody might change his mind, so hurrying out of the last room of the long wooden shed I proceeded down the platform to the train at a pace that must have shown signs of breaking into a run. There in my compartment the thoughts that came to me were in this order:
There must be reason for such a rigid inspection; no doubt spies must have been caught recently trying to enter Germany at Warnemunde.
If I hadn't lost the courier in the crowd there would have been plain sailing.
III--STORY OF THE MYSTERIOUS PAPERS
The minutes passed. It was nearly time for the train to start. Where was the courier? Presently, rather pale, nervous in speech, but as reserved and cool as ever he limply entered the compartment and threw himself on the cushions.
"They took everything," he announced. "All they left me was a pair of pajamas."
"What! You mean they have your papers?"
"All of them," he smiled. "Likewise a trunk full of letters and a valise. Oh, well, they'll send them on. They took my address. Gad, they stripped me through!"
I began laughing. The courier could see no mirth in the situation.
"You," I gasped, "you, who by all rights should have paraded through, from you they take everything while they let me pass."
"Do you mean to say," he exclaimed, "that they didn't take your letters?"
"Not one," I grinned.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he said.
Locked in the compartment we nervously watched the door, half expecting that the police spy would come back for us. We could not have been delayed more than a few minutes, but it seemed hours, before, with German regard for comfort, the train glided out of the shed. It must have been trying on my companion's good humor, but the absurdity of stripping a courier of everything he carried, was irresistible. Perhaps it was our continued laughter that brought the knock on the door.
Pushing aside the curtains we saw outside--for it was one of the new German wagons with a passageway running the entire length of one side of the car--a tall, broad-shouldered, lean man with features and expression both typical and unmistakable.
"An Englishman!"
We saw him smile and shake his head. I hesitatingly let fall the curtain and looked at the courier.
"Let him in," he said. "He's got the brand of an English university boy all over him. We'll have a chat with him. You don't mind, do you?"
"Mind!" In my eagerness I banged back the compartment doors with a crash that brought down the conductor. I saw my companion hastily corrupt that official whose murmured "_Bitte schon_" implied an un-Teutonic disregard for the fact that he had done something _verboten_ by admitting a second-class passenger into a first-class coupé; and the stranger entered.
We were gazing upon a strikingly handsome, fair-haired man not yet thirty. His eyes twinkled when he said that he supposed we were Americans. His manner and intonation made me stare at him.
"And you?" we finally asked.
"I'm going first to Berlin, then to Petrograd," he said, perhaps avoiding our question. "Business trip."
We chatted on, the obvious thought obsessing me. Of course the man was an English spy. But how absurd! If his face did not give him away to any one who knew--and my word for it, those police spies do know!--he would be betrayed by his mannerisms. His accent would instantly cry out the English in him. Of what could Downing Street be thinking? It was sending this man to certain death. One began to feel sorry for him.
Feeling the intimacy brought by the common experience at Warnemunde, I presently said:
"You certainly have your nerve with you, traveling in Germany with _your_ accent."
"Why?" he laughed. "A neutral is safe."
Expecting he would follow this up by saying that he was an American I looked inquiring and when he sought to turn the subject I asked:
"Neutral? What country?"
"Denmark," he smiled.
"But your accent?" I persisted.
"I do talk a bit English, do I not? I had quite a go at it, though; lived in London a few years, you know."
Nerve? I marveled at it. Stark foolhardy courage, or did a secret commission from Downing Street make this the merest commonplace of duty? Charming company, he hurried along the time with well-told anecdotes of the Russian capital and Paris, in both of which places he said he had been since the war began. As we drew near Lübeck, where a thirty-five minute stop was allowed for dinner in the station, and the stranger showed no signs of going back to his own compartment, I could see that the courier was becoming annoyed. Relapsing into silence he only broke it to reply to the "Dane" in monosyllables; finally, to my surprise, the courier became downright rude. As the stranger, from the start, had been extremely courteous, this rudeness surprised me, more so, as it seemed deliberate. Bludgeoned by obvious hints the stranger excused himself, and as soon as he was gone my companion leaned towards me.
"You were surprised at my rudeness," he said, and then in an undertone; "it was deliberate."
"I saw that. But why?"
"Because," he explained, "seeing we are Americans that fellow wanted to travel with us all the way through. He must have known that American company is the best to be seen in over here these days. He might have made trouble for us."
"Then you think he's English?"
"Think! Why, they must have let him through at Warnemunde for a reason. He has a Danish passport right enough. I saw it in the inspection room. But I'll bet you anything there's a police spy in this train, undoubtedly in the same compartment with him."
One felt uncomfortable. One thought that those police spies must dislike one even more now.
"That means we may be suspected as being confederates," I gloomily suggested.
Whether he was getting back for my having guyed him about losing his papers I do not know, but the courier said we probably were suspected. Whereupon the book I tried to read became a senseless jumble of words and our compartment door became vastly more interesting. When would it open to admit the police spy?... Confound the luck! Everything breaking wrong.
IV--STORY OF A RIDE FROM LÜBECK TO HAMBURG
But at Lübeck nothing happened--nothing to us. A train load of wounded had just come in and our hearts jumped at the sight of the men in the gray-green coats of the firing line, slowly climbing the long iron steps from the train platforms. Hurrying, we saw them go clumping down a long, airy waiting room and as they approached the street their hobbling steps suddenly quickened to the sharper staccato of the canes upon which they leaned. Hurrying too, we saw there a vague mass of pallid faces in a dense crowd; some one waved a flag;--it stuck up conspicuously above that throng;--some one darted forth;--"_Vater!_"--"_Liebes Mütterchen!_"
Past the burly _Landsturm_, who was trying his utmost to frown his jolly face into threatening lines that would keep back the crowd, a woman was scurrying. One of the big gray-green wounded men caught her in his arm--the other arm hung in a black sling--and she clung to him as though some one might take him away, and because she was a woman, she wept in her moment of happiness. Her _Mann_ had come home....
Forgetting the dinner we were to have eaten in the Lübeck station, we finally heeded a trainman's warning and turned back to our car. There remained etched in my mind the line of pallid, apprehensive faces, the tiny waving flags, the little woman and the big man. It was my first sight of war.
From Lübeck to Hamburg the ride was uneventful. The hour was not late and beyond remarking that the towns through which we passed were not as brilliantly lighted as usual, the courier could from the car window observe no difference between the Germany of peace and of war. Here and there we noticed bridges and trestles patroled by _Landwehr_ and outside our compartment we read the handbill requesting every passenger to aid the government in preventing spies throwing explosives from the car windows. From the conductor we learned that there had been such attempts to delay the passage of troop trains. Whereupon we congratulated ourselves upon buying the conductor, as we had the compartment to ourselves. One thought of what would have happened had there been an excitable German in with us and while the train was crossing a bridge, we had innocently opened a window for air!
It was almost ten when the close, clustered lights of Hamburg closed in against the trackside and we caught our first glimpse of the swarming _Bahnhof_. Soldiers everywhere. The blue of the Reservists, the gray-green of the Regulars--a shifting tide of color swept the length of the long platforms, rising against the black slopes of countless staircases, overrunning the vast halls above, increasing, as car after car emptied its load. And then, as at Lübeck, we saw white bandages coming down under cloth-covered helmets and caps, or arms slung in black slings; the slightly wounded were coming in from the western front.
All this time we had forgotten the Englishman, and it was with a start that we recalled him.
"If he spots us," advised my companion, "we've got to hand him the cold shoulder. Mark my words, he'll try to trail along to the same hotel and stick like a leech."
Again he was right. At the baggage room the Englishman overtook us, suggesting that we make a party of it--he knew a gay café--first going to the hotel. He suggested the _Atlantic_. Bluntly he was informed we were visiting friends, but nothing would do then but we must agree to meet him in, say, an hour. Not until he found it an impossibility did he give us up and finally, with marvelous good nature, he said good night. The last I saw of him was his broad back disappearing through a door into a street.
The courier nudged me.
"Quick," he whispered, "look,--the man going out the next door."
Before I could turn I knew whom he meant. I saw only the man's profile before he, too, disappeared into the street; but it was a face difficult to forget, for it had been close to me at Warnemunde; it was the face of the police spy.
"I told you they purposely let him get through," continued my friend. "That police fellow must have come down on the train from Warnemunde. I tell you it's best not to pick up with any one these days. Suppose we had fallen for that Englishman and gone to a café with him to-night--a nice mess!"
It was in a restaurant a few hours later that I saw my first Iron Cross, black against a gray-green coat and dangling from a button. In _Bieber's_, a typical better class café of the new German type, luxurious with its marble walls and floors, and with little soft rugs underfoot and colored wicker tables and chairs, one felt the new spirit of this miracle of nations. On the broad landing of a wide marble staircase an orchestra played soldier songs and above the musicians, looking down on his people, loomed a bust of Wilhelm II, _Von Gottes Gnaden, Kaiser von Deutschland_. About him, between the flags of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, blazed the black, white, and red, and there where all might read, hung the proclamation of August to the German people. We had read it through to the last line: "_Forward with God who will be with us as he was with our Fathers!_"--when we heard an excited inflection in the murmurings from the many tables--"_Das Eiserne Kreuz!_" And we saw the officer from whose coat dangled the black maltese cross, outlined in silver. His cheeks flushed, proud of a limping, shot-riddled leg, proud of his Emperor's decoration, but prouder still that he was a German; he must have forgotten all of battle and suffering during that brief walk between the tables. Cheers rang out, then a song, and when finally the place quieted everybody stared at that little cross of black as though held by some hypnotic power.
So! We were Americans, he said when we finally were presented. That was good. We--that is--I had come to write of the war as seen from the German side. Good, _sehr gut_! He had heard the Allies, especially the English,--_Verfluchte Englanderschwein!_--were telling many lies in the American newspapers. How could any intelligent man believe them?
In his zeal for the German cause his Iron Cross, his one shattered leg, the consciousness that he was a hero, all were forgotten. Of course I wanted to hear his story--the story of that little piece of metal hanging from the black and white ribbon on his coat--but tenaciously he refused. That surprised me until I knew Prussian officers.
So we left the man with the Iron Cross, marveling not at his modesty but that it embodied the spirit of the German army; whereas I thought I knew that spirit. But not until the next night, when I left Hamburg behind, where every one was pretending to be busy and the nursemaids and visitors were still tossing tiny fish to the wintering gulls in the upper lake; not until the train was bringing me to Berlin did I understand what it meant. At the stations I went out and walked with the passengers and watched the crowds; I talked with a big business man of Hamburg--bound for Berlin because he had nothing to do in Hamburg; then it was I faintly began to grasp the tremendous emotional upheaval rumbling in every Germanic soul.
V--STORY OF THE SOLDIERS IN BERLIN
My first impression of Berlin was the long cement platform gliding by, a dazzling brilliance of great arc lamps and a rumbling chorus of song. Pulling down the compartment window I caught the words "_Wir kämpfen_ _Mann für Mann, für Kaiser and Reich!_" And leaning out I could see down at the other end of the Friederichstrasse Station a regiment going to the front.
Flowers bloomed from the long black tubes from which lead was soon to pour; wreaths and garlands hung from cloth-covered helmets; cartridge belts and knapsacks were festooned with ferns. The soldiers were all smoking; cigars and cigarettes had been showered upon them with prodigal hand. Most of them held their guns in one hand and packages of delicacies in the other; and they were climbing into the compartments or hanging out of the windows singing, always singing, in the terrific German way. Later I was to learn that they went into battle with the "_Wacht am Rhein_" on their lips and a wonderful trust in God in their hearts.
I felt that trust now. I saw it in the confident face of the young private who hung far out of the compartment in order to hold his wife's hand. It was not the way a conscript looks. This soldier's blue eyes sparkled as with a holy cause, and as I watched this man and wife I marveled at their sunny cheer. I saw that each was wonderfully proud of the other and that this farewell was but an incident in the sudden complexity of their lives. The Fatherland had been attacked: her man must be a hero. It was all so easy, so brimming with confidence. Of course he would come back to her.... You believed in the Infinite ordering of things that he would.
Walking on down the platform I saw another young man. They were all young, strapping fellows in their new uniforms of field gray. He was standing beside the train; he seemed to want to put off entering the car until the last minute. He was holding a bundle of something white in his arms, something that he hugged to his face and kissed, while the woman in the cheap furs wept, and I wondered if it was because of the baby she cried, while that other childless young wife had smiled.
Back in the crowd I saw a little woman with white hair; she was too feeble to push her way near the train. She was dabbing her eyes and waving to a big, mustached man who filled a compartment door and who shouted jokes to her. And almost before they all could realize it, the train was slipping down the tracks; the car windows filled with singing men, the long gray platform suddenly shuffling to the patter of men's feet, as though they would all run after the train as far as they could go. But the last car slipped away and the last waving hand fell weakly against a woman's side. They seemed suddenly old, even the young wife, as they slowly walked away. Theirs was not the easiest part to play in the days of awful waiting while the young blood of the nation poured out to turn a hostile country red.
I thought I had caught the German spirit at Lübeck and at the café in Hamburg when the hero of the Iron Cross had declined to tell me his tale; but this sensation that had come with my setting foot on the Berlin station--this was something different. Fifteen hundred men going off to what?--God only knows!--fifteen hundred virile types of this nation of virility; and they had laughed and they had sung, and they had kissed their wives and brothers and babies as though these helpless ones should only be proud that their little household was helping their Fatherland and their Emperor. Self? It was utterly submerged. On that station platform I realized that there is but one self in all Germany to-day and that is the soul of the nation. Nothing else matters; a sacrifice is commonplace. Wonderful? Yes. But then we Americans fought that way at Lexington; any nation can fight that way when it is a thing of the heart; and this war is all of the heart in Germany. As we walked through the station gates I understood why three million Socialists who had fought their Emperor in and out of the Reichstag, suddenly rallied to his side, agreeing "I know no parties, only Germans." I felt as I thought of the young faces of the soldiers, cheerfully starting down into the unknown hell of war, that undoubtedly among their number were Socialists. In this national crisis partisan allegiance counted for nothing, they had ceased dealing with the Fatherland in terms of the mind and gave to it only the heart.
Even in Berlin I realized that war stalks down strange by-paths. It forever makes one feel the incongruous. It disorders life in a monstrous way. I have seen it in an instant make pictures that the greatest artist would have given his life to have done. It likes to deal in contrasts; it is jolting....
With General von Loebell I walked across the Doeberitz camp, which is near Berlin. At Doeberitz new troops were being drilled for the front. We walked towards a dense grove of pines above which loomed the sky, threateningly gray. Between the trees I saw the flash of yellow flags; a signal squad was drilling. Skirting the edge of the woods we came to a huge, cleared indentation where twenty dejected English prisoners were leveling the field for a parade ground. On the left I saw an opening in the trees; a wagon trail wound away between the pines. And then above the rattling of the prisoners' rakes I heard the distant strains of a marching song that brought a lump to my throat. Back there in the woods somewhere, some one had started a song; and countless voices took up the chorus; and through the trees I saw a moving line of gray-green and down the road tramped a company of soldiers. They were all singing and their boyish voices blended with forceful beauty. "In the Heimat! In the Heimat!" It was the favorite medley of the German army.
The prisoners stopped work; unconsciously some of those dispirited figures in British khaki stiffened. And issuing from the woods in squads of fours, all singing, tramped the young German reserves, swinging along not fifteen feet from the prison gang in olive drab--"In the Heimat!" And out across the Doeberitz plains they swung, big and snappy.
"They're ready," remarked General von Loebell. "They've just received their field uniforms."
And then there tramped out of the woods another company, and another, two whole regiments, the last thundering "_Die Wacht am Rhein_," and we went near enough to see the pride in their faces, the excitement in their eyes; near enough to see the Englishmen, young lads, too, who gazed after the swinging column with a soldier's understanding, but being prisoners and not allowed to talk, they gave no expression to their emotions and began to scrape their rakes over the hard ground....
VI--STORY OF "THE HALL OF AWFUL DOUBT"
I stood on the Dorotheenstrasse looking up at the old red brick building which before the second of August in this year of the world war was the War Academy. I had heard that when tourists come to Berlin they like to watch the gay uniformed officers ascending and descending the long flights of gray steps; for there the cleverest of German military youths are schooled for the General Staff. Like the tourists, I stood across the street to-day and watched the old building and the people ascending or descending the long flights of gray steps. Only I saw civilians, men alone and in groups, women with shawls wrapped around their heads, women with yellow topped boots, whose motors waited beside the curb, and children, clinging to the hands of women, all entering or leaving by the gray gate; some of the faces were happy and others were wet with tears, and still others stumbled along with heavy steps. For this old building on Dorotheenstrasse is no longer the War Academy; it is a place where day after day hundreds assemble to learn the fate of husband, kin or lover. For inside the gray gate sits the Information Bureau of the War Ministry, ready to tell the truth about every soldier in the German army! I, too, went to learn the truth.
I climbed a creaking staircase and went down a creaking hall. I met the Count von Schwerin, who is in charge. I found myself in a big, high-ceilinged room the walls of which were hung with heroic portraits of military dignitaries. My first impression was of a wide arc of desks that circling from wall to wall seemed to be a barrier between a number of gentle-spoken, elderly gentlemen and a vague mass of people that pressed forward. The anxious faces of all these people reminded me of another crowd that I had seen--the crowd outside the White Star offices in New York when the _Titanic_ went down. And I became conscious that the decorations of this room which, the Count was explaining, was the Assembly Hall of the War Academy, were singularly appropriate--the pillars and walls of gray marble, oppressively conveying a sense of coldness, insistent cold, like a tomb, and all around you the subtle presence of death, the death of hopes. It was the Hall of Awful Doubt.
And as I walked behind the circle of desks I learned that these men of tact and sympathy, too old for active service, were doing their part in the war by helping to soften with kindly offices the blow of fate. I stood behind them for some few moments and watched, although I felt like one trespassing upon the privacy of grief. I saw in a segment of the line a fat, plain-looking woman, with a greasy child clinging to her dress, a white-haired man with a black muffler wrapped around his neck, a veiled woman, who from time to time begged one of the elderly clerks to hurry the news of her husband, and then a wisp of a girl in a cheap, rose-colored coat, on whose cheeks two dabs of rouge burned like coals.
Soldiers from the Berlin garrison were used there as runners. At the bidding of the gentle old men they hastened off with the inquiry to one of the many filing rooms and returned with the news. This day there was a new soldier on duty; he was new to the Hall of Awful Doubt.
"I cannot imagine what is keeping him so long," I heard an elderly clerk tell the woman with the veil. "He'll come any minute.... There he is now. Excuse me, please."
And the elderly clerk hurried to meet the soldier, wanting to intercept the news, if it were bad, and break it gently. But as he caught sight of the clerk I saw the soldier click his heels and, as if he were delivering a message to an officer, his voice boomed out: "_Tot!_" ... Dead!
And the woman with the veil gave a little gasp, a long, low moan, and they carried her to another room; and as I left the gray room, with the drawn, anxious faces pushing forward for their turns at the black-covered desks, I realized the heart-rending sacrifice of the women of France, Belgium, Russia, England, Servia, and Austria, who, like these German mothers, wives, sweethearts, had been stricken down in the moment of hope.
VII--STORY OF A NIGHT IN BERLIN
That night I went to the Jägerstrasse, to Maxim's. The place is everything the name suggests; one of those Berlin cafés that open when the theaters are coming out and close when the last girl has smiled and gone off with the last man. I sat in a white and gold room with a cynical German surgeon, listening to his comments.
"It is the best in town now," he explained. "All the Palais de Danse girls come here. Don't be in a hurry. I know what you want for your articles. You'll see it soon."
Maxim's, like most places of the sort, was methodically banal. But one by one officers strolled in and soon a piano struck up the notes of a patriotic song. When the music began the girls left the little tables where they had been waiting for some man to smile, and swarmed around the piano, singing one martial song upon another, while officers applauded, drank their healths, and asked them to sing again.
Time passed and the girls sang on, flushed and savage as the music crashed to the cadenzas of war. What were the real emotions of these subjects of Germany; had the war genuine thrills for them? I had talked with decent women of all classes about the war; what of the women whose hectic lives had destroyed real values?
"Get one of those girls over here," I told the surgeon, "and ask her what she thinks of the war."
"Do you really mean it?" he said with a cynical smile.
"Surely. This singing interests me. I wonder what's back of it?"
He called one of them. "Why not sing?" Hilda said with a shrug. "What else? There are few men here now and there are fewer every night. What do I think of this war? My officer's gone to the front without leaving me enough to keep up the apartment. _Krieg? Krieg ist schrecklich!_ War is terrible!"
My German friend was laughing.
"War?" he smiled. "And you thought it was going to change that kind."
But I was thinking of the woman with the veil whom I had seen in the Hall of Awful Doubt; and outside the night air felt cool and clean....
But my symbol of Berlin is not these things--not bustling streets filled with motors, swarming with able-bodied men whom apparently the army did not yet need. Its summation is best expressed by the varied sights and emotions of an afternoon in mid-December.
Lodz has fallen; again Hindenburg has swept back the Russian hordes. Black-shawled women call the extras. Berlin rises out of its calmness and goes mad. Magically the cafés fill.... I am walking down a side street. I see people swarming toward a faded yellow brick church. They seem fired with a zealot's praise. I go in after them and see them fall on their knees.... They are thanking Him for the Russian rout.... Wondering I go out. I come to another church. Its aisles are black with bowed backs; the murmur of prayer drones like bees; a robed minister is intoning:
"Oh, Almighty Father, we thank Thee that Thou art with us in our fight for the right; we thank Thee that----"
It is very quiet in there. War seems a thing incredibly far away. The sincerity of these people grips your heart. I feel as I never felt in church before. Something mysteriously big and reverent stirs all around.... Then outside in the street drums rattle, feet thump. A regiment is going to the front! I hurry to see it go by, but back in the church the bowed forms pray on.
(This American observer now leaves Berlin to go to the battle-front with the German armies. He continues to narrate his experiences in some of the world's greatest battles. He tells the first complete account of the great battle of Augustowo Wald in which the Russian army of 240,000 men was annihilated, and how he was a guest of honor at the "Feast of Victory.")
FOOTNOTE:
[1] All numerals throughout this volume relate to the stories herein related--not to chapters in the original book.
THE "EMDEN"--AN EPIC OF THE GREAT WAR
_Experiences Aboard a Gallant Little Fighting Ship_
_By Kapitanleutnant Hellmuth Von Mücke, of His Emperor's Ship, The "Emden"--Translated by Helene S. White_
The tale of the _Emden_ is one of the greatest sea stories in all history. Fighting its way through the China Seas, into the Bay of Bengal, and across the Indian Ocean, knowing that sooner or later it must face death, the crew of this gallant ship defeated and captured twenty-four enemy ships, destroying cargoes and property valued at $10,000,000--in two months roving the high seas. The romantic voyage began on September 10th and ended on November 9th, 1914. It was a crew of "jolly good fellows" that sailed under Commander von Müller; their adventures won the admiration not only of their enemies but of the whole world. An authentic story of this epic of the seas is told by Lieutenant Captain von Mücke, of the _Emden_ in a volume relating its exploits. He has also written a book bearing on the adventures of the landing squad in "The Ayesha." There is nothing more sensationally adventuresome in fiction than these voyages. The most improbable romance is outdone by the exploits of the gallant German seamen. Commander von Müller of the _Emden_ is a prisoner of war in England at the time that these accounts are written. Selections are here given from the volume on the _Emden_, with permission of the publishers, _Ritter and Company_, Copyright 1917.
[2] I--STORY OF ADVENTURES ON THE YELLOW SEA
"All hands aft," shrilled the whistles of the boatswain's mate through all the ship's decks. Quickly all the officers and crew assembled on the after deck. Everyone knew what it was for.
It was at two o'clock on the afternoon of the second day of August, 1914, while our ship lay far out in the Yellow Sea, that Captain von Mueller appeared on the poop, holding in his hand a slip of paper such as is used for messages by wireless. In eager expectancy three hundred pairs of eyes were fixed upon the lips of our Commander as he began to speak.
"The following wireless message has just been received from Tsingtao: 'On August first, his Majesty, the Emperor, ordered the mobilization of the entire land and naval forces of the Empire. Russian troops have crossed the border into Germany. As a consequence, the Empire is at war with Russia and with France...."
* * * * *
Three cheers for his Majesty, the Emperor, rang out over the broad surface of the Yellow Sea. Then came the order that sent every man to his post,--"Clear ship for action."
And so it had come to pass--the war was upon us!...
* * * * *
"Guns ready!" "Torpedo service ready!" "Engines and auxiliary engines ready!" "Leak service ready!" "Steering service ready!" "Signal and wireless service ready!"
Rapidly, one after the other, the reports from all over the ship were now coming in, and demanded my attention to the exclusion of all further thought and reflection. A quick tour of inspection through the ship assured me that all was in readiness, and I could report to our Commander, "The ship is clear for action."
At a speed of fifteen nautical miles we were proceeding toward the Strait of Tchusima. When darkness came on, the war watch was begun on the _Emden_, which is done in the following manner: Half of the men of the crew remain awake and on duty at their posts,--at the guns, at the searchlights and lookouts, in the torpedo room, in the engine and fire rooms, etc., while the others are allowed to go to sleep with their clothes on, and ready, at a moment's notice, to get to their posts. The commander of the ship takes charge of one of these watches, and the other one is in command of the first officer.
After passing through the Strait of Tchusima, the _Emden_ steered northward. There was no moon, and the night was pitch black. It was too dark to see anything even in our immediate vicinity. We were, of course, traveling with all lights screened. Not a ray of light was allowed to escape from the ship, nor the least bit of smoke from her funnels. There was a moderate sea running, and the water was unusually bright with phosphorescence. The water churned up by our screws stretched away behind the ship in a shimmering wake of light green. The waves dashing high up against the bow, and the water tumbling and breaking against the sides, splashed the whole ship with a phosphorescent glitter, and made her appear as though she had been dipped into molten gold of a greenish hue. Occasionally, there appeared in the water large shining spots of great length, so that a number of times the lookouts reported undersea boats in sight.
At four o'clock in the morning the port war watch, which I commanded, was relieved. The Commander now took charge. The day was just dawning. I had just gone to my cabin, and had lain down to rest, when I was wakened by the shrill call of the alarm bells and the loud noise of many hurrying feet. "Clear ship for action," the order went echoing from room to room. In an instant everyone was at his post. Were we really to be so fortunate as to fall in, on our very first day, with one of the Russian or French ships that had been reported to us as being in the vicinity of Vladivostok?
By the trembling of the ship we could tell that the engine had been put on high speed. In the gray of the early morning we sighted, ahead of us and a little to the right, a vessel somewhat larger than our own, which was also traveling with screened lights, and looked like a man-of-war. Our commander ordered a course toward her at high speed. Hardly had she seen us when she turned hard about, took the contrary course, and ran away from us, the dense column of smoke rising from her funnels indicating that her engines were working at maximum power. The pursued ship took a course directly toward the Japanese Islands, lying about ten miles distant. A black cloud of smoke streamed behind her, rested on the water, and, for a while, hid her from sight entirely. We could see nothing of her but the mast tops, and so found it impossible to discover the nature of the vessel with which we were dealing. That she was not a neutral was evident enough from her behavior. Therefore, after her with full speed!
II--STORY OF CAPTURE OF THE RUSSIAN "RJESAN"
Meanwhile, daylight had come. The signal: "Stop at once!" was flying at our foremast. When this demand was not complied with after a reasonable time, we fired a blind shell, and when this also failed to have the desired effect, we sent a quick reminder in the form of a couple of sharp shots after her. The fleeing ship could no longer hope to reach the neutral waters of Japan. When our shots fell into the water close beside her, she stopped, turned, and set the Russian colors in all her topmasts. So, on the very first night after the war had begun, we had taken our first prize. It was the Russian volunteer steamer _Rjesan_. In time of peace she had plied as a passenger steamer between Shanghai and Vladivostok. She was now to be armed with guns and to serve as an auxiliary cruiser. She was a speedy and very new ship, built in the German ship yards of Schichau.
In the sea that was running, the _Emden_ and her prize rolled badly. It was therefore no easy matter to get the cutter, that was to carry the prize crew from the _Emden_ to the _Rjesan_, into the water. There was danger that it would be pounded to pieces against the sides of the ships. However, everything passed off satisfactorily. In a short time we saw the officer of the prize crew, followed by a number of men, all armed with pistols, climbing up the gangway ladder. The Russian flag was hauled down, and in its place the German colors were run up.
As the steamer was one that could serve our own purposes excellently well--she could be transformed into a very good German auxiliary cruiser--our commander decided not to destroy her, but instead to take her to Tsingtao. At a speed of fifteen miles we made our way southward. Behind us, in our wake, followed the _Rjesan_. A commanding officer with a prize crew of twelve men remained aboard of her, to make certain that the service of the ship and the engines, etc., would be according to our wishes.
* * * * *
From the newspapers, we had learned that the main body of the French fleet, consisting of the armored cruisers _Montcalm_ and _Dupleix_, besides a number of torpedo boat destroyers, was lying somewhere off Vladivostok. With these ships the _Emden_ must not be allowed to come in contact by daylight. As we were rounding the southern extremity of Corea, the look-out in the top suddenly sang out, "Seven smoke clouds in sight astern!" To make quite sure of it, the Commander sent me aloft. I, too, could distinctly see seven separate columns of smoke, together with the upper structure of a small vessel, the one nearest to us, just above the horizon. Upon hearing my report, the commander gave orders to change our course. We swept a wide circle, and so avoided the enemy. Without meeting with hindrance of any kind, we arrived at Tsingtao.
On the way we caught up an interesting wireless message. The Reuter Agency, so celebrated for its rigid adherence to facts, was sending a telegram abroad, informing the credulous world that the _Emden_ had been sunk. How many sympathetic people must have shuddered as they read,--and so did we, of course!
During the following night, our prize occasioned us some further trouble. Naturally, her lights, as well as our own, had to be screened. It was a much easier matter to give orders to that effect, however, than to see to it that they were carried out. On the steamer were several women passengers, who, from the outset, were filled with mortal terror as to what the barbarous Germans would do with them. Most of them were fat Russian Jewesses. Every few minutes they would turn on the electric lights in their cabins, so that finally there was nothing left for the officer of the prize crew to do but to have the electric light cable in the engine capped....
III--IN THE HARBOR AT TSINGTAO
At Tsingtao our commander found orders awaiting him from the Admiral of our squadron, Count von Spee, who, with the armored cruisers, _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, and the small cruiser, _Nürnberg_, was in the South Pacific, steering northward. The _Emden's_ orders were to join this squadron at a stated point of meeting in the South Pacific.
* * * * *
At sunrise on the following day the _Emden_ left Tsingtao in the company of a large number of German ships, all bound for the south, where they were to join the Admiral's squadron.
* * * * *
With fair weather and a smooth sea the _Emden_ slipped out of the harbor moles. Our band played "The Watch on the Rhine." The entire crew was on deck, singing as the band played. Cheers rang from ship to shore, and back again. Everyone was confident and in high spirits.
* * * * *
Cautiously the _Emden_ made her way between the mines which barred the entrance to the harbor. The sun had just risen. Behind us lay Tsingtao, the gem of the far East, brightened by the golden-red beams of the young day--a picture of peace....
As we gazed, there was not one of us who was not conscious of a strange tugging at his heart. But duty called with an imperative voice. Therefore, farewell to the fair scene we were leaving behind us! For us, it was, "Onward, to the South!"
We were accompanied by the _Markomannia_, the other ships taking different courses. The _Markomannia_ remained our faithful companion for a number of months.
* * * * *
On our way to the South Pacific we learned, by wireless, of the rupture in the relations between Germany and England, and of the latter's declaration of war.
A few days later we learned of Japan's remarkable ultimatum, without its causing us any special anxiety. It might as well all be done up at one and the same time, was the general feeling among us.
* * * * *
On the twelfth of August, in the evening, we had reached the vicinity of the island where we were to join our cruiser squadron, and soon we fell in with some of the ships that were serving as outposts. As we approached the group of assembled warships, we saw the stanch cruisers _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ lying in the midst of them, each with a coal tender alongside, and engaged in coaling. To the left lay the slender _Nürnberg_, also busy with taking on coal. Distributed about the bay, many larger and smaller auxiliary ships and tenders of the squadron could be seen. The _Emden_ was ordered to an anchorage close beside the flagship, in the right-hand half of the bay. Rousing cheers were sent from deck to deck, as we passed by the other ships, and soon our anchor rattled seaward, and to the bottom,--it was to be the last time for many a long day.
Our commander went aboard the flagship to report to the Admiral of the squadron, and to submit to him the proposal that the _Emden_ be detached from the squadron, and be sent to the Indian Ocean, to raid the enemy's commerce.
On the following day the squadron steered an easterly course, the ships keeping a long line, one behind the other, with all the coal tenders bringing up the rear. The Admiral had, for the present, reserved his decision with regard to our Commander's proposition, and we were all impatient to learn what it would be. At last, toward noon, signal flags were seen running up on the flagship. They read, "_Emden_ detached. Wish you good luck!" Sweeping a wide curve, the _Emden_ withdrew from the long line of warships, a signal conveying her Commander's thanks for the good wishes of the Admiral fluttering at her mast head. There was still another signal from the commanding officer of the squadron, ordering the _Markomannia_ to attend the _Emden_. Ere long we had lost sight of the other ships of the squadron, which now were steering a course contrary to our own, and we all knew full well that we should never meet again.
* * * * *
These days were strenuous ones for our men, as the war watch was continued without intermission, in order that the ship might be ready at a moment's notice for any emergency. There was no opportunity to give the crew even a short season of rest. For us, there was not one harbor of refuge where we might lie free from danger....
To reach the open sea, our course now led us through a number of narrow water ways. These straits swarmed with fishing boats and other small sea craft. The nights were bright with moonlight, which made it possible to recognize the _Emden_ at a considerable distance. To meet so many boats was a source of anxiety to our Commander, who expressed himself as apprehensive that our presence in these waters, and our probable course also, would be noised about by some of these vessels. All English ships have either two or four funnels, whereas the _Emden_ had three.
The happy thought came to me that much might be gained if the _Emden_ were provided with a fourth funnel....
Out of wooden laths and sail-cloth we soon had constructed a funnel of most elegant appearance, and, when it had been placed in position, the _Emden_ was the exact counterpart of the British cruiser _Yarmouth_....
IV--STORY OF EXPLOITS ON THE BAY OF BENGAL
In this way, by the end of the first week in September, we had got as far as the Bay of Bengal. For a period of about five days an English man-of-war, most likely the _Minotaur_, kept a course close beside our own, which we learned from the frequent wireless messages that we caught up. Gradually, her messages became less distinct, and then ceased altogether. At no time had she come within sight of us.
It was not until the night of September tenth that our work began in real earnest. A steamer came in sight, and we approached her very cautiously, so as to give her a closer inspection. Quietly, and with lights screened, we crept up behind our intended victim. Our Commander ordered an approach to within one hundred meters of the steamer, which was peacefully and unsuspectingly proceeding on her course, and, after the manner of merchantmen, was paying little heed to anything except what was ahead of her and showing lights. Suddenly, through the stillness of the perfectly calm night, rang out our challenge through the speaking trumpet:
"Stop at once! Do not use your wireless! We are sending a boat!"
The steamer did not seem to realize what was meant by this order. Perhaps she did not expect, here in the heart of Indian waters, to run across an enemy's man-of-war. Or she may have thought it the voice of a sea god, and therefore no concern of hers. At any rate, she continued on her way undeterred. So, to explain the situation, we sent a blank shot whizzing past her. This made an impression, and, pell mell, her engines were reversed--we truly regretted the start we had given her dozing engineers--and with her siren she howled out her willingness to obey our order.
One of our cutters, with a prize crew in it, glided swiftly to water, and thence to the steamer, of which we thus took possession. An unpleasant surprise was now in store for us, for soon there came flashing back to us a signal given by one of the men of our prize crew: "This is the Greek steamer, _Pontoporros_." ...
The _Pontoporros_ was loaded with coal from India, the very dirtiest coal in the world....
I had, in jest, entreated our Commander to capture, as our first prize, a ship loaded with soap, instead of which we now got this cargo of dirty Indian coal. My disappointment was so great that I could not refrain from reproachfully calling our Commander's attention to it, and, with a laugh, he promised to do his best toward providing us with the much-needed soap. And he kept his word.
On the morning of the eleventh of September, only a few hours after we had made the first addition to our squadron, there appeared, forward, a large steamer, which, in the supposition that we were an English man-of-war, manifested her delight at meeting us by promptly running up a large English flag while still a long way off. We could not help wondering what sort of expression her captain's face wore when we ran up the German colors, and politely requested him to remain with us for a while.
The steamer hailed from Calcutta, had been requisitioned to serve as an English transport for carrying troops from Colombo to France, and was fitted out with an abundance of excellent supplies....
We also found aboard the ship a very handsome race horse. By a shot through the head, this noble creature was spared the agony of death by drowning. But our sympathy was hardly sufficient to extend to all the many mounts for artillery, which occupied as many neatly numbered stalls that had been built into the ship. They had to be left to become the prey of sharks a half hour later. The ship's crew was sent aboard our "junkman."...
During the next few days our business flourished. It was carried on in this way: As soon as a steamer came in sight, she was stopped, and one of our officers, accompanied by ten men, was sent aboard her. It was their duty to get the steamer ready to be sunk, and to arrange for the safe transfer of the passengers and crew. As a rule, while we were still occupied with this, the mast head of the next ship would appear above the horizon. There was no need of giving chase. When the next steamer had come near enough to us, the _Emden_ steamed off to meet her, and sent her a friendly signal by which she was induced to join our other previously captured ships. Again an officer and men were sent off, boarded her, got her ready to be sunk, and attended to the transfer of all hands aboard her, etc., and, by the time this was accomplished, the mast head of the third ship had usually come in sight. Again the _Emden_ went to meet her, and so the game went on....
V--SEA TALES FROM CEYLON TO CALCUTTA
In this way we cleaned up the whole region from Ceylon to Calcutta. In addition to our old companion, the _Markomannia_, we were now accompanied by the Greek collier _Pontoporros_, which, in the meanwhile, had relinquished the rôle of "junkman" to the _Cabigna_. The latter was an English steamer carrying an American cargo, the destruction of which would have resulted in nothing but unnecessary charges.
The _Cabigna_ continued with us for several days, although she, the _Markomannia_, and the _Pontoporros_ were not the only companions of the _Emden_ during that night. We had captured more prizes, whose destruction, however, was deferred to the following day in consideration of the passengers, because of the darkness, and the high seas running. All told, we had six attendants that night. Three of these disappeared in the sea on the coming morning, and the _Cabigna_ was discharged to land her passengers.
Aboard the _Cabigna_ were the wife and little child of the captain. The position at sea, where the other steamers had been sent to the bottom, was so far distant from the nearest shore that it would have been quite impossible for any boats to have reached land. Before the captain of the _Cabigna_ had been told that he would be allowed to proceed, and in the assumption that his ship also was to be sunk, he begged that he might be allowed to take a revolver with him for the protection of his wife and child....
When the captain was informed that it was not our purpose to destroy his ship, he was overcome with joy. I, myself, was aboard his ship for several hours, and he could not find words sufficient to express his gratitude, begging me to convey his thanks to our Commander, and finally handing me a letter to deliver to him.
I had a long conversation with the captain's wife, also, and she expressed sentiments much like those contained in her husband's letter to our Commander. When she discovered, from something I said, that my oil-skins were going to pieces, she pressed me to accept her husband's. Besides this, upon learning that our supply of smoking tobacco was getting low, she urged us to take as many cigarettes and as much smoking tobacco with us as we could carry. These, she declared, were but trifling gifts in comparison with the gratitude she felt. It is hardly necessary to say that we took with us neither the tobacco nor the oil-skins.
At the time that the _Cabigna_ was discharged, her deck was full of passengers, all people from the steamers we had captured. At our order, "You may proceed!" three cheers--"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!"--rang back to us, one for the Commander, one for the officers, and one for the crew of H. M. S. _Emden_, in which every person on the crowded deck joined.... There were, at the time, about four hundred persons aboard the ship.
In the further progress of our activities we never failed to get three cheers from our discharged "junkmen," as they departed with their collection of passengers from captured steamers....
This seems a fitting place to speak about the attitude taken by the Englishmen when we captured their ships. Most of them behaved very sensibly. After they had recovered from the first shock of surprise, they usually passed into the stage of unrestrained indignation at their government, at which they swore roundly. With but one exception, they never offered any resistance to the sinking of their ships. We always allowed them time enough to collect and take with them their personal possessions. They usually devoted most of this time to making certain that their precious supply of whiskey was not wasted on the fishes. I can say with truth that seldom did we send off a wholly sober lot of passengers on any one of our "junkmen."
* * * * *
VI--TWO SHELLS AT MADRAS--AND AN EXPLOSION
One captain was especially amusing. His was the unenviable duty of taking a bucket-dredger from England to Australia. No seafaring man can help sympathizing with the unfortunate who has to conduct one of these rolling tubs, with a speed of not more than four nautical miles at best, all the way from Europe down to Australia. And so, from a purely humane standpoint, we could fully appreciate this English captain's joy at being captured. Rarely have I seen anyone jump so high for joy. He must have been a past master in the art of jumping to be able to keep his feet in spite of the terrible rolling of his ship. Tears of gratitude coursed down his weathered cheeks as he exclaimed, "Thank God, that the old tub is gone! The five hundred pounds I was to have for taking her to Australia were paid me in advance."
* * * * *
On the eighteenth of September, in the evening, the _Emden_ entered the harbor. It so happened that this was the day after the one on which the joyful tidings of the _Emden's_ destruction had been officially announced. To celebrate the happy occasion, a large company had assembled for dinner at the Club. As we were not aware of this, it was hardly our fault that the _Emden's_ shells fell into the soup. Had we known of the dinner party, we would, of course, gladly have deferred our attack until another day, as it is the part of wisdom never to exasperate the enemy unnecessarily. A due regard should always be shown for sacred institutions, and _dinner_ is an institution with regard to which the English are always keenly sensitive.
We approached to within 3,000 meters of Madras. The harbor light was shining peacefully. It rendered us good service as we steered toward shore, for which we again take this opportunity to express our gratitude to the British Indian government. A searchlight revealed to us the object of our quest,--the oil tanks, painted white and ornamented with a stripe of red. A couple of shells sent in that direction, a quick upleaping of tongues of bluish-yellow flame, streams of liquid fire pouring out through the holes made by our shots, an enormous black cloud of dense smoke,--and, following the advice of the old adage, "A change is good for everybody," we had sent several millions' worth of the enemy's property up into the air, instead of down into the sea, as heretofore.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the coaling question had come to be a source of annoyance to us. Our faithful _Markomannia_ had no more coal to give us. To be sure, our prize, the _Pontoporros_, with her cargo of coal from India, was still with us. But this Indian coal is far from being desirable fuel, as it not only clogs the fire kettles with dirt, but, while it gives out a minimum of heat, it sends forth a maximum of smoke, and so our prize was not an unmixed joy to us. However, this vexed coal question was happily solved for us by the English Admiralty in a most satisfactory manner. Before many days had passed, a fine large steamer of 7,000 tonnage, loaded with the best of Welsh coal, en route for Hong Kong, and destined for their own use, was relinquished to us by the English in a most unselfish manner.
So, for the present, we were most generously supplied with the best of fuel, and all further anxiety on this account was dismissed to the uncertain future. The captain of our new coal-laden prize seemed to have no scruples with regard to transferring himself, together with his ship, into German service. Willingly and faithfully he coöperated with the officer of the prize crew that was, of course, placed in command of his ship, all the while cheerfully whistling "Rule, Britannia."
In the meantime, even the English government itself had become convinced that the destruction of the _Emden_ had, after all, not been accomplished.
* * * * *
VII--STORY OF LIFE ABOARD THE FLYING DUTCHMAN
We knew quite well that sixteen hostile ships were in pursuit of us,--British, French, and Japanese. We never had any information with regard to the position of these ships, nor of their character, which, after all, could matter very little to us, since the _Emden_ was the smallest and least formidable of all the war ships in the Indian Ocean. There was not a hostile cruiser, that she was likely to meet, that was not her superior in strength. That the _Emden's_ career must soon be cut short was therefore a prospect of which everyone aboard her felt certain. Many hounds are certain death to the hare.
Our Commander had set this aspect of affairs before us, sharply and clearly, at the very outset of the _Emden's_ career, pointing out that the only future ahead of the _Emden_ was to inflict as much damage as possible upon the enemy before she herself should be destroyed, which, in any event, could be but a question of time.
The devotion of the _Emden's_ crew to their Commander was touching in the extreme. The men appreciated the high qualities of their leader, were proud of their ship, and gloried in its successful career. If, at any time when they were singing, or were otherwise noisy, the word was passed along, "The Commander is tired," they would become instantly quiet. At a word of encouragement from him the men would accomplish some truly wonderful feats in connection with difficult undertakings, such as coaling at sea under most adverse conditions, and in spite of extreme fatigue.
Of "_Emden_ yarns" ... there was an untold number. On board ship we kept a scrap-book in which they were all preserved, but this, unfortunately, was lost, together with much that was of higher value.
Amusement of a different nature was afforded the officers' mess by our "war cats," as we called them. On the day before we left Tsingtao a cat had come on board, and so had come along with us. In course of time, this cat experienced the joys of motherhood. Lying in my hammock one morning, I opened my eyes upon a charming scene of family life. Just beneath me, a little to one side, on a mattress on the floor of the deck, lay Lieutenant Schall, sleeping the sleep of the just. Close beside him, on the same mattress, lay the cat, with a family of five newly born kittens. After I had quickly wakened the other officers who were sleeping near, so that they might enjoy the sight of this peaceful domesticity, we poked Lieutenant Schall until he, too, opened his eyes upon the scene. At first he did not seem to share our pleasure in it, however, but, with a muttered oath, hurried off to the washroom.
Our kittens were not the only animals that the war had brought aboard our ship. If some one had dropped from the sky, and landed on the _Emden_ on one of these days, he would have opened his eyes in wonderment at sight of this "man-of-war." Forward, in the vicinity of the drain pipe, he would have discovered one or two pigs, grunting with satisfaction. Near by, he would have seen a couple of lambs and a sheep or two, bleating peacefully. By a walk aft he would, in all probability, have scared up a whole flock of pigeons that had been sitting on the rails which served for the transportation of ammunition, and that, at his approach, would take refuge in the pigeon house that had been fastened against one of the funnels. In his further progress he would most likely have frightened up a few dozen hens that would then have run cackling about his heels, the noise they made being only outdone by the still louder cackling of a flock of geese engaged in unsuccessful attempts at swimming in a large half-tub aft, and at the same time trying to drink salt water. We always had a great deal of live stock on board, all of which we had taken from the captured steamers.... We had a less practical, but more ornamental addition to our menagerie in a dwarf antelope, which I came upon one day in the forward battery. How the dainty creature got there has always remained a mystery to me.
VIII--LAST DAYS OF THE GALLANT "EMDEN"
Every afternoon the ship's band gave us quite a long concert. At such times the men all sat cozily about on the forecastle, listening to the music, some joining in with their voices, while others smoked or danced. In the evening, after darkness had set in, the singers aboard usually got together, and then every possible and impossible song was sung by a chorus that was excellent both in volume and quality. The "possible" songs were, to a great extent, our beautiful German national melodies, and these were always well rendered. The "impossible" ones were frequently improvised for the occasion. In these, clearness of enunciation was always a greater feature than either rhyme or rhythm. The singing invariably closed with the "Watch on the Rhine," in which all hands on deck joined.
Distributing the booty we had taken from a captured ship was always an occasion about which centered a great deal of interest. Anything of a useful nature, especially everything in the line of food, was, as a matter of course, taken aboard the _Emden_. As a result, veritable mountains of canned goods were stored away in a place set apart for them on the forward deck. Casks full of delectable things were there. Hams and sausages dangled down from the engine skylight. There were stacks of chocolate and confectionery, and bottles labelled "Claret" and "Cognac," with three stars....
So as to be able to do justice to all that fortune bestowed upon us, an extra meal or two had to be tucked in between the usual ones. So, with our afternoon coffee we now had chocolate or bonbons. For the smokers there were more than 250,000 cigarettes stored away, and when, in the evening, they had been passed around, the deck looked as though several hundred fireflies were flitting about it.
* * * * *
So we spent the passing days, while certain death lurked round about us. In sixteen ships our enemies were burning their coal, and racking their brains in vain attempt to catch us.
(Here the Lieutenant-Captain of _The Flying Dutchman_ narrates the adventures of those wonderful days; how they kept the enemy seas fraught with danger; how they were hunted through the oceans; how they lived their gay life of "gentlemen buccaneers," knowing that each day brought them nearer to death and the bottom of the seas. He describes vividly "Our Baptism by Fire;" he tells how they torpedoed the Russian destroyer _Schemtschuk_; how they fought the French gunboat _D'Iberville_; how they sunk the French destroyer _Mousquet_; how they wrapped the French dead in the French flag and buried them with naval honors in the sea; until the last fight of the _Emden_ when she met her champion, the Anglo-Australian cruiser _Sydney_ and went down gloriously in the Indian Ocean. The Lieutenant-Captain's description of this last fight is one of the classics of the Great War.)
FOOTNOTE:
[2] All numerals relate to the stories herein told--not to the chapters in the book.
"THE WAY OF THE CROSS"--A TRAGEDY OF THE RUSSIANS
_The Millions Who Have Become Beggars_
_Told by V. Doroshevitch, Famous Russian Journalist_
This is probably the first piece of Russian War literature translated into English. It presents the terrible picture of the Russian and Polish fugitives flying from the German invasion in the autumn of 1915. The narrator is a famous Russian journalist, who first contributed his experiences to the _Russkol Slovl_. He went from Moscow to meet the incoming flood of refugees and then passed through to the rear of the Russian Army. At first he met the survivors who were forced ahead in the procession; afterwards they came thicker and thicker until they were a moving wall. He tells how they camped in the forests, how they died by the way, how they put up their crosses by the side of the road, how they sold their horses and abandoned their carts, how they starved, how they suffered. His articles have been collected by Stephen Graham and published in book form by _G. P. Putnam's Sons_: Copyright 1916. These breathless, desperate stories breathe a tender love. The style is typically Slavic and has been preserved in the excellent translations. A single typical story is here told of "The Desolation of Roslavl" by permission of the publishers.
In 1812 Moscow made a funeral pyre for herself, and burned--for Russia's sake. A hundred years have passed. And the red glare of Moscow's fire has paled. The Moscow of those days! A wooden city. The burning of it was appalling. The ground burned under the feet of the Napoleonic soldiers: even the roadways of Moscow were made of wood at that time.
But now! More than ten provinces have been laid waste by the enemy. Millions of people have become beggars. And have fled. From the places of their birth to the far centre of Russia stretches the way of the Cross for these people.
And on this way, as on that other way--of Golgotha, are places, where the people faint under the burden of the Cross: Bobruisk! Dovsk! Roslavl! These are names full of affliction. Especially: The memory of Roslavl is terrible.
* * * * *
[3] I--STORY OF DESOLATION OF ROSLAVL
Roslavl, on the River Oster, is a quiet little town in the province of Smolensk. Ordinarily, when you drive along the high-road coming from the West, in Rogachef, in Cherikof, in Propoisk, in Krichef, they will tell you that Roslavl is the first Russian town. From here to the eastward, Great Russia begins.
When you arrive at Roslavl you will be awakened in the morning by the soft yet powerful baritone of its marvellous bell, sounding from the height of the Transfiguration monastery on the hill.
And you will hear this, like music--for the first time on the whole of your journey from the West up till then.
* * * * *
Now Roslavl is choked and drowned. There is neither sugar nor salt in the town. In the streets fugitives stop you and ask,
"Friend, where can I buy any salt here? I've been trying to get some all day."
"Little father, where can we get any sugar? Even if it's only half a pound or a quarter of a pound."
You go into a baker's shop and ask:
"Have you any white bread?"
The shopman looks at you in wonder.
"We bake no white. Only black, and even that's all taken for the fugitives."
"The fugitives will eat us up," says Roslavl in terror.
But the wave of fugitives comes on and on, and a stench is given forth from it. Here the great river stops, and its waters turn round and round, like a whirlpool. Roslavl is overwhelmed; the tide rises above its head.
The reason?--the railway. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people will remember with horror the desolation of Roslavl. Here is enacted a dreadful scene: "The completion of the process"--the fugitives giving up their horses. First they were as "gipsies," but now they have turned into a Khitrof market.[4] Numbers of the fugitives, the great majority of them, having exhausted their last strength and reached the railway.
Have the last thing to do as peasants. They sell their horses. And thence go onward--in the train. Waiting in an open-air camp in Roslavl for a week or so, until they are given places. And with what desperation do they cling to the possession of their horses.
II--STORY OF THE PEASANT--AND THREE MOTHERLESS CHILDREN
Here I made the acquaintance of a fugitive--a bitter man. His wife died two weeks before the final ruin and he has three children, two very young, and a baby. He had owned some land and was a farmer. He had paid 12,000 rubles for it. The payment had been spread over seven years and all had been paid. He had only just begun to make a living. And now "this had happened." He had managed to bring away all his cattle. And four horses. He had gone a long way.
But in Minsk province, where a continuous marsh extends for tens and tens of versts, an order had come to clear the high-road, and the cattle had been driven on to the marsh.
"My little son," said he, "who had gone on in front with the cattle, ran back to meet me at a turn of the road, crying, 'Daddy, Daddy, the cattle are all drowned in the marsh.' I ran to him. The herd of cattle were twisting and writhing in the bog. Bellowing. And among them I saw mine."
He spoke sadly but calmly about the death of his wife, about his land that had "cost so much money."
"But I'd rather have been blinded than see such a sight. A second ruin. All my property perishing in the quagmire, and I stand on the road and become a beggar. Three horses died on the way. One remained. A little shaggy horse, ten years old, but active."
In Roslavl he found a kind man who permitted him to live in his _banya_, bath-house. A black _banya_. But that was a palace!
"Day and night I never cease to pray to God for the kind man who saved my children," says he.
He has found a footing at Roslavl and will remain there--drives a cab.
"Two rubles a day shall I earn, think I. One and a half will feed the horse, and the fifty kopecks which remain must suffice for us four."
"Not a large budget. And what if you were to sell the horse and go farther?"
He looked at me straight in the eyes with terror.
"Master!" said he, "I have a horse, and so all the same I remain a man! A human being! But without a horse, what sort of a being should I be? What should I be?"
III--STORY OF THE PROCESSION--AND THE COFFINS
On all sides you hear:
"Well, at least we have a horse! So we can still count ourselves human beings! Still peasants!"
And if the money be all spent, and the peasant cease to be a peasant. What then? The last thing that connects him with the past, the last thing that binds him to life.
Along the main street of Roslavl from earliest morning till the darkness of night without interruption, without ceasing, go two processions, one one way, the other the other. On one side of the road come an endless series of grey carts, one after another endlessly--and pass away towards that stretch of the road where yesterday we saw innumerable camp bonfires. On the other side coming from that place come refugees on horseback, some astride, some sitting sideways, on little worn-out horses. They go to the bazaar. Betwixt the two processions is the long empty alley of the middle of the street.
On both sides there is silence as if funeral processions going in opposite directions were meeting one another. Not even looking at one another, in fact, as if they did not remark one another.
To the town:
--To seek salt?
To know:
--What further orders have been given? Whither should they go now?
No, no, they are carrying coffins through--mostly children's. A peasant is carrying a coffin on his shoulder. Silently after him and without weeping strides his peasant wife. Clinging to her skirts also silently and without weeping come frozen barefooted children.
Look, here comes a large coffin. From the hardly shut lid hang new and bright coloured cottons. It is a girl that has died. Four girls are carrying the coffin. They will bury her in the right way, with the ritual. The little procession went past, simple, beautiful, melancholy. No one stopped to look round, to turn the head. No one meeting the procession crossed himself, nor drew off his hat, nor gave any attention. As if the people had ceased to see wit |
48941-8 | h their eyes.
And there stretches, stretches, along the footways, along the margin of the road, without respite, without interval, without interruption, the two processions ever coming towards one another and passing.
Grey carts, carts, carts. Horses, horses, horses, fugitives wandering like shadows, horses, children's coffins, and again horses, horses, horses. The head turns giddy looking at the endless movement. It becomes difficult to breathe because of that which passes before the eyes.
In this little town through which comes such an ocean of people, it is as quiet as if it were all one great funeral. I had hardly come into the market-place before the crowd swirled round me with quick movements and feverish eyes. Whence had they come to Roslavl? Whence had so many come? There were all dialects. Great Russian, Russian and Little Russian accent, with Polish accent.
IV--STORY OF THE PEASANT'S HORSE MARKET
"_Panitch!_ Do you want horses? You can buy them very reasonably. Ah, so reasonably! A horse that cost a hundred rubles, you can buy for twenty-five. Do you wish to buy?"
"Wait for me, wait for me. I'll take you to the horses."
"Mr. Squire, Mr. Squire, here are horses. Farm horses! And cheap! Cheap! I'll bring them to you."
There's no getting through the horses in the market--no possibility of penetrating through. There stands one great solid crowd. Quick people even slip about under the horses. What the prices are you may judge from separate exclamations.
"If there's such a bargain anywhere else on God's earth I'd like to hear of it!" says a fugitive, turning over and turning over again the dirty notes which he has received.
"Don't get rid of them here. Better sell their skins in Kalutsk."
"Take the twelve rubles now. Take them now. To-morrow you'll be glad to sell at ten."
"By to-morrow she'll drop down dead if you go on!"
"What! Fifteen rubles not good money? Did you say that? You?"
"Ten rubles as they stand! From hand to hand!" says a tall, dark peasant with a long beard, standing beside a cart to which are tied six horses, all skin and bone.
He says in a contemptuous tone:
"You see the horses. A red note for each. Altogether. Take them. It will mean money. Without money there's no doing anything."
I say to a fugitive:
"Don't you know that in Muchin yard, beyond the town, they're buying for the Government. There you would get a fairer price."
The fugitive does not succeed in answering for himself. Once more the crowd of people with quick movements and feverish eyes.
"The Government? There, you'll never get a turn! It's necessary to stand three days. He's got to hurry for the train. See what a lot of people are coming in. He will be late, and have to wait a month in the open. The autumn rains will start. And cold. All his children will freeze. From Bobruisk another five hundred thousand are coming. Who are you, Mister? Are you someone from the Government or a Relief Committee?"
"Our little children are just freezing to death," says another fugitive.
And at this market where horses and people are crushed in one compact mass where from the heat of bodies and the smell of horses it is difficult to breathe, if any one is cheerful, it is only the purchaser.
The fugitives have not much to say for themselves, and that in a low voice--as if stunned. They sell their horses and stand as if in perplexity. They go away--horseless, peasants no longer, wordless. In appearance so calm and indifferent: as if nothing had happened. No expression of the grief, of the deadly melancholy which is in the soul.
V--STORY OF THE HOMELESS PEASANT WOMEN
A silent land. In the same street as the market-place, by the Petrograd Hotel, from dawn until late evening, the crowd is like stone. There's no getting through. The hotel is occupied by the Committee--of "Northern-Help." Here it is arranged for the fugitives where each has to go.
I attempt to pass through the crowd and get as far as the gateway. Farther is impossible. The stench is such that the head simply goes round. May God give strength to the Relief delegates working in this stench--to remain healthy!
"We've been waiting for days!"--complain the fugitives,--"and standing without a bite of food from morning."
"What's a day! You stand a day and at the end of it go away. To-morrow you come again and have had nothing to eat."
I cast a glance at the Town Hall, where is a crowd of peasant women. In a corner is a table. With the notice:
"Employment Bureau."
A stout lady sitting there says to a peasant woman standing with a child in her arms:
"With us, my dear, the conditions of employment for servants are usually ..."
Tiny Roslavl. How is it possible to find employment here for tens of thousands of people! The peasant women stand in the waiting rooms. They stand patiently, they stand all day. And having obtained nothing whatever, go away.
In the street you are stopped by people, saying:
"Are you not in need of workmen in your village?"
"Are you not hiring people?"
And all in such melancholy, hopeless, gentle voices. I drive back to the place where last night I saw a horde of nomads--an actual horde. From the high bank of the Oster, on that side from which the forest has been cleared, you see for versts and versts a cloud of bluish, half-transparent smoke. That's the evening camping-ground.
I walk farther and farther into the forest over the soft wilted grass. Everywhere are glades, everywhere people, huts of pine-branches, and from all sides is heard the sound of axes. How many thousands of people are there here! People tell you various enormous numbers.... How many drops of water are there in the river?
What a terrible smoke in the forest! Because of the smoke the eyes of all are red and painful.
"It is damp at night, the smoke settles down, and there's no getting out of the wood," says a small farmer to me, "but it's warm in the smoke. Just like sitting in a dark _izba_. Hot, even. We warm the forest. That's what it's come to for us."
"Perhaps it's just the smoke that saves us," says his neighbour, also a farmer--"everyone is coughing all around, some are spitting blood, but in the smoke every microbe perishes."
VI--STORY OF THE PRIESTS--AND REFUGEES
Going farther into the forest I come upon a crowd. A priest is explaining to them how and where to go that their horses may be properly inspected and priced, how to go to Muchin yard, sell their horses, and receive the money; how to go to the railway station and wait their turn for a seat in the train, how much will be given to each man for food.
"And I will drive ahead and meet you at such and such a station." That's so many versts away. This is a priest from the province of Holm, and he is explaining to his flock. Many of the priests of Holm province accompany their refugees. And the help which they give is colossal. They get some sort of understanding of the situation for themselves and explain everything to their people.
It is asked: "Where are the numberless local officials, the people looking after the village in time of peace, where are they now in the time of terror and calamity, where have they betaken themselves--where, saving themselves, do they receive their former official salary? How they have abandoned this illiterate people who do not even understand the Russian language well, in such a moment."
They looked after them all the time like children, and then, in the difficult moment, abandon the children to the will of Fate! Had they come with their own refugees, had even the least important of them come, there would have been someone to whom to turn for information, to find out things. But abandoned, left entirely to themselves, the fugitives grope about, and feel their way like people with bandaged eyes.
* * * * *
I made acquaintance with a priest. He spoke bitterly. There was desperation in his voice.
"We try to preserve ourselves together. But we are assigned to places! Assigned! One part of the flock to Riazan, another to Kazan, a third to Orenburg!"
Here in the wood are fugitives at the last limit of their strength, making a decision: To deprive themselves of the last thing--to sell their horses. They sell them in the market-place, in Muchin yard, to "Northern-Help," to the Government, _fkaznu_, as they say. Then they are already not muzhiks; they wander over from this camp to the camp near the railway station. And whilst they are encamped in the wood they go backwards and forwards between the relief points of "Northern-Help" and the "Municipal Alliance."
On the great highway--a promenade--as one of the numerous gendarmes keeping order put it. Not only is it difficult to drive through, but difficult to walk through. The people flock first one way, then the other, with downcast visage, to the forest, from the forest, from one side of the highway to the other side of the highway. At the bonfires they warm their red and chilblained hands. Horses pass through the crowd. With triangular brandings on their hind legs.
Many horses wander about lost. They come to the high-road, to the people, to the other horses. They wander about quietly, somehow helplessly, looking around them with their wise, sad eyes. As if they were seeking their own people. Horses at the last gasp of their strength. But no one pays any attention to them. Neither do the horses pay attention. They stumble upon people.
In the peasant huts occupied as relief points bread is taken in at the back door, cut up there, and handed out from a little window in the front. So from morning to night bread flows in an uninterrupted stream. Sentries keep the order of those who are waiting for bread. In front of the bread windows range endless ranks of fugitives. Thousands and thousands of people. One person moves an inch, another person moves an inch, and from the midst is heard wails.
"You're suffocating me! Oh, suffocating!"
People fall unconscious. Here indeed only the stronger can stand the strain. The hungry crush the hungry in order that they may squeeze into a better place in the line and receive their bit of bread sooner. The women, the children, with wide staring eyes, with deathly pale faces. Quietly and silently the fierce and cruel struggle goes on. All around the people swarm like flies.
A man in a uniform has only to appear, or even a gentleman in civil attire, and the fugitives swarm about him.
"Your high nobility! Show us your official mercy!"
Where have I heard this melancholy, hopeless tone, these very words of humiliation?
* * * * *
"What is it you want?"
"Give us a certificate!"
Food is only given out to those who have certificates--according to the number of souls in the family. Such certificates ought to have been obtained from the village authorities at the point from which they started.
"They did not give us them! We had not time to get them."
--"Lost!"
--"We shall die of hunger."
--"Your high nobility!"
They come for everything, they come to make complaints.
"Your high nobility! Permit me to explain. The _starosta_ advised me to wait for the Germans and not go away. I did not agree. He got angry and refused to give me a certificate. Decide for yourself! Show God's mercy, and give me one now."
VII--STORY OF THE WANDERING MULTITUDES--AND THEIR PRAYERS
Down below, under the cliff, is an immense marshy meadow, and there, what a wild, what a strange picture.... At that point I thought of the late V. V. Verestchagin. Only he with his gray tones could have painted the gray horror of this life, only he could have painted the dreadful picture in all its horror.
For several acres the whole meadow was covered with abandoned and broken carts. The iron parts had been unloosed and taken away, wheels lay separately, tilts separately. How many were there there? Tens of thousands. The whole plain was gray with carts, with wheels, with shafts and single shafts. Having sold their horses for cash, the fugitives abandoned their carts here, only taking with them the iron parts they could unfasten.
Among this gray wilderness of ruin fugitives were wandering. These people who preserved their horses and could still go on--in their own carts. They sought here any bits of harness or shafts or wheels that could serve them better than their own. From various separate parts they put together whole carts. Some of the branded horses had come here. Seeking perhaps, by scent or by instinct, the carts to which they had once been harnessed. They wandered and stumbled like shadows, hardly keeping their feet. They fell. There lies one. He breathes heavily, suddenly quivers tremulously. In his round, glassy eyes there is suffering. He tries to raise his head from the ground. He has not strength to hold it up, and lets it fall again. Then suddenly he begins to wail, just like a man. A little farther off lies a horse already stiff, and its long, long, lean legs stretch out.
* * * * *
The crowd does not melt away but increases. Here it is cold, here there is no forest. And the fugitives press together closely, family to family. Only warming themselves in the smoke of their bonfires. There are bonfires day and night. Wandering women go from house to house in the neighbourhood. They stop outside the doors, crying:
"Give, for Christ's sake, give us wood."
And, the heart anguished, they give.
--More still is stolen!
* * * * *
Irritated by fear for themselves, frightened at these "unheard-of people," the little towns and hamlets and the "all-understanding" villages ... one can only express astonishment at the celerity with which man adapts himself to circumstances. Where and when have these peasants of yesterday learnt so quickly to build dens and dwelling-places from any sort of rubbish? It's as if they were born nomads. It simply makes one wonder. Out of what was all this put together? How does it hold? Some slates stolen from one place, a paling broken somewhere else, an armful of hay, rags brought in by the children--and behold, a dwelling-place.
"And, O Lord, how to thank Thee that there is no longer any rain!"
--They freeze, get ill, watch their children die, and wait. It's not possible to breathe. All around is human filth. In certain stinking horrible ponds, the peasant women with feet blue from the cold, are washing clothes. And these ponds also are tainted with filth....
And when I come here in the morning, whilst the ground all around is covered with hoar-frost and the half-expired bonfires glimmer beside the marsh on which the camp is set, the spectacle is dreadful. How reckon up the sufferings? It's no use even thinking of going across the station platform. For passage there is only the merest margin above the rails where one might go along as on a tight-rope, and sideways. The whole platform is occupied by the fortunate ones. By those who have gone through all the trials of the way of affliction, lost their horses, frozen in open camping-grounds for weeks whilst they waited; by the people who have at last obtained:
--Their turn.
And they will travel, no one knows where, no one knows to what end. On immense bundles, on top of mountains of household furniture, lie people, lie or sit, and you can see that no force could prevail on them to abandon their positions. When the bell rings, indicating the arrival of a goods train, wild scenes are enacted.
In the cattle-trucks it will at once become warm, because of the many people, and the fugitives rush to take the train by storm, crushing one another as they push forward. And they lug along their bundles.
And how much of the strangest, most unnecessary rubbish do they pull along with them into the trucks, and heap up in the places which might otherwise be occupied by extra people! Rubbish for us--but the last possessions for them. That is all that remains.
* * * * *
I return to the town. In endless series, meeting one another and passing on, go the two processions up and down the street. They come, they come, they come, without respite, without interruption, the gray carts. They are all like one. One like another. And on the other side of the road come the fugitives on horseback, to sell their horses. And in this whirlpool of the river of human grief, little and dreadful Roslavl has choked and drowned.
Such was the coming of the fugitives into Great Russia.
(The Russian narrator tells many tragic stories of "Meeting the Fugitives;" "Along the Kief Road;" "The Forests of Mogilef," and many other vivid sketches of Russian suffering.)
FOOTNOTES:
[3] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.
[4] A notorious district in Moscow, where beggars, tramps and thieves congregate, and where there are many doss-houses.
THE ADVENTURES OF AN AMERICAN ATTACHÉ
_A Despatch Bearer in the Diplomatic Service_
_Told by Eric Fisher Wood, Attaché at the American Embassy in Paris_
This young American tells of his experience in the Diplomatic Service in Europe during the Great War. Ambassador Herrick placed him in charge of the interned Germans, Austrians and Hungarians in France. He was sent to the front four times where he saw parts of the battles of the Marne and the Aisne and the struggle for Calais. His most interesting adventures, however, was as a despatch bearer between the American Embassies of practically all the European countries. He tells how he carried secret documents between Ambassador Herrick, Ambassador Gerard, Ambassador Page, Ambassador Penfield. This gave him unusual diplomatic opportunities for seeing and hearing things of extraordinary interest and significance. These are related in his book: "The Note Book of an Attaché" (_The Century Company_: Copyright 1915) which gives sidelights on some of the most stupendous events of the last one hundred years.
[5] I--A STORY OF THE STRANDED AMERICANS IN PARIS
When the war-storm suddenly loomed over Europe at the end of July, 1914, I was quietly studying architecture in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Paris. When Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia on July 24th, the atmosphere of the city became so surcharged with excitement that to persist in study was difficult. Within a week I myself had been swept into the vortex of rushing events, from which I did not emerge until seven months later....
_Paris, Tuesday, August 4th._ When I arrived to-day the _Chancellerie_ presented an astounding sight. Around the outer door were huddled a compact crowd of Germans, men and women; they pressed about the entrance; they glanced furtively over their shoulders and their blue eyes were filled with dumb apprehension. Inside the _Chancellerie_ was chaos. Hundreds of Americans and Germans crowded together seeking audience and counsel. German women sank down in corners of the halls or on the stairs, weeping for joy to have found a haven of refuge. Scores of Sovereign American Citizens stood in the busiest spots and protested with American vehemence against fate and chance. Each S.A.C. was remonstrating about a separate grievance. Most of them reiterated from time to time their sovereignty, and announced to no one in particular that it was their right to see "their Ambassador" in person. They demanded information! They needed money! They wished to know what to do with letters of credit! What was "the government" going to do about sending them home? Was Paris safe? Would there be immediate attacks by Zeppelins? Could they deposit their jewels in the Embassy vaults? Were passports necessary? WHY were passports necessary? They asked the same questions over and over, and never listened to the answers....
II--IN THE AMERICAN LEGATION AT BERNE
_Berne, Saturday, November 28th._ Donait and I left Paris at nine last evening for Lyons, Culoz, and Geneva with dispatches for Berlin. For many reasons we are particularly anxious to see Germany and Austria in war time, and look forward keenly to the experience which we face.
We arrived in Geneva at noon. We were very tired, for our train and compartment were overcrowded and we had to sit up all night. The responsibility of the sack of official papers which we carried, and on which one of us had constantly to keep his mind, hand, and eyes, was an additional element of fatigue.
* * * * *
Our legation in Berne has always been the most isolated, humdrum spot on earth. People stationed here nearly died of ennui; nothing ever happened, until all Europe suddenly was plunged into the conflagration of war, and then Berne became, of necessity, the clearing house for the continent for dispatches, mail, telegrams, money, prisoners, and refugees. Every telegram which the American Embassy in Paris sends to the Embassies in Germany, Austria, or Italy is directed: "American Legation, Berne. Repeat to Gerard"--or Penfield or Page, as the case may be....
Donait and I were sent by Minister Stovall to make a verbal report on the situation of the Germans in France to Baron Romberg, the German Minister to Switzerland. I was much impressed in this my first touch with a German official. He is rather small, slim of body, but keen of mind, with excellent repose and control. Like all German diplomats, he speaks faultless English. A startling evidence of the efficiency of the German Information Bureau was furnished by the fact that he already knew to the minutest details nearly as much about my work in Paris in caring for German subjects as did I myself.
_Tuesday, December 1st._ We reached the Swiss-German frontier at noon to-day. We descended from the train at Basle and drove three miles to the frontier. Here there were two barriers straight across the road, the nearer one guarded by numerous Swiss soldiers; the farther, some twenty yards behind, by soldiers wearing the spiked helmet. Before we were allowed to pass the first barrier our papers and luggage were minutely examined by Swiss military and customs officers. We then walked across the twenty yards to the second, or German, barrier, where we were conducted into a little guard-house. Here some dozen soldiers were sleeping or playing cards on cots in the background along the walls. An efficient sergeant examined our papers and then allowed us to pass the second barrier into Germany, showing marked respect for the Herr Lieutenant and the Herr Attaché....
I was momentarily embarrassed and self-conscious when first I found myself rubbing shoulders with gentlemen in spiked helmets. During the past four months I had seen them only as prisoners or dead men, and their only greetings had been by way of their shells and bombs....
III--AWAKENED BY THE SECRET SERVICE MEN
_Mannheim, Wednesday, December 2d._ At half-past seven this morning I was awakened from a sound sleep by a pounding at my door. I climbed sleepily out of bed and, in pajamas, opened the door to two extremely polite and suave Secret Service men who, nevertheless, examined my papers with the greatest thoroughness and as carefully cross-questioned me as to my race, color, and previous condition. They asked to see my dispatches, whose seals they studied in order to be certain that I was really carrying some sort of official messages. Having listened with close attention to my story, they asked me out of a clear sky where Donait was and why he had left me. They capped the climax by reminding me that at Leopoldshöhe I had told the sergeant we were bound for Berlin, which was exactly what I had told him, not having considered the brief stop at Mannheim of sufficient importance to be mentioned. When they had received a satisfactory explanation of the discrepancy (the conversation having staggered along in German, of which my knowledge is limited) they thanked me politely and withdrew....
IV--AT THE AMERICAN EMBASSY IN BERLIN
_Berlin, Thursday, December 3d._ Donait and I had a whole compartment to ourselves last night, which shows how normally German railroads are running. We arrived in Berlin at eight o'clock this morning, bathed, dressed, and had breakfast, at eleven o'clock presented ourselves at the American Embassy and delivered our precious dispatch pouch to Mr. Grew, the First Secretary....
The Emperor is in popular estimation not much lower than God Almighty, and the two seem inextricably mingled in the public mind. The world-wide amusement created by "_Me und Gott_," or by the Emperor's firm conviction that he and he alone is worthy of divine aid and approval, is an amusement not shared by any Germans. If you say to them, "the Emperor seems to think the German people are the one race chosen of God and that He works only for them and their advancement," the Germans will promptly and emphatically reply: "Why, of course; all our past history proves that." The God they appeal to, however, is the God of Battles of the Old Testament and of the ancient Hebrews, who slew His enemies, destroyed nations, and annihilated races, who was cruel and vindictive.
* * * * *
_Berlin, Friday, December 4th._ In Berlin, restaurants, cafés, theaters, and concerts are going at full blast. Donait, Iselin, and I, who have for months been working like dogs in Paris, which is as dull as a country village and where cafés close at eight and restaurants at nine and no places of amusement are open other than a few poor cinemas, are thoroughly enjoying the contrast....
People who one day read the announcement of the death of a son, a father, or a brother, are seen the next day in the streets or cafés going about quietly, expressing or betraying neither sorrow nor regret. The loved one has died "_für Gott, für König, und für Vaterland_." That is glory enough, and neither the Emperor nor the people feel that it is appropriate to mourn for one who has died for his country....
_Berlin, Sunday, December 6th._ About the atrocities in Belgium there is, apparently, no question, but considering the way the Germans controlled themselves in France, some explanation of their brutality farther north in Belgian Flanders is necessary. The Germans say that the cruelties were not all on one side; that the Belgians practised sniping, impeded the German army, and mutilated German wounded. The only one of these charges that seems to have been proved is that of sniping, but even if other cruelties were committed it must be remembered that the moral status of the Belgians was entirely different from that of the Germans. The Belgians were aroused to blind fury by the disregard of their neutrality rights and the unwarranted invasion of their peaceful country....
Recently I had a long conversation with a German statesman of ambassadorial rank, who spoke with intense feeling of the plight of the thousands of German subjects, men, women, and children, who had been caught in France at the opening of the war and interned in detention camps. He said: "It is ridiculous for the French to suspect any of these people of being spies, for German spies are not weak or unprotected, but strong, picked men and women, highly trained to make technical observations."
_Tuesday, December 8th._ I went to the American Embassy this morning to obtain the necessary paper for my departure to-morrow for Vienna. Mr. Grew called me into his private office and said that Ambassador Gerard was particularly anxious that I should go to London instead as he had dispatches of the utmost importance to send and would feel indebted to me if I could take them. He warned me that the undertaking would not be pleasant or altogether safe. I promptly accepted the mission,--indeed such requests are, in the Army, the Navy, and the Diplomatic Service, made only to be accepted. I am to leave Berlin Thursday morning at 8:59 and go through Germany and Holland to Flushing, where I shall take a boat across the North Sea to Folkestone and thence to our Embassy in London.
V--ON THE WAY TO HOLLAND--SHADOWED BY DETECTIVES
_Thursday, December 10th._ Soon after the train left Berlin this morning I judged that I was being shadowed. When it pulled out of the station there were four people, including myself, in the six-place compartment, the two middle seats being vacant, one on my left as I sat next the window and the other diagonally facing me. Soon after the train was well started two men came in and occupied these seats. This in itself was suspicious, since people do not seek seats while a train is in motion. Both moreover had the air of being detectives. I, by this time, know the type well, for I have been constantly shadowed ever since my arrival in Germany and am perfectly certain that my rooms have several times been searched while I was absent. I simply continued to behave with the greatest possible circumspection, the two detectives meanwhile staring at me constantly with fixed intensity.
It was a bit unpleasant because I did not certainly know the nature of the dispatches I carried, but realized that they were extremely important. They were in a small leather mail pouch, padlocked and sealed, which I had set on the floor between my feet and knees. Everything went quietly for some two hours. I could not look out of the window in towns and yards because I might have seen troop-trains, factories, etc., and that would have been "indiscreet." The part of Germany from Berlin to Holland is utterly flat and uninteresting, so that there was no pleasure in looking at the countryside between stations. I pretended to doze, or read three German weeklies which I had bought. One of these finally precipitated matters. It was the _Fliegende Blätter_, a comic paper of about the class of _Life_ or _Punch_. There was in it a joke in German argot which had been too much for my scant knowledge of the language and the courier who had escorted me from the Embassy had by the merest hazard translated it for me. In my desperate efforts to amuse myself I was looking through this sheet again and encountering this joke thought, "If I don't write down the English I shall forget it." Whereupon I took out a pencil and wrote the translation interlinearly.
Soon afterwards one of the detectives got up, went out into the corridor, and came back with three conductors who, in Germany, of course, are military officials. The three civilians who had shared the compartment left us as if they had been rehearsed. One of the detectives then suddenly burst into a perfect berserker rage, getting quite purple in the face, and snatching up the _Fliegende Blätter_ proceeded carefully to turn over the pages again and again, holding each page against the light. It was altogether melodramatically ridiculous. Taking the paper from me in this way, although inoffensive, was perhaps within his rights since it concerned me only in a personal and not in an official way, and so I sat quite calmly in my seat and, biding my time, made no move of any kind. I paid no attention to the conductors, judging the detective to be the kingpin and the conductors merely dragged in as a matter of routine. None of them could read English and they chose to regard the interlineation (one line of about ten words) as extraordinarily suspicious.
The detective asked me for my passports and did so without going through the customary formality of showing his police card. I demanded as a matter of routine that he do this and began to draw out of my pocket the large envelope in which I keep all my documents in order to take out my Eagle-stamped German courier's paper. Without complying with my request he grabbed for this envelope, while at the same moment someone jerked at the bag which was between my knees. All this was an affair totally different from that of the _Fliegende Blätter_. I had thoroughly thought out what I would do in an emergency if German officials should attempt to take my pouch from me, and had decided that I should make enough of a resistance so that there should be no possibility of disputing the fact that physical force had been used and an assault committed. This would "let me out," since a dispatch-bearer cannot be expected successfully to defend himself against the whole German army. Incidentally I might add that interference in any way with the dispatch-bearer of a neutral country is a very heinous international and diplomatic sin. I therefore jerked my envelope of papers rudely out of the detective's hand and gave him a vigorous shove, resisting an almost overwhelming temptation to hit him with all my might on his fat, unprotected jaw. I had half risen to my feet, meanwhile keeping a grip on the dispatch bag with my knees, and at the same time I vigorously swung my hips and freed myself from the man below. The detective struck the opposite wall of the compartment and bounced off toward the doorway, where he and the conductors stood jabbering and waving their arms and ever getting more and more purple in the face.
VI--OUTWITTING THE PRUSSIAN SPIES
Finally the detective showed his police card, and I then extended to them my Eagle-stamped courier passport, following it with my Embassy credential and my certificate of identity or personal passport. These three made a complete case and I refused to show anything more, insisting that my status had been adequately established. The officials continued to jabber and argue, having been continuously impolite during the entire episode, a mode of behavior which was a notable divergence from my previous experiences with agents of the Imperial Secret Service. The chief detective, whose name was Werther, continued to hang around, trying to talk with me, evidently determined to get further information about my plans.
I do not pretend to judge whether all this was mere accidental clumsiness and rudeness on the part of stupid detectives or if it was something very much deeper, prompted by someone higher up. One is, however, inclined to doubt inefficiency in the Prussian Secret Service and there may have been reasons why German authorities would count it of great importance to know the contents of my pouch....
I was followed constantly thereafter, as previously, the men being cleverly changed at every opportunity. My every step was dogged. At Wesel a detective sat at the same table in the station restaurant while I ate dinner. Such being the case I was, to say the least, a bit annoyed.
At Essen during a fifteen-minute wait for a change of trains, I withdrew to one end of the platform after having rechecked the two big mail-sacks. I was standing alone, with a detective, as usual, off in the background, when a man who looked a typical raw-boned Englishman drew near and hung around, staring at me. I looked him up and down and then turned my back thinking, "Another detective!" It was impossible to believe that an Englishman could be, of all places, in Essen. He finally approached me, saying in English of a most perfect and pronounced British accent, "Are you an American?" I replied, "Yes, are you a police officer? If so, please show me your card." He replied, "No, I am in a delicate position. I am trying to go to England this evening. I have American papers. You must see me through. I am ----." I cut him short by saying that I regretted, etc., and deliberately walked away. From that time on this man dogged me everywhere, trying to pass through gates with me and to get into the same compartments, even following me to the same hotels and restaurants, and trying to make anything he could out of my presence. I never lost sight of him for long until we finally set foot in England, where he did finally arrive, in spite of some very close shaves. I last saw him giving me a very ugly look as I landed at Folkestone. Whatever his nationality, he certainly was a spy in the German service.
VII--SAFE ARRIVAL AT EMBASSY IN LONDON
_London, Saturday, December 12th._ We had an exciting trip across the North Sea, taking zigzag courses to avoid mine-fields and sighting numerous destroyers and one sunken ship. We successfully avoided either hitting a mine or running into a torpedo. The boat was packed down with Belgian and French refugees. One Luxembourger had been a whole month getting to Flushing from his home in Belgium. I was much relieved when I arrived at Victoria Station with my pouch and found a clerk from the Embassy waiting for me, and still more relieved when we had deposited all the bags safely at their destination.
* * * * *
_Sunday, December 13th._ Imagine the face of any British telegraph operator if I were to hand him a cable saying: "I am leaving again for Berlin and Vienna," which is exactly what I am to do. I return immediately with dispatches from England to our Embassies in Germany and Austria. My plans are subject to modification by official orders, but I shall probably remain in Berlin only one day and then go to Vienna and Budapest. The bag I am to take to Berlin contains not only official dispatches, but a large sum of money....
_On the North Sea, December 16th._ It has been a wonderful stormy day to-day; as an officer said: "a typical North Sea winter day"--a leaden sky, roaring wind, smothers of rain, great black-green waves all flecked and blotched in white, big sea birds and little gulls dipping down the wave valleys and soaring up the wave mountains, and the ship taking the most foolish and impossible angles....
Two hours out a British destroyer came dashing up in our wake, making two feet to our one. She was a most picturesque sight, long, low, and speedy, painted black; her towering knife-prow thrust out in front and the long, low hull strung out behind. She "brought us to" with a shot across the bows, and as we wallowed in the trough of the sea, she went by to starboard fairly shaving our side. The officer on her bridge, over which great waves of spray and water broke at every moment, "looked us over" and then bellowed orders to our captain through a megaphone....
VIII--EXPERIENCES AT THE EMBASSY IN VIENNA
_Vienna, Saturday, December 19th._ I remained in Berlin only one day and started this morning for Vienna with dispatches, arriving late in the evening after an uneventful fourteen-hour journey.
_Sunday, December 20th._ I presented myself at the American Embassy this morning and delivered my dispatches....
_Monday, December 21st._ I had a walk and talk with Ambassador Penfield this morning; took luncheon with Mr. Grant-Smith and went afterward to the Embassy. Later in the afternoon I went with Count Colloredo von Mansfeld to the Austro-Hungarian Foreign Office and then called on the Countess Potatka to whom I had brought letters of introduction.
_Tuesday, December 22d._ After luncheon to-day Mr. Grant-Smith presented me to Wilhelm Prince zu Stollberg Wering Rode, Conseiller of the German Embassy in Vienna, who made an appointment with me for Thursday.
I am meeting many officials, American, German, and Austrian, but at present I cannot, without indiscretion, state just what they discuss....
_Thursday, December 24th._ I made a verbal report to Prince zu Stollberg this morning on the situation of German subjects in France. After luncheon I had a most interesting talk with Mr. Nelson O'Shaughnessy, of Mexican fame, who is Conseiller at the Embassy. Later I went for a most delightful automobile ride with Ambassador Penfield....
* * * * *
Count Berchtold, whom I have seen on several occasions, is a wiry man of medium height, always grave, intent and all-observing under a mask of stolidity. He never "talks" and seldom speaks. When he does he is terse and speaks out of one corner of his mouth as if reluctant to let the words escape. He is, however, noted for the most unfailing and perfect manners. It is said he can hear perfectly every separate conversation that may be carried on in any room where he happens to be present, and not only hears what is spoken but catches every little motion or hint of important matters. Such is the man whose hand struck the match that lit the long-prepared conflagration in which the total military casualties alone already far exceed five million.
* * * * *
IX--IN A CASTLE AT BUDAPEST
_Budapest, Tuesday, December 29th._ I left Vienna at nine o'clock this morning and reached Budapest at two. I had tea with Mrs. Gerard, who is in Budapest visiting her sister, Countess Sigray. I called at the home of Count Albert Apponyi to leave my card and letters of introduction. I dined with Mrs. Gerard and the Count and Countess Sigray.
* * * * *
The Austrian Emperor is a little man, slightly stooped, rather shriveled-up and possessed of a pair of keen, shrewd eyes. He is an able follower of the Emperor Ferdinand who once replied to the statement that a certain one of his subjects was a patriot by saying: "I don't care if he's patriotic for the country, but is he patriotic for me?" Franz Josef is cold, pitiless, and does not hesitate to ruin in a moment his most faithful servitor if he is at any time guilty of failure, or commits a blunder. Even when a minister or general is forced to carry out an order in spite of strong protests, he has relentlessly broken him if any catastrophe has resulted. A notable case is that of the general who commanded the Austrian armies in the battle of Sadowa.
At the request of the Countess X. I had written to her mother, the Countess W., before leaving Vienna, and found her answer awaiting me at the Consul's office when I arrived in Budapest. I learn that she also communicated with Count Berchtold, the Prime Minister of the Empire, with Count Szecsen, ex-Ambassador to France, and with the Hungarian Premier, so that in case I missed her letters (she sent me one to Vienna and one to Budapest) these gentlemen would see to it that I went to visit her, as she wished to thank me personally for what I had been able to do for her daughter, and also to hear direct news of her grandchildren.
I left Budapest early this afternoon and arrived after dark at Békéscsaba, which is about half-way to Belgrade. I was met by a major-domo who appropriated my luggage and led me to a private car on a private railroad belonging to the Countess. We started immediately and ran in about twenty minutes to the gate of the estate where she usually resides. Here I was carefully transferred into a waiting carriage and was tenderly tucked into numerous fur rugs by two or three strong men. The two splendid horses turned through the gates for a ten-minute drive across a beautiful park to the castle--and such a castle! It is equal in size and charm to some of the famous French châteaux along the Loire which I studied last spring.
I was carefully unpacked again under a splendid porte-cochère and ushered by numerous flunkies into the presence of the Countess. She received me in a tremendous room with a lofty ceiling, and in a preliminary talk of an hour she took off the first keen edge of her appetite for news.
My bedroom is perfectly huge and has two ante-rooms--for the personal servants whom I do not possess. We dined at eight, there being at the table, besides the Countess, a daughter and her companion, a Frenchwoman. During dinner the Countess mentioned that the war necessitated frequent readjustments in the management of her estates; that the military authorities had recently taken another five hundred of her men for service in the army. She asked me if I enjoyed hunting and, upon receiving an affirmative answer, said that she would send me for an hour or two with the pheasants in the morning. She warned me that the shooting would be poor because no care had been taken of the preserves since her sons departed for the war.
X--WITH THE HUNGARIAN NOBLEMAN
_Saturday, January 9th._ Yesterday on my arrival in Budapest I found awaiting me an invitation from Count Albert Apponyi to visit him at his castle at Eberhard, near Pozsony. I left Budapest at eight, reached Pozsony about eleven, and drove to Eberhard, where I was received by the Count.
I was extremely impressed on meeting Count Apponyi. I had anticipated something unusual, but he was quite beyond my expectations. He is about six feet three inches tall, has a splendidly erect carriage, and is a most impressively handsome man. He has a broad, well-shaped forehead sloping back steeply, splendid blue-gray eyes, the biggest, thinnest nose in the world, enormous nostrils, a strong, sensitive mouth, and a grayish, square-cut beard. The "grand old man of Hungary" looked up to his title.
He has been a member of the Hungarian Parliament for forty-two years and has several times held ministerial portfolios....
He has twice been in America. He has several times visited ex-President Roosevelt at the White House and at Sagamore Hill, and the Colonel has been a guest here at Eberhard....
At luncheon there were as guests the Count and Countess Karolyi Hunyadi and two of their sons, and the Countess Herberstein, whose husband is a general in the army.
_Sunday, January 10th._ I had the honor of a very interesting walk and talk with Count Apponyi this morning. Among other things he said: "I sometimes let my younger daughter (aged 12) play with the children of the peasants on the place. It gives her an understanding of life, and besides, there is no one of her own age and rank in this part of the country." This for a Hungarian nobleman is an extremely democratic remark.
(And so this American Attaché continues to write in his notebook the impressions which he received on his official journeys through the war-ridden countries, which were so soon to become the enemies of his own country. His diary is one of the most interesting records of the war.)
FOOTNOTE:
[5] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.
'NEATH VERDUN--BEHIND THE CROWN PRINCE'S ARMY
_By Lieutenant Maurice Genevoix--Translated by H. Grahame Richards_
This extraordinary narrative by a young Lieutenant in the French Army gives the most vivid impression that has been recorded of the Great War. The author was a student at the Ecole Normale, Paris, at the outbreak of the War. He received his baptism of fire in August, 1914--and what a baptism it was! It has been truly said by critics that his narrative is one which will be read and reread and handed on to posterity. He lays bare the soul of the War. Under his magic touch, we stand at Verdun; we see the army at "The Crossing of the Meuse"; we stay with them through "The Days of the Marne"; we march with them "Behind the Crown Prince's Army"; we fight with them "In the Woods." We here reprint portions of his narrative by permission of his American publishers, _Frederick A. Stokes Company_.
[6] I--STORY OF THE LIEUTENANT AT VERDUN
Half-past one in the morning! Kit bags on the ground, rifles piled, lines in sections of four, at the edge of a little wood of birch trees struggling for life on a stony soil. The night is cold. I place a listening post well forward and return and seat myself near my men. The stillness is palpitating; the passage of time interminably long-drawn. The dawn begins to lighten the sky. I look around me and see the pale and tired faces of my men.
Four o'clock. A dozen rifle shots to the right cause me to leap to my feet just as I am making myself comfortable. Out of a small neighboring wood a dozen Uhlans are flying at a gallop--they must have passed the night in the covert.
The day breaks clear and fresh. My Nubécourt bed-fellow produces his inexhaustible flask, and we sip a drop of brandy which possesses no bouquet at all and seems like raw alcohol. The Captain joins us at last and explains the situation in a few words:
"A German army corps," he says, "is marching towards the southeast, having for flank-guard a brigade which follows the valley of the Aire. The --th Corps is going to engage the said German corps, while it remains for us to deal with the flanking brigade."
For the first time I am going to experience war in all its reality!
* * * * *
Clac! Clac! Two bullets have struck immediately to my left. The noise at once surprises and slightly amazes me; these bullets seem less dangerous when they sing and whistle. Clac! Clac! Stones, pieces of dried earth, spurts of dust fly into the air; we have been seen and they have got the range of us. Forward! I am leading, seeking a ditch, a slope, a fold in the earth wherein to shelter my men after the first rush--even the hedge of a field, or anything which will render them less visible to the Boches will do. A movement of my right arm shortens the line by half. I hear the tramp of feet, the rustle of the stubble lying in our course. And while we are running forward the detachment in support fires rapidly but steadily. Then when I raise my cap, that detachment in its turn charges at the double, whilst all around me my men's rifles come into play and speak unceasingly.
A strangled cry to the left. I have scarcely time to see the man sprawl flat on his back, his two legs still moving as though to carry him forward. A second, and all his body stiffens and then relaxes and the man is no more than an inert thing, dead flesh which to-morrow the sun will commence to decompose.
Forward! To remain still would cost us more dearly now than the most furious assault. Forward! The men are falling rapidly, stopped dead in full course, some crashing prone without a word, others halting and staring stupidly, while feeling with their hand for their wound. And they say: "I have got it," or, "Mine has arrived!" Often it is no more than a single expressive word. Almost all of them, even those whose wounds are slight, turn pale at the shock.
* * * * *
"Oh!..." The cry escaped a dozen of us at once. A high explosive burst clean among the Saint Maixenter's platoon. And he, I saw it distinctly with my own eyes, received the shell full in his body. His cap vanished into space, a part of his coat, an arm. And there he is lying on the earth a shapeless mass, white and red pulp, a body stripped well-nigh naked, shattered. His men, finding themselves leaderless, give way and scatter.
* * * * *
We march through an inferno of smoke, from time to time obtaining a glimpse, through momentary clearings, of the village and the river running beneath the trees. But there is no truce to the shells which follow us in hundreds.
I recollect passing one of my sergeants being carried by two of the men on crossed rifles; he pointed out to me speechlessly, his torn and blood-stained shirt and his side terribly lacerated by an explosion. I could see the raw edges of the flesh....
I march onwards and onwards exhausted and stumbling. I take a long gulp of the water that remains in my flask. Since yesterday evening I have eaten nothing.
When we reach the edge of the stream, the men halt and throw themselves down and commence to lap the muddied waters like dogs.
It must be seven o'clock now; the sun is sinking into a bed of virgin gold. The sky above us is a pale and transparent emerald. The earth darkens, colors vanish. It is quite dark by the time we leave Sommaisne. We become mere shadows trailing along the road.
* * * * *
Not a wink of sleep. The noise of the shells hurtling through the air is constantly in my ears, while the acrid and suffocating fumes of explosives haunt my nostrils. Scarcely yet is it midnight before I receive orders to depart. I emerge from the trusses of wheat and rye among which I had ensconced myself. Bits of stalk have slipped down my collar and up my sleeves, and tickle me all over. The night is so dark that we stumble over the stones and irregularities of the ground. We pass very close to some 120's drawn up behind us; I hear the voices of the artillerymen, but only with difficulty can I distinguish the heavy sleeping guns.
* * * * *
Hallo! The German guns are speaking early this morning! Before us shrapnel is bursting noisily and spitefully. Over the plain they have thrown a barrage. Nevertheless we have to go through it. Our first section detaches itself; in a line, long-drawn and thin, it moves across the fields towards a small wood which the captain has indicated as the objective. Rifles crackle away to the left. Bullets sing and throw up the dust about the marching section. Then shrapnel bursts right over the men. The undulating line becomes still, taking cover behind a ridge of earth shaped like a gigantic caterpillar.
II--STORY OF THE CHARGING GERMANS
"Hurrah! Hurrah! Vorwärts!"
How many thousands of soldiers are surging down upon us then? The moist earth quivers beneath the tramp of their heavy feet. Most surely must we be smashed to pieces, trampled down, broken. For there are not more than sixty of us all told, and how may sixty men extended in single file hope to resist the tremendous pressure of these ranks upon ranks of men rushing down upon us like a herd of maddened buffaloes?
"Rapid fire! _Nom de Dieu!_ Fire!"
The crackling of the rifles rends the air; spurts of flame shatter the darkness. The rifles of my platoon have spoken simultaneously!
And now there is a gap in the very heart of the charging mass. I hear shrill screams of agony as of beasts mortally stricken. The dark figures divide to flow right and left, just as if, before the trench, and extending its whole length, a tempest had raged and laid men to the earth, as the breath of the gale bends down the growing wheat.
Some of the men about me say:
"Look, Lieutenant! See, they are lying down!"
"No, my friend! It is not so. They have fallen down!"
And ... (Censored.)
Once more I repeat:
"Fire! Fire! Let them have it! Put it into them! Fire!"
* * * * *
"Hurrah! Vorwärts!"
I am surrounded by Boches; it seems impossible that I can escape, separated as I am from all my men. Nevertheless I grasp my revolver in my hand and pray only I may be permitted to give a good account of myself.
Suddenly I am sprawling face downwards, nose to the earth, having stumbled over something hard and metallic. Lying in the mud is the body of a dead German whose helmet has rolled a little away from him. Instantly an idea seizes me. I pick up the helmet and place it on my own head, passing the strap beneath my chin to secure it.
There follows a mad flight for the safety the chasseurs will afford. Without hesitating a second, I rush by groups of Boches who are wandering about doubtfully, their original plans having been rather upset by our fusillade. As I pass them I cry:
"Hurrah! Vorwärts!"
Like them, too, I keep repeating the word to which they seem to attach great importance, which is:
"Heiligtum!"
The rain stings my face: the mud adheres to my soles until only with difficulty can I raise boots which have become enormously big and heavy. Twice I fall on my hands and knees, only to rise again and instantly resume my flight, notwithstanding my aching legs. Singing and whistling bullets pass over me into the darkness beyond.
Out of the blackness at my feet a man rises and the words on his lips are French.
"Is it you, Letty?"
"Yes, Lieutenant; I've got one in the thigh."
"That's all right, old man; we'll get there yet!"
Already there are no more harsh-voiced brawlers around us. Manifestly they must reform before continuing the assault. So I throw away the helmet and replace my cap of which I have taken good care.
Before reaching the chasseurs I overtake four Boches, in each of whom, either in the back or in the head, I put a revolver bullet. Each one drops in his tracks with a long, strangled cry.
(Censored.)
* * * * *
Skirting the base of a steep slope, I pass through a fire zone where the bullets in hundreds, whining and shrilling, tear up the soil all about me. Then I encounter a group of men, standing at the foot of a tree. There is a dying officer in the center, supported against the tree-hole. A glimpse I have of a dark blue tunic wide opened, of a shirt stained with bright blood. The wounded man's head sags heavily down to his shoulder, and in the whitened, tortured face, moist from fearful agony, I recognize my own major.
But I must not stay!
* * * * *
I question a lieutenant who is marking the fall of the shells through his glasses, shaking from head to foot the while from excitement.
"Things going well? Eh?"
He turns towards me. The joy which fills him is plainly legible in his face. He laughs exuberantly:
"I should say they are going well. The Germans are giving way--deserting their positions like rats a sinking ship."
He laughs once more. "Listen to our 75's! They are making them dance like madmen! That is the way to carry on, what? They are being kicked in the sterns now, the swine!"
A staff captain on foot is watching the delighted gunnners. He laughs also and repeats several times in a loud voice: "Good! Very good!"
III--STORIES TOLD AFTER THE BATTLE
Heavily and dreamlessly I sleep, and awake to find myself in precisely the same attitude as that in which I flung myself down the preceding night. The straw wraps me in grateful warmth, rather moist, perhaps, because the water in my saturated clothes has evaporated during the night....
We find that in the night the torrent has well-nigh filled the trenches with liquid mud. Some sappers, however, come to our assistance, and, thanks to them, we are able to shelter ourselves from the worst of the downpour.
The men work easily, flinging jests one to the other. The incidents of the night attack are revived and acquire a totally new force by reason of the simple words in which they are related.
"I was all right at the beginning," says Martigny, one of my men. "But all at once, while I was still firing, down toppled a Boche right on top of me, without so much as a "by your leave!" I was on my knees and he lay across my calves. It's not easy to fire in such a position as that! Little by little the weight forced my knees down into the mud; the water rose almost up to my hands: how was I to refill my magazine? I could not see the animal, but you can take my word for it, he was heavy."
And a second:
"A good job for me that I was once fencing-sergeant in the regulars! Otherwise I should not be here now. Not even time to fix my bayonet before I found one of the ugly pigs on top of me with his skewer. I thought to myself: 'What's all this about? But you are going to find you can joke once too often, my Boche!' And there we were all in and at it. I parried a thrust with the stock of my rifle, but what sort of defence could I put up, seeing that my weapon was much shorter than his? Only he didn't manage to get his bayonet into me!... There wasn't even a cartridge! I tell you that Boche kept me jumping from side to side until I felt like dying from weariness. You know what a job it is to parry, when you can no longer feel your own fingers? Still jumping, I said to myself: 'What in the name of glory are those asses right and left fooling about? Are they going to stand by and see me knocked out?' Oh! but they were there all right, and it was Gillet to the right who put a bullet into him while he was pausing to take a breath. Then I stuck on my bayonet and filled my magazine. There were others still coming up, you understand!"
"Sons of pigs, these Boches!" rasps a miner from the North. "And what mugs they are too, _Mon Dieu_! When I saw them swarming over towards me, 'Martin,' said I to myself, 'you're done for this time!' And then: 'Hurrah!' they're off! Bang, bang, bang! And I knew no more."
"Martin, you are babbling," grunts a huge Champenois, who is smoking his pipe and listening with eyes atwinkle. "Hammer away at the earth, seeing that is what you were born for; but don't mix yourself up in conversations, because you can't talk."
He spits on his hands, rubs them against each other, and taking up his pick starts digging again with long, steady, powerful strokes.
* * * * *
In the evening we go into the village. I stroll slowly towards the barn where my section is billeted. In the square, a group of noisy soldiers is gathered before a house which has nothing in particular to distinguish it from its neighbours. With much pushing and stretching of necks they are contriving to scan a big placard stuck on the wall....
The first word that encounters my eyes, however, gives me a violent shock. I can see nothing else but that word, which instantly seizes upon my excited imagination and seems to presage things marvellous, superhuman, incredible. The word is:
"Victory!"
It sings in my ears, that word. It echoes through all the streets, it bursts on me like a triumphant fanfare.
"Victory!" Thrills pass through me, enthusiasm seizes upon me and stirs me so violently as to make me feel almost sick. I feel that I am too small to contain the emotion to which the sacred word gives rise.
"_The retreat of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd German Armies is becoming pronounced before our left and centre. In its turn, the enemy's 4th Army is beginning to fall back to the north of Vitry and Sermaize._"
So that is it, then! We have been progressing everywhere. We have grappled with them, badly torn them, wounded them! Oh! that it may run and run, that German blood, until every particle of strength shall have streamed out of them!...
IV--STORIES OF THE GRAVES--AND CROSSES
_Marats-la-Grande._ We do not pass through the village. Some mounted batteries are passing and scaling the sloping fields towards the road. The riders are shouting and whipping their horses, already straining at the collar. Poor beasts! So thin that one can count their ribs, sides chafed raw by the harness, heads hanging, they strain and strain until their laboured breathing is audible, while their large bleared eyes speak eloquently of their sufferings.
A grave; two posts have been tied to form a cross! On the horizontal one a deep notch has been made with a knife, revealing the white heart of the wood. Someone has written in pencil the name of the soldier whose body is lying in the earth, his uniform for his shroud. The number of his regiment, his company and the date of his death, the 9th of September, are also inscribed. Four days! Only four days ago that decomposing something lying beneath the mound of earth was a man in the full flood of life, hoping, perhaps, soon to be reunited to the dear ones waiting for him. Four days!... His parents would not have heard yet.
More graves. They are not laid out in any particular order, or even in groups. At irregular intervals, they line the road we are following, which is no more than a trampled-down track over fresh grass between trees in leaf. Everywhere one can see these sad little crosses, on almost all of which a red cap hangs. Without halting, the men read aloud the inscriptions. The 8th of September, the 9th of September, the 10th of September....
And here is one which is not marked with the little cross of branches. A stake has been simply driven into the ground, bearing a burnt-in inscription to tell passersby the name of the dead man; on the newly-turned earth some white stones have been arranged in the form of a cross--they seem to protect him who lies there better and more intimately.
Hastily-made graves, turned out with small trenching tools, how I wish you were much deeper! Your lines suggest the shape of the body you hide from our eyes. The rain must have soaked you these last days and nights! But at least calm and peace are with you. The enemy is far away, never to return. Guard well, then, your poor dead, until the day dawns when the old men and women shall come to demand of you the bodies of their loved ones!
We march onwards a few minutes longer and reach a bare plain studded with shell-craters. The sun is sinking, the rays of its golden light striking obliquely. Mutilated horses are lying about, their stiff legs crossed or thrust up towards the sky.
V--TRAMP! TRAMP! TRAMP! ALONG THE ROAD OF CORPSES
"Fall in!"
New orders have just arrived and we are to move on again.
Before leaving, I pick up a fragment of shell over which I stumbled. It is fifty centimetres long by fifteen wide, with jagged edges like the teeth of a saw. I contemplate this terrible thing lying heavy in my hand. To what kind of a shell, swift and growling, must it have belonged? This fragment must be one of those which cleanly sweep away an arm or leg, tear off a head, or cut a man completely in two. And holding it thus in my hand, heavy and cold, I remember a poor little cyclist who was killed close to us in Septsarges Wood--one leg taken away at the hip and the lower part of his abdomen laid open.
Trees and a shimmer of green on a wide road, away to the north. Night is falling. Suddenly through the grayness we find ourselves looking upon some ruins--we have reached Erize-la-Petite.
* * * * *
Another road skirting the line which links Rembercourt with Vauxmarie and Beuzée. In the ditches, hunched up or stretched at full length, are human corpses. A single corpse is a rare spectacle. As a rule they are lying huddled together as if seeking to warm each other. The failing light reveals blue coats and red trousers; Frenchmen; more Frenchmen, in fact nothing but Frenchmen! Judge my enthusiasm on finding some Boches among them! I fall out several times to make sure that these really are Boches. The foe cannot have had the time to hide away that lot!
The night becomes black and corpses are no longer visible. But they are always there, at the bottom of the ditches, on the slopes at the very edge of the road. We realize their presence even in the dark. By shielding the eyes and peering hard, it is possible to see the eerie heaps which have lost all resemblance to that of which they are made....
Not a word in the ranks; nothing but the regular tramp, tramp, before and behind me; occasionally someone coughs, a little dryly, or a man spits. That is all. It must be cold, yet my head and hands are burning, and my will struggles to subdue an uncontrollable inclination to turn to my right where the cool waters of the Aire, flowing by the roadside, are betrayed by the stagnant pools under the trees.
An unexpected halt! The men bump their noses against the packs of the file in front. Confusion and much swearing. Then quick commands:
"Quartermasters prepare rations for distribution."
It is the best of all signs. The day's march is ended.
* * * * *
Come! Head erect and fists clenched! No more of that weakness that a moment ago assailed me. We must look unmoved on these poor dead and seek from them the inspiration of hate. It was the Boche in his flight who dragged these sorry things to the side of the road, who arranged this horrid spectacle for our express benefit, and we must never rest until the brute has drunk our cup of vengeance to the dregs.
Impotent and childish is the fury that only inspires us with rage and the passion for vengeance instead of fear, as our foe hopes and believes.
Besides, every step forward now presents us with eloquent testimony of the completeness of the defeat they have suffered--helmets torn and pierced by our bullets, crushed and shattered by our shells; rusty bayonets; broken cartridge-belts, still full. To the left of the road in the fields are some overturned ammunition wagons and gun-carriages in pieces, the horses lying dead in a heap. In the ditch is the carriage of a shattered machine-gun; one can see the hole made by the shell--a 75. What a state the gun on that carriage must have been in! And the machine-gunners? At the bottom of the hole! Ammunition belts of coarse white canvas lie coiled in puddles.
We pick up some boots full of rain-water. I wonder whether the men from whom we took them walked barefooted through the mud merely for pleasure? In another hole we find the men themselves. Further on again we encounter crosses bearing German inscriptions. Here then are the Ottos, the Friedrichs, the Karls, and the Hermans! Each cross bears four, five and even six names. The Germans were in a hurry; they buried their men in bunches.
A cross higher than the others attracts and holds our attention; it bears no more than three words deeply carved in big capitals:
ZWEI DEUTSCHES KRIEGER
Is there still another challenge hidden behind this? If so, it is obscure. For who killed you, you two German soldiers?
VI--TALES OF THE NIGHTMARE DAYS
Over the trampled roadway, newspapers, post-cards and letters flutter. I pick up a photograph on the back of which a woman has written a few lines:
"My Peter, it is a long time since we received any news from you and we are naturally very anxious. I think, however, that very shortly you will be able to tell us of still further victories and that you will return in glory to Toelz. What a fête you shall have then...." And then further on: "The little one has grown and is becoming quite strong. You could never imagine what a little treasure he is. Do not be too long in returning, or he will not be able to recognize you."
Sad enough, indeed, is it not? Whose, however, is the fault? Remember our dead of a short while ago; remember the captain flung almost across the road. What has he done, of what is he capable, this Peter, this German whose photograph shows him with lowered face, cold eyes, heavy-jawed, resting his hand on the back of a chair on which his wife is seated, smiling but negligible? Pity at such a moment would shame us. Let us harden our hearts and keep them hard until the end comes.
* * * * *
And so in memory I live again through bad days, nightmare days--the _réveil_ in the furious, stinging rain; the arrival at Louvemont, that indescribable village little better than a sewer. I had gone over to the quarters of the adjoining section because before their barn a little chimney-piece had been erected with some paving stones. There had been a fire of flaming logs, hissing and spluttering. We had stripped ourselves to the waist to let the grateful warmth of the flames play on our chests and backs and shoulders. Sitting on a bundle of straw we had found an old, white-bearded soldier, dreaming. I had gone up to him and said:
"Hallo, M----! So you are better! Beginning to feel alive once again, eh?"
"Oh, yes, Lieutenant. But it has been a hard pull, a very hard pull!..."
And he had repeated in a low voice, as though experiencing again hardships still recent: "Very hard!"
Poor old man! He had gone through the campaign of '70 as a volunteer, and since those days had lived outside France. For thirty years, I believe, he acted as a notary in California, until the very day, in fact, which had brought this war upon us. Then, when France was once more attacked and menaced, he had flung everything aside and had come back to shoulder his rifle. He had described himself as being robust, smart and well able to endure any hardships. They had accepted his statement and sent him up to face the Boches with the first batch of reinforcements. He had joined up with us in the woods at the very moment we were setting out for those nightmarish advance posts; those two succeeding days were the first of his service. Poor old man!--and he was sixty-four years of age!
* * * * *
We had crossed the line from Verdun to Conflans, marching ankle-deep in wet coal-dust. Before a smoke-blackened house at the barrier some enormous girasols thrust forth their yellow and black corollæ, their colours rendered more brilliant by the recent rain. We passed some quads of territorials with their tools on their shoulders, artillerymen from the big fortresses, slow-moving country wagons laden with forage, tree-trunks and wine casks. Wooden huts had been erected along the roadside, each of which had a name inscribed on it, such as: Happy Villa; The Good Children's Castle; Villa Piccolo, etc. Verses adorned some of them, not of high poetical attainment, but something after this fashion:
"You never see us weeping here-- Often you'll see us drinking beer. War may not be the best of fun, But we'll stick it till we've smashed the Hun!"
* * * * *
An interruption. A woman appears, thin and dirty, pushing before her a little yellow-haired girl, whose eyes are red-rimmed and tear-stained. The doctor having been consulted, prescribes for colic.
"And what do I owe you for that, doctor?" asks the woman.
"Nothing at all, madam."
But she draws from beneath her apron a dusty bottle. "I must 'recompinse' you somehow. There is not very much in it, but what there is tastes good. It is good: oh, but indeed it is!"
It is Toul wine, dry, thin and somewhat sharp. A brawn, turned out on to a plate, gives us an excellent lunch.
In the afternoon we pass to the observation trench. We overtake a group of lame men, without weapons, coats open, almost all of them limping along with a stick. Among them I recognize a friend of pre-war days. We shake hands and speak eagerly and with pleasure of common memories, before approaching the inevitable regrets. As he belonged to a regiment which was compelled to give way before the Boches, I asked him how it had come about. He shrugged his shoulders despondently.
"Masses of infantry; an endless hail of shell; not a gun to support us ... don't let's talk about it, old man."
* * * * *
The thunder of the 75's almost splits our ears. Occasionally a German shell flies past us with a shrill whistle and peppers the trees with a volley of shrapnel. Into the midst of this tumult we march and take up position. My section occupies about fifty yards of a trench already full of corpses.
"Out with your tools," I say to my men, "and dig for all you are worth."
VII--THE DEATH WAILS OF THE WOUNDED
Night falls. The cold increases. It is that hour when, the battle ended, the wounded who have not yet been brought in, cry aloud in their suffering and distress. And those calls, those appealings, those moanings, awaken anguish in all those compelled to listen to them; an anguish the crueler for the fighters who are chained to their posts by stern duty yet who long to rush out to their gasping comrades, to dress their wounds, to speak words of comfort to them, and to carry them to safety where fires burn brightly and warm. Yet we must not do so; we are chained to the spot, our hearts wrung, our nerves quivering, shivering at the sound of soul-stricken cries brought to us unceasingly by the night.
"A drink!..."
"Are you going to leave me to die here?..."
"Stretcher-bearers!..."
"Drink!..."
"Ah!..."
"Stretcher-bearers!..."
I hear some of my men say:
"Where the devil are the stretcher-bearers!"
... (Censored.) ...
"They are like fleas--you can never find them when you look for them."
And before us the whole plain wrapped in darkness seems to shiver from the agony of those undressed wounds.
Voices soft, weary from having cried so long:
"... (Censored.) ...
....?"
"Mother, oh, mother!"
"Jeanne, little Jeanne.... Oh! say that you hear me, my Jeanne!"
"I am thirsty.... I am thirsty.... I am thirsty.... I am thirsty...."
Voices in anguish, panting and gasping:
"I won't die here like a rat!"
"Stretcher-bearers! Stretcher-bearers!... Stretcher-bearers!!!"
"... (Censored.) ...
....?"
"You fellows, finish me off, for God's sake! Ah!..."
A German not more than twenty yards away, cries out incessantly:
"Kamerad! Franzose! Kamerad! Kamerad! Franzose!"
And in a lower voice:
"Hilfe! Hilfe!"
His voice wavers and breaks into a wailing as of a crying child; then his teeth snap fiercely; then he shatters the night stillness with a beast's cry, like the howling of a dog baying at the moon.
Terrible beyond the power of words, that night. Every minute either Porchon or myself were jumping to our feet. The whole time we were under fire and the cold was truly cursed.
The nearer we approach the village, the more numerous become the wounded men returning from the fight. They come in groups, carefully selecting the shorter grass to walk over, seeking the shade to avoid the burning sun, which makes their wounds smart intolerably. There are a few Germans mingled with our men; one big-built man, fair, ruddy and with blue eyes, is assisting a little French infantryman, who limps along jesting and laughing and displaying all his teeth. With a wicked glance towards us, he cries aloud to the Boche:
"Is it not true, you pig, that you are a good pig?"
"I understand," exclaims the German gutturally. "Pig, good pig! I understand!"
And an unctuous laugh spreads all over his greasy face, happy at this display of camaraderie which promises so well for him, as vile and loathsome as are all Boches when at the mercy of a conqueror....
In the clear, cool night, to the accompaniment of many voices, the sections assemble and line up, and the companies are reformed. How attenuated, how mutilated they look!
My poor battalion! To-day's fight has once again cost us dearly. The 5th, which was so terribly cut up two weeks ago in the trenches at Vauxmarie, has also suffered cruelly again.
As for my own men, I know only too well those who are missing. Lauche, my sergeant, the only one left to me since Vauxmarie--it is always Vauxmarie!--I had seen him, as Vauthier put it, clawing the grass at the bottom of the ditch; I knew he was gone already. There was big Brunet also, and several others struck down at my side. And when I told the corporals to step forward and call out the rolls of their squads, voices responded which were not theirs. In each case a man of the "first class" or old soldier stepped forward to say:
"Corporal Regnard, wounded."
Or:
"Corporal Henry, killed."
"And Morand?"
"Corporal Morand, wounded," said an old soldier.
* * * * *
Not one sergeant! Not even a corporal! All those squads which become after a time a well-beloved family to those in charge of them, a family not to be parted from without sorrow and regret--here they are deprived of their leaders, to whom they look up constantly, who watch over them, who sustain them through long and difficult hours by the mere magic of their presence. I had known each one of them so well, those I had lost to-day! They were the men of my choice, men for whom a single word from me was sufficient, men who had never sought to shirk their duties, accepting their task whatever it was, and fulfilling it to the very best of their powers.
* * * * *
Through the field behind us men are moving. We can hear the rustling of the dried leaves they are gathering; the falling flakes of earth from the roots they pull up; they have discovered some turnips. We remember then that so far we have eaten nothing.
It is cold. We shiver. We remain silent.
(The young French Lieutenant continues in his book, "'Neath Verdun" these tremendous experiences in which he shows the self-abnegation of the French soldiers. His comrade, Porchon, was killed at Les Eparges on February 20th, 1915. M. Genevoix himself was wounded--but his love for France and his spirit of exaltation lives on. The last chapter in his book, "The Armies Go to Earth" is a vision of the reality of these days when the world is being reconstructed.)
FOOTNOTE:
[6] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.
ON THE ANZAC TRAIL--WITH THE FIGHTING AUSTRALASIANS
_Adventures of a New Zealand Sapper_
_Told by "Anzac" (Name Suppressed)_
This is the story of the Anzacs. It is told by one of the New Zealanders who was with them in Egypt. He was present at the Landing and did his best to uphold the honor of Maoriland in the long and grim battle of the trenches. Throughout these adventurous days, he kept a diary which has been published under title "On the Anzac Trail." This diary tells the tales of a man in the ranks; it is told without gloss or varnish. A few anecdotes are here retold by permission of his American publishers, _J. B. Lippincott Company_, of Philadelphia.
[7] I--STORY OF THE NEW ZEALANDER
When the Great War struck Europe I was living with my people in Ireland. I had served in the South African campaign, so, of course, I realized that it was up to me to roll up again and do my bit towards keeping the old flag flying. It's a queer thing, but let a man once go on the war-path and it's all the odds to a strap ring he's off again, full cry, to the sound of the bugle. I reckon it's in the Britisher's blood; he kind of imbibes it along with his mother's milk. When all's said and done we are a fighting breed....
When England took off the gloves to Germany I knew the Colonies wouldn't hang back long. They breed men on the fringes of our Empire. Hence I wasn't surprised when I saw a notice in the papers, calling on all New Zealanders, or men who had seen service with the Maorilanders in South Africa, to roll up at the High Commissioner's office in London, to be trained for service with the "Down Under" contingents. Well, I had lived for years in New Zealand, and had fought Boers time and again side by side with New Zealand troops, so I sent in my name right away.
* * * * *
... I fancy this "history" of the doings of the Anzacs is going to be more of a diary than anything else. I kept a rough note of things as they happened day by day. For one thing the diary style pins the various events down to a kind of sequence and insures their being told in the order in which they happened; for another it saves the author a deal of labor. This by way of explanation and apology. Here goes, then----
II--DANISH SKIPPER AND GREEK CREW--ON WAY TO ALEXANDRIA
_April_ 17, 1915.--Sailed from Alexandria in transport _A26_, otherwise the S. S. _Goslar_, a captured German prize. We had a Danish skipper and a Greek crew--a poor lot as seamen go. We were quartered in the forepeak, the quarters being rough, but on the whole fairly comfortable. We shared them with a healthy and mightily lively lot of brown bugs. The tucker wasn't too bad.
The weather was fine and the sea calm all the way to Lemnos Island. Had a pow-wow with the O.C., who read out aloud the General's orders, informing us that we should land under cover of the warships' guns, that we were to drive the Turks back, secure a footing, and hold it _at all costs_. Anticipated heavy losses. When dismissed went and made our wills.
Were met on the 19th by the cruiser _Dartmouth_ and escorted by her till the evening, when a destroyer took us in charge and saw us safely into Mudros Harbor. The _Dartmouth_ informed us by semaphore that transport _B12_, steaming one hour ahead of us, had been attacked by an enemy torpedo boat, three torpedoes being fired at her, all of which missed. A number of soldiers jumped overboard, thinking the transport was doomed, and were drowned. The torpedo boat was engaged by our ships, driven ashore and destroyed.
We arrived in Mudros Harbor, in Lemnos, on the night of the 19th. It was just crowded with shipping, and looked for all the world like a big floating town. Were informed that there were over 200 transports and 60 warships gathered in the harbor. Had a splendid view of the _Queen Elizabeth_ as she lay quite close to our old hooker. The anchorage was simply alive with destroyers, torpedo boats, submarines, etc., both French and English. The French craft struck me as being a bit mouldy-looking, not so up-to-date as the British. You could always tell a French destroyer, she was so crowded up with all kinds of deck gear, and had a general Back of Beyond look about her--like a chap who had stopped washing and shaving for a longish spell.
During our stay at Lemnos we amused ourselves by practising boat drill, landing of troops, etc. It was no joke swarming down a rope ladder loaded up in full marching order--and it was just as bad climbing up again. One of our chaps let go his rifle; the rest contented themselves with language. No one was drowned.
It was while lying here we had our first solid day and night's rain, the first really heavy fall since leaving home. The temperature rapidly dropped in consequence till it became like early summer in England. Were told that we should find no firewood where we were going, and orders issued that each man was to carry a bundle of kindling wood strapped on top of his pack. We shall look like a mob of walking Christmas Trees when we get all on. Living on bully beef and biscuits now; no bread.
_April_ 23.--Had a rather pleasant sail in one of the ship's boats to-day. Landed on a small island in the harbor and cut a big supply of green fodder for the horses we had on board. Found the formation of the island to be volcanic in character, as all the land round about these parts seems to be. Not much sign of water, yet the sole of grass was good, and the color a vivid green. Plenty of white clover, some of what looked like English cocksfoot, and a plant that struck me as Italian rye-grass. Heard the cuckoo and the lark, and noticed some small green lizards scurrying over the outcropping rocks. _Thought_ I saw a tarantula spider, but wouldn't swear to it.
Coming back to ship we found we had to beat against a head wind. Our craft was lug-rigged, the sail something like a dirty pocket-handkerchief. She had no use for beating; there wasn't a beat in her. Tried to ram an outward bound mine-sweeper which refused to get out of our way. Mine-sweeper's captain called us names that may have been true but didn't sound nice. Doused the sail and rowed back. In the evening we watched the French and English transports and warships leaving the harbor. Rumors fill the air--the latest that we leave for the Dardenelles to-morrow (24th).
_April_ 24.--Preparations for the big event. Told that the staff were prepared to lose 80 per cent of the forces to effect a landing; also, that the fleet could see us ashore but that _it couldn't take us off again_; once ashore we'd got to look after ourselves. The fellows stroked their chins and looked thoughtful for a spell; I reckon they were thinking of the pie that mother used to make--or of their latest girls. We were also told that as like as not all the wells on Gallipoli would be poisoned, and that we should have to do on our water-bottles for three days. Three days on about a pint and a half! And biscuits ditto! We began to cotton on to it that it wasn't a picnic or mothers' meeting we were out to take a hand in. Were served out with a 2-oz. tin of tobacco between four men, and three packets each of cigarettes. Handed in our blankets and waterproof sheets, so will be going ashore as we stand. Very stiff fight expected, as it is fairly sure that the Turks will do all that is in them to beat us back. Wonder how many of the boys will go under?
_Later._--Under way. All lights out and general air of suppressed excitement on all hands. Some of the chaps making a book on the event, and laying odds on the chances of the takers getting through the slather-up unharmed. Others tossing up to see if certain of their mates will finish up in heaven or hell! No one the least downhearted; all determined to at least give the enemy the time of his life when they come to grips. They are certainly as tough a crowd as ever got into uniform.
Landing expected to take place just at daybreak or slightly earlier. Creeping along like a "mob of thieves in the night," as one of the chaps put it. Distance from Lemnos about 45 miles, I hear, so will be there in whips of time. Funny thing to think that one's folks will be lying in bed sound asleep at the moment we go into the enemy, and never dreaming of what their men will be taking on. Just as well, too, come to think of it. Weather A1. Sea calm; nothing to complain of in that line, anyway.
III--STORY OF "HELL LET LOOSE" AT ANZAC
_April_ 28.--First chance of scribbling anything for three days. Been through hell--just that. War! It wasn't war; it was just cold-blooded butchery. How the position has been held beats me. But held it has been--and it's going to be held--at a cost! I wonder what the price of crêpe will rise to out in Australia and New Zealand! Here goes for a shy at describing our amusement of the past three days.
It was dark when we left the transports off Gaba Tepe and crept in towards the denser blackness that represented the shore. The night--or early morning, rather--was still; everything seemed in our favor; not a sound welled out seaward, not a light twinkled in the murk ahead. Could it be that we had taken the Turks by surprise? Or were they simply lying low and playing a waiting game? Soon we were to know.
On--on crept the boats loaded to the gunwales with the citizen soldiers from the Dominions. Every jaw was set hard as agate, every eye was fixed on the forbidding-looking heights now taking form dimly as the east reddened and the sky became shot with lengthening spears of greenish-yellow. Minutes passed--minutes that seemed as hours--while ever shoreward crawled the fleet of boats, and even plainer and gloomier loomed the frowning cliffs that dominated the Bay of Anzac. Back of the flotilla, away to seaward, lay the British warships, their gray hulls floating ghostlike in the first of the dawn--like couchant lions scenting blood. A sense of protection, modified to some extent by the stretch of intervening water and the ghostliness of their outlines, emanated from those cruisers and battleships squatting like watch-dogs on the chain, alert and eager. Our gaze wandered ever and anon from the forbidding shore ahead to where those uncouth gray hulls broke the sea-line. Would they never give tongue!
... We were close to the land. The _wouff!_ of a gentle surf breaking on a sloping shingle beach, followed by the _soughing_ of the undertow, came plainly to our straining ears. Back of the crescent-shaped strand, now dimly outlined in a flatted monotint of leaden gray, rose the darker, scrub-clothed slope, its breast seamed and gashed by _dongas_ and water-courses, that stretched to the foot of the sheer bluff whose summit cut the sky-line 400 feet above our heads. As the minutes passed the scene changed. Sand and shingle took form and color in the rapidly growing half-tones. The blackness of the slope beyond merged into a velvet green. The serrated crest of the ridge grew roseate as the first of the sun-rays stretched forth athwart the fields of Troy and touched it with gold-tipped fingers. A new-born day begotten of early summer had sprung from the womb of an Eastern night--a day fraught with much of suffering, much of mutilation and death, but surely a day that shall live in the history of the British Empire so long as that Empire stands....
Was it the surprise we all hoped for, after all?--the surprise that seemed beyond the bounds of possibility. Were there _any_ Turks there waiting to oppose us at all? And if so, where were they hidden? In trenches cut on the beach? In the scrub? Behind the crest of the cliff? God! were they never going to show themselves----?
_Crash! Bang! Z-z-z-z-z-ip!_ It was hell let loose--hell with the bottom out! The whole beach belched flame and spat bullets. The scrub behind burst forth into a sheet of fire. Maxims--maxims everywhere! The place seemed alive with them. It was as if we had received a blizzard of lead in our faces. The physical shock was almost more than flesh and blood could bear. For a moment it seemed as if the whole flotilla was doomed--a moment in which whole boatloads of brave men were absolutely cut to pieces and mangled out of all recognition--in which boats were blown from the water, smashed into matchwood and riddled from stem to stern by the high explosive and shrapnel fire that came over the crest of the cliff hot on the heels of the rifle and machine-gun fire. Just a moment! Then the men from the bush, the plains, and the cities of Australasia showed the stuff they were made of. In dashed the boats--in anyhow, no matter how, so long as they touched Turkish soil--some bow on, some stern on, some broadside. All higgledy-piggledy, a confused mass like a huge dismembered raft tossed on a sea that hissed and spouted as its surface was torn by the never-ceasing rain of lead and iron.
IV--HEROIC CHARGE OF THE AUSTRALASIANS
Over the sides of the boats dived and rolled those splendid infantrymen, their bayonets already fixed. They knew what to do; no need to give them orders. No time to form--no time to think. The cold steel--nothing but the steel! Off fell their packs; down dropped their bayonet points, and with a wild yell that rose even above the awful battle roar that made day hideous they hurled themselves straight as their rifles at the unseen enemy. In sixes and sevens, in tens and twenties, in platoons, in half-companies--just as they tumbled out of the boats--those great-hearted fellows dashed up the beach and into that sickening inferno. They didn't fire a shot; they didn't waste a single second. They just flung their heavy packs from their shoulders, bent their heads to the storm, and with every inch of pace at their command they charged the Turkish trenches, some fifty yards distant. Charge! I never saw a charge like it. It was a wild, breakneck rush, regardless of losses. Nothing short of killing every man of that magnificent soldiery could have stopped their onslaught. The machine-guns and rifles took their toll--but they utterly failed to beat down that desperate assault delivered by those iron-nerved men--those men who openly boasted that they feared "neither God, man, nor devil." In a moment they were into the enemy's front line of trench, machine-guns were captured, and the Turks got a taste of the bayonet that will never be forgotten by those who escaped. And they were few. Just a minute of hacking, slashing, and stabbing--one minute of sickening yet exhilarating butchery in which no quarter was given; when to _kill!_ and _kill!_ was joy unspeakable--and those long, lean, brown-faced men with the square jaws and fierce eyes were up again, their bayonets, smoking, and charging the second line of trenches with the same dare-devil recklessness. What power on earth could stop such men? Not the Turks, anyway. With imploring cries of "_Allah!--Allah!_" they abandoned their trenches and scurried up through the scrub, the panting Colonials straining every nerve to overtake them.
It is difficult to understand the Australasian character. He will joke even in the midst of danger, nay, death. He is, as a rule, a "hard doer;" and even his best friends must admit that he is often a hard, and fairly original swearer. Nothing is safe from him when looking for a butt; very little is sacred, I fear, and his humor takes a queer bent sometimes: which accounted for the behavior of the landing force on this occasion, dear reader--that and the desire to inflict all the Arabic he knew (picked up in Egypt) on the fleeing Turk.
"_Imshi! Yalla!_" yelled the now laughing Colonials, as they followed hard on the heels of the enemy.
"_Allah! Allah!_" continued the Turks, and they put on an extra spurt.
"_Allah_ be d----d! Clean 'em boots! Eggs is cook! Three for a l'arf! _Imshi_, you all-fired illegitimates!"
Such, with the addition of ear-splitting coo-ees, wild bush oaths, and a running fire of blasphemy and unearthly cat-calls were the battle cries of the men from Down Under as they drove the enemy out of his trenches and up the hill, through the scrub, over _dongas_ and gullies, right to the base of the sheer cliff itself, up which finally, all mixed together and sliding, crawling, and clinging like monkeys, scrambled pursuer and pursued in one loosely strung mob of panting, war-drunken men. It was the personification of grandeur: it was the apotheosis of the ludicrous. In a word it was the old reckless, dare-devil spirit of their ancestors--the men who carved out the British Empire--re-born in those virile youths and young men from that bigger and fresher and brighter Britain overseas.
Meantime the guns of the fleet were pouring in a terrific fire, their shells screaming overhead and bursting well beyond the ridge. It was difficult at first to see what execution they were doing, and at this stage of the fight I don't think many of the enemy were bagged. As our chaps advanced farther inland the shells from the ships began to pitch amongst them, so their elevation was raised and their fire concentrated on the Turkish communications and on the dominating hills that lay on our flanks. They also tried hard to locate and silence the enemy's big guns, but they were so well concealed that it was almost impossible to silence them.
V--"ALLAH! ALLAH!" AN OPEN BATTLE WITH THE TURKS
Once on top of the ridge our fellows paused for a minute or two to get their breath, then, as full of fight as ever, they doubled into the scrub and pursued the retreating Turks with unabated ardour. It was now an open battle, and except for the fact that the Anzacs were exposed to a heavy shrapnel fire, Jack was as good as his master. In threes and fours at a time the shells burst over and swept through the lines of advancing men, taking their toll all the time. The Turks took full advantage of the plentiful cover; they knew the country and we didn't. Now and then one caught a glimpse of a fleeing figure or two; that was all. We had no field artillery to cover our advance, and the consequence was we suffered heavily, our guns not coming into action till the evening, and then only one or two had been landed. Add to this the natural difficulties of a broken and rugged country which we had never seen before, and the reader will have some conception of the task that faced the Dominion troops. It was next to impossible to keep in touch with each other, let alone preserve something approaching an unbroken line. Thus the fight resolved itself largely into one of units. Here and there isolated bodies of infantry pushed far ahead, then lying down they held on grimly until the main force came up and eased the pressure.
One or two lots got caught in the beds of deep gullies, were opened on by concealed enfilade fire from machine-guns and rifles, and died to a man. But they died fighting. One party at least fought its way almost to the Narrows, and then disappeared: not a single man returned. The rest pushed on and on, trusting to the reserves coming up and enabling them to hold the captured ground--those reserves that came in driblets only. The fact was that the men could not be thrown ashore quickly enough to reinforce in the strength required. Where battalions landed there should have been brigades; where brigades, divisions. It was just sheer bad luck. No blame attached to the fleet--every man worked like a Trojan, worked on without paying the slightest attention to the hail of projectiles falling around. They were white right through, those boys from the warships, from the plucky little middies and the jolly "Jacks" right up to the senior officers. I pity the chap who ever says a word against them if any of the Anzacs happen to be within coo-ee of him! Come to think it over, I don't see that blame could be fixed on any one. The country was just made for defensive purposes; it would have required division after division to have been thrown in on each other's heels in order to reduce it, or to seize the ground to the Narrows and hang on. We simply hadn't the men. And the natural difficulties in the way of getting up such reinforcements as we had, not to speak of supplies, ammunition, etc., were nigh insurmountable. There were no tracks, much less roads; the guns that _were_ landed that first evening had to be pulled by hand through the standing scrub; the landing parties on the beach were open to continuous shell fire, not to mention snipers--altogether I don't think there was ever such a daring or hazardous enterprise attempted in the world's history.
VI--STORY OF THE BAYONET CHARGE AGAINST THE MOHAMMEDANS
And now strong Turkish reinforcements appeared on the scene. Battalion after battalion of fresh troops joined the enemy firing line. It stiffened up: we failed to break it. Our men were falling fast; half our strength seemed to be down, killed or wounded, while the remainder were beginning to feel the effects of their tremendous gruelling in the fierce heat of a sub-tropic sun. Still on came the masses of Turkish reserves. The naval guns, especially those of the _Lizzie_, cut them up, but didn't stagger them. They took the offensive. For a time it was charge and counter-charge, give and take. But it couldn't last; the odds were too great. We retired fighting--and in that retirement our losses were something cruel. Machine-guns and shrapnel did the damage mostly, but the Mausers took their share. Only in one thing had we the advantage--the bayonet. When we got to hand grips with them the Turks couldn't stand up to our chaps, who went for them with the cold steel like devils red-hot from hell.
No man who took part in that retirement will ever forget it. Overhead burst the shells, underfoot the dust rose and the twigs snapped as the unending rain of rifle, machine-gun, and shrapnel bullets _zipped!_ and spattered around. Men fell fast, killed and wounded; every temporary stand we made was marked by little groups of grotesquely postured khaki-clad forms still with the stillness of death. Here and there one saw a sorely wounded man feebly raise his head and gaze pathetically after the retiring line of hard-pressed men; others (and these were many) limped and hobbled painfully along in the wake of the retreating infantry, till in many cases another bullet laid them low. Most of our wounded fell into the hands of the enemy. It was hard to leave them, but what could we do?
Time after time we tried to dig ourselves in. In vain! The line had to be shortened, else we should be outflanked by the enormously superior forces opposed to us. There was nothing for it but to retire right back to the ridge and hold the crest--or try to! Back then we went, retiring by companies and half-companies. There was no running, no panic at any time. When the Turks pressed us too closely we gave them a shake-up with the bayonet. In many cases men had to rely on the steel alone, their ammunition giving out. Time after time the enemy drew back while his big guns and maxims wrought their will on us. He didn't half like the steel.
We reached the ridge, and, exhausted as we were, started to dig ourselves in. Our throats were parched, for we dare not broach our water-bottles lest we should be tempted to finish them straight away. Once a man begins to drink he will keep on. In many cases bottles had been shot through and the contents drained away. Others had left them with wounded comrades. For food we munched a biscuit--when we had time! There weren't many biscuits eaten until after nightfall.
We dug a line of holes, scratching fiercely with our trenching tools, all the while subjected to a withering shrapnel fire. The naval gunners seemed quite unable to locate and silence the Turkish artillery, so cleverly was it concealed. Lying down as flat as possible we scraped away, working frantically for the much-needed cover that should enable us to hold the position, if it were possible to hold it. At times we dropped the trenching tools--to lift our rifles and beat back the oncoming enemy. Yet it was evident that the Turks were beginning to feel the strain too. Perhaps they thought they had us anyhow, for their assaults began to lose a lot of their sting, and we were enabled to get a half chance to dig. As the day waned and nightfall approached they came again, and we were hard put to it for a time to hang on. Charge and counter-charge followed rapidly on each other's heels, and all the time a deafening fire was kept up along the whole position. Then the brief twilight changed into night; the fire slackened off; the moon rose, and for the first time since early morning we were enabled to obtain a few minutes' rest before going on digging again.
We stuck to it hard all through the night, grafting away for all we were worth. It was our only chance. Yet at times we were absolutely forced by sheer fatigue to drop our tools and stretch out for a spell. Sixteen hours of hard, solid fighting through a broken and hilly country, followed by a whole night's digging; then stand-to before daybreak, and all the succeeding hours of the second day hold the trenches against intermittent attacks. At night go on working at strengthening the trenches; stand-to again before daylight the third day--and from before dawn till well on in the evening of that day do your bit at beating off the enemy's attack in force with a fresh army that outnumbers you by five to one--_the_ attack by which he means to seize your position at _all costs_! Just do the foregoing, dear reader, and you will realise what those Australasian troops endured. And do it (as they did) on a pint and a half of water and a few biscuits.
VII--OVER THE RIDGE--INTO THE SEA
It was on Tuesday, April 27, that Enver Pasha launched the attack against our lines that was to drive us into the sea. All through Monday and Monday night our transports were landing fresh troops under heavy and constant shelling from the Turkish big guns; under cover of the darkness these troops were marched up and placed, some in the fire trenches to fill up the many gaps caused by the enemy's shrapnel and machine-guns, others massed in reserve at the base of the cliff. Yet not a man of those who had stormed the position the first day, and who had been hard at it ever since, could be spared from the front line. Come to think, I don't fancy a single one would have left it. The feeling had got abroad that the change was going to be taken out of the Turks this time (it had leaked out that the big attack would certainly take place on Monday night or Tuesday morning), and the chaps were fair mad to get a bit of their own back. They did, too.
Our position as finally formed extended along the very crest, or rim, of the cliff for a distance of about two miles, or rather better. Here and there deep gullies, or cañons, ran into and cut the line, or caused the line itself to "bulge" considerably towards the enemy position. Such was "Shrapnel Gully," at the head of which lay "Quinn's Post," where our trenches had to be pushed perilously forward owing to the configuration of the ground. "Quinn's Post," in fact, formed the key to the whole position; it lay right in the centre of the line, and had it been carried the whole bag of tricks would, in my opinion, have crumpled up badly, and a big disaster might have occurred. When your centre is pierced it's no picnic. To the left of "Quinn's" was "Dead Man's Ridge," held by the Turks, and from which they were able to snipe right down "Shrapnel Gully"--and, incidentally, our camps and dug-outs. It was from "Dead Man's Ridge" that General Bridges was shot close to Brigade Headquarters down in the "Gully." No man was safe from those snipers; they seemed to be everywhere--before, alongside, and _behind_ our lines even. Hence no supplies could be brought up in daylight; everything had to be done at night when there was only shell-fire to worry about. Afterwards we got those snipers fossicked out (they met strange deaths sometimes!), but in the meantime our life wasn't anything to hanker after.
Now had the enemy only succeeded in pushing us over the rim of the ridge, nothing would have saved us. Below lay the open beach. We couldn't possibly have been taken off with the heights in the hands of the Turks. I guess it would have been one of the biggest and finest wipe-outs in history. Old Enver Pasha thought it would look jolly well in the morning papers, I expect. Anyway he had no end of a hard try--and to give him and his men their due I don't mind admitting that they weren't so very far from succeeding.
VIII--STORY OF THE BATTLE OF THE GIANTS
I don't pretend to describe that struggle. No man could. It was grit, tenacity, and gameness opposed to overwhelming numbers. A battle of giants. It was sickening; brutal--and yet splendid. Men fought that day stripped to the waist; fought till their rifles jammed, picked up another--and went on fighting. Men with broken legs refused to leave the trench, cursing those who would have assisted them--went on firing until a second bullet crippled their rifle arm. Yet still they clung on, handing up clips of cartridges to their mates, all the time imploring them to "give the sons of ---- hell!" They weren't Sunday-school models, those big-hearted, happy-go-lucky toughs from the Back of Beyond. But they knew how to fight--and die. They were men right through, not kid-glove soldiers. They lived hard, fought hard, and died hard. And what if they did die with curses on their lips! Who shall dare to judge them, dying as _they_ died? And it may be that the Big Padre up aloft turned a deaf ear to those oaths begotten of the life they had lived--or perhaps He failed to hear them in the noise of battle!
The Turks attacked gamely, like the big, brave soldiers they are and always were. Led by their splendid officers, they came on in masses, shoulder to shoulder, and did all that in them lay to rush our trenches. They were met by a storm of bullets that would have staggered anything born of woman. It did stagger them: they recoiled before that leaden blast that piled their dead and wounded up in ghastly heaps and ridges like broken-down walls--before that smashing fire delivered at twenty yards range. They recoiled--yes. But run--no! They charged, charged right through that hurricane of machine-gun and rifle fire--charged right up to our parapets.
And now it was our turn. Like one man the colonial infantry leaped from their cover. _Crash!_ They were into the Turks. Followed a wild hurly-burly of hacking and stabbing while one might count twenty slowly; then the enemy were beaten back, and the defenders ran, limped, and crawled back to their trenches and took to their rifles again.
Thus it went on from before dawn till towards evening. Charge and counter-charge, till men reeled from sheer exhaustion, and their blood-clotted weapons slipped from hands sticky with the same red paint. I am not exaggerating! those who were present on that awful Tuesday will bear me out.
We were hard pressed. The strongest men in the world are only human. Loss of sleep, insufficient food, and practically no water, combined with the exertions we had already gone through, began to tell their tale. Our losses were also very heavy; and owing to the slippery state of the clay soil, following on an all-night of rain, our reserves could not get up quickly enough. Thus yards and yards of trench were at times empty of all save dead and wounded men, and in some cases the Turks effected a footing in them; they were always driven out again, however, or bayoneted to a man. Our fellows were simply magnificent; budge they would not. To capture those trenches meant the killing of the men who held them; you couldn't _drive_ them out. And the officers were just the same.
But it was cruel to hear the continual cries of----
"Stretcher-bearers!--Stretcher-bearers to the right!"
"Stretcher-bearers to the left!"
"_Ammunition!_ Send up ammunition--we haven't a----round here!"
"Reinforce! _For God's sake reinforce!_ They're into No. 8! _Christ! boys, get a move on!_"
At this time we had neither support trenches nor communications--just one thin line, which, if broken, meant the loss of the ridge with all that _that_ meant. We were also so clogged up with dead in our trenches that to make room for the living we had to throw the bodies over the back. In many cases where our line was cut on the edge of the ridge these bodies rolled right down to the foot of the cliff. At "Quinn's Post" things were about as bad as they could be. There was only the merest apology for a track from the "Gully" up to the trenches situated on the very lip of the crest, and at one time when reinforcements were making their way in single file up this track they had to scramble in and out through and over dead men lying tossed about anyhow, while all the way, right down to the valley the wounded were lying "heads and tails" awaiting transport to the beach. It wasn't the most encouraging sight in the world for the fellows coming up straight off the transports.
In one place quite a little stack of bodies had been huddled together to one side of the track; there might have been eighteen or twenty in the lot. Owing to the water running down this stack began to move, and kept on moving till it blocked the track up altogether. I don't know how many chaps tumbled into that heap and got tied up in it, but eventually a fatigue party had to be told off to build up the bodies as you would build sheaves on a wagon. We had no time to bury our dead for the first few days--and in that climate you don't want to keep them above ground for many _hours_.
As the day wore on it became evident that the Turks had shot their bolt. The attack died down, then ceased altogether, and save for the heavy rifle and artillery fire they kept up on our trenches, we weren't troubled by them for some time. They had lost tremendously; the ground along our front looked like a heavy crop of wheat after the binder had been through it--either 4000 or 7000 dead lay there. (And they lay there unburied for _three weeks_.) At last we were able to get a little sorely needed rest. We had been pushed to the extremest limit of human endurance.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.
WITH BOTHA'S ARMY IN GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA
_On the Road to Capetown_
_Told by J. P. Kay Robinson, with the British Army_
These experiences of an English soldier in South Africa form most interesting stories of the brilliant campaigns under General Botha. They have been gathered into a book under title "With Botha's Army," with an indorsement by General Botha in which he says: "It contains an able and good description of the fine spirit which animates our Army in German South West Africa, and of the good humor which kept our men cheerful under most trying conditions." The narrator tells about "The Occupation of Luderitzbucht"; "Sandstorms and Ceremonies"; "War's Grim Jests and Morals," with numberless anecdotes of human interest. The few selections here given are by permission of his American publishers, _E. P. Dutton and Company_, of New York; all rights reserved.
[8] I--STORY OF THE CARBINEERS IN AFRICA
The story of the campaign of German Southwest Africa is written, plain for all time, across the sands of that amazing country, and an empty bully-beef tin, half-buried in the flank of a tawny sand-dune, is eloquent of most of its detail.
* * * * *
The week that followed upon our second taking of Fort Grasplatz brought us a passing interest in new arrivals: the Natal Carbineers, the Pretoria Regiment, the Kaffrarian Rifles, a battery of the Natal Field Artillery, the Eastern Rifles, the 1st Kimberley Regiment, and--it was whispered--a brand-new Brigadier with a brand-new Staff to match.
A bare note in my diary states simply that they came. Of the order of their coming is no mention, but then, not even official records, I believe, could have lucidly sustained the sandstorm that snarled over Luderitzbucht throughout the whole of that infernal week. Through it were caught glimpses, here and there, of herds of baggage-laden infantry being driven to allotted camping-grounds; of spick-and-span Carbineers striving desperately to maintain the dignity of their spurs--and almost succeeding; of kicking mules and cursing drivers; strings of horses, wagons, guns, more drivers (still cursing), native scouts, poultice-wallopers (courtesy title of the S.A.M.C.), and all the rag-tag and bobtail of our amateur army.
A hard-bitten company of the Veterinary Corps drifted down upon us, and asked if there was beer: they had heard----. We told them, Yes; there was beer, but there was none now. We were sorry. Whereupon, and without enthusiasm, they said that it didn't matter, and drifted away, still searching. Others, but these were of the infantry, forlorn units blown from all knowledge of their whereabouts, we found huddled under the lee of buildings. They bleated at us joylessly, and asked many questions. Was this a sandstorm? Were there many Germans about? and--but this was inevitable and unvaried--had we found many diamonds?
We would usually tell them that our kit-bags could hold no more, whereupon they would break down and beg to be taken back to their regiments. We did not, of course, entertain the slightest knowledge of their regiments' whereabouts, but, as something was obviously expected of us, we would indicate variously all four points of the compass, and they would thank us effusively and merge away, one by one, into the muffled landscape.
Sandstorms, however, do not last for ever, and there came at last a day when the unchanged hills looked down upon neat acres of canvas and a new and startling activity. All of our immediate world was become a geometric pattern. Wagons, scores upon scores of them, stood axle to axle in a faultless precision that led the eye along ruled lines to ordered rows of water-carts and tethered mules. A group of these last had broken loose, and half a dozen mathematicians with long-handled whips were chasing them back into equational order. Beyond, again, right-angled horse lines and a criss-cross pattern of tents which was the Natal Carbineers' camp played with the Natal Field Artillery's 15-pounders at being an Euclidic proposition. Which, of course, was absurd.
It has somewhere been said that an Army represents the only true democracy. This is not true. Nowhere is there so nice a class distinction as in the Army, and nowhere, perhaps, is that nicety so candidly maintained. We, the I.L.H., would not at that time have even dreamed of visiting the infantry, but we called upon the Carbineers because, simply, they were "mounted men," and as such our equals. Later, months later, out of the common thirst and the sandstorms--all men are alike in a sandstorm--there grew the reluctant conviction that active service brings to pass a sort of socialistic millennium in which regiments are judged only by their performances, and in which officers may at times speak quite respectfully to their men, and men almost respectfully of their officers. That the _moral_ of the mounted man is usually superior to that of the "foot-slogger" may be attributed solely to the superior _moral_ of the horse that he rides. This last is an epigram, but true.
II--TALES OF THE NATAL FIELD ARTILLERY
The Natal Field Artillery, too, were on our visiting list, and we found them to be excellent fellows. We swapped lies with them; we pronounced their guns to be the loot of some museum--they were not, certainly, of the newest type--and we greedily borrowed all the newspapers that they had brought with them.
It was in the N.F.A. lines, by the way, one white-hot noon, that I almost tripped over the super-philosopher. He was Irish, which perhaps makes his philosophy the less remarkable, and he sat upon an upturned soap-box and toyed with a dish of something that sounded like camp stew.
There was a sudden noise, the sort of noise that makes a grown-up say to a child: "You should put your hand before your mouth when you do that!" and I heard, rather than saw, the super-philosopher clear his mouth of some objectionable morsel. I looked round, and his pale eye closed with mine. "Praise th' saints!" he said, "thim ants have no bones into thim!"
Our interest in the arrivals did not last long. A new sandstorm blew up and swallowed them, and when, weeks later, it spat them out again, they had all but lost their identity as far as we were concerned. The infantry became known to us simply as "foot-sloggers;" the Carbineers, from a weakness for polishing their riding-boots, became "the Cherry Blossom Brigade;" and we, the I.L.H., were known to all and sundry as the "Illicit Liquor Hunters." I do not think, however, that we should have minded so much if there had been any liquor left to hunt.
We were kept hard at work, too, and we soon learned that the "in-betweens" were more profitably to be spent in what we called "blanket-drill," and what our N.C.O.'s, when they were not indulging in it themselves, called "darned laziness," than in afternoon calls upon strangers who had so thoroughly taken upon themselves the color of their surroundings as to have become as supremely uninteresting as ourselves.
The deep groaning noise that a trumpet makes at dawn, and which field-officers and poets call "réveillé," and turn over again and snore at, when by some rare chance, they hear it, was to us the first note in a symphony of labor that was to last all day. Who has heard the howls of execration that uprise from a sleeping camp at its first note will appreciate the truth of what I say. The utter hopelessness of any resistance to its summons is, perhaps, what galls most. Turn you never so deaf an ear, you will still have the chilling conviction that some N.C.O., with more liver than bowels of compassion, is waiting "outside" to mark you down as an absentee from roll-call.
Réveillé, roll-call, arms inspection, morning stables, alleged breakfast, stable fatigue, mounted squadron drill, watering and feeding horses, and musketry instruction took us by gentle stages as far as lunch-time. After lunch (save the mark! but is sand, disguised as Irish stew, lunch?), Swedish drill, sectional skirmishing on foot, and an odd quarter-master's fatigue or so thrown in, would lead us on to evening stables. That accomplished, we were at liberty--those, at least, of us who were not on guard for the night--to prepare our evening meal and to retire to our blankets, where, masters of ourselves at last, we could--the writer certainly did on one occasion--dream that one-eyed camels of malevolent aspect chased us through interminable leagues of sandstorm, and finally drove us into seas of greasy Irish stew, wherefrom emerged horrid shapes that lectured us on the care of rifles and the virtues of discipline.
How we longed for war, if only for its comparative peace!
Not all our days were gray days, however. There came a period when each morning saw us, clad mainly in pipes and towels, taking our horses down to a landlocked arm of the sea, where the hills stood up in their glory around us, and where flamingoes, in their stately phalanxes, waded the still shallows or flung in broad-pinioned ease to some further sand-bank; where black seals bobbed greeting to us from the dipping waters, and where we could forget the sandstorms of yesterday and to-morrow.
Horses, we found, made excellent diving boards, and lent themselves, besides, to a type of chariot-racing that I have not met elsewhere. For this form of sport it is essential to have two horses, and it usually became one's painful duty, therefore, to borrow the mount of some other man, preferably a non-swimmer, when he was not looking, and then to make for deep water--where he could not follow--with as little delay as possible. Remained then only to so contrive oneself as to stand with a foot on the back of each animal, and to keep them swimming sufficiently near together to allow one to retain some sort of balance. Sometimes one would succeed, but usually, and in spite of extreme efforts, the contrary beasts would swim more and more widely apart, until overtaxed powers of doing the splits would end in a ducking as ignominious as inevitable.
I remember an occasion when, after a long and tiring patrol, we had ridden our horses into the shallows to cool their legs, a school of ground-sharks suddenly appeared, almost literally, under their very noses. The White Knight in "Alice in Wonderland," who made his horse wear spiked anklets against the danger of shark-bite, must have foreseen some such contingency; but then, had he been with us, he would have fallen off, I feel sure, in the smother of spray and panic which the experience cost us.
III--WILD RIDE OF THE WATER PATROL
One of our duties at this time was the providing of an escort to the water ration that left Luderitzbucht each morning for Kolmanskoppe.
The water was taken in mule-drawn trolleys along the railway line (we possessed no other "rolling stock" at that time) and as it was the sole supply of the two infantry regiments stationed there, extreme care had to be taken to prevent its being intercepted by a stray German patrol.
On October 7, No. 3 Troop had supplied the convoy, and we, whose turn it was to do so on the morrow, had spent the greater part of the day in the sweet frame of mind that is bred by camp fatigues, and at four o'clock in the afternoon were waiting for the order to "break away" from a squadron drill that seemed as if it would never end. The other troops had dismissed long ago, and we asked ourselves with some bitterness why we should be kept out in the heat and sand playing at circuses, and all the while the sharp words of command stabbed through the curtain of dust that followed us, and punctuated our grumbling. "On the left fo-orm troop!" Some one, hand-jostled by a section in rear, cursed aloud, and we laughed as we went forward at the picturesque phrase he had used. "Sections right!" The sand-fog rose more thickly about us. Was this farce never going to end? "Ha-alt!" Ah! This was the order for which we had been waiting. The "dismiss" would follow, and there was still time if we hurried for a bathe before evening stables.
But our O.C. had apparently forgotten us. He was gazing with something of an air of abstraction at a soldierly horseman making towards us from the direction of the camp.
There was nothing really extraordinary in the sight of that figure (we could recognize him, by the big, upstanding gray that he rode, as the Colonel's orderly), yet something--his obvious hurry perhaps--made us forget our anxiety to be dismissed.
A minute later he had pulled up before our troop leader. "Colonel D----n's compliments, sir! and you are to report to him at once!" And then, in the confidential tone that orderlies learn from their constant association with the higher ranks: "Water guard, sir!" I could just catch the words: "... German patrol ... one ... chap wounded.... What's that, sir?... Yes, one of our fellows."
"Sections right! Wa-alk 'arch! Tr-r-ot!" There was life in the order this time, and there was life, too, in our quick response. The horses even seemed to be infected, and we had to hold them a little as we pounded along in the wake of the news-bringer.
"Steady, there! Ye don't want to ride the sentries down, do ye?" The camp buildings had leaped out at us from the yellow haze of our own progress, and the corporal of the guard had flattened himself against a wall--just in time. We pulled up and rode in soberly. Men of other troops dashed at us and held our horses. "Lucky devils!" they said, and bade us get our bandoliers and rifles. From them we learned that a German patrol had lain in wait for the water convoy at a point some three miles up the line, had potted one of our men through the thigh, and had retired without our fellows being able to fire a shot in exchange, and now, we--"lucky 4," they called us--were going out to hunt them. "And I don't suppose they've gone far," one informed me. "I expect they'll be waiting for you, an' p'raps they'll shoot one of you. I know I hope they will--you lucky, lucky devils!"
Into the press of chaff and counter-chaff, and the excitement of straps and buckles, rode one, speaking with the large voice of small authority, and hung about with "the complete campaigner's outfit." Not a detail--if we except the camp-stretcher and the cork-mattress--was missing. Water-bottle, haversack, prismatic compass, field-glasses, first-aid outfit, and sand goggles--the White Knight again!
As a quick-change artist he should have commanded our ready admiration. As it was, he provided just that sobering touch of humor that we needed. "Goin' to take all week to get ready?" he queried with that heavy urbanity which N.C.O.'s and stage managers mistake for satire, "... passel o' ladies' maids!"
"Oh! you--you May queen!" I heard some one say, and the troop giggled helplessly as we swung into our saddles. "Number off from the right!" the order was barked at us.
"One"--"two"--"three"----. The fourth man was having trouble with his pony and was far too busy to think of mere numbers, and the White Knight glared down the line of us as if, in some way, just outside his comprehension, we were all to blame. "As you were!" he snapped--it sounded like "Zwear!" "Number off from the ri----" "No time for that now, Sergeant!" spoke the crisp voice of the O.C. from somewhere behind us. "Sections left! Walk! march! Tr-r-ot!" and the quick dust rose to the forward surge of horses and men, and we were off.
Five minutes later we had passed the outlying pickets of the Transvaal Scottish, and were kicking up the sand at a good hand-canter along the hill-girt railway line to Kolmanskuppe. There is a peculiar exhilaration in this form of sport (I cannot easily use the term "warfare" in regard to a game wherein all that is ordinar |
48941-8 | ily known as "patriotism" is swallowed up and lost in a wholesome, primal, man's desire to hunt man--the royalist of royal game--for the sake, only, of the game's lust), and if in G.S.W. we were rather like the famous American hunter who had never been known to kill anything, but who "just hunted"--well, such little killing as did come our way proved conclusively that "just hunting" held all the breathless joy of the thing and left no--aftertaste.
For some miles we held our pace, and the heavy, springless sand through which we rode flung its yellow veil about us. There was the sound of wind in our ears, and the creaking of saddle-leather, a vague surging noise, as of a heavy ground-swell sucking through rocks, and, over all, the choking, blinding pall of dust. An oath, back-flung from a leading section where a horse had stumbled, sounded smothered and unreal. Now and again an outcrop of bare granite would leap out to meet us, and the brief thunder of our passing would shout back from the echoing hills; then sand again, and its muffled tumult.
IV--STORY OF THE TROOPERS ON TRAIL OF THE AMBUSHERS
The valley became narrower, and a hint of coolness stole down the sudden shadows. All on a moment a swift hand plucked the sunlight from us, and the jaws of the hills closed suddenly about our path--closed, closed, until the ribbon of steel that we knew to be the railway line looked like a tongue lolling from the cleft grin before us. There was a silence in that place, and our horses pricked quick, apprehensive ears to it. "What a place for an ambush!" said some one of my section, and the angry "Don't be a fool!" of the man to whom he had spoken showed that three of us, at least, were thinking of the same thing. The click of a steel-shod hoof striking against stone, and--"click!" back would come the answer of the rocks; just the sort of noise that the bolt of a Mauser rifle makes when it is drawn back to ----. Well, speaking personally, I do not suppose that I should have noticed it if my horse hadn't jumped so.
It was here, or hereabouts, that our patrol had been fired on only a few hours before, and we had received no particular assurance that ours was not likely to be a similar experience. On the contrary, every breathing instant was pregnant with possibility, and, be it said, a sort of half-shrinking hope.
A barrier of great boulders, through which the line won a bare clearance, stood suddenly up against us. Just the place for an ambush; but nothing happened save, perhaps, that one was conscious more of one's own breathing after it was passed. A hundred yards or so farther on the hills to our right fell away in a great curve, and sheeted sunlight lay on all the place; orange, streaked with silver of drift-sand on the shining plain, while beyond, and high above all, white-faced crags swam on an opal-hearted mist. To our right a mad sunset flared above the purple-footed hills, and pointed long, scornful, shadow-fingers at us. Sunset? or drunken magic? Saffron there was, and duck's-egg green lying on amber; amber that dripped molten gold, and tipped with splendid color the peaks which stood up blackly against it; amber, shot with blush-rose and slashed with fierce scarlet: a breathless wonder that changed while we watched it--changed and deepened until all the painted sky was a blood-clotted glory.
Night had stepped into the valley in which we rode, and I was not sorry when my section was picked out for "flanking work," and we were sent at a sharp trot to the foot-hills and the sunlight. We were told to keep slightly in advance of the troop, and, as the broken nature of the ground allowed, about three hundred yards distant from the railway line, the idea being, of course, that should an enemy patrol be waiting for us among the rocks, we--"the advance screen"--would draw their fire, and so secure some measure of safety for our main body. A leading section was sent off to the shadow-land on the right of the line, and, looking back when we had ridden some hundred yards or so, I saw two other sections detach themselves from the main body, and drop back, to the right and left respectively, as a sort of extended rearguard.
"As the nature of the ground allowed!" The words were the letter of our instructions; the exclamation mark, as _Punch_ might say, was ours when the first gentle slope that we negotiated jumped suddenly up into a hog-backed "krantz," that looked as if it might strain even a klipspringer. It had to be done, however, and we laid ourselves on our horses' necks and let them go at it. What a breathless scramble it was! Loose shale avalanched about us, and steel-shod hoofs slipped and struck, and struck and slipped again on the crisp granite, and just when it seemed to me that nothing was left but to dismount and pull my horse up after me, there was a last, furious straining of willing muscles, a plunge that shook my hat over my eyes, and the four of us were landed in a hard-breathing bunch on a sort of shelf of rock. A girth had slipped, and we paused while it was tightened, and looked back. The troop was halted--while we attained our position, I supposed--and as we watched, a figure rode clear of the others and signaled agitatedly to us to advance.
It was comparatively easy, from our elevation, to select a route that conformed measurably to our instructions and to the opposing factor of our own instinct of self-preservation. Only comparatively easy, however, because distances that looked flat, or, at the most, but gently tilted, proved on closer inspection to be almost worth the serious consideration of an Alpine Club. But we managed to scramble along somehow. When possible, we even went farther into the spirit of our instructions, and rode in extended formation, but, although our horses displayed an amazing aptitude for rock-work, we usually found ourselves progressing in single file. Once, I remember, when a flat surface of rock tempted us to something approaching a trot, we pulled up only a few yards short of where the hill ended abruptly, and lay, piled about its own foot, hundreds of feet below. It was from there, too, that we first caught sight of the white buildings of Kolmanskuppe, some two or three miles away, but although it was a cheering sight, we went on from that place with much sedateness and circumspection. All serious thought of meeting the enemy patrol had vanished, of course, with that first glimpse of "civilization." Only one ordeal now remained: to get ourselves down, out of that region of sunlight and breathlessness, to where, with the lesser hills, began the last phase of our journey.
One attempt landed us in a cul-de-sac of tumbled granite, another on a tongue of rock that would have proved perfectly negotiable if the tongue had not been bitten short, or if there had been a bridge across the forty-foot chasm that grinned up at us; but, eventually, by winding in single file round a spur of rock where a false step meant--as one of us said and giggled so much at, that he all but put his assertion to the proof--"more than a bad cold" for the man who slipped, we found a steep slope wheredown we tobogganed with safety and some amusement to ourselves, but not a little detriment, I think, to the tails of our horses.
V--SCOUTING ON THE EDGE OF THE DESERT
The troop, we found, had taken courage of the less imposing scenery, and were just visible in a cloud of dust some half a mile ahead of us. Just outside Kolmanskuppe the railway line takes a sharp bend to the left, and as half a mile in the rear does not exactly correspond with the M.I. hand-book's definition of an advance guard's position, we kicked up our tired animals and made a desperate effort, by cutting across the angle of the line, to regain some measure of dignity. What the troop thought when, some ten minutes later, we reappeared in advance of them, I do not know. They looked rather indifferent, I thought, and when, soon afterwards, a ragged fringe of infantry appeared on the sky-line above us--Kolmanskuppe is on the edge of the desert proper, and looks as if it had been washed up by the sea of mountainous sand-dunes--and the troop, realizing apparently that there was really no need to follow its meticulous course along the railway metals, wheeled sharply to the right, we cantered down and, with all humility, tied ourselves on to its tail.
In the number of its houses, Kolmanskuppe is not a large place; in the extent covered by such buildings as there are it is quite considerable. An average distance of about one hundred yards between the houses, and the glaring monotony of their design stifles any desire on the part of the visitor unduly to prolong his tour of inspection.
In the ordinary sense we were not, of course, visitors, and besides, we had "done" Kolmanskuppe, more thoroughly than an American tourist does Rome, on a previous occasion. Then, we had been actuated by other than guide-book motives, and now, its interest gone, the place was become an eyesore, and we wanted to go home. That, we supposed, was why we got the order to off-saddle.
The one picturesque touch in the picture was supplied by our three camels. They were there on some water-carrying pretext, and they recognized us from afar off, and came and stood to windward of us so that there could be no remote possibility of our not recognizing them.
We never seemed, somehow, to be able to get away from those three gaunt beasts. No matter the direction of our journeyings, we always met them sooner or later. We should not, of course, have minded if they had shown any signs of awakening affection for us, but they didn't. It was their sneering indifference to our presence that galled us most, I think. Had we been in the habit of thrusting ourselves upon them, this attitude would have been understandable, even commendable; but we didn't thrust ourselves upon them. They hatched deliberate plots to meet us in unexpected places, and when we met they sneered at us, and besides, as I have said elsewhere, they smelt abominably. In very truth, Tartarin of Tarascon was not more haunted by his own camel than were we by our three.
The corporal who was in charge of them slouched to us from somewhere out of the desert--he was borrowing habits right and left from his camels, we often told him--and gave us the cheerful information that we were to convoy some wagons back to Luderitzbucht, which wagons, he added, were only then being off-loaded. Dusk was spreading like a gray blanket across the face of the sands, and the prospect of a night ride at the tail of a string of creaking wagons was not enticing. We asked him how he knew, and he retired into his newly acquired camelism, and went off to his uncouth beasts.
But he was right, and an hour later saw us--or heard us rather, for it was pitch dark--starting on such a ride as I hope never again to suffer. The road from Kolmanskuppe to Luderitzbucht is rendered distinct from the country through which it runs by means of white-painted paraffin tins placed at irregular intervals along its alleged sides. That it does not otherwise differ to any marked extent from the surrounding country is due less, I think, to the surveyor than to the country, which is mainly precipices and small but very knobby hills. I have since traveled that road in the daytime, and its unrelieved roughness--unless an occasional wallow in deep sand can be called relief--makes of it a thing to be remembered; but of that night, when our nostrils, and our throats, and our eyes were filled with the dust kicked up by close upon a hundred mules and half as many horses, and our ears were deafened by the harsh thunder of empty wagons bouncing into and out of deep holes and over fire-spitting granite boulders, recollection is a mere headache.
For the first half-mile or so--my section had now become the rearguard--we rode at some fifty yards behind the last wagon. We did this for several reasons: firstly, because the air was less full of dust at that distance; secondly, because we could more or less select our own pace instead of having, every now and then, to pull our horses back upon their haunches to avoid spitting them on the brake handle of a wagon stopped suddenly in its drunken career by virtue of collision with some more than usually imposing obstruction; and thirdly--but this I do not think was a real reason--because we had been ordered to do so.
VI--THE FRIGHTENED HORSES--AND THE CAMELS
We were going down some unseen slope, I remember, when the change occurred. My horse was plunging a good deal, and I had to use both hands to prevent his getting away from me. The man on my right seemed to be having similar difficulty with his animal. Strange! they were all quiet enough a minute ago, and now----"Look out!" The words were shot at me by No. 3 of the section as, with his horse completely out of control, he raced past me into the darkness and the dust. "Rummy," said the man on my right, "I don't know what's the matter with the beasts. They're scared out of their lives, that I'll swear--Good Lord!" His ejaculation was spoken away from me, for his pony had swung suddenly about with a quick, frightened movement, and was now staring into the blackness from whence we had come. A moment later and my own beast had spun around. We waited in silence.
"Where's T----?" said the other man suddenly. (T---- was of my section, and I seemed vaguely to remember that he had been riding behind us.) If my memory was right, then T---- was somewhere out there in the blackness, and the--the--whatever it was that was frightening our horses was out there with him. It was not a nice thought. We waited again, and I found myself wondering what it would sound like to call out T----'s name, when out of the darkness came the sound of a snort, followed by what seemed like the frenzied plunging of some heavy beast. Then a voice uplifted itself in earnest supplication, and the voice was the voice of T----.
He seemed to be calling upon the name of a god not altogether orthodox. I caught, here and there, strong expressions of his disapproval of some person or thing. The voice was growing louder and clearer, and it became obvious that T---- was being borne towards us at a high rate of speed. The pale sheet of the sky held him in silhouette for an instant, and then he flung down upon us in a perfect flood of invective.
I had never heard him talk quite like that before. It was really, and almost literally, illuminating, and we reined aside in a sort of reverential awe to let him pass. He did so on the wings of some of the most golden eloquence that it has ever been my lot to hear. "Goddam!" I heard distinctly, followed by a string of words which I do not know how to spell; and then some fine but strictly censorable phrases, out of which I collected fragments that made a disconnected yet interesting whole. In this way I was puzzled for some moments by the many variations of the word camel. "Camel!" I found myself saying, "camel!" when "Look!" said the other man suddenly, and I looked, and saw striding down upon us from the same pale sheet of sky that had held T---- only a few minutes before three gaunt, long-legged shadows.
"The camels!" said the other man, and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and what there was in that shrouding darkness to tell each other what the other thought I do not know; but, as our frenzied horses waltzed and plunged away from the acrid fear behind them, we clung to our saddles with both hands, and rocked and choked with insane laughter. Later, when we met T----, leading a dead-lame pony out of the rocks, we broke out afresh, and between paroxysms, told him something of our admiring respect. Indeed, a man who could steer a madly racing pony through pitch darkness and over and between rocks, and at the same time conduct ably a rhetorical discourse on the (presumed) illegitimacy of camels and the moral degeneracy of men who ride upon them, well deserved some more tangible expression of merit than was held in mere words. Iron crosses have been given for less.
The remainder of that ride left to us only recurring fits of laughter, dust, and noise and darkness, and when the camels came too near, which, in spite of concise injunctions to them to go "to another place," they often did, spasms of wrathful and sulphurous abuse.
A note in my diary says of our return to Luderitzbucht: "Surprised to find myself looking on the beastly place as 'home!'"
But was there real cause for surprise?
(The narrator here begins to tell about "Alarums and Excursions" along the African deserts; a wild night ride; hunting the Germans like big game; and numberless anecdotes that put the African fever into one's blood.)
FOOTNOTE:
[8] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.
LAST WORDS OF A "SOLDIER AND DRAMATIST"
_Letters of Harold Chapin_
_An American Who Died for England at Loos, on September 26, 1915_
The story of Harold Chapin's life and death is a glorious page in the annals of the Great War. This brilliant, young dramatist was born in Brooklyn in 1888. His mother is an actress and when the boy was seven years old, he made his first appearance on the stage in the Memorial Theater, Stratford-on-Avon, England, where his mother was engaged to play during a Shakespeare festival. From this youthful beginning, he developed into an actor, producer, and dramatist of great ability, gaining a reputation on both continents. When war was declared on August 4th, 1914, Harold Chapin found that "he could not act, he could not write" he could think only of the war and the world bowed in tragedy. Finally, on September 2, 1914, he enlisted in the R. A. M. C. The artist and dreamer became an enthusiastic soldier. While fighting at the battle of Loos, he was killed on Sunday, September 26, 1915. He was only 29 years of age but "he had lived worthily and he died gloriously." The letters which Harold Chapin wrote to his mother, his wife, and his little son have been published in this country in book form by the _John Lane Company_, under the title "Soldier and Dramatist." They form a notable contribution to the war's literature. Several of the letters are here reprinted by permission of the publishers from the hundred or more in the published collection: Copyright 1916.
[9] I--STORY OF HOW HAROLD CHAPIN DIED
_The following letter from Mr. Richard Capell one of Harold Chapin's comrades, was the first intimation Mrs. Chapin received of her husband's death. It was, of course, written hurriedly and under trying conditions, but it gives so touching and dramatic an account of Harold Chapin's last days, that it is felt that it must be included in this book exactly as it was received._
October 3rd, 1915.
MY DEAR MRS. CHAPIN,
I beg you to accept my heartfelt condolences. I would not so much as hint at the word consolation to you after this unutterably cruel blow,--even to us, his chance friends of less than a year, it seems too cruel to be realisable,--were it not that I can give you some account, at first hand, of the splendid work of your husband on those days, September 25th and 26th. It must surely be, eventually, a consolation to you to think that he died no mean, casual death, but that he was shot down (on the afternoon of Sunday a week ago) when actually on an errand of help, and after giving himself up for hour after hour to heavy and perilous toil for the wounded. I have been at some pains to get for you some details of that fatal afternoon, but I cannot--the reason will be obvious--now tell you quite all there is. The essential is that on Sunday morning an appeal came to our station for stretcher-bearers to assist a battalion, seven of whose bearers were out of action. Your husband and two other men set out for the trenches in question, which were to the south-west of Loos. The journey, itself, had its perils. Over the distance of two miles or thereabouts, the Germans, who were rallying after their defeat of the day before, could enfilade our ground. One day I will explain the position with precision. The three of them eventually reached the series of trenches at a moment when the Germans were counter-attacking, and were told by an officer that stretcher-work was impossible at such a moment. It was suicide to show one's head above the parapet. This was, of course, one of the old German trenches, and the enemy fire came both from front and right flank. Chapin consequently told the two others to wait for him while he reported to the medical officer who had appealed in the morning, his intention being to return to collect the wounded after dark, as we did during the week as a matter of routine. The two never saw him again.
Our line that afternoon wavered for a moment, before the counter-attack. There was a short period of confusion, and some of our men were caught in the open by German rifle and machine-gun fire. You may possibly one day get an exact account from an actual eye-witness, but from what I can piece together, your husband went over the parapet to fetch in some wounded man. He was certainly shot in the foot. It appears that he persisted and was then killed outright by a shot through the head.
Our work was so exacting at that moment, that hours passed before Chapin's absence was noticed at our station, and it was not till the following morning that we felt anxious.
I pass over a series of extravagant adventures that befell me as I made my way, then, to your husband's destination of the day before, with the idea of getting first-hand information. I found myself on the scene when the English were making a further attack. It was impossible, in daylight, to go into the open, but I found from a medical officer that a lance-corporal of the R.A.M.C. had, the night before, been seen dead over the parapet. The English attack, that afternoon, improved the position. The next morning, we had a run out there; your husband had been buried in the night near where he fell. I went down on Wednesday to the trenches, saw the officer who had been in charge of the burial party, and eventually got the papers, watch, etc., which were found on his body. These you will have received by now, I suppose. There can be no harm in telling you that he lies with six other London Territorials, within a few hundred yards of Loos cemetery.
If I have the pleasure of seeing you again, when this ghastly business is over, I will tell you something of Chapin's fine work on the Saturday, collecting wounded on the wire before the first captured German trench. For many hours I was out there with him;--heart-breaking conditions, twenty appeals for help where one could only heed one; rain for hour after hour, and no little annoyance from cross-fire. On one journey, three of us (your husband was one) came in for a tempest of fire. Two of us lay low with the laden stretcher on the grass, while your husband volunteered to go ahead into the village, using a communication trench to bring back the "wheels," by which we get stretchers along at a good pace over roads. Eventually the tempest ended, and the whole day ended without casualties for us. We went to bed at midnight for two hours. Before daybreak I joined a party that was going to Loos, and so began the fatal Sunday.
If, dear Mrs. Chapin, you succeed in getting more detailed information of your husband's death it will be from some one or another in the 17th Battalion London Regiment.
I feel that I am intruding on your grief. Excuse me, and believe me, with profound sympathy,
Yours very sincerely, RICHARD CAPELL.
II--LETTER TO HIS SON ON HIS BIRTHDAY
ST. ALBANS, Dec. 21st, 1914.
MY DARLING,
This is your birthday! The day I'm writing on I mean, of course you won't get the letter till to-morrow so what you will have to say is "yesterday _was_ my Birthday and Doody wrote on the evening of my Birthday."
I'm not sending you any present for your Birthday because I can't afford to send two presents in one week. I am sending you a present for Xmas instead.
I am coming home to see you again soon and we'll have an awfully good time together. We might go to the Zoo together if I can get Sunday tickets.
Good night my little boy--I'm very tired and I've got to shave and have a good wash before I go to bed on the floor next to your friend Ex Corporal Willson on one side of me and with Galton and Fisher (you have met Fisher but not Galton--he is a Scotchman and likes whiskey hot before going to sleep)--with Galton and Fisher kicking me on the other side.
God bless you my dearest little man. Please _please_ be very good to dear Mummy and your newest Nanny and please _please_ don't ever spit. I should hate to hear that you had been spitting when I come back.
Your DOODY.
III--LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON CHRISTMAS
ST. ALBANS, Dec. 26th, 1914.
DEAREST,
We have had a terrific Xmas ... tremendous work and plenty of fun. Went to Midnight Service on Xmas Eve (special leave being granted from 11 P.M. to 2 A.M. to those wanting to go, and of course I was after anything going). I know you will forgive me for not writing more often. We have really been up to our necks in work--and an alarum warned us as likely to occur on Boxing Day ... we were all packed up and ready--and indeed one battalion was entrained and another paraded for entrainment before the "warning" was withdrawn to _us_ of the 6th Field Ambulance. Perhaps you won't understand this: it means that the fighting section of the brigade--the battalions--(which of course move off ahead of us) were not only warned but ordered--in other words we were _all_ ordered but _our_ order was countermanded before taking effect. Hard luck on the Battalions wasn't it? The 21st had to march 12½ miles and back for nothing, having been roused at 4 in the morning to begin with. That is the advantage of belonging to a unit that travels by "train no. 57" as we do, instead of one of the first units to go out.
I'm going to turn in. God bless you and my baby--do write soon and at length. I know posts are responsible for it but I haven't had a letter since the one containing the photos--for which many thanks--now four days ago and I am longing for one.
Bless you! Bless you!
IV--LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON LANDING IN FRANCE
FRANCE, March 18th, 1915.
Here we are in France--journey not finished yet. We had an ideal crossing--and a most amazing one. I believe every square yard of the Channel has its own British T.B. Destroyer--queer black shapes with rectangular outlines, hard and well drawn against the dark sky or the streams of light from more distant warships. I never saw one in detail with the light upon it--always in silhouette against the light. We steamed with lights out nearly all the way. I slept on deck--not over warm--but I kept getting up to see the latest sight as one or other called me and so kept warm.
We are fed on Bully Beef (ordinary Fray Bentos, you know the brand) and lovely hard biscuits which I adore. Last night I added to my menu a bloater and some bread and marmalade, "duff" and coffee--having scraped an acquaintance with some of the engine room artificers who invited me to sup in the fo'castle. It was very hot in there but we supped in low neck. Great fun!
Bye bye--Love to my blessed boy--Try to read him as much of my letters as he will understand. I do miss him so and I want him to hear about me all he can so's we shan't be strangers when we meet next. Rubbish I know, but still I'm not quite joking. He's growing so fast.
An unfortunate officer has got to read this and a hundred more letters, so I'll cut it short. Bless you.
V--LETTER TO HIS SON AT THE BATTLE-FRONT
FRANCE, March 30th, 1915.
Hullo Vallie! I'm in France at the war at last. How are you? We are having such a funny time all sleeping on straw on the floor--think of that when you get into your little cribbie-cot to-night.
I am sitting writing this on a sack on the ground with my back against Jack's. You remember Jack the cook? In front of me are all the horses in rows and rows tied to pegs driven into the ground. They are tied by the head--the way Modestine used to be--to one peg and by the hind foot to another peg to prevent them turning round and kicking each other. They don't like having their hind foots tied and pull at them and swear with their ears and top lips. You remember how your Modestine used to swear with her ears. They try to kick too, just as she used to do.
There are soldiers all about here, all busy shoving the Germans back and _shoving_ the Germans back and SHOVING the Germans back, and sooner or later we shall shove the whole lot of them right back into Germany over the Rhine--which is a big river--bigger than the river at Maidenhead--RIGHT back into Germany and off their feet, and then we shall sit on their heads severely until they have had enough, and then the war will be over, and we shall just have to tidy up and come home and I shall come home to you my Darling and the Blessed Mummy and the nice flat at St. John's Wood, and oh, I do hope it will be soon because I want to see you and Mummy most awfully.
Good bye my precious, please give my love to Gram and tell her I wish I could have some English Turkey. And please Vallie send everybody you can out here to help shove, because the sooner the Germans are shoved over and the more of us there are to sit on their heads, the sooner I shall see you all again.
Your DOODY.
VI--LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON NIGHT REVERIES
April 30th, 1915.
MY DARLING,
Curious situations abound. Behold me sitting in Lieut. Dickenson's chair by Lieut. Dickenson's fire in the midst of Lieut. Dickenson's deserted patience (a game unknown to me: five rows and aces out) Lieut. D. having gone forth to the Regimental Aid Post on our L. Front to see a man afflicted suddenly with peritonitis. We are a party forming an Advance Dressing Station here at ----. We have just sent our first case (Sergeant shot through chin, tongue and neck--quite conscious--hit at three, remained in trench till seven, left us 8.15--in Hospital by now) into ---- together with a request for two pounds of soda for the Bat. M.O. on our R. Front. (Thus our Motor Ambulances fetch and carry). I am waiting up to take the soda when it arrives up to the M.O. at his aid post behind the trenches. Why soda in the middle of the night? _Gas_, my dear. Les Bosches are now throwing chunks of gas at us. Nasty smelly trick, isn't it? We are replying in our nice clean British way with soda--at least so I thought at first, but the truth is that partially asphyxiated Tommies thrive on Sodium _Bi_--not the washing variety. I am going to rouse out Fisher (now sleeping peacefully in the billet in spite of a battery) to walk up with me when the stuff arrives. Lieut. Dickenson won't let me go alone. It is a lovely night--high moon almost full and a low mist over the firing line through which star shells (otherwise rockets) twinkle up occasionally. The battery near here "bings" out a shell every ten minutes or so. It is a noisy brute but some naval guns over a mile away are quite deafening even at that distance. The expression "tearing the atmosphere" really applies to the scream of their shells as they pass overhead. They do sound like tearing silk heard through a stethoscope. The prettiest sound of the night is a machine-gun a mile or so to our right firing short tap tap tap tap taps like an over-grown woodpecker. Understand that these sounds are only occasional only the scattered rifle fire being anything like continuous, and that so scattered that it is a mere background. Bing! from the near battery--five minutes elapse--tap tap tap tap, another four or five--tap tap tap again--a slight increase in the rifle fire--_Bahang Wheeeee!_ from the naval gun--ten minutes perfect calm but for rifles very faint and intermittent, tap tap tap--tap tap tap. This time from further off: the woodpecker's mate. Sh Sh Sh--Sh--Sh a German shell coming to _look for_ our Battery. Sh Sh Sh! Whap! Missed it by about half a mile--five or six minutes peace. Bing from ours. Bing again after a minute and two more bings rapid. Peace once more, the rifles a trifle fainter, one crack a trifle louder. Tap tap tap tap tap----
That's half an hour not taken down of course but typified. I am looking forward to the walk.
VII--LETTER TO HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW ON HIS BOY'S FUTURE
May 28th, 1915, Empty Hospital.
DEAR GRAM,
Thanks very much for your letter. It is now nearly three weeks since it reached me but you will, I am sure, forgive tardiness in replying: those three weeks have been so very full of work.
Of course I have no objection to your teaching Vallie a prayer. Why should I have? Only please teach him one thing: that his prayer may not be answered and that if it isn't, he must not think that God is cruel or unmindful. "Thy will be done" is the safety valve in all prayer and a believer in God must surely think--if they do not say--those words as a part of every prayer. In the case of a child I think they should be said.
I would be grateful if you would not muddle his little brain with trinitarian dogma. I have nothing against the trinity idea except that it is puzzling and quite unnecessary. It's all right for an artist or a mystic--it can have a symbolic meaning which is most grateful but I think it should not be taught. One can be a lover of God without going into the matters of the definition of Christ; and all such difficulties. If Vallie grows up a poet or a mystic, he will fight into those problems for himself. I would rather he had the chance to do so unguided. If he is going to grow up an engineer or a farmer, he will be no poorer for never having been troubled with them.
If I don't come home you may--I mean: _Please will you_--teach him the Sermon on the Mount and "The Lord is my Shepherd" etc., but I have always looked forward to teaching him these myself and still hope to do so--this coming winter too.
VIII--LETTER TO HIS SON ON "SWANKING"
Vallie you villain what's this I hear about your visit to Brighton? Swanking in the Hotel about having cut the Kaiser into little bits and put him down the dust shoot. _Swank_ Sir, you never did _nothink_ of the sort. He's still bossing Germany and giving us no end of trouble. You must have cut up somebody else by mistake. You really should look before you chop.
Bye bye, my darling little man. I love you most muchly much. How do you like me?
Your DOODY.
IV--LETTER TO HIS DOG--HEART TO HEART
July 6th, 1915.
MY DEAR EMMA,
Do you realise that I haven't written to you _once_ in four months away? Do you? If you don't, I am hurt, if you do and _don't mind realising it_ I am still more hurt. Taken either way you are a heartless little dog and you don't deserve a letter.
There is only one hope for you. You may be too proud to enquire with suitable asperity, why I have not written. I leave it to you, _are_ you proud?
If so what of? Your ears?--I beg your pardon; I forgot Firstie. Of course you've a right to be proud after all, but I don't see your point. Why should your natural pride in Firstie be too great for you to complain of my remissness. You are illogical Emma, as well as heartless. I don't see what you're getting at.
If you see that son of mine, you might give him my love and tell him to get his hair cut. If it hasn't been cut since the photo it must be too long by now--unless it grows backwards: in which case he must have a knot tied in each hair close to his blessed little scalp to prevent it growing in too far and coming out of his chin as whiskers. Will you see to this? I don't want to come back and find my little boy sprouting a beard: he's too young for such things.
Please give my love to Mrs. Chapin with this, letter _enclo_. It's a silly sort of letter--a great mistake I know--but--entre nous--(that's French) I'm a silly sort of person and subject to quite idiotic moods when I start thinking about all my darlings at home in England.
Bless you all.
X--LETTER TO HIS WIFE ON WAR'S HORRORS
July 22nd, 1915.
DEAREST,
I am quite incapable of doing justice to this morning's entertainment. "They" have been shelling the most thickly--and poorly--populated part of this little mining town. Some of us went up into it getting the wounded out. Houses, men, women, and children blown to pieces by huge high explosives--and more shells coming over every few minutes, all within a couple of hundred yards of the hospital. I want to tell you all I see--all that happens to me out here, but I must fail to convey it--and I don't want you quite to share my feelings. Amazing, ironic contrasts abounded: within five minutes of each other came in a self-possessed young woman of about ten to have the remains of her arm cut off--perfectly calm--walked in--never cried or showed the least excitement--_and_ a man of fifty on a stretcher with a mangled leg who roared out in an enormous mad voice for his "Maman" over and over again till he was anæsthetised. Could any creation of the imagination equal this? Or this scene in a squalid kitchen:--a huge woman dead on her face across the threshold, a little child also dead at her feet, the legs of her men folk (husband and son?) straggling across the foot way outside (I am keeping back all the hundreds of horrible details, hard though it may be to believe it) and her remaining daughter a child of about twelve--leaping back and forth over the bodies struggling to get a chain from the neck of the body. "Souvenir!" I tried to get her away--she was half mad--but was assailed fiercely by neighbours on her behalf, who seemed to regard her desire for a memento of her mother under the circumstances, most natural and commendable. While I was being suppressed another shell came over and we went to earth in a heap, the hundred yards away crash bringing down plaster and crockery on to our heads and the flying pieces of "case" buzzing past the windows like enormous bees or small aeroplanes. When they had settled the child returned to the chain--armed now with a carving knife--and I left her to it.
XI--LAST LETTER TO HIS SON--AT THE TRENCHES
Sept. 18th, 1915.
My Son-bird, how are you? I'm quite well but a little stiff in the joints. We've been doing a lot of digging: making a _trench_ to carry wounded people up and down, and we've walked miles and miles back from the place where we did the digging and we are tired.
We are not very near the Germans _here_, but we can hear them banging away in the distance sometimes, and last night all the sky was lit up in their direction by a big fire--houses burning. Yesterday--too--while we were up digging near to them some Germans climbed up a tower behind their lines, and we had to bob down into the holes we were digging to prevent them seeing us and then _our_ cannons banged at _them_ and they came down from the tower in a hurry.
I do hope you are a good little boy. It's so much nicer to have a good little boy at home than to have a regular little pickle. Please write and tell me if you are a good little boy--I shall be so pleased to hear it.
Love from your Doody.
XII--LAST LETTER TO HIS WIFE--AT DEATH'S DOOR
Sept. 24th, 1915.
SWEETHEART MINE:
This is my ideal of happiness: (under war conditions) to arrive back, after a hard day's navvying among the nice big bangs (I really do like the noise of guns--unhealthy taste, eh?) to come back to camp and tea healthily tired, to come back by the _first_ batch of cars thereby ensuring a wash unhurried and evading the wait by the roadside at "----" _and_ to find a letter from you waiting for me. I am sure you think my effusions over your letters mere civil romance but they are not. I cannot exaggerate the pleasure I feel when I wade into a letter from you.
I am so very glad that you are to have the blessed with you again. I hate to think of you and him apart. It makes me feel altogether too "scattered" (compris?) to have a son here, a wife there, a mother somewhere else, a sister elsewhere. Keep him with you all you can and talk to him about me a _lot_. I do so want to come home to you both.
We are launching forth in many directions: beds (for patients of course) and a young drug store under a roof of its own; no longer housed with the Quarter Master's store. At present _I_ and some score of others are going up to the line daily doing the most glorious navvying: knocking cellars into each other and whitewashing the whole into operating rooms and waiting rooms, and bearers' billets; digging special R.A.M.C. stretcher trenches to connect them (A) with the general communicating trenches and (B) with each other and filling billions of sandbags to protect the entrances to these cellar-stations. I love the work, three days I slaved at a part of the trench where it traverses a mine-yard and came back a Frank Tinney at night. Yesterday I was housebreaking with hammer and chisel or pick connecting up cellars by holes knocked in walls and making bolting holes to get in and out through. Also we go investigating the rows and rows of empty houses (the line where we work passes almost through a mining townlet now deserted) bagging chairs, mirrors--there are many quite good ones unbroken in the midst of the chaos of bent girders, scattered walls, roofs, pavements even.
Everybody seems very high-spirited out here and grumbling is a thing of the past. I suspect that the weather is reason. Day after day is glorious--though night after night is _cold_.
As the weather grows colder my appetite increases, _cake_ most acceptable.
Posting this the morning after writing it. Was called away to interview M. Le Directeur des Mines apropos d'une affaire forte difficile, _je vous dis_.
Love to the dear--I wish I were going to see you both again soon. Wanted!--
[_The above was the last letter ever received from Harold Chapin. The following unfinished letter was found in his pocket-book after his death. It was written some days before the preceding letter._]
XIII--LAST LETTER TO HIS MOTHER--AS HE DIES
DEAREST MATER:
I dunno if I did or did not write to you the day after that letter to Calypso. We've had a good few days lately when 6 o'clock parade (6 o'clock a.m. you understand) and dusk were linked up by a day's work and march so that no letters were written, and I dare swear the censor was correspondingly rejoiced.
Our days spent trench digging (special communication trenches we dig, pour chercher les blessées not for wicked men with arms or what would the Geneva convention say?), our days spent trench digging are a great source of enjoyment--curious, because they involve a bolted breakfast--a seven o'clock start, an hour's jog in a hard, springless, G.S. waggon, a halting, single-file march of a couple of miles and a day of back breaking work at pick and shovel followed sometimes by march and G.S. waggon back, sometimes by a long march and _no_ G.S. waggon. The secret of their charm is the feeling of doing something actual compared with the messing about cleaning waggons for inspection and everlastingly tidying up camp to get it dirty again. Those trenches may never be used but if ever it is necessary to bring in wounded from the fire trenches to the aid posts under anything of a bombardment they will mean endless lives saved. It's a pleasant thought. I haven't seen the Lloyd George speech you mention.--I didn't know he'd written anything lately. Do you know--coeval with his rise in popularity I am getting a bit sick of him. He strikes me as being all enthusiasm and no judgment--no sense of fitness. On the tide and with the tide of universal approval is not the best place for a Welshman. I prefer the "brave man struggling with adversity" to this popular idol playing with his admirers, being rude to them just to show how well he can apologise, etc., etc.
Books--yes, I want a pocket Browning mit everything in it! Is such a thing to be had, I wonder? Of course I've got sizable pockets. Still it's a tall order.
Anyway I want "Paracelsus" and "Men and Women" particularly. I am on guard and writing letters for the next two or three days (I may only send off one a day). Our supply of corporals is not quite adequate to the demands made upon it and this will be my fourth night on guard in a fortnight.--Rather fatiguing work, involving a night of cat naps fully dressed and booted and a final rise at a little after 4 a.m. to call the cooks and "duties," hoist the flag and remove the lamps and finally (at 5 a.m.) to call the camp in general.
Later
(Sunday in fact)
Oh, my dear, I wish you could see your golden-haired laddie sitting by the roadside waiting for a waggon,--time 5 p.m.
I have been for two days digging through the slag heap of a mine! A mine! Our trench happens to go that way. I am as black as a coal heaver.
FOOTNOTE:
[9] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.
"THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE"--AN AMERICAN WITH THE SLAVS
_Experiences With the Russian Generals_
_Told by Stanley Washburn, Special Correspondent of the "London Times" with the Russian Armies_
Mr. Washburn was the only American (with the exception of the American Military Attaché, Lieut. Sherman Miles, and Robert R. McCormick) to have access to the Russian fighting lines at the time this was written. He met on friendly terms the Czar, Grand Duke Nicholas, and all the Russians in high authority in the War. He was decorated by the Czar with the Cross of St. Anne. He has described the anguish of Warsaw and the Russian retreat in his book entitled: "Victory in Defeat," an authoritative account of his experiences in the campaign of Galicia and the retreat through Poland. In his second book, called "The Russian Advance," he tells how Russia, when overwhelmingly defeated, managed her colossal offensive drive. The chapters here given are by permission of his publishers, _Doubleday, Page and Company_.
[10] I--STORY OF THE RUSSIAN GENERAL STAFF
One hears a lot in war about the "man behind the gun," but there is another individual, and a lot of them just as important, and that is the "man behind" the "man behind the gun," or, more briefly stated, the one higher up. I have known scores of Russian generals since the beginning of the war, and have written a good deal about the men at the greater staffs who play the intellectual end of the game in their distant offices, but, I think, far too little of the generals who sit in rough peasant cottages at the front, just behind the lines where the roar of the artillery and the rattle of the machine gun tells them of their troops in action even before the field telephone buzzes through its raucous message from the trenches. I spent June 23d (1915) with a division commander who may be taken as the type of scores of others who are directing the tactics of the war to-day. And when I write of General Monkevitch I write, I think, of many more who are almost identical in character and mould. This General I call my "Russian godfather," because he was the first one I met when I came to Russia, and it was he who, sitting in a luxurious office in Petrograd in September, 1914, arranged the first permits that enabled me to join the army in the field. In those days he was an important member of the Petrograd General Staff and with his smart uniform and silver _aiguillettes_ with his resplendent shoulder straps he was a picture of a city officer. Even in that early day he bemoaned his fate at being detained on staff work at the distant capital when the real work was going on at the front. When I came back from my first trip I was told that my friend had gone to the front "somewhere in Bukovina," and gradually the recollection of his kindly features drifted back among the memories of the past.
That afternoon I was ushered into the low-ceilinged room of a humble peasant's cottage, where a tired-looking man in war-worn uniform, tarnished shoulder straps, and muddy boots, was leaning over a hand-hewn table strewn with maps. He looked up as we entered, and I discovered in the commander of the division my erstwhile friend of Petrograd. Half of the house was still occupied by the peasants, while the General's sleeping apartment was in a rough shack outside, where he slept on a camp bed, with hardly any adornment in the room save a low bench on which was placed a battered old tin basin, if one may call it an ornament.
"The luxurious establishment of a Russian General of Division," he told me laughingly as he showed me over his place of residence. In the trellised vestibule of the cottage were the telephones and telegraphs, while from all directions came the field wires from the positions six versts beyond.
Sitting round the rough table, we listened to the General's account of his divisions fighting against the advance, an achievement that I have already alluded to in a previous chapter, and then, at his advice, we paid a visit to the front, as I have also mentioned elsewhere. The generals higher up are so far away that it is only by chance that they see their men or come in actual contact with their wounded. These divisional commanders are the ones that stand between the intellectual end of the game and the men in the trenches. The moment a shot is fired unexpectedly, their telephone from the trenches tells them what is the cause. An hour after a fight starts, the wounded (if the positions be near) begin to drift back here. In this headquarters the General could look out of the window and see the price in human suffering that the plans he made on the map before him were costing Russia....
After dinner I accompanied General Monkevitch on a walk about the town. With a long, swinging gait he paced down the primitive little street, with a nod and a word for every soldier that he passed. With scrupulous courtesy he returned the bows of the peasants who smilingly greeted him, for it was easy to see that he was a favourite in the village. Even the little children came in for a pleasant word and a bit of chaff, and several times he stopped with his officers about him to joke with the kiddies, and the littler they were the more happily they responded to his pleasant words.
A bit down the street we turned into the great shed where first come the wounded from the smaller units of the divisions. Yesterday, the General told us, his face suddenly going very sad, had resulted in heavy losses. For a moment he stood in a reverie, and then, throwing off his mood of melancholy, shrugged his shoulders and said: "Well, let us look at those within."
II--TALES OF THE WOUNDED RUSSIAN SOLDIERS
The great wooden shed was divided into a series of rooms where clean, sweet-smelling hay and new-cut clover was piled deeply on the floor, and here lay those too heavily wounded to be moved immediately to the rear. All told, there remained but a few hundred, the great bulk, as the General told me, having been cleared within eight hours after their arrival, to be sent to the greater bases where more comforts awaited them. Between the double rows of haggard creatures slowly strode the General, stopping every few paces to speak to the wounded. The relation of the Russian peasant to his superiors is extraordinary. Never is there the slightest degree of self-consciousness or embarrassment on the part of the soldiers, no matter how high or exalted be the rank of the officer who addresses him.
Again and again soldiers whose haggard features and glazing eyes denoted the serious nature of their wounds called to him in faltering voices: "How goes the fight, Excellency?" or "Did we take the trench, my General?" And always he would stop and reply, "All goes well, my children. You have done superbly. I am proud of you. Go back now to the rear and get well. You have behaved like heroes."
Another groaned audibly as he raised himself to ask: "Have more of my brothers fallen than of the Austrians?" The General replied quickly, raising his voice that all might hear: "For each one of you here, my children, there are five Austrians to pay for it, so rest contented that you have done your duty well."
One mere stripling, shot through the stomach, called to his Chief: "I did my best, Excellency. I killed all I could," and then sank back, groaning, on his bed of straw. And thus it went as we entered building after building where lay the price of victory. One heavily wounded lad called to the General, who immediately went to his side and listened to the high, feverish voice tell of the assault, of capture, escape, and a bullet through the abdomen. With the quick compassion characteristic of the Russians, the General reached for his cigarette case and turned its contents out into the hands of the soldier.
Among the wounded were numbers of Austrians, with pallid features, lying side by side with the Russians, receiving the same kind words and gentle treatment that are accorded to the Russians themselves.
During these assaults many of the wounds are from machine-gun bullets, and a large portion of such are through the stomach or abdomen. Many, I think, of such must die on the battlefield, for of those that die in the hospitals later the bulk are of such a nature. Certainly they are hideously painful, and the little murmuring sobs of the soldiers trying to stifle their anguish are sad indeed to hear.
Outside under the trees was a row of stretchers, each reverently covered with a white sheet. The General halted for a moment, as he uncovered his head. "Our dead," he murmured reverently, and then briskly, "Shall we move on?"
And thus, in the wonderful afterglow of a hot summer day, we strolled with him and beheld the man in his changing moods--General, father of his soldiers, mourner for his dead--each phase merging and emerging from the other as the different sights we saw brought them out. As we wandered casually homeward toward his quarters we passed a house before which stood a sentry. It appeared that he was guarding an Austrian captive officer. Instantly the General turned in and, entering the tiny peasant room, greeted the officer, who proved to be a mere boy, in the uniform of the lowest grade of commissioned officer. The General shook him by the hand, chatted with him for a minute or two, and then again shaking hands and saluting, said in German: "_Wohl, auf wiedersehen, mein Freund. Glücklicher Reise_," and left the Austrian standing in the dim twilight, with a look of wonder on his face. I daresay the Germans never told him that the Russian officers were like this.
III--ALONG THE BATTLE ROAD--WITH THE VICTORIOUS
The first dull gray tinge of a misty morning was in our cottage room when we rolled out of our straw beds next day. A plodding soldier sleepily rubbing his eyes gave us a bit of bread and some hot soup, and we were ready for the day's work. Around at the staff of the corps we met the Chief of Staff in slippers and without collar, standing in the door looking dreamily across the hazy landscape. He smiled genially when he saw us as he announced that our infantry had already attacked and carried the first line of the Austrian trenches on the front of his corps. Away to the west came the heavy booming of guns, muffled as in cotton by the moisture that still hung in the air.
As we talked the General in command stepped out of his room as brisk and dapper as though he had had a night's sleep (which he hadn't). His face was wreathed in smiles as he pulled on his gloves and, lighting a cigarette, stepped out onto the verandah before which stood his motor. A moment later we started, and winding our way out of the little muddy village, we were soon in among the rolling billows of hills that stretch in great sweeps in this section of the country.... Though the hour was early the whole countryside, now saturated with the life of the army, was beginning to move. In every grove artillery ammunition parks were packing up, and already caissons were pulling out on to the roads to overtake their parent batteries which already had left their positions of the night before and were pushing closer to the retiring Austrians, who had succeeded in escaping from their first line of trenches.
Every village through which we passed was crowded with reserves getting on the march to be within easy call of the front, in case the enemy made a counter-attack against the troops that had been fighting and winning during the night. With each mile of our advance the signs of life and activity became more numerous. But as we pushed with our motors through the mud we soon began to encounter the back-wash from the battlefield.
First one met a weary, mud-stained soldier with a red, dripping bandage around one hand which he nursed tenderly with his other. He was the vanguard of the column that from now on we passed for an hour. Next came groups of those wounded so slightly that they could still walk to the rear. That is, those with minor head and arm hits, which represent but a few weeks or even days out of the firing line. Behind these came the creaking peasant carts, each with its pair of tiny horses tugging along through the mud and ruts of the roads, and each loaded with wounded. Some held six or eight men that were able to sit up. All had only the first-aid bandages and most of them were deep-stained with the blood that oozed through the hastily bound dressing. The attack had been made in the pouring rain, through a marsh, and every soldier was saturated with mud, and their faces, what with dirt and the pain of their wounds, looked in the early morning light to be the shade of putty.
Next, one began to encounter the carts of heavily wounded, two in a cart lying on the straw, their eyes staring up into the misty morning sky, their expressions indifferent, stolid, and unemotional. Some clung to the sides of the carts to ease the jolting caused by the inequality of the way. Others lay as though dead, with blankets thrown over their faces. These sights, however, have become as common now as the mud of the road itself and hardly warrant description.
Now, intermingled among the carts, began to appear a sprinkling of the blue-coated Austrians, wandering aimlessly along in the general direction of the flow of traffic. Sometimes a Russian guard plodded along behind them, but more often they came quite alone. Some that were slightly wounded sat beside the road, looking at us with stupid, heavy eyes as we passed in the motor. All, even as the Russian soldiers, were plastered with mud and many saturated with gore, either their own or that of comrades they had tried to help.
IV--CAISSONS! HORSES! MEN!--DRAMA OF THE BATTLEFIELD
With every verst we moved forward the denser became the traffic, and now the flow to the rear was as heavy in volume as that going forward. Caissons that had sat beside their guns all night feeding them the shells that had breached the Austrian lines came toiling back through the deep-cut roads, the horses steaming and sweating with their exertions and the mud-plastered drivers giving them the leash and forcing them into a trot whenever it was possible to get the empty caissons over the road more speedily.
One never realized what a number of characters it takes to make up the great drama behind a battlefield. It would be possible to sit beside the way for an hour and write a volume of the strange and curious things one sees. Here a cartload of peasants that are still pushing to the rear, unconscious, perhaps, that the battle has already gone in the opposite direction. Just beyond lie the smoking embers of the village we saw blazing last night. There is hardly a chimney standing, and soon the roads will obliterate even the site of a group of what but last night was a dozen thatched peasant cottages. I noticed in the throng a Russian soldier leading a pack horse still in the Austrian harness with the quaint blinkers that the enemy use on many of their transport horses. The poor patient beast had been shot through the nose, and little rivulets of blood streamed down his velvety cheek as with plodding steps he followed the soldier who was leading him. No doubt he would be patched up again. Certainly that was the intention of the kindly peasant who now and anon looked back with a gently murmured word of encouragement to his dumb and stricken friend and prisoner. The road is narrow at that part, and we slowed down or took the side again and again to let ambulances or carts of wounded pass us.
The General called out to the passersby, wishing them good morning, or occasionally stopped to inquire of a soldier where he was during the night or how he received his wound. There is an extraordinary spirit of comradeship between them, all these Russians, as I have mentioned many times in my records of this front.
The General stopped his car and in a few minutes was receiving news of the action from his Chief of Staff, whom we left back at ----. He listened intently, and then snapped back some directions, and we pushed on out of the village on to another crest. Here we met a general of cavalry with an orderly at his heels, both incrusted with mud and dripping with wet from the brush through which they had been riding across country. Spurring his hesitant horse up to the side of the motor, he shook hands with his commander and told him gleefully that the prisoners would run into the thousands and that already six guns were in our hands. As he backed away, saluting, he narrowly escaped collision with four stolid soldiers carrying a dead man on a stretcher elevated above their shoulders. "Why this pains with a dead man?" one wondered. "War is for the living and not the dead. Most of them lie where they fall, until buried." But we were on the move again, coming nearer and ever nearer to the guns.... We are now surrounded by columns of unwounded Austrian prisoners winding back in droves that take up a mile at a time on the road. Turning a bit off the narrow ribbon we have been following, we motor up on to another crest, where is the Commander of the Division and his staff. Here is the observation point of a battalion, neatly dug out of the ridge, and men now stroll about casually in the place where it would have been instant death to show one's head four hours ago....
V--HIGH SPIRITS OF THE RUSSIAN TROOPS
The Commander of the Division, whom I knew last year at Warsaw, told gleefully of the prowess of his troops and pointed with riding-crop to the point beneath us where his men forced the river and broke the Austrian line. Everybody was in high spirits and congratulations were exchanged between the General and his officers. In a near-by wheat field were a couple of hundred blue-coated prisoners, waiting for guides to take them to the rear, while a hundred yards away were fifty sour-looking Germans, also waiting developments....
An approaching shell sang through the air and a big six-inch German shell landed in the field a few hundred yards away, throwing up clouds of dirt and heavy volumes of the greasy black smoke of the German high-explosive shell. Every one was surprised, but no one even mentioned it. I suppose it is bad taste to allude to such things.... I must say, however, that these events do not bother the Russians in the least. Nowadays generals in high command are constantly going to the positions and studying out the situation personally, regardless of risks.
After a dozen shells the firing ceased, but suddenly broke out again on a farther ridge where I suppose some observer thought he saw something moving. The General himself sat quietly down on the crest of the trench and with map spread out on his lap began to dictate orders to an orderly who, crouching at his feet, transmitted them through the field telephone. Here one saw the real control of a battle. Over the ridge there our infantry was pushing forward, each regiment unrolling behind it its field wire and every unit constantly in touch with this man lying in the wheat field who with finger on map was directing the following up of the retreating enemy. Wherever one could see a road it was black with traffic moving forward, and wherever one looked over the ridges beyond us one saw the puff of shrapnel and heard the boom and reverberations of our heavy guns and the sullen report of bursting German shells. The map with its many blue and red lines was the key to the puzzle of sound, and the streams of men and hors |
48941-8 | es moving in every direction. This one individual quietly smoking his cigarette on the hilltop, quite unperturbed by bursting shells, could by a single word divert or halt all of those endless columns that we saw. Truly is war a great and fascinating game for those whose post is not in the trenches. As for them--well, war is war.
(This American War Correspondent describes in his stories: "The Fall of Warsaw"; "The Escape from Villna"; "The Defense of Petrograd"; "The Lemberg Front," and the other Russian battle lines, with his visits to the "village of horrors," and summaries of the Russian campaigns.)
FOOTNOTE:
[10] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.
A FRENCH MOTHER IN WAR TIME
_Being the Journal of Madame Edouard Drumont, Wife of the Well-Known Editor of the Libre Parole_
_Translated by Grace E. Bevir_
This journal reveals the magnificent character and the inspired souls of the French women. Its translation will give American readers a new insight into the mentality and spirituality of the French while they are passing through their Calvary. The husband of Madam Drumont is an Imperialist in politics, while Paul, who figures largely in the journal, is her son by a former marriage. It is a beautiful tribute to mothers, showing how they rise to heights of stoical heroism: "God gives to each century the heroines it needs." These selections from the narrative are published by permission of _Longmans, Green and Company_, who represent the English publishers in America.
[11] I--PARIS--ON THE EVE OF "INEVITABLE WAR"
_July, 1914._--I have just spent a week in Paris waiting for my son, who has been doing his three weeks' training on the frontier at Belfort. I am horrified at the rumors of war which are in the air. Not that I shrink from pain, for both my father and brother were soldiers. On my father's side I am of Lorraine. Every reason, therefore, to be vigorous, and love my country with all my might; but I am so afraid that my son will not have time to finish his military training before the crisis comes, and that I shall not see him again before the war--if there is a war. This idea preys on me day and night.
And yet they say that this war which everyone loathes is inevitable! Are butchery, frightfulness, pillage, and destruction inevitable?
It is incredible that well on in the twentieth century, with civilization at its height, such monstrous iniquity should be considered "inevitable."
I have spent this week of waiting in Paris, where the feeling of feverish agitation which precedes great disasters pervades everything. The shops refuse to sell anything because they are afraid of not being able to get in fresh stock later on, everyone refuses notes, and will only take cash. The banks will give no change, and one rushes wildly about all over the place with notes for a thousand or a hundred francs in one's pocket, without being able to buy a single thing. During all this week I have been conscious of the mutterings of panic like the first rumbling of the thunder which precedes a great storm. I stay at home the whole time waiting for a wire to tell me that Paul was returning.
II--A MOTHER--AND HER SOLDIER SON
_July._--I was on the balcony about two o'clock when a car stopped in front of the house. A sapper got out of it. I uttered a cry of jubilation--it was Paul! He came up and threw himself into my arms. I remained riveted to the spot, speechless and in tears.
"Oh, Mother, Mother, I did so want to see you before the great upheaval. What luck! Well, I've seen you, and now I am ready to go when the bugle calls."
I could not speak; I was choking. I looked at this dear, big, handsome boy who is my only child, my whole life, whom I must give to France, must sacrifice perhaps to the inexorable laws of war. I felt my heart rise in revolt. I did not say anything, however, for he would have scolded me and it would have depressed him.
* * * * *
_July._--Yesterday, when we were dining together, the telephone-bell rang. We both ran to it. It was a call from the Maison B.
"Is F. there?"
"Yes."
"Ask him to come to the telephone at once."
I handed the receiver to my son, and saw that he was listening gravely and attentively. Then his face lighted up; he answered, and I guessed part of what was being said to him. I asked him:
"Is that B.?"
"Yes, Mother; he is asking me to join a squadron of the Flying Corps. Six aeroplanes are to be taken to D.; when I get there I shall be given a commission. You see, I can't refuse."
"Yes, but before that what did he say to you--when you looked so serious? There is going to be war, isn't there?"
He pursed up his mouth, which is a familiar trick of his when he wishes to hide something from me.
"My dear Mother, you think everything points to war. It is quite possible that there will be war, in fact it's almost certain, but as long as they are not actually on the frontier and it is not declared, don't take such a jaundiced view of things, for goodness' sake. B. asks me to go to Douai to make some trial flights, that's all. I gave up flying because there were no openings for civilians, and I had met with endless disappointments and mortifications at the hands of those who should have helped and encouraged me. Now these same people have sent for me; my country needs me, I'm going into the Flying Corps, and I'm off. Cheer up! be pleased about it. I am so pleased to be going to be a bird again! Pack up my things, because I must be at Douai by three o'clock to-morrow. And don't worry--the English and the Russians are in with us. What a lark!"
And I thought: Alas! a poor sort of lark.
III--TO-MORROW--WAR WILL BE DECLARED
_July._--Paul has gone, and I had scarcely time to dry my eyes when I received his call to the colors, ordering him to go to Belfort as a member of the Flying Corps.
* * * * *
And I thought of Drumont, whom I had left at Les Sablons and was to have rejoined that evening. Could I leave him alone any longer? What a torture it was to be divided between one's husband and one's child!
The telephone-bell rang. It was a friend ringing up from Paris who said:
"Go off at once to join your husband. To-morrow war will be declared...."
I was in despair and did not know what to do. I felt that my son might arrive at any minute, and that I might have gone and not be there to say good-bye to him. And this time I should be leaving Paris for good and all.
To have to leave Paris, the center of everything, and not to see Paul again because duty calls me back to the country--my God, how cruel it is! The car will take me back to Les Sablons to-night.
IV--VISION OF A FRENCH WOMAN'S HEART
_August._--The mobilization order came out yesterday, just as I was leaving Paris to join D. at Les Sablons.
The sight of the excitement in the villages, the women in tears standing spellbound before the tricolor notices, the mobilized men trudging off with their knapsacks and any sort of uniform, and young fellows singing the Marseillaise, upset me terribly.
On this scene of desolation the sun shone gloriously, indifferent to the troubles of earth, and his rays even penetrated into the car and reached me as I sat huddled up in the corner, crying bitterly.
* * * * *
_August._--The torture has begun. Yesterday evening D. was waiting for me when I arrived--knowing how upset I should be after parting with my son, he was anxious and sympathetic. We were both crying when we kissed each other.
Already we are without papers and without news. We rush after people who pass reading odd sheets, bought in neighboring towns and full of vague rumors which are generally contradicted next day. My chauffeur has gone, and my staff of servants is reduced to my Hindu and a charwoman. We often have a good cry together when we think of the beautiful country we lived in of yore, and are terrified at the thought of what may be in store for us here.
V--THE STREAM TOWARD DEATH
I am still without any news of Paul, and enduring the misery of not knowing where he is.
I particularly asked a soldier who was starting for Dijon to find out if F., the airman, was there. But will he do it?
The road to Fontainebleau passes this house, and all day long troops and horses go by, and men who have been called up and are joining their regiments, and cars bringing back others from their holidays to go to the front.
And already there is fighting on the frontier. Germany, like an octopus, has put out her tentacles to wrest from us our sons, our husbands, and our country. How monstrous a thing is war! I could not, if I would, describe my thoughts and feelings, and who would dare to do so in the midst of such desolation!
* * * * *
The continuous stream flows out towards death--soldiers pass singing and shouting, "To Berlin!" Others go by in silence, fierce-looking, and determined.
The women make superhuman efforts not to cry as they accompany them to the stations. Everything is well organized. Yesterday thirty trains went through at intervals of five minutes, all full of young men. Fontainebleau is in a ferment, so is Paris; they say that the principal hospital will be at Fontainebleau, and a whole nursing staff is being organized to attend to the first wounded who come in. A great many officers' wives have volunteered as nurses. They have put up hospital tents all round the station at Moret.
This morning I at last received news of my darling son. Alas! he has apparently been sent to Belfort. It seems the irony of fate that he who is so madly keen on aeroplanes should be sent to look after balloons, in which he takes no interest. However, Paul is brave and energetic, he is also fortunately devoid of the sort of recklessness which leads people to expose themselves uselessly. Drumont said to me the other day: "The sound common sense he inherits from you will be worth a fortune to him."
My dear boy's letter has stirred me to the very depths of my being. Day or night I will never part with the lock of his hair which we cut off just as he was going.
Since six o'clock this morning there has been an unending stream of horses and carts which have been mobilized. With incredible insolence the Germans have crossed the frontier before declaring war. Near Belfort they have rounded up all the cattle. Their plan seems to be a sudden shattering attack which will cause a panic and bring the half-finished mobilization to a standstill.
I sat in a brown study brooding over all this news, whilst poor old Black, upset by his young master's absence, wandered forlornly round me.
* * * * *
_August._--An anxious letter from Muncho--what an affectionate little thing she is, and she really does love my son, "our Paul," as she calls him. He has written to her, and she is delighted, though it is a delight largely mingled with pain.
I find on analyzing my feelings for my future daughter-in-law that I am not at all jealous of her, or afraid of any paltry rivalry between us in my son's affections. On the contrary, it seems to me that when there are two people to love him so much it should be a sort of protection to him.
* * * * *
_August._--Belgium is putting up a heroic defence--what a debt we shall owe to her! What a hero her King is, and what a fine race of men! They are amazing us by their serenity under the most crushing and undeserved misfortunes, and the way in which, at a word from their sovereign, they are sacrificing themselves for the cause they believe to be right. Our gratitude must be as great as our admiration, and we shall not forget Mr. Asquith's pledge on behalf of the Allies never to sheathe the sword while a German remains in Belgium. We, the mothers of France, offer to their noble Queen, who does her duty with such dignity and simplicity, our homage and our boundless gratitude, a gratitude proportionate to the greatness of her sacrifice.
VI--A SOLDIER'S SOUL--THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE
_August._--I have had a letter from Belfort from my son telling me that it had taken him seventeen hours to get from Paris to Belfort. There was indescribable enthusiasm in every place he passed through. The women were crying and laughing at the same time, as if they were mad, climbing up to the doors and decorating them with flowers, kissing the soldiers and filling the carriages with food and cigarettes. On all sides there were cheering and bravoes and cries of "_à bas l'Allemagne_," and "_Vive la France_"--in fact such scenes of enthusiasm as stimulate courage and awaken patriotism in hearts in which they seemed to be numb.
And now, after this long, exciting journey, Paul is alone in Belfort, with nothing to do but to guard the balloons, when all the time he is dying to be in the fighting round the town. He says, "Sometimes the thought of you and of Her seems to hover over me like two great white birds on a dark plain. It is painful but exquisitely sweet, and I drive away these two birds because they unman me."
Ah! my dear son, what a sorrow parting with you is!
* * * * *
Yesterday evening, as I was leaning out of my window, I heard a train passing, and soldiers shouting "To Berlin." Ah! God grant that they may get there! and I cried as I thought of my son: Where is he? Why can't he write to me? Is he still at the aerodrome?
This morning the butcher said to me, "There is no more beef or mutton, we have only got veal." All the better; I wish we did not have to eat at all.
* * * * *
Yesterday, as I was going to bed, about ten o'clock, one of these trains was passing down the valley. The effect was striking: I could scarcely see the carriages, there were so few lights in the train, but a plaintive sort of melody was issuing from one of them. The unending line of vans full of soldiers playing the tunes of their country as they go to their death, above them a blood-red crescent moon--it was a terrible and unforgetable sight. I shall never forget that phantom train.
Oh, my son! where are you?
* * * * *
We spent the day at the station serving out food and drink to the soldiers traveling to Paris and then on North. They were all so happy, singing and laughing and promising to bring us the Kaiser's head.
VII--STORIES OF REFUGEES--FLEEING FROM THE SAVAGE HORDE
_August._--Four days have gone by without anything interesting happening. The great battle is still impending. The Germans are as savage as ever, and news of my son comes very seldom. Fortunately his little fiancée writes to me, and her letters reach me, as they have not so far to come. These dear children lavish so much affection on me and are always assuring me how certain they are that we shall win.
* * * * *
M. C. saw at Dinant a lieutenant who had got hold of a machine-gun, and was mowing down the Germans who were appearing in fours on the summit of a hill. It required an order from a superior officer to bring that lieutenant back. He remained there alone, without thinking of the danger, and only retired when, tired of arguing, they told him, "Well, if you don't care about your life, we do care about the loss of a machine-gun."
Every moment one comes across similar acts of heroism.
* * * * *
_August._--Paul has written to me; I have his letter here. It is just like him, brave boy! Oh, I am sure that he will come back to me!
* * * * *
Old prophecies are being re-published proclaiming the fall of the German Empire. People gather together to read them aloud, and pass them on to their neighbors, like so many thirsty travelers happening on a spring of fresh water.
"Oh, yes! To see the last Prussian at his last gasp, and all due to us. What a glorious sight!" That is what we are all saying to each other in France.
These hordes of barbarians who rob the dead, kill the wounded, and fire on our ambulances; who shoot old men, women, and children, and girls when they have violated them; who cut off little boys' hands, so that they shall not fight against them later on--these monsters who have escaped from Hell will return thither or else there is no Divine justice.
The news of the atrocities committed in Belgium by the Kaiser's monsters emptied the villages in the North in a single night, and one can imagine nothing more dismal than the stream of fugitives along the roads of France. We saw them passing by our houses, coming from goodness knows where, piled up on carts with their animals, their bedding, their old men and their children, and all their household goods.
They had come through Paris, their horses almost dropping with fatigue, to seek a refuge in some friendly district, but where that would be they knew not. For the moment their only idea was to go a long, long way off to the other ends of the earth, in order to escape from the blood-thirsty hordes.
From the North right down to the South of France the roads were covered with thousands of panic-stricken refugees, in carts, in cars, in carriages, in trains, all in the wildest confusion. Many of them camped out all night, in their carts, and quite near the house there were some whom we tried to help a little. The stories they told led us also to think of flight.
One night the soldiers from the depot at Fontainebleau passed under our windows, going in the direction of Provins. An officer who is a great friend of ours had said to us, "When you see the soldiers from the depot going--go too." It was terrible.
It was a beautiful moonlight night, the regiment in extended formation marched along the Avenue des Sablons. Their measured tread purposely muffled, the slight rattling of their mess-tins against their haversacks, and from time to time a curt command given in a low voice, threw us into an agony of fear. We could not sleep: and hidden behind the Venetian blinds we and our maid spent the night in watching them.
We had tried to give the soldiers drinks, but the officers objected. I thought of all the mothers whose sons were marching through that tragic night to death, while they, poor women, were sleeping or peacefully praying for them in some far-off corner of France. I thought of my own boy, and my heart was wrung with anguish.
When day came I went to lie down, feeling crushed, all my courage gone.
The next day the Mayor sent to say that we ought to go; an enemy force was at Provins; the Germans were advancing rapidly; communications would be cut by them, and it would be wisest to be off.
I could not make up my mind to it, although all these stories filled me with terror, and Paul said in every letter, "For Heaven's sake--go!" I still shrank from the pang of leaving my house and all that was in it, and especially my animals, my dogs, my mementoes, all the links that bind one to one's home.
VIII--STORY OF THE FLIGHT BEFORE THE INVADERS
The journey, which generally takes two hours, lasted for ten. We were packed like sardines. There were all sorts of things in our carriage, from a baby's bath to a birdcage. Oh! how often we stopped between the stations! (We heard afterwards that there had been an accident on a side line, which accounted for the block and the impossibility of getting on.) The passengers kept getting out and sitting on the banks, and the children played about and amused themselves.
Trains full of soldiers, and even of wounded, were hung up like us on parallel lines. All this confusion brought home to one the panic and terror of this herd of human beings who, in order to escape from the enemy, were rushing headlong into inconceivable troubles.
On the edge of the forest of Orleans we stopped for more than an hour. By this time it was night, but the moon was shining. Another train had also drawn up, and in the moonlight, the two trains looked like long funeral processions.
The Master had not spoken since we left. With my face in my hands I was crying, and there was complete silence in the compartment. All of a sudden the most exquisite song rose on the tragic night. The voice came from the other train which had been stopped like ours near the forest. It was a man's voice, and he sang the serenade from "_La Damnation de Faust_"--"_Vous qui faites l'endormie_," etc., and this song, rendered with feeling by a musical and charming voice, lifted my spirits from gloom and my soul from despair.
How I listened to this song, which bore from the train-load of wounded the sweet message of a loving thought to some far-away sweetheart. In the moonlight in the midst of all this human misery and distress it was sublime.
Oh! love, thou art within the reach of all, and like the great sea sheddest thy glamor even within the lowliest dwelling.
I shall long remember that man's song, and his warm and vibrant southern voice.
These poetic impressions were soon obliterated at Orleans. Never shall I forget the hell that station was.... It seemed impossible to walk through that station without treading upon something or somebody. Hundreds of human beings were stretched on seats and on the ground; children were sleeping amongst bits of orange-peel and dirty pieces of paper, their mothers were squatting down beside them. Stretcher-bearers were going round with their stretchers.
All of us conceal from our neighbors our inmost thoughts, our secret wounds, our hidden dreams, our cherished illusions, and our unknown longings. And the part of us which we hide so jealously is the most real, the most essential, the most enduring. That which we offer to the outer world is only the husk and the mask!
Ah! what we mothers hide!
Yesterday at Lamballe we met a convoy of Prussian prisoners. They were going, under a strong guard, to work on the railway. At the sight of the gang my heart leapt within me. Standing up in the car I lost all control of myself, and shouted: "Bandits, savages, assassins, down with the Kaiser!" I was trembling with rage and emotion to think that here I had before my eyes those brutes who had killed women and children, girls and old men, for no reason at all--simply for the pleasure of killing.
My friends were as much moved as I was, and even after the prisoners had passed we kept on shouting, "_A bas l'Allemagne_," and "_Vive la France!_"
They marched by, unmoved, with a contemptuous and disdainful expression on their brutal faces. Only a very few of them looked as if they came from a decent class--the rest were savages. Really, when one is near them, one feels a regular surge of hate.
IX--THE BREAKING HEARTS OF THE MOTHERS OF FRANCE
_December 31._--The wintry wind is blowing keenly and violently. The year is dying, and I am thinking of those out there in the trenches who are playing at "_Qui perd gagne_." How sorrowfully they must be thinking of their loved ones! and I am thinking also of the unutterable sadness of everything around my son.
The pagans used to sprinkle lustral waters on towns defiled by inexpiable wars, to appease the anger of the gods. Who can tell us what ritual we can perform to allay the anger of God and wipe out the traces of so much blood?
What is my son doing on this last evening of the year, on this December 31st which soon will be torn from this year's calendar like the last leaf from a tree that thenceforward remains black and withered.
* * * * *
The papers are full of stories of German atrocities. The naked bodies of some women were found stripped and empaled on German bayonets near a farm, their breasts had been cut in pieces, and other unspeakable details revealed the Sadism which prevails among the Kaiser's soldiers. Is his madness infectious? and has it spread to his Army?--or are these massacres due to the brutes being drunk? A Red Cross nurse who had looked after a wounded prisoner, an officer, was warmly thanked by him several times. His thanks were charmingly expressed in excellent French. He even went so far as to promise to send her a little souvenir when he went back to his country. Soon afterwards, when he had recovered, he did go back, and the nurse thought no more about it, until one day she received a parcel from the German officer.
Rather surprised at so much politeness she eagerly undid the parcel, and nearly fainted with horror on discovering, wrapped up in tissue-papers, two baby's hands cut off at the wrist. Such monstrous behavior seems inconceivable on the part of a man of a certain class, and therefore better educated than the mass of common soldiers. A story like this sets one thinking of the mother who must have been present when her child was mutilated....
Who will ever know all the sufferings endured by Frenchwomen in these hours of terror and death brought upon them by the German war? They, too, have trodden the road to Calvary.
Surely this Kaiser must be the Anti-Christ, for he has destroyed the foundations of the old world and overthrown the pillars of modern society, and all the laws of humanity and of Christian morality. Surely the hand of God will weigh heavy upon him!
(This French mother describes heroically her experiences in Paris and at Les Sablons, with her flight to Val André, and then thanks God from the bottom of her heart that she is the "mother of Paul" and has lived in these heroic days.)
FOOTNOTE:
[11] All numerals relate to stories herein told--not to chapters in the book.
"THE FALL OF TSINGTAU"--THE WAR IN THE FAR EAST
_With the Japanese in the Orient_
_Told by Jefferson Jones, an American Civilian Eye Witness_
This American witnessed the epoch-making events in the Far East, within the lines of the Japanese Army, through a permit granted by General Kamio, Commander of the Allied Forces at Tsingtau. He describes the events with the understanding of one who has resided for many years in Japan and China, asserting that "one of the most remarkable changes to be wrought in Christendom by the greatest of wars will be found, not in Europe or in Europe's dependencies, but in the Far East"; recalling the words of Napoleon, "There lies a sleeping China. Let him sleep: for when he moves he will move the world." He has recorded his observations in a volume entitled: "The Fall of Tsingtau," in which he describes the advance of the Japanese Army; the beginning of the siege; the fleet bombarding the city; the surrender. He also discusses analytically the political and economic situations. His description of Tsingtau "After the City's Fall" is here retold by arrangement with his publishers, _Houghton, Mifflin and Company_: Copyright 1915, by Jefferson Jones.
I--STORY OF THE CONQUERED TEUTON FORT
Scenes of havoc met the eyes of the Japanese staff officers when they entered the fallen forts of Tsingtau. With dynamite and nitro-glycerine the German defenders had destroyed the guns and demolished all that might be taken by the captors as trophies of war. Along the casemate walls of the forts still lay the German and Japanese soldiers who had been killed in the final assault, while the concrete forts themselves were just a mass of shale and twisted steel rods where dynamite or falling shells had done their work.
Into the forts the Japanese filed and, collecting all the German soldiers together in lots, marched them to the barbed-wire entanglements in the rear of the city and after a short rest took them to the foot of Prince Heinrich Berg, where a prison camp had been improvised. The German officers, however, through the courtesy of the Japanese commander, were allowed to remain in Tsingtau.
The courtesy of the Japanese, for which the Orient is already famous, received an excellent demonstration in the surrender of Tsingtau. General Kamio, commander-in-chief, realizing that to march his victorious troops through the city of Tsingtau would throw the residents into much confusion and disorder, made the direct surrender appear like a capitulation on terms. All German officers, including Governor-General Meyer-Waldeck, were allowed to go about Tsingtau at their freedom after the surrender, and General Kamio at once posted orders that only the Japanese staff officers would be allowed to enter the city for several days. Japanese pickets were placed along the roads outside of the city to see that this regulation was enforced.
For several days, then, while the Japanese troops were quartered in Moltke and Bismarck Barracks in the rear of Tsingtau, and the British force was also in German barracks, the residents of Tsingtau were given free opportunity to recover from their besieged life without being ruffled by the sight of marching and quartered troops.
During that period between the surrender of the Tsingtau forts and November 16, when the British and Japanese expeditionary forces made their triumphal entry into the city, the Japanese officers busied themselves in the final preparations for the transfer of the German possessions into the hands of Dai Nippon. The rest of the troops spent the days in examining the Tsingtau forts and gradually the "whyfore" of their surrender was answered.
On Iltis Fort were mounted six twelve-centimeter guns, two of which had been captured from the French in the siege of Paris in 1871. On the left of this battery and toward the rear of the fort had been placed four twenty-eight-centimeter mortars, while two 10.5-centimeter guns cast in 1889, which had seen service in the siege of Taku in 1900, made up the remainder of the fort's equipment.
Bismarck Fort, to the left of Iltis, seemed to be the most strongly fortified of any of the Tsingtau defenses. Besides four twenty-eight-centimeter howitzers and two twenty-one-centimeter guns, it contained the Tsingtau battery of four fifteen-centimeter guns.
At Moltke Fort, on the bay side of the city, the German garrison had mounted two fifteen-centimeter guns stripped from the Austrian cruiser _Kaiserin Elisabeth_, a field battery of ten pieces, three field howitzers, and several small guns taken from the second-class German gunboats and cruisers that had been allowed to be bottled up in the Bay of Kiaochow.
The two German forts which commanded the sea approaches were Huit-chien-huk and Tscha-nui-va. The first was equipped with two twenty-four-centimeter guns and three fifteen-centimeter guns, while the latter's equipment consisted of two twenty-one-centimeter guns which had been taken from the Chinese Taku forts in 1900.
The German garrison at Tsingtau at the opening of the war, knowing that their surrender was inevitable, had made all plans to keep as far as possible all trophies of war from falling into the enemy's hands after surrender. The result was that early on the morning of the 7th, after the Japanese infantry had gained the redoubt walls, all preparations were made by the garrison for destroying the guns.
The breech-block of each was wound with nitro-glycerine and dynamite was placed in the cannons up to the muzzle edge. The white flag was the signal. A few minutes later, when the Japanese forces swarmed the forts, they found the place a mass of wreckage. Big twenty-four-centimeter guns were split in two as evenly and neatly as if they had been cut by a jack-knife, while one hundred or more yards distant could be found all that remained of the breech-block. The four twenty-eight-centimeter mortars on Iltis had been dynamited and just a mass of twisted steel and splintered plates remained.
On Bismarck and Moltke Forts, many of the guns had been backed in against the sandbag walls and dynamited on their carriages. The discharge had left the place scattered with the broken pieces of the carriages and split sandbags. The guns in the majority of cases had fallen down to the foot of the casemate walls. The explosions of the dynamite also appeared to have wrecked adjacent walls, for the concrete work about the gun-stands seemed to be so much shale. Exposed to sight were the steel pipes and wire used in the construction of the forts, all twisted and broken.
This desire to keep trophies of war from the hands of the enemy was not confined alone to guns. From the various post-offices German officials gathered the colony's issue of postage stamps and all were burned. Men had evidently been detailed to handle the storehouses, for all about them I found large cans of corned beef, sausages, milk, saurkraut and German delicacies opened and lying in heaps, their contents untouched.
All valuable papers in the vaults of Government buildings that contained military secrets or maps of fortifications throughout the Far East, were also made way with; in fact the German garrison left little that the Japanese could boast about, except the city of Tsingtau itself.
As officially given out by the War Office, the Japanese forces had a total of 142 guns on the firing line. They consisted of six 28-centimeter howitzers, 72 other siege guns of 15-and 24-centimeters, 18 mountain guns, 36 field pieces, and eight 4.7 and 6-inch guns of the marine detachment.
According to figures given me by General Kamio, the total active fighting force of the Japanese during the siege was 20,000 men, while the British expedition force consisted of 925 regulars, with a regiment of 300 Sikhs.
Opposing them was the German force of 4,500 men, more than 700 of whom were sick or wounded or captured before the actual siege started.
Among the criticisms directed against the defenders of Tsingtau, which I heard after the surrender, especially in the British camp, was that the Germans fired away great quantities of ammunition at the beginning of the bombardment of the fortifications so that, with their supply exhausted, an excuse for the surrender could be made. In proof of this they referred to the large number of shells which fell daily about the Japanese forces while they were getting the big siege guns into position. The estimate of "more than two thousand German shells in twelve hours' firing with no casualties to the Japanese or British forces," was further evidence given.
II--THE GERMAN OFFICER'S TALE OF THE SIEGE
On my first trip into Tsingtau I met a German officer in the Prince Heinrich Hotel, who had taken part in the siege, and questioned him as to the truth of the statement.
"Maybe that is what they say, but the facts are the garrison had expected Tsingtau to fall sooner than it did. Our heavy artillery fire was not kept up for the purpose of throwing away our shells,--it would have been less dangerous to have dropped them in the bay,--but solely to do as much damage to the Japanese as possible before the assault on the fortifications could be made. We regulated our fire with the one purpose of covering the country with shells before they had a chance to get under cover. When they attempted to mount their siege guns at the start of the bombardment their forces were exposed to us. We could see their ammunition columns and supply wagons rolling up on open roads and, by spreading our fire about the valley, we were attempting solely to postpone the fall of Tsingtau as much as possible by hindering the allied forces in their work."
The officer then went on to tell me of the ruse Lieutenant Trendel, manager of the Wagonlits Hotel at Peking, who took part in the siege, played on the Japanese. Trendel was in command of a battery of six old nine-centimeter ships' guns which were in an exposed position on a ridge near Iltis Fort. This battery received a fire from both the ship and land guns, and the men could be seen on the first day of the bombardment building bomb-proofs in the dust and smoke from exploding shells.
In the night Lieutenant Trendel put up wooden guns, roughly shaped from beams, at a distance of two hundred yards from his own guns. In the morning, he exploded powder near them to give an appearance of firing from them. By this ruse he diverted the Japanese fire and saved all his men, dynamiting his guns before the surrender.
Governor-General Waldeck, after the surrender, made the following statement as to the bombardment:--
The combatant force at Tsingtau did not amount to more than forty-five hundred. The permanent garrison consisted of eighteen hundred men nominally, but was, in reality, about two hundred short. Some of those under arms were mere boys. Each fort was defended by about two hundred men.
The Tsingtau guns were mostly weapons captured from the Boxers during their rebellion, or trophies of the Franco-German War, and were no match for modern arms. The Huichuan and Bismarck Forts, however, had some modern pieces. Altogether there were, for the defense, about sixty guns and a hundred machine guns.
The Iltis fort was guarded by sixty men. The Japanese in their assault charged up under a hot fire as if unconscious of their danger, and gained the position before the defenders could call reinforcements.
The Bismarck and Moltke Forts were also taken by a charge, but for the most part the Japanese conducted their attack under cover of their trenches, and concealed themselves so well that the most searching German fire could not stop their advance. At length the supply of ammunition ran out, and further defense was futile. I thought the Japanese casualties would be very heavy, as they fought bravely and charged desperately, and I estimated their loss at five to six thousand. I have been astonished to learn that the loss in killed and wounded amounts to only seventeen hundred. They certainly showed remarkable skill in taking cover.
Tsingtau was not an ideal fortification, such as Antwerp. Strictly speaking, it was merely a defended position. As possible enemies in the Far East, Germany had calculated only on England, France and Russia. It was quite unexpected that the blow would come from so good a friend as Japan.
The fire from the Japanese squadron was not so furious as to cause any great inconvenience, except once when a shell landed in the Huichan Point Fort, killed thirteen and severely wounded three. In respect of accuracy of range the fire of the British cruiser _Triumph_ was inferior to that of Japanese ships. The land fire, however, was terrible. A perfect rain of shells fell on the Bismarck, Iltis, and Hsiaochau Forts, and the central batteries suffered severely. One of them received as many as a hundred shells, and it was death to leave the trenches for an instant.
Two days after the surrender I was able to get through the picket line thrown about the rear of the city of Tsingtau, and could observe better just what damage had been done to the city during the seven days of bombardment.
III--WAR'S TYPHOON IN THE CITY
The city appeared as if a typhoon had passed through it. Its wide asphalt and macadamized streets, fronted by beautiful four- and five-story buildings of German architecture, were vacant. Giant shells, some three feet long and a foot in diameter, were lying about on sidewalk and street still unexploded. Trees, splintered at their bases, lay toppled over in the avenues. Windows in the houses were shattered, while gaunt holes in the sides of buildings, where shells had torn their way, made the residence blocks appear to be gasping for air.
Out in the harbor could be seen the spars of the _Rickmers_ and two or three other German freighters, which had been sunk at the opening of hostilities about the city, while farther out in the channel was the grave of the Austrian cruiser, _Kaiserin Elisabeth_, which had been sunk by the Germans.
The whole scene seemed one of devastation. Streets deserted of people, show-fronts of stores completely gone, as was also the merchandise, harbors deserted of ships, and not even a sign of a ricksha to remind you of the Orient.
Such was Tsingtau as I first saw it two days after its surrender. But for the continual sight of the Rising Sun flag flapping from every peak in the rear of the city, as well as from every Government building, and its message of "occupied," one would have thought Tsingtau a city deserted.
WITH MY REGIMENT--BRITONS ON THE FIELD OF HONOR
_Fighting from the Aisne to La Bassée_
_Told by a "Platoon Commander"_
This is the inspiring story of a typical British soldier. "I was staying in a large house by the banks of the Thames when we heard the news of the War," he relates. "My hostess was the mother of soldiers. She took the news calmly, as the mother of soldiers do; said good-bye to her eldest boy, who was to go with the first troops who left England, arranged for the outfit of her two second sons, and sent for her baby from Eton, who she saw dispatched to the Royal Military College. It was a great house to be in on the outbreak of War--a house whose sons to the third and fourth generation had built up the British Empire, and which now, when the Empire was called upon to fight for its life, stood firm and undismayed." This platoon commander tells his experiences in a book entitled "With My Regiment." Many of his stories have appeared in the _Westminster Gazette_, _The English Review_, and _The London Standard_. Some of them are reproduced here by permission of his American publishers, _J. B. Lippincott Company_, of Philadelphia.
I--STORY OF THE OLD WOMAN AT THE AISNE
We were moved to the village very suddenly. There was no reason that we could see for the move. However, this transpired later. It was getting dusk when we reached the village. A and C Companies were sent at once up to the firing-line, and B and D Companies were lined along a ditch in support. The ditch had been prepared for habitation by the regiment who had held it before. At one point they had thrown some boards across the ditch and made a house underneath. This proved a very welcome shelter when later it came on to rain. We lay in the ditch for an hour or two listening to the last shells before nightfall, from one of our heavy batteries, singing overhead. The shells were sent in groups of three, and we could plainly hear each, whizz-whizz-whizz, chasing each other through the air, perhaps not more than twenty yards apart. We were comfortable enough where we were, and idly speculated on what errand of destruction the shells were bent. They sounded nasty great things to have coming in the wrong direction, and we wished the Germans joy of them.
About eight I felt hungry, and got out of the trench to have a look round. I had two tins of Mc'Conochie in my haversack, which I put in a pan of boiling water. Across a field to the front I saw a farm, and decided to go over and explore. In the field there were two or three curious heaps of straw, which proved to be the burial piles of dead cows, killed by shell fire, and covered over by the farmer in this rather ineffective fashion. The cows were getting smelly, and I did not stay long looking at them. I found the farm occupied by two old men and an old woman. One of the old men, over eighty, they told me, had taken to his bed and lain there with the shutters up for three days. He was half-dead from fright, and could not be induced to move. The old woman said they had had Germans billeted in the farm a week before. They had treated her and her old husband none too gently, driving them out of the house while they made soup in her cauldron. She had managed to hide one or two little bits of bread, and was making supper off a crust and some coffee. She put the fire at my disposal for getting supper ready for Goyle and the other officers in the company. They all came across a quarter of an hour later, Evans with a great possession--a tin of cocoa. There was plenty of milk to be had from the farm--indeed, it was a godsend to the old people to get a man to milk their cows--and we soon had a beautiful jug of thick, steaming cocoa. We then prepared the Mc'Conochie, and what proved to be our last meal all together was a good one.
II--WOUNDED--SCENES IN A NIGHT ATTACK
It was getting late when we had finished, and we had to hurry back to the support trench. On the way, as I was going along at a quick trot, I came head over heels over a big object and nearly impaled myself on a spike. Apart from the smell of the cow, it was really most dangerous lying out there at night-time, and I sent a party of men back to bury it.
The trenches we were to take over lay just beyond the village along the crest of a slope. The section my company was responsible for ran just in front of three haystacks. A company extended away to our right, and the Dorchester Regiment continued the line to our left. The officer of the regiment we were relieving said to me: "You see those stacks--well, I should keep clear of them; the enemy have them set." I nodded, very tired at finding myself back in the firing-line, where we had been almost continuously for ten days, and not particularly interested in what the enemy had set or what they had not. In fact, as soon as I had seen the men distributed along the trench, and had given one or two orders about its improvement, I made straight for the centre stack, pulled as much hay as I could out of the side of it, rolled myself up, and went to sleep.
I was awakened by a sharp blow in the back. Looking up I saw Evans drawing his foot back to give me a second and harder kick.
"Get up, you blithering fool," he said; "your men are out all over the place."
I jumped to my feet, and, fastening my belt as I ran, dashed for the trench. I owed a lot to Evans for waking me. As Evans said, the men were all walking about outside the trench. I got them in immediately, and was preparing to follow when I thought of my bed, and went off to fetch it. One never knew when the next chance of leaving the trench might come. I was bending down, gathering a good armful of hay, when there was a report, a sensation like red-hot iron running through one, followed by acute pain, and I pitched head-forward into the hay. I had been hit. Very frightened and hurt, I crawled as fast as I could round to the side farthest from the enemy and sat down. I examined my wounds--a bullet through each leg. The shots were low down and did not look very serious. They hurt infernally, and I made a mental note to call the next man who said he never noticed he had been hit in the heat of an action a liar. I examined the wounds. Were they serious enough to warrant a visit to the field-dressing station and a possible return to England? I hoped devoutly they were. An attempt to stand soon satisfied me, and I fell down again, much relieved. All these thoughts were a matter of seconds; in the meanwhile there was a good deal going on round the stack. An enemy battery was playing round it with high-explosive shrapnel. The shells burst first one side, then the other, in front, behind, in all directions. The noise was deafening, and the lead in the air was just like a hailstorm; however, it was a stout stack, and kept me dry, though I confess I doubted getting away alive. After a few minutes the firing stopped, and, throwing myself on my side, I rolled as fast as I could for a support trench. I pitched head-first into the trench and landed on the top of two privates who were sheltering in the bottom expecting more shrapnel over at any minute. They were not expecting me, and thought their last hour had come when I fell on top of them. Getting our breath, we all three cursed each other. Then, seeing I was an officer, they became respectful. I explained I was wounded, and they helped me off with my puttees and bound up the wounds with the first-aid bandage which I ripped from my coat. In the meanwhile word was sent back for stretcher-bearers. As the firing had stopped these came up immediately, lifted me out of the trench, put me on a stretcher, and started off with me. We had to go down a road in full view of the enemy. For some providential reason they never fired at us, though I was about the last wounded man to be brought down that road. Halfway down the road the stretcher-bearers began to show signs of feeling my weight. I coaxed them on a few more yards, but when they came to the lee of a cottage they put me down and shook their heads; another bearer came to the rescue, and with the extra help the party proceeded. A hundred yards more brought us to a cottage which was being used as a field-dressing station. The cottage was beginning to fill, and wounded men lay about all over the floor.
"Oh, Gawd! Oh--! ----ooh!!"
"Shut up, can't yer?" a man shouted from the far corner of the room.
"I've got a 'ole in me big enough to put yer 'and in," the sufferer explained, and began again to groan and swear.
"Got a cigarette, mate?" A man deathly pale on a stretcher held out his hand to a comrade who was slightly wounded and standing beside him. The latter extricated a Woodbine from a crumpled packet and passed it down. The man on the stretcher lit the cigarette and puffed at it phlegmatically. It was doubtful whether he would live, and though he did not know this, he knew he must not have anything to eat or drink for many hours.
III--THE DOCTORS AND THE STRETCHER BEARERS
About fifteen or twenty of us were lying on the floor of a cottage. Outside, four or five hundred yards up the street, a lively fight was in progress for the possession of the village. After the firing-line the cottage seemed a haven of peace and safety.
"Hullo, they've got you."
"Morning, Doctor."
A young fellow, fresh from his training at a hospital, was standing beside me. He was our regimental doctor, and I'd always thought of him as a lucky fellow who rode on a horse when we were on the march, and got his rations regularly at all times, and during a scrap enjoyed the security of the extra few hundred yards which he was supposed to have between his dressing-station and the firing-line. Well, here he was to look after me, anyhow.
"Got a bit of work to do to-day, Doctor," I said as he bound me up.
"Yes," he answered, adjusting a blanket as a pad under me, "there, just keep in that position and the bleeding will soon stop." He turned to the man next me.
"I've got some across the way, too," he said, as the orderly handed him fresh bandages. "They've been shelling the poor beggars, knocking all the slates off the roof."
As he spoke some shrapnel crashed against the roof of our cottage, sending a few tiles rattling to the ground. The doctor looked up.
"I think we're all right here," he said. "We've got a double roof. I always try to pick a cottage with a double roof. But those poor devils over the way are getting awful scared; I think I'll slip across to them."
The bit of road he had to "slip across" was catching most of the shells which the cottage did not, and was also the channel for a steady stream of rifle and machine-gun fire. I began to see there wasn't much in it, whether one was a doctor or a platoon commander.
More especially did I realize a doctor's difficulties when, later in the day, just as our doctor had finished looking at my dressings, a message came that the field-dressing station belonging to the regiment on our left had been set alight by a shell. He hastily organized a party of stretcher-bearers and orderlies and went off at once. Later he came back. He said it had been terrible to see the wounded lying helpless in the barn waiting for the flames, but somehow they had managed to rescue all and move them to a safer place, though the whole operation had to be carried out under rifle and shell fire. Each time a regiment is seriously engaged with the enemy at least 100 men are hit, often four times the number. The regimental doctor is supposed to bind up each one of these, and often when times are slack and a stray man here or there gets hit he will be sent for to come up to the trenches.
"'Allo, Jock," loud greetings were shouted by every one in the room to a little man standing in the doorway with a bandolier across his chest and rifle with bayonet still fixed. He was a grubby little fellow, with blood and mud caked all down his cheek, ragged clothes, and--as I had seen as he came up the cottage steps--a pronounced limp. It was Private Mutton, scallawag, humorist, and well-known character in the regiment.
"Yus, they got me," he said in answer to inquiries, "fro' me calf," he pointed to his leg, "and right acrost the top of me 'ead"--he raised his cap and showed where a bullet had parted his hair, grazing the scalp. "But I give the bloke somethink what did it." Private Mutton grinned at his bayonet. "Got 'im fair, right fro' 'is stomick."
I could not help feeling delighted, for I recognized in the muddy, gory, highly-pleased-with-himself little man the original of Thomas Atkins, of whose doings along the Indian frontier I had read thrilling accounts by Mr. Kipling, and whose quaint mannerisms I had often laughed at as represented on the stage of music-halls at home....
At 9 P.M. the ambulances came up.
The doctor went round quickly attending to each man. He bound up my wounds afresh and had me carried into an inner room. I lay there all day, and never shall I forget the experience. I could see nothing except a bit of the wall on the opposite side of the street. But I could hear. Just after I had been brought in fresh firing broke out. Rifle fire this time, sharp and insistent. Then there was a sound of stamping feet, and I heard an officer rallying the men at the corner of the street. The firing continued all day and sometimes seemed to rage almost at the door of the cottage. I gathered that the Germans were attacking the village in masses, and that it was touch-and-go whether we could hold out. Sometimes there would be a rush of men outside the window, and I would look to see if the pale grey uniform was there or if khaki still held the place. Every now and then a shower of shrapnel struck the roof of the cottage, and tiles went rattling to the road. All the while a section of our artillery fired incessantly. How gallant those guns of ours sound--Boom-boom-boom. They were fighting to their last shell. If the village went, they went with it. No horses could be brought up to draw them away in such an inferno. The doctor worked on quietly. His work extended now to houses on the left and right. He said it was terrible to see the fear of death on the faces of men shot through the stomach. He found time once to have a cup of tea with me and smoke a cigarette. Night began to fall and the room grew dark. I was glad of his company for five minutes. We were in the same boat, he told me--if the Germans got the village he was going to stay behind with the wounded.
At half-past five Evans came in with a smashed arm.
"Goyle has gone," he said. "He was hit twice before during the day. He was holding out with a few men there and got a third through the chest which did him. Edwards was shot through the knee, and we had to leave him. All the company officers are down. A company has been surrounded and cut off. Whew! you can't live out there." As he spoke the firing swelled to a din unequalled through the day. We heard shouts and curses. The Germans were making a final tremendous effort to break through.
"Our boys may do it," said Evans, "but there are not many left." I lay back against the wall, pulled out a cigarette, and threw one to Evans. We could only wait. Suddenly outside we heard a stamp of feet, a hoarsely yelled order, "Fix bayonets!" another word of command, and a mass of men rushed past the window up the street, cheering madly.
"That's the ----s," cried a stretcher-bearer, who came in excitedly. "They have been sent up from the reserve."
The doctor came in. "We've got two more regiments up; we shall be all right now," he said.
For a moment the firing continued, then died down. Night came and found us still holding the village, and at ten o'clock the ambulance took us away.
THE STORY OF COUNT SEILERN
_A Tragedy of the Hapsburgs_
Assassinations, abductions, and scandals of every kind loom large in the records of the reigning Austrian house, and many of its crimes have not yet come to light, as this amazing story proves. But for the confession of an Austrian prisoner of war, anxious to relieve his mind of the burden that oppressed it, this latest instance of Hapsburg treachery would never have been heard of beyond the precincts of the Hofburg. "Le Matin," the well-known French newspaper, first drew attention to this officer's extraordinary story, which is here set forth in full, and as nearly as possible in his own words. It is a tragic tale indeed, a tale of love and duplicity in high places, which he told to the _Wide World Magazine_.
I--STORY OF THE VENETIAN NOBLEMAN
The first time I met Count Seilern and became acquainted with the anteccedents of this brilliant young officer, the heir of a noble Viennese family, was during the summer of 1914, whilst I was undergoing a cure at one of the Austrian spas, which, owing to my desire to remain as anonymous as possible, I will leave unnamed. We were both members of an international club, run by an American, who offered his patrons "all the usual casino attractions to be found elsewhere." True, there was neither roulette nor _trente-et-quarante_, but, under the cloak of a long list of subsidiary and innocent beguilements, such as golf, tennis, and pigeon-shooting, the game of baccarat flourished in a manner that bore a very respectable similarity to the famous allurements of the great French Riviera resort.
It was here--one evening in mid-June--that I was introduced to Count Seilern, and that he offered to introduce me as a member of the inner _cercle_.
Nothing is so revelatory of a man's character as his attitude under the temptations of the gaming-table. I have gambled many times, but have always known when to respond to the promptings of the spirit of prudence and leave off. I gambled at C----, but only until the moment when I considered I had paid a sufficiently high entrance-fee for the privilege of studying my fellow-clubmen in general and Count Seilern in particular.
This new acquaintance of mine attracted me from the very first. In spite of the weakness of his character, which was evident all the more clearly the longer he played, it was impossible for anyone of education and refinement not to like him. There was something even in the manner in which he coquetted with the Goddess of Chance which compelled one's admiration.
A little less than a week later I was in a position to judge the character of my new friend infinitely better. Personal observation had taught me that he could be both chivalrous and generous. I noted more than once that, however reckless he might be at times, there were moments when he could give himself up to day-dreams and calm reflection. This was to me a puzzling problem of his personality until, almost simultaneously with these early days of our acquaintanceship, fresh light came from certain brother officers, who volunteered to put me _au courant_ with details concerning his private life which were known only to the innermost circle of Viennese society.
These new facts, which explained so much that had hitherto been vague or unintelligible, were as fuel added to the fire of my imagination. Count Seilern suddenly became, in my eyes, a hero of romance. Yet I cannot say that it was wholly admiration which now filled me. An indescribable feeling of pity, mingled with fear, came over me whilst I was listening, strolling one afternoon under the trees in the admirable park of C----, after drinking the regulation number of glasses of water from my favourite spring, to the first of those startling disclosures.
"There goes the man who is playing with fire," said my companion, as Count Seilern's well-known olive-green car, with himself at the wheel, glided past us and disappeared round a curve of the road leading to the golf-links.
"Has he been losing heavily again?" I asked.
"Possibly. But I'm not referring to his proclivity to waste time and money at the International. There are far more ways than that by which a man may play with fire, and if gaming were the Count's only little diversion, many a mind in his family--one of the oldest in Austria, you know--would be set at rest. Whatever losses he may have, the means to meet them will always be more than sufficient, for the Seilerns possess untold wealth. It is for that reason, I suppose, that the Count aspires so high. No, the particular danger which threatens him is of a wholly different order to the one you have in mind. It is a case, my friend, of '_cherchez la femme_.' But surely you know of that last winter's affair of his?"
"Not a word reached my ears. I was away from Vienna, on a mission, the whole of last winter."
"I see. Well, now I come to think about it, you might not have heard anything if you'd been there, for the affair was kept very quiet, and those in the secret were pledged not to mention the lady's real name. When I tell you that she is a young Archduchess, closely related to the Archduchess Maria Theresa, and the victim of a most unfortunate marriage, you will understand what I mean by referring to Seilern playing with fire."
"Oh, ho! so that's it? And you are certain he is still infatuated with the lady?"
"Absolutely, unfortunately for him. But let me tell you all about it from the beginning."
II--TRAGEDY OF THE AUSTRIAN ARCHDUCHESS
The story of the young Archduchess Valeria--to give her the fictitious name my informant used, and which is now doubly necessary--is one that has been encountered before in the annals of the Royal Family of Austria.
When the time came for her marriage, those who jealously watch over the conservation of the so-called purity of the Royal blood, carefully chose a husband and--naturally, against her will--united her to a man fully twelve years her senior. Had this been his only disqualification to be the husband of so young and charming a creature as the Archduchess Valeria, she would have had less reason to complain.
Alas! it was not long before she found he was one of the most abject personages who ever crawled within the shadow of the throne of the Hapsburgs. He was a degenerate, in every sense of the word, and possessed a most unenviable reputation.
Into the details of his career I will not enter, as my outspoken informant did, but enough has been said to enable you to form an idea of the married life of the Archduchess Valeria--if, indeed, that adjective can be applied to an existence in which cruelty, drink, and debauchery played so large a part on the husband's side.
Is it surprising that, childless as she happily was, and still sufficiently young and unbroken in spirit to hope for happier days, the Archduchess turned her eyes longingly elsewhere and encountered those of Count Seilern? There are some who contend that the idyll dated from the days before her marriage, and a tale went the rounds of aristocratic circles that the young Count first made the Archduchess's acquaintance when he was a military student and she little more than a schoolgirl. But that may well be the embroidery which is often added to undoubted facts, and these, for which the speaker said he could personally vouch, were briefly as follows:
Count Seilern, whose family relations gave him many opportunities of seeing the Archduchess, had entered on a sentimental and clandestine intrigue with her. They had corresponded for some time and seen each other repeatedly before their attachment was discovered. Suspicions having been aroused, the Archduchess's correspondence had been intercepted and the truth made known not only to the husband but to the Emperor Francis Joseph himself. The aged ruler, who had helped to plan the marriage, fell into a fit of anger on hearing of this "fresh attempt to smirch the honour of his family"--an outburst so violent that fears were entertained that it might have a bad effect on his precarious health. It would undoubtedly have gone ill with Count Seilern but for two considerations: a knowledge of the disreputable character of the Archduchess Valeria's husband, whose escapades could only be kept hidden from the public by suppressing the scandal, and the powerful influence which the Count possessed, not only in his own family and society _milieu_, but even in certain sacrosanct circles of the Court itself. So the terrible old man, raging in his heart over the ever-recurring evidence of the moral laxity of his own flesh and blood, decided to let Count Seilern off with a simple warning, dexterously brought to his notice, and to give orders that the Archduchess and her correspondence should in future be kept under strict supervision.
A means was found of separating the lovers. Count Seilern's military superiors sent him off on a mission lasting several months--a mission whose real object was self-evident to the young officer; the Archduchess's husband suddenly developed a desire for Italian travel and dragged his wife with him. Thus were the lovers' hopes crushed. But only for a time. Once more, through mutual friends, they found a means of occasional correspondence, and thus kept alive the hope that, some day, an odious marriage would be brought to an end--by death or otherwise, they cared not which--and that then their union would be made possible.
"That is the stage," continued my friend, "at which we find Count Seilern to-day. He and she are simply waiting. But they are, as it were, prisoners, whose movements are watched, whose correspondence is liable to be read by the 'Cabinet Noir' of Vienna, and concerning whom anything suspicious may be reported to headquarters. As regards the consequences of any indiscretion, the Archduchess, owing to her rank, has less to fear than the Count. Had the _rôles_ been reversed, Francis Joseph might have set things straight, as he did in the case of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand, by granting permission, under certain conditions, for a morganatic marriage. But this is a case in which a male 'outsider' dares to aspire to set the rigourous 'family law' of the reigning house at defiance--and the very idea of such a thing is, you know, abhorrent to the Emperor. Hence the danger which continually hangs over the head of this really splendid man. It is devoutly to be hoped that he will exercise extreme prudence and avoid the snares which our police are capable of setting for him at the instigation of the crafty and fanatical man who rules over us. But I fear that Seilern's headstrong nature will some day play him false."
The premonitory signs of the whirlwind which was to sweep us all off our feet towards the end of the following month completely threw this conversation into the background of my mind. Everything in the social world of C---- suffered an eclipse through the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his morganatic wife.
III--FIRST RUMBLES OF GREAT WAR IN VIENNA
We military men, acquainted with the aspirations of the Austrian General Staff, knew only too well the far-reaching effect the crime of Sarajevo was likely to have. Our sole interest became the crisis, our sole topic of conversation from morning until night the probability of war. The baccarat rooms of the International Club were deserted, and it was the same with all other amusements and recreations. Only a few English and American enthusiasts continued to frequent the golf-links and the tennis-courts, apparently oblivious of the volcano on which they were dallying. The arrival of the whirlwind itself--the mobilization order and the certainty that the first shots in the great war would soon be fired--speedily aroused them from their apparent indifference. Then came the sudden emptying of the hotels, the rush of panic-stricken visitors to the station, and our own precipitate departure for Vienna and the Staff headquarters. Can one be astonished at the fact that the petty private affairs of Count Seilern and the Archduchess Valeria were momentarily obliterated by the great world-drama in which we were to play our respective parts?
More than four months had elapsed since the outbreak of war. The approach of Christmas found us on the battlefield and, alas! as far from our goal as on the occasion when we officers of the General Staff, assembled on the eve of our departure for the Front, raised our glasses and drank to the day of victory. All hope of a short campaign had gone for ever. Being now a prisoner of war, I can confess to my feelings of those days without the slightest compunction, and frankly admit that, despite our undoubted military successes, I was a disappointed man. How could my mental attitude be otherwise when I sat down and calmly compared the early weeks of the war with the existing situation?
Candidly, I was full of disillusionments, and to add still more to my wretchedness in the little Hungarian village where we were stationed, certain personal grievances weighed heavily upon me. Picture a soldier of my active and imaginative temperament, who had lived for weeks in the hope of participating in the glory of battle, being forced to live that quasi-military life somewhere at the back of the Front.
I was not the only one who felt the monotony of that existence, made up of receiving and transmitting reports, coding and deciphering messages, poring over maps, and otherwise taking part in the office work of the General Staff. Some of my brother-officers were perhaps more patient and philosophic than I was, but I am convinced there was not one of them who, at the bottom of his heart, was not heartily sick of this vegetating life at the end of the telegraph wires, far from the actual scenes of operations.
But I am wandering a little from my story, and mentioning my brother-officers brings me back to the main theme. Whom do you think--to the infinite satisfaction of a man yearning for congenial society, no less than to his great surprise--they included? Of all people in the world, no other than Count Seilern!
Retrospection--backed up by a nature essentially fatalistic--forces me to the conclusion that I was destined to meet this man again and to play a prominent part in his life. How can one set down to a mere coincidence that second meeting and the blossoming of our acquaintanceship of the International Club of C---- into a close friendship, any more than one can think that it was due to mere chance that I should then have learnt so much (for my future guidance) relating to his private history, in which, again, I was to be, in such strange circumstances, both actor and historian?
Since Fate, then, has made me the historian of this tragic tale, let me come at once to the facts and so relieve my mind of some part of the burden which I fear will always oppress it.
Count Seilern held the rank of first lieutenant of cavalry. Being the bearer of one of the noblest names in Austria, he benefited by a certain amount of protection. His duties were much less onerous than ours, but on that account the monotony of his existence must have been all the greater. More than once, indeed, he confessed to me how much he felt it. Coupling certain remarks of his with information which came to me from a sure source, I saw clearly the principal reason which, as Christmas drew near, made him sadder and sadder. It was evident that he was filled with an ardent desire to see the Archduchess Valeria once more. Taking advantage of the unsettled state of the nation's affairs, the lovers had found a means of once more corresponding with each other freely, and, as was shortly to be proved to us, of concocting one of the most daring of plans.
It was undoubtedly the fertile brain of the Archduchess Valeria which conceived a means of putting the much-relaxed vigilance of the Court authorities off the scent. All difficulties were removed by her patience and veritable genius for intrigue. On the plea of taking an active part in war work, she succeeded in severing all relations with her ignoble consort, and--having obtained a first-class training as a nurse--secured an engagement in a Red Cross hospital train circulating in the very sector, at the rear of the armies, where we were stationed.
IV--THE DRAMATIC LOVERS' MEETING IN THE HOSPITAL TRAIN
At last the day arrived when a meeting between the lovers was possible. It was but a week to Christmas (according to the eye-witness who related these dramatic incidents to me) when, one morning, the hospital train stopped at the nearest station to the headquarters of the Army of the Carpathians. Count Seilern was waiting on the platform. He mounted into one of the compartments. The train, naturally, contained neither sick nor wounded men--only her Royal Highness, accompanied by a small and discreet suite. Nobody had been told of her presence, not even the Chief of Staff himself, General Conrad von Hoetzendorf.
The interview lasted a long time, and it was, doubtless, whilst the lovers were forgetting the fleeting hours that some diligent spy went to inform the General. Before the train continued on its journey, the Archduchess Valeria descended on to the platform to spend the last few minutes with the Count. Suddenly Conrad von Hoetzendorf appeared on the scene and immediately recognized her Royal Highness, in spite of the simplicity of her Red Cross nurse's uniform.
"I shall never forget that scene as long as I live," said my informant; "a scene rendered all the more dramatic owing to the fact that its opening passed without a word being spoken. General Conrad von Hoetzendorf, in the presence of a scandal for which he might be rendered responsible, went white with anger. After making a well-nigh imperceptible bow to the Archduchess Valeria--who almost at once bade the Count adieu, and mounted into her compartment--he fixed his cold, grey eyes upon Seilern and kept them there until the train moved out of the station. As he stood there, like a statue, we who were around him could see the nervous twitching of the fingers of his clenched fists, and could interpret the thoughts passing through his brain. His heart was raging--first of all at the idea that his authority as the military chief had been set at naught; secondly, because he saw a danger to himself in the incident; and thirdly, on account of being placed, as it were, in a position of inferiority as regards the man whom he had detected in what he regarded as a flagrant breach of discipline. In brief, belonging, as he does, to the new nobility, he was jealous of the good fortune of his subordinate--this simple first lieutenant, who turned not a hair, caught, though he was, in the act. But, like a wise courtier, Hoetzendorf refrained from giving verbal expression to these feelings, and it was not until the train--with the Princess waving her handkerchief to her lover from one of the windows, and Seilern replying with a salute--passed out of sight, that he opened his lips. Even then, it was merely to order Count Seilern, in the iciest of tones, to come to see him at headquarters. In the presence of his _entourage_ it was necessary for him to make an example of the offender--if only for the purpose of ridding himself of responsibility. With the words, 'Lieutenant Count Seilern, you will come to see me this evening at five, without fail,' he turned on his heels and strode away in the direction of his car."
From that time onwards, the action of the drama in which Count Seilern became involved quickened with bewildering rapidity. The incidents which immediately followed I can describe from personal knowledge, for it was my painful privilege to be present at the interview which took place between General Conrad von Hoetzendorf and the man whom I had by this time determined to support through thick and thin.
With the exception of the General's secretary, who had brought him some letters to be signed, I was the only person present when Count Seilern, punctual to the minute, was announced and ushered into the room of the Commander-in-Chief, situated in a small _schloss_ on the outskirts of the village.
A steely look came into Hoetzendorf's eyes as the young officer entered and, with an apology for a salute, stood before him. The General continued to sign his letters, unperturbed, and without omitting a single flourish after his signature. Having come to the last one, the secretary seized the batch of correspondence and hastened to retire. I was about to do the same, having practically come to the end of my own business, when the General motioned to me to remain, saying:--
"Captain ----, I wish you to stay here. You are, if I mistake not, the lieutenant's friend, so there is no reason, it seems to me, why you should not be present while I make a few friendly observations to Count Seilern. They relate to a little affair which, as I dare say you know, occurred this morning."
Uneasy at being retained as a witness of a scene which I instinctively felt would be of the most painful character, I glanced at my friend with the object of catching his eye, and expressing to him by a look my uncomfortable state of mind.
To a certain extent, he relieved my feelings. At least, I interpreted an almost imperceptible nod of his haughtily-raised head to mean that he was rather pleased than otherwise I was there. I noted--not without anxiety--a certain arrogance in his bearing, as though he were still intoxicated by the declarations and promises which, presumably, had been made to him in the course of his _tête-à-tête_ with the Archduchess. On hearing Hoetzendorf speak of "friendly observations," he perceptibly bridled and coldly, almost insolently, replied:--
"And what may they be, General?"
"Lieutenant Count Seilern," began Conrad von Hoetzendorf, nervously toying with his pen, and evidently making a great effort both to keep his temper and choose his words carefully, "it is almost needless to say that it gives me very great pain to have had to summon you here. But I was in duty bound to do so. You, as a soldier, will surely appreciate my position--the very difficult position in which your conduct, which it was impossible for me to regard otherwise than as reprehensible, has placed me----"
"Reprehensible? Opinions differ, General von Hoetzendorf," interjected Count Seilern.
"Allow me to inform you, once for all, Lieutenant Seilern," replied the General, omitting my friend's title and laying a slight emphasis on his rank, "that as regards a question of military discipline, I can permit of no two opinions. It is your duty to remember that we are on campaign, and that this is no time for society play."
"I am of the opinion, General von Hoetzendorf, that my time is my own when off duty, as was the case this morning," rapped out Count Seilern, white to the eyes.
"Your time is Austria's--by which I mean that, even when off duty, you should remember that this is no time for the amusements to which members of your class are unfortunately addicted in days of peace. I repeat that the dalliance of which you have been guilty is highly reprehensible, so long as you are under my command, and I have reason to believe that my Imperial master would support me in this view. Understand, therefore----"
V--IMPERIAL MANDATE--THE SOLDIER'S ARREST
But the General's further "friendly observations" were never completed. His veiled reference to the Archduchess and the displeasure of the Emperor Francis Joseph, indicating, as it did, that he had received instructions on the subject, had the most disastrous effect on Count Seilern, who, in a paroxysm of rage, exclaimed:--
"That is a private matter which concerns only another and myself! Your Imperial mandate extends to my military duties, which I have always carried out with precision, and no further."
"Silence!" cried Hoetzendorf, springing to his feet and stretching out his hand to touch the button of an electric bell on his table. "We will very soon see about that!"
It was then that the irreparable happened. Count Seilern, either through interpreting the General's gesture as a menace to his personal safety, or because he was carried away by anger, brought his hand to the hilt of his sword, and, at the very moment that an aide-de-camp, in reply to the summons, appeared in the doorway, partly drew the weapon from its scabbard.
"I order you to disarm Lieutenant Count Seilern and place him under arrest," said the General, drawing himself up to his full height as he instinctively stepped back a few paces. "Call the guard immediately. Captain ----," turning his head in my direction, "you are a witness of this inexcusable act of insubordination. I shall require you shortly to give evidence, so you may as well draw up a report of what you have heard and seen without delay. Soldiers, remove the prisoner to the guard-room."
As Count Seilern was led away, proud and defiant, I saw clearly that the danger of which I had been informed at C---- was still hanging over his head. Moreover, the conviction suddenly came to me that Conrad von Hoetzendorf was acting as an agent for those who were attempting to counter the plans of this over-ambitious man. An inkling of this was given me by the Count himself during the confrontation, by the expression of his face and his manner, no less than by the indignant words, "Your Imperial mandate extends to my military duties--and no further." I seemed to read therein the Count's recognition that he was the victim of a cabal, which was drawing a net ever closer and closer around him.
General von Hoetzendorf might have judged and condemned Count Seilern there and then, but postponed this disagreeable duty; and I have a very good idea why. When, an hour later, I handed in my report (the most obnoxious piece of work I have ever done in my life) I found him in deep thought. All he said, ere I withdrew, was:--
"Very good, Captain ----, I will read what you have written later. The affair can stand over for a while, until I call a court-martial."
It was evident (thought I) that the General was considering what the effects of all this was going to be on himself. He was torn between his allegiance to his Imperial master and a desire to avoid the enmity of the powerful families with whom the Seilerns were allied. A soldier by profession, he had an instinctive hatred of being connected in the slightest degree with Court intrigues, and especially at such a time as that, when the whole of his mental power ought to have been concentrated on the business of war. For these reasons (I was convinced) he had contented himself with placing Count Seilern, for the time being, under arrest in a small house--used as a guard-room--in the village, with two sentinels at the door.
But what were my unfortunate friend's thoughts in this prison? Some of them I learnt within the next few days; others, which enable me to complete the picture of Count Seilern's meditations, which few of us imagined were to lead, within a week, to such a startling complication of his life drama, came with later knowledge.
He thought at first, but only for a moment, of committing suicide, in order to avoid a dishonouring sentence. On reflection he came to the conclusion that there was a chance of the General hesitating to be too severe on him, through a desire to remain on good terms with all parties concerned. It was then that certain so-called friends called on the prisoner and made a most extraordinary proposal to him--that he should allow himself to be represented at his forthcoming trial as irresponsible! But he was too well acquainted with the scandalous chronicles of the Hapsburgs not to know what such a "favour" meant. He called to mind the fate of the unhappy Louise of Belgium, who spent seven years in asylums to satisfy the rancour of Philip of Coburg.[12] How thoroughly in accordance with tradition was this suspicious proposal--made, he had not the slightest doubt, at the suggestion of Conrad Von Hoetzendorf! He also thought of the tragic end of Rudolf of Hapsburg, and the many other crimes committed with the tacit approbation of the Hofburg.
VI--THE LOVER'S FLIGHT FROM THE HAPSBURG PRISON
As a result of these reflections he at last came to a definite conclusion. He determined, encouraged by certain friends, to make a bold bid for liberty and effect his escape, even though he might have to resort to violence, hoping that, once in Vienna, the Archduchess and her friends would protect him.
Working in conjunction with two or three devoted friends, whom this ever-popular man never lacked wherever he might be, he succeeded in inspiring confidence in the two soldiers who guarded him, and who, moreover, watched over him with the consideration due to his rank.
One morning the door of the little Hungarian house in which Count Seilern had been imprisoned for a little less than a week was found open, and there, before the entrance, was the evidence of the means which the prisoner's friends had adopted to rescue him. Stretched on the ground were the unconscious bodies of the two sentinels, heavily drugged by Seiler's accomplices.
Shortly before this occurrence, which, though it naturally created a great sensation in the immediate circle of the Staff, was thrown into the background by military events of considerable importance and the consequent long-desired removal of headquarters to a place nearer the Front, there occurred an event which I cannot but regard as connected with it. A certain Baron A----, one of Seilern's intimate friends, found the means of obtaining permission to return to Vienna. The alleged reason for his departure was urgent family business--some sudden illness or similar call for his presence at home; but I am convinced that its real object was to prepare a sure hiding-place for the fugitive Count. It matters not what my reasons may be for so thinking; suffice it to say that information received from a sure source led me not only to that conclusion but to many other inferences. I learnt, for instance, that the particulars of what was now known as the "Seilern Affair" had leaked out, that the hiding-place of the Count was already known to the police of the Austrian capital, but that _no attempt was being made to arrest him_. It was evident, indeed, that powerful influences were at work, and that every possible means was being taken to hush up the scandal.
Later, I learnt that recourse was had to the advice of the aged Princess M----, the oracle of the higher society circles of Vienna, whose wisdom has been brought to bear on every "good" scandal at the Court of the Hapsburgs during more than the half-century she has made the laws of the fashionable world there.
Whilst Princess M---- was setting her acute wits to work, the Archduchess Valeria, more and more determined never to return to her ignoble husband, and realizing that the great crisis in her life had at last come, took refuge at the house of some faithful family retainers. The outcome of Princess M----'s ingenious reflections was that Baron A---- was found a further useful mission in conjunction with the affair. This trusted emissary was sent to Berne as a diplomatic messenger, the alleged bearer of confidential documents for Count von G----, a high Austro-Hungarian official and the representative of our Government with the Swiss Confederation.
Holding the opinions I do in regard to the policy which is bringing my poor country to the brink of ruin, I have no hesitation in speaking my mind about some of the men who compose its diplomatic corps. Let me explain, then, that von G----, a former head of the Cabinet of Count Aerenthal, is one of the most equivocal figures in the diplomacy of the Ballplatz. Frigid in his courtesy, scrupulously careful not to offend anyone of importance, pitiless to the weak and servile to the powerful, he was the mere tool of the Minister who first brought Austro-Hungary under the dominations of Berlin.
You can easily imagine the unctuous politeness with which this Machiavellian diplomatist received the man who called upon him with a letter from Princess M----, asking him, in the cordial and guarded terms which her pen can so well indite, to favour the love affair of Count Seilern and hush up a scandal which, "if generally known, would do incalculable harm, at a time when we have more and more need of enlisting the respect of the subjects of His Most Gracious and Imperial Majesty."
"What would I not do to oblige Princess M----?" exclaimed the Count von G----, on coming to the end of the letter and turning his heavily-whiskered face to Baron A---- (who related the interview to me). "Will you transmit that expression of my devotion to her Royal Highness, and say that I live in the hope of accomplishing much, _much_ more than this truly insignificant service? You will, of course, understand, my dear Baron, that this is strictly _entre nous_. No documentary evidence of my connection with this affair must exist, and--_je vous en prie!_--not a word about this interview. See, I carry out her Royal Highness's request this very minute and destroy her letter"--tearing it in pieces and throwing them into his waste-paper basket. "I will leave you to acknowledge its receipt. It is always best to transact little affairs of this sort strictly by word of mouth. You will call upon me once or twice and we will arrange--verbally, mark you--for the accommodation of these turtle-doves of the dear Princess. And, once on this free Helvetian soil, we will assist them--as in the story-books, ha, ha!--to live happily ever afterwards."
A few days later, Count Seilern himself, provided, thanks to Princess M----'s influence, backed up by the collaboration of Count von G----and Baron A----, with passports, crossed the frontier. He had shaved off his moustache and had all the appearance of a young man little more than twenty. His extremely youthful physiognomy enabled him to pass as the secretary of the Archduchess Valeria, who, when she heard that Princess M---- was disposed to facilitate the escape of her lover to Switzerland and thence to the United States, where he could remain until after the war, when things would have blown over, insisted on accompanying him into exile. It was at Zurich that the romantic couple found their first hiding-place, arranged with Count von G----'s usual genius for intrigue.
But the Austrian Court was on the watch.
The plan so astutely arranged by Princess M---- had saved Count Seilern from the condemnation which hung over his head. Unfortunately, the hatred of the Hapsburgs and the vengeance of Conrad von Hoetzendorf followed him to Switzerland.
Whilst at Zurich, Count Seilern frequently received messages from Princess M----, who, with her love for adventures of this sort, began to take more and more interest in the welfare of the couple, who had come to be known by Count von G----'s cynical phrase of "the turtle-doves." There was hardly an occasion on which the Imperial messenger left Vienna with diplomatic correspondence for that cunning official but he carried confidential letters for both the Count and the Archduchess.
I have often wondered whether Seilern, living happily in his retirement at Zurich and looking forward to the still more free life of the United States, ever realized the tremendous hatred he had aroused against him. Probably not, judging by his trustful attitude and what followed. He appears, as far as I have been able to learn, to have been so wrapped up in himself and his Archduchess that he had not the slightest suspicion of the snare which the Austrian Court had determined to set for him.
This, then, was what happened, according to Baron A----, to whom I owe the rest of this narrative.
VII--THE HYPOCRITICAL DIPLOMATIST SETS DEATH TRAP
Von G----, in spite of his scrupulous care to avoid incriminating evidence of complicity with Princess M----, soon discovered the danger of "running with the hare and hunting with the hounds," and accordingly made his choice. I strongly suspect that pressure was brought to bear upon him and that, in order not to lose his post, and at the same time to gain favour at Court, he was obliged to give his assistance to the Hapsburg and Hoetzendorf parties, which had made up their minds to punish severely the man who had dared to turn an Archduchess from her duties and to set military laws at defiance. So he entered without delay on his double game.
On the one hand, as the friend of Princess M----, he assured Seilern, through Baron A----, of his earnest desire to assist him in high flight by procuring him the means of leaving for America. But, on the other, this hypocritical diplomatist set to work to devise a plan for enticing him on to Austrian soil--that is to say, on to premises which, having been rented at Lucerne by the Austrian Legation, would be considered as benefiting, in the eyes of the Swiss authorities, by the valuable privilege of ex-territoriality. A plan of this duplicity was truly after the heart of such a man. If successfully carried out, he knew it would inevitably lead to him being regarded as an Austrian diplomat _de la meilleure race_--as he himself would have expressed it.
I must now introduce to you a new character, a sincere friend of Count Seilern--an Englishman, Professor S----, who, in ignorance of Count von G----'s duplicity, and responding solely to the generosity of his heart, unknowingly lent himself to the plot which was on foot. Before he is actually brought upon the scene, however, let me explain that von G---- had rented, at Lucerne, the annex of an hotel, where, a short time afterwards, Count von Bülow was to install his offices. Coinciding with this, the Archduchess Valeria's brother, who, by the way, is completely under the influence of the Court, arrived and took up his quarters at the hotel in question.
Von G----, still professing to be the friend of all parties, then transmitted to Count Seilern, through his English friend and professor, an invitation to come to Lucerne for a short time, so as to receive the passports necessary for traveling without let or hindrance to the United States.
Thereupon the Archduchess Valeria, Count Seilern, and their friend and counsellor, Baron A----, left for that resort, and took up their residence at an hotel. The morning after their arrival, Seilern was requested to come to the annex rented by the Austro-Hungarian Legation. He was received there by the Minister Plenipotentiary, Count von G----, the Archduchess Valeria's brother, the military attaché von E----, and a number of other unknown individuals, who, in reality, were members of the secret police of Vienna.
What happened? You may judge from what follows.
The same day, his English friend, Professor S----, quietly continuing his work at Zurich, and under the impression that he would be hearing in a few days of the safe departure of the Count and Archduchess for the United States, thanks to the "noble support" of the Austro-Hungarian Minister, received a telegram worded as follows: "Come to Lucerne immediately."
At the railway station of the celebrated resort he was met by two agents of the Austrian secret police, who begged him, on behalf of Count von G----, to accompany them to the annex of the hotel rented by the Legation. On the way they explained that Count von G---- had sent for him "to see his friend, who had had an accident." That was all the information he could extract from them.
Mounting to the first floor, a door was thrown open before him. In the middle of the room he saw a bed and on it a body--that of the hapless Count Seilern, who had been _condemned to death and executed_ (though his decease was attributed in the newspapers to suicide) for having loved an Austrian Princess and threatened General von Hoetzendorf!
As in the case of the Archduke Rudolf of Hapsburg, at Mayerling, the body of the man who dared to "play with fire" was covered up to the neck with white cloth, with flowers strewn all over his deathbed.
This was in January, 1915.
Thus, the tradition of assassination is perpetuated from one end to the other of the reign of the sinister Emperor who sold the independence of his kingdom to William II. of Germany. The victims change, but the methods remain the same. Whosoever is considered guilty of an offence against the "dignity" or "honour" of the Hapsburgs must die, unless he or she consents to be declared insane. Crime follows crime, and the family which, in the eyes of the aged Emperor Francis Joseph himself, is "doomed to be tracked by tragedy" knows, as in the Middle Ages, but one argument against its enemies--the knife and the bullet.
But what of the Archduchess Valeria? The last news I heard of her was to the effect that, half-demented by the shock she sustained, she lay for months between life and death. On recovering, she turned her back for ever on the fashionable life of Vienna, and withdrew to one of her estates in the country, where she seeks what consolation she can find in charitable work in her religion.
FOOTNOTE:
[12] Brother of Ferdinand, the treacherous Czar of Bulgaria.
TURNING HEAVENS INTO HELL--EXPLOITS OF CANADIAN FLYING CORPS
_Battle in Air With One Hundred Aeroplanes_
_Told by Officer of Royal Canadian Flying Corps_
The heroism of the Canadians is one of the immortal epics of the War. The great dominion sent across the seas her strongest sons. Their valor in trench and field "saved the British army" on many critical moments. The feats of daring of these Canadians would fill many volumes, but here is one story typical of their sublime courage--a tale of the air.
I--WITH THE CANADIANS IN THE CLOUDS
There were one hundred of us--fifty on a side--but we turned the heavens into a hell, up in the air there, more terrible than ten thousand devils could have made running rampant in the pit.
The sky blazed and crackled with bursting time bombs, and the machine guns spitted out their steel venom, while underneath us hung what seemed like a net of fire, where shells from the Archies, vainly trying to reach us, were bursting.
We had gone out early in the morning, fifty of us, from the Royal Canadian Flying Corps barracks, back of the lines, when the sun was low and my courage lower, to bomb the Prussian trenches before the infantry should attack.
Our machines were stretched out across a flat tableland. Here and there in little groups the pilots were receiving instructions from their commander and consulting maps and photographs.
At last we all climbed into our machines. All along the line engines began to roar and sputter. Here was a 300 horsepower Rolls-Royce, with a mighty, throbbing voice; over there a $10,000 Larone rotary engine vieing with the others in making a noise. Then there were the little fellows humming and spitting the "vipers" or "maggots," as they are known in the service.
At last the squadron commander took his place in his machine and rose with a whirr. The rest of us rose and circled round, getting our formation.
Crack! At the signal from the commander's pistol we darted forward, going ever higher and higher, while the cheers of the mechanicians and riggers grew fainter.
Across our own trenches we sailed and out over No Man's Land, like a huge, eyeless, pock-scarred earth face staring up at us.
There was another signal from the commander. Down we swooped. The bomb racks rattled as hundreds of bombs were let loose, and a second later came the crackle of their explosions over the heads of the Boches in their trenches.
Lower and lower we flew. We skimmed the trenches and sprayed bullets from our machine guns. The crashing of the weapons drowned the roar of the engines.
I saw ahead of me a column of flame shoot up from one of our machines, and I caught a momentary glance at the pilot's face. It was greenish-ash color. His petrol tank had been hit. I hope the fall killed him and that he did not burn to death.
II--THE VULTURES OVER THE TRENCHES
Away in the distance a number of specks had risen, like vultures scenting the carrion that had already been made. It was a German squadron. The Archies had not bothered us much while we were spraying the Prussian trenches, but now we had that other squadron to take care of. Our orders were to bomb the trenches. We could not spare a bomb or a cartridge from the task of putting the fear of Britain into the hearts of the infantry below before our own "Tommies" should start over the top.
I don't know what it was, but suddenly, just after my partner had let go a rack of bombs, there was a terrific explosion just beneath us. My machine leaped upward, twisted, then dropped suddenly. Death himself was trying to wrench the control levers from my grip, but I clung to them madly and we righted. A few inches more and I couldn't have told you about this.
There was no longer any chance to worry about flying position. There were too many things occupying my attention--that line of gray down there that we were trying to erase and the Boche squadron thrumming down on us.
One drum of our ammunition was already used up. My partner whirled around on his stool--a sort of piano stool, which always made me think of the tuneless, tinpanny instrument back in quarters--grabbed another drum and slammed it into the machine gun. It was to be a parting message for the Prussians, for the commander was just signalling to retire.
My partner lurched forward. He was hit. A thin red stream trickled down his face.
I raced westward, the air whistling through the bullet holes in the wings of the machine and my partner leaning against the empty bomb rack, silent.
As we sailed over the foremost Prussian trench some Scotch were just leaping into it. The "ladies from hell" the Germans call them, because of their kilts.
Several machines had landed before I took the ground. Ambulances were dashing back and forth across the flying field.
They lifted my partner out of the aeroplane, but they did not put him into an ambulance. He had answered another recall. I walked to quarters ill--ill at heart, at stomach, at mind. I'll never know a better pal than was Tom.
On the way I managed to help with a machine that had just landed. A big Rolls-Royce it was, and the radiator had been hit by a bit of shrapnel. The pilot and observer were both terribly scalded.
Just by the aerodrome another biplane fluttered down. The observer was dead. The pilot was hit in a dozen places. Somehow he brought the machine in, switched off his engine and slopped forward in his seat, stone dead.
Ten minutes later I was sound asleep. The next day we were at it again.
In battles of this kind it is more or less a matter of good fortune if you escape with your life. Flying ability and trickiness can play but little part. It is in the lone adventure that stunt flying helps.
III--THE MYSTERIOUS MAJOR AND THE UHLANS
One of the most versatile flyers in the corps was the "Mysterious Major." Condon was his name, but to all the men, both sides of No Man's Land, he was the "Mysterious Major."
He was forced to glide to earth one day, back of the Prussian lines, with his big motor stalled. He leaped out hastily, adjusted a bit of machinery and spun the propellers. A gentle purr, then silence, was the response.
Once more he flashed the blades around, with no better result.
It wasn't a healthy neighborhood to be in. With a short, crisp oath, the "Mysterious Major" set to work in dead earnest. Down the road to the right of the field a cloud of dust, flying high, appeared. It meant cavalry. The major's ears caught the sound of hoofbeats.
It was tradition that he would never be killed in the air, but here he was on earth, with cavalry galloping toward him. His descent had probably been spotted and the Uhlans sent to get him.
At last he got a roar from the engine that sounded like business, but it petered out.
Closer came the hoof beats. The Uhlans rode over a fence and came galloping across the field. A shot punctuated his exhortations to the motor and slit one of the planes.
Pulling and tugging, he got his machine turned so that he could use his machine gun. Br-r-rang! He let drive a drum of ammunition from his machine gun. He saw several horses and riders go down in sprawling, rolling heaps, then turned to his motor again.
Eight or ten Uhlans who had escaped his murderous fire withdrew. He knew what they would do. They would return from every side at once, and his single machine gun could never stop them.
If he could only get into the air he would feel safe. Once more he twisted the propeller. As though nothing had ever been wrong, the engine started to thrum and roar. He leaped into the seat.
Quickly the machine rose. The Uhlans saw it. I suppose they knew he had not loaded the machine gun again, and they galloped on to the field, firing at him.
He was so low that there was every chance for them to hit his petrol tank or even the major himself. So he went even lower. Straight at the heads of the horses he drove. The animals, scared at the great, white-winged, roaring machine, reared and plunged, throwing some of the riders to the ground. The others were too busy with their mounts to shoot straight.
The major waved goodby, fired a couple of parting shots from his service revolver and climbed to where the bullets could not reach him. It was not his fate to die in the air, he thought, but only a few weeks after he told me this story he was killed by a shrapnel burst from an Archie, which wrecked his machine while he was flying with an air patrol.
I do not think they ever should have sent him on such work. He was too valuable alone. The Prussians feared him so much that a price was upon his head.
Scarcely a day went by that some new feat of daring was not accredited to this almost phantom-like flier. Perhaps he did not perform them all, but the effect was cumulative.
I have known the "Mysterious Major" to side slip three thousand feet at a time. He used to skim so close to the Boche trenches that they say men ducked their heads, and all the time he was pouring six hundred shots a minute from his machine gun.
Many said the "Mysterious Major" was crazy, but if we all were suffering from the same dementia the Boches wouldn't be able to show their heads. He was of inestimable value to the secret service, but those stories will have to wait until after the war, if they are ever told.
IV--THE BIRDMAN WHO PLAYED 'POSSUM
One of the most thrilling encounters I can recall is that of Captain Woodhouse, who, accompanied by another pilot, was out over the Prussian lines. One of the Prussians gave chase and opened fire. Woodhouse made believe that he had been hit, and his companion brought the machine down in a field. Immediately the Prussian, in one of the latest type battle planes, made his landing and went over to the other machine without bothering to cover the pilot with his revolver, Woodhouse meanwhile lying as if dead. Suddenly he leaped up, jammed his revolver under the Boche's nose and marched him over to the big battle plane, got in after him and with the gun against his ribs took him back to our lines, a prisoner. Later he returned and got the Prussian machine. Besides the machine there were some valuable papers taken, which proved very useful later.
In the Royal Naval Air Service there is a young lieutenant, Murray Galbraith by name, with whom I once trained at the school at Dayton, Ohio. Murray is a great big fellow who gave up a splendid future--his father is one of the Canadian silver kings--to go into the flying service. He was sent to Dunkirk to do patrol work for one of the monitors lying off the coast. Over at Ostend the Prussians had made their staff headquarters in a certain hotel. Galbraith spotted this hotel and directed the shell-fire of the monitor with such accuracy that the Prussian staff barely escaped annihilation.
On one of his flights over the Prussian lines he encountered five machines, one of which he disposed of. He got away from the rest and, coming on toward the Somme, ran into another group of Boches. Two of these he put out of business with a withering fire from his Lewis gun and then executed a loop and started earthward. His engine gave out, but he was just high enough to glide back over their lines and then to a point of safety near our lines.
When he landed his machine was literally shot to pieces. He received the D. S. O. for this and, I believe, has since been decorated again. (Retold from _New York Herald_.)
"THE LEGION OF DEATH"--WOMEN SOLDIERS ON THE FIRING-LINE
_How the Russian, Serbian, and German Women Go to War_
_Told by Officers and Eye-Witnesses from the Battlefields_
Tales of the Great War bring stories of thousands of women fighting as soldiers in men's uniforms on all the battle-lines--in the trenches, in the artillery and cavalry, and going "over the top" in the bayonet charges. "The Legion of Death"--a battalion of Russian women, under command of Vera Butchkaroff, has fought many hard battles with the Russian Army. They are pledged to take their own lives rather than become prisoners of the Germans, who have ravished and attacked them. Each woman soldier carries a ration of cyanide of potassium to be swallowed in case of capture. Mme. Colonel Koudasheva commands the Sixth Ural Cossacks, of which one-fourth of the soldiers are women. The Serbian, German and Austrian women are in the ranks. Official dispatches mention them for orders of bravery. A few of these stories are told in these pages from the following sources: I--War Correspondent of _New York American_; II--William G. Shepherd, War Correspondent for _United Press_; III--War Correspondent for _Salt Lake Tribune_; IV--War Correspondent for _New York World_; V--War Correspondent for _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_; VI--_London Daily Telegraph_.
(Many are the tales that will be told of these women soldiers in the "New Russia," but this is sufficient to prove that womanhood the world over always rises to the emergency, when home and country are in danger--EDITOR.)
I--STORIES OF MADAM COLONEL KOUDASHEVA
It did not seem possible that women could undergo the hardships, the complete reversal of all their habits and the primitive manners that necessarily accompany trench life. Incredulity has, however, given way before actual official reports of women decorated and promoted for bravery on the battlefields. It seems now that in Europe the women actually do put on the uniform of the men, fight not only in trenches, but in the cavalry, and in every way measure up to the standard of a soldier.
Indeed, they are harder to conquer, it seems, than the men. A recent semi-official report from Petrograd mentioned that the Russians were surprised, when they captured a line of trenches along the Bzura River in Poland, to find a number of German women among their captives. These women were found in the very first line, with hot rifles still in their hands.
"There was much more difficulty in making these women prisoners than the men," reported the officer in charge of the victors. "They would not surrender until after all their men comrades had thrown down their arms, and they taunted the men with cowardice. These women were not at all heavy, unsexed peasants. Some of them showed the marks of refinement. Inquiry developed that only a few had donned the uniform because some loved one was in their company. The majority had enlisted because of pure patriotism.
"I was told that the German authorities," said the officer in charge of the victors, "do not openly encourage enlistment by women, but they do wink at it. The men in the trenches, the officers know perfectly well that this and that soldier is a woman, but they pretend not to know it officially."
The Russians could not have been surprised at seeing women soldiers, however, because hundreds of women are apparently fighting in the armies of the Czar.
Mme. Alexandra Koudasheva is the most distinguished woman soldier in the Russian army. She commands the Sixth Ural Cossack Regiment, which has covered itself with honors in many battles in East Prussia. Wounded twice, Mme. Koudasheva bears the Cross of St. George, that is given only for exceptional bravery, and many orders of inferior significance. She is back again to her regiment which consists of many Cossack woman volunteers, though the majority of the soldiers are men. A few more successful battles and Mme. Koudasheva will be promoted to a general.
When the war began Mme. Koudasheva entered the army as a volunteer. She distinguished herself in daring raids on the German Uhlans, and was made a lieutenant, and soon thereafter a colonel of the same regiment in which her husband had served two years ago. During the two months that she has acted as a commander of the regiment she has given proof of exceptional strategic gifts and courage. She has never stood behind, but always in front, of her men. Naturally, no man likes to be surpassed by a woman, and this has given her company a reputation for unusual bravery.
Colonel Koudasheva is by no means a semi-barbaric adventurer or a Salome who revels in bloodshed. She is a lady of highest culture and refinement. Besides being a talented poet and brilliant writer, she is a fine musician and a passionate lover of sports. She has made twice a trip on horseback from China, through Manchuria, Siberia and European Russia to Petrograd. She made the trip alone, and passed the most dangerous deserts of the two continents without having had any great difficulties.
"I have felt just as safe in the wildest deserts of Siberia, as I do in the streets of Moscow or Petrograd, simply because I have absolute confidence in my ability to command the man, regardless do I meet him in a fashionable society of a big city, or as a highway robber in the wildest wilds. A woman--if she only knows her feminine powers--can conquer any man," thus writes Mme. Koudasheva in her "Diary of Ride Through Siberia."
This is how she writes in a letter to a friend in New York of one of her adventures while she was still a lieutenant and was out to ascertain the strength of the enemy at night:
"It was a ghastly moonlight night of the Fall. A bleak wind whistled and howled around the ruins of the village, in which there had been so much human joy before and so much misery after. I was riding with a company of twenty-five men to trace the retreating enemy. Though the amphitheatric hills that rose before us seemed dead and bare, yet mysterious flashes of light appeared here and there, like magic signals. They warned us of the hidden batteries of the enemy. As we galloped on, I could see the road strewn with broken boxes, knapsacks, household implements, dead horses and men which the enemy had left behind in his hurried retreat.
"'Excellency,' whispered my orderly, I see there beyond the hill a moving dot. It's probably the head of a "dady"' (as we called the Germans). As we were in the shadow of the ruins, we could discern distinctly the bare field in the moonlight. Before us was the first line of the trenches of the enemy. I pulled my rifle and aimed. A shot. The dot became a black figure that rose and staggered and fell. It was a distance of 150 steps, and I could see how a gray ribbon of trenches stretched in both directions before us--a ribbon that always fascinates and yet frightens because it is the home of death. More black dots were visible, moving in the direction where the one before had fallen.
"Little by little I could see dots in every direction beyond the ribbon. A few figures climbed out and started running toward us. 'One, two, three!' I whispered and then followed a salvo from my men. The figures either fell or ran back behind the ribbon. From behind a hill flashed a light and then the battery of the enemy opened fire at the village where we were. It was the machine guns. 'Nu-ka, Misha, tickle the dadies, quick!' was the humorous remark of one of my soldiers to me. We must have killed and wounded a hundred or more. Then we turned around and rode away, without having lost a single man and without having any men wounded."
Mme. Koudasheva is a student of soldier psychology on the battlefield, as is shown in another letter.
"When you feel the invisible fingers of fate so close to your life, as on the battlefield, the problems that interest you before and the feelings that you experience in a peaceful feminine activity die out and a new view opens. It is not the feeling of sport, it is not the feeling of being killed, that takes hold of the mind of the battlefield, but it is a queer, dramatic hypnose, like an actor feels before opening a play.
"It all seems a huge cosmic play--a stern tragic panorama of life--but still a play. The whole human organism seems to work against all laws of nature, for, though you stay in the cold and rain day and night, yet you catch no cold, no ailments that are usual in everyday life."
Mme. Colonel Koudasheva may require a strict discipline of her inferiors, but she never applies any punitive measures. She commands with the most polite words. "Gentlemen, please, would you do me the favor" is her usual command to the soldiers. "My boys and girls go to any fire without any forcible measures," she writes. "I just need to hint at an instruction, and already it is carried out. I have taught them not to shoot with hate, but to love the man they shoot. And they do love, which is proven by an incident when once we chased the enemy into river and when we saw that they would be drowned we all went to pull them out, and thus saved a whole company."
Another Russian heroine is Natalie Tychnini, a high school girl of Kier, who has received the decoration of the Order of St. George for distinguished service at the front. She had arrived at Opatow among a detachment of volunteers for the campaign against the Austrians. She was dressed like a man, and passed for a remarkably handsome boy. She was detailed to carry ammunition to the trenches. She was in the hottest fire and was wounded twice. The Russians were forced to retire, and she was left lying on the field.
The Austrian Red Cross workers found her.
"Why, this is a woman!" exclaimed the Austrian surgeon who examined her. The Austrians nursed her. When the Russians again took Opatow she was still in a hospital. She was recaptured by them and sent back to Kier, where she was given her honors.
Austrian women are also fighting. Stefa Falica is a young Croatian who enlisted with her husband in the same regiment. In this case her sex was well-known, and she was not forced to use men's clothes. She has already been made a corporal for her bravery in the field.
A similar case is that of Stanislawa Ordinska, who enlisted, masquerading as a man, in the Polish Legion of Austria. She was made a sergeant for bravery shown at the front before it was discovered she was a woman. Then she was allowed to keep her rank and her gun.
One of the most interesting bodies of women soldiers is the Serbian organization called the "Legia Smirti," or Legion of Death.
The Legion of Death is composed of women who have been trained in the use of firearms and in the science of war. In the Balkan States, where women frequently follow their husbands throughout military campaigns, acting as pack-carriers, camp-attendants, and even as trench-diggers and sappers when necessary, it is not unusual for them to take their places beside their husbands or their lovers on the firing line. There are many expert rifle shots among them, many indeed who are capable of taking men's places under necessity. Accustomed to attack in solitary places, and more or less inured to bereavement, a kind of grim quiet follows them wherever they are seen.
The Legion of Death is recruited from all classes of women, from the wives of rich merchants to the wives and daughters of peasants. This Amazon corps had its origin in the patriotic enthusiasm of a woman sixty-two years old, whose husband died for Serbia in the war for liberty against the Turks. The women handle the regulation rifles and are held in deadly fear by the Austrians and Germans.
Indeed, it seems that on both sides the soldiers dread the women soldiers more than they do those of their own sex.
Kipling's "The female of the species is more deadly than the male," recalls itself, of course. Dr. Hans Hulduckson, writing of this same phenomenon, said:
"Women are not natural combatants. They do not rush into war for war's sake. They are without the blood lust that makes fighting a joy for fighting's sake. They will fight only in desperate straits, and then only for their honor, their children or the existence of their country. Standing at one of these last ditches, however, they fight with the ferocity of tigers. They do battle without rule or reason and to the death. An Englishwoman, who is endeavoring to organize a company of women for military training, said that she did not fear that they would not fight, but the fear was that they might fight too fiercely. They are the most cruel of combatants when they so far overcome their native womanly gentleness as to enter into combat.
"A soldier of experience said that he would rather fight a company of male soldiers than one woman soldier. He explained that woman is too resourceful in the matter of weapons. War transforms woman for the time into a beast."
II--STORY OF THE "POTASSIUM BRIGADE"
Russia's women soldiers have pledged themselves to take their own lives rather than become German war prisoners. Each woman soldier carries a ration of cyanide of potassium to be swallowed in case of capture.
The members of the women regiments, now constantly increasing, agreed that death was to be preferred to the fate they would probably meet at the hands of the Germans.
The "Legion of Death" fighters are "good killers." I learned this to-day, when I talked to five of them now in a hospital near here, suffering from shell shock. From a woman's lips I heard how she had run a German through with her bayonet, firing the rifle at the same time. From others I heard how these women and girls, fresh from comfortable homes and universities, went leaping over mangled bodies in the charge with enemy shells bursting all about them.
But these harrowing experiences of the women fighters have steeled them and hundreds of other girls to a new determination to see it through. Girl soldiers drilling in the streets are now a common sight in Petrograd. Huge crowds gather daily about the Engineers' School, where 1,000 girls are drilling preparing to go to the front. In Moscow 1,000 men are training, while Kieff and Odessa have smaller bands. Premier Kerensky has also authorized the formation of women marine detachments and has promised to assign them to ships. The new women commands attempt no sort of decoration. Their heads are shaved and they wear the regulation uniform, including the heavy, ugly army boots.
The five women fighters I visited at the hospital were partially paralyzed by shell shock. One of them, a peasant girl, smiled joyously as she pointed to a German helmet on the bed beside her. It was the first war prize of a Russian woman.
"I saw a German in front of me as I ran forward with the others in the charge," she told me. "It was his life or mine. I raised my rifle. I plunged with all my strength. I stabbed him. The bayonet went deep into his body. At the same moment I pulled the trigger. He dropped dead. Then I took his hat as a souvenir."
The girl soldier smiled with delight.
"What was the battle like?" I asked another of the legionnaires.
"I was very nervous just before the charge," she replied. "We knew the order was coming and naturally we were just a little scared. But as soon as the orders to go forward came we forgot everything else in the advance.
"I could hear our girls yelling and shouting throughout the march forward. None of us were afraid once we got started. We were in the midst of a great fusillade of shots. Then terrific big shells began breaking all around us.
"We were again frightened a little when we first saw dead men about, but before very long we were jumping over the dead, and quickly forgot all about them."
"We couldn't tell what was going on anywhere," said a third girl in describing the final stages of the battle.
"Commander Bochkoreva was everywhere, urging us to fight and die like real Russian soldiers."
Then the girl told how the legion took its first prisoners.
"As we ran forward we suddenly came upon a bunch of Germans immediately ahead of us. It was only a second until we were all around them.
"They saw they were caught and threw down their rifles, holding up their hands. They were terribly frightened.
"Good God! Women!" they exclaimed.
"We saw wounded German soldiers raising themselves on their elbows and shooting," interjected another wounded girl. "We just forgot ourselves entirely. We were simply Russia, fighting for her life.
"The loss of Lena, the most popular member of our company, was keenly felt by all of us," she added soberly. "During the battle Lena heard that Commander Bochkoreva had been killed. She hurried forward into the shell and fire, saying she was going to find her. We saw her go through one space literally strewn with exploding shells. Then, through the smoke and flames, we saw her blown to fragments.
"We also lost Sonia. She used to be a musician with the Romanoff concert organization. She was killed by machine gun fire."
Petrograd has not yet seen the full casualty list of the Legion of Death. From what the girls say, however, it appears that at least a dozen big shells struck square in their midst, killing perhaps twelve girls and wounding twice as many more.
Five of the German prisoners the girls captured were women, wearing the German soldier's uniform. The number of women in all armies on the eastern front is believed to be growing steadily.
As I returned from the hospital where I saw these paralyzed girls I met a new company of women marching briskly through the street. They were ready for the firing line, ready to give their lives in battle, and with their little ration of cyanide ready to take their own lives to avoid worse than death at the hands of the enemy.
III--STORIES OF WOUNDED GIRLS IN "COMMAND OF DEATH"
When the Russian women's battalion, known officially as the "Command of Death," went into action against the Germans near Smorgon, July 25, they captured a number of German women who also were fighting on the battle front in western Russia.
Ten wounded heroines of the women's battalion arrived in Petrograd leaving their commander, Vera Butchkareff and Marya Skrydloff, a daughter of Admiral Skrydloff, former commander of the Baltic fleet, and minister of marine, in a hospital at Vitebsk.
The women said it was reported that of the 200 of the command who reached the front only fifty remained. Twenty were killed, eight were taken prisoners and all the rest were wounded.
"Several times," said one wounded girl, "we attacked the Germans. Especially memorable was our attack at Novospassky wood, near Smorgon, where the enemy, hearing the voices of girls, lost their nerve. The result was that the prisoners were a few women, from whom we learned for the first time that German women also were fighting.
"We did not feel the slightest fear for our personal safety. Our passion was to serve the fatherland. We advanced gaily against the foe with laughter and song, our only unpleasant sentiments being when we first came to the corpses. Once when replying to the enemy's severe rifle and machine gun fire, we discovered to our amazement that all our men comrades in the neighboring trenches had treacherously fled, leaving us--a handful of women--to face the enemy alone."
The Russian women's battalion underwent the greatest hardships, not only in the actual fighting, but on their way to the front, according to stories told by wounded girls who have been brought back from the fighting lines to be placed in hospitals. Their heroism under fire was wonderful. Their dash and elan and their fearlessness under fire make a new chapter of the war.
The girls were sent to the front after they had demanded of Premier Kerensky that they be allowed to go.
They had boarded a train of long striped cars. The wooden bunks had been placed along the walls. The journey had been long and tiresome. Word of the women soldiers' coming had preceded them and they were greeted by jeering and hooting crowds at every station along the route.
The girls had their answers ready to the cries of the station crowds.
"What do you think you're going to do?" the jeers would go.
"Why are you fighting?"
Back would come the answer hot with scorn:
"Because you men are afraid to fight. All Russians are not cowards."
The women were sent to a camp back of the lines on the northern front. On their arrival there they were hooted by the male soldiers, who later tried to force themselves into the women's camp. It was plain that the men had no idea the women really expected to fight; they believed them to be merely camp followers and their cries showed as much. It was only when a band of male soldiers had been driven from the women's quarters at the bayonet point that they changed their view.
The girls drilled every day, rain or shine, and bathed in a river near the camp. While half of the battalion bathed the others had to maintain a strict guard to keep the male soldiers away.
Then came weary days of waiting. The commanders would not let the girls go to the front. It was only after great influence had been used that the order sending them to the trenches was given. They greeted the order with cheers and in their first action advanced singing songs of home. Their voices reached the German trenches and the sound of women singing so surprised the defenders that they were beaten back before they could regain their composure. As a result a number of prisoners were taken.
The women of the "Command of Death" came from every branch and class of society. University students, girls from some of the most noted families of Russia, professional women, working women and peasants, all were included in the membership.
"All we wanted was to help save the fatherland," said a wounded girl. "Women have as much right at the front as men. It is our country, too."
IV--STORIES TOLD BY WOMEN AFTER THE BATTLE
Only fifty of the whole battalion of women in Russia's Legion of Death came through their first battle unscathed. But the wounded as well as those who escaped are going back to the front.
Vera Butchkareff, commander of the Legion, suffering from shell shock in a hospital, so declared as she proudly told the heroic story of her unit's fighting. Half a dozen other wounded women in the same hospital gave instant corroboration.
"We have fought with men and with women," Commander Butchkareff declared, "and one is as good as the other if he or she loves the fatherland.
"My girls have been divided before the battle. One half remained a unit under my command and the other half were distributed in small detachments of six or ten to various companies. These small units were to act as ammunition carriers only. My half was an active fighting force. I led them into the charge myself."
"We are all going back to the front," one of the girls declared. The whole roomful of wounded Legionnaires chorused instant approval.
"The German girls we captured carried a sign 'Send us your women; we will pay you well,'" declared one of the girl soldiers.
"They sent us--but we carried bayonets," she added.
The girls are for the most part between eighteen and thirty years of age. Some of the force are married women with children and a few are of middle age. Among these latter a striking figure is Mme. Sofie Vansa, widow of a colonel killed in battle and whose two sons are now lying wounded.
Mary Goloubyova, the eighteen-year-old high-school girl who was wounded, tells this story:
"We went into action a fortnight after our arrival at the front under heavy German cannon fire. Given the order to advance, we rushed out of our trench. Feeling no sense of danger, we dashed toward the enemy in the wood. The machine guns began knocking over my companions. We were ordered to lie down. I noticed those at the front with me were all women. The men were further back.
"I began shooting, the gun kicking my shoulder so hard that it is still blue and stiff. I was glad when we were ordered to charge the machine guns in the woods. We paid dearly, but we held on, and by night our scouts discovered the machine gunners and we shelled them out.
"After the first attack I was attached to a machine gun, carrying ammunition to an advanced position under the fire of hidden German machine guns. We were advancing and constantly in danger of capture by the Germans. On one trip over newly captured ground I saw what I considered a wounded German officer lying on the ground. I went to help him with my gun in my right hand and the machine-gun ammunition in my left.
"Seeing this, he jumped to his knees and pulled out his revolver, but before he could shoot I dropped the ammunition and killed him. How did I feel on taking a human life? I had no sensation except to rid my country of an enemy. There was no sentimentality. We were trying to kill them and they were trying to kill us--that is all. Any Russian girl or any American girl in the same position would have the same feeling."
V--VISIT TO THE WOMEN SOLDIERS' BARRACKS
In the history of new Russia, as it will be written for posterity, will stand out one bright, flaming spot--the gallant stand of the Women's Regiment--the "Command of Death"--in the midst of an ebbing wave of cowardly, panic-stricken men units. For pure courage and coolness the action of the Butchkareff detachment near Vilna on that terrible July day has seldom been equaled....
The barracks of the command is in Torgvay Street. Posted at the gate was a little blue-eyed sentry in a soldier's khaki blouse, short breeches, green forage-cap, woman's ordinary black stockings, and neat, heavily soled shoes. The sentry was Miss Mary Skrydloff, daughter of the former commander of the Baltic Fleet and Minister of Marine. The Skrydloff family is one of the oldest and most distinguished in Russia.
Inside there were four large dormitories, the beds without bedding and heavy overcoats flung over them. In the courtyard 300 girls were at drill, mostly between eighteen and twenty-five years of age and of good physique and most of them pretty and refined in appearance. They wore their hair short or their heads entirely shaved. They were being drilled under the direction of a male sergeant of the Volynsky Regiment, a famous Russian military organization, and were marching in an exaggerated goose step.
Commander Vera Butchkareff explained that most of the recruits were from the higher educational academies and secondary schools, with a few peasants, factory girls, and servants. The commander said:
"We apply the rigid system of the army before the days of the revolution, rejecting the new principle of soldier self-government. Having no time to inure the girls gradually to hardships, we impose a Spartan régime from the first. They sleep on boards, without bed-clothes, thus immediately eliminating the weak and those who require comforts. The smallest breach of discipline is punished with immediate and dishonorable discharge.
"The ordinary food of the soldier is furnished by the guards equipage corps. We arise at four and drill daily from five to eleven and from one to six. The girls carry the cavalry carbine, which is five pounds lighter than the regulation infantry rifle. On our first parade I requested those whose motives were frivolous to step aside. Only one did so. Later on, however, many who were unable to stand the privations of a soldier-life left us.
"We are fully official and are already entered on the lists of Russia's regiments. Uniforms and supplies are received from the Ministry of War, to which we render accounts and present reports. Yesterday the commander of the Petrograd district reviewed us and expressed great satisfaction. I am convinced that we will excel the male fighters, once we get into action."
Commander Butchkareff said that only the Volynsky, which had provided the drill-sergeant, was really favorable. The Volynsky Regiment was the unit which led the Russian revolution. The regimental clerk is Mme. Barbara Bukovishkoff, the author of several admirable short stories.
VI--STORY OF COMMANDER VERA BUTCHKAREFF
Mme. Butchkareff is of peasant origin. Vera Butchkareff, or simply Yashka, as she has been christened by the men of the regiment to which she belonged, got much of her warlike spirit from her father, who fought through the whole of the Turkish war and was left a cripple for life. Her mother was a hard-working woman, with five children, of whom Yashka was the eldest, and she had to go out washing and cooking to earn enough to clothe and feed this flock.
At the age of five Yashka was sent out as nurse to a baby of three. And from that time she has never stopped working. She looks none the worse for it. Finely yet strongly built, with broad shoulders and healthy complexion, she can lift 200 pounds with the greatest of ease. She has never known what fear is.
Not long ago she remarked that during the last two years she had lived through so much that there remained but one danger yet to experience, that of flying. Just as she was saying that an aviator came up and offered to take her for a flight, and before the day was out she had exhausted her list of perils.
When she was sixteen years old her parents seized the first opportunity of getting her married. She never knew the man, but luckily as time wore on they grew very fond of each other, and were very happy. At first they both served in a shop, and thanks to their perseverance and frugality they were soon able to open a small shop of their own. But just as they began to prosper the war broke out, and he was one of the first to be called up.
She was very keen on accompanying him as a soldier, but he begged her to stay behind and work for her parents, whom they had been keeping.
She was always ready for any daring venture, and it was with great reluctance that she stayed at home in compliance with her husband's wish. Time passed, and after long waiting she got the news that he had been killed in action on May 28, 1915. At once she went to her parents, and said: "I have decided to go to the front, and you will either hear of my death or I shall return to you in honor and glory. I trust in God." And no persuasions were of any use.
For two years she has lived in the trenches and fought like a man. She has been wounded three times--in her arm, leg, and back. In the Lake Naroch battles there was a time when all the officers were killed and the men lost courage and lay down, too frightened to attack. Then she rose up and dashed forward calling on them to follow her. Every one obeyed her.
(Many are the tales that will be told of these women soldiers in the "New Russia," but this is sufficient to prove that womanhood the world over always rises to the emergency when home or country are in danger.)
THE TALE OF THE "TARA" OFF THE AFRICAN COAST
_Rescued by "Tanks in the Desert"_
_As told by survivors, set down by Lewis R. Freeman_
The adventures of the crew of the auxiliary cruiser, _Tara_, torpedoed off the North African coast, form one of the most exciting and romantic chapters in the annals of the Great War. Handed over as prisoners to the fanatical Senussi Arabs, they were taken out into the heart of the desert, where for many weary months they were on the brink of starvation, eking out their scanty ration of rice with snails and roots. The captain escaped and tried to bring help, but was captured and brought back to be lashed and kept without food. Just when things were at their worst a squadron of British armored cars, commanded by the Duke of Westminster, appeared as though by magic, drove off the Arabs, and rescued the survivors of the sorely-tried crew. By courtesy of the Admiralty the author interviewed Captain Gwatkin-Williams, the _Tara's_ commander; Lieutenant Tanner, R.N.R., and several members of the ship's company, and their stories give a vivid idea of the terrible experience they underwent, as told in the _Wide World Magazine_.
I--STORY OF THE BRITISH PACKET
When England took over something like half of her twenty million tons of merchant shipping for war service, among the transports, colliers, hospital ships, and the like were a number of small but swift packets which were armed and employed as auxiliary cruisers or patrols. One of these was the _Tara_, which, under the name _Hibernia_, had plied in the Irish service of the London and North-Western Railway. Commanded by an officer of the Royal Navy, but still worked by her old crew, the _Tara_ was sent to the bleak Cyrenaican coast of the Mediterranean to keep a look-out for submarines and prevent the smuggling of arms and supplies to the small but dangerous Turkish forces which were operating in Eastern Tripolitana with the object of inciting the Arabs to move against the then lightly-held western frontier of Egypt.
On November 5th the _Tara_ was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Gulf of Sollum, and sank with the loss of eleven of her crew of something over one hundred. The ninety-two survivors were towed by the submarine to Port Sulieman and handed over to the Turks. The latter, in turn, passed the party on to the Senussi, who, as shortly transpired, were getting ready to launch a "holy war" against the Italians and English. The Arabs, short of food already, started marching their prisoners about the desert, and after several weeks established them in a sort of permanent camp at an old Roman well in the interior. Here, ekeing out with snails and roots such scanty rations as their captors were able to provide, the unfortunate Britons, racked by disease, and only half sheltered from the capricious winter weather, existed for three months and a half. The trickle of food, now from one oasis, now from another, became thinner and thinner as time went on, and by the middle of March the failure of supplies had become so complete that absolute starvation in the course of the next few days appeared inevitable. But on the seventeenth of that month, as suddenly as though dropped from the sky, a squadron of armored automobiles appeared on the horizon, and a few moments later the Arab guards had fallen before the fire of machine-guns, and the half-delirious prisoners, clutching hastily-broached jam and condensed milk tins, were being bundled into Red Cross ambulances for the return journey. A couple of days more, and they were in the hospitals of Alexandria, and a month later the bulk of them were back in England reporting for duty.
Through the courtesy of the British Admiralty the writer was granted an extended interview with Captain Gwatkin-Williams--the only one, indeed, that that distinguished officer gave before going to his new command in the North Atlantic. Later I journeyed to Wales and Ireland, to talk with Lieutenant Tanner, R.N.R., and several of the surviving members of the _Tara's_ crew. The narrative that follows is the result of these conversations.
I recognized Captain Gwatkin-Williams the instant his broad shoulders filled the door of the room. I knew at once that he had all the characteristics, as he had all the appearance, of the typical British naval officer, and that among these was a distinct disinclination to tell of his own experiences. Knowing from past failures the futility of trying to "draw" a man of his kind by frontal attack, I wasted no effort in that direction, but asked him pointblank if he had been able to preserve any souvenirs of his desert sojourn, and it is by piecing together the things he told me over a brine-blotched naval uniform, a dented jam tin, a handful of snail-shells and dried roots, three or four camel-bone needles, and a blood-stained whip of hippo hide, that I was able to construct the connected story which follows.
* * * * *
It was about ten-thirty in the forenoon of the fifth of last November that I saw a torpedo heading straight for us at a distance of not over three hundred feet. It was painted a bright red, and therefore, in the clear water, even more conspicuous than the wake from its propellers and air exhaust. It struck the ship fairly amidships on the starboard side, and my first order was to lower away the boats to port. I was not even thrown from my feet by the shock, nor was there any sharp explosion audible. Had I not seen the torpedo, I should for the moment have been in some doubt as to what had actually happened.
My men were already standing by their gun, and the instant the submarine put up its "eye" we took its range and opened fire. At least one shell cracked right over the periscope, causing it to disappear at once, and we did not see it again until salt water had stopped the mouth of our little rapid-firer.
The _Tara_, her engines still running, continued for some distance on a perfectly even keel, the boats meanwhile being safely launched with the surviving members of the crew. Eleven had been killed by the explosion. Then, all of a sudden, she began settling aft, and finally went down like a sounding-lead, throwing her bows high in the air. My gun crew and I were caught beneath the for'ard awning, and owed our lives to the fact that we had no lifebelts on, and were therefore able to dive and clamber clear.
The submarine--the U35--rose to the surface and came nosing into the wreckage before we had all been picked up by our boats, but the fellows on the deck of it contented themselves with covering us with their revolvers--a precautionary measure, doubtless--and not interfering with the work of rescue. I asked the commander of the submarine if we might be allowed to proceed to X----, an Egyptian port at which a small British force was stationed, and which we should have had no trouble in making in a few hours. He replied, in excellent English, that this would be impossible, as it was necessary for him to deliver us to the Turks as prisoners.
The submarine then took our three boats in tow, and headed for Port Sulieman, where we were landed at about three in the afternoon. I made a part of the passage on the deck of the U boat, and had some little chat with its commander. He admitted that we had nearly put his "eye" out with one of our shells. He said that he had been often to England before the war, and even confessed to a visit to the Isle of Wight. He could not, of course, be blamed for wanting to prevent our getting back to a British port to report the probable existence of a German submarine base on the Cyrenaican coast; the callousness of his action only transpired later, when it became evident that neither the Turks nor the Arabs were able to house or feed us.
II--HELD PRISONERS BY THE ARABS
The Turkish officers at Port Sulieman were very courteous, especially Nouri Pasha, who is a brother of Enver Pasha, but palpably perturbed at the prospect of caring for us. They were short of food themselves apparently, and that region, like all the rest of Eastern Tripolitana, is an almost absolute desert. Since their German masters had decreed the thing, however, there was nothing more to be said, and so, in the true Oriental fashion of following the line of least resistance, they passed us on to the Senussi. Since the Senussi had no one else to pass us along to, they had to shoulder the burden themselves and trudge on with it as best they might.
The ship's cook, who had died from his wounds in one of the boats, we buried soon after landing, breaking an oar to form a rude cross above his grave. That night, still in our wet garments, we spent huddled together upon some rocks by the shore. The next morning we were given a small quantity of rice, which we had to cook as best we could in some beef tins and eat with our fingers. There was less than a handful of the tasteless, unsalted mixture to each man. We were terribly cold, hungry, and thirsty; indeed, for the next four months and a half, there was hardly an hour in which we were not suffering a good deal from one, and usually all three, of these causes.
After a couple of days we were moved back from the coast to a primitive village where the people and animals alike lived in dug-outs in the rocks. A "stable" which had been occupied by goats, donkeys, and pigs was cleared for us, and there, living in indescribable filth, we were kept for four days. We had been forced to carry with us on a stretcher, a quartermaster of the _Tara_ who had sustained a double fracture of one of his legs. At this juncture, between filth and vermin, infection set in, and the only chance of saving his life appeared to be amputation. This--I will spare you the harrowing details--was finally accomplished with no other instruments than a pair of old scissors and a drop of whisky--our last--to steady the poor fellow's nerves. Of course, he died.
The Arabs now told us that they were going to take us to a beautiful oasis, where there were water and dates in plenty, and flocks of sheep and goats, and warm houses to shelter us in. Why they told us this I have never been able to make out. Possibly to make us forget our ever-empty stomachs; more likely because Arabs are incapable of telling the truth even when they want to. At any rate, we never reached the paradise that our captors persistently dangled before us like the carrot on a donkey's nose.
But march we did, marched endlessly, and most of the time on less than a pint of vile water and a dozen ounces of cooked rice a day. The country was one endless stretch of small round pebbles that ground the soles from our boots and the skin from our feet. We were always hungry, always thirsty, always footsore. The sun at noonday scorched us, the cold of the night chilled us. One day, to make matters worse, a man who was off his head from suffering ran away and evaded capture. Following the Oriental practice, our guards must needs punish the birds in the hand for the sins of the one in the bush. For two days we were marched without a drop of water or a morsel of food. The second day they goaded us forward from daybreak to sunset. It seemed as though we must have gone a hundred miles, and I learned later that it was actually twenty. Even that was an awful distance for starving men, who hadn't the strength to walk in a straight line, to be driven.
For three long weeks they herded us on. At the end of that time we arrived at what appeared to be our destination, some half-ruined Roman wells called Bir-Hakkim, the "Red Doctor" and the "White Doctor." It was not an oasis in the true sense, but only three or four caved-in cisterns, partially filled with reeking rain-water, which served as a caravan halt. There were no houses, no palms, no cultivation; only rocks and the crumbling copings of the ancient wells broke the awful monotony of the desert. Most of us arrived barefooted, all of us half-naked; but it is due to our guards to say that they were in scarcely better plight themselves, and that as opportunity offered to get old boots and rags from passing caravans they gave them to us.
One day I found a bit of broken glass, and with this managed to scrape down some slivers of camel's bone to the form of clumsy needles. Yarn we made by rolling tufts of camels' hair, picked up along the way, between our palms. The resulting strand was seldom less than an eighth of an inch in diameter, and always lumpy and prone to pull apart at the joints; yet, by dint of patience and care, we were able to stitch fragments of rags together to form hats and long Arab shirts. Those of us who still had any parts of our socks and trousers left, patched and darned them as best we could with our bunchy yarn.
Our daily ration, diminutive from the first, became smaller and smaller as the days went by, and finally, to stave off actual starvation, we began eating snails and the roots of a small plant, with spreading leaves like the arms of an octopus, which grew here and there among the rocks. The roots had a pleasant, nutty flavour--I could eat these few I have kept with the greatest zest at this moment--but snails, roasted in their shells on a camel-dung fire and eaten without salt, were, to say the least, hardly up to that delicacy as served at the Maison Riche. Most of us had a hard time in bringing ourselves to eat them at all, and a few ever came really to like them. One chap, however, a Welsh quartermaster, developed an almost uncanny taste for the things, eating several hundred every day, and actually waxing fat on them. Ever since we have called him the "Snail King."
A few days after our arrival at Bir-Hakkim an Arab woman came to our camp with some goats and sheep to sell, but our guards either could not or would not buy them for us. That night, however, a wolf killed one of the sheep, and some of the men, out foraging for snails, found and brought in the half-eaten carcass. Neither the wolf himself, nor the waiting vultures, could have tackled that flesh more voraciously than those half-famished sailors did.
III--THE STRANGE TRICK OF FATE
It was about this time that we first learned the true reason for the terrible scarcity of food, a scarcity that affected the Arabs as well as ourselves. The Turks, it appeared, had been successful in their intrigues with the Senussi, and the sheikhs of this powerful Arab confederation had declared war upon England and thrown their forces against the Egyptian frontier. Sollum, but lightly held at that time, had been taken, and the Arabs assured us that their armies were marching on Alexandria and Cairo. In retaliation for this treachery, the British Fleet had extended its blockade to the Senussi coast, and the hinterland, barren and almost entirely dependent for food upon Egypt, was already in the grip of famine. The impetuous Arabs were learning their lesson on the "influence of sea-power" by being slowly starved into repentance, and by a strange trick of fate we British sailors, who otherwise would ourselves have been helping to drive the lesson home, were being starved with them.
For some reason the guards made us draw our water from the fouler of the two wells, the one from which the animals were watered. We boiled the noisome green liquid, and did our best to render it potable. It was all to little purpose, however, for dysentery soon developed and spread rapidly through the camp. As there were no medicines of any kind whatever available, there was little to do but let the disease run its course. This accentuated the weakening influence of the starvation, and the wonder is that we left no more than four graves behind us in the accursed spot.
About December 20th a little flour, tea, and sugar were given us, and we were told that this was the last of such dainties that we might expect to receive. We decided unanimously to keep on our diet of rice, snails, and roots for four days longer, and save these luxuries for a Christmas "spread." Here is our menu for that glad occasion, as recorded in my diary:--
"CHRISTMAS DAY, 1915.--Breakfast, rice boiled with a little salt. Dinner, two ounces of boiled goat flesh and 'pudding.' Tea, one small pancake, with weak tea."
By New Year's Day we were practically on an "all-snail" diet, and the epidemic of dysentery appeared to grow worse as a consequence. Two or three times in the succeeding weeks camels came in with food, but never in sufficient quantity to allow any increase in our tiny ration. This continued to be rice, with an occasional goat or sheep divided among five score of us. Without the roots and snails it would not have been enough to keep us alive.
Early in February I came to the conclusion that our only chance of rescue lay in getting word of our whereabouts through to some point in Egypt still occupied by our forces. Figuring that one man would have a better chance of escaping observation than two or three, I finally decided to make the attempt alone. The nights would be moonless, I calculated, for a week or more following February 20th. For a fortnight preceding that date I began saving a half of my daily ration of rice, and as the news of my plan was gradually confided to other men of the camp, these also began laying by a share of their already pitifully small allowance. Thus about twenty pounds of cooked rice were saved up, and this I tied up in the legs of a pair of Turkish trousers given me by one of the guards. To keep the soft mass from settling down in one end, I tied the legs at frequent intervals with bits of yarn, so that my novel knapsack finally had much the appearance of a double string of German sausages. My goat-skin water-bag held just two and a half kettlefuls of water--forty-eight of the little jam-tins with which I had to fill it.
The cordon round our camp was never tightly drawn, and I had no difficulty in slipping through it on the night of the 20th. I had kept mental note of the roundabout route by which the Arabs had brought us to Bir-Hakkim, and felt sure that I should be able to strike the coast at some point near the Egyptian boundary. I held to my pre-determined course by the stars, and stumbled on over the stones till daybreak. I had met no one, and there were no signs of pursuit, but in the steady leaking of my water through the semi-porous bag and the frightful way in which the new Arab shoes I was wearing were rubbing the skin from my toes, I forsaw thus early the almost certain defeat of my hopes.
Lying down in as sheltered a place as I could find, I rested till nightfall before setting off again on my way. By morning my water, my toe-nails, and my strength were gone, on top of which I stumbled straight into a camp of nomad Arabs. Flight was out of the question, so I made the best of a bad situation by trying to induce them, in my fragmentary Arabic, to take me to the coast. They understood me all right, and appeared not a little tempted by the prospect of the double handful of gold I promised them. They debated the question for a while, but in the end their fear of the Turk was too strong, and they decided I must be delivered to the nearest Ottoman post.
My captors were not unkind to me; indeed, they treated me rather as a prized animal pet, a sort of dancing bear, than a dangerous captive. They exhibited me to everyone they met along the way, even made a point of travelling circuitously in order to show their strange find to some encampments that would otherwise have missed the treat. They never ceased to marvel at my ability to tell the direction without a compass and the time without a watch--simple tricks for a sailor--and seeing it kept them good-natured, I made a point of going through my tricks whenever they wanted them.
The Turks to whom I was finally brought were just as courteous and sympathetic as those to whom we had been delivered on landing, and they cannot be blamed for deciding that I should be returned to the camp at Bir-Hakkim. They were probably hard up for food themselves.
IV--HORRORS OF THE DESERT MARCH
I hardly care to go into details about that return journey. Except that it was two or three days of horrible nightmare, my memory of it is a good deal confused, and I am rather thankful that such is the case. I am afraid there were some things I shouldn't care to remember too clearly. A fanatical old Senussi priest had come to fetch me, and he rode on a camel and drove me ahead of him with a long hippo-hide whip all the way. They gave me no food and no water for two days, and my one clear recollection of the whole time is of gulping down the nearly-hatched eggs from a lark's nest I stumbled upon, and of the horrible revulsion of my outraged stomach as the nauseous mess entered it. But I'd really rather not speak about that little interval at all.
Something of the nature of what Captain Gwatkin-Williams had to go through on this journey may be inferred from this entry in the diary of one of the _Tara_ men, under date of February 29th:--
"About 3 p.m. we suddenly heard rifle-shots to the northward. A few minutes later there appeared over the brow of a small hill some men and camels, and there, walking apart from the rest, was our brave captain. We were now witness of one of the most degrading and brutal sights it has ever been my lot to see. He was lashed with an elephant thong whip, and the guard punched him violently in the face. Then the women came up and pelted him with the largest stones they could find."
As a punishment for running away I was put in solitary confinement in a goat-pen, where, for a day or two, the old priest and some of the more temperamental of the Arab ladies--the one with his hippo-hide whip and the others with filth and stones--spent most of their idle hours in trying to bring me round to a state of true repentance for my truancy. This treatment raised such a protest from my comrades, however, that finally the guards, on Lieutenant Tanner's undertaking full responsibility for my docility in the future, restored me to full camp privileges. That is to say, I was allowed my fistful of daily rice again, and liberty to hunt my own snails and dig my own roots.
Things grew rapidly worse during the next fortnight, and by the middle of March it seemed that the end we had feared and fought against for so long--slow starvation--could not be much longer postponed. No more food was coming in, the snails were breeding and absolutely unfit to eat, and all the roots within a radius that any of us still had the strength to walk to gather were exhausted. Indeed, the strongest of us were by now so weak that we could no longer keep our balance in stooping to pull the roots, but had to kneel and worry them out by digging and tugging.
The stock of rice was entirely exhausted early in March, and from that time we lived on practically nothing but a few ounces of goat-meat per man as a daily ration. Famished as we were, even these tiny portions of unsalted meat seemed to nauseate rather than nourish, and in my own case the repulsion for meat engendered during this period has persisted to this day. I am now practically a vegetarian.
The plight of our guards was little better than our own, except, of course, that when worst came to worst, they could always abandon us and make their way across the desert to some place where at least subsistence would be obtainable. For ourselves, we were now quite incapable of undertaking any kind of a march at all. Help would have to come to us; it was quite out of the question for us to search for it, even if our guards had been willing to allow us to try.
The last two or three days I do not like to think about. We were too weak to venture far afield, and there was little to do but sit about and brood over the fact that even such almost negligible rations as we still had were nearly at an end. We avoided each other as much as possible, and when we did come together tried to speak of anything but _the_ thing that occupied all our minds. And then, from the one quarter concerning which we had long ago given up all hope, help came.
You see, we had written a good many letters from time to time on the assurance of our guards that they would be handed to the Turks for forwarding to England. Most of these were probably thrown away or deliberately destroyed, but, by a kind trick of fate, one written by myself was taken by the Turks to Sollum when the Senussi occupied that port. In this letter--no matter how--I managed to indicate that we were held captive and in danger of starvation at Bir-Hakkim. When the British retook Sollum this letter, by a second lucky coincidence, was left behind in the hastily-evacuated quarters of a Turkish officer.
V--THE RESCUE AND THE RETURN TO ENGLAND
Once definitely located, our rescue was only the matter of assembling the requisite strength in armoured cars and finding a competent guide. This done, our deliverance was but a question of hours. But of how they would have found things had anything delayed them for even a few days I do not care to think.
It was about three in the afternoon of St. Patrick's Day--we had celebrated it in the morning by making a feeble attempt to kill off a few of the snakes that had recently begun to infest the camp--that the first car was sighted, and before we had finished pinching ourselves to prove we were not dreaming the whole force of forty-one were thundering down upon us. The ambulances pulled up, and the attendants, as soon as they could free themselves from the embraces of the men, began to shower food about. Meanwhile, the armoured cars, spreading out like a "fan," swept by in pursuit of our fleeing guards.
Except for the Senussi priest, whom the sailors had dubbed "The Old Black Devil," and who had departed a couple of days previously, we had no special grounds for complaint against the men upon whom the care of our party had fallen. They had, for the most part, done the best they could for us, and we had no reason to believe that they had fared much better than their prisoners. We would gladly have interceded for them if there had been any chance. Taking it for granted, apparently, that they would receive no quarter, they had taken to their heels the moment the first cars came into sight, and a panicky sort of resistance on a part of a few of them when they were overtaken sealed the fate of the lot. Save for a few women and children, all the Arabs about the place succumbed to the fire of the machine-guns, and a score or so of graves were added to the four of the _Tara_ men we had already buried at Bir-Hakkim.
We lost one more man in a hospital at Alexandria, but the rest of us, thanks to good food and careful nursing, were soon quite our old selves again. Practically every man of us is back, or about to go back, on duty. Word of my own new command comes only this morning.
Lieutenant Tanner, R.N.R., captain of the _Tara_ in her merchant marine days, I found in his home at Holyhead. Through the window of his cosy library, where he spun his yarn, I could look out across the rocky coast of Anglesea to where the slate-coloured patrol-boats kept guard in St. George's Channel.
"Lieutenant Tanner," I asked him, "what did the men of the _Tara_ talk about and think about, once the excitement of the sinking, and the landing, and the march was over and you were all settled down to the routine of 'prison life'?"
"First and always--food," he replied, promptly. "We were famishing for the whole four months and more. For a while we thought and talked a good deal of the possibility of rescue; but as the weeks went by that hope gradually died out, and our speculations--perhaps more in thought than in word--were of how the end would come. It was only during the last couple of months that the men came to speak often on this subject, and they were, not unnaturally, most prone to discuss it in the intervals of deeper depression following the death of one of their mates. We seemed to divide into two sharply differentiated parties on this issue, the optimists holding that our heritage of civilization and our discipline would enable us to meet the worst bravely and resignedly, while the pessimists maintained that we would gradually slough off our civilized restraint--just as our clothes and our conventions had gone already--and end by fighting for life like a pack of wolves. The rate at which the bickerings and petty quarrels over trivialities increased as the days went by inclined more and more of the men to the latter theory, but a few of us never wavered in our belief, but it would be the man in us, and not the beast, that would be supreme at the last.
"We--the officers--made a point of imposing no discipline whatever upon the men, this extending even to non-interference in their increasingly frequent disputes. We held--and rightly, I am convinced--that anything calculated to give an outlet to their feelings would make them less likely to become a prey to gloomy thought. Sullen, silent brooding was what we feared more than anything else. Consequently, therefore, we rather welcomed the occasional bouts of fisticuffs that marked the later stages of our imprisonment. They unquestionably acted as safety-valves to prevent more dangerous explosions.
"I also made what effort I could to keep the minds of the men occupied. Every Sunday evening we met and sang hymns, and on these occasions I usually read from my Prayer Book and invited discussion on some text I had given out the previous Sunday. Here"--turning to his diary--"are some of the things we debated in our weekly desert 'forums' by the old Roman wells:--
"'More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.'--From 'The Passing of Arthur.'
"'Love took up the glass of time.'--From 'Locksley Hall.'
"'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend.'
"'Does the end justify the means?'
"As you may well imagine, strange theses were developed, and I am afraid that many a sore head resulted from the preliminary discussions. It didn't take much to start them going in that last fortnight after the snails failed us; but the diversion was good for them, and, besides, poor chaps, they were far too weak to be able to hurt one another in the least. Their fights were like the tussles of a couple of puppies. When you see some of the boys on the steamer to-night, by the way, I can suggest no more promising line of inquiry for you to pursue than to ask them to tell you some of the things they used to fight about in the desert."
Wireless Operator Birkby and Stewards Barton and Fenton, who were among the _Tara_ survivors, had, on their return to England, been put to work on the _Tara's_ sister-ship, the _Greenore_, and it was behind the darkened windows of the smoking-room of this smart little packet, as she bore into the snoring sou'wester which swept St. George's Channel, that I contrived to gather the three of them together to talk of their adventures.
"All I want to know," I said, "is a few of the things you fellows used to punch each other's heads about in the desert. I've got all the rest of the story."
They rose to that cast with a rush. All three commenced talking at once, but the two stewards quickly fell silent out of deference to the superior rank of the wireless operator.
VI--THE WIRELESS OPERATOR'S TALE
"Easier to tell you, sir, what we _didn't_ fight about," laughed Birkby. "At first it was mostly food. We didn't have any 'pothecary's scales to divide it exactly with, and when one lad got a few grains of rice more than another, it wasn't in human nature not to make some bit of a mention of it."
"That was wot you an' me 'ad our first tiff over, matey," cut in Fenton. "It was the day after Captain Tanner gave out the text 'love thy neighbour like thyself' for us to ponder ower. You dipped into the pot ahead of me, an' I said, 'How's a bloke goin' to love his neighbour when that neighbour pinches half his rice?' You filled your mouth with one hand an' clipped me one in the jaw wi' t'other; an' as I went reelin' back I put my foot into Bill's pile of toasted snails, squashing 'em flat. So over he rolls an' starts to beat me afore I cud get up. W'en at last I gets up the rice was all gone an' Bill had copped all my snails to pay for the ones I squashed. All I had to put down me gullet that night was some of the squashed snails I salvaged from the sand, an' the grit I ate with 'em started my dysentery going again fer a week."
Birkby smiled, and nodded confirmatively. "Yes," he resumed, "most of our fights were about food, but my first one was about my trousers. You see, I was off watch and turned in asleep when the torpedo struck the _Tara_, and only just managed to get away in my pajamas. The lower part of these I kicked out of in the water, and one of the sailors of the submarine gave me a spare pair of his German naval breeches. It was glad indeed I was to have them. At first no one remarked them, but finally, at the end of a hard day's march, one of the Welsh lads passed some observation in his own language about me accepting the bounty of the Hun. I didn't understand exactly what he said, but to be on the safe side I clouted him one then and there. But all the same," he concluded after a pause, "I traded the Hun trousers to one of the guards for a long Arab shirt, and got on without any breeches for the rest of the time."
"An' not a bit worse off than most of the rest of us," added Fenton. "His 'burnoose' was a good foot longer than mine."
"But it was X---, the 'Snail King,'" continued Birkby, "who was oftenest in trouble. We were all jealous of his appetite for the wriggling things, jealous of the quick way he had of spying and picking them up, and, most of all, jealous of the way he was getting fat on them while all the rest of us were wasting away to skeletons. First and last, though, I think we were about quits with him. You see, the way we cooked the snails was to throw them on the coals till the blow-off of steam made a sort of whistle to announce that they were done to a proper turn. Well, little old Barton here, by dint of long practising alone in the desert, developed a bit of a whistle of his own which even the 'Snail King' himself couldn't tell from the real thing. By tooting up at the proper moments, old Barty had the 'King' setting his teeth in half-cooked snails for nearly a week before he twigged the thing. Then, of course, he jumped on our little friend here with both feet, and it took two of us half-fed ones to drag him off."
"Aye, matey," Barton chipped in, "an' it took three o' ye to hold him the week after when we planted the loaded shells on him. I pinched a cartridge from one o' a dozen snail-shells wi' powder. On top o' this I rammed in the upper half--the 'orned half--of a snail, an' scattered the shells where 'His Highness' cu'd find 'em, but for not 'avin' put 'em all on the coals at onct. After the first ones began to blow up a post-mortem on the remainin' ones revealed some of my infernal machines, and then I laughed and gave the whole game away."
And so they ran on. Fenton confessed to having had to "clout" one of the quartermasters, because the latter had been so "swanky" as to maintain that the torpedo that sank the _Tara_ was scarlet "when the bally thing was only red"; and Birkby admitted to having closed his argument for the negative on one of Lieutenant Tanner's Sunday texts with, "And if you still think that 'Love is the greatest thing in the world'--take _that_!" And as we slid up the Liffey in the drizzle of the Irish dawn, Barton just finished telling me how someone accused the first man to sight the rescuing motors with eating the "Arabs' hemp and 'seeing' things,'" adding that the two were circling each other on tottering legs, looking for an opening, when the bout was interrupted by the arrival of the Red Cross ambulances. "Half a minute later," he concluded, "the two of 'em was both guzzlin' over the same jam-tin."
There had, it appears, been some kind of a dispute over everything, from the sand beneath their feet to the sky above their heads, and, except for the higher officers, just about every man of them had had some kind of a set-to with every other one. And yet not even the fine optimism of Captain Gwatkin-Williams and Lieutenant Tanner convinced me so thoroughly as these off-hand recitals of the ancient British spirit of give-and-take in which they settled their petty troubles that, had the worst come to the worst--had, for instance, the Duke of Westminister's rescue party gone astray, as it nearly did--it would have been the man, not the beast, in the _Tara_ sailors that would have triumphed in the end.
THE WHITE SILENCE--WINTER IN THE CARPATHIANS
_In the Snow-Clad Mountains with the Austrians Told by Ludwig Bauer, of Vienna_
This war has set new standards of endurance for the soldier. They have been compelled to keep the field--to march, to fight or to carry on siege warfare in the trenches--regardless of weather conditions. Battles have frequently been fought while a blizzard raged or while the thermometer stood below zero. War in the solitary, snow-clad wastes of a mountain range is war stripped of all its glamor. It is the repellant, savage struggle of wild beasts or of primitive men stalking one another and at the same time engaging in a life-and-death struggle with the destructive forces of nature. Something of the extraordinary physical and mental strain of service in the Carpathians in the winter of 1915-'16 is conveyed in the following story by Ludwig Bauer, the well known Viennese writer. It was published originally in the _New Yorker Staats Zeitung_, with whose permission it is here translated by William L. McPherson with editorial note for the _New York Tribune_.
I--STORY OF THE SNOWBOUND REGIMENT
The 3d company of the --st Regiment sits up there in the snow and waits. It doesn't know what for, or for how long. It may be that the next moment the field marshal will come. It may be that they must squat there another week.
About 300 meters below them runs the road. At least, it runs there on the map. It cannot be recognized now; it is just as white and smooth as the rest of the snow-covered world around them.
That is the road over which they are to advance. But just now no advance is possible. For the Russian artillery stands there on the mountain rising 700 feet high above them and commands the way. So they must wait until their artillery succeeds in locating the enemy's batteries. That is a hard job, since the Russians have naturally hidden themselves in the woods, and the tall, dark trees seem impenetrable; they betray nothing.
Slowly and measuredly the flakes fall, as if they were considering whether they should fall or not. The sky is leaden and lowering. The men gaze at it stolidly. This endless white has something deadening and stupefying about it. They say little. They have already exhausted their conversation, and nothing happens any longer to start new talk.
With their snow mantles and snow caps they, too, look completely whitened, as though they were a lean, haggard collection of snow-men. They may not smoke, they may not cook; the least flame or smoke would betray them. They are not allowed to dig out trenches, for the brown earth would be visible for miles, a dark spot on the brilliant snow cover.
So there is apparently nothing to do but to stare into the whiteness until the eyes smart, to keep silence and to indulge in memories--to remember some past existence which was not so white, so lifeless, so absolutely passive. In the long run that is not very entertaining, but beggars cannot be choosers.
The soldiers press the snow with their well-protected fists until it is quite hard--almost solid. Then they lie down on it as on a bed. When one gets used to it, it furnishes a sort of warmth. But one must be careful lest the hands, the nose and the ears freeze. The ears are covered; one sticks his hands in his armpits, which are the best stoves hereabouts. But the most difficult thing is to protect the nose.
They have no fear--less fear certainly than anywhere else. Through the influence of this endless white shroud of hills, mountains and valleys they have become calmer, quieter, more thoughtful than ever. What it was a sacrifice to give up in Galicia every one accepts here as a matter of routine. For here they are clear out of the accustomed world of villages or cities, even if those settlements on the plain were settlements burned, ravaged or deserted. They at least recalled the world of ordinary experience and reminded the men of their former life, with its desires or necessities. But here every civilized tie is broken. Here they are alone--alone with the enemy.
It is just as if foresters and poachers encountered each other in the mountains.
They sleep, but that sleep is troubled by a sense of the mystery which surrounds them, which conceals the Russians from them and them from the Russians.
Carefully, measuredly, they eat at night their cold conserves; it may be a long time before another fresh supply comes to them over the meter-deep mountain snows; and in the morning they wash themselves in the snow, which here suffices for all uses--soap, drink, roadway, bed and shroud. So another day comes, which may bring an advance, an assault, perhaps a victory, if the Russians show themselves. Instinctively they look out into the white silence.
* * * * *
The under officer was a Pole, but a Pole who spoke German. He had a hatchet nose, very black, glowing eyes and a pallid face. It seemed to me that he always kept moving his hands uneasily. I noticed also the golden medal for valor which he wore. I had milk chocolate with me, and so he told me the story of how he got the decoration. It was this:
II--TALE OF THE POLISH OFFICER
"We knew at last where the Russians stood. But they were three companies strong, and we were only one, so we couldn't well attack them. Besides, they stood near a little wood and had machine guns. But we had to get ahead. They were across our path, and there were other reasons which my lieutenant explained to me, but which I couldn't understand.
"So we decided to try to take them by surprise. But that is very difficult, for on this accursed snow in the Carpathians you can see everything. It would be almost necessary to dip one's self into a barrel of flour. Fortunately, a mist came in the mountains, and that night we resolved to make the attempt.
"We knew exactly the direction; the first lieutenant had made a drawing on which everything was clear and plain. Two men were to be chosen who should steal ahead and overpower the sentinels. Many volunteered. Ignatz and I were selected.
"Everything depended on our not being discovered. The company crawled behind us. It was compelled to stop behind the last snow ridge; otherwise its presence would have been detected. It was a bold enough stroke to have gone that far; and except for the fog and the snow even this could not have been accomplished. Two hundred men always make some noise, however much they try to avoid it. So they stayed behind the ridge, about a hundred paces from the trees where the two Russian sentinels were posted. Then it was for us to do our work.
"The night was dark and the fog thick, but the snow gave off a certain light. We did not see the two Russians, but we thought we saw the shadows of the pine trees under which they stood. We crawled along slowly over the snow, each for himself. We had plenty of time. The point was not to be quick, but to make no sound.
"We had taken off our shoes and wrapped our feet in white woollen cloths. The ridge there was pretty steep; but one couldn't tumble down it, for the snow would have crackled. Ordinarily they would not have heard it, nor would I have heard it. But on such a night a sentinel could hear everything--it was so frightfully still.
"Yet we got ahead. And then we could crawl further on the level surface. I was very careful, and now and then shovelled with my hands a little snow bank, so that I could have some shelter if they discovered me.
"We couldn't see the sentinels yet; that is, I couldn't see them. About Ignatz I know nothing, and nobody will ever know whether or not he found them. There may have been a deep hole somewhere in the snow cover, or maybe he grew weak and fainted.
"About that I don't know. I crawled forward without looking for him. Suddenly I heard the two Russians talking, and quite near me. It couldn't be more than twenty paces away.
"I held up. I had to wait till one of them went away or till Ignatz came.
"They had been careless. But I was already so near, and it is a wonder to me that they didn't notice me.
"I could have shot them; but that would have given the alarm. I didn't want to attack them with the bayonet, for they would have cried out and would have awakened the vedettes, who were somewhere behind them, and then the whole three companies would have been warned.
"I decided to strangle one of them. Ignatz would have to make way with the other.
"The fog had become thinner; it broke into streaks here and there. The sentinels were looking in my direction. I believed that they must see me. If I only could catch the expression on their faces!
"But I would not move; that was bound to betray me. If they had shot at me then I should never have seen them raising their rifles.
"Very slowly I moved my head. Then I noticed that they turned toward each other and talked. They talked continually, and that angered me. A sentinel ought not to talk.
"Then a third man came along--an officer. He inspected them, showed them something, looked sharply about, particularly toward me. But I had already sunk in the snow and did not move. Then he went his way. I did not see him again.
"Scarcely had the officer gone when the two Russians began to quarrel. At first I didn't understand why, but it soon became clear to me, because one of them, the smaller, went about thirty paces to the side, laid himself under a tree and wrapped himself in his cloak, as if he intended to sleep until the Judgment Day.
"It was plain that they were wrangling over which of them should go to sleep.
"I was so glad. Now I didn't need to wait for Ignatz, but could carry through the plan by myself."
III--THE PRIMITIVE SAVAGERY OF WAR
"Yet I had to get so near the Russian that I could seize him by the throat at one jump. He must not be able to cry out.
"And that was the hardest part of my task; compared to it, all the rest was only child's play. For when one man is so near another man, the other must either see or hear him. I breathed as softly as a dying man, but kept pushing forward.
"And when one is so impatient he imagines everything possible. It seemed to me as if each movement I made caused a frightful disturbance. But that was only the hot beating of my blood.
"At last there was nothing which should have hidden me from the vision of the Russian. I saw him distinctly when he came in my direction. The snow beat in my eyes, but I could not turn my gaze away from him.
"He was a tall Siberian and wore a snow cap. His cheek bones stood out like those of a heathen, which he probably was. He was thinking of nothing; sleeping as he stood, like a rabbit with open eyes.
"That was my luck and his misfortune. That made me bold. I ventured a quicker movement, sliding a whole pace forward. He stood there, half turned toward the wood. He must suddenly have sensed my presence, for he became at once more wide awake and uneasy, walking quickly to and fro with a restless movement, like a hen when she sees a hawk above her.
"He lifted his gun as though to shoot; but not at me, for I was almost at his feet. I think that he did not dare to look ahead--at me--for the fright would have been too great for him; he would have died of it.
"Then he turned to the other side to see whether an enemy might be creeping up from that direction. That was my moment--my time to do what I intended to do.
"Like a flash I started for his yellow, pock-marked face. It seemed to me that I already had my hands about his throat. The way I did it did not surprise me--I had thought it out so carefully beforehand.
"It is frightfully hard to spring up after one has crawled or lain so long motionless on the snow. I had thought--I knew--that I must cause him no pain, that it must happen in a second, in order that he might not recover from his surprise and cry out. Therefore it was a frightful moment for me. Surely death itself is not so frightful. Every muscle in my body was strained and broken, it seemed to me. I cannot tell all that I suffered, thought, felt, in that tiny space of time.
"He had turned around toward me, and in his face was already the presentiment that he was going to die. Never have I seen anything so grewsome as his horrified look, even before I got my hands on his throat.
"He was, as it were, paralyzed. He did not think of defending himself. He was too weak even to raise a cry. I held him fast; that you can believe, for he sank slowly in the snow without a sound.
"The other one under the trees slept soundly and his throat rattled in his sleep. I went at him with the bayonet.
"Afterward I hurried back and gave the sign agreed upon. Ten minutes later the three companies surrendered. Thus I won my medal."
* * * * *
As I shook the hand of this hero in parting I felt that there remained in his own eyes something of the terror of the Siberian whom he had throttled, and that that look of terror would never leave his face.
"MY TEN YEARS OF INTRIGUE IN THE KAISER'S SECRET SERVICE"
_The Plot to Dynamite the Welland Canal_
_Related by Horst Von Der Goltz, alias Bridgeman Taylor, Welland Canal Dynamite Plotter_
Horst Von Der Goltz claims to be a secret agent of the German Empire. He stated in court that his real name is Wachendorf. In the trial of the so-called Welland Canal conspiracy in the United States Court he was proved to have been the emissary of Capt. von Papen, German military attaché, who seems to have entrusted him with a mission to blow up the canal locks with dynamite. From Buffalo Von der Goltz returned to New York, and on Oct. 3 sailed for Genoa under a passport issued on behalf of Bridgeman Henry Taylor. His next appearance, according to the endorsements on his passports and other documents, was in Berlin. He entered England from Holland in November, 1914, and was imprisoned under suspicion as a German spy. Among the papers taken from Capt. von Papen in January, 1916, a check was found for $200 in favor of Bridgeman Henry Taylor, and confronted with this, Von der Goltz confessed complicity in the canal plot and was subsequently requisitioned by the United States Government to give evidence at the trial of Hans Tauscher, American representative of the Krupps, and others indicted for plotting against the peace of the United States. Further, confirmatory of Von der Goltz's relations with the German Government, are documents set forth in the British Government's official report of April, 1916--a letter from Capt. von Papen requesting Consuls in Baltimore and St. Paul to give Bridgeman Henry Taylor "all the assistance he may ask for," and a letter signed Dr. Kraske, German Vice-Consul in New York and addressed to Baron von der Goltz, mentioning having called on him at the Holland House and inviting him to call next day at the German Consulate to meet a gentleman "who is interested in you." At the trial of Tauscher, which involved international issues of the most serious nature, the defense bitterly attacked the character of Von der Goltz, who appeared as chief witness against the accused. Witnesses they brought from New Mexico and El Paso assailed his personal character and integrity and the proceedings ended in Tauscher's acquittal. In a series of articles published in the _New York World_, Von der Goltz tells what purport to be his adventures as a German secret agent. These confessions have further been preserved in a book published by _Robert M. McBride and Co._
I--CONFESSION OF THE TEUTON SECRET AGENT
The 3d of August, 1914, Gen. Raul Madero, my commanding officer in the Constitutionalist army, granted me six months' leave, with the privilege of extension, and I left at once for El Paso, Tex., where I met Consul Kueck at the Del Norte Hotel. I was informed that Capt. von Papen would be in New York two weeks later.
On the 8th of August I left El Paso for Washington, D. C., where I stopped only one day, having learned there that von Papen would see me in New York in about a fortnight. Aug. 10 I left Washington and went to Asbury Park, N. J., spending about a week there on a visit to relatives of Raul Madero's, and reaching New York about the middle of August. I put up at the Holland House.
Although I surmised, to say the least, that I was again to be employed on service which must be secret, I had taken no steps to conceal my identity. All the way up from the border I had been a loose-tongued, hotly enthusiastic German, full of bombastic enthusiasm. I kept it up in New York. Interviews with me can be found in the papers of that period in which I predicted the speedy downfall of the Allies and Germany's sure triumph.
My reason for wearing this cloak of simple obviousness should be apparent. It was my only sure disguise. Too many people knew me or knew of me as a former servant of the German Government to let me hope I could escape their scrutiny. The only way to hoodwink them was to make myself seem such a fool that I could not possibly be a spy.
So I made myself very apparent. I spent a great deal of money in very foolish ways. I talked a great deal. Result: All those interested said to themselves: "This young idiot has picked up a bit of money in Mexico. It is burning his pockets, and among other things has caused him to imagine himself a person of importance. He a German agent! Germany's far too clever to choose such agents as he--who cannot even keep his mouth shut."
So I got the results I wanted. I have never flattered myself on being exceptionally astute. My only claim to cleverness must lie in the fact that I have generally realized that the people I was dealing with were even greater simpletons than I.
In the midst of all my strutting and gabbling, however, I found early opportunity to report at the Imperial German Consulate General, No. 11 Broadway. Two or three days later, Aug. 21, 1914, the Vice-Consul, Dr. Kraske, wrote me a letter, in his own hand, telling me that "a gentleman who is interested in you"--Capt. von Papen, to wit--would meet me next morning at the consulate. It may be worth remarking that Dr. Kraske, of his own volition, addressed the letter to "Baron von der Goltz." I had used merely my Mexican military title in registering at the Holland House.
I met Von Papen next day at the consulate. The conversation at first touched on prevailing conditions in Mexico, to which country, as well as to the United States, you may remember, Capt. von Papen was jointly accredited as Military Attaché. Attention was next devoted to a scheme proposed to the German Embassy by a man who had a plan for raiding Canadian towns on the Great Lakes, using motor boats armed with machine guns. In consequence of unfavorable information concerning the writer this scheme was rejected, as were several other tentative ones for various reasons. Among them was a plan to invade Canada with armed forces composed of German reservists in the United States, aided by German warships then in the Pacific. Another, for a time considered rather more feasible, was to seize the Island of Jamaica, in the British West Indies, also with naval aid. This plan, indeed, went so far that my Mexican rank of captain received German ratification, in order to give me military status should I be captured on British soil with arms in my hands. But this, too, was given up.
The activity finally decided on was a plan to blow up the locks of the canals connecting the Great Lakes, the main railway junctions of Canada and the largest grain elevators, with the double purpose of destroying one of England's chief sources of food supply and of throwing the Dominion into such a panic of suspicion that public opinion would demand the retention at home of the Canadian contingent of troops then mobilized for transportation to England.
Our conferences led me to believe the plan was fairly feasible and Capt. von Papen thereupon put entire responsibility for the details of execution into my hands.
So the Welland Canal plot--the obvious part of it, and the only part any outsider till now has heard a breath of--was hatched and began to grow up under my protection. Why it was permitted to be quite so obvious I must reserve the explanation for a few paragraphs. The one fact to note now is that it was almost transparent, and that I took no precautions to make it otherwise. Instead, I even talked and boasted of it and my important part in its execution.
Two things were needed--men and explosives. The first I got by going to Baltimore and asking for volunteers from among the crews of the German merchant ships laid up there. There were plenty of them. I selected the ones I wanted, and their captain promised to pay them off at the Baltimore Consulate and send them to New York under charge of a ship's officer. In Baltimore I was also supplied with a revolver, my own being out of order, and with a passport for one Bridgeman Henry Taylor--a passport issued by your American State Department, supposedly to an American citizen. But he, it merely happened, did not exist.
Back in New York, I reported to Capt. von Papen, and, as I needed money for the sailors who were coming, he gave me a check for two hundred dollars, drawn by himself and payable to Bridgeman Taylor. I got it cashed through the kindly offices of an acquaintance, Mr. Stallford, a member of the German Club on Central Park South. The sailors arrived in New York, were quartered in various places and were immediately put under the surveillance of detectives, just as I had expected and indeed hoped. The explanation of my cherishing such a seemingly absurd hope I must again momentarily defer.
II--A TALE OF DIABOLICAL CUNNING
Coming at the explosives was a more complicated matter. How it was done is best explained by the documents held by your secret service, which were part of the evidence at the trial of Hans Tauscher in the Federal Court here on a charge of plotting against the peace of the United States. Tauscher testified that he had no knowledge of the Welland Canal plot and that he sold the dynamite believing it was to be used for mining in Mexico. The jury believed him or gave him the benefit of a doubt, for they acquitted him.
These documents, and others in the possession of The World Magazine, show:
First, that Sept. 5, 1914, Mr. Tauscher, American representative of Krupp's, No. 320 Broadway, New York, asked the du Pont Powder Company to deliver to Bridgeman Taylor 300 pounds of 60 per cent. dynamite and send the bill to him.
Second, that on Sept. 11 the du Pont Company sent to Tauscher a bill for 300 pounds of dynamite delivered to Bridgeman Taylor, New York City, on Sept. 5; and on Sept. 16 sent him a second bill for 45 feet of fuse delivered to Bridgeman Taylor on Sept. 12, the total of the two bills amounting to $31.13.
Third, that on Dec. 29, 1914, Tauscher sent a bill to Capt. von Papen for a total of $503.24, the third item of which, dated Sept. 11, amounted to $31.13.
Fourth, that on Jan. 5, 1915, von Papen requested some one to draw a check for $503.24 to the order of Tauscher.
I went and got the dynamite myself from the du Pont Company's dynamite barges lying off the Jersey shore near the Statue of Liberty. I had hired a motor boat near the foot of West One Hundred and Forty-Sixth Street and I carried the stuff in suitcases. I took the whole 300 pounds in a taxicab to the German Club, and met von Papen there. He told me to call later and he would supply me with automatic pistols, batteries, detonators and wire for exploding the dynamite. He kept his promise.
All these things I took, and part of them I stored in the rooms I had taken in an obscure street and house in Harlem. For by this time the boastful, talkative Major von der Goltz was slipping down in the world. He could no longer afford the amenities of the Holland House. It must have been quite obvious to all interested that the money he had brought from Mexico was almost spent. There are certain advantages in looking impecunious, if one knows how to use them. The furtive, secretive poor man who does no work yet has what money he needs is open to suspicion. But the broken spendthrift in his seedy clothes who cannot pay his bills and yet does nothing but talk of his own importance--he is manifestly a fool.
So toward the middle of September the fool von der Goltz and four companions--Fritzen, Tucker, Busse and Covani--armed with automatic pistols and carrying suitcases crammed with high explosives, were permitted to leave New York, from the Grand Central Station, and to go to Buffalo, where they took rooms at No. 198 Delaware Avenue and were supplied with funds by wire from New York on Sept. 16, being identified by a Buffalo lawyer, John T. Ryan.
After that we went on to Niagara Falls, where, within twelve miles, lay the locks of the Welland Canal, our first and most important objective. While waiting for further orders we fell victims to impatience.
For sitting and waiting was all we ever did. While my superiors were hesitating to give the decisive word the first Canadian contingent had left for England, and it had been decided to postpone the attempt till another crucial moment for Canada.
So the affair ended tamely, and the authorities of the United States never guessed how close they had come to being plunged into a complication which might have made the Trent affair or the Alabama affair of Civil War days seem small by comparison.
I have told you I was obviously in New York with a purpose, and hoped to be unable to escape the attentions of detectives and Federal Secret Service agents. They could have stopped us at any moment, and they did not. Why? Because they thought me an impractical fool, a theatrical plotter, harmless, and wanted to let me thoroughly compromise myself before they stopped me. If the true circumstances had been like the seeming ones, that would have been thoroughly sound policy, in accordance with the best detective tradition. But----
The real circumstances were very different. My men and I were a blind. We had our explosives and meant to use them if we could. But the serious dynamiting was not assigned to us at all, but to men already in Canada, men thoroughly organized, men whose names in no way suggested German sympathies and who were not at all suspected, and never would be as long as we made-to-order German plotters were at hand.
Imagine, then, what the effect would have been on public opinion if those orders had not been countermanded. The Welland Canal and others would have gone up, and we would have seemed to be the perpetrators--we, whom the United States Government might so easily have stopped if it had cared to. I have been concerned in various plots in my time, but never in one of a more devilish ingenuity than this one that failed, or failed in part.
III--THE MACHINATIONS OF THE GERMAN WAR OFFICE
I have tried, in writing here, not to speak with too much awe of myself and my doings. But now I crave your indulgence for a moment to call your attention to a very serious aspect of the affair. This plot of mine that seemed to fail, Werner Horn's attempt against the bridge at Vanceboro, the talk of German wireless stations in the woods of Maine, all the rumors of invasions of Canada planned by German reservists in the United States, were not so harmless and fruitless as they seemed. They served to stir up talk. They were meant to stir up talk and create the belief that some men of German descent, living in America, were less American in their loyalty than they were German.
Who made that talk? The German press agencies, under Franz von Papen. And why? To set all German-Americans apart from their neighbors by rendering their loyalty suspicious; to band all German-Americans together for self-protection, and so to dyke Germany from the rising tide of world-wide disapproval. It was the most coolly calculated betrayal I have ever come in contact with.
But it was not my part to register disapproval, as the film directors say. I came back to New York, reported to Capt. von Papen and received instructions to go to Germany, on the Bridgeman Taylor passport, and report in Berlin to Department III. B of the General Staff. Oct. 8, 1914, I sailed for Italy, carrying a letter of introduction from Capt. von Papen recommending me to the German Consul General at Genoa. He also gave me $200 to pay for my passage.
After the abandonment, at the last moment, of the plot to blow up the locks of the Welland Canal with dynamite paid for by Capt. Franz von Papen, at the time German Military Attaché at Washington, I sailed from New York for Genoa, Italy, whence the German Consul General sent me on to the Prussian Consulate in Munich. From there I went to Berlin, arriving Oct. 17, 1914. By order, I reported to the General Staff, Department III., B, to the Foreign Office and to the Colonial Office, being questioned at each place regarding my impressions of affairs on the North American Continent.
Then I was ordered to report in person to the Emperor, which I did at Coblentz, and was questioned in great detail about the state of affairs in Mexico. After being granted an opportunity to visit both the western and eastern fronts, I was sent back to Berlin and given the choice of going to Turkey or going back to Mexico. I chose Mexico, and accordingly was sent to England, via Holland, traveling on the American passport issued to Bridgeman Henry Taylor.
I arrived in London Nov. 4, 1914. England was then in the first and most feverish stages of the German-spy-phobia which followed the outbreak of the war, and for four days I thoroughly enjoyed the sensation of tickling the Lion's whiskers, so to speak. Then the Lion suddenly clapped a paw down and I was caught under it.
Nov. 8, 1914, I had gone down to the Horse Guards to watch guard mounting. A crowd had assembled for the spectacular ceremony. In the press a boy stepped heavily on my foot. I had a corn there, it happened, and promptly cursed him in round Mexican fashion, though in English. Recollecting where I was, I was feeling in my pocket for a penny to salve his feelings, when out of the crowd I saw a face turned steadily toward me.
I knew the man at once. He was the friend of a very celebrated Russian dancer, and I had once been instrumental in exposing him, in Germany, as a Russian agent. And he assuredly knew my face as well as I knew his. I forgot the penny I was going to give the boy.
What should I do? The man had recognized me and would undoubtedly report his discovery to the proper quarter. But they would have no further proof of anything against me. According to the papers in my pocket-book I was a Mexican officer returning from leave of absence. True, I was traveling on a false passport. But why not? Constitutionalist Mexico had no officials to issue passports just then, and German names on passports were not convenient. Such a deception might have been practised innocently enough, if I could only make the English believe that I was not in German pay and was not in England as a spy.
In a parliamentary White Paper (Miscellaneous No. 13, Series of 1916), you can find this statement:
"Horst von der Goltz arrived in England from Holland on the 4th of November, 1914. He offered information upon projected air raids, the source where the _Emden_ derived her information as to British shipping and how the _Leipzig_ was obtaining her coal supplies. He offered to go back to Germany to obtain the information, and all he asked for in the first instance was his traveling expenses."
This is how it happened. In that brief moment of cogitation in front of the Horse Guards, I saw that my one safe method was audacity and directness, my only hope to tell some sort of a story before my accuser could tell his. So I went direct to Downing Street and the Foreign Office, which was walking into the Lion's jaws with a vengeance. I asked for Mr. Campbell of the Secret Intelligence Department and told him I wished to enter his service. What, he asked, did I claim to have information about? Zeppelin raids, I told him, that being the least harmful subject I could think of, in case my "traitorous" offer should ever come to German ears. No topic was more closely guarded, so I knew I could trust Berlin to realize I was bluffing when I claimed any knowledge of it. Also, it was a topic which vastly interested the English.
The bluff went through to this extent: It left the British authorities thoroughly at sea. My apparent good intent, combined with my Mexican commission and American passport, provided them with a puzzle which would take a good long time solving. The only provable charge they could bring against me was that of being an alien enemy who had failed to register.
IV--IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN A BRITISH PRISON
So, on the 13th of November, I found myself arraigned in police court on that charge. You may be sure I did not complain. It would have been so very easy for me to be standing before a court-martial, on a charge that carried the penalty of death.
On the 26th of November I was sentenced to six months at hard labor at Pentonville Prison, with a recommendation for deportation at its expiration. I served five months at Pentonville, and then my good conduct let me out. Home Secretary MacKenna signed the order for my deportation. But I was not deported.
Instead, I was thrust into Brixton Prison. In Brixton, though I was not sentenced on any charge, I was kept in solitary confinement until January, 1916, when I was transferred to Reading Jail. At Reading--locale of Oscar Wilde's ballade--conditions were less disagreeable than they had been at Brixton. I was allowed to have newspapers and magazines and to talk and exercise with my fellow prisoners.
All this time, you may be sure, attempts were made to secure further information from me, and especially to solve the enigma of my personal identity. But I stuck steadfastly to my story. By that time it had crystallized to this: I was Horst von der Goltz, born in Gautemala of German parents, but not a German citizen. I was an officer on leave from the Mexican army and had used the Bridgeman Taylor passport from necessity. From necessity, too, I had concocted the fable of wishing to sell information to the British Government, in the natural hope of avoiding the predicament in which I found myself.
Try as they would, the authorities could find no evidence to knock holes in that story. And it was then I conceived a deep personal liking for British sportsmanship. They were deeply suspicious, but they compelled themselves to play fair and give me every chance.
You recall that in December, 1915, on President Wilson's request, the German Government recalled Capts. Boy-Ed and von Papen, its Naval and Military Attachés. They traveled home on personal safe-conducts from the British and French Governments. You may remember also that Capt. von Papen took along with him a number of personal papers, and that when the ship which bore him touched at Falmouth, England, these documents were seized. Complaining, he was reminded that his safe-conduct covered only his body, and that he wore his clothing merely by the British Navy's courtesy. That seizure of his papers happened on Jan. 2, 1916.
Being now permitted to read the daily papers, I heard of it, even in Reading, and at first was greatly alarmed. But nothing happened. The documents were published and made a great deal of sensation in England. But my name did not appear. It had been deleted by the censor, so it later appeared.
Ten days of false hope that deletion gave me, and then, on the night of Jan. 30, 1916, the Governor of Reading told me I was to go up to London next day. Where to? Scotland Yard.
Any moment more dramatic than that of my entrance, next morning, into the Commissioner's room at Scotland Yard I do not wish to live through. Some one else may have that excitement.
V--THE TALE OF THE LITTLE PINK CHECK
There were several men in the room--Capt. William Hall of the Admiralty's Intelligence Department, Mr. Nathan, Capt. Carter of the War Office and Mr. Basil Thompson, Assistant Commissioner of Police. They all looked very grave. There was one big table in the center of the room, and on it was one little oblong piece of paper--pink paper.
One of them picked it up and held it where I could read it. A reproduction of it was printed in the preceding installment of this series.
"Washington, D. C., Sept. 1, 1914. "THE RIGGS NATIONAL BANK: "Pay to the order of Mr. Bridgeman Taylor two hundred dollars. F. VON PAPEN."
When I had read that he turned it over for me to see the indorsement: "Mr. Bridgeman Taylor."
"Sign your name, please--'B. H. Taylor.' Do you know that check?"
"Yes," I admitted.
"Why was it issued?"
"Von Papen gave me the money to go to Europe and join the army."
"Ah! Von Papen gave it you----"
I was doing quick thinking. That little pink check might easily be my death warrant. In that trunkful of documents, it seemed more than likely, were reports and instructions with my name sprinkled through them, since that check had been there. My last chance was gone, after all those months of bluffing.
I have sense enough to know a game is up. If people have positive proof that you have done a thing it's no use saying you have not. I saw one chance--and one chance only--of extricating myself. I must make a confession. But it must be a peculiar sort of confession. To carry conviction it must admit everything material contained in Capt. von Papen's seized papers where my name was implicated. And, not to be disloyal, it must admit nothing more--nothing, in other words, that England was not already cognizant of from other sources. How to do that--to bluff them once more, to a finish.
I swung round on them.
"Are you the executioners of the German Government?" I asked abruptly. "Are you so fond of von Papen that you want to do him a favor? You will be doing just that if you try and shoot me."
"We are going to prosecute you on this evidence," was the only answer.
"You English pride yourselves on not being taken in," I said. "Von Papen is a very clever man--are you going to let him take you in? Do you think he was fool enough not to realize that those papers would be seized? Do you think"--this part of it was a random shot, and lucky--"do you think it is an accident that the only papers among them referring to a live, free, unsentenced man in England refer to me? Just look! Von Papen has been recalled. The United States can investigate his doings now without embarrassment. And he, knowing me to be the connecting link of the chain of his activities, and knowing me to be a prisoner liable to extradition, would ask nothing better than to get permanently rid of me. And in the papers he carried he very obligingly furnished you all the proofs you need before you shoot me. You can choose for yourselves. Do him this favor if you want to. But I think I'm worth more to you alive than dead. Especially now that I see how very willing my own Government is to have me dead."
They got the point and the veiled promise and were willing to give me immunity in return for a co |
48941-8 | nfession and revelation of the workings of German secret agencies. So much ground was gained. The hardest stretch still remained to gain--to get some inkling of what I must tell and what I must keep silent about. That knowledge was very hard to come at. But from one of them, who had known me all through my fifteen months' fight for life and liberty, and had sympathized, I managed to get, without arousing his suspicions, a sketchy notion of what ground the seized documents covered.
It sufficed to put the bluff through. That night they lodged me in Brixton Prison, with a supply of stationery, and I wrote down my "voluntary statement," taking care to incorporate in its closing paragraphs the promise already made me verbally, "I have made these statements on the distinct understanding that the statements I have made, or should make in the future, will not be used against me; that I am not to be prosecuted for participation in any enterprise directed against the United Kingdom or her Allies I engaged in at the direction of Capt. von Papen or other representatives of the German Government, and that the promise made to me by Capt. William Hall, Chief of the Intelligence Department of the Admiralty, in the presence of Mr. Basil Thompson, former Governor of Tonga and Assistant Commissioner of Police, and in the presence of Supt. Quinn, political branch of Scotland Yard, that I am not to be extradited or sent to any country where I am liable to punishment for political offenses, is made on behalf of His Majesty's Government."
On Feb. 2 I was asked whether I was willing to swear to the truth of my statements. They were true, as far as they went, and I swore so.
So by sheer bluffing I got out from between the Lion's paws. They sent me to Lewes Prison then. With its baths and lawns for tennis, it hardly seemed a prison, and I was content there until last spring, the United States Department of Justice needed me as a witness in its Grand Jury proceedings.
I came over, gave my testimony--and now here I am. One volume of my life's history apparently is written to a _Finis_. What will the next one be, I wonder?
REAL-LIFE ROMANCES OF THE WAR
_Told by Malcolm Savage Treacher_
The author is a sergeant in a famous regiment, and has been invalided to England after an exciting time in the Near East. In these unusual articles he sets down a number of little stories--cameos of the Great War--told to him by soldiers during his seven months' sojourn in various hospitals. The incidents are authenticated by the names and regiments of the men concerned. "All the stories are related exactly as I heard them," he writes in the _Wide World Magazine_.
I--TALE OF MYSTERY OF THE ABANDONED CHATEAU
During the early months of the war, Corporal R. J. Mullins, of the 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade, was among those who helped to stem the flood of Germans advancing on Paris. He is a slight, boyish figure, with merry, laughing eyes, and in spite of two serious wounds from shell-fire manages to-day to cram as much vitality into his life as any six ordinary men. I met him in hospital, where he related to me the following curious experiences.
One evening his regiment was ordered to attack a château which the German General Staff was known to have occupied the previous night. No enemy soldier, however, was found there when the British arrived--nothing except signs of a hasty evacuation. On the table were the remains of an interrupted meal, some of the pictures had been removed, and everything of value in the mansion had been taken away.
Mullins and his companions had been marching for several days in rough campaigning conditions, and almost the first thing the corporal did on entering the fine _salle à manger_ was to fling himself into an arm-chair beside the gas fire of imitation logs.
"Everything's been cleared out," exclaimed one of his comrades. "The Germans have left nothing."
"And what if they had?" asked the corporal.
"We've strict orders not to loot, and I'm going to see them carried out."
"But there's orders _and_ orders," responded the other.
"Anyhow, it's all the same," returned Mullins. "There's going to be no looting if I can help it."
Thereupon the rifleman sat down beside his companion, and for several minutes they smoked together. Then, all of a sudden, they heard the whistle sounding the fall-in outside, and both prepared to go. Mullins snatched his cap hastily from a Louis XV. sideboard that covered half the length of the room, and to his amazement several secret drawers opened. In some curious manner his cap had touched a knob, thereby releasing a concealed spring. The drawers were full of wondrous treasures of early French art--vases and cups of silver-gilt or gold, studded with precious stones and other valuables. Before him lay wealth and treasure enough, probably for a King's ransom.
Very thoughtfully the corporal closed the drawers again, leaving everything exactly in order as he had found it. After all, orders _were_ orders--but what a chance for the German Crown Prince!
By this time his comrades had all fallen in, and already he could hear the steady tramp, tramp of their footsteps marching away in the distance.
As he scrambled hastily out of the door of the château, Mullins realized that he was alone, and that in his hurry he had somehow taken the wrong road. There was no one to be seen anywhere, and he could no longer hear the regiment. A few minutes later he was stumbling along through the grounds of the house, groping his way in the darkness, trying to find the highway. Presently he discerned that he was in a field enclosed by a high wooden fence, and went hurrying across it. Right out in the open he collided with some heavy object, only to recoil in horror as the thing moved and snorted. Its back was wet--wet with what the corporal later discovered to be blood. The animal, wounded probably by malevolent design, rose to its feet, its long horns and huge bulk shaping through the darkness as the form of a bull. Conceiving Mullins to be one of its tormentors, the bull first lashed its tail angrily against its sides and then galloped full pelt after him. By this time Mullins had reached the side of the corral, and crouched there, hoping that the darkness would cover him. But he was mistaken. The bull charged down upon him with lowered head, and drove its horns deep into the fencing on each side of the horrified man's head. There it remained fixed just long enough to give Corporal Mullins time to crawl out and scramble over the corral, glad to find himself still alive and uninjured. An hour afterwards he rejoined his regiment.
II--STORY OF WOMAN WHO WALKED IN THE NIGHT
Yet another queer experience befell the corporal a short time later. It occurred when he was on "listening-post" between the trenches--one of the most arduous and dangerous jobs the war has to offer. Corporal Mullins, with a couple of comrades, was on duty in a listening-post hard by Armentières. On the previous day the Germans had attacked and been beaten off, and our troops were expecting a further assault that evening. Already the big guns were battering away at the entrenchments. The three men lay in front of a shallow stream, on the other side of which rose grimly the high banks of the German earthworks. Suddenly the noise of the cannonade ceased. Very intently the watchers listened, for the silence was ominous and foreshadowed an assault. After a few moments' suspense, Mullin's arm was touched by one of his companions. From across the stream the wind wafted to them the unmistakable sound of someone walking through the water. The three gripped their rifles in alarm. The Germans were coming! But nothing happened. They heard men breathing hard and straining at their work, and gradually the explanation dawned upon them. The disturbing noise was nothing worse than the enemy bailing water from their trenches into the stream! The three laughed silently, greatly relieved at the discovery.
The bailing continued for some hours, when the sound was supplemented by another. This time there was no room for doubt; stealthy footsteps were approaching them, plash, plash through the water. Probably it was a spy. Right into their waiting arms the crouching figure walked. A hand promptly covered its mouth, and it was pulled down. Then the trio gasped, for they discovered from the soft cheeks and long, dishevelled hair that their captive was a--_woman_!
One of the men thrust her into a hole burrowed by an enemy howitzer, and they flashed an electric torch into her face. Despair, shame, horror--all the elements of a more terrible tragedy than ever Euripides made immortal were written in the poor girl's features. Disgraced she was for ever in the eyes of her kith and kin, one of the hapless victims of the Huns. She had escaped from her captors, it appeared, and had come to the British lines to seek refuge.
The three men laughed again, as silently as before; but this time their mirth was full of terrible meaning, pregnant with thoughts of vengeance.
III--THE VENDETTA--AN EYE-FOR-AN-EYE
From Flanders we will turn to Gallipoli. A man had just been shot in the first line trench at Anzac by a sniper. Private Roy Scotton, the 5th Field Ambulance, A.I.F., had been hurried along with a stretcher to bear him away for burial.
"Who is it?" asked one of the bearers as they picked up the soldier. The sergeant of the section, his head bent to avoid hostile bullets, came hastening along the trench.
"Who's down this time?" he asked in turn. But there came no response from the bystanders. Some busied themselves with the breeches of their rifles; some, who had commenced a smoke, put aside their tobacco. The dead soldier's face had been covered with a blanket.
"Who is it?" asked the sergeant once more, sick with apprehension. He was a brave man, a man inured to campaigning of all kinds, cunning in battle against the Turk, crafty in his fight against Nature in the Australian bush, wily in his dealings with political antagonists at his home in New South Wales. For this was "Paddy" Larkin, a popular Australian M.P. Pulling aside the blanket covering the dead man's face, he gave a cry of horror. It was his own brother!
He bowed his head reverently for a moment over the cold, set features; then, snatching a rifle and bayonet from the man nearest him, he scrambled quickly across the trench. Before any man present suspected his intention, "Paddy" Larkin was leaping towards the enemy to avenge his brother's death. A storm of bullets opened on him. They lashed the sand around him: they tore into his clothes, into his body. Still he went on. Over the wire entanglements, over the parapet he leapt, his bayonet thrusting savagely at the Turks. Very short and fierce was the fight, but "Paddy" Larkin died happy. His brother's death was avenged.
IV--"HE SHOT MY CHUM!"
Of a somewhat similar nature is the following story, also related to me by Private Scotton. A Turkish prisoner had been caught. He was an officer, a brilliantly-educated man, accomplished in several modern tongues. After examining him the company captain resolved to dispatch the prisoner to Brigade Headquarters, where he would have proved very useful. A corporal was told off to escort the prisoner, and on arrival at "H.Q." handed to a staff captain the official document containing full particulars of his prisoner. Having read through the report, the officer ordered the prisoner to be brought to him.
"It's not possible," responded the corporal.
"How not possible?" demanded the other angrily. "Has he escaped?" News of the Turk had already been telephoned through to Headquarters, and the staff there had resolved to take full advantage of the man's knowledge.
"No; he's not escaped exactly," commenced the corporal, slowly. "He spoke English, and on the way here we talked of different things. He spoke of his home in Syria, and then we got talking about prisoners----"
"But what's all this to do with me?" asked the officer, sharply. "Why have you arrived here without the prisoner?"
"We spoke of prisoners," repeated the man, stolidly, "and I asked him what had become of my 'cobber,'[13] who was captured in a sap-head a week ago. The officer remembered him. 'He was spying on us,' said he. 'My men brought him in to me.'
"'And what became of him?' I asked.
"'Oh, I had him shot,' he told me.
"You see, sir," concluded the corporal, "he shot my chum. That's all, sir."
"But I don't understand," exclaimed the staff captain.
"He shot my chum," repeated the corporal, "so there was only one thing to do."
"So you shot _him_?" asked the officer, drumming his fingers on the table.
The soldier nodded. Then he saluted smartly and marched out.
V--THE STERN CALL OF DUTY
No embroidery is required to elaborate the following episode: it is a bit of grim reality. The Prussian Guard had just delivered an attack around Ypres. For days they had been paving the road to Calais with their own corpses. At that time, you will remember, we had no high explosive to spare to beat off these assaults; only shrapnel, and none too much of that. In an advanced trench before the British lines were the Northumberland Fusiliers, firing with another regiment. Commanding a fraction of the latter regiment was a young lieutenant, whose greatest chum happened to be directing the fire of our batteries. In those days each shot had to tell, and it was resolved that when the enemy rallied again for another attack, fire was to be held until the Germans were immediately in front of our trenches. Among the "Fighting Fifth," as the Northumberland Fusiliers are affectionately called, was Corporal R. J. Glasgow, of the 2nd Battalion. Many of his comrades had fallen that morning, and as he crouched in the ill-sheltered trench, an old "pal," who as a boy had worked with him on the Elswick Shipbuilding Yard on the Tyne, talked with him of old times. He offered the corporal a cigarette, and, as Glasgow felt through his pockets for a match, said:--
"I want to enjoy this smoke. It'll be our last together."
"You think the Germans are getting through this time?" asked the other.
"No, I don't think they'll get through. But, anyhow, I've a kind of presentiment that this is our last smoke together."
During the day they lay together, smoking and yarning. Hard by the artillery major was preparing busily for the attack everyone knew was to be delivered that evening. At length the day waned, the red disc of the sun silhouetted in sharp relief against the battered tower of Ypres Cathedral. Night fell, and at last the German guns belched a furious cannonade against the poor earthworks held by our fellows. When they had done their work the Prussian Guard poured out of their holes and mounds and stormed towards the British.
Until they were almost upon our lines the British guns were silent. Then, when the enemy were practically at hand-grips with those holding the advanced trenches, a terrible fusillade opened upon the Prussians. By some unfortunate mistake, however, the range had not been accurately calculated; our shrapnel was bursting too far behind the attacking enemy. There was but little time to think; immediate action was imperative. Desperate cases are cured only by desperate remedies. Either that little handful of men in the front trench must be sacrificed, or the enemy would burst through the British lines.
The major directing the artillery fire was in a terrible quandary, for among the men who would be sacrificed was his dear friend.
Yet he knew his duty as a soldier, and he did not hesitate. He directed the range of the batteries to be shortened until the shells were bursting over the trench, and his chum fell, pierced with bullets. That same evening the major himself was found--dead by his own hand, a revolver by his side. Corporal Glasgow was carried to a dressing-station with sixteen bullets from British shrapnel in his leg, and his friend of the cigarette episode had been shot through the brain. That terrible night furnished a long list of casualties for the British, but Ypres had been saved, and the road to Calais was still guarded by the thin khaki line.
VI--THE BRITISH SERGEANT'S UNCONSCIOUS FIGHT FOR LOVE
Lance-Corporal W. Bird, of the 1st Battalion Norfolk Regiment, who was also wounded at Ypres, recounted the following incident to me. Its central figure is a sergeant of his own regiment, and it commences in those first vivid days of the war, when the Germans were swarming over the border. A company of ragged Chasseurs d'Afrique had burst through a village. Some limped and were blood-stained; all breathed heavily in great gasps, and they were plastered with mud and haggard for want of food and sleep.
"It's all up, Mother Vinot," shouted the corporal, a burly Alsatian, to a shivering old creature outside the village _débit_. "The Boches are upon us."
Hobbling into the wine-shop, the old woman bade her grandson hasten the loading of the bullock wagon. He was a tall, weedy lad fresh from school. "They won't hurt us, _petite gran'mère_," said he. He lifted his belt, displaying the thick butt of a revolver he had taken from a dead hussar lying under his horse on the roadside. "I will protect both you and the English milady, _nom de pipe_. These are great times for men."
The English milady huddled closer to the fire. She had only left Brussels on the previous day; the wagon on which she had travelled had broken down in the mud. While his grandmother hid their last barrel of cognac under the flooring, Jean busied himself with the bullock wagon. It was soon loaded, for their household effects were not extensive. Clambering into the vehicle, they sat their bullocks ambling through the deserted street. Here and there lay groups of dead soldiers; over the bodies the bullocks picked their way carefully. The roar of the cannon and the ear-splitting crack of the rifles had now ceased. The Germans were advancing cautiously upon the village.
The boy urged the unwilling beasts with his goad. Inside the wagon, the English milady shuddered in horror at the spectacle of the stark bodies around them, and at last she broke into sobs. The crone, who sat at the shafts of the vehicle telling her beads, looked curiously at her. The lady was speaking.
"Last night I dreamed he was dead," she cried, in French. "I fear to look at these poor creatures; I fear I may find him among them."
At that moment there was a rustle in the hedge bordering the road. The boy caught glimpse of rifles levelled at his companions.
"They're spies!" shouted a voice in English. "Shoot the wretches down. It's another of the German dodges."
"Let the poor devils go," cried another voice. "I've seen the old woman in the village before, and the boy ties a good trout fly. I know them both. Don't shoot."
But one of the soldiers had levelled his rifle and fired. "There's one of their dirty officers huddling in the wagon behind the old woman," cried he. Already, however, Jean had the wagon turned, and the bullet missed its mark. Thrusting his goad deeply into the bullocks, Jean speedily made the maddened animals trot forward. There was no more firing. Very soon the little party had turned by the _curé's_ house at the bend of the road, and were in the village again.
"The Germans have us both ways," said Jean, entering the tiny courtyard of the _curé_. "We'd best leave our load here and hide. There is a famous place in Père Vincent's hayloft." Bidding them climb the ladder to the loft, Jean stood on guard behind the open gates.
There was a clatter of hoofs along the road, the glint of lances, and a number of Uhlans dashed at a mad gallop through the village. At the bend of the road they halted. Something had aroused their suspicion. One of them dismounted and began to examine his horse's shoes. His three companions, meanwhile, trotted back to the wine-shop and proceeded to batter the door down. Jean glanced first at the men entering his home; then at the dismounted soldier. His mind was soon made up. There were only four of them, and of those he could give good account. Taking careful aim with his weapon, he pressed the trigger. Like a stone the Uhlan dropped beside his horse. Hearing the firing, his comrades rushed from the wine-shop, mounted their horses, and clattered down the street towards the boy. Jean stepped out from his hiding-place and stood full in front of them. His first shot struck the leading man's horse. The animal stumbled and flung its rider white and still on the road. Following hard at his heels, the second horseman came down with a crash, the legs of his steed tangled in the reins of the first. Jean pointed his weapon for the third time. But there was no report--he had fired his last cartridge! The remaining Uhlan, with a fierce curse, lowered his lance and charged towards the lad.
Jean never knew exactly what happened after that. He remembered hearing men hard by cheering in a strange tongue; he remembered, too, the firing of rifles behind him; but after that he could recollect no more. Milady, who had been a governess in Brussels, crouched in the hay with the old woman and shuddered. They heard the galloping of the horses, the curses of the soldiers, and the firing, but they understood nothing of its significance. Then came the thunder of a shell bursting beneath the loft. The place took fire and the loose straw sent up clouds of smoke which helped make the terrified women and their position more terrible. They heard one sharp crackle of musketry; then dead silence. This was broken at length by footsteps advancing over the courtyard. They halted cautiously at the threshold of the barn, and then made a bold dash. Seeing nobody, the men halted again.
"I heard voices here," the first man shouted to a comrade. "Somebody is hiding hereabouts--some of the Huns."
Seizing the rungs of the ladder in one hand, he clambered like a cat towards the loft.
"Let the pigs burn," growled his comrade after him.
The women were hidden in the straw, but the soldier saw it move, and poised his bayonet over milady's breast.
"Come out of that," he shouted. In astonishment at hearing the sound of her own tongue, the Englishwoman moved her hands from her eyes.
"Save me!" she implored, and held her hands appealingly towards the soldier. And then Mme. Vinot was the witness of a strange scene. For the soldier, with a startled exclamation, flung down his rifle, seized the woman in his arms, kissed her, and spoke her name in endearing terms. It was her sweetheart, and twice that day, all unknowingly, he had saved her life! Lance-Corporal Bird was present at the sergeant's wedding some months afterwards, and vouches for the happy ending of the story.
VII--TALE OF THE MOHAMMODAN WOMAN SNIPER
When the war broke out, plain John Gallinshaw, a graduate of Harvard University, was earning the hardest of all livings as a journalist by the sweat of his pen. His home being in Newfoundland, he hurried back there, enlisted, came to England with the draft in the 1st Battalion N.R., and spent an arduous winter's training in Stevenson's favourite Edinburgh. Then selections for active service were made, and Corporal Gallinshaw's name was not among them. The men sailed from England late in the spring; and shortly after leaving port a stowaway was found. It was Gallinshaw. He wanted experience, and not even the fear of martial law prevented him from getting what he considered his share of the fun. The _Megantic_ landed her troops, and for the first few weeks on Turkish soil, the preliminary baptism of fire once over, things went on in the old round of dullness, for life in the trenches at Gallipoli became very monotonous, as stereotyped as life at any popular seaside resort.
Then snipers began to make themselves all agreeable. One of them, in particular, gave our fellows a good deal of trouble. This sniper, armed with an old German needle-gun, rarely missed his aim. One day Corporal Gallinshaw, on duty in the trench, had occasion in the early hours of dawn to repair some wire entanglements that had been badly wrecked by shell-fire. He had not been long at his work when the crack of the deadly needle-gun reminded him of the close proximity of the sniper. A bullet flung up a rain of stones in his face. Altering his position, he set to work again, this time more warily, but not warily enough for the sniper. Another report rang out, and this time a bullet penetrated his lungs. While he lay bleeding in front of the trench, some of the Newfoundlanders took it into their heads to go out and bring in the sniper. They returned before the sun was up with a gagged and bound figure. It was the sniper. Now, Newfoundlanders are notoriously democratic, and they wanted to take the law into their own hands and hang the captive.
"It's the rule with snipers," said one. "They expect no mercy."
"String him up," said another. "He's been caught red-handed."
"Give the poor devil a chance," exclaimed Gallinshaw, whose wounds were being bound up.
"As much chance as he gave you," responded one of his companions, ironically. Apparently, however, Gallinshaw's words were heeded, for nothing drastic was done until an officer came along and examined the prisoner. Then, to everyone's astonishment, the captive was found to be a woman. She was a young woman, too, and of prepossessing appearance. The officer decided she should be sent to Egypt. Learning this decision, the captive was full of gratitude towards the corporal for his intercession. But neither the man nor the woman could make themselves understood. And thus this romance of real life ended. But who knows what _might_ have happened, had the affair been properly conducted--say by Seton Merriman, Stanley Weyman, or some other romantic novelist?
* * * * *
At the 3rd London General Hospital recently I was shown two X-ray photographs, illustrating what may be considered a miracle of modern surgery. The first plate depicted Private Coleheart's leg, shattered by Turkish gunfire; the second picture, taken after the smashed bone had been welded to a silver plate, showed the leg practically as good as ever. When I saw Coleheart his thin, pinched face glowed with happiness over the skill of the surgeon, and for the first time during our hospital acquaintance of many months he was inclined to talk.
VIII--THE TRAGEDY OF THE YOUNG BRIDE
In Egypt, while the 8th Battalion A.I.F. was under training, the men worked very hard indeed. Marches over the desert for fourteen hours at a stretch were not uncommon. When the troops returned at night they were too tired for any other relaxation than sleep. One evening, however, it was rumored that the _fiancée_ of a corporal in Private Coleheart's platoon had come into Mena Camp. She had landed at Suez from Melbourne the previous day and had journeyed direct to Cairo. She had been unable to endure the long separation from her lover.
The corporal, obtaining three days' leave, married her. On the second day of the honeymoon, however, he was wired for to return immediately to Mena. The regiment was proceeding to Alexandria to embark for the Dardanelles.
Husband and wife said good-bye, and the corporal sailed from Egypt with a heavy heart. During the voyage out he was sick, lying in his bunk the whole time until the ship arrived at Anzac. When his men fell in on deck he was too ill to make more than a perfunctory examination of their kits. From the sergeant, however, he learned that two men from a draft had been dispatched to the regiment at the last moment to complete its war establishment. One of them looked curiously familiar, but the corporal was too unwell to bother about trifles at that moment.
They were all sent almost at once to the trenches, where--unlike the troops in France, who often spend no more than four days in their burrows--three weeks and even longer was the customary time for soldiers to be entrenched at a stretch.
One of the two new hands, a slight little fellow named Whitening, found considerable difficulty in fetching up the supplies of water for his comrades. He seemed to have no grit in him, too, when the bullets were whizzing round, and appeared to have neither strength of frame nor strength of mind. Coleheart often saw him crying softly to himself at night. At last, in the early summer of last year, the Turks made their great onslaught on our trenches. They peppered the ground first with their great guns, and charged with fierce Oriental bravery, despising death as much as they seemed to despise our own preparations for driving them off. They came on in droves, and they were beaten down in herds, for our quick-firers and machine-guns never had a better target.
At length, when they were almost over our trenches, their hearts failed them. They broke and turned tail in headlong flight. It was then that Coleheart and his companions were ordered out to disperse the flying enemy. But the Turkish guns had already opened on both friend and foe. Within a few yards of the trench Coleheart fell, his leg mangled horribly. Now it is well known that during a charge soldiers must leave their wounded comrades bleeding on the ground and await the final decision of arms before the injured may be tended. This latter duty is the care of the Red Cross men and the stretcher-bearers of a regiment.
To Coleheart's surprise, however, he was picked up and helped along by one of his comrades to a first-line dressing-station. Coleheart saw that his companion was Whitening.
"You'll get into trouble," he said, feebly. "You're not supposed to fall out. You'll be court-martialled."
"I don't care!" responded the other, fiercely. "My husband's just been killed. He was Corporal----"
And before the astonished Coleheart could respond, "Whitening" had snatched up the rifle, which had previously formed a rough splint around Coleheart's leg, and was dashing back to the trenches.
The surgeon in the dressing-station decided to amputate the injured leg, but Coleheart was obdurate. He was born with that leg, he said, and he would die with it. Patched up, he was soon afterwards put on a hospital ship, and finally arrived in London.
"But what became of 'Whitening'?" I asked, curious to learn the end of the history.
"Killed the same day," responded Coleheart. "It never got into the papers. The whole business was hushed up."
VIII--STORY OF THE HERMIT OF YPRES
All readers of Sir Walter Scott's novels will recollect Old Mortality, the itinerant antiquary, whose craze it was to clean the moss from gravestones and keep their letters and effigies in good condition. Private R. Walker, of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, told me the following story concerning a very similar character.
You have probably heard how the Canadians have brought the spirit of the trapper to the trenches; of their patience in marking down their prey. The enemy never know what the Canadians will be about next, and for a wealth of reasons one imagines that to be opposite the Canadian trenches in Flanders must be a nerve-racking experience.
The boys from the land of the Maple Leaf are particularly patient in sapping and mining. They burrow vertical shafts far under the depths at which they estimate the Germans will counter-mine; they destroy the enemy's galleries and, creating a series of craters, occupy them and connect them up with the nearest Canadian trenches.
In these mining operations the Canadians have obtained a good deal of information concerning the enemy's moves from an old fellow they call "Gravestones." His chief occupation is the preservation of the rows of wooden crosses denoting the last resting place of the fallen. The old man's history is passing strange. He is a Belgian. His daughter, prior to the war, had taken the veil, but when the country was invaded the cloisters of most of the convents and monasteries of Belgium were deserted. The men took up arms; the women helped in the hospitals.
"Gravestones" lived at Genappe, in Brabant. When his daughter joined him, from her convent, he took flight to Gembroux, hoping to reach the French border, but the party was intercepted by the Germans. The old man, pretending to lose the power of articulate speech, was set free. Meanwhile the daughter, during the cross-examination of her father, had taken shelter in the old church of the village. Thither she was pursued by some of the German soldiers.
When they entered the church the girl was hiding by the altar; but in alarm, as the soldiers advanced towards her, she seized the great gilt cross surmounting the altar itself and threatened to hurl it down upon the first man who approached her.
Thereupon one of the sergeants ordered his men to open fire upon her, as an example to certain of the villagers who had also taken refuge in the building. Perhaps the men felt the influence of the sacred precincts they had violated; perhaps they respected the girl's bravery. Anyway, they fired low. The girl was not killed, but fell under the altar, both her legs riddled with bullets.
To-day she is believed to be in hospital at Namur, though no accurate information is obtainable. Meanwhile, her father, once a prosperous _fabricant_ of paper at Genappe, works out a slow and terrible scheme of revenge. Lovingly he plants flowers and shrubs on the graves of those who have helped to defeat the Huns, and incidentally he supplies the living with information of the utmost value. Living among some ruins outside Ypres, the bent old fellow is known to all but the Canadians as the "Hermit of Ypres."
IX--TALE OF THE LOVERS' TREACHERY
When the Germans first poured over France, trenches were dug at frequent intervals behind Paris and right down towards the great seaport of Havre. Later on these earthworks were strengthened and completed by the labour section of the Army Service Corps. A member of the Corps, Private Ronald Barrow, tells the following experience in connection with the work round Etretat. This village lies in a rock-bound valley, at the end of which is an old Gothic church named St. Vallery.
The ruins of this church were at first ordered to be destroyed in order to give a clear sweep for the guns, but the colonel of Engineers in charge decided not to proceed with this demolition. Hard by the ruins was a tiny _auberge_, and it was here that Private Barrow encountered Chrysale Duigin.
Barrow had been a school-teacher; and his knowledge of French gave him the opportunity of making the young woman's acquaintance. Witty, shrewd, spiteful, she was nevertheless a most interesting personage, for she was beautiful, possessed means, and was full of little touches of wisdom.
Chrysale had two lovers; one a fisherman, a rough, strong fellow, the other a puny little conscript, who, in happier days, collected taxes. Hervé, the conscript, had been invalided home from Verdun, having lost his right arm. Galen, the fisherman, was exempt from military service. Between the two there was naturally a great rivalry. Hervé said much, and did nothing; Galen said nothing, and brooded.
Thus matters stood, until one evening Galen embarked on an armed trawler that had been fitted out at the port to seek for mines floating down the Channel towards Havre. He had become a _matelot_ in the French navy. One morning at dawn the vessel was struck by a mine outside the very roads of Etretat. Putting out, the lifeboat saved only one man--Galen, the fisherman. In rescuing him one man was lost overboard. That man was Hervé, Chrysale's lover, and Galen's rival in her affections. Nothing more was seen of him. A heavy sea was running, and he must have been carried away by the tide.
When Galen was brought ashore he was still unconscious. On his head was a deep wound, where he had been struck by a boat-hook handled by one of the rescuers. Taken to his house, Galen lay at death's door for some days, but his great physical strength pulled him through. They saved his life, but not his reason; his brain had become hopelessly deranged.
A fortnight later Barrow, who knew the principal actors in the pitiful tale, saw one of the crew of the lifeboat. In the meantime, Barrow had been employed on the docks at Havre.
"It's a sad enough story," said the fisherman, in response to Barrow's questioning. "It's a pity we ever took young Hervé aboard with us."
"But Hervé did his best," responded Barrow. "He gave his life for Galen."
"He gave his life, sure enough," grunted the fisherman; "but he gave it unconsciously, unwillingly. It was Hervé that struck Galen the blow with the boat-hook. Every man of the crew saw it was done with purpose."
Barrow understood it all. Hervé had struck at his rival, and Galen had pulled his man overboard to perish. Thus love and jealousy flourish just as lustily in wartime as in the piping days of peace.
X--STORY OF THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED
I met Manech Argouarch for the second time at Brest some six years ago. My friend who keeps the _Civette Nantaise_ in the Rue de Siam--probably the only place in Brest where cigars are sold in smokable condition--has kept me informed from time to time concerning interesting items of local history. From his letters I have put together the story of Manech. When I knew the man he was a wild, dissolute fellow, but, like many vagabonds, fortune had endowed him with a charming mate. Ten years younger than Manech, she was a tiny wisp of a woman. As far as I could judge, the pair were happy together in their own way.
When the war had run its course for some months Argouarch found his fishing-boat sadly short-handed, for the crews of most of the fishing-vessels were taken as conscripts. At this juncture Elène, his wife, went aboard, and did what she could to help.
It chanced that one day in the spring of last year a gale sprang up suddenly when they were a long way out at sea. A terrific sea got up, and Manech had to heave-to as best he could, and endeavour to ride out the storm. Early in the morning the gale broke. The wind moderated sensibly, but the swell was still exceedingly heavy. Meanwhile the little boat was in a sorry plight, with one of the masts down and the rigging lying tangled over the deck.
Soon after nine o'clock in the morning Manech saw the periscope of a submarine away on the port bow. Emerging from the water, the sinister craft drew alongside, and a young German lieutenant came aboard. He wanted provisions and fresh water. Realizing the futility of resistance Manech and the boy Becsalé brought up on deck the whole of their available supplies. The German, however, was not satisfied. He said he would search the craft himself.
Elène had been instructed to hide herself in the tiny cabin, and when the German climbed down the hatchway, thinking he would probably seek to do her harm, she took up a big clasp-knife from the table and hid it in the folds of her dress. The German's search proved without avail, but he was more than interested in the pretty Elène. He seized her hand, and attempted to kiss it, but Elène wrenched herself from his grasp, and in a second stood in a corner of the cabin, holding the knife to her breast, and threatening to plunge it into her bosom if he attempted to approach. She was too terrified to scream.
Meanwhile Argouarch, who had been aloft furling a small storm stay-sail, descended into the cabin, wondering what had become of the German. When he saw his wife with the knife at her breast he hurled himself on the German in mad rage. The fight was short and fierce. Hearing the scuffle, three German sailors who were on deck hurried down, overpowered the unfortunate Manech and bore him, more dead than alive, into the submarine. Then one of their look-out men reported a vessel away on the lee bow, steaming hard towards them. It was a French destroyer. Within a few moments the submarine submerged again, and speedily disappeared from sight.
Elène came into harbour soon afterwards, a French sailor being put aboard to navigate the crippled fishing-boat to safety. For days after her arrival in Brest there were stories about as to an enemy submarine having been sunk by a French torpedo craft, but nothing definite is known.
As to the fate of Manech, nothing whatever has been heard. But every day Elène is out early upon the highest cliff, peering through the sea mist across Brest Roads. Her companions are lonely women whose husbands and lovers have been swallowed up by the sea. They strain their eyes over the waters, hoping against hope, but their search is always in vain.
XI--TALE OF THE RESCUE FROM THE AIR
For the dashing exploit next described, Lieutenant Pétri, of the French Aerial Service, received the Military Cross. It was during the tragic period when the British Naval Division had evacuated Antwerp. Somewhere near Bruges a large party of cavalry, which included the Royal Horse Guards, met the fugitives. Above them a French biplane hovered. A splinter of shell had killed the observer. Lieutenant Pétri piloted the machine. Hard by the town of Eecloo he perceived a score of tiny ant-men fleeing along the road towards Waerschoot. These would have attracted Pétri's attention before had not his engine commenced miss-firing. For a time it seemed on the point of refusing action altogether, but at last he got it going again.
It was then, when the biplane had come quite close to the earth, that he became aware of an exciting chase beneath. The cape of a woman first caught his eye. She was mounted on a horse, and was galloping away at breakneck speed from half-a-dozen Uhlans, who, with lances poised, were pursuing her. In a flash Pétri had manoeuvred his machine over the horsemen. A lever was pulled, and the roar of an explosion right among the Uhlans told of the success of his aim. As he descended Pétri observed that one of the soldiers had managed to make good his escape. In all probability he had gone for reinforcements. There was no time to lose. The machine came to earth near the woman, who had dismounted.
"You have come to make me a prisoner?" she cried, in French. She was very beautiful, with dark curls of chestnut hair floating in the wind.
"I have come to take you," answered Pétri, touching his cap, "but not as a prisoner--as a passenger, if mam'selle will permit."
In horror she pointed to the observer, whose head hung loosely on his breast.
"Poor Fanchon has been shot," answered the lieutenant. Tearing away the straps that held the poor fellow securely in his seat, Pétri laid him reverently on a mound of grass by the roadside.
This was no occasion for ceremony. Very soon the girl's horse was cantering riderless along the road, and the engine was roaring again as the plane rose up towards the clouds.
When they had mounted some five hundred feet into the air the passenger pointed with almost fearful interest at another group proceeding along the road they had just quitted. The Uhlan was returning, with probably a score of companions. They promptly opened fire on the machine, but by this time the biplane was out of their reach.
When Pétri regained the French lines it was found that the woman was the bearer of important despatches. There was no more to relate, for Horace tells us that romance ends with marriage, and Pétri was already a married man when our story opens.
XII--ROMANCE IN THE BRITISH NAVY
Some years ago Henry Lawe joined the Royal Navy as a carpenter's mate. While on the Australian Station he deserted, but was arrested, homeward bound, at Malta. Here, while waiting for a ship to return him to Australia, he made the acquaintance of a young woman, a lady's companion. A warm friendship quickly ensued, which developed into something more romantic, and before long there was an "understanding" between the pair. At this juncture, however, a light cruiser bound for the Antipodes put into the harbour, and the deserter Lawe was sent back to Sydney.
Life in His Majesty's ships on the Australian Station was quite uncongenial to him, so he deserted for the second time. He worked at his old trade in an assumed name, and prospered. Meanwhile letters were passing between himself and his lady of Malta. Before anything definite had been settled war broke out, and--a free pardon being granted to all deserters--Lawe joined the Australian Army Corps as a private in the 15th Battalion. In due course he reached the Dardanelles, where he was wounded in the knee. By a stroke of good luck the hospital ship on which he sailed for home, instead of putting her wounded ashore at Alexandria, steamed straight through the Mediterranean. Nearing Malta, wireless signals were picked up which instructed the vessel to land her wounded on the island, as it was dangerous for ships to proceed up the English Channel on account of drifting mines.
Private Lawe was put ashore at Malta, and lost no time in endeavoring to get into communication with his fair correspondent. She had, however, left her situation, and to his grief he was unable to trace her whereabouts.
It happened a few days later that an admiral's daughter visited the hospital and, hearing part of Lawe's story, took an interest in him. Finding that the crutches he was using were hurting his arms, she purchased a specially comfortable pair for him at her own expense. These she sent to the hospital by her companion.
The sequel? Well, you have, no doubt, guessed it. The young lady's maid was Lawe's little maid, and so the lovers were united again.
XIII--THE TRAGEDY OF RANNOU COLBERT
Less fortunate is the sequel of Rannou Colbert's adventure. He was a bellringer at Quimper Cathedral before the war. Exempt from military service, he joined the Colonial Infantry, a corps of paid professional soldiers, entirely distinct from conscripts. Originally equivalent to our marines, these regiments no longer serve aboard ship, but garrison the overseas possessions of France. The company in which Colbert was serving fought by the side of our Ghurkas at the Dardanelles. There Private J. Threadgold, of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, made Colbert's acquaintance. Our men exchanged some of their bully-beef ration with the French against cigarettes, and Colbert understood enough English to act as interpreter in many small international bargains. Colbert's name is scratched on a silver match-box in Threadgold's possession.
On the night that Threadgold was wounded an attack had been made on our trenches by the Turks. The enemy was beaten off. Early the next morning a party of the Turks crawled between our sentries in the Indian lines and slew two Ghurkas. Only one of the enemy was wounded, and he was taken prisoner. From him it was learnt that the attacking party was eighteen strong. That day the Ghurkas became tremendously excited. They sharpened their curved knives and talked closely together. They were plotting, and it was spread along the line from mouth to mouth that an adventure was afoot. That same evening after sunset exactly eighteen Ghurkas crept from the entrenchments, and they were joined by a man from the French regiment of Colonial Infantry, Rannou Colbert. The party wound their way through the scrub towards the Turkish trenches. They were gone an hour; then, chattering and gesticulating in intense joy, they all returned in safety except one man. They had killed eighteen Turks. The one man missing was Rannou Colbert, who had been taken prisoner.
No more was heard of Colbert until some months later, when a poignant little history appeared in the _Matin_. It is unknown whether Colbert escaped from the Turks, or whether he was an exchanged prisoner. During his imprisonment he was, for some reason, not allowed to write home, and as his name was not furnished by the Turkish authorities to the French he was posted as missing.
At Bordeaux, whence he arrived from Lemnos, he landed without money, and consequently could not telegraph to his wife. During the whole of the journey to Quimper, however, he relished keenly the thought of the pleasure he would see on her face when she saw him. Of his two children, too, he thought, anticipating gleefully the welcome they would give him. He sailed on a coasting vessel, one of those that bring the red wine from Bordeaux to Brittany. Into the River Odet at last they came, and its banks became narrower and steeper until Quimper hove in sight, the twin towers of St. Corenten showing warm and venerable in the waning light. His home was in the Rue Kéréron, a mediæval street of old mansions. Trembling with excitement, Colbert lifted the latch. There was nobody in the passage, but from the kitchen he heard the merry laugh of a happy family circle. He recognized Babette's laugh--and another man's. Listening, he distinguished the latter as that of his friend, Maurice, a potter who turned lumps of clay into Quimper faience.
It is a sad little story, the rest of it. Her husband being given up as dead, Babette, with scarcely sufficient money to buy bread for her children, had married Maurice. Rannou did not chide her; in the circumstances he considered she had done the obvious thing. She was broken-hearted and so was he. That night he left for Concarneau. He saw that his wife and Maurice had sufficient money to live on; and he, a cripple, did not wish to burden her. He determined to earn what he could and live his own life.
He managed to secure a berth at Concarneau, where he had relations, and was employed on the quays, checking the giant mackerel unloaded from the tunny-boats. Some time later, hearing that Maurice had fallen out of work, Rannou sent to his old home as much as he could spare from his scanty earnings. Truly the ways of men are passing strange! One day, perhaps, Maurice will die; and Rannou will return to Quimper and to the Babette who loves him still.
FOOTNOTE:
[13] Australian slang for "chum."
THE IRISHMEN OF THE FIGHTING TENTH AT MACEDONIA
_Told by One of the Fighting Irishmen_
This is a spirited story of how the heroic Tenth (Irish) Division saved the situation for the Allies in retreat from Macedonia to Salonica. It is told for the first time by the _London Weekly Despatch_.
I--TALES OF THE IRISHMEN AND THE BULGARS
On December 3, which was a Friday, the British outposts brought in six Bulgar deserters who had much of interest to tell. They said that the Bulgars not only had suffered very heavily in their engagements with the Serbians but were losing men rapidly owing to sickness and frostbite.
What is more to the point, they warned the officers that a big attack against our line was impending, that it had been arranged to take place that day but that the severe snowstorm had caused them to put it off to another day which would not be long delayed.
_March, 1916._
These opportune tidings which as events proved were thoroughly reliable, were communicated to headquarters and the necessary precautions for battle taken. The outposts were drawn in and finishing touches given to the trenches.
The night before the great Bulgar attack began one of the battalions held a pow-wow in their dug-outs, which they had covered in with a big tarpaulin that hid the smoke of a matchwood fire, lit for cheerfulness as much as for warmth. There was little in their surroundings to make them happy, but their own lively spirits allowed them to triumph over their environment and the night passed pleasantly in song.
In that bleak corner of the Balkans thousands of miles from home Englishmen sang themselves happy with sentimental and topical ditties. If a program had been printed it would have run like this:
Song, "My Little Gray Home in the West."
Mouth organ solo, "Who Were You With Last Night?"
Song, "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling."
Whistling solo, "Stop Your Tickling, Jock."
Interval for refreshments (tea, bully beef and biscuit sandwiches, jam sandwiches, etc.)
Song, "Yiddle on Your Fiddle."
Mouth organ solo, "Tipperary."
Song, "Are We All Here?"
Note.--Smoking allowed in all parts of the house.
Though the West Kents thus amused themselves and put many a shy comrade who refused to sing "in the oven," there was a feeling that danger was near. Instinct proved unerring.
The Tenth Division stood to all night, so that if the enemy came in the morning they would not find their hosts unprepared. In the first trenches were the Connaughts, the Munsters, the Dublin Fusiliers, the Hampshires and the Inniskillings, the latter to a large extent Ulster men holding the extreme right wing.
Dawn had scarcely broken when the enemy made his expected attack. The conditions wholly favored him, for a fairly dense fog prevailed, and under its cover the Bulgars were able to get within 300 yards of parts of our line without being observed. The Inniskillings were the first to be attacked; about 5 A. M. their outposts were driven in and then a great mass of the enemy swooped down on the trenches, but were driven back by the fire of our Maxim guns and by the steady magazine fire that came from the trenches.
Scarcely had the attack on the extreme right of our line had time to develop when the main body of Bulgars were seen running down a defile leading to the center of our front. They were perceived as a long, interminable stretch of men--a mass of shadowy figures revealed half distinctly in the mist. As they reached the end of the defile they spread out as from a bottle neck, and with wild cheers flung themselves on our line. But before they had got so far our guns smashed and battered the thick procession of men leaping out of the narrow gorge. It was impossible to miss them. British artillery had never had such a target since the first battle of Ypres, when the guns literally mowed down the half-trained German troops who attacked on the Yser.
The slaughter of the guns was magnified by the slaughter of the rapid magazine fire at short range. Wave after wave of the enemy came on, each broken as it swept out of the defile, but the Bulgars were not to be denied. Though their comrades fell thick and fast they came on, and by sheer impetus of numbers reached our trenches, where awful work was wrought. It was hand to hand fighting then--terrible to witness, terrible to think of. The short bayonet of the Bulgar, however, was of little use in these trench combats, and man for man the British won, but the Bulgars had the numbers and temporarily the first line of the Twelfth Division was overborne. The British were driven out.
The British artillery had been doing splendid work, but by now the enemy artillery was in full blast, and they poured a devastating and withering hail of fire on our positions, which through faulty ranging put out of action more of the Bulgars than it did of us. The Munsters and the Connaughts and the Dublins quickly rallied, and with a wonderful bayonet charge drove the enemy out of their trenches again. The enemy, massed in close formation, swarmed in once more, but against the deadly fire poured into them they could make no headway for some time. The brave Irish regiments were pouring lead into them as fast as they could load their rifles. They poured into the oncoming masses as much as 175 rounds at pointblank range. This will give an idea of the slaughter that went on this December morning, as the dawn slowly beat the mists away.
II--CRIES OF HALF-MADDENED BULGARS
Mingling with the roar of the artillery and the clitter-clatter of the machine guns and the sharp snap of the rifles were the hoarse cries of the half maddened Bulgars, whose officers ever drove them on to the death that came quick and hot from the British trenches. Men of splendid physique they were that faced our hail of lead, cheering in a sort of wild euthanasia of battle, with bugles and trumpets blowing defiant challenge as in the knightly days of the tourney. They did not know, many of them, whether they were attacking French, British or Turk, but unquestioning, unthinking, they came on with a fearlessness of life deserving of a better cause, leaping into our trenches and falling back dead with a bullet in the throat or a bayonet wound in the breast or with head blown off by one of our shells.
But it was, "for all our grim resistance," a hopeless kind of struggle. Sooner or later that unceasing stream of men issuing out of the narrow defile must sweep us back. Always the enemy returned to the charge, undeterred by heavy losses, undismayed by our deadly gun and magazine fire. The line held, and to their cheers we answered with our own cheers, and to their cries we gave back answer with our own cries, and if sometimes the thin line faltered the shouts of officers and men, "Stick it, jolly boys! Give 'em hell, Connaughts!" brought new life and new strength.
In the end we gave the enemy his dearly bought line of trenches and slowly fell back to our second line of positions, where the remainder of the divison joined up and helped us to beat off the sustained attacks, which lacked naught in violence. All day the Bulgars alternately bombarded and charged us. There seemed to be thousands and thousands of them. They gave us no rest at night. Wherever we stood they rained an unceasing fusillade of shell upon us and followed each rafale up with a determined infantry attack.
Outnumbering the Tenth Division in the proportion of at least eight to one, they were obstinately bent on its destruction at whatever cost to themselves. Their artillery far exceeded ours in weight of metal, but in effectiveness there was no comparison. Almost all our shells told, while many of theirs did no more than splinter the rocks yards away. So Monday, December 6, was passed with the Tenth Division mightily pressed but still well able to hold its own. Tuesday the 7th was an exact replica of the previous day.
The Bulgars heavily bombarded our line; then sent forward strong storming parties before whom we recoiled a little, but no more. The division never lost its cohesion, and it gave ground only at the rate of two miles a day, which is a proof, if any were needed, of the splendid rearguard action that this much outnumbered force fought. Our artillery kept them in sufficient check to give us all the respite we needed, and the rifle fire of the different regiments bit gaping wounds in the enemy mass that helped to throw them into temporary confusion.
Teodorow, the Bulgarian General, is a great believer in the German method of attack. He reckons no loss in men is too great if the objective be gained. The objective in this case was the decimation of the Tenth Division, and under his orders the Bulgars charged and charged until the snowdrifts over which the battle was fought were black with the recumbent forms of his men.
III--"WE OUTLIVED THE HORRORS OF SULVA"
We fought as at Mons. The arrowhead of the division consisting of two or three regiments, the Dublins, the Munsters and the Connaughts, took the shock of the enemy attacks, while the sides made good their retirement, then the arrowhead rapidly fell back and joined us with the main body, while other regiments received the shock in turn.
In the two days we drew four miles nearer to the Greek frontier. If we could continue to maintain this deliberate rate of retirement with our formations still intact we could hope for salvation, for we knew that re-enforcements were due.
The night of the 7th the Bulgars made a final attempt to smash our resistance. They redoubled the force of their bombardment; they increased still more the momentum of their infantry attacks. They came very near to achieving their purpose, and there were hours when one would have asked prayers for the Tenth Division, but British bulldog courage and obstinacy withstood all the fury of the enemy's onset, and our mountain artillery always found an easy target. By the 8th the force of the Bulgar attacks had spent itself.... In the two days' battle the Tenth Division inflicted on the enemy at least four times their own number of casualties and, what is possibly of equal importance, they taught him the temper and morale of British infantry....
The Tenth Division outlived the horrors of Sulva; it outlived the days and nights of biting cold on the Serbian frontier ranges, and it finished the miracle, to quote the official phrase, by "sustaining violent attacks delivered by the enemy in overwhelming numbers." The slow, punishing, rearguard action it fought allowed the Allies to withdraw all their accumulated stores and munitions and to fall back without congestion into Greek territory again.
The Tenth Division saved the situation by a display of courage and dogged heroism that cannot be too highly praised. One of these days we shall be told what the general said to the thinned units when he met them again at Salonica....
You ask the most talkative of them to give you a picture of the oncoming Bulgar masses.
"A mad, swearing mob, they were," he says, "on us as thick as ants. I suppose they were swearing. Anyhow, we couldn't understand their lingo, and they didn't say much after we had let them have five rounds of rapid fire." You ask another what he said when the Bulgars stormed the trench. "Said?" is the reply, "said? I never said anything. I was too busy pumping hell into them to say anything. But my pal was shouting hard enough for me and him as well." Get men with that spirit and neither Bulgar nor German shall best them.
It is hard to explain how the Tenth Division, encompassed as it was, won through, and perhaps the most satisfactory thing to do is to fall back on the explanation of a Munster Fanger, whose only grumble is that he was kept twelve hours in those terrible forty-eight hours' fighting without food.
"They beat us with numbers. We couldn't hope to hold up against the crowd they sent against us, a daft, clumsy gang of men. We gave 'em hell, but their numbers beat us. But two days wasn't much of a time to give theirselves to make us see we were beaten, and so we got away with them still coming after us. You'd got to be there to see what happened." It sounds very much like an anti-climax, but it is really what happened. The Tenth Division escaped because it hadn't time to know that by all the rules it was beaten.
THE ARTIFICIAL VOLCANO
_An incident of the Italian Campaign in the Dolomites_
_Related by Capitano Z----, of the Royal Italian Engineers_
No more spectacular feat has been accomplished in the present war than the taking of the Col di Lana, a great peak whose summit, towering above the Upper Cordevole Valley and commanding the main highway through the Dolomites, was for many months held by the Austrians. How the steel-clad crest of the Col was wrested from the enemy is here set forth in detail. The narrator's name is suppressed at his own request in his reminiscences in the _Wide World Magazine_.
I--STORY OF THE ROYAL ENGINEERS
It was Christmas Eve, 1915, and we officers of the Royal Italian Engineers were huddled together in a trench, doing our best, at that chilly elevation of some seven thousand eight hundred feet, to keep ourselves warm. Not a word had been spoken for fully a quarter of an hour. We were all intent, in the semi-darkness of our subterranean refuge, on the smoking of our pipes, turning over and over in our minds meanwhile the problem which had faced us for months past.
Entrusted with the task, amidst that wilderness of mountains known as the Dolomite Alps, of driving back the Austrians, we had been fighting our way forward week after week, month after month. You say that you have never done any climbing in the Dolomites? Then you can have but a faint idea of how formidable our work was.
Imagine, since you have never been there, a seemingly endless succession of ranges and peaks which have assumed the most extraordinary and fantastic forms. The mountains are broken up into every imaginable shape. Here and there they rise at a bound in the form of slender peaks; elsewhere they assume the form of gigantic steps or pyramids or indented crests, sometimes like a saw, at others like a trident.
Through this land of towering, snow-clad summits, mighty gorges, rugged precipices, and apparently bottomless abysses, into which the unwary scout might at any moment find himself precipitated, we soldiers and engineers of the Italian army had steadily fought our way. No one, gazing on these summits held by our enemies, would ever have thought it possible to dislodge them. And yet, one by one, they fell into our hands--with the single exception of the Col di Lana, a supreme peak and pass in the Upper Cordevole Valley which, at the altitude I have named, commands the great highway through the Dolomites.
On this topmost peak the Austrians had found a last refuge. Daily--almost hourly, indeed--they sent down upon us an avalanche of boulders and hand-grenades. In spite of this we managed on one occasion to gain a foothold, but only for a short time. A withering fire from artillery and machine-guns, placed on the encircling heights, forced us back to the security of our own trenches, some fifty yards below; and there we had been, at the time my story opens, for many weeks, faced with the eternal problem--how to dislodge the enemy from the steel-clad crest of the mountain. Suddenly the meditative silence into which we had fallen was broken by Don Gelasio Caetani, a young engineer who is the son of the Duca di Sermoneta and an English lady. Well known for his patriotism and professional ability, we knew that anything he might have to say would be well worth listening to, so at the sound of his voice we all looked up.
"_Ho un idéa!_" ("An idea occurs to me!") he said, slowly and impressively. "I was day-dreaming of my native Naples and Vesuvius," he added. "To a Neapolitan, Vesuvius is everything. He regards it as possessing almost a personality, endowed with life and thought. He watches it, year after year, as I have done, and notes the changes its form has undergone through successive eruptions. The thought of Vesuvius gave me my idea. What do you say, _amici_, if we try and convert the Col di Lana into an artificial volcano?"
Had Don Gelasio been other than what we knew he was--a man noted for extreme fertility of invention and resource--we might have been inclined to laugh at him. But we were all too well aware of his seriousness of mind to treat his idea as an idle fancy, and as one man we voiced a request for an explanation of the ways and means towards the proposed end.
Don Gelasio's pencil and notebook were out in a trice and, crowding round him, we were soon buried in the study of a sectional drawing of the Col di Lana, with the respective positions of the invading and invaded forces and the distance of one from the other accurately marked. Lines and figures and calculations, as he explained the scheme in detail, quickly covered the sides of the sketch, showing theoretically and mathematically, whatever practice might prove, that the scheme was feasible.
"It will be a long task," I ventured to remark, when he had come to the end of his explanations and seemed to be waiting for our observations; "but if it takes four months I'm your man. How long do you estimate this tunnelling will take?"
"Not far short of the time you've named. If we can do it quicker by putting a few extra men on to the job, all the better; but I calculate there are three thousand feet of solid rock to be bored before we can bring off our little surprise on the enemy. Well, my friend, then I take it the scheme is agreed upon? We will begin to-morrow--Christmas Day; 'the better the day the better the deed.'"
At an early hour on Christmas morning Don Gelasio Caetani and our corps of engineers, numbering in all twenty-five, set to work to imitate Nature--to make the long preliminary preparations for supplying the bowels of the earth under the Col di Lana with a power similar to the pent-up forces of an eruption.
II--PLANTING DEATH ON THE IRON-CRESTED PEAK
As soon as the bold and dangerous plan became known there was no lack of volunteers. We had no difficulty in forming a band of experienced miners, who worked in two shifts, never stopping day or night. A powerful perforator (drill) was got to work under most ingenious conditions--in deference to the higher military authorities I cannot be more precise--lest its strident voice should give away the secret of the fate which awaited the enemy forces on the iron-crested peak.
During the month of January we made excellent progress with our tunnel into the heart of the mountains, and were able to form some idea of how long we should be over the work. Roughly speaking, we found we were able to bore about seven hundred feet a month. During February we put on speed, and did considerably over that length--not bad work when you consider that each of our _galleria_ was sufficiently big to allow two men to pass each other comfortably, and that we were working all the time in bitter winter weather. But, in spite of our hardships, all went as merry as a marriage bell until we reached the early days of March. Up to then the Austrians had suspected nothing. They showed by what they said during the occasional truces, which were not uncommon between the rival trenches, that they considered themselves in perfect safety. We often heard ironical voices chanting such taunts as this:--
"Perhaps you may take Trento, Perhaps you may take Trieste, But the Col di Lana--never!"
And the chorus of arrogant, cock-sure Austrian soldiers would vociferate:--
"But the Col di Lana--never!"
When March came in, however, we discovered that the enemy were becoming suspicious. The steady burrowing noise of our drills and the thud of our pickaxes awoke them, as we drew nearer and nearer to their positions, to the reality of the situation. Soon we became aware that they had started excavating a counter-mine. Don Gelasio brought the news to the day-squad with words of encouragement:--
"Go ahead, boys!" he said. "Put on speed as much as you can. It's now a matter of a race for life."
We were now boring slightly upwards, to get as near as possible to the summit of the Col di Lana, and the turn matters had taken necessitated an earlier date for the eruption of our artificial volcano than we had contemplated. So, after we had been working with feverish haste for another three weeks, our chief held a council of war and announced that the fateful day was near.
"To-morrow or the day after we must place the explosive," he said. "We shall need ten tons of gelatine and dynamite. I'm having the extreme end of the _galleria_, which cannot be far away now from the enemy's positions, blocked with a shield of thick armoured steel, in order to turn the force of the explosion upward, and at the same time save the remaining portion of the main tunnel from destruction. I'm counting on that as an open pathway when the moment comes for rushing the enemy trenches--or all that will be left of them. Ah! in spite of all their tardy attempts to counter-mine us, they little suspect on what a volcano they are sitting!"
For the dangerous task of leading the way through the tunnel, directly after the explosion, forty of our bravest _alpini_ came forward, being promised a fortnight's leave if the attempt succeeded.
At last everything was ready and the hour fixed--half-past eleven on a Tuesday night--for the firing of the mine. How the time hung on our hands all that afternoon and evening!
All the while we wondered what progress the enemy had made with _his_ boring, asking ourselves whether we should forestall him or not. More anxious hours I never passed in my life.
What a relief it was when the hour struck for testing the efficiency of our work. I can still see Don Gelasio Caetani as he stood at the wheel of his little electric generator, ready to give the couple of turns which would set free the destructive spark. We surrounded him in his little dugout, waiting with bated breath, for the sound of the explosion.
III--"A HELLISH ROAR BURST FORTH"
At last Caetani spun the wheel. Heavens! what a din ensued! The mountain seemed to be shaken to its very base. A hellish roar burst forth and rolled like thunder over the vast wastes of the Dolomites, and a terrific blast of air smote upon us even in our shelter.
Out we rushed, to find that the gallant forty, marshalled at the entrance to the main gallery, had been struck full in the face by a mighty ice-cold blast, due to the displacement of air, and that for a few moments they were held up by a series of after-explosions, caused by the ignition of the mines which the hapless Austrians had prepared.
One of the men, describing the explosion to me the next day, said:--
"A huge tongue of flame, followed by a mighty column of smoke, shot into the air, blowing the entire top of the mountain into the sky. Ah! _capitano_, it resembled nothing so much as the eruption of a volcano; and if it is true, as I am told, that Don Gelasio spoke of imitating Vesuvius, he could not have chosen a happier image or succeeded better."
But let me tell you the sequel.
At length the men were able to bound forward in the darkness towards the enemy trenches. Just at that moment the moon suddenly beamed forth behind the clouds, revealing the shattered summit of the Col, heaps of mutilated bodies, and groups of dumfounded, trembling survivors, with arms upraised in token of surrender. All this time our artillery was raining a shower of shells on the mountain saddle between the Col di Lana and Monte Sief, with the double object of preventing the flight of the enemy and their reinforcement. But they were all glad to give in, being thoroughly unnerved and dazed, and well aware of the fact that both telegraphic and telephonic communication with their main forces had been completely destroyed by the explosion.
It seems that at the fateful hour they happened to have an extra force on the Col, a company sent specially from Sief to relieve the soldiery in the trenches; hence the large number of victims. Considerably over two hundred must have been blown to atoms or killed by falling _débris_.
But we had no time that night to bother about the dead and wounded. Our whole attention was directed towards the prisoners, a first batch of whom, including four officers, was soon being taken down the mountain by ten of our brave volunteers. A second batch of five officers and a hundred and ten men followed soon afterwards. In addition we took possession of a shattered mountain gun, cleverly mounted in a cavern and half-a-dozen equally useless mitrailleuses. Five others, with two hundred rifles, were intact. Stores of food sufficient to have lasted the entire garrison for another month completed our booty.
So ended the affair of the Col di Lana, which will ever be linked in the Italian annals of the war with the name of Don Gelasio Caetani, to whom is due a good deal of the credit of the great advance which, immediately afterwards, we made along the main highway through the Dolomites.
LAST HOURS OF EDITH CAVELL ON NIGHT OF EXECUTION
_Experience of American Diplomat in Effort to Save Life of English Nurse_
_Told by Hugh Gibson, Secretary of American Legation at Brussels_
This is the official story of the events on the midnight just before the execution of Edith Cavell, the English nurse, who became the first woman martyr of the Great War. Hugh Gibson here relates how, with the Spanish Minister and a Belgian counsellor, he went to the house of the German Governor at Brussels late at night and pleaded with Baron von der Lancken and the German officers for a stay of execution. The American Minister, Brand Whitlock, too ill to make the journey himself, waited at the American Embassy for the results of the mission. The story is told in the official report to Minister Whitlock, which was forwarded to the British Government. The narrative given herewith is from Mr. Gibson's statement in the _World's Work_, with introductory reports from other sources.
[14] I--STORY OF THE EXECUTION OF EDITH CAVELL
Edith Cavell was an English nurse, daughter of the late Rev. Frederick Cavell, former Vicar of Swardeston, Norfolk. The charge against her was aiding Belgians to escape to England. It is stated she hid them in her house and provided them with money and addresses in England and helped to smuggle them across the frontier.
Miss Cavell was confined in prison ten weeks. Her trial before the military court of Brussels lasted two days. M. De Leval, Belgian Counsellor for the American Legation, tells this story:
"Herr Kirschon assured me repeatedly that the Military Court always was perfectly fair and that he would keep me informed of all developments in the case, but he failed to give me any information and after the trial I learned from other sources the following:
"Miss Cavell was prosecuted for having helped English and French soldiers, as well as Belgian young men, to cross the frontier and go to England. She admitted by signing a statement before the day of the trial and by public acknowledgment in court that she was guilty of the charges, not only that she had helped these soldiers to cross the frontier, but also that some of them had thanked her in writing when arriving in England.
"This last admission made her case more serious, because if it had only been proved she had helped soldiers to traverse the Dutch frontier and no proof was produced that those soldiers had reached a country at war with Germany, she could have only been sentenced for an attempt to commit the crime, and not for the crime being duly accomplished.
"Miss Cavell, in her oral statement before the court, disclosed almost all the facts of the prosecution. She spoke without trembling and showed a clear mind, and often added some greater precision to her previous depositions.
"When she was asked why she helped these soldiers to go to England she replied that she thought if she had not done so they would have been shot by the Germans. Therefore she thought she only did her duty to her country in saving their lives.
"The military prosecutor said the argument might be good for English soldiers, but that it did not apply to Belgian young men, who would have been perfectly free to remain in the country without danger to their lives. The German military court found her guilty and sentenced her to death by shooting."
The execution took place at 2 o'clock in the morning (October 12, 1915) immediately after the American and Spanish diplomats left the house of the German Governor, who refused their appeals.
The execution ground was a garden or yard in Brussels surrounded by a wall. A German firing party of six men and an officer was drawn up in the garden and awaited its victim. She was led in by soldiers from a house near-by, blindfolded with a black scarf. Up to this minute the woman, though deadly white, had stepped out bravely to meet her fate, but before the rifle party her strength at last gave out and she tottered and fell to the ground thirty yards or more from the spot where she was to have been shot.
The officer in charge of the execution walked to her. She lay prone on the ground, motionless. The officer then drew a large service revolver from his belt, took steady aim from his knee and shot the woman through the head as she lay on the floor (this version is denied by the German authorities). The firing party looked on. The officer quietly returned his revolver to its case and ordered the soldiers to carry the body to the house, where charge was taken of it by a Belgian woman, acting under the instructions of the Spanish Minister, who had undertaken the responsibility for the body pending arrangements for the burial.
* * * * *
M. De Leval, a Belgian counsellor, makes this statement of Edith Cavell's last message:
"This morning Mr. Gahan, an English clergyman, told me that he had seen Miss Cavell in her cell yesterday night at 10 o'clock and that he had given her the Holy Communion and had found her admirably strong and calm. I asked Mr. Gahan whether she had made any remarks about anything concerning the legal side of her case, and whether the confession she made before trial and in court was in his opinion perfectly free and sincere. Mr. Gahan said she told him she was perfectly well and knew what she had done; that, according to the law, of course she was guilty, and admitted her guilt, but that she was happy to die for her country."[14]
II--STORY OF HUGH GIBSON, AMERICAN DIPLOMAT
When we got to the Political Department we found that Baron von der Lancken and all the members of his staff had gone out to spend the evening at one of the disreputable little theatres that have sprung up here for the entertainment of the Germans. At first we were unable to find where he had gone, as the orderly on duty evidently had orders not to tell, but by dint of some blustering and impressing on him the fact that Lancken would have cause to regret not having seen us, he agreed to have him notified. We put the orderly into the motor and sent him off. The Marquis de Villalobar De Leval and I settled down to wait, and we waited long, for Lancken, evidently knowing the purpose of our visit, declined to budge until the end of an act that seemed to appeal to him.
He came in about 10:30, followed shortly by Count Harrach and Baron von Falkenhausen, members of his staff. I briefly explained to him the situation as we understood it, and presented the note from the minister transmitting the appeal for clemency. Lancken read the note aloud in our presence, showing no feeling aside from cynical annoyance at something--probably our having discovered the intentions of the German authorities.
When he had finished reading the note Lancken said that he knew nothing of the case, but was sure in any event that no sentence would be executed so soon as we had said. He manifested some surprise, not to say annoyance, that we should give credence to any report in regard to the case which did not come from his department, that being the only official channel. Leval and I insisted, however, that we had reason to believe our reports were correct and urged him to make inquiries. He then tried to find out the exact source of our information, and became insistent. I did not propose, however, to enlighten him on this point, and said that I did not feel at liberty to divulge our source of information.
Lancken then became persuasive--said that it was most improbable that any sentence had been pronounced; that even if it had, it could not be put into effect within so short a time, and that in any event all government offices were closed and that it was impossible for him to take any action before morning. He suggested that we all go home "reasonably," sleep quietly, and come back in the morning to talk about the case. It was very clear that if the facts were as we believed them to be the next morning would be too late, and we pressed for immediate inquiry. I had to be rather insistent on this point, and De Leval, in his anxiety, became so emphatic that I feared he might bring down the wrath of the Germans on his own head, and tried to quiet him. There was something splendid about the way De Leval, a Belgian, with nothing to gain and everything to lose, stood up for what he believed to be right and chivalrous, regardless of consequences to himself.
Finally, Lancken agreed to inquire as to the facts, telephoned from his office to the presiding judge of the court-martial, and returned in a short time to say that sentence had indeed been passed and that Miss Cavell was to be shot during the night.
We then presented with all the earnestness at our command the plea for clemency. We pointed out to Lancken that Miss Cavell's offences were a matter of the past; that she had been in prison for some weeks, thus effectually ending her power for harm; that there was nothing to be gained by shooting her, and, on the contrary, this would do Germany much more harm than good and England much more good than harm. We pointed out to him that the whole case was a very bad one from Germany's point of view; that the sentence of death had heretofore been imposed only for cases of espionage, and that Miss Cavell was not even accused by the German authorities of anything so serious. At the time there was no intimation that Miss Cavell was guilty of espionage. It was only when public opinion had been aroused by her execution that the German government began to refer to her as "the spy Cavell." According to the German statement of the case, there is no possible ground for calling her a spy. We reminded him that Miss Cavell, as directress of a large nursing home, had, since the beginning of the war, cared for large numbers of German soldiers in a way that should make her life sacred to them. I further called his attention to the manifest failure of the Political Department to comply with its repeated promises to keep us informed as to the progress of the trial and the passing of the sentence. The deliberate policy of subterfuge and prevarication by which they had sought to deceive us as to the progress of the case was so raw as to require little comment. We all pointed out to Lancken the horror of shooting a woman, no matter what her offence, and endeavored to impress upon him the frightful effect that such an execution would have throughout the civilized world. With a sneer he replied that, on the contrary, he was confident that the effect would be excellent.
When everything else had failed we asked Lancken to look at the case from the point of view solely of German interests, assuring him that the execution of Miss Cavell would do Germany infinite harm. We reminded him of the burning of Louvain and the sinking of the _Lusitania_, and told him that this murder would rank with those two affairs and would stir all civilized countries with horror and disgust. Count Harrach broke in at this with the rather irrelevant remark that he would rather see Miss Cavell shot than have harm come to the humblest German soldier, and his only regret was that they had not "three or four old English women to shoot."
The Spanish Minister and I tried to prevail upon Lancken to call Great Headquarters, at Charleville, on the telephone and have the case laid before the Emperor for his decision. Lancken stiffened perceptibly at this suggestion and refused, frankly--saying that he could not do anything of the sort. Turning to Villalobar, he said, "I can't do that sort of thing. I am not a friend of my sovereign as you are of yours," to which a rejoinder was made that in order to be a good friend one must be loyal and ready to incur displeasure in case of need. However, our arguments along this line came to the point of saying that the military governor of Brussels was the supreme authority (Gerichtsherr) in matters of this sort, and that even the Governor General had no power to intervene. After further argument he agreed to get General von Sauberschweig, the military governor, out of bed to learn whether he had already ratified the sentence and whether there was any chance for clemency.
Lancken was gone about half an hour, during which time the three of us labored with Harrach and Falkenhausen, without, I am sorry to say, the slightest success. When Lancken returned he reported that the military governor had acted in this case only after mature deliberation; that the circumstances of Miss Cavell's offence were of such a character that he considered infliction of the death penalty imperative. Lancken further explained that under the provisions of German military law the Gerichtsherr had discretionary power to accept or to refuse to accept an appeal for clemency; that in this case the Governor regretted that he must decline to accept the appeal for clemency or any representations in regard to the matter.
We then brought up again the question of having the Emperor called on the telephone, but Lancken replied very definitely that the matter had gone too far; that the sentence had been ratified by the military governor, and that when matters had gone that far "even the Emperor himself could not intervene." (Although accepted at the time as true, this statement was later found to be entirely false and is understood to have displeased the Emperor. The Emperor could have stopped the execution at any moment.)
Despite Lancken's very positive statements as to the futility of our errand, we continued to appeal to every sentiment to secure delay and time for reconsideration of the case. The Spanish Minister led Lancken aside and said some things to him that he would have hesitated to say in the presence of Harrach, Falkenhausen and De Leval, a Belgian subject. Lancken squirmed and blustered by turns, but stuck to his refusal. In the meantime, I went after Harrach and Falkenhausen again. This time, throwing modesty to the winds, I reminded them of some of the things we had done for German interests at the outbreak of the war; how we had repatriated thousands of German subjects and cared for their interests; how during the siege of Antwerp I had repeatedly crossed the lines during actual fighting at the request of Field Marshal von der Goltz to look after German interests; how all this service had been rendered gladly and without thought of reward; that since the beginning of the war we had never asked a favor of the German authorities, and it seemed incredible that they should now decline to grant us even a day's delay to discuss the case of a poor woman who was, by her imprisonment, prevented from doing further harm, and whose execution in the middle of the night at the conclusion of a course of trickery and deception was nothing short of an affront to civilization. Even when I was ready to abandon all hope, De Leval was unable to believe that the German authorities would persist in their decision, and appealed most touchingly and feelingly to the sense of pity for which we looked in vain.
Our efforts were perfectly useless, however, as the three men with whom we had to deal were so completely callous and indifferent that they were in no way moved by anything that we could say.
We did not stop until after midnight, when it was only too clear that there was no hope.
It was a bitter business leaving the place feeling that we had failed and that the little woman was to be led out before a firing squad within a few hours. But it was worse to go back to the legation to the little group of English women who were waiting in my office to learn the result of our visit. They had been there for nearly four hours while Mrs. Whitlock and Miss Larner sat with them and tried to sustain them through the hours of waiting. There were Mrs. Gahan, wife of the English chaplain; Miss B. and several nurses from Miss Cavell's school. One was a little wisp of a thing who had been mothered by Miss Cavell, and was nearly beside herself with grief. There was no way of breaking the news to them gently, for they could read the answer in our faces when we came in. All we could do was to give them each a stiff drink of sherry and send them home. De Leval was white as death, and I took him back to his house. I had a splitting headache myself and could not face the idea of going to bed. I went home and read for awhile, but that was no good, so I went out and walked the streets, much to the annoyance of German patrols. I rang the bells of several houses in a desperate desire to talk to somebody, but could not find a soul--only sleepy and disgruntled servants. It was a night I should not like to go through again, but it wore through somehow, and I braced up with a cold bath and went to the legation for the day's work.
The day brought forth another loathsome fact in connection with the case. It seems the sentence on Miss Cavell was not pronounced in open court. Her executioners, apparently in the hope of concealing their intentions from us, went into her cell, and there, behind locked door, pronounced sentence upon her. It's all of a piece with the other things they have done.
On October 11 Mr. Gahan got a pass and was admitted to see Miss Cavell shortly before she was taken out and shot. He said she was calm and prepared, and faced the ordeal without a tremor. She was a tiny thing that looked as though she could be blown away with a breath, but she had a great spirit. She told Mr. Gahan that soldiers had come to her and asked her to be helped to the frontier; that, knowing the risks they ran and the risks she took, she had helped them. She said she had nothing to regret, no complaint to make, and that if she had it all to do over again she would change nothing.
They partook together of the Holy Communion, and she who had so little need of preparation was prepared for death. She was free from resentment and said: "I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward any one."
She was taken out and shot before daybreak.
She was denied the support of her own clergyman at the end, but a German military chaplain stayed with her and gave her burial within the precincts of the prison. He did not conceal his admiration, and said: "She was courageous to the end. She professed her Christian faith and said that she was glad to die for her country. She died like a heroine."
FOOTNOTE:
[14] This is the report as given in England--it is not Mr. Gibson's statement.
A BAYONET CHARGE IN PICARDY
_Told by a British Army Captain_
A racy bit of battle description, hot from the guns, as spoken by a wounded Captain who led one of the first rushes against the German trenches in the great British drive in 1916. Recorded in _Current History_.
I--HOW OUR ENGLISH COUSIN TELLS ABOUT THE BATTLE
Eh? Oh, just an ordinary front-line trench, you know; rather chipped about, of course, by the Boche heavies, you know; but--oh, hang it, you know what the ordinary fire trench looks like; along the north side of the Mametz Wood we were. What? Oh, yes, we were packed pretty close, of course, while we were waiting; only got there a little before midnight. My chaps were all in splendid heart, and keen as mustard to get the word "Go!" I was lucky; met my friend ----, almost directly we got in.
The weather was jolly then; but there'd been a lot of rain, and the trench was in a beastly state. You know what it's like, after a lot of strafing, when you get heavy rains on the churned-up ground. It was like porridge with syrup over it; and we were all absolutely plastered--hair and mustaches and everything--before we'd been half an hour in the place. The Boche was crumping us pretty heavy all the time, but it didn't really matter, because, for some reason, he didn't seem to have got our range just right, and nearly all his big stuff was landing in front or behind, and giving us very little but the mud of it.
What did worry me a bit was his machine guns. His snipers, too, seemed fairly on the spot, though how the devil they could be, with our artillery as busy as it was, I can't think. But I know several of my sentries were laid out by rifle bullets. I particularly wanted to let the others get a smoke when they could, seeing we'd be there three or four hours; helps to keep 'em steady in the waiting, you know; but we had to be mighty careful about matches, the Boche being no more than a hundred yards off.
Just before 3 I got my position, right in the middle of my company. We were going over at 3:25, you know. The trench was deep there, with a hell of a lot of mud and water; but there was no set parapet left; just a gradual slope of muck, as though cartloads of it had been dropped from the sky by giants--spilt porridge. I wanted to be first out, if I could--good effect on the men, you know--but I couldn't trust myself in all that muck, so I'd collared a rum-case from ----'s dugout, and was nursing the blooming thing, so that when the time came I could plant it in the mud and get a bit of a spring from that. Glad I did, too.
I passed the word along at a quarter past to be ready for my whistle; but it was all you could do to make a fellow hear by shouting in his ear. Our heavies were giving it lip then, I can tell you. I was in a devil of a stew lest some of my chaps should get over too soon. They kept wriggling up and forward in the mud. They were frightfully keen to get moving. I gathered from my Sergeant their one fear was that if we couldn't get going our artillery would have left no strafing for us to do. Little they knew their Boche, if they thought that.
I thought I could just make out our artillery lift, about a minute and a half before the twenty-five, but I wouldn't swear to it. On the stroke of the twenty-five I got a good jump from my rum-box, and fell head first into a little pool--whizz-bang hole, I suppose; something small. It loosened two of my front teeth pretty much. I'd my whistle in my teeth, you see. But I blew like blazes directly I got my head up. Never made a sound. Whistle full of mud. But it didn't matter a bit. They all saw me take my dive, and a lot were in front of me when I got going. But I overhauled 'em, and got in front.
II--"DOWN 'EM, BOYS--STICK 'EM"
I believe we must have got nearly fifty yards without a casualty. But it's hard to say. It wasn't light, you know; just a glimmering kind of grayness. Not easy to spot casualties. The row, of course, was deafening, and we were running like lamplighters. You remember our practice stunts at home? Short rushes, and taking cover in folds of the ground. "Remember your file of direction, Sir; dressin' by the right," and all that. Oh, the boys remembered it right enough. But, good Lord, it wasn't much like Salisbury Plain, you know. We were going hell for leather. You think you're going strong, and--Woosh! You've got your face deep in porridge. Fallen in a shell hole. You trip over some blame thing, and you turn a complete somersault, and you're on again, wondering where your second wind is. Lord, you haven't a notion whether you're hit or not.
I felt that smack on my left wrist, along with a dozen other smacks of one sort and another, but I didn't know it was a wound for an hour or more. All you thought about was trying to keep your rifle muzzle up, and I guess the fellows behind must've thought a bit about not stickin' us with their bayonets more'n they could help. I was shouting ----, the local name of the regiment, you know. The boys like it. But my Sergeant, who was close to me, was just yelling, "Down 'em, boys!" and "Stick 'em! Stick 'em!" for all he was worth.
My lot were bound for the second line, you see. My No. 12 Platoon, with thirteen of "D," were to look after cleaning up the Boche first line.
There was no real parapet left in that Boche front line. Their trench was just a sort of gash, a ragged crack in the porridge. Where I was, there was quite a bit of their wire left; but, do you know, one didn't feel it a bit. You can judge a bit from my rags what it was like. We went at it like fellows in a race charge the tape; and it didn't hurt us any more. Only thing that worried us was the porridge and the holes. Your feet sinking down make you feel you're crawling; making no headway. I wish I could have seen a bit better. It was all a muddy blur to me. But I made out a line of faces in the Boche ditch; and I know I gave a devil of a yell as we jumped for those faces. Lost my rifle there.
'Fraid I didn't stick my man, really, because my bayonet struck solid earth. I just smashed my fellow. We went down into the muck together, and another chap trod on my neck for a moment. Makes you think quick, I tell you. I pulled that chap down on top of my other Boche, and just took one good look to make sure he was a Boche; and then I gave him two rounds from my revolver, with the barrel in his face. I think I killed the under one too, but can't be sure.
III--"I GOT MY KNOCK-OUT"
Next thing I knew we were scrambling on to the second line. It was in the wire of the second line that I got my knockout; this shoulder and some splinters in my head. Yes; bomb. I was out of business, then; but as the light grew I could see my chaps having the time of their lives inside that second line. One of 'em hauled me in after a bit, and I got a drink of beer in a big Boche dugout down two separate flights of steps. My hat! That beer was good, though it was German. But, look here, I'm in No. 5 train, that that chap's calling. I must get ashore. Just want to tell you about that dugout of ----'s in our own line, you know. It was 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and we'd got the Bazentin Wood all right then, when my orderly, who never got a scratch, was helping me back, making for our dressing station. We crawled into what had been a trench, and while we were taking a breather I sort of looked around, and made out a bit here and a bend there. Begad, it was the trench we started from.
Seems nothing, but you've no idea how odd it was to me; like dropping into a bit of England after about a century and a half in--in some special kind of hell, you know. Seemed so devilish odd that any mortal thing should be the same anywhere after that day. Not that it was the same, really. My rum case was in splinters, sticking up out of the porridge, and I found my map case there, torn off my belt as we got over at 3:25. "Won't be much left of that dugout," I thought, and I got my orderly to help me along to see. Couldn't find the blessed thing, anyhow. Went backward and forward three or four times. Then I spotted the head of a long trench stick that ---- had carried, sticking out through soft earth at the back of the trench. The orderly worked that stick about a little, and the earth fell away. It was just loose, dry stuff blown in off the front part of the roof of the dugout, and blocking the little entrance. Came away at a touch, almost, and there was the little hole you got in by. I worried through, somehow. I was really curious to see. If you'll believe me, the inside of that dugout--it looked like a drawing room to me, after the outside, you know--it was just exactly the same as when we'd left it the night before. There was the fine stove we made the café-au-lait on, with a half-empty box of matches balanced on the side of it, and the last empty tin of the coffee stuff we'd used, with the broken-handled spoon standing up in it, just as I'd left it; and ----'s notebook lying open and face down on an air pillow in his bunk--most extraordinarily homey. There I was looking at his notebook, and his hold-all, and poor ---- dead. Yes, I'd seen his body. And the rats, too; the rats were cavorting around on the felt of the roof, happy as sandboys. They didn't know anything about the Push, I suppose. By the way, we found only dead rats in the Boche trenches. They say it was our gas. I don't know; but there were thousands of dead rats there, and millions of live fleas. Very live they were. I must get. Cheero.
THE SLAUGHTER AT DOUAUMONT
_Told by a French Soldier_
Despite the horror of it, despite the ceaseless flow of blood, one wants to see. One's soul wants to feed on the sight of the brute Boches falling. I stopped on the ground for hours, and when I closed my eyes I saw the whole picture again. The guns are firing at 200 and 300 yards, and shrapnel is exploding with a crash, scything them down. Our men hold their ground; our machine guns keep to their work, and yet they advance.
Near me, as I lie in the mud, there is a giant wrapped in one of our uniforms with a steel helmet on his head. He seems to be dead, he is so absolutely still. At a given moment the Boches are quite close to us. Despite the noise of the guns one can hear their oaths and their shouts as they strike. Then the giant next to me jumps up, and with a voice like a stentor shouts "Hier da! Hier da!" Mechanically some of us get up. (My wound, which had been dressed, left me free and I had forgotten.) I was unarmed and so I struck him with my steel helmet and he dropped, with his head broken. An officer who was passing sees the incident and takes off the man's coat. Below is a German uniform. Where had the spy come from and how had he got there?
But the Boches are returning again massed to the assault, and they are being killed in bulk. It makes one think that in declaring the war the Kaiser had sworn the destruction of his race, and he would have shown good taste in doing so. Their gunfire is slackening now, and ours redoubles. The fort has gone, and if under its ruins there are left a few guns and gunners the bulk of the guns are firing from outside. The machine guns are coming up and getting in position, and our men are moving on in numerous waves. I find a rifle belonging to a comrade who has fallen and join the Chasseurs with the fifty cartridges that I have left. What a fight it is, and what troops! From time to time a man falls, rises, shoots, runs, shoots again, keeps on firing, fights with his bayonet, and then, worn out, falls, to be tramped on without raising a cry. The storm of fire continues. Everything is on fire--the wood near by, the village of Douaumont, Verdun, the front of Bezonvaux, and the back of Thiaumont. There is fire everywhere. The acrid smell of carbonic acid and blood catches at our throats, but the battle goes on.
They are brave, but one of our men is worth two of theirs, especially in hand-to-hand fighting. They bend and fall back, and the sound of the song they sing to order, "Heil dir im Siegerkranz," only reaches us in hiccoughs. Our reinforcements continue to arrive. We are the masters. Our officers, with wonderful coolness, control the ardor of the troops. The infantry action is over. By its tirs de barrage the artillery is holding that of the enemy, and we keep awaiting the fresh order for action in silence.
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious errors of punctuation and diacritics repaired. Inconsistent hyphenation fixed.
P. 31: reremained our faithful companion -> remained our faithful companion.
P. 33: peacefully and unuspectingly -> peacefully and unsuspectingly.
P. 44: Sidney -> Sydney.
P. 72: Luzembourger -> Luxembourger.
P. 89: One the horizontal one -> On the horizontal one.
P. 91: cropses are no longer visible -> corpses are no longer visible.
P. 102: mightly lively lot of brown bugs -> mightily lively lot of brown bugs.
P. 144: Corkoral -> Corporal.
P. 145: an allarum warned us -> an alarum warned us.
P. 155: affaire forte dificle -> affaire forte difficile.
P. 160: Russian General of Divison -> Russian General of Division.
P. 210: premonitary signs -> premonitory signs.
P. 249: I dropped the ammution -> I dropped the ammunition.
P. 258: a man who was aff his head -> a man who was off his head.
P. 268: and out speculations -> and our speculations.
P. 305: the red disc of the sun silhoueted -> the red disc of the sun silhouetted.
P. 310: close proxmity of the sniper -> close proximity of the sniper.
P. 317: punny little conscript -> puny little conscript.
P. 317 (twice): Hevré -> Hervé.
P. 318: in their one way -> in their own way.
P. 321: help the poor fellow securely in his seat -> held the poor fellow securely in his seat.
P. 321: score of campanions -> score of companions.
P. 340: It seems that the fateful hour -> It seems that at the fateful hour.
End of Project Gutenberg's True Stories of The Great War Volume II, by Various |
35338-8 | Produced by Eleni Christofaki, Juliet Sutherland and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
|=================================================| | MR. WELLS HAS ALSO WRITTEN | | The following Novels: | | | | TONO BUNGAY | | LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM | | KIPPS ANN VERONICA | | THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY | | and THE NEW MACHIAVELLI | | | | Numerous short stories now published | | in a single volume under the title. | | THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND | | | | The following fantastic Romances: | | | | THE TIME MACHINE | | THE WONDERFUL VISIT | | THE INVISIBLE MAN | | THE WAR OF THE WORLDS | | THE SEA LADY | | IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET | | THE SLEEPER AWAKES | | THE FOOD OF THE GODS | | THE WAR IN THE AIR | | THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON | | and THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU | | | | And a series of books upon social and political | | questions of which | | | | A MODERN UTOPIA | | FIRST AND LAST THINGS (RELIGION) | | NEW WORLDS FOR OLD | | THE FUTURE IN AMERICA | | and ANTICIPATIONS | | are the chief. | |=================================================|
MARRIAGE
BY
H. G. WELLS
"And the Poor Dears haven't the shadow of a doubt they will live happily ever afterwards."--_From a Private Letter_.
[Illustration]
NEW YORK DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912 DUFFIELD & COMPANY
_FRATERNALLY TO ARNOLD BENNETT_
BOOK THE FIRST MARJORIE MARRIES
MARRIAGE
CHAPTER THE FIRST
A DAY WITH THE POPES
§ 1
An extremely pretty girl occupied a second-class compartment in one of those trains which percolate through the rural tranquillities of middle England from Ganford in Oxfordshire to Rumbold Junction in Kent. She was going to join her family at Buryhamstreet after a visit to some Gloucestershire friends. Her father, Mr. Pope, once a leader in the coach-building world and now by retirement a gentleman, had taken the Buryhamstreet vicarage furnished for two months (beginning on the fifteenth of July) at his maximum summer rental of seven guineas a week. His daughter was on her way to this retreat.
At first she had been an animated traveller, erect and keenly regardful of every detail upon the platforms of the stations at which her conveyance lingered, but the tedium of the journey and the warmth of the sunny afternoon had relaxed her pose by imperceptible degrees, and she sat now comfortably in the corner, with her neat toes upon the seat before her, ready to drop them primly at the first sign of a fellow-traveller. Her expression lapsed more and more towards an almost somnolent reverie. She wished she had not taken a second-class ticket, because then she might have afforded a cup of tea at Reading, and so fortified herself against this insinuating indolence.
She was travelling second class, instead of third as she ought to have done, through one of those lapses so inevitable to young people in her position. The two Carmel boys and a cousin, two greyhounds and a chow had come to see her off; they had made a brilliant and prosperous group on the platform and extorted the manifest admiration of two youthful porters, and it had been altogether too much for Marjorie Pope to admit it was the family custom--except when her father's nerves had to be considered--to go third class. So she had made a hasty calculation--she knew her balance to a penny because of the recent tipping--and found it would just run to it. Fourpence remained,--and there would be a porter at Buryhamstreet!
Her mother had said: "You will have Ample." Well, opinions of amplitude vary. With numerous details fresh in her mind, Marjorie decided it would be wiser to avoid financial discussion during her first few days at Buryhamstreet.
There was much in Marjorie's equipment in the key of travelling second class at the sacrifice of afternoon tea. There was, for example, a certain quiet goodness of style about her clothes, though the skirt betrayed age, and an entire absence of style about her luggage, which was all in the compartment with her, and which consisted of a distended hold-all, a very good tennis racquet in a stretcher, a portmanteau of cheap white basketwork held together by straps, and a very new, expensive-looking and meretricious dressing-bag of imitation morocco, which had been one of her chief financial errors at Oxbridge. The collection was eloquent indeed of incompatible standards....
Marjorie had a chin that was small in size if resolute in form, and a mouth that was not noticeably soft and weak because it was conspicuously soft and pretty. Her nose was delicately aquiline and very subtly and finely modelled, and she looked out upon the world with steady, grey-blue eyes beneath broad, level brows that contradicted in a large measure the hint of weakness below. She had an abundance of copper-red hair, which flowed back very prettily from her broad, low forehead and over her delicate ears, and she had that warm-tinted clear skin that goes so well with reddish hair. She had a very dainty neck, and the long slender lines of her body were full of the promise of a riper beauty. She had the good open shoulders of a tennis-player and a swimmer. Some day she was to be a tall, ruddy, beautiful woman. She wore simple clothes of silvery grey and soft green, and about her waist was a belt of grey leather in which there now wilted two creamy-petalled roses.
That was the visible Marjorie. Somewhere out of time and space was an invisible Marjorie who looked out on the world with those steady eyes, and smiled or drooped with the soft red lips, and dreamt, and wondered, and desired.
§ 2
What a queer thing the invisible human being would appear if, by some discovery as yet inconceivable, some spiritual X-ray photography, we could flash it into sight! Long ago I read a book called "Soul Shapes" that was full of ingenious ideas, but I doubt very much if the thing so revealed would have any shape, any abiding solid outline at all. It is something more fluctuating and discursive than that--at any rate, for every one young enough not to have set and hardened. Things come into it and become it, things drift out of it and cease to be it, things turn upside down in it and change and colour and dissolve, and grow and eddy about and blend into each other. One might figure it, I suppose, as a preposterous jumble animated by a will; a floundering disconnectedness through which an old hump of impulse rises and thrusts unaccountably; a river beast of purpose wallowing in a back eddy of mud and weeds and floating objects and creatures drowned. Now the sunshine of gladness makes it all vivid, now it is sombre and grimly insistent under the sky of some darkling mood, now an emotional gale sweeps across it and it is one confused agitation....
And surely these invisible selves of men were never so jumbled, so crowded, complicated, and stirred about as they are at the present time. Once I am told they had a sort of order, were sphered in religious beliefs, crystal clear, were arranged in a cosmogony that fitted them as hand fits glove, were separated by definite standards of right and wrong which presented life as planned in all its essential aspects from the cradle to the grave. Things are so no longer. That sphere is broken for most of us; even if it is tied about and mended again, it is burst like a seed case; things have fallen out and things have fallen in....
Can I convey in any measure how it was with Marjorie?
What was her religion?
In college forms and returns, and suchlike documents, she would describe herself as "Church of England." She had been baptized according to the usages of that body, but she had hitherto evaded confirmation into it, and although it is a large, wealthy, and powerful organization with many minds to serve it, it had never succeeded in getting into her quick and apprehensive intelligence any lucid and persuasive conception of what it considered God and the universe were up to with her. It had failed to catch her attention and state itself to her. A number of humorous and other writers and the general trend of talk around her, and perhaps her own shrewd little observation of superficial things, had, on the other hand, created a fairly definite belief in her that it wasn't as a matter of fact up to very much at all, that what it said wasn't said with that absolute honesty which is a logical necessity in every religious authority, and that its hierarchy had all sorts of political and social considerations confusing its treatment of her immortal soul....
Marjorie followed her father in abstaining from church. He too professed himself "Church of England," but he was, if we are to set aside merely superficial classifications, an irascible atheist with a respect for usage and Good Taste, and an abject fear of the disapproval of other gentlemen of his class. For the rest he secretly disliked clergymen on account of the peculiarity of their collars, and a certain influence they had with women. When Marjorie at the age of fourteen had displayed a hankering after ecclesiastical ceremony and emotional religion, he had declared: "We don't want any of _that_ nonsense," and sent her into the country to a farm where there were young calves and a bottle-fed lamb and kittens. At times her mother went to church and displayed considerable orthodoxy and punctilio, at times the good lady didn't, and at times she thought in a broad-minded way that there was a Lot in Christian Science, and subjected herself to the ministrations of an American named Silas Root. But his ministrations were too expensive for continuous use, and so the old faith did not lose its hold upon the family altogether.
* * * * *
At school Marjorie had been taught what I may best describe as Muffled Christianity--a temperate and discreet system designed primarily not to irritate parents, in which the painful symbol of the crucifixion and the riddle of what Salvation was to save her from, and, indeed, the coarser aspects of religion generally, were entirely subordinate to images of amiable perambulations, and a rich mist of finer feelings. She had been shielded, not only from arguments against her religion, but from arguments for it--the two things go together--and I do not think it was particularly her fault if she was now growing up like the great majority of respectable English people, with her religious faculty as it were, artificially faded, and an acquired disposition to regard any speculation of why she was, and whence and whither, as rather foolish, not very important, and in the very worst possible taste.
And so, the crystal globe being broken which once held souls together, you may expect to find her a little dispersed and inconsistent in her motives, and with none of that assurance a simpler age possessed of the exact specification of goodness or badness, the exact delimitation of right and wrong. Indeed, she did not live in a world of right and wrong, or anything so stern; "horrid" and "jolly" had replaced these archaic orientations. In a world where a mercantile gentility has conquered passion and God is neither blasphemed nor adored, there necessarily arises this generation of young people, a little perplexed, indeed, and with a sense of something missing, but feeling their way inevitably at last to the great releasing question, "Then why shouldn't we have a good time?"
Yet there was something in Marjorie, as in most human beings, that demanded some general idea, some aim, to hold her life together. A girl upon the borders of her set at college was fond of the phrase "living for the moment," and Marjorie associated with it the speaker's lax mouth, sloe-like eyes, soft, quick-flushing, boneless face, and a habit of squawking and bouncing in a forced and graceless manner. Marjorie's natural disposition was to deal with life in a steadier spirit than that. Yet all sorts of powers and forces were at work in her, some exalted, some elvish, some vulgar, some subtle. She felt keenly and desired strongly, and in effect she came perhaps nearer the realization of that offending phrase than its original exponent. She had a clean intensity of feeling that made her delight in a thousand various things, in sunlight and textures, and the vividly quick acts of animals, in landscape, and the beauty of other girls, in wit, and people's voices, and good strong reasoning, and the desire and skill of art. She had a clear, rapid memory that made her excel perhaps a little too easily at school and college, an eagerness of sympathetic interest that won people very quickly and led to disappointments, and a very strong sense of the primary importance of Miss Marjorie Pope in the world. And when any very definite dream of what she would like to be and what she would like to do, such as being the principal of a ladies' college, or the first woman member of Parliament, or the wife of a barbaric chief in Borneo, or a great explorer, or the wife of a millionaire and a great social leader, or George Sand, or Saint Teresa, had had possession of her imagination for a few weeks, an entirely contrasted and equally attractive dream would presently arise beside it and compete with it and replace it. It wasn't so much that she turned against the old one as that she was attracted by the new, and she forgot the old dream rather than abandoned it, simply because she was only one person, and hadn't therefore the possibility of realizing both.
In certain types Marjorie's impressionability aroused a passion of proselytism. People of the most diverse kinds sought to influence her, and they invariably did so. Quite a number of people, including her mother and the principal of her college, believed themselves to be the leading influence in her life. And this was particularly the case with her aunt Plessington. Her aunt Plessington was devoted to social and political work of an austere and aggressive sort (in which Mr. Plessington participated); she was childless, and had a Movement of her own, the Good Habits Movement, a progressive movement of the utmost scope and benevolence which aimed at extensive interferences with the food and domestic intimacies of the more defenceless lower classes by means ultimately of legislation, and she had Marjorie up to see her, took her for long walks while she influenced with earnestness and vigour, and at times had an air of bequeathing her mantle, movement and everything, quite definitely to her "little Madge." She spoke of training her niece to succeed her, and bought all the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward for her as they appeared, in the hope of quickening in her that flame of politico-social ambition, that insatiable craving for dinner-parties with important guests, which is so distinctive of the more influential variety of English womanhood. It was due rather to her own habit of monologue than to any reserve on the part of Marjorie that she entertained the belief that her niece was entirely acquiescent in these projects. They went into Marjorie's mind and passed. For nearly a week, it is true, she had dramatized herself as the angel and inspiration of some great modern statesman, but this had been ousted by a far more insistent dream, begotten by a picture she had seen in some exhibition, of a life of careless savagery, whose central and constantly recurrent incident was the riding of barebacked horses out of deep-shadowed forest into a foamy sunlit sea--in a costume that would certainly have struck Aunt Plessington as a mistake.
If you could have seen Marjorie in her railway compartment, with the sunshine, sunshine mottled by the dirty window, tangled in her hair and creeping to and fro over her face as the train followed the curves of the line, you would certainly have agreed with me that she was pretty, and you might even have thought her beautiful. But it was necessary to fall in love with Marjorie before you could find her absolutely beautiful. You might have speculated just what business was going on behind those drowsily thoughtful eyes. If you are--as people say--"Victorian," you might even have whispered "Day Dreams," at the sight of her....
She _was_ dreaming, and in a sense she was thinking of beautiful things. But only mediately. She was thinking how very much she would enjoy spending freely and vigorously, quite a considerable amount of money,--heaps of money.
You see, the Carmels, with whom she had just been staying, were shockingly well off. They had two motor cars with them in the country, and the boys had the use of the second one as though it was just an old bicycle. Marjorie had had a cheap white dinner-dress, made the year before by a Chelsea French girl, a happy find of her mother's, and it was shapely and simple and not at all bad, and she had worn her green beads and her Egyptian necklace of jade; but Kitty Carmel and her sister had had a new costume nearly every night, and pretty bracelets, and rubies, big pearls, and woven gold, and half a score of delightful and precious things for neck and hair. Everything in the place was bright and good and abundant, the servants were easy and well-mannered, without a trace of hurry or resentment, and one didn't have to be sharp about the eggs and things at breakfast in the morning, or go without. All through the day, and even when they had gone to bathe from the smart little white and green shed on the upper lake, Marjorie had been made to feel the insufficiency of her equipment. Kitty Carmel, being twenty-one, possessed her own cheque-book and had accounts running at half a dozen West-end shops; and both sisters had furnished their own rooms according to their taste, with a sense of obvious effect that had set Marjorie speculating just how a room might be done by a girl with a real eye for colour and a real brain behind it....
The train slowed down for the seventeenth time. Marjorie looked up and read "Buryhamstreet."
§ 3
Her reverie vanished, and by a complex but almost instantaneous movement she had her basket off the rack and the carriage door open. She became teeming anticipations. There, advancing in a string, were Daffy, her elder sister, Theodore, her younger brother, and the dog Toupee. Sydney and Rom hadn't come. Daffy was not copper red like her sister, but really quite coarsely red-haired; she was bigger than Marjorie, and with irregular teeth instead of Marjorie's neat row; she confessed them in a broad simple smile of welcome. Theodore was hatless, rustily fuzzy-headed, and now a wealth of quasi-humorous gesture. The dog Toupee was straining at a leash, and doing its best in a yapping, confused manner, to welcome the wrong people by getting its lead round their legs.
"Toupee!" cried Marjorie, waving the basket. "Toupee!"
They all called it Toupee because it was like one, but the name was forbidden in her father's hearing. Her father had decided that the proper name for a family dog in England is Towser, and did his utmost to suppress a sobriquet that was at once unprecedented and not in the best possible taste. Which was why the whole family, with the exception of Mrs. Pope, of course, stuck to Toupee....
Marjorie flashed a second's contrast with the Carmel splendours.
"Hullo, old Daffy. What's it like?" she asked, handing out the basket as her sister came up.
"It's a lark," said Daffy. "Where's the dressing-bag?"
"Thoddy," said Marjorie, following up the dressing-bag with the hold-all. "Lend a hand."
"Stow it, Toupee," said Theodore, and caught the hold-all in time.
In another moment Marjorie was out of the train, had done the swift kissing proper to the occasion, and rolled a hand over Toupee's head--Toupee, who, after a passionate lunge at a particularly savoury drover from the next compartment, was now frantically trying to indicate that Marjorie was the one human being he had ever cared for. Brother and sister were both sketching out the state of affairs at Buryhamstreet Vicarage in rapid competitive jerks, each eager to tell things first--and the whole party moved confusedly towards the station exit. Things pelted into Marjorie's mind.
"We've got an old donkey-cart. I thought we shouldn't get here--ever.... Madge, we can go up the church tower whenever we like, only old Daffy won't let me shin up the flagstaff. It's _perfectly_ safe--you couldn't fall off if you tried.... Had positively to get out at the level crossing and _pull_ him over.... There's a sort of moat in the garden.... You never saw such furniture, Madge! And the study! It's hung with texts, and stuffed with books about the Scarlet Woman.... Piano's rather good, it's a Broadwood.... The Dad's got a war on about the tennis net. Oh, frightful! You'll see. It won't keep up. He's had a letter kept waiting by the _Times_ for a fortnight, and it's a terror at breakfast. Says the motor people have used influence to silence him. Says that's a game two can play at.... Old Sid got herself upset stuffing windfalls. Rather a sell for old Sid, considering how refined she's getting...."
There was a brief lull as the party got into the waiting governess cart. Toupee, after a preliminary refusal to enter, made a determined attempt on the best seat, from which he would be able to bark in a persistent, official manner at anything that passed. That suppressed, and Theodore's proposal to drive refused, they were able to start, and attention was concentrated upon Daffy's negotiation of the station approach. Marjorie turned on her brother with a smile of warm affection.
"How are you, old Theodore?"
"I'm all right, old Madge."
"Mummy?"
"Every one's all right," said Theodore; "if it wasn't for that damned infernal net----"
"Ssssh!" cried both sisters together.
"_He_ says it," said Theodore.
Both sisters conveyed a grave and relentless disapproval.
"Pretty bit of road," said Marjorie. "I like that little house at the corner."
A pause and the eyes of the sisters met.
"_He's_ here," said Daffy.
Marjorie affected ignorance.
"Who's here?"
"_Il vostro senior Miraculoso_."
"Just as though a fellow couldn't understand your kiddy little Italian," said Theodore, pulling Toupee's ear.
"Oh well, I thought he might be," said Marjorie, regardless of her brother.
"Oh!" said Daffy. "I didn't know----"
Both sisters looked at each other, and then both glanced at Theodore. He met Marjorie's eyes with a grimace of profound solemnity.
"Little brothers," he said, "shouldn't know. Just as though they didn't! Rot! But let's change the subject, my dears, all the same. Lemme see. There are a new sort of flea on Toupee, Madge, that he gets from the hens."
"_Is_ a new sort," corrected Daffy. "He's horrider than ever, Madge. He leaves his soap in soak now to make us think he has used it. This is the village High Street. Isn't it jolly?"
"Corners don't _bite_ people," said Theodore, with a critical eye to the driving.
Marjorie surveyed the High Street, while Daffy devoted a few moments to Theodore.
The particular success of the village was its brace of chestnut trees which, with that noble disregard of triteness which is one of the charms of villages the whole world over, shadowed the village smithy. On either side of the roadway between it and the paths was a careless width of vivid grass protected by white posts, which gave way to admit a generous access on either hand to a jolly public house, leering over red blinds, and swinging a painted sign against its competitor. Several of the cottages had real thatch and most had porches; they had creepers nailed to their faces, and their gardens, crowded now with flowers, marigolds, begonias, snapdragon, delphiniums, white foxgloves, and monkshood, seemed almost too good to be true. The doctor's house was pleasantly Georgian, and the village shop, which was also a post and telegraph office, lay back with a slight air of repletion, keeping its bulging double shop-windows wide open in a manifest attempt not to fall asleep. Two score of shock-headed boys and pinafored girls were drilling upon a bald space of ground before the village school, and near by, the national emotion at the ever-memorable Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria had evoked an artistic drinking-fountain of grey stone. Beyond the subsequent green--there were the correctest geese thereon--the village narrowed almost to a normal road again, and then, recalling itself with a start, lifted a little to the churchyard wall about the grey and ample church. "It's just like all the villages that ever were," said Marjorie, and gave a cry of delight when Daffy, pointing to the white gate between two elm trees that led to the vicarage, remarked: "That's us."
In confirmation of which statement, Sydney and Rom, the two sisters next in succession to Marjorie, and with a strong tendency to be twins in spite of the year between them, appeared in a state of vociferous incivility opening the way for the donkey-carriage. Sydney was Sydney, and Rom was just short for Romola--one of her mother's favourite heroines in fiction.
"Old Madge," they said; and then throwing respect to the winds, "Old Gargoo!" which was Marjorie's forbidden nickname, and short for gargoyle (though surely only Victorian Gothic, ever produced a gargoyle that had the remotest right to be associated with the neat brightness of Marjorie's face).
She overlooked the offence, and the pseudo-twins boarded the cart from behind, whereupon the already overburthened donkey, being old and in a manner wise, quickened his pace for the house to get the whole thing over.
"It's really an avenue," said Daffy; but Marjorie, with her mind strung up to the Carmel standards, couldn't agree. It was like calling a row of boy-scouts Potsdam grenadiers. The trees were at irregular distances, of various ages, and mostly on one side. Still it was a shady, pleasant approach.
And the vicarage was truly very interesting and amusing. To these Londoners accustomed to live in a state of compression, elbows practically touching, in a tall, narrow fore-and-aft stucco house, all window and staircase, in a despondent Brompton square, there was an effect of maundering freedom about the place, of enlargement almost to the pitch of adventure and sunlight to the pitch of intoxication. The house itself was long and low, as if a London house holidaying in the country had flung itself asprawl; it had two disconnected and roomy staircases, and when it had exhausted itself completely as a house, it turned to the right and began again as rambling, empty stables, coach house, cart sheds, men's bedrooms up ladders, and outhouses of the most various kinds. On one hand was a neglected orchard, in the front of the house was a bald, worried-looking lawn area capable of simultaneous tennis and croquet, and at the other side a copious and confused vegetable and flower garden full of roses, honesty, hollyhocks, and suchlike herbaceous biennials and perennials, lapsed at last into shrubbery, where a sickle-shaped, weedy lagoon of uncertain aims, which had evidently, as a rustic bridge and a weeping willow confessed, aspired to be an "ornamental water," declined at last to ducks. And there was access to the church, and the key of the church tower, and one went across the corner of the lawn, and by a little iron gate into the churchyard to decipher inscriptions, as if the tombs of all Buryhamstreet were no more than a part of the accommodation relinquished by the vicar's household.
Marjorie was hurried over the chief points of all this at a breakneck pace by Sydney and Rom, and when Sydney was called away to the horrors of practice--for Sydney in spite of considerable reluctance was destined by her father to be "the musical one"--Rom developed a copious affection, due apparently to some occult æsthetic influence in Marjorie's silvery-grey and green, and led her into the unlocked vestry, and there prayed in a whisper that she might be given "one good hug, just _one_"--and so they came out with their arms about each other very affectionately to visit the lagoon again. And then Rom remembered that Marjorie hadn't seen either the walnut-tree in the orchard, or the hen with nine chicks....
Somewhere among all these interests came tea and Mrs. Pope.
Mrs. Pope kissed her daughter with an air of having really wanted to kiss her half an hour ago, but of having been distracted since. She was a fine-featured, anxious-looking little woman, with a close resemblance to all her children, in spite of the fact that they were markedly dissimilar one to the other, except only that they took their ruddy colourings from their father. She was dressed in a neat blue dress that had perhaps been hurriedly chosen, and her method of doing her hair was a manifest compromise between duty and pleasure. She embarked at once upon an exposition of the bedroom arrangements, which evidently involved difficult issues. Marjorie was to share a room with Daffy--that was the gist of it--as the only other available apartment, originally promised to Marjorie, had been secured by Mr. Pope for what he called his "matutinal ablutions, _videlicet_ tub."
"Then, when your Aunt Plessington comes, you won't have to move," said Mrs. Pope with an air of a special concession. "Your father's looking forward to seeing you, but he mustn't be disturbed just yet. He's in the vicar's study. He's had his tea in there. He's writing a letter to the _Times_ answering something they said in a leader, and also a private note calling attention to their delay in printing his previous communication, and he wants to be delicately ironical without being in any way offensive. He wants to hint without actually threatening that very probably he will go over to the _Spectator_ altogether if they do not become more attentive. The _Times_ used to print his letters punctually, but latterly these automobile people seem to have got hold of it.... He has the window on the lawn open, so that I think, perhaps, we'd better not stay out here--for fear our voices might disturb him."
"Better get right round the other side of the church," said Daffy.
"He'd hear far less of us if we went indoors," said Mrs. Pope.
§ 4
The vicarage seemed tight packed with human interest for Marjorie and her mother and sisters. Going over houses is one of the amusements proper to her sex, and she and all three sisters and her mother, as soon as they had finished an inaudible tea, went to see the bedroom she was to share with Daffy, and then examined, carefully and in order, the furniture and decoration of the other bedrooms, went through the rooms downstairs, always excepting and avoiding very carefully and closing as many doors as possible on, and hushing their voices whenever they approached the study in which her father was being delicately ironical without being offensive to the _Times_. None of them had seen any of the vicarage people at all--Mr. Pope had come on a bicycle and managed all the negotiations--and it was curious to speculate about the individuals whose personalities pervaded the worn and faded furnishings of the place.
The Popes' keen-eyed inspection came at times, I think, dangerously near prying. The ideals of decoration and interests of the vanished family were so absolutely dissimilar to the London standards as to arouse a sort of astonished wonder in their minds. Some of the things they decided were perfectly hideous, some quaint, some were simply and weakly silly. Everything was different from Hartstone Square. Daffy was perhaps more inclined to contempt, and Mrs. Pope to refined amusement and witty appreciation than Marjorie. Marjorie felt there was something in these people that she didn't begin to understand, she needed some missing clue that would unlock the secret of their confused peculiarity. She was one of those people who have an almost instinctive turn for decoration in costume and furniture; she had already had a taste of how to do things in arranging her rooms at Bennett College, Oxbridge, where also she was in great demand among the richer girls as an adviser. She knew what it was to try and fail as well as to try and succeed, and these people, she felt, hadn't tried for anything she comprehended. She couldn't quite see why it was that there was at the same time an attempt at ornament and a disregard of beauty, she couldn't quite do as her mother did and dismiss it as an absurdity and have done with it. She couldn't understand, too, why everything should be as if it were faded and weakened from something originally bright and clear.
All the rooms were thick with queer little objects that indicated a quite beaver-like industry in the production of "work." There were embroidered covers for nearly every article on the wash-hand-stand, and mats of wool and crochet wherever anything stood on anything; there were "tidies" everywhere, and odd little brackets covered with gilded and varnished fir cones and bearing framed photographs and little jars and all sorts of colourless, dusty little objects, and everywhere on the walls tacks sustained crossed fans with badly painted flowers or transfer pictures. There was a jar on the bedroom mantel covered with varnished postage stamps and containing grey-haired dried grasses. There seemed to be a moral element in all this, for in the room Sydney shared with Rom there was a decorative piece of lettering which declared that--
"Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose."
There were a great number of texts that set Marjorie's mind stirring dimly with intimations of a missed significance. Over her own bed, within the lattice of an Oxford frame, was the photograph of a picture of an extremely composed young woman in a trailing robe, clinging to the Rock of Ages in the midst of histrionically aggressive waves, and she had a feeling, rather than a thought, that perhaps for all the oddity of the presentation it did convey something acutely desirable, that she herself had had moods when she would have found something very comforting in just such an impassioned grip. And on a framed, floriferous card, these incomprehensible words:
|================================| |THY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR ME. | |================================|
seemed to be saying something to her tantalizingly just outside her range of apprehension.
Did all these things light up somehow to those dispossessed people--from some angle she didn't attain? Were they living and moving realities when those others were at home again?
The drawing-room had no texts; it was altogether more pretentious and less haunted by the faint and faded flavour of religion that pervaded the bedrooms. It had, however, evidences of travel in Switzerland and the Mediterranean. There was a piano in black and gold, a little out of tune, and surmounted by a Benares brass jar, enveloping a scarlet geranium in a pot. There was a Japanese screen of gold wrought upon black, that screened nothing. There was a framed chromo-lithograph of Jerusalem hot in the sunset, and another of Jerusalem cold under a sub-tropical moon, and there were gourds, roses of Jericho, sandalwood rosaries and kindred trash from the Holy Land in no little profusion upon a what-not. Such books as the room had contained had been arranged as symmetrically as possible about a large, pink-shaded lamp upon the claret-coloured cloth of a round table, and were to be replaced, Mrs. Pope said, at their departure. At present they were piled on a side-table. The girls had been through them all, and were ready with the choicer morsels for Marjorie's amusement. There was "Black Beauty," the sympathetic story of a soundly Anglican horse, and a large Bible extra-illustrated with photographs of every well-known scriptural picture from Michael Angelo to Doré, and a book of injunctions to young ladies upon their behaviour and deportment that Rom and Sydney found particularly entertaining. Marjorie discovered that Sydney had picked up a new favourite phrase. "I'm afraid we're all dreadfully cynical," said Sydney, several times.
A more advanced note was struck by a copy of "Aurora Leigh," richly underlined in pencil, but with exclamation marks at some of the bolder passages....
And presently, still avoiding the open study window very elaborately, this little group of twentieth century people went again into the church--the church whose foundations were laid in A.D. 912--foundations of rubble and cement that included flat Roman bricks from a still remoter basilica. Their voices dropped instinctively, as they came into its shaded quiet from the exterior sunshine. Marjorie went a little apart and sat in a pew that gave her a glimpse of the one good stained-glass window. Rom followed her, and perceiving her mood to be restful, sat a yard away. Syd began a whispered dispute with her mother whether it wasn't possible to try the organ, and whether Theodore might not be bribed to blow. Daffy discovered relics of a lepers' squint and a holy-water stoup, and then went to scrutinize the lettering of the ten commandments of the Mosaic law that shone black and red on gold on either side of the I.H.S. monogram behind the white-clothed communion table that had once been the altar. Upon a notice board hung about the waist of the portly pulpit were the numbers of hymns that had been sung three days ago. The sound Protestantism of the vicar had banished superfluous crosses from the building; the Bible reposed upon the wings of a great brass eagle; shining blue and crimson in the window, Saint Christopher carried his Lord. What a harmonized synthesis of conflicts a country church presents! What invisible mysteries of filiation spread between these ancient ornaments and symbols and the new young minds from the whirlpool of the town that looked upon them now with such bright, keen eyes, wondering a little, feeling a little, missing so much?
It was all so very cool and quiet now--with something of the immobile serenity of death.
§ 5
When Mr. Pope had finished his letter to the _Times_, he got out of the window of the study, treading on a flower-bed as he did so--he was the sort of man who treads on flower-beds--partly with the purpose of reading his composition aloud to as many members of his family as he could assemble for the purpose, and so giving them a chance of appreciating the nuances of his irony more fully than if they saw it just in cold print without the advantage of his intonation, and partly with the belated idea of welcoming Marjorie. The law presented a rather discouraging desolation. Then he became aware that the church tower frothed with his daughters. In view of his need of an audience, he decided after a brief doubt that their presence there was unobjectionable, and waved his MS. amiably. Marjorie flapped a handkerchief in reply....
The subsequent hour was just the sort of hour that gave Mr. Pope an almost meteorological importance to his family. He began with an amiability that had no fault, except, perhaps, that it was a little forced after the epistolary strain in the study, and his welcome to Marjorie was more than cordial. "Well, little Madge-cat!" he said, giving her an affectionate but sound and heavy thump on the left shoulder-blade, "got a kiss for the old daddy?"
Marjorie submitted a cheek.
"That's right," said Mr. Pope; "and now I just want you all to advise me----"
He led the way to a group of wicker garden chairs. "You're coming, mummy?" he said, and seated himself comfortably and drew out a spectacle case, while his family grouped itself dutifully. It made a charming little picture of a Man and his Womankind. "I don't often flatter myself," he said, "but this time I think I've been neat--neat's the word for it."
He cleared his throat, put on his spectacles, and emitted a long, flat preliminary note, rather like the sound of a child's trumpet. "Er--'Dear Sir!'"
"Rom," said Mrs. Pope, "don't creak your chair."
"It's Daffy, mother," said Rom.
"Oh, _Rom!_" said Daffy.
Mr. Pope paused, and looked with a warning eye over his left spectacle-glass at Rom.
"Don't creak your chair, Rom," he said, "when your mother tells you."
"I was _not_ creaking my chair," said Rom.
"I heard it," said Mr. Pope, suavely.
"It was Daffy."
"Your mother does not think so," said Mr. Pope.
"Oh, all right! I'll sit on the ground," said Rom, crimson to the roots of her hair.
"Me too," said Daffy. "I'd rather."
Mr. Pope watched the transfer gravely. Then he readjusted his glasses, cleared his throat again, trumpeted, and began. "Er--'Dear Sir,'"
"Oughtn't it to be simply 'Sir,' father, for an editor?" said Marjorie.
"Perhaps I didn't explain, Marjorie," said her father, with the calm of great self-restraint, and dabbing his left hand on the manuscript in his right, "that this is a _private_ letter--a private letter."
"I didn't understand," said Marjorie.
"It would have been evident as I went on," said Mr. Pope, and prepared to read again.
This time he was allowed to proceed, but the interruptions had ruffled him, and the gentle stresses that should have lifted the subtleties of his irony into prominence missed the words, and he had to go back and do his sentences again. Then Rom suddenly, horribly, uncontrollably, was seized with hiccups. At the second hiccup Mr. Pope paused, and looked very hard at his daughter with magnified eyes; as he was about to resume, the third burst its way through the unhappy child's utmost effort.
Mr. Pope rose with an awful resignation. "That's enough," he said. He regarded the pseudo-twin vindictively. "You haven't the self-control of a child of six," he said. Then very touchingly to Mrs. Pope: "Mummy, shall we try a game of tennis with the New Generation?"
"Can't you read it after supper?" asked Mrs. Pope.
"It must go by the eight o'clock post," said Mr. Pope, putting the masterpiece into his breast pocket, the little masterpiece that would now perhaps never be read aloud to any human being. "Daffy, dear, do you mind going in for the racquets and balls?"
The social atmosphere was now sultry, and overcast, and Mr. Pope's decision to spend the interval before Daffy returned in seeing whether he couldn't do something to the net, which was certainly very unsatisfactory, did not improve matters. Then, unhappily, Marjorie, who had got rather keen upon tennis at the Carmels', claimed her father's first two services as faults, contrary to the etiquette of the family. It happened that Mr. Pope had a really very good, hard, difficult, smart-looking serve, whose only defect was that it always went either too far or else into the net, and so a feeling had been fostered and established by his wife that, on the whole, it was advisable to regard the former variety as a legitimate extension of a father's authority. Naturally, therefore, Mr. Pope was nettled at Marjorie's ruling, and his irritation increased when his next two services to Daffy perished in the net. ("Damn that net! Puts one's eye out.") Then Marjorie gave him an unexpected soft return which he somehow muffed, and then Daffy just dropped a return over the top of the net. (Love-game.) It was then Marjorie's turn to serve, which she did with a new twist acquired from the eldest Carmel boy that struck Mr. Pope as un-English. "Go on," he said concisely. "Fifteen love."
She was gentle with her mother and they got their first rally, and when it was over Mr. Pope had to explain to Marjorie that if she returned right up into his corner of the court he would have to run backwards very fast and might fall over down the silly slope at that end. She would have to consider him and the court. One didn't get everything out of a game by playing merely to win. She said "All right, Daddy," rather off-handedly, and immediately served to him again, and he, taken a little unawares, hit the ball with the edge of his racquet and sent it out, and then he changed racquets with Daffy--it seemed he had known all along she had taken his, but he had preferred to say nothing--uttered a word of advice to his wife just on her stroke, and she, failing to grasp his intention as quickly as she ought to have done, left the score forty-fifteen. He felt better when he returned Marjorie's serve, and then before she could control herself she repeated her new unpleasant trick of playing into the corner again, whereupon, leaping back with an agility that would have shamed many a younger man, Mr. Pope came upon disaster. He went spinning down the treacherous slope behind, twisted his ankle painfully and collapsed against the iron railings of the shrubbery. It was too much, and he lost control of himself. His daughters had one instant's glimpse of the linguistic possibilities of a strong man's agony. "I told her," he went on as if he had said nothing. "_Tennis!_"
For a second perhaps he seemed to hesitate upon a course of action. Then as if by a great effort he took his coat from the net post and addressed himself houseward, incarnate Grand Dudgeon--limping.
"Had enough of it, Mummy," he said, and added some happily inaudible comment on Marjorie's new style of play.
The evening's exercise was at an end.
The three ladies regarded one another in silence for some moments.
"I will take in the racquets, dear," said Mrs. Pope.
"I think the other ball is at your end," said Daffy....
The apparatus put away, Marjorie and her sister strolled thoughtfully away from the house.
"There's croquet here too," said Daffy. "We've not had the things out yet!"....
"He'll play, I suppose."
"He wants to play."...
"Of course," said Marjorie after a long pause, "there's no _reasoning_ with Dad!"
§ 6
Character is one of England's noblest and most deliberate products, but some Englishmen have it to excess. Mr. Pope had.
He was one of that large and representative class which imparts a dignity to national commerce by inheriting big businesses from its ancestors. He was a coach-builder by birth, and a gentleman by education and training. He had been to City Merchant's and Cambridge.
Throughout the earlier half of the nineteenth century the Popes had been the princes of the coach-building world. Mr. Pope's great-grandfather had been a North London wheelwright of conspicuous dexterity and integrity, who had founded the family business; his son, Mr. Pope's grandfather, had made that business the occupation of his life and brought it to the pinnacle of pre-eminence; his son, who was Marjorie's grandfather, had displayed a lesser enthusiasm, left the house at the works for a home ten miles away and sent a second son into the Church. It was in the days of the third Pope that the business ceased to expand, and began to suffer severely from the competition of an enterprising person who had originally supplied the firm with varnish, gradually picked up the trade in most other materials and accessories needed in coach-building, and passed on by almost imperceptible stages to delivering the article complete--dispensing at last altogether with the intervention of Pope and Son--to the customer. Marjorie's father had succeeded in the fulness of time to the inheritance this insurgent had damaged.
Mr. Pope was a man of firm and resentful temper, with an admiration for Cato, Brutus, Cincinnatus, Cromwell, Washington, and the sterner heroes generally, and by nature a little ill-used and offended at things. He suffered from indigestion and extreme irritability. He found himself in control of a business where more flexible virtues were needed. The Popes based their fame on a heavy, proud type of vehicle, which the increasing luxury and triviality of the age tended to replace by lighter forms of carriage, carriages with diminutive and apologetic names. As these lighter forms were not only lighter but less expensive, Mr. Pope with a pathetic confidence in the loyalty of the better class of West End customer, determined to "make a stand" against them. He was the sort of man to whom making a stand is in itself a sombre joy. If he had had to choose his pose for a portrait, he would certainly have decided to have one foot advanced, the other planted like a British oak behind, the arms folded and the brows corrugated,--making a stand.
Unhappily the stars in their courses and the general improvement of roads throughout the country fought against him. The lighter carriages, and especially the lighter carriages of that varnish-selling firm, which was now absorbing businesses right and left, prevailed over Mr. Pope's resistance. For crossing a mountain pass or fording a river, for driving over the scene of a recent earthquake or following a retreating army, for being run away with by frantic horses or crushing a personal enemy, there can be no doubt the Pope carriages remained to the very last the best possible ones and fully worth the inflexible price demanded. Unhappily all carriages in a civilization essentially decadent are not subjected to these tests, and the manufactures of his rivals were not only much cheaper, but had a sort of meretricious smartness, a disingenuous elasticity, above all a levity, hateful indeed to the spirit of Mr. Pope yet attractive to the wanton customer. Business dwindled. Nevertheless the habitual element in the good class customer did keep things going, albeit on a shrinking scale, until Mr. Pope came to the unfortunate decision that he would make a stand against automobiles. He regarded them as an intrusive nuisance which had to be seen only to be disowned by the landed gentry of England. Rather than build a car he said he would go out of business. He went out of business. Within five years of this determination he sold out the name, good will, and other vestiges of his concern to a mysterious buyer who turned out to be no more than an agent for these persistently expanding varnish makers, and he retired with a genuine grievance upon the family accumulations--chiefly in Consols and Home Railways.
He refused however to regard his defeat as final, put great faith in the approaching exhaustion of the petrol supply, and talked in a manner that should have made the Automobile Association uneasy, of devoting the rest of his days to the purification of England from these aggressive mechanisms. "It was a mistake," he said, "to let them in." He became more frequent at his excellent West End club, and directed a certain portion of his capital to largely indecisive but on the whole unprofitable speculations in South African and South American enterprises. He mingled a little in affairs. He was a tough conventional speaker, rich in established phrases and never abashed by hearing himself say commonplace things, and in addition to his campaign against automobiles he found time to engage also in quasi-political activities, taking chairs, saying a few words and so on, cherishing a fluctuating hope that his eloquence might ultimately win him an invitation to contest a constituency in the interests of reaction and the sounder elements in the Liberal party.
He had a public-spirited side, and he was particularly attracted by that mass of modern legislative proposals which aims at a more systematic control of the lives of lower class persons for their own good by their betters. Indeed, in the first enthusiasm of his proprietorship of the Pope works at East Purblow, he had organized one of those benevolent industrial experiments that are now so common. He felt strongly against the drink evil, that is to say, the unrestricted liberty of common people to drink what they prefer, and he was acutely impressed by the fact that working-class families do not spend their money in the way that seems most desirable to upper middle-class critics. Accordingly he did his best to replace the dangerous freedoms of money by that ideal of the social reformer, Payment in Kind. To use his invariable phrase, the East Purblow experiment did "no mean service" to the cause of social reform. Unhappily it came to an end through a prosecution under the Truck Act, that blot upon the Statute Book, designed, it would appear, even deliberately to vitiate man's benevolent control of his fellow man. The lessons to be drawn from that experience, however, grew if anything with the years. He rarely spoke without an allusion to it, and it was quite remarkable how readily it could be adapted to illuminate a hundred different issues in the hospitable columns of the _Spectator_....
§ 7
At seven o'clock Marjorie found herself upstairs changing into her apple-green frock. She had had a good refreshing wash in cold soft water, and it was pleasant to change into thinner silk stockings and dainty satin slippers and let down and at last brush her hair and dress loiteringly after the fatigues of her journey and the activities of her arrival. She looked out on the big church and the big trees behind it against the golden quiet of a summer evening with extreme approval.
"I suppose those birds are rooks," she said.
But Daffy had gone to see that the pseudo-twins had done themselves justice in their muslin frocks and pink sashes; they were apt to be a little sketchy with their less accessible buttons.
Marjorie became aware of two gentlemen with her mother on the lawn below.
One was her almost affianced lover, Will Magnet, the humorous writer. She had been doing her best not to think about him all day, but now he became an unavoidable central fact. She regarded him with an almost perplexed scrutiny, and wondered vividly why she had been so excited and pleased by his attentions during the previous summer.
Mr. Magnet was one of those quiet, deliberately unassuming people who do not even attempt to be beautiful. Not for him was it to pretend, but to prick the bladder of pretence. He was a fairish man of forty, pale, with a large protuberant, observant grey eye--I speak particularly of the left--and a face of quiet animation warily alert for the wit's opportunity. His nose and chin were pointed, and his lips thin and quaintly pressed together. He was dressed in grey, with a low-collared silken shirt showing a thin neck, and a flowing black tie, and he carried a grey felt hat in his joined hands behind his back. She could hear the insinuating cadences of his voice as he talked in her mother's ear. The other gentleman, silent on her mother's right, must, she knew, be Mr. Wintersloan, whom Mr. Magnet had proposed to bring over. His dress betrayed that modest gaiety of disposition becoming in an artist, and indeed he was one of Mr. Magnet's favourite illustrators. He was in a dark bluish-grey suit; a black tie that was quite unusually broad went twice around his neck before succumbing to the bow, and his waistcoat appeared to be of some gaily-patterned orange silk. Marjorie's eyes returned to Mr. Magnet. Hitherto she had never had an opportunity of remarking that his hair was more than a little attenuated towards the crown. It was funny how his tie came out under his chin to the right.
What an odd thing men's dress had become, she thought. Why did they wear those ridiculous collars and ties? Why didn't they always dress in flannels and look as fine and slender and active as the elder Carmel boy for example? Mr. Magnet couldn't be such an ill-shaped man. Why didn't every one dress to be just as beautiful and splendid as possible?--instead of wearing queer things!
"Coming down?" said Daffy, a vision of sulphur-yellow, appearing in the doorway.
"Let _them_ go first," said Marjorie, with a finer sense of effect. "And Theodore. We don't want to make part of a comic entry with Theodore, Daffy."
Accordingly, the two sisters watched discreetly--they had to be wary on account of Mr. Magnet's increasingly frequent glances at the windows--and when at last all the rest of the family had appeared below, they decided their cue had come. Mr. Pope strolled into the group, with no trace of his recent debacle except a slight limp. He was wearing a jacket of damson-coloured velvet, which he affected in the country, and all traces of his Grand Dudgeon were gone. But then he rarely had Grand Dudgeon except in the sanctities of family life, and hardly ever when any other man was about.
"Well," his daughters heard him say, with a witty allusiveness that was difficult to follow, "so the Magnet has come to the Mountain again--eh?"
"Come on, Madge," said Daffy, and the two sisters emerged harmoniously together from the house.
It would have been manifest to a meaner capacity than any present that evening that Mr. Magnet regarded Marjorie with a distinguished significance. He had two eyes, but he had that mysterious quality so frequently associated with a bluish-grey iris which gives the effect of looking hard with one large orb, a sort of grey searchlight effect, and he used this eye ray now to convey a respectful but firm admiration in the most unequivocal manner. He saluted Daffy courteously, and then allowed himself to retain Marjorie's hand for just a second longer than was necessary as he said--very simply--"I am very pleased indeed to meet you again--very."
A slight embarrassment fell between them.
"You are staying near here, Mr. Magnet?"
"At the inn," said Mr. Magnet, and then, "I chose it because it would be near you."
His eye pressed upon her again for a moment.
"Is it comfortable?" said Marjorie.
"So charmingly simple," said Mr. Magnet. "I love it."
A tinkling bell announced the preparedness of supper, and roused the others to the consciousness that they were silently watching Mr. Magnet and Marjorie.
"It's quite a simple farmhouse supper," said Mrs. Pope.
§ 8
There were ducks, green peas, and adolescent new potatoes for supper, and afterwards stewed fruit and cream and junket and cheese, bottled beer, Gilbey's Burgundy, and home-made lemonade. Mrs. Pope carved, because Mr. Pope splashed too much, and bones upset him and made him want to show up chicken in the _Times_. So he sat at the other end and rallied his guests while Mrs. Pope distributed the viands. He showed not a trace of his recent umbrage. Theodore sat between Daffy and his mother because of his table manners, and Marjorie was on her father's right hand and next to Mr. Wintersloan, while Mr. Magnet was in the middle of the table on the opposite side in a position convenient for looking at her. Both maids waited.
The presence of Magnet invariably stirred the latent humorist in Mr. Pope. He felt that he who talks to humorists should himself be humorous, and it was his private persuasion that with more attention he might have been, to use a favourite form of expression, "no mean jester." Quite a lot of little things of his were cherished as "Good" both by himself and, with occasional inaccuracies, by Mrs. Pope. He opened out now in a strain of rich allusiveness.
"What will you drink, Mr. Wintersloan?" he said. "Wine of the country, yclept beer, red wine from France, or my wife's potent brew from the golden lemon?"
Mr. Wintersloan thought he would take Burgundy. Mr. Magnet preferred beer.
"I've heard there's iron in the Beer, And I believe it,"
misquoted Mr. Pope, and nodded as it were to the marker to score. "Daffy and Marjorie are still in the lemonade stage. Will you take a little Burgundy to-night, Mummy?"
Mrs. Pope decided she would, and was inspired to ask Mr. Wintersloan if he had been in that part of the country before. Topography ensued. Mr. Wintersloan had a style of his own, and spoke of the Buryhamstreet district as a "pooty little country--pooty little hills, with a swirl in them."
This pleased Daffy and Marjorie, and their eyes met for a moment.
Then Mr. Magnet, with a ray full on Marjorie, said he had always been fond of Surrey. "I think if ever I made a home in the country I should like it to be here."
Mr. Wintersloan said Surrey would tire him, it was too bossy and curly, too flocculent; he would prefer to look on broader, simpler lines, with just a sudden catch in the breath in them--if you understand me?
Marjorie did, and said so.
"A sob--such as you get at the break of a pinewood on a hill."
This baffled Mr. Pope, but Marjorie took it. "Or the short dry cough of a cliff," she said.
"Exactly," said Mr. Wintersloan, and having turned a little deliberate close-lipped smile on her for a moment, resumed his wing.
"So long as a landscape doesn't _sneeze_" said Mr. Magnet, in that irresistible dry way of his, and Rom and Sydney, at any rate, choked.
"Now is the hour when Landscapes yawn," mused Mr. Pope, coming in all right at the end.
Then Mrs. Pope asked Mr. Wintersloan, about his route to Buryhamstreet, and then Mr. Pope asked Mr. Magnet whether he was playing at a new work or working at a new play.
Mr. Magnet said he was dreaming over a play. He wanted to bring out the more serious side of his humour, go a little deeper into things than he had hitherto done.
"Mingling smiles and tears," said Mr. Pope approvingly.
Mr. Magnet said very quietly that all true humour did that.
Then Mrs. Pope asked what the play was to be about, and Mr. Magnet, who seemed disinclined to give an answer, turned the subject by saying he had to prepare an address on humour for the next dinner of the _Literati_. "It's to be a humourist's dinner, and they've made me the guest of the evening--by way of a joke to begin with," he said with that dry smile again.
Mrs. Pope said he shouldn't say things like that. She then said "Syd!" quietly but sharply to Sydney, who was making a disdainful, squinting face at Theodore, and told the parlourmaid to clear the plates for sweets. Mr. Magnet professed great horror of public speaking. He said that whenever he rose to make an after-dinner speech all the ices he had ever eaten seemed to come out of the past, and sit on his backbone.
The talk centered for awhile on Mr. Magnet's address, and apropos of Tests of Humour Mr. Pope, who in his way was "no mean raconteur," related the story of the man who took the salad dressing with his hand, and when his host asked why he did that, replied: "Oh! I thought it was spinach!"
"Many people," added Mr. Pope, "wouldn't see the point of that. And if they don't see the point they can't--and the more they try the less they do."
All four girls hoped secretly and not too confidently that their laughter had not sounded hollow.
And then for a time the men told stories as they came into their heads in an easy, irresponsible way. Mr. Magnet spoke of the humour of the omnibus-driver who always dangled and twiddled his badge "by way of a joke" when he passed the conductor whose father had been hanged, and Mr. Pope, perhaps, a little irrelevantly, told the story of the little boy who was asked his father's last words, and said "mother was with him to the end," which particularly amused Mrs. Pope. Mr. Wintersloan gave the story of the woman who was taking her son to the hospital with his head jammed into a saucepan, and explained to the other people in the omnibus: "You see, what makes it so annoying, it's me only saucepan!" Then they came back to the Sense of Humour with the dentist who shouted with laughter, and when asked the reason by his patient, choked out: "Wrong tooth!" and then Mr. Pope reminded them of the heartless husband who, suddenly informed that his mother-in-law was dead, exclaimed "Oh, don't make me laugh, please, I've got a split lip...."
§ 9
The conversation assumed a less anecdotal quality with the removal to the drawing-room. On Mr. Magnet's initiative the gentlemen followed the ladies almost immediately, and it was Mr. Magnet who remembered that Marjorie could sing.
Both the elder sisters indeed had sweet clear voices, and they had learnt a number of those jolly songs the English made before the dull Hanoverians came. Syd accompanied, and Rom sat back in the low chair in the corner and fell deeply in love with Mr. Wintersloan. The three musicians in their green and sulphur-yellow and white made a pretty group in the light of the shaded lamp against the black and gold Broadwood, the tawdry screen, its pattern thin glittering upon darkness, and the deep shadows behind. Marjorie loved singing, and forgot herself as she sang.
"I love, and he loves me again, Yet dare I not tell who; For if the nymphs should know my swain, I fear they'd love him too,"
she sang, and Mr. Magnet could not conceal the intensity of his admiration.
Mr. Pope had fallen into a pleasant musing; several other ripe old yarns, dear delicious old things, had come into his mind that he felt he might presently recall when this unavoidable display of accomplishments was overpast, and it was with one of them almost on his lips that he glanced across at his guest. He was surprised to see Mr. Magnet's face transfigured. He was sitting forward, looking up at Marjorie, and he had caught something of the expression of those blessed boys who froth at the feet of an Assumption. For an instant Mr. Pope did not understand.
Then he understood. It was Marjorie! He had a twinge of surprise, and glanced at his own daughter as though he had never seen her before. He perceived in a flash for the first time that this troublesome, clever, disrespectful child was tall and shapely and sweet, and indeed quite a beautiful young woman. He forgot his anecdotes. His being was suffused with pride and responsibility and the sense of virtue rewarded. He did not reflect for a moment that Marjorie embodied in almost equal proportions the very best points in his mother and his mother-in-law, and avoided his own more salient characteristics with so neat a dexterity that from top to toe, except for the one matter of colour, not only did she not resemble him but she scarcely even alluded to him. He thought simply that she was his daughter, that she derived from him, that her beauty was his. She was the outcome of his meritorious preparations. He recalled all the moments when he had been kind and indulgent to her, all the bills he had paid for her; all the stresses and trials of the coach-building collapse, all the fluctuations of his speculative adventures, became things he had faced patiently and valiantly for her sake. He forgot the endless times when he had been viciously cross with her, all the times when he had pished and tushed and sworn in her hearing. He had on provocation and in spite of her mother's protests slapped her pretty vigorously, but such things are better forgotten; nor did he recall how bitterly he had opposed the college education which had made her now so clear in eye and thought, nor the frightful shindy, only three months since, about that identical green dress in which she now stood delightful. He forgot these petty details, as an idealist should. There she was, his daughter. An immense benevolence irradiated his soul--for Marjorie--for Magnet. His eyes were suffused with a not ignoble tenderness. The man, he knew, was worth at least thirty-five thousand pounds, a discussion of investments had made that clear, and he must be making at least five thousand a year! A beautiful girl, a worthy man! A good fellow, a sound good fellow, a careful fellow too--as these fellows went!
Old Daddy would lose his treasure of course.
Well, a father must learn resignation, and he for one would not stand in the way of his girl's happiness. A day would come when, very beautifully and tenderly, he would hand her over to Magnet, his favourite daughter to his trusted friend. "Well, my boy, there's no one in all the world----" he would begin.
It would be a touching parting. "Don't forget your old father, Maggots," he would say. At such a moment that quaint nickname would surely not be resented....
He reflected how much he had always preferred Marjorie to Daffy. She was brighter--more like him. Daffy was unresponsive, with a touch of bitterness under her tongue....
He was already dreaming he was a widower, rather infirm, the object of Magnet's and Marjorie's devoted care, when the song ceased, and the wife he had for the purpose of reveries just consigned so carelessly to the cemetery proposed that they should have a little game that every one could play at. A number of pencils and slips of paper appeared in her hands. She did not want the girls to exhaust their repertory on this first occasion--and besides, Mr. Pope liked games in which one did things with pencils and strips of paper. Mr. Magnet wished the singing to go on, he said, but he was overruled.
So for a time every one played a little game in which Mr. Pope was particularly proficient. Indeed, it was rare that any one won but Mr. Pope. It was called "The Great Departed," and it had such considerable educational value that all the children had to play at it whenever he wished.
It was played in this manner; one of the pseudo twins opened a book and dabbed a finger on the page, and read out the letter immediately at the tip of her finger, then all of them began to write as hard as they could, writing down the names of every great person they could think of, whose name began with that letter. At the end of five minutes Mr. Pope said Stop! and then began to read his list out, beginning with the first name. Everybody who had that name crossed it out and scored one, and after his list was exhausted all the surviving names on the next list were read over in the same way, and so on. The names had to be the names of dead celebrated people, only one monarch of the same name of the same dynasty was allowed, and Mr. Pope adjudicated on all doubtful cases. It was great fun.
The first two games were won as usual by Mr. Pope, and then Mr. Wintersloan, who had been a little distraught in his manner, brightened up and scribbled furiously.
The letter was _D_, and after Mr. Pope had rehearsed a tale of nine and twenty names, Mr. Wintersloan read out his list in that curious voice of his which suggested nothing so much as some mobile drink glucking out of the neck of a bottle held upside down.
"Dahl," he began.
"Who was Dahl?" asked Mr. Pope.
"'Vented dahlias," said Mr. Wintersloan, with a sigh. "Danton."
"Forgot him," said Mr. Pope.
"Davis."
"Davis?"
"Davis Straits. Doe."
"Who?"
"John Doe, Richard Roe."
"Legal fiction, I'm afraid," said Mr. Pope.
"Dam," said Mr. Wintersloan, and added after a slight pause: "Anthony van."
Mr. Pope made an interrogative noise.
"Painter--eighteenth century--Dutch. Dam, Jan van, his son. Dam, Frederich van. Dam, Wilhelm van. Dam, Diedrich van. Dam, Wilhelmina, wood engraver, gifted woman. Diehl."
"Who?"
"Painter--dead--famous. See Düsseldorf. It's all painters now--all guaranteed dead, all good men. Deeds of Norfolk, the aquarellist, Denton, Dibbs."
"Er?" said Mr. Pope.
"The Warwick Claude, _you_ know. Died 1823."
"Dickson, Dunting, John Dickery. Peter Dickery, William Dock--I beg your pardon?"
Mr. Pope was making a protesting gesture, but Mr. Wintersloan's bearing was invincible, and he proceeded.
In the end he emerged triumphant with forty-nine names, mostly painters for whose fame he answered, but whose reputations were certainly new to every one else present. "I can go on like that," said Mr. Wintersloan, "with any letter," and turned that hard little smile full on Marjorie. "I didn't see how to do it at first. I just cast about. But I know a frightful lot of painters. No end. Shall we try again?"
Marjorie glanced at her father. Mr. Wintersloan's methods were all too evident to her. A curious feeling pervaded the room that Mr. Pope didn't think Mr. Wintersloan's conduct honourable, and that he might even go some way towards saying so.
So Mrs. Pope became very brisk and stirring, and said she thought that now perhaps a charade would be more amusing. It didn't do to keep on at a game too long. She asked Rom and Daphne and Theodore and Mr. Wintersloan to go out, and they all agreed readily, particularly Rom. "Come on!" said Rom to Mr. Wintersloan. Everybody else shifted into an audience-like group between the piano and the what-not. Mr. Magnet sat at Marjorie's feet, while Syd played a kind of voluntary, and Mr. Pope leant back in his chair, with his brows knit and lips moving, trying to remember something.
The charade _was_ very amusing. The word was Catarrh, and Mr. Wintersloan, as the patient in the last act being given gruel, surpassed even the children's very high expectations. Rom, as his nurse, couldn't keep her hands off him. Then the younger people kissed round and were packed off to bed, and the rest of the party went to the door upon the lawn and admired the night. It was a glorious summer night, deep blue, and rimmed warmly by the afterglow, moonless, and with a few big lamp-like stars above the black still shapes of trees.
Mrs. Pope said they would all accompany their guests to the gate at the end of the avenue--in spite of the cockchafers.
Mr. Pope's ankle, however, excused him; the cordiality of his parting from Mr. Wintersloan seemed a trifle forced, and he limped thoughtfully and a little sombrely towards the study to see if he could find an Encyclopædia or some such book of reference that would give the names of the lesser lights of Dutch, Italian, and English painting during the last two centuries.
He felt that Mr. Wintersloan had established an extraordinarily bad precedent.
§ 10
Marjorie discovered that she and Mr. Magnet had fallen a little behind the others. She would have quickened her pace, but Mr. Magnet stopped short and said: "Marjorie!"
"When I saw you standing there and singing," said Mr. Magnet, and was short of breath for a moment.
Marjorie's natural gift for interruption failed her altogether.
"I felt I would rather be able to call you mine--than win an empire."
The pause seemed to lengthen, between them, and Marjorie's remark when she made it at last struck her even as she made it as being but poorly conceived. She had some weak idea of being self-depreciatory.
"I think you had better win an empire, Mr. Magnet," she said meekly.
Then, before anything more was possible, they had come up to Daffy and Mr. Wintersloan and her mother at the gate....
As they returned Mrs. Pope was loud in the praises of Will Magnet. She had a little clear-cut voice, very carefully and very skilfully controlled, and she dilated on his modesty, his quiet helpfulness at table, his ready presence of mind. She pointed out instances of those admirable traits, incidents small in themselves but charming in their implications. When somebody wanted junket, he had made no fuss, he had just helped them to junket. "So modest and unassuming," sang Mrs. Pope. "You'd never dream he was quite rich and famous. Yet every book he writes is translated into Russian and German and all sorts of languages. I suppose he's almost the greatest humorist we have. That play of his; what is it called?--_Our Owd Woman_--has been performed nearly twelve hundred times! I think that is the most wonderful of gifts. Think of the people it has made happy."
The conversation was mainly monologue. Both Marjorie and Daffy were unusually thoughtful.
§ 11
Marjorie ended the long day in a worldly mood.
"Penny for your thoughts," said Daffy abruptly, brushing the long firelit rapids of her hair.
"Not for sale," said Marjorie, and roused herself. "I've had a long day."
"It's always just the time I particularly wish I was a man," she remarked after a brief return to meditation. "Fancy, no hair-pins, no brushing, no tie-up to get lost about, no strings. I suppose they haven't strings?"
"They haven't," said Daffy with conviction.
She met Marjorie's interrogative eye. "Father would swear at them," she explained. "He'd naturally tie himself up--and we should hear of it."
"I didn't think of that," said Marjorie, and stuck out her chin upon her fists. "Sound induction."
She forgot this transitory curiosity.
"Suppose one had a maid, Daffy--a real maid ... a maid who mended your things ... did your hair while you read...."
"Oh! here goes," and she stood up and grappled with the task of undressing.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE TWO PROPOSALS OF MR. MAGNET
§ 1
It was presently quite evident to Marjorie that Mr. Magnet intended to propose marriage to her, and she did not even know whether she wanted him to do so.
She had met him first the previous summer while she had been staying with the Petley-Cresthams at High Windower, and it had been evident that he found her extremely attractive. She had never had a real grown man at her feet before, and she had found it amazingly entertaining. She had gone for a walk with him the morning before she came away--a frank and ingenuous proceeding that made Mrs. Petley-Crestham say the girl knew what she was about, and she had certainly coquetted with him in an extraordinary manner at golf-croquet. After that Oxbridge had swallowed her up, and though he had called once on her mother while Marjorie was in London during the Christmas vacation, he hadn't seen her again. He had written--which was exciting--a long friendly humorous letter about nothing in particular, with an air of its being quite the correct thing for him to do, and she had answered, and there had been other exchanges. But all sorts of things had happened in the interval, and Marjorie had let him get into quite a back place in her thoughts--the fact that he was a member of her father's club had seemed somehow to remove him from a great range of possibilities--until a drift in her mother's talk towards him and a letter from him with an indefinable change in tone towards intimacy, had restored him to importance. Now here he was in the foreground of her world again, evidently more ardent than ever, and with a portentous air of being about to do something decisive at the very first opportunity. What was he going to do? What had her mother been hinting at? And what, in fact, did the whole thing amount to?
Marjorie was beginning to realize that this was going to be a very serious affair indeed for her--and that she was totally unprepared to meet it.
It had been very amusing, very amusing indeed, at the Petley-Cresthams', but there were moments now when she felt towards Mr. Magnet exactly as she would have felt if he had been one of the Oxbridge tradesmen hovering about her with a "little account," full of apparently exaggerated items....
Her thoughts and feelings were all in confusion about this business. Her mind was full of scraps, every sort of idea, every sort of attitude contributed something to that Twentieth Century jumble. For example, and so far as its value went among motives, it was by no means a trivial consideration; she wanted a proposal for its own sake. Daffy had had a proposal last year, and although it wasn't any sort of eligible proposal, still there it was, and she had given herself tremendous airs. But Marjorie would certainly have preferred some lighter kind of proposal than that which now threatened her. She felt that behind Mr. Magnet were sanctions; that she wasn't free to deal with this proposal as she liked. He was at Buryhamstreet almost with the air of being her parents' guest.
Less clear and more instinctive than her desire for a proposal was her inclination to see just all that Mr. Magnet was disposed to do, and hear all that he was disposed to say. She was curious. He didn't behave in the least as she had expected a lover to behave. But then none of the boys, the "others" with whom she had at times stretched a hand towards the hem of emotion, had ever done that. She had an obscure feeling that perhaps presently Mr. Magnet must light up, be stirred and stirring. Even now his voice changed very interestingly when he was alone with her. His breath seemed to go--as though something had pricked his lung. If it hadn't been for that new, disconcerting realization of an official pressure behind him, I think she would have been quite ready to experiment extensively with his emotions....
But she perceived as she lay awake next morning that she wasn't free for experiments any longer. What she might say or do now would be taken up very conclusively. And she had no idea what she wanted to say or do.
Marriage regarded in the abstract--that is to say, with Mr. Magnet out of focus--was by no means an unattractive proposal to her. It was very much at the back of Marjorie's mind that after Oxbridge, unless she was prepared to face a very serious row indeed and go to teach in a school--and she didn't feel any call whatever to teach in a school--she would probably have to return to Hartstone Square and share Daffy's room again, and assist in the old collective, wearisome task of propitiating her father. The freedoms of Oxbridge had enlarged her imagination until that seemed an almost unendurably irksome prospect. She had tasted life as it could be in her father's absence, and she was beginning to realize just what an impossible person he was. Marriage was escape from all that; it meant not only respectful parents but a house of her very own, furniture of her choice, great freedom of movement, an authority, an importance. She had seen what it meant to be a prosperously married young woman in the person of one or two resplendent old girls revisiting Bennett College, scattering invitations, offering protections and opportunities....
Of course there is love.
Marjorie told herself, as she had been trained to tell herself, to be sensible, but something within her repeated: _there is love_.
Of course she liked Mr. Magnet. She really did like Mr. Magnet very much. She had had her girlish dreams, had fallen in love with pictures of men and actors and a music master and a man who used to ride by as she went to school; but wasn't this desolating desire for self-abandonment rather silly?--something that one left behind with much else when it came to putting up one's hair and sensible living, something to blush secretly about and hide from every eye?
Among other discrepant views that lived together in her mind as cats and rats and parrots and squirrels and so forth used to live together in those Happy Family cages unseemly men in less well-regulated days were wont to steer about our streets, was one instilled by quite a large proportion of the novels she had read, that a girl was a sort of self-giving prize for high moral worth. Mr. Magnet she knew was good, was kind, was brave with that truer courage, moral courage, which goes with his type of physique; he was modest, unassuming, well off and famous, and very much in love with her. His True Self, as Mrs. Pope had pointed out several times, must be really very beautiful, and in some odd way a line of Shakespeare had washed up in her consciousness as being somehow effectual on his behalf:
"Love looks not with the eye but with the mind."
She felt she ought to look with the mind. Nice people surely never looked in any other way. It seemed from this angle almost her duty to love him....
Perhaps she did love him, and mistook the symptoms. She did her best to mistake the symptoms. But if she did truly love him, would it seem so queer and important and antagonistic as it did that his hair was rather thin upon the crown of his head?
She wished she hadn't looked down on him....
Poor Marjorie! She was doing her best to be sensible, and she felt herself adrift above a clamorous abyss of feared and forbidden thoughts. Down there she knew well enough it wasn't thus that love must come. Deep in her soul, the richest thing in her life indeed and the best thing she had to give humanity, was a craving for beauty that at times became almost intolerable, a craving for something other than beauty and yet inseparably allied with it, a craving for deep excitement, for a sort of glory in adventure, for passion--for things akin to great music and heroic poems and bannered traditions of romance. She had hidden away in her an immense tumultuous appetite for life, an immense tumultuous capacity for living. To be loved beautifully was surely the crown and climax of her being.
She did not dare to listen to these deeps, yet these insurgent voices filled her. Even while she drove her little crocodile of primly sensible thoughts to their sane appointed conclusion, her blood and nerves and all her being were protesting that Mr. Magnet would not do, that whatever other worthiness was in him, regarded as a lover he was preposterous and flat and foolish and middle-aged, and that it were better never to have lived than to put the treasure of her life to his meagre lips and into his hungry, unattractive arms. "The ugliness of it! The spiritless horror of it!" so dumbly and formlessly the rebel voices urged.
"One has to be sensible," said Marjorie to herself, suddenly putting down Shaw's book on Municipal Trading, which she imagined she had been reading....
(Perhaps all marriage was horrid, and one had to get over it.)
That was rather what her mother had conveyed to her.
§ 2
Mr. Magnet made his first proposal in form three days later, after coming twice to tea and staying on to supper. He had played croquet with Mr. Pope, he had been beaten twelve times in spite of twinges in the sprained ankle--heroically borne--had had three victories lucidly explained away, and heard all the particulars of the East Purblow experiment three times over, first in relation to the new Labour Exchanges, then regarded at rather a different angle in relation to female betting, tally-men, and the sanctities of the home generally, and finally in a more exhaustive style, to show its full importance from every side and more particularly as demonstrating the gross injustice done to Mr. Pope by the neglect of its lessons, a neglect too systematic to be accidental, in the social reform literature of the time. Moreover, Mr. Magnet had been made to understand thoroughly how several later quasi-charitable attempts of a similar character had already become, or must inevitably become, unsatisfactory through their failure to follow exactly in the lines laid down by Mr. Pope.
Mr. Pope was really very anxious to be pleasant and agreeable to Mr. Magnet, and he could think of no surer way of doing so than by giving him an unrestrained intimacy of conversation that prevented anything more than momentary intercourse between his daughter and her admirer. And not only did Mr. Magnet find it difficult to get away from Mr. Pope without offence, but whenever by any chance Mr. Pope was detached for a moment Mr. Magnet discovered that Marjorie either wasn't to be seen, or if she was she wasn't to be isolated by any device he could contrive, before the unappeasable return of Mr. Pope.
Mr. Magnet did not get his chance therefore until Lady Petchworth's little gathering at Summerhay Park.
Lady Petchworth was Mrs. Pope's oldest friend, and one of those brighter influences which save our English country-side from lassitude. She had been more fortunate than Mrs. Pope, for while Mr. Pope with that aptitude for disadvantage natural to his temperament had, he said, been tied to a business that never gave him a chance, Lady Petchworth's husband had been a reckless investor of exceptional good-luck. In particular, led by a dream, he had put most of his money into a series of nitrate deposits in caves in Saghalien haunted by benevolent penguins, and had been rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice. His foresight had received the fitting reward of a knighthood, and Sir Thomas, after restoring the Parish Church at Summerhay in a costly and destructive manner, spent his declining years in an enviable contentment with Lady Petchworth and the world at large, and died long before infirmity made him really troublesome.
Good fortune had brought out Lady Petchworth's social aptitudes. Summerhay Park was everything that a clever woman, inspired by that gardening literature which has been so abundant in the opening years of the twentieth century, could make it. It had rosaries and rock gardens, sundials and yew hedges, pools and ponds, lead figures and stone urns, box borderings and wilderness corners and hundreds and hundreds of feet of prematurely-aged red-brick wall with broad herbaceous borders; the walks had primroses, primulas and cowslips in a quite disingenuous abundance, and in spring the whole extent of the park was gay, here with thousands of this sort of daffodil just bursting out and here with thousands of that sort of narcissus just past its prime, and every patch ready to pass itself off in its naturalized way as the accidental native flower of the field, if only it hadn't been for all the other different varieties coming on or wilting-off in adjacent patches....
Her garden was only the beginning of Lady Petchworth's activities. She had a model dairy, and all her poultry was white, and so far as she was able to manage it she made Summerhay a model village. She overflowed with activities, it was astonishing in one so plump and blonde, and meeting followed meeting in the artistic little red-brick and green-stained timber village hall she had erected. Now it was the National Theatre and now it was the National Mourning; now it was the Break Up of the Poor Law, and now the Majority Report, now the Mothers' Union, and now Socialism, and now Individualism, but always something progressive and beneficial. She did her best to revive the old village life, and brought her very considerable powers of compulsion to make the men dance in simple old Morris dances, dressed up in costumes they secretly abominated, and to induce the mothers to dress their children in art-coloured smocks instead of the prints and blue serge frocks they preferred. She did not despair, she said, of creating a spontaneous peasant art movement in the district, springing from the people and expressing the people, but so far it had been necessary to import not only instructors and material, but workers to keep the thing going, so sluggish had the spontaneity of our English countryside become.
Her little gatherings were quite distinctive of her. They were a sort of garden party extending from mid-day to six or seven; there would be a nucleus of house guests, and the highways and byeways on every hand would be raided to supply persons and interests. She had told her friend to "bring the girls over for the day," and flung an invitation to Mr. Pope, who had at once excused himself on the score of his ankle. Mr. Pope was one of those men who shun social gatherings--ostensibly because of a sterling simplicity of taste, but really because his intolerable egotism made him feel slighted and neglected on these occasions. He told his wife he would be far happier with a book at home, exhorted her not to be late, and was seen composing himself to read the "Vicar of Wakefield"--whenever they published a new book Mr. Pope pretended to read an old one--as the hired waggonette took the rest of his family--Theodore very unhappy in buff silk and a wide Stuart collar--down the avenue.
They found a long lunch table laid on the lawn beneath the chestnuts, and in full view of the poppies and forget-me-nots around the stone obelisk, a butler and three men servants with brass buttons and red and white striped waistcoats gave dignity to the scene, and beyond, on the terrace amidst abundance of deckchairs, cane chairs, rugs, and cushions, a miscellaneous and increasing company seethed under Lady Petchworth's plump but entertaining hand. There were, of course, Mr. Magnet, and his friend Mr. Wintersloan--Lady Petchworth had been given to understand how the land lay; and there was Mr. Bunford Paradise the musician, who was doing his best to teach a sullen holiday class in the village schoolroom to sing the artless old folk songs of Surrey again, in spite of the invincible persuasion of everybody in the class that the songs were rather indelicate and extremely silly; there were the Rev. Jopling Baynes, and two Cambridge undergraduates in flannels, and a Doctor something or other from London. There was also the Hon. Charles Muskett, Lord Pottinger's cousin and estate agent, in tweeds and very helpful. The ladies included Mrs. Raff, the well-known fashion writer, in a wonderful costume, the anonymous doctor's wife, three or four neighbouring mothers with an undistinguished daughter or so, and two quiet-mannered middle-aged ladies, whose names Marjorie could not catch, and whom Lady Petchworth, in that well-controlled voice of hers, addressed as Kate and Julia, and seemed on the whole disposed to treat as humorous. There was also Fraulein Schmidt in charge of Lady Petchworth's three tall and already abundant children, Prunella, Prudence, and Mary, and a young, newly-married couple of cousins, who addressed each other in soft undertones and sat apart. These were the chief items that became distinctive in Marjorie's survey; but there were a number of other people who seemed to come and go, split up, fuse, change their appearance slightly, and behave in the way inadequately apprehended people do behave on these occasions.
Marjorie very speedily found her disposition to take a detached and amused view of the entertainment in conflict with more urgent demands. From the outset Mr. Magnet loomed upon her--he loomed nearer and nearer. He turned his eye upon her as she came up to the wealthy expanse of Lady Petchworth's presence, like some sort of obsolescent iron-clad turning a dull-grey, respectful, loving searchlight upon a fugitive torpedo boat, and thereafter he seemed to her to be looking at her without intermission, relentlessly, and urging himself towards her. She wished he wouldn't. She hadn't at all thought he would on this occasion.
At first she relied upon her natural powers of evasion, and the presence of a large company. Then gradually it became apparent that Lady Petchworth and her mother, yes--and the party generally, and the gardens and the weather and the stars in their courses were of a mind to co-operate in giving opportunity for Mr. Magnet's unmistakable intentions.
And Marjorie with that instability of her sex which has been a theme for masculine humour in all ages, suddenly and with an extraordinary violence didn't want to make up her mind about Mr. Magnet. She didn't want to accept him; and as distinctly she didn't want to refuse him. She didn't even want to be thought about as making up her mind about him--which was, so to speak, an enlargement of her previous indisposition. She didn't even want to seem to avoid him, or to be thinking about him, or aware of his existence.
After the greeting of Lady Petchworth she had succeeded very clumsily in not seeing Mr. Magnet, and had addressed herself to Mr. Wintersloan, who was standing a little apart, looking under his hand, with one eye shut, at the view between the tree stems towards Buryhamstreet. He told her that he thought he had found something "pooty" that hadn't been done, and she did her best to share his artistic interests with a vivid sense of Mr. Magnet's tentative incessant approach behind her.
He joined them, and she made a desperate attempt to entangle Mr. Wintersloan in a three-cornered talk in vain. He turned away at the first possible opportunity, and left her to an embarrassed and eloquently silent _tête-à-tête_. Mr. Magnet's professional wit had deserted him. "It's nice to see you again," he said after an immense interval. "Shall we go and look at the aviary?"
"I hate to see birds in cages," said Marjorie, "and it's frightfully jolly just here. Do you think Mr. Wintersloan will paint this? He does paint, doesn't he?"
"I know him best in black and white," said Mr. Magnet.
Marjorie embarked on entirely insincere praises of Mr. Wintersloan's manner and personal effect; Magnet replied tepidly, with an air of reserving himself to grapple with the first conversational opportunity.
"It's a splendid day for tennis," said Marjorie. "I think I shall play tennis all the afternoon."
"I don't play well enough for this publicity."
"It's glorious exercise," said Marjorie. "Almost as good as dancing," and she decided to stick to that resolution. "I never lose a chance of tennis if I can help it."
She glanced round and detected a widening space between themselves and the next adjacent group.
"They're looking at the goldfish," she said. "Let us join them."
Everyone moved away as they came up to the little round pond, but then Marjorie had luck, and captured Prunella, and got her to hold hands and talk, until Fraulein Schmidt called the child away. And then Marjorie forced Mr. Magnet to introduce her to Mr. Bunford Paradise. She had a bright idea of sitting between Prunella and Mary at the lunch table, but a higher providence had assigned her to a seat at the end between Julia--or was it Kate?--and Mr. Magnet. However, one of the undergraduates was opposite, and she saved herself from undertones by talking across to him boldly about Newnham, though she hadn't an idea of his name or college. From that she came to tennis. To her inflamed imagination he behaved as if she was under a Taboo, but she was desperate, and had pledged him and his friend to a foursome before the meal was over.
"Don't _you_ play?" said the undergraduate to Mr. Magnet.
"Very little," said Mr. Magnet. "Very little--"
At the end of an hour she was conspicuously and publicly shepherded from the tennis court by Mrs. Pope.
"Other people want to play," said her mother in a clear little undertone.
Mr. Magnet fielded her neatly as she came off the court.
"You play tennis like--a wild bird," he said, taking possession of her.
Only Marjorie's entire freedom from Irish blood saved him from a vindictive repartee.
§ 3
"Shall we go and look at the aviary?" said Mr. Magnet, reverting to a favourite idea of his, and then remembered she did not like to see caged birds.
"Perhaps we might see the Water Garden?" he said. "The Water Garden is really very delightful indeed--anyhow. You ought to see that."
On the spur of the moment, Marjorie could think of no objection to the Water Garden, and he led her off.
"I often think of that jolly walk we had last summer," said Mr. Magnet, "and how you talked about your work at Oxbridge."
Marjorie fell into a sudden rapture of admiration for a butterfly.
Twice more was Mr. Magnet baffled, and then they came to the little pool of water lilies with its miniature cascade of escape at the head and source of the Water Garden. "One of Lady Petchworth's great successes," said Mr. Magnet.
"I suppose the lotus is like the water-lily," said Marjorie, with no hope of staving off the inevitable----
She stood very still by the little pool, and in spite of her pensive regard of the floating blossoms, stiffly and intensely aware of his relentless regard.
"Marjorie," came his voice at last, strangely softened. "There is something I want to say to you."
She made no reply.
"Ever since we met last summer----"
A clear cold little resolution not to stand this, had established itself in Marjorie's mind. If she must decide, she _would_ decide. He had brought it upon himself.
"Marjorie," said Mr. Magnet, "I love you."
She lifted a clear unhesitating eye to his face. "I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she said.
"I wanted to ask you to marry me," he said.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she repeated.
They looked at one another. She felt a sort of scared exultation at having done it; her mother might say what she liked.
"I love you very much," he said, at a loss.
"I'm sorry," she repeated obstinately.
"I thought you cared for me a little."
She left that unanswered. She had a curious feeling that there was no getting away from this splashing, babbling pool, that she was fixed there until Mr. Magnet chose to release her, and that he didn't mean to release her yet. In which case she would go on refusing.
"I'm disappointed," he said.
Marjorie could only think that she was sorry again, but as she had already said that three times, she remained awkwardly silent.
"Is it because----" he began and stopped.
"It isn't because of anything. Please let's go back to the others, Mr. Magnet. I'm sorry if I'm disappointing."
And by a great effort she turned about.
Mr. Magnet remained regarding her--I can only compare it to the searching preliminary gaze of an artistic photographer. For a crucial minute in his life Marjorie hated him. "I don't understand," he said at last.
Then with a sort of naturalness that ought to have touched her he said: "Is it possible, Marjorie--that I might hope?--that I have been inopportune?"
She answered at once with absolute conviction.
"I don't think so, Mr. Magnet."
"I'm sorry," he said, "to have bothered you."
"_I'm_ sorry," said Marjorie.
A long silence followed.
"I'm sorry too," he said.
They said no more, but began to retrace their steps. It was over. Abruptly, Mr. Magnet's bearing had become despondent--conspicuously despondent. "I had hoped," he said, and sighed.
With a thrill of horror Marjorie perceived he meant to _look_ rejected, let every one see he had been rejected--after encouragement.
What would they think? How would they look? What conceivably might they not say? Something of the importance of the thing she had done, became manifest to her. She felt first intimations of regret. They would all be watching, Mother, Daffy, Lady Petchworth. She would reappear with this victim visibly suffering beside her. What could she say to straighten his back and lift his chin? She could think of nothing. Ahead at the end of the shaded path she could see the copious white form, the agitated fair wig and red sunshade of Lady Petchworth----
§ 4
Mrs. Pope's eye was relentless; nothing seemed hidden from it; nothing indeed was hidden from it; Mr. Magnet's back was diagrammatic. Marjorie was a little flushed and bright-eyed, and professed herself eager, with an unnatural enthusiasm, to play golf-croquet. It was eloquently significant that Mr. Magnet did not share her eagerness, declined to play, and yet when she had started with the Rev. Jopling Baynes as partner, stood regarding the game with a sort of tender melancholy from the shade of the big chestnut-tree.
Mrs. Pope joined him unobtrusively.
"You're not playing, Mr. Magnet," she remarked.
"I'm a looker-on, this time," he said with a sigh.
"Marjorie's winning, I think," said Mrs. Pope.
He made no answer for some seconds.
"She looks so charming in that blue dress," he remarked at last, and sighed from the lowest deeps.
"That bird's-egg blue suits her," said Mrs. Pope, ignoring the sigh. "She's clever in her girlish way, she chooses all her own dresses,--colours, material, everything."
(And also, though Mrs. Pope had not remarked it, she concealed her bills.)
There came a still longer interval, which Mrs. Pope ended with the slightest of shivers. She perceived Mr. Magnet was heavy for sympathy and ripe to confide. "I think," she said, "it's a little cool here. Shall we walk to the Water Garden, and see if there are any white lilies?"
"There are," said Mr. Magnet sorrowfully, "and they are very beautiful--_quite_ beautiful."
He turned to the path along which he had so recently led Marjorie.
He glanced back as they went along between Lady Petchworth's herbaceous border and the poppy beds. "She's so full of life," he said, with a sigh in his voice.
Mrs. Pope knew she must keep silent.
"I asked her to marry me this afternoon," Mr. Magnet blurted out. "I couldn't help it."
Mrs. Pope made her silence very impressive.
"I know I ought not to have done so without consulting you"--he went on lamely; "I'm very much in love with her. It's----It's done no harm."
Mrs. Pope's voice was soft and low. "I had no idea, Mr. Magnet.... You know she is very young. Twenty. A mother----"
"I know," said Magnet. "I can quite understand. But I've done no harm. She refused me. I shall go away to-morrow. Go right away for ever.... I'm sorry."
Another long silence.
"To me, of course, she's just a child," Mrs. Pope said at last. "She _is_ only a child, Mr. Magnet. She could have had no idea that anything of the sort was in your mind----"
Her words floated away into the stillness.
For a time they said no more. The lilies came into sight, dreaming under a rich green shade on a limpid pool of brown water, water that slept and brimmed over as it were, unconsciously into a cool splash and ripple of escape. "How beautiful!" cried Mrs. Pope, for a moment genuine.
"I spoke to her here," said Mr. Magnet.
The fountains of his confidence were unloosed.
"Now I've spoken to you about it, Mrs. Pope," he said, "I can tell you just how I--oh, it's the only word--adore her. She seems so sweet and easy--so graceful----"
Mrs. Pope turned on him abruptly, and grasped his hands; she was deeply moved. "I can't tell you," she said, "what it means to a mother to hear such things----"
Words failed her, and for some moments they engaged in a mutual pressure.
"Ah!" said Mr. Magnet, and had a queer wish it was the mother he had to deal with.
"Are you sure, Mr. Magnet," Mrs. Pope went on as their emotions subsided, "that she really meant what she said? Girls are very strange creatures----"
"She seems so clear and positive."
"Her manner is always clear and positive."
"Yes. I know."
"I know she _has_ cared for you."
"No!"
"A mother sees. When your name used to be mentioned----. But these are not things to talk about. There is something--something sacred----"
"Yes," he said. "Yes. Only----Of course, one thing----"
Mrs. Pope seemed lost in the contemplation of water-lilies.
"I wondered," said Mr. Magnet, and paused again.
Then, almost breathlessly, "I wondered if there should be perhaps--some one else?"
She shook her head slowly. "I should know," she said.
"Are you sure?"
"I know I should know."
"Perhaps recently?"
"I am sure I should know. A mother's intuition----"
Memories possessed her for awhile. "A girl of twenty is a mass of contradictions. I can remember myself as if it was yesterday. Often one says no, or yes--out of sheer nervousness.... I am sure there is no other attachment----"
It occurred to her that she had said enough. "What a dignity that old gold-fish has!" she remarked. "He waves his tail--as if he were a beadle waving little boys out of church."
§ 5
Mrs. Pope astonished Marjorie by saying nothing about the all too obvious event of the day for some time, but her manner to her second daughter on their way home was strangely gentle. It was as if she had realized for the first time that regret and unhappiness might come into that young life. After supper, however, she spoke. They had all gone out just before the children went to bed to look for the new moon; Daffy was showing the pseudo-twins the old moon in the new moon's arms, and Marjorie found herself standing by her mother's side. "I hope dear," said Mrs. Pope, "that it's all for the best--and that you've done wisely, dear."
Marjorie was astonished and moved by her mother's tone.
"It's so difficult to know what _is_ for the best," Mrs. Pope went on.
"I had to do--as I did," said Marjorie.
"I only hope you may never find you have made a Great Mistake, dear. He cares for you very, very much."
"Oh! we see it now!" cried Rom, "we see it now! Mummy, have you seen it? Like a little old round ghost being nursed!"
When Marjorie said "Good-night," Mrs. Pope kissed her with an unaccustomed effusion.
It occurred to Marjorie that after all her mother had no selfish end to serve in this affair.
§ 6
The idea that perhaps after all she had made a Great Mistake, the Mistake of her Life it might be, was quite firmly established in its place among all the other ideas in Marjorie's mind by the time she had dressed next morning. Subsequent events greatly intensified this persuasion. A pair of new stockings she had trusted sprang a bad hole as she put them on. She found two unmistakable bills from Oxbridge beside her plate, and her father was "horrid" at breakfast.
Her father, it appeared, had bought the ordinary shares of a Cuban railway very extensively, on the distinct understanding that they would improve. In a decent universe, with a proper respect for meritorious gentlemen, these shares would have improved accordingly, but the weather had seen fit to shatter the wisdom of Mr. Pope altogether. The sugar crop had collapsed, the bears were at work, and every morning now saw his nominal capital diminished by a dozen pounds or so. I do not know what Mr. Pope would have done if he had not had his family to help him bear his trouble. As it was he relieved his tension by sending Theodore from the table for dropping a knife, telling Rom when she turned the plate round to pick the largest banana that she hadn't the self-respect of a child of five, and remarking sharply from behind the _Times_ when Daffy asked Marjorie if she was going to sketch: "Oh, for God's sake don't _whisper!_" Then when Mrs. Pope came round the table and tried to take his coffee cup softly to refill it without troubling him, he snatched at it, wrenched it roughly out of her hand, and said with his mouth full, and strangely in the manner of a snarling beast: "No' ready yet. Half foo'."
Marjorie wanted to know why every one didn't get up and leave the room. She glanced at her mother and came near to speaking.
And very soon she would have to come home and live in the midst of this again--indefinitely!
After breakfast she went to the tumbledown summer-house by the duckpond, and contemplated the bills she had not dared to open at table. One was boots, nearly three pounds, the other books, over seven. "I _know_ that's wrong," said Marjorie, and rested her chin on her hand, knitted her brows and tried to remember the details of orders and deliveries....
Marjorie had fallen into the net prepared for our sons and daughters by the delicate modesty of the Oxbridge authorities in money matters, and she was, for her circumstances, rather heavily in debt. But I must admit that in Marjorie's nature the Oxbridge conditions had found an eager and adventurous streak that rendered her particularly apt to these temptations.
I doubt if reticence is really a virtue in a teacher. But this is a fearful world, and the majority of those who instruct our youth have the painful sensitiveness of the cloistered soul to this spirit of terror in things. The young need particularly to be told truthfully and fully all we know of three fundamental things: the first of which is God, the next their duty towards their neighbours in the matter of work and money, and the third Sex. These things, and the adequate why of them, and some sort of adequate how, make all that matters in education. But all three are obscure and deeply moving topics, topics for which the donnish mind has a kind of special ineptitude, and which it evades with the utmost skill and delicacy. The middle part of this evaded triad was now being taken up in Marjorie's case by the Oxbridge tradespeople.
The Oxbridge shopkeeper is peculiar among shopkeepers in the fact that he has to do very largely with shy and immature customers with an extreme and distinctive ignorance of most commercial things. They are for the most part short of cash, but with vague and often large probabilities of credit behind them, for most people, even quite straitened people, will pull their sons and daughters out of altogether unreasonable debts at the end of their university career; and so the Oxbridge shopkeeper becomes a sort of propagandist of the charms and advantages of insolvency. Alone among retailers he dislikes the sight of cash, declines it, affects to regard it as a coarse ignorant truncation of a budding relationship, begs to be permitted to wait. So the youngster just up from home discovers that money may stay in the pocket, be used for cab and train fares and light refreshments; all the rest may be had for the asking. Marjorie, with her innate hunger for good fine things, with her quite insufficient pocket-money, and the irregular habits of expenditure a spasmodically financed, hard-up home is apt to engender, fell very readily into this new, delightful custom of having it put down (whatever it happened to be). She had all sorts of things put down. She and the elder Carmel girl used to go shopping together, having things put down. She brightened her rooms with colour-prints and engravings, got herself pretty and becoming clothes, acquired a fitted dressing-bag already noted in this story, and one or two other trifles of the sort, revised her foot-wear, created a very nice little bookshelf, and although at times she felt a little astonished and scared at herself, resolutely refused to estimate the total of accumulated debt she had attained. Indeed until the bills came in it was impossible to do that, because, following the splendid example of the Carmel girl, she hadn't even inquired the price of quite a number of things....
She didn't dare think now of the total. She lied even to herself about that. She had fixed on fifty pounds as the unendurable maximum. "It is less than fifty pounds," she said, and added: "_must_ be." But something in her below the threshold of consciousness knew that it was more.
And now she was in her third year, and the Oxbridge tradesman, generally satisfied with the dimensions of her account, and no longer anxious to see it grow, was displaying the less obsequious side of his character. He wrote remarks at the bottom of his account, remarks about settlement, about having a bill to meet, about having something to go on with. He asked her to give the matter her "early attention." She had a disagreeable persuasion that if she wanted many more things anywhere she would have to pay ready money for them. She was particularly short of stockings. She had overlooked stockings recently.
Daffy, unfortunately, was also short of stockings.
And now, back with her family again, everything conspired to remind Marjorie of the old stringent habits from which she had had so delightful an interlude. She saw Daffy eye her possessions, reflect. This morning something of the awfulness of her position came to her....
At Oxbridge she had made rather a joke of her debts.
"I'd _swear_ I haven't had three pairs of house shoes," said Marjorie. "But what can one do?"
And about the whole position the question was, "what can one do?"
She proceeded with tense nervous movements to tear these two distasteful demands into very minute pieces. Then she collected them all together in the hollow of her hand, and buried them in the loose mould in a corner of the summer-house.
"Madge," said Theodore, appearing in the sunshine of the doorway. "Aunt Plessington's coming! She's sent a wire. Someone's got to meet her by the twelve-forty train."
§ 7
Aunt Plessington's descent was due to her sudden discovery that Buryhamstreet was in close proximity to Summerhay Park, indeed only three miles away. She had promised a lecture on her movement for Lady Petchworth's village room in Summerhay, and she found that with a slight readjustment of dates she could combine this engagement with her promised visit to her husband's sister, and an evening or so of influence for her little Madge. So she had sent Hubert to telegraph at once, and "here," she said triumphantly on the platform, after a hard kiss at Marjorie's cheek, "we are again."
There, at any rate, she was, and Uncle Hubert was up the platform seeing after the luggage, in his small anxious way.
Aunt Plessington was a tall lean woman, with firm features, a high colour and a bright eye, who wore hats to show she despised them, and carefully dishevelled hair. Her dress was always good, but extremely old and grubby, and she commanded respect chiefly by her voice. Her voice was the true governing-class voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant and authoritative; it made everything she said clear and important, so that if she said it was a fine morning it was like leaded print in the _Times_, and she had over her large front teeth lips that closed quietly and with a slight effort after her speeches, as if the words she spoke tasted well and left a peaceful, secure sensation in the mouth.
Uncle Hubert was a less distinguished figure, and just a little reminiscent of the small attached husbands one finds among the lower crustacea: he was much shorter and rounder than his wife, and if he had been left to himself, he would probably have been comfortably fat in his quiet little way. But Aunt Plessington had made him a Haigite, which is one of the fiercer kinds of hygienist, just in the nick of time. He had round shoulders, a large nose, and glasses that made him look astonished--and she said he had a great gift for practical things, and made him see after everything in that line while she did the lecturing. His directions to the porter finished, he came up to his niece. "Hello, Marjorie!" he said, in a peculiar voice that sounded as though his mouth was full (though of course, poor dear, it wasn't), "how's the First Class?"
"A second's good enough for me, Uncle Hubert," said Marjorie, and asked if they would rather walk or go in the donkey cart, which was waiting outside with Daffy. Aunt Plessington, with an air of great _bonhomie_ said she'd ride in the donkey cart, and they did. But no pseudo-twins or Theodore came to meet this arrival, as both uncle and aunt had a way of asking how the lessons were getting on that they found extremely disagreeable. Also, their aunt measured them, and incited them with loud encouraging noises to grow one against the other in an urgent, disturbing fashion.
Aunt Plessington's being was consumed by thoughts of getting on. She was like Bernard Shaw's life force, and she really did not seem to think there was anything in existence but shoving. She had no idea what a lark life can be, and occasionally how beautiful it can be when you do not shove, if only, which becomes increasingly hard each year, you can get away from the shovers. She was one of an energetic family of eight sisters who had maintained themselves against a mutual pressure by the use of their elbows from the cradle. They had all married against each other, all sorts of people; two had driven their husbands into bishoprics and made quite typical bishop's wives, one got a leading barrister, one a high war-office official, and one a rich Jew, and Aunt Plessington, after spending some years in just missing a rich and only slightly demented baronet, had pounced--it's the only word for it--on Uncle Hubert. "A woman is nothing without a husband," she said, and took him. He was a fairly comfortable Oxford don in his furtive way, and bringing him out and using him as a basis, she specialized in intellectual philanthropy and evolved her Movement. It was quite remarkable how rapidly she overhauled her sisters again.
What the Movement was, varied considerably from time to time, but it was always aggressively beneficial towards the lower strata of the community. Among its central ideas was her belief that these lower strata can no more be trusted to eat than they can to drink, and that the licensing monopoly which has made the poor man's beer thick, lukewarm and discreditable, and so greatly minimized its consumption, should be extended to the solid side of his dietary. She wanted to place considerable restrictions upon the sale of all sorts of meat, upon groceries and the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which do not sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach), to increase the present difficulties in the way of tobacco purchasers, and to put an end to that wanton and deleterious consumption of sweets which has so bad an effect upon the enamel of the teeth of the younger generation. Closely interwoven with these proposals was an adoption of the principle of the East Purblow Experiment, the principle of Payment in Kind. She was quite in agreement with Mr. Pope that poor people, when they had money, frittered it away, and so she proposed very extensive changes in the Truck Act, which could enable employers, under suitable safeguards, and with the advice of a small body of spinster inspectors, to supply hygienic housing, approved clothing of moral and wholesome sort, various forms of insurance, edifying rations, cuisine, medical aid and educational facilities as circumstances seemed to justify, in lieu of the wages the employees handled so ill....
As no people in England will ever admit they belong to the lower strata of society, Aunt Plessington's Movement attracted adherents from every class in the community.
She now, as they drove slowly to the vicarage, recounted to Marjorie--she had the utmost contempt for Daffy because of her irregular teeth and a general lack of progressive activity--the steady growth of the Movement, and the increasing respect shown for her and Hubert in the world of politico-social reform. Some of the meetings she had addressed had been quite full, various people had made various remarks about her, hostile for the most part and yet insidiously flattering, and everybody seemed quite glad to come to the little dinners she gave in order, she said, to gather social support for her reforms. She had been staying with the Mastersteins, who were keenly interested, and after she had polished off Lady Petchworth she was to visit Lady Rosenbaum. It was all going on swimmingly, these newer English gentry were eager to learn all she had to teach in the art of breaking in the Anglo-Saxon villagers, and now, how was Marjorie going on, and what was _she_ going to do in the world?
Marjorie said she was working for her final.
"And what then?" asked Aunt Plessington.
"Not very clear, Aunt, yet."
"Looking around for something to take up?"
"Yes, Aunt."
"Well, you've time yet. And it's just as well to see how the land lies before you begin. It saves going back. You'll have to come up to London with me for a little while, and see things, and be seen a little."
"I should love to."
"I'll give you a good time," said Aunt Plessington, nodding promisingly. "Theodore getting on in school?"
"He's had his remove."
"And how's Sydney getting on with the music?"
"Excellently."
"And Rom. Rom getting on?"
Marjorie indicated a more restrained success.
"And what's Daffy doing?"
"Oh! _get_ on!" said Daffy and suddenly whacked the donkey rather hard. "I beg your pardon, Aunt?"
"I asked what _you_ were up t |
35338-8 | o, Daffy?"
"Dusting, Aunt--and the virtues," said Daffy.
"You ought to find something better than that."
"Father tells me a lot about the East Purblow Experiment," said Daffy after a perceptible interval.
"Ah!" cried Aunt Plessington with a loud encouraging note, but evidently making the best of it, "_that's_ better. Sociological observation."
"Yes, Aunt," said Daffy, and negotiated a corner with exceptional care.
§ 8
Mrs. Pope, who had an instinctive disposition to pad when Aunt Plessington was about, had secured the presence at lunch of Mr. Magnet (who was after all staying on in Buryhamstreet) and the Rev. Jopling Baynes. Aunt Plessington liked to meet the clergy, and would always if she could win them over to an interest in the Movement. She opened the meal with a brisk attack upon him. "Come, Mr. Baynes," she said, "what do your people eat here? Hubert and I are making a study of the gluttonous side of village life, and we find that no one knows so much of that as the vicar--not even the doctor."
The Reverend Jopling Baynes was a clergyman of the evasive type with a quite distinguished voice. He pursed his lips and made his eyes round. "Well, Mrs. Plessington," he said and fingered his glass, "it's the usual dietary. The usual dietary."
"Too much and too rich, badly cooked and eaten too fast," said Aunt Plessington. "And what do you think is the remedy?"
"We make an Effort," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, "we make an Effort. A Hint here, a Word there."
"Nothing organized?"
"No," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, and shook his head with a kind of resignation.
"We are going to alter all that," said Aunt Plessington briskly, and went on to expound the Movement and the diverse way in which it might be possible to control and improve the domestic expenditure of the working classes.
The Rev. Jopling Baynes listened sympathetically across the table and tried to satisfy a healthy appetite with as abstemious an air as possible while he did so. Aunt Plessington passed rapidly from general principles, to a sketch of the success of the movement, and Hubert, who had hitherto been busy with his lunch, became audible from behind the exceptionally large floral trophy that concealed him from his wife, bubbling confirmatory details. She was very bright and convincing as she told of this prominent man met and subdued, that leading antagonist confuted, and how the Bishops were coming in. She made it clear in her swift way that an intelligent cleric resolved to get on in this world _en route_ for a better one hereafter, might do worse than take up her Movement. And this touched in, she turned her mind to Mr. Magnet.
(That floral trophy, I should explain, by the by, was exceptionally large because of Mrs. Pope's firm conviction that Aunt Plessington starved her husband. Accordingly, she masked him, and so was able to heap second and third helpings upon his plate without Aunt Plessington discovering his lapse. The avidity with which Hubert ate confirmed her worst suspicions and evinced, so far as anything ever did evince, his gratitude.)
"Well, Mr. Magnet," she said, "I wish I had your sense of humour."
"I wish you had," said Mr. Magnet.
"I should write tracts," said Aunt Plessington.
"I knew it was good for something," said Mr. Magnet, and Daffy laughed in a tentative way.
"I mean it," said Aunt Plessington brightly. "Think if we had a Dickens--and you are the nearest man alive to Dickens--on the side of social reform to-day!"
Mr. Magnet's light manner deserted him. "We do what we can, Mrs. Plessington," he said.
"How much more might be done," said Aunt Plessington, "if humour could be organized."
"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Pope.
"If all the humorists of England could be induced to laugh at something together."
"They do--at times," said Mr. Magnet, but the atmosphere was too serious for his light touch.
"They could laugh it out of existence," said Aunt Plessington.
It was evident Mr. Magnet was struck by the idea.
"Of course," he said, "in _Punch_, to which I happen to be an obscure occasional contributor----"
Mrs. Pope was understood to protest that he should not say such things.
"We _do_ remember just what we can do either in the way of advertising or injury. I don't think you'll find us up against any really _solid_ institutions."
"But do you think, Mr. Magnet, you are sufficiently kind to the New?" Aunt Plessington persisted.
"I think we are all grateful to _Punch_," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes suddenly and sonorously, "for its steady determination to direct our mirth into the proper channels. I do not think that any one can accuse its editor of being unmindful of his great responsibilities----"
Marjorie found it a very interesting conversation.
She always met her aunt again with a renewal of a kind of admiration. That loud authoritative rudeness, that bold thrusting forward of the Movement until it became the sole criterion of worth or success, this annihilation by disregard of all that Aunt Plessington wasn't and didn't and couldn't, always in the intervals seemed too good to be true. Of course this really was the way people got on and made a mark, but she felt it must be almost as trying to the nerves as aeronautics. Suppose, somewhere up there your engine stopped! How Aunt Plessington dominated the table! Marjorie tried not to catch Daffy's eye. Daffy was unostentatiously keeping things going, watching the mustard, rescuing the butter, restraining Theodore, and I am afraid not listening very carefully to Aunt Plessington. The children were marvellously silent and jumpily well-behaved, and Mr. Pope, in a very unusual state of subdued amiability, sat at the end of the table with the East Purblow experiment on the tip of his tongue. He liked Aunt Plessington, and she was good for him. They had the same inherent distrust of the intelligence and good intentions of their fellow creatures, and she had the knack of making him feel that he too was getting on, that she was saying things on his behalf in influential quarters, and in spite of the almost universal conspiracy (based on jealousy) to ignore his stern old-world virtues, he might still be able to battle his way to the floor of the House of Commons and there deliver himself before he died of a few sorely needed home-truths about motor cars, decadence and frivolity generally....
§ 9
After lunch Aunt Plessington took her little Madge for an energetic walk, and showed herself far more observant than the egotism of her conversation at that meal might have led one to suppose. Or perhaps she was only better informed. Aunt Plessington loved a good hard walk in the afternoon; and if she could get any one else to accompany her, then Hubert stayed at home, and curled up into a ball on a sofa somewhere, and took a little siesta that made him all the brighter for the intellectual activities of the evening. The thought of a young life, new, untarnished, just at the outset, just addressing itself to the task of getting on, always stimulated her mind extremely, and she talked to Marjorie with a very real and effectual desire to help her to the utmost of her ability.
She talked of a start in life, and the sort of start she had had. She showed how many people who began with great advantages did not shove sufficiently, and so dropped out of things and weren't seen and mentioned. She defended herself for marrying Hubert, and showed what a clever shoving thing it had been to do. It startled people a little, and made them realize that here was a woman who wanted something more in a man than a handsome organ-grinder. She made it clear that she thought a clever marriage, if not a startlingly brilliant one, the first duty of a girl. It was a girl's normal gambit. She branched off to the things single women might do, in order to justify this view. She did not think single women could do very much. They might perhaps shove as suffragettes, but even there a husband helped tremendously--if only by refusing to bail you out. She ran over the cases of a number of prominent single women.
"And what," said Aunt Plessington, "do they all amount to? A girl is so hampered and an old maid is so neglected," said Aunt Plessington.
She paused.
"Why don't you up and marry Mr. Magnet, Marjorie?" she said, with her most brilliant flash.
"It takes two to make a marriage, aunt," said Marjorie after a slight hesitation.
"My dear child! he worships the ground you tread on!" said Aunt Plessington.
"He's rather--grown up," said Marjorie.
"Not a bit of it. He's not forty. He's just the age."
"I'm afraid it's a little impossible."
"Impossible?"
"You see I've refused him, aunt."
"Naturally--the first time! But I wouldn't send him packing the second."
There was an interval.
Marjorie decided on a blunt question. "Do you really think, aunt, I should do well to marry Mr. Magnet?"
"He'd give you everything a clever woman needs," said Aunt Plessington. "Everything."
With swift capable touches she indicated the sort of life the future Mrs. Magnet might enjoy. "He's evidently a man who wants helping to a position," she said. "Of course his farces and things, I'm told, make no end of money, but he's just a crude gift by himself. Money like that is nothing. With a clever wife he might be all sorts of things. Without one he'll just subside--you know the sort of thing this sort of man does. A rather eccentric humorous house in the country, golf, croquet, horse-riding, rose-growing, queer hats."
"Isn't that rather what he would like to do, aunt?" said Marjorie.
"That's not _our_ business, Madge," said Aunt Plessington with humorous emphasis.
She began to sketch out a different and altogether smarter future for the fortunate humorist. There would be a house in a good central position in London where Marjorie would have bright successful lunches and dinners, very unpretending and very good, and tempt the clever smart with the lure of the interestingly clever; there would be a bright little country cottage in some pretty accessible place to which Aunt and Uncle Plessington and able and influential people generally could be invited for gaily recreative and yet extremely talkative and helpful week-ends. Both places could be made centres of intrigue; conspiracies for getting on and helping and exchanging help could be organized, people could be warned against people whose getting-on was undesirable. In the midst of it all, dressed with all the natural wit she had and an enlarging experience, would be Marjorie, shining like a rising planet. It wouldn't be long, if she did things well, before she had permanent officials and young cabinet ministers mingling with her salad of writers and humorists and the Plessington connexion.
"Then," said Aunt Plessington with a joyous lift in her voice, "you'll begin to _weed_ a little."
For a time the girl's mind resisted her.
But Marjorie was of the impressionable sex at an impressionable age, and there was something overwhelming in the undeviating conviction of her aunt, in the clear assurance of her voice, that this life which interested her was the real life, the only possible successful life. The world reformed itself in Marjorie's fluent mind, until it was all a scheme of influence and effort and ambition and triumphs. Dinner-parties and receptions, men wearing orders, cabinet ministers more than a little in love asking her advice, beautiful robes, a great blaze of lights; why! she might be, said Aunt Plessington rising to enthusiasm, "another Marcella." The life was not without its adventurous side; it wasn't in any way dull. Aunt Plessington to illustrate that point told amusing anecdotes of how two almost impudent invitations on her part had succeeded, and how she had once scored off her elder sister by getting a coveted celebrity through their close family resemblance. "After accepting he couldn't very well refuse because I wasn't somebody else," she ended gleefully. "So he came--and stayed as long as anybody."
What else was there for Marjorie to contemplate? If she didn't take this by no means unattractive line, what was the alternative? Some sort of employment after a battle with her father, a parsimonious life, and even then the Oxbridge tradesmen and their immortal bills....
Aunt Plessington was so intent upon her theme that she heeded nothing of the delightful little flowers she trampled under foot across the down, nor the jolly squirrel with an artistic temperament who saw fit to give an uninvited opinion upon her personal appearance from the security of a beech-tree in the wood. But Marjorie, noting quite a number of such things with the corner of her mind, and being now well under the Plessington sway, wished she had more concentration....
In the evening after supper the customary games were suspended, and Mr. and Mrs. Plessington talked about getting on, and work and efficiency generally, and explained how so-and-so had spoilt his chances in life, and why so-and-so was sure to achieve nothing, and how this man ate too much and that man drank too much, and on the contrary what promising and capable people the latest adherents of and subscribers to the Movement were, until two glasses of hot water came--Aunt Plessington had been told it was good for her digestion and she thought it just as well that Hubert should have some too--and it was time for every one to go to bed.
§ 10
Next morning an atmosphere of getting on and strenuosity generally prevailed throughout the vicarage. The Plessingtons were preparing a memorandum on their movement for the "Reformer's Year Book," every word was of importance and might win or lose adherents and subscribers, and they secured the undisturbed possession of the drawing-room, from which the higher notes of Aunt Plessington's voice explaining the whole thing to Hubert, who had to write it out, reached, a spur to effort, into every part of the house.
Their influence touched every one.
Marjorie, struck by the idea that she was not perhaps getting on at Oxbridge so fast as she ought to do, went into the summer-house with Marshall's "Principles of Economics," read for two hours, and did not think about her bills for more than a quarter of the time. Rom, who had already got up early and read through about a third of "Aurora Leigh," now set herself with dogged determination to finish that great poem. Syd practised an extra ten minutes--for Aunt Plessington didn't mind practice so long as there wasn't a tune. Mrs. Pope went into the kitchen and made a long-needed fuss about the waste of rice. Mr. Pope began the pamphlet he had had in contemplation for some time upon the advantages to public order of Payment in Kind. Theodore, who had washed behind his ears and laced his boots in all the holes, went into the yard before breakfast and hit a tennis ball against the wall and back, five hundred and twenty-two times--a record. He would have resumed this after breakfast, but his father came round the corner of the house with a pen in his mouth, and asked him indistinctly, but fiercely, what the _devil_ he was doing. So he went away, and after a fretful interval set himself to revise his Latin irregular verbs. By twelve he had done wonders.
Later in the day the widening circle of aggressive urgency reached the kitchen, and at two the cook gave notice in order, she said, to better herself.
Lunch, unconscious of this impending shadow, was characterized by a virtuous cheerfulness, and Aunt Plessington told in detail how her seven and twenty nephews and nieces, the children of her various sisters, were all getting on. On the whole, they were not getting on so brilliantly as they might have done (which indeed is apt to be the case with the children of people who have loved not well but too wisely), and it was borne in upon the mind of the respectfully listening Marjorie that, to borrow an easy colloquialism of her aunt's, she might "take the shine out of the lot of them" with a very little zeal and effort--and of course Mr. Magnet.
The lecture in the evening at Summerhay was a great success.
The chair was taken by the Rev. Jopling Baynes, Lady Petchworth was enthroned behind the table, Hubert was in charge of his wife's notes--if notes should be needed--and Mr. Pope, expectant of an invitation at the end to say a few words about the East Purblow experiment, also occupied a chair on the platform. Lady Petchworth, with her abundant soft blond hair, brightly blond still in spite of her fifty-five years, her delicate features, her plump hands, her numerous chins and her entirely inaudible voice, made a pleasing contrast with Aunt Plessington's resolute personality. She had perhaps an even greater assurance of authority, but it was a quiet assurance; you felt that she knew that if she spoke in her sleep she would be obeyed, that it was quite unnecessary to make herself heard. The two women, indeed, the one so assertive, the other so established, were at the opposite poles of authoritative British womanhood, and harmonized charmingly. The little room struck the note of a well-regulated brightness at every point, it had been decorated in a Keltic but entirely respectful style by one of Lady Petchworth's artistic discoveries, it was lit by paraffin lamps that smelt hardly at all, and it was gay with colour prints illustrating the growth of the British Empire from the battle of Ethandune to the surrender of Cronje. The hall was fairly full. Few could afford to absent themselves from these brightening occasions, but there was a tendency on the part of the younger and the less thoughtful section of the village manhood to accumulate at the extreme back and rumble in what appeared to be a slightly ironical spirit, so far as it had any spirit, with its feet.
The Rev. Jopling Baynes opened proceedings with a few well-chosen remarks, in which he complimented every one present either singly or collectively according to their rank and importance, and then Aunt Plessington came forward to the centre of the platform amidst a hectic flush of applause, and said "Haw!" in a loud clear ringing tone.
She spoke without resorting to the notes in Hubert's little fist, very freely and easily. Her strangulated contralto went into every corner of the room and positively seemed to look for and challenge inattentive auditors. She had come over, she said, and she had been very glad to come over and talk to them that night, because it meant not only seeing them but meeting her very dear delightful friend Lady Petchworth (loud applause) and staying for a day or so with her brother-in-law Mr. Pope (unsupported outburst of applause from Mr. Magnet), to whom she and social reform generally owed so much. She had come to talk to them that night about the National Good Habits Movement, which was attracting so much attention and which bore so closely on our National Life and Character; she happened to be--here Aunt Plessington smiled as she spoke--a humble person connected with that movement, just a mere woman connected with it; she was going to explain to them as well as she could in her womanly way and in the time at her disposal just what it was and just what it was for, and just what means it adopted and just what ends it had in view. Well, they all knew what Habits were, and that there were Good Habits and Bad Habits, and she supposed that the difference between a good man and a bad man was just that the good man had good habits and the bad one had bad habits. Everybody she supposed wanted to get on. If a man had good habits he got on, and if he had bad habits he didn't get on, and she supposed it was the same with a country, if its people had good habits they got on, and if its people had bad habits they didn't get on. For her own part she and her husband (Hubert gave a little self-conscious jump) had always cultivated good habits, and she had to thank him with all her heart for his help in doing so. (Applause from the front seats.) Now, the whole idea of her movement was to ask, how can we raise the standard of the national habits? how can we get rid of bad habits and cultivate good ones?... (Here there was a slight interruption due to some one being suddenly pushed off the end of a form at the back, and coming to the floor with audible violence, after which a choked and obstructed tittering continued intermittently for some time.)
Some of her audience, she remarked, had not yet acquired the habit of sitting still.
(Laughter, and a coarse vulgar voice: "Good old Billy Punt!")
Well, to resume, she and her husband had made a special and careful study of habits; they had consulted all sorts of people and collected all sorts of statistics, in fact they had devoted themselves to this question, and the conclusion to which they came was this, that Good Habits were acquired by Training and Bad Habits came from neglect and carelessness and leaving people, who weren't fit for such freedom, to run about and do just whatever they liked. And so, she went on with a note of complete demonstration, the problem resolved itself into the question of how far they could get more Training into the national life, and how they could check extravagant and unruly and wasteful and unwise ways of living. (Hear, hear! from Mr. Pope.) And this was the problem she and her husband had set themselves to solve.
(Scuffle, and a boy's voice at the back, saying: "Oh, _shut_ it, Nuts! SHUT it!")
Well, she and her husband had worked the thing out, and they had come to the conclusion that what was the matter with the great mass of English people was first that they had rather too much loose money, and secondly that they had rather too much loose time. (A voice: "What O!" and the Rev. Jopling Baynes suddenly extended his neck, knitted his brows, and became observant of the interrupter.) She did not say they had too much money (a second voice: "Not Arf!"), but too much _loose_ money. She did not say they had too much time but too much loose time, that is to say, they had money and time they did not know how to spend properly. And so they got into mischief. A great number of people in this country, she maintained, and this was especially true of the lower classes, did not know how to spend either money or time; they bought themselves wasteful things and injurious things, and they frittered away their hours in all sorts of foolish, unprofitable ways. And, after the most careful and scientific study of this problem, she and her husband had come to the conclusion that two main principles must underlie any remedial measures that were attempted, the first of which was the Principle of Payment in Kind, which had already had so interesting a trial at the great carriage works of East Purblow, and the second, the Principle of Continuous Occupation, which had been recognized long ago in popular wisdom by that admirable proverb--or rather quotation--she believed it was a quotation, though she gave, she feared, very little time to poetry ("Better employed," from Mr. Pope)--
"Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do."
(Irrepressible outbreak of wild and sustained applause from the back seats, and in a sudden lull a female voice asking in a flattened, thwarted tone: "Ain't there to be no lantern then?")
The lecturer went on to explain what was meant by either member of what perhaps they would permit her to call this double-barrelled social remedy.
It was an admirable piece of lucid exposition. Slowly the picture of a better, happier, more disciplined England grew upon the minds of the meeting. First she showed the new sort of employer her movement would evoke, an employer paternal, philanthropic, vaguely responsible for the social order of all his dependants. (Lady Petchworth was seen to nod her head slowly at this.) Only in the last resort, and when he was satisfied that his worker and his worker's family were properly housed, hygienically clothed and fed, attending suitable courses of instruction and free from any vicious inclinations, would he pay wages in cash. In the discharge of the duties of payment he would have the assistance of expert advice, and the stimulus of voluntary inspectors of his own class. He would be the natural clan-master, the captain and leader, adviser and caretaker of his banded employees. Responsibility would stimulate him, and if responsibility did not stimulate him, inspectors (both men and women inspectors) would. The worker, on the other hand, would be enormously more healthy and efficient under the new régime. His home, designed by qualified and officially recognized architects, would be prettier as well as more convenient and elevating to his taste, his children admirably trained and dressed in the new and more beautiful clothing with which Lady Petchworth (applause) had done so much to make them familiar, his vital statistics compared with current results would be astonishingly good, his mind free from any anxiety but the proper anxiety of a man in his position, to get his work done properly and earn recognition from those competent and duly authorized to judge it. Of all this she spoke with the inspiring note of absolute conviction. All this would follow Payment in Kind and Continuous Occupation as days follow sunrise. And there would always,--and here Aunt Plessington's voice seemed to brighten--be something for the worker to get on with, something for him to do; lectures, classes, reading-rooms, improving entertainments. His time would be filled. The proper authorities would see that it was filled--and filled in the right way. Never for a moment need he be bored. He would never have an excuse for being bored. That was the second great idea, the complementary idea to the first. "And here it is," she said, turning a large encouraging smile on Lady Petchworth, "that the work of a National Theatre, instructive, stimulating, well regulated, and morally sustaining, would come in." He wouldn't, of course, be _compelled_ to go, but there would be his seat, part of his payment in kind, and the public-house would be shut, most other temptations would be removed....
The lecture reached its end at last with only one other interruption. Some would-be humorist suddenly inquired, _à propos_ of nothing: "What's the fare to America, Billy?" and a voice, presumably Billy's, answered him: "Mor'n _you'll_ ev 'av in _you'_ pocket."
The Rev. Jopling Baynes, before he called upon Mr. Pope for his promised utterance about East Purblow, could not refrain from pointing out how silly "in every sense of the word" these wanton interruptions were. What, he asked, had English social reform to do with the fare to America?--and having roused the meeting to an alert silence by the length of his pause, answered in a voice of ringing contempt: "Nothing--_whatsoever_." Then Mr. Pope made his few remarks about East Purblow with the ease and finish that comes from long practice; much, he said, had to be omitted "in view of" the restricted time at his disposal, but he did not grudge that, the time had been better filled. ("No, no," from Aunt Plessington.) Yes, yes,--by the lucid and delightful lecture they had all enjoyed, and he not least among them. (Applause.)...
§ 11
They came out into a luminous blue night, with a crescent young moon high overhead. It was so fine that the Popes and the Plessingtons and Mr. Magnet declined Lady Petchworth's proffered car, and walked back to Buryhamstreet across the park through a sleeping pallid cornfield, and along by the edge of the pine woods. Mr. Pope would have liked to walk with Mr. Magnet and explain all that the pressure on his time had caused him to omit from his speech, and why it was he had seen fit to omit this part and include that. Some occult power, however, baffled this intention, and he found himself going home in the company of his brother-in-law and Daffy, with Aunt Plessington and his wife like a barrier between him and his desire. Marjorie, on the other hand, found Mr. Magnet's proximity inevitable. They fell a little behind and were together again for the first time since her refusal.
He behaved, she thought, with very great restraint, and indeed he left her a little doubtful on that occasion whether he had not decided to take her decision as final. He talked chiefly about the lecture, which had impressed him very deeply. Mrs. Plessington, he said, was so splendid--made him feel trivial. He felt stirred up by her, wanted to help in this social work, this picking up of helpless people from the muddle in which they wallowed.
He seemed not only extraordinarily modest but extraordinarily gentle that night, and the warm moonshine gave his face a shadowed earnestness it lacked in more emphatic lights. She felt the profound change in her feelings towards him that had followed her rejection of him. It had cleared away his effect of oppression upon her. She had no longer any sense of entanglement and pursuit, and all the virtues his courtship had obscured shone clear again. He was kindly, he was patient--and she felt something about him a woman is said always to respect, he gave her an impression of ability. After all, he could banish the trouble that crushed and overwhelmed her with a movement of his little finger. Of all her load of debt he could earn the payment in a day.
"Your aunt goes to-morrow?" he said.
Marjorie admitted it.
"I wish I could talk to her more. She's so inspiring."
"You know of our little excursion for Friday?" he asked after a pause.
She had not heard. Friday was Theodore's birthday; she knew it only too well because she had had to part with her stamp collection--which very luckily had chanced to get packed and come to Buryhamstreet--to meet its demand. Mr. Magnet explained he had thought it might be fun to give a picnic in honour of the anniversary.
"How jolly of you!" said Marjorie.
"There's a pretty bit of river between Wamping and Friston Hanger--I've wanted you to see it for a long time, and Friston Hanger church has the prettiest view. The tower gets the bend of the river."
He told her all he meant to do as if he submitted his plans for her approval. They would drive to Wamping and get a very comfortable little steam launch one could hire there. Wintersloan was coming down again; an idle day of this kind just suited his temperament. Theodore would like it, wouldn't he?
"Theodore will think he is King of Surrey!"
"I'll have a rod and line if he wants to fish. I don't want to forget anything. I want it to be _his_ day really and truly."
The slightest touch upon the pathetic note? She could not tell.
But that evening brought Marjorie nearer to loving Magnet than she had ever been. Before she went to sleep that night she had decided he was quite a tolerable person again; she had been too nervous and unjust with him. After all, his urgency and awkwardness had been just a part of his sincerity. Perhaps the faint doubt whether he would make his request again gave the zest of uncertainty to his devotion. Of course, she told herself, he would ask again. And then the blissful air of limitless means she might breathe. The blessed release....
She was suddenly fast asleep.
§ 12
Friday was after all not so much Theodore's day as Mr. Magnet's.
Until she found herself committed there was no shadow of doubt in Marjorie's mind of what she meant to do. "Before I see you again," said Aunt Plessington at the parting kiss, "I hope you'll have something to tell me." She might have been Hymen thinly disguised as an aunt, waving from the departing train. She continued by vigorous gestures and unstinted display of teeth and a fluttering handkerchief to encourage Marjorie to marry Mr. Magnet, until the curve of the cutting hid her from view....
Fortune favoured Mr. Magnet with a beautiful day, and the excursion was bright and successful from the outset. It was done well, and what perhaps was more calculated to impress Marjorie, it was done with lavish generosity. From the outset she turned a smiling countenance upon her host. She did her utmost to suppress a reviving irrational qualm in her being, to maintain clearly and simply her overnight decision, that he should propose again and that she should accept him.
Yet the festival was just a little dreamlike in its quality to her perceptions. She found she could not focus clearly on its details.
Two waggonettes came from Wamping; there was room for everybody and to spare, and Wamping revealed itself a pleasant small country town with stocks under the market hall, and just that tint of green paint and that loafing touch the presence of a boating river gives.
The launch was brilliantly smart with abundant crimson cushions and a tasselled awning, and away to the left was a fine old bridge that dated in its essentials from Plantagenet times.
They started with much whistling and circling, and went away up river under overhanging trees that sometimes swished the funnel, splashing the meadow path and making the reeds and bulrushes dance with their wash. They went through a reluctant lock, steamed up a long reach, they passed the queerly painted Potwell Inn with its picturesque group of poplars and its absurd new notice-board of "Omlets." ... Theodore was five stone of active happiness; he and the pseudo-twins, strictly under his orders as the universal etiquette of birthdays prescribes, clambered round and round the boat, clutching the awning rail and hanging over the water in an entirely secure and perilous looking manner. No one, unless his father happened to be upset by something, would check him, he knew, on this auspicious day. Mr. Magnet sat with the grey eye on Marjorie and listened a little abstractedly to Mr. Pope, who was telling very fully what he would say if the Liberal party were to ask his advice at the present juncture. Mrs. Pope attended discreetly, and Daffy and Marjorie with a less restrained interest, to Mr. Wintersloan, who showed them how to make faces out of a fist tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, how to ventriloquize, how to conjure with halfpence--which he did very amusingly--and what the buttons on a man's sleeve were for; Theodore clambering at his back discovered what he was at, and by right of birthday made him do all the faces and tricks over again. Then Mr. Wintersloan told stories of all the rivers along which, he said, he had travelled in steamboats; the Rhine, the Danube, the Hoogly and the Fall River, and particularly how he had been bitten by a very young crocodile. "It's the smell of the oil brings it all back to me," he said. "And the kind of sway it gives you."
He made sinuous movements of his hand, and looked at Marjorie with that wooden yet expressive smile.
Friston Hanger proved to be even better than Wamping. It had a character of its own because it was built very largely of a warm buff coloured local rock instead of the usual brick, and the outhouses at least of the little inn at which they landed were thatched. Most of the cottages had casement windows with diamond panes, and the streets were cobbled and very up-and-down hill. The place ran to high walls richly suggestive of hidden gardens, overhung by big trees and pierced by secretive important looking doors. And over it all rose an unusually big church, with a tall buttressed tower surmounted by a lantern of pierced stone.
"We'll go through the town and look at the ruins of the old castle beyond the church," said Mr. Magnet to Marjorie, "and then I want you to see the view from the church tower."
And as they went through the street, he called her attention again to the church tower in a voice that seemed to her to be inexplicably charged with significance. "I want you to go up there," he said.
"How about something to eat, Mr. Magnet?" remarked Theodore suddenly, and everybody felt a little surprised when Mr. Magnet answered: "Who wants things to eat on your birthday, Theodore?"
But they saw the joke of that when they reached the castle ruins and found in the old tilting yard, with its ivy-covered arch framing a view of the town and stream, a table spread with a white cloth that shone in the sunshine, glittering with glass and silver and gay with a bowl of salad and flowers and cold pies and a jug of claret-cup and an ice pail--a silver pail! containing two promising looking bottles, in the charge of two real live waiters, in evening dress as waiters should be, but with straw hats to protect them from the sun and weather. "Oh!" cried Mrs. Pope, "what a _splendid_ idea, Mr. Magnet," when the destination of the feast was perfectly clear, and even Theodore seemed a little overawed--almost as if he felt his birthday was being carried too far and might provoke a judgment later. Manifestly Mr. Magnet must have ordered this in London, and have had it sent down, waiters and all! Theodore knew he was a very wonderful little boy in spite of the acute criticism of four devoted sisters, and Mr. Magnet had noticed him before at times, but this was, well, rather immense! "Look at the pie-crusts, old man!" And on the pie-crusts, and on the icing of the cake, their munificent host had caused to be done in little raised letters of dough and chocolate the word "Theodore."
"Oh, _Mr._ Magnet!" said Marjorie--his eye so obviously invited her to say something. Mr. Pope tried a nebulous joke about "groaning boards of Frisky Hanger," and only Mr. Wintersloan restrained his astonishment and admiration. "You could have got those chaps in livery," he said--unheeded. The lunch was as a matter of fact his idea; he had refused to come unless it was provided, and he had somehow counted on blue coats, brass buttons, and yellow waistcoats--but everybody else of course ascribed the whole invention to Mr. Magnet.
"Well," said Mr. Pope with a fine air of epigram, "the only thing I can say is--to eat it," and prepared to sit down.
"Melon," cried Mr. Magnet to the waiters, "we'll begin with the melon. Have you ever tried melon with pepper and salt, Mrs. Pope?"
"You put salt in everything," admired Mr. Pope. "Salt from those attics of yours--Attic salt."
"Or there's ginger!" said Mr. Magnet, after a whisper from the waiter.
Mr. Pope said something classical about "ginger hot in the mouth."
"Some of these days," said Mr. Wintersloan, "when I have exhausted all other sensations, I mean to try melon and mustard."
Rom made a wonderful face at him.
"I can think of worse things than that," said Mr. Wintersloan with a hard brightness.
"Not till after lunch, Mr. Wintersloan!" said Rom heartily.
"The claret cup's all right for Theodore, Mrs. Pope," said Magnet. "It's a special twelve year old brand." (He thought of everything!)
"Mummy," said Mr. Pope. "You'd better carve this pie, I think."
"I want very much," said Mr. Magnet in Marjorie's ear and very confidentially, "to show you the view from the church tower. I think--it will appeal to you."
"Rom!" said Theodore, uncontrollably, in a tremendous stage whisper. "There's peaches!... _There!_ on the hamper!"
"Champagne, m'am?" said the waiter suddenly in Mrs. Pope's ear, wiping ice-water from the bottle.
(But what could it have cost him?)
§ 13
Marjorie would have preferred that Mr. Magnet should not have decided with such relentless determination to make his second proposal on the church tower. His purpose was luminously clear to her from the beginning of lunch onward, and she could feel her nerves going under the strain of that long expectation. She tried to pull herself together, tried not to think about it, tried to be amused by the high spirits and nonsense of Mr. Wintersloan and Syd and Rom and Theodore; but Mr. Magnet was very pervasive, and her mother didn't ever look at her, looked past her and away from her and all round her, in a profoundly observant manner. Marjorie felt chiefly anxious to get to the top of that predestinate tower and have the whole thing over, and it was with a start that she was just able to prevent one of the assiduous waiters filling her glass with champagne for the third time.
There was a little awkwardness in dispersing after lunch. Mr. Pope, his heart warmed by the champagne and mellowed by a subsequent excellent cigar, wanted very much to crack what he called a "postprandial jest" or so with the great humorist, while Theodore also, deeply impressed with the discovery that there was more in Mr. Magnet than he had supposed, displayed a strong disposition to attach himself more closely than he had hitherto done to this remarkable person, and study his quiet but enormous possibilities with greater attention. Mrs. Pope with a still alertness did her best to get people adjusted, but Syd and Rom had conceived a base and unnatural desire to subjugate the affections of the youngest waiter, and wouldn't listen to her proposal that they should take Theodore away into the town; Mr. Wintersloan displayed extraordinary cunning and resource in evading a _tête-à-tête_ with Mr. Pope that would have released Mr. Magnet. Now Mrs. Pope came to think of it, Mr. Wintersloan never had had the delights of a good talk with Mr. Pope, he knew practically nothing about the East Purblow experiment except for what Mr. Magnet might have retailed to him, and she was very greatly puzzled to account for his almost manifest reluctance to go into things thoroughly. Daffy remained on hand, available but useless, and Mrs. Pope, smiling at the landscape and a prey to Management within, was suddenly inspired to take her eldest daughter into her confidence. "Daffy," she said, with a guileful finger extended and pointing to the lower sky as though she was pointing out the less obvious and more atmospheric beauties of Surrey, "get Theodore away from Mr. Magnet if you can. He wants to talk to Marjorie."
Daffy looked round. "Shall I call him?" she said.
"No," said Mrs. Pope, "do it--just--quietly."
"I'll try," said Daffy and stared at her task, and Mrs. Pope, feeling that this might or might not succeed but that anyhow she had done what she could, strolled across to her husband and laid a connubial touch upon his shoulder. "All the young people," she said, "are burning to climb the church tower. I never _can_ understand this activity after lunch."
"Not me," said Mr. Pope. "Eh, Magnet?"
"_I'm_ game," said Theodore. "Come along, Mr. Magnet."
"I think," said Mr. Magnet looking at Marjorie, "I shall go up. I want to show Marjorie the view."
"We'll stay here, Mummy, eh?" said Mr. Pope, with a quite unusual geniality, and suddenly put his arm round Mrs. Pope's waist. Her motherly eye sought Daffy's, and indicated her mission. "I'll come with you, Theodore," said Daffy. "There isn't room for everyone at once up that tower."
"I'll go with Mr. Magnet," said Theodore, relying firmly on the privileges of the day....
For a time they played for position, with the intentions of Mr. Magnet showing more and more starkly through the moves of the game. At last Theodore was lured down a side street by the sight of a huge dummy fish dangling outside a tackle and bait shop, and Mr. Magnet and Marjorie, already with a dreadful feeling of complicity, made a movement so rapid it seemed to her almost a bolt for the church tower. Whatever Mr. Magnet desired to say, and whatever elasticity his mind had once possessed with regard to it, there can be no doubt that it had now become so rigid as to be sayable only in that one precise position, and in the exact order he had determined upon. But when at last they got to that high serenity, Mr. Magnet was far too hot and far too much out of breath to say anything at all for a time except an almost explosive gust or so of approbation of the scenery. "Shor' breath!" he said, "win'ey stairs always--that 'fect on me--buful sceny--Suwy--like it always."
Marjorie found herself violently disposed to laugh; indeed she had never before been so near the verge of hysterics.
"It's a perfectly lovely view," she said. "No wonder you wanted me to see it."
"Naturally," said Mr. Magnet, "wanted you to see it."
Marjorie, with a skill her mother might have envied, wriggled into a half-sitting position in an embrasure and concentrated herself upon the broad wooded undulations that went about the horizon, and Mr. Magnet mopped his face with surreptitious gestures, and took deep restoring breaths.
"I've always wanted to bring you here," he said, "ever since I found it in the spring."
"It was very kind of you, Mr. Magnet," said Marjorie.
"You see," he explained, "whenever I see anything fine or rich or splendid or beautiful now, I seem to want it for you." His voice quickened as though he were repeating something that had been long in his mind. "I wish I could give you all this country. I wish I could put all that is beautiful in the world at your feet."
He watched the effect of this upon her for a moment.
"Marjorie," he said, "did you really mean what you told me the other day, that there was indeed no hope for me? I have a sort of feeling I bothered you that day, that perhaps you didn't mean all----"
He stopped short.
"I don't think I knew what I meant," said Marjorie, and Magnet gave a queer sound of relief at her words. "I don't think I know what I mean now. I don't think I can say I love you, Mr. Magnet. I would if I could. I like you very much indeed, I think you are awfully kind, you're more kind and generous than anyone I have ever known...."
Saying he was kind and generous made her through some obscure association of ideas feel that he must have understanding. She had an impulse to put her whole case before him frankly. "I wonder," she said, "if you can understand what it is to be a girl."
Then she saw the absurdity of her idea, of any such miracle of sympathy. He was entirely concentrated upon the appeal he had come prepared to make.
"Marjorie," he said, "I don't ask you to love me yet. All I ask is that you shouldn't decide _not_ to love me."
Marjorie became aware of Theodore, hotly followed by Daffy, in the churchyard below. "I _know_ he's up there," Theodore was manifestly saying.
Marjorie faced her lover gravely.
"Mr. Magnet," she said, "I will certainly promise you that."
"I would rather be your servant, rather live for your happiness, than do anything else in all the world," said Mr. Magnet. "If you would trust your life to me, if you would deign--." He paused to recover his thread. "If you would deign to let me make life what it should be for you, take every care from your shoulders, face every responsibility----"
Marjorie felt she had to hurry. She could almost feel the feet of Theodore coming up that tower.
"Mr. Magnet," she said, "you don't understand. You don't realize what I am. You don't know how unworthy I am--what a mere ignorant child----"
"Let me be judge of that!" cried Mr. Magnet.
They paused almost like two actors who listen for the prompter. It was only too obvious that both were aware of a little medley of imperfectly subdued noises below. Theodore had got to the ladder that made the last part of the ascent, and there Daffy had collared him. "_My_ birthday," said Theodore. "Come down! You _shan't_ go up there!" said Daffy. "You _mustn't_, Theodore!" "Why not?" There was something like a scuffle, and whispers. Then it would seem Theodore went--reluctantly and with protests. But the conflict receded.
"Marjorie!" said Mr. Magnet, as though there had been no pause, "if you would consent only to make an experiment, if you would try to love me. Suppose you _tried_ an engagement. I do not care how long I waited...."
He paused. "Will you try?" he urged upon her distressed silence.
She felt as though she forced the word. "_Yes!_" she said in a very low voice.
Then it seemed to her that Mr. Magnet leapt upon her. She felt herself pulled almost roughly from the embrasure, and he had kissed her. She struggled in his embrace. "Mr. Magnet!" she said. He lifted her face and kissed her lips. "Marjorie!" he said, and she had partly released herself.
"Oh _don't_ kiss me," she cried, "don't kiss me yet!"
"But a kiss!"
"I don't like it."
"I beg your pardon!" he said. "I forgot----. But you.... You.... I couldn't help it."
She was suddenly wildly sorry for what she had done. She felt she was going to cry, to behave absurdly.
"I want to go down," she said.
"Marjorie, you have made me the happiest of men! All my life, all my strength I will spend in showing you that you have made no mistake in trusting me----"
"Yes," she said, "yes," and wondered what she could say or do. It seemed to him that her shrinking pose was the most tenderly modest thing he had ever seen.
"Oh my dear!" he said, and restrained himself and took her passive hand and kissed it.
"I want to go down to them!" she insisted.
He paused on the topmost rungs of the ladder, looking unspeakable things at her. Then he turned to go down, and for the second time in her life she saw that incipient thinness....
"I am sure you will never be sorry," he said....
They found Mr. and Mrs. Pope in the churchyard. Mr. Pope was reading with amusement for the third time an epitaph that had caught his fancy--
"Lands ever bright, days ever fair, And yet we weep that _he_ is there."
he read. "You know that's really Good. That ought to be printed somewhere."
Mrs. Pope glanced sharply at her daughter's white face, and found an enigma. Then she looked at Mr. Magnet.
There was no mistake about Mr. Magnet. Marjorie had accepted him, whatever else she had felt or done.
§ 14
Marjorie's feelings for the rest of the day are only to be accounted for on the supposition that she was overwrought. She had a preposterous reaction. She had done this thing with her eyes open after days of deliberation, and now she felt as though she was caught in a trap. The clearest thing in her mind was that Mr. Magnet had taken hold of her and kissed her, kissed her on the lips, and that presently he would do it again. And also she was asking herself with futile reiteration why she had got into debt at Oxbridge? Why she had got into debt? For such silly little things too!
Nothing definite was said in her hearing about the engagement, but everybody seemed to understand. Mr. Pope was the most demonstrative, he took occasion to rap her hard upon the back, his face crinkled with a resolute kindliness. "Ah!" he said, "Sly Maggots!"
He also administered several resounding blows to Magnet's shoulder blades, and irradiated the party with a glow of benevolent waggery. Marjorie submitted without an answer to these paternal intimations. Mrs. Pope did no more than watch her daughter. Invisible but overwhelming forces were busy in bringing Marjorie and her glowing lover alone together again. It happened at last, as he was departing; she was almost to her inflamed imagination thrust out upon him, had to take him to the gate; and there in the shadows of the trees he kissed her "good night" with passionate effusion.
"Madge," he said, "Madge!"
She made no answer. She submitted passively to his embrace, and then suddenly and dexterously disengaged herself from him, ran in, and without saying good-night to anyone went to her room to bed.
Mr. Pope was greatly amused by this departure from the customary routine of life, and noted it archly.
When Daffy came up Marjorie was ostentatiously going to sleep....
As she herself was dropping off Daffy became aware of an odd sound, somehow familiar, and yet surprising and disconcerting.
Suddenly wide awake again, she started up. Yes there was no mistake about it! And yet it was very odd.
"Madge, what's up?"
No answer.
"I say! you aren't crying, Madge, are you?"
Then after a long interval: "_Madge!_"
An answer came in a muffled voice, almost as if Marjorie had something in her mouth. "Oh shut it, old Daffy."
"But Madge?" said Daffy after reflection.
"Shut it. _Do_ shut it! Leave me alone, I say! Can't you leave me alone? Oh!"--and for a moment she let her sobs have way with her--"Daffy, don't worry me. Old Daffy! _Please!_"
Daffy sat up for a long time in the stifled silence that ensued, and then like a sensible sister gave it up, and composed herself again to slumber....
Outside watching the window in a state of nebulous ecstasy, was Mr. Magnet, moonlit and dewy. It was a high serene night with a growing moon and a scattered company of major stars, and if no choir of nightingales sang there was at least a very active nightjar. "More than I hoped," whispered Mr. Magnet, "more than I dared to hope." He was very sleepy, but it seemed to him improper to go to bed on such a night--on such an occasion.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
THE MAN WHO FELL OUT OF THE SKY
§ 1
For the next week Marjorie became more nearly introspective than she had ever been in her life before. She began to doubt her hitherto unshaken conviction that she was a single, consistent human being. She found such discords and discrepancies between mood and mood, between the conviction of this hour and the feeling of that, that it seemed to her she was rather a collection of samples of emotion and attitude than anything so simple as an individual.
For example, there can be no denying there was one Marjorie in the bundle who was immensely set up by the fact that she was engaged, and going to be at no very remote date mistress of a London house. She was profoundly Plessingtonian, and quite the vulgarest of the lot. The new status she had attained and the possibly beautiful house and the probably successful dinner-parties and the arrangements and the importance of such a life was the substance of this creature's thought. She designed some queenly dresses. This was the Marjorie most in evidence when it came to talking with her mother and Daphne. I am afraid she patronized Daphne, and ignored the fact that Daphne, who had begun with a resolute magnanimity, was becoming annoyed and resentful.
And she thought of things she might buy, and the jolly feeling of putting them about and making fine effects with them. One thing she told Daphne, she had clearly resolved upon; the house should be always full and brimming over with beautiful flowers. "I've always wished mother would have more flowers--and not keep them so long when she has them...."
Another Marjorie in the confusion of her mind was doing her sincerest, narrow best to appreciate and feel grateful for and return the devotion of Mr. Magnet. This Marjorie accepted and even elaborated his views, laid stress on his voluntary subjection, harped upon his goodness, brought her to kiss him.
"I don't deserve all this love," this side of Marjorie told Magnet. "But I mean to learn to love you----"
"My dear one!" cried Magnet, and pressed her hand....
A third Marjorie among the many was an altogether acuter and less agreeable person. She was a sprite of pure criticism, and in spite of the utmost efforts to suppress her, she declared night and day in the inner confidences of Marjorie's soul that she did not believe in Mr. Magnet's old devotion at all. She was anti-Magnet, a persistent insurgent. She was dreadfully unsettling. It was surely this Marjorie that wouldn't let the fact of his baldness alone, and who discovered and insisted upon a curious unbeautiful flatness in his voice whenever he was doing his best to speak from the heart. And as for this devotion, what did it amount to? A persistent unimaginative besetting of Marjorie, a growing air of ownership, an expansive, indulgent, smiling disposition to thwart and control. And he was always touching her! Whenever he came near her she would wince at the freedoms a large, kind hand might take with her elbow or wrist, at a possible sudden, clumsy pat at some erring strand of hair.
Then there was an appraising satisfaction in his eye.
On the third day of their engagement he began, quite abruptly, to call her "Magsy." "We'll end this scandal of a Girl Pope," he said. "Magsy Magnet, you'll be--M.M. No women M.P.'s for _us_, Magsy...."
She became acutely critical of his intellectual quality. She listened with a new alertness to the conversations at the dinner-table, the bouts of wit with her father. She carried off utterances and witticism for maturer reflection. She was amazed to find how little they could withstand the tests and acids of her mind. So many things, such wide and interesting fields, he did not so much think about as cover with a large enveloping shallowness....
He came strolling around the vicarage into the garden one morning about eleven, though she had not expected him until lunch-time; and she was sitting with her feet tucked up on the aged but still practicable garden-seat reading Shaw's "Common Sense of Municipal Trading." He came and leant over the back of the seat, and she looked up, said "Good morning. Isn't it perfectly lovely?" and indicated by a book still open that her interest in it remained alive.
"What's the book, Magsy?" he asked, took it out of her slightly resisting hand, closed it and read the title. "Um," he said; "Isn't this a bit stiff for little women's brains?"
All the rebel Marjories were up in arms at that.
"Dreadful word, 'Municipal.' I _don't_ like it." He shook his head with a grimace of humorous distaste.
"I suppose women have as good brains as men," said Marjorie, "if it comes to that."
"Better," said Magnet. "That's why they shouldn't trouble about horrid things like Municipal and Trading.... On a day like this!"
"Don't you think this sort of thing is interesting?"
"Oh!" he said, and flourished the book. "Come! And besides--_Shaw!_"
"He makes a very good case."
"But he's such a--mountebank."
"Does that matter? He isn't a mountebank there."
"He's not sincere. I doubt if you had a serious book on Municipal Trading, Magsy, whether you'd make head or tail of it. It's a stiff subject. Shaw just gets his chance for a smart thing or so.... I'd rather you read a good novel."
He really had the air of taking her reading in hand.
"You think I ought not to read an intelligent book."
"I think we ought to leave those things to the people who understand."
"But we ought to understand."
He smiled wisely. "There's a lot of things _you_ have to understand," he said, "nearer home than this."
Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to say!" she cried, with an undergraduate's freedom. "Really, you are talking nonsense! I read that book because it interests me. If I didn't, I should read something else. Do you mean to suggest that I'm reading like a child, who holds a book upside down?"
She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback. "I don't mean to suggest--" he began, and turned to greet the welcome presence, the interrogative eye of Mrs. Pope.
"Here we are!" he said, "having a quarrel!"
"Marjorie!" said Mrs. Pope.
"Oh, it's serious!" said Mr. Magnet, and added with a gleam: "It's about Municipal Trading!"
Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's eye better than Mr. Magnet. She had known it from the nursery, and yet she had never quite mastered its meaning. She had never yet realized it was Marjorie, she had always regarded it as something Marjorie, some other Marjorie, ought to keep under control. So now she adopted a pacificatory tone.
"Oh! lovers' quarrels," she said, floating over the occasion. "Lovers' quarrels. You mustn't ask _me_ to interfere!"
Marjorie, already a little ashamed of her heat, thought for an instant she ought to stand that, and then decided abruptly with a return to choler that she would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand for her book.
"Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable force and freedom as she took it, "has been talking unutterable nonsense. I don't call that a lovers' quarrel--anyhow."
Then, confronted with a double astonishment, and having no more to say, she picked up her skirt quite unnecessarily, and walked with a heavenward chin indoors.
"I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a little too free with one of Magsy's favourite authors."
"Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs. Pope, after a reflective pause, with a mother's indulgent smile.
"Shaw." He raised amused eyebrows. "It's just the age, I suppose."
"She's frightfully loyal while it lasts," said Mrs. Pope. "No one dare say a word against them."
"I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet--with an answering loyalty and gusto.
§ 2
The aviation accident occurred while Mrs. Pope, her two eldest daughters, and Mr. Magnet were playing golf-croquet upon the vicarage lawn. It was a serene, hot afternoon, a little too hot to take a game seriously, and the four little figures moved slowly over the green and grouped and dispersed as the game required. Mr. Magnet was very fond of golf-croquet, he displayed a whimsical humour and much invention at this game, it was not too exacting physically; and he could make his ball jump into the air in the absurdest manner. Occasionally he won a laugh from Marjorie or Daffy. No one else was in sight; the pseudo-twins and Theodore and Toupee were in the barn, and Mr. Pope was six miles away at Wamping, lying prone, nibbling grass blades and watching a county cricket match, as every good Englishman, who knows what is expected of him, loves to do.... Click went ball and mallet, and then after a long interval, click. It seemed incredible that anything could possibly happen before tea.
But this is no longer the world it was. Suddenly this tranquil scene was slashed and rent by the sound and vision of a monoplane tearing across the heavens.
A purring and popping arrested Mr. Magnet in mid jest, and the monster came sliding up the sky over the trees beside the church to the east, already near enough to look big, a great stiff shape, big buff sails stayed with glittering wire, and with two odd little wheels beneath its body. It drove up the sky, rising with a sort of upward heaving, until the croquet players could see the driver and a passenger perched behind him quite clearly. It passed a little to the right of the church tower and only a few yards above the level of the flagstaff, there wasn't fifty feet of clearance altogether, and as it did so Marjorie could see both driver and passenger making hasty movements. It became immense and over-shadowing, and every one stood rigid as it swept across the sun above the vicarage chimneys. Then it seemed to drop twenty feet or so abruptly, and then both the men cried out as it drove straight for the line of poplars between the shrubbery and the meadow. "Oh, oh, OH!" cried Mrs. Pope and Daffy. Evidently the aviator was trying to turn sharply; the huge thing banked, but not enough, and came about and slipped away until its wing was slashing into the tree tops with a thrilling swish of leaves and the snapping of branches and stays.
"Run!" cried Magnet, and danced about the lawn, and the three ladies rushed sideways as the whole affair slouched down on them. It came on its edge, hesitated whether to turn over as a whole, then crumpled, and amidst a volley of smashing and snapping came to rest amidst ploughed-up turf, a clamorous stench of petrol, and a cloud of dust and blue smoke within twenty yards of them. The two men had jumped to clear the engine, had fallen headlong, and were now both covered by the fabric of the shattered wing.
It was all too spectacular for word or speech until the thing lay still. Even then the croquet players stood passive for awhile waiting for something to happen. It took some seconds to reconcile their minds to this sudden loss of initiative in a monster that had been so recently and threateningly full of go. It seemed quite a long time before it came into Marjorie's head that she ought perhaps to act in some way. She saw a tall young man wriggling on all fours from underneath the wreckage of fabric. He stared at her rather blankly. She went forward with a vague idea of helping him. He stood up, swayed doubtfully on his legs, turned, and became energetic, struggling mysteriously with the edge of the left wing. He gasped and turned fierce blue eyes over his shoulder.
"Help me to hold the confounded thing up!" he cried, with a touch of irritation in his voice at her attitude.
Marjorie at once seized the edge of the plane and pushed. The second man, in a peculiar button-shaped head-dress, was lying crumpled up underneath, his ear and cheek were bright with blood, and there was a streak of blood on the ground near his head.
"That's right. Can you hold it if I use only one hand?"
Marjorie gasped "Yes," with a terrific weight as it seemed suddenly on her wrists.
"Right O," and the tall young man had thrust himself backwards under the plane until it rested on his back, and collared the prostrate man. "Keep it up!" he said fiercely when Marjorie threatened to give way. He seemed to assume that she was there to obey orders, and with much grunting and effort he had dragged his companion clear of the wreckage.
The man's face was a mass of blood, and he was sickeningly inert to his companion's lugging.
"Let it go," said the tall young man, and Marjorie thanked heaven as the broken wing flapped down again.
She came helpfully to his side, and became aware of Daffy and her mother a few paces off. Magnet--it astonished her--was retreating hastily. But he had to go away because the sight of blood upset him--so much that it was always wiser for him to go away.
"Is he hurt?" cried Mrs. Pope.
"We both are," said the tall young man, and then as though these other people didn't matter and he and Marjorie were old friends, he said: "Can we turn him over?"
"I think so." Marjorie grasped the damaged man's shoulder and got him over skilfully.
"Will you get some water?" said the tall young man to Daffy and Mrs. Pope, in a way that sent Daffy off at once for a pail.
"He wants water," she said to the parlourmaid who was hurrying out of the house.
The tall young man had gone down on his knees by his companion, releasing his neck, and making a hasty first examination of his condition. "The pneumatic cap must have saved his head," he said, throwing the thing aside. "Lucky he had it. He can't be badly hurt. Just rubbed his face along the ground. Silly thing to have come as we did."
He felt the heart, and tried the flexibility of an arm.
"_That's_ all right," he said.
He became judicial and absorbed over the problems of his friend's side. "Um," he remarked. He knelt back and regarded Marjorie for the first time. "Thundering smash," he said. His face relaxed into an agreeable smile. "He only bought it last week."
"Is he hurt?"
"Rib, I think--or two ribs perhaps. Stunned rather. All _this_--just his nose."
He regarded Marjorie and Marjorie him for a brief space. He became aware of Mrs. Pope on his right hand. Then at a clank behind, he turned round to see Daphne advancing with a pail of water. The two servants were now on the spot, and the odd-job man, and the old lady who did out the church, and Magnet hovered doubtfully in the distance. Suddenly with shouts and barks of sympathetic glee the pseudo-twins, Theodore and Toupee shot out of the house. New thoughts were stirring in the young aviator. He rose, wincing a little as he did so. "I'm afraid I'm a little rude," he said.
"I do hope your friend isn't hurt," said Mrs. Pope, feeling the duty of a hostess.
"He's not hurt _much_--so far as I can see. Haven't we made rather a mess of your lawn?"
"Oh, not at all!" said Mrs. Pope.
"We have. If that is your gardener over there, it would be nice if he kept back the people who seem to be hesitating beyond those trees. There will be more presently. I'm afraid I must throw myself on your hands." He broke into a chuckle for a moment. "I have, you know. Is it possible to get a doctor? My friend's not hurt so very much, but still he wants expert handling. He's Sir Rupert Solomonson, from"--he jerked his head back--"over beyond Tunbridge Wells. My name's Trafford."
"I'm Mrs. Pope and these are my daughters."
Trafford bowed. "We just took the thing out for a lark," he said.
Marjorie had been regarding the prostrate man. His mouth was a little open, and he showed beautiful teeth. Apart from the dry blood upon him he was not an ill-looking man. He was manifestly a Jew, a square-rigged Jew (you have remarked of course that there are square-rigged Jews, whose noses are within bounds, and fore-and-aft Jews, whose noses aren't), with not so much a bullet-head as a round-shot, cropped like the head of a Capuchin monkey. Suddenly she was down and had his head on her knee, with a quick movement that caught Trafford's eye. "He's better," she said. "His eyelids flickered. Daffy, bring the water."
She had felt a queer little repugnance at first with this helpless man, but now that professional nurse who lurks in the composition of so many women, was uppermost. "Give me your handkerchief," she said to Trafford, and with Daffy kneeling beside her and also interested, and Mrs. Pope a belated but more experienced and authoritative third, Sir Rupert was soon getting the best of attention.
"Wathall ..." said Sir Rupert suddenly, and tried again: "Wathall." A third effort gave "Wathall about, eh?"
"If we could get him into the shade," said Marjorie.
"Woosh," cried Sir Rupert. "Weeeooo!"
"That's all right," said Trafford. "It's only a rib or two."
"Eeeeeyoooo!" said Sir Rupert.
"Exactly. We're going to carry you out of the glare."
"Don't touch me," said Sir Rupert. "Gooo."
It took some little persuasion before Sir Rupert would consent to be moved, and even then he was for a time--oh! crusty. But presently Trafford and the two girls had got him into the shade of a large bush close to where in a circle of rugs and cushions the tea things lay prepared. There they camped. The helpful odd-job man was ordered to stave off intruders from the village; water, towels, pillows were forthcoming. Mr. Magnet reappeared as tentative assistance, and Solomonson became articulate and brave and said he'd nothing but a stitch in his side. In his present position he wasn't at all uncomfortable. Only he didn't want any one near him. He enforced that by an appealing smile. The twins, invited to fetch the doctor, declined, proffering Theodore. They had conceived juvenile passions for the tall young man, and did not want to leave him. He certainly had a very nice face. So Theodore after walking twice round the wreckage, tore himself away and departed on Rom's bicycle. Enquiry centred on Solomonson for a time. His face, hair and neck were wet but no longer bloody, and he professed perfect comfort so long as he wasn't moved, and no one came too near him. He was very clear about that though perfectly polite, and scrutinized their faces to see if they were equally clear. Satisfied upon this point he closed his eyes and spoke no more. He looked then like a Capuchin monkey lost in pride. There came a pause. Every one was conscious of having risen to an emergency and behaved well under unusual circumstances. The young man's eye rested on the adjacent tea-things, lacking nothing but the coronation of the teapot.
"Why not," he remarked, "have tea?"
"If you think your friend----" began Mrs. Pope.
"Oh! _he's_ all right. Aren't you, Solomonson? There's nothing more now until the doctor."
"Only want to be left alone," said Solomonson, and closed his heavy eyelids again.
Mrs. Pope told the maids, with an air of dismissal, to get tea.
"We can keep an eye on him," said Trafford.
Marjorie surveyed her first patient with a pretty unconscious mixture of maternal gravity and girlish interest, and the twins to avoid too openly gloating upon the good looks of Trafford, chose places and secured cushions round the tea-things, calculating to the best of their ability how they might secure the closest proximity to him. Mr. Magnet and Toupee had gone to stare at the monoplane; they were presently joined by the odd-job man in an interrogative mood. "Pretty complete smash, sir!" said the odd-job man, and then perceiving heads over the hedge by the churchyard, turned back to his duty of sentinel. Daffy thought of the need of more cups and plates and went in to get them, and Mrs. Pope remarked that she did hope Sir Rupert was not badly hurt....
"Extraordinary all this is," remarked Mr. Trafford. "Now, here we were after lunch, twenty miles away--smoking cigars and with no more idea of having tea with you than--I was going to say--flying. But that's out of date now. Then we just thought we'd try the thing.... Like a dream."
He addressed himself to Marjorie: "I never feel that life is quite real until about three days after things have happened. Never. Two hours ago I had not the slightest intention of ever flying again."
"But haven't you flown before?" asked Mrs. Pope.
"Not much. I did a little at Sheppey, but it's so hard for a poor man to get his hands on a machine. And here was Solomonson, with this thing in his hangar, eating its head off. Let's take it out," I said, "and go once round the park. And here we are.... I thought it wasn't wise for him to come...."
Sir Rupert, without opening his eyes, was understood to assent.
"Do you know," said Trafford, "The sight of your tea makes me feel frightfully hungry."
"I don't think the engine's damaged?" he said cheerfully, "do you?" as Magnet joined them. "The ailerons are in splinters, and the left wing's not much better. But that's about all except the wheels. One falls so much lighter than you might suppose--from the smash.... Lucky it didn't turn over. Then, you know, the engine comes on the top of you, and you're done."
§ 3
The doctor arrived after tea, with a bag and a stethoscope in a small coffin-like box, and the Popes and Mr. Magnet withdrew while Sir Rupert was carefully sounded, tested, scrutinized, questioned, watched and examined in every way known to medical science. The outcome of the conference was presently communicated to the Popes by Mr. Trafford and the doctor. Sir Rupert was not very seriously injured, but he was suffering from concussion and shock, two of his ribs were broken and his wrist sprained, unless perhaps one of the small bones was displaced. He ought to be bandaged up and put to bed....
"Couldn't we--" said Mrs. Pope, but the doctor assured her his own house was quite the best place. There Sir Rupert could stay for some days. At present the cross-country journey over the Downs or by the South Eastern Railway would be needlessly trying and painful. He would with the Popes' permission lie quietly where he was for an hour or so, and then the doctor would come with a couple of men and a carrying bed he had, and take him off to his own house. There he would be, as Mr. Trafford said, "as right as ninepence," and Mr. Trafford could put up either at the Red Lion with Mr. Magnet or in the little cottage next door to the doctor. (Mr. Trafford elected for the latter as closer to his friend.) As for the smashed aeroplane, telegrams would be sent at once to Sir Rupert's engineers at Chesilbury, and they would have all that cleared away by mid-day to-morrow....
The doctor departed; Sir Rupert, after stimulants, closed his eyes, and Mr. Trafford seated himself at the tea-things for some more cake, as though introduction by aeroplane was the most regular thing in the world.
He had very pleasant and easy manners, an entire absence of self-consciousness, and a quick talkative disposition that made him very rapidly at home with everybody. He described all the sensations of flight, his early lessons and experiments, and in the utmost detail the events of the afternoon that had led to this disastrous adventure. He made his suggestion of "trying the thing" seem the most natural impulse in the world. The bulk of the conversation fell on him; Mr. Magnet, save for the intervention of one or two jests, was quietly observant; the rest were well disposed to listen. And as Mr. Trafford talked his eye rested ever and again on Marjorie with the faintest touch of scrutiny and perplexity, and she, too, found a curious little persuasion growing up in her mind that somewhere, somehow, she and he had met and had talked rather earnestly. But how and where eluded her altogether....
They had sat for an hour--the men from the doctor's seemed never coming--when Mr. Pope returned unexpectedly from his cricket match, which had ended a little prematurely in a rot on an over-dry wicket. He was full of particulars of the day's play, and how Wiper had got a most amazing catch and held it, though he fell; how Jenks had deliberately bowled at a man's head, he believed, and little Gibbs thrown a man out from slip. He was burning to tell all this in the utmost detail to Magnet and his family, so that they might at least share the retrospect of his pleasure. He had thought out rather a good pun on Wiper, and he was naturally a little thwarted to find all this good, rich talk crowded out by a more engrossing topic.
At the sight of a stranger grouped in a popular manner beside the tea-things, he displayed a slight acerbity, which was if anything increased by the discovery of a prostrate person with large brown eyes and an expression of Oriental patience and disdain, in the shade of a bush near by. At first he seemed scarcely to grasp Mrs. Pope's explanations, and regarded Sir Rupert with an expression that bordered on malevolence. Then, when his attention was directed to the smashed machine upon the lawn, he broke out into a loud indignant: "Good God! What next?"
He walked towards the wreckage, disregarding Mr. Trafford beside him. "A man can't go away from his house for an hour!" he complained.
"I can assure you we did all we could to prevent it," said Trafford.
"Ought never to have had it to prevent," said Mr. Pope. "Is your friend hurt?"
"A rib--and shock," said Trafford.
"Well--he deserves it," said Mr. Pope. "Rather than launch myself into the air in one of those infernal things, I'd be stood against a wall and shot."
"Tastes differ, of course," said Trafford, with unruffled urbanity.
"You'll have all this cleared away," said Mr. Pope.
"Mechanics--oh! a complete break-down party--are speeding to us in fast motors," said Trafford. "Thanks to the kindness of your domestic in taking a telegram for me."
"Hope they won't kill any one," said Mr. Pope, and just for a moment the conversation hung fire. "And your friend?" he asked.
"He goes in the next ten minutes--well, whenever the litter comes from the doctor's. Poor old Solomonson!"
"Solomonson?"
"Sir Rupert."
"Oh!" said Mr. Pope. "Is that the Pigmentation Solomonson?"
"I believe he does do some beastly company of that sort," said Trafford. "Isn't it amazing we didn't smash our engine?"
Sir Rupert Solomonson was indeed a familiar name to Mr. Pope. He had organized the exploitation of a number of pigment and bye-product patents, and the ordinary and deferred shares of his syndicate has risen to so high a price as to fill Mr. Pope with the utmost confidence in their future; indeed he had bought considerably, withdrawing capital to do so from an Argentine railway whose stock had awakened his distaste and a sort of moral aversion by slumping heavily after a bad wheat and linseed harvest. This discovery did much to mitigate his first asperity, his next remark to Trafford was almost neutral, and he was even asking Sir Rupert whether he could do anything to make him comfortable, when the doctor returned with a litter, borne by four hastily compiled bearers.
§ 4
Some brightness seemed to vanish when the buoyant Mr. Trafford, still undauntedly cheerful, limped off after his more injured friend, and disappeared through the gate. Marjorie found herself in a world whose remaining manhood declined to see anything but extreme annoyance in this gay, exciting rupture of the afternoon. "Good God!" said Mr. Pope. "What next? What next?"
"Registration, I hope," said Mr. Magnet,--"and relegation to the desert of Sahara."
"One good thing about it," said Mr. Pope--"it all wastes petrol. And when the petrol supply gives out--they're done."
"Certainly we might all have been killed!" said Mrs. Pope, feeling she had to bear her witness against their visitors, and added: "If we hadn't moved out of the way, that is."
There was a simultaneous movement towards the shattered apparatus, about which a small contingent of villagers, who had availed themselves of the withdrawal of the sentinel, had now assembled.
"Look at it!" said Mr. Pope, with bitter hostility. "Look at it!"
Everyone had anticipated his command.
"They'll never come to anything," said Mr. Pope, after a pause of silent hatred.
"But they _have_ to come to something," said Marjorie.
"They've come to smash!" said Mr. Magnet, with the true humorist's air.
"But consider the impudence of this invasion, the wild--objectionableness of it!"
"They're nasty things," said Mr. Magnet. "Nasty things!"
A curious spirit of opposition stirred in Marjorie. It seemed to her that men who play golf-croquet and watch cricket matches have no business to contemn men who risk their lives in the air. She sought for some controversial opening.
"Isn't the engine rather wonderful?" she remarked.
Mr. Magnet regarded the engine with his head a little on one side. "It's the usual sort," he said.
"There weren't engines like that twenty years ago."
"There weren't people like _you_ twenty years ago," said Mr. Magnet, smiling wisely and kindly, and turned his back on the thing.
Mr. Pope followed suit. He was filled with the bitter thought that he would never now be able to tell the history of the remarkable match he had witnessed. It was all spoilt for him--spoilt for ever. Everything was disturbed and put out.
"They've left us our tennis lawn," he said, with a not unnatural resentment passing to invitation. "What do you say, Magnet? Now you've begun the game you must keep it up?"
"If Marjorie, or Mrs. Pope, or Daffy...?" said Magnet.
Mrs. Pope declared the house required her. And so with the gravest apprehensions, and an insincere compliment to their father's energy, Daffy and Marjorie made up a foursome for that healthy and invigorating game. But that evening Mr. Pope got his serve well into the bay of the sagging net almost at once, and with Marjorie in the background taking anything he left her, he won quite easily, and everything became pleasant again. Magnet gloated upon Marjorie and served her like a missionary giving Bibles to heathen children, he seemed always looking at her instead of the ball, and except for a slight disposition on the part of Daffy to slash, nothing could have been more delightful. And at supper Mr. Pope, rather crushing his wife's attempt to recapitulate the more characteristic sayings and doings of Sir Rupert and his friend, did after all succeed in giving every one a very good idea indeed of the more remarkable incidents of the cricket match at Wamping, and made the pun he had been accustomed to use upon the name of Wiper in a new and improved form. A general talk about cricket and the Immense Good of cricket followed. Mr. Pope said he would make cricket-playing compulsory for every English boy.
Everyone it seemed to Marjorie was forgetting that dark shape athwart the lawn, and all the immense implication of its presence, with a deliberate and irrational skill, and she noted that the usual move towards the garden at the end of the evening was not made.
§ 5
In the night time Marjorie had a dream that she was flying about in the world on a monoplane with Mr. Trafford as a passenger.
Then Mr. Trafford disappeared, and she was flying about alone with a curious uneasy feeling that in a minute or so she would be unable any longer to manage the machine.
Then her father and Mr. Magnet appeared very far below, walking about and disapproving of her. Mr. Magnet was shaking his head very, very sagely, and saying: "Rather a stiff job for little Marjorie," and her father was saying she would be steadier when she married. And then, she wasn't clear how, the engine refused to work until her bills were paid, and she began to fall, and fall, and fall towards Mr. Magnet. She tried frantically to pay her bills. She was falling down the fronts of skyscrapers and precipices--and Mr. Magnet was waiting for her below with a quiet kindly smile that grew wider and wider and wider....
She woke up palpitating.
§ 6
Next morning a curious restlessness came upon Marjorie. Conceivably it was due to the absence of Magnet, who had gone to London to deliver his long promised address on The Characteristics of English Humour to the _Literati_ Club. Conceivably she missed his attentions. But it crystallized out in the early afternoon into the oddest form, a powerful craving to go to the little town of Pensting, five miles off, on the other side of Buryhamstreet, to buy silk shoelaces.
She decided to go in the donkey cart. She communicated her intention to her mother, but she did not communicate an equally definite intention to be reminded suddenly of Sir Rupert Solomonson as she was passing the surgery, and make an inquiry on the spur of the moment--it wouldn't surely be anything but a kindly and justifiable impulse to do that. She might see Mr. Trafford perhaps, but there was no particular harm in that.
It is also to be remarked that finding Theodore a little disposed to encumber her vehicle with his presence she expressed her delight at being released from the need of going, and abandoned the whole expedition to him--knowing as she did perfectly well that if Theodore hated anything more than navigating the donkey cart alone, it was going unprotected into a shop to buy articles of feminine apparel--until he chucked the whole project and went fishing--if one can call it fishing when there are no fish and the fisherman knows it--in the decadent ornamental water.
And it is also to be remarked that as Marjorie approached the surgery she was seized with an absurd and powerful shyness, so that not only did she not call at the surgery, she did not even look at the surgery, she gazed almost rigidly straight ahead, telling herself, however, that she merely deferred that kindly impulse until she had bought her laces. And so it happened that about half a mile beyond the end of Buryhamstreet she came round a corner upon Trafford, and by a singular fatality he also was driving a donkey, or, rather, was tracing a fan-like pattern on the road with a donkey's hoofs. It was a very similar donkey to Marjorie's, but the vehicle was a governess cart, and much smarter than Marjorie's turn-out. His ingenuous face displayed great animation at the sight of her, and as she drew alongside he hailed her with an almost unnatural ease of manner.
"Hullo!" he cried. "I'm taking the air. You seem to be able to drive donkeys forward. How do you do it? I can't. Never done anything so dangerous in my life before. I've just been missed by two motor cars, and hung for a terrible minute with my left wheel on the very verge of an unfathomable ditch. I could hear the little ducklings far, far below, and bits of mould dropping. I tried to count before the splash. Aren't you--_white?_"
"But why are you doing it?"
"One must do something. I'm bandaged up and can't walk. It hurt my leg more than I knew--your doctor says. Solomonson won't talk of anything but how he feels, and _I_ don't care a rap how he feels. So I got this thing and came out with it."
Marjorie made her inquiries. There came a little pause.
"Some day no one will believe that men were ever so foolish as to trust themselves to draught animals," he remarked. "Hullo! Look out! The horror of it!"
A large oil van--a huge drum on wheels--motor-driven, had come round the corner, and after a preliminary and quite insufficient hoot, bore down upon them, and missing Trafford as it seemed by a miracle, swept past. Both drivers did wonderful things with whips and reins, and found themselves alone in the road again, with their wheels locked and an indefinite future.
"I leave the situation to you," said Trafford. "Or shall we just sit and talk until the next motor car kills us?"
"We ought to make an effort," said Marjorie, cheerfully, and descended to lead the two beasts.
Assisted by an elderly hedger, who had been taking a disregarded interest in them for some time, she separated the wheels and got the two donkeys abreast. The old hedger's opinion of their safety on the king's highway was expressed by his action rather than his words; he directed the beasts towards a shady lane that opened at right angles to the road. He stood by their bridles while Marjorie resumed her seat.
"It seems to me clearly a case for compromise," said Trafford. "You want to go that way, I want to go that way. Let us both go _this_ way. It is by such arrangements that civilization becomes possible."
He dismissed the hedger generously and resumed his reins.
"Shall we race?" he asked.
"With your leg?" she inquired.
"No; with the donkeys. I say, this _is_ rather a lark. At first I thought it was both dangerous and dull. But things have changed. I am in beastly high spirits. I feel there will be a cry before night; but still, I am----I wanted the companionship of an unbroken person. It's so jolly to meet you again."
"Again?"
"After the year before last."
"After the year before last?"
"You didn't know," said Trafford, "I had met you before? How aggressive I must have seemed! Well, _I_ wasn't quite clear. I spent the greater part of last night--my ankle being foolish in the small hours--in trying to remember how and where."
"I don't remember," said Marjorie.
"I remembered you very distinctly, and some things I thought about you, but not where it had happened. Then in the night I got it. It _is_ a puzzle, isn't it? You see, I was wearing a black gown, and I had been out of the sunlight for some months--and my eye, I remember it acutely, was bandaged. I'm usually bandaged somewhere.
'I was a King in Babylon And you were a Christian slave'
--I mean a candidate."
Marjorie remembered suddenly. "You're Professor Trafford."
"Not in this atmosphere. But I am at the Romeike College. And as soon as I recalled examining you I remembered it--minutely. You were intelligent, though unsound--about cryo-hydrates it was. Ah, you remember me now. As most young women are correct by rote and unintelligent in such questions, and as it doesn't matter a rap about anything of that sort, whether you are correct or not, as long as the mental gesture is right----" He paused for a moment, as though tired of his sentence. "I remembered you."
He proceeded in his easy and detached manner, that seemed to make every topic possible, to tell her his first impressions of her, and show how very distinctly indeed he remembered her.
"You set me philosophizing. I'd never examined a girls' school before, and I was suddenly struck by the spectacle of the fifty of you. What's going to become of them all?"
"I thought," he went on, "how bright you were, and how keen and eager you were--_you_, I mean, in particular--and just how certain it was your brightness and eagerness would be swallowed up by some silly ordinariness or other--stuffy marriage or stuffy domestic duties. The old, old story--done over again with a sort of threadbare badness. (Nothing to say against it if it's done well.) I got quite sentimental and pathetic about life's breach of faith with women. Odd, isn't it, how one's mind runs on. But that's what I thought. It's all come back to me."
Marjorie's bright, clear eye came round to him. "I don't see very much wrong with the lot of women," she reflected. "Things are different nowadays. Anyhow----"
She paused.
"You don't want to be a man?"
"_No!_"
She was emphatic.
"Some of us cut more sharply at life than you think," he said, plumbing her unspoken sense.
She had never met a man before who understood just how a girl can feel the slow obtuseness of his sex. It was almost as if he had found her out at something.
"Oh," she said, "perhaps you do," and looked at him with an increased interest.
"I'm half-feminine, I believe," he said. "For instance, I've got just a woman's joy in textures and little significant shapes. I know how you feel about that. I can spend hours, even now, in crystal gazing--I don't mean to see some silly revelation of some silly person's proceedings somewhere, but just for the things themselves. I wonder if you have ever been in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and looked at Ruskin's crystal collection? I saw it when I was a boy, and it became--I can't help the word--an obsession. The inclusions like moss and like trees, and all sorts of fantastic things, and the cleavages and enclosures with little bubbles, and the lights and shimmer--What were we talking about? Oh, about the keen way your feminine perceptions cut into things. And yet somehow I was throwing contempt on the feminine intelligence. I don't do justice to the order of my thoughts. Never mind. We've lost the thread. But I wish you knew my mother."
He went on while Marjorie was still considering the proper response to this.
"You see, I'm her only son and she brought me up, and we know each other--oh! very well. She helps with my work. She understands nearly all of it. She makes suggestions. And to this day I don't know if she's the most original or the most parasitic of creatures. And that's the way with all women and girls, it seems to me. You're as critical as light, and as undiscriminating.... I say, do I strike you as talking nonsense?"
"Not a bit," said Marjorie. "But you do go rather fast."
"I know," he admitted. "But somehow you excite me. I've been with Solomonson a week, and he's dull at all times. It was that made me take out that monoplane of his. But it did him no good."
He paused.
"They told me after the exam.," said Marjorie, "you knew more about crystallography--than anyone."
"Does that strike you as a dull subject?"
"No," said Marjorie, in a tone that invited justifications.
"It isn't. I think--naturally, that the world one goes into when one studies molecular physics is quite the most beautiful of Wonderlands.... I can assure you I work sometimes like a man who is exploring a magic palace.... Do you know anything of molecular physics?"
"You examined me," said Marjorie.
"The sense one has of exquisite and wonderful rhythms--just beyond sound and sight! And there's a taunting suggestion of its being all there, displayed and confessed, if only one were quick enough to see it. Why, for instance, when you change the composition of a felspar almost imperceptibly, do the angles change? What's the correspondence between the altered angle and the substituted atom? Why does this bit of clear stuff swing the ray of light so much out of its path, and that swing it more? Then what happens when crystals gutter down, and go into solution. The endless launching of innumerable little craft. Think what a clear solution must be if only one had ultra-microscopic eyes and could see into it, see the extraordinary patternings, the swimming circling constellations. And then the path of a ray of polarized light beating through it! It takes me like music. Do you know anything of the effects of polarized light, the sight of a slice of olivine-gabbro for instance between crossed Nicols?"
"I've seen some rock sections," said Marjorie. "I forget the names of the rocks."
"The colours?"
"Oh yes, the colours."
"Is there anything else so rich and beautiful in all the world? And every different mineral and every variety of that mineral has a different palette of colours, a different scheme of harmonies--and is telling you something."
"If only you understood."
"Exactly. All the ordinary stuff of life--you know--the carts and motor cars and dusty roads and--cinder sifting, seems so blank to me--with that persuasion of swing and subtlety beneath it all. As if the whole world was fire and crystal and aquiver--with some sort of cotton wrappers thrown over it...."
"Dust sheets," said Marjorie. "I know."
"Or like a diamond painted over!"
"With that sort of grey paint, very full of body--that lasts."
"Yes." He smiled at her. "I can't help apologetics. Most people think a professor of science is just----"
"A professor of science."
"Yes. Something all pedantries and phrases. I want to clear my character. As though it is foolish to follow a vortex ring into a vacuum, and wise to whack at a dirty golf ball on a suburban railway bank. Oh, their golf! Under high heaven!... You don't play golf, do you, by any chance?"
"Only the woman's part," said Marjorie.
"And they despise us," he said. "Solomonson can hardly hide how he despises us. Nothing is more wonderful than the way these people go on despising us who do research, who have this fever of curiosity, who won't be content with--what did you call those wrappers?"
"Dust sheets."
"Yes, dust sheets. What a life! Swaddling bands, dust sheets and a shroud! You know, research and discovery aren't nearly so difficult as people think--if only you have the courage to say a thing or try a thing now and then that it isn't usual to say or try. And after all----" he went off at a tangent, "these confounded ordinary people aren't justified in their contempt. We keep on throwing them things over our shoulders, electric bells, telephones, Marconigrams. Look at the beautiful electric trains that come towering down the London streets at nightfall, ships of light in full sail! Twenty years ago they were as impossible as immortality. We conquer the seas for these--golfers, puts arms in their hands that will certainly blow them all to bits if ever the idiots go to war with them, come sailing out of the air on them----"
He caught Marjorie's eye and stopped.
"_Falling_ out of the air on them," corrected Marjorie very softly.
"That was only an accident," said Mr. Trafford....
So they began a conversation in the lane where the trees met overhead that went on and went on like a devious path in a shady wood, and touched upon all manner of things....
§ 7
In the end quite a number of people were aggrieved by this dialogue, in the lane that led nowhither....
Sir Rupert Solomonson was the first to complain. Trafford had been away "three mortal hours." No one had come near him, not a soul, and there hadn't been even a passing car to cheer his ear.
Sir Rupert admitted he had to be quiet. "But not so _damned_ quiet."
"I'd have been glad," said Sir Rupert, "if a hen had laid an egg and clucked a bit. You might have thought there had been a Resurrection or somethin', and cleared off everybody. Lord! it was deadly. I'd have sung out myself if it hadn't been for these infernal ribs...."
Mrs. Pope came upon the affair quite by accident.
"Well, Marjorie," she said as she poured tea for the family, "did you get your laces?"
"Never got there, Mummy," said Marjorie, and paused fatally.
"Didn't get there!" said Mrs. Pope. "That's worse than Theodore! Wouldn't the donkey go, poor dear?"
There was nothing to colour about, and yet Marjorie felt the warm flow in neck and cheek and brow. She threw extraordinary quantities of candour into her manner. "I had a romantic adventure," she said rather quietly. "I was going to tell you."
(Sensation.)
"You see it was like this," said Marjorie. "I ran against Mr. Trafford...."
She drank tea, and pulled herself together for a lively description of the wheel-locking and the subsequent conversation, a bright ridiculous account which made the affair happen by implication on the high road and not in a byeway, and was adorned with every facetious ornament that seemed likely to get a laugh from the children. But she talked rather fast, and she felt she forced the fun a little. However, it amused the children all right, and Theodore created a diversion by choking with his tea. From first to last Marjorie was extremely careful to avoid the affectionate scrutiny of her mother's eye. And had this lasted the _whole_ afternoon? asked Mrs. Pope. "Oh, they'd talked for half-an-hour," said Marjorie, or more, and had driven back very slowly together. "He did all the talking. You saw what he was yesterday. And the donkeys seemed too happy together to tear them away."
"But what was it all about?" asked Daffy curious.
"He asked after you, Daffy, most affectionately," said Marjorie, and added, "several times." (Though Trafford had as a matter of fact displayed a quite remarkable disregard of all her family.)
"And," she went on, getting a plausible idea at last, "he explained all about aeroplanes. And all that sort of thing. Has Daddy gone to Wamping for some more cricket?..."
(But none of this was lost on Mrs. Pope.)
§ 8
Mr. Magnet's return next day was heralded by nearly two-thirds of a column in the _Times_.
The Lecture on the Characteristics of Humour had evidently been quite a serious affair, and a very imposing list of humorists and of prominent people associated with their industry had accepted the hospitality of the _Literati_.
Marjorie ran her eyes over the Chairman's flattering introduction, then with a queer faint flavour of hostility she reached her destined husband's utterance. She seemed to hear the flat full tones of his voice as she read, and automatically the desiccated sentences of the reporter filled out again into those rich quietly deliberate unfoldings of sound that were already too familiar to her ear.
Mr. Magnet had begun with modest disavowals. "There was a story, he said,"--so the report began--"whose hallowed antiquity ought to protect it from further exploitation, but he was tempted to repeat it because it offered certain analogies to the present situation. There were three characters in the story, a bluebottle and two Scotsmen. (Laughter.) The bluebottle buzzed on the pane, otherwise a profound silence reigned. This was broken by one of the Scotsmen trying to locate the bluebottle with zoölogical exactitude. Said this Scotsman: 'Sandy, I am thinking if yon fly is a birdie or a beastie.' The other replied: 'Man, don't spoil good whiskey with religious conversation.' (Laughter.) He was tempted, Mr. Magnet resumed, to ask himself and them why it was that they should spoil the aftereffects of a most excellent and admirably served dinner by an academic discussion on British humour. At first he was pained by the thought that they proposed to temper their hospitality with a demand for a speech. A closer inspection showed that he was to introduce a debate and that others were to speak, and that was a new element in their hospitality. Further, he was permitted to choose the subject so that he could bring their speeches within the range of his comprehension. (Laughter.) His was an easy task. He could make it easier; the best thing to do would be to say nothing at all. (Laughter.)"
For a space the reporter seemed to have omitted largely--perhaps he was changing places with his relief--and the next sentence showed Mr. Magnet engaged as it were in revising a _hortus siccus_ of jokes. "There was the humour of facts and situations," he was saying, "or that humour of expression for which there was no human responsibility, as in the case of Irish humour; he spoke of the humour of the soil which found its noblest utterance in the bull. Humour depended largely on contrast. There was a humour of form and expression which had many local varieties. American humour had been characterized by exaggeration, the suppression of some link in the chain of argument or narrative, and a wealth of simile and metaphor which had been justly defined as the poetry of a pioneer race."...
Marjorie's attention slipped its anchor, and caught lower down upon: "In England there was a near kinship between laughter and tears; their mental relations were as close as their physical. Abroad this did not appear to be the case. It was different in France. But perhaps on the whole it would be better to leave the humour of France and what some people still unhappily chose to regard as matters open to controversy--he referred to choice of subject--out of their discussion altogether. ('Hear, hear,' and cheers.)"...
Attention wandered again. Then she remarked:--it reminded her in some mysterious way of a dropped hairpin--"It was noticeable that the pun to a great extent had become démodé...."
At this point the flight of Marjorie's eyes down the column was arrested by her father's hand gently but firmly taking possession of the _Times_. She yielded it without reluctance, turned to the breakfast table, and never resumed her study of the social relaxations of humorists....
Indeed she forgot it. Her mind was in a state of extreme perplexity. She didn't know what to make of herself or anything or anybody. Her mind was full of Trafford and all that he had said and done and all that he might have said and done, and it was entirely characteristic that she could not think of Magnet in any way at all except as a bar-like shadow that lay across all her memories and all the bright possibilities of this engaging person.
She thought particularly of the mobile animation of his face, the keen flash of enthusiasm in his thoughts and expressions....
It was perhaps more characteristic of her time than of her that she did not think she was dealing so much with a moral problem as an embarrassment, and that she hadn't as yet felt the first stirrings of self-reproach for the series of disingenuous proceedings that had rendered the yesterday's encounter possible. But she was restless, wildly restless as a bird whose nest is taken. She could abide nowhere. She fretted through the morning, avoided Daffy in a marked manner, and inflicted a stinging and only partially merited rebuke upon Theodore for slouching, humping and--of all trite grievances!--not washing behind his ears. As if any chap washed behind his ears! She thought tennis with the pseudo-twins might assuage her, but she broke off after losing two sets; and then she went into the garden to get fresh flowers, and picked a large bunch and left them on the piano until her mother reminded her of them. She tried a little Shaw. She struggled with an insane wish to walk through the wood behind the village and have an accidental meeting with someone who couldn't possibly appear but whom it would be quite adorable to meet. Anyhow she conquered that.
She had a curious and rather morbid indisposition to go after lunch to the station and meet Mr. Magnet as her mother wished her to do, in order to bring him straight to the vicarage to early tea, but here again reason prevailed and she went.
Mr. Magnet arrived by the 2.27, and to Marjorie's eye his alighting presence had an effect of being not so much covered with laurels as distended by them. His face seemed whiter and larger than ever. He waved a great handful of newspapers.
"Hullo, Magsy!" he said. "They've given me a thumping Press. I'm nearer swelled head than I've ever been, so mind how you touch me!"
"We'll take it down at croquet," said Marjorie.
"They've cleared that thing away?"
"And made up the lawn like a billiard table," she said.
"That makes for skill," he said waggishly. "I shall save my head after all."
For a moment he seemed to loom towards kissing her, but she averted this danger by a business-like concern for his bag. He entrusted this to a porter, and reverted to the triumph of overnight so soon as they were clear of the station. He was overflowing with kindliness towards his fellow humorists, who had appeared in force and very generously at the banquet, and had said the most charming things--some of which were in one report and some in another, and some the reporters had missed altogether--some of the kindliest.
"It's a pleasant feeling to think that a lot of good fellows think you are a good fellow," said Mr. Magnet.
He became solicitous for her. How had she got on while he was away? She asked him how one was likely to get on at Buryhamstreet; monoplanes didn't fall every day, and as she said that it occurred to her she was behaving meanly. But he was going on to his next topic before she could qualify.
"I've got something in my pocket," he remarked, and playfully: "Guess."
She did, but she wouldn't. She had a curious sinking of the heart.
"I want you to see it before anyone else," he said. "Then if you don't like it, it can go back. It's a sapphire."
He was feeling nervously in his pockets and then the little box was in her hand.
She hesitated to open it. It made everything so dreadfully concrete. And this time the sense of meanness was altogether acuter. He'd bought this in London; he'd brought it down, hoping for her approval. Yes, it was--horrid. But what was she to do?
"It's--awfully pretty," she said with the glittering symbol in her hand, and indeed he had gone to one of those artistic women who are reviving and improving upon the rich old Roman designs. "It's so beautifully made."
"I'm so glad you like it. You really _do_ like it?"
"I don't deserve it."
"Oh! But you _do_ like it?"
"Enormously."
"Ah! I spent an hour in choosing it."
She could see him. She felt as though she had picked his pocket.
"Only I don't deserve it, Mr. Magnet. Indeed I don't. I feel I am taking it on false pretences."
"Nonsense, Magsy. Nonsense! Slip it on your finger, girl."
"But I don't," she insisted.
He took the box from her, pocketed it and seized her hand. She drew it away from him.
"No!" she said. "I feel like a cheat. You know, I don't--I'm sure I don't love----"
"I'll love enough for two," he said, and got her hand again. "No!" he said at her gesture, "you'll wear it. Why shouldn't you?"
And so Marjorie came back along the vicarage avenue with his ring upon her hand. And Mr. Pope was evidently very glad to see him....
The family was still seated at tea upon rugs and wraps, and still discussing humorists at play, when Professor Trafford appeared, leaning on a large stick and limping, but resolute, by the church gate. "Pish!" said Mr. Pope. Marjorie tried not to reveal a certain dismay, there was dumb, rich approval in Daphne's eyes, and the pleasure of Theodore and the pseudo-twins was only too scandalously evident. "Hoo-Ray!" said Theodore, with ill-concealed relief.
Mrs. Pope was the incarnate invocation of tact as Trafford drew near.
"I hope," he said, with obvious insincerity, "I don't invade you. But Solomonson is frightfully concerned and anxious about your lawn, and whether his men cleared it up properly and put things right." His eye went about the party and rested on Marjorie. "How are you?" he said, in a friendly voice.
"Well, we seem to have got our croquet lawn back," said Mr. Pope. "And our nerves are recovering. How is Sir Rupert?"
"A little fractious," said Trafford, with the ghost of a smile.
"You'll take some tea?" said Mrs. Pope in the pause that followed.
"Thank you," said Trafford and sat down instantly.
"I saw your jolly address in the _Standard_," he said to Magnet. "I haven't read anything so amusing for some time."
"Rom dear," said Mrs. Pope, "will you take the pot in and get some fresh tea?"
Mr. Trafford addressed himself to the flattery of Magnet with considerable skill. He had detected a lurking hostility in the eyes of the two gentlemen that counselled him to propitiate them if he meant to maintain his footing in the vicarage, and now he talked to them almost exclusively and ignored the ladies modestly but politely in the way that seems natural and proper in a British middle-class house of the better sort. But as he talked chiefly of the improvement of motor machinery that had recently been shown at the Engineering Exhibition, he did not make that headway with Marjorie's father that he had perhaps anticipated. Mr. Pope fumed quietly for a time, and then suddenly spoke out.
"I'm no lover of machines," he said abruptly, slashing across Mr. Trafford's description. "All our troubles began with villainous saltpetre. I'm an old-fashioned man with a nose--and a neck, and I don't want the one offended or the other broken. No, don't ask me to be interested in your valves and cylinders. What do you say, Magnet? It starts machinery in my head to hear about them...."
On such occasions as this when Mr. Pope spoke out, his horror of an anti-climax or any sort of contradiction was apt to bring the utterance to a culmination not always to be distinguished from a flight. And now he rose to his feet as he delivered himself.
"Who's for a game of tennis?" he said, "in this last uncontaminated patch of air? I and Marjorie will give you a match, Daffy--if Magnet isn't too tired to join you."
Daffy looked at Marjorie for an instant.
"We'll want you, Theodore, to look after the balls in the potatoes," said Mr. Pope lest that ingenuous mind should be corrupted behind his back....
Mrs. Pope found herself left to entertain a slightly disgruntled Trafford. Rom and Syd hovered on the off chance of notice, at the corner of the croquet lawn nearest the tea things. Mrs. Pope had already determined to make certain little matters clearer than they appeared to be to this agreeable but superfluous person, and she was greatly assisted by his opening upon the subject of her daughters. "Jolly tennis looks," he said.
"Don't they?" said Mrs. Pope. "I think it is such a graceful game for a girl."
Mr. Trafford glanced at Mrs. Pope's face, but her expression was impenetrable.
"They both like it and play it so well," she said. "Their father is so skillful and interested in games. Marjorie tells me you were her examiner a year or so ago."
"Yes. She struck my memory--her work stood out."
"Of course she is clever," said Mrs. Pope. "Or we shouldn't have sent her to Oxbridge. There she's doing quite well--quite well. Everyone says so. I don't know, of course, if Mr. Magnet will let her finish there."
"Mr. Magnet?"
"She's just engaged to him. Of course she's frightfully excited about it, and naturally he wants her to come away and marry. There's very little excuse for a long engagement. No."
Her voice died in a musical little note, and she seemed to be scrutinizing the tennis with an absorbed interest. "They've got new balls," she said, as if to herself.
Trafford had rolled over, and she fancied she detected a change in his voice when it came. "Isn't it rather a waste not to finish a university career?" he said.
"Oh, it wouldn't be wasted. Of course a girl like that will be hand and glove with her husband. She'll be able to help him with the scientific side of his jokes and all that. I sometimes wish it had been Daffy who had gone to college though. I sometimes think we've sacrificed Daffy a little. She's not the bright quickness of Marjorie, but there's something quietly solid about her mind--something _stable_. Perhaps I didn't want her to go away from me.... Mr. Magnet is doing wonders at the net. He's just begun to play--to please Marjorie. Don't you think he's a dreadfully amusing man, Mr. Trafford? He says such _quiet_ things."
§ 9
The effect of this _éclaircissement_ upon Mr. Trafford was not what it should have been. Properly he ought to have realized at once that Marjorie was for ever beyond his aspirations, and if he found it too difficult to regard her with equanimity, then he ought to have shunned her presence. But instead, after his first shock of incredulous astonishment, his spirit rose in a rebellion against arranged facts that was as un-English as it was ungentlemanly. He went back to Solomonson with a mood of thoughtful depression giving place to a growing passion of indignation. He presented it to himself in a generalized and altruistic form. "What the deuce is the good of all this talk of Eugenics," he asked himself aloud, "if they are going to hand over that shining girl to that beastly little area sneak?"
He called Mr. Magnet a "beastly little area sneak!"
Nothing could show more clearly just how much he had contrived to fall in love with Marjorie during his brief sojourn in Buryhamstreet and the acuteness of his disappointment, and nothing could be more eloquent of his forcible and undisciplined temperament. And out of ten thousand possible abusive epithets with which his mind was no doubt stored, this one, I think, had come into his head because of the alert watchfulness with which Mr. Magnet followed a conversation, as he waited his chance for some neat but brilliant flash of comment....
Trafford, like Marjorie, was another of those undisciplined young people our age has produced in such significant quantity. He was just six-and-twenty, but the facts that he was big of build, had as an only child associated much with grown-up people, and was already a conspicuous success in the world of micro-chemical research, had given him the self-reliance and assurance of a much older man. He had still to come his croppers and learn most of the important lessons in life, and, so far, he wasn't aware of it. He was naturally clean-minded, very busy and interested in his work, and on remarkably friendly and confidential terms with his mother who kept house for him, and though he had had several small love disturbances, this was the first occasion that anything of the kind had ploughed deep into his feelings and desires.
Trafford's father had died early in life. He had been a brilliant pathologist, one of that splendid group of scientific investigators in the middle Victorian period which shines ever more brightly as our criticism dims their associated splendours, and he had died before he was thirty through a momentary slip of the scalpel. His wife--she had been his wife for five years--found his child and his memory and the quality of the life he had made about her too satisfying for the risks of a second marriage, and she had brought up her son with a passionate belief in the high mission of research and the supreme duty of seeking out and expressing truth finely. And here he was, calling Mr. Magnet a "beastly little area sneak."
The situation perplexed him. Marjorie perplexed him. It was, had he known it, the beginning for him of a lifetime of problems and perplexities. He was absolutely certain she didn't love Magnet. Why, then, had she agreed to marry him? Such pressures and temptations as he could see about her seemed light to him in comparison with such an undertaking.
Were they greater than he supposed?
His method of coming to the issue of that problem was entirely original. He presented himself next afternoon with the air of an invited guest, drove Mr. Pope who was suffering from liver, to expostulatory sulking in the study, and expressed a passionate craving for golf-croquet, in spite of Mrs. Pope's extreme solicitude for his still bandaged ankle. He was partnered with Daffy, and for a long time he sought speech with Marjorie in vain. At last he was isolated in a corner of the lawn, and with the thinnest pretence of inadvertence, in spite of Daffy's despairing cry of "She plays next!" he laid up within two yards of her. He walked across to her as she addressed herself to her ball, and speaking in an incredulous tone and with the air of a comment on the game, he said: "I say, are you engaged to that chap Magnet?"
Marjorie was amazed, but remarkably not offended. Something in his tone set her trembling. She forgot to play, and stood with her mallet hanging in her hand.
"Punish him!" came the voice of Magnet from afar.
"Yes," she said faintly.
His remark came low and clear. It had a note of angry protest. "_Why?_"
Marjorie, by the way of answer, hit her ball so that it jumped and missed his, ricochetted across the lawn and out of the ground on the further side.
"I'm sorry if I've annoyed you," said Trafford, as Marjorie went after her ball, and Daffy thanked heaven aloud for the respite.
They came together no more for a time, and Trafford, observant with every sense, found no clue to the riddle of her grave, intent bearing. She played very badly, and with unusual care and deliberation. He felt he had made a mess of things altogether, and suddenly found his leg was too painful to go on. "Partner," he asked, "will you play out my ball for me? I can't go on. I shall have to go."
Marjorie surveyed him, while Daffy and Magnet expressed solicitude. He turned to go, mallet in hand, and found Marjorie following him.
"Is that the heavier mallet?" she asked, and stood before him looking into his eyes and weighing a mallet in either hand.
"Mr. Trafford, you're one of the worst examiners I've ever met," she said.
He looked puzzled.
"I don't know _why_," said Marjorie, "I wonder as much as you. But I am"; and seeing the light dawning in his eyes, she turned about, and went back to the debacle of her game.
§ 10
After that Mr. Trafford had one clear desire in his being which ruled all his other desires. He wanted a long, frank, unembarrassed and uninterrupted conversation with Marjorie. He had a very strong impression that Marjorie wanted exactly the same thing. For a week he besieged the situation in vain. After the fourth day Solomonson was only kept in Buryhamstreet by sheer will-power, exerted with a brutality that threatened to end that friendship abruptly. He went home on the sixth day in his largest car, but Trafford stayed on beyond the limits of decency to perform some incomprehensible service that he spoke of as "clearing up."
"I want," he said, "to clear up."
"But what _is_ there to clear up, my dear boy?"
"Solomonson, you're a pampered plutocrat," said Trafford, as though everything was explained.
"I don't see any sense in it at all," said Solomonson, and regarded his friend aslant with thick, black eyebrows raised.
"I'm going to stay," said Trafford.
And Solomonson said one of those unhappy and entirely disregarded things that ought never to be said.
"There's some girl in this," said Solomonson.
"Your bedroom's always waiting for you at Riplings," he said, when at last he was going off....
Trafford's conviction that Marjorie also wanted, with an almost equal eagerness, the same opportunity for speech and explanations that he desired, sustained him in a series of unjustifiable intrusions upon the seclusion of the Popes. But although the manner of Mr. and Mrs. Pope did change considerably for the better after his next visit, it was extraordinary how impossible it seemed for him and Marjorie to achieve their common end of an encounter.
Always something intervened.
In the first place, Mrs. Pope's disposition to optimism had got the better of her earlier discretions, and a casual glance at Daphne's face when their visitor reappeared started quite a new thread of interpretations in her mind. She had taken the opportunity of hinting at this when Mr. Pope asked over his shirt-stud that night, "What the devil that--that chauffeur chap meant by always calling in the afternoon."
"Now that Will Magnet monopolizes Marjorie," she said, after a little pause and a rustle or so, "I don't see why Daffy shouldn't have a little company of her own age."
Mr. Pope turned round and stared at her. "I didn't think of that," he said. "But, anyhow, I don't like the fellow."
"He seems to be rather clever," said Mrs. Pope, "though he certainly talks too much. And after all it was Sir Rupert's aeroplane. _He_ was only driving it to oblige."
"He'll think twice before he drives another," said Mr. Pope, wrenching off his collar....
Once Mrs. Pope had turned her imagination in this more and more agreeable direction, she was rather disposed, I am afraid, to let it bolt with her. And it was a deflection that certainly fell in very harmoniously with certain secret speculations of Daphne's. Trafford, too, being quite unused to any sort of social furtiveness, did perhaps, in order to divert attention from his preoccupation with Marjorie, attend more markedly to Daphne than he would otherwise have done. And so presently he found Daphne almost continuously on his hands. So far as she was concerned, he might have told her the entire history of his life, and every secret he had in the world, without let or hindrance. Mrs. Pope, too, showed a growing appreciation of his company, became sympathetic and confidential in a way that invited confidence, and threw a lot of light on her family history and Daffy's character. She had found Daffy a wonderful study, she said. Mr. Pope, too, seemed partly reconciled to him. The idea that, after all, both motor cars and monoplane were Sir Rupert's, and not Trafford's, had produced a reaction in the latter gentleman's favour. Moreover, it had occurred to him that Trafford's accident had perhaps disposed him towards a more thoughtful view of mechanical traction, and that this tendency would be greatly helped by a little genial chaff. So that he ceased to go indoors when Trafford was there, and hung about, meditating and delivering sly digs at this new victim of his ripe, old-fashioned humour.
Nor did it help Trafford in his quest for Marjorie and a free, outspoken delivery that the pseudo-twins considered him a person of very considerable charm, and that Theodore, though indisposed to "suck up" to him publicly--I write here in Theodorese--did so desire intimate and solitary communion with him, more particularly in view of the chances of an adventitious aeroplane ride that seemed to hang about him--as to stalk him persistently--hovering on the verge of groups, playing a waiting game with a tennis ball and an old racquet, strolling artlessly towards the gate of the avenue when the time seemed ripening for his appearance or departure.
On the other hand, Marjorie was greatly entangled by Magnet.
Magnet was naturally an attentive lover; he was full of small encumbering services, and it made him none the less assiduous to perceive that Marjorie seemed to find no sort of pleasure in all the little things he did. He seemed to think that if picking the very best rose he could find for her did not cause a very perceptible brightening in her, then it was all the more necessary quietly to force her racquet from her hand and carry it for her, or help her ineffectually to cross a foot-wide ditch, or offer to read her in a rich, abundant, well modulated voice, some choice passage from "The Forest Lovers" of Mr. Maurice Hewlett. And behind these devotions there was a streak of jealousy. He knew as if by instinct that it was not wise to leave these two handsome young people together; he had a queer little disagreeable sensation whenever they spoke to one another or looked at one another. Whenever Trafford and Marjorie found themselves in a group, there was Magnet in the midst of them. He knew the value of his Marjorie, and did not mean to lose her....
Being jointly baffled in this way was oddly stimulating to Marjorie's and Trafford's mutual predisposition. If you really want to throw people together, the thing to do--thank God for Ireland!--is to keep them apart. By the fourth day of this emotional incubation, Marjorie was thinking of Trafford to the exclusion of all her reading; and Trafford was lying awake at nights--oh, for half an hour and more--thinking of bold, decisive ways of getting at Marjorie, and bold, decisive things to say to her when he did.
(But why she should be engaged to Magnet continued, nevertheless, to puzzle him extremely. It was a puzzle to which no complete solution was ever to be forthcoming....)
§ 11
At last that opportunity came. Marjorie had come with her mother into the village, and while Mrs. Pope made some purchases at the general shop she walked on to speak to Mrs. Blythe the washerwoman. Trafford suddenly emerged from the Red Lion with a soda syphon under each arm. She came forward smiling.
"I say," he said forthwith, "I want to talk with you--badly."
"And I," she said unhesitatingly, "with you."
"How can we?"
"There's always people about. It's absurd."
"We'll have to meet."
"Yes."
"I have to go away to-morrow. I ought to have gone two days ago. Where _can_ we meet?"
She had it all prepared.
"Listen," she said. "There is a path runs from our shrubbery through a little wood to a stile on the main road." He nodded. "Either I will be there at three or about half-past five or--there's one more chance. While father and Mr. Magnet are smoking at nine.... I might get away."
"Couldn't I write?"
"No. Impossible."
"I've no end of things to say...."
Mrs. Pope appeared outside her shop, and Trafford gesticulated a greeting with the syphons. "All right," he said to Marjorie. "I'm shopping," he cried as Mrs. Pope approached.
§ 12
All through the day Marjorie desired to go to Trafford and could not do so. It was some minutes past nine when at last with a swift rustle of skirts that sounded louder than all the world to her, she crossed the dimly lit hall between dining-room and drawing-room and came into the dreamland of moonlight upon the lawn. She had told her mother she was going upstairs; at any moment she might be missed, but she would have fled now to Trafford if an army pursued her. Her heart seemed beating in her throat, and every fibre of her being was aquiver. She flitted past the dining-room window like a ghost, she did not dare to glance aside at the smokers within, and round the lawn to the shrubbery, and so under a blackness of trees to the gate where he stood waiting. And there he was, dim and mysterious and wonderful, holding the gate open for her, and she was breathless, and speechless, and near sobbing. She stood before him for a moment, her face moonlit and laced with the shadows of little twigs, and then his arms came out to her.
"My darling," he said, "Oh, my darling!"
They had no doubt of one another or of anything in the world. They clung together; their lips came together fresh and untainted as those first lovers' in the garden.
"I will die for you," he said, "I will give all the world for you...."
They had thought all through the day of a hundred statements and explanations they would make when this moment came, and never a word of it all was uttered. All their anticipations of a highly strung eventful conversation vanished, phrases of the most striking sort went like phantom leaves before a gale. He held her and she clung to him between laughing and sobbing, and both were swiftly and conclusively assured their lives must never separate again.
§ 13
Marjorie never knew whether it was a moment or an age before her father came upon them. He had decided to take a turn in the garden when Magnet could no longer restrain himself from joining the ladies, and he chanced to be stick in hand because that was his habit after twilight. So it was he found them. She heard his voice falling through love and moonlight like something that comes out of an immense distance.
"Good God!" he cried, "what next!"
But he still hadn't realized the worst.
"Daffy," he said, "what in the name of goodness----?"
Marjorie put her hands before her face too late.
"Good Lord!" he cried with a rising inflection, "it's Madge!"
Trafford found the situation difficult. "I should explain----"
But Mr. Pope was giving himself up to a towering rage. "You damned scoundrel!" he said. "What the devil are you doing?" He seized Marjorie by the arm and drew her towards him. "My poor misguided girl!" he said, and suddenly she was tensely alive, a little cry of horror in her throat, for her father, at a loss for words and full of heroic rage, had suddenly swung his stick with passionate force, and struck at Trafford's face. She heard the thud, saw Trafford wince and stiffen. For a perfectly horrible moment it seemed to her these men, their faces queerly distorted by the shadows of the branches in the slanting moonlight, might fight. Then she heard Trafford's voice, sounding cool and hard, and she knew that he would do nothing of the kind. In that instant if there had remained anything to win in Marjorie it was altogether won. "I asked your daughter to meet me here," he said.
"Be off with you, sir!" cried Mr. Pope. "Don't tempt me further, sir," and swung his stick again. But now the force had gone out of him. Trafford stood with a hand out ready for him, and watched his face.
"I asked your daughter to meet me here, and she came. I am prepared to give you any explanation----"
"If you come near this place again----"
For some moments Marjorie's heart had been held still, now it was beating violently. She felt this scene must end. "Mr. Trafford," she said, "will you go. Go now. Nothing shall keep us apart!"
Mr. Pope turned on her. "Silence, girl!" he said.
"I shall come to you to-morrow," said Trafford.
"Yes," said Marjorie, "to-morrow."
"Marjorie!" said Mr. Pope, "_will_ you go indoors."
"I have done nothing----"
"Be off, sir."
"I have done nothing----"
"Will you be off, sir? And you, Marjorie--will you go indoors?"
He came round upon her, and after one still moment of regard for Trafford--and she looked very beautiful in the moonlight with her hair a little disordered and her face alight--she turned to precede her father through the shrubbery.
Mr. Pope hesitated whether he should remain with Trafford.
A perfectly motionless man is very disconcerting.
"Be off, sir," he said over his shoulder, lowered through a threatening second, and followed her.
But Trafford remained stiffly with a tingling temple down which a little thread of blood was running, until their retreating footsteps had died down into that confused stirring of little sounds which makes the stillness of an English wood at night.
Then he roused himself with a profound sigh, and put a hand to his cut and bruised cheek.
"_Well!_" he said.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
CRISIS
§ 1
Crisis prevailed in Buryhamstreet that night. On half a dozen sleepless pillows souls communed with the darkness, and two at least of those pillows were wet with tears.
Not one of those wakeful heads was perfectly clear about the origins and bearings of the trouble; not even Mr. Pope felt absolutely sure of himself. It had come as things come to people nowadays, because they will not think things out, much less talk things out, and are therefore in a hopeless tangle of values that tightens sooner or later to a knot....
What an uncharted perplexity, for example, was the mind of that excellent woman Mrs. Pope!
Poor lady! she hadn't a stable thing in her head. It is remarkable that some queer streak in her composition sympathized with Marjorie's passion for Trafford. But she thought it such a pity! She fought that sympathy down as if it were a wicked thing. And she fought too against other ideas that rose out of the deeps and did not so much come into her mind as cluster at the threshold, the idea that Marjorie was in effect grown up, a dozen queer criticisms of Magnet, and a dozen subtle doubts whether after all Marjorie was going to be happy with him as she assured herself the girl would be. (So far as any one knew Trafford might be an excellent match!) And behind these would-be invaders of her guarded mind prowled even worse ones, doubts, horrible disloyal doubts, about the wisdom and kindness of Mr. Pope.
Quite early in life Mrs. Pope had realized that it is necessary to be very careful with one's thoughts. They lead to trouble. She had clipped the wings of her own mind therefore so successfully that all her conclusions had become evasions, all her decisions compromises. Her profoundest working conviction was a belief that nothing in the world was of value but "tact," and that the art of living was to "tide things over." But here it seemed almost beyond her strength to achieve any sort of tiding over....
(Why _couldn't_ Mr. Pope lie quiet?)
Whatever she said or did had to be fitted to the exigencies of Mr. Pope.
Availing himself of the privileges of matrimony, her husband so soon as Mr. Magnet had gone and they were upstairs together, had explained the situation with vivid simplicity, and had gone on at considerable length and with great vivacity to enlarge upon his daughter's behaviour. He ascribed this moral disaster,--he presented it as a moral disaster of absolutely calamitous dimensions--entirely to Mrs. Pope's faults and negligences. Warming with his theme he had employed a number of homely expressions rarely heard by decent women except in these sacred intimacies, to express the deep indignation of a strong man moved to unbridled speech by the wickedness of those near and dear to him. Still warming, he raised his voice and at last shouted out his more forcible meanings, until she feared the servants and children might hear, waved a clenched fist at imaginary Traffords and scoundrels generally, and giving way completely to his outraged virtue, smote and kicked blameless articles of furniture in a manner deeply impressive to the feminine intelligence.
Finally he sat down in the little arm-chair between her and the cupboard where she was accustomed to hang up her clothes, stuck out his legs very stiffly across the room, and despaired of his family in an obtrusive and impregnable silence for an enormous time.
All of which awakened a deep sense of guilt and unworthiness in Mrs. Pope's mind, and prevented her going to bed, but did not help her in the slightest degree to grasp the difficulties of the situation....
She would have lain awake anyhow, but she was greatly helped in this by Mr. Pope's restlessness. He was now turning over from left to right or from right to left at intervals of from four to seven minutes, and such remarks as "Damned scoundrel! Get out of this!" or "_My_ daughter and degrade yourself in this way!" or "Never let me see your face again!" "Plight your troth to one man, and fling yourself shamelessly--I repeat it, Marjorie, shamelessly--into the arms of another!" kept Mrs. Pope closely in touch with the general trend of his thoughts.
She tried to get together her plans and perceptions rather as though she swept up dead leaves on a gusty day. She knew that the management of the whole situation rested finally on her, and that whatever she did or did not do, or whatever arose to thwart her arrangements, its entire tale of responsibility would ultimately fall upon her shoulders. She wondered what was to be done with Marjorie, with Mr. Magnet? Need he know? Could that situation be saved? Everything at present was raw in her mind. Except for her husband's informal communications she did not even know what had appeared, what Daffy had seen, what Magnet thought of Marjorie's failure to bid him good-night. For example, had Mr. Magnet noticed Mr. Pope's profound disturbance? She had to be ready to put a face on things before morning, and it seemed impossible she could do so. In times of crisis, as every woman knows, it is always necessary to misrepresent everything to everybody, but how she was to dovetail her misrepresentations, get the best effect from them, extract a working system of rights and wrongs from them, she could not imagine....
(Oh! she did so wish Mr. Pope would lie quiet.)
But he had no doubts of what became _him_. He had to maintain a splendid and irrational rage--at any cost--to anybody.
§ 2
A few yards away, a wakeful Marjorie confronted a joyless universe. She had a baffling realization that her life was in a hopeless mess, that she really had behaved disgracefully, and that she couldn't for a moment understand how it had happened. She had intended to make quite sure of Trafford--and then put things straight.
Only her father had spoilt everything.
She regarded her father that night with a want of natural affection terrible to record. Why had he come just when he had, just as he had? Why had he been so violent, so impossible?
Of course, she had no business to be there....
She examined her character with a new unprecedented detachment. Wasn't she, after all, rather a mean human being? It had never occurred to her before to ask such a question. Now she asked it with only too clear a sense of the answer. She tried to trace how these multiplying threads of meanness had first come into the fabric of a life she had supposed herself to be weaving in extremely bright, honourable, and adventurous colours. She ought, of course, never to have accepted Magnet....
She faced the disagreeable word; was she a liar?
At any rate, she told lies.
And she'd behaved with extraordinary meanness to Daphne. She realized that now. She had known, as precisely as if she had been told, how Daphne felt about Trafford, and she'd never given her an inkling of her own relations. She hadn't for a moment thought of Daphne. No wonder Daffy was sombre and bitter. Whatever she knew, she knew enough. She had heard Trafford's name in urgent whispers on the landing. "I suppose you couldn't leave him alone," Daffy had said, after a long hostile silence. That was all. Just a sentence without prelude or answer flung across the bedroom, revealing a perfect understanding--deeps of angry disillusionment. Marjorie had stared and gasped, and made no answer.
Would she ever see him again? After this horror of rowdy intervention? She didn't deserve to; she didn't deserve anything.... Oh, the tangle of it all! The tangle of it all! And those bills at Oxbridge! She was just dragging Trafford down into her own miserable morass of a life.
Her thoughts would take a new turn. "I love him," she whispered soundlessly. "I would die for him. I would like to lie under his feet--and him not know it."
Her mind hung on that for a long time. "Not know it until afterwards," she corrected.
She liked to be exact, even in despair....
And then in her memory he was struck again, and stood stiff and still. She wanted to kneel to him, imagined herself kneeling....
And so on, quite inconclusively, round and round through the interminable night hours.
§ 3
The young man in the village was, if possible, more perplexed, round-eyed and generally inconclusive than anyone else in this series of nocturnal disturbances. He spent long intervals sitting on his window-sill regarding a world that was scented with nightstock, and seemed to be woven of moonshine and gossamer. Being an inexpert and infrequent soliloquist, his only audible comment on his difficulties was the repetition in varying intonations of his fervent, unalterable conviction that he was damned. But behind this simple verbal mask was a great fury of mental activity.
He had something of Marjorie's amazement at the position of affairs.
He had never properly realized that it was possible for any one to regard Marjorie as a daughter, to order her about and resent the research for her society as criminal. It was a new light in his world. Some day he was to learn the meaning of fatherhood, but in these night watches he regarded it as a hideous survival of mediæval darknesses.
"Of course," he said, entirely ignoring the actual quality of their conversation, "she had to explain about the Magnet affair. Can't one--converse?"
He reflected through great intervals.
"I _will_ see her! Why on earth shouldn't I see her?"
"I suppose they can't lock her up!"
For a time he contemplated a writ of Habeas Corpus. He saw reason to regret the gaps in his legal knowledge.
"Can any one get a writ of Habeas Corpus for any one--it doesn't matter whom"--more especially if you are a young man of six-and-twenty, anxious to exchange a few richly charged words with a girl of twenty who is engaged to someone else?
The night had no answer.
It was nearly dawn when he came to the entirely inadvisable conclusion--I use his own word's--to go and have it out with the old ruffian. He would sit down and ask him what he meant by it all--and reason with him. If he started flourishing that stick again, it would have to be taken away.
And having composed a peroration upon the institution of the family of a character which he fondly supposed to be extraordinarily tolerant, reasonable and convincing, but which was indeed calculated to madden Mr. Pope to frenzy, Mr. Trafford went very peacefully to sleep.
§ 4
Came dawn, with a noise of birds and afterwards a little sleep, and then day, and heavy eyes opened again, and the sound of frying and the smell of coffee recalled our actors to the stage. Mrs. Pope was past her worst despair; always the morning brings courage and a clearer grasp of things, and she could face the world with plans shaped subconsciously during those last healing moments of slumber.
Breakfast was difficult, but not impossible. Mr. Pope loomed like a thundercloud, but Marjorie pleaded a headache very wisely, and was taken a sympathetic cup of tea. The pseudo-twins scented trouble, but Theodore was heedless and over-full of an entertaining noise made by a moorhen as it dived in the ornamental water that morning. You could make it practically _sotto voce_, and it amused Syd. He seemed to think the _Times_ opaque to such small sounds, and learnt better only to be dismissed underfed and ignominiously from the table to meditate upon the imperfections of his soul in the schoolroom. There for a time he was silent, and then presently became audible again, playing with a ball and, presumably, Marjorie's tennis racquet.
Directly she could disentangle herself from breakfast Mrs. Pope, with all her plans acute, went up to the girls' room. She found her daughter dressing in a leisurely and meditative manner. She shut the door almost confidentially. "Marjorie," she said, "I want you to tell me all about this."
"I thought I heard father telling you," said Marjorie.
"He was too indignant," said Mrs. Pope, "to explain clearly. You see, Marjorie"--she paused before her effort--"he knows things--about this Professor Trafford."
"What things?" asked Marjorie, turning sharply.
"I don't know, my dear--and I can't imagine."
She looked out of the window, aware of Marjorie's entirely distrustful scrutiny.
"I don't believe it," said Marjorie.
"Don't believe what, dear?"
"Whatever he says."
"I wish I didn't," said Mrs. Pope, and turned. "Oh, Madge," she cried, "you cannot imagine how all this distresses me! I cannot--I cannot conceive how you came to be in such a position! Surely honour----! Think of Mr. Magnet, how good and patient he has been! You don't know that man. You don't know all he is, and all that it means to a girl. He is good and honourable and--pure. He is kindness itself. It seemed to me that you were to be so happy--rich, honoured."
She was overcome by a rush of emotion; she turned to the bed and sat down.
"_There!_" she said desolately. "It's all ruined, shattered, gone."
Marjorie tried not to feel that her mother was right.
"If father hadn't interfered," she said weakly.
"Oh, don't, my dear, speak so coldly of your father! You don't know what he has to put up with. You don't know his troubles and anxieties--all this wretched business." She paused, and her face became portentous. "Marjorie, do you know if these railways go on as they are going he may have to _eat into his capital_ this year. Just think of that, and the worry he has! And this last shame and anxiety!"
Her voice broke again. Marjorie listened with an expression that was almost sullen.
"But what is it," she asked, "that father knows about Mr. Trafford?"
"I don't know, dear. I don't know. But it's something that matters--that makes it all different."
"Well, may I speak to Mr. Trafford before he leaves Buryhamstreet?"
"My dear! Never see him, dear--never think of him again! Your father would not dream----Some day, Marjorie, you will rejoice--you will want to thank your father on your bended knees that he saved you from the clutches of this man...."
"I won't believe anything about Mr. Trafford," she said slowly, "until I know----"
She left the sentence incomplete.
She made her declaration abruptly. "I love Mr. Trafford," she said, with a catch in her voice, "and I don't love Mr. Magnet."
Mrs. Pope received this like one who is suddenly stabbed. She sat still as if overwhelmed, one hand pressed to her side and her eyes closed. Then she said, as if she gasped involuntarily--
"It's too dreadful! Marjorie," she said, "I want to ask you to do something. After all, a mother has _some_ claim. Will you wait just a little. Will you promise me to do nothing--nothing, I mean, to commit you--until your father has been able to make inquiries. Don't _see_ him for a little while. Very soon you'll be one-and-twenty, and then perhaps things may be different. If he cares for you, and you for him, a little separation won't matter.... Until your father has inquired...."
"Mother," said Marjorie, "I can't----"
Mrs. Pope drew in the air sharply between her teeth, as if in agony.
"But, mother----Mother, I _must_ let Mr. Trafford know that I'm not to see him. I _can't_ suddenly cease.... If I could see him once----"
"Don't!" said Mrs. Pope, in a hollow voice.
Marjorie began weeping. "He'd not understand," she said. "If I might just speak to him!"
"Not alone, Marjorie."
Marjorie stood still. "Well--before you."
Mrs. Pope conceded the point. "And then, Marjorie----" she said.
"I'd keep my word, mother," said Marjorie, and began to sob in a manner she felt to be absurdly childish--"until--until I am one-and-twenty. I'd promise that."
Mrs. Pope did a brief calculation. "Marjorie," she said, "it's only your happiness I think of."
"I know," said Marjorie, and added in a low voice, "and father."
"My dear, you don't understand your father.... I believe--I do firmly believe--if anything happened to any of you girls--anything bad--he would kill himself.... And I know he means that you aren't to go about so much as you used to do, unless we have the most definite promises. Of course, your father's ideas aren't always my ideas, Marjorie; but it's your duty--You know how hasty he is and--quick. Just as you know how good and generous and kind he is"--she caught Marjorie's eye, and added a little lamely--"at bottom." ... She thought. "I think I could get him to let you say just one word with Mr. Trafford. It would be very difficult, but----"
She paused for a few seconds, and seemed to be thinking deeply.
"Marjorie," she said, "Mr. Magnet must never know anything of this."
"But, mother----!"
"Nothing!"
"I can't go on with my engagement!"
Mrs. Pope shook her head inscrutably.
"But how _can_ I, mother?"
"You need not tell him _why_, Marjorie."
"But----"
"Just think how it would humiliate and distress him! You _can't_, Marjorie. You must find some excuse--oh, any excuse! But not the truth--not the truth, Marjorie. It would be too dreadful."
Marjorie thought. "Look here, mother, I _may_ see Mr. Trafford again? I _may_ really speak to him?"
"Haven't I promised?"
"Then, I'll do as you say," said Marjorie.
§ 5
Mrs. Pope found her husband seated at the desk in the ultra-Protestant study, meditating gloomily.
"I've been talking to her," she said, "She's in a state of terrible distress."
"She ought to be," said Mr. Pope.
"Philip, you don't understand Marjorie."
"I don't."
"You think she was kissing that man."
"Well, she was."
"You can think _that_ of her!"
Mr. Pope turned his chair to her. "But I _saw!_"
Mrs. Pope shook her head. "She wasn't; she was struggling to get away from him. She told me so herself. I've been into it with her. You don't understand, Philip. A man like that has a sort of fascination for a girl. He dazzles her. It's the way with girls. But you're quite mistaken.... Quite. It's a sort of hypnotism. She'll grow out of it. Of course, she _loves_ Mr. Magnet. She does indeed. I've not a doubt of it. But----"
"You're _sure_ she wasn't kissing him?"
"Positive."
"Then why didn't you say so?"
"A girl's so complex. You didn't give her a chance. She's fearfully ashamed of herself--fearfully! but it's just because she _is_ ashamed that she won't admit it."
"I'll make her admit it."
"You ought to have had all boys," said Mrs. Pope. "Oh! she'll admit it some day--readily enough. But I believe a girl of her spirit would rather _die_ than begin explaining. You can't expect it of her. Really you can't."
He grunted and shook his head slowly from side to side.
She sat down in the arm-chair beside the desk.
"I want to know just exactly what we are to do about the girl, Philip. I can't bear to think of her--up there."
"How?" he asked. "Up there?"
"Yes," she answered with that skilful inconsecutiveness of hers, and let a brief silence touch his imagination. "Do you think that man means to come here again?" she asked.
"Chuck him out if he does," said Mr. Pope, grimly.
She pressed her lips together firmly. She seemed to be weighing things painfully. "I wouldn't," she said at last.
"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Pope.
"I do not want you to make an open quarrel with Mr. Trafford."
"_Not_ quarrel!"
"Not an open one," said Mrs. Pope. "Of course I know how nice it would be if you _could_ use a horsewhip, dear. There's such a lot of things--if we only just slash. But--it won't help. Get him to go away. She's consented never to see him again--practically. She's ready to tell him so herself. Part them against their will--oh! and the thing may go on for no end of time. But treat it as it ought to be treated--She'll be very tragic for a week or so, and then she'll forget him like a dream. He _is_ a dream--a girl's dream.... If only we leave it alone, she'll leave it alone."
§ 6
Things were getting straight, Mrs. Pope felt. She had now merely to add a few touches to the tranquillization of Daphne, and the misdirection of the twin's curiosity. These touches accomplished, it seemed that everything was done. After a brief reflection, she dismissed the idea of putting things to Theodore. She ran over the possibilities of the servants eavesdropping, and found them negligible. Yes, everything was done--everything. And yet....
The queer string in her nature between religiosity and superstition began to vibrate. She hesitated. Then she slipped upstairs, fastened the door, fell on her knees beside the bed and put the whole thing as acceptably as possible to Heaven in a silent, simple, but lucidly explanatory prayer....
She came out of her chamber brighter and braver than she had been for eighteen long hours. She could now, she felt, await the developments that threatened with the serenity of one who is prepared at every point. She went almost happily to the kitchen, only about forty-five minutes behind her usual time, to order the day's meals and see with her own eyes that economies prevailed. And it seemed to her, on the whole, consoling, and at any rate a distraction, when the cook informed her that after all she _had_ meant to give notice on the day of aunt Plessington's visit.
§ 7
The unsuspecting Magnet, fatigued but happy--for three hours of solid humorous writing (omitting every unpleasant suggestion and mingling in the most acceptable and saleable proportions smiles and tears) had added its quota to the intellectual heritage of England, made a simple light lunch cooked in homely village-inn fashion, lit a well merited cigar, and turned his steps towards the vicarage. He was preceded at some distance along the avenuesque drive by the back of Mr. Trafford, which he made no attempt to overtake.
Mr. Trafford was admitted and disappeared, and a minute afterwards Magnet reached the door.
Mrs. Pope appeared radiant--about the weather. A rather tiresome man had just called upon Mr. Pope about business matters, she said, and he might be detained five or ten minutes. Marjorie and Daffy were upstairs--resting. They had been disturbed by bats in the night.
"Isn't it charmingly rural?" said Mrs. Pope. "_Bats!_"
She talked about bats and the fear she had of their getting in her hair, and as she talked she led the way brightly but firmly as far as possible out of earshot of the windows of the ultra Protestant study in which Mr. Pope was now (she did so hope temperately) interviewing Mr. Trafford.
§ 8
Directly Mr. Trafford had reached the front door it had opened for him, and closed behind him at once. He had found himself with Mrs. Pope. "You wish to see my husband?" she had said, and had led him to the study forthwith. She had returned at once to intercept Mr. Magnet....
Trafford found Mr. Pope seated sternly at the centre of the writing desk, regarding him with a threatening brow.
"Well, sir," said Mr. Pope breaking the silence, "you have come to offer some explanation----"
While awaiting this encounter Mr. Pope had not been insensitive to the tactical and scenic possibilities of the occasion. In fact, he had spent the latter half of the morning in intermittent preparations, arranging desks, books, hassocks in advantageous positions, and not even neglecting such small details as the stamp tray, the articles of interest from Jerusalem, and the rock-crystal cenotaph, which he had exhibited in such a manner as was most calculated to damp, chill and subjugate an antagonist in the exposed area towards the window. He had also arranged the chairs in a highly favourable pattern.
Mr. Trafford was greatly taken aback by Mr. Pope's juridical manner and by this form of address, and he was further put out by Mr. Pope saying with a regal gesture to the best illuminated and most isolated chair: "Be seated, sir."
Mr. Trafford's exordium vanished from his mind, he was at a loss for words until spurred to speech by Mr. Pope's almost truculent: "Well?"
"I am in love sir, with your daughter."
"I am not aware of it," said Mr. Pope, and lifted and dropped the paper-weight. "My daughter, sir, is engaged to marry Mr. Magnet. If you had approached me in a proper fashion before presuming to attempt--to attempt----" His voice thickened with indignation,--"Liberties with her, you would have been duly informed of her position--and everyone would have been saved"--he lifted the paper-weight. "Everything that has happened." (Bump.)
Mr. Trafford had to adjust himself to the unexpected elements in this encounter. "Oh!" he said.
"Yes," said Mr. Pope, and there was a distinct interval.
"Is your daughter in love with Mr. Magnet?" asked Mr. Trafford in an almost colloquial tone.
Mr. Pope smiled gravely. "I presume so, sir."
"She never gave me that impression, anyhow," said the young man.
"It was neither her duty to give nor yours to receive that impression," said Mr. Pope.
Again Mr. Trafford was at a loss.
"Have you come here, sir, merely to bandy words?" asked Mr. Pope, drumming with ten fingers on the table.
Mr. Trafford thrust his hands into his pockets and assumed a fictitious pose of ease. He had never found any one in his life before quite so provocative of colloquialism as Mr. Pope.
"Look here, sir, this is all very well," he began, "but why can't I fall in love with your daughter? I'm a Doctor of Science and all that sort of thing. I've a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather a swell in his science. I'm an entirely decent and respectable person."
"I beg to differ," said Mr. Pope.
"But I am."
"Again," said Mr. Pope, with great patience, and a slight forward bowing of the head, "I beg to differ."
"Well--differ. But all the same----"
He paused and began again, and for a time they argued to no purpose. They generalized about the position of an engaged girl and the rights and privileges of a father. Then Mr. Pope, "to cut all this short," told him frankly he wasn't wanted, his daughter did not want him, nobody wanted him; he was an invader, he had to be got rid of--"if possible by peaceful means." Trafford disputed these propositions, and asked to see Marjorie. Mr. Pope had been leading up to this, and at once closed with that request.
"She is as anxious as any one to end this intolerable siege," he said. He went to the door and called for Marjorie, who appeared with conspicuous promptitude. She was in a dress of green linen that made her seem very cool as well as very dignified to Trafford; she was tense with restrained excitement, and either--for these things shade into each other--entirely without a disposition to act her part or acting with consummate ability. Trafford rose at the sight of her, and remained standing. Mr. Pope closed the door and walked back to the desk. "Mr. Trafford has to be told," he said, "that you don't want him in Buryhamstreet." He arrested Marjorie's forward movement towards Trafford by a gesture of the hand, seated himself, and resumed his drumming on the table. "Well?" he said.
"I don't think you ought to stay in Buryhamstreet, Mr. Trafford," said Marjorie.
"You don't want me to?"
"It will only cause trouble--and scenes."
"You want me to go?"
"Away from here."
"You really mean that?"
Marjorie did not answer for a little time; she seemed to be weighing the exact force of all she was going to say.
"Mr. Trafford," she answered, "everything I've ever said to you--everything--I've _meant_, more than I've ever meant anything. Everything!"
A little flush of colour came into Trafford's cheeks. He regarded Marjorie with a brightening eye.
"Oh well," he said, "I don't understand. But I'm entirely in your hands, of course."
Marjorie's pose and expression altered. For an instant she was a miracle of instinctive expression, she shone at him, she conveyed herself to him, she assured him. Her eyes met his, she stood warmly flushed and quite unconquered--visibly, magnificently _his_. She poured into him just that riotous pride and admiration that gives a man altogether to a woman.... Then it seemed as if a light passed, and she was just an everyday Marjorie standing there.
"I'll do anything you want me to," said Trafford.
"Then I want you to go."
"Ah!" said Mr. Pope.
"Yes," said Trafford, with his eyes on her self-possession.
"I've promised not to write or send to you, or--think more than I can help of you, until I'm twenty-one--nearly two months from now."
"And then?"
"I don't know. How can I?"
"You hear, sir?" from Mr. Pope, in the pause of mutual scrutiny that followed.
"One question," said Mr. Trafford.
"You've surely asked enough, sir," said Mr. Pope.
"Are you still engaged to Magnet?"
"Sir!"
"Please, father;" said Marjorie, with unusual daring and in her mother's voice. "Mr. Trafford, after what I've told you--you must leave that to me."
"She _is_ engaged to Mr. Magnet," said Mr. Pope. "Tell him outright, Marjorie. Make it clear."
"I think I understand," said Trafford, with his eyes on Marjorie.
"I've not seen Mr. Magnet since last night," said Marjorie. "And so--naturally--I'm still engaged to him."
"Precisely!" said Mr. Pope, and turned with a face of harsh interrogation to his importunate caller. Mr. Trafford seemed disposed for further questions. "I don't think we need detain you, Madge," said Mr. Pope, over his shoulder.
The two young people stood facing one another for a moment, and I am afraid that they were both extremely happy and satisfied with each other. It was all right, they were quite sure--all right. Their lips were almost smiling. Then Marjorie made an entirely dignified exit. She closed the door very softly, and Mr. Pope turned to his visitor again with a bleak politeness. "I hope that satisfies you," he said.
"There is nothing more to be said at present, I admit," said Mr. Trafford.
"Nothing," said Mr. Pope.
Both gentlemen bowed. Mr. Pope rose ceremoniously, and Mr. Trafford walked doorward. He had a sense of latent absurdities in these tremendous attitudes. They passed through the hall--processionally. But just at the end some lower strain in Mr. Trafford's nature touched the fine dignity of the occasion with an inappropriate remark.
"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Pope, holding the housedoor wide.
"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Trafford, and then added with a note of untimely intimacy in his voice, with an inexcusable levity upon his lips: "You know--there's nobody--no man in the world--I'd sooner have for a father-in-law than you."
Mr. Pope, caught unprepared on the spur of the moment, bowed in a cold and distant manner, and then almost immediately closed the door to save himself from violence....
From first to last neither gentleman had made the slightest allusion to a considerable bruise upon Mr. Trafford's left cheek, and a large abrasion above his ear.
§ 9
That afternoon Marjorie began her difficult task of getting disengaged from Mr. Magnet. It was difficult because she was pledged not to tell him of the one thing that made this line of action not only explicable, but necessary. Magnet, perplexed, and disconcerted, and secretly sustained by her mother's glancing sidelights on the feminine character and the instability of "girlish whims," remained at Buryhamstreet until the family returned to Hartstone Square. The engagement was ended--formally--but in such a manner that Magnet was left a rather pathetic and invincibly assiduous besieger. He lavished little presents upon both sisters, he devised little treats for the entire family, he enriched Theodore beyond the dreams of avarice, and he discussed his love and admiration for Marjorie, and the perplexities and delicacies of the situation not only with Mrs. Pope, but with Daphne. At first he had thought very little of Daphne, but now he was beginning to experience the subtle pleasures of a confidential friendship. She understood, he felt; it was quite wonderful how she understood. He found Daffy much richer in response than Marjorie, and far less disconcerting in reply....
Mr. Pope, for all Marjorie's submission to his wishes, developed a Grand Dudgeon of exceptionally fine proportions when he heard of the breach of the engagement. He ceased to speak to his daughter or admit himself aware of her existence, and the Grand Dudgeon's blighting shadow threw a chill over the life of every one in the house. He made it clear that the Grand Dudgeon would only be lifted by Marjorie's re-engagement to Magnet, and that whatever blight or inconvenience fell on the others was due entirely to Marjorie's wicked obstinacy. Using Mrs. Pope as an intermediary, he also conveyed to Marjorie his decision to be no longer burthened with the charges of her education at Oxbridge, and he made it seem extremely doubtful whether he should remember her approaching twenty-first birthday.
Marjorie received the news of her severance from Oxbridge, Mrs. Pope thought, with a certain hardness.
"I thought he would do that," said Marjorie. "He's always wanted to do that," and said no more.
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
A TELEPHONE CALL
§ 1
Trafford went back to Solomonson for a day or so, and then to London, to resume the experimental work of the research he had in hand. But he was so much in love with Marjorie that for some days it was a very dazed mind that fumbled with the apparatus--arranged it and rearranged it, and fell into daydreams that gave the utmost concern to Durgan the bottle-washer.
"He's not going straight at things," said Durgan the bottle-washer to his wife. "He usually goes so straight at things it's a pleasure to watch it. He told me he was going down into Kent to think everything out." Mr. Durgan paused impressively, and spoke with a sigh of perplexity. "He hasn't...."
But later Durgan was able to report that Trafford had pulled himself together. The work was moving.
"I was worried for a bit," said Mr. Durgan. "But I _think_ it's all right again. I _believe_ it's all right again."
§ 2
Trafford was one of those rare scientific men who really ought to be engaged in scientific research.
He could never leave an accepted formula alone. His mind was like some insatiable corrosive, that ate into all the hidden inequalities and plastered weaknesses of accepted theories, and bit its way through every plausibility of appearance. He was extraordinarily fertile in exasperating alternative hypotheses. His invention of destructive test experiments was as happy as the respectful irony with which he brought them into contact with the generalizations they doomed. He was already, at six-and-twenty, hated, abused, obstructed, and respected. He was still outside the Royal Society, of course, and the editors of the scientific periodicals admired his papers greatly, and delayed publication; but it was fairly certain that that pressure of foreign criticism and competition which prevents English scientific men of good family and social position from maintaining any such national standards as we are able to do in art, literature, and politics, would finally carry him in. And since he had a small professorship worth three hundred a year, which gave him the command of a sufficient research laboratory and the services of Mr. Durgan, a private income of nearly three hundred more, a devoted mother to keep house for him, and an invincible faith in Truth, he had every prospect of winning in his particular struggle to inflict more Truth, new lucidities, and fresh powers upon this fractious and unreasonable universe.
In the world of science now, even more than in the world of literature and political thought, the thing that is alive struggles, half-suffocated, amidst a copious production of things born dead. The endowment of research, the organization of scientific progress, the creation of salaried posts, and the assignment of honours, has attracted to this field just that type of man which is least gifted to penetrate and discover, and least able to admit its own defect or the quality of a superior. Such men are producing great, bulky masses of imitative research, futile inquiries, and monstrous entanglements of technicality about their subjects; and it is to their instinctive antagonism to the idea of a "gift" in such things that we owe the preposterous conception of a training for research, the manufacture of mental blinkers that is to say, to avoid what is the very soul of brilliant inquiry--applicable discursiveness. The trained investigator is quite the absurdest figure in the farce of contemporary intellectual life; he is like a bath-chair perpetually starting to cross the Himalayas by virtue of a licence to do so. For such enterprises one must have wings. Organization and genius are antipathetic. The vivid and creative mind, by virtue of its qualities, is a spasmodic and adventurous mind; it resents blinkers, and the mere implication that it can be driven in harness to the unexpected. It demands freedom. It resents regular attendance from ten to four and punctualities in general and all those paralyzing minor tests of conduct that are vitally important to the imagination of the authoritative dull. Consequently, it is being eliminated from its legitimate field, and it is only here and there among the younger men that such a figure as Trafford gives any promise of a renewal of that enthusiasm, that intellectual enterprise, which were distinctive of the great age of scientific advance.
Trafford was the only son of his parents. His father had been a young surgeon, more attracted by knowledge than practice, who had been killed by a scratch of the scalpel in an investigation upon ulcerative processes, at the age of twenty-nine. Trafford at that time was three years old, so that he had not the least memory of his father; but his mother, by a thousand almost unpremeditated touches, had built up a figure for him and a tradition that was shaping his life. She had loved her husband passionately, and when he died her love burnt up like a flame released, and made a god of the good she had known with him. She was then a very beautiful and active-minded woman of thirty, and she did her best to reconstruct her life; but she could find nothing so living in the world as the clear courage, the essential simplicity, and tender memories of the man she had lost. And she was the more devoted to him that he had had little weaknesses of temper and bearing, and that an outrageous campaign had been waged against him that did not cease with his death. He had, in some medical periodical, published drawings of a dead dog clamped to display a deformity, and these had been seized upon by a group of anti-vivisection fanatics as the representation of a vivisection. A libel action had been pending when he died; but there is no protection of the dead from libel. That monstrous lie met her on pamphlet cover, on hoardings, in sensational appeals; it seemed immortal, and she would have suffered the pains of a dozen suttees if she could have done so, to show the world how the power and tenderness of this alleged tormentor of helpless beasts had gripped one woman's heart. It counted enormously in her decision to remain a widow and concentrate her life upon her son.
She watched his growth with a care and passionate subtlety that even at six-and-twenty he was still far from suspecting. She dreaded his becoming a mother's pet, she sent him away to school and fretted through long terms alone, that he might be made into a man. She interested herself in literary work and social affairs lest she should press upon him unduly. She listened for the crude expression of growing thought in him with an intensity that was almost anguish. She was too intelligent to dream of forming his mind, he browsed on every doctrine to find his own, but she did desire most passionately, she prayed, she prayed in the darkness of sleepless nights, that the views, the breadths, the spacious emotions which had ennobled her husband in her eyes should rise again in him.
There were years of doubt and waiting. He was a good boy and a bad boy, now brilliant, now touching, now disappointing, now gloriously reassuring, and now heart-rending as only the children of our blood can be. He had errors and bad moments, lapses into sheer naughtiness, phases of indolence, attacks of contagious vulgarity. But more and more surely she saw him for his father's son; she traced the same great curiosities, the same keen dauntless questioning; whatever incidents might disturb and perplex her, his intellectual growth went on strong and clear and increasing like some sacred flame that is carried in procession, halting perhaps and swaying a little but keeping on, over the heads of a tumultuous crowd.
He went from his school to the Royal College of Science, thence to successes at Cambridge, and thence to Berlin. He travelled a little in Asia Minor and Persia, had a journey to America, and then came back to her and London, sunburnt, moustached, manly, and a little strange. When he had been a boy she had thought his very soul pellucid; it had clouded opaquely against her scrutiny as he passed into adolescence. Then through the period of visits and departures, travel together, separations, he grew into something detached and admirable, a man curiously reminiscent of his father, unexpectedly different. She ceased to feel what he was feeling in his mind, had to watch him, infer, guess, speculate about him. She desired for him and dreaded for him with an undying tenderness, but she no longer had any assurance that she could interfere to help him. He had his father's trick of falling into thought. Her brown eyes would watch him across the flowers and delicate glass and silver of her dinner table when he dined at home with her. Sometimes he seemed to forget she existed, sometimes he delighted in her, talked to amuse her, petted her; sometimes, and then it was she was happiest, he talked of plays and books with her, discussed general questions, spoke even of that broadly conceived scheme of work which engaged so much of his imagination. She knew that it was distinguished and powerful work. Old friends of her husband spoke of it to her, praised its inspired directness, its beautiful simplicity. Since the days of Wollaston, they said, no one had been so witty an experimenter, no one had got more out of mere scraps of apparatus or contrived more ingenious simplifications.
When he had accepted the minor Professorship which gave him a footing in the world of responsible scientific men, she had taken a house in a quiet street in Chelsea which necessitated a daily walk to his laboratory. It was a little old Georgian house with worn and graceful rooms, a dignified front door and a fine gateway of Sussex ironwork much painted and eaten away. She arranged it with great care; she had kept most of her furniture, and his study had his father's bureau, and the selfsame agate paper-weight that had pressed the unfinished paper he left when he died. She was a woman of persistent friendships, and there came to her, old connections of those early times trailing fresher and younger people in their wake, sons, daughters, nephews, disciples; her son brought home all sorts of interesting men, and it was remarkable to her that amidst the talk and discussion at her table, she discovered aspects of her son and often quite intimate aspects she would never have seen with him alone.
She would not let herself believe that this Indian summer of her life could last for ever. He was no passionless devotee of research, for all his silence and restraints. She had seen him kindle with anger at obstacles and absurdities, and quicken in the presence of beauty. She knew how readily and richly he responded to beauty. Things happened to have run smoothly with him so far, that was all. "Of course," she said, "he must fall in love. It cannot be long before he falls in love."
Once or twice that had seemed to happen, and then it had come to nothing....
She knew that sooner or later this completion of his possibilities must come, that the present steadfastness of purpose was a phase in which forces gathered, that love must sweep into his life as a deep and passionate disturbance. She wondered where it would take him, whether it would leave him enriched or devastated. She saw at times how young he was; she had, as I suppose most older people have about their juniors, the profoundest doubt whether he was wise enough yet to be trusted with a thing so good as himself. He had flashes of high-spirited indiscretion, and at times a wildfire of humour flared in his talk. So far that had done no worse for him than make an enemy or so in scientific circles. But she had no idea of the limits of his excitability. She would watch him and fear for him--she knew the wreckage love can make--and also she desired that he should lose nothing that life and his nature could give him.
§ 3
In the two months of separation that ensued before Marjorie was one-and-twenty, Trafford's mind went through some remarkable phases. At first the excitement of his passion for Marjorie obscured everything else, then with his return to London and his laboratory the immense inertia of habit and slowly developed purposes, the complex yet convergent system of ideas and problems to which so much of his life had been given, began to reassert itself. His love was vivid and intense, a light in his imagination, a fever in his blood; but it was a new thing; it had not crept into the flesh and bones of his being, it was away there in Surrey; the streets of London, his home, the white-walled chamber with its skylight and high windows and charts of constants, in which his apparatus was arranged, had no suggestion of her. She was outside--an adventure--a perplexing incommensurable with all these things.
He had left Buryhamstreet with Marjorie riotously in possession of his mind. He could think of nothing but Marjorie in the train, and how she had shone at him in the study, and how her voice had sounded when she spoke, and how she stood and moved, and the shape and sensation of her hands, and how it had felt to hold her for those brief moments in the wood and press lips and body to his, and how her face had gleamed in the laced shadows of the moonlight, soft and wonderful.
In fact, he thought of Marjorie.
He thought she was splendid, courageous, wise by instinct. He had no doubt of her or that she was to be his--when the weeks of waiting had passed by. She was his, and he was Marjorie's; that had been settled from the beginning of the world. It didn't occur to him that anything had happened to alter his life or any of his arrangements in any way, except that they were altogether altered--as the world is altered without displacement when the sun pours up in the east. He was glorified--and everything was glorified.
He wondered how they would meet again, and dreamt a thousand impossible and stirring dreams, but he dreamt them as dreams.
At first, to Durgan's infinite distress, he thought of her all day, and then, as the old familiar interests grappled him again, he thought of her in the morning and the evening and as he walked between his home and the laboratory and at all sorts of incidental times--and even when the close-locked riddles of his research held the foreground and focus of his thoughts, he still seemed to be thinking of her as a radiant background to ions and molecules and atoms and interwoven systems of eddies and quivering oscillations deep down in the very heart of matter.
And always he thought of her as something of the summer. The rich decays of autumn came, the Chelsea roads were littered with variegated leaves that were presently wet and dirty and slippery, the twilight crept down into the day towards five o'clock and four, but in his memory of her the leaves were green, the evenings were long, the warm quiet of rural Surrey in high August filled the air. So that it was with a kind of amazement he found her in London and in November close at hand. He was called to the college telephone one day from a conversation with a proposed research student. It was a middle-aged woman bachelor anxious for the D.Sc., who wished to occupy the further bench in the laboratory; but she had no mental fire, and his mind was busy with excuses and discouragements.
He had no thought of Marjorie when she answered, and for an instant he did not recognize her voice.
"Yes, I'm Mr. Trafford."...
"Who is it?" he reiterated with a note of irascibility. "_Who?_"
The little voice laughed. "Why! I'm Marjorie!" it said.
Then she was back in his life like a lantern suddenly become visible in a wood at midnight.
It was like meeting her as a china figure, neat and perfect and two inches high. It was her voice, very clear and very bright, and quite characteristic, as though he was hearing it through the wrong end of a telescope. It was her voice, clear as a bell; confident without a shadow.
"It's _me!_ Marjorie! I'm twenty-one to-day!"
It was like a little arrow of exquisite light shot into the very heart of his life.
He laughed back. "Are you for meeting me then, Marjorie?"
§ 4
They met in Kensington Gardens with an air of being clandestine and defiant. It was one of those days of amber sunlight, soft air, and tender beauty with which London relieves the tragic glooms of the year's decline. There were still a residue of warm-tinted leaves in puffs and clusters upon the tree branches, a boat or two ruffled the blue Serpentine, and the waterfowl gave colour and animation to the selvage of the water. The sedges were still a greenish yellow.
The two met shyly. They were both a little unfamiliar to each other. Trafford was black-coated, silk-hatted, umbrella-d, a decorous young professor in the place of the cheerful aeronaut who had fallen so gaily out of the sky. Marjorie had a new tailor-made dress of russet-green, and a little cloth toque ruled and disciplined the hair he had known as a ruddy confusion.... They had dreamt, I think, of extended arms and a wild rush to embrace one another. Instead, they shook hands.
"And so," said Trafford, "we |
35338-8 | meet again!"
"I don't see why we shouldn't meet!" said Marjorie.
There was a slight pause.
"Let's have two of those jolly little green chairs," said Trafford....
They walked across the grass towards the chairs he had indicated, and both were full of the momentous things they were finding it impossible to say.
"There ought to be squirrels here, as there are in New York," he said at last.
They sat down. There was a moment's silence, and then Trafford's spirit rose in rebellion and he plunged at this--this stranger beside him.
"Look here," he said, "do you still love me, Marjorie?"
She looked up into his face with eyes in which surprise and scrutiny passed into something altogether beautiful. "I love you--altogether," she said in a steady, low voice.
And suddenly she was no longer a stranger, but the girl who had flitted to his arms breathless, unhesitating, through the dusk. His blood quickened. He made an awkward gesture as though he arrested an impulse to touch her. "My sweetheart," he said. "My dear one!"
Marjorie's face flashed responses. "It's you," he said.
"Me," she answered.
"Do you remember?"
"Everything!"
"My dear!"
"I want to tell you things," said Marjorie. "What are we to do?"....
He tried afterwards to retrace that conversation. He was chiefly ashamed of his scientific preoccupations during that London interval. He had thought of a thousand things; Marjorie had thought of nothing else but love and him. Her happy assurance, her absolute confidence that his desires would march with hers, reproached and confuted every adverse thought in him as though it was a treachery to love. He had that sense which I suppose comes at times to every man, of entire unworthiness for the straight, unhesitating decision, the clear simplicity of a woman's passion. He had dreamt vaguely, unsubstantially, the while he had arranged his pressures and temperatures and infinitesimal ingredients, and worked with goniometer and trial models and the new calculating machine he had contrived for his research. But she had thought clearly, definitely, fully--of nothing but coming to him. She had thought out everything that bore upon that; reasons for preciptance, reasons for delay, she had weighed the rewards of conformity against the glamour of romance. It became more and more clear to him as they talked, that she was determined to elope with him, to go to Italy, and there have an extraordinarily picturesque and beautiful time. Her definiteness shamed his poverty of anticipation. Her enthusiasm carried him with her. Of course it was so that things must be done....
When at last they parted under the multiplying lamps of the November twilight, he turned his face eastward. He was afraid of his mother's eyes--he scarcely knew why. He walked along Kensington Gore, and the clustering confused lights of street and house, white and golden and orange and pale lilac, the moving lamps and shining glitter of the traffic, the luminous interiors of omnibuses, the reflection of carriage and hoarding, the fading daylight overhead, the phantom trees to the left, the deepening shadows and blacknesses among the houses on his right, the bobbing heads of wayfarers, were just for him the stir and hue and texture of fairyland. All the world was fairyland. He went to his club and dined there, and divided the evening between geography, as it is condensed in Baedeker and Murray on North Italy, Italian Switzerland and the Italian Riviera, and a study of the marriage laws as they are expounded in "Whitaker's Almanac," the "Encyclopædia Britannica," and other convenient works of reference. He replaced the books as he used them, and went at last from the library into the smoking-room, but seeing a man who might talk to him there, he went out at once into the streets, and fetched a wide compass by Baker Street, Oxford Street, and Hyde Park, home.
He was a little astonished at himself and everything.
But it was going to be--splendid.
(What poor things words can be!)
§ 5
He found his mother still up. She had been re-reading "The Old Wives' Tale," and she sat before a ruddy fire in the shadow beyond the lit circle of a green-shaded electric light thinking, with the book put aside. In the dimness above was his father's portrait. "Time you were in bed, mother," he said reprovingly, and kissed her eyebrow and stood above her. "What's the book?" he asked, and picked it up and put it down, forgotten. Their eyes met. She perceived he had something to say; she did not know what. "Where have you been?" she asked.
He told her, and they lapsed into silence. She asked another question and he answered her, and the indifferent conversation ended again. The silence lengthened. Then he plunged: "I wonder, mother, if it would put you out very much if I brought home a wife to you?"
So it had come to this--and she had not seen it coming. She looked into the glowing recesses of the fire before her and controlled her voice by an effort. "I'd be glad for you to do it, dear--if you loved her," she said very quietly. He stared down at her for a moment; then he knelt down beside her and took her hand and kissed it. "_My dear_," she whispered softly, stroking his head, and her tears came streaming. For a time they said no more.
Presently he put coal on the fire, and then sitting on the hearthrug at her feet and looking away from her into the flames--in an attitude that took her back to his boyhood--he began to tell her brokenly and awkwardly of Marjorie.
"It's so hard, mother, to explain these things," he began. "One doesn't half understand the things that are happening to one. I want to make you in love with her, dear, just as I am. And I don't see how I can."
"Perhaps I shall understand, my dear. Perhaps I shall understand better than you think."
"She's such a beautiful thing--with something about her----. You know those steel blades you can bend back to the hilt--and they're steel! And she's tender. It's as if someone had taken tears, mother, and made a spirit out of them----"
She caressed and stroked his hand. "My dear," she said, "I know."
"And a sort of dancing daring in her eyes."
"Yes," she said. "But tell me where she comes from, and how you met her--and all the circumstantial things that a sensible old woman can understand."
He kissed her hand and sat down beside her, with his shoulder against the arm of her chair, his fingers interlaced about his knee. She could not keep her touch from his hair, and she tried to force back the thought in her mind that all these talks must end, that very soon indeed they would end. And she was glad, full of pride and joy too that her son was a lover after her heart, a clean and simple lover as his father had been before him. He loved this unknown Marjorie, finely, sweetly, bravely, even as she herself could have desired to have been loved. She told herself she did not care very greatly even if this Marjorie should prove unworthy. So long as her son was not unworthy.
He pieced his story together. He gave her a picture of the Popes, Marjorie in her family like a jewel in an ugly setting, so it seemed to him, and the queer dull rage of her father and all that they meant to do. She tried to grasp his perplexities and advise, but chiefly she was filled with the thought that he was in love. If he wanted a girl he should have her, and if he had to take her by force, well, wasn't it his right? She set small store upon the Popes that night--or any circumstances. And since she herself had married on the slightest of security, she was concerned very little that this great adventure was to be attempted on an income of a few hundreds a year. It was outside her philosophy that a wife should be anything but glad to tramp the roads if need be with the man who loved her. He sketched out valiant plans, was for taking Marjorie away in the teeth of all opposition and bringing her back to London. It would have to be done decently, of course, but it would have, he thought, to be done. Mrs. Trafford found the prospect perfect; never before had he sounded and looked so like that dim figure which hung still and sympathetic above them. Ever and again she glanced up at her husband's quiet face....
On one point she was very clear with him.
"You'll live with us, mother?" he said abruptly.
"Not with you. As near as you like. But one house, one woman.... I'll have a little flat of my own--for you both to come to me."
"Oh, nonsense, mother! You'll have to be with us. Living alone, indeed!"
"My dear, I'd _prefer_ a flat of my own. You don't understand--everything. It will be better for all of us like that."
There came a little pause between them, and then her hand was on his head again. "Oh, my dear," she said, "I want you to be happy. And life can be difficult. I won't give a chance--for things to go wrong. You're hers, dear, and you've got to be hers--be each other's altogether. I've watched so many people. And that's the best, the very best you can have. There's just the lovers--the real enduring lovers; and the uncompleted people who've failed to find it."...
§ 6
Trafford's second meeting with Marjorie, which, by the by, happened on the afternoon of the following day, brought them near to conclusive decisions. The stiffness of their first encounter in London had altogether vanished. She was at her prettiest and in the highest spirits--and she didn't care for anything else in the world. A gauzy silk scarf which she had bought and not paid for that day floated atmospherically about her straight trim body; her hair had caught the infection of insurrection and was waving rebelliously about her ears. As he drew near her his grave discretion passed from him as clouds pass from a hillside. She smiled radiantly. He held out both his hands for both of hers, and never did a maiden come so near and yet not get a public and shameless kissing.
One could as soon describe music as tell their conversation. It was a matter of tones and feelings. But the idea of flight together, of the bright awakening in unfamiliar sunshine with none to come between them, had gripped them both. A certain sober gravity of discussion only masked that deeper inebriety. It would be easy for them to get away; he had no lectures until February; he could, he said, make arrangements, leave his research. She dreaded disputation. She was for a simple disappearance, notes on pincushions and defiantly apologetic letters from Boulogne, but his mother's atmosphere had been a gentler one than her home's, with a more powerful disposition to dignity. He still couldn't understand that the cantankerous egotism of Pope was indeed the essential man; it seemed to him a crust of bad manners that reason ought to pierce.
The difference in their atmospheres came out in their talk--in his desire for a handsome and dignified wedding--though the very heavens protested--and her resolve to cut clear of every one, to achieve a sort of gaol delivery of her life, make a new beginning altogether, with the minimum of friction and the maximum of surprise. Unused to fighting, he was magnificently prepared to fight; she, with her intimate knowledge of chronic domestic conflict, was for the evasion of all the bickerings, scoldings, and misrepresentations his challenge would occasion. He thought in his innocence a case could be stated and discussed; but no family discussion she had ever heard had even touched the realities of the issue that occasioned it.
"I don't like this underhand preparation," he said.
"Nor I," she echoed. "But what can one do?"
"Well, oughtn't I to go to your father and give him a chance? Why shouldn't I? It's--the dignified way."
"It won't be dignified for father," said Marjorie, "anyhow."
"But what right has he to object?"
"He isn't going to discuss his rights with you. He _will_ object."
"But _why?_"
"Oh! because he's started that way. He hit you. I haven't forgotten it. Well, if he goes back on that now----He'd rather die than go back on it. You see, he's ashamed in his heart. It would be like confessing himself wrong not to keep it up that you're the sort of man one hits. He just hates you because he hit you. I haven't been his daughter for twenty-one years for nothing."
"I'm thinking of us," said Trafford. "I don't see we oughtn't to go to him just because he's likely to be--unreasonable."
"My dear, do as you please. He'll forbid and shout, and hit tables until things break. Suppose he locks me up!"
"Oh, Habeas Corpus, and my strong right arm! He's much more likely to turn you out-of-doors."
"Not if he thinks the other will annoy you more. I'll have to bear a storm."
"Not for long."
"He'll bully mother till she cries over me. But do as you please. She'll come and she'll beg me----Do as you please. Perhaps I'm a coward. I'd far rather I could slip away."
Trafford thought for a moment. "I'd far rather you could," he answered, in a voice that spoke of inflexible determinations.
They turned to the things they meant to do. "_Italy!_" she whispered, "_Italy!_" Her face was alight with her burning expectation of beauty, of love, of the new heaven and the new earth that lay before them. The intensity of that desire blazing through her seemed to shame his dull discretions. He had to cling to his resolution, lest it should vanish in that contagious intoxication.
"You understand I shall come to your father," he said, as they drew near the gate where it seemed discreet for them to part.
"It will make it harder to get away," she said, with no apparent despondency. "It won't stop us. Oh! do as you please."
She seemed to dismiss the question, and stood hand-in-hand with him in a state of glowing gravity. She wouldn't see him again for four-and-twenty hours. Then a thought came into her head--a point of great practical moment.
"Oh!" she said, "of course, you won't tell father you've seen me."
She met his eye. "Really you mustn't," she said. "You see--he'll make a row with mother for not having watched me better. I don't know what he isn't likely to do. It isn't myself----This is a confidential communication--all this. No one in this world knows I am meeting you. If you _must_ go to him, go to him."
"For myself?"
She nodded, with her open eyes on his--eyes that looked now very blue and very grave, and her lips a little apart.
She surprised him a little, but even this sudden weakness seemed adorable.
"All right," he said.
"You don't think that I'm shirking----?" she asked, a little too eagerly.
"You know your father best," he answered. "I'll tell you all he says and all the terror of him here to-morrow afternoon."
§ 7
In the stillness of the night Trafford found himself thinking over Marjorie; it was a new form of mental exercise, which was destined to play a large part in his existence for many subsequent years. There had come a shadow on his confidence in her. She was a glorious person; she had a kind of fire behind her and in her--shining through her, like the lights in a fire-opal, but----He wished she had not made him promise to conceal their meeting and their close co-operation from her father. Why did she do that? It would spoil his case with her father, and it could forward things for them in no conceivable way. And from that, in some manner too subtle to trace, he found his mind wandering to another problem, which was destined to reappear with a slowly dwindling importance very often in this procedure of thinking over Marjorie in the small hours. It was the riddle--it never came to him in the daytime, but only in those intercalary and detachedly critical periods of thought--why exactly had she engaged herself to Magnet? Why had she? He couldn't imagine himself, in Marjorie's position, doing anything of the sort. Marjorie had ways of her own; she was different.... Well, anyhow, she was splendid and loving and full of courage.... He had got no further than this when at last he fell asleep.
§ 8
Trafford's little attempt to regularise his position was as creditable to him as it was inevitably futile. He sought out 29, Hartstone Square in the morning on his way to his laboratory, and he found it one of a great row of stucco houses each with a portico and a dining-room window on the ground floor, and each with a railed area from which troglodytic servants peeped. Collectively the terrace might claim a certain ugly dignity of restraint, there was none of your Queen Anne nonsense of art or beauty about it, and the narrow height, the subterranean kitchens of each constituent house, told of a steep relentless staircase and the days before the pampering of the lower classes began. The houses formed a square, as if the British square so famous at Waterloo for its dogged resistance to all the forces of the universe had immortalized itself in buildings, and they stared upon a severely railed garden of hardy shrubs and gravel to which the tenants had the inestimable privilege of access. They did not use it much, that was their affair, but at any rate they had keys and a nice sense of rights assured, and at least it kept other people out.
Trafford turned out of a busy high road full of the mixed exhilarating traffic of our time, and came along a quiet street into this place, and it seemed to him he had come into a corner of defence and retreat, into an atmosphere of obstinate and unteachable resistances. But this illusion of conservativism in its last ditch was dispelled altogether in Mr. Pope's portico. Youth flashed out of these solemnities like a dart shot from a cave. Trafford was raising his hand to the solid brass knocker when abruptly it was snatched from his fingers, the door was flung open and a small boy with a number of dirty books in a strap flew out and hit him with projectile violence.
"Blow!" said the young gentleman recoiling, and Trafford recovering said: "Hullo, Theodore!"
"Lord!" said Theodore breathless, "It's you! _What_ a lark! Your name's never mentioned--no how. What _did_ you do?... Wish I could stop and see it! I'm ten minutes late. _Ave atque vale_. So long!"
He vanished with incredible velocity. And Mr. Trafford was alone in possession of the open doorway except for Toupee, who after a violent outbreak of hostility altered his mind and cringed to his feet in abject and affectionate propitiation. A pseudo-twin appeared, said "Hello!" and vanished, and then he had an instant's vision of Mr. Pope, newspaper in hand, appearing from the dining-room. His expression of surprise changed to malevolence, and he darted back into the room from which he had emerged. Trafford decided to take the advice of a small brass plate on his left hand, and "ring also."
A housemaid came out of the bowels of the earth very promptly and ushered him up two flights of stairs into what was manifestly Mr. Pope's study.
It was a narrow, rather dark room lit by two crimson-curtained windows, and with a gas fire before which Mr. Pope's walking boots were warming for the day. The apartment revealed to Trafford's cursory inspection many of the stigmata of an Englishman of active intelligence and literary tastes. There in the bookcase were the collected works of Scott, a good large illustrated Shakespeare in numerous volumes, and a complete set of bound _Punches_ from the beginning. A pile of back numbers of the _Times_ stood on a cane stool in a corner, and in a little bookcase handy for the occupier of the desk were Whitaker, Wisden and an old peerage. The desk bore traces of recent epistolary activity, and was littered with the printed matter of Aunt Plessington's movements. Two or three recent issues of _The Financial Review of Reviews_ were also visible. About the room hung steel engravings apparently of defunct judges or at any rate of exceedingly grim individuals, and over the mantel were trophies of athletic prowess, a bat witnessing that Mr. Pope had once captained the second eleven at Harrogby.
Mr. Pope entered with a stern expression and a sentence prepared. "Well, sir," he said with a note of ironical affability, "to what may I ascribe this--intrusion?"
Mr. Trafford was about to reply when Mr. Pope interrupted. "Will you be seated," he said, and turned his desk chair about for himself, and occupying it, crossed his legs and pressed the finger tips of his two hands together. "Well, sir?" he said.
Trafford remained standing astraddle over the boots before the gas fire.
"Look here, sir," he said; "I am in love with your daughter. She's one and twenty, and I want to see her--and in fact----" He found it hard to express himself. He could think only of a phrase that sounded ridiculous. "I want--in fact--to pay my addresses to her."
"Well, sir, I don't want you to do so. That is too mild. I object strongly--very strongly. My daughter has been engaged to a very distinguished and able man, and I hope very shortly to hear that that engagement----Practically it is still going on. I don't want you to intrude upon my daughter further."
"But look here, sir. There's a certain justice--I mean a certain reasonableness----"
Mr. Pope held out an arresting hand. "I don't wish it. Let that be enough."
"Of course it isn't enough. I'm in love with her--and she with me. I'm an entirely reputable and decent person----"
"May I be allowed to judge what is or is not suitable companionship for my daughter--and what may or may not be the present state of her affections?"
"Well, that's rather the point we are discussing. After all, Marjorie isn't a baby. I want to do all this--this affair, openly and properly if I can, but, you know, I mean to marry Marjorie--anyhow."
"There are two people to consult in that matter."
"I'll take the risk of that."
"Permit me to differ."
A feeling of helplessness came over Trafford. The curious irritation Mr. Pope always roused in him began to get the better of him. His face flushed hotly. "Oh really! really! this is--this is nonsense!" he cried. "I never heard anything so childish and pointless as your objection----"
"Be careful, sir!" cried Mr. Pope, "be careful!"
"I'm going to marry Marjorie."
"If she marries you, sir, she shall never darken my doors again!"
"If you had a thing against me!"
"_Haven't_ I!"
"What have you?"
There was a quite perceptible pause before Pope fired his shot.
"Does any decent man want the name of Trafford associated with his daughter. Trafford! Look at the hoardings, sir!"
A sudden blaze of anger lit Trafford. "My God!" he cried and clenched his fists and seemed for a moment ready to fall upon the man before him. Then he controlled himself by a violent effort. "You believe in that libel on my dead father?" he said, with white lips.
"Has it ever been answered?"
"A hundred times. And anyhow!--Confound it! I don't believe--_you_ believe it. You've raked it up--as an excuse! You want an excuse for your infernal domestic tyranny! That's the truth of it. You can't bear a creature in your household to have a will or preference of her own. I tell you, sir, you are intolerable--intolerable!"
He was shouting, and Pope was standing now and shouting too. "Leave my house, sir. Get out of my house, sir. You come here to insult me, sir!"
A sudden horror of himself and Pope seized the younger man. He stiffened and became silent. Never in his life before had he been in a bawling quarrel. He was amazed and ashamed.
"Leave my house!" cried Pope with an imperious gesture towards the door.
Trafford made an absurd effort to save the situation. "I am sorry, sir, I lost my temper. I had no business to abuse you----"
"You've said enough."
"I apologise for that. I've done what I could to manage things decently."
"Will you go, sir?" threatened Mr. Pope.
"I'm sorry I came," said Trafford.
Mr. Pope took his stand with folded arms and an expression of weary patience.
"I did what I could," said Trafford at the door.
The staircase and passage were deserted. The whole house seemed to have caught from Mr. Pope that same quality of seeing him out....
"Confound it!" said Trafford in the street. "How on earth did all this happen?"...
He turned eastward, and then realized that work would be impossible that day. He changed his direction for Kensington Gardens, and in the flower-bordered walk near the Albert Memorial he sat down on a chair, and lugged at his moustache and wondered. He was extraordinarily perplexed, as well as ashamed and enraged by this uproar. How had it begun? Of course, he had been stupidly abusive, but the insult to his father had been unendurable. Did a man of Pope's sort quite honestly believe that stuff? If he didn't, he deserved kicking. If he did, of course he was entitled to have it cleared up. But then he wouldn't listen! Was there any case for the man at all? Had he, Trafford, really put the thing so that Pope would listen? He couldn't remember. What was it he had said in reply to Pope? What was it exactly that Pope had said?
It was already vague; it was a confused memory of headlong words and answers; what wasn't vague, what rang in his ears still, was the hoarse discord of two shouting voices.
Could Marjorie have heard?
§ 9
So Marjorie carried her point. She wasn't to be married tamely after the common fashion which trails home and all one's beginnings into the new life. She was to be eloped with, romantically and splendidly, into a glorious new world. She walked on shining clouds, and if she felt some remorse, it was a very tender and satisfactory remorse, and with a clear conviction below it that in the end she would be forgiven.
They made all their arrangements elaborately and carefully. Trafford got a license to marry her; she was to have a new outfit from top to toe to go away with on that eventful day. It accumulated in the shop, and they marked the clothes _M.T._ She was watched, she imagined, but as her father did not know she had seen Trafford, nothing had been said to her, and no attempt was made to prohibit her going out and coming in. Trafford entered into the conspiracy with a keen interest, a certain amusement, and a queer little feeling of distaste. He hated to hide any act of his from any human being. The very soul of scientific work, you see, is publication. But Marjorie seemed to justify all things, and when his soul turned against furtiveness, he reminded it that the alternative was bawling.
One eventful afternoon he went to the college, and Marjorie slipped round by his arrangement to have tea with Mrs. Trafford....
He returned about seven in a state of nervous apprehension; came upstairs two steps at a time, and stopped breathless on the landing. He gulped as he came in, and his eyes were painfully eager. "She's been?" he asked.
But Marjorie had won Mrs. Trafford.
"She's been," she answered. "Yes, she's all right, my dear."
"Oh, mother!" he said.
"She's a beautiful creature, dear--and such a child! Oh! such a child! And God bless you, dear, God bless you....
"I think all young people are children. I want to take you both in my arms and save you.... I'm talking nonsense, dear."
He kissed her, and she clung to him as if he were something too precious to release.
§ 10
The elopement was a little complicated by a surprise manoeuvre of Mrs. Pope's. She was more alive to the quality of the situation, poor lady! than her daughter suspected; she was watching, dreading, perhaps even furtively sympathizing and trying to arrange--oh! trying dreadfully to arrange. She had an instinctive understanding of the deep blue quiet in Marjorie's eyes, and the girl's unusual tenderness with Daffy and the children. She peeped under the blind as Marjorie went out, noted the care in her dress, watched her face as she returned, never plumbed her with a question for fear of the answer. She did not dare to breathe a hint of her suspicions to her husband, but she felt things were adrift in swift, smooth water, and all her soul cried out for delay. So presently there came a letter from Cousin Susan Pendexter at Plymouth. The weather was beautiful, Marjorie must come at once, pack up and come and snatch the last best glow of the dying autumn away there in the west. Marjorie's jerry-built excuses, her manifest chagrin and reluctance, confirmed her mother's worst suspicions.
She submitted and went, and Mrs. Pope and Syd saw her off.
I do not like to tell how a week later Marjorie explained herself and her dressing-bag and a few small articles back to London from Plymouth. Suffice it that she lied desperately and elaborately. Her mother had never achieved such miracles of mis-statement, and she added a vigour that was all her own. It is easier to sympathize with her than exonerate her. She was in a state of intense impatience, and--what is strange--extraordinarily afraid that something would separate her from her lover if she did not secure him. She was in a fever of determination. She could not eat or sleep or attend to anything whatever; she was occupied altogether with the thought of assuring herself to Trafford. He towered in her waking vision over town and land and sea.
He didn't hear the lies she told; he only knew she was magnificently coming back to him. He met her at Paddington, a white-faced, tired, splendidly resolute girl, and they went to the waiting registrar's forthwith.
She bore herself with the intentness and dignity of one who is taking the cardinal step in life. They kissed as though it was a symbol, and were keenly business-like about cabs and luggage and trains. At last they were alone in the train together. They stared at one another.
"We've done it, Mrs. Trafford!" said Trafford.
She snapped like an over-taut string, crumpled, clung to him, and without a word was weeping passionately in his arms.
It surprised him that she could weep as she did, and still more to see her as she walked by his side along the Folkestone pier, altogether recovered, erect, a little flushed and excited like a child. She seemed to miss nothing. "Oh, smell the sea!" she said, "Look at the lights! Listen to the swish of the water below." She watched the luggage spinning on the wire rope of the giant crane, and he watched her face and thought how beautiful she was. He wondered why her eyes could sometimes be so blue and sometimes dark as night.
The boat cleared the pier and turned about and headed for France. They walked the upper deck together and stood side by side, she very close to him.
"I've never crossed the sea before," she said.
"Old England," she whispered. "It's like leaving a nest. A little row of lights and that's all the world I've ever known, shrunken to that already."
Presently they went forward and peered into the night.
"Look!" she said. "_Italy!_ There's sunshine and all sorts of beautiful things ahead. Warm sunshine, wonderful old ruins, green lizards...." She paused and whispered almost noiselessly: "_love_----"
They pressed against each other.
"And yet isn't it strange? All you can see is darkness, and clouds--and big waves that hiss as they come near...."
§ 11
Italy gave all her best to welcome them. It was a late year, a golden autumn, with skies of such blue as Marjorie had never seen before. They stayed at first in a pretty little Italian hotel with a garden on the lake, and later they walked over Salvator to Morcote and by boat to Ponte Tresa, and thence they had the most wonderful and beautiful tramp in the world to Luino, over the hills by Castelrotto. To the left of them all day was a broad valley with low-lying villages swimming in a luminous mist, to the right were purple mountains. They passed through paved streets with houses the colour of flesh and ivory, with balconies hung with corn and gourds, with tall church campaniles rising high, and great archways giving upon the blue lowlands; they tramped along avenues of sweet chestnut and between stretches of exuberant vineyard, in which men and women were gathering grapes--purple grapes, a hatful for a soldo, that rasped the tongue. Everything was strange and wonderful to Marjorie's eyes; now it would be a wayside shrine and now a yoke of soft-going, dewlapped oxen, now a chapel hung about with _ex votos_, and now some unfamiliar cultivation--or a gipsy-eyed child--or a scorpion that scuttled in the dust. The very names of the villages were like jewels to her, Varasca, Croglio, Ronca, Sesia, Monteggio. They walked, or sat by the wayside and talked, or rested at the friendly table of some kindly albergo. A woman as beautiful as Ceres, with a white neck all open, made them an omelette, and then fetched her baby from its cradle to nurse it while she talked to them as they made their meal. And afterwards she filled their pockets with roasted chestnuts, and sent them with melodious good wishes upon their way. And always high over all against the translucent blue hung the white shape of Monte Rosa, that warmed in colour as the evening came.
Marjorie's head was swimming with happiness and beauty, and with every fresh delight she recurred again to the crowning marvel of this clean-limbed man beside her, who smiled and carried all her luggage in a huge rucksack that did not seem to exist for him, and watched her and caressed her--and was hers, _hers!_
At Baveno there were letters. They sat at a little table outside a café and read them, suddenly mindful of England again. Incipient forgiveness showed through Mrs. Pope's reproaches, and there was also a simple, tender love-letter (there is no other word for it) from old Mrs. Trafford to her son.
From Baveno they set off up Monte Mottarone--whence one may see the Alps from Visto to Ortler Spitz--trusting to find the inn still open, and if it was closed to get down to Orta somehow before night. Or at the worst sleep upon the mountain side.
(Monte Mottarone! Just for a moment taste the sweet Italian name upon your lips.) These were the days before the funicular from Stresa, when one trudged up a rude path through the chestnuts and walnuts.
As they ascended the long windings through the woods, they met an old poet and his wife, coming down from sunset and sunrise. There was a word or two about the inn, and they went upon their way. The old man turned ever and again to look at them.
"Adorable young people," he said. "Adorable happy young people....
"Did you notice, dear, how she held that dainty little chin of hers?...
"Pride is such a good thing, my dear, clear, straight pride like theirs--and they were both so proud!...
"Isn't it good, dear, to think that once you and I may have looked like that to some passer-by. I wish I could bless them--sweet, swift young things! I wish, dear, it was possible for old men to bless young people without seeming to set up for saints...."
BOOK THE SECOND MARJORIE MARRIED
CHAPTER THE FIRST
SETTLING DOWN
§ 1
It was in a boat among reeds upon the lake of Orta that Trafford first became familiarized with the idea that Marjorie was capable of debt.
"Oh, I ought to have told you," she began, apropos of nothing.
Her explanation was airy; she had let the thing slip out of her mind for a time. But there were various debts to Oxbridge tradespeople. How much? Well, rather a lot. Of course, the tradespeople were rather enticing when first one went up----How much, anyhow?
"Oh, about fifty pounds," said Marjorie, after her manner. "Not _more_. I've not kept all the bills; and some haven't come in. You know how slow they are."
"These things _will_ happen," said Trafford, though, as a matter of fact, nothing of the sort had happened in his case. "However, you'll be able to pay as soon as you get home, and get them all off your mind."
"I think fifty pounds will clear me," said Marjorie, clinging to her long-established total, "if you'll let me have that."
"Oh, we don't do things like that," said Trafford. "I'm arranging that my current account will be a sort of joint account, and your signature will be as good as mine--for the purpose of drawing, at least. You'll have your own cheque-book----"
"I don't understand, quite," said Marjorie.
"You'll have your own cheque-book and write cheques as you want them. That seems the simplest way to me."
"Of course," said Marjorie. "But isn't this--rather unusual? Father always used to allowance mother."
"It's the only decent way according to my ideas," said Trafford. "A man shouldn't marry when he can't trust."
"Of course not," said Marjorie. Something between fear and compunction wrung her. "Do you think you'd better?" she asked, very earnestly.
"Better?"
"Do this."
"Why not?"
"It's--it's so generous."
He didn't answer. He took up an oar and began to push out from among the reeds with something of the shy awkwardness of a boy who becomes apprehensive of thanks. He stole a glance at her presently and caught her expression--there was something very solemn and intent in her eyes--and he thought what a grave, fine thing his Marjorie could be.
But, indeed, her state of mind was quite exceptionally confused. She was disconcerted--and horribly afraid of herself.
"Do you mean that I can spend what I like?" asked Marjorie.
"Just as I may," he said.
"I wonder," said Marjorie again, "if I'd better."
She was tingling with delight at this freedom, and she knew she was not fit for its responsibility. She just came short of a passionate refusal of his proposal. He was still so new to her, and things were so wonderful, or I think she would have made that refusal.
"You've got to," said Trafford, and ended the matter.
So Marjorie was silent--making good resolutions.
§ 2
Perhaps some day it may be possible to tell in English again, in the language of Shakspeare and Herrick, of the passion, the tenderness, the beauty, and the delightful familiarizations of a happy honeymoon; suffice it now, in this delicate period, to record only how our two young lovers found one day that neither had a name for the other. He said she could be nothing better than Marjorie to him; and she, after a number of unsuccessful experiments, settled down to the old school-boy nickname made out of his initials, R. A. G.
"Dick," she said, "is too bird-like and boy-like. Andrew I can't abide. Goodwin gives one no chances for current use. Rag you must be. Mag and Rag--poor innocents! Old rag!"
"Mag," he said, "has its drawbacks! The street-boy in London says, 'Shut your mag.' No, I think I shall stick to Marjorie...."
All honeymoons must end at last, so back they came to London, still very bright and happy. And then, Marjorie, whose eyes had changed from flashing stones to darkly shining pools of blue, but whose soul had still perhaps to finds its depths, set herself to the business of decorating and furnishing the little house Mrs. Trafford had found for them within ten minutes of her own. Meanwhile they lived in lodgings.
There can be no denying that Marjorie began her furnishing with severely virtuous intentions. She was very particular to ask Trafford several times what he thought she might spend upon the enterprise. He had already a bedroom and a study equipped, and he threw out three hundred pounds as his conception of an acceptable figure. "Very well," said Marjorie, with a note of great precision, "now I shall know," and straightway that sum took a place in her imagination that was at once definitive and protective, just as her estimate of fifty pounds for her Oxbridge debts had always been. She assured herself she was going to do things, and she assured herself she was doing things, on three hundred pounds. At times the astonishment of two or three school friends, who joined her in her shopping, stirred her to a momentary surprise at the way she was managing to keep things within that limit, and following a financial method that had, after all, in spite of some momentary and already nearly forgotten distresses, worked very well at Oxbridge, she refrained from any additions until all the accounts had come to hand.
It was an immense excitement shopping to make a home. There was in her composition a strain of constructive artistry with such concrete things, a strain that had hitherto famished. She was making a beautiful, secure little home for Trafford, for herself, for possibilities--remote perhaps, but already touching her imagination with the anticipation of warm, new, wonderful delights. There should be simplicity indeed in this home, but no bareness, no harshness, never an ugliness nor a discord. She had always loved colour in the skies, in the landscapes, in the texture of stuffs and garments; now out of the chaotic skein of countless shops she could choose and pick and mingle her threads in a glow of feminine self-expression.
On three hundred pounds, that is to say--as a maximum.
The house she had to deal with was, like Mrs. Trafford's, old and rather small; it was partly to its lack of bedroom accommodation, but much more to the invasion of the street by the back premises of Messrs. Siddons & Thrale, the great Chelsea outfitters, that the lowness of the rent was due, a lowness which brought it within the means of Trafford. Marjorie knew very clearly that her father would say her husband had taken her to live in a noisy slum, and that made her all the keener to ensure that every good point in the interior told to its utmost, and that whatever was to be accessible to her family should glow with a refined but warm prosperity. The room downstairs was shapely, and by ripping off the papered canvas of the previous occupier, some very dilapidated but admirably proportioned panelling was brought to light. The dining-room and study door on the ground floor, by a happy accident, were of mahogany, with really very beautiful brass furnishings; and the dining-room window upon the minute but by no means offensive paved garden behind, was curved and had a little shallow balcony of ironwork, half covered by a devitalized but leafy grapevine. Moreover, the previous occupier had equipped the place with electric light and a bathroom of almost American splendour on the landing, glass-shelved, white-tiled, and white painted, so that it was a delight to go into.
Marjorie's mind leapt very rapidly to the possibilities of this little establishment. The panelling must be done and done well, anyhow; that would be no more than a wise economy, seeing it might at any time help them to re-let; it would be painted white, of course, and thus set the key for a clean brightness of colour throughout. The furniture would stand out against the softly shining white, and its line and proportions must be therefore the primary qualities to consider as she bought it. The study was much narrower than the dining-room, and so the passage, which the agent called the hall, was much broader and more commodious behind the happily wide staircase than in front, and she was able to banish out of the sight of the chance visitor all that litter of hat-stand and umbrella-stand, letters, boxes arriving and parcels to post, which had always offended her eye at home. At home there had been often the most unsightly things visible, one of Theo's awful caps, or his school books, and not infrequently her father's well-worn and all too fatally comfortable house slippers. A good effect at first is half the victory of a well done house, and Marjorie accomplished another of her real economies here by carpeting hall and staircase with a fine-toned, rich-feeling and rather high-priced blue carpet, held down by very thick brass stair-rods. She hung up four well-chosen steel engravings, put a single Chippendale chair in the hall, and a dark old Dutch clock that had turned out to be only five pounds when she had expected the shopman to say eleven or twelve, on the half-landing. That was all. Round the corner by the study door was a mahogany slab, and the litter all went upon a capacious but very simple dark-stained hat-stand and table that were out of the picture entirely until you reached the stairs.
Her dining-room was difficult for some time. She had equipped that with a dark oak Welsh dresser made very bright with a dessert service that was, in view of its extremely decorative quality, remarkably cheap, and with some very pretty silver-topped glass bottles and flasks. This dresser and a number of simple but shapely facsimiles of old chairs, stood out against a nearly primrose paper, very faintly patterned, and a dark blue carpet with a margin of dead black-stained wood. Over the mantel was a German colour-print of waves full of sunlight breaking under cliffs, and between this and the window were dark bookshelves and a few bright-coloured books. On the wall, black-framed, were four very good Japanese prints, rich in greenish-blues and blueish-greys that answered the floor, and the window curtains took up some of the colours of the German print. But something was needed towards the window, she felt, to balance the warmly shining plates upon the dresser. The deep rose-red of the cherries that adorned them was too isolated, usurped too dominating a value. And while this was weighing upon her mind she saw in a window in Regent Street a number of Bokhara hangings very nobly displayed. They were splendid pieces of needlework, particularly glorious in their crimsons and reds, and suddenly it came to her that it was just one of these, one that had great ruby flowers upon it with dead-blue interlacings, that was needed to weld her gay-coloured scheme together. She hesitated, went half-way to Piccadilly Circus, turned back and asked the prices. The prices were towering prices, ten, fifteen, eighteen guineas, and when at last the shopman produced one with all the charm of colour she sought at eight, it seemed like ten guineas snatched back as they dropped from her hands. And still hesitating, she had three that pleased her most sent home, "on approval," before she decided finally to purchase one of them. But the trial was conclusive. And then, struck with a sudden idea, she carried off a long narrow one she had had no idea of buying before into the little study behind. Suppose, she thought, instead of hanging two curtains as anybody else would do in that window, she ran this glory of rich colour across from one side on a great rod of brass.
She was giving the study the very best of her attention. After she had lapsed in some other part of the house from the standards of rigid economy she had set up, she would as it were restore the balance by adding something to the gracefully dignified arrangement of this den he was to use. And the brass rod of the Bokhara hanging that was to do instead of curtains released her mind somehow to the purchase of certain old candlesticks she had hitherto resisted. They were to stand, bored to carry candle electric lights, on either corner of the low bookcase that faced the window. They were very heavy, very shapely candlesticks, and they cost thirty-five shillings. They looked remarkably well when they were put up, except that a sort of hollowness appeared between them and clamoured for a delightful old brass-footed workbox she had seen in a shop in Baker Street. Enquiry confirmed her quick impression that this was a genuine piece (of quite exceptional genuineness) and that the price--they asked five pounds ten and came down to five guineas--was in accordance with this. It was a little difficult (in spite of the silent hunger between the candlesticks) to reconcile this particular article with her dominating idea of an austerely restrained expenditure, until she hit upon the device of calling it a _hors d'oeuvre_, and regarding it not as furniture but as a present from herself to Trafford that happened to fall in very agreeably with the process of house furnishing. She decided she would some day economise its cost out of her dress allowance. The bookcase on which it stood was a happy discovery in Kensington, just five feet high, and with beautiful oval glass fronts, and its capacity was supplemented and any excess in its price at least morally compensated by a very tall, narrow, distinguished-looking set of open shelves that had been made for some special corner in another house, and which anyhow were really and truly dirt cheap. The desk combined grace and good proportions to an admirable extent, the fender of pierced brass looked as if it had always lived in immediate contact with the shapely old white marble fireplace, and the two arm-chairs were marvels of dignified comfort. By the fireplace were a banner-shaped needlework firescreen, a white sheepskin hearthrug, a little patch and powder table adapted to carry books, and a green-shaded lamp, grouped in a common inaudible demand for a reader in slippers. Trafford, when at last the apartment was ready for his inspection, surveyed these arrangements with a kind of dazzled admiration.
"By Jove!" he said. "How little people know of the homes of the Poor!"
Marjorie was so delighted with his approval that she determined to show Mrs. Trafford next day how prettily at least her son was going to live. The good lady came and admired everything, and particularly the Bokhara hangings. She did not seem to appraise, but something set Marjorie talking rather nervously of a bargain-hunter's good fortune. Mrs. Trafford glanced at the candlesticks and the low bookcase, and returned to the glowing piece of needlework that formed the symmetrical window curtain in the study. She took it in her hand, and whispered, "beautiful!"
"But aren't these rather good?" asked Mrs. Trafford.
Marjorie answered, after a little pause. "They're not too good for _him_," she said.
§ 3
And now these young people had to resume life in London in earnest. The orchestral accompaniment of the world at large began to mingle with their hitherto unsustained duet. It had been inaudible in Italy. In Chelsea it had sounded, faintly perhaps but distinctly, from their very first inspection of the little house. A drawing-room speaks of callers, a dining-room of lunch-parties and dinners. It had swayed Marjorie from the front door inward.
During their honeymoon they had been gloriously unconscious of comment. Now Marjorie began to show herself keenly sensitive to the advent of a score of personalities, and very anxious to show just how completely successful in every sense her romantic disobedience had been. She knew she had been approved of, admired, condemned, sneered at, thoroughly discussed. She felt it her first duty to Trafford, to all who had approved of her flight, to every one, herself included, to make this marriage obviously, indisputably, a success, a success not only by her own standards but by the standards of anyonesoever who chose to sit in judgment on her.
There was Trafford. She felt she had to extort the admission from every one that he was the handsomest, finest, ablest, most promising and most delightful man a prominent humorist was ever jilted for. She wanted them to understand clearly just all that Trafford was--and that involved, she speedily found in practice, making them believe a very great deal that as yet Trafford wasn't. She found it practically impossible not to anticipate his election to the Royal Society and the probability of a more important professorship. She felt that anyhow he was an F.R.S. in the sight of God....
It was almost equally difficult not to indicate a larger income than facts justified.
It was entirely in Marjorie's vein in those early days that she would want to win on every score and by every standard of reckoning. If Marjorie had been a general she would have counted no victory complete if the struggle was not sustained and desperate, and if it left the enemy with a single gun or flag, or herself with so much as a man killed or wounded. The people she wanted to impress varied very widely. She wanted to impress the Carmel girls, and the Carmel girls, she knew, with their racial trick of acute appraisement, were only to be won by the very highest quality all round. They had, she knew, two standards of quality, cost and distinction. As far as possible, she would give them distinction. But whenever she hesitated over something on the verge of cheapness the thought of those impending judgments tipped the balance. The Carmel girls were just two influential representatives of a host. She wanted to impress quite a number of other school and college friends. There were various shy, plastic-spirited, emotional creatures, of course, for the most part with no confidence in their own appearance, who would be impressed quite adequately enough by Trafford's good looks and witty manner and easy temper. They might perhaps fall in love with him and become slavish to her after the way of their kind, and anyhow they would be provided for, but there were plenty of others of a harder texture whose tests would be more difficult to satisfy. There were girls who were the daughters of prominent men, who must be made to understand that Trafford was prominent, girls who were well connected, who must be made to realize the subtle excellence of Trafford's blood. As she thought of Constance Graham, for example, or Ottiline Winchelsea, she felt the strongest disposition to thicken the by no means well authenticated strands that linked Trafford with the Traffords of Trafford-over-Lea. She went about the house dreaming a little apprehensively of these coming calls, and the pitiless light of criticism they would bring to bear, not indeed upon her happiness--that was assured--but upon her success.
The social side of the position would have to be strained to the utmost, Marjorie felt, with Aunt Plessington. The thought of Aunt Plessington made her peculiarly apprehensive. Aunt Plessington had to the fullest extent that contempt for merely artistic or scientific people which sits so gracefully upon the administrative English. You see people of that sort do not get on in the sense that a young lawyer or barrister gets on. They do not make steps; they boast and quarrel and are jealous perhaps, but that steady patient shove upward seems beyond their intelligence. The energies God manifestly gave them for shoving, they dissipate in the creation of weak beautiful things and unremunerative theories, or in the establishment of views sometimes diametrically opposed to the ideas of influential people. And they are "queer"--socially. They just moon about doing this so-called "work" of theirs, and even when the judgment of eccentric people forces a kind of reputation upon them--Heaven knows why?--they make no public or social use of it. It seemed to Aunt Plessington that the artist and the scientific man were dealt with very neatly and justly in the Parable of the Buried Talent. Moreover their private lives were often scandalous, they married for love instead of interest, often quite disadvantageously, and their relationships had all the instability that is natural upon such a foundation. And, after all, what good were they? She had never met an artist or a prominent imaginative writer or scientific man that she had not been able to subdue in a minute or so by flat contradiction, and if necessary slightly raising her voice. They had little or no influence even upon their own public appointments....
The thought of the invasion of her agreeable little back street establishment by this Britannic system of judgments filled Marjorie's heart with secret terrors. She felt she had to grapple with and overcome Aunt Plessington, or be for ever fallen--at least, so far as that amiable lady's report went, and she knew it went pretty far. She wandered about the house trying to imagine herself Aunt Plessington.
Immediately she felt the gravest doubts whether the whole thing wasn't too graceful and pretty. A rich and rather massive ugliness, of course, would have been the thing to fetch Aunt Plessington. Happily, it was Aunt Plessington's habit to veil her eyes with her voice. She might not see very much.
The subjugation of Aunt Plessington was difficult, but not altogether hopeless, Marjorie felt, provided her rejection of Magnet had not been taken as an act of personal ingratitude. There was a case on her side. She was discovering, for example, that Trafford had a really very considerable range of acquaintance among quite distinguished people; big figures like Evesham and MacHaldo, for example, were intelligently interested in the trend of his work. She felt this gave her a basis for Plessingtonian justifications. She could produce those people--as one shows one's loot. She could imply, "Oh, Love and all that nonsense! Certainly not! _This_ is what I did it for." With skill and care and good luck, and a word here and there in edgeways, she believed she might be able to represent the whole adventure as the well-calculated opening of a campaign on soundly Plessingtonian lines. Her marriage to Trafford, she tried to persuade herself, might be presented as something almost as brilliant and startling as her aunt's swoop upon her undistinguished uncle.
She might pretend that all along she had seen her way to things, to coveted dinner-tables and the familiarity of coveted guests, to bringing people together and contriving arrangements, to influence and prominence, to culminations and intrigues impossible in the comparatively specialized world of a successful humorist and playwright, and so at last to those high freedoms of authoritative and if necessary offensive utterance in a strangulated contralto, and from a position of secure eminence, which is the goal of all virtuously ambitious Englishwomen of the governing classes--that is to say, of all virtuously ambitious Englishwomen....
§ 4
And while such turbid solicitudes as these were flowing in again from the London world to which she had returned, and fouling the bright, romantic clearness of Marjorie's life, Trafford, in his ampler, less detailed way was also troubled about their coming re-entry into society. He, too, had his old associations.
For example, he was by no means confident of the favourable judgments of his mother upon Marjorie's circle of school and college friends, whom he gathered from Marjorie's talk were destined to play a large part in this new phase of his life. She had given him very ample particulars of some of them; and he found them interesting rather than richly attractive personalities. It is to be noted that while he thought always of Marjorie as a beautiful, grown-up woman, and his mate and equal, he was still disposed to regard her intimate friends as schoolgirls of an advanced and aggressive type....
Then that large circle of distinguished acquaintances which Marjorie saw so easily and amply utilized for the subjugation of Aunt Plessington didn't present itself quite in that service to Trafford's private thoughts. He hadn't that certitude of command over them, nor that confidence in their unhesitating approval of all he said and did. Just as Marjorie wished him to shine in the heavens over all her people, so, in regard to his associates, he was extraordinarily anxious that they should realize, and realize from the outset without qualification or hesitation, how beautiful, brave and delightful she was. And you know he had already begun to be aware of an evasive feeling in his mind that at times she did not altogether do herself justice--he scarcely knew as yet how or why....
She was very young....
One or two individuals stood out in his imagination, representatives and symbols of the rest. Particularly there was that old giant, Sir Roderick Dover, who had been, until recently, the Professor of Physics in the great Oxford laboratories. Dover and Trafford had one of those warm friendships which spring up at times between a rich-minded man whose greatness is assured and a young man of brilliant promise. It was all the more affectionate because Dover had been a friend of Trafford's father. These two and a group of other careless-minded, able, distinguished, and uninfluential men at the Winton Club affected the end of the smoking-room near the conservatory in the hours after lunch, and shared the joys of good talk and fine jesting about the big fireplace there. Under Dover's broad influence they talked more ideas and less gossip than is usual with English club men. Twaddle about appointments, about reputations, topics from the morning's papers, London architecture, and the commerce in "good stories" took refuge at the other end in the window bays or by the further fireplace. Trafford only began to realize on his return to London how large a share this intermittent perennial conversation had contributed to the atmosphere of his existence. Amidst the romantic circumstances of his flight with Marjorie he had forgotten the part these men played in his life and thoughts. Now he was enormously exercised in the search for a reconciliation between these, he felt, incommensurable factors.
He was afraid of what might be Sir Roderick's unspoken judgment on Marjorie and the house she had made--though what was there to be afraid of? He was still more afraid--and this was even more remarkable--of the clear little judgments--hard as loose, small diamonds in a bed--that he thought Marjorie might pronounce on Sir Roderick. He had never disguised from himself that Sir Roderick was fat--nobody who came within a hundred yards of him could be under any illusion about that--and that he drank a good deal, ate with a cosmic spaciousness, loved a cigar, and talked and laughed with a freedom that sometimes drove delicate-minded new members into the corners remotest from the historical fireplace. Trafford knew himself quite definitely that there was a joy in Dover's laugh and voice, a beauty in his face (that was somehow mixed up with his healthy corpulence), and a breadth, a charity, a leonine courage in his mind (that was somehow mixed up with his careless freedom of speech) that made him an altogether satisfactory person.
But supposing Marjorie didn't see any of that!
Still, he was on the verge of bringing Sir Roderick home when a talk at the club one day postponed that introduction of the two extremes of Trafford's existence for quite a considerable time.
Those were the days of the first enthusiasms of the militant suffrage movement, and the occasional smashing of a Downing Street window or an assault upon a minister kept the question of woman's distinctive intelligence and character persistently before the public. Godley Buzard, the feminist novelist, had been the guest of some member to lunch, and the occasion was too provocative for any one about Dover's fireplace to avoid the topic. Buzard's presence, perhaps, drove Dover into an extreme position on the other side; he forgot Trafford's new-wedded condition, and handled this great argument, an argument which has scarcely progressed since its beginning in the days of Plato and Aristophanes, with the freedoms of an ancient Greek and the explicitness of a modern scientific man.
He opened almost apropos of nothing. "Women," he said, "are inferior--and you can't get away from it."
"You can deny it," said Buzard.
"In the face of the facts," said Sir Roderick. "To begin with, they're several inches shorter, several pounds lighter; they've less physical strength in footpounds."
"More endurance," said Buzard.
"Less sensitiveness merely. All those are demonstrable things--amenable to figures and apparatus. Then they stand nervous tensions worse, the breaking-point comes sooner. They have weaker inhibitions, and inhibition is the test of a creature's position in the mental scale."
He maintained that in the face of Buzard's animated protest. Buzard glanced at their moral qualities. "More moral!" cried Dover, "more self-restraint! Not a bit of it! Their desires and passions are weaker even than their controls; that's all. Weaken restraints and they show their quality. A drunken woman is far worse than a drunken man. And as for their biological significance----"
"They are the species," said Buzard, "and we are the accidents."
"They are the stolon and we are the individualized branches. They are the stem and we are the fruits. Surely it's better to exist than just transmit existence. And that's a woman's business, though we've fooled and petted most of 'em into forgetting it...."
He proceeded to an attack on the intellectual quality of women. He scoffed at the woman artist, at feminine research, at what he called the joke of feminine philosophy. Buzard broke in with some sentences of reply. He alleged the lack of feminine opportunity, inferior education.
"You don't or won't understand me," said Dover. "It isn't a matter of education or opportunity, or simply that they're of inferior capacity; it lies deeper than that. They don't _want_ to do these things. They're different."
"Precisely," ejaculated Buzard, as if he claimed a score.
"They don't care for these things. They don't care for art or philosophy, or literature or anything except the things that touch them directly. That's their peculiar difference. Hunger they understand, and comfort, and personal vanity and desire, furs and chocolate and husbands, and the extreme importance conferred upon them by having babies at infrequent intervals. But philosophy or beauty for its own sake, or dreams! Lord! no! The Mahometans know they haven't souls, and they say it. We know, and keep it up that they have. Haven't all we scientific men had 'em in our laboratories working; don't we know the papers they turn out? Every sane man of five and forty knows something of the disillusionment of the feminine dream, but we who've had the beautiful creatures under us, weighing rather badly, handling rather weakly, invariably missing every fine detail and all the implications of our researches, never flashing, never leaping, never being even thoroughly bad,--we're specialists in the subject. At the present time there are far more educated young women than educated young men available for research work--and who wants them? Oh, the young professors who've still got ideals perhaps. And in they come, and if they're dull, they just voluminously do nothing, and if they're bright, they either marry your demonstrator or get him into a mess. And the work----? It's nothing to them. No woman ever painted for the love of painting, or sang for the sounds she made, or philosophized for the sake of wisdom as men do----"
Buzard intervened with instances. Dover would have none of them. He displayed astonishing and distinctive knowledge. "Madame Curie," clamoured Buzard, "Madame Curie."
"There was Curie," said Dover. "No woman alone has done such things. I don't say women aren't clever," he insisted. "They're too clever. Give them a man's track or a man's intention marked and defined, they'll ape him to the life----"
Buzard renewed his protests, talking at the same time as Dover, and was understood to say that women had to care for something greater than art or philosophy. They were custodians of life, the future of the race----
"And that's my crowning disappointment," cried Dover. "If there was one thing in which you might think women would show a sense of some divine purpose in life, it is in the matter of children--and they show about as much care in that matter, oh!--as rabbits. Yes, rabbits! I stick to it. Look at the things a nice girl will marry; look at the men's children she'll consent to bring into the world. Cheerfully! Proudly! For the sake of the home and the clothes. Nasty little beasts they'll breed without turning a hair. All about us we see girls and women marrying ugly men, dull and stupid men, ill-tempered dyspeptic wrecks, sickly young fools, human rats--_rats!_"
"No, no!" cried Trafford to Dover.
Buzard's voice clamoured that all would be different when women had the vote.
"If ever we get a decent care for Eugenics, it will come from men," said a white-faced little man on the sofa beside Trafford, in the confidential tone of one who tells a secret.
"Doing it cheerfully!" insisted Dover.
Trafford in mid-protest was suddenly stricken into silence by a memory. It was as if the past had thrown a stone at the back of his head and hit it smartly. He nipped his sentence in the bud. He left the case for women to Buzard....
He revived that memory again on his way home. It had been in his mind overlaid by a multitude of newer, fresher things, but now he took it out and looked at it. It was queer, it was really very queer, to think that once upon a time, not so very long ago, Marjorie had been prepared to marry Magnet. Of course she had hated it, but still----....
There is much to be discovered about life, even by a brilliant and rising young Professor of Physics....
Presently Dover, fingering the little glass of yellow chartreuse he had hitherto forgotten in the heat of controversy, took a more personal turn.
"Don't we know," he said, and made the limpid amber vanish in his pause. "Don't we know we've got to manage and control 'em--just as we've got to keep 'em and stand the racket of their misbehaviour? Don't our instincts tell us? Doesn't something tell us all that if we let a woman loose with our honour and trust, some other man will get hold of her? We've tried it long enough now, this theory that a woman's a partner and an equal; we've tried it long enough to see some of the results, and does it work? Does it? A woman's a prize, a possession, a responsibility, something to take care of and be careful about.... You chaps, if you'll forgive me, you advanced chaps, seem to want to have the women take care of you. You seem always to want to force decisions on them, make them answerable for things that you ought to decide and answer for.... If one could, if one could! If!... But they're not helps--that's a dream--they're distractions, gratifications, anxieties, dangers, undertakings...."
Buzard got in his one effective blow at this point. "That's why you've never married, Sir Roderick?" he threw out.
The big man was checked for a moment. Trafford wondered what memory lit that instant's pause. "I've had my science," said Dover.
§ 5
Mrs. Pope was of course among the first to visit the new home so soon as it was open to inspection. She arrived, looking very bright and neat in a new bonnet and some new black furs that suited her, bearing up bravely but obviously in a state of dispersed and miscellaneous emotion....
In many ways Marjorie's marriage had been a great relief to her mother. Particularly it had been a financial relief. Marjorie had been the most expensive child of her family, and her cessation had led to increments both of Mrs. Pope's and Daphne's all too restricted allowances. Mrs. Pope had been able therefore to relapse from the orthodox Anglicanism into which poverty had driven her, and indulge for an hour weekly in the consolations of Higher Thought. These exercises in emancipated religiosity occurred at the house of Mr. Silas Root, and were greatly valued by a large circle of clients. Essentially they were orgies of vacuity, and they cost six guineas for seven hours. They did her no end of good. All through the precious weekly hour she sat with him in a silent twilight, very, very still and feeling--oh! "higher" than anything, and when she came out she wore an inane smile on her face and was prepared not to worry, to lie with facility, and to take the easiest way in every eventuality in an entirely satisfactory and exalted manner. Moreover he was "treating" her investments. Acting upon his advice, and doing the whole thing quietly with the idea of preparing a pleasant surprise for her husband, she had sold out of certain Home Railway debentures and invested in a company for working the auriferous waste which is so abundant in the drainage of Philadelphia, a company whose shareholders were chiefly higher thought disciples and whose profits therefore would inevitably be greatly enhanced by their concerted mental action. It was to the prospective profits in this that she owed the new black furs she was wearing.
The furs and the bonnet and the previous day's treatment she had had, all helped to brace her up on Marjorie's doorstep for a complex and difficult situation, and to carry her through the first tensions of her call. She was so much to pieces as it was that she could not help feeling how much more to pieces she might have been--but for the grace of Silas Root. She knew she ought to have very strong feelings about Trafford, though it was not really clear to her what feelings she ought to have. On the whole she was inclined to believe she was experiencing moral disapproval mixed up with a pathetic and rather hopeless appeal for the welfare of the tender life that had entrusted itself so recklessly to these brutal and discreditable hands, though indeed if she had really dared to look inside her mind her chief discovery would have been a keenly jealous appreciation of Trafford's good looks and generous temper, and a feeling of injustice as between her own lot and Marjorie's. However, going on her assumed basis she managed to be very pale, concise and tight-lipped at any mention of her son-in-law, and to put a fervour of helpless devotion into her embraces of her daughter. She surveyed the house with a pained constrained expression, as though she tried in vain to conceal from herself that it was all slightly improper, and even such objects as the Bokhara hangings failed to extort more than an insincere, "Oh, very nice, dear--_very_ nice."
In the bedroom, she spoke about Mr. Pope. "He was dreadfully upset," she said. "His first thought was to come after you both with a pistol. If--if _he_ hadn't married you----"
"But dear Mummy, of _course_ we meant to marry! We married right away."
"Yes, dear, of course. But if he hadn't----"
She paused, and Marjorie, with a momentary flush of indignation in her cheeks, did not urge her to conclude her explanation.
"He's _wounded_," said Mrs. Pope. "Some day perhaps he'll come round--you were always his favourite daughter."
"I know," said Marjorie concisely, with a faint flavour of cynicism in her voice.
"I'm afraid dear, at present--he will do nothing for you."
"I don't think Rag would like him to," said Marjorie with an unreal serenity; "_ever_."
"For a time I'm afraid he'll refuse to see you. He just wants to forget----. Everything."
"Poor old Dad! I wish he wouldn't put himself out like this. Still, I won't bother him, Mummy, if you mean that."
Then suddenly into Mrs. Pope's unsystematic, unstable mind, started perhaps by the ring in her daughter's voice, there came a wave of affectionate feeling. That she had somehow to be hostile and unsympathetic to Marjorie, that she had to pretend that Trafford was wicked and disgusting, and not be happy in the jolly hope and happiness of this bright little house, cut her with a keen swift pain. She didn't know clearly why she was taking this coldly hostile attitude, or why she went on doing so, but the sense of that necessity hurt her none the less. She put out her hands upon her daughter's shoulders and whimpered: "Oh my dear! I do wish things weren't so difficult--so very difficult."
The whimper changed by some inner force of its own to honest sobs and tears.
Marjorie passed through a flash of amazement to a sudden understanding of her mother's case. "Poor dear Mummy," she said. "Oh! poor dear Mummy. It's a shame of us!"
She put her arms about her mother and held her for awhile.
"It _is_ a shame," said her mother in a muffled voice, trying to keep hold of this elusive thing that had somehow both wounded her and won her daughter back. But her poor grasp slipped again. "I knew you'd come to see it," she said, dabbing with her handkerchief at her eyes. "I knew you would." And then with the habitual loyalty of years resuming its sway: "He's always been so good to you."...
But Mrs. Pope had something more definite to say to Marjorie, and came to it at last with a tactful offhandedness. Marjorie communicated it to Trafford about an hour later on his return from the laboratory. "I say," she said, "old Daffy's engaged to Magnet!"
She paused, and added with just the faintest trace of resentment in her voice: "She can have him, as far as I'm concerned."
"He didn't wait long," said Trafford tactlessly.
"No," said Marjorie; "he didn't wait long.... Of course she got him on the rebound."...
§ 6
Mrs. Pope was only a day or so ahead of a cloud of callers. The Carmel girls followed close upon her, tall figures of black fur, with costly-looking muffs and a rich glitter at neck and wrist. Marjorie displayed her house, talking fluently about other things, and watching for effects. The Carmel girls ran their swift dark eyes over her appointments, glanced quickly from side to side of her rooms, saw only too certainly that the house was narrow and small----. But did they see that it was clever? They saw at any rate that she meant it to be clever, and with true Oriental politeness said as much urgently and extravagantly. Then there were the Rambord girls and their mother, an unobservant lot who chattered about the ice at Prince's; then Constance Graham came with a thoroughbred but very dirty aunt, and then Ottiline Winchelsea with an American minor poet, who wanted a view of mountains from the windows at the back, and said the bathroom ought to be done in pink. Then Lady Solomonson came; an extremely expensive-looking fair lady with an affectation of cynicism, a keen intelligence, acutely apt conversation, and a queer effect of thinking of something else all the time she was talking. She missed nothing....
Hardly anybody failed to appreciate the charm and decision of Marjorie's use of those Bokhara embroideries.
They would have been cheap at double the price.
§ 7
And then our two young people went out to their first dinner-parties together. They began with Trafford's rich friend Solomonson, who had played so large and so passive a part in their first meeting. He had behaved with a sort of magnanimous triumph over the marriage. He made it almost his personal affair, as though he had brought it about. "I knew there was a girl in it," he insisted, "and you told me there wasn't. O-a-ah! And you kept me in that smell of disinfectant and things--what a chap that doctor was for spilling stuff!--for six blessed days!..."
Marjorie achieved a dress at once simple and good with great facility by not asking the price until it was all over. (There is no half-success with dinner-dresses, either the thing is a success and inestimable, or not worth having at any price at all.) It was blue with a thread of gold, and she had a necklace of blueish moonstones, gold-set, and her hair ceased to be copper and became golden, and her eyes unfathomable blue. She was radiant with health and happiness, no one else there had her clear freshness, and her manner was as restrained and dignified and ready as a proud young wife's can be. Everyone seemed to like her and respect her and be interested in her, and Trafford kissed her flushed cheek in the hansom as they came home again and crowned her happiness. It had been quite a large party, and really much more splendid and brilliant than anything she had ever seen before. There had been one old gentleman with a coloured button and another with a ribbon; there had been a countess with historical pearls, and half-a-dozen other people one might fairly call distinguished. The house was tremendous in its way, spacious, rich, glowing with lights, abounding in vistas and fine remote backgrounds. In the midst of it all she had a sudden thrill at the memory that less than a year ago she had been ignominiously dismissed from the dinner-table by her father for a hiccup....
A few days after Aunt Plessington suddenly asked the Traffords to one of her less important but still interesting gatherings; not one of those that swayed the world perhaps, but one which Marjorie was given to understand achieved important subordinate wagging. Aunt Plessington had not called, she explained in her note, because of the urgent demands the Movement made upon her time; it was her wonderful hard-breathing way never to call on anyone, and it added tremendously to her reputation; none the less it appeared--though here the scrawl became illegible--she meant to shove and steer her dear niece upward at a tremendous pace. They were even asked to come a little early so that she might make Trafford's acquaintance.
The dress was duly admired, and then Aunt Plessington--assuming the hearthrug and forgetting the little matter of their career--explained quite Napoleonic and wonderful things she was going to do with her Movement, fresh principles, fresh applications, a big committee of all the "names"--they were easy to get if you didn't bother them to do things--a new and more attractive title, "Payment in Kind" was to give way to "Reality of Reward," and she herself was going to have her hair bleached bright white (which would set off her eyes and colour and the general geniality of appearance due to her projecting teeth), and so greatly increase her "platform efficiency." Hubert, she said, was toiling away hard at the detail of these new endeavours. He would be down in a few minutes' time. Marjorie, she said, ought to speak at their meetings. It would help both the Traffords to get on if Marjorie cut a dash at the outset, and there was no such dash to be cut as speaking at Aunt Plessington's meetings. It was catching on; all next season it was sure to be the thing. So many promising girls allowed themselves to be submerged altogether in marriage for a time, and when they emerged everyone had forgotten the promise of their début. She had an air of rescuing Marjorie from an impending fate by disabusing Trafford from injurious prepossessions....
Presently the guests began to drop in, a vegetarian health specialist, a rising young woman factory inspector, a phrenologist who was being induced to put great talents to better uses under Aunt Plessington's influence, his dumb, obscure, but inevitable wife, a colonial bishop, a baroness with a taste rather than a capacity for intellectual society, a wealthy jam and pickle manufacturer and his wife, who had subscribed largely to the funds of the Movement and wanted to meet the lady of title, and the editor of the Movement's organ, _Upward and On_, a young gentleman of abundant hair and cadaverous silences, whom Aunt Plessington patted on the shoulder and spoke of as "one of our discoveries." And then Uncle Hubert came down, looking ruffled and overworked, with his ready-made dress-tie--he was one of those men who can never master the art of tying a bow--very much askew. The conversation turned chiefly on the Movement; if it strayed Aunt Plessington reached out her voice after it and brought it back in a masterful manner.
Through soup and fish Marjorie occupied herself with the inflexible rigour of the young editor, who had brought her down. When she could give her attention to the general conversation she discovered her husband a little flushed and tackling her aunt with an expression of quiet determination. The phrenologist and the vegetarian health specialist were regarding him with amazement, the jam and pickle manufacturer's wife was evidently deeply shocked. He was refusing to believe in the value of the Movement, and Aunt Plessington was manifestly losing her temper.
"I don't see, Mrs. Plessington," he was saying, "that all this amounts to more than a kind of Glorious District Visiting. That is how I see it. You want to attack people in their homes--before they cry out to you. You want to compel them by this Payment in Kind of yours to do what you want them to do instead of trying to make them want to do it. Now, I think your business is to make them want to do it. You may perhaps increase the amount of milk in babies, and the amount of whitewash in cottages and slums by your methods--I don't dispute the promise of your statistics--but you're going to do it at a cost of human self-respect that's out of all proportion----"
Uncle Hubert's voice, with that thick utterance that always suggested a mouthful of plums, came booming down the table. "All these arguments," he said, "have been answered long ago."
"No doubt," said Trafford with a faint asperity. "But tell me the answers."
"It's ridiculous," said Aunt Plessington, "to talk of the self-respect of the kind of people--oh! the very dregs!"
"It's just because the plant is delicate that you've got to handle it carefully," said Trafford.
"Here's Miss Gant," said Aunt Plessington, "_she_ knows the strata we are discussing. She'll tell you they have positively _no_ self-respect--none at all."
"_My_ people," said Miss Gant, as if in conclusive testimony, "actually conspire with their employers to defeat me."
"I don't see the absence of self-respect in that," said Trafford.
"But all their interests----"
"I'm thinking of their pride."...
The discussion lasted to the end of dinner and made no headway. As soon as the ladies were in the drawing-room, Aunt Plessington, a little flushed from the conflict, turned on Marjorie and said, "I _like_ your husband. He's wrong-headed, but he's young, and he's certainly spirited. He _ought_ to get on if he wants to. Does he do nothing but his researches?"
"He lectures in the spring term," said Marjorie.
"Ah!" said Aunt Plessington with a triumphant note, "you must alter all that. You must interest him in wider things. You must bring him out of his shell, and let him see what it is to deal with Affairs. Then he wouldn't talk such nonsense about our Work."
Marjory was at a momentary loss for a reply, and in the instant's respite Aunt Plessington turned to the jam and pickle lady and asked in a bright, encouraging note: "Well! And how's the Village Club getting on?"...
She had another lunge at Trafford as he took his leave. "You must come again soon," she said. "I _love_ a good wrangle, and Hubert and I never want to talk about our Movement to any one but unbelievers. You don't know the beginnings of it yet. Only I warn you they have a way of getting converted. I warn you."...
On this occasion there was no kissing in the cab. Trafford was exasperated.
"Of all the intolerable women!" he said, and was silent for a time.
"The astounding part of it is," he burst out, "that this sort of thing, this Movement and all the rest of it, does really give the quality of English public affairs. It's like a sample--dredged. The--the _cheapness_ of it! Raised voices, rash assertions, sham investigations, meetings and committees and meetings, that's the stuff of it, and politicians really have to attend to it, and silly, ineffective, irritating bills really get drafted and messed about with and passed on the strength of it. Public affairs are still in the Dark Ages. Nobody now would think of getting together a scratch committee of rich old women and miscellaneous conspicuous people to design an electric tram, and jabbering and jabbering and jabbering, and if any one objects"--a note of personal bitterness came into his voice--"jabbering faster; but nobody thinks it ridiculous to attempt the organization of poor people's affairs in that sort of way. This project of the supersession of Wages by Payment in Kind--oh! it's childish. If it wasn't it would be outrageous and indecent. Your uncle and aunt haven't thought for a moment of any single one of the necessary consequences of these things they say their confounded Movement aims at, effects upon the race, upon public spirit, upon people's habits and motives. They've just a queer craving to feel powerful and influential, which they think they can best satisfy by upsetting the lives of no end of harmless poor people--the only people they dare upset--and that's about as far as they go.... Your aunt's detestable, Marjorie."
Marjorie had never seen him so deeply affected by anything but herself. It seemed to her he was needlessly disturbed by a trivial matter. He sulked for a space, and then broke out again.
"That confounded woman talks of my physical science," he said, "as if research were an amiable weakness, like collecting postage stamps. And it's changed human conditions more in the last ten years than all the parliamentary wire-pullers and legislators and administrative experts have done in two centuries. And for all that, there's more clerks in Whitehall than professors of physics in the whole of England."...
"I suppose it's the way that sort of thing gets done," said Marjorie, after an interval.
"That sort of thing doesn't get done," snapped Trafford. "All these people burble about with their movements and jobs, and lectures and stuff--and _things happen_. Like some one getting squashed to death in a crowd. Nobody did it, but anybody in the muddle can claim to have done it--if only they've got the cheek of your Aunt Plessington."
He seemed to have finished.
"_Done!_" he suddenly broke out again. "Why! people like your Aunt Plessington don't even know where the handle is. If they ventured to look for it, they'd give the whole show away! Done, indeed!"
"Here we are!" said Marjorie, a little relieved to find the hansom turning out of King's Road into their own side street....
And then Marjorie wore the blue dress with great success at the Carmels'. The girls came and looked at it and admired it--it was no mere politeness. They admitted there was style about it, a quality--there was no explaining. "You're _wonderful_, Madge!" cried the younger Carmel girl.
The Carmel boy, seizing the opportunity of a momentary seclusion in a corner, ended a short but rather portentous silence with "I say, you _do_ look ripping," in a voice that implied the keenest regret for the slacknesses of a summer that was now infinitely remote to Marjorie. It was ridiculous that the Carmel boy should have such emotions--he was six years younger than Trafford and only a year older than Marjorie, and yet she was pleased by his manifest wound....
There was only one little thing at the back of her mind that alloyed her sense of happy and complete living that night, and that was the ghost of an addition sum. At home, in her pretty bureau, a little gathering pile of bills, as yet unpaid, and an empty cheque-book with appealing counterfoils, awaited her attention.
Marjorie had still to master the fact that all the fine braveries and interests and delights of life that offer themselves so amply to the favoured children of civilization, trail and, since the fall of man at any rate, have trailed after them something--something, the justification of morality, the despair of all easy, happy souls, the unavoidable drop of bitterness in the cup of pleasure--the Reckoning.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
THE CHILD OF THE AGES
§ 1
When the intellectual history of this time comes to be written, nothing I think will stand out more strikingly than the empty gulf in quality between the superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations that are going on and the general thought of other educated sections of the community. I do not mean that the scientific men are as a whole a class of supermen, dealing with and thinking about everything in a way altogether better than the common run of humanity, but that in their own field, they think and work with an intensity, an integrity, a breadth, boldness, patience, thoroughness and faithfulness that (excepting only a few artists) puts their work out of all comparison with any other human activity. Often the field in which the work is done is very narrow, and almost universally the underlying philosophy is felt rather than apprehended. A scientific man may be large and deep-minded, deliberate and personally detached in his work, and hasty, commonplac |
35338-8 | e and superficial in every other relation of life. Nevertheless it is true that in these particular directions the human mind has achieved a new and higher quality of attitude and gesture, a veracity, self-detachment and self-abnegating vigour of criticism that tend to spread out and must ultimately spread out to every other human affair. In these uncontroversial issues at least mankind has learnt the rich rewards that ensue from patience and infinite pains.
The peculiar circumstances of Trafford's birth and upbringing had accentuated his natural disposition toward this new thoroughness of intellectual treatment which has always distinguished the great artist, and which to-day is also the essential quality of the scientific method. He had lived apart from any urgency to produce and compete in the common business of the world; his natural curiosities, fed and encouraged by his natural gifts, had grown into a steady passion for clarity and knowledge. But with him there was no specialization. He brought out from his laboratory into the everyday affairs of the world the same sceptical restraint of judgment which is the touchstone of scientific truth. This made him a tepid and indeed rather a scornful spectator of political and social life. Party formulae, international rivalries, social customs, and very much of the ordinary law of our state impressed him as a kind of fungoid growth out of a fundamental intellectual muddle. It all maintained itself hazardously, changing and adapting itself unintelligently to unseen conditions. He saw no ultimate truth in this seething welter of human efforts, no tragedy as yet in its defeats, no value in its victories. It had to go on, he believed, until the spreading certitudes of the scientific method pierced its unsubstantial thickets, burst its delusive films, drained away its folly. Aunt Plessington's talk of order and progress and the influence of her Movement impressed his mind very much as the cackle of some larger kind of hen--which cackles because it must. Only Aunt Plessington being human simply imagined the egg. She laid--on the plane of the ideal. When the great nonsensical issues between liberal and conservative, between socialist and individualist, between "Anglo-Saxon" and "Teuton," between the "white race" and the "yellow race" arose in Trafford's company, he would if he felt cheerful take one side or the other as chance or his amusement with his interlocutors determined, and jest and gibe at the opponent's inconsistencies, and if on the other hand he chanced to be irritable he would lose his temper at this "chewing of mesembryanthemum" and sulk into silence. "Chewing mesembryanthemum" was one of Trafford's favourite images,--no doubt the reader knows that abundant fleshy Mediterranean weed and the weakly unpleasant wateriness of its substance. He went back to his laboratory and his proper work after such discussions with a feeling of escape, as if he shut a door upon a dirty and undisciplined market-place crowded with mental defectives. Yet even before he met and married Marjorie, there was a queer little undertow of thought in his mind which insisted that this business could not end with door-slamming, that he didn't altogether leave the social confusion outside his panels when he stood alone before his apparatus, and that sooner or later that babble of voices would force his defences and overcome his disdain.
His particular work upon the intimate constitution of matter had broadened very rapidly in his hands. The drift of his work had been to identify all colloids as liquid solutions of variable degrees of viscosity, and to treat crystalline bodies as the only solids. He had dealt with oscillating processes in colloid bodies with especial reference to living matter. He had passed from a study of the melting and toughening of glass to the molecular structure of a number of elastic bodies, and so, by a characteristic leap into botanical physiology, to the states of resinous and gummy substances at the moment of secretion. He worked at first upon a false start, and then resumed to discover a growing illumination. He found himself in the presence of phenomena that seemed to him to lie near the still undiscovered threshold to the secret processes of living protoplasm. He was, as it were, breaking into biology by way of molecular physics. He spent many long nights of deep excitement, calculating and arranging the development of these seductive intimations. It was this work which his marriage had interrupted, and to which he was now returning.
He was surprised to find how difficult it was to take it up again. He had been only two months away from it, and yet already it had not a little of the feeling of a relic taken from a drawer. Something had faded. It was at first as if a film had come over his eyes, so that he could no longer see these things clearly and subtly and closely. His senses, his emotions, had been living in a stirring and vivid illumination. Now in this cool quietude bright clouds of coloured memory-stuff swam distractingly before his eyes. Phantom kisses on his lips, the memory of touches and the echoing vibrations of an adorable voice, the thought of a gay delightful fireside and the fresh recollection of a companion intensely felt beside him, effaced the delicate profundities of this dim place. Durgan hovered about him, helpful and a mute reproach. Trafford had to force his attention daily for the better part of two weeks before he had fully recovered the fine enchanting interest of that suspended work.
§ 2
At last one day he had the happiness of possession again. He had exactly the sensation one gets when some hitherto intractable piece of a machine one is putting together, clicks neatly and beyond all hoping, into its place. He found himself working in the old style, with the hours slipping by disregarded. He sent out Durgan to get him tobacco and tea and smoked-salmon sandwiches, and he stayed in the laboratory all night. He went home about half-past five, and found a white-faced, red-eyed Marjorie still dressed, wrapped in a travelling-rug, and crumpled and asleep in his study arm-chair beside the grey ashes of an extinct fire.
In the instant before she awoke he could see what a fragile and pitiful being a healthy and happy young wife can appear. Her pose revealed an unsuspected slender weakness of body, her face something infantile and wistful he had still to reckon with. She awoke with a start and stared at him for a moment, and at the room about her. "Oh, where have you been?" she asked almost querulously. "Where _have_ you been?"
"But my dear!" he said, as one might speak to a child, "why aren't you in bed? It's just dawn."
"Oh," she said, "I waited and I waited. It seemed you _must_ come. I read a book. And then I fell asleep." And then with a sob of feeble self-pity, "And here I am!" She rubbed the back of her hand into one eye and shivered. "I'm cold," she said, "and I want some tea."
"Let's make some," said Trafford.
"It's been horrible waiting," said Marjorie without moving; "horrible! Where have you been?"
"I've been working. I got excited by my work. I've been at the laboratory. I've had the best spell of work I've ever had since our marriage."
"But I have been up all night!" she cried with her face and voice softening to tears. "How _could_ you? How _could_ you?"
He was surprised by her weeping. He was still more surprised by the self-abandonment that allowed her to continue. "I've been working," he repeated, and then looked about with a man's helplessness for the tea apparatus. One must have hot water and a teapot and a kettle; he would find those in the kitchen. He strolled thoughtfully out of the room, thinking out the further details of tea-making all mixed up with amazement at Marjorie, while she sat wiping her eyes with a crumpled pocket-handkerchief. Presently she followed him down with the rug about her like a shawl, and stood watching him as he lit a fire of wood and paper among the ashes in the kitchen fireplace. "It's been dreadful," she said, not offering to help.
"You see," he said, on his knees, "I'd really got hold of my work at last."
"But you should have sent----"
"I was thinking of my work. I clean forgot."
"Forgot?"
"Absolutely."
"Forgot--_me!_"
"Of course," said Trafford, with a slightly puzzled air, "you don't see it as I do."
The kettle engaged him for a time. Then he threw out a suggestion. "We'll have to have a telephone."
"I couldn't imagine where you were. I thought of all sorts of things. I almost came round--but I was so horribly afraid I mightn't find you."
He renewed his suggestion of a telephone.
"So that if I really want you----" said Marjorie. "Or if I just want to feel you're there."
"Yes," said Trafford slowly, jabbing a piece of firewood into the glow; but it was chiefly present in his mind that much of that elaborate experimenting of his wasn't at all a thing to be cut athwart by the exasperating gusts of a telephone bell clamouring for attention. Hitherto the laboratory telephone had been in the habit of disconnecting itself early in the afternoon.
And yet after all it was this instrument, the same twisted wire and little quivering tympanum, that had brought back Marjorie into his life.
§ 3
And now Trafford fell into a great perplexity of mind. His banker had called his attention to the fact that his account was overdrawn to the extent of three hundred and thirteen pounds, and he had been under that vague sort of impression one always has about one's current account that he was a hundred and fifty or so to the good. His first impression was that those hitherto infallible beings, those unseen gnomes of the pass-book whose lucid figures, neat tickings, and unrelenting additions constituted banks to his imagination, must have made a mistake; his second that some one had tampered with a cheque. His third thought pointed to Marjorie and the easy circumstances of his home. For a fortnight now she had been obviously ailing, oddly irritable; he did not understand the change in her, but it sufficed to prevent his taking the thing to her at once and going into it with her as he would have done earlier. Instead he had sent for his pass-book, and in the presence of its neat columns realized for the first time the meaning of Marjorie's "three hundred pounds." Including half-a-dozen cheques to Oxbridge tradesmen for her old debts, she had spent, he discovered, nearly seven hundred and fifty.
He sat before the little bundle of crumpled strips of pink and white, perforated, purple stamped and effaced, in a state of extreme astonishment. It was no small factor in his amazement to note how very carelessly some of those cheques of Marjorie's had been written. Several she had not even crossed. The effect of it all was that she'd just spent his money--freely--with an utter disregard of the consequences.
Up to that moment it had never occurred to Trafford that anybody one really cared for, could be anything but punctilious about money. Now here, with an arithmetical exactitude of demonstration, he perceived that Marjorie wasn't.
It was so tremendous a discovery for him, so disconcerting and startling, that he didn't for two days say a word to her about it. He couldn't think of a word to say. He felt that even to put these facts before her amounted to an accusation of disloyalty and selfishness that he hadn't the courage to make. His work stopped altogether. He struggled hourly with that accusation. Did she realize----? There seemed no escape from his dilemma; either she didn't care or she didn't understand!
His thoughts went back to the lake of Orta, when he had put all his money at her disposal. She had been surprised, and now he perceived she had also been a little frightened. The chief excuse he could find for her was that she was inexperienced--absolutely inexperienced.
Even now, of course, she was drawing fresh cheques....
He would have to pull himself together, and go into the whole thing--for all its infinite disagreeableness--with her....
But it was Marjorie who broached the subject.
He had found work at the laboratory unsatisfactory, and after lunching at his club he had come home and gone to his study in order to think out the discussion he contemplated with her. She came in to him as he sat at his desk. "Busy?" she said. "Not very," he answered, and she came up to him, kissed his head, and stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder.
"Pass-book?" she asked.
He nodded.
"I've been overrunning."
"No end."
The matter was opened. What would she say?
She bent to his ear and whispered. "I'm going to overrun some more."
His voice was resentful. "You _can't_," he said compactly without looking at her. "You've spent--enough."
"There's--things."
"What things?"
Her answer took some time in coming. "We'll have to give a wedding present to Daffy.... I shall want--some more furniture."
Well, he had to go into it now. "I don't think you can have it," he said, and then as she remained silent, "Marjorie, do you know how much money I've got?"
"Six thousand."
"I _had_. But we've spent nearly a thousand pounds. Yes--one thousand pounds--over and above income. We meant to spend four hundred. And now, we've got--hardly anything over five."
"Five thousand," said Marjorie.
"Five thousand."
"And there's your salary."
"Yes, but at this pace----"
"Dear," said Marjorie, and her hands came about his neck, "dear--there's something----"
She broke off. An unfamiliar quality in her voice struck into him. He turned his head to see her face, rose to his feet staring at her.
This remarkable young woman had become soft and wonderful as April hills across which clouds are sweeping. Her face was as if he had never seen it before; her eyes bright with tears.
"Oh! don't let's spoil things by thinking of money," she said. "I've got something----" Her voice fell to a whisper. "Don't let's spoil things by thinking of money.... It's too good, dear, to be true. It's too good to be true. It makes everything perfect.... We'll have to furnish that little room. I didn't dare to hope it--somehow. I've been so excited and afraid. But we've got to furnish that little room there--that empty little room upstairs, dear, that we left over.... Oh my _dear!_ my _dear!_"
§ 4
The world of Trafford and Marjorie was filled and transfigured by the advent of their child.
For two days of abundant silences he had been preparing a statement of his case for her, he had been full of the danger to his research and all the waste of his life that her extravagance threatened. He wanted to tell her just all that his science meant to him, explain how his income and life had all been arranged to leave him, mind and time and energy, free for these commanding investigations. His life was to him the service of knowledge--or futility. He had perceived that she did not understand this in him; that for her, life was a blaze of eagerly sought experiences and gratifications. So far he had thought out things and had them ready for her. But now all this impending discussion vanished out of his world. Their love was to be crowned by the miracle of parentage. This fact flooded his outlook and submerged every other consideration.
This manifest probability came to him as if it were an unforeseen marvel. It was as if he had never thought of such a thing before, as though a fact entirely novel in the order of the universe had come into existence. Marjorie became again magical and wonderful for him, but in a manner new and strange, she was grave, solemn, significant. He was filled with a passionate solicitude for her welfare, and a passionate desire to serve her. It seemed impossible to him that only a day or so ago he should have been accusing her in his heart of disloyalty, and searching for excuses and mitigations....
All the freshness of his first love for Marjorie returned, his keen sense of the sweet gallantry of her voice and bearing, his admiration for the swift, falconlike swoop of her decisions, for the grace and poise of her body, and the steady frankness of her eyes; but now it was all charged with his sense of this new joint life germinating at the heart of her slender vigour, spreading throughout her being to change it altogether into womanhood for ever. In this new light his passion for research and all the scheme of his life appeared faded and unworthy, as much egotism as if he had been devoted to hunting or golf or any such aimless preoccupation. Fatherhood gripped him and faced him about. It was manifestly a monstrous thing that he should ever have expected Marjorie to become a mere undisturbing accessory to the selfish intellectualism of his career, to shave and limit herself to a mere bachelor income, and play no part of her own in the movement of the world. He knew better now. Research must fall into its proper place, and for his immediate business he must set to work to supplement his manifestly inadequate resources.
At first he could form no plan at all for doing that. He determined that research must still have his morning hours until lunch-time, and, he privately resolved, some part of the night. The rest of his day, he thought, he would set aside for a time to money-making. But he was altogether inexperienced in the methods of money-making; it was a new problem, and a new sort of problem to him altogether. He discovered himself helpless and rather silly in the matter. The more obvious possibilities seemed to be that he might lecture upon his science or write. He communicated with a couple of lecture agencies, and was amazed at their scepticism; no doubt he knew his science, on that point they were complimentary in a profuse, unconvincing manner, but could he interest like X--and here they named a notorious quack--could he _draw_? He offered Science Notes to a weekly periodical; the editor answered that for the purposes of his publication he preferred, as between professors and journalists, journalists. "You real scientific men," he said, "are no doubt a thousand times more accurate and novel and all that, but as no one seems able to understand you----" He went to his old fellow-student, Gwenn, who was editing _The Scientific Review_, and through him he secured some semi-popular lectures, which involved, he found, travelling about twenty-nine miles weekly at the rate of four-and-sixpence a mile--counting nothing for the lectures. Afterwards Gwenn arranged for some regular notes on physics and micro-chemistry. Trafford made out a weekly time-table, on whose white of dignity, leisure, and the honourable pursuit of knowledge, a diaper of red marked the claims of domestic necessity.
§ 5
It was astonishing how completely this coming child dominated the whole atmosphere and all the circumstances of the Traffords. It became their central fact, to which everything else turned and pointed. Its effect on Marjorie's circle of school and college friends was prodigious. She was the first of their company to cross the mysterious boundaries of a woman's life. She became to them a heroine mingled with something of the priestess. They called upon her more abundantly and sat with her, noted the change in her eyes and voice and bearing, talking with a kind of awe and a faint diffidence of the promised new life.
Many of them had been deeply tinged by the women's suffrage movement, the feminist note was strong among them, and when one afternoon Ottiline Winchelsea brought round Agatha Alimony, the novelist, and Agatha said in that deep-ringing voice of hers: "I hope it will be a girl, so that presently she may fight the battle of her sex," there was the profoundest emotion. But when Marjorie conveyed that to Trafford he was lacking in response.
"I want a boy," he said, and, being pressed for a reason, explained: "Oh, one likes to have a boy. I want him with just your quick eyes and ears, my dear, and just my own safe and certain hands."
Mrs. Pope received the news with that depth and aimless complexity of emotion which had now become her habitual method with Marjorie. She kissed and clasped her daughter, and thought confusedly over her shoulder, and said: "Of course, dear----. Oh, I _do_ so hope it won't annoy your father." Daffy was "nice," but vague, and sufficiently feminist to wish it a daughter, and the pseudo-twins said "_Hoo_-ray!" and changed the subject at the earliest possible opportunity. But Theodore was deeply moved at the prospect of becoming an uncle, and went apart and mused deeply and darkly thereon for some time. It was difficult to tell just what Trafford's mother thought, she was complex and subtle, and evidently did not show Marjorie all that was in her mind; but at any rate it was clear the prospect of a grandchild pleased and interested her. And about Aunt Plessington's views there was no manner of doubt at all. She thought, and remarked judicially, as one might criticize a game of billiards, that on the whole it was just a little bit too soon.
§ 6
Marjorie kept well throughout March and April, and then suddenly she grew unutterably weary and uncomfortable in London. The end of April came hot and close and dry--it might have been July for the heat--the scrap of garden wilted, and the streets were irritating with fine dust and blown scraps of paper and drifting straws. She could think of nothing but the shade of trees, and cornfields under sunlight and the shadows of passing clouds. So Trafford took out an old bicycle and wandered over the home counties for three days, and at last hit upon a little country cottage near Great Missenden, a cottage a couple of girl artists had furnished and now wanted to let. It had a long, untidy vegetable garden and a small orchard and drying-ground, with an old, superannuated humbug of a pear-tree near the centre surrounded by a green seat, and high hedges with the promise of honeysuckle and dog-roses, and gaps that opened into hospitable beechwoods--woods not so thick but that there were glades of bluebells, bracken and, to be exact, in places embattled stinging-nettles. He took it and engaged a minute, active, interested, philoprogenitive servant girl for it, and took Marjorie thither in a taxi-cab. She went out, wrapped in a shawl, and sat under the pear-tree and cried quietly with weakness and sentiment and the tenderness of afternoon sunshine, and forthwith began to pick up wonderfully, and was presently writing to Trafford to buy her a dog to go for walks with, while he was away in London.
Trafford was still struggling along with his research in spite of a constant gravitation to the cottage and Marjorie's side, but he was also doing his best to grapple with the difficulties of his financial situation. His science notes, which were very uncongenial and difficult to do, and his lecturing, still left his income far behind his expenditure, and the problem of minimising the inevitable fresh inroads on his capital was insistent and distracting. He discovered that he could manage his notes more easily and write a more popular article if he dictated to a typist instead of writing out the stuff in his own manuscript. Dictating made his sentences more copious and open, and the effect of the young lady's by no means acquiescent back was to make him far more explicit than he tended to be pen in hand. With a pen and alone he felt the boredom of the job unendurably, and, to be through with it, became more and more terse, allusive, and compactly technical, after the style of his original papers. One or two articles by him were accepted and published by the monthly magazines, but as he took what the editors sent him, he did not find this led to any excessive opulence....
But his heart was very much with Marjorie through all this time. Hitherto he had taken her health and vigour and companionship for granted, and it changed his attitudes profoundly to find her now an ailing thing, making an invincible appeal for restraint and consideration and help. She changed marvellously, she gained a new dignity, and her complexion took upon itself a fresh, soft beauty. He would spend three or four days out of a week at the cottage, and long hours of that would be at her side, paper and notes of some forthcoming lecture at hand neglected, talking to her consolingly and dreamingly. His thoughts were full of ideas about education; he was obsessed, as are most intelligent young parents of the modern type, by the enormous possibilities of human improvement that might be achieved--if only one could begin with a baby from the outset, on the best lines, with the best methods, training and preparing it--presumably for a cleaned and chastened world. Indeed he made all the usual discoveries of intelligent modern young parents very rapidly, fully and completely, and overlooked most of those practical difficulties that finally reduce them to human dimensions again in quite the normal fashion.
"I sit and muse sometimes when I ought to be computing," he said. "Old Durgan watches me and grunts. But think, if we take reasonable care, watch its phases, stand ready with a kindergarten toy directly it stretches out its hand--think what we can make of it!"...
"We will make it the most wonderful child in the world," said Marjorie. "Indeed! what else can it be?"
"Your eyes," said Trafford, "and my hands."
"A girl."
"A boy."
He kissed her white and passive wrist.
§ 7
The child was born a little before expectation at the cottage throughout a long summer's night and day in early September. Its coming into the world was a long and painful struggle; the general practitioner who had seemed two days before a competent and worthy person enough, revealed himself as hesitating, old-fashioned, and ill-equipped. He had a lingering theological objection to the use of chloroform, and the nurse from London sulked under his directions and came and discussed his methods scornfully with Trafford. From sundown until daylight Trafford chafed in the little sitting-room and tried to sleep, and hovered listening at the foot of the narrow staircase to the room above. He lived through interminable hours of moaning and suspense....
The dawn and sunrise came with a quality of beautiful horror. For years afterwards that memory stood out among other memories as something peculiarly strange and dreadful. Day followed an interminable night and broke slowly. Things crept out of darkness, awoke as it were out of mysteries and reclothed themselves in unsubstantial shadows and faint-hued forms. All through that slow infiltration of the world with light and then with colour, the universe it seemed was moaning and endeavouring, and a weak and terrible struggle went on and kept on in that forbidden room whose windows opened upon the lightening world, dying to a sobbing silence, rising again to agonizing cries, fluctuating, a perpetual obstinate failure to achieve a tormenting end. He went out, and behold the sky was a wonder of pink flushed level clouds and golden hope, and nearly every star except the morning star had gone, the supine moon was pale and half-dissolved in blue, and the grass which had been grey and wet, was green again, and the bushes and trees were green. He returned and hovered in the passage, washed his face, listened outside the door for age-long moments, and then went out again to listen under the window....
He went to his room and shaved, sat for a long time thinking, and then suddenly knelt by his bed and prayed. He had never prayed before in all his life....
He returned to the garden, and there neglected and wet with dew was the camp chair Marjorie had sat on the evening before, the shawl she had been wearing, the novel she had been reading. He brought these things in as if they were precious treasures....
Light was pouring into the world again now. He noticed with an extreme particularity the detailed dewy delicacy of grass and twig, the silver edges to the leaves of briar and nettle, the soft clearness of the moss on bank and wall. He noted the woods with the first warmth of autumn tinting their green, the clear, calm sky, with just a wisp or so of purple cloud waning to a luminous pink on the brightening east, the exquisite freshness of the air. And still through the open window, incessant, unbearable, came this sound of Marjorie moaning, now dying away, now reviving, now weakening again....
Was she dying? Were they murdering her? It was incredible this torture could go on. Somehow it must end. Chiefly he wanted to go in and kill the doctor. But it would do no good to kill the doctor!
At last the nurse came out, looking a little scared, to ask him to cycle three miles away and borrow some special sort of needle that the fool of a doctor had forgotten. He went, outwardly meek, and returning was met by the little interested servant, very alert and excited and rather superior--for here was something no man can do--with the news that he had a beautiful little daughter, and that all was well with Marjorie.
He said "Thank God, thank God!" several times, and then went out into the kitchen and began to eat some flabby toast and drink some lukewarm tea he found there. He was horribly fatigued. "Is she all right?" he asked over his shoulder, hearing the doctor's footsteps on the stairs....
They were very pontifical and official with him.
Presently they brought out a strange, wizened little animal, wailing very stoutly, with a face like a very, very old woman, and reddish skin and hair--it had quite a lot of wet blackish hair of an incredible delicacy of texture. It kicked with a stumpy monkey's legs and inturned feet. He held it: his heart went out to it. He pitied it beyond measure, it was so weak and ugly. He was astonished and distressed by the fact of its extreme endearing ugliness. He had expected something strikingly pretty. It clenched a fist, and he perceived it had all its complement of fingers and ridiculous, pretentious little finger nails. Inside that fist it squeezed his heart.... He did not want to give it back to them. He wanted to protect it. He felt they could not understand it or forgive, as he could forgive, its unjustifiable feebleness....
Later, for just a little while, he was permitted to see Marjorie--Marjorie so spent, so unspeakably weary, and yet so reassuringly vital and living, so full of gentle pride and gentler courage amidst the litter of surgical precaution, that the tears came streaming down his face and he sobbed shamelessly as he kissed her. "Little daughter," she whispered and smiled--just as she had always smiled--that sweet, dear smile of hers!--and closed her eyes and said no more....
Afterwards as he walked up and down the garden he remembered their former dispute and thought how characteristic of Marjorie it was to have a daughter in spite of all his wishes.
§ 8
For weeks and weeks this astonishing and unprecedented being filled the Traffords' earth and sky. Very speedily its minute quaintness passed, and it became a vigorous delightful baby that was, as the nurse explained repeatedly and very explicitly, not only quite exceptional and distinguished, but exactly everything that a baby should be. Its weight became of supreme importance; there was a splendid week when it put on nine ounces, and an indifferent one when it added only one. And then came a terrible crisis. It was ill; some sort of infection had reached it, an infantile cholera. Its temperature mounted to a hundred and three and a half. It became a flushed misery, wailing with a pathetic feeble voice. Then it ceased to wail. Marjorie became white-lipped and heavy-eyed from want of sleep, and it seemed to Trafford that perhaps his child might die. It seemed to him that the spirit of the universe must be a monstrous calivan since children had to die. He went for a long walk through the October beechwoods, under a windy sky, and in a drift of falling leaves, wondering with a renewed freshness at the haunting futilities of life.... Life was not futile--anything but that, but futility seemed to be stalking it, waiting for it.... When he returned the child was already better, and in a few days it was well again--but very light and thin.
When they were sure of its safety, Marjorie and he confessed the extremity of their fears to one another. They had not dared to speak before, and even now they spoke in undertones of the shadow that had hovered and passed over the dearest thing in their lives.
CHAPTER THE THIRD
THE NEW PHASE
§ 1
In the course of the next six months the child of the ages became an almost ordinary healthy baby, and Trafford began to think consecutively about his scientific work again--in the intervals of effort of a more immediately practical sort.
The recall of molecular physics and particularly of the internal condition of colloids to something like their old importance in his life was greatly accelerated by the fact that a young Oxford don named Behrens was showing extraordinary energy in what had been for a time Trafford's distinctive and undisputed field. Behrens was one of those vividly clever energetic people who are the despair of originative men. He had begun as Trafford's pupil and sedulous ape; he had gone on to work that imitated Trafford's in everything except its continual freshness, and now he was ransacking every scrap of suggestion to be found in Trafford's work, and developing it with an intensity of uninspired intelligence that most marvellously simulated originality. He was already being noted as an authority; sometimes in an article his name would be quoted and Trafford's omitted in relation to Trafford's ideas, and in every way his emergence and the manner of his emergence threatened and stimulated his model and master. A great effort had to be made. Trafford revived the drooping spirits of Durgan by a renewed punctuality in the laboratory. He began to stay away from home at night and work late again, now, however, under no imperative inspiration, but simply because it was only by such an invasion of the evening and night that it would be possible to make headway against Behren's unremitting industry. And this new demand upon Trafford's already strained mental and nervous equipment began very speedily to have its effect upon his domestic life.
It is only in romantic fiction that a man can work strenuously to the limit of his power and come home to be sweet, sunny and entertaining. Trafford's preoccupation involved a certain negligence of Marjorie, a certain indisposition to be amused or interested by trifling things, a certain irritability....
§ 2
And now, indeed, the Traffords were coming to the most difficult and fatal phase in marriage. They had had that taste of defiant adventure which is the crown of a spirited love affair, they had known the sweetness of a maiden passion for a maid, and they had felt all those rich and solemn emotions, those splendid fears and terrible hopes that weave themselves about the great partnership in parentage. And now, so far as sex was concerned, there might be much joy and delight still, but no more wonder, no fresh discoveries of incredible new worlds and unsuspected stars. Love, which had been a new garden, an unknown land, a sunlit sea to launch upon, was now a rich treasure-house of memories. And memories, although they afford a perpetually increasing enrichment to emotion, are not sufficient in themselves for the daily needs of life.
For this, indeed, is the truth of passionate love, that it works outs its purpose and comes to an end. A day arrives in every marriage when the lovers must face each other, disillusioned, stripped of the last shred of excitement--undisguisedly themselves. And our two were married; they had bound themselves together under a penalty of scandalous disgrace, to take the life-long consequences of their passionate association.
It was upon Trafford that this exhaustion of the sustaining magic of love pressed most severely, because it was he who had made the greatest adaptations to the exigencies of their union. He had crippled, he perceived more and more clearly, the research work upon which his whole being had once been set, and his hours were full of tiresome and trivial duties and his mind engaged and worried by growing financial anxieties. He had made these abandonments in a phase of exalted passion for the one woman in the world and her unprecedented child, and now he saw, in spite of all his desire not to see, that she was just a weak human being among human beings, and neither she nor little Margharita so very marvellous.
But while Marjorie shrank to the dimensions of reality, research remained still a luminous and commanding dream. In love one fails or one wins home, but the lure of research is for ever beyond the hills, every victory is a new desire. Science has inexhaustibly fresh worlds to conquer....
He was beginning now to realize the dilemma of his life, the reality of the opposition between Marjorie and child and home on the one hand and on the other this big wider thing, this remoter, severer demand upon his being. He had long perceived these were distinct and different things, but now it appeared more and more inevitable that they should be antagonistic and mutually disregardful things. Each claimed him altogether, it seemed, and suffered compromise impatiently. And this is where the particular stress of his situation came in. Hitherto he had believed that nothing of any importance was secret or inexplicable between himself and Marjorie. His ideal of his relationship had assumed a complete sympathy of feeling, an almost instinctive identity of outlook. And now it was manifest they were living in a state of inadequate understanding, that she knew only in the most general and opaque forms, the things that interested him so profoundly, and had but the most superficial interest in his impassioned curiosities. And missing as she did the strength of his intellectual purpose she missed too, she had no inkling of, the way in which her careless expansiveness pressed upon him. She was unaware that she was destroying an essential thing in his life.
He could not tell how far this antagonism was due to inalterable discords of character, how far it might not be an ineradicable sex difference, a necessary aspect of marriage. The talk of old Sir Roderick Dover at the Winton Club germinated in his mind, a branching and permeating suggestion. And then would come a phase of keen sympathy with Marjorie; she would say brilliant and penetrating things, display a swift cleverness that drove all these intimations of incurable divergence clean out of his head again. Then he would find explanations in the differences between his and Marjorie's training and early associations. He perceived his own upbringing had had a steadfastness and consistency that had been altogether lacking in hers. He had had the rare advantage of perfect honesty in the teaching and tradition of his home. There had never been any shams or sentimentalities for him to find out and abandon. From boyhood his mother's hand had pointed steadily to the search for truth as the supreme ennobling fact in life. She had never preached this to him, never delivered discourses upon his father's virtues, but all her conversation and life was saturated with this idea. Compared with this atmosphere of high and sustained direction, the intellectual and moral quality of the Popes, he saw, was the quality of an agitated rag bag. They had thought nothing out, joined nothing together, they seemed to believe everything and nothing, they were neither religious nor irreligious, neither moral nor adventurous. In the place of a religion, and tainting their entire atmosphere, they had the decaying remains of a dead Anglicanism; it was clear they did not believe in its creed, and as clear that they did not want to get rid of it; it afforded them no guidance, but only vague pretensions, and the dismal exercises of Silas Root flourished in its shadows, a fungus, a post-mortem activity of the soul. None of them had any idea of what they were for or what their lives as a whole might mean; they had no standards, but only instincts and an instinctive fear of instincts; Pope wanted to be tremendously respected and complimented by everybody and get six per cent. for his money; Mrs. Pope wanted things to go smoothly; the young people had a general indisposition to do anything that might "look bad," and otherwise "have a good time." But neither Marjorie nor any of them had any test for a good time, and so they fluctuated in their conceptions of what they wanted from day to day. Now it was Plessingtonian standards, now Carmel standards, now the standards of Agatha Alimony; now it was a stimulating novel, now a gleam of æsthetic imaginativeness come, Heaven knows whence, that dominated her mood. He was beginning to understand all this at last, and to see the need of coherence in Marjorie's mood.
He realized the unfairness of keeping his thoughts to himself, the need of putting his case before her, and making her realize their fatal and widening divergence. He wanted to infect her with his scientific passion, to give her his sense of the gravity of their practical difficulties. He would sit amidst his neglected work in his laboratory framing explanatory phrases. He would prepare the most lucid and complete statements, and go about with these in his mind for days waiting for an opportunity of saying what he felt so urgently had to be said.
But the things that seemed so luminous and effective in the laboratory had a curious way of fading and shrinking beside the bright colours of Marjorie's Bokhara hangings, in the presence of little Margharita pink and warm and entertaining in her bath, or amidst the fluttering rustle of the afternoon tea-parties that were now becoming frequent in his house. And when he was alone with her he discovered they didn't talk now any more--except in terms of a constrained and formal affection.
What had happened to them? What was the matter between himself and Marjorie that he couldn't even intimate his sense of their divergence? He would have liked to discuss the whole thing with his mother, but somehow that seemed disloyal to Marjorie....
One day they quarrelled.
He came in about six in the afternoon, jaded from the delivery of a suburban lecture, and the consequent tedium of suburban travel, and discovered Marjorie examining the effect of a new picture which had replaced the German print of sunlit waves over the dining-room mantelpiece. It was a painting in the post-impressionist manner, and it had arrived after the close of the exhibition in Weldon Street, at which Marjorie had bought it. She had bought it in obedience to a sudden impulse, and its imminence had long weighed upon her conscience. She had gone to the show with Sydney Flor and old Mrs. Flor, Sydney's mother, and a kind of excitement had come upon them at the idea of possessing this particular picture. Mrs. Flor had already bought three Herbins, and her daughter wanted to dissuade her from more. "But they're so delightful," said Mrs. Flor. "You're overrunning your allowance," said Sydney. Disputing the point, they made inquiries for the price, and learnt that this bright epigram in colour was going begging--was even offered at a reduction from the catalogue price. A reduced price always had a strong appeal nowadays to Marjorie's mind. "If you don't get it," she said abruptly, "I shall."
The transition from that attitude to ownership was amazingly rapid. Then nothing remained but to wait for the picture. She had dreaded a mistake, a blundering discord, but now with the thing hung she could see her quick eye had not betrayed her. It was a mass of reds, browns, purples, and vivid greens and greys; an effect of roof and brick house facing upon a Dutch canal, and it lit up the room and was echoed and reflected by all the rest of her courageous colour scheme, like a coal-fire amidst mahogany and metal. It justified itself to her completely, and she faced her husband with a certain confidence.
"Hullo!" he cried.
"A new picture," she said. "What do you think of it?"
"What is it?"
"A town or something--never mind. Look at the colour. It heartens everything."
Trafford looked at the painting with a reluctant admiration.
"It's brilliant--and impudent. He's an artist--whoever he is. He hits the thing. But--I say--how did you get it?"
"I bought it."
"Bought it! Good Lord! How much?"
"Oh! ten guineas," said Marjorie, with an affectation of ease; "it will be worth thirty in ten years' time."
Trafford's reply was to repeat: "Ten guineas!"
Their eyes met, and there was singularly little tenderness in their eyes.
"It was priced at thirteen," said Marjorie, ending a pause, and with a sinking heart.
Trafford had left her side. He walked to the window and sat down in a chair.
"I think this is too much," he said, and his voice had disagreeable notes in it she had never heard before. "I have just been earning two guineas at Croydon, of all places, administering comminuted science to fools--and here I find--this exploit! Ten guineas' worth of picture. To say we can't afford it is just to waste a mild expression. It's--mad extravagance. It's waste of money--it's--oh!--monstrous disloyalty. Disloyalty!" He stared resentful at the cheerful, unhesitating daubs of the picture for a moment. Its affected carelessness goaded him to fresh words. He spoke in a tone of absolute hostility. "I think this winds me up to something," he said. "You'll have to give up your cheque-book, Marjorie."
"Give up my cheque-book!"
He looked up at her and nodded. There was a warm flush in her cheeks, her lips panted apart, and tears of disappointment and vexation were shining beautifully in her eyes. She mingled the quality of an indignant woman with the distress and unreasonable resentment of a child.
"Because I've bought this picture?"
"Can we go on like this?" he asked, and felt how miserably he had bungled in opening this question that had been in his mind so long.
"But it's _beautiful!_" she said.
He disregarded that. He felt now that he had to go on with these long-premeditated expostulations. He was tired and dusty from his third-class carriage, his spirit was tired and dusty, and he said what he had to say without either breadth or power, an undignified statement of personal grievances, a mere complaint of the burthen of work that falls upon a man. That she missed the high aim in him, and all sense of the greatness they were losing had vanished from his thoughts. He had too heavy a share of the common burthen, and she pressed upon him unthinkingly; that was all he could say. He girded at her with a bitter and loveless truth; it was none the less cruel that in her heart she knew these things he said were true. But he went beyond justice--as every quarrelling human being does; he called the things she had bought and the harmonies she had created, "this litter and rubbish for which I am wasting my life." That stabbed into her pride acutely and deeply. She knew anyhow that it wasn't so simple and crude as that. It was not mere witlessness she contributed to their trouble. She tried to indicate her sense of that. But she had no power of ordered reasoning, she made futile interruptions, she was inexpressive of anything but emotion, she felt gagged against his flow of indignant, hostile words. They blistered her.
Suddenly she went to her little desk in the corner, unlocked it with trembling hands, snatched her cheque-book out of a heap of still unsettled bills, and having locked that anti-climax safe away again, turned upon him. "Here it is," she said, and stood poised for a moment. Then she flung down the little narrow grey cover--nearly empty, it was, of cheques, on the floor before him.
"Take it," she cried, "take it. I never asked you to give it me."
A memory of Orta and its reeds and sunshine and love rose like a luminous mist between them....
She ran weeping from the room.
He leapt to his feet as the door closed. "Marjorie!" he cried.
But she did not hear him....
§ 3
The disillusionment about marriage which had discovered Trafford a thwarted, overworked, and worried man, had revealed Marjorie with time on her hands, superabundant imaginative energy, and no clear intimation of any occupation. With them, as with thousands of young couples in London to-day, the breadwinner was overworked, and the spending partner's duty was chiefly the negative one of not spending. You cannot consume your energies merely in not spending money. Do what she could, Marjorie could not contrive to make house and child fill the waking hours. She was far too active and irritable a being to be beneficial company all day for genial, bubble-blowing little Margharita; she could play with that young lady and lead her into ecstasies of excitement and delight, and she could see with an almost instinctive certainty when anything was going wrong; but for the rest that little life reposed far more beneficially upon the passive acquiescence of May, her pink and wholesome nurse. And the household generally was in the hands of a trustworthy cook-general, who maintained a tolerable routine. Marjorie did not dare to have an idea about food or domestic arrangements; if she touched that routine so much as with her little finger it sent up the bills. She could knock off butcher and greengrocer and do every scrap of household work that she could touch, in a couple of hours a day. She tried to find some work to fill her leisure; she suggested to Trafford that she might help him by writing up his Science Notes from rough pencil memoranda, but when it became clear that the first step to her doing this would be the purchase of a Remington typewriter and a special low table to carry it, he became bluntly discouraging. She thought of literary work, and sat down one day to write a short story and earn guineas, and was surprised to find that she knew nothing of any sort of human being about whom she could invent a story. She tried a cheap subscription at Mudie's and novels, and they filled her with a thirst for events; she tried needlework, and found her best efforts aesthetically feeble and despicable, and that her mind prowled above the silks and colours like a hungry wolf.
The early afternoons were the worst time, from two to four, before calling began. The devil was given great power over Marjorie's early afternoon. She could even envy her former home life then, and reflect that there, at any rate, one had a chance of a game or a quarrel with Daffy or Syd or Rom or Theodore. She would pull herself together and go out for a walk, and whichever way she went there were shops and shops and shops, a glittering array of tempting opportunities for spending money. Sometimes she would give way to spending exactly as a struggling drunkard decides to tipple. She would fix on some object, some object trivial and a little rare and not too costly, as being needed--when she knew perfectly well it wasn't needed--and choose the most remotest shops and display the exactest insistence upon her requirements. Sometimes she would get home from these raids without buying at all. After four the worst of the day was over; one could call on people or people might telephone and follow up with a call; and there was a chance of Trafford coming home....
One day at the Carmels' she found herself engaged in a vigorous flirtation with young Carmel. She hadn't noticed it coming on, but there she was in a windowseat talking quite closely to him. He said he was writing a play, a wonderful passionate play about St. Francis, and only she could inspire and advise him. Wasn't there some afternoon in the week when she sat and sewed, so that he might come and sit by her and read to her and talk to her? He made his request with a certain confidence, but it filled her with a righteous panic; she pulled him up with an abruptness that was almost inartistic. On her way home she was acutely ashamed of herself; this was the first time she had let any man but Trafford think he might be interesting to her, but once or twice on former occasions she had been on the verge of such provocative intimations. This sort of thing anyhow mustn't happen.
But if she didn't dress with any distinction--because of the cost--and didn't flirt and trail men in her wake, what was she to do at the afternoon gatherings which were now her chief form of social contact? What was going to bring people to her house? She knew that she was more than ordinarily beautiful and that she could talk well, but that does not count for much if you are rather dowdy, and quite uneventfully virtuous.
It became the refrain of all her thoughts that she must find something to do.
There remained "Movements."
She might take up a movement. She was a rather exceptionally good public speaker. Only her elopement and marriage had prevented her being president of her college Debating Society. If she devoted herself to some movement she would be free to devise an ostentatiously simple dress for herself and stick to it, and she would be able to give her little house a significance of her own, and present herself publicly against what is perhaps quite the best of all backgrounds for a good-looking, clear-voiced, self-possessed woman, a platform. Yes; she had to go in for a Movement.
She reviewed the chief contemporary Movements much as she might have turned over dress fabrics in a draper's shop, weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each....
London, of course, is always full of Movements. Essentially they are absorbents of superfluous feminine energy. They have a common flavour of progress and revolutionary purpose, and common features in abundant meetings, officials, and organization generally. Few are expensive, and still fewer produce any tangible results in the world. They direct themselves at the most various ends; the Poor, that favourite butt, either as a whole or in such typical sections as the indigent invalid or the indigent aged, the young, public health, the woman's cause, the prevention of animal food, anti-vivisection, the gratuitous advertisement of Shakespear (that neglected poet), novel but genteel modifications of medical or religious practice, dress reform, the politer aspects of socialism, the encouragement of æronautics, universal military service, garden suburbs, domestic arts, proportional representation, duodecimal arithmetic, and the liberation of the drama. They range in size and importance from campaigns on a Plessingtonian scale to sober little intellectual Beckingham things that arrange to meet half-yearly, and die quietly before the second assembly. If Heaven by some miracle suddenly gave every Movement in London all it professed to want, our world would be standing on its head and everything would be extremely unfamiliar and disconcerting. But, as Mr. Roosevelt once remarked, the justifying thing about life is the effort and not the goal, and few Movements involve any real and impassioned struggle to get to the ostensible object. They exist as an occupation; they exercise the intellectual and moral activities without undue disturbance of the normal routines of life. In the days when everybody was bicycling an ingenious mechanism called Hacker's Home Bicycle used to be advertised. Hacker's Home Bicycle was a stand bearing small rubber wheels upon which one placed one's bicycle (properly equipped with a cyclometer) in such a way that it could be mounted and ridden without any sensible forward movement whatever. In bad weather, or when the state of the roads made cycling abroad disagreeable Hacker's Home Bicycle could be placed in front of an open window and ridden furiously for any length of time. Whenever the rider tired, he could descend--comfortably at home again--and examine the cyclometer to see how far he had been. In exactly the same way the ordinary London Movement gives scope for the restless and progressive impulse in human nature without the risk of personal entanglements or any inconvenient disturbance of the milieu.
Marjorie considered the Movements about her. She surveyed the accessible aspects of socialism, but that old treasure-house of constructive suggestion had an effect like a rich château which had been stormed and looted by a mob. For a time the proposition that "we are all Socialists nowadays" had prevailed. The blackened and discredited frame remained, the contents were scattered; Aunt Plessington had a few pieces, the Tory Democrats had taken freely, the Liberals were in possession of a hastily compiled collection. There wasn't, she perceived, and there never had been a Socialist Movement; the socialist idea which had now become part of the general consciousness, had always been too big for polite domestication. She weighed Aunt Plessington, too, in the balance, and found her not so much wanting indeed as excessive. She felt that a Movement with Aunt Plessington in it couldn't possibly offer even elbow-room for anybody else. Philanthropy generally she shunned. The movements that aim at getting poor people into rooms and shouting at them in an improving, authoritative way, aroused an instinctive dislike in her. Her sense of humour, again, would not let her patronize Shakespear or the stage, or raise the artistic level of the country by means of green-dyed deal, and the influence of Trafford on her mind debarred her from attempting the physical and moral regeneration of humanity by means of beans and nut butter. It was indeed rather by the elimination of competing movements than by any positive preference that she found herself declining at last towards Agatha Alimony's section of the suffrage movement.... It was one of the less militant sections, but it held more meetings and passed more resolutions than any two others.
One day Trafford, returning from an afternoon of forced and disappointing work in his laboratory,--his mind had been steadfastly sluggish and inelastic,--discovered Marjorie's dining room crowded with hats and all the rustle and colour which plays so large a part in constituting contemporary feminine personality. Buzard, the feminist writer, and a young man just down from Cambridge who had written a decadent poem, were the only men present. The chairs were arranged meeting-fashion, but a little irregularly to suggest informality; the post-impressionist picture was a rosy benediction on the gathering, and at a table in the window sat Mrs. Pope in the chair, looking quietly tactful in an unusually becoming bonnet, supported by her daughter and Agatha Alimony. Marjorie was in a simple gown of blueish-grey, hatless amidst a froth of foolish bows and feathers, and she looked not only beautiful and dignified but deliberately and conscientiously patient until she perceived the new arrival. Then he noted she was a little concerned for him, and made some futile sign he did not comprehend. The meeting was debating the behaviour of women at the approaching census, and a small, earnest, pale-faced lady with glasses was standing against the fireplace with a crumpled envelope covered with pencil notes in her hand, and making a speech. Trafford wanted his tea badly, but he had not the wit to realize that his study had been converted into a refreshment room for the occasion; he hesitated, and seated himself near the doorway, and so he was caught; he couldn't, he felt, get away and seem to slight a woman who was giving herself the pains of addressing him.
The small lady in glasses was giving a fancy picture of the mind of Mr. Asquith and its attitude to the suffrage movement, and telling with a sort of inspired intimacy just how Mr. Asquith had hoped to "bully women down," and just how their various attempts to bring home to him the eminent reasonableness of their sex by breaking his windows, interrupting his meetings, booing at him in the streets and threatening his life, had time after time baffled this arrogant hope. There had been many signs lately that Mr. Asquith's heart was failing him. Now here was a new thing to fill him with despair. When Mr. Asquith learnt that women refused to be counted in the census, then at least she was convinced he must give in. When he gave in it would not be long--she had her information upon good authority--before they got the Vote. So what they had to do was not to be counted in the census. That was their paramount duty at the present time. The women of England had to say quietly but firmly to the census man when he came round: "No, we don't count in an election, and we won't count now. Thank you." No one could force a woman to fill in a census paper she didn't want to, and for her own part, said the little woman with the glasses, she'd starve first. (Applause.) For her own part she was a householder with a census paper of her own, and across that she was going to write quite plainly and simply what she thought of Mr. Asquith. Some of those present wouldn't have census papers to fill up; they would be sent to the man, the so-called Head of the House. But the W.S.P.U. had foreseen that. Each householder had to write down the particulars of the people who slept in his house on Sunday night, or who arrived home before mid-day on Monday; the reply of the women of England must be not to sleep in a house that night where census papers were properly filled, and not to go home until the following afternoon. All through that night the women of England must be abroad. She herself was prepared, and her house would be ready. There would be coffee and refreshments enough for an unlimited number of refugees, there would be twenty or thirty sofas and mattresses and piles of blankets for those who chose to sleep safe from all counting. In every quarter of London there would be houses of refuge like hers. And so they would make Mr. Asquith's census fail, as it deserved to fail, as every census would fail until women managed these affairs in a sensible way. For she supposed they were all agreed that only women could manage these things in a sensible way. That was _her_ contribution to this great and important question. (Applause, amidst which the small lady with the glasses resumed her seat.)
Trafford glanced doorward, but before he could move another speaker was in possession of the room. This was a very young, tall, fair, round-shouldered girl who held herself with an unnatural rigidity, fixed her eyes on the floor just in front of the chairwoman, and spoke with knitted brows and an effect of extreme strain. She remarked that some people did not approve of this proposed boycott of the census. She hung silent for a moment, as if ransacking her mind for something mislaid, and then proceeded to remark that she proposed to occupy a few moments in answering that objection--if it could be called an objection. They said that spoiling the census was an illegitimate extension of the woman movement. Well, she objected--she objected fiercely--to every word of that phrase. Nothing was an illegitimate extension of the woman movement. Nothing could be. (Applause.) That was the very principle they had been fighting for all along. So that, examined in this way, this so-called objection resolved itself into a mere question begging phrase. Nothing more. And her reply therefore to those who made it was that they were begging the question, and however well that might do for men, it would certainly not do, they would find, for women. (Applause.) For the freshly awakened consciousness of women. (Further applause.) This was a war in which quarter was neither asked nor given; if it were not so things might be different. She remained silent after that for the space of twenty seconds perhaps, and then remarked that that seemed to be all she had to say, and sat down amidst loud encouragement.
Then with a certain dismay Trafford saw his wife upon her feet. He was afraid of the effect upon himself of what she was going to say, but he need have had no reason for his fear. Marjorie was a seasoned debater, self-possessed, with a voice very well controlled and a complete mastery of that elaborate appearance of reasonableness which is so essential to good public speaking. She could speak far better than she could talk. And she startled the meeting in her opening sentence by declaring that she meant to stay at home on the census night, and supply her husband with every scrap of information he hadn't got already that might be needed to make the return an entirely perfect return. (Marked absence of applause.)
She proceeded to avow her passionate interest in the feminist movement of which this agitation for the vote was merely the symbol. (A voice: "No!") No one could be more aware of the falsity of woman's position at the present time than she was--she seemed to be speaking right across the room to Trafford--they were neither pets nor partners, but something between the two; now indulged like spoilt children, now blamed like defaulting partners; constantly provoked to use the arts of their sex, constantly mischievous because of that provocation. She caught her breath and stopped for a moment, as if she had suddenly remembered the meeting intervening between herself and Trafford. No, she said, there was no more ardent feminist and suffragist than herself in the room. She wanted the vote and everything it implied with all her heart. With all her heart. But every way to get a thing wasn't the right way, and she felt with every fibre of her being that this petulant hostility to the census was a wrong way and an inconsistent way, and likely to be an unsuccessful way--one that would lose them the sympathy and help of just that class of men they should look to for support, the cultivated and scientific men. (A voice: "_Do_ we want them?") What was the commonest charge made by the man in the street against women?--that they were unreasonable and unmanageable, that it was their way to get things by crying and making an irrelevant fuss. And here they were, as a body, doing that very thing! Let them think what the census and all that modern organization of vital statistics of which it was the central feature stood for. It stood for order, for the replacement of guesses and emotional generalization by a clear knowledge of facts, for the replacement of instinctive and violent methods, by which women had everything to lose (a voice: "No!") by reason and knowledge and self-restraint, by which women had everything to gain. To her the advancement of science, the progress of civilization, and the emancipation of womanhood were nearly synonymous terms. At any rate, they were different phases of one thing. They were different aspects of one wider purpose. When they struck at the census, she felt, they struck at themselves. She glanced at Trafford as if she would convince him that this was the real voice of the suffrage movement, and sat down amidst a brief, polite applause, that warmed to rapture as Agatha Alimony, the deep-voiced, stirring Agatha, rose to reply.
Miss Alimony, who was wearing an enormous hat with three nodding ostrich feathers, a purple bow, a gold buckle and numerous minor ornaments of various origin and substance, said they had all of them listened with the greatest appreciation and sympathy to the speech of their hostess. Their hostess was a newcomer to the movement, she knew she might say this without offence, and was passing through a phase, an early phase, through which many of them had passed. This was the phase of trying to take a reasonable view of an unreasonable situation. (Applause.) Their hostess had spoken of science, and no doubt science was a great thing; but there was something greater than science, and that was the ideal. It was woman's place to idealize. Sooner or later their hostess would discover, as they had all discovered, that it was not to science but the ideal that women must look for freedom. Consider, she said, the scientific men of to-day. Consider, for example, Sir James Crichton-Browne, the physiologist. Was he on their side? On the contrary, he said the most unpleasant things about them on every occasion. He went out of his way to say them. Or consider Sir Almroth Wright, did he speak well of women? Or Sir Ray Lankester, the biologist, who was the chief ornament of the Anti-Suffrage Society. Or Sir Roderick Dover, the physicist, who--forgetting Madame Curie, a far more celebrated physicist than himself, she ventured to say (Applause.) had recently gone outside his province altogether to abuse feminine research. There were your scientific men. Mrs. Trafford had said their anti-census campaign would annoy scientific men; well, under the circumstances, she wanted to annoy scientific men. (Applause.) She wanted to annoy everybody. Until women got the vote (loud applause) the more annoying they were the better. When the whole world was impressed by the idea that voteless women were an intolerable nuisance, then there would cease to be voteless women. (Enthusiasm.) Mr. Asquith had said--
And so on for quite a long time....
Buzard rose out of waves of subsiding emotion. Buzard was a slender, long-necked, stalk-shaped man with gilt glasses, uneasy movements and a hypersensitive manner. He didn't so much speak as thrill with thought vibrations; he spoke like an entranced but still quite gentlemanly sibyl. After Agatha's deep trumpet calls, he sounded like a solo on the piccolo. He picked out all his more important words with a little stress as though he gave them capitals. He said their hostess's remarks had set him thinking. He thought it was possible to stew the Scientific Argument in its own Juice. There was something he might call the Factuarial Estimate of Values. Well, it was a High Factuarial Value on their side, in his opinion at any rate, when Anthropologists came and told him that the Primitive Human Society was a Matriarchate. ("But it wasn't!" said Trafford to himself.) It had a High Factuarial Value when they assured him that Every One of the Great Primitive Inventions was made by a Woman, and that it was to Women they owed Fire and the early Epics and Sagas. ("Good Lord!" said Trafford.) It had a High Factuarial Value when they not only asserted but proved that for Thousands of Years, and perhaps for Hundreds of Thousands of Years, Women had been in possession of Articulate Speech before men rose to that Level of Intelligence....
It occurred suddenly to Trafford that he could go now; that it would be better to go; that indeed he _must_ go; it was no doubt necessary that his mind should have to work in the same world as Buzard's mental processes, but at any rate those two sets of unsympathetic functions need not go on in the same room. Something might give way. He got up, and with those elaborate efforts to be silent that lead to the violent upsetting of chairs, got himself out of the room and into the passage, and was at once rescued by the sympathetic cook-general, in her most generalized form, and given fresh tea in his study--which impressed him as being catastrophically disarranged....
§ 4
When Marjorie was at last alone with him she found him in a state of extreme mental stimulation. "Your speech," he said, "was all right. I didn't know you could speak like that, Marjorie. But it soared like the dove above the waters. Waters! I never heard such a flood of rubbish.... You know, it's a mistake to _mass_ women. It brings out something silly.... It affected Buzard as badly as any one. The extraordinary thing is they have a case, if only they'd be quiet. Why did you get them together?"
"It's our local branch."
"Yes, but _why?_"
"Well, if they talk about things--Discussions like this clear up their minds."
"Discussion! It wasn't discussion."
"Oh! it was a beginning."
"Chatter of that sort isn't the beginning of discussion, it's the end. It's the death-rattle. Nobody was meeting the thoughts of any one. I admit Buzard, who's a man, talked the worst rubbish of all. That Primitive Matriarchate of his! So it isn't sex. I've noticed before that the men in this movement of yours are worse than the women. It isn't sex. It's something else. It's a foolishness. It's a sort of irresponsible looseness." He turned on her gravely. "You ought not to get all these people here. It's contagious. Before you know it you'll find your own mind liquefy and become enthusiastic and slop about. You'll begin to talk monomania about Mr. Asquith."
"But it's a great movement, Rag, even if incidentally they say and do silly things!"
"My dear! aren't I feminist? Don't I want women fine and sane and responsible? Don't I want them to have education, to handle things, to vote like men and bear themselves with the gravity of men? And these meetings--all hat and flutter! These displays of weak, untrained, hysterical vehemence! These gatherings of open-mouthed impressionable young girls to be trained in incoherence! You can't go on with it!"
Marjorie regarded him quietly for a moment. "I must go on with something," she said.
"Well, not this."
"Then _what?_"
"Something sane."
"Tell me what."
"It must come out of yourself."
Marjorie thought sullenly for a moment. "Nothing comes out of myself," she said.
"I don't think you realize a bit what my life has become," she went on; "how much I'm like some one who's been put in a pleasant, high-class prison."
"This house! It's your own!"
"It doesn't give me an hour's mental occupation in the day. It's all very well to say I might do more in it. I can't--without absurdity. Or expenditure. I can't send the girl away and start scrubbing. I can't make jam or do ornamental needlework. The shops do it better and cheaper, and I haven't been trained to it. I've been trained _not_ to do it. I've been brought up on games and school-books, and fed on mixed ideas. I can't sit down and pacify myself with a needle as women used to do. Besides, I not only detest doing needlework but I hate it--the sort of thing a woman of my kind does anyhow--when it's done. I'm no artist. I'm not sufficiently interested in outside things to spend my time in serious systematic reading, and after four or five novels--oh, these meetings are better than that! You see, you've got a life--too much of it--_I_ haven't got enough. I wish almost I could sleep away half the day. Oh! I want something _real_, Rag; something more than I've got." A sudden inspiration came to her. "Will you let me come to your laboratory and work with you?"
She stopped abruptly. She caught up her own chance question and pointed it at him, a vitally important challenge. "Will you let me come to your laboratory and work?" she repeated.
Trafford thought. "No," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because I'm in love with you. I can't think of my work when you're about.... And you're too much behind. Oh my dear! don't you see how you're behind?" He paused. "I've been soaking in this stuff of mine for ten long years."
"Yes," assented Marjorie flatly.
He watched her downcast face, and then it lifted to him with a helpless appeal in her eyes, and lift in her voice. "But look here, Rag!" she cried--"what on earth am I to _DO?_"
§ 5
At least there came out of these discussions one thing, a phrase, a purpose, which was to rule the lives of the Traffords for some years. It expressed their realization that instinct and impulse had so far played them false, that life for all its rich gifts of mutual happiness wasn't adjusted between them. "We've got," they said, "to talk all this out between us. We've got to work this out." They didn't mean to leave things at a misfit, and that was certainly their present relation. They were already at the problem of their joint lives, like a tailor with his pins and chalk. Marjorie hadn't rejected a humorist and all his works in order to decline at last to the humorous view of life, that rather stupid, rather pathetic, grin-and-bear-it attitude compounded in incalculable proportions of goodwill, evasion, indolence, slovenliness, and (nevertheless) spite (masquerading indeed as jesting comment), which supplies the fabric of everyday life for untold thousands of educated middle-class people. She hated the misfit. She didn't for a moment propose to pretend that the ungainly twisted sleeve, the puckered back, was extremely jolly and funny. She had married with a passionate anticipation of things fitting and fine, and it was her nature, in great matters as in small, to get what she wanted strenuously before she counted the cost. About both their minds there was something sharp and unrelenting, and if Marjorie had been disposed to take refuge from facts in swathings of aesthetic romanticism, whatever covering she contrived would have been torn to rags very speedily by that fierce and steely veracity which swung down out of the laboratory into her home.
One may want to talk things out long before one hits upon the phrases that will open up the matter.
There were two chief facts in the case between them and so far they had looked only one in the face, the fact that Marjorie was unemployed to a troublesome and distressing extent, and that there was nothing in her nature or training to supply, and something in their circumstances and relations to prevent any adequate use of her energies. With the second fact neither of them cared to come to close quarters as yet, and neither as yet saw very distinctly how it was linked to the first, and that was the steady excess of her expenditure over their restricted means. She was secretly surprised at her own weakness. Week by week and month by month, they were spending all his income and eating into that little accumulation of capital that had once seemed so sufficient against the world....
And here it has to be told that although Trafford knew that Marjorie had been spending too much money, he still had no idea of just how much money she had spent. She was doing her utmost to come to an understanding with him, and at the same time--I don't explain it, I don't excuse it--she was keeping back her bills from him, keeping back urgent second and third and fourth demands, that she had no cheque-book now to stave off even by the most partial satisfaction. It kept her awake at nights, that catastrophic explanation, that all unsuspected by Trafford hung over their attempts at mutual elucidation; it kept her awake but she could not bring it to the speaking point, and she clung, in spite of her own intelligence, to a persuasion that _after_ they had got something really settled and defined then it would be time enough to broach the particulars of this second divergence....
Talking one's relations over isn't particularly easy between husband and wife at any time; we are none of us so sure of one another as to risk loose phrases or make experiments in expression in matters so vital; there is inevitably an excessive caution on the one hand and an abnormal sensitiveness to hints and implications on the other. Marjorie's bills were only an extreme instance of these unavoidable suppressions that always occur. Moreover, when two people are continuously together, it is amazingly hard to know when and where to begin; where intercourse is unbroken it is as a matter of routine being constantly interrupted. You cannot broach these broad personalities while you are getting up in the morning, or over the breakfast-table while you make the coffee, or when you meet again after a multitude of small events at tea, or in the evening when one is rather tired and trivial after the work of the day. Then Miss Margharita Trafford permitted no sustained analysis of life in her presence. She synthesized things fallaciously, but for the time convincingly; she insisted that life wasn't a thing you discussed, but pink and soft and jolly, which you crowed at and laughed at and addressed as "Goo." Even without Margharita there were occasions when the Traffords were a forgetfulness to one another. After an ear has been pinched or a hand has been run through a man's hair, or a pretty bare shoulder kissed, all sorts of broader interests lapse into a temporary oblivion. They found discussion much more possible when they walked together. A walk seemed to take them out of the everyday sequence, isolate them from their household, abstract them a little from one another. They set out one extravagant spring Sunday to Great Missenden, and once in spring also they discovered the Waterlow Park. On each occasion they seemed to get through an enormous amount of talking. But the Great Missenden walk was all mixed up with a sweet keen wind, and beechwoods just shot with spring green and bursting hedges and the extreme earliness of honeysuckle, which Trafford noted for the first time, and a clamorous rejoicing of birds. And in the Waterlow Park there was a great discussion of why the yellow crocus comes before white and purple, and the closest examination of the manner in which daffodils and narcissi thrust their green noses out of the garden beds. Also they found the ugly, ill-served, aggressively propagandist non-alcoholic refreshment-room in that gracious old house a scandal and disappointment, and Trafford scolded at the stupidity of officialdom that can control so fine a thing so ill.
Though they talked on these walks they were still curiously evasive. Indeed, they were afraid of each other. They kept falling away from their private thoughts and intentions. They generalized, they discussed Marriage and George Gissing and Bernard Shaw and the suffrage movement and the agitation for the reform of the divorce laws. They pursued imaginary cases into distant thickets of contingency remotely far from the personal issues between them....
§ 6
One day came an incident that Marjorie found wonderfully illuminating. Trafford had a fit of rage. Stung by an unexpected irritation, he forgot himself, as people say, and swore, and was almost physically violent, and the curious thing was that so he lit up things for her as no premeditated attempt of his had ever done.
A copy of the _Scientific Bulletin_ fired the explosion. He sat down at the breakfast-table with the heaviness of a rather overworked and worried man, tasted his coffee, tore open a letter and crumpled it with his hand, turned to the _Bulletin_, regarded its list of contents with a start, opened it, read for a minute, and expressed himself with an extraordinary heat of manner in these amazing and unprecedented words:
"Oh! Damnation and damnation!"
Then he shied the paper into the corner of the room and pushed his plate from him.
"Damn the whole scheme of things!" he said, and met the blank amazement of Marjorie's eye.
"Behrens!" he said with an air of explanation.
"Behrens?" she echoed with a note of inquiry.
"He's doing my stuff!"
He sat darkling for a time and then hit the table with his fist so hard that the breakfast things seemed to jump together--to Marjorie's infinite amazement. "I can't _stand_ it!" he said.
She waited some moments. "I don't understand," she began. "What has he done?"
"Oh!" was Trafford's answer. He got up, recovered the crumpled paper and stood reading. "Fool and thief," he said.
Marjorie was amazed beyond measure. She felt as though she had been effaced from Trafford's life. "Ugh!" he cried and slapped back the _Bulletin_ into the corner with quite needless violence. He became aware of Marjorie again.
"He's doing my work," he said.
And then as if he completed the explanation: "And I've got to be in Croydon by half-past ten to lecture to a pack of spinsters and duffers, because they're too stupid to get the stuff from books. It's all in books,--every bit of it."
He paused and went on in tones of unendurable wrong. "It isn't as though he was doing it right. He isn't. He can't. He's a fool. He's a clever, greedy, dishonest fool with a twist. Oh! the pile, the big Pile of silly muddled technicalities he's invented already! The solemn mess he's making of it! And there he is, I can't get ahead of him, I can't get at him. I've got no time. I've got no room or leisure to swing my mind in! Oh, curse these engagements, curse all these silly fretting entanglements of lecture and article! I never get the time, I can't get the time, I can't get my mind clear! I'm worried! I'm badgered! And meanwhile Behrens----!"
"Is he discovering what you want to discover?"
"Behrens! _No!_ He's going through the breaches I made. He's guessing out what I meant to do. And he's getting it set out all wrong,--misleading terminology,--distinctions made in the wrong place. Oh, the fool he is!"
"But afterwards----"
"Afterwards I may spend my life--removing the obstacles he's made. He'll be established and I shan't. You don't know anything of these things. You don't understand."
She didn't. Her next question showed as much. "Will it affect your F.R.S.?" she asked.
"Oh! _that's_ safe enough, and it doesn't matter anyhow. The F.R.S.! Confound the silly little F.R.S.! As if that mattered. It's seeing all my great openings--misused. It's seeing all I might be doing. This brings it all home to me. Don't you understand, Marjorie? Will you never understand? I'm getting away from all _that!_ I'm being hustled away by all this work, this silly everyday work to get money. Don't you see that unless I can have time for thought and research, life is just darkness to me? I've made myself master of that stuff. I had at any rate. No one can do what I can do there. And when I find myself--oh, shut out, shut out! I come near raving. As I think of it I want to rave again." He paused. Then with a swift transition: "I suppose I'd better eat some breakfast. Is that egg boiled?"
She gave him an egg, brought his coffee, put things before him, seated herself at the table. For a little while he ate in silence. Then he cursed Behrens.
"Look here!" she said. "Bad as I am, you've got to reason with me, Rag. I didn't know all this. I didn't understand ... I don't know what to do."
"What _is_ there to do?"
"I've got to do something. I'm beginning to see things. It's just as though everything had become clear suddenly." She was weeping. "Oh, my dear! I want to help you. I have so wanted to help you. Always. And it's come to this!"
"But it's not _your_ fault. I didn't mean that. It's--it's in the nature of things."
"It's my fault."
"It's not your fault."
"It is."
"Confound it, Marjorie. When I swear at Behrens I'm not swearing at you."
"It's my fault. All this is my fault. I'm eating you up. What's the good of your pretending, Rag. You know it is. Oh! When I married you I meant to make you happy, I had no thought but to make you happy, to give myself to you, my body, my brains, everything, to make life beautiful for you----"
"Well, _haven't_ you?" He thrust out a hand she did not take.
"I've broken your back," she said.
An unwonted resolution came into her face. Her lips whitened. "Don't you know, Rag," she said, forcing herself to speak----"Don't you guess? You don't know half! In that bureau there----In there! It's stuffed with bills. Unpaid bills."
She was weeping, with no attempt to wipe the streaming tears away; terror made the expression of her wet face almost fierce. "Bills," she repeated. "More than a hundred pounds still. Yes! Now. _Now!_"
He drew back, stared at her and with no trace of personal animus, like one who hears of a common disaster, remarked with a quiet emphasis: "Oh, _damn!_"
"I know," she said, "Damn!" and met his eyes. There was a long silence between them. She produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "That's what I amount to," she said.
"It's your silly upbringing," he said after a long pause.
"And my silly self."
She stood up, unlocked and opened her littered desk, turned and held out the key to him.
"Why?" he asked.
"Take it. You gave me a cheque-book of my own and a corner of my own, and they--they are just ambushes--against you."
He shook his head.
"Take it," said Marjorie with quiet insistence.
He obeyed. She stood with her eyes on the crumpled heap of bills. They were not even tidily arranged. That seemed to her now an extreme aggravation of her offence.
"I ought to be sent to the chemist's," she remarked, "as one sends a worthless cat."
Trafford weighed this proposition soberly for some moments. "You're a bother, Marjorie," he said with his eyes on the desk; "no end of a bother. I'd better have those bills."
He looked at her, stood up, put his hands on her shoulders, drew her to him and kissed her forehead. He did it without passion, without tenderness, with something like resignation in his manner. She clung to him tightly, as though by clinging she could warm and soften him.
"Rag," she whispered; "all my heart is yours.... I want to help you.... And this is what I have done."
"I know," he said--almost grimly.
He repeated his kiss.
Then he seemed to explode again. "Gods!" he cried, "look at the clock. I shall miss that Croydon lecture!" He pushed her from him. "Where are my boots?..."
§ 7
Marjorie spent the forenoon and the earlier part of the afternoon repeating and reviewing this conversation. Her mind was full of the long disregarded problem of her husband's state of mind. She thought with a sympathetic astonishment of his swearing, of his startling blow upon the table. She hadn't so far known he could swear. But this was the real thing, the relief of vehement and destructive words. His voice, saying "damnation and damnation," echoed and re-echoed in her ears. Somehow she understood that as she had never understood any sober statement of his case. Such women as Marjorie, I think, have an altogether keener understanding of people who have lost control of themselves than they have of reasoned cases. Perhaps that is because they themselves always reserve something when they state a reasoned case.
She went on to the apprehension of a change in him that hitherto she had not permitted herself to see--a change in his attitude to her. There had been a time when she had seemed able without an effort to nestle inside his heart. Now she felt distinctly for the first time that that hadn't happened. She had instead a sense of her embrace sliding over a rather deliberately contracted exterior.... Of course he had been in a hurry....
She tried to follow him on his journey to Croydon. Now he'd have just passed out of London Bridge. What was he thinking and feeling about her in the train? Now he would be going into the place, wherever it was, where he gave his lecture. Did he think of Behrens and curse her under his breath as he entered that tiresome room?...
It seemed part of the prevailing inconvenience of life that Daffy should see fit to pay an afternoon call.
Marjorie heard the sobs and uproar of an arrested motor, and glanced discreetly from the window to discover the dark green car with its green-clad chauffeur which now adorned her sister's life, and which might under different circumstances, have adorned her own. Wilkins--his name was Wilkins, his hair was sandy and his expression discreet, and he afforded material for much quiet humorous observation--descended smartly and opened the door. Daffy appeared in black velvet, with a huge black fur muff, and an air of being unaware that there were such things as windows in the world.
It was just four, and the cook-general, who ought to have been now in her housemaid's phase, was still upstairs divesting herself of her more culinary characteristics. Marjorie opened the door.
"Hullo, old Daffy!" she said.
"Hullo, old Madge!" and there was an exchange of sisterly kisses and a mutual inspection.
"Nothing wrong?" asked Daffy, surveying her.
"_Wrong?_"
"You look pale and--tired about the eyes," said Daffy, leading the way into the drawing-room. "Thought you might be a bit off it, that's all. No offence, Madge."
"I'm all right," said Marjorie, getting her back to the light. "Want a holiday, perhaps. How's every one?"
"All right. _We're_ off to Lake Garda next week. This new play has taken it out of Will tremendously. He wants a rest and fresh surroundings. It's to be the biggest piece of work he's done--so far, and it's straining him. And people worry him here; receptions, first nights, dinners, speeches. He's so neat, you know, in his speeches.... But it wastes him. He wants to get away. How's Rag?"
"Busy."
"Lecturing?"
"And his Research of course."
"Oh! of course. How's the Babe?"
"Just in. Come up and see the little beast, Daffy! It is getting so pretty, and it talks----"
Margharita dominated intercourse for a time. She was one of those tactful infants who exactly resemble their fathers and exactly resemble their mothers, and have a charm and individuality quite distinctly their own, and she was now beginning to converse with startling enterprise and intelligence.
"Big, big, bog," she said at the sight of Daffy.
"Remembers you," said Marjorie.
"Bog! Go ta-ta!" said Margharita.
"There!" said Marjorie, and May, the nurse in the background, smiled unlimited appreciation.
"Bably," said Margharita.
"That's herself!" said Marjorie, falling on her knees. "She talks like this all day. Oh de sweetums, den!" _Was_ it?
Daffy made amiable gestures and canary-like noises with her lips, and Margharita responded jovially.
"You darling!" cried Marjorie, "you delight of life," kneeling by the cot and giving the crowing, healthy little mite a passionate hug.
"It's really the nicest of babies," Daffy conceded, and reflected....
"I don't know what I should do with a kiddy," said Daffy, as the infant worship came to an end; "I'm really glad we haven't one--yet. He'd love it, I know. But it would be a burthen in some ways. They _are_ a tie. As he says, the next few years means so much for him. Of course, here his reputation is immense, and he's known in Germany, and there are translations into Russian; but he's still got to conquer America, and he isn't really well known yet in France. They read him, of course, and buy him in America, but they're--_restive_. Oh! I do so wish they'd give him the Nobel prize, Madge, and have done with it! It would settle everything. Still, as he says, we mustn't think of that--yet, anyhow. He isn't venerable enough. It's doubtful, he thinks, that they would give the Nobel prize to any humorist now that Mark Twain is dead. Mark Twain was different, you see, because of the German Emperor and all that white hair and everything."
At this point Margharita discovered that the conversation had drifted away from herself, and it was only when they got downstairs again that Daffy could resume the thread of Magnet's career, which had evidently become the predominant interest in her life. She brought out all the worst elements of Marjorie's nature and their sisterly relationship. There were moments when it became nakedly apparent that she was magnifying Magnet to belittle Trafford. Marjorie did her best to counter-brag. She played her chief card in the F. R. S.
"They always ask Will to the Royal Society Dinner," threw out Daffy; "but of course he can't always go. He's asked to so many things."
Five years earlier Marjorie would have kicked her shins for that.
Instead she asked pointedly, offensively, if Magnet was any balder.
"He's not really bald," said Daffy unruffled, and went on to discuss the advisability of a second motor car--purely for town use. "I tell him I don't want it," said Daffy, "but he's frightfully keen upon getting one."
§ 8
When Daffy had at last gone Marjorie went back into Trafford's study and stood on the hearthrug regarding its appointments, with something of the air of one who awakens from a dream. She had developed a new, appalling thought. Was Daffy really a better wife than herself? It was dawning upon Marjorie that she hadn't been doing the right thing by her husband, and she was as surprised as if it had been suddenly brought home to her that she was neglecting Margharita. This was her husband's study--and it showed just a little dusty in the afternoon sunshine, and everything about it denied the pretensions of serene sustained work that she had always made to herself. Here were the crumpled galley proofs of his science notes; here were unanswered letters. There, she dare not touch them, were computations, under a glass paper-weight. What did they amount to now? On the table under the window were back numbers of the _Scientific Bulletin_ in a rather untidy pile, and on the footstool by the arm-chair she had been accustomed to sit at his feet when he stayed at home to work, and look into the fire, and watch him furtively, and sometimes give way to an overmastering tenderness and make love to him. The thought of Magnet, pampered, fenced around, revered in his industrious tiresome repetitions, variations, dramatizations and so forth of the half-dozen dry little old jokes which the British public accepted as his characteristic offering and rewarded him for so highly, contrasted vividly with her new realization of Trafford's thankless work and worried face.
And she loved him, she loved him--_so_. She told herself in the presence of all these facts, and without a shadow of doubt in her mind that all she wanted in the world was to make him happy.
It occurred to her as a rather drastic means to this end that she might commit suicide.
She had already gone some way in the composition of a touching letter of farewell to him, containing a luminous analysis of her own defects, before her common-sense swept away this imaginative exercise.
Meanwhile, as if it had been working at her problem all the time that this exciting farewell epistle had occupied the foreground of her thoughts, her natural lucidity emerged with the manifest conclusion that she had to alter her way of living. She had been extraordinarily regardless of him, she only began to see that, and now she had to take up the problem of his necessities. Her self-examination now that it had begun was thorough. She had always told herself before that she had made a most wonderful and beautiful little home for him. But had she made it for him? Had he as a matter of fact ever wanted it, except that he was glad to have it through her? No doubt it had given him delight and happiness, it had been a marvellous little casket of love for them, but how far did that outweigh the burthen and limitation it had imposed upon him? She had always assumed he was beyond measure grateful to her for his home, in spite of all her bills, but was he? It was like sticking a knife into herself to ask that, but she was now in a phase heroic enough for the task--was he? She had always seen herself as the giver of bounties; greatest bounty of all was Margharita. She had faced pains and terrors and the shadow of death to give him Margharita. Now with Daffy's illuminating conversation in her mind, she could turn the light upon a haunting doubt that had been lurking in the darkness for a long time. Had he really so greatly wanted Margharita? Had she ever troubled to get to the bottom of that before? Hadn't she as a matter of fact wanted Margharita ten thousand times more than he had done? Hadn't she in effect imposed Margharita upon him, as she had imposed her distinctive and delightful home upon him, regardlessly, because these things were the natural and legitimate developments of herself?
These things were not his ends.
Had she hitherto ever really cared what his ends might be?
A phrase she had heard abundantly enough in current feminist discussion recurred to her mind, "the economic dependence of women," and now for the first time it was charged with meaning. She had imposed these things upon him not because she loved him, but because these things that were the expansions and consequences of her love for him were only obtainable through him. A woman gives herself to a man out of love, and remains clinging parasitically to him out of necessity. Was there no way of evading that necessity?
For a time she entertained dreams of marvellous social reconstructions. Suppose the community kept all its women, suppose all property in homes and furnishings and children vested in them! That was Marjorie's version of that idea of the Endowment of Womanhood which has been creeping into contemporary thought during the last two decades. Then every woman would be a Princess to the man she loved.... He became more definitely personal. Suppose she herself was rich, then she could play the Princess to Trafford; she could have him free, unencumbered, happy and her lover! Then, indeed, her gifts would be gifts, and all her instincts and motives would but crown his unhampered life! She could not go on from that idea, she lapsed into a golden reverie, from which she was roused by the clock striking five.
In half an hour perhaps Trafford would be home again. She could at least be so much of a princess as to make his home sweet for his home-coming. There should be tea in here, where callers did not trouble. She glanced at an empty copper vase. It ached. There was no light in the room. There would be just time to dash out into High Street and buy some flowers for it before he came....
§ 9
Spring and a renewed and deepened love for her husband were in Marjorie's blood. Her mind worked rapidly during the next few days, and presently she found herself clearly decided upon her course of action. She had to pull herself together and help him, and if that meant a Spartan and strenuous way of living, then manifestly she must be Spartan and strenuous. She must put an end once for all to her recurrent domestic deficits, and since this could only be done by getting rid of May, she must get rid of May and mind the child herself. (Every day, thank Heaven! Margharita became more intelligent, more manageable, and more interesting.) Then she must also make a far more systematic and thorough study of domestic economy than she had hitherto done, and run the shopping and housekeeping on severer lines; she bought fruit carelessly, they had far too many joints; she never seemed able to restrain herself when it came to flowers. And in the evenings, which would necessarily be very frequently lonely evenings if Trafford's researches were to go on, she would typewrite, and either acquire great speed at that or learn shorthand, and so save Trafford's present expenditure on a typist. That unfortunately would mean buying a typewriter.
She found one afternoon in a twopenny book-box, with which she was trying to allay her craving for purchases, a tattered little pamphlet entitled: "Proposals for the Establishment of an Order of Samurai," which fell in very exactly with her mood. The title "dated"; it carried her mind back to her middle girlhood and the defeats of Kuropatki and the futile earnest phase in English thought which followed the Boer War. The order was to be a sort of self-appointed nobility serving the world. It shone with the light of a generous dawn, but cast, I fear, the shadow of the prig. Its end was the Agenda Club.... She read and ceased to read--and dreamt.
The project unfolded the picture of a new method of conduct to her, austere, yet picturesque and richly noble. These Samurai, it was intimated, were to lead lives of hard discipline and high effort, under self-imposed rule and restraint. They were to stand a little apart from the excitements and temptations of everyday life, to eat sparingly, drink water, resort greatly to self-criticism and self-examination, and harden their spirits by severe and dangerous exercises. They were to dress simply, work hard, and be the conscious and deliberate salt of the world. They were to walk among mountains. Incidentally, great power was to be given them. Such systematic effort and self-control as this, seemed to Marjorie to give just all she wasn't and needed to be, to save her life and Trafford's from a common disaster....
It particularly appealed to her that they were to walk among mountains....
But it is hard to make a change in the colour of one's life amidst the routine one has already established about oneself, in the house that is grooved by one's weaknesses, amidst hangings and ornaments living and breathing with the life of an antagonistic and yet insidiously congenial ideal. A great desire came upon Marjorie to go away with Trafford for a time, out of their everyday life into strange and cool and spacious surroundings. She wanted to leave London and its shops, and the home and the movements and the callers and rivalries, and even dimpled little Margharita's insistent claims, and get free and think. It was the first invasion of their lives by this conception, a conception that was ever afterwards to leave them altogether, of retreat and reconstruction. She knelt upon the white sheepskin hearthrug at Trafford's feet one night, and told him of her desire. He, too, was tired of his work and his vexations, and ripe for this suggestion of an altered life. The Easter holiday was approaching, and nearly twenty unencumbered days. Mrs. Trafford, they knew, would come into the house, meanwhile, and care for Margharita. They would go away somewhere together and walk, no luggage but a couple of knapsacks, no hotel but some homely village inn. They would be in the air all day, until they were saturated with sweet air and spirit of clean restraints. They would plan out their new rule, concentrate their aims. "And I could think," said Trafford, "of this new work I can't begin here. I might make some notes." Presently came the question of where the great walk should be. Manifestly, it must be among mountains, manifestly, and Marjorie's eye saw those mountains with snow upon their summits and cold glaciers on their flanks. Could they get to Switzerland? If they travelled second class throughout, and took the cheaper way, as Samurai should?...
§ 10
That holiday seemed to Marjorie as if they had found a lost and forgotten piece of honeymoon. She had that same sense of fresh beginnings that had made their first walk in Italian Switzerland so unforgettable. She was filled with the happiness of recovering Trafford when he had seemed to be slipping from her. All day they talked of their outlook, and how they might economise away the need of his extra work, and so release him for his search again. For the first time he talked of his work to her, and gave her some intimation of its scope and quality. He became enthusiastic with the sudden invention of experimental devices, so that it seemed to her almost worth while if instead of going on they bolted back, he to his laboratory and she to her nursery, and so at once inaugurated the new régime. But they went on, to finish the holiday out. And the delight of being together again with unfettered hours of association! They rediscovered each other, the same--and a little changed. If their emotions were less bright and intense, their interest was far wider and deeper.
The season was too early for high passes, and the weather was changeable. They started from Fribourg and walked to Thun and then back to Bulle, and so to Bultigen, Saanen, Montbovon and the Lake of Geneva. They had rain several days, the sweet, soft, windless mountain rain that seemed so tolerable to those who are accustomed to the hard and driven downpours of England, and in places they found mud and receding snow; the inns were at their homeliest, and none the worse for that, and there were days of spring sunshine when a multitude of minute and delightful flowers came out as it seemed to meet them--it was impossible to suppose so great a concourse universal--and spread in a scented carpet before their straying feet. The fruit trees in the valleys were powdered with blossom, and the new grass seemed rather green-tinted sunlight than merely green. And they walked with a sort of stout leisureliness, knapsacks well-hung and cloaks about them, with their faces fresh and bright under the bracing weather, and their lungs deep charged with mountain air, talking of the new austerer life that was now beginning. With great snow-capped mountains in the background, streaming precipices overhead, and a sward of flowers to go upon, that strenuous prospect was altogether delightful. They went as it pleased them, making detours into valleys, coming back upon their steps. The interludes of hot, bright April sunshine made them indolent, and they would loiter and halt where some rock or wall invited, and sit basking like happy, animals, talking very little, for long hours together. Trafford seemed to have forgotten all the strain and disappointment of the past two years, to be amazed but in no wise incredulous at this enormous change in her and in their outlook; it filled her with a passion of pride and high resolve to think that so she could recover and uplift him.
He was now very deeply in love with her again. He talked indeed of his research, but so that it might interest her, and when he thought alone, he thought, not of it, but of her, making again the old discoveries, his intense delight in the quality of her voice, his joy in a certain indescribable gallantry in her bearing. He pitied all men whose wives could not carry themselves, and whose voices failed and broke under the things they had to say. And then again there was the way she moved her arms, the way her hands took hold of things, the alert lucidity of her eyes, and then that faint, soft shadow of a smile upon her lips when she walked thinking or observant, all unaware that he was watching her.
It rained in the morning of their eleventh day and then gave way to warmth and sunshine, so that they arrived at Les Avants in the afternoon a little muddy and rather hot. At one of the tables under the trees outside the Grand Hotel was a small group of people dressed in the remarkable and imposing costume which still in those days distinguished the motorist. They turned from their tea to a more or less frank inspection of the Traffords, and suddenly broke out into cries of recognition and welcome. Solomonson--for the most part brown leather--emerged with extended hands, and behind him, nestling in the midst of immense and costly furs, appeared the kindly salience and brightness of his Lady's face. "Good luck!" cried Solomonson. "Good luck! Come and have tea with us! But this is a happy encounter!"
"We're dirty--but so healthy!" cried Marjorie, saluting Lady Solomonson.
"You look, oh!--splendidly well," that Lady responded.
"We've been walking."
"With just that knapsack!"
"It's been glorious."
"But the courage!" said Lady Solomonson, and did not add, "the tragic hardship!" though her tone conveyed it. She had all the unquestioning belief of her race in the sanity of comfort. She had ingrained in her the most definite ideas of man's position and woman's, and that any one, man or woman, should walk in mud except under dire necessity, was outside the range of her philosophy. She thought Marjorie's thick boots and short skirts quite the most appalling feminine costume she had ever seen. She saw only a ruined complexion and damaged womanhood in Marjorie's rain-washed, sun-bit cheek. Her benevolent heart rebelled at the spectacle. It was dreadful, she thought, that nice young people like the Traffords should have come to this.
The rest of the party were now informally introduced. They were all very splendid and disconcertingly free from mud. One was Christabel Morrison, the actress, a graceful figure in a green baize coat and brown fur, who looked ever so much more charming than her innumerable postcards and illustrated-paper portraits would have led one to expect; her neighbour was Solomonson's cousin Lee, the organizer of the Theatre Syndicate, a brown-eyed, attenuated, quick-minded little man with an accent that struck Trafford as being on the whole rather Dutch, and the third lady was Lady Solomonson's sister, Mrs. Lee. It appeared they were all staying at Lee's villa above Vevey, part of an amusing assembly of people who were either vividly rich or even more vividly clever, an accumulation which the Traffords in the course of the next twenty minutes were three times invited, with an increasing appreciation and earnestness, to join.
From the first our two young people were not indisposed to do so. For eleven days they had maintained their duologue at the very highest level; seven days remained to them before they must go back to begin the hard new life in England, and there was something very attractive--they did not for a moment seek to discover the elements of that attractiveness--in this proposal of five or six days of luxurious indolence above the lake, a sort of farewell to the worldly side of worldly things, before they set forth upon the high and narrow path they had resolved to tread.
"But we've got no clothes," cried Marjorie, "no clothes at all! We've these hobnail boots and a pair each of heelless slippers."
"My dear!" cried Lady Solomonson in real distress, and as much aside as circumstances permitted, "my dear! My sister can manage all that!" Her voice fell to earnest undertones. "We can really manage all that. The house is packed with things. We'll come to dinner in fancy dress. And Scott, my maid, is so clever."
"But really!" said Marjorie.
"My dear!" said Lady Solomonson. "Everything." And she changed places with Lee in order to be perfectly confidential and explicit. "Rachel!" she cried, and summoned her sister for confirmatory assurances....
"But my husband!" Marjorie became audible.
"We've long Persian robes," said Mrs. Lee, with a glance of undisguised appraisement. "He'll be splendid. He'll look like a Soldan...."
The rest of the company forced a hectic conversation in order not to seem to listen, and presently Lady Solomonson and her sister were triumphant. They packed Marjorie into the motor car, and Trafford and Solomonson returned to Vevey by train and thence up to the villa by a hired automobile.
§ 11
They didn't go outside the magic confines of the Lees' villa for three days, and when they did they were still surrounded by their host's service and possessions; they made an excursion to Chillon in his motor-cars, and went in his motor-boat to lunch with the Maynards in their lake-side villa close to Geneva. During all that time they seemed lifted off the common earth into a world of fine fabrics, agreeable sounds, noiseless unlimited service, and ample untroubled living. It had an effect of enchantment, and the long healthy arduous journey thither seemed a tale of incredible effort amidst these sunny excesses. The weather had the whim to be serenely fine, sunshine like summer and the bluest of skies shone above the white wall and the ilex thickets and cypresses that bounded them in from the great world of crowded homes and sous and small necessities. And through the texture of it all for Trafford ran a thread of curious new suggestion. An intermittent discussion of economics and socialism was going on between himself and Solomonson and an agreeable little stammering man in brown named Minter, who walked up in the afternoon from Vevey,--he professed to be writing a novel--during the earlier half of the day. Minter displayed the keenest appreciation of everything in his entertainment, and blinked cheerfully and expressed opinions of the extremest socialistic and anarchistic flavour to an accompaniment of grateful self-indulgence. "Your port-wine is wonderful, Lee," he would say, sipping it. "A terrible retribution will fall upon you some day for all this."
The villa had been designed by Lee to please his wife, and if it was neither very beautiful nor very dignified, it was at any rate very pretty and amusing. It might have been built by a Parisian dressmaker--in the châteauesque style. It was of greyish-white stone, with a roof of tiles. It had little balconies and acutely roofed turrets, and almost burlesque buttresses, pierced by doors and gates; and sun-trap loggias, as pleasantly casual as the bows and embroideries of a woman's dress; and its central hall, with an impluvium that had nothing to do with rain-water, and its dining-room, to which one ascended from this hall between pillars up five broad steps, were entirely irrelevant to all its exterior features. Unobtrusive men-servants in grey with scarlet facings hovered serviceably.
From the little terrace, all set with orange-trees in tubs, one could see, through the branches and stems of evergreens and over a foreground of budding, starting vineyard, the clustering roofs of Vevey below, an agglomeration veiled ever so thinly in the morning by a cobweb of wood smoke, against the blue background of lake with its winged sailing-boats, and sombre Alpine distances. Minter made it all significant by a wave of the hand. "All this," he said, and of the crowded work-a-day life below, "all that."
"All this," with its rich litter of stuffs and ornaments, its fine profusion, its delicacies of flower and food and furniture, its frequent inconsecutive pleasures, its noiseless, ready service, was remarkably novel and yet remarkably familiar to Trafford. For a time he could not understand this undertone of familiarity, and then a sunlit group of hangings in one of the small rooms that looked out upon the lake took his mind back to his own dining-room, and the little inadequate, but decidedly good, Bokhara embroidery that dominated it like a flag, that lit it, and now lit his understanding, like a confessed desire. Of course, Mrs. Lee--happy woman!--was doing just everything that Marjorie would have loved to do. Marjorie had never confessed as much, perhaps she had never understood as much, but now in the presence of Mrs. Lee's æsthetic exuberances, Trafford at least understood. He surveyed the little room, whose harmonies he had at first simply taken for granted, noted the lustre-ware that answered to the gleaming Persian tiles, the inspiration of a metallic thread in the hangings, and the exquisite choice of the deadened paint upon the woodwork, and realized for the first time how little aimless extravagance can be, and all the timid, obstinately insurgent artistry that troubled his wife. He stepped through the open window into a little loggia, and stared unseeingly over glittering, dark-green leaves to the mysteries of distance in the great masses above St. Gingolph, and it seemed for the first time that perhaps in his thoughts he had done his wife a wrong. He had judged her fickle, impulsive, erratic, perhaps merely because her mind followed a different process from his, because while he went upon the lines of constructive truth, her guide was a more immediate and instinctive sense of beauty.
He was very much alive to her now, and deeply in love with her. He had reached Les Avants with all his sense of their discordance clean washed and walked out of his mind, by rain and sun and a flow of high resolutions, and the brotherly swing of their strides together. They had come to the Lee's villa, mud-splashed, air-sweet comrades, all unaware of the subtle differences of atmosphere they had to encounter. They had no suspicion that it was only about half of each other that had fraternized. Now here they were in a company that was not only altogether alien to their former mood, but extremely interesting and exciting and closely akin to the latent factors in Marjorie's composition. Their hostess and her sister had the keen, quick æsthetic sensibilities of their race, with all that freedom of reading and enfranchisement of mind which is the lot of the Western women. Lee had an immense indulgent affection for his wife, he regarded her arrangements and exploits with an admiration that was almost American. And Mrs. Lee's imagination had run loose in pursuit of beautiful and remarkable people and splendours rather than harmonies of line and colour. Lee, like Solomonson, had that inexplicable alchemy of mind which distils gold from the commerce of the world ("All this," said Minter to Trafford, "is an exhalation from all that"); he accumulated wealth as one grows a beard, and found his interest in his uxorious satisfactions, and so Mrs. Lee, with her bright watchful eyes, quick impulsive movements and instinctive command had the utmost freedom to realize her ideals.
In the world at large Lee and Solomonson seemed both a little short and a little stout, and a little too black and bright for their entirely conventional clothing, but for the dinner and evening of the villa they were now, out of consideration for Trafford, at their ease, and far more dignified in Oriental robes. Trafford was accommodated with a long, black, delicately embroidered garment that reached to his feet, and suited something upstanding and fine in his bearing; Minter, who had stayed on from an afternoon call, was gorgeous in Chinese embroidery. The rest of the men clung boldly or bashfully to evening dress....
On the evening of his arrival Trafford, bathed and robed, found the rest of the men assembling about an open wood fire in the smaller hall at the foot of the main staircase. Lee was still upstairs, and Solomonson, with a new grace of gesture begotten by his costume, made the necessary introductions; a little man with fine-cut features and a Galway accent was Rex the playwright; a tall, grey-haired, clean-shaven man was Bright from the New York Central Museum; and a bearded giant with a roof of red hair and a remote eye was Radlett Barns, the great portrait-painter, who consents to paint your portrait for posterity as the King confers a knighthood. These were presently joined by Lee and Pacey, the blond-haired musician, and Mottersham, whose patents and inventions control electric lighting and heating all over the world, and then, with the men duly gathered and expectant, the women came down the wide staircase.
The staircase had been planned and lit for these effects, and Mrs. Lee meant to make the most of her new discovery. Her voice could be heard in the unseen corridor above arranging the descent: "You go first, dear. Will you go with Christabel?" The conversation about the fire checked and ceased with the sound of voices above and the faint rustle of skirts. Then came Christabel Morrison, her slender grace beautifully contrasted with the fuller beauties of that great lady of the stage, Marion Rufus. Lady Solomonson descended confidently in a group of three, with Lady Mottersham and sharp-tongued little Mrs. Rex, all very rich and splendid. After a brief interval their hostess preceded Marjorie, and was so much of an artist that she had dressed herself merely as a foil to this new creation. She wore black and scarlet, that made the white face and bright eyes under her sombre hair seem the face of an inspiring spirit. A step behind her and to the right of her came Marjorie, tall and wonderful, as if she were the queen of earth and sunshine, swathed barbarically in gold and ruddy brown, and with her abundant hair bound back by a fillet of bloodstones and gold. Radlett Barns exclaimed at the sight of her. She was full of the manifest consciousness of dignity as she descended, quite conscious and quite unembarrassed; two borrowed golden circlets glittered on her shining arm, and a thin chain of gold and garnets broke the contrast of the warm, sun-touched neck above, with the unsullied skin below.
She sought and met her husband's astonishment with the faintest, remotest of smiles. It seemed to him that never before had he appreciated her beauty. His daily companion had become this splendour in the sky. She came close by him with hand extended to greet Sir Philip Mottersham. He was sensible of the glow of her, as it were of a scented aura about her. He had a first full intimation of the cult and worship of woman and the magnificence of women, old as the Mediterranean and its goddesses, and altogether novel to his mind....
Christabel Morrison found him a pleasant but not very entertaining or exciting neighbor at the dinner-table, and was relieved when the time came for her to turn an ear to the artistic compliments of Radlett Barns. But Trafford was too interested and amused by the general effect of the dinner to devote himself to the rather heavy business of really exhilarating Christabel. He didn't give his mind to her. He found the transformation of Sir Rupert into a turbanned Oriental who might have come out of a picture by Carpaccio, gently stimulating and altogether delightful. His attention returned again and again to that genial swarthiness. Mrs. Lee on his left lived in her eyes, and didn't so much talk to him as rattle her mind at him almost absent-mindedly, as one might dangle keys at a baby while one talked to its mother. Yet it was evident she liked the look of him. Her glance went from his face to his robe, and up and down the table, at the bright dresses, the shining arms, the glass and light and silver. She asked him to tell her just where he had tramped and just what he had seen, and he had scarcely begun answering her question before her thoughts flew off to three trophies of china and silver, struggling groups of china boys bearing up great silver shells of fruit and flowers that stood down the centre of the table. "What do you think of my chubby boys?" she asked. "They're German work. They came from a show at Düsseldorf last week. Ben saw I liked them, and sent back for them secretly, and here they, are! I thought they might be too colourless. But are they?"
"No," said Trafford, "they're just cool. Under that glow of fruit. Is this salt-cellar English cut glass?"
"Old Dutch," said Mrs. Lee. "Isn't it jolly?" She embarked with a roving eye upon the story of her Dutch glass, which was abundant and admirable, and broke off abruptly to say, "Your wife is wonderful."
"Her hair goes back," she said, "like music. You know what I mean--a sort of easy rhythm. You don't mind my praising your wife?"
Trafford said he didn't.
"And there's a sort of dignity about her. All my life, Mr. Trafford, I've wanted to be tall. It stopped my growth."
She glanced off at a tangent. "Tell me, Mr. Trafford," she asked, "was your wife beautiful like this when you married her? I mean--of course she was a beautiful girl and adorable and all that; but wasn't she just a slender thing?"
She paused, but if she had a habit of asking disconcerting questions she did not at any rate insist upon answers, and she went on to confess that she believed she would be a happier woman poor than rich--"not that Ben isn't all he should be"--but that then she would have been a fashionable dressmaker. "People want help," she said, "so much more help than they get. They go about with themselves--what was it Mr. Radlett Barns said the other night--oh!--like people leading horses they daren't ride. I think he says such good things at times, don't you? So wonderful to be clever in two ways like that. Just look _now_ at your wife--now I mean, that they've drawn that peacock-coloured curtain behind her. My brother-in-law has been telling me you keep the most wonderful and precious secrets locked up in your breast, that you know how to make gold and diamonds and all sorts of things. If I did,--I should make them."
She pounced suddenly upon Rex at her left with questions about the Keltic Renascence, was it still going on--or what? and Trafford was at liberty for a time to enjoy the bright effects about him, the shadowed profile and black hair of Christabel to the right of him, and the coruscating refractions and reflections of Lady Solomonson across the white and silver and ivory and blossom of the table. Then Mrs. Lee dragged him into a sudden conflict with Rex, by saying abruptly--
"Of course, Mr. Trafford wouldn't believe that."
He looked perhaps a little lost.
"I was telling Mrs. Lee," said Rex, "that I don't believe there's any economy of human toil in machinery whatever. I mean that the machine itself really embodies all the toil it seems to save, toil that went to the making of it and preparing it and getting coal for it...."
§ 12
Next morning they found their hostess at breakfast in the dining-room and now the sun was streaming through a high triple window that had been curtained overnight, and they looked out through clean, bright plate-glass upon mountains half-dissolved in a luminous mist, and a mist-veiled lake below. Great stone jars upon the terrace bore a blaze of urged and early blossom, and beyond were cypresses. Their hostess presided at one of two round tables, at a side table various breakfast dishes kept warm over spirit lamps, and two men servants dispensed tea and coffee. In the bay of the window was a fruit table, with piled fruit-plates and finger-bowls.
Mrs. Lee waved a welcoming hand, and drew Marjorie to a seat beside her. Rex was consuming trout and Christabel peaches, and Solomonson, all his overnight Orientalism abandoned, was in outspoken tweeds and quite under the impression that he was interested in golf. Trafford got frizzled bacon for Marjorie and himself, and dropped into a desultory conversation, chiefly sustained by Christabel, about the peculiarly exalting effect of beautiful scenery on Christabel's mind. Mrs. Lee was as usual distraught, and kept glancing towards the steps that led up from the hall. Lady Solomonson appeared with a rustle in a wrapper of pink Chinese silk. "I came down after all," she said. "I lay in bed weighing rolls and coffee and relaxed muscles against your English breakfast downstairs. And suddenly I remembered your little sausages!"
She sat down with a distribution of handkerchief, bag, letters, a gold fountain pen and suchlike equipments, and Trafford got her some of the coveted delicacies. Mrs. Lee suddenly cried out, "_Here_ they come! _Here_ they come!" and simultaneously the hall resonated with children's voices and the yapping of a Skye terrier.
Then a gay little procession appeared ascending the steps. First came a small but princely little boy of three, with a ruddy face and curly black hair, behind him was a slender, rather awkward girl of perhaps eleven, and a sturdier daughter of Israel of nine. A nurse in artistic purple followed, listening inattentively to some private whisperings of a knickerbockered young man of five, and then came another purple-robed nurse against contingencies, and then a nurse of a different, white-clad, and more elaborately costumed sort, carrying a sumptuous baby of eight or nine months. "Ah! the _darlings!_" cried Christabel, springing up quite beautifully, and Lady Solomonson echoed the cry. The procession broke against the tables and split about the breakfast party. The small boy in petticoats made a confident rush for Marjorie, Christabel set herself to fascinate his elder brother, the young woman of eleven scrutinized Trafford with speculative interest and edged towards him coyly, and Mrs. Lee interviewed her youngest born. The amiable inanities suitable to the occasion had scarcely begun before a violent clapping of hands announced the appearance of Lee.
It was Lee's custom, Mrs. Lee told Marjorie over her massively robed baby, to get up very early and work on rolls and coffee; he never breakfasted nor joined them until the children came. All of them rushed to him for their morning kiss, and it seemed to Trafford that Lee at least was an altogether happy creature as he accepted the demonstrative salutations of this struggling, elbowing armful of offspring, and emerged at last like a man from a dive, flushed and ruffled and smiling, to wish his adult guests good morning.
"Come upstairs with us, daddy," cried the children, tugging at him. "Come upstairs!"
Mrs. Lee ran her eye about her table and rose. "It's the children's hour," she said to Marjorie. "You don't I hope, mind children?"
"But," said Trafford incredulous, and with a friendly arm about his admirer, "is this tall young woman yours?"
The child shot him a glance of passionate appreciation for this scrap of flattery.
"We began young," said Mrs. Lee, with eyes of uncritical pride for the ungainly one, and smiled at her husband.
"Upstairs," cried the boy of five and the girl of nine. "Upstairs."
"May we come?" asked Marjorie.
"May we all come?" asked Christabel, determined to be in the movement.
Rex strolled towards the cigars, with disentanglement obviously in his mind.
"Do you really care?" asked Mrs. Lee. "You know, I'm so proud of their nursery. Would you care----? Always I go up at this time."
"I've my little nursery, too," said Marjorie.
"Of course!" cried Mrs. Lee, "I forgot. Of course;" and overwhelmed Marjorie with inquiries as she followed her husband. Every one joined the nurseryward procession except Rex, who left himself behind with an air of inadvertency, and escaped to the terrace and a cigar....
It was a wonderful nursery, a suite of three bedrooms, a green and white, well-lit schoolroom and a vast playroom, and hovering about the passage Trafford remarked a third purple nurse and a very efficient and serious-looking Swiss governess. The schoolroom and the nursery displayed a triumph of judicious shopping and arrangement, the best of German and French and English things had been blended into a harmony at once hygienic and pedagogic and humanly charming. For once Marjorie had to admire the spending of another woman, and admit to herself that even she could not have done better with the money.
There were clever little desks for the elder children to work at, adjustable desks scientifically lit so that they benefited hands and shoulders and eyes; there were artistically coloured and artistically arranged pictures, and a little library held all the best of Lang and Lucas, rare good things like "Uncle Lubin," Maurice Baring's story of "Forget-me-not," "Johnny Crow's Garden," "The Bad Child's Book of Beasts," animal books and bird books, costume books and story books, colour books and rhyme books, abundant, yet every one intelligently chosen, no costly meretricious printed rubbish such as silly Gentile mothers buy. Then in the great nursery, with its cork carpet on which any toy would stand or run, was an abundance of admirable possessions and shelving for everything, and great fat cloth elephants to ride, and go-carts, and hooks for a swing. Marjorie's quick eye saw, and she admired effusively and envied secretly, and Mrs. Lee appreciated her appreciation. A skirmishing romp of the middle children and Lee went on about the two of them, and Trafford was led off by his admirer into a cubby-house in one corner (with real glass windows made to open) and the muslin curtains were drawn while he was shown a secret under vows. Lady Solomonson discovered some soldiers, and was presently on her knees in a corner with the five-year old boy.
"These are like my Teddy's," she was saying. "My Billy has some of these."
Trafford emerged from the cubby-house, which was perhaps a little cramped for him, and surveyed the room, with his admirer lugging at his arm unheeded, and whispering: "Come back with me."
Of course this was the clue to Lee and Solomonson. How extremely happy Lee appeared to be! Enormous vistas of dark philoprogenitive parents and healthy little Jews and Jewesses seemed to open out to Trafford, hygienically reared, exquisitely trained and educated. And he and Marjorie had just one little daughter--with a much poorer educational outlook. She had no cloth elephant to ride, no elaborate cubby-house to get into, only a half-dozen picture books or so, and later she wouldn't when she needed it get that linguistic Swiss.
He wasn't above the normal human vanity of esteeming his own race and type the best, and certain vulgar aspects of what nowadays one calls Eugenics crossed his mind.
§ 13
During those few crowded days of unfamiliar living Trafford accumulated a vast confused mass of thoughts and impressions. He realized acutely the enormous gulf between his attitudes towards women and those of his host and Solomonson--and indeed of all the other men. It had never occurred to him before that there was any other relationship possible between a modern woman and a modern man but a frank comradeship and perfect knowledge, helpfulness, and honesty. That had been the continual implication of his mother's life, and of all that he had respected in the thought and writing of his time. But not one of these men in their place--with the possible exception of Minter, who remained brilliant but ambiguous--believed anything of the sort. It necessarily involved in practice a share of hardship for women, and it seemed fundamental to them that women should have no hardship. He sought for a word, and hung between chivalry and orientalism. He inclined towards chivalry. Their women were lifted a little off the cold ground of responsibility. Charm was their obligation. "A beautiful woman should be beautifully dressed," said Radlett Barns in the course of the discussion of a contemporary portrait painter. Lee nodded to endorse an obvious truth. "But she ought to dress herself," said Barns. "It ought to be herself to the points of the old lace--chosen and assimilated. It's just through not being that, that so many rich women are--detestable. Heaps of acquisition. Caddis-women...."
Trafford ceased to listen, he helped himself to a cigar and pinched its end and lit it, while his mind went off to gnaw at: "A beautiful woman should be beautifully dressed," as a dog retires with a bone. He couldn't escape from its shining truth, and withal it was devastating to all the purposes of his life.
He rejected the word orientalism; what he was dealing with here was chivalry. "All this," was indeed, under the thinnest of disguises, the castle and the pavilion, and Lee and Solomonson were valiant knights, who entered the lists not indeed with spear and shield but with prospectus and ingenious enterprise, who drew cheques instead of swords for their ladies' honour, who held "all that" in fee and subjection that these exquisite and wonderful beings should flower in rich perfection. All these women lived in a magic security and abundance, far above the mire and adventure of the world; their knights went upon quests for them and returned with villas and pictures and diamonds and historical pearls. And not one of them all was so beautiful a being as his Marjorie, whom he made his squaw, whom he expected to aid and follow him, and suffer uncomplainingly the rough services of the common life. Not one was half so beautiful as Marjorie, nor half so sweet and wonderful....
If such thoughts came in Lee's villa, they returned with redoubled force when Trafford found himself packed painfully with Marjorie in the night train to Paris. His head ached with the rattle and suffocation of the train, and he knew hers must ache more. The windows of the compartment and the door were all closed, the litigious little commercial traveller in shiny grey had insisted upon that, there was no corner seat either for Marjorie or himself, the dim big package over her head swayed threateningly. The green shade over the light kept opening with the vibration of the train, the pallid old gentleman with the beard had twisted himself into a ghastly resemblance to a broken-necked corpse, and pressed his knees hard and stiffly against Trafford, and the small, sniffing, bow-legged little boy beside the rusty widow woman in the corner smelt mysteriously and penetratingly of Roquefort cheese. For the seventeenth time the little commercial traveller jumped up with an unbecoming expletive, and pulled the shade over the light, and the silent young man in the fourth corner stirred and readjusted his legs.
For a time until the crack of light overhead had widened again every one became a dark head-dangling outline....
He watched the dim shape before him and noted the weary droop of her pose. He wished he had brought water. He was intolerably thirsty, and his thirst gave him the measure of hers. This jolting foetid compartment was a horrible place for her, an intolerably horrible place. And she was standing it, for all her manifest suffering, with infinite gallantry and patience. What a gallant soul indeed she was! Whatever else she did she never failed to rise to a challenge. Her very extravagance that had tried their lives so sorely was perhaps just one aspect of that same quality. It is so easy to be saving if one is timid; so hard if one is unaccustomed to fear. How beautiful she had shone at times in the lights and glitter of that house behind there, and now she was back in her weather-stained tweeds again, like a shining sword thrust back into a rusty old sheath.
Was it fair that she should come back into the sheath because of this passion of his for a vast inexhaustible research?
He had never asked himself before if it was fair to assume she would follow his purpose and his fortunes. He had taken that for granted. And she too had taken that for granted, which was so generously splendid of her. All her disloyalties had been unintentional, indeed almost instinctive, breaches of her subordination to this aim which was his alone. These breaches he realized had been the reality of her nature fighting against her profoundest resolutions.
He wondered what Lee must think of this sort of married life. How ugly and selfish it must seem from that point of view.
He perceived for the first time the fundamental incongruity of Marjorie's position, she was made to shine, elaborately prepared and trained to shine, desiring keenly to shine, and then imprisoned and hidden in the faded obscurity of a small, poor home. How conspicuously, how extremely he must be wanting in just that sort of chivalry in which Lee excelled! Those business men lived for their women to an extent he had hitherto scarcely dreamt of doing....
His want of chivalry was beyond dispute. And was there not also an extraordinary egotism in this concentration upon his own purposes, a self-esteem, a vanity? Had her life no rights? Suppose now he were to give her--two years, three years perhaps of his life--altogether. Or even four. Was it too much to grudge her four? Solomonson had been at his old theme with him, a theme the little man had never relinquished since their friendship first began years ago, possibilities of a business alliance and the application of a mind of exceptional freshness and penetration to industrial development. Why shouldn't that be tried? Why not "make money" for a brief strenuous time, and then come back, when Marjorie's pride and comfort were secure?...
(Poor dear, how weary she looked!)
He wondered how much more remained of this appalling night. It would have made so little difference if they had taken the day train and travelled first-class. Wasn't she indeed entitled to travel first-class? Pictures of the immense spaciousness, the softness, cleanliness and dignity of first-class compartments appeared in his mind....
He would have looked at his watch, but to get at it would mean disturbing the silent young man on his left.
Outside in the corridor there broke out a noisy dispute about a missing coupon, a dispute in that wonderful language that is known to the facetious as _entente cordiale_, between an Englishman and the conductor of the train....
§ 14
In Paris there was a dispute with an extortionate cabman, and the crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven was rough and bitterly cold. They were both ill. They reached home very dirty and weary, and among the pile of letters and papers on Trafford's desk was a big bundle of Science Note proofs, and two letters from Croydon and Pinner to alter the hours of his lectures for various plausible and irritating reasons.
The little passage looked very small and rather bare as the door shut behind them, and the worn places that had begun to be conspicuous during the last six months, and which they had forgotten during the Swiss holiday, reasserted themselves. The dining-room, after spacious rooms flooded with sunshine, betrayed how dark it was, and how small. Those Bokhara embroideries that had once shone so splendid, now, after Mrs. Lee's rich and unlimited harmonies, seemed skimpy and insufficient, mere loin-cloths for the artistic nakedness of the home. They felt, too, they were beginning to find out their post-impressionist picture. They had not remembered it as nearly so crude as it now appeared. The hole a flying coal had burnt in the unevenly faded dark-blue carpet looked larger than it had ever done before, and was indeed the only thing that didn't appear faded and shrunken.
§ 15
The atmosphere of the Lees' villa had disturbed Marjorie's feelings and ideas even more than it had Trafford's. She came back struggling to recover those high resolves that had seemed so secure when they had walked down to Les Avantes. There was a curiously tormenting memory of that vast, admirable nursery, and the princely procession of children that would not leave her mind. No effort of her reason could reconcile her to the inferiority of Margharita's equipment. She had a detestable craving for a uniform for May. But May was going....
But indeed she was not so sure that May was going.
She was no longer buoyantly well, she was full of indefinable apprehensions of weakness and failure. She struggled to control an insurgence of emotions that rose out of the deeps of her being. She had now, she knew, to take on her share of the burden, to become one of the Samurai, to show her love no longer as a demand but as a service. Yet from day to day she procrastinated under the shadow of apprehended things; she forebore to dismiss May, to buy that second-hand typewriter she needed, to take any irrevocable step towards the realization of the new way of living. She tried to think away her fears, but they would not leave her. She felt that Trafford watched her pale face with a furtive solicitude and wondered at her hesitations; she tried in vain to seem cheerful and careless in his presence, with an anxiety, with premonitions that grew daily.
There was no need to worry him unduly....
But soon the matter was beyond all doubting. One night she gathered her courage together suddenly and came down into his study in her dressing-gown with her hair about her shoulders. She opened the door and her heart failed her.
"Rag," she whispered.
"Yes," he said busily from his desk, without looking round.
"I want to speak to you," she answered, and came slowly, and stood beside him silently.
"Well, old Marjorie?" he said presently, drawing a little intricate pattern in the corner of his blotting paper, and wondering whether this was a matter of five pounds or ten.
"I meant so well," she said and caught herself back into silence again.
He started at the thought, at a depth and meaning in her voice, turned his chair about to look at her, and discovered she was weeping and choking noiselessly. He stood up close to her, moving very slowly and silently, his eyes full of this new surmise, and now without word or gesture from her he knew his thought was right. "My dear," he whispered.
She turned her face from him. "I meant so well," she sobbed. "My dear! I meant so well." Still with an averted face her arms came out to him in a desperate, unreasoning appeal for love. He took her and held her close to him. "Never mind, dear," he said. "Don't mind." Her passion now was unconstrained. "I thought--" he began, and left the thing unsaid.
"But your work," she said; "your research?"
"I must give up research," he said.
"Oh, my dearest!"
"I must give up research," he repeated. "I've been seeing it for days. Clearer and clearer. _This_ dear, just settles things. Even--as we were coming home in the train--I was making up my mind. At Vevey I was talking to Solomonson."
"My dear," she whispered, clinging to him.
"I talked to Solomonson. He had ideas--a proposal."
"No," she said.
"Yes," he said. "I've left the thing too long."
He repeated. "I must give up research--for years. I ought to have done it long before."
"I had meant so well," she said. "I meant to work. I meant to deny myself...."
"I'm glad," he whispered. "Glad! Why should you weep?" It seemed nothing to him then, that so he should take a long farewell to the rare, sweet air of that wonderland his mind had loved so dearly. All he remembered was that Marjorie was very dear to him, very dear to him, and that all her being was now calling out for him and his strength. "I had thought anyhow of giving up research," he repeated. "This merely decides. It happens to decide. I love you, dear. I put my research at your feet. Gladly. This is the end, and I do not care, my dear, at all. I do not care at all--seeing I have you...."
He stood beside her for a moment, and then sat down again, sideways, upon his chair.
"It isn't you, my dear, or me," he said, "but life that beats us--that beautiful, irrational mother.... Life does not care for research or knowledge, but only for life. Oh! the world has to go on yet for tens of thousands of years before--before we are free for that. I've got to fight--as other men fight...."
He thought in silence for a time, oddly regardless of her. "But if it was not you," he said, staring at the fireplace with knitted brows, "if I did not love you.... Thank God, I love you, dear! Thank God, our children are love children! I want to live--to my finger-tips, but if I didn't love you--oh! love you! then I think now--I'd be glad--I'd be glad, I think, to cheat life of her victory."
"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and clung weeping to him, and caught at him and sat herself upon his knees, and put her arms about his head, and kissed him passionately with tear-salt lips, with her hair falling upon his face.
"My dear," she whispered....
§ 16
So soon as Trafford could spare an afternoon amidst his crowded engagements he went to talk to Solomonson, who was now back in London. "Solomonson," he said, "you were talking about rubber at Vevey."
"I remember," said Solomonson with a note of welcome.
"I've thought it over."
"I _thought_ you would."
"I've thought things over. I'm going to give up my professorship--and science generally, and come into business--if that is what you are meaning."
Solomonson turned his paper-weight round very carefully before replying. Then he said: "You mustn't give up your professorship yet, Trafford. For the rest--I'm glad."
He reflected, and then his bright eyes glanced up at Trafford. "I knew," he said, "you would."
"I didn't," said Trafford. "Things have happened since."
"Something was bound to happen. You're too good--for what it gave you. I didn't talk to you out there for nothing. I saw things.... Let's go into the other room, and smoke and talk it over." He stood up as he spoke.
"I thought you would," he repeated, leading the way. "I knew you would. You see,--one _has_ to. You can't get out of it."
"It was all very well before you were married," said Solomonson, stopping short to say it, "but when a man's married he's got to think. He can't go on devoting himself to his art and his science and all that--not if he's married anything worth having. No. Oh, I understand. He's got to look about him, and forget the distant prospect for a bit. I saw you'd come to it. _I_ came to it. Had to. I had ambitions--just as you have. I've always had an inclination to do a bit of research on my own. I _like_ it, you know. Oh! I could have done things. I'm sure I could have done things. I'm not a born money-maker. But----." He became very close and confidential. "It's----_them_. You said good-bye to science for a bit when you flopped me down on that old croquet-lawn, Trafford." He went off to reminiscences. "Lord, how we went over! No more aviation for me, Trafford!"
He arranged chairs, and produced cigars. "After all--this of course--it's interesting. Once you get into the movement of it, it takes hold of you. It's a game."
"I've thought over all you said," Trafford began, using premeditated phrases. "Bluntly--I want three thousand a year, and I don't make eight hundred. It's come home to me. I'm going to have another child."
Solomonson gesticulated a congratulation.
"All the same, I hate dropping research. It's stuff I'm made to do. About that, Solomonson, I'm almost superstitious. I could say I had a call.... It's the maddest state of affairs! Now that I'm doing absolutely my best work for mankind, work I firmly believe no one else can do, I just manage to get six hundred--nearly two hundred of my eight hundred is my own. What does the world think I could do better--that would be worth four times as much."
"The world doesn't think anything at all about it," said Solomonson.
"Suppose it did!"
The thought struck Sir Rupert. He knitted his brows and looked hard obliquely at the smoke of his cigar. "Oh, it won't," he said, rejecting a disagreeable idea. "There isn't any world--not in that sense. That's the mistake you make, Trafford."
"It's not what your work is worth," he explained. "It's what your advantages can get for you. People are always going about supposing--just what you suppose--that people ought to get paid in proportion to the good they do. It's forgetting what the world is, to do that. Very likely some day civilization will get to that, but it hasn't got to it yet. It isn't going to get to it for hundreds and hundreds of years."
His manner became confidential. "Civilization's just a fight, Trafford--just as savagery is a fight, and being a wild beast is a fight,--only you have paddeder gloves on and there's more rules. We aren't out for everybody, we're out for ourselves--and a few friends perhaps--within limits. It's no good hurrying ahead and pretending civilization's something else, when it isn't. That's where all these socialists and people come a howler. Oh, _I_ know the Socialists. I see 'em at my wife's At Homes. They come along with the literary people and the artists' wives and the actors and actresses, and none of them take much account of me because I'm just a business man and rather dark and short, and so I get a chance of looking at them from the side that isn't on show while the other's turned to the women, and they're just as fighting as the rest of us, only they humbug more and they don't seem to me to have a decent respect for any of the common rules. And that's about what it all comes to, Trafford."
Sir Rupert paused, and Trafford was about to speak when the former resumed again, his voice very earnest, his eyes shining with purpose. He liked Trafford, and he was doing his utmost to make a convincing confession of the faith that was in him. "It's when it comes to the women," said Sir Rupert, "that one finds it out. That's where _you've_ found it out. You say, I'm going to devote my life to the service of Humanity in general. You'll find Humanity in particular, in the shape of all the fine, beautiful, delightful and desirable women you come across, preferring a narrower turn of devotion. See? That's all. _Caeteris paribus_, of course. That's what I found out, and that's what you've found out, and that's what everybody with any sense in his head finds out, and there you are."
"You put it--graphically," said Trafford.
"I feel it graphically. I may be all sorts of things, but I do know a fact when I see it. I'm here with a few things I want and a woman or so I have and want to keep, and the kids upstairs, bless 'em! and I'm in league with all the others who want the same sort of things. Against any one or anything that upsets us. We stand by the law and each other, and that's what it all amounts to. That's as far as my patch of Humanity goes. Humanity at large! Humanity be blowed! _Look_ at it! It isn't that I'm hostile to Humanity, mind you, but that I'm not disposed to go under as I should do if I didn't say that. So I say it. And that's about all it is, and there you are."
He regarded Trafford over his cigar, drawing fiercely at it for some moments. Then seeing Trafford on the point of speaking, he snatched it from his lips, demanded silence by waving it at his hearer, and went on.
"I say all this in order to dispose of any idea that you can keep up the open-minded tell-everybody-every-thing scientific attitude if you come into business. You can't. Put business in two words and what is it? Keeping something from somebody else, and making him pay for it--"
"Oh, look here!" protested Trafford. "That's not the whole of business."
"There's making him want it, of course, advertisement and all that, but that falls under making him pay for it, really."
"But a business man organizes public services, consolidates, economizes."
Sir Rupert made his mouth look very wide by sucking in the corners. "Incidentally," he said, and added after a judicious pause: "Sometimes ... I thought we were talking of making money."
"Go on," said Trafford.
"You set me thinking," said Solomonson. "It's the thing I always like about you. I tell you, Trafford, I don't believe that the majority of people who make money help civilization forward any more than the smoke that comes out of the engine helps the train forward. If you put it to me, I don't. I've got no illusions of that sort. They're about as much help as--fat. They accumulate because things happen to be arranged so."
"Things will be arranged better some day."
"They aren't arranged better now. Grip that! _Now_, it's a sort of paradox. If you've got big gifts and you choose to help forward the world, if you choose to tell all you know and give away everything you can do in the way of work, you've got to give up the ideas of wealth and security, and that means fine women and children. You've got to be a _deprived_ sort of man. 'All right,' you say, 'That's me!' But how about your wife being a deprived sort of woman? Eh? That's where it gets you! And meanwhile, you know, while _you_ make your sacrifices and do your researches, there'll be little mean sharp active beasts making money all over you like maggots on a cheese. And if everybody who'd got gifts and altruistic ideas gave themselves up to it, then evidently only the mean and greedy lot would breed and have the glory. They'd get everything. Every blessed thing. There wouldn't be an option they didn't hold. And the other chaps would produce the art and the science and the literature, as far as the men who'd got hold of things would let 'em, and perish out of the earth altogether.... There you are! Still, that's how things are made...."
"But it isn't worth it. It isn't worth extinguishing oneself in order to make a world for those others, anyhow. Them and their children. Is it? Eh? It's like building a temple for flies to buzz in.... There is such a thing as a personal side to Eugenics, you know."
Solomonson reflected over the end of his cigar. "It isn't good enough," he concluded.
"You're infernally right," said Trafford.
"Very well," said Solomonson, "and now we can get to business."
§ 17
The immediate business was the systematic exploitation of the fact that Trafford had worked out the problem of synthesizing indiarubber. He had done so with an entire indifference to the commercial possibilities of the case, because he had been irritated by the enormous publicity given to Behrens' assertion that he had achieved this long-sought end. Of course the production of artificial rubbers and rubber-like substances had been one of the activities of the synthetic chemist for many years, from the appearance of Tilden's isoprene rubber onward, and there was already a formidable list of collaterals, dimethybutadiene, and so forth, by which the coveted goal could be approached. Behrens had boldly added to this list as his own a number of variations upon a theme of Trafford's, originally designed to settle certain curiosities about elasticity. Behrens' products were not only more massively rubber-like than anything that had gone before them, but also extremely cheap to produce, and his bold announcement of success had produced a check in rubber sales and widespread depression in the quiveringly sensitive market of plantation shares. Solomonson had consulted Trafford about this matter at Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to complete and publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, first a smashing demonstration of the unsoundness of Behrens' claim and then a lucid exposition of just what had to be done and what could be done to make an indiarubber absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The business man could not believe his ears.
"My dear chap, positively--you mustn't," Solomonson had screamed, and he had opened his fingers and humped his shoulders and for all his public school and university training lapsed undisguisedly into the Oriental. "Don't you _see_ all you are throwing away?" he squealed.
"I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," said Trafford, when at last Solomonson's point of view became clear to him. They had embarked upon a long rambling discussion of that issue of publication, a discussion they were now taking up again. "When men dropped that idea of concealing knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist," said Trafford, "and all that is worth having in modern life, all that makes it better and safer and more hopeful than the ancient life, began."
"My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to give away the synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of the window into the street! _Gare l'eau!_ O! And when you could do with so much too!"....
Now they resumed the divergent threads of that Vevey talk.
Solomonson had always entertained the warmest friendship and admiration for Trafford, and it was no new thing that he should desire a business co-operation. He had been working for that in the old days at Riplings; he had never altogether let the possibility drop out of sight between them in spite of Trafford's repudiations. He believed himself to be a scientific man turned to business, but indeed his whole passion was for organization and finance. He knew he could do everything but originate, and in Trafford he recognized just that rare combination of an obstinate and penetrating simplicity with constructive power which is the essential blend in the making of great intellectual initiatives. To Trafford belonged the secret of novel and unsuspected solutions; what were fixed barriers and unsurmountable conditions to trained investigators and commonplace minds, would yield to his gift of magic inquiry. He could startle the accepted error into self-betrayal. Other men might play the game of business infinitely better than he--Solomonson knew, indeed, quite well that he himself could play the game infinitely better than Trafford--but it rested with Trafford by right divine of genius to alter the rules. If only he could be induced to alter the rules secretly, unostentatiously, on a business footing, instead of making catastrophic plunges into publicity! And everything that had made Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as such no concern with personal consequences; his business is the steady, relentless clarification of knowledge. The human affairs he changes, the wealth he makes or destroys, are no concern of his; once these things weigh with him, become primary, he has lost his honour as a scientific man.
"But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had cried during those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you are, shying this cheap synthetic rubber of yours into the world--for it's bound to be cheap! any one can see that--like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good of saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ business is just to make bombs and drop them out of the window? You smash up things just the same. Why! you'll ruin hundreds and thousands of people, people living on rubber shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable workers in rubber works...."
Sir Rupert was now still a little incredulous of Trafford's change of purpose, and for a time argued conceded points. Then slowly he came to the conditions and methods of the new relationship. He sketched out a scheme of co-operation and understandings between his firm and Trafford, between them both and his associated group in the city.
Behrens was to have rope and produce his slump in plantation shares, then Trafford was to publish his criticism of Behrens, reserving only that catalytic process which was his own originality, the process that was to convert the inert, theoretically correct synthetic rubber, with a mysterious difference in the quality of its phases, into the real right thing. With Behrens exploded, plantation shares would recover, and while their friends in the city manipulated that, Trafford would resign his professorship and engage himself to an ostentatious promotion syndicate for the investigation of synthetic rubber. His discovery would follow immediately the group had cleared itself of plantation shares; indeed he could begin planning the necessary works forthwith; the large scale operations in the process were to be protected as far as possible by patents, but its essential feature, the addition of a specific catalytic agent, could be safely dealt with as a secret process.
"I hate secrecy," said Trafford.
"Business," interjected Solomonson, and went on with his exposition of the relative advantages of secrecy and patent rights. It was all a matter of just how many people you had to trust. As that number increased, the more and more advisable did it become to put your cards on the table and risk the complex uncertain protection of the patent law. They went into elaborate calculations, clerks were called upon to hunt up facts and prices, and the table was presently littered with waste arithmetic.
"I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said Solomonson, leaning back in his chair at last, and rattling his fountain pen between his teeth, "so soon, that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can lower the price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the end--there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow tea.... I say, let's have an invalid dinner of chicken and champagne, and go on with this. It's fascinating. You can telephone."
They dined together, and Solomonson on champagne rather than chicken. His mind, which had never shown an instant's fatigue, began to glow and sparkle. This enterprise, he declared, was to be only the first of a series of vigorous exploitations. The whole thing warmed him. He would rather make ten thousand by such developments, than a hundred thousand by mere speculation. Trafford had but scratched the surface of his mine of knowledge. "Let's think of other things," said Sir Rupert Solomonson. "Diamonds! No! They've got too many tons stowed away already. A diamond now--it's an absolutely artificial value. At any time a new discovery and one wild proprietor might bust that show. Lord!--diamonds! Metals? Of course you've worked the colloids chiefly. I suppose there's been more done in metals and alloys than anywhere. There's a lot of other substances. Business has hardly begun to touch substances yet, you know, Trafford--flexible glass, for example, and things like that. So far we've always taken substances for granted. On our side, I mean. It's extraordinary how narrow the outlook of business and finance is--still. It never seems to lead to things, never thinks ahead. In this case of rubber, for example----"
"When men fight for their own hands and for profit and position in the next ten years or so, I suppose they tend to become narrow."
"I suppose they must." Sir Rupert's face glowed with a new idea, and his voice dropped a little lower. "But what a pull they get, Trafford, if perhaps--they don't, eh?"
"No," said Trafford with a smile and a sigh, "the other sort gets the pull."
"Not _this_ time," said Solomonson; "not with you to spot processes and me to figure out the cost--" he waved his hands to the litter that had been removed to a side table--"and generally see how the business end of things is going...."
BOOK THE THIRD MARJORIE AT LONELY HUT
CHAPTER THE FIRST
SUCCESSES
§ 1
I find it hard to trace the accumulation of moods and feelings that led Trafford and Marjorie at last to make their extraordinary raid upon Labrador. In a week more things happen in the thoughts of such a man as Trafford, changes, revocations, deflections, than one can chronicle in the longest of novels. I have already in an earlier passage of this story sought to give an image of the confused content of a modern human mind, but that pool was to represent a girl of twenty, and Trafford now was a man of nearly thirty-five, and touching life at a hundred points for one of the undergraduate Marjorie's. Perhaps that made him less confused, but it certainly made him fuller. Let me attempt therefore only the broad outline of his changes of purpose and activity until I come to the crucial mood that made these two lives a little worth telling about, amidst the many thousands of such lives that people are living to-day....
It took him seven years from his conclusive agreement with Solomonson to become a rich and influential man. It took him only seven years, because already by the mere accidents of intellectual interest he was in possession of knowledge of the very greatest economic importance, and because Solomonson was full of that practical loyalty and honesty that distinguishes his race. I think that in any case Trafford's vigor and subtlety of mind would have achieved the prosperity he had found necessary to himself, but it might have been, under less favorable auspices, a much longer and more tortuous struggle. Success and security were never so abundant nor so easily attained by men with capacity and a sense of proportion as they are in the varied and flexible world of to-day. We live in an affluent age with a nearly incredible continuous fresh increment of power pouring in from mechanical invention, and compared with our own, most other periods have been meagre and anxious and hard-up times. Our problems are constantly less the problems of submission and consolation and continually more problems of opportunity....
Trafford found the opening campaign, the operation with the plantation shares and his explosion of Behrens' pretensions extremely uncongenial. It left upon his mind a confused series of memories of interviews and talks in offices for the most part dingy and slovenly, of bales of press-cuttings and blue-pencilled financial publications, of unpleasing encounters with a number of bright-eyed, flushed, excitable and extremely cunning men, of having to be reserved and limited in his talk upon all occasions, and of all the worst aspects of Solomonson. All that part of the new treatment of life that was to make him rich gave him sensations as though he had ceased to wash himself mentally, until he regretted his old life in his laboratory as a traveller in a crowded night train among filthy people might regret the bathroom he had left behind him....
But the development of his manufacture of rubber was an entirely different business, and for a time profoundly interesting. It took him into a new astonishing world, the world of large-scale manufacture and industrial organization. The actual planning of the works was not in itself anything essentially new to him. So far as all that went it was scarcely more than the problem of arranging an experiment upon a huge and permanent scale, and all that quick ingenuity, that freshness and directness of mind that had made his purely scientific work so admirable had ample and agreeable scope. Even the importance of cost and economy at every point in the process involved no system of considerations that was altogether novel to him. The British investigator knows only too well the necessity for husbanded material and inexpensive substitutes. But strange factors came in, a new region of interest was opened with the fact that instead of one experimenter working with the alert responsive assistance of Durgan, a multitude of human beings--even in the first drafts of his project they numbered already two hundred, before the handling and packing could be considered--had to watch, control, assist or perform every stage in a long elaborate synthesis. For the first time in his life Trafford encountered the reality of Labour, as it is known to the modern producer.
It will be difficult in the future, when things now subtly or widely separated have been brought together by the receding perspectives of time, for the historian to realize just how completely out of the thoughts of such a young man as Trafford the millions of people who live and die in organized productive industry had been. That vast world of toil and weekly anxiety, ill-trained and stupidly directed effort and mental and moral feebleness, had been as much beyond the living circle of his experience as the hosts of Genghis Khan or the social life of the Forbidden City. Consider the limitations of his world. In all his life hitherto he had never been beyond a certain prescribed area of London's immensities, except by the most casual and uninstructive straying. He knew Chelsea and Kensington and the north bank and (as a boy) Battersea Park, and all the strip between Kensington and Charing Cross, with some scraps of the Strand as far as the Law Courts, a shop or so in Tottenham Court Road and fragments about the British Museum and Holborn and Regent's Park, a range up Edgware Road to Maida Vale, the routes west and south-west through Uxbridge and Putney to the country, and Wimbledon Common and Putney Heath. He had never been on Hampstead Heath nor visited the Botanical Gardens nor gone down the Thames below London Bridge, nor seen Sydenham nor Epping Forest nor the Victoria Park. Take a map and blot all he knew and see how vast is the area left untouched. All industrial London, all wholesale London, great oceans of human beings fall into that excluded area. The homes he knew were comfortable homes, the poor he knew were the parasitic and dependent poor of the West, the shops, good retail shops, the factories for the most part engaged in dressmaking.
Of course he had been informed about this vast rest of London. He knew that as a matter of fact it existed, was populous, portentous, puzzling. He had heard of "slums," read "Tales of Mean Streets," and marvelled in a shallow transitory way at such wide wildernesses of life, apparently supported by nothing at all in a state of grey, darkling but prolific discomfort. Like the princess who wondered why the people having no bread did not eat cake, he could never clearly understand why the population remained there, did not migrate to more attractive surroundings. He had discussed the problems of those wildernesses as young men do, rather confidently, very ignorantly, had dismissed them, recurred to them, and forgotten them amidst a press of other interests, but now it all suddenly became real to him with the intensity of a startling and intimate contact. He discovered this limitless, unknown, greater London, this London of the majority, as if he had never thought of it before. He went out to inspect favourable sites in regions whose very names were unfamiliar to him, travelled on dirty little intraurban railway lines to hitherto unimagined railway stations, found parks, churches, workhouses, institutions, public-houses, canals, factories, gas-works, warehouses, foundries and sidings, amidst a multitudinous dinginess of mean houses, shabby back-yards, and ill-kept streets. There seemed to be no limits to this thread-bare side of London, it went on northward, eastward, and over the Thames southward, for mile after mile--endlessly. The factories and so forth clustered in lines and banks upon the means of communication, the homes stretched between, and infinitude of parallelograms of grimy boxes with public-houses at the corners and churches and chapels in odd places, towering over which rose the council schools, big, blunt, truncated-looking masses, the means to an education as blunt and truncated, born of tradition and confused purposes, achieving by accident what they achieve at all.
And about this sordid-looking wilderness went a population that seemed at first as sordid. It was in no sense a tragic population. But it saw little of the sun, felt the wind but rarely, and so had a white, dull skin that looked degenerate and ominous to a West-end eye. It was not naked nor barefooted, but it wore cheap clothes that were tawdry when new, and speedily became faded, discoloured, dusty, and draggled. It was slovenly and almost wilfully ugly in its speech and gestures. And the food it ate was rough and coarse if abundant, the eggs it consumed "tasted"--everything "tasted"; its milk, its beer, its bread was degraded by base adulterations, its meat was hacked red stuff that hung in the dusty air until it was sold; east of the city Trafford could find no place where by his standards he could get a tolerable meal tolerably served. The entertainment of this eastern London was jingle, its religion clap-trap, its reading feeble and sensational rubbish without kindliness or breadth. And if this great industrial multitude was neither tortured nor driven nor cruelly treated--as the slaves and common people of other days have been--yet it was universally anxious, perpetually anxious about urgent small necessities and petty dissatisfying things....
That was the general effect of this new region in which he had sought out and found the fortunate site for his manufacture of rubber, and against this background it was that he had now to encounter a crowd of selected individuals, and weld them into a harmonious and successful "process." They came out from their millions to him, dingy, clumsy, and at first it seemed without any individuality. Insensibly they took on character, rounded off by unaccustomed methods into persons as marked and distinctive as any he had known.
There was Dowd, for instance, the technical assistant, whom he came to call in his private thoughts Dowd the Disinherited. Dowd had seemed a rather awkward, potentially insubordinate young man of unaccountably extensive and curiously limited attainments. He had begun his career in a crowded home behind and above a baker's shop in Hoxton, he had gone as a boy into the works of a Clerkenwell electric engineer, and there he had developed that craving for knowledge which is so common in poor men of the energetic type. He had gone to classes, read with a sort of fury, feeding his mind on the cheap and adulterated instruction of grant-earning crammers and on stale, meretricious and ill-chosen books; his mental food indeed was the exact parallel of the rough, abundant, cheap and nasty groceries and meat that gave the East-ender his spots and dyspeptic complexion, the cheap text-books were like canned meat and dangerous with intellectual ptomaines, the rascally encyclopædias like weak and whitened bread, and Dowd's mental complexion, too, was leaden and spotted. Yet essentially he wasn't, Trafford found, by any means bad stuff; where his knowledge had had a chance of touching reality it became admirable, and he was full of energy in his work and a sort of honest zeal about the things of the mind. The two men grew from an acute mutual criticism into a mutual respect.
At first it seemed to Trafford that when he met Dowd he was only meeting Dowd, but a time came when it seemed to him that in meeting Dowd he was meeting all that vast new England outside the range of ruling-class dreams, that multitudinous greater England, cheaply treated, rather out of health, angry, energetic and now becoming intelligent and critical, that England which organized industrialism has created. There were nights when he thought for hours about Dowd. Other figures grouped themselves round him--Markham, the head clerk, the quintessence of East-end respectability, who saw to the packing; Miss Peckover, an ex-telegraph operator, a woman so entirely reliable and unobservant that the most betraying phase of the secret process could be confidently entrusted to her hands. Behind them were clerks, workmen, motor-van men, work-girls, a crowd of wage-earners, from amidst which some individual would assume temporary importance and interest by doing something wrong, getting into trouble, becoming insubordinate, and having contributed a little vivid story to Trafford's gathering impressions of life, drop back again into undistinguished subordination.
Dowd became at last entirely representative.
When first Trafford looked Dowd in the eye, he met something of the hostile interest one might encounter in a swordsman ready to begin a duel. There was a watchfulness, an immense reserve. They discussed the work and the terms of their relationship, and all the while Trafford felt there was something almost threateningly not mentioned.
Presently he learnt from a Silvertown employer what that concealed aspect was. Dowd was "that sort of man who makes trouble," disposed to strike rather than not upon a grievance, with a taste for open-air meetings, a member, obstinately adherent in spite of friendly remonstrance, of the Social Democratic Party. This in spite of his clear duty to a wife and two small white knobby children. For a time he would not talk to Trafford of anything but business--Trafford was so manifestly the enemy, not to be trusted, the adventurous plutocrat, the exploiter--when at last Dowd did open out he did so defiantly, throwing opinions at Trafford as a mob might hurl bricks at windows. At last they achieved a sort of friendship and understanding, an amiability as it were, in hostility, but never from first to last would he talk to Trafford as one gentleman to another; between them, and crossed only by flimsy, temporary bridges, was his sense of incurable grievances and fundamental injustice. He seemed incapable of forgetting the disadvantages of his birth and upbringing, the inferiority and disorder of the house that sheltered him, the poor food that nourished him, the deadened air he breathed, the limited leisure, the inadequate books. Implicit in his every word and act was the assurance that but for this handicap he could have filled Trafford's place, while Trafford would certainly have failed in his.
For all these things Dowd made Trafford responsible; he held him to that inexorably.
"_You_ sweat us," he said, speaking between his teeth; "_you_ limit us, _you_ stifle us, and away there in the West-end, _you_ and the women you keep waste the plunder."
Trafford attempted palliation. "After all," he said, "it's not me so particularly----"
"But it is," said Dowd.
"It's the system things go upon."
"You're the responsible part of it. _You_ have freedom, _you_ have power and endless opportunity--"
Trafford shrugged his shoulders.
"It's because your sort wants too much," said Dowd, "that my sort hasn't enough."
"Tell me how to organize things better."
"Much you'd care. They'll organize themselves. Everything is drifting to class separation, the growing discontent, the growing hardship of the masses.... Then you'll see."
"Then what's going to happen?"
"Overthrow. And social democracy."
"How is that going to work?"
Dowd had been cornered by that before. "I don't care if it _doesn't_ work," he snarled, "so long as we smash up this. We're getting too sick to care what comes after."
"Dowd," said Trafford abruptly, "_I'm_ not so satisfied with things."
Dowd looked at him askance. "You'll get reconciled to it," he said. "It's ugly here--but it's all right there--at the spending end.... Your sort has got to grab, your sort has got to spend--until the thing works out and the social revolution makes an end of you."
"And then?"
Dowd became busy with his work.
Trafford stuck his hands in his pockets and stared out of the dingy factory window.
"I don't object so much to your diagnosis," he said, "as to your remedy. It doesn't strike me as a remedy."
"It's an end," said Dowd, "anyhow. My God! When I think of all the women and shirkers flaunting and frittering away there in the West, while here men and women toil and worry and starve...." He stopped short like one who feels too full for controlled speech.
"Dowd," said Trafford after a fair pause, "What would you do if you were me?"
"Do?" said Dowd.
"Yes," said Trafford as one who reconsiders it, "what would you do?"
"Now that's a curious question, Mr. Trafford," said Dowd, turning to regard him. "Meaning--if I were in your place?"
"Yes," said Trafford. "What would you do in my place?"
"I should sell out of this place jolly quick," he said.
"_Sell!_" said Trafford softly.
"Yes--sell. And start a socialist daily right off. An absolutely independent, unbiassed socialist daily."
"And what would that do?"
"It would stir people up. Every day it would stir people up."
"But you see I can't edit. I haven't the money for half a year of a socialist daily.... And meanwhile people want rubber."
Dowd shook his head. "You mean that you and your wife want to have the spending of six or eight thousand a year," he said.
"I don't make half of that," said Trafford.
"Well--half of that," pressed Dowd. "It's all the same to me."
Trafford reflected. "The point where I don't agree with you," he said, "is in supposing that my scale of living--over there, is directly connected with the scale of living--about here."
"Well, isn't it?"
"'Directly,' I said. No. If we just stopped it--over there--there'd be no improvement here. In fact, for a time it would mean dislocations. It might mean permanent, hopeless, catastrophic dislocation. You know that as well as I do. Suppose the West-end became--Tolstoyan; the East would become chaos."
"Not much likelihood," sneered Dowd.
"That's another question. That we earn together here and that I spend alone over there, it's unjust and bad, but it isn't a thing that admits of any simple remedy. Where we differ, Dowd, is about that remedy. I admit the disease as fully as you do. I, as much as you, want to see the dawn of a great change in the ways of human living. But I don't think the diagnosis is complete and satisfactory; our problem is an intricate muddle of disorders, not one simple disorder, and I don't see what treatment is indicated."
"Socialism," said Dowd, "is indicated."
"You might as well say that health is indicated," said Trafford with a note of impatience in his voice. "Does any one question that if we could have this socialist state in which every one is devoted and every one is free, in which there is no waste and no want, and beauty and brotherhood prevail universally, we wouldn't? But----. You socialists have no scheme of government, no scheme of economic organization, no intelligible guarantees of personal liberty, no method of progress, no ideas about marriage, no plan--except those little pickpocket plans of the Fabians that you despise as much as I do--for making this order into that other order you've never yet taken the trouble to work out even in principle. Really you know, Dowd, what is the good of pointing at my wife's dresses and waving the red flag at me, and talking of human miseries----"
"It seems to wake you up a bit," said Dowd with characteristic irrelevance.
§ 2
The accusing finger of Dowd followed Trafford into his dreams.
Behind it was his grey-toned, intelligent, resentful face, his smouldering eyes, his slightly frayed collar and vivid, ill-chosen tie. At times Trafford could almost hear his flat insistent voice, his measured h-less speech. Dowd was so penetratingly right,--and so ignorant of certain essentials, so wrong in his forecasts and ultimates. It was true beyond disputing that Trafford as compared with Dowd had opportunity, power of a sort, the prospect and possibility of leisure. He admitted the liability that followed on that advantage. It expressed so entirely the spirit of his training that with Trafford the noble maxim of the older socialists; "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need," received an intuitive acquiescence. He had no more doubt than Dowd that Dowd was the victim of a subtle evasive injustice, innocently and helplessly underbred, underfed, cramped and crippled, and that all his own surplus made him in a sense Dowd's debtor.
But Dowd's remedies!
Trafford made himself familiar with the socialist and labor newspapers, and he was as much impressed by their honest resentments and their enthusiastic hopefulness as he was repelled by their haste and ignorance, their cocksure confidence in untried reforms and impudent teachers, their indiscriminating progressiveness, their impulsive lapses into hatred, misrepresentation and vehement personal abuse. He was in no mood for the humours of human character, and he found the ill-masked feuds and jealousies of the leaders, the sham statecraft of G. B. Magdeberg, M.P., the sham Machiavellism of Dorvil, the sham persistent good-heartedness of Will Pipes, discouraging and irritating. Altogether it seemed to him the conscious popular movement in politics, both in and out of Parliament, was a mere formless and indeterminate aspiration. It was a confused part of the general confusion, symptomatic perhaps, but exercising no controls and no direction.
His attention passed from the consideration of this completely revolutionary party to the general field of social reform. With the naïve directness of a scientific man, he got together the published literature of half a dozen flourishing agitations and philanthropies, interviewed prominent and rather embarrassed personages, attended meetings, and when he found the speeches too tiresome to follow watched the audience about him. He even looked up Aunt Plessington's Movement, and filled her with wild hopes and premature boastings about a promising convert. "Marjorie's brought him round at last!" said Aunt Plessington. "I knew I could trust my little Madge!" His impression was not the cynic's impression of these wide shallows of activity. Progress and social reform are not, he saw, mere cloaks of hypocrisy; a wealth of good intention lies behind them in spite of their manifest futility. There is much dishonesty due to the blundering desire for consistency in people of hasty intention, much artless and a little calculated self-seeking, but far more vanity and amiable feebleness of mind in their general attainment of failure. The Plessingtons struck him as being after all very typical of the publicist at large, quite devoted, very industrious, extremely presumptuous and essentially thin-witted. They would cheat like ill-bred children for example, on some petty point of reputation, but they could be trusted to expend, ineffectually indeed, but with the extremest technical integrity, whatever sums of money their adherents could get together....
He emerged from this inquiry into the proposed remedies and palliatives for Dowd's wrongs with a better opinion of people's hearts and a worse one of their heads than he had hitherto entertained.
Pursuing this line of thought he passed from the politicians and practical workers to the economists and sociologists. He spent the entire leisure of the second summer after the establishment of the factory upon sociological and economic literature. At the end of that bout of reading he attained a vivid realization of the garrulous badness that rules in this field of work, and the prevailing slovenliness and negligence in regard to it. He chanced one day to look up the article on Socialism in the new Encyclopædia Britannica, and found in its entire failure to state the case for or against modern Socialism, to trace its origins, or to indicate any rational development in the movement, a symptom of the universal laxity of interest in these matters. Indeed, the writer did not appear to have heard of modern Socialism at all; he discussed collective and individualist methods very much as a rather ill-read schoolgirl in a hurry for her college debating society might have done. Compared with the treatment of engineering or biological science in the same compilation, this article became almost symbolical of the prevailing habitual incompetence with which all this system of questions is still handled. The sciences were done scantily and carelessly enough, but they admitted at any rate the possibility of completeness; this did not even pretend to thoroughness.
One might think such things had no practical significance. And at the back of it all was Dowd, remarkably more impatient each year, confessing the failure of parliamentary methods, of trades unionism, hinting more and more plainly at the advent of a permanent guerilla war against capital, at the general strike and sabotage.
"It's coming to that," said Dowd; "it's coming to that."
"_What's the good of it?_" he said, echoing Trafford's words. "It's a sort of relief to the feelings. Why shouldn't we?"
§ 3
But you must not suppose that at any time these huge grey problems of our social foundations and the riddle of intellectual confusion one reaches through them, and the yet broader riddles of human purpose that open beyond, constitute the whole of Trafford's life during this time. When he came back to Marjorie and his home, a curtain of unreality fell between him and all these things. It was as if he stepped through such boundaries as Alice passed to reach her Wonderland; the other world became a dream again; as if he closed the pages of a vivid book and turned to things about him. Or again it was as if he drew down the blind of a window that gave upon a landscape, grave, darkling, ominous, and faced the warm realities of a brightly illuminated room....
In a year or so he had the works so smoothly organized and Dowd so reconciled, trained and encouraged that his own daily presence was unnecessary, and he would go only three and then only two mornings a week to conduct those secret phases in the preparation of his catalytic that even Dowd could not be trusted to know. He reverted more and more completely to his own proper world.
And the first shock of discovering that greater London which "isn't in it" passed away by imperceptible degrees. Things that had been as vivid and startling as new wounds became unstimulating and ineffective with repetition. He got used to the change from Belgravia to East Ham, from East Ham to Belgravia. He fell in with the unusual persuasion in Belgravia, that, given a firm and prompt Home Secretary, East Ham could be trusted to go on--for quite a long time anyhow. One cannot sit down for all one's life in the face of insoluble problems. He had a motor-car now that far outshone Magnet's, and he made the transit from west to east in the minimum of time and with the minimum of friction. It ceased to be more disconcerting that he should have workers whom he could dismiss at a week's notice to want or prostitution than that he should have a servant waiting behind his chair. Things were so. The main current of his life--and the main current of his life flowed through Marjorie and his home--carried him on. Rubber was his, but there were still limitless worlds to conquer. He began to take up, working under circumstances of considerable secrecy at Solomonson's laboratories at Riplings, to which he would now go by motor-car for two or three days at a time, the possibility of a cheap, resilient and very tough substance, rubber glass, that was to be, Solomonson was assured, the road surface of the future.
§ 4
The confidence of Solomonson had made it impossible for Trafford to alter his style of living almost directly upon the conclusion of their agreement. He went back to Marjorie to broach a financially emancipated phase. They took a furnished house at Shackleford, near Godalming in Surrey, and there they lived for nearly a year--using their Chelsea home only as a town apartment for Trafford when business held him in London. And there it was, in the pretty Surrey country, with the sweet air of pine and heather in Marjorie's blood, that their second child was born. It was a sturdy little boy, whose only danger in life seemed to be the superfluous energy with which he resented its slightest disrespect of his small but important requirements.
When it was time for Marjorie to return to London, spring had come round again, and Trafford's conceptions of life were adapting themselves to the new scale upon which they were now to do things. While he was busy creating his factory in the East End, Marjorie was displaying an equal if a less original constructive energy in Sussex Square, near Lancaster Gate, for there it was the new home was to be established. She set herself to furnish and arrange it so as to produce the maximum of surprise and chagrin in Daphne, and she succeeded admirably. The Magnets now occupied a flat in Whitehall Court, the furniture Magnet had insisted upon buying himself with all the occult cunning of the humorist in these matters, and not even Daphne could blind herself to the superiority both in arrangement and detail of Marjorie's home. That was very satisfactory, and so too was the inevitable exaggeration of Trafford's financial importance. "He can do what he likes in the rubber world," said Marjorie. "In Mincing Lane, where they deal in rubber shares, they used to call him and Sir Rupert the invaders; now they call them the Conquering Heroes.... Of course, it's mere child's play to Godwin, but, as he said, 'We want money.' It won't really interfere with his more important interests...."
I do not know why both those sisters were more vulgarly competitive with each other than with any one else; I have merely to record the fact that they were so.
The effect upon the rest of Marjorie's family was equally gratifying. Mr. Pope came to the house-warming as though he had never had the slightest objection to Trafford's antecedents, and told him casually after dinner that Marjorie had always been his favourite daughter, and that from the first he had expected great things of her. He told Magnet, who was the third man of the party, that he only hoped Syd and Rom would do as well as their elder sisters. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he whacked Marjorie suddenly and very startlingly on the shoulder-blade--it was the first bruise he had given her since Buryhamstreet days. "You've made a man of him, Maggots," he said.
The quiet smile of the Christian Scientist was becoming now the fixed expression of Mrs. Pope's face, and it scarcely relaxed for a moment as she surveyed her daughter's splendours. She had triumphantly refused to worry over a rather serious speculative disappointment, but her faith in her prophet's spiritual power had been strengthened rather than weakened by the manifest insufficiency of his financial prestidigitations, and she was getting through life quite radiantly now, smiling at (but not, of course, giving way to) beggars, smiling at toothaches and headaches, both her own and other people's, smiling away doubts, smiling away everything that bows the spirit of those who are still in the bonds of the flesh....
Afterwards the children came round, Syd and Rom now with skirts down and hair up, and rather stiff in the fine big rooms, and Theodore in a high collar and very anxious to get Trafford on his side in his ambition to chuck a proposed bank clerkship and go in for professional aviation....
It was pleasant to be respected by her family again, but the mind of Marjorie was soon reaching out to the more novel possibilities of her changed position. She need no longer confine herself to teas and afternoons. She could now, delightful thought! give dinners. Dinners are mere vulgarities for the vulgar, but in the measure of your brains does a dinner become a work of art. There is the happy blending of a modern and distinguished simplicity with a choice of items essentially good and delightful and just a little bit not what was expected. There is the still more interesting and difficult blending and arrangement of the diners. From the first Marjorie resolved on a round table, and the achievement of that rare and wonderful thing, general conversation. She had a clear centre, with a circle of silver bowls filled with short cut flowers and low shaded, old silver candlesticks adapted to the electric light. The first dinner was a nervous experience for her, but happily Trafford seemed unconscious of the importance of the occasion and talked very easily and well; at last she attained her old ambition to see Sir Roderick Dover in her house, and there was Remington, the editor of the _Blue Weekly_ and his silent gracious wife; Edward Crampton, the historian, full of surprising new facts about Kosciusko; the Solomonsons and Mrs. Millingham, and Mary Gasthorne the novelist. It was a good talking lot. Remington sparred agreeably with the old Toryism of Dover, flank attacks upon them both were delivered by Mrs. Millingham and Trafford, Crampton instanced Hungarian parallels, and was happily averted by Mary Gasthorne with travel experiences in the Carpathians; the diamonds of Lady Solomonson and Mrs. Remington flashed and winked across the shining table, as their wearers listened with unmistakable intelligence, and when the ladies had gone upstairs Sir Rupert Solomonson told all the men exactly what he thought of the policy of the _Blue Weekly_, a balanced, common-sense judgment. Upstairs Lady Solomonson betrayed a passion of admiration for Mrs. Remington, and Mrs. Millingham mumbled depreciation of the same lady's intelligence in Mary Gasthorne's unwilling ear. "She's _passive_," said Mrs. Millingham. "She bores him...."
For a time Marjorie found dinner-giving delightful--it is like picking and arranging posies of human flowers--and fruits--and perhaps a little dried grass, and it was not long before she learnt that she was esteemed a success as a hostess. She gathered her earlier bunches in the Carmel and Solomonson circle, with a stiffening from among the literary and scientific friends of Trafford and his mother, and one or two casual and undervalued blossoms from Aunt Plessington's active promiscuities. She had soon a gaily flowering garden of her own to pick from. Its strength and finest display lay in its increasing proportion of political intellectuals, men in and about the House who relaxed their minds from the tense detailed alertness needed in political intrigues by conversation that rose at times to the level of the smarter sort of article in the half-crown reviews. The women were more difficult than the men, and Marjorie found herself wishing at times that girl novelists and playwrights were more abundant, or women writers on the average younger. These talked generally well, and one or two capable women of her own type talked and listened with an effect of talking; so many other women either chattered disturbingly, or else did not listen, with an effect of not talking at all, and so made gaps about the table. Many of these latter had to be asked because they belonged to the class of inevitable wives, _sine-qua-nons_, and through them she learnt the value of that priceless variety of kindly unselfish men who can create the illusion of attentive conversation in the most uncomfortable and suspicious natures without producing backwater and eddy in the general flow of talk.
Indisputably Marjorie's dinners were successful. Of course, the abundance and æsthetic achievements of Mrs. Lee still seemed to her immeasurably out of reach, but it was already possible to show Aunt Plessington how the thing ought really to be done, Aunt Plessington with her narrow, lank, austerely served table, with a sort of quarter-deck at her own end and a subjugated forecastle round Hubert. And accordingly the Plessingtons were invited and shown, and to a party, too, that restrained Aunt Plessington from her usual conversational prominence....
These opening years of Trafford's commercial phase were full of an engaging activity for Marjorie as for him, and for her far more completely than for him were the profounder solicitudes of life lost sight of in the bright succession of immediate events.
Marjorie did not let her social development interfere with her duty to society in the larger sense. Two years after the vigorous and resentful Godwin came a second son, and a year and a half later a third. "That's enough," said Marjorie, "now we've got to rear them." The nursery at Sussex Square had always been a show part of the house, but it became her crowning achievement. She had never forgotten the Lee display at Vevey, the shining splendours of modern maternity, the books, the apparatus, the space and light and air. The whole second floor was altered to accommodate these four triumphant beings, who absorbed the services of two nurses, a Swiss nursery governess and two housemaids--not to mention those several hundred obscure individuals who were yielding a sustaining profit in the East End. At any rate, they were very handsome and promising children, and little Margharita could talk three languages with a childish fluency, and invent and write a short fable in either French or German--with only as much misspelling as any child of eight may be permitted....
Then there sprang up a competition between Marjorie and the able, pretty wife of Halford Wallace, most promising of under-secretaries. They gave dinners against each other, they discovered young artists against each other, they went to first-nights and dressed against each other. Marjorie was ruddy and tall, Mrs. Halford Wallace dark and animated; Halford Wallace admired Marjorie, Trafford was insensible to Mrs. Halford Wallace. They played for points so vague that it was impossible for any one to say which was winning, but none the less they played like artists, for all they were worth....
Trafford's rapid prosperity and his implicit promise of still wider activities and successes brought him innumerable acquaintances and many friends. He joined two or three distinguished clubs, he derived an uncertain interest from a series of week-end visits to ample, good-mannered households, and for a time he found a distraction in little flashes of travel to countries that caught at his imagination, Morocco, Montenegro, Southern Russia.
I do not know whether Marjorie might not have been altogether happy during this early Sussex Square period, if it had not been for an unconquerable uncertainty about Trafford. But ever and again she became vaguely apprehensive of some perplexing unreality in her position. She had never had any such profundity of discontent as he experienced. It was nothing clear, nothing that actually penetrated, distressing her. It was at most an uneasiness. For him the whole fabric of life was, as it were, torn and pieced by a provocative sense of depths unplumbed that robbed it of all its satisfactions. For her these glimpses were as yet rare, mere moments of doubt that passed again and left her active and assured.
§ 5
It was only after they had been married six or seven years that Trafford began to realize how widely his attitudes to Marjorie varied. He emerged slowly from a naïve unconsciousness of his fluctuations,--a naïve unconsciousness of inconsistency that for most men and women remains throughout life. His ruling idea that she and he were friends, equals, confederates, knowing everything about each other, co-operating in everything, was very fixed and firm. But indeed that had become the remotest rendering of their relationship. Their lives were lives of intimate disengagement. They came nearest to fellowship in relation to their children; there they shared an immense common pride. Beyond that was a less confident appreciation of their common house and their joint effect. And then they liked and loved each other tremendously. They could play upon each other and please each other in a hundred different ways, and they did so, quite consciously, observing each other with the completest externality. She was still in many ways for him the bright girl he had admired in the examination, still the mysterious dignified transfiguration of that delightful creature on the tragically tender verge of motherhood; these memories were of more power with him than the present realities of her full-grown strength and capacity. He petted and played with the girl still; he was still tender and solicitous for that early woman. He admired and co-operated also with the capable, narrowly ambitious, beautiful lady into which Marjorie had developed, but those remoter experiences it was that gave the deeper emotions to their relationship.
The conflict of aims that had at last brought Trafford from scientific investigation into business, had left behind it a little scar of hostility. He felt his sacrifice. He felt that he had given something for her that she had had no right to exact, that he had gone beyond the free mutualities of honest love and paid a price for her; he had deflected the whole course of his life for her and he was entitled to repayments. Unconsciously he had become a slightly jealous husband. He resented inattentions and absences. He felt she ought to be with him and orient all her proceedings towards him. He did not like other people to show too marked an appreciation of her. She had a healthy love of admiration, and in addition her social ambitions made it almost inevitable that at times she should use her great personal charm to secure and retain adherents. He was ashamed to betray the resentments thus occasioned, and his silence widened the separation more than any protest could have done....
For his own part he gave her no cause for a reciprocal jealousy. Other women did not excite his imagination very greatly, and he had none of the ready disposition to lapse to other comforters which is so frequent a characteristic of the husband out of touch with his life's companion. He was perhaps an exceptional man in his steadfast loyalty to his wife. He had come to her as new to love as she had been. He had never in his life taken that one decisive illicit step which changes all the aspects of sexual life for a man even more than for a woman. Love for him was a thing solemn, simple, and unspoilt. He perceived that it was not so for most other men, but that did little to modify his own private attitude. In his curious scrutiny of the people about him, he did not fail to note the drift of adventures and infidelities that glimmers along beneath the even surface of our social life. One or two of his intimate friends, Solomonson was one of them, passed through "affairs." Once or twice those dim proceedings splashed upward to the surface in an open scandal. There came Remington's startling elopement with Isabel Rivers, the writer, which took two brilliant and inspiring contemporaries suddenly and distressingly out of Trafford's world. Trafford felt none of that rage and forced and jealous contempt for the delinquents in these matters which is common in the ill-regulated, virtuous mind. Indeed, he was far more sympathetic with than hostile to the offenders. He had brains and imagination to appreciate the grim pathos of a process that begins as a hopeful quest, full of the suggestion of noble possibilities, full of the craving for missed intensities of fellowship and realization, that loiters involuntarily towards beauties and delights, and ends at last too often after gratification of an appetite, in artificially hideous exposures, and the pelting misrepresentations of the timidly well-behaved vile. But the general effect of pitiful evasions, of unavoidable meannesses, of draggled heroics and tortuously insincere explanations confirmed him in his aversion from this labyrinthine trouble of extraneous love....
But if Trafford was a faithful husband, he ceased to be a happy and confident one. There grew up in him a vast hinterland of thoughts and feelings, an accumulation of unspoken and largely of unformulated things in which his wife had no share. And it was in that hinterland that his essential self had its abiding place....
It came as a discovery; it remained for ever after a profoundly disturbing perplexity that he had talked to Marjorie most carelessly, easily and seriously, during their courtship and their honeymoon. He remembered their early intercourse now as an immense happy freedom in love. Then afterwards a curtain had fallen. That almost delirious sense of escaping from oneself, of having at last found some one from whom there need be no concealment, some one before whom one could stand naked-souled and assured of love as one stands before one's God, faded so that he scarce observed its passing, but only discovered at last that it had gone. He misunderstood and met misunderstanding. He found he could hurt her by the things he said, and be exquisitely hurt by her failure to apprehend the spirit of some ill-expressed intention. And it was so vitally important not to hurt, not to be hurt. At first he only perceived that he reserved himself; then there came the intimation of the question, was she also perhaps in such another hinterland as his, keeping herself from him?
He had perceived the cessation of that first bright outbreak of self-revelation, this relapse into the secrecies of individuality, quite early in their married life. I have already told of his first efforts to bridge their widening separation by walks and talks in the country, and by the long pilgrimage among the Alps that had ended so unexpectedly at Vevey. In the retrospect the years seemed punctuated with phases when "we must talk" dominated their intercourse, and each time the impulse of that recognized need passed away by insensible degrees again--with nothing said.
§ 6
Marjorie cherished an obstinate hope that Trafford would take up political questions and go into Parliament. It seemed to her that there was something about him altogether graver and wider than most of the active politicians she knew. She liked to think of those gravities assuming a practical form, of Trafford very rapidly and easily coming forward into a position of cardinal significance. It gave her general expenditure a quality of concentration without involving any uncongenial limitation to suppose it aimed at the preparation of a statesman's circle whenever Trafford chose to adopt that assumption. Little men in great positions came to her house and talked with opaque self-confidence at her table; she measured them against her husband while she played the admiring female disciple to their half-confidential talk. She felt that he could take up these questions and measures that they reduced to trite twaddle, open the wide relevancies behind them, and make them magically significant, sweep away the encrusting pettiness, the personalities and arbitrary prejudices. But why didn't he begin to do it? She threw out hints he seemed blind towards, she exercised miracles of patience while he ignored her baits. She came near intrigue in her endeavor to entangle him in political affairs. For a time it seemed to her that she was succeeding--I have already told of his phase of inquiry and interest in socio-political work--and then he relapsed into a scornful restlessness, and her hopes weakened again.
But he could not concentrate his mind, he could not think where to begin. Day followed day, each with its attacks upon his intention, its petty just claims, its attractive novelties of aspect. The telephone bell rang, the letters flopped into the hall, Malcom the butler seemed always at hand with some distracting oblong on his salver. Dowd was developing ideas for a reconstructed organization of the factory, Solomonson growing enthusiastic about rubber-glass, his house seemed full of women, Marjorie had an engagement for him to keep or the children were coming in to say good-night. To his irritated brain the whole scheme of his life presented itself at last as a tissue of interruptions which prevented his looking clearly at reality. More and more definitely he realized he wanted to get away and think. His former life of research became invested with an effect of immense dignity and of a steadfast singleness of purpose....
But Trafford was following his own lights, upon his own lines. He was returning to that faith in the supreme importance of thought and knowledge, upon which he had turned his back when he left pure research behind him. To that familiar end he came by an unfamiliar route, after his long, unsatisfying examination of social reform movements and social and political theories. Immaturity, haste and presumption vitiated all that region, and it seemed to him less and less disputable that the only escape for mankind from a continuing extravagant futility lay through the attainment of a quite unprecedented starkness and thoroughness of thinking about all these questions. This conception of a needed Renascence obsessed him more and more, and the persuasion, deeply felt if indistinctly apprehended, that somewhere in such an effort there was a part for him to play....
Life is too great for us or too petty. It gives us no tolerable middle way between baseness and greatness. We must die daily on the levels of ignoble compromise or perish tragically among the precipices. On the one hand is a life--unsatisfying and secure, a plane of dulled gratifications, mean advantages, petty triumphs, adaptations, acquiescences and submissions, and on the other a steep and terrible climb, set with sharp stones and bramble thickets and the possibilities of grotesque dislocations, and the snares of such temptation as comes only to those whose minds have been quickened by high desire, and the challenge of insoluble problems and the intimations of issues so complex and great, demanding such a nobility of purpose, such a steadfastness, alertness and openness of mind, that they fill the heart of man with despair....
There were moods when Trafford would, as people say, pull himself together, and struggle with his gnawing discontent. He would compare his lot with that of other men, reproach himself for a monstrous greed and ingratitude. He remonstrated with himself as one might remonstrate with a pampered child refusing to be entertained by a whole handsome nursery full of toys. Other men did their work in the world methodically and decently, did their duty by their friends and belongings, were manifestly patient through dullness, steadfastly cheerful, ready to meet vexations with a humorous smile, and grateful for orderly pleasures. Was he abnormal? Or was he in some unsuspected way unhealthy? Trafford neglected no possible explanations. Did he want this great Renascence of the human mind because he was suffering from some subtle form of indigestion? He invoked, independently of each other, the aid of two distinguished specialists. They both told him in exactly the same voice and with exactly the same air of guineas well earned: "What you want, Mr. Trafford, is a change."
Trafford brought his mind to bear upon the instances of contentment about him. He developed an opinion that all men and many women were potentially at least as restless as himself. A huge proportion of the usage and education in modern life struck upon him now as being a training in contentment. Or rather in keeping quiet and not upsetting things. The serious and responsible life of an ordinary prosperous man fulfilling the requirements of our social organization fatigues and neither completely satisfies nor completely occupies. Still less does the responsible part of the life of a woman of the prosperous classes engage all her energies or hold her imagination. And there has grown up a great informal organization of employments, games, ceremonies, social routines, travel, to consume these surplus powers and excessive cravings, which might otherwise change or shatter the whole order of human living. He began to understand the forced preoccupation with cricket and golf, the shooting, visiting, and so forth, to which the young people of the economically free classes in the community are trained. He discovered a theory for hobbies and specialized interests. He began to see why people go to Scotland to get away from London, and come to London to get away from Scotland, why they crowd to and fro along the Riviera, swarm over Switzerland, shoot, yacht, hunt, and maintain an immense apparatus of racing and motoring. Because so they are able to remain reasonably contented with the world as it is. He perceived, too, that a man who has missed or broken through the training to this kind of life, does not again very readily subdue himself to the security of these systematized distractions. His own upbringing had been antipathetic to any such adaptations; his years of research had given him the habit of naked intimacy with truth, filled him with a craving for reality and the destructive acids of a relentless critical method.
He began to understand something of the psychology of vice, to comprehend how small a part mere sensuality, how large a part the spirit of adventure and the craving for illegality, may play, in the career of those who are called evil livers. Mere animal impulses and curiosities it had always seemed possible to him to control, but now he was beginning to apprehend the power of that passion for escape, at any cost, in any way, from the petty, weakly stimulating, competitive motives of low-grade and law-abiding prosperity....
For a time Trafford made an earnest effort to adjust himself to the position in which he found himself, and make a working compromise with his disturbing forces. He tried to pick up the scientific preoccupation of his earlier years. He made extensive schemes, to Solomonson's great concern, whereby he might to a large extent disentangle himself from business. He began to hunt out forgotten note-books and yellowing sheets of memoranda. He found the resumption of research much more difficult than he had ever supposed possible. He went so far as to plan a laboratory, and to make some inquiries as to site and the cost of building, to the great satisfaction not only of Marjorie but of his mother. Old Mrs. Trafford had never expressed her concern at his abandonment of molecular physics for money-making, but now in her appreciation of his return to pure investigation she betrayed her sense of his departure.
But in his heart he felt that this methodical establishment of virtue by limitation would not suffice for him. He said no word of this scepticism as it grew in his mind. Marjorie was still under the impression that he was returning to research, and that she was free to contrive the steady preparation for that happier day when he should assume his political inheritance. And then presently a queer little dispute sprang up between them. Suddenly, for the first time since he took to business, Trafford found himself limiting her again. She was disposed, partly through the natural growth of her circle and her setting and partly through a movement on the part of Mrs. Halford Wallace, to move from Sussex Square into a larger, more picturesquely built house in a more central position. She particularly desired a good staircase. He met her intimations of this development with a curious and unusual irritation. The idea of moving bothered him. He felt that exaggerated annoyance which is so often a concomitant of overwrought nerves. They had a dispute that was almost a quarrel, and though Marjorie dropped the matter for a time, he could feel she was still at work upon it.
CHAPTER THE SECOND
TRAFFORD DECIDES TO GO
§ 1
A haunting desire to go away into solitude grew upon Trafford very steadily. He wanted intensely to think, and London and Marjorie would not let him think. He wanted therefore to go away out of London and Marjorie's world. He wanted, he felt, to go away alone and face God, and clear things up in his mind. By imperceptible degrees this desire anticipated its realization. His activities were affected more and more by intimations of a determined crisis. One eventful day it seemed to him that his mind passed quite suddenly from desire to resolve. He found himself with a project, already broadly definite. Hitherto he hadn't been at all clear where he could go. From the first almost he had felt that this change he needed, the change by which he was to get out of the thickets of work and perplexity and distraction that held him captive, must be a physical as well as a mental removal; he must go somewhere, still and isolated, where sustained detached thinking was possible.... His preference, if he had one, inclined him to some solitude among the Himalaya Mountains. That came perhaps from Kim and the precedent of the Hindoo's religious retreat from the world. But this retreat he contemplated was a retreat that aimed at a return, a clarified and strengthened resumption of the world. And then suddenly, as if he had always intended it, Labrador flashed through his thoughts, like a familiar name that had been for a time quite unaccountably forgotten.
The word "Labrador" drifted to him one day from an adjacent table as he sat alone at lunch in the Liberal Union Club. Some bore was reciting the substance of a lecture to a fellow-member. "Seems to be a remarkable country," said the speaker. "Mineral wealth hardly glanced at, you know. Furs and a few score Indians. And at our doors. Practically--at our doors."
Trafford ceased to listen. His mind was taking up this idea of Labrador. He wondered why he had not thought of Labrador before.
He had two or three streams of thought flowing in his mind, as a man who muses alone is apt to do. Marjorie's desire to move had reappeared; a particular group of houses between Berkeley Square and Park Lane had taken hold of her fancy, she had urged the acquisition of one upon him that morning, and this kept coming up into consciousness like a wrong thread in a tapestry. Moreover, he was watching his fellow-members with a critical rather than a friendly eye. A half-speculative, half-hostile contemplation of his habitual associates was one of the queer aspects of this period of unsettlement. They exasperated him by their massive contentment with the surface of things. They came in one after another patting their ties, or pulling at the lapels of their coats, and looked about them for vacant places with a conscious ease of manner that irritated his nerves. No doubt they were all more or less successful and distinguished men, matter for conversation and food for anecdotes, but why did they trouble to give themselves the air of it? They halted or sat down by friends, enunciated vapid remarks in sonorous voices, and opened conversations in trite phrases, about London architecture, about the political situation or the morning's newspaper, conversations that ought, he felt, to have been thrown away unopened, so stale and needless they seemed to him. They were judges, lawyers of all sorts, bankers, company promoters, railway managers, stockbrokers, pressmen, politicians, men of leisure. He wondered if indeed they were as opaque as they seemed, wondered with the helpless wonder of a man of exceptional mental gifts whether any of them at any stage had had such thoughts as his, had wanted as acutely as he did now to get right out of the world. Did old Booch over there, for example, guzzling oysters, cry at times upon the unknown God in the vast silences of the night? But Booch, of course, was a member or something of the House of Laymen, and very sound on the thirty-nine articles--a man who ate oysters like that could swallow anything--and in the vast silences of the night he was probably heavily and noisily asleep....
Blenkins, the gentlemanly colleague of Denton in the control of the _Old Country Gazette_, appeared on his way to the pay-desk, gesticulating amiably _en-route_ to any possible friend. Trafford returned his salutation, and pulled himself together immediately after in fear that he had scowled, for he hated to be churlish to any human being. Blenkins, too, it might be, had sorrow and remorse and periods of passionate self-distrust and self-examination; maybe Blenkins could weep salt tears, as Blenkins no doubt under suitable sword-play would reveal heart and viscera as quivering and oozy as any man's.
But to Trafford's jaundiced eyes just then, it seemed that if you slashed Blenkins across he would probably cut like a cheese....
Now, in Labrador----....
So soon as Blenkins had cleared, Trafford followed him to the pay-desk, and went on upstairs to the smoking-room, thinking of Labrador. Long ago he had read the story of Wallace and Hubbard in that wilderness.
There was much to be said for a winter in Labrador. It was cold, it was clear, infinitely lonely, with a keen edge of danger and hardship and never a letter or a paper.
One could provision a hut and sit wrapped in fur, watching the Northern Lights....
"I'm off to Labrador," said Trafford, and entered the smoking-room.
It was, after all, perfectly easy to go to Labrador. One had just to go....
As he pinched the end of his cigar, he became aware of Blenkins, with a gleam of golden glasses and a flapping white cuff, beckoning across the room to him. With that probable scowl on his conscience Trafford was moved to respond with an unreal warmth, and strolled across to Blenkins and a group of three or four other people, including that vigorous young politician, Weston Massinghay, and Hart, K.C., about the further fireplace. "We were talking of you," said Blenkins. "Come and sit down with us. Why don't you come into Parliament?"
"I've just arranged to go for some months to Labrador."
"Industrial development?" asked Blenkins, all alive.
"No. Holiday."
No Blenkins believes that sort of thing, but of course, if Trafford chose to keep his own counsel----
"Well, come into Parliament as soon as you get back."
Trafford had had that old conversation before. He pretended insensibility when Blenkins gestured to a vacant chair. "No," he said, still standing, "we settled all that. And now I'm up to my neck in--detail about Labrador. I shall be starting--before the month is out."
Blenkins and Hart simulated interest. "It's immoral," said Blenkins, "for a man of your standing to keep out of politics."
"It's more than immoral," said Hart; "it's American."
"Solomonson comes in to represent the firm," smiled Trafford, signalled the waiter for coffee, and presently disentangled himself from their company.
For Blenkins Trafford concealed an exquisite dislike and contempt; and Blenkins had a considerable admiration for Trafford, based on extensive misunderstandings. Blenkins admired Trafford because he was good-looking and well-dressed, with a beautiful and successful wife, because he had become reasonably rich very quickly and easily, was young and a Fellow of the Royal Society with a reputation that echoed in Berlin, and very perceptibly did not return Blenkins' admiration. All these things filled Blenkins with a desire for Trafford's intimacy, and to become the associate of the very promising political career that it seemed to him, in spite of Trafford's repudiations, was the natural next step in a deliberately and honourably planned life. He mistook Trafford's silences and detachment for the marks of a strong, silent man, who was scheming the immense, vulgar, distinguished-looking achievements that appeal to the Blenkins mind. Blenkins was a sentimentally loyal party Liberal, and as he said at times to Hart and Weston Massinghay: "If those other fellows get hold of him----!"
Blenkins was the fine flower of Oxford Liberalism and the Tennysonian days. He wanted to be like King Arthur and Sir Galahad, with the merest touch of Launcelot, and to be perfectly upright and splendid and very, very successful. He was a fair, tenoring sort of person with an Arthurian moustache and a disposition to long frock coats. It had been said of him that he didn't dress like a gentleman, but that he dressed more like a gentleman than a gentleman ought to dress. It might have been added that he didn't behave like a gentleman, but that he behaved more like a gentleman than a gentleman ought to behave. He didn't think, but he talked and he wrote more thoughtfully in his leaders, and in the little dialogues he wrote in imitation of Sir Arthur Helps, than any other person who didn't think could possibly do. He was an orthodox Churchman, but very, very broad; he held all the doctrines, a distinguished sort of thing to do in an age of doubt, but there was a quality about them as he held them--as though they had been run over by something rather heavy. It was a flattened and slightly obliterated breadth--nothing was assertive, but nothing, under examination, proved to be altogether gone. His profuse thoughtfulness was not confined to his journalistic and literary work, it overflowed into Talks. He was a man for Great Talks, interminable rambling floods of boyish observation, emotional appreciation, and silly, sapient comment. He loved to discuss "Who are the Best Talkers now Alive?" He had written an essay, _Talk in the Past_. He boasted of week-ends when the Talk had gone on from the moment of meeting in the train to the moment of parting at Euston, or Paddington, or Waterloo; and one or two hostesses with embittered memories could verify his boasting. He did his best to make the club a Talking Club, and loved to summon men to a growing circle of chairs....
Trafford had been involved in Talks on one or two occasions, and now, as he sat alone in the corridor and smoked and drank his coffee, he could imagine the Talk he had escaped, the Talk that was going on in the smoking room--the platitudes, the sagacities, the digressions, the sudden revelation of deep, irrational convictions. He reflected upon the various Talks at which he had assisted. His chief impression of them all was of an intolerable fluidity. Never once had he known a Talk thicken to adequate discussion; never had a new idea or a new view come to him in a Talk. He wondered why Blenkins and his like talked at all. Essentially they lived for pose, not for expression; they did not greatly desire to discover, make, or be; they wanted to seem and succeed. Talking perhaps was part of their pose of great intellectual activity, and Blenkins was fortunate to have an easy, unforced running of mind....
Over his cigar Trafford became profoundly philosophical about Talk. And after the manner of those who become profoundly philosophical he spread out the word beyond its original and proper intentions to all sorts of kindred and parallel things. Blenkins and his miscellany of friends in their circle of chairs were, after all, only a crude rendering of very much of intellectual activity of mankind. Men talked so often as dogs bark. Those Talkers never came to grips, fell away from topic to topic, pretended depth and evaded the devastating horrors of sincerity. Listening was a politeness amongst them that was presently rewarded with utterance. Tremendously like dogs they were, in a dog-fancying neighborhood on a summer week-day afternoon. Fluidity, excessive abundance, inconsecutiveness; these were the things that made Talk hateful to Trafford.
Wasn't most literature in the same class? Wasn't nearly all present philosophical and sociological discussion in the world merely a Blenkins circle on a colossal scale, with every one looming forward to get in a deeply thoughtful word edgeways at the first opportunity? Imagine any one in distress about his soul or about mankind, going to a professor of economics or sociology or philosophy! He thought of the endless, big, expensive, fruitless books, the windy expansions of industrious pedantry that mocked the spirit of inquiry. The fields of physical and biological science alone had been partially rescued from the floods of human inconsecutiveness. There at least a man must, on the whole, join on to the work of other men, stand a searching criticism, justify himself. Philosophically this was an age of relaxed schoolmen. He thought of Doctor Codger at Cambridge, bubbling away with his iridescent Hegelianism like a salted snail; of Doctor Quiller at Oxford, ignoring Bergson and fulminating a preposterous insular Pragmatism. Each contradicted the other fundamentally upon matters of universal concern; neither ever joined issue with the other. Why in the name of humanity didn't some one take hold of those two excellent gentlemen, and bang their busy heads together hard and frequently until they either compromised or cracked?
§ 2
He forgot these rambling speculations as he came out into the spring sunshine of Pall Mall, and halting for a moment on the topmost step, regarded the tidy pavements, the rare dignified shops, the waiting taxicabs, the pleasant, prosperous passers-by. His mind lapsed back to the thought that he meant to leave all this and go to Labrador. His mind went a step further, and reflected that he would not only go to Labrador, but--it was highly probable--come back again.
And then?
Why, after all, should he go to Labrador at all? Why shouldn't he make a supreme effort here?
Something entirely irrational within him told him with conclusive emphasis that he had to go to Labrador....
He remembered there was this confounded business of the proposed house in Mayfair to consider....
§ 3
It occurred to him that he would go a little out of his way, and look at the new great laboratories at the Romeike College, of which his old bottle-washer Durgan was, he knew, extravagantly proud. Romeike's widow was dead now and her will executed, and her substance half turned already to bricks and stone and glazed tiles and all those excesses of space and appliance which the rich and authoritative imagine must needs give us Science, however ill-selected and underpaid and slighted the users of those opportunities may be. The architects had had great fun with the bequest; a quarter of the site was devoted to a huge square surrounded by dignified, if functionless, colonnades, and adorned with those stone seats of honour which are always so chill and unsatisfactory as resting places in our island climate. The Laboratories, except that they were a little shaded by the colonnades, were everything a laboratory should be; the benches were miracles of convenience, there wasn't anything the industrious investigator might want, steam, high pressures, electric power, that he couldn't get by pressing a button or turning a switch, unless perhaps it was inspiring ideas. And the new library at the end, with its greys and greens, its logarithmic computators at every table, was a miracle of mental convenience.
Durgan showed his old professor the marvels.
"If he _chooses_ to do something here," said Durgan not too hopefully, "a man can...."
"What's become of the little old room where we two used to work?" asked Trafford.
"They'll turn 'em all out presently," said Durgan, "when this part is ready, but just at present it's very much as you left it. There's been precious little research done there since you went away--not what _I_ call research. Females chiefly--and boys. Playing at it. Making themselves into D.Sc.'s by a baby research instead of a man's examination. It's like broaching a thirty-two gallon cask full of Pap to think of it. Lord, sir, the swill! Research! Counting and weighing things! Professor Lake's all right, I suppose, but his work was mostly mathematical; he didn't do much of it here. No, the old days ended, sir, when you...."
He arrested himself, and obviously changed his words. "Got busy with other things."
Trafford surveyed the place; it seemed to him to have shrunken a little in the course of the three years that had intervened since he resigned his position. On the wall at the back there still hung, fly-blown and a little crumpled, an old table of constants he had made for his elasticity researches. Lake had kept it there, for Lake was a man of generous appreciations, and rather proud to follow in the footsteps of an investigator of Trafford's subtlety and vigor. The old sink in the corner where Trafford had once swilled his watch glasses and filled his beakers had been replaced by one of a more modern construction, and the combustion cupboard was unfamiliar, until Durgan pointed out that it had been enlarged. The ground-glass window at the east end showed still the marks of an explosion that had banished a clumsy student from this sanctuary at the very beginning of Trafford's career.
"By Jove!" he said after a silence, "but I did some good work here."
"You did, sir," said Durgan.
"I wonder--I may take it up again presently."
"I doubt it, sir," said Durgan.
"Oh! But suppose I come back?"
"I don't think you would find yourself coming back, sir," said Durgan after judicious consideration.
He adduced no shadow of a reason for his doubt, but some mysterious quality in his words carried conviction to Trafford's mind. He knew that he would never do anything worth doing in molecular physics again. He knew it now conclusively for the first time.
§ 4
He found himself presently in Bond Street. The bright May day had brought out great quantities of people, so that he had to come down from altitudes of abstraction to pick his way among them.
He was struck by the prevailing interest and contentment in the faces he passed. There was no sense of insecurity betrayed, no sense of the deeps and mysteries upon which our being floats like a film. They looked solid, they looked satisfied; surely never before in the history of the world has there been so great a multitude of secure-feeling, satisfied-looking, uninquiring people as there is to-day. All the tragic great things of life seem stupendously remote from them; pain is rare, death is out of sight, religion has shrunken to an inconsiderable, comfortable, reassuring appendage of the daily life. And with the bright small things of immediacy they are so active and alert. Never before has the world seen such multitudes, and a day must come when it will cease to see them for evermore.
As he shouldered his way through the throng before the Oxford Street shop windows he appreciated a queer effect, almost as it were of insanity, about all this rich and abundant and ultimately aimless life, this tremendous spawning and proliferation of uneventful humanity. These individual lives signified no doubt enormously to the individuals, but did all the shining, reflecting, changing existence that went by like bubbles in a stream, signify collectively anything more than the leaping, glittering confusion of shoaling mackerel on a sunlit afternoon? The pretty girl looking into the window schemed picturesque achievements with lace and ribbon, the beggar at the curb was alert for any sympathetic eye, the chauffeur on the waiting taxi-cab watched the twopences ticking on with a quiet satisfaction; each followed a keenly sought immediate end, but altogether? Where were they going altogether? Until he knew that, where was the sanity of statecraft, the excuse of any impersonal effort, the significance of anything beyond a life of appetites and self-seeking instincts?
He found that perplexing suspicion of priggishness affecting him again. Why couldn't he take the gift of life as it seemed these people took it? Why was he continually lapsing into these sombre, dimly religious questionings and doubts? Why after all should he concern himself with these riddles of some collective and ultimate meaning in things? Was he for all his ability and security so afraid of the accidents of life that on that account he clung to this conception of a larger impersonal issue which the world in general seemed to have abandoned so cheerfully? At any rate he did cling to it--and his sense of it made the abounding active life of this stirring, bristling thoroughfare an almost unendurable perplexity....
By the Marble Arch a little crowd had gathered at the pavement edge. He remarked other little knots towards Paddington, and then still others, and inquiring, found the King was presently to pass. They promised themselves the gratification of seeing the King go by. They would see a carriage, they would see horses and coachmen, perhaps even they might catch sight of a raised hat and a bowing figure. And this would be a gratification to them, it would irradiate the day with a sense of experiences, exceptional and precious. For that some of them had already been standing about for two or three hours.
He thought of these waiting people for a time, and then he fell into a speculation about the King. He wondered if the King ever lay awake at three o'clock in the morning and faced the riddle of the eternities or whether he did really take himself seriously and contentedly as being in himself the vital function of the State, performed his ceremonies, went hither and thither through a wilderness of gaping watchers, slept well on it. Was the man satisfied? Was he satisfied with his empire as it was and himself as he was, or did some vision, some high, ironical intimation of the latent and lost possibilities of his empire and of the world of Things Conceivable that lies beyond the poor tawdry splendours of our present loyalties, ever dawn upon him?
Trafford's imagination conjured up a sleepless King Emperor agonizing for humanity....
He turned to his right out of Lancaster Gate into Sussex Square, and came to a stop at the pavement edge.
From across the road he surveyed the wide white front and portals of the house that wasn't big enough for Marjorie.
§ 5
He let himself in with his latchkey.
Malcolm, his man, hovered at the foot of the staircase, and came forward for his hat and gloves and stick.
"Mrs. Trafford in?" asked Trafford.
"She said she would be in by four, sir."
Trafford glanced at his watch and went slowly upstairs.
On the landing there had been a rearrangement of the furniture, and he paused to survey it. The alterations had been made to accommodate a big cloisonné jar, that now glowed a wonder of white and tinted whites and luminous blues upon a dark, deep-shining stand. He noted now the curtain of the window had been changed from something--surely it had been a reddish curtain!--to a sharp clear blue with a black border, that reflected upon and sustained and encouraged the jar tremendously. And the wall behind--? Yes. Its deep brown was darkened to an absolute black behind the jar, and shaded up between the lacquer cabinets on either hand by insensible degrees to the general hue. It was wonderful, perfectly harmonious, and so subtly planned that it seemed it all might have grown, as flowers grow....
He entered the drawing-room and surveyed its long and handsome spaces. Post-impressionism was over and gone; three long pictures by young Rogerson and one of Redwood's gallant bronzes faced the tall windows between the white marble fireplaces at either end. There were two lean jars from India, a young boy's head from Florence, and in a great bowl in the remotest corner a radiant mass of azaleas....
His mood of wondering at familiar things was still upon him. It came to him as a thing absurd and incongruous that this should be his home. It was all wonderfully arranged into one dignified harmony, but he felt now that at a touch of social earthquake, with a mere momentary lapse towards disorder, it would degenerate altogether into litter, lie heaped together confessed the loot it was. He came to a stop opposite one of the Rogersons, a stiffly self-conscious shop girl in her Sunday clothes, a not unsuccessful emulation of Nicholson's wonderful Mrs. Stafford of Paradise Row. Regarded as so much brown and grey and amber-gold, it was coherent in Marjorie's design, but regarded as a work of art, as a piece of expression, how madly irrelevant was its humour and implications to that room and the purposes of that room! Rogerson wasn't perhaps trying to say much, but at any rate he was trying to say something, and Redwood too was asserting freedom and adventure, and the thought of that Florentine of the bust, and the patient, careful Indian potter, and every maker of all the little casual articles about him, produced an effect of muffled, stifled assertions. Against this subdued and disciplined background of muted, inarticulate cries,--cries for beauty, for delight, for freedom, Marjorie and her world moved and rustled and chattered and competed--wearing the skins of beasts, the love-plumage of birds, the woven cocoon cases of little silkworms....
"Preposterous," he whispered.
He went to the window and stared out; turned about and regarded the gracious variety of that long, well-lit room again, then strolled thoughtfully upstairs. He reached the door of his study, and a sound of voices from the schoolroom--it had recently been promoted from the rank of day nursery to this level--caught his mood. He changed his mind, crossed the landing, and was welcomed with shouts.
The rogues had been dressing up. Margharita, that child of the dreadful dawn, was now a sturdy and domineering girl of eight, and she was attired in a gilt paper mitre and her governess's white muslin blouse so tied at the wrists as to suggest long sleeves, a broad crimson band doing duty as a stole. She was Becket prepared for martyrdom at the foot of the altar. Godwin, his eldest son, was a hot-tempered, pretty-featured pleasantly self-conscious boy of nearly seven and very happy now in a white dragoon's helmet and rude but effective brown paper breastplate and greaves, as the party of assassin knights. A small acolyte in what was in all human probably one of the governess's more intimate linen garments assisted Becket, while the general congregation of Canterbury was represented by Edward, aged two, and the governess, disguised with a Union Jack tied over her head after the well-known fashion of the middle ages. After the children had welcomed their father and explained the bloody work in hand, they returned to it with solemn earnestness, while Trafford surveyed the tragedy. Godwin slew with admirable gusto, and I doubt if the actual Thomas of Canterbury showed half the stately dignity of Margharita.
The scene finished, they went on to the penance of Henry the Second; and there was a tremendous readjustment of costumes, with much consultation and secrecy. Trafford's eyes went from his offspring to the long, white-painted room, with its gay frieze of ships and gulls and its rug-variegated cork carpet of plain brick red. Everywhere it showed his wife's quick cleverness, the clean serviceable decorativeness of it all, the pretty patterned window curtains, the writing desks, the little library of books, the flowers and bulbs in glasses, the counting blocks and bricks and jolly toys, the blackboard on which the children learnt to draw in bold wide strokes, the big, well-chosen German colour prints upon the walls. And the children did credit to their casket; they were not only full of vitality but full of ideas, even Edward was already a person of conversation. They were good stuff anyhow....
It was fine in a sense, Trafford thought, to have given up his own motives and curiosities to afford this airy pleasantness of upbringing for them, and then came a qualifying thought. Would they in their turn for the sake of another generation have to give up fine occupations for mean occupations, deep thoughts for shallow? Would the world get them in turn? Would the girls be hustled and flattered into advantageous marriages, that dinners and drawing-rooms might still prevail? Would the boys, after this gracious beginning, presently have to swim submerged in another generation of Blenkinses and their Talk, toil in arduous self-seeking, observe, respect and manipulate shams, succeed or fail, and succeeding, beget amidst hope and beautiful emotions yet another generation doomed to insincerities and accommodations, and so die at last--as he must die?...
He heard his wife's clear voice in the hall below, and went down to meet her. She had gone into the drawing-room, and he followed her in and through the folding doors to the hinder part of the room, where she stood ready to open a small bureau. She turned at his approach, and smiled a pleasant, habitual smile....
She was no longer the slim, quick-moving girl who had come out of the world to him when he crawled from beneath the wreckage of Solomonson's plane, no longer the half-barbaric young beauty who had been revealed to him on the staircase of the Vevey villa. She was now a dignified, self-possessed woman, controlling her house and her life with a skilful, subtle appreciation of her every point and possibility. She was wearing now a simple walking dress of brownish fawn colour, and her hat was touched with a steely blue that made her blue eyes seem handsome and hard, and toned her hair to a merely warm brown. She had, as it were, subdued her fine colours into a sheath in order that she might presently draw them again with more effect.
"Hullo, old man!" she said, "you home?"
He nodded. "The club bored me--and I couldn't work."
Her voice had something of a challenge and defiance in it. "I've been looking at a house," she said. "Alice Carmel told me of it. It isn't in Berkeley Square, but it's near it. It's rather good."
He met her eye. "That's--premature," he said.
"We can't go on living in this one."
"I won't go to another."
"But why?"
"I just won't."
"It isn't the money?"
"No," said Trafford, with sudden fierce resentment. "I've overtaken you and beaten you there, Marjorie."
She stared at the harsh bitterness of his voice. She was about to speak when the door opened, and Malcom ushered in Aunt Plessington and Uncle Hubert. Husband and wife hung for a moment, and then realized their talk was at an end....
Marjorie went forward to greet her aunt, careless now of all that once stupendous Influence might think of her. She had long ceased to feel even the triumph of victory in her big house, her costly, dignified clothes, her assured and growing social importance. For five years Aunt Plessington had not even ventured to advise; had once or twice admired. All that business of Magnet was--even elaborately--forgotten....
Seven years of feverish self-assertion had left their mark upon both the Plessingtons. She was leaner, more gauntly untidy, more aggressively ill-dressed. She no longer dressed carelessly, she defied the world with her clothes, waved her tattered and dingy banners in its face. Uncle Hubert was no fatter, but in some queer way he had ceased to be thin. Like so many people whose peripheries defy the manifest quaint purpose of Providence, he was in a state of thwarted adiposity, and with all the disconnectedness and weak irritability characteristic of his condition. He had developed a number of nervous movements, chin-strokings, cheek-scratchings, and incredulous pawings at his more salient features.
"Isn't it a lark?" began Aunt Plessington, with something like a note of apprehension in her highpitched voice, and speaking almost from the doorway, "we're making a call together. I and Hubert! It's an attack in force."
Uncle Hubert goggled in the rear and stroked his chin, and tried to get together a sort of facial expression.
The Traffords made welcoming noises, and Marjorie advanced to meet her aunt.
"We want you to do something for us," said Aunt Plessington, taking two hands with two hands....
In the intervening years the Movement had had ups and downs; it had had a boom, which had ended abruptly in a complete loss of voice for Aunt Plessington--she had tried to run it on a patent non-stimulating food, and then it had entangled itself with a new cult of philanthropic theosophy from which it had been extracted with difficulty and in a damaged condition. It had never completely recovered from that unhappy association. Latterly Aunt Plessington had lost her nerve, and she had taken to making calls upon people with considerable and sometimes embarrassing demand for support, urging them to join committees, take chairs, stake reputations, speak and act as foils for her. If they refused she lost her temper very openly and frankly, and became industriously vindictive. She circulated scandals or created them. Her old assurance had deserted her; the strangulated contralto was losing its magic power, she felt, in this degenerating England it had ruled so long. In the last year or so she had become extremely snappy with Uncle Hubert. She ascribed much of the Movement's futility to the decline of his administrative powers and the increasing awkwardness of his gestures, and she did her utmost to keep him up to the mark. Her only method of keeping him up to the mark was to jerk the bit. She had now come to compel Marjorie to address a meeting that was to inaugurate a new phase in the Movement's history, and she wanted Marjorie because she particularly wanted a daring, liberal, and spiritually amorous bishop, who had once told her with a note of profound conviction that Marjorie was a very beautiful woman. She was so intent upon her purpose that she scarcely noticed Trafford. He slipped from the room unobserved under cover of her playful preliminaries, and went to the untidy little apartment overhead which served in that house as his study. He sat down at the big desk, pushed his methodically arranged papers back, and drummed on the edge with his fingers.
"I'm damned if we have that bigger house," said Trafford.
§ 6
He felt he wanted to confirm and establish this new resolution, to go right away to Labrador for a year. He wanted to tell someone the thing definitely. He would have gone downstairs again to Marjorie, but she was submerged and swimming desperately against the voluble rapids of Aunt Plessington's purpose. It might be an hour before that attack withdrew. Presently there would be other callers. He decided to have tea with his mother and talk to her about this new break in the course of his life.
Except that her hair was now grey and her brown eyes by so much contrast brighter, Mrs. Trafford's appearance had altered very little in the ten years of her only son's marriage. Whatever fresh realizations of the inevitably widening separation between parent and child these years had brought her, she had kept to herself. She had watched her daughter-in-law sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with perplexity, always with a jealous resolve to let no shadow of jealousy fall between them. Marjorie had been sweet and friendly to her, but after the first outburst of enthusiastic affection, she had neither offered nor invited confidences. Old Mrs. Trafford had talked of Marjorie to her son guardedly, and had marked and respected a growing indisposition on his part to discuss his wife. For a year or so after his marriage she had ached at times with a sense of nearly intolerable loneliness, and then the new interests she had found for herself had won their way against this depression. The new insurrectionary movement of women that had distinguished those years had attacked her by its emotion and repelled her by its crudity, and she had resolved, quite in the spirit of the man who had shaped her life, to make a systematic study of all the contributory strands that met in this difficult tangle. She tried to write, but she found that the poetic gift, the gift of the creative and illuminating phrase which alone justifies writing, was denied to her, and so she sought to make herself wise, to read and hear, and discuss and think over these things, and perhaps at last inspire and encourage writing in others.
Her circle of intimates grew, and she presently remarked with a curious interest that while she had lost the confidences of her own son and his wife, she was becoming the confidant of an increasing number of other people. They came to her, she perceived, because she was receptive and sympathetic and without a claim upon them or any interest to complicate the freedoms of their speech with her. They came to her, because she did not belong to them nor they to her. It is, indeed, the defect of all formal and established relationship, that it embarrasses speech, and taints each phase in intercourse with the flavour of diplomacy. One can be far more easily outspoken to a casual stranger one may never see again than to that inseparable other, who may misinterpret, who may disapprove or misunderstand, and who will certainly in the measure of that discord remember....
It became at last a matter of rejoicing to Mrs. Trafford that the ties of the old instinctive tenderness between herself and her son, the memories of pain and tears and the passionate conflict of childhood, were growing so thin and lax and inconsiderable, that she could even hope some day to talk to him again--almost as she talked to the young men and young women who drifted out of the unknown to her and sat in her little room and sought to express their perplexities and listened to her advice....
It seemed to her that afternoon the wished-for day had come.
Trafford found her just returned from a walk in Kensington Gardens and writing a note at her desk under the narrow sunlit window that looked upon the High Street. "Finish your letter, little mother," he said, and took possession of the hearthrug.
When she had sealed and addressed her letter, she turned her head and found him looking at his father's portrait.
"Done?" he asked, becoming aware of her eyes.
She took her letter into the hall and returned to him, closing the door behind her.
"I'm going away, little mother," he said with an unconvincing off-handedness. "I'm going to take a holiday."
"Alone?"
"Yes. I want a change. I'm going off somewhere--untrodden ground as near as one can get it nowadays--Labrador."
Their eyes met for a moment.
"Is it for long?"
"The best part of a year."
"I thought you were going on with your research work again."
"No." He paused. "I'm going to Labrador."
"Why?" she asked.
"I'm going to think."
She found nothing to say for a moment. "It's good," she remarked, "to think." Then, lest she herself should seem to be thinking too enormously, she rang the bell to order the tea that was already on its way.
"It surprises a mother," she said, when the maid had come and gone, "when her son surprises her."
"You see," he repeated, as though it explained everything, "I want to think."
Then after a pause she asked some questions about Labrador; wasn't it very cold, very desert, very dangerous and bitter, and he answered informingly. How was he going to stay there? He would go up the country with an expedition, build a hut and remain behind. Alone? Yes--thinking. Her eyes rested on his face for a time. "It will be--lonely," she said after a pause.
She saw him as a little still speck against immense backgrounds of snowy wilderness.
The tea-things came before mother and son were back at essentials again. Then she asked abruptly: "Why are you going away like this?"
"I'm tired of all this business and finance," he said after a pause.
"I thought you would be," she answered as deliberately.
"Yes. I've had enough of things. I want to get clear. And begin again somehow."
She felt they both hung away from the essential aspect. Either he or she must approach it. She decided that she would, that it was a less difficult thing for her than for him.
"And Marjorie?" she asked.
He looked into his mother's eyes very quietly. "You see," he went on deliberately disregarding her question, "I'm beached. I'm aground. I'm spoilt now for the old researches--spoilt altogether. And I don't like this life I'm leading. I detest it. While I was struggling it had a kind of interest. There was an excitement in piling up the first twenty thousand. But _now_--! It's empty, it's aimless, it's incessant...."
He paused. She turned to the tea-things, and lit the spirit lamp under the kettle. It seemed a little difficult to do, and her hand trembled. When she turned on him again it was with an effort.
"Does Marjorie like the life you are leading?" she asked, and pressed her lips together tightly.
He spoke with a bitterness in his voice that astonished her. "Oh, _she_ likes it."
"Are you sure?"
He nodded.
"She won't like it without you."
"Oh, that's too much! It's her world. It's what she's done--what she's made. She can have it; she can keep it. I've played my part and got it for her. But now--now I'm free to go. I will go. She's got everything else. I've done my half of the bargain. But my soul's my own. If I want to go away and think, I will. Not even Marjorie shall stand in the way of that."
She made no answer to this outburst for a couple of seconds. Then she threw out, "Why shouldn't Marjorie think, too?"
He considered that for some moments. "She doesn't," he said, as though the words came from the roots of his being.
"But you two----"
"We don't talk. It's astonishing--how we don't. We don't. We can't. We try to, and we can't. And she goes her way, and now--I will go mine."
"And leave her?"
He nodded.
"In London?"
"With all the things she cares for."
"Except yourself."
"I'm only a means----"
She turned her quiet face to him. "You know," she said, "that isn't true."...
"No," she repeated, to his silent contradiction.
"I've watched her," she went on. "You're _not_ a means. I'd have spoken long ago if I had thought that. Haven't I watched? Haven't I lain awake through long nights thinking about her and you, thinking over every casual mood, every little sign--longing to help--helpless." ... She struggled with herself, for she was weeping. "_It has come to this_," she said in a whisper, and choked back a flood of tears.
Trafford stood motionless, watching her. She became active. She moved round the table. She looked at the kettle, moved the cups needlessly, made tea, and stood waiting for a moment before she poured it out. "It's so hard to talk to you," she said, "and about all this.... I care so much. For her. And for you.... Words don't come, dear.... One says stupid things."
She poured out the tea, and left the cups steaming, and came and stood before him.
"You see," she said, "you're ill. You aren't just. You've come to an end. You don't know where you are and what you want to do. Neither does she, my dear. She's as aimless as you--and less able to help it. Ever so much less able."
"But she doesn't show it. She goes on. She wants things and wants things----"
"And you want to go away. It's the same thing. It's exactly the same thing. It's dissatisfaction. Life leaves you empty and craving--leaves you with nothing to do but little immediate things that turn to dust as you do them. It's her trouble, just as it's your trouble."
"But she doesn't show it."
"Women don't. Not so much. Perhaps even she doesn't know it. Half the women in our world don't know--and for a woman it's so much easier to go on--so many little things."...
Trafford tried to grasp the intention of this. "Mother," he said, "I mean to go away."
"But think of her!"
"I've thought. Now I've got to think of myself."
"You can't--without her."
"I will. It's what I'm resolved to do."
"Go right away?"
"Right away."
"And think?"
He nodded.
"Find out--what it all means, my boy?"
"Yes. So far as I'm concerned."
"And then----?"
"Come back, I suppose. I haven't thought."
"To her?"
He didn't answer. She went and stood beside him, leaning upon the mantel. "Godwin," she said, "she'd only be further behind.... You've got to take her with you."
He stood still and silent.
"You've got to think things out with her. If you don't----"
"I can't."
"Then you ought to go away with her----" She stopped.
"For good?" he asked.
"Yes."
They were both silent for a space. Then Mrs. Trafford gave her mind to the tea that was cooling in the cups, and added milk and sugar. She spoke again with the table between them.
"I've thought so much of these things," she said with the milk-jug in her hand. "It's not only you two, but others. And all the movement about us.... Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because women have become human beings. Only----You know, Godwin, all these things are so difficult to express. Woman's come out of being a slave, and yet she isn't an equal.... We've had a sort of sham emancipation, and we haven't yet come to the real one."
She put down the milk-jug on the tray with an air of grave deliberation. "If you go away from her and make the most wonderful discoveries about life and yourself, it's no good--unless she makes them too. It's no good at all.... You can't live without her in the end, any more than she can live without you. You may think you can, but I've watched you. You don't want to go away from her, you want to go away from the world that's got hold of her, from the dresses and parties and the competition and all this complicated flatness we have to live in.... It wouldn't worry you a bit, if it hadn't got hold of her. You don't want to get out of it for your own sake. You _are_ out of it. You are as much out of it as any one can be. Only she holds you in it, because she isn't out of it. Your going away will do nothing. She'll still be in it--and still have her hold on you.... You've got to take her away. Or else--if you go away--in the end it will be just like a ship, Godwin, coming back to its moorings."
She watched his thoughtful face for some moments, then arrested herself just in time in the act of putting a second portion of sugar into each of the cups. She handed her son his tea, and he took it mechanically. "You're a wise little mother," he said. "I didn't see things in that light.... I wonder if you're right."
"I know I am," she said.
"I've thought more and more,--it was Marjorie."
"It's the world."
"Women made the world. All the dress and display and competition."
Mrs. Trafford thought. "Sex made the world. Neither men nor women. But the world has got hold of the women tighter than it has the men. They're deeper in." She looked up into his face. "Take her with you," she said, simply.
"She won't come," said Trafford, after considering it.
Mrs. Trafford reflected. "She'll come--if you make her," she said.
"She'll want to bring two housemaids."
"I don't think you know Marjorie as well as I do."
"But she can't----"
"She can. It's you--you'll want to take two housemaids for her. Even you.... Men are not fair to women."
Trafford put his untasted tea upon the mantelshelf, and confronted his mother with a question point blank. "Does Marjorie care for me?" he asked.
"You're the sun of her world."
"But she goes her way."
"She's clever, she's full of life, full of activities, eager to make and arrange and order; but there's nothing she is, nothing she makes, that doesn't centre on you."
"But if she cared, she'd understand!"
"My dear, do _you_ understand?"
He stood musing. "I had everything clear," he said. "I saw my way to Labrador...."
Her little clock pinged the hour. "Good God!" he said, "I'm to be at dinner somewhere at seven. We're going to a first night. With the Bernards, I think. Then I suppose we'll have a supper. Always life is being slashed to tatters by these things. Always. One thinks in snatches of fifty minutes. It's dementia...."
§ 7
They dined at the Loretto Restaurant with the Bernards and Richard Hampden and Mrs. Godwin Capes, the dark-eyed, quiet-mannered wife of the dramatist, a woman of impulsive speech and long silences, who had subsided from an early romance (Capes had been divorced for her while she was still a mere girl) into a markedly correct and exclusive mother of daughters. Through the dinner Marjorie was watching Trafford and noting the deep preoccupation of his manner. He talked a little to Mrs. Bernard until it was time for Hampden to entertain her, then finding Mrs. Capes was interested in Bernard, he lapsed into thought. Presently Marjorie discovered his eyes scrutinizing herself.
She hoped the play would catch his mind, but the play seemed devised to intensify his sense of the tawdry unreality of contemporary life. Bernard filled the intervals with a conventional enthusiasm. Capes didn't appear.
"He doesn't seem to care to see his things," his wife explained.
"It's so brilliant," said Bernard.
"He has to do it," said Mrs. Capes slowly, her sombre eyes estimating the crowded stalls below. "It isn't what he cares to do."
The play was in fact an admirable piece of English stagecraft, and it dealt exclusively with that unreal other world of beings the English theatre has for its own purposes developed. Just as Greece through the ages evolved and polished and perfected the idealized life of its Homeric poems, so the British mind has evolved their Stage Land to embody its more honourable dreams, full of heroic virtues, incredible honour, genial worldliness, childish villainies, profound but amiable waiters and domestics, pathetic shepherds and preposterous crimes. Capes, needing an income, had mastered the habits and customs of this imagined world as one learns a language; success endorsed his mastery; he knew exactly how deeply to underline an irony and just when it is fit and proper for a good man to call upon "God!" or cry out "Damn!" In this play he had invented a situation in which a charming and sympathetic lady had killed a gross and drunken husband in self-defence, almost but not quite accidentally, and had then appealed to the prodigious hero for assistance in the resulting complications. At a great cost of mental suffering to himself he had told his First and Only Lie to shield her. Then years after he had returned to England--the first act happened, of course in India--to find her on the eve of marrying, without any of the preliminary confidences common among human beings, an old school friend of his. (In plays all Gentlemen have been at school together, and one has been the other's fag.) The audience had to be interested in the problem of what the prodigious hero was to do in this prodigious situation. Should he maintain a colossal silence, continue his shielding, and let his friend marry the murderess saved by his perjury, or----?... The dreadful quandary! Indeed, the absolute--inconvenience!
Marjorie watched Trafford in the corner of the box, as he listened rather contemptuously to the statement of the evening's Problem and then lapsed again into a brooding quiet. She wished she understood his moods better. She felt there was more in this than a mere resentment at her persistence about the new house....
Why didn't he go on with things?...
This darkling mood of his had only become manifest to her during the last three or four years of their life. Previously, of course, he had been irritable at times.
Were they less happy now than they had been in the little house in Chelsea? It had really been a horrible little house. And yet there had been a brightness then--a nearness....
She found her mind wandering away upon a sort of stock-taking expedition. How much of real happiness had she and Trafford had together? They ought by every standard to be so happy....
She declined the Bernard's invitation to a chafing-dish supper, and began to talk so soon as she and Trafford had settled into the car.
"Rag," she said, "something's the matter?"
"Well--yes."
"The house?"
"Yes--the house."
Marjorie considered through a little interval.
"Old man, why are you so prejudiced against a bigger house?"
"Oh, because the one we have bores me, and the next one will bore me more."
"But try it."
"I don't want to."
"Well," she said and lapsed into silence.
"And then," he asked, "what are we going to do?"
"Going to do--when?"
"After the new house----"
"I'm going to open out," she said.
He made no answer.
"I want to open out. I want you to take your place in the world, the place you deserve."
"A four-footman place?"
"Oh! the house is only a means."
He thought upon that. "A means," he asked, "to what? Look here, Marjorie, what do you think you are up to with me and yourself? What do you see me doing--in the years ahead?"
She gave him a silent and thoughtful profile for a second or so.
"At first I suppose you are going on with your researches."
"Well?"
"Then----I must tell you what I think of you, Rag. Politics----"
"Good Lord!"
"You've a sort of power. You could make things noble."
"And then? Office?"
"Why not? Look at the little men they are."
"And then perhaps a still bigger house?"
"You're not fair to me."
He pulled up the bearskin over his knees.
"Marjorie!" he said. "You see----We aren't going to do any of those things at all.... _No!_..."
"I can't go on with my researches," he explained. "That's what you don't understand. I'm not able to get back to work. I shall never do any good research again. That's the real trouble, Marjorie, and it makes all the difference. As for politics----I can't touch politics. I despise politics. I think this empire and the monarchy and Lords and Commons and patriotism and social reform and all the rest of it, silly, _silly_ beyond words; temporary, accidental, foolish, a mere stop-gap--like a gipsey's roundabout in a place where one will presently build a house.... You don't help make the house by riding on the roundabout.... There's no clear knowledge--no clear purpose.... Only research matters--and expression perhaps--I suppose expression is a sort of research--until we get that--that sufficient knowledge. And you see, I can't take up my work again. I've lost something...."
She waited.
"I've got into this stupid struggle for winning money," he went on, "and I feel like a woman must feel who's made a success of prostitution. I've been prostituted. I feel like some one fallen and diseased.... Business and prostitution; they're the same thing. All business is a sort of prostitution, all prostitution is a sort of business. Why should one sell one's brains any more than one sells one's body?... It's so easy to succeed if one has good brains and cares to do it, and doesn't let one's attention or imagination wander--and it's so degrading. Hopelessly degrading.... I'm sick of this life, Marjorie. _I_ don't want to buy things. I'm sick of buying. I'm at an end. I'm clean at an end. It's exactly as though suddenly in walking through a great house one came on a passage that ended abruptly in a door, which opened--on nothing! Nothing!"
"This is a mood," she whispered to his pause.
"It isn't a mood, it's a fact.... I've got nothing ahead, and I don't know how to get back. My life's no good to me any more. I've spent myself."
She looked at him with dismayed eyes. "But," she said, "this _is_ a mood."
"No," he said, "no mood, but conviction. I _know_...."
He started. The car had stopped at their house, and Malcolm was opening the door of the car. They descended silently, and went upstairs in silence.
He came into her room presently and sat down by her fireside. She had gone to her dressing-table and unfastened a necklace; now with this winking and glittering in her hand she came and stood beside him.
"Rag," she said, "I don't know what to say. This isn't so much of a surprise.... I _felt_ that somehow life was disappointing you, that I was disappointing you. I've felt it endless times, but more so lately. I haven't perhaps dared to let myself know just how much.... But isn't it what life is? Doesn't every wife disappoint her husband? We're none of us inexhaustible. After all, we've had a good time; isn't it a little ungrateful to forget?..."
"Look here, Rag," she said. "I don't know what to do. If I did know, I would do it.... What are we to do?"
"Think," he suggested.
"We've got to live as well as think."
"It's the immense troublesome futility of--everything," he said.
"Well--let us cease to be futile. Let us _do_. You say there is no grip for you in research, that you despise politics.... There's no end of trouble and suffering. Cannot we do social work, social reform, change the lives of others less fortunate than ourselves...."
"Who are we that we should tamper with the lives of others?"
"But one must do something."
He thought that over.
"No," he said "that's the universal blunder nowadays. One must do the right thing. And we don't know the right thing, Marjorie. That's the very heart of the trouble.... Does this life satisfy _you?_ If it did would you always be so restless?..."
"But," she said, "think of the good things in life?"
"It's just the good, the exquisite things in life, that make me rebel against this life we are leading. It's because I've seen the streaks of gold that I know the rest for dirt. When I go cheating and scheming to my office, and come back to find you squandering yourself upon a horde of chattering, overdressed women, when I think that that is our substance and everyday and what we are, then it is I remember most the deep and beautiful things.... It is impossible, dear, it is intolerable that life was made beautiful for us--just for these vulgarities."
"Isn't there----" She hesitated. "Love--still?"
"But----Has it been love? Love is a thing that grows. But we took it--as people take flowers out of a garden, cut them off, put them in water.... How much of our daily life has been love? How much of it mere consequences of the love we've left behind us?... We've just cohabited and 'made love'--you and I--and thought of a thousand other things...."
He looked up at her. "Oh, I love a thousand things about you," he said. "But do I love _you_, Marjorie? Have I got you? Haven't I lost you--haven't we both lost something, the very heart of it all? Do you think that we were just cheated by instinct, that there wasn't something in it we felt and thought was there? And where is it now? Where is that brightness and wonder, Marjorie, and the pride and the immense unlimited hope?"
She was still for a moment, then knelt very swiftly before him and held out her arms.
"Oh Rag!" she said, with a face of tender beauty. He took her finger tips in his, dropped them and stood up above her.
"My dear," he cried, "my dear! why do you always want to turn love into--touches?... Stand up again. Stand up there, my dear; don't think I've ceased to love you, but stand up there and let me talk to you as one man to another. If we let this occasion slide to embraces...."
He stopped short.
She crouched before the fire at his feet. "Go on," she said, "go on."
"I feel now that all our lives now, Marjorie----We have come to a crisis. I feel that now----_now_ is the time. Either we shall save ourselves now or we shall never save ourselves. It is as if something had gathered and accumulated and could wait no longer. If we do not seize this opportunity----Then our lives will go on as they have gone on, will become more and more a matter of small excitements and elaborate comforts and distraction...."
He stopped this halting speech and then broke out again.
"Oh! why _should_ the life of every day conquer us? Why should generation after generation of men have these fine beginnings, these splendid dreams of youth, attempt so much, achieve so much and then, then become--_this!_ Look at this room, this litter of little satisfactions! Look at your pretty books there, a hundred minds you have pecked at, bright things of the spirit that attracted you as jewels attract a jackdaw. Look at the glass and silver, and that silk from China! And we are in the full tide of our years, Marjorie. Now is the very crown and best of our lives. And this is what we do, we sample, we accumulate. For this we loved, for this we hoped. Do you remember when we were young--that life seemed so splendid--it was intolerable we should ever die?... The splendid dream! The intimations of greatness!... The miserable failure!"
He raised clenched fists. "I won't stand it, Marjorie. I won't endure it. Somehow, in some way, I will get out of this life--and you with me. I have been brooding upon this and brooding, but now I know...."
"But how?" asked Marjorie, with her bare arms about her knees, staring into the fire. "_How?_"
"We must get out of its constant interruptions, its incessant vivid, petty appeals...."
"We might go away--to Switzerland."
"We _went_ to Switzerland. Didn't we agree--it was our second honeymoon. It isn't a honeymoon we need. No, we'll have to go further than that."
A sudden light broke upon Marjorie's mind. She realized he had a plan. She lifted a fire-lit face to him and looked at him with steady eyes and asked----
"Where?"
"Ever so much further."
"Where?"
"I don't know."
"You do. You've planned something."
"I don't know, Marjorie. At least--I haven't made up my mind. Where it is very lonely. Cold and remote. Away from all this----" His mind stopped short, and he ended with a cry: "Oh! God! how I want to get out of all this!"
He sat down in her arm-chair, and bowed his face on his hands.
Then abruptly he stood up and went out of the room.
§ 8
When in five minutes' time he came back into her room she was still upon her hearthrug before the fire, with her necklace in her hand, the red reflections of the flames glowing and winking in her jewels and in her eyes. He came and sat again in her chair.
"I have been ranting," he said. "I feel I've been--eloquent. You make me feel like an actor-manager, in a play by Capes.... You are the most difficult person for me to talk to in all the world--because you mean so much to me."
She moved impulsively and checked herself and crouched away from him. "I mustn't touch your hand," she whispered.
"I want to explain."
"You've got to explain."
"I've got quite a definite plan.... But a sort of terror seized me. It was like--shyness."
"I know. I knew you had a plan."
"You see.... I mean to go to Labrador."
He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands extended, explanatory. He wanted intensely that she should understand and agree and his desire made him clumsy, now slow and awkward, now glibly and unsatisfyingly eloquent. But she comprehended his quality better than he knew. They were to go away to Labrador, this snowy desert of which she had scarcely heard, to camp in the very heart of the wilderness, two hundred miles or more from any human habitation----
"But how long?" she asked abruptly.
"The better part of a year."
"And we are to talk?"
"Yes," he said, "talk and think ourselves together--oh!--the old phrases carry it all--find God...."
"It is what I dreamt of, Rag, years ago."
"Will you come," he cried, "out of all this?"
She leant across the hearthrug, and seized and kissed his hand....
Then, with one of those swift changes of hers, she was in revolt. "But, Rag," she exclaimed, "this is dreaming. We are not free. There are the children! Rag! We cannot leave the children!"
"We can," he said. "We must."
"But, my dear!--our duty!"
"_Is_ it a mother's duty always to keep with her children? They will be looked after, their lives are organized, there is my mother close at hand.... What is the good of having children at all--unless their world is to be better than our world?... What are we doing to save them from the same bathos as this--to which we have come? We give them food and health and pictures and lessons, that's all very well while they are just little children; but we've got no religion to give them, no aim, no sense of a general purpose. What is the good of bread and health--and no worship?... What can we say to them when they ask us why we brought them into the world?--_We_ happened--_you_ happened. What are we to tell them when they demand the purpose of all this training, all these lessons? When they ask what we are preparing them for? Just that _you_, too, may have children! Is that any answer? Marjorie, it's common-sense to try this over--to make this last supreme effort--just as it will be common-sense to separate if we can't get the puzzle solved together."
"Separate!"
"Separate. Why not? We can afford it. Of course, we shall separate."
"But Rag!--separate!"
He faced her protest squarely. "Life is not worth living," he said, "unless it has more to hold it together than ours has now. If we cannot escape together, then--_I will go alone_."...
§ 9
They parted that night resolved to go to Labrador together, with the broad outline of their subsequent journey already drawn. Each lay awake far into the small hours thinking of this purpose and of one another, with a strange sense of renewed association. Each woke to a morning of sunshine heavy-eyed. Each found that overnight decision remote and incredible. It was like something in a book or a play that had moved them very deeply. They came down to breakfast, and helped themselves after the wonted fashion of several years, Marjorie with a skilful eye to the large order of her household; the _Times_ had one or two characteristic letters which interested them both; there was the usual picturesque irruption of the children and a distribution of early strawberries among them. Trafford had two notes in his correspondence which threw a new light upon the reconstruction of the Norton-Batsford company in which he was interested; he formed a definite conclusion upon the situation, and went quite normally to his study and the telephone to act upon that.
It was only as the morning wore on that it became real to him that he and Marjorie had decided to leave the world. Then, with the Norton-Batsford business settled, he sat at his desk and mused. His apathy passed. His imagination began to present first one picture and then another of his retreat. He walked along Oxford Street to his Club thinking--"soon we shall be out of all this." By the time he was at lunch in his Club, Labrador had become again the magic refuge it had seemed the day before. After lunch he went to work in the library, finding out books about Labrador, and looking up the details of the journey.
But his sense of futility and hopeless oppression had vanished. He walked along the corridor and down the great staircase, and without a trace of the despairful hostility of the previous day, passed Blenkins, talking grey bosh with infinite thoughtfulness. He nodded easily to Blenkins. He was going out of it all, as a man might do who discovers after years of weary incarceration that the walls of his cell are made of thin paper. The time when Blenkins seemed part of a prison-house of routine and invincible stupidity seemed ten ages ago.
In Pall Mall Trafford remarked Lady Grampians and the Countess of Claridge, two women of great influence, in a big green car, on the way no doubt to create or sustain or destroy; and it seemed to him that it was limitless ages since these poor old dears with their ridiculous hats and their ridiculous airs, their luncheons and dinners and dirty aggressive old minds, had sent tidal waves of competitive anxiety into his home....
He found himself jostling through the shopping crowd on the sunny side of Regent Street. He felt now that he looked over the swarming, preoccupied heads at distant things. He and Marjorie were going out of it all, going clean out of it all. They were going to escape from society and shopping, and petty engagements and incessant triviality--as a bird flies up out of weeds.
§ 10
But Marjorie fluctuated more than he did.
There were times when the expedition for which he was now preparing rapidly and methodically seemed to her the most adventurously-beautiful thing that had ever come to her, and times when it seemed the maddest and most hopeless of eccentricities. There were times when she had devastating premonitions of filth, hunger, strain and fatigue, damp and cold, when her whole being recoiled from the project, when she could even think of staying secure in London and letting him go alone. She developed complicated anxieties for the children; she found reasons for further inquiries, for delay. "Why not," she suggested, "wait a year?"
"No," he said, "I won't. I mean we are to do this, and do it now, and nothing but sheer physical inability to do it will prevent my carrying it out.... And you? Of course you are to come. I can't drag you shrieking all the way to Labrador; short of that I'm going to _make_ you come with me."
She sat and looked up at him with dark lights in her upturned eyes, and a little added warmth in her cheek. "You've never forced my will like this before," she said, in a low voice. "Never."
He was too intent upon his own resolve to heed her tones.
"It hasn't seemed necessary somehow," he said, considering her statement. "Now it does."
"This is something final," she said.
"It is final."
She found an old familiar phrasing running through her head, as she sat crouched together, looking up at his rather gaunt, very intent face, the speech of another woman echoing to her across a vast space of years: "Whither thou goest I will go----"
"In Labrador," he began....
CHAPTER THE THIRD
THE PILGRIMAGE TO LONELY HUT
§ 1
Marjorie was surprised to find how easy it was at last to part from her children and go with Trafford.
"I am not sorry," she said, "not a bit sorry--but I am fearfully afraid. I shall dream they are ill.... Apart from that, it's strange how you grip me and they don't...."
In the train to Liverpool she watched Trafford with the queer feeling which comes to all husbands and wives at times that that other partner is indeed an undiscovered stranger, just beginning to show perplexing traits,--full of inconceivable possibilities.
For some reason his tearing her up by the roots in this fashion had fascinated her imagination. She felt a strange new wonder at him that had in it just a pleasant faint flavour of fear. Always before she had felt a curious aversion and contempt for those servile women who are said to seek a master, to want to be mastered, to be eager even for the physical subjugations of brute force. Now she could at least understand, sympathize even with them. Not only Trafford surprised her but herself. She found she was in an unwonted perplexing series of moods. All her feelings struck her now as being incorrect as well as unexpected; not only had life become suddenly full of novelty but she was making novel responses. She felt that she ought to be resentful and tragically sorry for her home and children. She felt this departure ought to have the quality of an immense sacrifice, a desperate and heroic undertaking for Trafford's sake. Instead she could detect little beyond an adventurous exhilaration when presently she walked the deck of the steamer that was to take her to St. John's. She had visited her cabin, seen her luggage stowed away, and now she surveyed the Mersey and its shipping with a renewed freshness of mind. She was reminded of the day, now nearly nine years ago, when she had crossed the sea for the first time--to Italy. Then, too, Trafford had seemed a being of infinitely wonderful possibilities.... What were the children doing?--that ought to have been her preoccupation. She didn't know; she didn't care! Trafford came and stood beside her, pointed out this and that upon the landing stage, no longer heavily sullen, but alert, interested, almost gay....
Neither of them could find any way to the great discussion they had set out upon, in this voyage to St. John's. But there was plenty of time before them. Plenty of time! They were both the prey of that uneasy distraction which seems the inevitable quality of a passenger steamship. They surveyed and criticized their fellow travellers, and prowled up and down through the long swaying days and the cold dark nights. They slept uneasily amidst fog-horn hootings and the startling sounds of waves swirling against the ports. Marjorie had never had a long sea voyage before; for the first time in her life she saw all the world, through a succession of days, as a circle of endless blue waters, with the stars and planets and sun and moon rising sharply from its rim. Until one has had a voyage no one really understands that old Earth is a watery globe.... They ran into thirty hours of storm, which subsided, and then came a slow time among icebergs, and a hooting, dreary passage through fog. The first three icebergs were marvels, the rest bores; a passing collier out of her course and pitching heavily, a lonely black and dirty ship with a manner almost derelict, filled their thoughts for half a day. Their minds were in a state of tedious inactivity, eager for such small interests and only capable of such small interests. There was no hurry to talk, they agreed, no hurry at all, until they were settled away ahead there among the snows. "There we shall have plenty of time for everything...."
Came the landfall and then St. John's, and they found themselves side by side watching the town draw near. The thought of landing and transference to another ship refreshed them both....
They were going, Trafford said, in search of God, but it was far more like two children starting out upon a holiday.
§ 2
There was trouble and procrastination about the half-breed guides that Trafford had arranged should meet them at St. John's, and it was three weeks from their reaching Newfoundland before they got themselves and their guides and equipment and general stores aboard the boat for Port Dupré. Thence he had planned they should go in the Gibson schooner to Manivikovik, the Marconi station at the mouth of the Green River, and thence past the new pulp-mills up river to the wilderness. There were delays and a few trivial, troublesome complications in carrying out this scheme, but at last a day came when Trafford could wave good-bye to the seven people and eleven dogs which constituted the population of Peter Hammond's, that last rude outpost of civilization twenty miles above the pulp-mill, and turn his face in good earnest towards the wilderness.
Neither he nor Marjorie looked back at the headland for a last glimpse of the little settlement they were leaving. Each stared ahead over the broad, smooth sweep of water, broken by one transverse bar of foaming shallows, and scanned the low, tree-clad hills beyond that drew together at last in the distant gorge out of which the river came. The morning was warm and full of the promise of a hot noon, so that the veils they wore against the assaults of sand-flies and mosquitoes were already a little inconvenient. It seemed incredible in this morning glow that the wooded slopes along the shore of the lake were the border of a land in which nearly half the inhabitants die of starvation. The deep-laden canoes swept almost noiselessly through the water with a rhythmic alternation of rush and pause as the dripping paddles drove and returned. Altogether there were four long canoes and five Indian breeds in their party, and when they came to pass through shallows both Marjorie and Trafford took a paddle.
They came to the throat of the gorge towards noon, and found strong flowing deep water between its high purple cliffs. All hands had to paddle again, and it was only when they came to rest in a pool to eat a mid-day meal and afterwards to land upon a mossy corner for a stretch and a smoke, that Marjorie discovered the peculiar beauty of the rock about them. On the dull purplish-grey surfaces played the most extraordinary mist of luminous iridescence. It fascinated her. Here was a land whose common substance had this gemlike opalescence. But her attention was very soon withdrawn from these glancing splendours.
She had had to put aside her veil to eat, and presently she felt the vividly painful stabs of the black-fly and discovered blood upon her face. A bigger fly, the size and something of the appearance of a small wasp, with an evil buzz, also assailed her and Trafford. It was a bad corner for flies; the breeds even were slapping their wrists and swearing under the torment, and every one was glad to embark and push on up the winding gorge. It opened out for a time, and then the wooded shores crept in again, and in another half-hour they saw ahead of them a long rush of foaming waters among tumbled rocks that poured down from a brimming, splashing line of light against the sky. They crossed the river, ran the canoes into an eddy under the shelter of a big stone and began to unload. They had reached their first portage.
The rest of the first day was spent in packing and lugging first the cargoes and then the canoes up through thickets and over boulders and across stretches of reindeer moss for the better part of two miles to a camping ground about half-way up the rapids. Marjorie and Trafford tried to help with the carrying, but this evidently shocked and distressed the men too much, so they desisted and set to work cutting wood and gathering moss for the fires and bedding for the camp. When the iron stove was brought up the man who had carried it showed them how to put it up on stakes and start a fire in it, and then Trafford went to the river to get water, and Marjorie made a kind of flour cake in the frying-pan in the manner an American woman from the wilderness had once shown her, and boiled water for tea. The twilight had deepened to night while the men were still stumbling up the trail with the last two canoes.
It gave Marjorie a curiously homeless feeling to stand there in the open with the sunset dying away below the black scrubby outlines of the treetops uphill to the northwest, and to realize the nearest roof was already a day's toilsome journey away. The cool night breeze blew upon her bare face and arms--for now the insects had ceased from troubling and she had cast aside gloves and veil and turned up her sleeves to cook--and the air was full of the tumult of the rapids tearing seaward over the rocks below. Struggling through the bushes towards her was an immense, headless quadruped with unsteady legs and hesitating paces, two of the men carrying the last canoe. Two others were now assisting Trafford to put up the little tent that was to shelter her, and the fifth was kneeling beside her very solemnly and respectfully cutting slices of bacon for her to fry. The air was very sweet, and she wished she could sleep not in the tent but under the open sky.
It was queer, she thought, how much of the wrappings of civilization had slipped from them already. Every day of the journey from London had released them or deprived them--she hardly knew which--of a multitude of petty comforts and easy accessibilities. The afternoon toil uphill intensified the effect of having clambered up out of things--to this loneliness, this twilight openness, this simplicity.
The men ate apart at a fire they made for themselves, and after Trafford and Marjorie had supped on damper, bacon and tea, he smoked. They were both too healthily tired to talk very much. There was no moon but a frosty brilliance of stars, the air which had been hot and sultry at mid-day grew keen and penetrating, and after she had made him tell her the names of constellations she had forgotten, she suddenly perceived the wisdom of the tent, went into it--it was sweet and wonderful with sprigs of the Labrador tea-shrub--undressed, and had hardly rolled herself up into a cocoon of blankets before she was fast asleep.
She was awakened by a blaze of sunshine pouring into the tent, a smell of fried bacon and Trafford's voice telling her to get up. "They've gone on with the first loads," he said. "Get up, wrap yourself in a blanket, and come and bathe in the river. It's as cold as ice."
She blinked at him. "Aren't you stiff?" she asked.
"I was stiffer before I bathed," he said.
She took the tin he offered her. (They weren't to see china cups again for a year.) "It's woman's work getting tea," she said as she drank.
"You can't be a squaw all at once," said Trafford.
§ 3
After Marjorie had taken her dip, dried roughly behind a bush, twisted her hair into a pigtail and coiled it under her hat, she amused herself and Trafford as they clambered up through rocks and willows to the tent again by cataloguing her apparatus of bath and toilette at Sussex Square and tracing just when and how she had parted from each item on the way to this place.
"But I _say!_" she cried, with a sudden, sharp note of dismay, "we haven't soap! This is our last cake almost. I never thought of soap."
"Nor I," said Trafford.
He spoke again presently. "We don't turn back for soap," he said.
"We don't turn back for anything," said Marjorie. "Still--I didn't count on a soapless winter."
"I'll manage something," said Trafford, a little doubtfully. "Trust a chemist...."
That day they finished the portage and came out upon a wide lake with sloping shores and a distant view of snow-topped mountains, a lake so shallow that at times their loaded canoes scraped on the glaciated rock below and they had to alter their course. They camped in a lurid sunset; the night was warm and mosquitoes were troublesome, and towards morning came a thunderstorm and wind and rain.
The dawn broke upon a tearing race of waves and a wild drift of slanting rain sweeping across the lake before a gale. Marjorie peered out at this as one peers out under the edge of an umbrella. It was manifestly impossible to go on, and they did nothing that day but run up a canvas shelter for the men and shift the tent behind a thicket of trees out of the full force of the wind. The men squatted stoically, and smoked and yarned |
35338-8 | . Everything got coldly wet, and for the most part the Traffords sat under the tent and stared blankly at this summer day in Labrador.
"Now," said Trafford, "we ought to begin talking."
"There's nothing much to do else," said Marjorie.
"Only one can't begin," said Trafford.
He was silent for a time. "We're getting out of things," he said....
The next day began with a fine drizzle through which the sun broke suddenly about ten o'clock. They made a start at once, and got a good dozen miles up the lake before it was necessary to camp again. Both Marjorie and Trafford felt stiff and weary and uncomfortable all day, and secretly a little doubtful now of their own endurance. They camped on an island on turf amidst slippery rocks, and the next day were in a foaming difficult river again, with glittering shallows that obliged every one to get out at times to wade and push. All through the afternoon they were greatly beset by flies. And so they worked their way on through a third days' journey towards the silent inland of Labrador.
Day followed day of toilsome and often tedious travel; they fought rapids, they waited while the men stumbled up long portages under vast loads, going and returning, they camped and discussed difficulties and alternatives. The flies sustained an unrelenting persecution, until faces were scarred in spite of veils and smoke fires, until wrists and necks were swollen and the blood in a fever. As they got higher and higher towards the central plateau, the mid-day heat increased and the nights grew colder, until they would find themselves toiling, wet with perspiration, over rocks that sheltered a fringe of ice beneath their shadows. The first fatigues and lassitudes, the shrinking from cold water, the ache of muscular effort, gave place to a tougher and tougher endurance; skin seemed to have lost half its capacity for pain without losing a tithe of its discrimination, muscles attained a steely resilience; they were getting seasoned. "I don't feel philosophical," said Trafford, "but I feel well."
"We're getting out of things."
"Suppose we are getting out of our problems!..."
One day as they paddled across a mile-long pool, they saw three bears prowling in single file high up on the hillside. "Look," said the man, and pointed with his paddle at the big, soft, furry black shapes, magnified and startling in the clear air. All the canoes rippled to a stop, the men, at first still, whispered softly. One passed a gun to Trafford, who hesitated and looked at Marjorie.
The air of tranquil assurance about these three huge loafing monsters had a queer effect on Marjorie's mind. They made her feel that they were at home and that she was an intruder. She had never in her life seen any big wild animals except in a menagerie. She had developed a sort of unconscious belief that all big wild animals were in menageries nowadays, and this spectacle of beasts entirely at large startled her. There was never a bar between these creatures, she felt, and her sleeping self. They might, she thought, do any desperate thing to feeble men and women who came their way.
"Shall I take a shot?" asked Trafford.
"No," said Marjorie, pervaded by the desire for mutual toleration. "Let them be."
The big brutes disappeared in a gully, reappeared, came out against the skyline one by one and vanished.
"Too long a shot," said Trafford, handing back the gun....
Their journey lasted altogether a month. Never once did they come upon any human being save themselves, though in one place they passed the poles--for the most part overthrown--of an old Indian encampment. But this desolation was by no means lifeless. They saw great quantities of waterbirds, geese, divers, Arctic partridge and the like, they became familiar with the banshee cry of the loon. They lived very largely on geese and partridge. Then for a time about a string of lakes, the country was alive with migrating deer going south, and the men found traces of a wolf. They killed six caribou, and stayed to skin and cut them up and dry the meat to replace the bacon they had consumed, caught, fried and ate great quantities of trout, and became accustomed to the mysterious dance of the northern lights as the sunset afterglow faded.
Everywhere, except in the river gorges, the country displayed the low hummocky lines and tarn-like pools of intensely glaciated land; everywhere it was carpeted with reindeer moss growing upon peat and variegated by bushes of flowering, sweet-smelling Labrador tea. In places this was starred with little harebells and diversified by tussocks of heather and rough grass, and over the rocks trailed delicate dwarf shrubs and a very pretty and fragrant pink-flowered plant of which neither she nor Trafford knew the name. There was an astonishing amount of wild fruit, raspberries, cranberries, and a white kind of strawberry that was very delightful. The weather, after its first outbreak, remained brightly serene....
And at last it seemed fit to Trafford to halt and choose his winter quarters. He chose a place on the side of a low, razor-hacked rocky mountain ridge, about fifty feet above the river--which had now dwindled to a thirty-foot stream. His site was near a tributary rivulet that gave convenient water, in a kind of lap that sheltered between two rocky knees, each bearing thickets of willow and balsam. Not a dozen miles away from them now they reckoned was the Height of Land, the low watershed between the waters that go to the Atlantic and those that go to Hudson's Bay. Close beside the site he had chosen a shelf of rock ran out and gave a glimpse up the narrow rocky valley of the Green River's upper waters and a broad prospect of hill and tarn towards the south-east. North and north-east of them the country rose to a line of low crests, with here and there a yellowing patch of last year's snow, and across the valley were slopes covered in places by woods of stunted pine. It had an empty spaciousness of effect; the one continually living thing seemed to be the Green River, hurrying headlong, noisily, perpetually, in an eternal flight from this high desolation. Birds were rare here, and the insects that buzzed and shrilled and tormented among the rocks and willows in the gorge came but sparingly up the slopes to them.
"Here presently," said Trafford, "we shall be in peace."
"It is very lonely," said Marjorie.
"The nearer to God."
"Think! Not one of these hills has ever had a name."
"Well?"
"It might be in some other planet."
"Oh!--we'll christen them. That shall be Marjorie Ridge, and that Rag Valley. This space shall be--oh! Bayswater! Before we've done with it, this place and every feature of it will be as familiar as Sussex Square. More so,--for half the houses there would be stranger to us, if we could see inside them, than anything in this wilderness.... As familiar, say--as your drawing-room. That's better."
Marjorie made no answer, but her eyes went from the reindeer moss and scrub and thickets of the foreground to the low rocky ridges that bounded the view north and east of them. The scattered boulders, the tangles of wood, the barren upper slopes, the dust-soiled survivals of the winter's snowfall, all contributed to an effect at once carelessly desert and hopelessly untidy. She looked westward, and her memory was full of interminable streaming rapids, wastes of ice-striated rocks, tiresome struggles through woods and wild, wide stretches of tundra and tarn, trackless and treeless, infinitely desolate. It seemed to her that the sea coast was but a step from London and ten thousand miles away from her.
§ 4
The men had engaged to build the framework of hut and store shed before returning, and to this under Trafford's direction they now set themselves. They were all half-breeds, mingling with Indian with Scottish or French blood, sober and experienced men. Three were named Mackenzie, two brothers and a cousin, and another, Raymond Noyes, was a relation and acquaintance of that George Elson who was with Wallace and Leonidas Hubbard, and afterwards guided Mrs. Hubbard in her crossing of Labrador. The fifth was a boy of eighteen named Lean. They were all familiar with the idea of summer travel in this country; quite a number, a score or so that is to say, of adventurous people, including three or four women, had ventured far in the wake of the Hubbards into these great wildernesses during the decade that followed that first tragic experiment in which Hubbard died. But that any one not of Indian or Esquimaux blood should propose to face out the Labrador winter was a new thing to them. They were really very sceptical at the outset whether these two highly civilized-looking people would ever get up to the Height of Land at all, and it was still with manifest incredulity that they set about the building of the hut and the construction of the sleeping bunks for which they had brought up planking. A stream of speculative talk had flowed along beside Marjorie and Trafford ever since they had entered the Green River; and it didn't so much come to an end as get cut off at last by the necessity of their departure.
Noyes would stand, holding a hammer and staring at the narrow little berth he was fixing together.
"You'll not sleep in this," he said.
"I will," replied Marjorie.
"You'll come back with us."
"Not me."
"There'll be wolves come and howl."
"Let 'em."
"They'll come right up to the door here. Winter makes 'em hidjus bold."
Marjorie shrugged her shoulders.
"It's that cold I've known a man have his nose froze while he lay in bed," said Noyes.
"Up here?"
"Down the coast. But they say it's 'most as cold up here. Many's the man it's starved and froze."...
He and his companions told stories,--very circumstantial and pitiful stories, of Indian disasters. They were all tales of weariness and starvation, of the cessation of food, because the fishing gave out, because the caribou did not migrate by the customary route, because the man of a family group broke his wrist, and then of the start of all or some of the party to the coast to get help and provisions, of the straining, starving fugitives caught by blizzards, losing the track, devouring small vermin raw, gnawing their own skin garments until they toiled half-naked in the snow,--becoming cannibals, becoming delirious, lying down to die. Once there was an epidemic of influenza, and three families of seven and twenty people just gave up and starved and died in their lodges, and were found, still partly frozen, a patient, pitiful company, by trappers in the spring....
Such they said, were the common things that happened in a Labrador winter. Did the Traffords wish to run such risks?
A sort of propagandist enthusiasm grew up in the men. They felt it incumbent upon them to persuade the Traffords to return. They reasoned with them rather as one does with wilful children. They tried to remind them of the delights and securities of the world they were deserting. Noyes drew fancy pictures of the pleasures of London by way of contrast to the bitter days before them. "You've got everything there, everything. Suppose you feel a bit ill, you go out, and every block there's a drug store got everything--all the new rem'dies--p'raps twenty, thirty sorts of rem'dy. Lit up, nice. And chaps in collars--like gentlemen. Or you feel a bit dully and you go into the streets and there's people. Why! when I was in New York I used to spend hours looking at the people. Hours! And everything lit up, too. Sky signs! Readin' everywhere. You can spend hours and hours in New York----"
"London," said Marjorie.
"Well, London--just going about and reading the things they stick up. Every blamed sort of thing. Or you say, let's go somewhere. Let's go out and be a bit lively. See? Up you get on a car and there you are! Great big restaurants, blazing with lights, and you can't think of a thing to eat they haven't got. Waiters all round you, dressed tremendous, fair asking you to have more. Or you say, let's go to a theatre. Very likely," said Noyes, letting his imagination soar, "you order up one of these automobillies."
"By telephone," helped Trafford.
"By telephone," confirmed Noyes. "When I was in New York there was a telephone in each room in the hotel. Each room. I didn't use it ever, except once when they didn't answer--but there it was. I know about telephones all right...."
Why had they come here? None of the men were clear about that. Marjorie and Trafford would overhear them discussing this question at their fire night after night; they seemed to talk of nothing else. They indulged in the boldest hypotheses, even in the theory that Trafford knew of deposits of diamonds and gold, and would trust no one but his wife with the secret. They seemed also attracted by the idea that our two young people had "done something." Lean, with memories of some tattered sixpenny novel that had drifted into his hands from England, had even some notion of an elopement, of a pursuing husband or a vindictive wife. He was young and romantic, but it seemed incredible he should suggest that Marjorie was a royal princess. Yet there were moments when his manner betrayed a more than personal respect....
One night after a hard day's portage Mackenzie was inspired by a brilliant idea. "They got no children," he said, in a hoarse, exceptionally audible whisper. "It worries them. Them as is Catholics goes pilgrimages, but these ain't Catholics. See?"
"I can't stand that," said Marjorie. "It touches my pride. I've stood a good deal. Mr. Mackenzie!... Mr.... Mackenzie."
The voice at the men's fire stopped and a black head turned around. "What is it, Mrs. Trafford?" asked Mackenzie.
She held up four fingers. "Four!" she said.
"Eh?"
"Three sons and a daughter," said Marjorie.
Mackenzie did not take it in until his younger brother had repeated her words.
"And you've come from them to _this_.... Sir, what _have_ you come for?"
"We want to be here," shouted Trafford to their listening pause. Their silence was incredulous.
"We wanted to be alone together. There was too much--over there--too much everything."
Mackenzie, in silhouette against the fire, shook his head, entirely dissatisfied. He could not understand how there could be too much of anything. It was beyond a trapper's philosophy.
"Come back with us sir," said Noyes. "You'll weary of it...."
Noyes clung to the idea of dissuasion to the end. "I don't care to leave ye," he said, and made a sort of byword of it that served when there was nothing else to say.
He made it almost his last words. He turned back for another handclasp as the others under their light returning packs were filing down the hill.
"I don't care to leave ye," he said.
"Good luck!" said Trafford.
"You'll need it," said Noyes, and looked at Marjorie very gravely and intently before he turned about and marched off after his fellows....
Both Marjorie and Trafford felt a queer emotion, a sense of loss and desertion, a swelling in the throat, as that file of men receded over the rocky slopes, went down into a dip, reappeared presently small and remote cresting another spur, going on towards the little wood that hid the head of the rapids. They halted for a moment on the edge of the wood and looked back, then turned again one by one and melted stride by stride into the trees. Noyes was the last to go. He stood, in an attitude that spoke as plainly as words, "I don't care to leave ye." Something white waved and flickered; he had whipped out the letters they had given him for England, and he was waving them. Then, as if by an effort, he set himself to follow the others, and the two still watchers on the height above saw him no more.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
LONELY HUT
§ 1
Marjorie and Trafford walked slowly back to the hut. "There is much to do before the weather breaks," he said, ending a thoughtful silence. "Then we can sit inside there and talk about the things we need to talk about."
He added awkwardly: "Since we started, there has been so much to hold the attention. I remember a mood--an immense despair. I feel it's still somewhere at the back of things, waiting to be dealt with. It's our essential fact. But meanwhile we've been busy, looking at fresh things."
He paused. "Now it will be different perhaps...."
For nearly four weeks indeed they were occupied very closely, and crept into their bunks at night as tired as wholesome animals who drop to sleep. At any time the weather might break; already there had been two overcast days and a frowning conference of clouds in the north. When at last storms began they knew there would be nothing for it but to keep in the hut until the world froze up.
There was much to do to the hut. The absence of anything but stunted and impoverished timber and the limitation of time, had forbidden a log hut, and their home was really only a double framework, rammed tight between inner and outer frame with a mixture of earth and boughs and twigs of willow, pine and balsam. The floor was hammered earth carpeted with balsam twigs and a caribou skin. Outside and within wall and roof were faced with coarse canvas--that was Trafford's idea--and their bunks occupied two sides of the hut. Heating was done by the sheet-iron stove they had brought with them, and the smoke was carried out to the roof by a thin sheet-iron pipe which had come up outside a roll of canvas. They had made the roof with about the pitch of a Swiss châlet, and it was covered with nailed waterproof canvas, held down by a large number of big lumps of stone. Much of the canvassing still remained to do when the men went down, and then the Traffords used every scrap of packing-paper and newspaper that had come up with them and was not needed for lining the bunks in covering any crack or join in the canvas wall.
Two decadent luxuries, a rubber bath and two rubber hot-water bottles, hung behind the door. They were almost the only luxuries. Kettles and pans and some provisions stood on a shelf over the stove; there was also a sort of recess cupboard in the opposite corner, reserve clothes were in canvas trunks under the bunks, they kept their immediate supply of wood under the eaves just outside the door, and there was a big can of water between stove and door. When the winter came they would have to bring in ice from the stream.
This was their home. The tent that had sheltered Marjorie on the way up was erected close to this hut to serve as a rude scullery and outhouse, and they also made a long, roughly thatched roof with a canvas cover, supported on stakes, to shelter the rest of the stores. The stuff in tins and cases and jars they left on the ground under this; the rest--the flour, candles, bacon, dried caribou beef, and so forth, they hung, as they hoped, out of the reach of any prowling beast. And finally and most important was the wood pile. This they accumulated to the north and east of the hut, and all day long with a sort of ant-like perseverance Trafford added to it from the thickets below. Once or twice, however, tempted by the appearance of birds, he went shooting, and one day he got five geese that they spent a day upon, plucking, cleaning, boiling and putting up in all their store of empty cans, letting the fat float and solidify on the top to preserve this addition to their provision until the advent of the frost rendered all other preservatives unnecessary. They also tried to catch trout down in the river below, but though they saw many fish the catch was less than a dozen.
It was a discovery to both of them to find how companionable these occupations were, how much more side by side they could be amateurishly cleaning out a goose and disputing about its cooking, than they had ever contrived to be in Sussex Square.
"These things are so infernally interesting," said Trafford, surveying the row of miscellaneous cans upon the stove he had packed with disarticulated goose. "But we didn't come here to picnic. All this is eating us up. I have a memory of some immense tragic purpose----"
"That tin's _boiling!_" screamed Marjorie sharply.
He resumed his thread after an active interlude.
"We'll keep the wolf from the door," he said.
"Don't talk of wolves!" said Marjorie.
"It is only when men have driven away the wolf from the door--oh! altogether away, that they find despair in the sky? I wonder----"
"What?" asked Marjorie in his pause.
"I wonder if there is nothing really in life but this, the food hunt and the love hunt. Is life just all hunger and need, and are we left with nothing--nothing at all--when these things are done?... We're infernally uncomfortable here."
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Marjorie.
"Think of your carpets at home! Think of the great, warm, beautiful house that wasn't big enough!--And yet here, we're happy."
"We _are_ happy," said Marjorie, struck by the thought. "Only----"
"Yes."
"I'm afraid. And I long for the children. And the wind _nips_."
"It may be those are good things for us. No! This is just a lark as yet, Marjorie. It's still fresh and full of distractions. The discomforts are amusing. Presently we'll get used to it. Then we'll talk out--what we have to talk out.... I say, wouldn't it keep and improve this goose of ours if we put in a little brandy?"
§ 2
The weather broke at last. One might say it smashed itself over their heads. There came an afternoon darkness swift and sudden, a wild gale and an icy sleet that gave place in the night to snow, so that Trafford looked out next morning to see a maddening chaos of small white flakes, incredibly swift, against something that was neither darkness nor light. Even with the door but partly ajar a cruelty of cold put its claw within, set everything that was moveable swaying and clattering, and made Marjorie hasten shuddering to heap fresh logs upon the fire. Once or twice Trafford went out to inspect tent and roof and store-shed, several times wrapped to the nose he battled his way for fresh wood, and for the rest of the blizzard they kept to the hut. It was slumberously stuffy, but comfortingly full of flavours of tobacco and food. There were two days of intermission and a day of gusts and icy sleet again, turning with one extraordinary clap of thunder to a wild downpour of dancing lumps of ice, and then a night when it seemed all Labrador, earth and sky together, was in hysterical protest against inconceivable wrongs.
And then the break was over; the annual freezing-up was accomplished, winter had established itself, the snowfall moderated and ceased, and an ice-bound world shone white and sunlit under a cloudless sky.
§ 3
Through all that time they got no further with the great discussion for which they had faced that solitude. They attempted beginnings.
"Where had we got to when we left England?" cried Marjorie. "You couldn't work, you couldn't rest--you hated our life."
"Yes, I know. I had a violent hatred of the lives we were leading. I thought--we had to get away. To think.... But things don't leave us alone here."
He covered his face with his hands.
"Why did we come here?" he asked.
"You wanted--to get out of things."
"Yes. But with you.... Have we, after all, got out of things at all? I said coming up, perhaps we were leaving our own problem behind. In exchange for other problems--old problems men have had before. We've got nearer necessity; that's all. Things press on us just as much. There's nothing more fundamental in wild nature, nothing profounder--only something earlier. One doesn't get out of life by going here or there.... But I wanted to get you away--from all things that had such a hold on you....
"When one lies awake at nights, then one seems to get down into things...."
He went to the door, opened it, and stood looking out. Against a wan daylight the snow was falling noiselessly and steadily.
"Everything goes on," he said.... "Relentlessly...."
§ 4
That was as far as they had got when the storms ceased and they came out again into an air inexpressibly fresh and sharp and sweet, and into a world blindingly clean and golden white under the rays of the morning sun.
"We will build a fire out here," said Marjorie; "make a great pile. There is no reason at all why we shouldn't live outside all through the day in such weather as this."
§ 5
One morning Trafford found the footmarks of some catlike creature in the snow near the bushes where he was accustomed to get firewood; they led away very plainly up the hill, and after breakfast he took his knife and rifle and snowshoes and went after the lynx--for that he decided the animal must be. There was no urgent reason why he should want to kill a lynx, unless perhaps that killing it made the store shed a trifle safer; but it was the first trail of any living thing for many days; it promised excitement; some primordial instinct perhaps urged him.
The morning was a little overcast, and very cold between the gleams of wintry sunshine. "Good-bye, dear wife!" he said, and then as she remembered afterwards came back a dozen yards to kiss her. "I'll not be long," he said. "The beast's prowling, and if it doesn't get wind of me I ought to find it in an hour." He hesitated for a moment. "I'll not be long," he repeated, and she had an instant's wonder whether he hid from her the same dread of loneliness that she concealed. Or perhaps he only knew her secret. Up among the tumbled rocks he turned, and she was still watching him. "Good-bye!" he cried and waved, and the willow thickets closed about him.
She forced herself to the petty duties of the day, made up the fire from the pile he had left for her, set water to boil, put the hut in order, brought out sheets and blankets to air and set herself to wash up. She wished she had been able to go with him. The sky cleared presently, and the low December sun lit all the world about her, but it left her spirit desolate.
She did not expect him to return until mid-day, and she sat herself down on a log before the fire to darn a pair of socks as well as she could. For a time this unusual occupation held her attention and then her hands became slow and at last inactive, and she fell into reverie. She thought at first of her children and what they might be doing, in England across there to the east it would be about five hours later, four o'clock in the afternoon, and the children would be coming home through the warm muggy London sunshine with Fraulein Otto to tea. She wondered if they had the proper clothes, if they were well; were they perhaps quarrelling or being naughty or skylarking gaily across the Park. Of course Fraulein Otto was all right, quite to be trusted, absolutely trustworthy, and their grandmother would watch for a flushed face or an irrational petulance or any of the little signs that herald trouble with more than a mother's instinctive alertness. No need to worry about the children, no need whatever.... The world of London opened out behind these thoughts; it was so queer to think that she was in almost the same latitude as the busy bright traffic of the autumn season in Kensington Gore; that away there in ten thousand cleverly furnished drawing-rooms the ringing tea things were being set out for the rustling advent of smart callers and the quick leaping gossip. And there would be all sorts of cakes and little things; for a while her mind ran on cakes and little things, and she thought in particular whether it wasn't time to begin cooking.... Not yet. What was it she had been thinking about? Ah! the Solomonsons and the Capeses and the Bernards and the Carmels and the Lees. Would they talk of her and Trafford? It would be strange to go back to it all. Would they go back to it all? She found herself thinking intently of Trafford.
What a fine human being he was! And how touchingly human! The thoughts of his moments of irritation, his baffled silences, filled her with a wild passion of tenderness. She had disappointed him; all that life failed to satisfy him. Dear master of her life! what was it he needed? She too wasn't satisfied with life, but while she had been able to assuage herself with a perpetual series of petty excitements, theatres, new books and new people, meetings, movements, dinners, shows, he had grown to an immense discontent. He had most of the things men sought, wealth, respect, love, children.... So many men might have blunted their heart-ache with--adventures. There were pretty women, clever women, unoccupied women. She felt she wouldn't have minded--_much_--if it made him happy.... It was so wonderful he loved her still.... It wasn't that he lacked occupation; on the whole he overworked. His business interests were big and wide. Ought he to go into politics? Why was it that the researches that had held him once, could hold him now no more? That was the real pity of it. Was she to blame for that? She couldn't state a case against herself, and yet she felt she was to blame. She had taken him away from those things, forced him to make money....
She sat chin on hand staring into the fire, the sock forgotten on her knee.
She could not weigh justice between herself and him. If he was unhappy it was her fault. She knew if he was unhappy it was no excuse that she had not known, had been misled, had a right to her own instincts and purposes. She had got to make him happy. But what was she to do, what was there for her to do?...
Only he could work out his own salvation, and until he had light, all she could do was to stand by him, help him, cease to irritate him, watch, wait. Anyhow she could at least mend his socks as well as possible, so that the threads would not chafe him....
She flashed to her feet. What was that?
It seemed to her she had heard the sound of a shot, and a quick brief wake of echoes. She looked across the icy waste of the river, and then up the tangled slopes of the mountain. Her heart was beating very fast. It must have been up there, and no doubt he had killed his beast. Some shadow of doubt she would not admit crossed that obvious suggestion.
This wilderness was making her as nervously responsive as a creature of the wild.
Came a second shot; this time there was no doubt of it. Then the desolate silence closed about her again.
She stood for a long time staring at the shrubby slopes that rose to the barren rock wilderness of the purple mountain crest. She sighed deeply at last, and set herself to make up the fire and prepare for the mid-day meal. Once far away across the river she heard the howl of a wolf.
Time seemed to pass very slowly that day. She found herself going repeatedly to the space between the day tent and the sleeping hut from which she could see the stunted wood that had swallowed him up, and after what seemed a long hour her watch told her it was still only half-past twelve. And the fourth or fifth time that she went to look out she was set atremble again by the sound of a third shot. And then at regular intervals out of that distant brown purple jumble of thickets against the snow came two more shots. "Something has happened," she said, "something has happened," and stood rigid. Then she became active, seized the rifle that was always at hand when she was alone, fired into the sky and stood listening.
Prompt come an answering shot.
"He wants me," said Marjorie. "Something----Perhaps he has killed something too big to bring!"
She was for starting at once, and then remembered this was not the way of the wilderness.
She thought and moved very rapidly. Her mind catalogued possible requirements, rifle, hunting knife, the oilskin bag with matches, and some chunks of dry paper, the rucksack--and he would be hungry. She took a saucepan and a huge chunk of cheese and biscuit. Then a brandy flask is sometimes handy--one never knows. Though nothing was wrong, of course. Needles and stout thread, and some cord. Snowshoes. A waterproof cloak could be easily carried. Her light hatchet for wood. She cast about to see if there was anything else. She had almost forgotten cartridges--and a revolver. Nothing more. She kicked a stray brand or so into the fire, put on some more wood, damped the fire with an armful of snow to make it last longer, and set out towards the willows into which he had vanished.
There was a rustling and snapping of branches as she pushed her way through the bushes, a little stir that died insensibly into quiet again; and then the camping place became very still....
Scarcely a sound occurred, except for the little shuddering and stirring of the fire, and the reluctant, infrequent drip from the icicles along the sunny edge of the log hut roof. About one o'clock the amber sunshine faded out altogether, a veil of clouds thickened and became greyly ominous, and a little after two the first flakes of a snowstorm fell hissing into the fire. A wind rose and drove the multiplying snowflakes in whirls and eddies before it. The icicles ceased to drip, but one or two broke and fell with a weak tinkling. A deep soughing, a shuddering groaning of trees and shrubs, came ever and again out of the ravine, and the powdery snow blew like puffs of smoke from the branches.
By four the fire was out, and the snow was piling high in the darkling twilight against tent and hut....
§ 6
Trafford's trail led Marjorie through the thicket of dwarf willows and down to the gully of the rivulet which they had called Marjorie Trickle; it had long since become a trough of snow-covered rotten ice; the trail crossed this and, turning sharply uphill, went on until it was clear of shrubs and trees, and in the windy open of the upper slopes it crossed a ridge and came over the lip of a large desolate valley with slopes of ice and icy snow. Here she spent some time in following his loops back on the homeward trail before she saw what was manifestly the final trail running far away out across the snow, with the spoor of the lynx, a lightly-dotted line, to the right of it. She followed this suggestion of the trail, put on her snowshoes, and shuffled her way across this valley, which opened as she proceeded. She hoped that over the ridge she would find Trafford, and scanned the sky for the faintest discolouration of a fire, but there was none. That seemed odd to her, but the wind was in her face, and perhaps it beat the smoke down. Then as her eyes scanned the hummocky ridge ahead, she saw something, something very intent and still, that brought her heart into her mouth. It was a big, grey wolf, standing with back haunched and head down, watching and winding something beyond there, out of sight.
Marjorie had an instinctive fear of wild animals, and it still seemed dreadful to her that they should go at large, uncaged. She suddenly wanted Trafford violently, wanted him by her side. Also she thought of leaving the trail, going back to the bushes. She had to take herself in hand. In the wastes one did not fear wild beasts. One had no fear of them. But why not fire a shot to let him know she was near?
The beast flashed round with an animal's instantaneous change of pose, and looked at her. For a couple of seconds, perhaps, woman and brute regarded one another across a quarter of a mile of snowy desolation.
Suppose it came towards her!
She would fire--and she would fire at it. She made a guess at the range and aimed very carefully. She saw the snow fly two yards ahead of the grisly shape, and then in an instant it had vanished over the crest.
She reloaded, and stood for a moment waiting for Trafford's answer. No answer came. "Queer!" she whispered, "queer!"--and suddenly such a horror of anticipation assailed her that she started running and floundering through the snow to escape it. Twice she called his name, and once she just stopped herself from firing a shot.
Over the ridge she would find him. Surely she would find him over the ridge.
She found herself among rocks, and there was a beaten and trampled place where Trafford must have waited and crouched. Then on and down a slope of tumbled boulders. There came a patch where he had either thrown himself down or fallen.
It seemed to her he must have been running....
Suddenly, a hundred feet or so away, she saw a patch of violently disturbed snow--snow stained a dreadful colour, a snow of scarlet crystals! Three strides and Trafford was in sight.
She had a swift conviction he was dead. He was lying in a crumpled attitude on a patch of snow between convergent rocks, and the lynx, a mass of blood smeared silvery fur, was in some way mixed up with him. She saw as she came nearer that the snow was disturbed round about them, and discoloured copiously, yellow widely, and in places bright red, with congealed and frozen blood. She felt no fear now, and no emotion; all her mind was engaged with the clear, bleak perception of the fact before her. She did not care to call to him again. His head was hidden by the lynx's body, it was as if he was burrowing underneath the creature; his legs were twisted about each other in a queer, unnatural attitude.
Then, as she dropped off a boulder, and came nearer, Trafford moved. A hand came out and gripped the rifle beside him; he suddenly lifted a dreadful face, horribly scarred and torn, and crimson with frozen blood; he pushed the grey beast aside, rose on an elbow, wiped his sleeve across his eyes, stared at her, grunted, and flopped forward. He had fainted.
She was now as clear-minded and as self-possessed as a woman in a shop. In another moment she was kneeling by his side. She saw, by the position of his knife and the huge rip in the beast's body, that he had stabbed the lynx to death as it clawed his head; he must have shot and wounded it and then fallen upon it. His knitted cap was torn to ribbons, and hung upon his neck. Also his leg was manifestly injured; how, she could not tell. It was chiefly evident he must freeze if he lay here. It seemed to her that perhaps he had pulled the dead brute over him to protect his torn skin from the extremity of cold. The lynx was already rigid, its clumsy paws asprawl--the torn skin and clot upon Trafford's face was stiff as she put her hands about his head to raise him. She turned him over on his back--how heavy he seemed!--and forced brandy between his teeth. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she poured a little brandy on his wounds.
She glanced at his leg, which was surely broken, and back at his face. Then she gave him more brandy and his eyelids flickered. He moved his hand weakly. "The blood," he said, "kept getting in my eyes."
She gave him brandy once again, wiped his face and glanced at his leg. Something ought to be done to that she thought. But things must be done in order.
She stared up at the darkling sky with its grey promise of snow, and down the slopes of the mountain. Clearly they must stay the night here. They were too high for wood among these rocks, but three or four hundred yards below there were a number of dwarfed fir trees. She had brought an axe, so that a fire was possible. Should she go back to camp and get the tent?
Trafford was trying to speak again. "I got----" he said.
"Yes?"
"Got my leg in that crack. Damn--damned nuisance."
Was he able to advise her? She looked at him, and then perceived she must bind up his head and face. She knelt behind him and raised his head on her knee. She had a thick silk neck muffler, and this she supplemented by a band she cut and tore from her inner vest. She bound this, still warm from her body, about him, wrapped her cloak round him. The next thing was a fire. Five yards away, perhaps, a great mass of purple gabbro hung over a patch of nearly snowless moss. A hummock to the westward offered shelter from the weakly bitter wind, the icy draught, that was soughing down the valley. Always in Labrador, if you can, you camp against a rock surface; it shelters you from the wind, reflects your fire, guards your back.
"Rag!" she said.
"Rotten hole," said Trafford.
"What?" she cried sharply.
"Got you in a rotten hole," he said. "Eh?"
"Listen," she said, and shook his shoulder. "Look! I want to get you up against that rock."
"Won't make much difference," said Trafford, and opened his eyes. "Where?" he asked.
"There."
He remained quite quiet for a second perhaps. "Listen to me," he said. "Go back to camp."
"Yes," she said.
"Go back to camp. Make a pack of all the strongest food--strenthin'--strengthrin' food--you know?" He seemed troubled to express himself.
"Yes," she said.
"Down the river. Down--down. Till you meet help."
"Leave you?"
He nodded his head and winced.
"You're always plucky," he said. "Look facts in the face. Kiddies. Thought it over while you were coming." A tear oozed from his eye. "Not be a fool, Madge. Kiss me good-bye. Not be a fool. I'm done. Kids."
She stared at him and her spirit was a luminous mist of tears. "You old _coward_," she said in his ear, and kissed the little patch of rough and bloody cheek beneath his eye. Then she knelt up beside him. "_I'm_ boss now, old man," she said. "I want to get you to that place there under the rock. If I drag, can you help?"
He answered obstinately: "You'd better go."
"I'll make you comfortable first," she answered, "anyhow."
He made an enormous effort, and then with her quick help and with his back to her knee, had raised himself on his elbows.
"And afterwards?" he asked.
"Build a fire."
"Wood?"
"Down there."
"Two bits of wood tied on my leg--splints. Then I can drag myself. See? Like a blessed old walrus."
He smiled, and she kissed his bandaged face again.
"Else it hurts," he apologized, "more than I can stand."
She stood up again, thought, put his rifle and knife to his hand for fear of that lurking wolf, abandoning her own rifle with an effort, and went striding and leaping from rock to rock towards the trees below. She made the chips fly, and was presently towing three venerable pine dwarfs, bumping over rock and crevice, back to Trafford. She flung them down, stood for a moment bright and breathless, then set herself to hack off the splints he needed from the biggest stem. "Now," she said, coming to him.
"A fool," he remarked, "would have made the splints down there. You're--_good_, Marjorie."
She lugged his leg out straight, put it into the natural and least painful pose, padded it with moss and her torn handkerchief, and bound it up. As she did so a handful of snowflakes came whirling about them. She was now braced up to every possibility. "It never rains," she said grimly, "but it pours," and went on with her bone-setting. He was badly weakened by pain and shock, and once he swore at her sharply. "Sorry," he said.
She rolled him over on his chest, and left him to struggle to the shelter of the rock while she went for more wood.
The sky alarmed her. The mountains up the valley were already hidden by driven rags of slaty snowstorms. This time she found a longer but easier path for dragging her boughs and trees; she determined she would not start the fire until nightfall, nor waste any time in preparing food until then. There were dead boughs for kindling--more than enough. It was snowing quite fast by the time she got up to him with her second load, and a premature twilight already obscured and exaggerated the rocks and mounds about her. She gave some of her cheese to Trafford, and gnawed some herself on her way down to the wood again. She regretted that she had brought neither candles nor lantern, because then she might have kept on until the cold of night stopped her, and she reproached herself bitterly because she had brought no tea. She could forgive herself the lantern, she had never expected to be out after dark, but the tea was inexcusable. She muttered self-reproaches while she worked like two men among the trees, panting puffs of mist that froze upon her lips and iced the knitted wool that covered her chin. Why don't they teach a girl to handle an axe?...
When at last the wolfish cold of the Labrador night had come, it found Trafford and Marjorie seated almost warmly on a bed of pine boughs between the sheltering dark rock behind and a big but well husbanded fire in front, drinking a queer-tasting but not unsavory soup of lynx-flesh, that she had fortified with the remainder of the brandy. Then they tried roast lynx and ate a little, and finished with some scraps of cheese and deep draughts of hot water. Then--oh Tyburnia and Chelsea and all that is becoming!--they smoked Trafford's pipe for alternate minutes, and Marjorie found great comfort in it.
The snowstorm poured incessantly out of the darkness to become flakes of burning fire in the light of the flames, flakes that vanished magically, but it only reached them and wetted them in occasional gusts. What did it matter for the moment if the dim snow-heaps rose and rose about them? A glorious fatigue, an immense self-satisfaction possessed Marjorie; she felt that they had both done well.
"I am not afraid of to-morrow now," she said at last--a thought matured. "_No!_"
Trafford had the pipe and did not speak for a moment. "Nor I," he said at last. "Very likely we'll get through with it." He added after a pause: "I thought I was done for. A man--loses heart. After a loss of blood."
"The leg's better?"
"Hot as fire." His humour hadn't left him. "It's a treat," he said. "The hottest thing in Labrador."
"I've been a good squaw this time, old man?" she asked suddenly.
He seemed not to hear her; then his lips twitched and he made a feeble movement for her hand. "I cursed you," he said....
She slept, but on a spring as it were, lest the fire should fall. She replenished it with boughs, tucked in the half-burnt logs, and went to sleep again. Then it seemed to her that some invisible hand was pouring a thin spirit on the flames that made them leap and crackle and spread north and south until they filled the heavens. Her eyes were open and the snowstorm overpast, leaving the sky clear, and all the westward heaven alight with the trailing, crackling, leaping curtains of the Aurora, brighter than she had ever seen them before. Quite clearly visible beyond the smoulder of the fire, a wintry waste of rock and snow, boulder beyond boulder, passed into a dun obscurity. The mountain to the right of them lay long and white and stiff, a shrouded death. All earth was dead and waste and nothing, and the sky alive and coldly marvellous, signalling and astir. She watched the changing, shifting colours, and they made her think of the gathering banners of inhuman hosts, the stir and marshalling of icy giants for ends stupendous and indifferent to all the trivial impertinence of man's existence....
That night the whole world of man seemed small and shallow and insecure to her, beyond comparison. One came, she thought, but just a little way out of its warm and sociable cities hither, and found this homeless wilderness; one pricked the thin appearances of life with microscope or telescope and came to an equal strangeness. All the pride and hope of human life goes to and fro in a little shell of air between this ancient globe of rusty nickel-steel and the void of space; faint specks we are within a film; we quiver between the atom and the infinite, being hardly more substantial than the glow within an oily skin that drifts upon the water. The wonder and the riddle of it! Here she and Trafford were! Phantasmal shapes of unsubstantial fluid thinly skinned against evaporation and wrapped about with woven wool and the skins of beasts, that yet reflected and perceived, suffered and sought to understand; that held a million memories, framed thoughts that plumbed the deeps of space and time,--and another day of snow or icy wind might leave them just scattered bones and torn rags gnawed by a famishing wolf!...
She felt a passionate desire to pray....
She glanced at Trafford beside her, and found him awake and staring. His face was very pale and strange in that livid, flickering light. She would have spoken, and then she saw his lips were moving, and something, something she did not understand, held her back from doing so.
§ 7
The bleak, slow dawn found Marjorie intently busy. She had made up the fire, boiled water and washed and dressed Trafford's wounds, and made another soup of lynx. But Trafford had weakened in the night, the stuff nauseated him, he refused it and tried to smoke and was sick, and then sat back rather despairfully after a second attempt to persuade her to leave him there to die. This failure of his spirit distressed her and a little astonished her, but it only made her more resolute to go through with her work. She had awakened cold, stiff and weary, but her fatigue vanished with movement; she toiled for an hour replenishing her pile of fuel, made up the fire, put his gun ready to his hand, kissed him, abused him lovingly for the trouble he gave her until his poor torn face lit in response, and then parting on a note of cheerful confidence set out to return to the hut. She found the way not altogether easy to make out, wind and snow had left scarcely a trace of their tracks, and her mind was full of the stores she must bring and the possibility of moving him nearer to the hut. She was startled to see by the fresh, deep spoor along the ridge how near the wolf had dared approach them in the darkness....
Ever and again Marjorie had to halt and look back to get her direction right. As it was she came through the willow scrub nearly half a mile above the hut, and had to follow the steep bank of the frozen river down. At one place she nearly slipped upon an icy slope of rock.
One possibility she did not dare to think of during that time; a blizzard now would cut her off absolutely from any return to Trafford. Short of that she believed she could get through.
Her quick mind was full of all she had to do. At first she had thought chiefly of his immediate necessities, of food and some sort of shelter. She had got a list of things in her head--meat extract, bandages, corrosive sublimate by way of antiseptic, brandy, a tin of beef, some bread and so forth; she went over that several times to be sure of it, and then for a time she puzzled about a tent. She thought she could manage a bale of blankets on her back, and that she could rig a sleeping tent for herself and Trafford with one and some bent sticks. The big tent would be too much to strike and shift. And then her mind went on to a bolder enterprise, which was to get him home. The nearer she could bring him to the log hut, the nearer they would be to supplies. She cast about for some sort of sledge. The snow was too soft and broken for runners, especially among the trees, but if she could get a flat of smooth wood she thought she might be able to drag him. She decided to try the side of her bunk. She could easily get that off. She would have, of course, to run it edgewise through the thickets and across the ravine, but after that she would have almost clear going until she reached the steep place of broken rocks within two hundred yards of him. The idea of a sledge grew upon her, and she planned to nail a rope along the edge and make a kind of harness for herself.
She found the camping-place piled high with drifted snow, which had invaded tent and hut, and that some beast, a wolverine she guessed, had been into the hut, devoured every candle-end and the uppers of Trafford's well-greased second boots, and had then gone to the corner of the store shed and clambered up to the stores. She made no account of its depredations there, but set herself to make a sledge and get her supplies together. There was a gleam of sunshine, but she did not like the look of the sky, and she was horribly afraid of what might be happening to Trafford. She carried her stuff through the wood and across the ravine, and returned for her improvised sledge. She was still struggling with that among the trees when it began to snow again.
It was hard then not to be frantic in her efforts. As it was, she packed her stuff so loosely on the planking that she had to repack it, and she started without putting on her snowshoes, and floundered fifty yards before she discovered that omission. The snow was now falling fast, darkling the sky and hiding everything but objects close at hand, and she had to use all her wits to determine her direction; she knew she must go down a long slope and then up to the ridge, and it came to her as a happy inspiration that if she bore to the left she might strike some recognizable vestige of her morning's trail. She had read of people walking in circles when they have no light or guidance, and that troubled her until she bethought herself of the little compass on her watch chain. By that she kept her direction. She wished very much she had timed herself across the waste, so that she could tell when she approached the ridge.
Soon her back and shoulders were aching violently, and the rope across her chest was tugging like some evil-tempered thing. But she did not dare to rest. The snow was now falling thick and fast, the flakes traced white spirals and made her head spin, so that she was constantly falling away to the south-westward and then correcting herself by the compass. She tried to think how this zig-zagging might affect her course, but the snow whirls confused her mind and a growing anxiety would not let her pause to think. She felt blinded; it seemed to be snowing inside her eyes so that she wanted to rub them. Soon the ground must rise to the ridge, she told herself; it must surely rise. Then the sledge came bumping at her heels and she perceived she was going down hill. She consulted the compass, and she found she was facing south. She turned sharply to the right again. The snowfall became a noiseless, pitiless torture to sight and mind.
The sledge behind her struggled to hold her back, and the snow balled under her snowshoes. She wanted to stop and rest, take thought, sit for a moment. She struggled with herself and kept on. She tried walking with shut eyes, and tripped and came near sprawling. "Oh God!" she cried, "oh God!" too stupefied for more articulate prayers.
Would the rise of the ground to the ribs of rock never come?
A figure, black and erect, stood in front of her suddenly, and beyond appeared a group of black, straight antagonists. She staggered on towards them, gripping her rifle with some muddled idea of defence, and in another moment she was brushing against the branches of a stunted fir, which shed thick lumps of snow upon her feet. What trees were these? Had she ever passed any trees? No! There were no trees on her way to Trafford....
She began whimpering like a tormented child. But even as she wept she turned her sledge about to follow the edge of the wood. She was too much downhill, she thought and she must bear up again.
She left the trees behind, made an angle uphill to the right, and was presently among trees again. Again she left them and again came back to them. She screamed with anger at them and twitched her sledge away. She wiped at the snowstorm with her arm as though she would wipe it away. She wanted to stamp on the universe....
And she ached, she ached....
Something caught her eye ahead, something that gleamed; it was exactly like a long, bare rather pinkish bone standing erect on the ground. Just because it was strange and queer she ran forward to it. Then as she came nearer she perceived it was a streak of barked trunk; a branch had been torn off a pine tree and the bark stripped down to the root. And then her foot hit against a freshly hewn stump, and then came another, poking its pinkish wounds above the snow. And there were chips! This filled her with wonder. Some one had been cutting wood! There must be Indians or trappers near, she thought, and then realized the wood-cutter could be none other than herself.
She turned to the right and saw the rocks rising steeply close at hand. "Oh Rag!" she cried, and fired her rifle in the air.
Ten seconds, twenty seconds, and then so loud and near it amazed her, came his answering shot. It sounded like the hillside bursting.
In another moment she had discovered the trail she had made overnight and that morning by dragging firewood. It was now a shallow soft white trench. Instantly her despair and fatigue had gone from her. Should she take a load of wood with her? she asked herself, in addition to the weight behind her, and had a better idea. She would unload and pile her stuff here, and bring him down on the sledge closer to the wood. She looked about and saw two rocks that diverged with a space between. She flashed schemes. She would trample the snow hard and flat, put her sledge on it, pile boughs and make a canopy of blanket overhead and behind. Then a fire in front.
She saw her camp admirable. She tossed her provisions down and ran up the broad windings of her pine-tree trail to Trafford, with the unloaded sledge bumping behind her. She ran as lightly as though she had done nothing that day.
She found him markedly recovered, weak and quiet, with snow drifting over his feet, his rifle across his knees, and his pipe alight. "Back already," he said, "but----"
He hesitated. "No grub?"
She knelt over him, gave his rough unshaven cheek a swift kiss, and very rapidly explained her plan.
§ 8
In three days' time they were back at the hut, and the last two days they wore blue spectacles because of the mid-day glare of the sunlit snow.
It amazed Marjorie to discover as she lay awake in the camp on the edge of the ravine close to the hut to which she had lugged Trafford during the second day, that she was deeply happy. It was preposterous that she should be so, but those days of almost despairful stress were irradiated now by a new courage. She was doing this thing, against all Labrador and the snow-driving wind that blew from the polar wilderness, she was winning. It was a great discovery to her that hardship and effort almost to the breaking-point could ensue in so deep a satisfaction. She lay and thought how deep and rich life had become for her, as though in all this effort and struggle some unsuspected veil had been torn away. She perceived again, but now with no sense of desolation, that same infinite fragility of life which she had first perceived when she had watched the Aurora Borealis flickering up the sky. Beneath that realization and carrying it, as a river flood may carry scum, was a sense of herself as something deeper, greater, more enduring than mountain or wilderness or sky, or any of those monstrous forms of nature that had dwarfed her physical self to nothingness.
She had a persuasion of self detachment and illumination, and withal of self-discovery. She saw her life of time and space for what it was. Away in London the children, with the coldest of noses and the gayest of spirits, would be scampering about their bedrooms in the mild morning sunlight of a London winter; Elsie, the parlourmaid, would be whisking dexterous about the dining-room, the bacon would be cooking and the coffee-mill at work, the letters of the morning delivery perhaps just pattering into the letter-box, and all the bright little household she had made, with all the furniture she had arranged, all the characteristic decoration she had given it, all the clever convenient arrangements, would be getting itself into action for another day--and _it wasn't herself!_ It was the extremest of her superficiality.
She had come out of all that, and even so it seemed she had come out of herself; this weary woman lying awake on the balsam boughs with a brain cleared by underfeeding and this continuous arduous bath of toil in snow-washed, frost cleansed, starry air, this, too, was no more than a momentarily clarified window for her unknown and indefinable reality. What was that reality? what was she herself? She became interested in framing an answer to that, and slipped down from the peace of soul she had attained. Her serenity gave way to a reiteration of this question, reiterations increasing and at last oppressing like the snowflakes of a storm, perpetual whirling repetitions that at last confused her and hid the sky....
She fell asleep....
§ 9
With their return to the hut, Marjorie had found herself encountering a new set of urgencies. In their absence that wretched little wolverine had found great plenty and happiness in the tent and store-shed; its traces were manifest nearly everywhere, and it had particularly assailed the candles, after a destructive time among the frozen caribou beef. It had clambered up on the packages of sardines and jumped thence on to a sloping pole that it could claw along into the frame of the roof. She rearranged the packages, but that was no good. She could not leave Trafford in order to track the brute down, and for a night or so she could not think of any way of checking its depredations. It came each night.... Trafford kept her close at home. She had expected that when he was back in his bunk, secure and warm, he would heal rapidly, but instead he suddenly developed all the symptoms of a severe feverish cold, and his scars, which had seemed healing, became flushed and ugly-looking. Moreover, there was something wrong with his leg, an ominous ache that troubled her mind. Every woman, she decided, ought to know how to set a bone. He was unable to sleep by reason of these miseries, though very desirous of doing so. He became distressingly weak and inert, he ceased to care for food, and presently he began ta talk to himself with a complete disregard of her presence. Hourly she regretted her ignorance of medicine that left her with no conceivable remedy for all the aching and gnawing that worried and weakened him, except bathing with antiseptics and a liberal use of quinine.
And his face became strange to her, for over his flushed and sunken cheeks, under the raw spaces of the scar a blond beard bristled and grew. Presently, Trafford was a bearded man.
Incidentally, however, she killed the wolverine by means of a trap of her own contrivance, a loaded rifle with a bait of what was nearly her last candles, rigged to the trigger.
But this loss of the candles brought home to them the steady lengthening of the nights. Scarcely seven hours of day remained now in the black, cold grip of the darkness. And through those seventeen hours of chill aggression they had no light but the red glow of the stove. She had to close the door of the hut and bar every chink and cranny against the icy air, that became at last a murderous, freezing wind. Not only did she line the hut with every scrap of skin and paper she could obtain, but she went out with the spade toiling for three laborious afternoons in piling and beating snow against the outer frame. And now it was that Trafford talked at last, talked with something of the persistence of delirium, and she sat and listened hour by hour, silently, for he gave no heed to her or to anything she might say. He talked, it seemed, to God....
§ 10
Darkness about a sullen glow of red, and a voice speaking.
The voice of a man, fevered and in pain, wounded and amidst hardship and danger, struggling with the unrelenting riddle of his being. Ever and again when a flame leapt she would see his face, haggard, bearded, changed, and yet infinitely familiar.
His voice varied, now high and clear, now mumbling, now vexed and expostulating, now rich with deep feeling, now fagged and slow; his matter varied, too; now he talked like one who is inspired, and now like one lost and confused, stupidly repeating phrases, going back upon a misleading argument, painfully, laboriously beginning over and over again. Marjorie sat before the stove watching it burn and sink, replenishing it, preparing food, and outside the bitter wind moaned and blew the powdery snow before it, and the shortening interludes of pallid, diffused daylight which pass for days in such weather, came and went. Intense cold had come now with leaden snowy days and starless nights.
Sometimes his speech filled her mind, seemed to fill all her world; sometimes she ceased to listen, following thoughts of her own. Sometimes she dozed; sometimes she awakened from sleep to find him talking. But slowly she realized a thread in his discourse, a progress and development.
Sometimes he talked of his early researches, and then he would trace computations with his hands as if he were using a blackboard, and became distressed to remember what he had written. Sometimes he would be under the claws of the lynx again, and fighting for his eyes. "Ugh!" he said, "keep those hind legs still. Keep your hind legs still! Knife? Knife? Ah! got it. Gu--u--u, you _Beast!_"
But the gist of his speech was determined by the purpose of his journey to Labrador. At last he was reviewing his life and hers, and all that their life might signify, even as he determined to do. She began to perceive that whatever else drifted into his mind and talk, this recurred and grew, that he returned to the conclusion he had reached, and not to the beginning of the matter, and went on from that....
"You see," he said, "our lives are nothing--nothing in themselves. I know that; I've never had any doubts of that. We individuals just pick up a mixed lot of things out of the powers that begat us, and lay them down again presently a little altered, that's all--heredities, traditions, the finger nails of my grandfather, a great-aunt's lips, the faith of a sect, the ideas of one's time. We live and then we die, and the threads run, dispersing this way and that. To make other people again. Whatever's immortal isn't that, our looks or our habits, our thoughts or our memories--just the shapes, these are, of one immortal stuff.... One immortal stuff."...
The voice died away as if he was baffled. Then it resumed.
"But we ought to _partake_ of immortality; that's my point. We ought to partake of immortality.
"I mean we're like the little elements in a magnet; ought not to lie higgledy-piggledy, ought to point the same way, bepolarized----Something microcosmic, you know, ought to be found in a man.
"Analogies run away with one. Suppose the bar isn't magnetized yet! Suppose purpose has to come; suppose the immortal stuff isn't yet, isn't being but struggling to be. Struggling to be.... Gods! that morning! When the child was born! And afterwards she was there--with a smile on her lips, and a little flushed and proud--as if nothing had happened so very much out of the way. Nothing so wonderful. And we had another life besides our own!..."
Afterwards he came back to that. "That was a good image," he said, "something trying to exist, which isn't substance, doesn't belong to space or time, something stifled and enclosed, struggling to get through. Just confused birth cries, eyes that hardly see, deaf ears, poor little thrusting hands. A thing altogether blind at first, a twitching and thrusting of protoplasm under the waters, and then the plants creeping up the beaches, the insects and reptiles on the margins of the rivers, beasts with a flicker of light in their eyes answering the sun. And at last, out of the long interplay of desire and fear, an ape, an ape that stared and wondered, and scratched queer pictures on a bone...."
He lapsed into silent thought for a time, and Marjorie glanced at his dim face in the shadows.
"I say nothing of ultimates," he said at last.
He repeated that twice before his thoughts would flow again.
"This is as much as I see, in time as I know it and space as I know it--_something struggling to exist_. It's true to the end of my limits. What can I say beyond that? It struggles to exist, becomes conscious, becomes now conscious of itself. That is where I come in, as a part of it. Above the beast in me is that--the desire to know better, to know--beautifully, and to transmit my knowledge. That's all there is in life for me beyond food and shelter and tidying up. This Being--opening its eyes, listening, trying to comprehend. Every good thing in man is that;--looking and making pictures, listening and making songs, making philosophies and sciences, trying new powers, bridge and engine, spark and gun. At the bottom of my soul, _that_. We began with bone-scratching. We're still--near it. I am just a part of this beginning--mixed with other things. Every book, every art, every religion is that, the attempt to understand and express--mixed with other things. Nothing else matters, nothing whatever. I tell you----Nothing whatever!
"I've always believed that. All my life I've believed that.
"Only I've forgotten."
"Every man with any brains believes that at the bottom of his heart. Only he gets busy and forgets. He goes shooting lynxes and breaks his leg. Odd, instinctive, brutal thing to do--to go tracking down a lynx to kill it! I grant you that, Marjorie. I grant you that."
"Grant me what?" she cried, startled beyond measure to hear herself addressed.
"Grant you that it is rather absurd to go hunting a lynx. And what big paws it has--disproportionately big! I wonder if that's an adaptation to snow. Tremendous paws they are.... But the real thing, I was saying, the real thing is to get knowledge, and express it. All things lead up to that. Civilization, social order, just for that. Except for that, all the life of man, all his affairs, his laws and police, his morals and manners--nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Lynx hunts! Just ways of getting themselves mauled and clawed perhaps--into a state of understanding. Who knows?..."
His voice became low and clear.
"Understanding spreading like a dawn....
"Logic and language, clumsy implements, but rising to our needs, rising to our needs, thought clarified, enriched, reaching out to every man alive--some day--presently--touching every man alive, harmonizing acts and plans, drawing men into gigantic co-operations, tremendous co-operations....
"Until man shall stand upon this earth as upon a footstool and reach out his hand among the stars....
"And then I went into the rubber market, and spent seven years of my life driving shares up and down and into a net!... Queer game indeed! Stupid ass Behrens was--at bottom....
"There's a flaw in it somewhere...."
He came back to that several times before he seemed able to go on from it.
"There _is_ a collective mind," he said, "a growing general consciousness--growing clearer. Something put me away from that, but I know it. My work, my thinking, was a part of it. That's why I was so mad about Behrens."
"Behrens?"
"Of course. He'd got a twist, a wrong twist. It makes me angry now. It will take years, it will eat up some brilliant man to clean up after Behrens----"
"Yes, but the point is"--his voice became acute--"why did I go making money and let Behrens in? Why generally and in all sorts of things does Behrens come in?..."
He was silent for a long time, and then he began to answer himself. "Of course," he said, "I said it--or somebody said it--about this collective mind being mixed with other things. It's something arising out of life--not the common stuff of life. An exhalation.... It's like the little tongues of fire that came at Pentecost.... Queer how one comes drifting back to these images. Perhaps I shall die a Christian yet.... The other Christians won't like me if I do. What was I saying?... It's what I reach up to, what I desire shall pervade me, not what I am. Just as far as I give myself purely to knowledge, to making feeling and thought clear in my mind and words, to the understanding and expression of the realities and relations of life, just so far do I achieve Salvation.... Salvation!...
"I wonder, is Salvation the same for every one? Perhaps for one man Salvation is research and thought, and for another expression in art, and for another nursing lepers. Provided he does it in the spirit. He has to do it in the spirit...."
There came a silence as though some difficulty baffled him, and he was feeling back to get his argument again.
"This flame that arises out of life, that redeems life from purposeless triviality, _isn't_ life. Let me get hold of that. That's a point. That's a very important point."
Something had come to him.
"I've never talked of this to Marjorie. I've lived with her nine years and more, and never talked of religion. Not once. That's so queer of us. Any other couple in any other time would have talked religion no end.... People ought to."
Then he stuck out an argumentative hand. "You see, Marjorie _is_ life," he said.
"She took me."
He spoke slowly, as though he traced things carefully. "Before I met her I suppose I wasn't half alive. No! Yet I don't remember I felt particularly incomplete. Women were interesting, of course; they excited me at times, that girl at Yonkers!--H'm. I stuck to my work. It was fine work, I forget half of it now, the half-concealed intimations I mean--queer how one forgets!--but I know I felt my way to wide, deep things. It was like exploring caves--monstrous, limitless caves. Such caves!... Very still--underground. Wonderful and beautiful.... They're lying there now for other men to seek. Other men will find them.... Then _she_ came, as though she was taking possession. The beauty of her, oh! the life and bright eagerness, and the incompatibility! That's the riddle! I've loved her always. When she came to my arms it seemed to me the crown of life. Caves indeed! Old caves! Nothing else seemed to matter. But something did. All sorts of things did. I found that out soon enough. And when that first child was born. That for a time was supreme.... Yes--she's the quintessence of life, the dear greed of her, the appetite, the clever appetite for things. She grabs. She's so damned clever! The light in her eyes! Her quick sure hands!... Only my work was crowded out of my life and ended, and she didn't seem to feel it, she didn't seem to mind it. There was a sort of disregard. Disregard. As though all that didn't really matter...."
"_My dear!_" whispered Marjorie unheeded. She wanted to tell him it mattered now, mattered supremely, but she knew he had no ears for her.
His voice flattened. "It's perplexing," he said. "The two different things."
Then suddenly he cried out harshly: "I ought never to have married her--never, never! I had my task. I gave myself to her. Oh! the high immensities, the great and terrible things open to the mind of man! And we breed children and live in littered houses and play with our food and chatter, chatter, chatter. Oh, the chatter of my life! The folly! The women with their clothes. I can hear them rustle now, whiff the scent of it! The scandals--as though the things they did with themselves and each other mattered a rap; the little sham impromptu clever things, the trying to keep young--and underneath it all that continual cheating, cheating, cheating, damning struggle for money!...
"Marjorie, Marjorie, Marjorie! Why is she so good and no better! Why wasn't she worth it altogether?...
"No! I don't want to go on with it any more--ever. I want to go back.
"I want my life over again, and to go back.
"I want research, and the spirit of research that has died in me, and that still, silent room of mine again, that room, as quiet as a cell, and the toil that led to light. Oh! the coming of that light, the uprush of discovery, the solemn joy as the generalization rises like a sun upon the facts--floods them with a common meaning. That is what I want. That is what I have always wanted....
"Give me my time oh God! again; I am sick of this life I have chosen. I am sick of it! This--busy death! Give me my time again.... Why did you make me, and then waste me like this? Why are we made for folly upon folly? Folly! and brains made to scale high heaven, smeared into the dust! Into the dust, into the dust. Dust!..."
He passed into weak, wandering repetitions of disconnected sentences, that died into whispers and silence, and Marjorie watched him and listened to him, and waited with a noiseless dexterity upon his every need.
§ 11
One day, she did not know what day, for she had lost count of the days, Marjorie set the kettle to boil and opened the door of the hut to look out, and the snow was ablaze with diamonds, and the air was sweet and still. It occurred to her that it would be well to take Trafford out into that brief brightness. She looked at him and found his eyes upon the sunlight quiet and rather wondering eyes.
"Would you like to get out into that?" she asked abruptly.
"Yes," he said, and seemed disposed to get up.
"You've got a broken leg," she cried, to arrest his movement, and he looked at her and answered: "Of course--I forgot."
She was all atremble that he should recognize her and speak to her. She pulled her rude old sledge alongside his bunk, and kissed him, and showed him how to shift and drop himself upon the plank. She took him in her arms and lowered him. He helped weakly but understandingly, and she wrapped him up warmly on the planks and lugged him out and built up a big fire at his feet, wondering, but as yet too fearful to rejoice, at the change that had come to him.
He said no more, but his eyes watched her move about with a kind of tired curiosity. He smiled for a time at the sun, and shut his eyes, and still faintly smiling, lay still. She had a curious fear that if she tried to talk to him this new lucidity would vanish again. She went about the business of the morning, glancing at him ever and again, until suddenly the calm of his upturned face smote her, and she ran to him and crouched down to him between hope and a terrible fear, and found that he was sleeping, and breathing very lightly, sleeping with the deep unconsciousness of a child....
When he awakened the sun was red in the west. His eyes met hers, and he seemed a little puzzled.
"I've been sleeping, Madge?" he said.
She nodded.
"And dreaming? I've a vague sort of memory of preaching and preaching in a kind of black, empty place, where there wasn't anything.... A fury of exposition ... a kind of argument.... I say!--Is there such a thing in the world as a new-laid egg--and some bread-and-butter?"
He seemed to reflect. "Of course," he said, "I broke my leg. Gollys! I thought that beast was going to claw my eyes out. Lucky, Madge, it didn't get my eyes. It was just a chance it didn't."
He stared at her.
"I say," he said, "you've had a pretty rough time! How long has this been going on?"
He amazed her by rising himself on his elbow and sitting up.
"Your leg!" she cried.
He put his hand down and felt it. "Pretty stiff," he said. "You get me some food--there _were_ some eggs, Madge, frozen new-laid, anyhow--and then we'll take these splints off and feel about a bit. Eh! why not? How did you get me out of that scrape, Madge? I thought I'd got to be froze as safe as eggs. (Those eggs ought to be all right, you know. If you put them on in a saucepan and wait until they boil.) I've a sort of muddled impression.... By Jove, Madge, you've had a time! I say you _have_ had a time!"
His eyes, full of a warmth of kindliness she had not seen for long weeks, scrutinized her face. "I say!" he repeated, very softly.
All her strength went from her at his tenderness. "Oh, my dear," she wailed, kneeling at his side, "my dear, dear!" and still regardful of his leg, she yet contrived to get herself weeping into his coveted arms.
He regarded her, he held her, he patted her back! The infinite luxury to her! He'd come back. He'd come back to her.
"How long has it been?" he asked. "Poor dear! Poor dear! How long can it have been?"
§ 12
From that hour Trafford mended. He remained clear-minded, helpful, sustaining. His face healed daily. Marjorie had had to cut away great fragments of gangrenous frozen flesh, and he was clearly destined to have a huge scar over forehead and cheek, but in that pure, clear air, once the healing had begun it progressed swiftly. His leg had set, a little shorter than its fellow and with a lump in the middle of the shin, but it promised to be a good serviceable leg none the less. They examined it by the light of the stove with their heads together, and discussed when it would be wise to try it. How do doctors tell when a man may stand on his broken leg? She had a vague impression you must wait six weeks, but she could not remember why she fixed upon that time.
"It seems a decent interval," said Trafford. "We'll try it."
She had contrived a crutch for him against that momentous experiment, and he sat up in his bunk, pillowed up by a sack and her rugs, and whittled it smooth, and padded the fork with the skin of that slaughtered wolverine, poor victim of hunger!--while she knelt by the stove feeding it with logs, and gave him an account of their position.
"We're somewhere in the middle of December," she said, "somewhere between the twelfth and the fourteenth,--yes! I'm as out as that!--and I've handled the stores pretty freely. So did that little beast until I got him." She nodded at the skin in his hand. "I don't see myself shooting much now, and so far I've not been able to break the ice to fish. It's too much for me. Even if it isn't too late to fish. This book we've got describes barks and mosses, and that will help, but if we stick here until the birds and things come, we're going to be precious short. We may have to last right into July. I've plans--but it may come to that. We ought to ration all the regular stuff, and trust to luck for a feast. The rations!--I don't know what they'll come to."
"Right O," said Trafford admiring her capable gravity. "Let's ration."
"Marjorie," he asked abruptly, "are you sorry we came?"
Her answer came unhesitatingly. "_No!_"
"Nor I."
He paused. "I've found you out," he said. "Dear dirty living thing!... You _are_ dirty, you know."
"I've found myself," she answered, thinking. "I feel as if I've never loved you until this hut. I suppose I have in my way----"
"Lugano," he suggested. "Don't let's forget good things, Marjorie. Oh! And endless times!"
"Oh, of course! As for _that_----! But now--now you're in my bones. We were just two shallow, pretty, young things--loving. It was sweet, dear--sweet as youth--but not this. Unkempt and weary--then one understands love. I suppose I _am_ dirty. Think of it! I've lugged you through the snow till my shoulders chafed and bled. I cried with pain, and kept on lugging----Oh, my dear! my dear!" He kissed her hair. "I've held you in my arms to keep you from freezing. (I'd have frozen myself first.) We've got to starve together perhaps before the end.... Dear, if I could make you, you should eat me.... I'm--I'm beginning to understand. I've had a light. I've begun to understand. I've begun to see what life has been for you, and how I've wasted--wasted."
"_We've_ wasted!"
"No," she said, "it was I."
She sat back on the floor and regarded him. "You don't remember things you said--when you were delirious?"
"No," he answered. "What did I say?"
"Nothing?"
"Nothing clearly. What did I say?"
"It doesn't matter. No, indeed. Only you made me understand. You'd never have told me. You've always been a little weak with me there. But it's plain to me why we didn't keep our happiness, why we were estranged. If we go back alive, we go back--all that settled for good and all."
"What?"
"That discord. My dear, I've been a fool, selfish, ill-trained and greedy. We've both been floundering about, but I've been the mischief of it. Yes, I've been the trouble. Oh, it's had to be so. What are we women--half savages, half pets, unemployed things of greed and desire--and suddenly we want all the rights and respect of souls! I've had your life in my hands from the moment we met together. If I had known.... It isn't that we can make you or guide you--I'm not pretending to be an inspiration--but--but we can release you. We needn't press upon you; we can save you from the instincts and passions that try to waste you altogether on us.... Yes, I'm beginning to understand. Oh, my child, my husband, my man! You talked of your wasted life!... I've been thinking--since first we left the Mersey. I've begun to see what it is to be a woman. For the first time in my life. We're the responsible sex. And we've forgotten it. We think we've done a wonder if we've borne men into the world and smiled a little, but indeed we've got to bear them all our lives.... A woman has to be steadier than a man and more self-sacrificing than a man, because when she plunges she does more harm than a man.... And what does she achieve if she does plunge? Nothing--nothing worth counting. Dresses and carpets and hangings and pretty arrangements, excitements and satisfactions and competition and more excitements. We can't _do_ things. We don't bring things off! And you, you Monster! you Dream! you want to stick your hand out of all that is and make something that isn't, begin to be! That's the man----"
"Dear old Madge!" he said, "there's all sorts of women and all sorts of men."
"Well, our sort of women, then, and our sort of men."
"I doubt even that."
"I don't. I've found my place. I've been making my master my servant. We women--we've been looting all the good things in the world, and helping nothing. You've carried me on your back until you are loathing life. I've been making you fetch and carry for me, love me, dress me, keep me and my children, minister to my vanities and greeds.... No; let me go on. I'm so penitent, my dear, so penitent I want to kneel down here and marry you all over again, heal up your broken life and begin again."...
She paused.
"One doesn't begin again," she said. "But I want to take a new turn. Dear, you're still only a young man; we've thirty or forty years before us--forty years perhaps or more.... What shall we do with our years? We've loved, we've got children. What remains? Here we can plan it out, work it out, day after day. What shall we do with our lives and life? Tell me, make me your partner; it's you who know, what are we doing with life?"
§ 13
What are we doing with life?
That question overtakes a reluctant and fugitive humanity. The Traffords were but two of a great scattered host of people, who, obeying all the urgencies of need and desire, struggling, loving, begetting, enjoying, do nevertheless find themselves at last unsatisfied. They have lived the round of experience, achieved all that living creatures have sought since the beginning of the world--security and gratification and offspring--and they find themselves still strong, unsatiated, with power in their hands and years before them, empty of purpose. What are they to do?
The world presents such a spectacle of evasion as it has never seen before. Never was there such a boiling over and waste of vital energy. The Sphinx of our opportunity calls for the uttermost powers of heart and brain to read its riddle--the new, astonishing riddle of excessive power. A few give themselves to those honourable adventures that extend the range of man, they explore untravelled countries, climb remote mountains, conduct researches, risk life and limb in the fantastic experiments of flight, and a monstrous outpouring of labour and material goes on in the strenuous preparation for needless and improbable wars. The rest divert themselves with the dwarfish satisfactions of recognized vice, the meagre routine of pleasure, or still more timidly with sport and games--those new unscheduled perversions of the soul.
We are afraid of our new selves. The dawn of human opportunity appals us. Few of us dare look upon this strange light of freedom and limitless resources that breaks upon our world.
"Think," said Trafford, "while we sit here in this dark hut--think of the surplus life that wastes itself in the world for sheer lack of direction. Away there in England--I suppose that is westward"--he pointed--"there are thousands of men going out to-day to shoot. Think of the beautifully made guns, the perfected ammunition, the excellent clothes, the army of beaters, the carefully preserved woodland, the admirable science of it--all for that idiot massacre of half-tame birds! Just because man once had need to be a hunter! Think of the others again--golfing. Think of the big, elaborate houses from which they come, the furnishings, the service. And the women--dressing! Perpetually dressing. _You_, Marjorie--you've done nothing but dress since we married. No, let me abuse you, dear! It's insane, you know! You dress your minds a little to talk amusingly, you spread your minds out to backgrounds, to households, picturesque and delightful gardens, nurseries. Those nurseries! Think of our tremendously cherished and educated children! And when they grow up, what have we got for them? A feast of futility...."
§ 14
On the evening of the day when Trafford first tried to stand upon his leg, they talked far into the night. It had been a great and eventful day for them, full of laughter and exultation. He had been at first ridiculously afraid; he had clung to her almost childishly, and she had held him about the body with his weight on her strong right arm and his right arm in her left hand, concealing her own dread of a collapse under a mask of taunting courage. The crutch had proved admirable. "It's my silly knees!" Trafford kept on saying. "The leg's all right, but I get put out by my silly knees."
They made the day a feast, a dinner of two whole day's rations and a special soup instead of supper. "The birds will come," they explained to each other, "ducks and geese, long before May. May, you know, is the latest."
Marjorie confessed the habit of sharing his pipe was growing on her. "What shall we do in Tyburnia!" she said, and left it to the imagination.
"If ever we get back there," he said.
"I don't much fancy kicking a skirt before my shins again--and I'll be a black, coarse woman down to my neck at dinner for years to come!..."
Then, as he lay back in his bunk and she crammed the stove with fresh boughs and twigs of balsam that filled the little space about them with warmth and with a faint, sweet smell of burning and with flitting red reflections, he took up a talk about religion they had begun some days before.
"You see," he said, "I've always believed in Salvation. I suppose a man's shy of saying so--even to his wife. But I've always believed more or less distinctly that there was something up to which a life worked--always. It's been rather vague, I'll admit. I don't think I've ever believed in individual salvation. You see, I feel these are deep things, and the deeper one gets the less individual one becomes. That's why one thinks of those things in darkness and loneliness--and finds them hard to tell. One has an individual voice, or an individual birthmark, or an individualized old hat, but the soul--the soul's different.... It isn't me talking to you when it comes to that.... This question of what we are doing with life isn't a question to begin with for you and me as ourselves, but for you and me as mankind. Am I spinning it too fine, Madge?"
"No," she said, intent; "go on."
"You see, when we talk rations here, Marjorie, it's ourselves, but when we talk religion--it's mankind. You've either got to be Everyman in religion or leave it alone. That's my idea. It's no more presumptuous to think for the race than it is for a beggar to pray--though that means going right up to God and talking to Him. Salvation's a collective thing and a mystical thing--or there isn't any. Fancy the Almighty and me sitting up and keeping Eternity together! God and R. A. G. Trafford, F.R.S.--that's silly. Fancy a man in number seven boots, and a tailor-made suit in the nineteen-fourteen fashion, sitting before God! That's caricature. But God and Man! That's sense, Marjorie."...
He stopped and stared at her.
Marjorie sat red-lit, regarding him. "Queer things you say!" she said. "So much of this I've never thought out. I wonder why I've never done so.... Too busy with many things, I suppose. But go on and tell me more of these secrets you've kept from me!"
"Well, we've got to talk of these things as mankind--or just leave them alone, and shoot pheasants."...
"If I could shoot a pheasant now!" whispered Marjorie, involuntarily.
"And where do we stand? What do we need--I mean the whole race of us--kings and beggars together? You know, Marjorie, it's this,--it's Understanding. That's what mankind has got to, the realization that it doesn't understand, that it can't express, that it's purblind. We haven't got eyes for those greater things, but we've got the promise--the intimation of eyes. We've come out of an unsuspecting darkness, brute animal darkness, not into sight, that's been the mistake, but into a feeling of illumination, into a feeling of light shining through our opacity....
"I feel that man has now before all things to know. That's his supreme duty, to feel, realize, see, understand, express himself to the utmost limits of his power."
He sat up, speaking very earnestly to her, and in that flickering light she realized for the first time how thin he had become, how bright and hollow his eyes, his hair was long over his eyes, and a rough beard flowed down to his chest. "All the religions," he said, "all the philosophies, have pretended to achieve too much. We've no language yet for religious truth or metaphysical truth; we've no basis yet broad enough and strong enough on which to build. Religion and philosophy have been impudent and quackish--quackish! They've been like the doctors, who have always pretended they could cure since the beginning of things, cure everything, and to this day even they haven't got more than the beginnings of knowledge on which to base a cure. They've lacked humility, they've lacked the honour to say they didn't know; the priests took things of wood and stone, the philosophers took little odd arrangements of poor battered words, metaphors, analogies, abstractions, and said: "That's it! Think of their silly old Absolute,--ab-solutus, an untied parcel. I heard Haldane at the Aristotelian once, go on for an hour--no! it was longer than an hour--as glib and slick as a well-oiled sausage-machine, about the different sorts of Absolute, and not a soul of us laughed out at him! The vanity of such profundities! They've no faith, faith in patience, faith to wait for the coming of God. And since we don't know God, since we don't know His will with us, isn't it plain that all our lives should be a search for Him and it? Can anything else matter,--after we are free from necessity? That is the work now that is before all mankind, to attempt understanding--by the perpetual finding of thought and the means of expression, by perpetual extension and refinement of science, by the research that every artist makes for beauty and significance in his art, by the perpetual testing and destruction and rebirth under criticism of all these things, and by a perpetual extension of this intensifying wisdom to more minds and more minds and more, till all men share in it, and share in the making of it.... There you have my creed, Marjorie; there you have the very marrow of me."...
He became silent.
"Will you go back to your work?" she said, abruptly. "Go back to your laboratory?"
He stared at her for a moment without speaking. "Never," he said at last.
"But," she said, and the word dropped from her like a stone that falls down a well....
"My dear," he said, at last, "I've thought of that. But since I left that dear, dusty little laboratory, and all those exquisite subtle things--I've lived. I've left that man seven long years behind me. Some other man must go on--I think some younger man--with the riddles I found to work on then. I've grown--into something different. It isn't how atoms swing with one another, or why they build themselves up so and not so, that matters any more to me. I've got you and all the world in which we live, and a new set of riddles filling my mind, how thought swings about thought, how one man attracts his fellows, how the waves of motive and conviction sweep through a crowd and all the little drifting crystallizations of spirit with spirit and all the repulsions and eddies and difficulties, that one can catch in that turbulent confusion. I want to do a new sort of work now altogether.... Life has swamped me once, but I don't think it will get me under again;--I want to study men."
He paused and she waited, with a face aglow.
"I want to go back to watch and think--and I suppose write. I believe I shall write criticism. But everything that matters is criticism!... I want to get into contact with the men who are thinking. I don't mean to meet them necessarily, but to get into the souls of their books. Every writer who has anything to say, every artist who matters, is the stronger for every man or woman who responds to him. That's the great work--the Reality. I want to become a part of this stuttering attempt to express, I want at least to resonate, even if I do not help.... And you with me, Marjorie--you with me! Everything I write I want you to see and think about. I want you to read as I read.... Now after so long, now that, now that we've begun to talk, you know, talk again----"
Something stopped his voice. Something choked them both into silence. He held out a lean hand, and she shuffled on her knees to take it....
"Don't please make me," she stumbled through her thoughts, "one of those little parasitic, parroting wives--don't pretend too much about me--because you want me with you----. Don't forget a woman isn't a man."
"Old Madge," he said, "you and I have got to march together. Didn't I love you from the first, from that time when I was a boy examiner and you were a candidate girl--because your mind was clear?"
"And we will go back," she whispered, "with a work----"
"With a purpose," he said.
She disengaged herself from his arm, and sat close to him upon the floor. "I think I can see what you will do," she said. She mused. "For the first time I begin to see things as they may be for us. I begin to see a life ahead. For the very first time."
Queer ideas came drifting into her head. Suddenly she cried out sharply in that high note he loved. "Good heavens!" she said. "The absurdity! The infinite absurdity!"
"But what?"
"I might have married Will Magnet----. That's all."
She sprang to her feet. There came a sound of wind outside, a shifting of snow on the roof, and the door creaked. "Half-past eleven," she exclaimed looking at the watch that hung in the light of the stove door. "I don't want to sleep yet; do you? I'm going to brew some tea--make a convivial drink. And then we will go on talking. It's so good talking to you. So good!... I've an idea! Don't you think on this special day, it might run to a biscuit?" Her face was keenly anxious. He nodded. "One biscuit each," she said, trying to rob her voice of any note of criminality. "Just one, you know, won't matter."
She hovered for some moments close to the stove before she went into the arctic corner that contained the tin of tea. "If we can really live like that!" she said. "When we are home again."
"Why not?" he answered.
She made no answer, but went across for the tea....
He turned his head at the sound of the biscuit tin and watched her put out the precious discs.
"I shall have another pipe," he proclaimed, with an agreeable note of excess. "Thank heaven for unstinted tobacco...."
And now Marjorie's mind was teaming with thoughts of this new conception of a life lived for understanding. As she went about the preparation of the tea, her vividly concrete imagination was active with the realization of the life they would lead on their return. She could not see it otherwise than framed in a tall, fine room, a study, a study in sombre tones, with high, narrow, tall, dignified bookshelves and rich deep green curtains veiling its windows. There should be a fireplace of white marble, very plain and well proportioned, with furnishings of old brass, and a big desk towards the window beautifully lit by electric light, with abundant space for papers to lie. And she wanted some touch of the wilderness about it; a skin perhaps....
The tea was still infusing when she had determined upon an enormous paper-weight of that iridescent Labradorite that had been so astonishing a feature of the Green River Valley. She would have it polished on one side only--the other should be rough to show the felspar in its natural state....
It wasn't that she didn't feel and understand quite fully the intention and significance of all he had said, but that in these symbols of texture and equipment her mind quite naturally clothed itself. And while this room was coming into anticipatory being in her mind, she was making the tea very deftly and listening to Trafford's every word.
§ 15
That talk marked an epoch to Marjorie. From that day forth her imagination began to shape a new, ordered and purposeful life for Trafford and herself in London, a life not altogether divorced from their former life, but with a faith sustaining it and aims controlling it. She had always known of the breadth and power of his mind, but now as he talked of what he might do, what interests might converge and give results through him, it seemed she really knew him for the first time. In his former researches, so technical and withdrawn, she had seen little of his mind in action: now he was dealing in his own fashion with things she could clearly understand. There were times when his talk affected her like that joy of light one has in emerging into sunshine from a long and tedious cave. He swept things together, flashed unsuspected correlations upon her intelligence, smashed and scattered absurd yet venerated conventions of thought, made undreamt-of courses of action visible in a flare of luminous necessity. And she could follow him and help him. Just as she had hampered him and crippled him, so now she could release him--she fondled that word. She found a preposterous image in her mind that she hid like a disgraceful secret, that she tried to forget, and yet its stupendous, its dreamlike absurdity had something in it that shaped her delight as nothing else could do; she was, she told herself--hawking with an archangel!...
These were her moods of exaltation. And she was sure she had never loved her man before, that this was indeed her beginning. It was as if she had just found him....
Perhaps, she thought, true lovers keep on finding each other all through their lives.
And he too had discovered her. All the host of Marjories he had known, the shining, delightful, seductive, wilful, perplexing aspects that had so filled her life, gave place altogether for a time to this steady-eyed woman, lean and warm-wrapped with the valiant heart and the frost-roughened skin. What a fine, strong, ruddy thing she was! How glad he was for this wild adventure in the wilderness, if only because it had made him lie among the rocks and think of her and wait for her and despair of her life and God, and at last see her coming back to him, flushed with effort and calling his name to him out of that whirlwind of snow.... And there was at least one old memory mixed up with all these new and overmastering impressions, the memory of her clear unhesitating voice as it had stabbed into his life again long years ago, minute and bright in the telephone: "_It's me, you know. It's Marjorie!_"
Perhaps after all she had not wasted a moment of his life, perhaps every issue between them had been necessary, and it was good altogether to be turned from the study of crystals to the study of men and women....
And now both their minds were Londonward, where all the tides and driftage and currents of human thought still meet and swirl together. They were full of what they would do when they got back. Marjorie sketched that study to him--in general terms and without the paper-weight--and began to shape the world she would have about it. She meant to be his squaw and body-servant first of all, and then--a mother. Children, she said, are none the worse for being kept a little out of focus. And he was rapidly planning out his approach to the new questions to which he was now to devote his life. "One wants something to hold the work together," he said, and projected a book. "One cannot struggle at large for plain statement and copious and free and courageous statement, one needs a positive attack."
He designed a book, which he might write if only for the definition it would give him and with no ultimate publication, which was to be called: "The Limits of Language as a Means of Expression." ... It was to be a pragmatist essay, a sustained attempt to undermine the confidence of all that scholasticism and logic chopping which still lingers like the _sequelæ_ of a disease in our University philosophy. "Those duffers sit in their studies and make a sort of tea of dry old words--and think they're distilling the spirit of wisdom," he said.
He proliferated titles for a time, and settled at last on "From Realism to Reality." He wanted to get at that at once; it fretted him to have to hang in the air, day by day, for want of books to quote and opponents to lance and confute. And he wanted to see pictures, too and plays, read novels he had heard of and never read, in order to verify or correct the ideas that were seething in his mind about the qualities of artistic expression. His thought had come out to a conviction that the line to wider human understandings lies through a huge criticism and cleaning up of the existing methods of formulation, as a preliminary to the wider and freer discussion of those religious and social issues our generation still shrinks from. "It's grotesque," he said, "and utterly true that the sanity and happiness of all the world lies in its habits of generalization." There was not even paper for him to make notes or provisional drafts of the new work. He hobbled about the camp fretting at these deprivations.
"Marjorie," he said, "we've done our job. Why should we wait here on this frosty shelf outside the world? My leg's getting sounder--if it wasn't for that feeling of ice in it. Why shouldn't we make another sledge from the other bunk and start down--"
"To Hammond?"
"Why not?"
"But the way?"
"The valley would guide us. We could do four hours a day before we had to camp. I'm not sure we couldn't try the river. We could drag and carry all our food...."
She looked down the wide stretches of the valley. There was the hill they had christened Marjorie Ridge. At least it was familiar. Every night before nightfall if they started there would be a fresh camping place to seek among the snow-drifts, a great heap of wood to cut to last the night. Suppose his leg gave out--when they were already some days away, so that he could no longer go on or she drag him back to the stores. Plainly there would be nothing for it then but to lie down and die together....
And a sort of weariness had come to her as a consequence of two months of half-starved days, not perhaps a failure so much as a reluctance of spirit.
"Of course," she said, with a new aspect drifting before her mind, "then--we _could_ eat. We _could_ feed up before we started. We could feast almost!"
§ 16
"While you were asleep the other night," Trafford began one day as they sat spinning out their mid-day meal, "I was thinking how badly I had expressed myself when I talked to you the other day, and what a queer, thin affair I made of the plans I wanted to carry out. As a matter of fact, they're neither queer nor thin, but they are unreal in comparison with the common things of everyday life, hunger, anger, all the immediate desires. They must be. They only begin when those others are at peace. It's hard to set out these things; they're complicated and subtle, and one cannot simplify without falsehood. I don't want to simplify. The world has gone out of its way time after time through simplifications and short cuts. Save us from epigrams! And when one thinks over what one has said, at a little distance,--one wants to go back to it, and say it all again. I seem to be not so much thinking things out as reviving and developing things I've had growing in my mind ever since we met. It's as though an immense reservoir of thought had filled up in my mind at last and was beginning to trickle over and break down the embankment between us. This conflict that has been going on between our life together and my--my intellectual life; it's only just growing clear in my own mind. Yet it's just as if one turned up a light on something that had always been there....
"It's a most extraordinary thing to think out, Marjorie, that antagonism. Our love has kept us so close together and always our purposes have been--like that." He spread divergent hands. "I've speculated again and again whether there isn't something incurably antagonistic between women (that's _you_ generalized, Marjorie) and men (that's me) directly we pass beyond the conditions of the individualistic struggle. I believe every couple of lovers who've ever married have felt that strain. Yet it's not a difference in kind between us but degree. The big conflict between us has a parallel in a little internal conflict that goes on; there's something of man in every woman and a touch of the feminine in every man. But you're nearer as woman to the immediate personal life of sense and reality than I am as man. It's been so ever since the men went hunting and fighting and the women kept hut, tended the children and gathered roots in the little cultivation close at hand. It's been so perhaps since the female carried and suckled her child and distinguished one male from another. It may be it will always be so. Men were released from that close, continuous touch with physical necessities long before women were. It's only now that women begin to be released. For ages now men have been wandering from field and home and city, over the hills and far away, in search of adventures and fresh ideas and the wells of mystery beyond the edge of the world, but it's only now that the woman comes with them too. Our difference isn't a difference in kind, old Marjorie; it's the difference between the old adventurer and the new feet upon the trail."
"We've got to come," said Marjorie.
"Oh! you've got to come. No good to be pioneers if the race does not follow. The women are the backbone of the race; the men are just the individuals. Into this Labrador and into all the wild and desolate places of thought and desire, if men come you women have to come too--and bring the race with you. Some day."
"A long day, mate of my heart."
"Who knows how long or how far? Aren't you at any rate here, dear woman of mine.... (_Surely you are here_)."
He went off at a tangent. "There's all those words that seem to mean something and then don't seem to mean anything, that keep shifting to and fro from the deepest significance to the shallowest of claptrap, Socialism, Christianity.... You know,--they aren't anything really, as yet; they are something trying to be.... Haven't I said that before, Marjorie?"
She looked round at him. "You said something like that when you were delirious," she answered, after a little pause. "It's one of the ideas that you're struggling with. You go on, old man, and _talk_. We've months--for repetitions."
"Well, I mean that all these things are seeking after a sort of co-operation that's greater than our power even of imaginative realization; that's what I mean. The kingdom of Heaven, the communion of saints, the fellowship of men; these are things like high peaks far out of the common life of every day, shining things that madden certain sorts of men to climb. Certain sorts of us! I'm a religious man, I'm a socialistic man. These calls are more to me than my daily bread. I've got something in me more generalizing than most men. I'm more so than many other men and most other women, I'm more socialistic than you...."
"You know, Marjorie, I've always felt you're a finer individual than me, I've never had a doubt of it. You're more beautiful by far than I, woman for my man. You've a keener appetite for things, a firmer grip on the substance of life. I love to see you do things, love to see you move, love to watch your hands; you've cleverer hands than mine by far.... And yet--I'm a deeper and bigger thing than you. I reach up to something you don't reach up to.... You're in life--and I'm a little out of it, I'm like one of those fish that began to be amphibian, I go out into something where you don't follow--where you hardly begin to follow.
"That's the real perplexity between thousands of men and women....
"It seems to me that the primitive socialism of Christianity and all the stuff of modern socialism that matters is really aiming--almost unconsciously, I admit at times--at one simple end, at the release of the human spirit from the individualistic struggle----
"You used 'release' the other day, Marjorie? Of course, I remember. It's queer how I go on talking after you have understood."
"It was just a flash," said Marjorie. "We have intimations. Neither of us really understands. We're like people climbing a mountain in a mist, that thins out for a moment and shows valleys and cities, and then closes in again, before we can recognize them or make out where we are."
Trafford thought. "When I talk to you, I've always felt I mustn't be too vague. And the very essence of all this is a vague thing, something we shall never come nearer to it in all our lives than to see it as a shadow and a glittering that escapes again into a mist.... And yet it's everything that matters, everything, the only thing that matters truly and for ever through the whole range of life. And we have to serve it with the keenest thought, the utmost patience, inordinate veracity....
"The practical trouble between your sort and my sort, Marjorie, is the trouble between faith and realization. You demand the outcome. Oh! and I hate to turn aside and realize. I've had to do it for seven years. Damnable years! Men of my sort want to understand. We want to understand, and you ask us to make. We want to understand atoms, ions, molecules, refractions. You ask us to make rubber and diamonds. I suppose it's right that incidentally we should make rubber and diamonds. Finally, I warn you, we will make rubber unnecessary and diamonds valueless. And again we want to understand how people react upon one another to produce social consequences, and you ask us to put it at once into a draft bill for the reform of something or other. I suppose life lies between us somewhere, we're the two poles of truth seeking and truth getting; with me alone it would be nothing but a luminous dream, with you nothing but a scramble in which sooner or later all the lamps would be upset.... But it's ever too much of a scramble yet, and ever too little of a dream. All our world over there is full of the confusion and wreckage of premature realizations. There's no real faith in thought and knowledge yet. Old necessity has driven men so hard that they still rush with a wild urgency--though she goads no more. Greed and haste, and if, indeed, we seem to have a moment's breathing space, then the Gawdsaker tramples us under."
"My dear!" cried Marjorie, with a sharp note of amusement. "What _is_ a Gawdsaker?"
"Oh," said Trafford, "haven't you heard that before? He's the person who gets excited by any deliberate discussion and gets up wringing his hands and screaming, 'For Gawd's sake, let's _do_ something _now!_' I think they used it first for Pethick Lawrence, that man who did so much to run the old militant suffragettes and burke the proper discussion of woman's future. You know. You used to have 'em in Chelsea--with their hats. Oh! 'Gawdsaking' is the curse of all progress, the hectic consumption that kills a thousand good beginnings. You see it in small things and in great. You see it in my life; Gawdsaking turned my life-work to cash and promotions, Gawdsaking----Look at the way the aviators took to flying for prizes and gate-money, the way pure research is swamped by endowments for technical applications! Then that poor ghost-giant of an idea the socialists have;--it's been treated like one of those unborn lambs they kill for the fine skin of it, made into results before ever it was alive. Was there anything more pitiful? The first great dream and then the last phase! when your Aunt Plessington and the district visitors took and used it as a synonym for Payment in Kind.... It's natural, I suppose, for people to be eager for results, personal and immediate results--the last lesson of life is patience. Naturally they want reality, naturally! They want the individual life, something to handle and feel and use and live by, something of their very own before they die, and they want it now. But the thing that matters for the race, Marjorie, is a very different thing; it is to get the emerging thought process clear and to keep it clear--and to let those other hungers go. We've got to go back to England on the side of that delay, that arrest of interruption, that detached, observant, synthesizing process of the mind, that solvent of difficulties and obsolescent institutions, which is the reality of collective human life. We've got to go back on the side of pure science--literature untrammeled by the preconceptions of the social schemers--art free from the urgency of immediate utility--and a new, a regal, a god-like sincerity in philosophy. And, above all, we've got to stop this Jackdaw buying of yours, my dear, which is the essence of all that is wrong with the world, this snatching at everything, which loses everything worth having in life, this greedy confused realization of our accumulated resources! You're going to be a non-shopping woman now. You're to come out of Bond Street, you and your kind, like Israel leaving the Egyptian flesh-pots. You're going to be my wife and my mate.... Less of this service of things. Investments in comfort, in security, in experience, yes; but not just spending any more...."
He broke off abruptly with: "I want to go back and begin."
"Yes," said Marjorie, "we will go back," and saw minutely and distantly, and yet as clearly and brightly as if she looked into a concave mirror, that tall and dignified study, a very high room indeed, with a man writing before a fine, long-curtained window and a great lump of rich-glowing Labradorite upon his desk before him holding together an accumulation of written sheets....
She knew exactly the shop in Oxford Street where the stuff for the curtains might be best obtained.
§ 17
One night Marjorie had been sitting musing before the stove for a long time, and suddenly she said: "I wonder if we shall fail. I wonder if we shall get into a mess again when we are back in London.... As big a mess and as utter a discontent as sent us here...."
Trafford was scraping out his pipe, and did not answer for some moments. Then he remarked: "What nonsense!"
"But we shall," she said. "Everybody fails. To some extent, we are bound to fail. Because indeed nothing is clear; nothing is a clear issue.... You know--I'm just the old Marjorie really in spite of all these resolutions--the spendthrift, the restless, the eager. I'm a born snatcher and shopper. We're just the same people really."
"No," he said, after thought. "You're all Labrador older."
"I always _have_ failed," she considered, "when it came to any special temptations, Rag. I can't _stand_ not having a thing!"
He made no answer.
"And you're still the same old Rag, you know," she went on. "Who weakens into kindness if I cry. Who likes me well-dressed. Who couldn't endure to see me poor."
"Not a bit of it. No! I'm a very different Rag with a very different Marjorie. Yes indeed! Things--are graver. Why!--I'm lame for life--and I've a scar. The very _look_ of things is changed...." He stared at her face and said: "You've hidden the looking-glass and you think I haven't noted it----"
"It keeps on healing," she interrupted. "And if it comes to that--where's my complexion?" She laughed. "These are just the superficial aspects of the case."
"Nothing ever heals completely," he said, answering her first sentence, "and nothing ever goes back to the exact place it held before. We _are_ different, you sun-bitten, frost-bitten wife of mine."...
"Character is character," said Marjorie, coming back to her point. "Don't exaggerate conversion, dear. It's not a bit of good pretending we shan't fall away, both of us. Each in our own manner. We shall. We shall, old man. London is still a tempting and confusing place, and you can't alter people fundamentally, not even by half-freezing and half-starving them. You only alter people fundamentally by killing them and replacing them. I shall be extravagant again and forget again, try as I may, and you will work again and fall away again and forgive me again. You know----It's just as though we were each of us not one person, but a lot of persons, who sometimes meet and shout all together, and then disperse and forget and plot against each other...."
"Oh, things will happen again," said Trafford, in her pause. "But they will happen again with a difference--after this. With a difference. That's the good of it all.... We've found something here--that makes everything different.... We've found each other, too, dear wife."
She thought intently.
"I am afraid," she whispered.
"But what is there to be afraid of?"
"_Myself_."
She spoke after a little pause that seemed to hesitate. "At times I wish--oh, passionately!--that I could pray."
"Why don't you?"
"I don't believe enough--in that. I wish I did."
Trafford thought. "People are always so exacting about prayer," he said.
"Exacting."
"You want to pray--and you can't make terms for a thing you want. I used to think I could. I wanted God to come and demonstrate a bit.... It's no good, Madge.... If God chooses to be silent--you must pray to the silence. If he chooses to live in darkness, you must pray to the night...."
"Yes," said Marjorie, "I suppose one must."
She thought. "I suppose in the end one does," she said....
§ 18
Mixed up with this entirely characteristic theology of theirs and their elaborate planning-out of a new life in London were other strands of thought. Queer memories of London and old times together would flash with a peculiar brightness across their contemplation of the infinities and the needs of mankind. Out of nowhere, quite disconnectedly, would come the human, finite: "Do you remember----?"
Two things particularly pressed into their minds. One was the thought of their children, and I do not care to tell how often in the day now they calculated the time in England, and tried to guess to a half mile or so where those young people might be and what they might be doing. "The shops are bright for Christmas now," said Marjorie. "This year Dick was to have had his first fireworks. I wonder if he did. I wonder if he burnt his dear little funny stumps of fingers. I hope not."
"Oh, just a little," said Trafford. "I remember how a squib made my glove smoulder and singed me, and how my mother kissed me for taking it like a man. It was the best part of the adventure."
"Dick shall burn his fingers when his mother's home to kiss him. But spare his fingers now, Dadda...."
The other topic was food.
It was only after they had been doing it for a week or so that they remarked how steadily they gravitated to reminiscences, suggestions, descriptions and long discussions of eatables--sound, solid eatables. They told over the particulars of dinners they had imagined altogether forgotten; neither hosts nor conversations seemed to matter now in the slightest degree, but every item in the menu had its place. They nearly quarrelled one day about _hors-d'oeuvre_. Trafford wanted to dwell on them when Marjorie was eager for the soup.
"It's niggling with food," said Marjorie.
"Oh, but there's no reason," said Trafford, "why you shouldn't take a lot of _hors-d'oeuvre_. Three or four sardines, and potato salad and a big piece of smoked salmon, and some of that Norwegian herring, and so on, and keep the olives by you to pick at. It's a beginning."
"It's--it's immoral," said Marjorie, "that's what I feel. If one needs a whet to eat, one shouldn't eat. The proper beginning of a dinner is soup--good, hot, _rich_ soup. Thick soup--with things in it, vegetables and meat and things. Bits of oxtail."
"Not peas."
"No, not peas. Pea-soup is tiresome. I never knew anything one tired of so soon. I wish we hadn't relied on it so much."
"Thick soup's all very well," said Trafford, "but how about that clear stuff they give you in the little pavement restaurants in Paris. You know--_Croûte-au-pot_, with lovely great crusts and big leeks and lettuce leaves and so on! Tremendous aroma of onions, and beautiful little beads of fat! And being a clear soup, you see what there is. That's--interesting. Twenty-five centimes, Marjorie. Lord! I'd give a guinea a plate for it. I'd give five pounds for one of those jolly white-metal tureens full--you know, _full_, with little drops all over the outside of it, and the ladle sticking out under the lid."
"Have you ever tasted turtle soup?"
"Rather. They give it you in the City. The fat's--ripping. But they're rather precious with it, you know. For my own part, I don't think soup should be _doled_ out. I always liked the soup we used to get at the Harts'; but then they never give you enough, you know--not nearly enough."
"About a tablespoonful," said Marjorie. "It's mocking an appetite."
"Still there's things to follow," said Trafford....
They discussed the proper order of a dinner very carefully. They decided that sorbets and ices were not only unwholesome, but nasty. "In London," said Trafford, "one's taste gets--vitiated."...
They weighed the merits of French cookery, modern international cookery, and produced alternatives. Trafford became very eloquent about old English food. "Dinners," said Trafford, "should be feasting, not the mere satisfaction of a necessity. There should be--_amplitude_. I remember a recipe for a pie; I think it was in one of those books that man Lucas used to compile. If I remember rightly, it began with: 'Take a swine and hew it into gobbets.' Gobbets! That's something like a beginning. It was a big pie with tiers and tiers of things, and it kept it up all the way in that key.... And then what could be better than prime British-fed roast beef, reddish, just a shade on the side of underdone, and not too finely cut. Mutton can't touch it."
"Beef is the best," she said.
"Then our English cold meat again. What can equal it? Such stuff as they give in a good country inn, a huge joint of beef--you cut from it yourself, you know as much as you like--with mustard, pickles, celery, a tankard of stout, let us say. Pressed beef, such as they'll give you at the Reform, too, that's good eating for a man. With chutney, and then old cheese to follow. And boiled beef, with little carrots and turnips and a dumpling or so. Eh?"
"Of course," said Marjorie, "one must do justice to a well-chosen turkey, a _fat_ turkey."
"Or a good goose, for the matter of that--with honest, well-thought-out stuffing. I like the little sausages round the dish of a turkey, too; like cherubs they are, round the feet of a Madonna.... There's much to be said for sausage, Marjorie. It concentrates."
Sausage led to Germany. "I'm not one of those patriots," he was saying presently, "who run down other countries by way of glorifying their own. While I was in Germany I tasted many good things. There's their Leberwurst; it's never bad, and, at its best, it's splendid. It's only a fool would reproach Germany with sausage. Devonshire black-pudding, of course, is the master of any Blutwurst, but there's all those others on the German side, Frankfurter, big reddish sausage stuff again with great crystalline lumps of white fat. And how well they cook their rich hashes, and the thick gravies they make. Curious, how much better the cooking of Teutonic peoples is than the cooking of the South Europeans! It's as if one needed a colder climate to brace a cook to his business. The Frenchman and the Italian trifle and stimulate. It's as if they'd never met a hungry man. No German would have thought of _soufflé_. Ugh! it's vicious eating. There's much that's fine, though, in Austria and Hungary. I wish I had travelled in Hungary. Do you remember how once or twice we've lunched at that Viennese place in Regent Street, and how they've given us stuffed Paprika, eh?"
"That was a good place. I remember there was stewed beef once with a lot of barley--such _good_ barley!"
"Every country has its glories. One talks of the cookery of northern countries and then suddenly one thinks of curry, with lots of rice."
"And lots of chicken!"
"And lots of hot curry powder, _very_ hot. And look at America! Here's a people who haven't any of them been out of Europe for centuries, and yet they have as different a table as you could well imagine. There's a kind of fish, planked shad, that they cook on resinous wood--roast it, I suppose. It's substantial, like nothing else in the world. And how good, too, with turkey are sweet potatoes. Then they have such a multitude of cereal things; stuff like their buckwheat cakes, all swimming in golden syrup. And Indian corn, again!"
"Of course, corn is being anglicized. I've often given you corn--latterly, before we came away."
"That sort of separated grain--out of tins. Like chicken's food! It's not the real thing. You should eat corn on the cob--American fashion! It's fine. I had it when I was in the States. You know, you take it up in your hands by both ends--you've seen the cobs?--and gnaw."
The craving air of Labrador at a temperature of -20° Fahrenheit, and methodically stinted rations, make great changes in the outward qualities of the mind. "_I'd_ like to do that," said Marjorie.
Her face flushed a little at a guilty thought, her eyes sparkled. She leant forward and spoke in a confidential undertone.
"_I'd--I'd like to eat a mutton chop like that_," said Marjorie.
§ 20
One morning Marjorie broached something she had had on her mind for several days.
"Old man," she said, "I can't stand it any longer. I'm going to thaw my scissors and cut your hair.... And then you'll have to trim that beard of yours."
"You'll have to dig out that looking-glass."
"I know," said Marjorie. She looked at him. "You'll never be a pretty man again," she said. "But there's a sort of wild splendour.... And I love every inch and scrap of you...."
Their eyes met. "We're a thousand deeps now below the look of things," said Trafford. "We'd love each other minced."
She broke into that smiling laugh of hers. "Oh! it won't come to _that_," she said. "Trust my housekeeping!"
CHAPTER THE FIFTH
THE TRAIL TO THE SEA
§ 1
One astonishing afternoon in January a man came out of the wilderness to Lonely Hut. He was a French-Indian half-breed, a trapper up and down the Green River and across the Height of Land to Sea Lake. He arrived in a sort of shy silence, and squatted amiably on a log to thaw. "Much snow," he said, "and little fur."
After he had sat at their fire for an hour and eaten and drunk, his purpose in coming thawed out. He explained he had just come on to them to see how they were. He was, he said, a planter furring; he had a line of traps, about a hundred and twenty miles in length. The nearest trap in his path before he turned northward over the divide was a good forty miles down the river. He had come on from there. Just to have a look. His name, he said, was Louis Napoleon Partington. He had carried a big pack, a rifle and a dead marten,--they lay beside him--and out of his shapeless mass of caribou skins and woolen clothing and wrappings, peeped a genial, oily, brown face, very dirty, with a strand of blue-black hair across one eye, irregular teeth in its friendly smile, and little, squeezed-up eyes.
Conversation developed. There had been doubts of his linguistic range at first, but he had an understanding expression, and his English seemed guttural rather than really bad.
He was told the tremendous story of Trafford's leg; was shown it, and felt it; he interpolated thick and whistling noises to show how completely he followed their explanations, and then suddenly he began a speech that made all his earlier taciturnity seem but the dam of a great reservoir of mixed and partly incomprehensible English. He complimented Marjorie so effusively and relentlessly and shamelessly as to produce a pause when he had done. "Yes," he said, and nodded to button up the whole. He sucked his pipe, well satisfied with his eloquence. Trafford spoke in his silence. "We are coming down," he said.
("I thought, perhaps----" whispered Louis Napoleon.)
"Yes," said Trafford, "we are coming down with you. Why not? We can get a sledge over the snow now? It's hard? I mean a flat sledge--like _this_. See? Like this." He got up and dragged Marjorie's old arrangement into view. "We shall bring all the stuff we can down with us, grub, blankets--not the tent, it's too bulky; we'll leave a lot of the heavy gear."
"You'd have to leave the tent," said Louis Napoleon.
"I _said_ leave the tent."
"And you'd have to leave ... some of those tins."
"Nearly all of them."
"And the ammunition, there;--except just a little."
"Just enough for the journey down."
"Perhaps a gun?"
"No, not a gun. Though, after all,--well, we'd return one of the guns. Give it you to bring back here."
"Bring back here?"
"If you liked."
For some moments Louis Napoleon was intently silent. When he spoke his voice was guttural with emotion. "After," he said thoughtfully and paused, and then resolved to have it over forthwith, "all you leave will be mine? Eh?"
Trafford said that was the idea.
Louis Napoleon's eye brightened, but his face preserved its Indian calm.
"I will take you right to Hammond's," he said, "Where they have dogs. And then I can come back here...."
§ 2
They had talked out nearly every particular of their return before they slept that night; they yarned away three hours over the first generous meal that any one of them had eaten for many weeks. Louis Napoleon stayed in the hut as a matter of course, and reposed with snores and choking upon Marjorie's sledge and within a yard of her. It struck her as she lay awake and listened that the housemaids in Sussex Square would have thought things a little congested for a lady's bedroom, and then she reflected that after all it wasn't much worse than a crowded carriage in an all-night train from Switzerland. She tried to count how many people there had been in that compartment, and failed. How stuffy that had been--the smell of cheese and all! And with that, after a dream that she was whaling and had harpooned a particularly short-winded whale she fell very peacefully into oblivion.
Next day was spent in the careful preparation of the two sledges. They intended to take a full provision for six weeks, although they reckoned that with good weather they ought to be down at Hammond's in four.
The day after was Sunday, and Louis Napoleon would not look at the sledges or packing. Instead he held a kind of religious service which consisted partly in making Trafford read aloud out of a very oily old New Testament he produced, a selected passage from the book of Corinthians, and partly in moaning rather than singing several hymns. He was rather disappointed that they did not join in with him. In the afternoon he heated some water, went into the tent with it and it would appear partially washed his face. In the evening, after they had supped, he discussed religion, being curious by this time about their beliefs and procedure.
He spread his mental and spiritual equipment before them very artlessly. Their isolation and their immense concentration on each other had made them sensitive to personal quality, and they listened to the broken English and the queer tangential starts into new topics of this dirty mongrel creature with the keenest appreciation of its quality. It was inconsistent, miscellaneous, simple, honest, and human. It was as touching as the medley in the pocket of a dead schoolboy. He was superstitious and sceptical and sensual and spiritual, and very, very earnest. The things he believed, even if they were just beliefs about the weather or drying venison or filling pipes, he believed with emotion. He flushed as he told them. For all his intellectual muddle they felt he knew how to live honestly and die if need be very finely.
He was more than a little distressed at their apparent ignorance of the truths of revealed religion as it is taught in the Moravian schools upon the coast, and indeed it was manifest that he had had far more careful and infinitely more sincere religious teaching than either Trafford or Marjorie. For a time the missionary spirit inspired him, and then he quite forgot his solicitude for their conversion in a number of increasingly tall anecdotes about hunters and fishermen, illustrating at first the extreme dangers of any departure from a rigid Sabbatarianism, but presently becoming just stories illustrating the uncertainty of life. Thence he branched off to the general topic of life upon the coast and the relative advantages of "planter" and fisherman.
And then with a kindling eye he spoke of women, and how that some day he would marry. His voice softened, and he addressed himself more particularly to Marjorie. He didn't so much introduce the topic of the lady as allow the destined young woman suddenly to pervade his discourse. She was, it seemed, a servant, an Esquimaux girl at the Moravian Mission station at Manivikovik. He had been plighted to her for nine years. He described a gramophone he had purchased down at Port Dupré and brought back to her three hundred miles up the coast--it seemed to Marjorie an odd gift for an Esquimaux maiden--and he gave his views upon its mechanism. He said God was with the man who invented the gramophone "truly." They would have found one a very great relief to the tediums of their sojourn at Lonely Hut. The gramophone he had given his betrothed possessed records of the Rev. Capel Gumm's preaching and of Madame Melba's singing, a revival hymn called "Sowing the Seed," and a comic song--they could not make out his pronunciation of the title--that made you die with laughter. "It goes gobble, gobble, gobble," he said, with a solemn appreciative reflection of those distant joys.
"It's good to be jolly at times," he said with his bright eyes scanning Marjorie's face a little doubtfully, as if such ideas were better left for week-day expression.
§ 3
Their return was a very different journey from the toilsome ascent of the summer. An immense abundance of snow masked the world, snow that made them regret acutely they had not equipped themselves with ski. With ski and a good circulation, a man may go about Labrador in winter, six times more easily than by the canoes and slow trudging of summer travel. As it was they were glad of their Canadian snow shoes. One needs only shelters after the Alpine Club hut fashion, and all that vast solitary country would be open in the wintertime. Its shortest day is no shorter than the shortest day in Cumberland or Dublin.
This is no place to tell of the beauty and wonder of snow and ice, the soft contours of gentle slopes, the rippling of fine snow under a steady wind, the long shadow ridges of shining powder on the lee of trees and stones and rocks, the delicate wind streaks over broad surfaces like the marks of a chisel in marble, the crests and cornices, the vivid brightness of edges in the sun, the glowing yellowish light on sunlit surfaces, the long blue shadows, the flush of sunset and sunrise and the pallid unearthly desolation of snow beneath the moon. Nor need the broken snow in woods and amidst tumbled stony slopes be described, nor the vast soft overhanging crests on every outstanding rock beside the icebound river, nor the huge stalactites and stalagmites of green-blue ice below the cliffs, nor trees burdened and broken by frost and snow, nor snow upon ice, nor the blue pools at mid-day upon the surface of the ice-stream. Across the smooth wind-swept ice of the open tarns they would find a growth of ice flowers, six-rayed and complicated, more abundant and more beautiful than the Alpine summer flowers.
But the wind was very bitter, and the sun had scarcely passed its zenith before the thought of fuel and shelter came back into their minds.
As they approached Partington's tilt, at the point where his trapping ground turned out of the Green River gorge, he became greatly obsessed by the thought of his traps. He began to talk of all that he might find in them, all he hoped to find, and the "dallars" that might ensue. They slept the third night, Marjorie within and the two men under the lee of the little cabin, and Partington was up and away before dawn to a trap towards the ridge. He had infected Marjorie and Trafford with a sympathetic keenness, but when they saw his killing of a marten that was still alive in its trap, they suddenly conceived a distaste for trapping.
They insisted they must witness no more. They would wait while he went to a trap....
"Think what he's doing!" said Trafford, as they sat together under the lee of a rock waiting for him. "We imagined this was a free, simple-souled man leading an unsophisticated life on the very edge of humanity, and really he is as much a dependant of your woman's world, Marjorie, as any sweated seamstress in a Marylebone slum. Lord! how far those pretty wasteful hands of women reach! All these poor broken and starving beasts he finds and slaughters are, from the point of view of our world, just furs. Furs! Poor little snarling unfortunates! Their pelts will be dressed and prepared because women who have never dreamt of this bleak wilderness desire them. They will get at last into Regent Street shops, and Bond Street shops, and shops in Fifth Avenue and in Paris and Berlin, they will make delightful deep muffs, with scent and little bags and powder puffs and all sorts of things tucked away inside, and long wraps for tall women, and jolly little frames of soft fur for pretty faces, and dainty coats and rugs for expensive little babies in Kensington Gardens."...
"I wonder," reflected Marjorie, "if I could buy one perhaps. As a memento."
He looked at her with eyes of quiet amusement.
"Oh!" she cried, "I didn't mean to! The old Eve!"
"The old Adam is with her," said Trafford. "He's wanting to give it her.... We don't cease to be human, Madge, you know, because we've got an idea now of just where we are. I wonder, which would you like? I dare say we could arrange it."
"No," said Marjorie, and thought. "It would be jolly," she said. "All the same, you know--and just to show you--I'm not going to let you buy me that fur."
"I'd like to," said Trafford.
"No," said Marjorie, with a decision that was almost fierce. "I mean it. I've got more to do than you in the way of reforming. It's just because always I've let my life be made up of such little things that I mustn't. Indeed I mustn't. Don't make things hard for me."
He looked at her for a moment. "Very well," he said. "But I'd have liked to."...
"You're right," he added, five seconds later.
"Oh! I'm right."
§ 4
One day Louis Napoleon sent them on along the trail while he went up the mountain to a trap among the trees. He rejoined them--not as his custom was, shouting inaudible conversation for the last hundred yards or so, but in silence. They wondered at that, and at the one clumsy gesture that flourished something darkly grey at them. What had happened to the man? Whatever he had caught he was hugging it as one hugs a cat, and stroking it. "Ugh!" he said deeply, drawing near. "Oh!" A solemn joy irradiated his face, and almost religious ecstasy found expression.
He had got a silver fox, a beautifully marked silver fox, the best luck of Labrador! One goes for years without one, in hope, and when it comes, it pays the trapper's debts, it clears his life--for years!
They tried poor inadequate congratulation....
As they sat about the fire that night a silence came upon Louis Napoleon. It was manifest that his mind was preoccupied. He got up, walked about, inspected the miracle of fur that had happened to him, returned, regarded them. "'M'm," he said, and stroked his chin with his forefinger. A certain diffidence and yet a certain dignity of assurance mingled in his manner. It wasn't so much a doubt of his own correctness as of some possible ignorance of the finer shades on their part that might embarrass him. He coughed a curt preface, and intimated he had a request to make. Behind the Indian calm of his face glowed tremendous feeling, like the light of a foundry furnace shining through chinks in the door. He spoke in a small flat voice, exercising great self-control. His wish, he said, in view of all that had happened, was a little thing.... This was nearly a perfect day for him, and one thing only remained.... "Well," he said, and hung. "Well," said Trafford. He plunged. Just simply this. Would they give him the brandy bottle and let him get drunk? Mr. Grenfell was a good man, a very good man, but he had made brandy dear--dear beyond the reach of common men altogether--along the coast....
He explained, dear bundle of clothes and dirt! that he was always perfectly respectable when he was drunk.
§ 5
It seemed strange to Trafford that now that Marjorie was going home, a wild impatience to see her children should possess her. So long as it had been probable that they would stay out their year in Labrador, that separation had seemed mainly a sentimental trouble; now at times it was like an animal craving. She would talk of them for hours at a stretch, and when she was not talking he could see her eyes fixed ahead, and knew that she was anticipating a meeting. And for the first time it seemed the idea of possible misadventure troubled her....
They reached Hammond's in one and twenty days from Lonely Hut, three days they had been forced to camp because of a blizzard, and three because Louis Napoleon was rigidly Sabbatarian. They parted from him reluctantly, and the next day Hammond's produced its dogs, twelve stout but extremely hungry dogs, and sent the Traffords on to the Green River pulp-mills, where there were good beds and a copious supply of hot water. Thence they went to Manivikovik, and thence the new Marconi station sent their inquiries home, inquiries that were answered next day with matter-of-fact brevity: "Everyone well, love from all."
When the operator hurried with that to Marjorie she received it off-handedly, glanced at it carelessly, asked him to smoke, remarked that wireless telegraphy was a wonderful thing, and then, in the midst of some unfinished commonplace about the temperature, broke down and wept wildly and uncontrollably....
§ 6
Then came the long, wonderful ride southward day after day along the coast to Port Dupré, a ride from headland to headland across the frozen bays behind long teams of straining, furry dogs, that leapt and yelped as they ran. Sometimes over the land the brutes shirked and loitered and called for the whip; they were a quarrelsome crew to keep waiting; but across the sea-ice they went like the wind, and downhill the komatic chased their waving tails. The sledges swayed and leapt depressions, and shot athwart icy stretches. The Traffords, spectacled and wrapped to their noses, had all the sensations then of hunting an unknown quarry behind a pack of wolves. The snow blazed under the sun, out to sea beyond the ice the water glittered, and it wasn't so much air they breathed as a sort of joyous hunger.
One day their teams insisted upon racing.
Marjorie's team was the heavier, her driver more skillful, and her sledge the lighter, and she led in that wild chase from start to finish, but ever and again Trafford made wild spurts that brought him almost level. Once, as he came alongside, she heard him laughing joyously.
"Marjorie," he shouted, "d'you remember? Old donkey cart?"
Her team yawed away, and as he swept near again, behind his pack of whimpering, straining, furious dogs, she heard him shouting, "You know, that old cart! Under the overhanging trees! So thick and green they met overhead! You know! When you and I had our first talk together! In the lane. It wasn't so fast as this, eh?"...
§ 7
At Port Dupré they stayed ten days--days that Marjorie could only make tolerable by knitting absurd garments for the children (her knitting was atrocious), and then one afternoon they heard the gun of the _Grenfell_, the new winter steamer from St. John's, signalling as it came in through the fog, very slowly, from that great wasteful world of men and women beyond the seaward grey.
THE END
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation and hyphenation inconsistencies have been silently repaired. Words with variable spelling have been retained. The following spelling and typographical emendations have been made:
p. 22: broken text "were they living and moving realities" was completed to "were they living and moving realities when those others were at home again?" p. 34: protruberant replaced with protuberant ("large protuberant") p. 38: pay replaced with play ("what the play was") p. 40: Majorie replaced with Marjorie ("Marjorie loved singing") p. 40: feut replaced with felt ("that he felt") p. 60: téte-à-tête replaced with tête-à-tête ("silent tête-à-tête") p. 70: foundamental replaced with fundamental ("three fundamental things") p. 76: fina replaced with final ("working for her final") p. 88: challenege replaced with challenge ("challenge inattentive auditors") p. 92: presumbly replaced with presumably ("presumably Billy's") p. 115: ino replaced with into ("into the air") p. 141: himse_f replaced with himself ("ask himself") p. 147: contradication replaced with contradiction ("any sort of contradiction") p. 167: calcalculated replaced with calculated ("indeed calculated") p. 223: hestitated replaced with hesitated ("She hesitated") p. 230: intriques replaced with intrigues ("culminations and intrigues") p. 242: America replaced with American ("American minor poet") p. 265: acquiscent replaced with acquiescent ("by no means acquiescent") p. 313: It's replaced with Its ("Its end was the Agenda Club") p. 316: regime replaced with régime ("the new régime") p. 341: number of section 15 replaced with 16 p. 342: gestulated replaced with gesticulated ("Solomonson gesticulated") p. 342: The paragraphs starting with: "It was all" and "You said good-bye" were merged p. 346: The paragraphs starting with: "They aren't arranged" and "They'd get everything" were merged p. 349: devine replaced with divine ("by right divine of genius") p. 368: presumptious replaced with presumptuous ("extremely presumptuous") p. 376: mispelling replaced with misspelling ("as much misspelling as") p. 376: The replaced with They ("They gave dinners") p. 378: The replaced with They ("They could play") p. 395: Docter replaced with Doctor ("Doctor Codger") p. 396: authoritive replaced with authoritative ("authoritative imagine") p. 399: shuldered replaced with shouldered ("As he shouldered") p. 403: wet replaced with went ("Trafford's eyes went from") p. 405: subthe replaced with subtle ("skilful, subtle appreciation") p. 426: fine replaced with find ("find God") p. 427: chidren replaced with children ("of having children at all") p. 441: serere replaced with serene ("brightly serene") p. 442: tundura replaced with tundra ("wide stretches of tundra") p. 457: rucksac replaced with rucksack ("chunks of dry paper, the rucksack") p. 481: realties replaced with realities ("expression of the realities") p. 485: the duplicate phrase "He stared at her" was removed p. 493: think replaced with thing ("salvation is a collective thing") p. 504: realty replaced with reality ("of sense and reality") p. 509: greal replaced with great ("a great lump") p. 512: caluclated replaced with calculated ("now they calculated") p. 515: travellel replaced with travelled ("I had travelled") p. 518: gutteral replaced with guttural ("seemed guttural") p. 520: gutteral replaced with guttural ("his voice was guttural") p. 524: slaughers replaced with slaughters ("he finds and slaughters")
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage, by H. G. Wells |
21060-8 | Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
The Congo Rovers A Story of the Slave Squadron
By Harry Collingwood ________________________________________________________________________ This book by Collingwood is a good story, but as your reviewer has said elsewhere, told in a rather long-winded manner, and in the notably Kingston style and format that Collingwood often adopts. Why not? Kingston was dead before Collingwood started to write, and the style had been proved to be what young readers of the era liked.
The format specifically is that the book starts with a young boy who is suddenly offered a posting as a midshipman in a naval vessel about to sail in a few days' time. The boy accepts, and the story goes on from there. ________________________________________________________________________ THE CONGO ROVERS A STORY OF THE SLAVE SQUADRON
BY HARRY COLLINGWOOD
A Story of the Slave Squadron.
CHAPTER ONE.
MY FIRST APPEARANCE IN UNIFORM.
"Um!" ejaculated my father as he thoughtfully removed his double eye- glass from his nose with one hand, and with the other passed a letter to me across the breakfast-table--"Um! this letter will interest you, Dick. It is from Captain Vernon."
My heart leapt with sudden excitement, and my hand trembled as I stretched it out for the proffered epistle. The mention of Captain Vernon's name, together with the announcement that the subject-matter of the letter was of interest to me, prepared me in a great measure for the intelligence it conveyed; which was to the effect that the writer, having been appointed to the command of the sloop-of-war _Daphne_, now found himself in a position to fulfil a promise of some standing to his dear and honoured friend Dr Hawkesley (my father) by receiving his son (myself) on board the sloop, with the rating of midshipman. The sloop, the letter went on to say, was commissioned for service on the west coast of Africa; and if I decided to join her no time should be lost in procuring my outfit, as the _Daphne_ was under orders to sail on the --; just four days from the date of the receipt of the letter.
"Well, Dick, what do you think of Captain Vernon's proposal?" inquired my father somewhat sadly, as I concluded my perusal of the letter and raised my eyes to his.
"Oh, father!" I exclaimed eagerly, "I _hope_ you will consent to let me go. Perhaps I may never have another such an opportunity; and I am _quite sure_ I shall never care to be anything but a sailor."
"Ah! yes--the old, old story," murmured my father, shaking his head dubiously. "Thousands of lads have told their fathers exactly the same thing, and have lived to bitterly regret their choice of a profession. Look at my life. I have to run about in all weathers; to take my meals when and how I can; there is not a single hour in the twenty-four that I can call my own; it is a rare thing for me to get a night of undisturbed rest; it is a hard, anxious, harassing life that I lead--you have often said so yourself, and urged it as one of the reasons why you object to follow in my footsteps. But I tell you, Dick, that my life--ay, or the life even of the poorest country practitioner, for that matter--is one of ease and luxury compared with that of a sailor. But I have said all this to you over and over again, without convincing you; and I hardly dare hope that I shall be more successful now; so, if you are really quite resolved to go to sea, I will offer no further objections. It is true that you will be going to an unhealthy climate; but God is just as well able to preserve you there as He is here; and then, again, you have a strong healthy constitution, which, fortified with such preservative medicines as I can supply, will, I hope, enable you to withstand the malaria and to return to us in safety. Now, what do you say--are you still resolved to go?"
"Quite," I replied emphatically. "Now that you have given your consent the last obstacle is removed, and I can follow with a light heart the bent of my own inclinations."
"Very well, then," said my father, rising from the table and pushing back his chair. "That question being settled, we had better call upon Mr Shears forthwith and give the order for your uniform and outfit. There is no time to lose; and since go you _will_, I would very much rather you went with Vernon than with anyone else."
The above conversation took place, as already stated, in the breakfast- room of my father's house. My father was at that time--as he continued to be until the day of his death--the leading physician in Portsmouth; and his house--a substantial four-storey building--stood near the top of the High Street. The establishment of Mr Shears, "Army and Navy Tailor, Clothier, and Outfitter," was situated near the bottom of the same street. A walk, therefore, of some ten minutes' duration took us to our destination; and at the end of a further half-hour's anxious consultation I had been measured for my uniform--one suit of which was faithfully promised for the next day--had chosen my sea-chest, and had selected a complete outfit of such clothing as was to be obtained ready- made. This important business concluded, my father departed upon his daily round of visits, and I had the remainder of the day at my own disposal.
My first act on emerging from the door of Mr Shears' establishment was to hasten off to the dockyard at top speed to take another look at the _Daphne_. I had often seen the craft before; had taken an interest in her, indeed, I may say, from the moment that her keel was laid--she was built in Portsmouth dockyard--and had watched her progress to completion and her recent launch with an admiration which had steadily increased until it grew into positive _love_. And now I was actually to have the happiness, the _bliss_, of going to sea in her as an officer on her first cruise. Ecstatic thought! I felt as though I was walking on air!
But my rapture received a pretty effectual damper when I reflected--as I soon did--that my obstinate determination to go to sea must certainly prove a deep disappointment, if not a source of constant and cruel anxiety, to my father. Dear old dad! his most cherished wish, as I knew full well, had long been that I, his only son, might qualify myself to take over and carry on the exceedingly snug practice he had built up, when the pressure of increasing years should render his retirement desirable. But the idea was so utterly distasteful to me that I had persistently turned a deaf ear to all his arguments, persuasions, ay, and even his entreaties. Unfortunately, perhaps, for the fulfilment of his desires, I was born and brought up at Portsmouth; and all my earliest recollections of amusement are, in some way or other, connected with salt water. Swimming and boating early became absolute passions with me; I was never quite happy unless I happened to be either in or on the water; _then_, indeed, all other pleasures were less than nothing to me. As a natural consequence, I soon became the intimate companion of every boatman in the harbour; I acquired, to a considerable extent, their tastes and prejudices, and soon mastered all the nautical lore which it was in their power to teach me. I could sail a boat before I could read; and by the time that I had learned to write, was able to hand, reef, and steer with the best of them. My conversation--except when it was addressed to my father--was copiously interlarded with nautical phrases; and by the time I had attained the age of fourteen--at which period this history begins--I was not only acquainted with the name, place, and use of every rope and spar in a ship, but I had also an accurate knowledge of the various rigs, and a distinct opinion as to what constituted a good model. The astute reader will have gathered from this confession that I was, from my earliest childhood, left pretty much my own master; and such was in fact the case. My mother died in giving birth to my only sister Eva (two years my junior); a misfortune which, in consequence of my father's absorption in the duties of his practice, left me entirely to the care of the servants, by whom I was shamefully neglected. But for this I should doubtless have been trained to obedience and a respectful deference to my father's wishes. The mischief, however, was done; I had acquired a love of the sea, and my highest ambition was to become a naval officer. This fact my father at length reluctantly recognised, and by persistent entreaty I finally prevailed upon him to take the necessary steps to gratify my heart's desire--with the result already known to the reader.
The sombre reflections induced by the thought of my father's disappointment did not, I confess with shame, last long. They vanished as a morning mist is dissipated before the rising sun, when I recalled to mind that I was not only going to sea, but that I was actually going to sail in the _Daphne_. This particular craft was my _beau-ideal_ of what a ship ought to be; and in this opinion I was by no means alone-- all my cronies hailing from the Hard agreeing, without exception, that she was far and away the handsomest and most perfect model they had ever seen. My admiration of her was unbounded; and on the day of her launch--upon which occasion I cheered myself hoarse--I felt, as I saw her gliding swiftly and gracefully down the ways, that it would be a priceless privilege to sail in her, even in the capacity of the meanest ship-boy. And now I was to be a midshipman on board her! I hurried onward with swift and impatient steps, and soon passed through the dockyard gates--having long ago, by dint of persistent coaxing, gained the _entree_ to the sacred precincts--when a walk of some four or five hundred yards further took me to the berth alongside the wharf where she was lying.
Well as I knew every curve and line of her beautiful hull, my glances now dwelt upon her with tenfold loving interest. She was a ship-sloop of 28 guns--long 18-pounders--with a flush deck fore and aft. She was very long in proportion to her beam; low in the water, and her lines were as fine as it had been possible to make them. She had a very light, elegant-looking stern, adorned with a great deal of carved scroll-work about the cabin windows; and her gracefully-curved cut-water was surmounted by an exquisitely-carved full-length figure of Peneus' lovely daughter, with both arms outstretched, as in the act of flight, and with twigs and leaves of laurel just springing from her dainty finger-tips. There was a great deal of brass-work about the deck fittings, which gleamed and flashed brilliantly in the sun; and, the paint being new and fresh, she looked altogether superlatively neat, in spite of the fact that the operations of rigging and of shipping stores were both going on simultaneously.
Having satisfied for the time being my curiosity with regard to the hull of my future home, I next cast a glance aloft at her spars. She was rigged only as far as her topmast-heads, her topgallant-masts being then on deck in process of preparation for sending aloft. When I had last seen her she was under the masting-shears getting her lower-masts stepped; and it then struck me that they were fitting her with rather heavy spars. But now, as I looked aloft, I was fairly startled at the length and girth of her masts and yards. To my eye--by no means an unaccustomed one--her spars seemed taunt enough for a ship of nearly double her size; and the rigging was heavy in the same proportion. I stood there on the wharf watching with the keenest interest the scene of bustle and animation on board until the bell rang the hour of noon, and all hands knocked off work and went to dinner; by which time the three topgallant-masts were aloft with the rigging all ready for setting up when the men turned-to again. The addition of these spars to the length of her already lofty masts gave the _Daphne_, in my opinion, more than ever the appearance of being over-sparred; an opinion in which, as it soon appeared, I was not alone.
Most of the men left the dockyard and went home (as I suppose) to their dinner; but half a dozen or so of riggers, instead of following the example of the others, routed out from some obscure spot certain small bundles tied up in coloured handkerchiefs, and, bringing these on shore, seated themselves upon some of the boxes and casks with which the wharf was lumbered, and, opening the bundles, produced therefrom their dinners, which they proceeded to discuss with quite an enviable appetite.
For a few minutes the meal proceeded in dead silence; but presently one of them, glancing aloft at the _Daphne's_ spars, remarked in a tone of voice which reached me distinctly--I was standing within a few feet of the party:
"Well, Tom, bo'; what d'ye think of the hooker _now_?"
The man addressed shook his head disapprovingly. "The more I looks at her the less I likes her," was his reply.
"I'm precious glad _I_ ain't goin' to sea in her," observed another.
"Same here," said the first speaker. "Why, look at the _Siren_ over there! She's a 38-gun frigate, and her mainmast is only two feet longer than the _Daphne's_--as I happen to know, for I had a hand in the buildin' of both the spars. The sloop's over-masted, that's what _she_ is."
I turned away and bent my steps homeward. The short snatch of conversation which I had just heard, confirming as it did my own convictions, had a curiously depressing effect upon me, which was increased when, a few minutes afterwards, I caught a glimpse of the distant buoy which marked the position of the sunken _Royal George_. For the moment my enthusiasm was all gone; a foreboding of disaster took possession of me, and but for very shame I felt more than half-inclined to tell my father I had altered my mind, and would rather not go to sea. I had occasion afterwards to devoutly wish I had acted on this impulse.
When, however, I was awakened next morning by the sun shining brilliantly in at my bed-room window, my apprehensions had vanished, my enthusiasm was again at fever-heat, and I panted for the moment--not to be very long deferred--when I should don my uniform and strut forth to sport my glories before an admiring world.
Punctual almost to a moment--for once at least in his life--Mr Shears sent home the uniform whilst we were sitting down to luncheon; and the moment that I decently could I hastened away to try it on.
The breeches were certainly rather wrinkly above the knees, and the jacket was somewhat uncomfortably tight across the chest when buttoned over; it also pinched me a good deal under the arm-pits, whilst the sleeves exhibited a trifle too much--some six inches or so--of my wristbands and shirt-sleeves; and when I looked at myself in the glass I found that there was a well-defined ridge of loose cloth running across the back from shoulder to shoulder. With these trifling exceptions, however, I thought the suit fitted me fairly well, and I hastened down- stairs to exhibit myself to my sister Eva. To my intense surprise and indignation she no sooner saw me than she burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, and was heartless enough to declare that I looked "a perfect fright." Thoroughly disgusted with such unsisterly conduct I mustered all my dignity, and without condescending to ask for an explanation walked in contemptuous silence out of the room and the house.
A regimental band was to play that afternoon on Southsea Common, and thither I accordingly decided to direct my steps. There were a good many people about the streets, and I had not gone very far before I made the discovery that everybody was in high good-humour about something or other. The people I met wore, almost without exception, genial smiling countenances, and many a peal of hearty laughter rang out from hilarious groups who had already passed me. I felt anxious to know what it was that thus set all Portsmouth laughing, and glanced round to see if I could discover an acquaintance of whom I might inquire; but, as usual in such cases, was unsuccessful. When I reached the Common I found, as I expected I should, a large and fashionably dressed crowd, with a good sprinkling of naval and military uniforms, listening to the strains of the band. Here, for the first five minutes or so, I failed to notice anything unusual in the behaviour of the people; but the humorous item of news must have reached them almost simultaneously with my own arrival upon the scene, for very soon I detected on the faces of those who passed me the same amused smile which I had before encountered in the streets. I stood well back out of the thick of the crowd; both because I could hear the music better, and also to afford any friend of mine who might chance to be present an opportunity to see me in my imposing new uniform.
It was whilst I was standing thus in the most easy and nonchalant attitude I could assume that a horrible discovery forced itself upon me. I happened to be regarding with a certain amount of languid interest a couple of promenaders, consisting of a very lovely girl and a somewhat foppish ensign, when I suddenly caught the eye of the latter fixed upon me. He raised his eye-glass to his eye, and, in the coolest manner in the world, deliberately surveyed me through it, when, in an instant, a broad smile of amusement--the smile which I by this time knew so well-- overspread his otherwise inanimate features. I glanced hurriedly behind me to see if I could discover the cause of his risibility, and, failing to do so, turned round again, just in time to see him, with his eye- glass still bearing straight in my direction, bend his head and speak a few words to his fair companion. Thereupon she, too, glanced in my direction, looked steadfastly at me for a moment, and then burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter which she vainly strove to stifle in her pocket-handkerchief. For a second or two I was utterly lost in astonishment at this unaccountable behaviour, and then all the hideous truth thrust itself upon me. They were laughing at _me_. Having at length fully realised this I turned haughtily away and at once left the ground.
I hurried homeward in a most unenviable state of mind, with the conviction every moment forcing itself more obtrusively upon me, that for some inconceivable reason I was the laughing-stock of everybody I met, when, just as I turned once more into the High Street I observed two midshipmen approaching on my own side of the way, and some half a dozen yards or so behind them a certain Miss Smith, a parlour boarder in the ladies' seminary opposite my father's house--a damsel not more than six or seven years my senior, with whom I was slightly acquainted, and for whom I had long cherished a secret but ardent passion.
With that sensitiveness which is so promptly evoked by even the bare suspicion of ridicule I furtively watched the two "young gentlemen" as they approached; but they had been talking and laughing loudly when I first caught sight of them, and although I saw that they were aware of my presence I failed to detect the sudden change of manner which I had dreaded to observe. Whether they were speaking of me or not I could not, of course, feel certain; but I rather fancied from the glances they cast in my direction that they were.
As they drew nearer I observed that the eyes of one of them were intently and inquiringly gazing into mine, and they continued so to do until the pair had fairly passed me. Being by this time in a decidedly aggressive frame of mind I returned this pertinacious gaze with a haughty and contemptuous stare, which, however, I must confess, did not appear to very greatly intimidate the individual at whom it was levelled, for, unless I was greatly mistaken, there was a twitching about the corners of his mouth which suggested a strong, indeed an almost uncontrollable disposition to laughter, whilst his eyes fairly beamed with merriment.
As they passed me this individual half halted for an instant, passed on again a step or two, and then turning abruptly to the right-about, dashed after me and seized me by the hand, which he shook effusively, exclaiming as he did so:
"It _is_--I'm _sure_ it is! My _dear_ Lord Henry, how are you? This is indeed an unexpected pleasure!"
At this moment Miss Smith passed, giving me as she did so a little start of recognition, followed by a bow and a beaming smile, which I returned in my most fascinating manner.
I was once more happy. This little incident, trifling though it was in itself, sufficed to banish in an instant the unpleasant reflections which a moment before had been rankling in my breast, for had not my fair divinity seen me in the uniform of the gallant defenders of our country? And had she not also heard and seen me mistaken for a lord? If this had no power to soften and subdue that proud heart and bring it in sweet humility to my feet, then--well I should like to know what would, that's all.
I allowed my fair enslaver to pass out of ear-shot, and then said to the midshipman who had so unexpectedly addressed me:
"Excuse me, sir, but I think you are mistaking me for someone else."
"Oh, no, I'm not," he retorted. "I know you well enough--though I must say you are greatly altered for the better since I saw you last a year ago. You're Lord Henry de Vere Montmorenci. Ah, you sly dog! you thought to play a trick upon your old friend Fitz-Jones, did you? But what brings you down here, Montmorenci? Have you come down to join?"
This was a most remarkable, and at the same time gratifying occurrence, for I could not keep feeling elated at being thus mistaken for a noble, and greeted with such enthusiasm by a most agreeable and intelligent brother officer, and--evidently--a scion of some noble house to boot. For a single instant an almost invincible temptation seized me to personate the character with which I was accredited, but it was as promptly overcome; my respect for the truth (temporarily) conquered my vanity, and I answered:
"I assure you, my dear sir, you are mistaken. I am _not_ Lord Henry de Vere Montmorenci, but plain Richard Hawkesley, just nominated to the _Daphne_."
"Well, if you persist in saying so, I suppose I must believe you," answered Fitz-Jones. "But, really, the resemblance is most extraordinary--truly remarkable indeed. There is the same lofty intellectual forehead, the same proud eagle-glance, the same haughty carriage; the same--now, tell me, Tomnoddy, upon your honour as an officer and a gentleman, did you ever in your life before see such an extraordinary resemblance?"
"I never did; it is really most remarkable," answered the other midshipman in a strangely quivering voice which, but for his solemn countenance, I should have considered decidedly indicative of suppressed laughter.
"It really is most singular, positively _marvellous_," resumed Fitz- Jones. Then he added hurriedly:
"By the way, do you know my friend Tomnoddy? No! Then allow me to introduce him. Lord Tomnoddy--Mr Richard Hawkesley, just nominated to the _Daphne_. And I suppose I ought also to introduce myself. I am Lord Montague Fitz-Jones. You have, of course, heard of the Fitz-Jones family--the Fitz-J-o-h-n-e-s's, you know?"
I certainly had not; nor had I, up to that moment, any idea that Lord Tomnoddy was other than a mythical personage; but I did not choose to parade my ignorance in such matters, so I replied by a polite bow.
There was silence between us for a moment; and then Fitz-Jones--or Fitz- Johnes, rather--raised his hand to his forehead with a thoughtful air and murmured:
"Hawkesley! Hawkesley! I'm _positive_ I've heard that name before. Now, where was it? Um--ah--eh? Yes; I have it. You're the handsome heartless fellow who played such havoc with my cousin Lady Mary's affections at the state ball last year. Now, don't deny it; I'm positive I'm right. Do you know," he continued, glaring at me in a most ferocious manner--"do you know that for the last six months I've been looking for you in order that I might shoot you?"
Somehow I did not feel very greatly alarmed at this belligerent speech, and vanity having by this time conquered my natural truthfulness, I determined to sustain my unexpected reputation as a lady-killer at all hazards. I therefore drew myself up, and, assuming my sternest look, replied that I should be happy to give him the desired opportunity whenever he might choose.
Fitz-Johnes' ferocious glare continued for a moment or two; then his brow cleared, and, extending his hand, he grasped mine, shook the member violently, and exclaimed:
"That was spoken like a gentleman and a brave man! Give me your hand, Hawkesley. I respect you, sir; I esteem you; and I forgive you all. If there is one thing which touches me more than another, one thing which I _admire_ more than another, it is to see a man show a bold front in the face of deadly peril. Ah! _now_ I can understand Lady Mary's infatuation. Poor girl! I pity her. And I suppose that pretty girl who passed just now is another victim to your fascinating powers. Ah, well! it's not to be wondered at, I'm sure. Tomnoddy, do you remember, by the by--?"
But Lord Tomnoddy was now standing with his back turned toward us, and his face buried in his pocket-handkerchief. His head was bowed, his shoulders were heaving convulsively, and certain inarticulate sounds which escaped him showed that he was struggling to suppress some violent emotion.
Lord Fitz-Johnes regarded his companion fixedly for a moment, then linked his arm in mine, drew me aside, and whispered hastily:
"Don't take any notice of him; he'll be all right again in a minute. It's only a little revulsion of feeling which has overcome him. He's frightfully tender-hearted--far too much so for a sailor; he can't bear the sight of blood; and he knew that if I called you out I should choose him for my second; and--you twig, eh!"
I thought I did, but was not quite sure, so I bowed again, which seemed quite as satisfactory as words to Fitz-Johnes, for he said, with his arm still linked in mine:
"That's all right. Now let's go and cement our friend ship over a bottle of wine at the `Blue Posts,' what do you say?"
I intimated that the proposal was quite agreeable to me; and we accordingly wheeled about and directed our steps to the inn in question, which, in my time, was _the_ place of resort, _par excellence_, of all midshipmen.
Lord Tomnoddy now removed his handkerchief from his eyes; and, sure enough, he _had_ been weeping, for I detected him in the very act of drying his tears. He must have possessed a truly wonderful command over his features, though, for I could not detect the faintest trace of that deep feeling which had overpowered him so shortly before; on the contrary, he laughed uproariously at a very feeble joke which I just then ventured to let off; and thereafter, until I parted with them both an hour later, was the merriest of the party.
We arrived in due course at the "Blue Posts," and, walking into a private parlour, rang for the waiter. On the appearance of that individual, Fitz-Johnes, with a truly lordly air, ordered in three bottles of port; sagely remarking that he made a point of never drinking less than a bottle himself; and as his friend Hawkesley was _known_ to have laid down the same rule, the third bottle was a necessity unless Lord Tomnoddy was to go without. Lord Tomnoddy faintly protested against the ordering of so much wine; but Fitz-Johnes was firm in his determination, insisting that he should regard it as nothing short of a deliberate insult on Tomnoddy's part if that individual declined his hospitality.
After a considerable delay the wine and glasses made their appearance, the waiter setting them down, and then pausing respectfully by the table.
"Thank you; that will do. You need not wait," said Fitz-Johnes.
"The money, if you please, sir," explained the waiter.
"Oh, ah! yes, to be sure. The money." And Fitz-Johnes plunged his hand into his breeches pocket and withdrew therefrom the sum of twopence halfpenny, together with half a dozen buttons (assorted); a penknife minus its blades; the bowl of a clay tobacco pipe broken short off; three pieces of pipe-stem evidently originally belonging to the latter; and a small ball of sewing twine.
Carefully arranging the copper coins on the edge of the table he returned the remaining articles to their original place of deposit, and then plunged his hand into his other pocket, from which he produced-- nothing.
"How much is it?" he inquired, glancing at the waiter.
"Fifteen shillings, if you please, sir," was the reply.
"Lend me a sovereign, there's a good fellow; I've left my purse in my other pocket," he exclaimed to Lord Tomnoddy.
"I would with pleasure, old fellow, if I had it. But, unfortunately, I haven't a farthing about me."
Thereupon the waiter proceeded deliberately to gather up the glasses again, and was about to take them and the wine away, when I interposed with a proposal to pay.
"No," said Fitz-Johnes fiercely; "I won't hear of it; I'll perish at the stake first. But if you really don't mind _lending_ me a sovereign until to-morrow--"
I said I should be most happy; and forthwith produced the coin, which Fitz-Johnes, having received it, flung disdainfully down upon the table with the exclamation:
"There, caitiff, is the lucre. Now, avaunt! begone! Thy bones are marrowless; and you have not a particle of speculation about you."
The waiter, quite unmoved, took up the sovereign, laid down the change-- which Fitz-Johnes promptly pocketed--and retired from the room, leaving us to discuss our wine in peace; which we did, I taking three glasses, and my companions disposing of the remainder.
Fitz-Johnes now became very communicative on the subject of his cousin Lady Mary; and finally the recollection came to him suddenly that she had sent him her miniature only a day or two before. This he proposed to show me, in order that I might pronounce an opinion as to the correctness of the likeness; but on instituting a search for it, he discovered--much to my relief, I must confess--that he had left it, with his purse, in the pocket of his other jacket.
The wine at length finished, we parted company at the door of the "Blue Posts;" I shaping a course homeward, and my new friends heading in the direction of the Hard, their uproarious laughter reaching my ear for some time after they had passed out of sight.
CHAPTER TWO.
I QUIT THE PATERNAL ROOF.
On reaching home I found that my father had preceded me by a few minutes only, and was to be found in the surgery. Thither, accordingly, I hastened to give him an opportunity of seeing me in my new rig.
"Good Heavens, boy!" he exclaimed when he had taken in all the details of my appearance, "do you mean to say that you have presented yourself in public in that extraordinary guise?"
I respectfully intimated that I had, and that, moreover, I failed to observe anything at all extraordinary in my appearance.
"Well," observed he, bursting into a fit of hearty laughter, notwithstanding his evident annoyance, "_you_ may not have noticed it; but I'll warrant that everybody else has. Why, I should not have been surprised to hear that you had found yourself the laughing-stock of the town. Run away, Dick, and change your clothes at once; Shears must see those things and endeavour to alter them somehow; you can never wear them as they are."
I slunk away to my room in a dreadfully depressed state of mind. Was it possible that what my father had said was true! A sickening suspicion seized me that it _was_; and that I had at last found an explanation of the universal laughter which had seemed to accompany me everywhere in my wanderings that wretched afternoon.
I wrapped up the now hated uniform in the brown paper which had encased it when it came from Shears; and my father and I were about to sally forth with it upon a wrathful visit to the erring Shears, when a breathless messenger from him arrived with another parcel, and a note of explanation and apology, to the effect that by some unfortunate blunder the wrong suit had been sent home, and Mr Shears would feel greatly obliged if we would return it per bearer.
The man, upon this, was invited inside and requested to wait whilst I tried on the rightful suit, which was found to fit excellently; and I could not avoid laughing rather ruefully as I looked in the glass and contrasted my then appearance with that which I remembered it to have been in the earlier part of the day. Later on, that same evening, my sea-chest and the remainder of my outfit arrived; and I was ready to join, as had been already arranged, on the following day.
The eventful morning at length arrived; and with my enthusiasm considerably cooled by a night of sleepless excitement and the unpleasant consciousness that I was about, in an hour or two more, to bid a long farewell to home and all who loved me, I descended to the breakfast-room. My father was already there; but Eva did not come down until the last moment; and when she made her appearance it was evident that she had very recently been weeping. The dear girl kissed me silently with quivering lips, and we sat down to breakfast. My father made two or three efforts to start something in the shape of a conversation, but it was no good; the dear old gentleman was himself manifestly ill at ease; Eva could not speak a word for sobbing; and as for me, I was as unable to utter a word as I was to swallow my food--a great lump had gathered in my throat, which not only made it sore but also threatened to choke me, and it was with the utmost difficulty that I avoided bursting into a passion of tears. None of us ate anything, and at length the wretched apology for a meal was brought to a conclusion, my father read a chapter from the Bible, and we knelt down to prayers. I will not attempt to repeat here the words of his supplication. Suffice it to say that they went straight to my heart and lodged there, their remembrance encompassing me about as with a seven- fold defence in many a future hour of trial and temptation.
On rising from his knees my father invited me to accompany him to his consulting-room, and on arriving there he handed me a chair, seated himself directly in front of me, and said:
"Now, my dear boy, before you leave the roof which has sheltered you from your infancy, and go forth to literally fight your own way through the world, there is just a word or two of caution and advice which I wish to say. You are about to embark in a profession of your own deliberate choice, and whilst that profession is of so honourable a character that all who wear its uniform are unquestioningly accepted as gentlemen, it is also one which, from its very nature, exposes its followers to many and great temptations. I will not enlarge upon these; you are now old enough to understand the nature of many of them, and those which you may not at present know anything about will be readily recognisable as such when they present themselves; and a few simple rules will, I trust, enable you to overcome them. The first rule which I wish you to take for your guidance through life, my son, is this. Never be ashamed to honour your Maker. Let neither false pride, nor the gibes of your companions, nor indeed _any_ influence whatever, constrain you to deny Him or your dependence upon Him; never take His name in vain, nor countenance by your continued presence any such thing in others. Bear in mind the fact that He who holds the ocean in the hollow of His hand is also the Guide, the Helper, and the defender of `those who go down into the sea in ships;' and make it an unfailing practice to seek His help and protection every day of your life.
"Never allow yourself to contract the habit of swearing. Many men--and, because of their pernicious example, many boys too--habitually garnish their conversation with oaths, profanity, and obscenity of the vilest description. It _may_ be--though I earnestly hope and pray it will not--that a bad example in this respect will be set you by even your superior officers. If such should unhappily be the case, think of this, our parting moments, and of my parting advice to you, and never suffer yourself to be led away by such example. In the first place it is wrong--it is distinctly _sinful_ to indulge in such language; and in the next place, to take much lower ground, it is vulgar, ungentlemanly, and altogether in the very worst possible taste. It is not even _manly_ to do so, though many lads appear to think it so; there is nothing manly, or noble, or dignified in the utterance of words which inspire in the hearers--unless they be the lowest of the low--nothing save the most extreme disgust. If you are ambitious to be classed among the vilest and most ruffianly of your species, use such language; but if your ambition soars higher than this, avoid it as you would the pestilence.
"Be always _strictly_ truthful. There are two principal incentives to falsehood--vanity and fear. Never seek self-glorification by a falsehood. If fame is not to be won legitimately, do without it; and never seek to screen yourself by a falsehood--this is mean and cowardly in the last degree. `To err is human;' we are all liable to make mistakes sometimes; such a person as an infallible man, woman, or child has never yet existed, and never will exist. Therefore, if you make a mistake, have the courage to manfully acknowledge it and take the consequences; I will answer for it that they will not be very dreadful. A fault confessed is half atoned. And, apart from the _morality_ of the thing, let me tell you that a reputation for truthfulness is a priceless possession to a man; it makes his services _doubly_ valuable.
"Be careful that you are always strictly honest, honourable, and upright in your dealings with others. Never let your reputation in this respect be sullied by so much as a breath. And bear this in mind, my boy, it is not sufficient that you should _be_ all this, you must also _seem_ it, that is to say you must keep yourself far beyond the reach of even the barest suspicion. Many a man who, by carelessness or inexperience, has placed himself in a questionable position, has been obliged to pay the penalty of his want of caution by carrying about with him, to the end of his life, the burden of a false and undeserved suspicion.
"And now there is only one thing more I wish to caution you against, and that is _vanity_. It is a failing which is only too plainly perceptible in most boys of your age, and--do not be angry, Dick, if I touch the sore spot with a heavy hand; it is for your own good that I do it--you have it in a very marked degree. Like most of your compeers you think that, having passed your fourteenth birth-day, you are now a _man_, and in many points I notice that you have already begun to ape the ways of men. Don't do it, Dick. Manhood comes not so early; and of all disagreeable and objectionable characters, save me, I pray you, from a boy who mistakes himself for a man. Manhood, with its countless cares and responsibilities, will come soon enough; whilst you are a boy _be_ a boy; or, if you insist on being a man before your time, cultivate those attributes which are characteristic of _true_ manhood, such as fearless truth, scrupulous honour, dauntless courage, and so on; but _don't_, for Heaven's sake, adopt the follies and vices of men. As I have said, Dick, vanity is certainly your _great_ weakness, and I want you to be especially on your guard against it. It will tempt you to tamper with the truth, even if it does no worse," (I thought involuntarily of Lady Mary and my tacit admission of the justice of Lord Fitz-Johnes' impeachment of me with regard to her), "and it is quite possible that it may lead you into a serious scrape.
"Now, Dick, my boy--my dear son--I have said to you all that I think, even in the slightest degree, necessary by way of caution and advice. I can only affectionately entreat you to remember and ponder upon my words, and pray God to lead you to a right understanding of them.
"And now," he added, rising from his seat, "I think it is time you were on the move. Go and wish Eva good-bye, and then I will drive you down to the Hard--I see Edwards has brought round the carriage."
I hurried away to the drawing-room, where I knew I should find my sister, and, opening the door gently, announced that I had come to say good-bye. The dear girl, upon hearing my voice, rose up from the sofa, in the cushion of which she had been hiding her tear-stained face, and came with unsteady steps toward me. Then, as I looked into her eyes-- heavy with the mental agony from which she was suffering, and which she bravely strove to hide for my sake--I realised, for the first time in my life, all the horror which lurks in that dreadful word "Farewell." Meaning originally a benediction, it has become by usage the word with which we cut ourselves asunder from all that is nearest and dearest to us; it is the signal for parting; the last word we address to our loved ones; the fatal spell at which they lingeringly and unwillingly withdraw from our clinging embrace; the utterance at which the hand-clasp of friendship or of love is loosed, and we are torn apart never perhaps again to meet until time shall be no more.
My poor sister! It was pitiful to witness her intense distress. This was our first parting. Never before had we been separated for more than an hour or two at a time, and, there being only the two of us, our mutual affection had steadily, though imperceptibly, grown and strengthened from year to year until now, when to say "good-bye" seemed like the rending of our heart-strings asunder.
It had to be said, however, and it _was_ said at last--God knows how, for my recollection of our parting moments is nothing more than that of a brief period of acute mental suffering--and then, placing my half- swooning sister upon the couch and pressing a last lingering kiss on her icy-cold lips, I rushed from the room and the house.
My father had already taken his seat in the carriage; my luggage was piled up on the front seat alongside the driver, and nothing therefore remained but for me to jump in, slam-to the door, and we were off.
It seemed equally impossible to my father and to myself to utter a single word during that short--though, in our then condition of acute mental tension, all too long--drive to the Hard; we sat therefore dumbly side by side, with our hands clasped, until the carriage drew up, when I sprang out, hastily hailed a boatman, and then at once began with feverish haste to drag my belongings off the carriage down into the road. I had still to say good-bye to my father, and I felt that I _must_ shorten the time as much as possible, that ten minutes more of such mental torture would drive me mad.
The boatman quickly shouldered my chest, and, gathering up the remainder of my belongings in his disengaged hand, discreetly trotted off to the wherry, which he unmoored and drew alongside the slipway.
Then I turned to my father, and, with the obtrusive lump in my throat by this time grown so inconveniently large that I could scarcely articulate, held out my hand to him.
"Good-bye, father!" I stammered out huskily.
"Good-bye, Dick, my son, my own dear boy!" he returned, not less affected than myself. "Good-bye! May God bless and keep you, and in His own good time bring you in health and safety back to us! Amen."
A quick convulsive hand-clasp, a last hungry glance into the loving face and the sorrow-dimmed eyes which looked so longingly down into mine, and with a hardly-suppressed cry of anguish I tore myself away, staggered blindly down the slipway, tumbled into the boat, and, as gruffly as I could under the circumstances, ordered the boatman to put me on board the _Daphne_.
CHAPTER THREE.
THE TRUTH ABOUT FITZ-JOHNES.
"Where are we going, Tom?" I asked, as the boatman, an old chum of mine, proceeded to step the boat's mast. "You surely don't need the sail for a run half-way across the harbour?"
"No," he answered; "no, I don't. But we're bound out to Spithead. The _Daphne_ went out this mornin' at daylight to take in her powder, and I 'spects she's got half of it stowed away by this time. Look out for your head, Mr Dick, sir, we shall jibe in a minute."
I ducked my head just in time to save my glazed hat from being knocked overboard by the jibing mainsail of the boat, and then drew out my handkerchief and waved another farewell to my father, whose fast- diminishing figure I could still make out standing motionless on the shore, with his hand shading his eyes as he watched the rapidly moving boat. He waved back in answer, and then the intervening hull of a ship hid him from my view, and I saw him no more for many a long day.
"Ah, it's a sorry business that, partin' with friends and kinsfolk when you're outward-bound on a long cruise that you can't see the end of!" commented my old friend Tom; "but keep up a good heart, Mr Dick; it'll all be made up to yer when you comes home again by and by loaded down to the scuppers with glory and prize-money."
I replied somewhat drearily that I supposed it would; and then Tom-- anxious in his rough kindliness of heart to dispel my depression of spirits and prepare me to present myself among my new shipmates in a suitably cheerful frame of mind--adroitly changed the subject and proceeded to put me "up to a few moves," as he expressed it, likely to prove useful to me in the new life upon which I was about to enter.
"And be sure, Mr Dick," he concluded, as we shot alongside the sloop, "be sure you remember _always_ to touch your hat when you steps in upon the quarter-deck of a man-o'-war, no matter whether 'tis your own ship or a stranger."
Paying the old fellow his fare, and parting with him with a hearty shake of the hand, I sprang up the ship's side, and--remembering Tom's parting caution just in the nick of time--presenting myself in due form upon the quarter-deck, where the first lieutenant had posted himself and from which he was directing the multitudinous operations then in progress, reported myself to that much-dreaded official as "come on board to join."
He was a rather tall and decidedly handsome man, with a gentlemanly bearing and a well-knit shapely-looking figure, dark hair and eyes, thick bushy whiskers meeting under the chin, and a clear strong melodious voice, which, without the aid of a speaking-trumpet, he made distinctly heard from one end of the ship to the other. As he stood there, in an easy attitude with his hands lightly clasped behind his back and his eye taking in, as it seemed at a glance, everything that was going forward, he struck me as the _beau-ideal_ of a naval officer. I took a strong liking to him on the spot, an instinctive prepossession which was afterwards abundantly justified, for Mr Austin--that was his name--proved to be one of the best officers it has ever been my good fortune to serve under.
"Oh, you're come on board to join, eh?" he remarked in response to my announcement. "I suppose you are the young gentleman about whom Captain Vernon was speaking to me yesterday. What is your name?"
I told him.
"Ah! Hawkesley! yes, that is the name. I remember now. Captain Vernon told me that although you have never been to sea as yet you are not altogether a greenhorn. What can you do?"
"I can hand, reef, and steer, box the compass, pull an oar, or sail a boat; and I know the name and place of every spar, sail, and rope throughout the ship."
"Aha! say you so? Then you will prove indeed a valuable acquisition. What is the name of this rope?"
"The main-topgallant clewline," I answered, casting my eye aloft to note the "lead" of the rope.
"Right!" he replied with a smile. "And you have the true nautical pronunciation also, I perceive. Mr Johnson,"--to a master's mate who happened to be passing at the moment--"this is Mr Hawkesley. Kindly take him under your wing and induct him into his quarters in the midshipmen's berth, if you please. Don't stop to stow away your things just now, Mr Hawkesley," he continued. "I shall have an errand for you in a few minutes."
"Very well, sir," I replied. And following my new acquaintance, I first saw to the hoisting in of my traps, and then with them descended to the place which was to be my home for so many months to come.
This was a tolerably roomy but very indifferently lighted cabin on the lower or orlop deck, access to which was gained by the descent of a very steep ladder. The furniture was of the most meagre description, consisting only of a very solid deal table, two equally solid forms or stools, and a couple of arm-chairs, one at each end of the table, all securely lashed down to the deck. There was a shelf with a ledge along its front edge, and divisions to form lockers, extending across the after-end of the berth; and under this hung three small book-cases, (which I was given to understand were private property) and a mirror six inches long by four inches wide, before which the "young gentlemen"-- four in number, including myself--and the two master's mates had to perform their toilets as best they could. The fore and after bulkheads of the apartment were furnished with stout hooks to which to suspend our hammocks, which, by the by, when slung, left, I noticed, but a very small space on either side of the table; and depending from a beam overhead there hung a common horn lantern containing the most attenuated candle I ever saw--a veritable "purser's dip." This lantern, which was suspended over the centre of the table, afforded, except at meal-times or other special occasions, the sole illumination of the place. Although the ship was new, and the berth had only been occupied a few days, it was already pervaded by a very powerful odour of paint and stale tobacco-smoke, which made me anxious to quit the place with the least possible delay.
Merely selecting a position, therefore, for my chest, and leaving to the wretched lad, whom adverse fortune had made the attendant of the place, the task of lashing it down, I hastened on deck again, and presenting myself once more before the first lieutenant, announced that I was now ready to execute any commission with which he might be pleased to intrust me.
"Very well," said he. "I want you to take the gig and proceed on board the _Saint George_ with this letter for the first lieutenant of that ship. Wait for an answer, and if he gives you a parcel be very careful how you handle it, as it will contain articles of a very fragile character which must on no account be damaged or broken."
The gig was thereupon piped away, and when she was in the water and her crew in her I proceeded in my most stately manner down the side and flung myself in an easily negligent attitude into the stern-sheets.
I felt at that moment exceedingly well satisfied with myself. I had joined the ship but a bare half-hour before; yet here I was, singled out from the rest of the midshipmen as the fittest person to be intrusted with an evidently important mission. I forgot not only my father's caution against vanity but also my sorrow at parting with him; my _amour propre_ rose triumphant above every other feeling; the disagreeable lump in my throat subsided, and with an unconscious, but no doubt very ludicrous, assumption of condescending authority, I gave the order to--
"Shove off, and get the muslin upon her, and see that you crack on, coxswain, for I am in a hurry."
"Ay, ay, sir," returned that functionary in a very respectful tone of voice. "Step the mast, for'ard there, you sea-dogs, `and get the muslin on her.'"
With a broad grin, whether at the verbatim repetition of my order, or in consequence of some pantomimic gesture on the part of the coxswain, who was behind me--I had a sudden painful suspicion that it might possibly be _both_--the men sprang to obey the order; and in another instant the mast was stepped, the halliard and tack hooked on, the sheet led aft, and the sail was all ready for hoisting.
"What d'ye say, Tom; shall us take down a reef!" asked one of the men.
"Reef? No, certingly not. Didn't you hear the gentleman say as how we was to `crack on' because he's in a hurry? Give her whole canvas," replied the coxswain.
With a shivering flutter and a sudden violent jerk the sail was run up; and, careening gunwale-to, away dashed the lively boat toward the harbour.
It was blowing fresh and squally from the eastward, and for the first mile of our course there was a nasty choppy sea for a boat. The men flung their oil-skins over their shoulders, and ranging themselves along the weather side of the boat, seated themselves on the bottom-boards, and away we went, jerk-jerking through it, the sea hissing and foaming past us to leeward, and the spray flying in a continuous heavy shower in over the weather-bow and right aft, drenching me through and through in less than five minutes.
"I'm afeard you're gettin' rayther wet, sir," remarked the coxswain feelingly when I had just about arrived at a condition of complete saturation; "perhaps you'd better have my oil-skin, sir."
"No, thanks," I replied, "I am very comfortable as I am."
This was, to put it mildly, a perversion of the truth. I was _not_ very comfortable; I was wet to the skin, and my bran-new uniform, upon which I so greatly prided myself, was just about ruined. But it was then too late for the oil-skin to be of the slightest benefit to me; and, moreover, I did not choose that those men should think I cared for so trifling a matter as a wetting.
But a certain scarcely-perceptible ironical inflection in the coxswain's voice, when he so kindly offered me the use of his jumper, suggested the suspicion that perhaps he was quietly amusing himself and his shipmates at my expense, and that the drenching I had received was due more to his management of the boat than anything else, so I set myself quietly to watch.
I soon saw that my suspicion was well-founded. The rascal, instead of easing the boat and meeting the heavier seas as he ought to have done, was sailing the craft at top speed right through them, varying the performance occasionally by keeping the boat broad away when a squall struck her, causing her to careen until her gunwale went under, and as a natural consequence shipping a great deal of water.
At length he rather overdid it, a squall striking the boat so heavily that before he could luff and shake the wind out of the sail she had filled to the thwarts. I thought for a moment that we were over, and so did the crew of the boat, who jumped to their feet in consternation. Being an excellent swimmer myself, however, I managed to perfectly retain my _sang-froid_, whilst I also recognised in the mishap an opportunity to take the coxswain down a peg or two.
Lifting my legs, therefore, coolly up on the side seat out of reach of the water, I said:
"How long have you been a sailor, coxswain?"
"Nigh on to seven year, sir. Now then, lads, dowse the sail smartly and get to work with the bucket."
"Seven years, have you?" I returned placidly. "Then you _ought_ to know how to sail a boat by this time. I have never yet been to sea; but I should be ashamed to make such a mess of it as this."
To this my friend in the rear vouchsafed not a word in reply, but from that moment I noticed a difference in the behaviour of the men all round. They found they had not got quite the greenhorn to deal with that they had first imagined.
When at last the boat was freed of the water and sail once more made upon her, I remarked to the coxswain:
"Now, Tom--if that is your name--you have amused yourself and your shipmates at my expense--to your heart's content, I hope--you have played off your little practical joke upon me, and I bear no malice. But--let there be no more of it--do you understand?"
"Ay ay, sir; I underconstumbles," was the reply; "and I'm right sorry now as I did it, sir, and I axes your parding, sir; that I do. Dash my buttons, though, but you're a rare plucky young gentleman, you are, sir, though I says it to your face. And I hopes, sir, as how you won't bear no malice again' me for just tryin' a bit to see what sort o' stuff you was made of, as it were?"
I eased the poor fellow's mind upon this point, and soon afterwards we arrived alongside the _Saint George_.
I found the first lieutenant, and duly handed over my despatch, which he read with a curious twitching about the corners of the mouth.
Having mastered the contents, he retired below, asking me to wait a minute or two.
At that moment my attention was attracted to a midshipman in the main rigging, who, with exaggerated deliberation, was making his unwilling way aloft to the mast-head as it turned out. A certain familiar something about the young gentleman caused me to look up at him more attentively; and I then at once recognised my recent acquaintance, Lord Fitz-Johnes. At the same moment the second lieutenant, who was eyeing his lordship somewhat wrathfully, hailed him with:
"Now then, Mr Tomkins, are you going to be all day on your journey? Quicken your movements, sir, or I will send a boatswain's mate after you with a rope's-end to freshen your way. Do you hear, sir?"
"Ay ay, sir," responded the _ci-devant_ Lord Fitz-Johnes--now plain Mr Tomkins--in a squeaky treble, as he made a feeble momentary show of alacrity. Just then I caught his eye, and, taking off my hat, made him an ironical bow of recognition, to which he responded by pressing his body against the rigging--pausing in his upward journey to give due effect to the ceremony--spreading his legs as widely apart as possible, and extending both hands toward me, the fingers outspread, the thumb of the right hand pressing gently against the point of his nose, and the thumb of the left interlinked with the right-hand little finger. This salute was made still more impressive by a lengthened slow and solemn twiddling of the fingers, which was only brought to an end by the second lieutenant hailing:
"Mr Tomkins, you will oblige me by prolonging your stay at the mast- head until the end of the afternoon watch, if you please."
As the answering "Ay ay, sir," came sadly down from aloft, I felt a touch on my arm, and, turning round, found my second acquaintance, Lord Tomnoddy, by my side. As I looked at him I felt strongly inclined to ask him whether _he_ also had changed his name since our last meeting.
"Oh, look here, Hawksbill," he commenced, "I'm glad you've come on board; I wanted to see you in order that I might repay you the sovereign you lent us the other day. Here it is,"--selecting the coin from a handful which he pulled out of his breeches pocket and thrusting it into my hand--"and I am very much obliged to you for the loan. I _really_ hadn't a farthing in my pocket at the time, or I wouldn't have allowed Tomkins to borrow it from you--and it was awfully stupid of me to let you go away without saying where I could send it to you."
"Pray do not say anything further about it, Mr --, Mr --."
"I am Lord Southdown, at your service--_not_ Lord Tomnoddy, as my whimsical friend Tomkins dubbed me the other day. It is perfectly true," he added somewhat haughtily, and then with a smile resumed: "but I suppose I must not take offence at your look of incredulity, seeing that I was a consenting party to that awful piece of deception which Tomkins played off upon you. Ha, ha, ha! excuse me, but I really wish you could have seen yourself when that mischievous friend of mine accused you of--of--what was it? Oh, yes, of playing fast and loose with the affections of the fictitious Lady Sara, or whatever the fellow called her. And then again, when he remarked upon your extraordinary resemblance to Lord--Somebody--another fictitious friend of his, and directed attention to your `lofty intellectual forehead, your proud eagle-glance, your--' oh, dear! it was _too_ much."
And off went his lordship into another paroxysm of laughter, which sent the tears coursing down his cheeks and caused me to flush most painfully with mortification.
"Upon my word, Hawksbill--" he commenced.
"My name is Hawkesley, my lord, at your service," I interrupted, somewhat angrily I am afraid.
"I beg your pardon, Mr Hawkesley; the mistake was a perfectly genuine and unintentional one, I assure you. I was going to apologise--as I _do_, most heartily, for laughing at you in this very impertinent fashion. But, my dear fellow, let me advise you as a friend to overcome your very conspicuous vanity. I am, perhaps, taking a most unwarrantable liberty in presuming to offer you advice on so delicate a subject, or, indeed, in alluding to it at all; but, to tell you the truth, I have taken rather a liking for you in spite of--ah--ahem--that is--I mean that you struck me as being a first-rate fellow notwithstanding the little failing at which I have hinted. You are quite good enough every way to pass muster without the necessity for any attempt to clothe yourself with fictitious attributes of any kind. Of course, in the ordinary run of events you will soon be laughed out of your weakness--there is no place equal to a man-of-war for the speedy cure of that sort of thing--but the process is often a very painful one to the patient--I have passed through it myself, so I can speak from experience--so _very_ painful was it to me that, even at the risk of being considered impertinent, I have ventured to give you a friendly caution, in the hope that your good sense will enable you to profit by it, and so save you many a bitter mortification. Now I _hope_ I have not offended you?"
"By no means, my lord," I replied, grasping his proffered hand. "On the contrary, I am very sincerely obliged to you--"
At this moment the first lieutenant of the _Saint George_ reappeared on deck, and coming up to me with Mr Austin's letter open in his hand, said:
"My friend Mr Austin writes me that you are quite out of eggs on board the _Daphne_, and asks me to lend him a couple of dozen." (Here was another take-down for me; the important despatch with which I--_out of all the midshipmen on board_--had been intrusted was simply a request for the loan of two dozen eggs!) "He sends to me for them instead of procuring them from the shore, because he is afraid you may lose some of your boat's crew." (Evidently Mr Austin had not the high opinion of me that I fondly imagined he had.) "I am sorry to say I cannot oblige Mr Austin; but I think we can overcome the difficulty if you do not mind being delayed a quarter of an hour or so. I have a packet which I wish to send ashore, and if you will give Lord Southdown here--who seems to be a friend of yours--a passage to the Hard and off again, he will look after your boat's crew for you whilst you purchase your eggs."
I of course acquiesced in this proposal; whereupon Lord Southdown was sent into the captain's cabin for the packet in question; and on his reappearance a few minutes later we jumped into the boat and went ashore together, his lordship regaling me on the way with sundry entertaining anecdotes whereof his humorous friend Tomkins was the hero.
We managed to execute our respective errands without losing any of the boat's crew; and duly putting Lord Southdown on board the _Saint George_ again, I returned triumphantly to the _Daphne_ with my consignment of eggs and handed them over intact to Mr Austin. After which I dived below, just in time to partake of the first dinner provided for me at the expense of His Most Gracious Majesty George IV.
For the remainder of that day and during the whole of the next, until nearly ten o'clock at night, we were up to our eyes in the business of completing stores, etcetera, and, generally, in getting the ship ready for sea; and at daybreak on the second morning after I had joined, the fore-topsail was loosed, blue peter run up to the fore royal-mast head, the boats hoisted in and stowed, and the messenger passed, after which all hands went to breakfast. At nine o'clock the captain's gig was sent on shore, and at 11 a.m. the skipper came off; his boat was hoisted up to the davits, the canvas loosed, the anchor tripped, and away we went down the Solent and out past the Needles, with a slashing breeze at east-south-east and every stitch of canvas set, from the topgallant studding-sails downwards.
CHAPTER FOUR.
A BOAT-EXCURSION INTO THE CONGO.
Our skipper's instructions were to the effect that he was, in the first instance, to report himself to the governor of Sierra Leone; and it was to that port, therefore, that we now made the best of our way.
The breeze with which we started carried us handsomely down channel and half-way across the Bay of Biscay, and the ship proving to be a regular flyer, everybody, from the skipper downwards, was in the very best of spirits. Then came a change, the wind backing out from south-west with squally weather which placed us at once upon a taut bowline; and simultaneously with this change of weather a most disagreeable discovery was made, namely, that the _Daphne_ was an exceedingly crank ship.
However, we accomplished the passage in a little over three weeks; and after remaining at Sierra Leone for a few hours only, proceeded for the mouth of the Congo, off which we expected to fall in with the _Fawn_, which ship we had been sent out to relieve. Proceeding under easy canvas, in the hope of picking up a prize by the way--in which hope, so however, we were disappointed--we reached our destination in twenty- three days from Sierra Leone; sighting the _Fawn_ at daybreak and closing with her an hour afterwards. Her skipper came on board the _Daphne_ and remained to breakfast with Captain Vernon, whom--our skipper being a total stranger to the coast--he posted up pretty thoroughly in the current news, as well as such of the "dodges" of the slavers as he had happened to have picked up. He said that at the moment there were no ships in the river, but that intelligence--whether trustworthy or no, however, he could not state--had reached him of the daily-expected arrival of three ships from Cuba. He also confirmed a very extraordinary story which had been told our skipper by the governor of Sierra Leone, to the effect that large cargoes of slaves, known to have been collected on shore up the river, awaiting the arrival of the slavers, had from time to time disappeared in a most mysterious manner, at times when, as far as could be ascertained, no craft but men-o'-war were anywhere near the neighbourhood. At noon the _Fawn_ filled away and bore up for Jamaica--whither she was to proceed preparatory to returning home to be paid off--her crew manning the rigging and giving us a parting cheer as she did so; and two hours later her royals dipped below the horizon, and we were left alone in our glory.
On parting from the _Fawn_ we filled away again upon the starboard tack, the wind being off the shore, and at noon brought the ship to an anchor in nine fathoms of water off Padron Point (the projecting headland on the southern side of the river's mouth) at a distance of two miles only from the shore. The order was then given for the men to go to dinner as soon as that meal could be got ready; it being understood that, notwithstanding the _Fawn's_ assurance as to there being no ships in the river, our skipper intended to satisfy himself of that fact by actual examination. Moreover, the deserted state of the river afforded us an excellent opportunity for making an unmolested exploration of it--making its acquaintance, so to speak, in order that at any future time, if occasion should arise, we might be able to make a dash into it without feeling that we were doing so absolutely blindfold.
At 1:30 p.m. the gig was piped away; Mr Austin being in charge, with me for an _aide_, all hands being fully armed.
The wind had by this time died away to a dead calm; the sun was blazing down upon us as if determined to roast us as we sat; and we had a long pull before us, for although the ship lay only two miles from the shore, we had to round a low spit, called, as Mr Austin informed me, Shark Point, six miles away, in a north-easterly direction, before we could be said to be fairly in the river.
For this point, then, away we stretched, the perspiration streaming from the men at every pore. Fortunately the tide had begun to make before we started, and it was therefore in our favour. We had a sounding-line with us, which we used at frequent intervals; and by its aid we ascertained that at a distance of one mile from the shore the shallowest water between the ship and Shark Point was about three and a half fathoms at low water. This was at a spot distant some three and a half miles from the point. Half a mile further on we suddenly deepened our water to forty-five fathoms; and at a distance of only a quarter of a mile from the point as we rounded it, the lead gave us fifteen fathoms, shortly afterwards shoaling to six fathoms, which depth was steadily maintained for a distance of eight miles up the river, the extent of our exploration on this occasion. On our return journey we kept a little further off the shore, and found a corresponding increase in the depth of water; a result which fully satisfied us that we need have no hesitation about taking the _Daphne_ inside should it at any time seem desirable so to do.
Immediately abreast of Shark Point is an extensive creek named Banana Creek; and hereabouts the river is fully six miles wide. On making out the mouth of this creek it was our first intention to have explored it; but on rounding the point and fairly entering the river, we made out so many snug, likely-looking openings on the southern side that we determined to confine our attention to that side first.
In the first place, immediately on rounding Shark Point we discovered a bay at the back of it, roughly triangular in shape, about four miles broad across the base, and perhaps three miles deep from base to apex. At the further end of the base of this triangular bay we descried the mouth of the creek; and at the apex or bottom of the bay, another. The latter of these we examined first, making the discovery that the mouth or opening gave access to _three_ creeks instead of one; they were all, however, too shallow to admit anything drawing over ten feet, even at high-water; and the land adjoining was also so low and the bush so stunted--consisting almost exclusively of mangroves--that only a partial concealment could have been effected unless a ship's upper spars were struck for the occasion. A low-rigged vessel, such as a felucca, would indeed find complete shelter in either of the two westernmost creeks-- the easternmost had only three feet of water in it when we visited it; but the shores on either side consisted only of a brownish-grey fetid mud, of a consistency little thicker than pea-soup; and the facilities for embarking slaves were so utterly wanting that we felt sure we need not trouble ourselves at any future time about either of these creeks.
The other creek, that which I have described as situated at the further end of the base of the triangle forming the bay, was undoubtedly more promising; though, like the others, it could only receive craft of small tonnage, having a little bar of its own across its mouth, on which at half-tide, which was about the time of our visit, there was only seven feet of water. Its banks, however, were tolerably firm and solid; the jungle was thicker and higher; though little more than a cable's length wide at its mouth, it was nearly a mile in width a little further in; and branching off from it, right and left, there were three or four other snug-looking little creeks, wherein a ship of light draught might lie as comfortably as if in dry-dock, and wherein, by simply sending down topgallant-masts, she would be perfectly concealed. Mr Austin would greatly have liked to land here and explore the bush a bit on each side of the creek; but our mission just then was to make a rough survey of the river rather than of its banks, so we reluctantly made our way back once more to the broad rolling river.
A pull of a couple of miles close along the shore brought us to the entrance of another creek, which for a length of two miles averaged quite half a mile wide, when it took a sharp bend to the right, or in a southerly direction, and at the same time narrowed down to less than a quarter of a mile in width. For the first two miles we had plenty of water, that is to say, there was never less than five fathoms under our keel; but with the narrowing of the creek it shoaled rapidly, so that by the time we had gone another mile we found ourselves in a stream about a hundred yards wide and only six feet deep. The mangrove-swamp, however, had ceased; and the grassy banks, shelving gently down to the water on each side, ended in a narrow strip of reddish sandy beach. The bush here was very dense and the vegetation extremely varied, whilst the foliage seemed to embrace literally all the colours of the rainbow. Greens of course predominated, but they were of every conceivable shade, from the pale delicate tint of the young budding leaf to an olive which was almost black. Then there was the ruddy bronze of leaves which appeared just ready to fall; and thickly interspersed among the greens were large bushes with long lance-shaped leaves of a beautifully delicate ashen-grey tint; others glowed in a rich mass of flaming scarlet; whilst others again had a leaf thickly covered with short white sheeny satin-like fur--I cannot otherwise describe it--which gleamed and flashed in the sun-rays as though the leaves were of polished silver. Some of the trees were thickly covered with blossoms exquisite both in form and colour; while as to the passion-plant and other flowering creepers, they were here, there, and everywhere in such countless varieties as would have sent a botanist into the seventh heaven of delight.
That this vast extent of jungle was not tenantless we had frequent assurance in the sudden sharp cracking of twigs and branches, as well as other more distant and more mysterious sounds; an occasional glimpse of a monkey was caught high aloft in the gently swaying branches of some forest giant; and birds of gorgeous plumage but more or less discordant cries constantly flitted from bough to bough, or swept in rapid flight across the stream.
We were so enchanted with the beauty of this secluded creek that though the time was flitting rapidly away Mr Austin could not resist the temptation to push a little further on, notwithstanding the fact that we had already penetrated higher than a ship, even of small tonnage, could possibly reach; and the men, nothing loath, accordingly paddled gently ahead for another mile. At this point we discovered that the tide was met and stopped by a stream of thick muddy fresh water; the creek or river, whichever you choose to call it, had narrowed in until it was only about a hundred feet across; and the water had shoaled to four feet. The trees in many places grew right down to the water's edge; the roots of some, indeed, were actually covered, and here and there the more lofty ones, leaning over the stream on either side, mingled their foliage overhead and formed a leafy arch, completely excluding the sun's rays and throwing that part of the river which they overarched into a deep green twilight shadow to which the eye had to become accustomed before it was possible to see anything. A hundred yards ahead of us there was a long continuous _tunnel_ formed in this way; and, on entering it, the men with one accord rested on their oars and allowed the boat to glide onward by her own momentum, whilst they looked around them, lost in wonder and admiration.
As we shot into this watery lane, and the roll of the oars in the rowlocks ceased, the silence became profound, almost oppressively so, marked and emphasised as it was by the lap and gurgle of the water against the boat's planking. Not a bird was here to be seen; not even an insect--except the mosquitoes, by the by, which soon began to swarm round us in numbers amply sufficient to atone for the absence of all other life. But the picture presented to our view by the long avenue of variegated foliage, looped and festooned in every direction with flowery creepers loaded with blooms of the most gorgeous hues; and the deep green--almost black--shadows, contrasted here and there with long arrowy shafts of greenish light glancing down through invisible openings in the leafy arch above, and lighting up into prominence some feathery spray or drooping flowery wreath, was enchantingly beautiful.
We were all sitting motionless and silent, wrapped in admiration of the enchanting scene, all the more enchanting, perhaps, to us from its striking contrast to the long monotony of sea and sky only upon which our eyes had so lately rested, when a slight, sharp, crackling sound-- proceeding from apparently but a short distance off in the bush on our port bow--arrested our attention. The boat had by this time lost her way, and the men, abruptly roused from their trance of wondering admiration, were about once more to dip their oars in the water when Mr Austin's uplifted hand arrested them.
The sounds continued at intervals; and presently, without so much as the rustling of a bough to prepare us for the apparition, a magnificent antelope emerged from the bush about fifty yards away, and stepped daintily down into the water. His quick eye detected in an instant the unwonted presence of our boat and ourselves, and instead of bowing his head at once to drink, as had evidently been his first intention, he stood motionless as a statue, gazing wonderingly at us. He was a superb creature, standing as high at the shoulders as a cow, with a smooth, glossy hide of a very light chocolate colour--except along the belly and on the inner side of the thighs, where the hair was milk-white--and long, sharp, gracefully curving horns. We were so close to him that we could even distinguish the greenish lambent gleam of his eyes.
Mr Austin very cautiously reached out his hand for a musket which lay on the thwart beside him, and had almost grasped it, when--in the millionth part of a second, as it seemed to me, so rapid was it--there was a flashing swirl of water directly in front of the deer, and before the startled creature had time to make so much as a single movement to save itself, an immense alligator had seized it by a foreleg and was tug-tugging at it in an endeavour to drag it into deep water. The deer, however, though taken by surprise and at a disadvantage, was evidently determined not to yield without a struggle, and, lowering his head, he made lunge after lunge at his antagonist with the long, sharply-pointed horns which had so excited my admiration, holding bravely back with his three disengaged legs the while.
"Give way, men," shouted Mr Austin in a voice which made the leafy archway ring again. "Steer straight for the crocodile, Tom; plump the boat right on him; and, bow-oar, lay in and stand by to prod the fellow with your boat-hook. Drive it into him under the arm-pit if you can; that, I believe, is his most vulnerable part."
Animated by the first lieutenant's evident excitement, the men dashed their oars into the water, and, with a tug which made the stout ash staves buckle like fishing-rods, sent the boat forward with a rush.
The alligator--or crocodile, whichever he happened to be--was, however, in the meantime, getting the best of the struggle, dragging the antelope steadily ahead into deeper water every instant, in spite of the beautiful creature's desperate resistance. We were only a few seconds in reaching the scene of the conflict, yet during that brief period the buck had been dragged forward until the water was up to his belly.
"Hold water! back hard of all!" cried Mr Austin, standing up in the stern-sheets, musket in hand, as we ranged up alongside the frantic deer. "Now give it him with your boat-hook; drive it well home into him. That's your sort, Ben; another like that, and he _must_ let go. Well struck! now another--"
Bang!
The crocodile had suddenly released his hold upon the antelope; and the creature no sooner felt itself free than it wheeled round, and, on three legs--the fourth was broken above the knee-joint, or probably _bitten_ in two--made a gallant dash for the shore. But our first lieutenant was quite prepared for such a movement, had anticipated it, in fact, and the buck had barely emerged from the water when he was cleverly dropped by a bullet from Mr Austin's musket. The boat was thereupon promptly beached, the buck's throat cut, and the carcass stowed away in the stern-sheets, which it pretty completely filled. We were just about to shove off again when the first lieutenant caught sight of a banana-tree, with the fruit just in right condition for cutting; so we added to our spoils three huge bunches of bananas, each as much as a man could conveniently carry.
The deepening shadows now warned us that the sun was sinking low; so we shoved off and made the best of our way back to the river. When we reached it we found that there was a small drain of the flood-tide still making, and, the land-breeze not yet having sprung up, Mr Austin determined to push yet a little higher up the river. The boat's head was accordingly pointed to the eastward, and, four miles further on, we hit upon another opening, into which we at once made our way.
We had no sooner entered this creek, however, than we found tha |
21060-8 | t, like the first we had visited, it forked into two, one branch of which trended to the south-west and the other in a south-easterly direction. We chose the latter, and soon found ourselves pulling along a channel very similar to the last one we had explored, except that, in the present instance, the first of a chain of hills, stretching away to the eastward, lay at no great distance ahead of us. A pull of a couple of miles brought us to a bend in the stream; and in a few minutes afterwards we found ourselves sweeping along close to the base of the hills, in a channel about a quarter of a mile wide and with from three to four and a half fathoms of water under us. Twenty minutes later the channel again divided, one branch continuing on in an easterly direction, whilst the other--which varied from a half to three-quarters of a mile in width--branched off abruptly to the northward and westward. Mr Austin chose this channel, suspecting that it would lead into the river again, a suspicion which another quarter of an hour proved correct.
The sun was by this time within half an hour of setting, and Shark Point--or rather the tops of the mangroves growing upon it--lay stretched along the horizon a good eleven miles off, so it was high time to see about returning. But the tide had by this time turned and was running out pretty strongly in mid-channel; the land-breeze also had sprung up, and, though where we were, close inshore, we did not feel very much of it, was swaying the tops of the more lofty trees in a way which I am sure must have gladdened the hearts of the boat's crew; so the oars were laid in, the mast stepped, and the lug hoisted, and in another ten minutes we were bowling down stream--what with the current and the breeze, both of which we got in their full strength as soon as we had hauled a little further out from the bank--at the rate of a good honest ten knots per hour.
The sun went down in a bewildering blaze of purple and crimson and gold when we were within five miles of Shark Point; and, ten minutes afterwards, night--the glorious night of the tropics--was upon us in all its loveliness. The heavens were destitute of cloud--save a low bank down on the western horizon--and the soft velvety blue-black of the sky was literally powdered with countless millions of glittering gems. I do not remember that I ever before or since saw so many of the smaller stars; and as for the larger stars and the planets, they shone down upon us with an effulgence which caused them to be reflected in long shimmering lines of golden light upon the turbid water.
Presently the boat's lug-sail, which spread above and before us like a great blot of ghostly grey against the starlit sky, began perceptibly to pale and brighten until it stood out clear and distinct, bathed in richest primrose light, with the shadow of the mast drawn across it in ebony-black. Striking the top of the sail first, the light swept gradually down; and in less than a minute the whole of the boat, with the crew and ourselves, were completely bathed in it. I looked behind me to ascertain the cause of this sudden glorification, and, behold! there was the moon sweeping magnificently into view above the distant tree-tops, her full orb magnified to three or four times its usual dimensions and painted a glorious ruddy orange by the haze which began to rise from the bosom of the river. Under the magic effect of the moonlight the noble river, with its background of trees and bush rising dim and ghostly above the wreathing mist and its swift-flowing waters shimmering in the golden radiance, presented a picture the dream-like beauty of which words are wholly inadequate to describe. But I am willing to confess that my admiration lost a great deal of its ardour when Mr Austin informed me that the mist which imparted so subtle a charm to the scene was but the forerunner of the deadly miasmatic fog which makes the Congo so fatal a river to Europeans; and I was by no means sorry when we found ourselves, three-quarters of an hour later, once more in safety alongside the _Daphne_, having succeeded in making good our escape before the pestilential fog overtook us. Our prizes, the buck and the bananas, were cordially welcomed on board the old barkie; the bananas being carefully suspended from the spanker-boom to ripen at their leisure, whilst the buck was handed over to the butcher to be operated upon forthwith, so far at least as the flaying was concerned; and on the morrow all hands, fore and aft, enjoyed the unwonted luxury of venison for dinner.
Mr Austin having duly reported to Captain Vernon that the river was just then free of shipping, we hove up the anchor that same evening, at the end of the second dog-watch, and stood off from the land all night under easy canvas.
CHAPTER FIVE.
THE "VESTALE."
About three bells in the forenoon watch next morning the look-out aloft reported a sail on the larboard bow; and, on being questioned in the usual manner, he shouted down to us the further information that the stranger was a brig working in for the land on the starboard tack under topgallant-sails, and that she had all the look of a man-o'-war.
By six bells we had closed each other within a mile; and a few minutes afterwards the stranger crossed our bows, and, laying her main topsail to the mast, lowered a boat. Perceiving that her captain wanted to speak us, we of course at once hauled our wind and, backing our main topsail, hove-to about a couple of cables' lengths to windward of the brig. She was as beautiful a craft as a seaman's eye had ever rested on: long and low upon the water, with a superbly-modelled hull, enormously lofty masts with a saucy rake aft to them, and very taunt heavy yards. She mounted seven guns of a side, apparently of the same description and weight as our own--long 18-pounders, and there was what looked suspiciously like a long 32-pounder on her forecastle. She was flying French colours, but she certainly looked at least as much like an English as she did like a French ship.
The boat dashed alongside us in true man-o'-war style; our side was duly manned, and presently there entered through the gangway a man dressed in the uniform of a lieutenant in the French navy. He was of medium height and rather square built; his skin was tanned to a deep mahogany colour; his hair and bushy beard were jet black, as also were his piercing, restless eyes; and though rather a handsome man, his features wore a fierce and repellent expression, which, however, passed away as soon as he began to speak.
"Bon jour, m'sieu," he began, raising his uniform cap and bowing to Mr Austin, who met him at the gangway. "What chip dis is, eh?"
"This, sir, is His Britannic Majesty's sloop _Daphne_. What brig is that?"
"That, sair, is the Franch brigue of war _Vestale_; and I am Jules Le Breton, her first leeftant, at your serveece. Are you le capitaine of this vaisseau?"
"No, sir; I am the first lieutenant, and my name is Austin," with a bow. "Captain Vernon is in his cabin. Do you wish to see him?"
At that moment the skipper made his appearance from below, and stepping forward, the French lieutenant was presented to him with all due formality by Mr Austin.
It being my watch on deck I was promenading fore and aft just to leeward of the group, and consequently overheard pretty nearly everything that passed. The _Vestale_, it appeared from Monsieur Le Breton's statement, had just returned to the coast from a fruitless chase half across the Atlantic after a large barque which had managed to slip out of the Congo and dodge past them some three weeks previously, and she was now about to look in there once more in the hope of meeting with better fortune. And, judging from the course we were steering that we had just left the river, Monsieur Le Breton had, "by order of Capitane Dubosc, ventured upon the liberte" of boarding us in order to ascertain the latest news.
The skipper of course mentioned our exploring expedition of the previous day, assured him of the total absence of all ships from the river, and finally invited him into the cabin to take wine with him.
They were below fully half an hour, and when they returned to the deck the Frenchman was chattering away in very broken English in the most lively manner, and gesticulating with his hands and shoulders as only a Frenchman can. But notwithstanding the animation with which he was conversing, I could not help noticing that his eyes were all over the ship, not in an abstracted fashion, but evidently with the object of thoroughly "taking stock" of us. It struck me, too, that his English was too broken to be quite genuine--or rather, to be strictly correct, that it was not always broken to the same extent. For instance, he once or twice used the word "the," uttering it as plainly as I could; and at other times I noticed that he called it "ze" or "dee." And I detected him ringing the changes in like manner on several other words. From which I inferred that he was not altogether as fair and above-board with us as he wished us to believe. I felt half disposed to seize an early opportunity to mention the matter to Mr Austin; but then, on the other hand, I reflected that Monsieur Le Breton could hardly have any possible reason for attempting to deceive us in any way, and so for the moment the matter passed out of my mind.
At length our visitor bowed himself down over the side, throwing one last lingering look round our decks as he did so, and in another five minutes was once more on board his own ship, which, hoisting up her boat, filled her main topsail, and, with a dip of her ensign by way of "good-bye," resumed her course.
"Thank Heaven I've got rid of the fellow at last!" exclaimed Captain Vernon with a laugh, when the brig was once more fairly under weigh. "He has pumped me dry; such an inquisitive individual I think I never in my life encountered before. But I fancy I have succeeded in persuading him that he will do no good by hanging about the coast hereabouts. We want no Frenchmen to help us with our work; and I gave him so very discouraging an account of the state of things here, that I expect they will take a trip northward after looking into the river."
We continued running off the land for the remainder of that day, the whole of the following night, and up to noon next day, with a breeze which sent us along, under topsails only, at a rate of about six knots an hour. On the following day, at six bells in the forenoon watch (11 a.m.), the look-out aloft reported a something which he took to be floating wreckage, about three points on the port bow; and Mr Smellie, our second lieutenant, at once went aloft to the foretopmast crosstrees to have a look at it through his telescope. A single glance sufficed to acquaint him with the fact that the object, which was about six miles distant, was a raft with people upon it, who were making such signals as it was in their power to make with the object of attracting our attention. Upon the receipt of this news on deck Captain Vernon at once ordered the ship's course to be altered to the direction of the raft, a gun being fired and the ensign run up to the gaff-end at the same time.
It was a trifle past noon when the _Daphne_ rounded-to about a hundred yards to windward of the raft, and sent away a boat to pick up those upon it. It was a wretched make-shift structure, composed of a spar or two, some half-burned hen-coops, and a few pieces of charred bulwark- planking; and was so small that there was scarcely room on it for the fourteen persons it sustained. It was a most fortunate circumstance for them that the weather happened to be fine at the time; for had there been any great amount of sea running, the crazy concern could not have been kept together for half an hour. We concluded from the appearance of the affair that the castaways had been burned out of their ship; and so they had, but not in the manner we supposed. As we closed with the raft it was seen that several sharks were cruising longingly round and round it, and occasionally charging at it, evidently in the hope of being able to drag off some of its occupants. So pertinacious were these ravenous fish that the boat's crew had to fairly fight their way through them, and even to beat them off with the oars and stretchers when they had got alongside. However, the poor wretches were rescued without accident; and in a quarter of an hour from the time of despatching the boat she was once more swinging at the davits, with the rescued men, most of whom were suffering more or less severely from burns, safely below in charge of the doctor and his assistant. Later on, when their injuries had been attended to and the cravings of their hunger and thirst satisfied--they had neither eaten nor drunk during the previous forty-two hours--Captain Vernon sent for the skipper of the rescued crew, to learn from him an account of the mishap.
His story, as related to me by him during the second dog-watch, was to the following effect:--
"My name is Richards, and my ship, which hailed from Liverpool, was called the _Juliet_. She was a barque of three hundred and fifty tons register, oak built and copper fastened throughout, and was only five years old.
"Fifty-four days ago to-day we cleared from Liverpool for Saint Paul de Loando with a cargo of Manchester and Birmingham goods, sailing the same day with the afternoon tide.
"All went well with us until the day before last, when, just before eight bells in the afternoon watch, one of the hands, who had gone aloft to stow the main-topgallant-sail, reported a sail dead to leeward of us under a heavy press of canvas. I have been to Saint Paul twice before, and know pretty well the character of this coast; moreover, on my first trip I was boarded and plundered by a rascally Spaniard; so I thought I would just step up aloft and take a look at the stranger through my glass at once. Well, sir, I did so, and the conclusion I came to was, that though it was blowing very fresh I would give the ship every stitch of canvas I could show to it. The strange sail was a brig of about three hundred tons or thereabouts, with very taunt spars, a tremendous spread of canvas, and her hull painted dead black down to the copper, which had been scoured until it fairly shone again. I didn't at all like the appearance of my newly-discovered neighbour; the craft had a wicked look about her from her truck down, and the press of sail she was carrying seemed to bode me no good. So, as the _Juliet_ happened to be a pretty smart vessel under her canvas, and in splendid sailing trim, I thought I would do what I could to keep the stranger at arms'-length, and when the watch was called, a few minutes afterwards, I got the topgallant-sails, royals, flying jib, main-topgallant, royal, and mizen- topmast-staysails all on the old barkie again, and we began to smoke through it, I can tell you. That done, I set the stranger by compass, and for the first hour or so I thought we were holding our own; but by sunset I could see--a great deal too plainly for my own comfort--that the brig was both weathering and fore-reaching upon us. Still she was a long way off, and had the night been dark I should have tried to dodge the fellow; but that unfortunately was no use; the sun was no sooner set than the moon rose, and of course he could see us even more plainly than we could see him. At seven o'clock he tacked, and then I felt pretty sure he meant mischief; and when, at a little before eight bells, he tacked again, this time directly in our wake, I had no further doubt about it. At this time he was about eight miles astern of us, and at midnight he ranged up on our weather quarter, slapped his broadside of seven 18-pound shot right into us without a word of warning, and ordered us to at once heave-to. My owners had unfortunately sent me to sea with only half a dozen muskets on board, and not an ounce of powder or shot; so what could I do? Nothing, of course, but heave-to as I was bid; and we accordingly backed the main topsail without a moment's delay. The brig then did the same, and lowered a boat, which five minutes later dashed alongside us and threw in upon our decks a crew of seventeen as bloodthirsty-looking ruffians as one need ever wish to see. We were, all hands fore and aft, at once bound neck and heels and huddled together aft on the monkey-poop, with two of the pirates mounting guard over us, and then the rest of the gang coolly set to work and ransacked the ship. The fellow in command of the party--a man about five feet six inches in height, square built, with deeply bronzed features and black hair and beard--made it his first business to hunt for the manifest; and having ascertained from it that we had amongst the cargo several bolts of canvas, a large quantity of new rope, four cases of watches and jewellery, and a dozen cases of beads, he first ordered me, in broken English, to inform him where these articles were stowed, and then had the hatches stripped off and the cargo roused on deck until he could get at them. When the beads, rope, canvas, and other matters that he took a fancy to, amounting to six boat loads, had been transferred to the brig, he informed me that I must point out to him the spot where I had concealed the money which he knew to be on board. Now it so happened that I had _no_ money on board; my owners are dreadfully suspicious people, and will not intrust _anybody_ with a shilling more than they can help--and many a good fifty-pound note has missed its way into their pockets through their over-cautiousness; but that's neither here nor there. Well, I told the fellow we had no money on board, whereupon he whipped out his watch and told me out loud, so that all hands could hear, that he would give us five minutes in which to make up our minds whether we would hand over the cash or not; and if we decided _not_ to do so he would at the end of that time set fire to the ship and leave us all to burn in her. And that's just exactly what he did."
"He actually set fire to the ship!" said I. "But of course he cast you all adrift first, and gave you at least a _chance_ to save your lives?"
"I'll tell you what he did, sir," replied the merchant-skipper. "When the five minutes had expired he called for a lantern, and, when he had got it, went round and examined each man's lashings with his own eyes and hands, so as to make sure that we were all secure to his satisfaction. Then he ordered half-a-dozen bales of cotton goods to be cut open and strewed about the cabin; poured oil, turpentine, and tar over them; did the same down in the forecastle; and then capsized a cask of tar and a can of turpentine over the most inflammable goods he could put his hand upon down in the main hatchway; had the bottoms of all the boats knocked out; took away all the oars; and then set fire to the ship forward, aft, and in midships; after which he wished us all a warm journey into the next world, and went deliberately down the side into his boat. The brig stood by us until we were fairly in flames fore and aft, and then filled away on the starboard tack under all the canvas she could show to it, leaving us there to perish miserably."
"And how did you manage to effect your escape after all?" I inquired.
"Well, sir," the skipper replied, "the ship--as you may imagine, with a cargo such as we had on board--burned like a torch. In less than five minutes after the pirates had shoved off from our side the flames were darting up through companion, hatchway, and fore-scuttle, and in a quarter of an hour she was all ablaze. Luckily for us, the ship, left to herself, had paid off before the wind, and the flames were therefore blown for'ard; but the deck upon which we were lying soon became so hot as to be quite unbearable; we were literally beginning to roast alive, and were in momentary expectation that the deck would fall in and drop us helplessly into the raging furnace below. At last, driven to desperation by the torture of mind and body from which I was suffering, I managed to roll over on my other side; and there, within an inch of my mouth, was a man's hands, lashed, like my own, firmly behind his back, and his ankles drawn close up to them. The idea seized me to try and _gnaw_ through his lashings and so free him, when of course he would soon be able to cast us adrift in return. I shouted to him what I intended to do, and then set to work with my teeth upon his bonds, gnawing away for dear life. When my teeth first came into contact with the firm hard rope I thought I should never be able to do it--at least not in time to save us--but a man never knows what he can do until he tries in earnest, as I did then; and I actually succeeded, and in a few minutes too, in eating my way through one turn of the lashings. The man then strained and tugged until he managed to free himself, after which it was the work of a few minutes only to liberate the rest of us. We then hastily collected together such materials as we could first lay our hands on, and with them constructed the raft off which you took us. It was a terribly crazy affair, but we had no time to make a better one. And of course, as the ship was by that time a mass of fire fore and aft, it was impossible for us to secure an atom of provisions of any kind, or a single drop of water."
"What a story of fiendish cruelty!" I ejaculated when Richards had finished his story. "By the by," I suddenly added, moved by an impulse which I could neither analyse nor account for, "of what nationality was the leader of the pirates? Do you think he was a _Frenchman_?"
"Yes, sir, I believe he _was_, although he addressed his men in Spanish," answered Richards in some surprise. "Why do you ask, sir? Have you ever fallen in with such a man as I have described him to be?"
"Well, ye--that is, not to my knowledge," I replied hesitatingly. The fact is that Richards' description of the pirate leader had somehow brought vividly before my minds' eye the personality of Monsieur Le Breton, the first lieutenant of the French gun-brig _Vestale_; and it was this which doubtless prompted me to put the absurd question to my companion as to the nationality of the man who had so inhumanly treated him. Not, it must be understood, that I seriously for a single instant associated Monsieur Le Breton or the _Vestale_ with the diabolical act of piracy to the account of which I had just listened. We had at that time no very great love of or respect for the French, it is true; but even the most bigoted of Englishmen would, I think, have hesitated to hint at the possibility of a French man-of-war being the perpetrator of such a deed.
The mere idea, the bare suggestion of such a suspicion, was so absurd that I laughed at myself for my folly in allowing it to obtrude itself, even in the most intangible form, for a single moment on my mind. And yet, such is the perversity of the human intellect, I could not, in spite of myself, quite get rid of the extravagant idea that Monsieur Le Breton was in some inexplicable way cognisant of the outrage; nor could I forbear sketching, for Richards' benefit, as accurate a word-portrait as I could of the French lieutenant; and--I suppose on account of that same perversity--I felt no surprise whatever when he assured me that I had faithfully described to him the arch-pirate who had left him and his crew to perish in the flames. Indeed, in my then contradictory state of mind I should have been disappointed had he said otherwise. The man's conduct--his stealthy but searching scrutiny of the ship; his endeavour, as I regarded it, to mislead us with his broken English; and his excessive curiosity, as hinted at by Captain Vernon, had struck me as peculiar, to say the least of it, on the occasion of his visit to the _Daphne_. I had suspected _then_ that he was not altogether and exactly what he pretended to be; and _now_ Richards' identification of him from my description seemed to confirm, in a great measure, my instinctive suspicions, unreasonable, extravagant, and absurd as I admitted them to be. My first impulse--and it was a very strong one--was to take Mr Austin into my confidence, to unfold to him my suspicions and the circumstances which had given rise to them, frankly admitting at the same time their apparent enormity, and then to put the question to him whether, in his opinion, there was the slightest possibility of those suspicions being well-founded.
So strongly, so unaccountably was I urged to do this, that I had actually set out to find the first lieutenant when reflection and common sense came to my aid and asked me what was this thing that I was about to do. The answer to this question was, that with the self-sufficiency and stupendous conceit which my father had especially cautioned me to guard against, I was arrogating to myself the possession of superhuman sagacity, and (upon the flimsy foundation of a wild and extravagant fancy, backed by a mere chance resemblance, which after all might prove to be no resemblance at all if Richards could once be confronted with Monsieur Le Breton) was about to insinuate a charge of the most atrocious character against an officer holding a responsible and honourable position--a man who doubtless was the soul of honour and rectitude. A moment's reflection sufficed to convince me of the utter impossibility of the same man being in command of a pirate-brig one day and an officer of a French man-o'-war the next. I might just as reasonably have suspected the _Vestale_ herself of piracy; and _that_, I well knew, would be carrying my suspicions to the uttermost extremity of idiotic absurdity. I had, in short--so I finally decided--discovered a mare's nest, and upon the strength of it had been upon the very verge of proclaiming myself a hopeless idiot and making myself the perpetual laughing-stock of the whole ship. I congratulated myself most heartily upon having paused in time, and resolved very determinedly that I would not further dwell upon the subject, or allow myself to be again lured into entertaining such superlatively ridiculous notions.
Yet only four days later I was harassed by a temporary recurrence of all my suspicions; and it was with the utmost difficulty that I combated them. I succeeded, it is true, in so far maintaining my self-control as to keep a silent tongue; but they continued persistently to haunt me until--but steady! Whither away, Dick, my lad? You are out of your course altogether and luffing into the wind's eye, instead of working steadily to windward, tack and tack, and taking the incidents of your story as you come to them.
The incident which revived my very singular suspicions was as follows:--
Upon learning the full details of Richards' story, Captain Vernon had come to the conclusion that the brig which destroyed the _Juliet_ was a vessel devoted to the combined pursuits of piracy and slave-trading; that she was, in all probability, one of the three vessels reported by the _Fawn_ as daily-expected to arrive on the coast from Cuba; and that it was more than likely her destination was the Congo. He therefore determined to make the best of his way back to that river, in the sanguine hope of effecting her capture; after which he intended to run down to Saint Paul de Loando to land the crew of the _Juliet_, Richards having expressed a desire to be taken there if possible.
It was on the fourth day after we had picked up the _Juliet's_ crew, and we were working our way back toward the mouth of the Congo, making short tacks across the track of vessels running the notorious Middle Passage, when the look-out aloft reported a sail about three points on the weather-bow, running down toward us under a perfect cloud of canvas. It was at once conjectured that this might be Richards' late free-and-easy acquaintance outward-bound with a cargo of slaves on board; and the _Daphne_ was accordingly kept away a couple of points to intercept him, the hands being ordered to hold themselves in readiness to jump aloft and make sail on the instant that the stranger gave the slightest sign of an intention to avoid us. At the same time Mr Armitage, our third lieutenant, proceeded aloft to the main topmast crosstrees with his telescope to maintain a vigilant watch upon the motions of the approaching vessel.
All hands were of course in an instant on the _qui vive_, the momentary expectation being that the stranger would shorten sail, haul upon a wind, and endeavour to evade us. But minute after minute passed without the slightest indication of any such intention, and very shortly his royals rose into view above the horizon from the deck; then followed his topgallant-sails, then his topsails, his courses next, and finally the hull of the ship appeared upon the horizon, with studding-sails alow and aloft on both sides, running down dead before the wind, and evidently going through the water at a tremendous pace.
Every available telescope in the ship was now brought to bear upon the craft, and presently her fore-royal and fore-topgallant-sail were observed to collapse, the yards slid down the mast, and the sails were clewed up, but not furled. The next instant the French tricolour fluttered out from her fore-royal-mast-head, the only position from whence it could be made visible to us; and simultaneously with its appearance the conviction came to us all that in the approaching vessel we were about to recognise our recent acquaintance the _Vestale_. Our ensign, which was already bent on to the peak-halyards, was promptly run up in response, whereupon the French ensign disappeared, to be instantly replaced by a string of signals. Our signal-book was at once produced, our answering pennant run half-mast up, and we then began to read off the following signal:
"Have you sighted?--"
Our pennant was then mast-headed to show that we understood; the flags disappeared on board the Frenchman, and another batch was run up, which, being interpreted, meant:
"Brig--"
This also was acknowledged, and the signalling was continued until the whole message was completed, thus:
"Same tonnage as--"
"Ourselves--"
"Hull--"
"Painted--"
"All black--"
"Steering west-north-west?"
The final string of flags then disappeared, and the _Vestale's_ answering pennant directly afterwards showed just above her topgallant yard, indicating that she had completed her signal and awaited our reply.
The entire signal then, freely interpreted, ran thus:
"Have you sighted a brig of the same tonnage (or size) as ourselves, with hull painted all black, steering a west-north-west course?"
We answered "No;" and, in our turn, inquired whether the _Vestale_ had seen or heard of such a craft.
The French gun-brig was by this time crossing our bows, distant about half a mile; her reply was accordingly made from her gaff-end, the fore- topgallant-sail and royal being at the same time sheeted-home and mast- headed.
It was to the following effect:
"Yes. Brig in question sailed from Congo yesterday, six hours before our arrival, with three hundred slaves on board."
By the time that this message had been communicated--by the slow and tedious process then in vogue--the two vessels were too far apart to render any further conversation possible, and in little more than an hour after the final hauling-down of the last signal the _Vestale's_ main-royal sank beneath the verge of the western horizon, and we were once more alone.
CHAPTER SIX.
IN THE CONGO ONCE MORE.
I have not yet, however, stated what it was in connection with our encounter with the _Vestale_ which served to fan my fantastic suspicions into flame anew, and, I may add too at the same time, mould them into a more definite shape than they had ever before taken.
It was Richards' peculiar conduct and remarks. He had manifested quite an extraordinary amount of interest in our _rencontre_ with the _Vestale_ from the moment of her being first reported from the mast- head, evidently sharing the hope and belief, which we all at first entertained, that the strange sail would turn out to be the brig which had served him so scurvy a trick a few days before.
It was easy to understand the excitement he exhibited so long as this remained a matter of conjecture, but when the conjecture proved to be unfounded I fully expected his excitement, if not his interest, would wane. It did not, however. He borrowed my telescope as soon as the brig became fully visible from the deck, and, placing himself at an open port, kept the tube of the instrument levelled at her until her topsails disappeared below the horizon again. I remained close beside him during the whole time, and his excitement and perplexity were so palpable that I could not refrain from questioning him as to the cause.
"I'll tell you, Mr Hawkesley," he replied. "You see that craft there? Well, I could almost stake my soul that she and the pirate-brig were built on the same stocks. The two craft are the same size to a ton, I'll swear that; and they are the same model and the same rig to a nicety. It's true I was only able to closely inspect the other craft at night-time, but it was by brilliant moonlight, and I was able to note every detail of her build, rig, and equipment almost as plainly as I now can that of the brig before us; and the two are sister-ships. They carry the same number of guns--ay, even to the long-gun I see there on the French brig's forecastle. The masts in both ships have the same rake, the yards the same spread, and the running-gear is rove and led in exactly the same manner. The only difference I can distinguish between the two ships is that yonder brig has a broad white ribbon round her, and a small figure-head painted white, whilst the pirate-craft was painted black down to her copper, and she carried a large black figure- head representing a negress with a gaudy scarf wrapped about her waist."
"Um!" I remarked. "Lend me the glass a moment, will you? Thanks!"
The _Vestale_ was, at the moment, just about to cross our fore-foot, and was therefore about as near to us as she would be at all I focused the telescope--a fine powerful instrument--upon her, and could clearly see the weather-stains and the yellowish-red marks of rust in the wake of her chain-plates upon the broad white ribbon which stretched along her side. Evidently that band of white paint had been exposed to sun and storm for many a long day. Then I had a look at her figure-head. It was a half-length model of a female figure, beautifully carved, less than life-size, with one arm drooping gracefully downwards, and the other--the right--outstretched, with a gilded lamp in the right hand. That, too, was weather-stained, and the gilding tarnished by long exposure. Those pertinacious, half-formed suspicions, which Richards' words had stirred into new life were refuted; and yet, as I have said, I could _not_ shake them off, try as I would, and argue with myself as I would, that they were utterly ridiculous and unreasonable.
"Look here, Mr Richards," said I; "if you really _are_ as positive upon this matter as you say, I wish you would speak to Captain Vernon about it; it might--and no doubt _would_--help us very materially in effecting the capture of the pirate-brig. We have seen the _Vestale_ twice, and have had so good an opportunity to note her peculiarities of structure and equipment that we shall now know her again as far off as we can see her. If, therefore, we should ever happen to fall in with a brig the exact counterpart of the _Vestale_ in all respects, except as to the matters of her figure-head and the painting of her hull, I should think we may take it for granted that that brig will undoubtedly be the pirate which destroyed the _Juliet_. And you may depend upon it, my good sir, that it is that identical craft that the _Vestale_ is now seeking."
"Ye-es, very likely--quite possible," he replied hesitatingly, and evidently still labouring under the feeling of perplexity I had noticed. Then, straightening himself up and passing his hand across his forehead, as though to clear away the mental cobwebs there, he added: "I'll go and speak to Captain Vernon about it at once."
And away he accordingly walked to carry out his resolve.
We stood on as we were going until eight bells in the afternoon watch that day, when the ship was hove round on the larboard tack and a course shaped for Saint Paul de Loando, our skipper having come to the conclusion that the brig referred to in the _Vestale's_ signal was undoubtedly the craft which we had been on our way back to the Congo to look for, and that as, according to the gun-brig's statement, she was no longer there, we were now free to proceed direct to Saint Paul to land the burnt-out crew as soon as possible.
We entered the bay--upon the shore of which the town is built--about 10 a.m. on the second day after our last meeting with the _Vestale_, and, anchoring in ten fathoms, lowered a boat, in which Mr Richards and his crew were landed, Captain Vernon going on shore with them. The skipper remained on shore until 4 p.m., and when he came off it was easy to see that he was deeply preoccupied. The boat was at once hoisted in, the messenger passed, the anchor hove up, and away we went again, crowding sail for the Congo. As soon as the ship was clear of the Loando reef and fairly at sea once more, Captain Vernon summoned the first and second lieutenants to his cabin, where the three remained closeted with him for some time, indeed the two officers dined with him; but, whatever the matter might be, neither Mr Austin nor Mr Smellie let fall a word as to its nature, though it was evident from their manner that it was deemed of considerable import.
When I turned in that night I felt very greatly dissatisfied with myself. Those outrageous suspicions, upon which I have dwelt so much in the last few pages, seemed to be gathering new strength every day in spite of my utmost endeavours to dissipate them, and that, too, without the occurrence of anything fresh to confirm them. I accordingly took myself severely to task; subjected myself to a rigid self-examination, looking the matter square in the face; and the conclusions to which I came were--first, that I had allowed myself to be deluded into the belief that the _Vestale_ herself was the craft which had committed the act of piracy of which poor Richards and his crew were the victims; and second, that I had been an unmitigated idiot for suffering myself to be so deluded. On going thoroughly over the whole question I was forced to admit to myself that there was not a particle of evidence incriminating the French gun-brig save what I had manufactured out of my own too vivid imagination; and I clearly foresaw that unless I could get rid of, or, at all events, conquer, this hallucination, I should be doing or saying something which would get me into a serious scrape. And, having at last thus settled the question--as I thought--to my own satisfaction, I rolled over in my hammock and went to sleep.
The breeze held fresh during the whole of that night; and the _Daphne_ made such good progress that by eight o'clock on the following morning we found ourselves once more abreast of Padron Point at the entrance to the Congo. Sail was now shortened; the ship hove-to, and the men sent to their breakfasts; the officers also being requested to get theirs at the same time.
At 8:30 the hands were turned up, the main topsail filled, and, under topsails, jib, and spanker, and with a leadsman in the fore-chains on each side, the sloop proceeded boldly to enter the river, under the pilotage of the master, who stationed himself for the purpose on the fore-topsail yard. This was a most unusual, almost an un-heard-of, proceeding at that time, the river never having been, up to that period, properly surveyed; so we came to the conclusion that there was something to the fore a trifle out of the common; a conclusion which was very fully verified a little later on.
It was just low water as we came abreast of Shark Point--which we passed at a distance of about a mile--but we found plenty of water everywhere; and, stretching across the river's mouth, the _Daphne_ finally entered Banana Creek, and anchored in six fathoms close to a smart-looking little barque of unquestionable American nationality. The sails were furled, the yards squared, ropes coiled down, and decks cleared up; and then the first cutter was piped away, Mr Smellie at the same time receiving a summons to the skipper's cabin.
The conference between the captain and the second lieutenant was but a short one; and when the latter again appeared on deck he beckoned me to him and instructed me to don my dirk, as I was to accompany him on a visit to the barque. Just as we were about to go down over the side Captain Vernon appeared on deck, and, addressing the second "luff," said.
"Whatever you do, Mr Smellie, keep my caution in mind, and do not provoke the man. Remember, that if he _is_ an American--of which I have very little doubt--we cannot touch him, even if he has his hold full of slaves; so be as civil to him as you can, please; and get all the information you can out of him."
"Ay, ay, sir; I'll do my best to stroke his fur the right way, never fear," answered Smellie laughingly; and away we went.
A couple of minutes later we shot alongside the barque; and Smellie and I clambered up her side-ladder to the deck, where we were received by a lanky cadaverous-looking individual arrayed in a by no means spotless suit of white nankin topped by a very dilapidated broad-brimmed Panama straw-hat.
"Mornin', gentlemen," observed this individual, in response to our salutation; "powerful hot; ain't it?"
"Very," returned Smellie in his most amicable manner, "but"--pointing to the awning spread fore and aft, "I see you know how to make yourselves comfortable. Your ship, I observe, is called the _Pensacola_ of New Orleans. I have come on board to go through the formality of looking at your papers. You have no objection, I presume?"
"Nary objection, stranger. Look at 'em and welcome," was the reply. "I guess I'll have to trouble you to come below, though."
With this he led the way down the companion-ladder, and we followed; eventually bringing-up on the comfortably-cushioned lockers of a fine spacious airy cabin very nicely fitted up.
Seating himself opposite us, the skipper struck a hand-bell which stood on the cabin table; in response to which summons a black steward, clad, like his master, in dingy white, made his appearance from the neighbouring pantry. Our host thereupon formed his right hand into the shape of a cup and raised it to his mouth, at the same time exhibiting three fingers of his left hand; and the steward, nodding and grinning his comprehension of the mute order, withdrew, to reappear next moment with a case-bottle of rum, three glasses, and a water-monkey, or porous earthen jar, full of what proved, on our pouring it out, to be a very doubtful-looking liquid.
"Help yourselves, gentlemen," said our host, pushing the rum-bottle and water-monkey towards us. "I ain't got no wine aboard to offer you, but the liquor is real old Jamaica, and the water is genuine Mississippi; they make a first-grade mixture. But perhaps you prefer to take your liquor `straight;' I always do."
And he forthwith practically illustrated the process of taking liquor "straight" by half-filling his tumbler with neat rum, which he swallowed at a single gulp. He then rose and retired to his state-room in search of his papers; leaving us to sip our five-water grog meanwhile.
The papers were produced, examined, and found to be perfectly correct; after which Smellie set himself to the task of "pumping" our new acquaintance; without much result, though we certainly managed to obtain one bit of valuable information from him.
"Whether there's slavers or no in this rivulet, I'll just leave you to find out, stranger," he remarked, in answer to a question of Smellie's; "I'm here about my own business, and you're here about yourn; you can't interfere with me; and I won't interfere with you. But I don't mind tellin' you that if you'd been here five days ago you'd have had a chance of nabbin' the _Black Venus_, the smartest slaver, I guess, that's ever visited this section of our sublunary sphere."
"Indeed!" exclaimed Smellie eagerly. "What sort of a craft is she? What is she like?"
"She is a brig,"--I pricked up my ears at this, and so, too, I could see, did Smellie--"of about three hundred tons register; long, and low in the water; mounts fourteen guns, seven of a side, and a long 32- pounder on her forecastle. Has very tall sticks, with a rake aft; and a tremendous spread of `caliker.' And she's the fastest craft in all creation. _Your_ ship looks as if she could travel; but I 'low she ain't a carcumstance to the _Black Venus_."
"How is she painted?" asked Smellie. "Is she all black, or does she sometimes sport a white riband?"
"Aha!" thought I; "that looks as though my suspicions are at last shared by somebody else. Richards' communication to the skipper has surely borne fruit."
"Wall," replied the Yankee with a knowing twinkle in his eye, "_when she sailed from here_ she was black right down to her copper. But that ain't much to go by; I guess her skipper knows a trick or two."
"You think, then, he might alter her appearance as soon as he got outside?" insinuated Smellie.
"He might--and he mightn't," was the cautious reply.
"Um!" observed Smellie. Then, as if inspired with a sudden suspicion, he asked:
"Have you seen any men-o'-war in here lately?"
I could see by the knowing look in our Yankee friend's eyes that he read poor Smellie like a book.
"Wall," he replied. "Come to speak of it, there _was_ a brig in here a few days ago that looked like a man-o'-war. She were flyin' French colours--when she flew any at all--and called herself the _Vestale_."
"Ah!" ejaculated Smellie. "Did any of her people board you?"
"You bet!" was the somewhat ambiguous answer. Not that the reply was at all ambiguous in itself; it was the peculiar emphasis with which the words were spoken, and the peculiar expression of the man's countenance as he uttered them, which constituted the ambiguity; the _words_ simply implied that the _Pensacola_ had been boarded; the _look_ spoke volumes, but the volumes were written in an unknown tongue, so far as we at least were concerned.
"What is the _Vestale_ like?" was Smellie's next question.
"Just as like the _Black Venus_ as two peas in a pod," was the reply, given with evident quiet amusement.
"And how was _she_ painted?" persisted Smellie. "Ah, there now, stranger, you've puzzled me!" was the unexpected answer.
"Why? Did you not say you saw her?" queried Smellie sharply.
"No, I guess not; I didn't say anything of the sort. I was ashore when her people boarded me. It was my mate that told me about it."
"Your mate? Can we see him?" exclaimed Smellie eagerly.
"Yes, I reckon," was the reply. "He's ashore now; but you've only to pull about five miles up the creek, and I calculate you'll find him somewheres."
"Thanks!" answered Smellie. "I'm afraid we can't spare the time for that. Can you tell me which of the two brigs--the _Vestale_ or the _Black Venus_--sailed first from the river?"
"Wall, stranger, I'd like to help you all I could, I really would; but," with his hand wandering thoughtfully over his forehead, "I really _can't_ for the life of me remember just now which of 'em it was."
The fellow was lying; I could see it, and so could Smellie; but we could not, of course, tell him so; and we accordingly thanked him for his information and rose to go, with an uncomfortable feeling that we had received certain information, part of which was probably true whilst part was undoubtedly false, and that we were wholly without the means of distinguishing the one from the other.
We returned to the _Daphne_ with our information, such as it was; and Smellie at once made his report to the skipper. A consultation followed in which the first lieutenant took part, and at the end of half an hour the three officers reappeared on deck, and the captain's gig was piped away.
Being suspicious, as I have already remarked, that something unusual was brewing, I remained on deck during the progress of this conference, so as to be at hand in the event of my services being required; and the _Pensacola_ happening to be the most prominent object in the landscape, she naturally came in for a large share of my attention during the progress of the discussion above referred to. She was flying no colours when we anchored in such close proximity to her, a circumstance which I attributed to the fact that she was, to all appearance, the only vessel in the river, and I was, therefore, not much surprised when, a short time after our visit to her, I observed her skipper go aft and run up the American ensign to his gaff-end. But I _was_ a little surprised when he followed this up by hoisting a small red swallow-tailed flag to his main-royal-mast-head. I asked myself what could be the meaning of this move on his part, and it did not take me very long to arrive at the conclusion that it was undoubtedly meant as a signal of some sort to somebody or other. He was scarcely likely to do such a thing for the gratification of a mere whim. And if it was a signal, what did it mean's and to whom was it made? There was of course the possibility that it was a prearranged signal to his absent mate; but, taken in conjunction with the fact that it was exhibited almost immediately after our visit to his ship, coupled with the other fact of his obvious attempt to keep us in the dark with respect to certain matters, I was greatly disposed to regard it rather as a warning signal to a vessel or vessels concealed in one or other of the numerous creeks which we knew to exist in our immediate vicinity. Accordingly, on the reappearance of the second lieutenant on deck, I stepped up to him and directed his attention to the suspicious-looking red flag, and mentioned my surmises as to its meaning.
"Thank you, Mr Hawkesley," said he. "I have no doubt it _is_ a signal of some kind; but what it means we have no possible method of ascertaining, and, moreover, it suits our purpose just now to take no notice of it. By the way, are you anything of a shot?"
"Pretty fair," I replied. "I can generally bring down a bird upon the wing if it is not a very long shot."
"Then put your pistols in your belt, provide yourself with a fowling- piece (I will lend you one), and be in readiness to go with us in the gig. We are bound upon a sporting expedition."
I needed no second invitation, but hurried away at once to make the necessary preparations; albeit there was a something in Mr Smellie's manner which led me to think that sport was perhaps after all a mere pretext, and that the actual object of our cruise was something much more serious.
A few minutes sufficed to complete my preparations, and when I again stepped on deck, gun in hand, Captain Vernon and Mr Smellie were standing near the gangway rather ostentatiously engaged--in full view of the American skipper--in examining their gun-locks, snapping off caps, and so on; whilst the steward was in the act of passing down over the side--with strict injunctions to those in the boat to be careful in the handling of it--a capacious basket of provisions with a snow-white cloth protruding out over its sides. The precious basket being at length safely deposited in the gig's stern-sheets, I followed it down the side; the second lieutenant came next, and the skipper bringing up the rear, we hoisted our lug-sail, the sea-breeze blowing strongly up the river, and shoved off; our motions being intently scrutinised by the Yankee skipper as long as we could make him out.
We had scarcely gone a quarter of a mile before a noble crane came sailing across our course with his head tucked in between his shoulders, his long stilt-like legs projecting astern of him, and his slowly- flapping wings almost touching the water at every stroke.
"There's a chance for you, Hawkesley," exclaimed our genial second luff; "let drive at him. All is fish that comes to our net so long as we are within range of the Yankee's telescope; fire at everything you see."
I raised my gun, pulled the trigger, and down dropped the crane into the water with a broken wing.
"Very neatly done," exclaimed the skipper approvingly. "Pick up the bird, Thomson,"--to the coxswain.
The unfortunate bird was duly picked up and hauled into the boat, though not without inflicting a rather severe wound with its long sharp beak on the hand of the man who grasped it; and we continued our course.
On reaching the mouth of the creek we hauled sharp round the projecting point, and shaped a course up and across toward the opposite side of the stream, steering for a low densely-wooded spit which jutted out into the river some eight miles distant. The tide, which was rising, was in our favour, and in an hour from the time of emerging from the creek into the main stream we had reached our destination; the boat shot into a water- way about a cable's length in width, the sail was lowered, the mast unstepped, and the men, taking to their oars, proceeded to paddle the boat gently up the creek.
We proceeded up this creek a distance of about two miles, when, coming suddenly upon a small branch, or tributary, well suited as a place of concealment for the boat, she was headed into it, and--after proceeding along the narrow canal for a distance of perhaps one hundred yards-- hauled alongside the bank and secured.
CHAPTER SEVEN.
MR. SMELLIE MAKES A LITTLE SURVEY.
Giving the gig's crew strict injunctions not to leave their boat for a moment upon any consideration, but to hold themselves in readiness to shove off on the instant of our rejoining them--should a precipitate retreat prove necessary--Captain Vernon and Mr Smellie stepped ashore with a request that I would accompany them.
The channel or canal in which the gig was now lying was about fifty feet wide, with a depth of water of about eight feet at the point to which we had reached. Its banks were composed of soft black foetid mud in a semi-liquid state, _so_ that in order to land it was necessary for us to make our way as best we could for a distance of some two hundred feet over the roots of the mangrove trees which thickly bordered the stream, before we were enabled to place our feet on solid ground.
Beyond the belt of mangroves the soil was densely covered with that heterogeneous jumble of parasitic creepers of all descriptions spoken of in Africa by the generic denomination of "bush," thickly interspersed with trees, many of which were of large size. Path there was none, not even the faintest traces of a footprint in the dry sandy soil to show that humanity had ever passed over the ground before us. It may be that ours _were_ the first human footsteps which had ever pressed the soil in that particular spot; at all events it looked very much like it, and we had not travelled one hundred feet before we became fully impressed with the necessity for carefully marking our route if we had the slightest desire to find our way back again. This task was intrusted to me, and I accomplished it by cutting a twig half through, and then bending it downwards until a long light strip of the inner wood was exposed. This I did at distances of about a yard apart all along our route, whilst the skipper and Smellie went ahead and forced a passage for the party through the thick undergrowth.
The general direction of our route was about south-south-west, as nearly as the skipper could hit it off with the aid of a pocket-compass, and it took us more than two hours to accomplish a journey of as many miles through the thick tangled undergrowth. This brought us out close to the water's edge again, and we saw before us a canal about a cable's length across, which the skipper said he was certain was a continuation of the one we had entered in the gig. About a mile distant, on the opposite side of the canal, could be seen the tops of the hills which we had noticed on the occasion of our first exploration of the river.
Here, as at the point of our landing, the banks of the canal consisted of black slimy foetid mud, out of which grew a belt of mangroves, their curious twisted roots straggling in a thick complicated mass of net-work over the slime beneath.
The sun was shining brilliantly down through the richly variegated foliage on the opposite bank of the stream, and lighting up the surface of the thick turbid water as it rolled sluggishly past; but where we stood--just on the inner edge of the mangrove-swamp--everything was enshrouded in a sombre green twilight, and an absolute silence prevailed all round us, which was positively oppressive in its intensity.
Breathless, perspiring, and exhausted with our unwonted exertions, we flung ourselves upon the ground for a moment's rest, during which the skipper and Smellie sought solace and refreshment in a cigar. As for me, not having at that time contracted the habit of smoking, I was contented to sit still and gaze with admiring eyes upon the weird beauty of my surroundings.
For perhaps a quarter of an hour my companions gave themselves up to the silent enjoyment of their cigars, but at the end of that time the skipper, turning to Smellie, said:
"I think this must be the creek to which we have been directed; but there are so many of these inlets, creeks, and canals on this side of the river--and on the other side also for that matter--that one cannot be at all certain about it. I would have explored the place thoroughly in the gig, and so have saved the labour of all this scrambling through the bush, but for the fact that if we are right, and any slave-craft happen to be lurking here--as our Yankee friend's suspicious conduct leads me to believe may be the case--there would be a great risk of our stumbling upon them unawares, and so giving them the alarm. And even if we escaped that mischance I have no doubt but that they keep sentinels posted here and there on the look-out, and we could hardly hope that the boat would escape being sighted by one or other of them. If there _are_ any craft hereabout, we may rest assured that they are fully aware of the presence of the _Daphne_ in the river; but I am in hopes that our _ruse_ of openly starting as upon a sporting expedition has thrown dust in their eyes for once, and that we may be able to steal near enough to get a sight of them without exciting their suspicions."
"It would be worth all our trouble if we _amid_ do so," responded Smellie. "But I don't half like this blind groping about in the bush; to say nothing of the tremendously hard work which it involves there is a very good chance, it seems to me, of our losing ourselves when we attempt to make our way back. And then, again, we are quite uncertain how much further we may have to go in order to complete our search satisfactorily. Do you not think it would be a good plan for one of us to shin up a tree and take a look round before we go any further? There are some fine tall trees here close at hand, from the higher branches of which one ought to be able to get a pretty extensive view."
"A very capital idea!" assented the skipper. "We will act upon it at once. There, now," pointing to a perfect forest giant only a few yards distant, "is a tree admirably suited to our purpose. Come, Mr Hawkesley, you are the youngest, and ought therefore to be the most active of the trio; give us a specimen of your tree-climbing powers. Just shin up aloft as high as you can go, take a good look round, and let us know if you can see anything worth looking at."
"Ay ay, sir," I responded; "but--" with a somewhat blank look at the tall, straight, smooth stem to which he pointed, "where are the ratlines?"
"Ratlines, you impudent young monkey!" responded the skipper with a laugh; "why, an active young fellow like you ought to make nothing of going up a spar like that."
But when we reached the tree it became evident that the task of climbing it was not likely to prove so easy as the skipper had imagined; for the bole was fully fifteen feet in circumference, with not a branch or protuberance of any description for the first sixty feet.
The second lieutenant, however, was equal to the occasion, and soon showed me how the thing might be done. Whipping out his knife, he quickly cut a long length of "monkey-rope" or creeper, and twisting the tough pliant stem into a grummet round the trunk of the tree, he bade me pass the bight over my shoulders, and then showed me how, with its aid, I might work myself gradually upward.
Accordingly, acting under his directions I placed myself within the bight, and tucking it well up under my arm-pits, slid the grummet up the trunk as high as it would go. Then bearing back upon it, so that it supported my whole weight, I worked my body upwards by pressing against the tree-trunk with my knees. By this means I rose about two feet from the ground. Then pressing against the tree firmly with my feet I gave the grummet a quick jerk upward and again worked myself up the trunk with my knees as before. In this way I got along very well, and after an awkward slip or two, in which my knees suffered somewhat and my breeches still more, soon acquired the knack of the thing, and speedily reached the lowermost branch, after which the rest of my ascent was of course easy.
On reaching the topmost branches I found that the tree I had climbed was indeed, as the skipper had aptly described it, a forest giant; it was by far the most lofty tree in the neighbourhood, and from my commanding position I had a fine uninterrupted prospect of many miles extent all round me, except to the southward, where the chain of hills before- mentioned shut in the view.
Away to the northward and eastward, in which direction I happened to be facing when I at length paused to look around me, I could catch glimpses of the river, over and between the intervening tree-tops, for a distance of quite twenty miles, and from what I saw I came to the conclusion that in that direction the river must widen out considerably and be thickly studded with islands, among which I thought it probable might be found many a snug lurking-place for slave-craft. On the extreme verge of the horizon I also distinctly made out a small group of hills, which I conjectured to be situate on the northern or right bank of the river. From these hills all the way round northerly, to about north-north-west, the country was flat and pretty well covered with bush; although at a distance of from two to four miles inland I could detect here and there large open patches of grass-land. Bearing about north-north-west from my point of observation was another chain of hills which stretched along the sea-coast outside the river's mouth, and extended beyond the horizon. To the left of them again, or about north-west from me, lay Banana Creek, its entrance about eleven miles distant, and over the intervening tree-tops on Boolambemba Island I could, so clear was the atmosphere just then, distinctly make out the royal-mast-heads of the _Daphne_ and the American barque; I could even occasionally detect the gleam of the sloop's pennant as it waved idly in the sluggish breeze. Still further to the left there lay the river's mouth, with the ripple which marked the junction between the fresh and the salt water clearly visible. Next came Shark Point, with the open sea stretching mile after mile away beyond it, until its gleaming surface became lost in the ruddy afternoon haze, and on the inner side of the point I could trace, without much difficulty, the course of the various creeks which we had explored in the boat on the occasion of our first visit. Looking below me, I allowed my eye to travel along the course of the stream or canal which flowed past almost under my feet, and following it along I saw that it forked at a point about three miles to the westward, and turned suddenly northward at a point about three miles further on, the branch and the stream itself eventually joining the river, and forming with it two islands of about five and three miles in length respectively, the larger of the two being that which we had so laboriously crossed that same afternoon.
The view which lay spread out below and around me was beautiful as a dream; it would have formed a fascinating study for a painter; but whatever art-instincts may have been awakened within me upon my first glance round were quickly put to flight by a scene which presented itself at a point only some three miles away. At that distance the channel or stream below me forked, as I have already said, and at the point of divergence of the two branches the water way broadened out until it became quite a mile wide, forming as snug a little harbour as one need wish to see. And in this harbour, perfectly concealed from all prying eyes which might happen to pass up or down the river, lay a brig, a brigantine, and a schooner, three as rakish-looking craft as could well be met with. Their appearance alone was almost sufficient to condemn them; but a huge barracoon standing in a cleared space close at hand, and a crowd of blacks huddled together on the adjacent bank, apparently in course of shipment on board one or other of the craft in sight, put their character quite beyond question.
A hail from below reminded me that there were others who would feel an interest in my discovery.
"Well, Mr Hawkesley, is there anything in sight, from your perch aloft there, worth looking at?" came floating up to me in the skipper's voice.
"Yes, sir, indeed there is. There are three craft in the creek away yonder, in the very act of shipping negroes at this moment," I replied.
"The deuce there are!" ejaculated the skipper. "Which do you think will be the easier plan of the two: to climb the tree, or to make our way through the bush to the spot?"
"You will find it much easier to climb the tree, I think, sir. You can be alongside me in five minutes, whilst it will take us nearly two hours, I should say, to make our way to them through the bush," I replied.
"Very well; hold on where you are then. We will tackle the tree," returned the skipper.
And, looking down, I saw him and the second lieutenant forthwith whip out their knives and begin hacking away at a creeper, wherewith to make grummets to assist them in their attempt at tree-climbing.
In a few minutes the twain were alongside me, and--in happy forgetfulness of the ruin wrought upon their unmentionables in the process of "shinning" aloft--eagerly noting through their telescopes the operations in progress on board the slavers.
"They seem very busy there," observed the skipper with his eye still peering through the tube of his telescope. "You may depend on it, Mr Smellie, the rascals have got wind of our presence in the river, and intend trying to slip out past us to-night as soon as the fog settles down. I'll be bound they know every inch of the river, and could find their way out blindfold?"
"No doubt of it, sir," answered the second luff. "But it is not high- water until two o'clock to-morrow morning, so that I suspect they will not endeavour to make a move until about an hour after midnight. That will enable them to go out on the top of the flood, and with a strong land-breeze in their favour."
"So much the better," returned Captain Vernon, with sparkling eyes. "But we will take care to have the boats in the creek in good time. You never know where to have these fellows; they are as cunning as foxes. Please note their position as accurately as you can, Mr Smellie, for I intend you to lead the attack to-night."
"Thank you, sir," answered Smellie delightedly; and planting himself comfortably astride a branch, he drew out a pencil and paper and proceeded to make a very careful sketch-chart of the river-mouth, Banana Creek, and the creek in which the slavers were lying; noting the bearings carefully with the aid of a pocket-compass.
"There, sir," said he, when he had finished, showing the sketch to the skipper; "that will enable me to find them, I think, let the night be as dark or as thick as it may. How do you think it looks for accuracy?"
"Capital!" answered Captain Vernon approvingly; "you really have a splendid eye for proportion and distance, Mr Smellie. That little chart might almost have been drawn to scale, so correct does it look. How in the world do you manage it?"
"It is all custom," was the reply. "I make it an invariable rule to devote time and care enough to such sketches as this to ensure their being as nearly accurate as possible. I have devised a few rules upon which I always work; and the result is generally a very near approximation to absolute accuracy. But the sun is getting low; had we not better be moving, sir?"
"By all means, if you are sure you have all the information you need," was the reply. "I would not miss my way in that confounded jungle to- night for anything. It would completely upset all our arrangements."
"To say nothing of the possibility of our affording a meal to some of the hungry carnivora which probably lurk in the depths of the said jungle," thought I. But I held my peace, and dutifully assisted my superior officers to effect their descent.
It was decidedly easier to go up than to go down; but we accomplished our descent without accident, and after a long and wearisome tramp back through the bush found ourselves once more on board the gig just as the last rays of the sun were gilding the tree-tops. The tide had now turned, and was therefore again in our favour; and in an hour from the time of our emerging upon the main stream we reached the sloop, just as the first faint mist-wreaths began to gather upon the bosom of the river.
I was exceedingly anxious to be allowed to take part in the forthcoming expedition and had been eagerly watching, all the way across the river, for an opportunity to ask the necessary permission; but Captain Vernon had been so earnestly engaged in discussing with Smellie the details and arrangements for the projected attack that I had been unable to do so. On reaching the ship, however, the opportunity came. As we went up over the side the skipper turned and said:
"By the way, Mr Smellie, I hope you--and you also, Mr Hawkesley--will give me the pleasure of your company to dinner this evening?"
Smellie duly bowed his acceptance of the invitation and I was about to follow suit when an idea struck me and I said:
"I shall be most happy, sir, if my acceptance of your kind invitation will not interfere with my taking part in to-night's boat expedition. I have been watching for an opportunity to ask your permission, and I hope you will not refuse me."
"Oh! that's it, is it?" laughed the skipper. "I thought you seemed confoundedly fidgety in the boat. Well--I scarcely know what to say about it; it will be anything but child's play, I can assure you. Still, you are tall and strong, and--there, I suppose I must say `yes.' And now run away and shift your damaged rigging as quickly as possible; dinner will be on the table in ten minutes."
I murmured my thanks and forthwith dived below to bend a fresh pair of pantaloons, those I had on being in so dilapidated a condition--what with the tree-climbing and our battle with the thorns and briars of the bush--as to be in fact scarcely decent.
The conversation at the dinner-table that night was of a very animated character, but as it referred entirely to the projected attack upon the slavers I will not inflict any portion of it upon the reader. Mr Austin, the first lieutenant, was at first very much disappointed when he found he was not to lead the boat expedition; but he brightened up a bit when the skipper pointed out to him that in all probability the slavers would slip their cables and endeavour to make their escape from the river on finding themselves attacked by the boats; in which case the cream of the fun would fall to the share of those left on board the sloop.
Mr Smellie--who was at all times an abstemious man--contented himself with a couple of glasses of wine after dinner, and, the moment that the conversation took a general turn, rose from the table, excusing himself upon the plea that he had several matters to attend to in connection with the expedition. As he rose he caught my eye and beckoned me to follow him, which I did after duly making my bow to the company.
When we reached the deck the fog was so thick that it was as much as we could do to see the length of the ship.
"Just as I expected," remarked my companion. "How are we to find the creek in such weather as this, Mr Hawkesley?"
"I am sure I don't know, sir," I replied, looking round me in bewilderment. "I suppose the expedition will have to be postponed until it clears a bit."
"Not if I can prevent it," said he with energy. "Although," he added, a little doubtfully, "it certainly _is very_ thick, and with the slightest deviation from our course we should be irretrievably lost. Whereaway do you suppose the creek to be?"
"Oh, somewhere in that direction!" said I, pointing over the starboard quarter.
"You are wrong," remarked my companion, looking into the binnacle. "The tide is slackening, whilst the land-breeze is freshening; so that the ship has swung with her head to the eastward, and the direction in which you pointed leads straight out to sea. Now, if you want to learn a good useful lesson--one which may prove of the utmost value to you in after- life--come below with me to the master, and between us we will show you how to find that creek in the fog."
"Thank you," said I, "I shall be very glad to learn. Why, you do not even know its compass-bearing."
"No," said Smellie, "but we will soon find it out." With that we descended to the master's cabin, where we found the owner in his shirt- sleeves and with a pipe in his mouth, poring over a chart of the coast on which was shown the mouth of the river only, its inland course being shown by two dotted lines, indicating that the portion thus marked had never been properly surveyed. He was busily engaged as we entered laying down in pencil upon this chart certain corrections and remarks with reference to the ebb and flow of the tidal current.
"Good evening, gentlemen!" said he as we entered. "Well, Mr Smellie, so you are going to lead the attack upon the slavers to-night, I hear."
"Yes," said Smellie, unconsciously straightening himself up, "yes, if this fog does not baffle us. And in order that it may not, I have come to invoke your assistance, Mr Mildmay."
"All right, sir!" said old Mildmay. "I expected you; I was waiting for you, sir."
"That's all right," said the second lieutenant. "Now, Mildmay," bending over the chart, "whereabouts is the _Daphne_?"
"_There_ she is," replied the master, placing the point of his pencil carefully down on the chart and twisting it round so as to produce a black mark.
"Very good," assented Smellie. "Now, look here, Mr Hawkesley, this is where your lesson begins." And he produced the sketch-chart he had made that afternoon and spread it out on the table.
"You will see from this sketch," he proceeded, "that the _Daphne_ bore exactly north-north-west from the tree in which we were perched when I made it. Which is equivalent to saying that the tree bears south-south- east from the _Daphne_; is it not?"
I assented.
"Very well, then," continued Smellie. "Be so good, Mr Mildmay, as to draw a line south-south-east from that pencil-mark which represents the _Daphne_ on your chart."
The master took his parallel ruler and did so.
"So far, so good," resumed the second lieutenant. "Now my sketch shows that the outer extremity of Shark Point bore from the tree north-west ¼ west. In other words, the tree bears from Shark Point south-east ¼ east. Lay off that bearing, Mildmay, if you please."
"Very good," he continued, when this second line had been drawn. "Now it is evident that the point where these two lines intersect must be the position of the tree. But, as a check upon these two bearings I took a third to that sharp projecting point at the mouth of Banana Creek," indicating with the pencil on the chart the point in question. "That point bears north-west by north; consequently the tree bears from it south-east by south. Mark that off also, Mildmay, if you please."
The master did so, and the three lines were found to intersect each other at exactly the same point. "Capital!" exclaimed Smellie, in high good-humour. "That satisfactorily establishes the exact position of the tree. Now for the next step. The slave fleet bears north-west ¼ west from the tree; and the western entrance to the creek (that by which we shall advance to the attack to-night) bears exactly north-west from the same point. Let us lay down these two bearings on the chart--thus. Now it is evident that the slave fleet and the entrance to the creek are situate _somewhere or other_ on these two lines; the question is--_where_? I will show you how I ascertained those two very important bits of information if you will step to my cabin and bring me the telescope which you will find hanging against the bulkhead."
Intensely interested in this valuable practical lesson in surveying I hurried away to do his bidding, and speedily returned with the glass, a small but very powerful instrument, which I had often greatly admired.
Taking the telescope from my hand he drew it open and directed my attention to a long series of neat little numbered lines scratched on the polished brass tube.
"You see these scratches?" he said. "Very well; now I will explain to you what they are. When I was a midshipman it was my good fortune to be engaged for a time on certain surveying work, during which I acquired a tolerably clear insight of the science. And after the work was over and done with, it occurred to me that my knowledge might be of the greatest use in cases similar to the present. Now I may tell you, by way of explanation, that surveying consists, broadly, in the measurement of angles and lines. The angles are, as you have already seen, very easily taken by means of a pocket-compass; but the measurement of the lines bothered me very considerably for a long time. Of course you can measure a line with perfect accuracy by means of a surveyor's chain, but I wanted something which, if not quite so accurate as that, would be sufficiently correct, while not occupying more than a few seconds in the operation of measurement. So I set to work and trained myself to judge distances by the eye alone; and by constant diligent practice I acquired quite a surprising amount of proficiency. And let me say here, I would very strongly recommend you and every young officer to practise the same thing; you will be surprised when you discover in how many unexpected ways it will be found useful. Well, I managed to do a great deal of serviceable work even in this rough-and-ready way; but after a time I grew dissatisfied with it--I wanted some means of measuring which should be just as rapid but a great deal more accurate. I thought the matter over for a long time, and at last hit upon the idea of turning the telescope to account. The way I did it was this. You have, of course, found that if you look through your telescope at an object, say, half a mile away, and then direct the instrument to another object, say, four miles off, you have to alter the focus of the glass before you can see the second object distinctly. It was this peculiarity which I pressed into my service as a means of measuring distances. My first step was to secure a small, handy, but first-rate telescope--the best I could procure for money; and, provided with this, I commenced operations by looking through it at objects, the exact distances of which from me I knew. I focused the glass upon them carefully, and then made a little scratch on the tube showing how far it had been necessary to draw it out in order to see the object distinctly; and then I marked the scratch with the distance of the object. You see," pointing to the tube, "I have a regular scale of distances here, from one hundred yards up to ten miles; and these scratches, let me tell you, represent the expenditure of a vast amount of time and labour. But they are worth it all. For instance, I want to ascertain the distance of an object. I direct the telescope toward it, focus the instrument carefully, and find that I can see it most clearly when the tube is drawn out to, say, this distance," suiting the action to the word. "I then look at the scale scratched on the tube, and find that it reads six thousand one hundred feet--which is a few feet over one nautical mile. And thus I measure all my distances, and am so enabled to make a really satisfactory little survey in a few minutes as in the case of this afternoon. You must not suppose, however, that I am able to measure in this way with absolute accuracy; I am not; but I manage to get a very near approximation to it, near enough for such purposes as the present. Thus, within the distance of a quarter of a mile I have found that I can always measure within two feet of the actual distance; beyond that and up to half a mile I can measure within four feet of the actual distance; and so on up to ten miles, which distance I can measure to within four hundred feet.
"And now to return to the business in hand. My telescope informed me that the slave fleet was anchored at a distance of eighteen thousand three hundred feet (or a shade over three nautical miles) from the tree, and that the western entrance to the creek is twenty-eight thousand nine hundred feet (or about four and three-quarter nautical miles) from the same spot. We have now only to mark off these two distances on the two compass-bearings which we last laid down on the chart: thus,"--measuring and marking off the distances as he spoke--"and here we have the position of the slavers and of the entrance to the creek; and by a moment's use of Mildmay's parallel ruler--thus--we get the compass- bearing of the entrance from the _Daphne_. There it is--south-east by east; and now we measure the distance from one to the other, and find it to be--eight miles, as nearly as it is possible to measure it. Thus, you see, my rough-and ready survey of this afternoon affords us the means of ascertaining our course and distance from the _Daphne_ to a point for which we should otherwise have been obliged to search, and which we could not possibly have hoped to find in the impenetrable fog which now overspreads the river."
"Thank you, Mr Smellie," said I, highly delighted with the lesson I had received; "if it will not be troubling you too much I think I must ask you to give me a lesson or two in surveying when you can spare the time."
"I shall be very pleased," was the reply. "Never hesitate to come to me for any information or instruction which you think I may be able to afford you. I shall always be happy to help you on in your studies to the utmost extent of my ability. But we have not quite finished yet, and it is now, Mildmay, that I think _you_ may perhaps be able to help us. You see we shall have to pull--or sail, as the case may be--_across_ the current, and it will therefore be necessary to make some allowance for its set. Now do you happen to know anything about the speed of the current in the river?"
"Not half so much as I should like," replied the master; "but a hint which the skipper dropped this morning caused me to take the dinghy and go away out in mid-stream _to spend the day in fishing_--ha--ha--ha! The Yankee had his glass turned full upon me, off and on, the whole morning--so I'm told--and if so I daresay he saw that I had some fairly good sport. But I wasn't so busy with my hooks and lines but that I found time to ascertain that the ebb-stream runs at a rate of about four knots at half-tide; and just abreast of us it flows to seaward at the rate of about one knot at half-flood; the salt water flowing _into_ the river along the bottom, and the fresh water continuing to flow _outwards_ on the surface. Now, at what time do you propose to start?"
"About half-past nine to-night," answered Smellie.
Old Mildmay referred to a book by his side, and then said:
"Ah, then you will have about two hours' ebb to contend with--the last two hours of the ebb-tide. Now let me see,"--and he produced a sheet of paper on which were some calculations, evidently the result of his observations whilst "Sshing." He ran over these carefully, and then said:
"How long do you expect it will take you to cross?"
"Two hours, if we have to pull across--as I expect we shall," answered the second lieutenant.
"Two hours!" mused the master. "Two hours! Then you'll have to make allowance, sir, for an average set to seaward of two miles an hour all the way across, or four miles in all."
"Very well," said Smellie. "Then to counteract that we must shape our course for a point four miles _above_ that which marks the entrance to the creek--must we not, Mr Hawkesley?"
"Certainly," I said; "that is quite clear."
"Then be so good as to lay that course down on the chart."
I measured off a distance of four miles with the dividers, and marked it off _above_ the mouth of the creek; then applied the parallel ruler and found the course.
"It is exactly south-east," said I; "and it will take us close past the southern extremity of this small island."
"That is quite right," remarked Smellie, who had been watching me; "and if we happen to sight the land in passing that point it will be an assurance that, so far, we have been steering our proper course. But-- bless me,"--looking at his watch--"it is a quarter after nine. I had no idea it was so late. Run away, Mr Hawkesley, and make your preparations. Put on your worst suit of clothes, and throw your pea- jacket into the boat. You may be glad to have it when we get into the thick of that damp fog. Bring your pistols, but not your dirk; a ship's cutlass, with which the armourer will supply you, will be much more serviceable for the work we have in hand to-night."
I hastened away, and reached the deck again just in time to see the men going down the side into the boats after undergoing inspection.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
WE ATTACK THE SLAVERS.
The attacking flotilla was composed of the launch, under Mr Smellie, with me for an _aide_; the first cutter, in charge of Mr Armitage, the third lieutenant; and the second cutter, in charge of Mr Williams, the master's mate; the force consisting of forty seamen and four officers-- quite strong enough, in Captain Vernon's opinion, to give a satisfactory account of the three slavers, which, it was arranged, we were to attack simultaneously, one boat to each vessel.
The last parting instructions having been given to Smellie by the skipper, and rounded off with a hearty hand-shake and an earnest exclamation of "I wish you success;" with a still more hearty hand-shake and a "Good-bye, Harold, old boy; good luck attend you!" from Mr Austin, the second lieutenant motioned me into the launch; followed me closely down; the word to shove off was given, and away we went punctually at half-past nine to the minute.
The fog was still as thick as ever; so thick, indeed, that it was as much as we could do to see one end of the boat from the other; and, notwithstanding the care with which, as I had had an opportunity of seeing, the second lieutenant had worked out all his calculations, I own that it seemed to me quite hopeless to expect that we should find the place of which we were in search. Nevertheless, we pushed out boldly into the opaque darkness, and the boats' heads were at once laid in the required direction, each coxswain steering by compass, the lighted binnacle containing which had been previously masked with the utmost care. Our object being to take the slavers by surprise the oars were of course muffled, and the strictest silence enjoined. Thus there was neither light nor sound to betray our whereabouts, and we slid over the placid surface of the river almost as noiselessly as so many mist- wreaths.
In so dense a fog it was necessary to adopt unusual precautions in order to prevent the boats from parting company. We therefore proceeded in single file, the launch leading, with the first cutter attached by her painter, the second cutter, in her turn, attached by her painter to the first cutter, bringing up the rear. The cutters were ordered to regulate their speed so that the connecting rope between each and the boat ahead should be just slack enough to dip into the water and no more, thus insuring that each boat's crew should do its own fair share of work at the oars.
Once fairly away from the ship's side we were immediately swallowed up by the impenetrable mist; and for a considerable time the flotilla glided gently along, without a sight or sound to tell us whether we were going right or wrong; without the utterance of a word on board either of the boats; and with only the slight muffled sound of the oars in the rowlocks and the gurgle of the water along the boats' sides to tell that we were moving at all. The silence would have been oppressive but for the slight murmuring swirl and ripple of the great river and the chirping of the countless millions of insects which swarmed in the bush on both banks of the stream. The latter sent forth so remarkable a volume of sound that when first told it was created by insects alone I found my credulity taxed to its utmost limit; and it was not until I was solemnly assured by Mr Austin that such was the case that I quite believed it. It was not unlike the "whirr" of machinery, save that it rose and fell in distinct cadences, and occasionally--as if by preconcerted arrangement on the part of every individual insect in the district--stopped altogether for a few moments. Then, indeed, the silence became weird, oppressive, uncanny; making one involuntarily shuffle nearer to one's neighbour and glance half-fearfully over one's shoulder. Then, after a slight interval, a faint, far-off signal _chirp! chirp_! would be heard, and in an instant the whole insect-world would burst into full chorus once more, and the air would fairly vibrate with sound. But the night had other voices than this. Mingled with the _chirr_ of the insects there would occasionally float off to us the snarling roar of some forest savage, the barking call of the deer, the yelping of a jackal, the blood-curdling cry of a hyena, the grunt of a hippopotamus, the weird cry of some night-bird; and--nearer at hand, sometimes apparently within a yard or so of the boats--sundry mysterious puffings and blowings, and sudden faint splashings of the water, which latter made me for one, and probably many of the others who heard them, feel particularly uncomfortable, especially if they happened to occur in one of the brief intervals of silence on shore. Once, in particular, during one of those silent intervals, my hair fairly bristled as the boat was suddenly but silently brought up all standing by coming into violent collision with some object which broke water directly under our bows; the shock being instantly followed by a long moaning sigh and a tremendous swirl of the water as the creature--whatever it was--sank again beneath the surface of the river.
The men in the launch were, like myself, considerably startled at the circumstance, and one of them--an Irishman--exclaimed, in the first paroxysm of his dismay:
"Howly ropeyarns! what was that? Is it shipwrecked, stranded, and cast away we are on the back of a say-crocodile? Thin, Misther Crocodile, let me tell yez at wanst that I'm not good to ate; I'm so sthrongly flavoured wid the tibaccy that I'd be shure to disagray wid yez."
This absurd exclamation appealed so forcibly to the men's sense of the ridiculous that it had the instant effect of steadying their nerves and raising a hearty laugh, which, however, was as instantly checked by Smellie, who, though he could not restrain a smile, exclaimed sharply:
"Silence, fore and aft! How dare you cry out in that ridiculous fashion, Flanaghan? I have a good mind to report you, sir, as soon as we return to the ship."
"_Who shall say how many of us will live to return_?"
"Merciful God! who spoke?" hoarsely cried the second lieutenant. And well he might. The words were uttered in a sound scarcely above a whisper, in so low a tone, indeed, that but for Smellie's startled ejaculation I should almost have been inclined to accept them as prompted by my own excited imagination; yet I saw in an instant that every man in the boat had heard them and was as much startled as myself. Who had uttered them, indeed? Every man's look, as his horrified glance sought his neighbour's face, asked the same question. Nobody seemed to have recognised or to be able to identify the voice; and the strangest thing about it was that it did not appear to have been spoken in the boat at all, but from a point close at hand.
The men had, with one accord, laid upon their oars in the first shock of this new surprise, and before they had recovered themselves the first cutter had ranged up alongside.
"Did anyone speak on board you, Armitage?" asked Smellie.
"No, certainly not," was the reply.
"Did you hear anyone speak on board the second cutter then?" followed.
"No; I heard nothing. Why?"
"No matter," muttered the second lieutenant. Then, in a low but somewhat louder tone:
"Give way, launches; someone has been trying to play a trick upon us."
The men resumed their work at the oars; but an occasional scarcely heard whisper reaching my ears and suggesting rather than conveying such fragmentary sentences as "Some of us doomed"--"Lose the number of our mess," etcetera, etcetera, showed that a very unfortunate impression had been made by the strange incident.
As we proceeded the second lieutenant began to consult his watch, and at last, turning to me as he slipped it back into his fob, he whispered:
"A quarter after tea. We ought now to be close to Boolambemba Point, but the fog keeps so dense that I am afraid there is no chance of our sighting it."
The insect chorus had been silent for an unusually long time when he spoke; but as the words left Smellie's lips the sounds burst out once more, this time in startling proximity to our larboard hand.
"By George! there it is, though, sure enough," continued Smellie. "By the sharpness of the sound we must be close aboard of the point. How is her head, coxswain?"
Before the man could reply there came in a low murmur from the men pulling the port oars:
"We're stirring up the mud here, sir, on the port hand."
And at the same moment, looking up, we became aware that the darkness was deeper--more intense and opaque, as it were, on our port hand than anywhere else.
"All right!" answered Smellie; "that is the point, sure enough, and very prettily we have hit it off. If we can only make as good a shot at the mouth of the creek I shall be more than satisfied. How have you been steering, coxswain?"
"South-east, sir, as straight as ever I could keep her."
"That's all right. South-east is your course all the way across. Now we are beginning to draw off from the point and out into mid-stream, and there must be no more talking upon any pretence whatever. The noise of the insects will tell us when we are drawing in with the other bank. On a night like this one has to be guided in a great measure by sound, and even the chirp of the grasshoppers may be made useful, Mr Hawkesley."
I murmured a whispered assent as in duty bound, and then all hands relapsed into silence once more.
The men worked steadily away at the oars, not exerting themselves to any great extent, but keeping the boat moving at the rate of about four knots per hour. According to our time-reckoning, and the fact that the volume of sound proceeding from the southern bank of the river had overpowered that from the northern bank, we had accomplished rather more than the half of our passage across the stream, when, happening to raise my head upon emerging from a brown study into which I had fallen, I thought I caught a momentary glimpse of some object looming through the fog broad on our port beam. I looked more earnestly still, and presently felt convinced that there _was_ something there.
Laying my hand on the second lieutenant's arm to call his attention, I whispered:
"Can you see anything out there, sir, abreast of us on our port hand?"
Smellie looked eagerly in the indicated direction for some moments, and then turning to the coxswain, whispered:
"Starboard--hard!"
The boat's helm was put over, her bows swept round; and then I was certain _that we were being watched_, for as the launch swerved out of her course the object became suddenly more distinct, only to vanish completely into the fog next moment, however, its course being as suddenly and promptly altered as our own, thus proving that there were other eyes at least as sharp as ours. But that single momentary glance had been sufficient to show me that the object was a native canoe containing three persons.
The second lieutenant was seriously disconcerted at this discovery, and was evidently in great doubt as to whether it would be more prudent to push on or to turn back. If the occupants of the canoe happened to be associated with the slavers, and had been sent out as scouts in anticipation of an attack from us, then there could be little doubt that it would be wiser to turn back, since a light craft like a canoe could easily reach the creek far enough ahead of us to give the alarm, in which case we should find a warm reception prepared for us; and in so dense a fog all the advantage would be on the side of those manning the slave fleet.
On the other hand, the _rencontre_ might possibly have been purely accidental, and its occupants supremely indifferent to the movements of ourselves and the slavers alike, in which case it would be not only mortifying in the extreme but possibly fatal to Smellie's prospects in the service if he allowed himself to be frightened out of the advantage of so excellent an opportunity for effecting a surprise.
It was a most embarrassing problem with which he thus suddenly found himself brought face to face; but with a brave man the question could not long remain an open one; a few seconds sufficed him to determine on proceeding and taking our chance.
The sounds from the shore now rapidly increased in intensity, and by and by we suddenly found that they proceeded from both sides of the boats. Smellie drew out his watch and consulted it by the light of the boat's binnacle.
"Twenty minutes to twelve! and we are now entering the creek," he whispered to me.
The slavers, we knew, were anchored about two miles up the creek, and the conviction suddenly smote me that in another half-hour I should in all probability be engaged in a fierce and deadly struggle. Somehow up to that moment I had only regarded the attack as a remote possibility--a something which _might_ but was not very likely to happen. I suppose I had unconsciously been entertaining a doubt as to the possibility of our finding the creek. Yet, there we were in it, and nothing could now avert a combat, and more or less bloodshed. Nothing, that is, except the exceedingly unlikely circumstance of our finding the birds flown.
Did I wish this? Was I _afraid_?
Honestly, I am unable to say whether I was or not; but I am inclined to acquit myself of the charge of cowardice. My sensations were peculiar and rather unpleasant, I freely admit; but looking back upon them now in the light of long years of experience, I am disposed to attribute them entirely to nervous excitement. Hitherto my nostrils had never sniffed the odour of powder burned in anger; I was about to undergo a perfectly new experience; I was about to engage with my fellow-men in mortal combat; to come face to face with and within arm's-length of those who, if the opportunity occurred, would take my life deliberately and without a moment's hesitation. In a short half-hour I might be dying--or _dead_. As this disagreeable and inopportune reflection flashed through my mind my heart throbbed violently, the blood rushed to my head, and my breathing became so laboured that I felt as though I was stifling. These disagreeable--indeed I might more truthfully call them _painful_-- sensations lasted in their intensity perhaps as long as five minutes, after which they rapidly subsided, to be succeeded by a feverish longing and impatience for the moment of action. My excitement ceased; my breathing again became regular; but the period of suspense--that period which only a few minutes before had seemed so short--now felt as though it were lengthening out to a veritable eternity. I wanted to begin at once, to know the worst, and to get it over.
I had not much longer to wait. We had advanced about a mile up the creek when a deep hoarse voice was heard shouting something from the shore.
"Oars!" exclaimed Smellie; and the men ceased pulling. "What was it the fellow said?" continued the second lieutenant, turning to me.
"Haven't the slightest idea, but it sounded like Spanish," I replied.
The hail was repeated, but we could make nothing of it. Mr Armitage, however, who boasted a slight knowledge of Spanish, informed us--the first cutter having by this time drifted up abreast of us--that it was a caution to us to return at once or take the consequences.
"Oh! that's it, is it?" remarked Smellie. "Well, it seems that we are discovered, so any further attempt at a surprise is useless. Cast the boats adrift from each other, and we will make a dash for it. Our best chance now is to board and carry the three craft simultaneously with a rush--if we can. Give way, lads!"
The boats' painters were cast off; the crews with a ringing cheer plunged their oars simultaneously into the water, and away we went at racing speed through the dense fog along the channel.
We had scarcely pulled half a dozen strokes when the report of a musket rang out from the bank on our starboard hand; and at the same instant a line of tiny sparks of fire appeared on either hand through the thick haze, rapidly increasing in size and luminosity until they stood revealed as huge fires of dry brushwood. They were twelve in number, six on either bank of the channel, and were spaced about three hundred yards apart. So large were they that they rendered the fog quite luminous; and it seemed pretty evident that they had been built and lighted for the express purpose of illuminating the channel and revealing our exact whereabouts. I was congratulating myself upon the circumstance that the dense fog would to a considerable extent defeat their purpose, when, in an instant, as though we had passed out through a solid wall, we emerged from the fog, and there lay the three slave- craft before us, moored with springs on their cables, boarding-nettings triced up, and guns run out, evidently quite ready to receive us.
The three craft were moored athwart the channel in a slightly curved line, with their bows pointing to the eastward, the brig being ahead, the schooner next, and the brigantine the sternmost of the line. Thus moored, their broadsides commanded the whole channel in the direction of our advance, and could, if required, be concentrated upon any one point in it.
"Hurrah!" shouted Smellie, rising to his feet and drawing his sword; "hurrah, lads, there is our game! Give way and go at them. I'll take the brig, Armitage; you tackle the brigantine, and leave Williams to deal with the schooner. Now bend your backs, launches; there is a glass of grog all round waiting for you if we are alongside first."
"Hurroo! pull, bhoys, and let's shecure that grog annyhow," exclaimed the irrepressible Flanaghan; and with another cheer and a hearty laugh the men stretched themselves out and plied the stout ashen oars until the water fairly buzzed again under the launch's bows, and it almost seemed as though they would lift her bodily out of the water.
As for Armitage and Williams, they were evidently quite determined not to be beaten in the race if they could help it. Both were on their feet, their drawn swords in their right hands, pistols in their left, and their bodies bobbing energetically forward, in approved racing fashion, at every stroke of the oars; whilst the voice of first one and then the other could be heard encouraging their respective crews with such exclamations as:
"Pull now! pull _hard! There_ she lifts! _Now_ she travels! There we draw ahead. _Well_ pulled; again so," and so on, she men all the while straining at the oars with a zeal and energy which left in the wake of each boat a long line of swirling, foamy whirlpools.
We were within about eighty yards of the slavers--the launch leading by a good half length--when a voice on board the brig uttered some word of command, and that same instant--_crash_! came a broadside at us, fired simultaneously from the three ships. The guns were well-aimed, the shot flying close over and all round us, tearing and thrashing up the placid surface of the water about the boats, and sprinkling us to such an extent that, for the moment, we seemed to be passing through a heavy shower; yet, strange to say, no damage was done.
Before the guns could be again loaded we were alongside, and then ensued--so far at least as the launch was concerned--a few minutes of such desperate hand-to-hand fighting as I have never since witnessed. We dashed alongside the brig in the wake of her larboard main rigging, and as the boat's side touched that of the slaver every man dropped his oar, seized his cutlass, and sprang for the main channels. Here, however, we were received so warmly that it was found utterly impossible to make good our footing, the men springing up only to fall back again into the boat wounded with pike-thrust, pistol-bullet, or cutlass-gash. Smellie and I happened to make a dash for the same spot, but being the lighter of the two I was jostled aside by him and narrowly avoided tumbling overboard. He succeeded in gaining a temporary footing on the chain-plate, and was evidently about to scramble thence upon the sheer- pole, when I saw a pike thrust out at him from over the topgallant bulwarks. The point struck him in the right shoulder, passing completely through it; the thrust upset his balance, and down he came by the run into the boat. Our lads meanwhile were cutting and hacking most desperately at the boarding netting, endeavouring to make a passage-way through it, but unfortunately they had emptied their pistols in the first rush, and, unable to reach their enemies through the netting, were completely at their mercy. In less than three minutes all hands were back in the boat, every one of us more or less hurt, and no nearer to getting on board than we had been before the beginning of the attack.
The cutters had evidently fared no better, for they were already hauling off, discomfited; seeing which, Smellie, who seemed scarcely conscious of his wound, reluctantly gave the order for us to follow their example, which we promptly did. Poor Smellie! I pitied him, for I could see he was deeply mortified at our defeat. The three boats converged toward each other as they hauled off, and as soon as we were within speaking distance of them the second lieutenant inquired of Armitage and Williams whether they had suffered much.
"We have one man killed, and I think none of us have escaped quite scot- free," was Armitage's reply; whilst Williams reported that two of his men were seriously hurt and seven others slightly wounded.
"Well," said Smellie, "it is evident that we can do nothing with them unless we change our tactics. We will, therefore, all three of us attack the schooner, the two cutters boarding her, one on each bow, whilst we in the launch will make a feint of attacking the brigantine, passing her, however, at the last moment, and boarding the schooner aft. Now--away we go!"
The boats upon this were quickly swept round, and off we dashed toward our respective points of attack. We were still fully a hundred yards distant when another broadside was poured into us, this time with very destructive effect so far as the launch was concerned. We were struck by no less than five nine-pound shot, two of which played havoc with our oars on the starboard side, a third tore out about twelve feet of planking and gunwale on the same side, and the remaining two struck the boat's stem close together, completely demolishing the bows and, worst of all, killing three men.
The launch was now a wreck and sinking. Smellie, therefore, conceiving it to be our best chance under the circumstances, gave orders to steer straight for the schooner's main-chains. We succeeded in reaching our quarry before the boat sank, and that was all, the launch capsizing alongside as we sprang from her gunwale to that of the schooner. Very fortunately for us, the two cutters had arrived nearly a minute before us, and when we boarded the entire crew of the schooner was on her forecastle fully occupied in the endeavour to repel their attack. Taking advantage of this we quietly but rapidly slipped in on deck through her open ports aft, and then made a furious charge forward, attacking the Spaniards in their rear. Our presence on board seemed to take them considerably by surprise. They wavered and hesitated, but, incited by a burly ruffian who forced his way through the crowd, rallied once more and attacked us hotly. This was exactly what we wanted. Our fellows, by Smellie's order, contented themselves with acting for the time being strictly on the defensive, giving way gradually before the impetuous attack of the Spaniards, and drawing them by degrees away from the forecastle. A diversion was thus effected in favour of the cutters' crews, of which they were not slow to avail themselves; and in less than five minutes after the attack of the launch's crew our entire party had gained a footing upon the schooner's deck. Even then the Spanish crew continued to fight desperately, inflicting several very severe wounds upon our lads, until at last, thoroughly roused by such obstinacy, the blue-jackets made such a determined charge that they cleared the decks by actually and literally driving their opponents overboard. Not that this entailed much loss upon the Spaniards, however; for they all, or very nearly all, swam either to the brig or the brigantine, where they were promptly hauled on board.
On our side Smellie lost not a moment in availing himself to the fullest extent of our partial victory. He ordered the cutters to be dropped under the schooner's stern, and whilst this was being done the springs were veered away and hauled upon until the schooner was brought broadside-on to her former consorts, now her antagonists. This done our lads went to the guns, double-shotted them, and succeeded in delivering an awfully destructive raking broadside fore and aft along the decks of both the brig and the brigantine. The frightful outcries and the confusion which ensued on board these craft assured us that our fire had wrought a tremendous amount of execution among the men crowding their decks; but they were too wise to give us an opportunity to repeat the dose. Their springs were promptly manned, and by the time that the schooner's batteries were again loaded our antagonists had brought their broadsides to bear upon us.
Once more was our double-shotted broadside hurled upon the foe, and then, before our lads had time to run-in their guns, we received the combined fire of the brig and the brigantine in return. Through the sharp ringing explosion of our antagonists' nine-pounders we distinctly heard the crashing of the shot through the schooner's timbers, and then--O God! I shall never forget it--the piercing shrieks and groans of mortal agony which uprose beneath our feet! Not a man of us upon the schooner's decks was injured by that terrible double broadside; for the Spaniards, resolved to sink the craft, had depressed the muzzles of their guns and sent their shot through the schooner's sides just above the water-line on the one side and out through her bottom on the other, regardless of the fact that _the vessel's hold was packed full of slaves_. The slaughter which resulted among these unhappy creatures, thus closely huddled together, I must leave to the reader's imagination--it was simply indescribable.
For a moment all hands of us on board the schooner were struck dumb and motionless with horror at this act of cowardice and wanton barbarity; then, with a yell of righteous fury our lads turned again to their guns, which thenceforward were loaded and fired independently, and as rapidly as possible. The slavers on their part were not behindhand in alacrity, and presently we received another broadside from the brig, closely followed by one from the brigantine, the guns being in both cases aimed as before, with similar murderous results, and with a repetition of those heart-rending shrieks of agony and despair.
"My God! I can't bear this!" I heard Smellie exclaim, as the dying shrieks of the negroes below again pealed out upon the startled air. "Mr Williams, take half a dozen men below and free those unhappy blacks. I don't know whether I am acting prudently or not, but I cannot leave them chained helplessly down there to be cut to pieces by the shot of those Spanish fiends. Let them come on deck and take their chance with us. Some of them at least may possibly effect their escape, either in the schooner's boats or by swimming to the shore."
Williams lost no time in setting about his perilous work of mercy; and a few minutes after his disappearance down the main hatchway the unhappy slaves began to make their appearance on deck, where they first stared in terrified wonder about them, and then crouched down helplessly on the deck wherever they might happen to find themselves.
In the meantime the cannonade was kept briskly up on both sides, and presently the Spaniards began to pepper us with musketry in addition. The bullets, fired at short range, flew thickly about us; and the casualties quickly increased, several of the unfortunate blacks falling victims to the first discharge. Seeing this, Smellie ordered the schooner's boats, three in number, to be lowered and the slaves passed into them. This was done, our lads leaving the guns for a few minutes for the purpose; but--will it be credited? The Spaniards no sooner became aware of our purpose than they directed their fire upon the boats and their hapless occupants; so that we were compelled to quickly drag the unhappy blacks back on board the schooner again, to save them from being ruthlessly slaughtered. The worst of it was, that though Williams had succeeded in freeing many of them from the heavy chains with which they were secured together in the schooner's hold, most of them still wore heavy fetters on their ankles. These we now proceeded to knock off as fast as we could, afterwards pitching the poor wretches overboard-- with scant ceremony, I fear--to take their chances of being able to reach the shore. And during all this the Spaniards never ceased firing upon us for an instant; so there we were in the midst of a perfect hailstorm of round-shot and bullets; the air about us thick and suffocating with the smoke from the guns, our only light the quick intermittent flashes of the cannon and musketry; the whole atmosphere vibrating with the roar and rattle of the fusillade, the shouts of the combatants, and the shrieks of the wounded and dying; struggling with the unhappy negroes who, driven almost frantic with the unwonted sights and sounds around them, seemed quite unable to comprehend our intentions, and resisted to the utmost our well-meant endeavours to pass them over the ship's side into the water.
In the midst of all this tumult and confusion we were suddenly confronted by an additional horror--Williams, badly wounded in the head by a splinter, staggering on deck, closely followed by his men, with the news that the schooner was rapidly sinking, and that it was impossible to free any more of the blacks.
I glanced down the hatchway. Merciful Heaven! shall I ever forget the sight which met my eyes in that brief glimpse! The intelligence was only too literally true. By the dim light of a horn lantern which Williams had suspended from the beams I could see the black water welling and bubbling rapidly up from the shot-holes below, and the wretched negroes, still chained below, surrounded by the mangled corpses of their companions and already immersed to their chins, with their heads thrown as far back as possible so as to keep their mouths and nostrils free until the last possible moment, their faces contorted and their eyes protruding from their sockets with mortal fear.
One of the unhappy creatures was a woman--a mother. Actuated by that loving and devoted instinct which constrains all animals to seek the safety of their helpless offspring before their own, she had raised her infant in her arms as high as possible above the surface of the bubbling water, and had fixed her dying gaze yearningly upon the little creature's face with an expression of despairing love which it was truly pitiful to see. I could not bear it. The mother was lost--chained as she was to the submerged deck, nothing could then save her--but the child might still be preserved. I sprang down the hatchway and, splashing through the rapidly-rising water, seized the child, and, as gently as possible, tried to disengage it from the mother's grasp. The woman turned her eyes upon me, looked steadfastly at me for a moment as though she would read my very soul, and then--possibly because she saw the flood of compassion which was welling up from my heart into my eyes--pressed her child's lips once rapidly and convulsively to her own already submerged mouth, loosed her grasp upon its body, and with a wild shriek of bitter anguish and despair threw herself backwards beneath the flood.
My heart was bursting with grief and indignation--grief for the miserable dying wretches around me, and indignation at our utter inability to prevent such wholesale human suffering. But there was no time to lose; the schooner was already settling down beneath our feet, and I saw that it would very soon be "Every man for himself and God for us all;" so I passed my charge on deck and quickly followed it myself.
I was just in time to see Smellie spinning the schooner's wheel hard over to port and lashing it there. Divining in an instant that he hoped by this manoeuvre to sheer the schooner alongside the brig, I seized the child I had brought up from below, dropped it into one of our own boats astern, and then stood by to make a spring for the brig with the rest of our party. Half a minute more and the sides of the two ships touched.
"Now, lads, follow me! Spring for your lives--the schooner is sinking!" I heard Smellie shout; and away we went--Armitage leading one party forward, and Smellie showing the way to the rest of them aft. And, even as we made our spring, the schooner heeled over and sank alongside.
We were met, as before, by so stubborn a resistance that I believe every one of us received some fresh hurt more or less serious before we actually reached the deck of the brig; but our lads were by this time fully aroused--neither boarding-nettings nor anything else could any longer restrain them; and in a few seconds, though more than one poor fellow fell back dead, we were in possession of the brig, the crew, in obedience to an order from their captain, suddenly flinging down their weapons and tumbling headlong into their boats, which for some reason--a reason we were soon to learn--they had lowered into the water.
To our surprise our antagonists, instead of taking refuge on board the brigantine, as we fully expected they would, took to their oars and pulled in frantic haste up the creek. In the dense darkness which now ensued consequent upon the cessation of firing it was impossible to send a shot after them with any chance of success; and so they were allowed to go free.
The hot pungent fumes which arose through the grating of the brig's main hatchway very convincingly testified to the presence of slaves on board that craft also; and, warned by his recent experience on board the schooner, Smellie resolved to warp the brig in alongside the bank and land the unfortunate creatures before resuming hostilities. A gang of men was accordingly sent forward to clear away the necessary warps and so on; and I was directed to go with a boat's crew into one of the cutters to run the ends of the warps on shore.
The boats, it will be remembered, had been passed astern of the schooner, and there they still remained uninjured, that craft having settled down in water so shallow that her deck was only submerged to a depth of about eighteen inches. In order to reach either of the boats, however, it was necessary to pass along the deck of the sunken craft; and I was just climbing down the brig's side to do so--the men having preceded me--when the bulwarks to which I was clinging suddenly burst outward, the brig's hull was rent open by a tremendous explosion, and, enveloped for an instant in a sheet of blinding flame, I felt myself whirled upwards and outwards for a considerable distance, to fall finally, stunned, scorched, and half-blinded, into the agitated waters of the creek. Moved more by instinct than anything else I at once struck out mechanically for the shore. It was at no great distance from me, and I had almost reached it when some object--probably a piece of falling wreckage from the dismembered brig--struck me a violent blow on the back of the head, and I knew no more.
CHAPTER NINE.
DOOMED TO THE TORTURE.
Consciousness at length began, slowly and with seeming reluctance, to return to me; and so exceedingly disagreeable was the process, that if I could have had my own way just then, I think I should have preferred to die. My first sensation was that of excessive stiffness in every part of my body, with distracting headache. Then, as my nerves more fully recovered their functions, ensued a burnin |
21060-8 | g fever which scorched my body and sent the blood rushing through my throbbing veins like a torrent of molten metal. And finally, as I made an unsuccessful effort to move, I became aware, first of all by sundry sharp smarting sensations, that I had been wounded in three or four places; and secondly, by a feeling of severe compression about the wrists and ankles, that I was bound--a prisoner!
With complete restoration to consciousness my sufferings rapidly grew more acute; and at length, with a groan of exquisite agony, I opened my eyes and looked about me.
"Where was I?"
Somewhere on shore, evidently.
Overhead was the deep brilliantly blue sky, with the sun, almost in the zenith, darting his burning beams directly down upon my uncovered head and my upturned face. Turning my head aside to escape the dazzling brightness which smote upon my aching eyeballs with a sensation of positive torture, I discovered that I was lying in about the centre of an extensive forest clearing of nearly circular shape and about five hundred yards in diameter, hemmed in on all sides by a dense growth of jungle and forest trees, and carpeted thickly with short verdant grass.
Near me lay the apparently inanimate body of poor Mr Smellie, bound hand and foot, like myself; and dotted about here and there on the grass, mostly in a sitting posture and also bound, were some fifteen or twenty negroes, who, from their wretched plight, I conjectured to be survivors from the sunken slave schooner. Turning my head in the opposite direction I discovered at a few yards distance a party of negroes, some fifty in number, much finer-looking and more athletic men than those in bonds round about me, who, from the weapons they bore, I at once concluded to be our captors. This surmise was soon afterwards proved to be correct; for, upon the completion of the meal which they were busily discussing when I first made them out, they approached us, and with sufficiently significant gestures gave us to understand that we must rise and march.
The captive blacks rose to their feet stolidly and without any apparent difficulty; but so far as I was concerned this was an impossibility, my feet as well as my hands being secured. One great hulking black fellow, noticing that neither Smellie nor I showed any signs of obedience, deliberately proceeded to prod us here and there with the point of his spear. Upon Smellie these delicate attentions produced no effect whatever, he evidently being either dead or insensible; but they aroused in me a very lively feeling of indignation, under the influence of which I launched such a vigorous kick at the unreasonable darky's shins as made him howl with pain and sent him hopping out of range in double- quick time--a proceeding which raised a hearty laugh at his expense among his companions. A moment later, however, he returned, his eyes sparkling with rage, and would have transfixed me with the light javelin he carried had not another of the party interfered. By the order of this last individual Smellie and I were presently raised from the ground, and each borne by two men, were carried off in the rear of the column of captive blacks, our captors taking up such positions along the line on either side as effectually precluded all possibility of escape.
Passing across the open space, we presently plunged into the jungle, traversing a bush-path just wide enough to allow of two men walking abreast. I had not much opportunity, however, for noting any of the incidents of our journey, for, owing to the clumsy way in which I was being carried, my wounds burst open afresh, and I soon fainted from loss of blood.
When next I recovered consciousness I found that we were afloat, no doubt on the river, though I had no means of ascertaining this for certain, as I was lying in the bottom of the canoe, and could see nothing but blue sky beyond either of the gunwales. Smellie was lying beside me, and, to my great joy, I found that he was not only alive but a great deal better than I could have thought possible after witnessing his former desperate condition. Of course we at once exchanged congratulations each at the other's escape; and then began to compare notes. My companion in misfortune had, it seemed, just started to go forward when the explosion occurred on board the brig; the shock had rendered him unconscious; and when he recovered he found himself on board the canoe with me beside him. Poor fellow! he was in a sad plight. He was severely wounded in no less than four different parts of his body; his face and hands were badly scorched; his clothing--about which he was always very particular--hung upon him in tatters; and lastly, he was greatly distressed in mind at the disastrous failure of the expedition, at the fearfully heavy casualties which we knew had befallen the attacking party, and at the extreme probability that those casualties had been very largely increased by the blowing up of the brig. I said what I could to comfort him, but, alas! that was not much; and it was a relief to us both to change the subject, even though we naturally turned at once to the discussion of our own problematical future.
The craft in which we found ourselves was a war-canoe, about sixty feet long and five feet beam, manned by about forty of our captors, who sat two abreast close to the gunwales, paddling vigorously; the negro prisoners, as well as ourselves, being stowed along the middle of the canoe, fore and aft. A fresh fair breeze was blowing, and full advantage was being taken of this circumstance, a huge mat sail being hoisted on the craft which must inevitably have capsized her had it happened to jibe. From the sharp rushing sound of the water along the sides and bottom of the canoe, and the swift strokes of the paddles, I judged that we must be travelling through the water at a rapid rate, a conjecture the truth of which was afterwards very disagreeably verified. We sped on thus until sunset, when the sail was suddenly lowered and with loud shouts, which were re-echoed from the shore, the canoe's course was altered, the craft grounding a few minutes afterwards on a beach where all hands of us landed.
Smellie and I were by this time quite able to walk, but before we could set foot to the ground a couple of stalwart blacks were told off to each of us, and we were carried along as before. On this occasion, however, our journey was but a short one, not more, perhaps, than five or six hundred yards altogether. Arrived, apparently, at our destination, we were set down, and immediately bound with _llianos_ or monkey-rope to the bole of a huge tree. Looking about us, we discovered that we were in a native village of considerable size, built in a semicircular shape, having in its centre a structure of considerable architectural pretensions in a barbaric sort of way, which structure we conjectured-- from the presence of a hideous idol in front of it--must be a sort of temple. Looking about us still further, we noticed that the remainder of the prisoners were being bound to trees like ourselves. There was a peculiarity about the disposition of the prisoners which I certainly did not like; there might be no motive for it, but it struck me that our being ranged in a semicircle in front of this idol had a rather sinister appearance.
Having secured the prisoners to their satisfaction, our captors left us; and we were speedily surrounded by a curious crowd consisting chiefly of women and children, who came and stared persistently with open-mouthed curiosity at the captives, and especially at Smellie and myself, greatly attracted by the apparently novel sight of our white skins. The old women were, for the most part, hideously ugly, wrinkled, and bent, their grizzled wool plastered with grease and dirt, and their bodies positively _encrusted_ with filth. The young women, on the other hand-- those, that is to say, whose ages seemed to range between thirteen and sixteen or seventeen--were by no means destitute of personal attractions, which--to do them justice--they exhibited with the most boundless liberality. They were all possessed of plump well-made figures; their limbs were, in many cases, very finely moulded; they had an upright graceful carriage; the expression of their features was amiable and gentle; and, notwithstanding their rather prominent lips, a few of them were actually pretty.
One of these damsels, a perfect little sable Hebe, seemed to be greatly attracted by us, walking round and round the tree to which we were secured--first at a respectful distance, and then nearer and nearer. Finally, after studying our countenances intently for nearly a minute, she boldly approached and laid her finger upon my cheek, apparently to ascertain whether or no it was genuine flesh and blood. Satisfied that it was so, she backed off to take another look at us, and I thought an expression of pity overspread her face. Finally she addressed us. We were, of course, quite unable to understand the words she uttered, but her actions, graceful as they were, were significant enough; she was evidently asking whether we were hungry or thirsty. To this inquiry Smellie nodded a prompt affirmative, which I backed up with the single word "_Rather_," uttered so expressively that I am certain she quite understood me. At all events, she tripped lightly away, returning in a few minutes with a small finely-woven basket containing about two quarts of fresh palm-juice, which she presented first to Smellie's lips, and then to mine. Need I say that, between us, we emptied it? Our hostess laughed gaily as she glanced at the empty basket, evidently pleased at the success of her attempt to converse with us; and then, with a reassuring word or two, she tripped away again. Only to return, however, about a quarter of an hour later, with the same basket, filled this time with a kind of porridge, which, though not particularly tasty, was acceptable enough after our long fast. This, our fair, or rather our _dark_ friend administered to us alternately by means of a flat wooden spatula. This feeding process had not passed, it need hardly be said, unobserved; and by the time that our meal was concluded quite a large audience of women had gathered round to witness the performance. The animated jabber and hearty ringing laughter of several of the younger women and the somewhat abashed yet pleased expression of our own particular friend seemed to indicate that _badinage_ was not altogether unknown, even in this obscure African village. But everything of that kind was brought abruptly to an end by a loud discordant blowing of horns and the hollow _tub, tub, tub_ of a number of rude drums; at which sounds the crowd around us broke up at once and retired, our little Hebe casting back at us more than one glance strongly indicative, as it seemed to me, of compassion.
A fire had been kindled in front of the idol, or _fetish_, during the feeding process above referred to, and now that the curious crowd of women and girls who then surrounded us had retired we were able to see a little more of what was going on. The horn-blowing and drum-beating emanated from a group of entirely naked savages who were marching in a kind of procession round the idol. This ceremony lasted about ten minutes, when another negro made his appearance upon the scene, emerging from the temple, if such it actually was, bearing in his hands a queer- looking construction, the nature of which I was at first unable to distinguish. After marching solemnly round the idol three times this individual seated himself tailor-fashion before it, laid the instrument on his knees, and began to hammer upon it with a couple of sticks; whereupon we became aware that he was playing upon a rude imitation of a child's harmonicon, the keys of which appeared to be constructed of hard wood, out of which he managed to beat a very fair specimen of barbaric music. This music seemed to be the overture to some impending entertainment; for upon the sound of the first notes the inhabitants began to pour out of their huts and to gather in a promiscuous crowd round the giant tree-stump upon which the hideous fetish was mounted. When the gathering was apparently complete the music ceased, the drumming and horn-blowing burst out afresh, and the crowd immediately divided into two sections, the smaller, and I presume the more select division squatting on the ground in a semicircle in front of the image, whilst the remainder of the inhabitants ranged themselves into two quadrants about thirty feet apart, one on each side and in front of their deity. Through this open space between the two quadrants it appeared probable that we should obtain a very good, if rather distant view of the ceremonies which were evidently about to take place.
The audience having arranged themselves in position, the horn-blowing ceased, and the musicians stepped inside the inner circle and seated themselves to the right and left of the fetish. A pause of perhaps a couple of minutes ensued, and then horns, drums, and harmonicon suddenly burst out with a loud confused fantasia, each man apparently doing his utmost to drown the noise of the others. Louder and louder blared the horns; the drummers pounded upon their long narrow drums until it seemed as though at every stroke the drum-heads must inevitably be beaten in; whilst the harmonicon-man hammered away at his instrument with a vigour and rapidity which must have been truly gratifying to his friends.
In the midst of this wild hullabaloo a blood-curdling yell rang out upon the still night air, and from the open door of the temple or fetish- house there bounded into the inner circle a most extraordinary figure, clad from head to heel in monkey skins, his head adorned with a coronet of beads and feathers, a bead necklace round his neck, a living snake encircling his waist as a girdle, and bearing in his hand a red and black wand about four feet long.
Upon the appearance of this individual the uproar suddenly ceased, then the _maestro_ who presided at the harmonicon struck up a low accompaniment, and the last comer burst into a subdued monotonous chant, pointing and gesticulating from time to time with his wand.
I watched the proceedings with a great deal of interest, and was beginning to wonder what would happen next, when Smellie turned to me and quietly asked:
"Mr Hawkesley, do you ever say your prayers?"
"Sir?" I ejaculated in unutterable surprise at so impertinent a question, as it seemed to me.
"I asked whether you ever said your prayers: I ought to have said, rather, do you ever pray? There is often a very great difference between the two acts," he returned quietly.
"Well--ah--yes--that is--certainly, sir, I do," stammered I.
"Then," said Smellie, "let me recommend you to pray _now_--to pray with all the earnestness and sincerity of which you are capable. Make your peace with God, if you have not already done so, whilst you have the opportunity, for, unless I am very greatly mistaken, _it is our doom to die to-night_."
I was so shocked, so completely knocked off my balance, by this unlooked-for communication, that, for the moment I lost all power of speech, my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, and I could only stare at my fellow-prisoner in horrified incredulity.
"My poor boy," he said compassionately, "I am afraid I have spoken to you too abruptly. I ought to have prepared you gradually for so momentous a piece of intelligence, to have _broken_ the news to you. But, there, what matters? You are a plucky lad, Hawkesley--your conduct last night abundantly proved that--and I am sure that, if the occasion should come, you will stand up and face death in the presence of these savages as an Englishman should; I am not afraid of that. But, my dear boy, are you prepared to die? Are you in a fit state to meet your God? You are very young, quite a lad in fact, and a _good_ lad too; you cannot yet have erred very grievously. Thoughtless, careless, indifferent you may have been, but your conscience can hardly charge you with any _very_ serious offence, I should think; and you may therefore well hope for pardon and mercy. Seek both at once, my dear boy."
"But--Mr Smellie--I--I don't understand; _you_ don't appear to be afraid or--or disturbed at--the near prospect of death."
"No," he replied, raising his eyes heavenward for a moment; "no, thank God, I am _not_ afraid. My mother--" his lips quivered, his voice faltered and almost broke for an instant, and by the red glare of the fire I saw the tears well up into his eyes as he spoke that revered name. But he steadied himself again directly, and went on--"my dear mother taught me to be ready for death at any moment; taught me so lovingly and so thoroughly that I can regard with perfect calmness to- night, as I have a score of times before, the approach of the Last Enemy. But let us not waste the precious moments in conversation. Time soon will be for us no more; and--ah! see, there comes the vile high- priest of a loathsome idolatry to claim his first victim. Should you by any chance escape the coming horrors of this night, Hawkesley, and live to reach England once more, seek out my mother--Austin will instruct you as to where she may be found--and tell her that her son died as she would wish him to die, a sincere Christian. I am to be the first victim it would appear. Farewell, my dear boy! God bless you, and grant us a happy meeting at His right hand on the last Great Day!"
I strove in vain to reply to his solemnly affectionate farewell. I wanted to let him know how inexpressibly precious to me were the few words of exhortation and encouragement he had spoken; to say were it only a single word to cheer his last moments with the assurance that he had not spoken in vain; but my emotion was too great. I felt that in the effort to speak I should inevitably burst into tears, and so, perhaps, unman him, and disgrace him and myself in the eyes of these inhuman savages. So, perforce, I held my peace, and watched with a wildly-beating heart to see how a brave man should die.
In the meantime the fetish-man had concluded his chant, and, in the midst of a breathless silence on the part of his audience, stood looking intently round the circle at the group of prisoners secured to the trees. He glanced keenly at each of us in turn, and at length pointed his wand straight at Smellie. It was this action which caused the second lieutenant to announce to me his belief that it was he who was to be the first victim of the impending sacrificial ceremony. Keeping his wand pointed directly at my companion, the uncouth figure slowly and with a quite undescribable undulatory dancing motion, advanced toward our tree, the crowd hastily making way for him, and four members of the inner circle rising to their feet and following him at a touch from his finger.
Overcoming by a strong effort the horrible fascination which this loathsome wretch exercised over me, I turned to look at my companion.
He seemed to be utterly unconscious of his surroundings. His eyes were raised to heaven, his lips moved from time to time, and it was manifest that he was holding the most solemn and momentous communion which it is possible for man to hold even with his Maker. Pale, haggard, and worn with mental and physical suffering, his crisp brown curly hair stiff and matted with blood, his face streaked with ensanguined stains, and his scorched clothing hanging about him in blood-stained rags, I nevertheless thought it would be difficult to picture a more perfect embodiment of a good, noble, and brave man.
Slowly and sinuously, like a serpent stealing upon his prey, the fetish- man or witch-doctor advanced until he stood within a yard of his intended victim, with the fatal wand still pointing straight at Smellie's breast. He stood thus for a full minute or more, seemingly striving to wring from the bound and helpless prisoner some sign of panic or at least of discomposure. In vain. His last most solemn act of duty done, Smellie at length turned his eyes upon those of his enemy, regarding him with a gaze so calmly steadfast, so palpably devoid of fear, that the savage, mortified at his utter failure, suddenly, with an exclamation unmistakably indicative of rage and chagrin, dropped the point of his wand, to raise it again instantly and direct it toward my breast.
But the cool intrepidity which I had just witnessed was contagious; in my sublime admiration of it my soul soared far above and beyond the reach of so debasing a feeling as fear, and in my turn I met the cruel sinister gaze of the crafty savage with one as calm as Smellie's own.
For perhaps a full minute--it may have been more, it may have been less; it is difficult to estimate the lapse of time under such trying circumstances--the fetish-man did his best to disconcert me; then, baffled once more, with a furious and threatening gesture he passed on to the next prisoner.
"We are reprieved for the time being," said Smellie, as the gesticulating witch-doctor and his myrmidons passed on, "but only to become the victims of a more refined and protracted torture at last. Having failed to exhibit any signs of fear in the first instance we are spared to witness the cumulative sufferings of those who are to precede us, in order that by the sight of their exquisite torments our courage may be quelled by the anticipation of our own. I imagine, from what I have read of the customs of this people, that we are about to witness and become participants in a ceremony undertaken to avert or remove some great calamity--a ceremony involving the sacrifice of many victims, each of whom is put to death with more refined barbarity than that dealt out to the victim preceding him. Ah! see there--a worthy victim has at last been found with which to begin the sacrifice."
I looked in the direction his eyes indicated, and, sure enough, the light but fatal stroke with the wand was just in the act of being struck upon the naked breast of one of the negro prisoners. As the blow fell a loud shriek of despair rang out from the lips of the wretched man; the fetish-man's four assistants sprang upon their prey, his bonds were cut, and in another moment he was dragged, struggling desperately and shrieking with mortal fear, into the inner circle and up to the broad tree-stump which supported the fetish or idol.
In the meantime the fire had been bountifully replenished with wood and now blazed up fiercely. By its ruddy light I saw the fetish-man retire to the interior of the temple or fetish-house, to appear immediately afterwards with a rude stone hammer in one hand and what looked like four or five large spike-nails in the other. He stood for a moment gloating over the agonised countenance of his victim, and then nodded his head. At the signal his four assistants seized their prisoner, and, despite his terrible struggles, rapidly placed him, head downwards, with his back against the tree-stump, and his limbs extended as far as they would go round it, when the fetish-man proceeded with cruel deliberation to secure him in position by _nailing him there_, the spikes taken from the fetish-house being used for the purpose.
The horns, drums, and harmonicon now broke forth afresh into a hideous clamour, which, however, was powerless to drown the dismal shrieks of the victim; and the fetish-man, arming himself with a large broad-bladed and most murderous-looking knife, began to dance slowly, with most extraordinary contortions of visage and body, round the idol. Gradually his gyrations grew more rapid, his gestures more extravagant; the knife was flourished in the air in an increasingly threatening manner, and at length, as the weird dancer whirled rapidly round the tree-stump, the weapon was at each revolution plunged ruthlessly into the writhing body of the hapless victim, the utmost care being taken, I noticed, to avoid any vital part. Finally, when the dancer had apparently danced himself into a frenzy--when his gyrations had become so rapid that it almost made me giddy to look at him, and when his contortions of body grew so extravagant that it was difficult to say whether he was dancing on his head or on his heels--there flashed a sudden lightning-like gleam of the knife, and the head of the miserable victim fell to the ground, to be snatched up instantly and, with still twitching features, nailed between the feet of the body.
A loud murmur of applause from the spectators greeted this effort of the fetish-man, in the midst of which he retired for a few minutes to the interior of the fetish-house, probably to recruit his somewhat exhausted energies.
CHAPTER TEN.
A FIENDISH CEREMONIAL.
"Now," said Smellie as he turned once more to me, "we shall probably be again threatened on the reappearance of that bloodthirsty villain. But whatever you do, Hawkesley, maintain a bold front; let him see no sign or trace whatever of weakness or discomposure in you. The fellow's thirst for blood is by this time fully aroused, and every succeeding victim will be subjected to greater refinements of torture; all that diabolical scoundrel's fiendish ingenuity will now be exercised to devise for his victims increasingly atrocious and protracted agonies. There is one, and only one hope for us, which is that by a persistent refusal to be terrorised by him, and a judiciously scornful demeanour, we may at last exasperate him out of his self-control, and thus provoke him into inflicting upon us the _coup-de-grace_ at once and without any of the preliminary torments. Here he comes again. Now, for your own sake, dear lad, remember and act upon my advice."
The first act of the wretch was to despatch his four assistants into the forest, whence they returned in a short time with three long slender poles and a considerable quantity of creeper or monkey-rope. With these, under the fetish-man's superintendence, a very tolerable set of light shears was speedily constructed, which, when finished, was erected immediately over the fire--now an immense mass of glowing smokeless cinders--in front of the idol. The entire arrangement was so unmistakably suggestive that I could not restrain a violent shudder as it occurred to me that it might possibly be my fate to be subjected to the fiery torment.
All being ready, a dead silence once more fell upon the assembly, and the chief actor in the inhuman ceremonial once more looked keenly around him for a victim.
As in the first instance, so now again was the wand pointed at Smellie's breast, and once more the cruel crafty bearer of it advanced on tip-toe with a stealthy cat-like tread toward us. He approached thus until he had reached to within about ten feet of the tree, when he once more paused in front of us, gesticulating with the wand and making as though about to strike with it the light blow which seemed to be the stroke of doom, keenly watching all the while for some sign of trepidation on the part of his victim. Then, whilst the wretch was in the very midst of his fantastic genuflexions before us, Smellie turned to me with a smile and observed:
"Just picture to yourself, Hawkesley, the way in which that fellow would be made to jump if Tom Collins, the boatswain's mate, could only approach him from behind now, and freshen his way with just one touch of his `cat.'"
There was perhaps not much in it; but the picture thus suggested to my abnormally excited imagination seemed so supremely ridiculous that I incontinently burst into a violent and uncontrollable fit of hysterical laughter (the precise effect which I afterwards ascertained Smellie was anxious to produce); so highly exasperating the fetish-man that, with eyes fairly sparkling with rage, he advanced and struck me a violent blow on the mouth with his filthy hand, passing on immediately afterwards to seek elsewhere for a victim.
He had not far to seek; the miserable wretch next me on my left was so paralysed with fear that he was deemed a fit and proper person to become the next sacrifice, and almost unresistingly--until resistance was all too late--he was dragged forward into the inner circle, thrown flat upon his stomach, and his hands and feet bound securely together behind him. Then, indeed, he seemed suddenly to awake to a sense of his horrid fate; and his superhuman struggles for freedom and his ear-splitting yells were simply dreadful beyond all description to see and hear. The fetish-man and his assistants, confident of the reliable character of their work, stood back and looked on quietly at the miserable wretch's unavailing struggles; they seemed to be regarded as quite a part of the entertainment, and the unhappy creature was allowed to continue them unmolested until they ceased from exhaustion. Then, when he lay quite still, panting and breathless, with his eyes starting from their sockets and the perspiration streaming from every pore, the fetish-man approached him and deftly bending on to his fettered limbs an end of stout monkey-rope, he was dragged along the ground into the fire, and thence triced in an instant up to the shears, whence he hung suspended at the height of about a foot immediately over the glowing embers.
The miserable sufferer bore the torment as long as he could, and I shall never forget the awful sight his distorted features presented as, drawing back his head as far as he could from the fierce heat, he glared round the circle seeking perchance for a hand merciful enough to put him out of his misery--but after the first minute of suffering his stoicism abandoned him, and he writhed so violently that the fetish-man and his assistants had to steady the shears in order to prevent them from capsizing altogether. And with every writhe of the victim the slender poles bent and gave, letting the miserable sufferer sink down some three or four inches nearer the fire. The superhuman struggles, the frightful contortions and writhings of the man, his ear-splitting yells, the horrible smell of roasting flesh--oh, God! it was awful beyond all attempt at description. I pray that I may never look upon such a ghastly sight again.
The fiendish exhibition had probably reached its most appalling phase, and I was wondering, shudderingly, what form of torture could possibly exceed it in cruelty, when there was a sudden slight movement of my bonds; they slackened and fell away from the tree-trunk against which I leaned, and _I was free_. Not a moment was allowed me in which to get over the first shock of my bewilderment; a soft plump hand grasped mine and gently drew me round behind the tree, so rapidly that I had only time to note the fact that apparently every eye in the assembly was fixed upon the writhing figure suspended over the fire--and before I had fairly realised what was happening I found myself a dozen yards away from my starting-point, gliding rapidly and noiselessly through the deep shadows cast by the tree-trunks, towards the outer darkness which prevailed beyond the range of the fire-light; with our little black Hebe friend of a few hours before dragging me along on one side of her and Smellie on the other.
Five minutes later we had left the village so far behind us that the barbarous sounds of horn and drum, mingled with the yells of anguish from the tortured victim, momentarily becoming more and more softened by our increasing distance, were the sole evidences that remained to us of its existence, and we found ourselves hurrying along through the rank grass, threading the mazes of the park-like clumps of lofty timber, and forcing a passage through the thickly clustering festoons of parasitic orchids, under the subdued light of the mellow stars alone.
With almost breathless rapidity our tender-hearted little deliverer hurried us forward, frequently exclaiming in low urgent accents, "Zola- ku! zola-ku," so expressively uttered that we had no difficulty in interpreting the words to mean that there was the most extreme necessity for rapid movement on our part. We accordingly hastened our steps to the utmost limit of our capacity, and in about ten minutes from the moment of our liberation emerged upon a long narrow strip of sandy beach, with the noble river sweeping grandly to seaward before us. Here our guide paused for a moment, apparently pondering as to what it would next be best to do. Glancing down the river I saw indistinctly, at about two hundred yards distance, some shapeless objects which I took to be canoes drawn up on the beach, and pointing to them I exclaimed to Smellie:
"Are not those canoes? If they are, what is to prevent our seizing one and making our way down the river without further ado?"
Our little Hebe glanced in the direction I had indicated, and seemed quite to understand the nature of my suggestion, for she shook her head violently and exclaimed rapidly in accents of very decided dissent, "Ve! _Ve_!! Ve!!!" pointing at the same time to Smellie's and my own untended wounds.
At that moment a loud confused shouting arose in the distant village, strongly suggestive of the discovery of our flight. The sounds apparently helped our guide to a decision as to her next step, for, seizing our hands afresh, she led us straight into the river until the water was up to our knees, and then turned sharply to the right or up stream. Pressing forward rapidly, our way freshened very decidedly by unmistakable shouts of pursuit emanating from the neighbourhood of the village, we reached, after about a quarter of an hour of arduous toil, a small creek some forty yards wide. Pausing here for a moment, our guide made with her hands and arms the motion of swimming, pointed across the creek, touched Smellie on the breast with the query "Yenu?" and then rapidly repeated the same process with me. We took this to mean an inquiry as to our ability to swim the creek, and both replied "Yes" with affirmative nods. Whereupon our guide, raising her finger to express the necessity for extreme caution, and uttering a warning "Ngandu" as she next pointed to the waters of the creek, waded gently and without raising a ripple into the deep water, Smellie and I following, and with a few quiet strokes we happily reached the other side in safety, to plunge forthwith into the friendly shadows of the forest. Had we known then--what we learned afterwards--that the word "Ngandu" is Congoese for "crocodile," and that it was uttered as an intimation to us that the river and its creeks literally swarm with these reptiles, it is possible that our swim, short though it was, would not have been undertaken with quite so much composure.
Once fairly in the forest, it became so dark that it was quite impossible for us to see whither we were going, but our guide seemed to be well acquainted with the route, which, from the comparatively few obstacles met with, seemed to be a tolerably well-beaten path, so we crowded sail and pressed along with tolerable rapidity behind the slender black and almost indistinguishable figure of our leader. The pursuit, too, was hotly maintained, as we could tell by the occasional shouts and the sudden _swishings_ of branches at no great distance from us in the bush; but at length, after a most wearisome and painful tramp of fully nine miles, we got fairly out of reach of all these sounds, and finally, at a sign from our deliverer, flung ourselves down in the midst of a thick growth of ferns at the foot of a giant tree, and, despite the increasing anguish of our wounds, soon went to sleep.
We awoke at daybreak, to find ourselves alone: our guide of the previous night had vanished. We were greatly disconcerted at this, for we felt that we should like to have done something--though we scarcely knew what--to mark our appreciation of her extremely important services of the preceding night. Besides, somehow, we had both taken the notion into our heads that in liberating us, she had committed an unpardonable sin against her former friends, and that when she crossed the creek and plunged into the forest with us she was virtually cutting herself adrift from her own people and casting in her lot with us. In which case, if we should succeed in making good our escape and finding our way back to the ship, we had little doubt about our ability to make such arrangements on her behalf as should cause her to rejoice for the remainder of her life at having befriended us. However, it seemed as though, having conducted us to a place of temporary safety, she had returned to the village, doubtless hoping to escape all suspicion of having had a hand in our liberation.
It was a glorious morning. The sun was darting his early beams through the richly variegated foliage, and touching here and there with gold the giant trunks and limbs of the forest trees. The earth around us was thickly carpeted with long grass interspersed with dense fern-brakes, and here and there a magnificent clump of aloes, their long waxy leaves and delicate white blossoms standing out in strong relief against the blaze of intense scarlet or the rich vivid green of a neighbouring bush. The early morning air was cool, pure, and refreshing as it gently fanned our fevered temples and wafted to us a thousand delicate perfumes. The birds, glancing like living gems between the clumps of foliage, were saluting each other blithely as they set out upon their diurnal quest for food. The bees were already busy among the gorgeous flowers; butterflies--more lovely even than the delicate blossoms above which they poised themselves--flitted merrily about from bough to bough; all nature, in fact, was rejoicing at the advent of a new day. And ill, suffering though we were, we could not but in some measure take part in the general joy, as with hearts overflowing with gratitude we remembered that we had escaped the horrors of the previous night.
A glance or two about us and we scrambled to our feet, intent, in the first instance, upon an immediate search for water. We had just settled the question as to which direction seemed most promising for the commencement of our quest when a clear musical call floated toward us, and looking in the direction from whence it came, we beheld our black Hebe approaching us, dragging a small dead antelope by the heels after her. So she had not abandoned us after all; on the contrary, she had probably spent a good part of the night arranging for the capture of the creature which was to furnish us with a breakfast.
On joining us she held up her prize for our inspection, and then, with a joyous laugh at our approving remarks--at the meaning of which she could, of course, only make the roughest of guesses--she set to work deftly to clear away and lay bare a space upon which to start a fire, in which task, as soon as we saw what she wanted, we assisted her to the best of our poor ability. This done, she went groping about beneath the trees apparently in search of something; soon returning with two pieces of dry stick, one of which, I noticed, had a hole in it. A quantity of dry leaves and sticks was next collected, having arranged which to her satisfaction, she knelt down, and inserting the pointed end of one stick in the hole of the other, twirled it rapidly between the palms of her hands, producing by the friction thus set up, first a slight wreath of smoke, and ultimately a tiny flame, which was carefully communicated to the dry leaves, and then gently fanned by her breath into a blaze. And in this way a capital fire for cooking purposes was speedily obtained.
In the meantime Smellie and I had produced our knives and had undertaken to skin and cut up the animal, some juicy steaks from which were soon spluttering on pointed sticks before the fire. The cooking operations being thus put in satisfactory progress, our little black friend borrowed my knife and plunged once more into the forest depths, to return again shortly afterwards with a huge gourd full of deliciously clear cool water.
The antelope steaks were by this time ready, and we all sat down to breakfast together. For my own part, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the meal; but I was sorry to observe that Smellie ate with but little appetite, drinking large quantities of water, however. The poor fellow made no complaint, but I could tell by his haggard look, his flushed cheeks, and his glittering eyes that it was quite time his wounds were attended to, or we should be having him down with fever in the bush, and then Heaven alone could tell when we should--if ever--be able to rejoin the _Daphne_.
But we were not to be allowed to sink tamely into a state of despondency or apprehension; our sable lady friend proved to be, like the rest of her sex, a great talker, and she seized the opportunity afforded by the discussion of breakfast to plunge into an animated conversation. She began by introducing herself, which she managed in quite an original fashion. Pausing for a moment, with a piece of steak poised daintily on a large thorn, she pointed to herself and remarked "Mono;" then touched Smellie and me lightly on the breast and added "Ingeya;" "Ingeya." We nodded gravely to signify that we understood, or thought we did; upon which she pointed to herself once more and observed, "Mono Lubembabemba."
"Which, being interpreted, means, as I take it, that her ladyship's name is Lubem by--something. Your most obedient servant, Miss Lubin by--"
She laughed a very pretty musical little laugh at Smellie's elaborate assumption of mock gallantry and his bungling efforts to pronounce the name.
"Lubem-ba-bemba," she corrected him; and this time the gallant second lieutenant managed to stumble through it correctly, at which there was more laughter and rejoicing on the lady's part. Then I was called upon to repeat the name, which, having paid the most praiseworthy attention whilst Smellie was receiving his lesson, I managed to do very fairly.
Then, flushed with her success, Miss Lubembabemba made a further attempt at conversation. Pointing to herself and repeating her name, she next pointed to Smellie and asked:
"Ingeya?"
Her meaning was so evident that Smellie answered at once, with another elaborate bow:
"Harold Smellie; at your service."
"Halold-smellie-at-o-serveece!" she repeated with wide-opened eyes of wonder at what she doubtless thought a very extraordinary name.
We both burst involuntarily into a laugh at this really clever first attempt to reproduce the second lieutenant's polite speech; at which she first looked decidedly disconcerted, but immediately afterwards joined heartily in the laugh against herself.
"No, no, no," said Smellie, "that won't do; you haven't got it quite right _Harold_; Harold."
"Halold?" she repeated. And after two or three attempts to put her right--attempts which failed from her evident inability to pronounce the "r"--Smellie was obliged to rest content with being henceforward called "Halold."
Then, of course, she turned to me with the same inquiry:
"Ingeya!"
"Dick," said I.
This time she caught the name accurately, and then, to show that she clearly understood the whole proceeding, pointed to Smellie, to me, and to herself in rotation, pronouncing our respective names.
"Yes," commented Smellie approvingly, "you have learned your lesson very well indeed, my dear; but we shall never be able to remember that extraordinary name of yours--Lubemba--what is it--you know; besides, it will take us a dog-watch to pronounce it in full; so I propose that we change it and re-christen you after the ship, eh? Call you `Daphne,' you know. How would you like that? You--Daphne; I--Halold, since you _will_ have it so; and this strapping young gentleman, Dick. Would that suit you? Daphne--Halold--Dick;" pointing to each of us in turn.
Her ladyship seemed to take the proposal as a tremendous compliment, for her face lighted up with pleasure, and she kept on pointing round the circle and repeating "Halold--Dick--Daphne" until breakfast was concluded. And thenceforward she refused to answer to any other name than Daphne, assuming an air of the most complete unconsciousness when either of us presumed to address her as "Lubembabemba" (the butterfly).
Breakfast over, I thought it was high time to attend to our wounds. The first requirement was water--plenty of it, and this want I managed with some little difficulty to explain to Miss Daphne. Comprehending my meaning at last she intimated that a stream was to be found at no great distance; and we at once set off in search of it, our little black friend carrying along with her a live ember from the fire, which, by waving it occasionally in the air, she managed to keep glowing.
We had not very far to go--most fortunately, for I saw that Smellie's wounds were momentarily giving him increased uneasiness and pain. A walk of about a quarter of an hour took us to a sequestered and most delightful spot, where we were not only perfectly concealed from chance wanderers, but where we also found a small rocky basin full of deliciously cool and pure water, which flowed into it from a tiny stream meandering down the steep hill-side. In this basin we laved our hurts until they were thoroughly cleansed from the dry hard coagulated blood, and then we set about the task of bandaging them up. Daphne, who, by the way, seemed to have little or no idea of surgery, made herself of great use to us in the bathing process, when once she understood what was required; but when it came to bandaging she found herself unable to help us further, and sorrowfully confessed herself beaten. We were compelled to convert our shirts, the only linen in our possession, into bandages; and poor Daphne, to her evident extreme sorrow, had no linen to sacrifice to our necessities, or indeed any clothing at all to speak of. The costume of a Congoese belle, according to her rendering of it, was a petticoat of parti-coloured bead fringe about twelve inches deep, depending loosely from the hips; the rest of her clothing consisting entirely--as Mike Flanaghan would have said--of jewellery, of which she wore a considerable quantity. I may as well here enumerate her ornaments, for the information and benefit of those who have never enjoyed the acquaintance of an African beauty. In the first place she wore a circular band of metal, about two inches wide, round her head and across her forehead. This band, or coronet, had a plain border of about half an inch wide, and inside this border, for about an inch in width throughout its length, the metal was cut away in very fine lines, forming an intricate and really elegant lace-like pattern. Then she wore also a very large pair of circular ear-rings, similarly ornamented, these ornaments being so large and heavy that they had actually stretched the lobes, and so spoiled the shape of what would otherwise have been a very pretty pair of ears. Upon each of her plump, finely- shaped arms, between the shoulder and the elbow, she wore four or five massive armlets of peculiar but by no means unskilled workmanship; and lastly, round each ankle she wore a single anklet of similar workmanship. On the previous night, when this rather lavish display of jewellery had first attracted my casual notice, I had imagined it to be brass; but now, seeing it again in the full light of day, I discovered it to be _gold_, almost or quite pure, as I judged from its softness.
To return to our subject Daphne's first task on our arrival at the pool had been to kindle another fire; and, after helping us as far as she could to doctor our wounds, she next undertook an exploration of the forest in our immediate neighbourhood, returning in about an hour's time with three long, thin, straight shafts of a kind of bamboo, and three small uprooted saplings. These articles she forthwith plunged into the fire, and after an hour's diligent work manipulated the bamboos into three very effective lances or javelins, and the saplings into three truly formidable clubs, the knotted roots being charred and trimmed until they formed rounded heads as large as one's two fists put together. One of each of these weapons she presented both to Smellie and to me, retaining one of each for herself; and thus armed, we were ready to set out once more upon our travels. But it was high time that our wanderings should be conducted with something like method. Our object was, of course, to rejoin the ship with the least possible delay; and before making a fresh start Smellie thought it would be just as well to acquaint our companion with this our desire. He accordingly undertook to do so, and a very amusing scene resulted; but he succeeded at last in making his wish clearly understood, and this achieved we once more resumed our march.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.
By the time that we were finally ready to start it was about noon, and the heat had become intensely oppressive. The refreshing zephyrs of the morning had died completely away, and the motionless atmosphere, rarefied by the burning rays of the sun, was all a-quiver. Not a beast, bird, or insect was stirring throughout the whole length and breadth of the far-stretching forest aisles. The grass, the flowers, the leaves of the trees, the graceful festoons of parasitic creepers, were all as still as though cut out of iron. The stagnant air was saturated to oppressiveness with a thousand mingled perfumes; and not a sound of any kind broke in upon the death-like stillness of the scene. It was Nature's silent hour, the hour of intensest heat; that short interval about noon when all living things appear to retire into the most sheltered nooks--the darkest, coolest shadows; the one hour out of the twenty-four when absolute, unbroken silence reigns throughout the African forest.
Under Daphne's leadership we struck off on a westerly course through the green shadows of the forest, and toiled laboriously forward until the dusky twilight warned us of the necessity for seeking a resting-place wherein to pass the coming night. This was found at length in the centre of a wide clearing or break in the forest; and Smellie and I, at Daphne's expressively--conveyed pantomimic suggestion, forthwith set about gathering the wherewithal to build a fire, whilst the damsel herself undertook the task of providing a supper for the party. Our task was barely completed when her dusky ladyship returned with three grey parrots and a pair of green pigeons, as well as a large gourd of water, from which we eventually managed to make a very satisfying supper. A circle of fires was then built about our camping-place, and we flung ourselves down in the long grass to sleep, two at least of the party being, as I can vouch, thoroughly done up.
We managed to get perhaps a couple of hours of sleep, and then our rest was completely destroyed for the remainder of the night by a well- sustained attack on the part of countless ticks, ants, and other inquisitive insects, which persisted in perambulating our bodies and busily taking sample bites out of our skins in an evident effort to ascertain the locality of the tenderest portions of our anatomy.
Next morning I discovered with the greatest concern that Smellie was downright ill, so much so that it soon became evident it would be quite impossible for us to prosecute our journey, for that day at least. Daphne's distress at this unfortunate state of affairs was very keen, but she was a pre-eminently sensible little body, seeing almost at a glance what was wanted; and promptly diverting her sympathies into a practical channel, she at once set off in search of a more suitable abiding place than the one we had occupied through the night. This she at length found in an open glade at no great distance; and thither we promptly removed our patient, the rapidly-increasing seriousness of his symptoms admonishing us that there was little room for delay.
Our new camping-place was a lovely spot, being an open amphitheatre of about ten acres in extent surrounded on all sides by the forest, and having a tiny rivulet of pure sparkling fresh water flowing through it. Daphne of course at once took the lead in the arrangements necessary for what threatened to be a somewhat protracted sojourn; and by her directions (it was singular how rapidly we were learning to make ourselves mutually understood) I proceeded in the first instance to clear away the grass, as far as possible, from a circular space some fifteen feet in diameter, within a few yards of the bank of the stream. Daphne, meanwhile, having borrowed Smellie's knife, went off into the forest, from which she soon afterwards returned with a heavy load of long tough pliant wands. Flinging these upon the ground, she next busied herself in lighting a fire on the partially cleared space, employing me to procure for her the necessary materials; and when a large enough bonfire had been constructed, and the embers were all red- hot, she spread them carefully over the whole of the space upon which I had been working, and thus effectually destroyed what grass I had been unable to remove. This done our next task was to cut all the wands or wattles to a uniform length of about twenty-seven feet and point them at both ends; after which, by driving the ends into the soil on opposite sides of our cleared circle of ground, we soon had complete the framework of a hemi-spherical bee-hive-like structure. A second load of wattles was, however, necessary to strengthen this framework to Daphne's liking, and leaving poor Smellie for the nonce to take care of himself, the pair of us set out to procure them. Daphne led me to a dense brake wherein immense numbers of these wattles were to be found, and leaving me to cut as many as I could carry, proceeded further afield in quest of building material of another sort I had completed my task and was back in camp preparing my load for use when Daphne returned; and this time she came staggering in under a tremendous load of palm-leaves, which I rightly guessed were to be used for thatch. So we toiled on during the whole of that day, which, like the preceding, was intensely hot, and by dusk our hut was so far complete as to be capable of affording us a shelter during the succeeding night. By mid-day of the following day it was quite finished; and an efficient shelter having thus been provided for Smellie from the scorching rays of the sun, we were then in a position to give him our undivided attention, of which he by that time stood in most urgent need.
The ensuing fortnight was one of ceaseless anxiety to Daphne and myself, poor Smellie being prostrate with raging fever and utterly helpless during the whole of that time. Fugitives as we were, and in a savage country, it was quite out of our power to procure assistance, medical or otherwise. We were thrown completely upon our own resources, and we had nothing whatever to guide us in our inexperience. Daphne, to my surprise, appeared to possess no knowledge whatever of the healing art; and thus the treatment of our patient devolved solely upon me. And what could I do?
I had no drugs; and had I had access to the best appointed apothecary's shop I should still have lacked the knowledge requisite for a right use of its contents. So we were obliged, no doubt fortunately for the patient, to allow Nature to take her course, merely adopting such simple precautionary measures as would suggest themselves to anyone possessed of average common sense. We provided for our patient a comfortable, fragrant, springy bed of a species of heather; cleansed and dressed his wounds as often as seemed necessary; kept him as cool as possible, and fed him entirely upon fruits of a mild and agreeable acid flavour. During that fortnight Smellie was undoubtedly hovering on the borderland between life and death, and but for the tireless and tender solicitude of Daphne I am convinced he would have passed across the dividing line and entered the land of shadows. I soon saw that this poor ignorant black girl, this unsophisticated savage, had, all unknowingly to Smellie, yielded up her simple untutored heart a willing captive to the charm of his genial manner and gallant bearing; and as the crisis approached which was to decide the question of life or death with him, the unhappy girl established herself beside him and seemed to enter upon a blind, dogged, obstinate struggle with the Grim Destroyer, with the life of the unconscious patient as the stake.
As for me, I was wretched, miserable beyond all power of description. Knowing but little of Smellie, save as my superior officer, until the terrible night when we found ourselves fellow-captives doomed to a cruel death together, I had since then seen so much that was noble and good in him that I had speedily learned to _love_ him with all my heart, ay, with the same love which David bore to Jonathan. And there he lay, sick unto death, and I was powerless to help him.
At length, leaving him one day under Daphne's care, I sallied forth to seek a fresh supply of fruit for him, and, wandering farther than usual afield in my misery and abstraction, I discovered a fruit-bearing tree quite new to me. The fruit--a kind of nut somewhat similar to a walnut--had a very strong, but by no means unpleasant, bitter taste, and it suddenly occurred to me that possibly this fruit might prove to be a not altogether ineffective substitute for quinine. At all events, I was resolved to try it, on myself first, if necessary, and I gathered as many of the nuts as I could conveniently carry.
On my arrival at the hut I showed them to Daphne, and tried to find out whether she knew anything about them; but for once we failed to comprehend each other, and I was obliged to carry out my original intention of experimenting upon myself. With this object I opened the nuts and set the kernels to steep in water in a gourd basin (upon setting up housekeeping we soon accumulated quite a number of gourd utensils). I observed with satisfaction that the water soon began to acquire a brown colour; and after my decoction had stood for about three hours I found that its flavour had become quite as strong as was desirable. Fearing to take much at the outset, lest I should unwittingly be swallowing poison, I drank about a quarter of a pint, and then, with some anxiety, awaited the result. It was about noon when I swallowed the potion, and two hours afterwards I was more hungry than I remembered to have ever been before. So far, good; I determined to wait until night, and then, if no worse result than hunger revealed itself, try the effect of my new medicine upon Smellie. By sunset I had come to the conclusion, that whatever else my decoction might be, it was not a poison, and with, I must confess, a certain amount of fear and trepidation, I at last prevailed upon myself to administer the draught, sitting down forthwith to watch and await the result. By midnight the most that could be said of our patient was that he was no worse; and, encouraged on the whole by this negative result, I then administered a second and larger dose. Next morning I thought I detected signs of improvement, and by sundown the improvement was no longer doubtful; the dry, scorching feeling of the skin had given place to a cool healthy moisture; the pulse was slower; the fevered and excited brain at length found rest, and the patient at last even pleaded guilty to a feeling of hunger.
Jubilation now reigned supreme in our palm-leaf hut; the fatted calf (in the shape of a parrot of gorgeous plumage) was killed--and devoured by the patient with something approaching to relish--and my reputation as a great medicine-man was thenceforth fully established.
From this time Smellie began to slowly mend, thanks as much, probably, to Daphne's tireless nursing and assiduous care as to the relentless perseverance with which I administered my new medicine; and in little more than a week he was able, with assistance, to totter into the open air and sit for half an hour or so under the shadow of a rough awning of thatch which Daphne and I had with some difficulty contrived to rig up for him.
Our little black friend still continued to devote herself wholly to Smellie, waiting upon him hand and foot, watching beside him night and day, fanning him with a palm-leaf, or feeding him on delicious fruit whilst he lay awake under his rude shelter drawing in fresh life and renewed health at every inspiration of the delicious, perfume-laden air, and snatching brief intervals of rest only whilst he slept. In consequence of this arrangement the furnishing of the larder devolved wholly upon me, and I soon acquired a considerable amount of skill in bringing down my game, principally birds, either by a dexterous cast of my club, or by means of a long reed tube, like an exaggerated pea- shooter, from which I puffed little reed darts to a great distance with considerable force.
About a fortnight after Smellie had exhibited the first symptoms of improvement I went out foraging as usual, and, having secured the necessary supplies, was within a quarter of a mile of our hut, on my return journey, when I suddenly discovered a negro stealing cautiously along from tree to tree before me. His actions were so |
21060-8 | suspicious that my curiosity was aroused, and, placing myself in ambush behind the nearest tree, I resolved to watch him. He was making straight for our hut, dodging from tree to tree, and lurking behind each until he had apparently satisfied himself that the coast ahead was perfectly clear. Such excessive caution on the stranger's part, coupled with the fact that he carried four broad-pointed spears, seemed to me to indicate a purpose the direct reverse of friendly, and I came to the conclusion that it would be well to shorten the distance between him and myself a trifle, if possible. This, however, was not by any means easy to do until the skulking savage had arrived within sight of the hut, when he paused long enough to allow of my creeping up to within a dozen yards of him, when the reason for his hesitation became apparent. Smellie and Daphne were under the awning outside the hut, and my mysterious friend could advance no further without passing into the open clearing, and so revealing himself.
We remained thus for fully half an hour, the savage so intently watching the couple under the awning that he had not the remotest suspicion of being himself watched. At the end of that time, the sun having set meanwhile, Smellie staggered to his feet, and, leaning on Daphne's shoulder, passed into the hut.
My mysterious neighbour maintained his position for some five minutes longer, and then, springing from his hiding-place, made a dash for the hut at full speed, I following. When I emerged from the forest into the open amphitheatre in the centre of which stood our hut, the savage was some fifty yards ahead of me, running like a hunted deer. I began to fear that he was bent on mischief of some kind, and--now that it was too late--keenly regretted the indecision which had allowed him to remain so long unchallenged. In my anxiety to check his speed I raised a shout. At the sound he glanced over his shoulder, saw me in hot pursuit, and paused for an instant, dashing forward the next moment, however, more rapidly than ever.
My shout was evidently heard by the occupants of the hut, for Daphne immediately afterwards appeared at the entrance. At the sight of the figure bounding toward her she uttered a little cry and put out her hands protestingly, calling out to him at the same time. I could not catch the words she uttered, and if I could have done so it is very improbable that I should have understood them, but it struck me that they conveyed either a warning or an appeal. Whatever they were, he paid no attention to them, but still rushed forward, brandishing a spear threateningly. In another second or two he reached the hut and endeavoured to force an entrance. To this, however, Daphne offered the most energetic opposition, obstinately maintaining her position in the doorway. The savage then strove to _force_ his way in, but Daphne still persisting in her opposition he drew back a pace, and, raising his arm with a savage cry, drove the broad-bladed javelin with all his brutal strength down into her bare bosom. The poor girl staggered under the force of the blow, and with a stifled shriek and an appealing cry to "Halold," reeled backward, and fell to the ground inside the hut. Meanwhile, the savage, leaving the javelin quivering in the body of his victim, turned to meet me, snatching another javelin with his right hand from his left at the same instant; and as he did so I recognised our former enemy, the fetish-man or witch-doctor of Daphne's village. I was by this time within arm's-length of him, and, quick as light, he made a lunge at me. By a happy chance I succeeded in parrying the stroke with the blow-pipe which I held in my left hand, and then, springing in upon him, I dealt him so tremendous a blow with my heavy, knotted, hard-wood club that his skull crashed under it like an egg-shell, and he fell a brainless corpse at my feet.
Entering the hut I found Smellie on his knees beside the lifeless body of Daphne.
"Too late, Hawkesley! you were just too late to save this poor devoted girl," he murmured. "Only a few seconds earlier, and you would have been in time to arrest the murderous blow. She is quite dead; indeed her death must have been instantaneous. See, the blade of the javelin is quite a foot long, and it was completely buried in her body; it must have passed clean through her heart. Poor girl! she was indeed faithful unto death, for it was my life that yonder murderous wretch thirsted for. You doubtless recognised him--the fetish-man who strove so hard to terrify us on the night of the sacrifice in the village! I am convinced that, in his anger and chagrin at our escape, he has patiently hunted us down, determined to make us feel his vengeance in one way if he failed in the other. Poor Daphne clearly read his intention, I am sure; and it was her resistance, her defence of poor helpless me, that brought this cruel death upon her. Well, God's will be done! The poor girl was only an ignorant savage, and it is hardly possible that she can ever have heard His holy name mentioned; but for all that she had pity upon the stranger and him who had no helper, and I cannot but believe that she will therefore receive her full reward. It only remains now to so dispose of her body that it shall be secure from violation by the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. But how is that to be done?"
He might well ask. We had neither shovel nor any other appliance wherewith to dig a grave, and it was obviously impossible to do so with our bare hands alone. We at length decided to burn both the bodies, and I forthwith set about the construction of a funeral pyre. Fortunately, we had the forest close at hand; the ground beneath the trees was abundantly strewn with dry leaves, twigs, and branches, and thus I had not far to go for fuel. By the time that darkness closed in I had accumulated a goodly pile close to the edge of the open amphitheatre, and thither I at length conveyed both the bodies, laid them on the top of the pyre, and finally ignited the heap of dried leaves which I had arranged in the centre.
This done, Smellie came out of the hut, and we stood side by side mournfully watching the crematory process. Naturally, we were very keenly distressed at the untimely and tragic fate which had overtaken our staunch little friend Daphne. She had been so cheerful, so helpful, and--particularly during Smellie's illness--so tender, so gentle, so sympathetic, and so tireless in her ministrations, that, unconsciously to ourselves, we had acquired for her quite a fraternal affection. As I stood there watching the fierce, bright flames which were steadily reducing her body to ashes, and recalled to mind the countless services she had rendered us during the short period of our mutual wanderings, and, above all, the fervent compassion which had moved her to a voluntary and permanent abandonment of home and friends for the sake of two helpless strangers of a race entirely alien to her own, my heart felt as though it would burst with sorrow at her cruel fate. As for Smellie, trembling with weakness and depressed in spirits as he was after his recent sharp attack of fever, he completely broke down, and, laying his head upon my shoulder, sobbed like a child. Poor Daphne! it seemed hard that she should thus, in the first bright flush and glory of her maidenhood, be struck down, and the light of her life extinguished by the ruthless hand of a murderer; and yet, perhaps, after all, it was better so, better that she should enjoy the bliss of laying down her life for the sake of the man she loved, rather than that, living on, she should see the day when all the vague, indefinite hopes and aspirations of her innocent, unsophisticated heart would crumble into ashes in a moment, and the man who, all unknowingly, had become the autocrat of her fate and the recipient of her blind, passionate, unreasoning love should lightly and smilingly bid her an eternal farewell.
At length the fire died down: the crematory process was completed; nothing remained of the pyre and its burden but a smouldering heap of grey, flaky ashes; and we returned sorrowfully to our hut, there to forget in sleep, if we could, the grievous loss we had sustained.
The painful incident of Daphne's death produced so distressing an effect upon Smellie in his feeble condition that another week passed away before he was sufficiently recovered to admit of our resuming our journey. By the end of that time, however, his strength had in some measure returned, and a feverish anxiety to get away from the scene of the tragedy having taken possession of him, we made what few preparations we had it in our power to make and got under weigh directly after breakfast on one of the most delightful mornings it has ever been my good fortune to witness.
Our progress was, of course, painfully slow; but by this time speed was a matter of merely secondary importance, since we knew that we must long since have been given up by our shipmates as dead; and that the _Daphne_ was, in all probability, hundreds of miles away in an unknown direction. It was quite possible that on reaching the river's mouth we might have to wait weeks, or even months, before she would again make her appearance and give us an opportunity to rejoin.
Day after day we plodded on through the glorious forest, following no pathway, but shaping a course as directly west as circumstances would permit, meeting with no incidents worthy of mention, picking up a sufficient subsistence without much trouble, our way beguiled by glorious prospects of wood and river, and our curiosity fed by the countless strange glimpses into the secrets of nature afforded us as we wended our way through that lonely wilderness. We slept well at night in spite of the babel of sounds which rose and fell around us; awoke in the morning refreshed and hungry; and so entered upon another day. The life was by no means one of hardship; and what was most important of all, Smellie was slowly but steadily regaining strength and progressing toward recovery.
At length, late in the afternoon of the fifth day from that which had witnessed the resumption of our journey, our wanderings came unexpectedly to an end, for a time at least, by our stumbling, in the most unexpected manner in the world, upon a human habitation. And the strangest as well as the most fortunate part of it was that the habitation in question was the abode of _civilised_ humanity. We had been travelling, almost uninterruptedly, along the ridge of a range of hills, and on the afternoon in question had reached a spot where the range took an abrupt turn to the southward, curving round in a sort of arm which encircled a basin or valley of perhaps half a mile in width, open to the river on the north side. The hill-side sloped gently down to the valley bottom on the eastern, southern, and western sides, and was much more thickly wooded than the country through which we had hitherto been passing. In the very thickest part of the wood, however, and about half-way down the slope, was a clearing of some ten acres in extent, and in the centre of the clearing a very neat and pretty-looking house, with a verandah running all round it, and a thatched roof. The clearing itself appeared to be in a high state of cultivation, a flower- garden of about an acre in extent lying immediately in front of the house, whilst the remainder of the ground was thickly planted with coffee, peach, banana, orange, and various other fruit-trees.
We lost no time in making our way to this very desirable haven, and had scarcely passed through the gate in the fence which surrounded the clearing when we were fortunate enough to encounter the proprietor himself. He was a very fine handsome specimen of a man, with snow-white hair and moustache, both closely cropped, and an otherwise clean-shaven face, which, with his neck and hands, were deeply bronzed by exposure to the vertical rays of the sun. He was clad in white flannel, his head being protected by a light and very finely-woven grass hat with an enormous brim, whilst his feet were encased in a pair of slippers of soft untanned leather. He was busily engaged among his coffee-trees when he first caught sight of us; and his start of surprise at our extraordinary appearance was closely followed up by a profound bow as he at once came forward and courteously addressed us in Spanish. Unhappily neither Smellie nor I understood a word of the language, so the second lieutenant answered the hail in French. The old gentleman shook his head and, I thought, looked rather annoyed, whereupon Smellie tried him in English, to which, very much to my surprise, I must confess, he responded with scarcely a trace of accent.
"Welcome, gentlemen, welcome!" he exclaimed, with outstretched hand. "So you are English? Well, after all, I might have guessed it. I am glad you are not French--_very_ glad. Do me the honour to consider my house and everything it contains as your own. You have met with some serious misfortune, I grieve to see; but if you will allow him, Manuel Carnero will do his best to repair it. You have evidently suffered much, and appear to be in as urgent need of medical attendance as you are of clothing. Fortunately, I can supply you with both, and shall be only too happy to do so; I have a very great regard for the English. Come, gentlemen, allow me to conduct you to the house."
So saying, he escorted us up the pathway until the house was reached, when, stepping quickly before us, he passed through the open doorway, and then, turning round, once more bade us welcome to his roof.
CHAPTER TWELVE.
DONA ANTONIA.
The ceremony of bidding us formal welcome having been duly performed to Don Manuel's satisfaction, he turned once more and called in stentorian tones for some invisible individual named Pedro, who, quickly making his appearance in the shape of a grave decorous-looking elderly man-servant, received certain instructions in Spanish; after which our host, turning to us, informed us that his valet would have the honour of showing us to our rooms. Thereupon the sedate and respectful Pedro, who was far too well-trained a servant to betray the slightest symptom of surprise at our exceedingly disreputable appearance, led the way to two small but pleasantly situated rooms adjoining each other, and, bowing profoundly to each of us as we passed into our respective apartments, closed the doors and withdrew.
The rooms in question were furnished with bed, washstand, dressing- table, etcetera, precisely in the English fashion, but the floors, instead of being covered with carpets, were bare, save for a large and handsome grass mat which occupied the centre of the room. I flung myself into a chair and was gazing complacently about me, congratulating myself upon the good fortune which had guided our wandering feet to such exceedingly comfortable quarters, when I heard Smellie's door open, and the next moment caught the tones of Don Manuel's voice. Directly afterwards a knock came to my own door, and upon my shouting "Come in," Pedro reappeared bearing upon his arm what proved to be a complete rig- out from stem to stern, including even a hat and a pair of shoes. These he spread out upon the bed, and then once more withdrew.
I took the garments up and looked at them. They were just about my size, a trifle large, perhaps, but nothing worth speaking about; they had evidently been worn before, but were in excellent condition, beautifully clean, and altogether so inviting that I lost no time in exchanging them for my rags. This exchange, in addition to a pretty thorough ablution, made quite a new man of me; I felt actually comfortable once more, for the first time since leaving the _Daphne_ on the occasion of that unfortunate night attack.
Smellie was still in his room, for I could hear him moving about, so I went in, curious to know whether he had fared equally well with myself. I found him struggling, with Pedro's assistance, slowly and rather painfully into a somewhat similar suit to that which I had donned; but the poor fellow, though still very thin and haggard, looked brighter, better, and altogether more comfortable than I had seen him for a long time, our new friend Don Manuel having personally dressed his wounds for him before turning him over to the hands of Pedro.
The second lieutenant looked at me in astonishment. "Why, Hawkesley, is that you?" he exclaimed. "Upon my word, young gentleman, you look vastly comfortable and vastly well, too, in your borrowed plumes. Why, you are worth a dozen dead men yet."
"I think I may say the same of you, my dear sir," I replied. "I am heartily glad to see so great a change in your appearance."
"Thank you very much," he returned. "Yes, I feel actually comfortable once more. Don Manuel has dressed and bound up my wounds, applying soothing salves to them, and altogether tinkering me up until I am pretty nearly as good as new. But, Hawkesley, my dear boy, are we in our sober senses, or is this only a delightful dream? I can scarcely realise that I am awake; that we are actually among our fellow-men once more; and that I am surrounded by the walls and sheltered by the roof of a material house, in which, as it seems to me, we are likely to enjoy a good many of the comforts of civilisation. But come," as he settled himself into a loose white flannel jacket, "let us join our host, who, I have reason to believe, is awaiting our presence at his dinner-table. Heave ahead, Pedro, my lad; we're quite ready to weigh."
Pedro might have understood Smellie's every word, so promptly did he fling open the door and bow us to follow him. Leading us along a cool and rather dark corridor, he conducted us to the front part of the house, and throwing open the door of a large and very handsomely furnished apartment, loudly announced us in Spanish as what I took to be "the English hidalgos."
Don Manuel was awaiting us in this room, and on our entrance rose to greet us with that lofty yet graceful courtesy which seems peculiar to the Spaniard. Then, turning slightly, he said:
"Allow me, gentlemen, to present to you my daughter Antonia, the only member of my family remaining to me. Antonia, these are two English gentlemen who, I trust, will honour us so far as to remain our guests for some time to come."
We duly bowed in response to her graceful curtsey, and her few words of welcome, spoken in the most piquant and charming of broken English, and then, I believe, went in to dinner. I say, I _believe_ we went in to dinner on that eventful evening, because I know it was intended that we should; but I have no recollection whatever of having partaken of the meal. For the rest of that evening I was conscious of but one thing-- the presence of Antonia Carnero.
How shall I describe her?
She was of medium height, with a superbly moulded figure, neither too stout nor too slim; a small well-poised head crowned with an immense quantity of very dark wavy chestnut hair having a golden gleam where the light fell upon it but black as night in its shadows; dark finely-arched eyebrows surmounting a pair of perfectly glorious brilliant dark-brown eyes, now sparkling with merriment and anon melting with deepest tenderness; very long thick dark eyelashes; a nose the merest trifle _retrousse_; a daintily-shaped mouth with full ripe ruddy lips; and a prettily rounded chin with a well-developed dimple in its centre. Her voice was musical as that of a bird; her complexion was a clear pale olive; her movements were as graceful and unrestrained as those of a gazelle; and she was only eighteen years of age, though she looked more like two-and-twenty.
We were a very pleasant party at dinner that evening. Don Manuel was simply perfect as a host, courteously and watchfully attentive to our slightest wants, and frankness itself in his voluntary explanation of the why and the wherefore of his establishment of himself in such an out-of-the-way place. Antonia, whilst not taking any very prominent part in the conversation, struck in now and then with a suggestive, explanatory, or playful remark, showing that she was was both attentive to and interested in the conversation. Smellie, more easy and comfortable, both in mind and body, than he had been for many a day, abandoned himself to the pleasant influences of his surroundings and bore his part like the cultured English gentleman he was; his deep rich melodious voice, easy graceful bearing, commanding figure, and handsome face, still pale and wan from his recent sufferings, evidently proving immensely attractive to Dona Antonia, much to my secret disgust. As for me, I am afraid I did little more than sit a silent worshipper at the shrine of this sylvan beauty upon whom we had so unexpectedly stumbled.
Don Manuel informed us that, though a Spaniard by birth, he had spent so many years in England that all his tastes and sympathies had become thoroughly Anglicised; that his second wife, Dona Antonia's mother, had been an Englishwoman; that he was an enthusiastic naturalist; and that he had chosen the banks of the Congo for his home principally in order that he might be able to study fully and at his leisure the fauna and flora of that little-known region; adding parenthetically that he had found the step not only a thoroughly agreeable but also a fairly profitable one, by doing a little occasional business with the whites who frequented the river on the one hand and with the natives on the other. I thought he looked a trifle discomposed when Smellie informed him that we were English naval officers, and I am quite sure he did when he was further informed that we had been in the hands of the natives. A very perceptible shade of anxiety clouded his features when Smellie recounted our adventures from the moment of our leaving the _Daphne_; and once or twice he shook his head in a manner which seemed to suggest the idea that he thought we might perhaps prove to be rather dangerous guests, under all the circumstances. If, however, any such idea really entered his mind he was careful to restrain all expression of it, and at the end of Smellie's narrative he uttered just the few courteous phrases of polite concern which seemed appropriate to the occasion and then allowed the subject to drop. Dona Antonia, on the contrary, evinced a most lively interest in the story, her face lighting up and her eyes flashing as she asked question after question, and her parted lips quivering with excitement and sympathetic apprehension as Smellie lightly touched upon the critical situations in which we had once or twice found ourselves. To my great surprise, and, I may add, disappointment, however, she did not exhibit very much sympathy in poor Daphne's tragic fate; on the contrary, she appeared to me to listen with a feeling closely akin to impatience to all that part of the story with which the negro girl was connected; and Smellie's frequent mention of the poor unfortunate creature actually elicited once or twice a slight but quite unmistakable shrug of the lovely shoulders and a decidedly contemptuous flash from the glorious eyes of his fair auditor.
I may as well at once confess frankly that, with the usual susceptibility of callow youth, I promptly became captivated by the charms of our lovely hostess; and I may as well complete my confession by stating that, with the equally usual overweening conceit of callow youth, I quite expected to find my clumsy and ill-timed efforts to render myself agreeable to my charmer speedily successful. In this expectation, however, I was doomed to be grievously disappointed; for I soon discovered that, whilst Dona Antonia was good-natured enough to receive my awkward attentions with unvarying patience and politeness, it was _Smellie's_ footstep and the sound of _his_ voice which caused her eyes to sparkle, her cheek to flush, and her bosom to heave tumultuously. So, in extreme disgust at the lady's deplorable lack of taste and discernment, I was fain to abandon my efforts to fascinate her, attaching myself to her father instead and accompanying him, gun in hand, on his frequent rambles through the forest in search of "specimens."
Returning to the house one evening rather late, we found a stranger awaiting Don Manuel's arrival. That is to say, he was a stranger to Smellie and myself, but he was evidently a tolerably intimate acquaintance of our host and hostess. He was a tall, dark, handsome, well-built man, evidently a Spaniard, with black restless gleaming eyes, a well-knit figure, and a manner so very free-and-easy as to be almost offensive. His attire consisted of a loose jacket of fine blue cloth garnished with gold buttons, a fine linen shirt of snowy whiteness, loose white nankeen trousers confined at the waist by a crimson silk sash, and a pair of canvas slippers on his otherwise naked feet. He wore a pair of gold rings in his small well-shaped ears, and the gold- mounted horn handle of what was doubtless a stiletto peeped unobtrusively from among the folds of his sash. A crimson cap of knitted silk with a tassel of the same depending from its pointed crown lay on a chair near him, and completed a costume which, whilst it undoubtedly set off his very fine figure to advantage, struck me as being of a somewhat theatrical character. Don Manuel greeted him in Spanish with effusion, and yet with--I thought;--a faint suspicion of uneasiness, on our entrance, and then introduced him to Smellie and me in English, as Senor Garcia Madera. He bowed stiffly in acknowledgment, murmured something to the effect that he "no speak Inglese," and then rather rudely turned his back upon us, and addressing Dona Antonia in Spanish, evidently laid himself out to play the agreeable to her.
I think we all--except Senor Madera,--felt slightly uncomfortable at dinner and for the remainder of that evening. Don Manuel indeed strove with all his might to promote and encourage general conversation, but his behaviour lacked that graceful ease which usually characterised it, his manner was constrained; he was obviously making an effort to dissipate the slight suggestion of discord which obstinately asserted itself in the social atmosphere, and I could see that he was a little ruffled at finding his efforts unsuccessful. As for Antonia, it was easy to see that the new guest was to her an unwelcome one, and his persevering attentions distasteful to her; yet, either because he _was_ a guest or for some other cogent reason, she evidently did her best to be agreeable and conciliatory to the man, casting, however, slight furtive deprecatory glances in Smellie's direction, from time to time, as she did so.
Senor Madera--who was evidently a seaman and not improbably the master of a slaver--remained the guest of Don Manuel for the night, sleeping under his roof, and taking his departure very early next morning, before either Smellie or I had turned out, in fact. On our making our appearance Don Manuel referred to his late visitor, explaining that he commanded a ship which traded regularly to the river, and was one of the few individuals through whom he maintained communication with his native country. He apologised very gracefully for his acquaintance's brusque behaviour of the night before, which, whilst deprecating, he explained by attributing it to a feeling of jealousy, Madera having, it would appear, exhibited a decided disposition to pay serious attention to Dona Antonia during his last two or three visits. And--Don Manuel suggested--being like the rest of his countrymen, of an exceedingly jealous disposition, it was possible that he would feel somewhat annoyed at finding two gentlemen domiciled beneath the same roof as his _inamorata_. At this Smellie drew himself up rather haughtily, and was beginning to express his profound regret that our presence in the house should prove the means of introducing a discordant element into an affair of so delicate a nature, when Don Manuel interrupted him by assuring us both that he regarded the circumstance as rather fortunate than otherwise, since, however much he might esteem Senor Madera as an acquaintance and a man of business, he was by no means the class of person to whom he would be disposed to confide the happiness of his daughter.
This little apology and explanation having been made, the party separated, Smellie retiring to the verandah with a book to study Spanish, while Don Manuel and I trudged off with our guns and butterfly- nets as usual.
On our return we found that Madera had again put in an appearance, and another evening of constraint and irritation was the result. This occurred also on the third evening, after which for a short time Senor Madera, apparently conscious of the fact that his company was not altogether desirable, relieved us of his presence.
Just at this time it happened unfortunately--or fortunately rather, as the event proved--that Don Manuel was confined to the house, his hand having been badly stung by some poisonous insect, and I availed myself of the opportunity to make an exploration of the neighbourhood. We had of course taken an early opportunity to acquaint Don Manuel with our expectation that the _Daphne_ would again visit the river at no very distant period, and that whenever such an event occurred we should make a very strenuous effort to rejoin her; and he had promised to use every means that lay in his power to procure for us timely notice of her arrival, pointing out at the same time the paucity of his sources of information, and suggesting that whilst it would afford him unmingled pleasure to retain us as his guests for an indefinite period it would be well for us when we were quite tired of our sojourn ashore to ourselves keep a look-out for the appearance of the ship. So on the occasion of Don Manuel's accident, finding Smellie unwilling--as indeed he was still unable--to take a long walk, I determined, as I have already said, to make a thorough exploration of the neighbourhood, and at the same time endeavour to ascertain whether the _Daphne_ was once more in the river.
Madera's appearance at Don Manuel's house, coupled with the evident fact that he was a seaman, had at once suggested to me the strong probability that there must be a navigable creek at no very great distance; and I thought it might be useful to ascertain whether such actually was or was not the case, and--in the event of this question being decided in the affirmative--also to ascertain the precise locality of the said creek. Of course it would have been a very simple matter to put the question directly to Don Manuel; but he had evinced such very palpable embarrassment and reticence whenever Madera's name had been mentioned that I thought it would be better to rely, in the first instance at all events, upon my own personal investigations. So when I left the house that morning it was with the determination to settle this question before turning my attention to anything else.
At a distance of about half a mile from the house the level ridge of the chain of hills was interrupted by a lofty hummock rising some two hundred feet higher than the hills themselves, affording a capital look- out; and to this spot I first of all directed my steps. On arriving at the place, however, I found the growth of timber to be so thick as to completely exclude the prospect; and the only means whereby I could take advantage of my superior elevation, therefore, was to climb a tree. I accordingly looked about me, and at last picked out an immense fellow whose towering height seemed to promise me an uninterrupted view; and, aided by the tough rope-like creepers which depended from its branches, I soon reached its top. From this commanding position I obtained, as I had expected, an unbroken view of the country all round me for a distance of at least thirty miles. The river was naturally a prominent object in the landscape, and, exactly opposite me, was about three miles in width, though, in consequence of the numerous islands which crowded its channel, the water-way was scarcely anywhere more than half a mile in width. These islands ceased about four miles lower down the river, leaving the channel perfectly clear; but they extended up the river in an unbroken chain to the very limits of my horizon. But what gratified me most was the discovery that in clear weather, such as happened to prevail just then, I could see right down to the mouth of the river, Shark Point being just discernible on the western horizon. Boolambemba Point was clearly defined; and I felt convinced that, on a fine day and with a good telescope, I should be able to see and even to identify the _Daphne_, should she happen to be at anchor in Banana Creek at the time.
This important point settled, I turned my attention to matters nearer at hand, and began to look about me for the creek, the existence of which I so strongly suspected. For a few minutes I was unable to locate it; but suddenly my eye, wandering over the vast sea of vegetation which lay spread out beneath me, became arrested by the appearance of a slender straight object projecting a few feet above the tree-tops. A careful scrutiny of this object satisfied me that it must be the mast-head of a ship; and where the ship was, there, too, would be the creek. Doubtless the craft lying there so snug, and in so suspiciously secret a harbour, was the one to which our rather insolent acquaintance Madera belonged; and curiosity strongly prompted me to have a look at her. Accordingly, taking her bearings by the position of the sun, I descended the tree and set out upon my quest I estimated that she was distant from my view- point about two miles, and about one mile from Don Manuel's house. A walk of perhaps three-quarters of an hour conducted me to the edge of a mangrove-swamp; and I knew then that the creek must be at no great distance. Plunging boldly into the swamp, I made my way as best I could over the tangled roots in what I deemed the proper direction, and after a toilsome scramble of another quarter of an hour found myself at the water's edge.
The creek was precisely similar in character to all the others with which I had previously made acquaintance; but so narrow and shallow at the point where I had hit it off that I saw at once, to my vexation, that I must have a further scramble among the mangrove-roots, exposed all the while to the attacks of countless hosts of bloodthirsty mosquitoes, if I would gratify my desire to see Senor Madera's vessel. And, having gone so far, I determined not to turn back until I had satisfied my curiosity; so on I went. My pace over such broken ground was naturally not very brisk, so that it was fully an hour later before I found myself standing--well concealed behind an intervening tree- trunk--opposite a small but beautifully-modelled schooner, moored head and stern close alongside the opposite bank. She was a craft of about one hundred and twenty tons register, painted grey, with very lofty spars, topsail-rigged forward, very little standing rigging, and a most wicked look all over.
When I put in my unobtrusive appearance the crew were busy with a couple of long untrimmed pine spars, the ends of which they were getting ashore. A few minutes' observation sufficed to satisfy me that they were rigging a gangway; and, settling myself comfortably in a position where my presence could not be detected, I determined to see the matter out. I looked carefully for Senor Madera on board, but was unable to detect his presence; I therefore concluded that, unlikely as such a supposition seemed, he had left the ship to make an early call upon Don Manuel.
The gangway was soon rigged, and after testing it by passing along it three or four times one of the schooner's crew disappeared in the bush. A quarter of an hour later he returned, closely followed by a number of armed natives in charge of a gang of slaves, who--poor wretches--were secured together in pairs by means of heavy logs of wood lashed to their necks. These slaves were mostly men; but there were a few young women with them, two or three of whom carried quite young babies lashed on their backs. And every slave, not excepting the women with children, was loaded with one large or two small tusks of ivory. These unfortunates were driven straight on board the schooner, the ivory was taken from them as they reached the deck, and they were then driven below; the _clink, clink_ of hammers which immediately afterwards proceeded from the schooner's hold bearing witness to the business-like promptitude with which the unhappy creatures were being secured. I counted them as they passed in over the gangway; they numbered sixty- three; and, judging from the schooner's size, I calculated that she had accommodation for about one hundred and fifty; her cargo being therefore incomplete, I feared we should be called upon to endure Senor Madera's presence for at least another day or two. The wretches who constituted the schooner's crew were a very noisy set, laughing, chattering, and shouting at the top of their voices, and altogether exhibiting by their utter carelessness a perfect consciousness of the fact that there were no men-o'-war just then anywhere near the river. How heartily I wished there had been a pennant of some sort at hand; I felt that I would not have cared what might be its nationality, I would have found means to board the craft, conveying the news of that wretched slaver's whereabouts, and afterwards assisting, if possible, in her capture.
I remained snugly ensconced in my hiding-place until the clearing up and washing down of the decks informed me that work was over on board the schooner for that day, and then set out cautiously to return to the house. I managed to effect a retreat into the cover of the bush without betraying myself; and then, moved by a quite uncontrollable impulse, bent my steps once more in the direction of the hill-top, from which I had that morning effected my reconnaissance--though it took me considerably out of my way--determined to have just one more look round before settling myself for the evening.
It was about four o'clock p.m. by the position of the sun when I once more stood beneath the overshadowing foliage of the tree which I had used as an observatory; and ten minutes later I found myself among its topmost branches. The atmosphere was luckily still quite clear, a fresh breeze from the eastward having prevailed during the whole of that day; but a purplish haze was gathering on the western horizon, and my heart leapt into my mouth--to make use of a well-worn figure of speech--when, standing out in clear relief against this soft purple-grey background, I saw, far away in the south-western board, the gleaming white sails of a ship stretching in toward the land _under easy canvas_.
It was this latter fact, of the ship being under easy canvas, which so greatly gratified me. A slaver or an ordinary trader would have been pressing in under every stitch that would draw--as indeed would a man- o'-war if she were upon some definite errand--but _only_ a man-o'-war would approach the land in that leisurely manner with evening close at hand. The stranger was a long distance off--perhaps as much as twenty miles--and it was, of course, impossible to see more than that she _was_ a ship of some sort; but I had by that time acquired experience enough to know, from the tiny white speck which gleamed up against the haze, that she was coming in under topsails only. What would I not have given just then to have held my trusty telescope in my hand once more just for an hour or _so_!
Suddenly I remembered having one day seen a very fine instrument belonging to Don Manuel in his own especial den. It was really an astronomical telescope; but, like many similar instruments, it was also provided with a terrestrial eye-piece, for I had looked through it across the river, and had marvelled at its far-reaching power. It was fitted to a tripod stand, but could be disconnected at will; and the bold idea presented itself to me of borrowing this instrument for a short time in order to ascertain, if possible, the nationality of the stranger. It was of course just possible that she might be English, in which event it would manifestly be Smellie's and my own duty to attempt to join her.
Full of this idea I descended hastily to the ground and made my way with all speed in the direction of Don Manuel's house. The telescope was fortunately in the place where I expected to find it; and, disconnecting it from the stand and tucking it into its leather case, I set out again for the look-out tree. Arrived there, I slung the instrument over my shoulder by means of the stout leather strap attached to the case, and at once ascended to the topmost branches of the tree, where, selecting a good substantial limb for a seat, with another conveniently situated to serve as a rest for the telescope, I comfortably settled myself in position, determined to ascertain definitely, if possible, before sunset, what the intentions of the strange sail might be.
I lost no time in extricating the instrument from its case and bringing it to bear upon the white speck, which, even during the short period of my absence, had perceptibly changed its position, thus proving the craft to be a smart vessel under her canvas. I soon had her focused, but found to my intense disappointment that, owing to her great distance and the rarefied condition of the atmosphere due to the intense heat of the day, I was unable to make out very much more in the shape of detail than was possible with the naked eye; the craft, as seen through the telescope, appearing to be merely a wavering blot of creamy white, with another wavering blot of dark colour, representing the hull, below it; a dark line with a spiral motion to it, which made it look like a corkscrew, representing above the sails the bare topgallant and royal- masts. This was vexatious, but the sun was still fully an hour high. By the time that he would reach the horizon the craft would probably be some seven or eight miles nearer; the atmosphere was cooling and becoming less rarefied every minute, and I was sanguine that before darkness set in I should succeed in getting such a view of the stranger as would enable me to form a tolerably accurate opinion as to her nationality and intentions.
Of course I kept my eye glued almost uninterruptedly to the eye-piece of the instrument, merely withdrawing it for a minute or so occasionally to give the visual organ a rest. And gradually, as I watched, the wavering motion of the white and dark blots decreased, they grew less blot-like and more defined in their outlines, and finally I succeeded in detecting the fact that the craft sported a broad white ribbon along her sides. Then I made out that she carried a white figure-head under the heel of her bowsprit; next, that her boats were painted black to their water- lines and white below, and so one detail after another emerged into clear definition until the entire craft stood distinctly revealed in the field of the instrument. By this time I was all a-quiver with excitement, for as the approaching ship showed with ever-increasing distinctness, a growing conviction forced itself upon me that many of her details were familiar to me. Finally, just as the sun was hovering for a moment like a great ball of fire upon the extreme verge of the purple horizon, the stranger tacked. The smartness with which she was manoeuvred was alone almost sufficient to proclaim her as English, but the point was definitely settled by my catching a momentary glimpse of Saint George's ensign fluttering at her peak as it gleamed in the last rays of the setting sun. In another moment she glided gracefully across the golden track of the sinking luminary, her every spar and rope clearly defined and black as ebony, her sharply outlined sails a deep rich purple against the gold, and the broad white ribbon round her shapely hull just distinguishable. The sun vanished, and though the western horizon immediately in his wake was all aglow with gold and crimson, the light at once began to fade rapidly away. I looked again at the ship: she was already a mass of pearly grey, with a row of little dark grey dots along her side, indicating the position of her ports. I took advantage of the last gleam of twilight to count these dots twice over. There were fourteen of them along her starboard broadside, indicating that she was a 28-gun ship; she was ship-rigged, and this, in conjunction with several little peculiarities which I had recognised connected with her spars and rigging, convinced me that she was actually none other than the _Daphne_. Another look--I could just distinguish her against the soft velvety blue-black background of the darkening sea, but I saw enough to satisfy me of the correctness of my surmise, and saw, too, that--happy chance--she was clewing up her courses as though about to lay-to or anchor off the mouth of the river for the night. Then, as she faded more and more and finally vanished from the field of the telescope, I closed the instrument and proceeded to carefully replace it in its case. By the time that I had done this the glow of the western horizon had faded into sober grey, the sky overhead had deepened into a magnificent sapphire blue and was already becoming thickly studded with stars, the forest around and below me had merged into a great shapeless mass of olive-black foliage, out of the depths of which arose the deafening _whir_ of countless millions of insects; and the conclusion forced itself upon me that it was high time I should see about effecting a descent from my lofty perch if I wished to do so in safety. I had no sooner scrambled down into the body of the tree than I found myself in complete darkness, and it was with the utmost difficulty and no little danger that I accomplished the remainder of the descent. However, I managed at last to reach the ground without mishap, and, taking up my gun--which I had placed against the trunk of the tree, and without which, acting upon Don Manuel's advice, I never ventured into the forest--I turned my face homeward, anxious to find Smellie and acquaint him with the state of affairs without a moment's unnecessary delay.
In due time I reached the gate in the palisading which surrounded Don Manuel's garden and passed through. In the brilliant star-light the sandy path which led up to the house was distinctly visible between the rows of coffee and other trees, and so also were two figures, a short distance ahead of me, sauntering along it toward the house, with their backs turned to me. They were evidently male and female, and were walking very closely together, so much so indeed that I felt almost certain that the arm of the taller of the two figures must be encircling the waist of the other, and from the height of the one and the white gleaming garments of the other I at once came to the conclusion that they were Smellie and Dona Antonia. My footsteps were of course quite inaudible on the light sandy soil, and the couple in front of me were consequently in a state of blissful ignorance as to my presence. Had they been aware of it I am little doubtful now as to whether it would have very greatly disturbed their equanimity. Be that as it may, I felt a certain amount of delicacy about advancing, and so showing them that I had been an involuntary witness of their philandering, so I softly stepped aside off the pathway and ensconsed myself behind a coffee-bush, thinking that perhaps they would go on and enter the house, in which case I could follow them in at a respectful distance. If, on the other hand, they did not enter, they would at all events be at such a distance from me when they turned that I might safely show myself without much fear of disconcerting either of them. So thinking, I continued to watch their receding figures, intending to step back into the pathway as soon as they were at a sufficient distance from me.
But before they had traversed half the distance between the gate and the house I was startled at seeing a group of figures suddenly and noiselessly emerge upon the pathway close behind them.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
AN EVENTFUL NIGHT.
What did it mean? Who were they, and what could they possibly want? I could see them clearly enough to distinguish that they wore the garments of civilisation; but they did not belong to the house: Don Manuel had only two men in his service; whereas, so far as I could distinguish in the uncertain light, there were five men in the group before me. Then, too, their actions were suspicious, their movements were stealthy, and it looked very much as though they were dogging the footsteps of the couple ahead of them for no good purpose. I did not at all like the aspect of affairs, so quietly disencumbering myself of the telescope, which I deposited on the ground, I grasped my gun, and, stepping into the pathway, shouted warningly to the second lieutenant:
"Look out, Mr Smellie, you are being followed!" Immediately there was a shout, in Spanish, of "Come on, men, give it him!" and the group made a dash at Smellie and his companion. Then followed an exclamation of surprise and anger in Smellie's well-known voice, a single stifled scream from Dona Antonia, and a most unmistakable affray. With a shout I dashed up the path, and in another minute or less plunged into the thick of the melee. Smellie was beset by three of the ruffians, who were slashing viciously at him with long ugly-looking knives, and he was maintaining a gallant defence with the aid of a stout stick, the assistance of which he had not up to then been wholly able to discard in walking. I saw that if he was to be saved from a serious, perhaps even a fatal, stab, prompt action was necessary, so without waiting for further developments I cocked my gun, and, making a lunge with it at the man who seemed to be Smellie's most formidable antagonist, pulled the trigger just as the muzzle struck his side, and poured the contents of the barrel into his body. At such very close quarters the charge of shot took effect like a bullet, and the fellow staggered backwards and fell to the ground with an oath and an agonised exclamation in Spanish of:
"Help, my men, help; I am shot!"
The remaining two who had been attacking Smellie turned at this to assist their wounded companion; and the second lieutenant and I thereupon dashed down the path after the other two, who were hurrying off the scene with all speed, carrying Dona Antonia bodily away with them. A dozen bounds or so and we were up with them. With an inarticulate cry of rage Smellie sprang upon the man nearest him and brought his stick down upon the fellow's head with such tremendous force that the stout cudgel shivered to pieces in his hand, whilst the recipient of the blow dropped prone without a groan or cry of any kind upon the pathway. The other meanwhile had dropped his share of their joint burden and seemed inclined to resume hostilities, but a well-aimed sweep of the butt-end of my gun took all the fight out of him, and he beat a hasty retreat, leaving his companion to our tender mercies. Smellie, however, had something else to think about, for there, upon the pathway, her white dress already stained with the blood of the prostrate ruffian beside her, lay the senseless body of Dona Antonia. Raising her in his arms my companion at once made for the house, despatching Pedro, who had just put in an alarmed appearance, in advance to summon the assistance of Old Madre Dolores, Antonia's special attendant.
I convoyed the pair as far as the door, and then retraced my steps down the pathway, intent on recovering the telescope, and also to reconnoitre the scene of action and ascertain whether or no the enemy had beaten a final retreat. The ground proved to be clear; so I presume that the fellow whose head Smellie had broken was not after all quite so seriously injured as he at first appeared to be.
On my return to the house I found the whole place in confusion, as might naturally be expected, and Don Manuel, with his damaged hand in a sling, anxiously inquiring of Smellie whether he had any idea as to the identity of the perpetrators of the outrage.
"I certainly _have_ an idea who was the leader," answered Smellie; "but I scarcely like to give utterance to my suspicions. Here comes Hawkesley; let us see whether his opinion upon the matter coincides with mine. Hawkesley, do you think you ever met either of those men before?"
"Yes," I replied unhesitatingly; "unless I am greatly mistaken, the man who was so pertinacious in his attack upon you, and whom I shot, was Senor Madera."
"Exactly so," coincided Smellie. "I recognised him directly; but it was so very dark down there among the trees that I scarcely cared to say as much without first having my conviction verified. I very much fear, Don Manuel, you have been grossly deceived by that fellow; if I am not greatly mistaken he is a thorough rascal. I do not say this because of his cowardly attack upon me--that I can quite account for after your explanation of a night or two ago; but his daring outrage upon your daughter is quite another matter."
"Yes, yes," exclaimed Don Manuel excitedly; "the fellow is a villain, there is no doubt about that. I have never entertained a very high opinion of him, it is true; but I must admit that I was quite unprepared for any such high-handed behaviour as that of to-night."
"Well," said Smellie cheerfully, "I think Hawkesley has given his ardour a cooling for some time to come, at all events; and for the rest, you will have to be very carefully on your guard for the future, my dear sir. I do not think he will venture a second attempt so long as we remain under your roof, but after we are gone--"
"Which I hope will not be for some time to come," hospitably interrupted Don Manuel. "But have no fear for us, my dear Don Harold; `forewarned is forearmed,' as you say in your England, and I shall take care to render any further attack upon my daughter's liberty impossible. But come, dinner awaits us, and we can further discuss the matter, if need be, over the--what is that you call it?--ah, yes, `the social board!'"
Thereupon we filed into the dining-room, and took our places at the table. And there, before the conversation had an opportunity to drift back into its former channel, I detailed my day's doings, and apprised Smellie of the important fact that the _Daphne_ was in the offing.
"This is momentous news, indeed," remarked Smellie when I had finished. "We must leave you to-night, I fear, Don Manuel, reluctant as we both must be to cut short so very agreeable an acquaintance. But I trust we shall have many opportunities of visiting you again, and so keeping alive the friendship established between us; and as to Senor Madera--if Hawkesley is only correct in his conjectures as to the schooner he saw-- why, I trust we may be able to effectually and permanently relieve you of his disagreeable attentions before twenty-four hours have passed over our heads."
Don Manuel bowed. "If Senor Madera is indeed the captain of a slave- ship, as I have sometimes felt inclined to believe he is," said he, "I beg that you will not permit the accident of having encountered him under my roof to influence you in any way in his favour. As I have already said, he is only an acquaintance--not a friend of mine--and if he is a transgressor against the laws relating to the slave-trade, make him suffer for it, if you can lay hands upon him. With regard to your proposed attempt to rejoin your ship to-night, I very much regret that I am only able to offer you the most meagre assistance; such as it is, however, you are heartily welcome to it. I have a canoe down in the creek yonder, and you are very welcome to take her; but she is only a small affair, and as I presume you are not very much accustomed to the handling of canoes, you will have to be exceedingly careful or you may meet with an upset. And that, let me tell you, may possibly prove a very serious affair, since the creek, ay, and the river itself, swarms with crocodiles."
Smellie duly expressed his thankful acceptance of Don Manuel's kind offer, and the conversation then became general. At the conclusion of the meal Smellie requested the favour of a few minutes' private conversation with Don Manuel; and that gentleman, with a somewhat questioning and surprised look, bowed an affirmative and at once led the way to his own especial sanctum.
I never actually heard what was the nature of the momentous communication which the gallant second lieutenant wished so suddenly to make to his host; but from the length of time that they remained closeted together, and the remark of Don Manuel when they at length reappeared--"Very well, my dear sir, then that is settled; upon the conditions I have named you can have her,"--I made a pretty shrewd guess at it.
In the meantime Dona Antonia had reappeared, very little the worse for her adventure; she was very pale, it is true, and she became perceptibly paler when, with that want of tact which is one of my most marked characteristics, I abruptly told her that we were on the point of leaving her to rejoin our ship. But she amply redeemed this want of colour by the deep rosy flush with which she greeted Smellie's approach and the low whispered request in response to which she placed her hand on his arm and retired with him to the verandah.
It was about 9:30 p.m. when they reappeared, Smellie looking very grave, but at the same time rather exultant, and poor Antonia in tears, which she made no attempt whatever to conceal. I was, of course, all ready to start at a moment's notice. We had no preparations to make, in fact, and we at once proceeded to the disagreeable task of saying farewell to our kind and generous host. It was a painful business; for though we had not known Don Manuel and his daughter very long, we had still known them quite long enough to have acquired for them both a very large measure of esteem and regard--in Smellie's case there could no longer be the least doubt that his feelings toward his hostess were even warmer than this--so we hurried over the leave-taking with all speed, and then set off down the pathway, under Pedro's guidance, on our road to the creek.
It was by this time pitch dark. The stars had all disappeared; the sky had become obscured by a heavy pall of thunder-cloud; and away to the eastward the lightning was already beginning to flash and the thunder to growl ominously. Before we reached the gate in the palisading Pedro had volunteered the prognostication of a stormy night, utterly unfit for such an expedition as that upon which we were bound, and had strongly urged us more than once to follow his counsel and postpone the attempt. But to this proposition we could not, of course, listen for a moment. If we missed the present opportunity to rejoin the _Daphne_ it was impossible to conjecture when another might offer; and pleasant though our sojourn under Don Manuel's hospitable roof had undoubtedly been, it was not _business_; every day so spent was a day distinctly lost in the pursuit of our professional interests. So we plodded steadily on, and in about half an hour's time reached the head of the creek, where, carefully housed under a low thatch covering, we found the canoe.
She was, indeed, a frail craft in which to undertake such a journey as ours, being only some two feet six inches beam, by about sixteen inches deep, and twenty feet long; hollowed out of a single log. She had no thwarts, and the paddlers were therefore compelled to squat tailor- fashion in the bottom of her, looking forward. This was, so far, fortunate; since she was so frightfully crank that, with such unaccustomed canoeists as ourselves, it was only by keeping our centres of gravity low down that we prevented her capsizing the moment we stepped into her. Pedro, worthy soul, detained us about twenty minutes whilst he explained the peculiarities of the craft and the proper mode of handling the paddles; and then, with Smellie aft and me forward, we bade the old fellow good-bye and boldly shoved off down the creek.
The channel here being narrow, and overarched to a great extent with trees, the darkness was quite as intense as it had been on our journey from the house through the wood and down to the creek; so dark was it, indeed, that but for the lightning which now flashed around us with rapidly-increasing frequency, it would have been quite impossible for us to see where we were going. This stygian darkness, whilst it proved an obstacle to our rapid progress, promised to afford us, by way of compensation, most valuable assistance in another way, since we hoped to slip past the schooner undetected in the impenetrable obscurity; our desire just then being to avoid anything like a renewal of our acquaintance with Senor Madera so soon after our very recent little misunderstanding. Unfortunately there were two or three phenomena which combined to render this feat a matter of difficulty. The first was the vivid lightning which, at increasingly brief intervals, lit up the channel with noontide distinctness. The next was the failure of the wind; a stark breathless calm having fallen upon the face of nature like a pall, in the which not so much as a single leaf stirred; and the whole insect-world, contrary to its usual custom, awaiting in hushed expectancy the outburst of the coming storm, a great and death-like silence prevailed, through which the slightest sound which we might accidentally make would have been heard for a long distance. And another, and perhaps the worst of all, was the highly phosphorescent state of the water. This was so excessive that the slightest ripple under the bows of the canoe, along her sides, and for some distance in her wake, together with the faint swirls created by our paddles, produced long trailing lines and eddies of vivid silvery light which could scarcely fail to attract the attention of a vigilant look-out and so betray our whereabouts. We were thus compelled to observe the utmost circumspection in our advance, which was made, as far as was practicable, through the deepest shadows of the overhanging foliage.
We were creeping slowly down the channel in this cautious fashion when a slight and almost imperceptible splash from the opposite bank attracted my attention. Glancing across in that direction I noticed a slowly spreading circle of luminous ripples, and beneath them a curious patch of pale phosphorescent light rapidly advancing toward us. In a few seconds it was almost directly underneath the canoe and keeping pace with her. To my consternation I then saw that it was a crocodile about the same length, "over all," as the canoe, the phosphorescence of the water causing his scaly carcass to gleam like a watery moon and distinctly revealing his every movement. We could even see his upturned eyes maintaining a vigilant watch upon us.
"Do you see that, sir?" I whispered.
"I do, indeed," murmured Smellie; "and I only hope the brute is completely ignorant of his ability to capsize us with a single whisk of his tail, if he should choose to do so. Phew! what a flash!"
What a flash, indeed! It seemed as though the entire vault of heaven had exploded into living flame; the whole atmosphere was for a moment irradiated; our surroundings leapt out of the darkness and stood for a single instant vividly revealed; and there, too, away ahead of us, at a distance of perhaps half a mile, appeared the schooner, her hull, spars, and rigging showing black as ebony against the brilliantly--illuminated background of foliage and cloud. Simultaneously with the lightning- flash there came a terrific peal of thunder, which crackled and crashed and roared and rumbled about us with such an awful percussion of sound that I was absolutely deafened for a minute or two. When I recovered my hearing the wild creatures of the forest were still giving vent to their terror in a chorus of roars and howls and screams of dismay. The crocodile, evidently not caring to be out in such weather, had happily vanished. We had scarcely gathered our wits once more about us when the flood-gates of heaven were opened and down came the rain. I had heard a great deal, at one time and another, about the violence of tropical rainstorms, but this exceeded far beyond all bounds the utmost that I had thereby been led to anticipate. It came, not in drops or sheets, or even the metaphorical "buckets-full," but in an absolute _deluge_ of such volume that not only were we drenched to the skin in a single instant, but almost before I was aware of it the water had risen in the bottom of the canoe to a depth of at least four inches. I was actually compelled to lean forward in a stooping posture to catch my breath.
For fully five minutes this overwhelming deluge continued to descend upon us, and then it relaxed somewhat and settled down into a steady downpour.
"Was that object which we caught sight of some distance ahead, just now, the schooner?" asked Smellie as soon as the rushing sound of the rain had so far abated as to permit of our hearing each other's voices.
"It was, sir," I replied.
"Then now is the time for us to make a dash past her; they will scarcely be keeping a very bright look-out in such rain as this," he remarked.
We accordingly hauled out into the centre of the stream and plied our paddles as rapidly as possible. We had been working hard for perhaps five minutes when Smellie said in a low cautious tone of voice:
"Hawkesley!"
"Sir?"
"Do you know, the fancy has seized upon me to have a look in on the deck of that schooner. If we are duly cautious I really believe it might be managed without very much risk. Somehow I do not think they will be keeping a particularly bright look-out on board her just now. The look- out may even be stowed away comfortably in the galley out of the rain. Have you nerve enough for the adventure?"
"Certainly I have, sir," I replied, a bold idea flashing at that instant through my brain.
"Then keep a sharp look-out for her, and, when you see her, work your paddle so as to drop the canoe alongside under her main-chains, and stand by to catch a turn with your painter."
"Ay, ay, sir," I replied; and we once more relapsed into silence and renewed paddling.
Five minutes later a shapeless object loomed up close aboard of us on our port bow, and, sheering the canoe sharply to larboard, we dropped her handsomely and without a sound alongside the schooner just in the wake of her main-chains. I rapidly took a turn with the painter round the foremost channel-iron, and in another moment stood alongside my superior officer in the schooner's main-chains.
Placing our heads close to the dead-eyes of the rigging, so as to expose ourselves as little as possible, we waited patiently for another flash of lightning--Smellie looking aft and I looking forward, by hastily- whispered agreement. Presently the flash came.
"Did you catch sight of the look-out?" whispered Smellie to me.
"No, sir," I whispered back; "did you?"
"No; but I noticed that the skylight and companion are both closed and the slide drawn over--probably to exclude the rain. I fancy most of the people must have turned in."
"Very probably," I acquiesced; "there is not much to tempt them to remain out of their bunks on such a night as this."
"True," remarked Smellie, still in the most cautious of whispers. "I feel more than half-inclined to climb inboard and make a tour of the decks."
"All right, sir!" I agreed. "Let us slip off our shoes and get on board at once. You take the starboard side of the deck; I'll take the port side. We can meet again on the forecastle."
"Agreed," was the reply; and slipping off our shoes forthwith we waited for another flash of lightning, and then, in the succeeding darkness, scrambled noiselessly in on deck and proceeded on our tour of investigation.
On reaching the schooner's deck we separated, and I made it my first business to carefully examine the skylight and companion. In the profound darkness it was quite impossible to _see_ anything; but by careful manipulation I soon ascertained that the former was shut down, and that the doors of the latter were closed and the slide drawn over within about six inches, as Smellie had said. It must have been frightfully hot down in the cabin, but the officers apparently preferred that to having a deluge of rain beating down below. The cabin was dimly lighted by a swinging lamp turned down very low; but I could see no one, nor was there any sound of movement down there--at which I was considerably surprised, because if the schooner really belonged to Senor Madera, as I had supposed, one would have expected to find one or two persons at least on the alert in attendance upon the wounded man.
Having learned all that it was possible to learn in this quarter, I next proceeded aft as far as the taffrail, where I found the deck encumbered on both sides by two big coils of mooring hawser, the other ends of which were secured, as I had noticed earlier in the day, to a couple of tree-trunks on shore.
I next proceeded leisurely forward, noting on my way the fact that the schooner mounted a battery of four brass nine-pounders on her starboard side--and of course her port battery would be the same. The main hatchway was securely covered in with a grating, up through which arose the unmistakable odour which betrays the presence of slaves in a ship's hold. All was quiet, however, below--the poor wretches down there having probably obtained in sleep a temporary forgetfulness of their miserable condition. On reaching the galley I found that the door on the port side was closed; but on applying my ear to the chink I fancied I could detect, through the steady _swish_ of the rain, the sounds of regular breathing, as of a slumbering man. Forward of the galley was the foremast, and on clearing this a faint gleam of light indicated the position of the fore-scuttle; and whilst I was still glancing round in an endeavour to discover the presence of a possible anchor-watch the light was suddenly obscured by the interposition of the second lieutenant's body, as he cautiously peered down into the forecastle. I advanced to his side and laid my hand upon his arm, at the same time mentioning his name to apprise him of my presence.
"Well," he whispered, first drawing me away from the open scuttle, "what have you discovered?"
I told him, adding that I thought the anchor-watch must have taken refuge in the galley from the rain, and there have fallen asleep.
"Yes," whispered Smellie; "he is safe enough there, and sound asleep, for I accidentally touched him without disturbing his slumber."
I thought the time had now arrived for the propounding of my brilliant idea.
"What is to prevent our _seizing the schooner_, sir?" I asked.
"Nothing whatever," was the reply. "I have been thinking of such a thing myself. She is already virtually in our possession, and a very little labour and patience would make her actually so. I think we are men enough to get her under canvas and to handle her afterwards, for she is only a very small craft. The great--and indeed only--danger connected with the affair consists in the possibility of their firing a pistol into the powder-magazine when they discover that they are prisoners, and so sending the ship and all hands sky-high together."
"They _might_ possibly do such a thing," I assented; "but I am willing to take the risk, sir, if you are."
"Well done, Hawkesley! you are made of the right stuff for a sailor," was Smellie's encouraging remark. "Then we'll do it," he continued. "The first thing is to close and fasten the fore-scuttle, which, I have already ascertained, is secured with a hasp and staple. A belaying-pin will secure it effectually; so that is the first thing we need."
A loose belaying-pin was soon found; and, provided with this, we then returned to the fore-scuttle, noiselessly placed the cover in position, and thrust the pin through the staple thus effectually imprisoning the crew.
"Now another belaying-pin and a rope's-end--a fathom or so off the end of the topgallant halliards will do--to secure this vigilant look-out in the galley."
Armed with the necessary gear we next crept toward the galley. The question was, how to secure the man effectually in the intense darkness and confined space, and at the same time prevent his raising an alarm. The only thing was to lure him out on deck; and accordingly, whilst Smellie awaited him at the door, I went in, and grasping him by the shoulder shook him roughly, retiring again promptly as soon as I found that I had aroused him. The fellow rose to his feet hurriedly, evidently under the impression that one of the officers had caught him napping, and, scarcely half-awake, stumbled out on deck muttering in Spanish a few incoherent words which he no doubt intended for an explanation of his presence in the galley. As he emerged from the door I promptly--and I fear rather roughly--forced the belaying-pin between his teeth and secured it there with the aid of my pocket handkerchief, Smellie at the same moment pinioning him from the other side so effectually that he was rendered quite incapable of resistance. A very short time sufficed us to secure him beyond the possibility of escape; and then the next thing demanding our attention was the skylight and companion. I had already thought of a means by which these might be made perfectly secure, and I now offered the idea to Smellie for whatever it might be worth. My suggestion met with his most unqualified approval, and we forthwith set about carrying it out. There was an abundance of firewood in the galley; and, selecting suitable pieces, we lost no time in hacking out half-a-dozen wedges. Armed with these we went aft, and noiselessly closing the companion slide to its full extent firmly wedged it there. A short piece of planking wedged tightly in between the binnacle and the companion doors made the latter perfectly secure; and when we had further heaped upon the skylight lid as many heavy articles as we could find about the decks and conveniently handle between us, the crew were effectually imprisoned below, fore and aft, and the work of seizing the schooner was complete.
We were not a moment too soon. The thunderstorm had all this while been raging with little if any diminution of fury, the rain continuing to pour down upon us in a steady torrent. But hitherto there had been no wind. We had barely completed our task of making matters secure fore and aft, however, when the lightning and rain ceased all in an instant.
"Now look out for the wind, sir," said I to Smellie.
"When the rain comes _before_ the wind. Stand by and well your topsails mind."
"Let the breeze come as soon as it likes," was the cheerful reply; "we shall want a breeze to help us out of the creek presently. But we may as well get the canvas on her whilst the calm lasts, if possible; so run your knife along the lashing of that mainsail, whilst I overhaul the sheet and cast adrift the halliards."
So said, so done, and in another minute the sail was loose. We then tailed on to the halliards, and after a long and weary drag managed to get the sail set after a fashion. But we had hardly begun this task before the squall burst upon us, and well was it for us then that the schooner happened to be moored in so completely sheltered a position. The wind careered, roaring and howling past us overhead, swaying and bending the stoutest forest giants as though they were pliant reeds; but down in the narrow channel, under the lee of the trees, we felt no more than a mere _scuffle_, which, however, was sufficient to make the mainsail flap heavily, and this effectually roused all hands below.
The first intimation we received of this state of things was a loud battering against the inside of the companion doors, accompanied by muffled ejaculations of anger. To this, however, we paid not the slightest heed; we knew that our prisoners were safe for a time at least, so as soon as we had set the mainsail to our satisfaction I skimmed out on the jib-boom and cast loose the jib, then slipped inboard again and helped Smellie to hoist it. This done, by Smellie's order I went aft to the wheel, whilst he, armed with the cook's axe, cut the hawsers fore and aft by which the schooner was secured to the bank.
The wind was very baffling just where we were; moreover we happened, unfortunately, to be on the lee side of the canal, and for a couple of minutes after cutting adrift we were in imminent danger of taking the ground after all our trouble. Between us, however, we succeeded in so far flattening in the main-sheet as to cant her bows to windward, and though the schooner's keel actually stirred up the mud for a distance of quite fifty yards, we at last had the gratification of seeing her draw off the bank. The moment that she was fairly under weigh I drew Smellie's attention to the violent pounding at the companion doors, and suggested as a precautionary measure that we should run one of the guns up against the doors in case of any attempt to batter them down, which we accordingly did; the wheel being lashed for the short period necessary to enable us to accomplish this task.
Very fortunately for us the wind had by this time broken up the dense black canopy of cloud overhead, permitting a star or two to peep through the rents here and there; the moon, too, just past her second quarter, had risen, so that we now had a fair amount of light to aid us. The navigation of the narrow creek was, however, so difficult that a look- out was absolutely necessary, and Smellie accordingly went forward and stationed himself on the stem-head to con the ship.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
WE REJOIN THE "DAPHNE."
The people in the cabin, finding that no good result followed their violent pounding upon the inside of the companion doors, soon abandoned so unprofitable an amusement, and I was just beginning to hope that they had philosophically made up their minds to submit with a good grace to the inevitable, when _crash_ came a bullet through the teak doors and past my head in most uncomfortable proximity to my starboard ear.
Smellie looked round at the sound.
"Any damage done, Hawkesley?" he hailed.
"None so far, I thank you," replied I; and as I spoke there was another report, and another bullet went whizzing past, well to port this time for a change. A minute or two passed, and then came a regular fusillade from quite half a dozen pistols discharged simultaneously I should say, one of the bullets knocking off the worsted cap I wore and grazing the skin of my right temple sufficiently to send a thin stream of blood trickling down into the corner of my right eye.
"You seem to be in a warm corner there," hailed Smellie; "but if you can hold on until we round this point I'll come and relieve you."
"No, thanks, I would very much rather you would continue to con the ship," I replied.
A minute or two later we rounded the point referred to, and, the creek widening out considerably, we began to feel the true breeze, when the schooner, even under the short and ill-set canvas we had been able to give her, at once increased her speed to about six knots. At the same time, however, she began to "gripe" most villainously, and with the helm hard a-weather it was as much as I could possibly do to keep her from running ashore among the bushes on our starboard hand. The people in the cabin were still pertinaciously blazing away through the companion doors at me, and doing some remarkably good shooting, too, taking into consideration the fact that they could only guess at my whereabouts; but I was just then far too busy to pay much attention to them. At length, fearing that, when we got a little lower down and felt the full strength of the breeze, the schooner would, in spite of all my efforts, fairly run away with me, I hailed Smellie, and, briefly explaining the situation to him, asked him to either give her the fore staysail or else come aft and trice up the tack of the mainsail. He chose the latter alternative, as leaving the craft under canvas easily manageable by one hand, and came aft to effect the alteration, hurriedly explaining that he would relieve me as soon as possible; but that there was still some difficult navigation ahead which he wanted to see the schooner safely through.
He triced the tack of the sail close up to the throat of the gaff, and was about to hurry forward again, when the schooner sheering round a bend into a new reach, my attention was suddenly attracted by something ahead and on our lee bow at a distance of perhaps half a mile.
"What is that away there on our lee bow, sir?" I exclaimed; "is it not a craft of some sort?"
Smellie jumped up on the rail to get a better view, and at the same moment a pistol shot rang out from the skylight, the bullet evidently flying close past him. He took not the slightest notice of the shot, but stood there on the rail with his hand shading his eyes, intently examining the object we were rapidly nearing.
"It is a brig," said he, "and unless I am very greatly mistaken--but no, it can't be--and yet it _must_ be too--it surely _is_ the _Vestale_."
"It looks remarkably like her; but I can't make out--confound those fellows! I wish they would stop firing.--I can't make out the white ribbon round her sides," said I.
"No, nor can I. And yet it is scarcely possible we can be mistaken. Luff you may--a little--do not shave her _too_ close. She has no pennant flying, by the way, whoever she may be. Ah! the rascals have pinked me after all," as a rattling volley was discharged at him through the glazed top of the skylight, and I saw him clap his hand to his side.
We were by this time close to the strange brig, on board which lights were burning in the cabin, whilst several persons were visible on deck. As we swept down toward her, hugging her pretty closely, a man sprang into the main rigging and hailed in Spanish:
"_Josefa_ ahoy! What's the matter on board? Why are you going to sea without a full cargo? Have matters gone wrong at the head of the creek?"
"No, no," replied Smellie in the same language, which by the way he had been diligently studying with Antonia's assistance during our sojourn under Don Manuel's roof--"no, everything is all right; our cargo--"
Unfortunately he was here interrupted by another volley from the cabin, and at the same time a voice yelled from the schooner's stern windows:
"We are captured; a prize to the accursed Ingleses."
The words were hardly out of the speaker's mouth when three or four muskets were popped at us from the brig, fortunately without effect. We were, however, by that time past her, and her crew, who seemed thoroughly mystified at the whole affair, made no further effort to molest us. Of one thing, however, we were amply assured, she was not the _Vestale_. The craft we had just passed--whilst the _double_ of the French gun-brig in every other respect--was painted black down to her copper, and she carried under the heel of her bowsprit a life-size figure of a negress with a scarf striped in various colours round her waist. _A negress_? Ah! there could not be a doubt of it. "Mr Smellie," said I, "do you know that craft?"
"N-n-no, I can't say I do, Hawkesley, under her present disguise."
"Disguise, my dear sir; she is not disguised at all. That is the pirate-brig which destroyed poor Richards' vessel--the _Juliet_. And-- yes--there can scarcely be a doubt about it--she must be the notorious _Black Venus_ of which the Yankee skipper told us."
Smellie looked at me in great surprise and perplexity for a moment.
"Upon my word, Hawkesley, I verily believe you are right!" he exclaimed at last. "The _Black Venus_--a negress for a figure-head--ha! are you hurt?"
"Not much, I think," stammered I, as I braced myself resolutely against the wheel, determined that I would _not_ give in. The fact was, that whilst we were talking another shot had been fired through the companion doors, and had struck me fairly in the right shoulder, inflicting such severe pain that for the moment I felt quite incapable of using my right arm. Fortunately the schooner now steered pretty easily, and I could manage the wheel with one hand.
"We must stop this somehow," said Smellie, again jumping on the rail and taking a long look ahead.
"Do you see that very tall tree shooting up above the rest, almost directly ahead?" he continued, pointing out the object as he turned to me.
I replied that I did.
"Well, steer straight for it then, and I will fetch aft some hatch- covers--there are several forward--and place them against the doors; I think I can perhaps contrive to rig up a bullet-proof screen for you."
"But you are hurt yourself, sir," I protested.
"A mere graze after all, I believe," he replied lightly, and forthwith set about the work of dragging aft the hatch-covers, six of which he soon piled in front of the companion.
"There," he said, as he placed the last one in position, "I think you are reasonably safe now; it was a pity we did not think of that before. Shall I bind up your shoulder for you? You are bleeding, I see."
"No, thank you," I replied; "it is only a trifling scratch, I think, not worth troubling about now. I would much rather you would go forward and look out; it would never do to plump the schooner ashore now that we have come so far. Besides, there are the men down forward; they ought to be watched, or perhaps they may succeed in breaking out after all."
Smellie looked at me rather doubtfully for almost a full minute. "I believe you are suffering a great deal of pain, Hawkesley," he said; "but you are a thoroughly plucky fellow; and if you can only keep up until we get clear of this confounded creek I will then relieve you. And I will take care, too, to let Captain Vernon know how admirably you have conducted yourself, not only to-night, but from the moment that we left the _Daphne_ together. Now I am going forward to see that all is right there. If you want help give me a timely hail."
And he turned and walked forward.
The navigation of the creek still continued to be exceedingly intricate and difficult; the creek itself being winding, and the deep-water channel very much more winding still, running now on one side of the creek, now on the other, besides being studded here and there with shoals, sand-banks, and tiny islets. This, whilst it made the navigation very difficult for strangers, added greatly to the value of the creek as a safe and snug resort for slavers; the multitudinous twists in the channel serving to mask it most artfully, and giving it an appearance of terminating at a point beyond which in reality a long stretch of deep water extended.
At length we luffed sharply round a low sandy spit thickly covered with mangroves, kept broad away again directly afterwards, and abruptly found ourselves in the main stream of the Congo. Here the true channel was easily discernible by the long regular run of the sea which had been lashed up by the gale; and I had therefore nothing to do but keep the schooner where the sea ran most regularly, and I should be certain to be right. Smellie now gave a little much-needed attention to the party in the forecastle, who had latterly been very noisy and clamourous in their demonstrations of disapproval. Luckily they did not appear to possess any fire-arms: the only fear from them, therefore, was that they would find means to break out; and this the second lieutenant provided against pretty effectually by placing a large wash-deck tub on the cover and coiling down therein the end of one of the mooring hawsers which stood on the deck near the windlass.
Having done this, he came aft to relieve me at the wheel, a relief for which I was by no means sorry.
The party in the cabin had, shortly before this, given up their amusement of popping at me through the closed doors of the companion, having doubtless heard Smellie dragging along the hatch-covers and placing them in position, and having also formed a very shrewd guess that further mischief on their part was thus effectually frustrated. Unfortunately, however, they had made the discovery that my head could be seen over the companion from the fore end of the skylight, and they had thereupon begun to pop at me from this new position. They had grazed me twice when Smellie came aft, and he had scarcely opened his lips to speak to me when another shot came whizzing past us close enough to him to prove that the fellows still had it in their power to undo all our work by a single lucky hit.
"Why, Hawkesley," he exclaimed, "this will never do; we _must_ put a stop to this somehow. We cannot afford to be hard hit, either of us, for another hour and a half at least. What is to be done? How does your shoulder feel? Can you use your right arm?"
"I am afraid I cannot," I replied; "my shoulder is dreadfully painful, and my arm seems to have no strength in it. But I can steer easily with one hand now?"
"How many people do you think there are in the cabin?" was Smellie's next question.
"I can scarcely say," I replied; "but I have only been able to distinguish _three_ voices so far."
"Three, eh? The skipper and two mates, I suppose." He ruminated a little, stepped forward, and presently returned with a rather formidable-looking iron bar he had evidently noticed some time before; and coolly remarked as he began to drag away the hatch-covers from before the companion:
"I am going down below to give those fellows their _quietus_. If I do not, there is no knowing what mischief they may yet perpetrate before we get the--what was it those fellows called her?--ah! the _Josefa_--before we get the _Josefa_ under the _Daphne's_ guns. Now, choose a star to steer by before I remove any more of this lumber, and then sit down on deck as much on one side as you can get; I shall try to draw their fire and then rush down upon them."
With that he removed his jacket and threw it loosely over the iron bar, which he laid aside for the moment whilst he cleared away the obstructions from before the doors. Then, taking up the coat and holding it well in front of the opening so as to produce in the uncertain light the appearance of a figure standing there, he suddenly flung back the slide and threw open the doors.
The immediate results were a couple of pistol shots and a rush up the companion-ladder, the latter of which Smellie promptly stopped by swinging his somewhat bulky carcass into the opening and letting himself drop plump down upon the individuals who were making it. There was a scuffle at the bottom of the ladder, another pistol shot, two or three dull crushing blows, another brief scuffle, and then Smellie reappeared, with blood flowing freely from his left arm, and a truculent-looking Spaniard in tow. This fellow he dragged on deck, and unceremoniously kicking his feet from under him, lashed him securely with the end of the topgallant brace. This done, he once more dived below, and in due time two more Spaniards, senseless and bleeding, were brought up out of the cabin and secured.
"There," he said, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, "I think we shall now manage to make the rest of our trip unmolested, and without having constantly before our eyes the fear of being blown clear across the Congo. Let me take the wheel; I am sure you must be sadly in need of a spell. But before you do anything else I will get you to clap a bandage of some sort round my arm here; I am bleeding so profusely that I think the bullet must have severed an artery. Here is my handkerchief, clap it round the arm and haul it as taut as you can; the great thing just now is to stop the bleeding; Doctor Burnett will do all that is necessary for us when we reach the sloop."
I bound up his arm after a fashion, making a good enough job of it to stop the bleeding, and then went forward to keep a look-out. We were foaming down the river at a tremendous pace, the gale being almost dead fair for us, and having the additional impetus of a red-hot tide under foot we swept down past the land as though we had been a steamer. Sooth to say, however, I scarcely felt in cue just then either to admire the _Josefa's_ paces or to take much note of the wonderful picture presented by the river, with its brown mud-tinted waters lashed into fury by the breath of the tropical tempest and chequered here and there with the shadows of the scurrying clouds, or lighted up by the phosphorescence which tipped each wave with a crest of scintillating silvery stars. The wound in my shoulder was every moment becoming more excruciatingly painful and more exacting in its demands upon my attention; my interest seemed to centre itself upon the _Daphne_ and her surgeon; and it was with a feeling of ineffable relief that, on jibing round Shark Point, about an hour and a half after clearing the creek, I saw at a distance of about seven miles away an indistinct object off Padron Point which I knew must be the _Daphne_ at anchor.
"Do you see the sloop, sir?" I hailed.
"No," returned Smellie from his post at the wheel, stooping and peering straight into the darkness. "I cannot make her out from here. Do you see her?"
"Yes, sir," I replied joyously; "there she is, broad on our port bow. Luff, sir, you may."
"Luff," I heard Smellie return; and the schooner's bows swept round until they pointed fair for the distant object. "Steady, sir!"
"Steady it is," replied Smellie, his voice sounding weird and mournful above the roar of the wind and the wash of the sea. I managed to trim over the jib-sheet without assistance, and then leaned over the bulwarks watching the gradual way in which the small dark blot on the horizon swelled and developed into a stately ship with lofty masts, long yards, and a delicate maze of rigging all as neat and trig as though she had but just emerged from the dockyard.
The sea being quite smooth after we had once rounded Shark Point, we made the run down to the sloop in about an hour, passing to windward of her, and then jibing over and rounding-to on her lee quarter, with our jib-sheet to windward.
As we approached the sloop I noticed that lights were still burning in the skipper's cabin, and I thought I could detect a human face or two peering curiously out at us from the ports. The dear old hooker was of course riding head to wind, and as we swept down across her bows within easy hailing distance a figure suddenly appeared standing on the knight- heads, and Armitage's voice rang out across the water with the hail of:
"Schooner ahoy!"
"Hillo!" responded Smellie.
A slight and barely perceptible pause; and then--
"What schooner is that?"
"The _Josefa_, slave schooner. Is that Mr Armitage?"
"Ay, ay, it is. Who may you be, pray?"
I had by this time gone aft and was standing by Smellie's side. The schooner was just jibing over and darting along on the _Daphne's_ starboard side.
"Armitage evidently has not recognised my voice as yet," remarked Smellie, "or else," he added, "they have given us up on board as dead, and he is unable so suddenly to realise the fact of our being still alive."
Then, as we finally rounded-to under the _Daphne's_ quarter, Armitage reappeared aft, and the confab was renewed, Smellie this time taking the lead.
"_Daphne_ ahoy!" he hailed, "has Captain Vernon yet retired for the night?"
"I think not," was the reply. "What do you want?"
"Kindly pass the word to him that Mr Smellie and Mr Hawkesley are alongside in a captured slaver: and say we shall feel greatly obliged if he will send a prize crew on board us to take possession."
"Ay, ay! I will."
Armitage thereupon disappeared, and, we being at the time to leeward of the sloop, a slight but distinct commotion became perceptible on board her. Presently a figure appeared in the fore-rigging, and a deep, gruff, hoarse voice hailed:
"Schooner ahoy! Did you say as Mr Smellie and Mr Hawkesley was on board you?"
"Yes I did. Do you not recognise my voice, Collins?"
"Ay, ay, sir! in course I does _now_," was the boatswain's hearty response. Then there followed, in lower tones, certain remarks of which we could only catch such fragments as:
"--lieutenant hisself, by--reefer, too;--man--rigging, you sea-dogs-- give--sailors' welcome."
Then in an instant the lower rigging became black with the figures of the men, and, with Collins as fugleman, they greeted our unexpected return with three as hearty cheers as ever pealed from the throats of British seamen.
For the life of me I could not just then have spoken a word had it been ever so necessary. That hearty ringing British cheer gave me the first convincing assurance that I was once more _safe_ and among friends, and, at the same time, enabled me to _fully_ realise, as I never had before, the extreme peril to which I had been exposed since I last saw the craft that lay there rolling gracefully upon the ground-swell, within a biscuit toss of us.
The men were just clearing the rigging when a small slight figure appeared on the sloop's quarter, and Captain Vernon's voice hailed us through the speaking-trumpet:
"Schooner ahoy! How many hands shall I send you?"
"A dozen men will be sufficient, sir," replied Smellie. "And I shall feel obliged if you will send with them the necessary officers to relieve us. We are both hurt, and in need of the doctor's services."
"You shall have the men at once," was the reply. "Shall I send Burnett to you, or can you come on board the sloop?"
"We will rejoin the sloop, sir, thank you. Our injuries are not very serious," replied Smellie.
"Very well, be it so," returned the skipper; and there the conversation ended.
The next moment the clear _tee-tee-tweetle-tweetle-weetle-wee-e-e_ of the boatswain's whistle came floating down to us, followed by his gruff "Cutters away!" and presently we saw the boat glide down the ship's side, and, after a very brief delay, shove off and come sweeping down toward us.
Five minutes later the prize crew, under Williams, the master's mate, with young Peters, a fellow mid of mine, as his second in command, stood upon the schooner's deck, and Mr Austin, who had accompanied them, was wringing our hands as though he would wring them off.
Smellie saw the exquisite agony which our warm-hearted "first luff" was unconsciously inflicting upon _me_ by his effusive greeting, and thoughtfully interposed with a--
"Gently, Edgar, old fellow. I am afraid you are handling poor Hawkesley a little roughly. He has received rather a bad hurt in the right shoulder to-night in our fight with the schooner's people."
"Fight!--schooner's people! I beg your pardon, Hawkesley; I hope I haven't hurt you. Why, you never mean to say you have had to _fight_ for the schooner?" Austin interrupted, aghast. "Well, we _took_ her by surprise; but her people proved very troublesome, and very pertinacious in their efforts to get her back again," Smellie replied. "But, come, let us get on board the old _Daphne_ once more. I long to set foot on her planks again; and, like Hawkesley here, I shall not be sorry to renew my acquaintance with Burnett."
So said, so done. We made our way into the boat, leaving the prize crew to secure the prisoners, and a few minutes later stood once more safe, if not altogether sound, on the deck of the dear old _Daphne_.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
A STERN CHASE--AND A FRUITLESS ONE.
"Welcome back to the _Daphne_, gentlemen!" exclaimed Captain Vernon as he met us at the gangway and extended his hand, first to Smellie and then to me. "This is indeed a pleasant surprise--for all hands, I will venture to say, though Armitage loses his step, at least _pro tem_., in consequence of your reappearance, Mr Smellie. But he is a good-hearted fellow, and when he entered my cabin to report you alongside, though he seemed a trifle incredulous as to your personality, he was as delighted as a schoolboy at the prospect of a holiday."
Smellie took the skipper's extended hand, and after replying suitably to his greeting, said:
"I must beg you will excuse Hawkesley, sir, if he gives you his left instead of his right hand. His starboard shoulder has been disabled to- night by a pistol-bullet whilst supporting me most intrepidly in the task of bringing out the schooner."
The skipper seized my left hand with his right, and pressing it earnestly yet gently, said:
"I am proud and pleased to hear so gratifying an account of you, Hawkesley. Mr Armitage has already borne witness to your gallantry during the night attack upon the slavers; and it was with deep and sincere sorrow that I received the news of your being, with Mr Smellie, missing. I fear, gentlemen, your friends at home will suffer a great deal of, happily unnecessary, sorrow at the news which I felt it my duty to send home; but that can all be repaired by your personally despatching to them the agreeable intelligence of your both being still in the land of the living. But what of your hurts? Are they too serious to be attended to in my cabin? They are not? I am glad to hear that. Then follow me, both of you, please; for I long to hear where you have been, what doing all this time, and how you happened to turn up so opportunely here to-night I will send for Burnett to bring his tools into my cabin; and you can satisfy my curiosity whilst he is doing the needful for you. Will you join us, Austin? I'll be bound your ears are tingling to hear what has befallen these wandering knights."
Thereupon we filed down below in the skipper's wake--I for one being most heartily thankful to find myself where I could once more sit down and rest my aching limbs. The skipper's steward brought out some wine and glasses, and then at Burnett's request--that individual having promptly turned up--went away to get ready some warm water.
"I think," said our genial medico, turning to me, "_you_ look in most urgent need of my services, so I will begin with you, young gentleman, if you please. Now whereabouts are your hurts?"
I told him, and he straightway began to cut away the sleeve of my coat and shirt, preparatory to more serious operations; whilst Smellie, drawing his chair up to the table, helped himself to a glass of wine, and then said:
"Before I begin my story, sir, will you permit me to ask what was the ultimate result of that most disastrous expedition against the slavers? I am naturally anxious to know, of course, seeing that upon my shoulders rests the odium of our failure."
Captain Vernon stared hard at the second lieutenant for a minute, and then said:
"My dear Smellie, what in the world are you talking about? Disaster! Odium! Why, man, the expedition was a _success_, not a failure. I admit that there was, most unfortunately, a very serious loss of life among the unhappy slaves; but we took the brigantine and afterwards raised the schooner, with a loss to ourselves of only four killed--now that you two have turned up. It was a most dashing affair, and admirably conducted, when we take into consideration the elaborate preparations which had been evidently made for your reception; and the _ultimate result_ about which you inquire so anxiously will, I hope, be a nice little bit of prize-money to all hands, and richly deserved promotion to yourself, Armitage, and young Williams."
It was now Smellie's turn to look surprised.
"You astonish me, sir," he said. "The last I remember of the affair is that, after a most stubborn and protracted fight, in which the schooner was sunk, we succeeded in gaining possession of the brig, only to be blown out of her a few minutes later, however; and my own impression-- and Hawkesley's too, for that matter, as I afterwards discovered on comparing notes with him--was that our losses must have amounted to at least half of the men composing the expedition."
"Well," said Captain Vernon, "I am happy to tell you that you were mistaken. Our total loss over that affair amounts to four men killed; but the severity of the fight is amply testified to by the fact that not one man out of the whole number escaped without a wound of some kind, more or less serious. They have all recovered, however, I am happy to say, and we have not at present a sick man in the ship. There can be no doubt that the slavers somehow received timely notice of our presence in the river, through the instrumentality of your fair-speaking friend, the skipper of the _Pensacola_, I strongly suspect, and that they made the best possible use of the time at their disposal. Had I been as wise then as I am now my arrangements would have been very different. However, it is easy to be wise after the event; and I am thankful that matters turned out so well. And now, I think we are fairly entitled to hear your story."
Thereupon Smellie launched out into a detailed recital of all that had befallen us from the moment of the explosion on board the brig up to our unexpected arrival that same night alongside the _Daphne_. He was interrupted by countless exclamations of astonishment and sympathy; and when he had finished there seemed to be no end to the questions which one and another was anxious to put to him. In the midst of it all, however, Burnett broke in with the announcement that, having finished with me, he was ready to attend to the second lieutenant.
The worthy medico's attentions to me had been, as may be gathered from the fact that they outlasted Smellie's story, of somewhat protracted duration, and that they were of an exceedingly painful character I can abundantly testify, the ball having broken my shoulder-blade and then buried itself among the muscles of the shoulder, whence Burnett insisted on extracting it, in spite of my protestations that I was quite willing to postpone that operation to a more convenient season. After much groping and probing about, however, utterly regardless of the excruciating agony he thus inflicted upon me, the conscientious Burnett had at last succeeded in extracting the ball, which he kindly presented to me as a memento, and then the rest of the work was, comparatively speaking, plain sailing. My wound was washed, dressed, and made comfortable; and I was dismissed with a strict injunction to turn-in at once.
To this the skipper moved, as an amendment, that I be permitted to drink a single glass of wine before retiring; and whilst I was sipping this they turned upon me with their questions, with the result that I soon forgot all about my hammock. At length Captain Vernon said:
"By-the-by, Hawkesley, what sort of a young lady is this Dona Antonia whom Mr Smellie has mentioned once or twice?"
"She is simply the most lovely creature I have ever seen, sir," I replied enthusiastically.
"--And my promised wife," jerked in Smellie, in a tone which warned all hands that there must be no jocularity in connection with the mention of the dona's name.
"Ho, ho!" ejaculated the skipper with a whistle of surprise. "That is how the wind blows, is it? Upon my word, Smellie, I heartily congratulate you upon your conquest. Quite a romantic affair, really. And pray, Mr Hawkesley, what success have _you_ met with in Cupid's warfare?"
"None whatever, sir," I replied with a laugh. "The only other lady in Don Manuel's household was old Dolores, Dona Antonia's attendant, and I was positively afraid to try the effect of my fascinations upon her."
"Lest you should prove only _too_ successful," laughed the skipper. "By the way, Smellie, do you think this Don Manuel was quite plain and above-board with you? I suppose _he_ does nothing in the slave-trading business, eh?"
"I think not, sir; though he undoubtedly possesses the acquaintance of a certain Senor Madera, a most suspicious-looking character, whose name I have already mentioned to you--by the way, Hawkesley, you were evidently mistaken as to the _Josefa_ belonging to Madera; he was nowhere to be found on board her."
"What is it, Mr Armitage?" said the skipper just then, as the third lieutenant made his appearance at the door.
"A vessel, apparently a brig, sir, has just come into view under the northern shore, evidently having just left the river. She is hugging the land very closely, keeping well under its shadow, in fact, and has all the appearance of being anxious to avoid attracting our attention."
The skipper glanced interrogatively at Smellie, who at once responded to the look by saying:
"The _Black Venus_, without doubt. I expect that our running away with the _Josefa_ has given them the alarm, and they have determined to slip out whilst the option remains to them, and take their chance of being able to give us the slip."
"They shall not do that if I can help it," remarked the skipper energetically; and, rising to his feet, he gave orders for all hands to be called forthwith. This broke up the party in the cabin, much to the gratification of Burnett, who now insisted that both Smellie and I should retire to our hammocks forthwith, and on no account presume to leave them again until we had his permission.
I was not very long in undressing, having secured the services of a marine to assist me in the operation; but before I had gained my hammock I was rejoined by Keene, a brother mid, whose watch it was below, and who brought me down the news that the sloop was under weigh and fairly after the stranger, who, as soon as our canvas dropped from the yards, had squared away on a westerly course with the wind on her quarter and a whole cloud of studding-sails set to windward.
What with the excitement of finding myself once more among so many friends and the pain of my wound it was some time before I succeeded in getting to sleep that night; and before I did so the _Daphne_ was rolling like an empty hogshead, showing how rapidly she had run off the land and into the sea knocked up by the gale.
When I awoke next morning the wind had dropped to a considerable extent, the sea had gone down, and the ship was a great deal steadier under her canvas. I was most anxious to leave my hammock and go on deck, but this Burnett would not for a moment consent to; my wound was very much inflamed and exceedingly painful, the result, doubtless, of the probing for the bullet on the night before; and instead of being allowed to turn out I was removed in my hammock, just as I was, to the sick bay. I was ordered to keep very quiet, but I managed to learn, nevertheless, that the chase was still in sight directly ahead, about nine miles distant, and that, though she certainly was not running away from us, there seemed to be little hope of our overtaking her for some time to come.
Matters remained in this unsatisfactory state for the next five days, the _Daphne_ keeping the chase in sight during the whole of that time, but failing to come up with her. The distance between the two vessels varied according to the weather, the chase appearing to have the best of it in a strong breeze, whilst the _Daphne_ was slightly the faster of the two in light airs. Unfortunately for us, the wind continued very nearly dead fair, or about three points on our starboard quarter, whereas the sloop seemed to do best with the wind abeam. We would not have objected even to a moderate breeze dead in our teeth, our craft being remarkably fast on a taut bowline; and as day after day went by without any apparent prospect of an end of the chase the barometer was anxiously watched, in the hope that before long we should be favoured with a change of weather.
On the morning of the fifth day I was so much better that, acceding to my urgent request, Burnett consented, with many doubtful shakes of the head, to my leaving my hammock and taking the air on deck for an hour or two. I accordingly dressed as rapidly as possible, and got on deck just in time to catch sight of the chase, about six miles distant, before a sea mist settled down on the scene, which soon effectually concealed her from our view. This was particularly exasperating, since, the wind having dropped to about a five-knot breeze, we had been slowly but perceptibly gaining on her for the last three or four hours; and now, when at length there appeared a prospect of overtaking her, a chance to elude us in the fog had presented itself. Of course it was utterly impossible to guess what ruse so wary a foe would resort to, but that he would have recourse to one of some kind was a moral certainty. Captain Vernon at once took counsel with his first and second lieutenants as to what course it would be most advisable to adopt under the circumstances, and it was at last decided to put the ship upon a wind, and make short tacks to the eastward until the fog should clear, it being thought highly probable that the chase would likewise double back upon her former course in the hope of our running past her in the fog.
The studding-sails were accordingly taken in, and the ship brought to the wind on the starboard tack. We made short reaches, tacking every hour, and had gone about for the third time when, just as the men were coiling up the ropes fore and aft, the look-out reported:
"Sail, ho! straight ahead. Hard up, sir, or you will be into her."
Mr Austin, who had charge of the deck, sprang upon a gun, and peered out eagerly ahead.
"Hard over, my man, _hard_ over!" he exclaimed excitedly; then continued, after a moment of breathless suspense:
"All clear, all clear! we have _just_ missed her, and that is all. By Jove, Hawkesley, that was a narrow squeak, eh? Why, it is surely the _Vestale_! _Vestale_ ahoy!"
"Hillo!" was the response from the other craft, indubitably the brig which we had fallen in with shortly after our first look into the Congo, and which we had been given to understand was the _Vestale_, French gun- brig.
"Have you sighted a sail of any kind to-day?" hailed Austin.
"Non, mon Dieu! We have not nevaire seen a sail until now since we leave Sierra Leone four weeks ago."
This ended the communication between the two ships, the _Vestale_--or whatever she was--disappearing again into the fog before the last words of the reply to our question had been uttered.
"Well," said Mr Austin, as he jumped down off the gun, "I am disappointed. When I first caught sight of that craft close under our bows I thought for a moment that we had made a clever guess; that the chase had doubled on her track, and that, by a lucky accident, we had stumbled fairly upon her in the fog. But as soon as I caught sight of the white figure-head and the streak round her sides I saw that I was mistaken. Well, we _may_ drop upon the fellow yet. I would give a ten- pound note this instant if the fog would only lift."
"I cannot understand it for the life of me," I replied in a dazed sort of way, as I stepped gingerly down off the gun upon which I, like the first lieutenant, had jumped in the first of the excitement.
Mr Austin looked at me questioningly.
"What is it that you cannot understand, Hawkesley?" he asked.
"That brig--the _Vestale_, as she calls herself--and all connected with her," I answered.
"Why, what _is_ there to understand about her? Or rather, what is there that is incomprehensible about her?" he asked sharply.
"_Everything_," I replied eagerly. "In the first place, we have only the statement of one man--and he a member of her own crew--that she actually _is_ the veritable _Vestale_, French gun-brig, which we know to be cruising in these waters. Secondly, her very extraordinary resemblance to the _Black Venus_, which, as you are aware, I have seen, absolutely _compels_ me, against my better judgment, to the belief that the two brigs are, in some mysterious way, intimately associated together, if, indeed, they are not absolutely _one and the same vessel_. And thirdly, my suspicion that the latter is the case receives strong confirmation from the fact that on _both_ occasions when we have been after the one--the _Black Venus_--we have encountered the other--the _Vestale_."
Mr Austin stared at me in a very peculiar way for a few minutes, and then said:
"Well, Hawkesley, your last assertion is undoubtedly true; but what does it prove? It can be nothing more than a curious coincidence."
"So I have assured myself over and over again, when my suspicions were strengthened by the first occurrence of the coincidence; and so I shall doubtless assure myself over and over again during the next few days," I replied. "But if a coincidence only it is certainly curious that it should have occurred on two occasions."
"I am not quite prepared to admit that," said the first lieutenant. "And, then, as to the remarkable resemblance between the two vessels, do you not think, now, honestly, Hawkesley, that your very extraordinary suspicions may have magnified that resemblance?"
"No," said I; "I do not. I only wish Mr Smellie had been on deck just now to have caught a glimpse of that inexplicable brig; he would have borne convincing testimony to the marvellous likeness between them. Why, sir, but for the white ribbon round the one, and the difference in the figure-heads, the two craft would be positively indistinguishable; so completely so, indeed, that poor Richards was actually unable to believe the evidence of his own senses, and, I firmly believe, was convinced of the identity of the two vessels."
"Indeed!" said Mr Austin in a tone of great surprise. "That is news to me. So Richards shared your suspicions, did he?"
"He did, indeed, sir," I replied. "It was, in fact, his extraordinary demeanour on the occasion of our second encounter with the _Vestale_-- you will remember the circumstance, sir?--which confirmed my suspicions; suspicions which, up to then, I had attributed solely to some aberration of fancy on my part. Then, again, when we questioned the skipper of the _Pensacola_ relative to the _Black Venus_ and the _Vestale_, how evasive were his replies!"
"Look here, Hawkesley; you have interested me in spite of myself," said Mr Austin. "If you are not too tired I should like you to tell me the whole history of these singular suspicions of yours from the very moment of their birth."
"I will, sir, with pleasure. They arose with Monsieur Le Breton's visit to us on the occasion of our first falling in with the _Vestale_," I replied. And then having at last finally broached the subject which had been for so long a secret source of mental disquiet to me, I fully detailed to the first luff all those suspicious circumstances--trifling in themselves but important when regarded collectively--which I have already confided to the reader. When I had finished he remained silent for a long time, nearly a quarter of an hour I should think, with his hands clasped behind his back and his eyes bent on the deck, evidently cogitating deeply. Finally he emerged from his abstraction with a start, cast an eye aloft at the sails, and then turning to me said:
"You have given me something to think about now with a vengeance, Hawkesley. If indeed your suspicions as to the honesty of the _Vestale_ should prove well-founded, your mention of them and the acute perception which caused you in the first instance to entertain them will constitute a very valuable service--for which I will take care that you get full credit--and may very possibly lead to the final detection and suppression of a series of hitherto utterly unaccountable transactions of a most nefarious character. At all events we can do no harm by keeping a wary eye upon this alleged _Vestale_ for the future, and I will make it my business to invent some plausible pretext for boarding her on the first opportunity which presents itself. And now I think you have been on deck quite as long as is good for you, so away you go below again and get back to your hammock. Such a wound as yours is not to be trifled with in this abominable climate; and you know,"--with a smile half good-humoured and half satirical--"we must take every possible care of a young gentleman who seems destined to teach us, from the captain downwards, our business. There, now, don't look hurt, my lad; you did quite right in speaking to me, and I am very much obliged to you for so doing; I only regret that you did not earlier make me your confidant. Now away you go below at once."
I of course did dutifully as I was bidden, and, truth to tell, was by no means sorry to regain my hammock, having soon found that my strength was by no means as great as I had expected. That same night I suffered from a considerable accession of fever, and in fine was confined to my hammock for rather more than three weeks from that date, at the end of which I became once more convalescent, and--this time observing proper precautions and a strict adherence to the doctor's orders--finally managed to get myself reported as once more fit for duty six weeks from the day on which Smellie and I rejoined the _Daphne_. I may as well here mention that the fog which so inopportunely enveloped us on the day of my conversation with Mr Austin did not clear away until just before sunset; and when it did the horizon was clear all round us, no trace of a sail being visible in any direction from our main-royal yard.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
A VERY MYSTERIOUS OCCURRENCE.
In extreme disgust at the loss of the notorious _Black Venus_ Captain Vernon reluctantly gave orders for the resumption of the cruise, and the _Daphne_ was once more headed in for the land, it being the skipper's intention to give a look in at all the likely places along the coast as far north as the Bight of Benin.
This was terribly tedious and particularly trying to the men, it being all boat work. The exploration of the Fernan Vas river occupied thirty hours, whilst in the case of the Ogowe river the boats were away from the ship for four days and three nights; the result being that when at last we went into Sierra Leone we had ten men down with fever, and had lost four more from the same cause. The worst of it all was that our labour had been wholly in vain, not a single prize being taken nor a suspicious craft fallen in with. Here we found Williams and the prize crew of the _Josefa_ awaiting us according to instructions; so shipping them and landing the sick men Captain Vernon lost no time in putting to sea once more.
On leaving Sierra Leone a course was shaped for the Congo, and after a long and very tedious passage, during the whole of which we had to contend against light head-winds, we found ourselves once more within sight of the river at daybreak.
It was stark calm, with a cloudless sky, and a long lazy swell came creeping in from the southward and eastward causing the sloop to roll most uncomfortably. We were about twelve miles off the land; and at about half-way between us and it, becalmed like ourselves, there lay a brig, which our telescopes informed us was the _Vestale_. On this fact being decisively ascertained Mr Austin came up to me and said:
"There is your _bete noire_, the _Vestale_, once more, you see, Hawkesley. I have been thinking a great deal about what you said to me some time ago respecting her, and I have come to the conclusion that it is quite worth our while to look into the matter, at least so far as will enable us to judge whether your suspicions are wholly groundless or not. If they are--if, in fact, the craft proves to be what she professes herself--well and good; we can dismiss the affair finally and for ever from our minds and give our undivided attention to other matters. But I confess you have to a certain extent imbued me with your own doubts as to the strict integrity of yonder brig; there are one or two little matters you mentioned which escaped my notice end which certainly have rather a suspicious appearance. I therefore intend--if the craft is bound into the river like ourselves--to make an early opportunity to pay her a visit on some pretext or other."
"Have you mentioned the matter to Captain Vernon yet, sir?" I inquired.
"No, not yet," was the reply. "I must have something a little more definite to say before I broach the matter to him. But here comes the breeze at last, a _sea_ breeze, too, thank Heaven! Man the braces fore and aft; square away the yards and brail in the mizen. Hard up with your helm, my man, and keep her dead away for the mouth of the river."
The faint blue line along the western horizon came creeping gradually down toward us, and presently a catspaw or two ruffled the glassy surface of the water for a moment and disappeared. Then a deliciously cool and refreshing draught of air fanned our faces and swelled out the light upper canvas for an instant, died away, came again a trifle stronger and lasted for perhaps half a minute, then with a flap the canvas collapsed, filled again, the sloop gathered way and paid off with her head to the eastward; a bubble or two floated past her sides, a faint ripple arose under her bows, grew larger, became audible, the glassy surface of the water grew gently ruffled and assumed an exquisite cerulean tint, the wheel began to press against the helmsman's hand, and away we went straight for the mouth of the river--and the brig.
The breeze, gentle though it was, reached our neighbour long before we did, and as soon as she felt it she too bore up, squared her yards, and headed direct for Boolambemba Point. She was about three miles ahead of us when the breeze reached her, and I felt very curious to see where she would finally come to an anchor. The only _safe_ anchorage is in Banana Creek, and though slavers constantly resort to the numerous other creeks and inlets higher up the river no captain of a man-of-war would think for a moment of risking his ship in any of them unless the emergency happened to be very pressing, nor even then unless his vessel happened to be of exceedingly light draught. If therefore the brig anchored in Banana Creek I should accept it as a point in favour of her honesty; if not, my suspicions would be stronger than ever.
It so happened that she _did_ anchor in Banana Creek, but fully a quarter of a mile higher up it than old Mildmay the master thought it prudent for us to venture, though in obedience to a hint from Mr Austin he took us much further in than where we had anchored on our previous visit. The brig got in fully half an hour before us, her canvas was consequently stowed, her yards squared, ropes hauled taut and coiled down, and her boats in the water when our anchor at length plunged into the muddy opaque-looking water of the creek.
We were barely brought up--and indeed the hands were still aloft stowing the canvas--when a gig shoved off from the brig and pulled down the creek. A few minutes later she dashed alongside and Monsieur Le Breton once more presented himself upon our quarter-deck, cap in had, bowing, smiling, and grimacing as only a Frenchman can. His visit, though such a singularly precipitate one, was, it soon turned out, merely a visit of ceremony, which he prolonged to such an extent that Captain Vernon was perforce obliged to invite him down below to breakfast, Mr Austin and I being also the skipper's guests on that particular morning. In the course of the meal he made several very complimentary remarks as to the appearance of the _Daphne_, and finally--when I suppose he saw that he had thus completely won poor Austin's heart--he very politely expressed his extreme desire to take a look through the ship, a desire which the first luff with equal politeness assured him it would give him great pleasure to gratify.
The fellow certainly had a wonderfully plausible and winning way with him, there was no denying that, and I saw that under its influence the slight suspicions which I had imparted to poor honest-hearted, straightforward Mr Austin were melting like snowflakes under a summer sun. Still, under all the plausibility, the delicate flattery, and the elaborate politeness of the man, there was a vague indefinable _something_ to which I found it quite impossible to reconcile myself; and I watched him as a cat does a mouse, anxious to note whatever suspicious circumstances might transpire, in order that I might be fully prepared for the talk with the first luff which I felt certain would closely follow upon our visitor's departure. To my chagrin, however, I was on this occasion wholly unable to detect anything whatever out of the common, and Monsieur Le Breton's broken English, upon which I had laid such stress in my former conversation with Mr Austin, was now quite consistent and irreproachable. He was taken through the ship and shown every nook and corner in her, and finally, about noon, took his leave. Just before going down over the side he apologised for the non- appearance of "Captain Dubosc" upon the plea that that gentleman was confined to his hammock with a severe attack of dysentery; but if the officers of the _Daphne_ would honour the _estate's_ ward-room with their presence at dinner that evening Monsieur Le Breton and his brother officers would be "enchanted." And, apparently as an after-thought, when his foot was on the top step of the gangway ladder, this very agreeable gentleman urgently requested the pleasure of Mr Austin's company on a sporting expedition which he and one or two more were about to undertake that afternoon. This latter invitation was declined upon the plea of stress of work; but the invitation to dinner was accepted conditionally upon the work being in a sufficiently forward state to allow of the officers leaving the ship.
We were indeed exceedingly busy that day, Mr Austin having determined to take advantage of the opportunity which our being at anchor afforded him to lift the rigging off the mastheads and give it and them a thorough overhaul.
As for me, I was engaged during the whole of the day in charge of a boat's crew filling up our water casks and tanks and foraging in the adjacent forest for a supply of fruit, not a single native canoe having approached us during the entire day. It was, consequently, not until late in the afternoon, when the neck of the day's work was broken, that I had an opportunity of exchanging a word or two with the first lieutenant on the subject of our neighbour, the brig, and then it was only a word or two. Mr Austin opened the conversation with:
"Well, Hawkesley, what do you think of our friend Monsieur Le Breton, now that you have had an opportunity of bettering your acquaintance with him?"
"Well, sir," I replied; "on the whole I am inclined to think that there is just a bare possibility of my having been mistaken in my estimate of him and of the character of the brig. Still--"
"Still your mind is not yet quite easy," Mr Austin laughingly interrupted me. "Now, what could you possibly have noticed of a suspicious character in the poor fellow's conduct this morning?"
"Nothing," I was obliged to acknowledge. "I am quite prepared to admit, sir, a total absence of those peculiarities of manner which _I am certain_ existed during his first visit to the ship. But did you not think it strange that he should be in such a tremendous hurry to come on board us this morning? At first I was inclined to think his object might be to prevent a visit from some of us to the brig; but that supposition is met, to some extent, by his invitation to us for this evening. The delay may, of course, have afforded them an opportunity to make arrangements for our reception by putting out of sight any--"
"Any tell-tale evidences of their dishonesty," laughed the first luff. "Really, Hawkesley, I must say I think you are deceiving yourself and worrying yourself unnecessarily. Of course I can quite understand how, having harboured those extraordinary suspicions of yours for so great a length of time, you now find it difficult to dismiss them all in a moment; but have patience for a few hours more; an excellent opportunity is now offered us for satisfying ourselves as to the brig's _bona fides_, and you may rest assured that I shall make the very best use of it. I find I shall be the only guest of the Frenchmen to-night--the rest of the officers are far too busy to leave the ship, and indeed _I_ can hardly be spared, and would not go but for the fact that it would look uncivil if we in a body declined their invitation; but I will see that to-morrow you have an opportunity of going on board and investigating for yourself. And now I must be off to make myself presentable, or I shall be keeping my hosts waiting, and perhaps spoil their dinner."
With that he dived below; and I turned away to attend to some little matter connected with the progress of the work. A quarter of an hour later he reappeared on deck, clean-shaven, and looking very handsome and seamanlike in his best suit of uniform; and, the gig being piped away, he went down over the side, giving me a parting nod as he did so. I watched the boat dash up alongside the brig; noted that the side was manned in due form, that our worthy "first" was received by a group of officers on the quarter-deck, conspicuous among whom I could make out with the aid of my glass Monsieur Le Breton, evidently performing the ceremony of introduction; and then the work being finished, ropes coiled down, and everything once more restored to its proper place, the hands were piped to tea, and I descended to the midshipmen's den, thoroughly tired out with my unwonted exertion.
When I again went on deck, about an hour later, the stars were shining brilliantly; the moon, about three days old, was gleaming with a soft subdued radiance through the topmost branches of the trees on the adjacent shore; and the night-mist was already gathering so thickly on the bosom of the river that the brig loomed through it vague, shadowy, and indistinct as a phantom craft. The tide was ebbing, and her stern was turned toward us, but no lights appeared gleaming through her cabin windows, which struck me as being a little strange until I remembered that Monsieur Le Breton had spoken of her captain being ill. A few of our lads were amusing themselves on the forecastle, dancing to the enlivening strains of the cook's fiddle, or singing songs; and an occasional round of applause or an answering song came floating down upon the gentle night-breeze from the brig; but as the fog grew thicker these sounds gradually ceased, we lost sight of her altogether, and so far as sound or sight was concerned we might have been the only craft in the entire river. Our own lads also quieted down; and finally the only sounds which broke the solemn stillness of the night were the sighing of the breeze, the gentle rustle of the foliage, and the loud sonorous _chirr, chirr, chirr_ of the insects.
It was about half-past nine o'clock, and I was just thinking of going below to turn-in when I became conscious of the sounds of a commotion of some sort; a muffled cry, which seemed to me like a call for "help;" a dull thud, as of a falling body, and _a splash_! The sounds certainly proceeded from the direction of the brig; and I thought that they must have emanated from a spot at about her distance from the _Daphne_. The slight feeling of drowsiness which had possessed me took flight at once; all my senses became instantly upon the alert; and I awaited in keen expectancy to hear if anything further followed. In vain; the minutes sped past, and neither sight nor sound occurred to elucidate the mystery. I began to feel anxious and alarmed; my old suspicions rose up again like a strong man aroused from sleep; and I walked aft to Mr Armitage, who was leaning against a gun with his arms folded, and his chin sunk upon his breast evidently in deep meditation. He started up as he heard my footstep approaching; and on my asking if he had heard anything peculiar ahead of us, somewhat shortly acknowledged that he had not. I thereupon told him what I had heard; but he evidently attached no importance to my statement, suggesting that _if anything_ it was doubtless some of the Frenchmen amusing themselves. I was by no means satisfied with this, and, my uneasiness increasing every moment, I went forward to ascertain whether any of the hands on the forecastle had heard the mysterious sounds. I found them all listening open-mouthed to some weird and marvellous yarn which one of the topmen was spinning for their edification; and from them also I failed to elicit anything satisfactory. Finally, it suddenly occurred to me that, in my wanderings ashore, I had often noticed how low the night-mists lay upon the surface of the river; and it now struck me that by going aloft I might get sight of something which would tend to explain the disquieting occurrence. To act upon the idea was the work of a moment; I sprang into the main rigging and made my way aloft as rapidly as if my life depended upon it, utterly heedless of the fact that the rigging had been freshly tarred down that day; and in less than a minute had reached the maintopmast crosstrees. As I had anticipated I was here almost clear of the mist; and I eagerly looked ahead to see if all was right in that quarter. The first objects which caught my eye were the mastheads of the brig, broad on our starboard bow instead of directly ahead, as I had expected to find them. This of itself struck me as being somewhat strange; but, what was stranger still, _they seemed to be unaccountably near to us_. I rubbed my eyes and looked at them again. They were just in a line with the tops of a clump of trees which rose like islands out of the silvery mist, and as I looked I saw that the spars were moving, gliding slowly and almost imperceptibly past the trees toward the river. _The brig was adrift_. I listened intently for quite five minutes without hearing the faintest sound from the craft, and during that time she had neared us almost a cable's length. In another minute or two she would be abreast of and within a couple of ships' lengths of us. What could it mean? She could not by any possibility have struck adrift accidentally. And if her berth was being intentionally shifted for any reason, why was the operation carried out under cover of the fog and in such profound silence? There had been no sound of lifting the anchor; nor could I hear anything to indicate that they were running out warps; it looked very much as though they had slipped their cable, and were allowing the tide to carry them silently out to sea. And where was Mr Austin during this stealthy movement? Was he aware of it? Why, if my suspicions were correct, had they invited the officers of the _Daphne_ on board to dinner? Was it merely a blind, a temporary resort to the usual courtesies adopted for the purpose of giving colour to their assumed character of a French man-o'-war, or was it a diabolical scheme to get us all into their power and so deprive a formidable antagonist of its head, so to speak, and thus cripple it?
All these surmises and many others equally wild flashed through my bewildered brain as I stood there on the crosstrees watching the stealthy phantom-like movement of the brig's upper spars; and the conclusion to which I finally came was that Captain Vernon ought to be informed forthwith of what was going on. I accordingly descended to the deck and once more sought out the third lieutenant.
"Mr Armitage," said I, in a low cautious tone of voice, "the brig is adrift, and driving down past us with the tide in the direction of the river."
"The brig adrift!" he repeated incredulously. "Nonsense, Mr Hawkesley, you must be dreaming!"
"Indeed I am not, sir, I assure you," I replied earnestly. "I have this moment come from aloft, and I saw her topgallant-masts most distinctly over the top of the mist. She is away over in that direction, and scarcely a cable's length distant from us."
"Are you _quite sure_?" he asked, aroused at last by my earnest manner to something like interest. "I can hear no sound of her."
"No, sir," I replied; "and that, in conjunction with the sounds which I undoubtedly heard just now makes me think that something must be wrong on board her. Do you not think the matter ought to be reported to Captain Vernon?"
"Most certainly it ought," he agreed. "Is it possible that the crew have taken the ship from their officers, think you?"
"I scarcely know _what_ to think," I replied. "Let us speak to the captain at once, and hear what he has to say about it."
Thereupon the third lieutenant directed Keene, one of the midshipmen, to take temporary charge of the deck; and we at once dived below.
"Well, Mr Armitage, what is it?" asked Captain Vernon, as we presented ourselves in the cabin and discovered him and Mr Smellie chatting together over their wine and cigars.
"I must apologise for intruding upon you, sir," said Armitage; "but Hawkesley here has come to me with a very extraordinary story which I think you had better hear from his own lips."
"Oh! Well, what is it, Mr --. Why, Hawkesley, where in the world have you been, and what doing, man? You are positively smothered in tar."
"Yes, sir," I replied, glancing at myself and discovering for the first time by the brilliant light of the cabin lamp the woeful ruin wrought upon my uniform. "I really beg your pardon, sir, for presenting myself in this plight, but the urgent nature of my business must be my excuse." And I forthwith plunged _in medias res_ and told what I had heard and seen.
"The noise of a scuffle and the brig adrift!" exclaimed the skipper. "The crew surely cannot have risen upon their officers and taken the ship!" the same idea promptly presenting itself to him as had occurred to the third lieutenant.
"No, sir," said I. "I do not believe that is it at all; the commotion was not great enough or prolonged enough for that; _all_ the officers would not be likely to be taken by surprise, but _one man might be_."
"One man! What do you mean? I don't understand you," rapped out the skipper.
"Well, then, sir, to speak the whole of my mind plainly, I am greatly afraid that Mr Austin has met with foul play on board that brig, and that she is not a French man-o'-war at all, as she professes to be," I exclaimed.
I saw Smellie start; and he was about to speak when:
"Mr Austin! Foul play! Not a French man-o'-war!!" gasped the skipper. "Why, Good Heavens! the boy is _mad_!"
"If I am, sir, I can only say that I have been so for the last four months," I retorted. "For it is fully as long as that, or longer, that I have had my suspicions about that brig and her crew."
"What!" exclaimed Smellie. "Have _you_, too, suspected the brig?"
"I have, indeed, sir," I replied.
"Take a chair, Hawkesley," interrupted the skipper; "pour yourself out a glass of wine, and let us have your story in the fewest possible words. Mr Armitage, do me the favour to ascertain the brig's present whereabouts and let me know. Now, Hawkesley, we are ready to listen to you."
As the skipper ceased, Armitage bowed and withdrew, whilst I very hastily sketched the rise and progress of my suspicions, from Monsieur Le Breton's first visit up to that present moment.
Before I had proceeded very far, however, Armitage returned with the intelligence that the brig was undoubtedly adrift and already some distance astern of us, and that the topman, who had been aloft to inspect, had reported that he thought he could detect men on her yards.
"Turn up the hands at once then, sir, if you please, and see everything ready for slipping our cable and making sail at a moment's notice. But let everything be done in absolute silence; and keep a hand aloft to watch the brig and report anything further he may notice on board her; it really looks as though we were on the brink of some important discovery. Now go ahead with your story, Hawkesley," said the skipper.
I proceeded as rapidly as possible, merely stating what suspicious circumstances had come under my own notice, and leaving Captain Vernon to draw his own deductions. When I had finished, the skipper turned to Smellie and said:
"Am I to understand, from your remark made a short time ago, that you, too, have suspected this mysterious brig, Mr Smellie?"
"Yes," answered Smellie, "I certainly had a vague feeling that there was something queer about her; but my suspicions were not nearly so clear and strong as Hawkesley's, and subsequent events quite drove the matter out of my mind."
"Um!" remarked the skipper meditatively; "it is strange, _very_ strange. _I_ never noticed anything peculiar about the craft."
"The brig is now about half a mile distant, sir, and is making sail," reported Armitage at that moment, presenting himself again at the cabin door.
"Then wait until the hands are out of his rigging; then slip, and we will be after him. I intend to see to the bottom of this," returned the skipper sharply. "There is undoubtedly something wrong or poor Austin would have turned up on board before matters had reached this stage. But, mind, let the work be carried on without an unnecessary sound of any kind."
As Armitage again withdrew and Smellie rose to his feet, Captain Vernon turned to me and said:
"I am very greatly obliged to you for the zeal and discretion you have manifested in this most delicate matter, Hawkesley; whatever comes of it I shall remember that you have acted throughout to the very best of your ability, not coming to me precipitately with a vague unconnected story, but waiting patiently until you had accumulated a sufficiency of convincing evidence for us to act upon; though, even now we must be very cautious as to what we do. And let me also add that Mr Smellie has spoken to me in the highest terms of your conduct throughout that trying time when you and he were ashore together; indeed he assures me that to you, under God, he is indebted for the actual preservation of his life. I have watched you carefully from the moment of your first coming on board, and I have been highly gratified with your conduct throughout. Go on as you have begun, young sir, and you will prove an ornament to the service. And now, gentlemen, to business."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
POOR AUSTIN'S FATE.
I hurried on deck, highly gratified at the very handsome compliment paid me by the skipper, and found that the hands were aloft, casting loose the canvas. Presently, without a word having been spoken above a whisper, or a shout uttered, they came down again; the topsail halliards were manned, the yards mast-headed, the jib run up, the cable slipped, and we were under weigh; the fog all the time being as thick as a hedge, so thick indeed that it was impossible to see the jib-boom end from the quarter-deck. Old Mildmay, the master, was conning the ship; but of course in such a fog it was all guess-work, and the old fellow was terribly nervous and anxious, as indeed was also Captain Vernon. It struck me that the ship might be better conned from aloft, and I stepped up to the skipper and with due modesty mentioned my idea.
"A very happy thought," exclaimed the master, who happened to overhear me. "I'll just step up as far as the crosstrees myself."
"Very good, Mr Mildmay; do so by all means," said Captain Vernon. "But the wind is light, and what little of it there is will carry the sound of your voice down to the brig if you hail the deck, and so apprise them of our approach. We must avoid that if possible; I want to get alongside the craft and take her by surprise, and we may have some trouble in accomplishing that if they suspect that we are after them. The _Daphne_ is a fast ship, but so also is the brig, and I am by no means certain that she has not the heels of us. We must devise a little code of signals from you to the deck, so as to obviate any necessity for hailing. Can anyone suggest anything?"
A very simple plan had occurred to me whilst the skipper was speaking, and as no one else seemed to have a suggestion to make, I offered mine.
"If the pennant halliards were cast adrift down here on deck, sir, and held by one of us," I said, "Mr Mildmay could get hold of them aloft, and one tug upon them might mean `port,' two tugs `starboard,' and three `steady.'"
"Excellent!" exclaimed the skipper, "and perfectly simple; we will adopt it forthwith, and you shall attend to the deck-end of the halliards, Mr Hawkesley, with Mr Keene and Mr Peters to pass the word from you along the deck to the helmsman. Place us in a good weatherly position, Mr Mildmay, if you please, so that when we run clear of the fog the brig may have no chance to dodge us."
"Ay ay, sir, never fear for me," answered Old Mildmay as he swung nimbly into the main rigging, and in a few seconds his body disappeared in the mist.
The old fellow soon put us in the right course, and away we went, crowding sail after the invisible brig. An anxious half-hour followed, and then we ran out of the fog and found ourselves creeping along parallel with the land to the northward of the river-mouth, with the brig about half a mile ahead of us under every stitch of canvas she could show to the freshening land-breeze. We had gained on her considerably, the master having kept a keen eye upon her gleaming upper canvas whilst piloting us out of the river and steering in such a direction as to very nearly cut her off altogether. He of course came down on deck as soon as we had cleared the fog, and Captain Vernon at once ordered the crew to quarters.
The men were not long in getting to their stations, and when all was ready a gun was fired after the flying brig, as a polite request for her to heave-to, and the ensign hoisted to the peak. I was naturally very anxious to see what notice would be taken of this, since the somewhat high-handed course we were taking with the craft had been adopted entirely upon the strength of my representations; and if the brig should, after all, turn out to be the _Vestale_ French gun-brig as she had pretended to be, our skipper might perhaps involve himself in a considerable amount of trouble. It was therefore with a sigh of real and genuine relief that I heard a shot come whistling close past us from the brig in reply to our own.
Captain Vernon, too, was evidently much relieved, for he ejaculated in tones of great satisfaction:
"Good! she has fired a shotted gun at us and refuses to show her colours. _Now_ my course is perfectly clear. Try the effect of another gun on her, Mr Armitage, and aim at her spars; she is skimming along there like a witch, and if we are not careful will give us the slip yet."
Armitage, who was in charge of the battery forward, upon this began peppering away at her in earnest; but though the shot made daylight through her canvas every time, no damage was done either to her spars or rigging, and it began to be only too evident that she was gradually creeping away from us. To make matters worse, too, her crew were just as smart with their guns as we were with ours, in fact a trifle more so, for before a quarter of an hour had passed several of our ropes, fortunately unimportant ones, had been cut; and at length a thud and a crack aloft turned all eyes in that direction, to see the fore royal- mast topple over to leeward.
Captain Vernon stamped upon the deck in the height of his vexation.
"Away aloft, there, and clear the wreck," he exclaimed, "and, for Heaven's sake, Mr Armitage, see if you cannot cripple the fellow. Ten minutes more and he will be out of range; then `good-bye' to him. I wish to goodness our people at home would condescend to take a lesson in shipbuilding from the men who turn out these slavers; we should then have a chance of making a capture occasionally."
Whilst the skipper had been thus giving vent to his rapidly-increasing chagrin, Smellie had walked forward; and presently I caught sight of him stooping down and squinting along the sights of the gun which had just been re-loaded and run out. A few seconds of anxious suspense followed, and then came a flash and a sharp report, followed the next moment by a ringing cheer from the men on the forecastle. The brig's fore-yard had been shot away in the slings.
The craft at once shot up into the wind and lay apparently at our mercy.
"Ram us alongside him, Mildmay," exclaimed the skipper in an ecstasy of delight. "Stand by with the grappling-irons fore and aft. Mr Smellie, stand by to lead a party on board him forward; I will attend to matters aft here."
It really looked for a moment as though we actually had the brig; but a chill of disappointment thrilled through me when I saw how splendidly she was handled. The man who commanded her was evidently equal to any emergency, for no sooner did the craft begin to luff into the wind than he let fly his after braces, shivered his main topsail, and hauled his head sheets over to windward, and--after a pause which must have sent the hearts of all on board into their mouths--the brig began to pay off again, until, by a deft and dainty manipulation of her canvas, she was actually got dead before the wind, when the main yard was squared and away she went once more but little the worse for her serious mishap.
If her skipper, however, was a thorough seaman, so too was old Mildmay. That experienced veteran soon saw how matters were tending, and though he was unable to "ram" us alongside in accordance with Captain Vernon's energetically expressed desire, he placed the _Daphne_ square in the wake and to windward of the brig, and within half a cable's length of her, thus, to some extent, taking the wind out of her sails, the effect of which was that we immediately began to gain upon her.
The crew of the brig now worked at their stern-chasers with redoubled energy, and our running-gear soon began to suffer. But though we might to some extent have avoided this by sheering away on to one or other of the brig's quarters, the position we then held was so commanding that the skipper resolved to maintain it. "We must grin and bear it," said he, "it will not be for long; another five minutes will place us alongside. Edge down a trifle toward his port quarter, Mildmay, as though we intended to board him on that side, then, at the last moment, sheer sharply across his stern and range up on his starboard side, it _may_ possibly save us a broadside as we board. Mr Smellie, kindly load both batteries with round and grape, if you please; we will deliver our broadside and board in the smoke."
Within the specified five minutes we ranged up alongside the brig, delivered our broadside, receiving hers in return, her hands proving too smart to let us escape that; our grappling-irons were securely hooked into her rigging, and away we went on board her fore and aft, being perhaps a second ahead of the brig's crew, who actually had the hardihood to attempt to board _us_. We were stoutly met by as motley, and, at the same time, as ruffianly a set of men as it has ever been my lot to encounter; and a most desperate struggle forthwith ensued. Captain Vernon of course took care to be first on board; but I stuck close to his coat-tails, and almost the first individual we encountered was no less a personage than our old acquaintance Monsieur Le Breton himself. He pressed fiercely forward and at once crossed swords with the skipper, who exchanged two or three passes with him; but the two were soon separated by the surging crowd of combatants, and then I found myself face to face with him. I was by no means a skilled swordsman, and to tell the truth felt somewhat nervous for a moment as his blade jarred and rasped upon mine. By great good fortune, however, I succeeded in parrying his first thrust, and the next instant--how it happened I could not possibly say--he reeled backwards with my sword- blade right through his body. Leaving him dying, as I thought, on deck, I immediately pressed forward after the skipper, and for a few minutes was kept pretty busy, first with one antagonist and then another. Finally, after a fiercely maintained struggle of some twelve minutes or so, the brig's crew began to give way before our own lads, until, finding themselves hemmed in on all sides, they flung down their arms and begged for quarter, which was of course given them. Upon this, seeing that the skipper and Smellie were both safe, I turned to go below, thinking that I should perhaps discover poor Austin in durance vile in one of the state-rooms. I descended the cabin staircase, and was about to pass into the saloon when I happened to catch sight, out of the corner of my eye, of some dark object moving in an obscure corner under the staircase. Turning to take a more direct look at it I to my great surprise discovered it to be Monsieur Le Breton, who, instead of being dead as I had quite imagined he must be, was alive, and, seemingly, not very much the worse for his wound. He carried a pistol in his hand, and was in the very act of lowering himself down through a trap in the flooring when I grasped him by the collar and invited him to explain his intentions. He quietly allowed me to drag him out of the opening, rose to his feet, and then suddenly closed with me, aiming fierce blows at my uncovered head--I had lost my hat somehow in the struggle on deck--with the heavy brass-mounted butt of his pistol. In such an encounter as this I did not feel very much afraid of him, being tall for my age, and having developed a fair share of muscular strength since leaving England; but it was as much as I could do to hold him and at the same time prevent his inflicting some serious injury upon me. His wound, however, told upon him at last, and I eventually succeeded in dragging him back to the deck, though not until after he had ineffectually emptied his pistol at me.
On regaining the deck I found our lads busy securing the prisoners, and Monsieur Le Breton was soon made as safe as the rest of them.
He was loudly protesting against the indignity of being bound, when Captain Vernon approached.
"Oh! here you are, Hawkesley!" he exclaimed. "I was looking for you, and began to fear that you had met with a mishap. Do me the favour to step below and see if you can discover anything of Mr Austin."
"I have already once been below with that object, sir," I replied; "but, discovering this man--Le Breton as he calls himself--acting in a very suspicious manner, I deemed it my duty to see him safe on deck before proceeding further in my quest."
"What was he doing?" asked the skipper sharply.
"I vill tell you, sare, vat I was doing," interrupted Le Breton recklessly. "I vas on my vay to ze _soute aux poudres_ to blow you and all ze people to ze devil to keep company wiz your inqueezatif first leftenant. And I would have done eet, too, but for zat pestilent midshipman, who have ze gripe of ze devil himself. _Peste_! you Eengleesh, you are like ze bouledogue, ven you take hold you not nevare let go again."
"There, Hawkesley, what do you think of that for a compliment?" laughed the skipper. "So, monsieur," he resumed, "you were about to blow us up, eh? Very kind of you, I'm sure. Perhaps you will increase our obligation to you by informing me what you have done with Mr Austin?"
"Done wiz him!" reiterated Le Breton with a diabolical sneer. "Why, I have sent him to ze bottom of ze creek, where I would have sent you all if you had not been too cautious to accept my polite invitation."
"Do I understand you to mean that you have _murdered_ him?" thundered the skipper.
"Yes," was the reckless answer; "drowned him or murdered him, call it what you will."
"You treacherous scoundrel!" ejaculated the skipper hoarsely; "you shall be made to bitterly account for this unprovoked outrage; clap him in irons," turning to the master-at-arms, who happened to be close at hand. "Poor Austin!" he continued. "Your suspicions, Hawkesley, have proved only too correct; the craft is, unquestionably, a slaver--or worse. We must have her thoroughly overhauled; possibly some documents of great value to us may be found stowed away somewhere or other. I'll see to it at once." And he forthwith dived below.
The prisoners having been secured, the dead and wounded were next attended to, the former being lashed up in their hammocks ready for burial, whilst the latter were carefully conveyed below to receive such attention as the surgeon and his assistant could bestow. The brig's loss was very severe, sixteen of her men having been killed and twenty- two wounded--principally by our final broadside--out of a total of sixty hands. Our own loss was light, considering the determination with which the enemy had fought, amounting to only eleven wounded. As soon as a sufficiency of hands could be spared for the purpose, the brig's square canvas was furled, a prize crew was told off to take charge of her, and the two craft then made sail in company--the brig under her fore-and-aft canvas only--for the anchorage under Padron Point, where we brought up about a couple of hours later. Captain Vernon then returned to the _Daphne_ in the brig's gig, bringing with him a bundle of papers, and leaving Smellie in charge of the prize; an anchor-watch was set, and all hands then turned in, pretty well tired but highly elated at the result of our evening's work.
At daybreak next morning both vessels weighed and returned to their former berths in Banana Creek, the _Daphne_ picking up the cable which she had slipped on the previous night. The dead were then buried on the little island which lies on the east side of the creek; after which the carpenter and boatswain with their mates were set to work upon the necessary repairs to the brig. This craft now proved to be English built, having been turned out of a Shoreham shipyard, and originally registered under the name of the _Virginia_; but how she had come to get into the hands of the individuals from whom we took her there was nothing to show. She was completely fitted for carrying on the business of a slaver; but from the nature of the goods discovered in her after hold--which was quite separate from her main hold--there could be no doubt that she had also done a little piracy whenever a convenient opportunity had presented itself.
I was sent away directly after breakfast that morning in charge of a couple of boats with orders to drag the creek for poor Mr Austin's body, and in little more than an hour we fortunately found it quite uninjured. The poor fellow had evidently been taken completely by surprise, a gag being in his mouth, and his hands manacled behind him, with a stout canvas bag containing two 18-pound shot lashed to his feet. We took the body on board the _Daphne_, and it was at once conveyed below to his own cabin, pending the construction of a coffin, the ensign being at the same time hoisted half up to the peak.
This melancholy duty performed I was again sent away to drag for the anchor and cable slipped by the _Virginia_ on the previous evening, and these also I found, weighed, and conveyed on board the prize, where, under Smellie's able supervision, the work of repairing and refitting was going on apace.
About noon that same day a strange brig entered the river with the French flag flying at her peak, and brought up in the creek about a cable's length astern of us. We were at once struck with the marked resemblance which the stranger bore to the _Virginia_--though it was by no means so striking as the similarity between our prize and the _Black Venus_--and we forthwith came to the conclusion that we now at last beheld the veritable _Vestale_--the real Simon Pure--before us. And so, upon Armitage boarding her, she proved to be; her captain, upon hearing of the extraordinary personation of his craft so successfully played off upon us by the _Virginia_, actually producing his commission to prove his _bona fides_. During the course of this somewhat eventful day, also, one of our lads learned from one of the prisoners that on the occasion of our second encounter with the _Virginia_--when she so cleverly pretended to be in pursuit of the _Black Venus_--she was actually making the best of her way to Havana with the three hundred slaves on board which she had accused her sister-ship of carrying off, and that her elaborate signalling on that occasion was merely resorted to for the purpose of hoodwinking us.
At four o'clock that afternoon, Mr Austin's body having been deposited in the coffin which had been prepared for it, the hands were mustered on deck in their clean clothes, the boats were hoisted out, and the body was deposited in the launch, with the union-jack spread over the coffin as a pall, and the ensign hoisted half-mast high on the staff in the boat's stern. Just as the procession was on the point of shoving off from the ship's side, the officers of the _Vestale_, who had incidentally learned the particulars of Austin's murder, approached in their two gigs, with the French flag floating at half-mast from the ensign-staves in the sterns of their boats, and took up a position in the rear. We then shoved off; the first and second cutters taking the launch in tow, and proceeding up the creek in charge of old Mildmay, the master, the captain and officers following in the two gigs. As soon as we were clear of the ship's side the _Daphne_ began firing minute-guns, to which the _Vestale_, hoisting her ensign half up to the peak, replied; and so we moved slowly up the creek, the minute-guns continuing as long as the boats remained within sight of the ship. We proceeded for a distance of about two miles, which brought us to a lovely spot selected by the skipper, who had himself sought it out during the morning, and there we landed. The body was then passed out of the launch and shouldered by six petty officers; Smellie and I supporting the pall on one side, whilst Armitage and old Mildmay performed a like duty on the other; the skipper leading the way to the grave and reading the burial service as he went, whilst the remaining officers and men, followed by the contingent from the _Vestale_, formed in the rear of the coffin. Arrived at the grave, the coffin was placed on the ground, the ropes for lowering it to the bottom were adjusted, and finally it was gently and reverently deposited in its last resting-place, the skipper meanwhile reading impressively those solemn sentences beginning with "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live," etcetera. A slight pause was made at the conclusion of these passages, and Smellie, deeply affected, stepped forward and threw the first earth upon the body of his dear friend and brother officer, after which the service again proceeded and soon came to an end. The firing party of marines next formed on each side of the grave and rendered the last honours to the dead; the grave was filled in, a wooden cross being temporarily planted at its head, and we turned sorrowfully away, entered the boats, and with the ensigns now hoisted to the staff-heads, returned to the ship realising _fully_, perhaps for the first time, the fact that we had lost for ever a genial, brave, devoted, and sympathetic friend. "In the midst of life we are in death." Never did I so thoroughly realise the absolute literal truth of this as whilst sitting in the gig, silently struggling with my feelings, on our return from poor Austin's funeral. We had just laid him in his lonely grave on a foreign shore, far away from all that he held dearest and best on earth, in a spot consecrated only by the solemn service which had just been performed over it, a spot which could never be watered by a mother's or a sister's tears, where his last resting-place would be at the mercy of the stranger and the savage, and where in the course of a very few years it would only too probably be obliterated beyond all possibility of recognition. Yet twenty-four short hours ago he was alive and well, rejoicing in the strength of his lusty manhood, and with, apparently, the promise of many years of life before him, never suspecting, as he went down over the ship's side, with a cheery smile and a reassuring nod to me, that he was going thus gaily to meet treachery and death. Poor Austin! I struggled successfully with my feelings whilst the eyes of others were upon me, but I am not ashamed to admit that I wept long and bitterly that night when I reflected in privacy upon his untimely and cruel fate. Nor am I ashamed to acknowledge that I then also prayed, more earnestly perhaps than I had ever prayed before, that I might be taught so to number my days that I might incline mine heart unto that truest of all wisdom, the wisdom which teaches us how to live in such a way that death may never find us unprepared.
On passing the _Virginia_ it was seen that her new fore-yard was slung and rigged, the sail bent, and the other repairs completed, so that she was once more ready for sea. Smellie shortly afterwards shifted his traps over into her, returning to the _Daphne_ to dine with Captain Vernon and to receive his final instructions.
These given, Mr Armitage and I were summoned to the cabin; and upon our arrival there, the skipper, after speaking regretfully upon the loss which the ship and all hands, himself especially, as he said, had sustained through the first lieutenant's death, informed us that Mr Smellie having received charge of the prize to deliver over to the admiral of the station with an earnest recommendation that she should be turned over to the navy and given to Smellie with the rank of commander, it now became necessary to appoint an acting first lieutenant to the _Daphne_. A few words of commendation to Armitage then followed, and he was presented with an acting order.
The skipper then turned to me.
"It next becomes necessary to appoint an acting second lieutenant," said he, "and after giving the subject my most serious attention, I have determined, Hawkesley, to appoint _you_. Nay, no thanks, young gentleman; you will discover before many hours have passed over your head that you have very little to be thankful for. You will exchange your present easy and irresponsible position for one of very grave and unceasing responsibility; the safety of the ship and of all hands will daily, during your watch, be confided to your care, and many other onerous duties will devolve upon you, every one of which will demand your most unceasing attention and your utmost skill in their proper discharge. Henceforward you will have time to think of nothing but _duty_, duty must wholly engage your thoughts by day, ay, and your very dreams by night; it is no post of mere empty honour which I am about to confer upon you. But, as I once before remarked to you, I have had my eye upon you ever since you came on board the ship, and, young as you are, and short as has been your term of probation, I have sufficient confidence in you to believe that you will do credit to my judgment. I presume, of course, that it is unnecessary to point out to you that this appointment can be only _temporary_; the _Virginia_ will doubtless bring back with her from Sierra Leone officers of the admiral's appointment to fill the posts of second and third lieutenant; but if, as I have no doubt, you discharge your temporary duties with anything like the ability I anticipate, your promotion, upon the completion of your time, will be sure and rapid."
So saying, the skipper extended his hand to me and gave mine a hearty shake, Smellie and Armitage following his example and offering me their congratulations.
It being, by this time, rather late, Smellie shortly afterwards rose, and bidding adieu at the gangway to his old shipmates, repaired on board his new command, which was under orders to sail next morning at daybreak.
As for me, I went off to the midshipmen's berth, which, through Keene, Woods, and Williams, the master's mate, being drafted on board the _Virginia_, was now almost empty, and shifted my few traps forthwith into the cabin recently vacated by Smellie, scarcely knowing meanwhile whether I was standing upon my head or my heels.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
THE CUTTERS BESET.
On the following morning Captain Dubosc and Lieutenant Le Breton (we now discovered that the _Virginia's_ people had assumed the names of the officers of the _Vestale_ in addition to appropriating the name of the ship) came on board the _Daphne_ to breakfast; Armitage and old Mildmay being invited to meet them.
The meal appeared to be a protracted one, for it was served punctually at eight o'clock and the participants did not appear on deck until half- past ten. The secret, however, soon came out, for when they did at length put in an appearance it became perfectly evident, from sundry disjointed remarks which passed between them, that something of importance was on the _tapis_. The Frenchmen's gig was awaiting them, and they soon passed down over the side, Captain Dubosc's last words being:
"Well, then, _mon ami_, it is all settled, and our contingent shall be ready for a start punctually at two o'clock _Au revoir_."
I was not left long in ignorance of the precise nature of the arrangement which had just been concluded, for as soon as the French gig was fairly away from our vessel's side, Captain Vernon beckoned me to him and said:
"Just step down below with me, Hawkesley; I want to have a talk with you."
I followed him down into his cabin, whereupon he directed me to be seated, drew a chair up to the table for himself, and laying his hand upon a bundle of papers, said:
"These are some of the papers which I discovered the night before last on board the _Virginia_; and as I anticipated would be the case, they contain several items of exceedingly important information. One of these items has reference to the existence, on an island some forty miles up the river, of an immense slave depot, as also of a slave hulk, in both of which, if the information here given happens to be reliable, a large number of slaves are at this moment awaiting embarkation. The papers seem also to imply that there is a very snug anchorage close to this island, with a navigable channel leading right up to it.
"Now I am exceedingly anxious, for many reasons, to test the truth of this information, and I have therefore arranged with Captain Dubosc to send a joint expedition up the river to survey the alleged channel, to destroy the depot and the hulk, if such are found to exist, and to free any slaves which may happen to be therein.
"From certain remarks to be found here and there in these documents, I infer that the depot and hulk are in charge of white men, but it is, unfortunately, nowhere stated how many these white men number. They cannot, however, muster very strongly there; they probably do not number above a dozen altogether; the expedition, therefore, will only be a small one, consisting only of our own cutter and that of the _Vestale_. I have determined to give the command of our people to Mr Mildmay, he being the most experienced officer at surveying now remaining to us, with you to lend a hand. The French boat will be under the command of Monsieur Saint Croix, the second lieutenant of the _Vestale_; and both boats, though of course under independent commands, will act in concert. This paper," placing one before me, "is, as you will perceive, a sketch-chart of the river, and the two crosses in red ink indicate the positions of the depot and the hulk. It differs somewhat, you will notice, from the admiralty chart," to which he pointed as he spoke, "and it will really be a great point to ascertain which, if either, of the two is correct. To an individual unacquainted with the river, the channel there on the larboard hand going up would naturally suggest itself as the preferable one, being so much wider than the other, but the soundings marked on this sketch go to show that the water is much deeper in the _south_ channel. This is one of the points I want cleared up. And another is the bearings and compass courses along the deepest water in each reach of the channel. I have already explained all this to Mildmay of course; but I thought I would also explain it to you, because, knowing exactly what I want, you will be able to render more intelligent assistance than would be possible were you working in the dark. There is only one thing more. You are a tolerably good hand with your pencil, I know; do you think you could make an exact copy of this sketch-chart to take with you, so as to leave the original behind with me?"
I assured the skipper that I both could and would, whereupon he furnished me with the necessary materials and left me in solitude to perform my task, going on deck himself to superintend the preparations for our trip.
The sketch-chart found among the papers on board the _Virginia_ was only a small affair, drawn upon a sheet of foolscap paper; but it was so carefully executed that I felt sure it must be the work of an experienced hand, and consequently, in all probability, perfectly accurate. My copy, therefore, to be of any value at all, would have to be, not a free-hand happy-go-lucky sketch, but an absolute _facsimile_. There was a great deal of work in it, and not much time wherein to do it; so, after a little thought, I hit upon the plan of fastening the outspread original with wafers to the glass of one of the stern windows, and watering a thin sheet of paper over it. The strong daylight reflected up from the surface of the water through the glass rendered the two sheets of paper sufficiently transparent to enable me to see every line and mark of the original with tolerable clearness through the sheet upon which I proposed to make my copy; and with the aid of a fine- pointed pencil I soon had it complete, going over it afterwards with pen and ink to make it indelible.
Mildmay and I lunched with the skipper that day, and during the course of the meal we received our final instructions, which were, however, little more than a recapitulation of those given me in the morning.
The meal over, the cutter's crew were paraded, fully armed, in the waist of the ship; their ammunition was served out to them, and they were ordered down into the boat, which lay alongside with a 12-pounder carronade in her bows, together with the necessary powder and shot for the same, spare ammunition for the men's muskets, four days' provisions and water, and, in fact, every necessary for the successful carrying out of the undertaking upon which we were bound. The skipper then shook hands with Mildmay and me, wishing us prosperity and success; we went down over the side into the boat, and the little expedition started. Three minutes later we were joined by Monsieur Saint Croix in the _Vestale's_ cutter, when the canvas was set in both boats, the wind, though dead in our teeth for the passage up the river, being free enough to carry us as far as Boolambemba Point.
For the remainder of that day and up to about 4 p.m. on the day following, the expedition progressed without incident of any kind worth mentioning. Our progress was steady but slow, Mildmay's whole energies being devoted to the making of a thoroughly satisfactory and trustworthy survey of the river channel up which we were passing; and in the accomplishment of this duty I was pleased to find that the studies I had been diligently pursuing under Mr Smellie's auspices enabled me to render him substantial assistance. Saint Croix, who kept about a quarter of a mile in our wake, was making a perfectly independent survey, which he compared with ours at the conclusion of each day's work. The first incident of note, though we attached no importance whatever to it at the moment, occurred about four o'clock in the afternoon on the day following our departure from Banana Creek, and it consisted merely in the fact that a large native canoe passed us upward bound, without its occupants bestowing upon us any notice whatever. We had previously encountered several canoes--small craft carrying from two to half-a-dozen natives--and the occupants of these, who seemed to be engaged for the most part in fishing, had invariably greeted us with vociferous ejaculations, which, from the hearty laughter immediately following them, were doubtless choice examples of Congoese wit. But the particular canoe now in question swept past us without a sound. She was a large, well-shaped craft, propelled by twenty-four paddles, and she dashed ahead of us as if we had been at anchor, her occupants--and especially four individuals who sat in the stern-sheets, or at all events where the stern-sheets ought to be, and who, from their display of feathers, bead necklaces, and leopard-skin robes, must have been very bigwigs indeed--looking straight ahead of them and vouchsafing not the faintest indication that they were conscious of our presence. This absurd assumption of dignity greatly tickled us at the moment, we attributing it entirely to the existence in the native mind of a profound conviction of their own immeasurable superiority; but subsequent events tended to give another and a more sinister aspect to the incident. We pressed diligently on with our work until six o'clock, at which time we found ourselves abreast a small native village. Here Mildmay proposed to effect a landing, both for the purpose of procuring some fruit and also to satisfy his very natural curiosity to see what a native village was like. But on pulling in toward the bank the natives assembled, making such unmistakable warlike demonstrations that we deemed it advisable to abandon our purpose. We could, of course, have easily dispersed the hostile blacks had we been so disposed; and Saint Croix, who was a particularly high-spirited, fiery-tempered young fellow, strongly advocated our doing so. But Captain Vernon's orders to us to avoid all collision with the natives had been most stringent, and old Mildmay was far too experienced and seasoned a hand to engage in an affray for the mere "fun" of the thing. He therefore sturdily refused to aid or abet Saint Croix in any such unrighteous undertaking; and we passed the night instead upon a small islet whereon there was nothing more formidable than a few water-fowl and a flock of green parrots to dispute our landing.
We had not been at work above an hour or so on the following morning before we had reason to suspect that some at least of the unusual number of canoes around us were suspiciously watching our movements, if not actually following us up the river. This, however, for the time being caused us little or no uneasiness, as we felt assured that, should their attentions become inconveniently obtrusive, a bullet or two, or failing that, a round-shot from our carronade, fired over their heads, would promptly send them to the right-about. Later on in the day, however, I must confess that I for one began to experience a slight qualm of anxiety as I noticed the steadily increasing number of canoes, _some_ of them carrying as many as ten or a dozen men, in our vicinity. They were all ostensibly engaged in fishing, it is true; but that this was only a pretence, or that they were meeting with unusually bad luck, was evident from the small number of fish captured. Still, up to noon, though the behaviour of the natives had been steadily growing more suspicious and unsatisfactory, no actual hostile demonstration had been made; and we landed upon a small bare, sandy islet to cook and despatch our dinner.
During all this time we had, of course, been carefully checking the chart of the river copied by me from the one found on board the _Virginia_, and comparing it with our own survey; the general result being to prove that it was very fairly accurate, quite sufficiently so at least to serve as a safe guide to any vessel of light draught, say up to ten feet or so, making for the island on which was the alleged slave depot. This chart told us that we had now arrived within a distance of some six miles of the island in question, a statement verified to some extent by the fact that on an island situate at about that distance from us we could make out, with the aid of our glasses, an object which might very well pass for a large building of some kind. The river channel between us and this island was entirely free of visible obstructions, and we therefore hoped that, by a little extra exertion, we might succeed in completing our survey right up to the island, and gaining possession of it and the hulk--thus achieving the full object of the expedition--before nightfall.
By the time that we were ready to make a start once more, however, the canoes had mustered in such numbers that even old Mildmay, who had hitherto poo-poohed my suggestions as to the possibility of a contemplated attack, began to look serious, and at last actually went the length of acknowledging that perhaps there might be mischief brewing after all. Saint Croix, however, treated the matter lightly, roundly asserting that the extraordinary gathering was due to nothing more serious than the native curiosity to behold the unwonted sight of a white man, and to watch our mysterious operations. There was undoubtedly a certain degree of probability about this suggestion, and most unfortunately we gave to it a larger share of credence than the event justified, shoving off from our sand-bank and resuming our surveying operations without first adopting those precautionary measures which prudence obviously dictated.
At two o'clock p.m., by which time we had passed over about three of the six miles which lay between the sand-bank and our supposed goal, the French boat being at the time about half a mile astern of us, a loud shouting arose from one of the largest canoes in the flotilla, her paddles were suddenly elevated in the air, and the whole fleet with one accord rapidly closed in between us and the Frenchmen, completely cutting us off the one from the other.
"Hillo!" exclaimed Mildmay, "what's the meaning of this? Just clap a round-shot into the carronade there, you Tom, and pitch it well over the heads of those black rascals. Pull port, back starboard, and slue the boat round with her nose toward them. That's your sort! Now, Tom, are you ready there, for'ard? Then well elevate the muzzle and stand by to fire when I give the word. Hold water, starboard oars, and port oars pull a stroke; we're pointing straight for the Frenchmen just now. Well of all; now we're clear, and no chance of hitting our friends. Fire!"
The carronade rang out its report from the bows of the boat, and the shot went screaming away far over the heads of those in the canoes, the Frenchmen firing in like manner at almost the same moment. A yell of dismay immediately arose from the canoes, and half a dozen of those nearest us dashed their paddles into the water and began paddling precipitately away. Their panic, however, was only momentary; they appeared to have seen and heard artillery before, and as soon as they saw that no damage had been done they arrested their flight, and a contingent of canoes, numbering quite a hundred, began cautiously to advance toward us, spreading out on our right and left in a manner which showed that they meditated an attempt to surround us.
"Give 'em another pill, Tom, and slap it right into the thick of 'em this time; we mustn't let 'em surround us at no price," exclaimed old Mildmay. "Turn round on your thwarts, lads, and pull the boat gently up stream, starn first, so's to keep our bull-dog forward there facing 'em. Now, as soon as you're ready there with the gun let 'em have it." Once again the carronade spoke out, and this time its voice conveyed a death- message to some of the belligerent blacks, the shot striking one of the canoes fair in the stem, knocking her into match-wood, and killing or maiming several of her occupants. We naturally expected that this severe lesson would have the effect of sending our troublesome neighbours to the right-about _en masse_, but to our surprise and discomfiture this was by no means the case; on the contrary, it appeared to have thoroughly aroused their most savage instincts, and with a loud shout they dashed their paddles into the water and advanced menacingly toward us.
"Load your muskets, lads!" exclaimed Mildmay, as, with eyes gleaming and nostrils dilated, the old war-horse snuffed the approaching battle; "load your muskets, and then take to your oars again and back her steadily up stream. Sharp's the word and quick's the action; if those rascals `outflank' us--as the sodgers call it--we may say `good-bye' to old England. Mr Hawkesley, d'ye think you can pitch a bullet into that long chap that's creeping up there on our larboard beam? I'm about to try my hand and see if I can't stop the gallop of this fellow who's in such a tremendous hurry away here to the nor'ard of us. Take good aim, now; we haven't a single bullet that we can afford to throw away. Ah! that's _well_ done," as I bowled over the individual who was handling the steering paddle in the canoe indicated to me. "Now let's see what an old man can do." He raised his piece to his shoulder, took a long steady aim, and fired. A white spot instantly appeared on the side of the canoe; and one of its occupants sprang convulsively to his feet and fell headlong into the river, nearly capsizing the frail craft as he did so.
This certainly checked the impetuosity of the two particular canoes, the occupants of which had suffered from our fire; but the others only pressed forward with increased eagerness.
"Hang it!" exclaimed the master pettishly, "I don't _want_ to do it, but I shall have to give 'em a dose of grape yet. Why won't the stupid donkeys take a hint? And why, in the name of fortune, should they want to interfere with us at all? Try 'em with grape this time, Tom; let's see what they think of `the fruit of the vine.'"
Meanwhile the French boat had also become actively engaged, the report of her carronade ringing out much more frequently than our own, whilst rattling volleys of musketry breezed up from her at brief intervals; but from the steadily decreasing sharpness of the reports it soon became evident, somewhat, I must confess, to our dismay, that she was _retiring_. It might, of course, be merely a strategic movement on Saint Croix's part; but if, on the other hand, he happened to be situated like ourselves, with all his work cut out to defend himself, and a way open to him _down_ stream only, as we had a clear road before us _up_ stream only, then indeed matters were beginning to look extremely serious for us. So far as he was concerned, if he could only avoid being surrounded he was comparatively safe; the way would be open for his retreat, and a fine breeze happening to be blowing down the river, he could, with the aid of his sails easily outpace the canoes. But with us the matter was very different; our retreat was cut off, and unless we could beat off the canoes the only course open to us seemed to be that of taking to dry land, intrenching ourselves as best we might, and patiently waiting until assistance should arrive. Meanwhile, in accordance with Mildmay's instructions, our carronade had been loaded with grape, and Tom, taking steady aim, applied the match to his piece. A flash, a roar, a volume of smoke, and away went the grape lashing up the surface of the water fair in line with a thick cluster of canoes, through which the iron shower next moment tore with disastrous effect. One canoe was literally rent to pieces, every one of its occupants, so far as we could see, being killed; two other canoes, one on each side of the first, were so seriously damaged that they immediately swamped, leaving their occupants squattering in the water like so many lame ducks; and three or four others were hit, with serious casualties to their crews. This effectually checked the advance of the blacks for a few minutes, during which we made good use of our oars in urging the boat, still stern foremost, in the direction of the island to which we were bound, and upon which we were now able to distinctly make out the shape of a huge wooden barrack-like structure.
As we pressed on toward the island we became cognisant of the fact that its occupants were in a great state of confusion, and a few minutes later we saw a long procession of blacks, who, from their constrained movements, were apparently manacled, emerge from the barrack and move off toward the opposite side of the island. We were enabled, with the aid of our glasses, to detect on the island the presence of some ten or a dozen white men, and these individuals, carrying each a musket in one hand and a whip in the other, seemed to be very freely using the latter to expedite the movements of the unhappy blacks.
We were, however, allowed but scanty time in which to take note of these matters, for the native canoes soon began to press forward upon us once more, evidently with the fixed determination to surround us if possible, and thus prevent our approach to the island. We knew that if this object were once accomplished our doom was certain, for in such a case, fight as desperately as we might, we must soon be overpowered by sheer force of numbers, and it consequently soon became, so far as we were concerned, an absolute race for life.
On swept the boat, our men pulling her through the water, though still stern foremost, at a pace such as she had rarely travelled before, and on crowded the canoes after us, spread out athwart the stream in the form of a crescent. Luckily for us, the channel at this point was not very wide, and by keeping in the middle of it we were able to throw a musket-shot clear across to either side, otherwise we should soon have found ourselves in a parlous case. The greater number of the canoes obstinately maintained a position in mid-stream ahead of us, thus presenting an insuperable barrier to our retreat down stream, whilst those on the outer wings to port and starboard of us hugged the bank of the stream, two or three of the larger craft making a big spurt ahead of the others now and then in an endeavour to outflank us, which endeavour, however, a well-directed volley of musketry always sufficed to check for the time being.
At length we reached a point where the stream widened out considerably, enabling the canoes on each side to spread out sufficiently far to be beyond musket-shot, and we saw that upon the question whether we or the canoes passed this point first, hinged our fate. The natives, though evidently entertaining a wholesome dread of our carronade, were by no means so dismayed by the execution it wrought among them as we had hoped they would be, and indeed exhibited a decidedly growing disposition to close upon us in spite of our fire; in fact, our position was at every moment growing more critical.
Very fortunately for us we happened to have a few rounds of canister in the boat, and Mildmay now resolved to try the effect of these upon the pertinacious natives. A charge of grape with one of canister on the top of it, was accordingly rammed home and sent flying into the thickest of the crowd of canoes immediately ahead of us, immediately succeeded by a like dose to the right and left wings of the flotilla. The canoes were just at about the right distance to give these murderous discharges their utmost possible effect, and the carnage among the thickly-crowded craft was simply indescribable. The effect was not only to check their advance effectually, but to actually put them to flight, and whilst a similar charge was again rammed home by those in charge of the gun the rest of the men slewed the boat round on her centre, and with a loud cheer gave way at top speed for the island.
We were within a hundred yards of the low shingly beach when, to our astonishment, the roar of artillery from the island greeted our ears, and at the same instant half a dozen round-shot came flying about our ears. Fortunately no damage was done beyond the smashing of a couple of oars and the incontinent precipitation backwards into the bottom of the boat of the pullers thereof, amidst the uproarious laughter of all hands, and before these unfortunates had fairly picked themselves up, the cutter was sent surging half her length high and dry up on the beach, the carronade belched forth its contents, and out we jumped, master and man, and charged up to the sod battery which had fired upon us. We were greeted with a volley of musketry, which, however, never stopped us in our rush a single instant, and as we clambered in at one side we had the satisfaction of seeing the rascally Spaniards go flying out at the other, whence they made short miles of it to a boat which lay awaiting them on the beach at the opposite side of the island, some two or three hundred yards away. We sent a few ineffectual flying shots after them, but attempted no pursuit, as we now found ourselves to some extent masters of the situation; in so far, that is to say, that we found the battery admirably adapted as a place wherein to make a stand until such time as we could see our way clear to once more take offensive measures. As for the Spaniards, they made good their retreat to a large hulk which lay securely moored at a distance of some twenty yards from the steeply sloping eastern shore of the island, and which-- floating high out of the water as she did, with channel-plates removed and no gear whatever about her sides to aid us in boarding should we make the attempt--would, I foresaw, prove rather a hard nut for us to crack. Our footing thus made good upon the island and in the battery, we had a moment or two in which to look about us, and the first discovery made was that poor old Mildmay, the master, had been wounded, and was lying helpless, face downwards on the sward outside the battery. The next was, that the natives had recovered from their panic and were actually once more advancing against us, spreading out on all sides so as to completely encircle the island.
The first object demanding our attention was, of course, the master. Directing the man Tom, our chief artilleryman, to look into the state of the guns belonging to the battery, and to load them afresh, I called a couple of men and took them with me to bring in the master. The poor old fellow was lying upon the grass face downwards, and when we gently raised him it became apparent that he had been bleeding rather profusely at the mouth. He was senseless and ghastly pale, and for the moment I feared he was dead. A low moan, however, as the men began to move with him, gave us the assurance that life was not quite extinct, and as gently as we could we lifted him over the low earth parapet, and laid him down under its shelter in comparative safety.
The command of the party now devolved upon me, and a very serious responsibility under the circumstances I found it. Here we were cooped up in a small sod battery, wholly ineffectual to resist a determined assault; with a perfect cloud of hostile natives hovering about us apparently determined to be satisfied with nothing short of our absolute extermination; with a dozen vindictive Spaniards on board the hulk close at hand, doubtless as anxious as the natives to sweep us from the face of the earth; the French boat having vanished from the scene; and-- though there was drinkable water in abundance in the river so long as we might be able to get at it--_with only one day's provisions left_.
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
THE SITUATION BECOMES DESPERATE.
"Well, Tom," said I, "what about the guns?--are they loaded?"
"Yes, sir, they is," answered Tom; "and a most fort'nate circumstance it were that you ordered them guns to be loaded when you did, otherwise we should have been sent sky-high by this time."
"Ah, indeed! how is that?"
"Why, you see, sir, when I was ordered to load the guns I nat'rally looks round for the ammunition for to do it with; and though this is the first time as I've ever found myself aboard a reg'lar genewine land- battery, it didn't take me long for to make up my mind that if there was any ammunition anywheres aboard the thing, it must be in one of them there corner lockers. So I goes away and tries to open the door, which in course I finds locked. It didn't take Ned and me mor'n a jiffy, hows'ever, to prise off the lock; and when I looked in, there sure enough was the powder--a goodish quantity--all made up into cartridges, and there, too, I sees the black stump of a fuze with a red spark on the end fizzing and smoking away--a good un. I knowed what that meant in a second, Mr Hawkesley; so I whips out my knife, sings out to Ned to prise open the other two doors, and cuts off the live end of the fuze at once, and just in time. There warn't more nor an inch of it left. And when we got the other two doors open it were just the same, sir--half a minute more 'd ha' done for the lot of us, sir."
"But you have taken care to see that the magazines are now all right?-- that there are no more live fuzes in them?" I exclaimed in considerable alarm.
"Ay, ay, sir; never fear for me," answered Tom with a quiet grin. "They are safe enough now, sir; we gave 'em a good overhaul before doing anything else, sir."
"Thank you, Tom," I replied; "you have rendered a most important service, which, if I live to get out of this scrape, I will not fail to report to Captain Vernon. But I should like to take a squint into these magazines myself."
"Certingly, sir, by all means," returned Tom; and leading the way to the magazines he pointed out the manner in which the fuzes had been placed, and graphically redescribed the manner in which a terrible catastrophe had been averted.
We had, indeed, had a frightfully narrow escape from destruction; for the magazines, of which there were three, one in each angle of the triangular-shaped battery, contained about one hundred cartridges each-- quite sufficient to have completely destroyed the battery and all in it.
Having satisfied myself that all was safe here, I at once turned my attention to the next most pressing business of the moment, which was to secure the muskets, ammunition, provisions, and water in the cutter, and to make the craft herself as safe as possible. This was likely to prove a somewhat hazardous task, as the canoes were now close to the beach and pressing rapidly in on all sides. I felt greatly averse to further slaughter; but in this case I scarcely saw how it was to be averted, the natives being so pertinacious in their attacks. It was quite evident that we must either kill or be killed. I therefore most reluctantly gave the order for the discharge of the six nine-pounders which the battery mounted right into the thickest of the crowd--the men to immediately afterwards rush for the boat, secure their muskets and ammunition, and at once return to the battery. This was done; and without pausing an instant to note the effect away we all went down to the boat, seized as much as we could conveniently carry, and immediately scampered back again. The whole operation did not occupy more than a couple of minutes; and I had the satisfaction of seeing all hands scramble back into the battery before the natives had recovered from the check of our last discharge.
So far so good; but a great many things still remained in the boat, especially the provisions and water, which it was absolutely necessary that we should secure; so I called for volunteers to accompany me on a second trip to the cutter. All hands proving equally willing to go, I picked half-a-dozen, leaving the remainder in the battery to cover us with their muskets.
Leaping the low sod parapet of the battery we once more made a dash for the boat; and the natives, catching sight of us, instantly raised a terrific yell and came paddling toward us at top speed.
"Out with your cutlasses, men!" I exclaimed; "we shall have to fight our way back this time, I believe. Now each man seize as much as he can carry in one hand, and keep close together. Now are you all ready? Then march. Ah! capital!" as the lads in the battery bowled over three or four blacks who had landed and were rushing down upon us. "Now _run for it_!"
Away we went, helter-skelter, and on |
21060-8 | ce more got safely within the compass of our sheltering walls, though not until I--who, of course, had to be last in seeking cover--had been overtaken and surrounded by some half-a-dozen furious blacks, two of whom I succeeded in disabling with my sword, whilst the remaining four were promptly placed _hors-de- combat_ by the muskets of those who were covering our retreat.
Taking fresh courage, perhaps, at our limited number, and possibly also feeling more at home in a fight on dry land than when in their canoes, the natives now closed in upon us on all sides, effecting a landing on the island and pressing forward, with loud cries and much brandishing of spears, to attack the battery. This battery, it may be well to explain, was a small equilateral triangular affair built of sods, and measuring about thirty-five feet on each of its sides. It mounted six nine- pounder brass guns, two to each side; and its walls rose to a height of about seven feet above the ground outside, a ledge about three feet wide on the inside being raised some three feet all round the interior of the walls, thus enabling those on the inside to fire over the low parapet. The guns were mounted on ordinary ship carriages and were unprovided with tackles, being placed upon wooden platforms slightly sloping forward, so that when loaded they could be easily run out by hand, the recoil of the discharge sending them back up the slight slope into loading position. The three angles of the battery were, as has already been intimated, occupied by the magazines.
The natives advanced boldly to the attack, and for the moment I must confess that I felt almost dismayed as I looked around me and got a clear idea of their overwhelming numbers. However, there was no escape--we were completely hemmed in on every side; and if we were to die I thought we might as well die fighting; so, waiting until they were within a few yards only of the walls, I gave the order to fire, and the report of the six nine-pounders rang sharply out upon the evening air. Each man then seized his loaded musket, saw that his naked cutlass was ready to his hand, and waited breathlessly for the inevitable rush.
The round-shot ploughed six well-defined lanes through the approaching phalanx; but our persevering foes had apparently become accustomed to the effects of artillery fire by this time, seeming to regard it as a disagreeable concomitant to the struggle which _must_ be faced, but which, after all, was not so very formidable. They had already acquired the knowledge that the guns, once fired, were perfectly harmless until they could be re-loaded, and that the operation of reloading required a certain amount of time. The moment, therefore, that they received our fire they charged down upon the battery, evidently feeling that the worst was over and that it now amounted to no more than an ordinary hand-to-hand fight. "Here they come, lads, with a vengeance!" I exclaimed. "Take your muskets and _aim low_--make every bullet do double or treble duty if you can. Keep cool, and be careful not to throw a single shot away."
This was excellent advice to give, especially as the giver thereof needed it perhaps more than any of those around him; but it was spoken with a calm and steady voice, and the lads responded to it with a hearty and inspiring cheer. They levelled their muskets carefully and steadily over the top of the sod parapet, selecting a particular mark and firing only when they felt sure of their aim, though at the moment a perfect cloud of spears came flying into the battery. The next instant our foes were upon us, and then commenced a furious, breathless, desperate hand- to-hand fight which lasted fully ten minutes--the blacks leaping upward or assisting each other in their efforts to surmount the parapet, and we cutting and slashing right and left without a moment's breathing-space in an equally determined effort to keep them out.
During the very thick of the fight light thin jets of smoke were seen to issue from the joints and crevices in the wooden walls of the huge barrack-like structure to windward of us, the jets rapidly growing in numbers and volume and being speedily succeeded by thin arrowy tongues of flame which shot into view for a moment, disappeared, and then appeared again, darting along the surface of the wood and uniting with others, until the entire building became completely enveloped in the flames, which no doubt the Spaniards had kindled on their retreat, in order to make assurance doubly sure, as it were, and in the event of their little scheme for the destruction of the battery miscarrying, to deprive us of what would have afforded us an excellent retreat in which to have withstood a siege.
The smoke, thick, pungent, and suffocating, from the tar and pitch with which the roof and sides of the building had been from time to time liberally coated, drifted down directly upon us in such dense volumes that it was difficult to see an arm's-length ahead, making the act of breathing next to an impossibility, and causing our eyes to stream with water, whilst the heat soon became almost insupportable. Our enemies, however, did not seem to be in the slightest degree incommoded either by the heat or the smoke, but, perceiving how greatly it embarrassed us, pressed forward more eagerly than ever to the attack. We, however, were fighting for our lives, and it is astonishing how much men can do under such circumstances. We actually succeeded in keeping the foe outside our three walls, and finally, after a prolonged effort which inspired us with a most profound sense of their individual intrepidity, they retired, carrying off their dead and wounded with them. They made a most daring attempt to carry off the cutter also with them in their retreat, but fortunately she was secured by a chain attached to the anchor, the latter being firmly embedded in the soil among the long grass; and the idea of pulling it up not seeming to present itself to any of them, they were compelled to abandon the attempt, owing to the galling musketry fire which we maintained upon them.
Exhausted, breathless, with our lips black with powder from the bitten ends of the cartridges, our skins begrimed with smoke, and with the perspiration streaming down our bodies, we now had a moment's breathing- space to look about us. The ground inside the battery literally _bristled_ with the spears which had been launched at us, but, marvellous to relate, only three of our number had been hurt in the recent scuffle, and that but very slightly. The injuries, such as they were, were promptly attended to, I at the same time doing what I could for poor old Mildmay; the guns and muskets were re-loaded, and then, placing a look-out at each angle of the battery, we sank down upon the ground and snatched such a hasty meal as was possible under the circumstances.
I embraced the opportunity afforded by this interval of tranquillity to point out to my small command the necessity for placing them upon a short allowance of food. I reminded them that, at the conclusion of the meal which we were then discussing, only one clear day's rations would remain to us, and that, though the French boat had doubtless made good her escape down the river--and, in that case, would probably reach the creek early enough that same evening to make Captain Vernon acquainted with our critical situation--we could scarcely reckon upon the appearance of a relief expedition under twenty-four hours from the time of speaking. I added that, further, it would be only wise to allow another twenty-four hours for possible unforeseen delays, rendering it not improbable that we should have to pass forty-eight hours in our present position, and that I had therefore decided, for these prudential reasons, that it would be necessary to place the party for that period on half rations. The men accepted this decision of mine with the utmost readiness, and, in fact, seemed agreeably surprised to find that I considered it likely we should be rescued in so short a time.
By the time that we had concluded our hasty meal the barrack--which after all, and notwithstanding its size, was a mere wooden shell of a place--had become a shapeless heap of smouldering ruins, and we were consequently to a great extent relieved of the annoyance from the heat and smoke. Now that the place was actually destroyed I was glad rather than otherwise, for standing as it did so close to the battery, it would, had it remained in existence, have afforded splendid "cover" for the enemy, behind which they would have been enabled to steal close up to us unobserved, necessitating a most unremitting watch, in spite of which a sudden unexpected rush might have put them in possession of the battery. Now, however, nothing in the nature of a surprise could well occur, for by the destruction of the barrack we were enabled to obtain an uninterrupted view from the battery all over the diminutive islet upon which it stood.
Half an hour after the conclusion of our meal the wind dropped away to a flat calm, the sun went down behind the low range of hills which stretched away to the westward of us, the landscape assumed a tint of rapidly deepening, all-pervading grey, the mist-wreaths rose from the bosom of the whirling river and stealthily gathered about the island like a beleaguering army of phantoms, and the solemn hush of night was broken only by the loud _chirr_ of the insects and the lapping ripple of the rushing stream.
Thicker and thicker gathered the mist about us until at last it became impossible to see across from one side of the battery to the other, and then ensued an anxious time indeed for all of us, and especially so for me, upon whom rested the responsibility of directing what steps should be taken for the safety and preservation of the little force under me. Would the natives attempt another attack that night under cover of the fog? I thought it highly probable that they would, seeing how important an advantage it would be to them to have the power of arranging their forces and creeping up to the very walls of the battery undetected. The idea indeed occurred to me, that under cover of that same fog it might be possible for us to take once more to the cutter, and, letting her drift with the current, in that way slip unobserved away down the river. But a very few minutes' consideration of that scheme sufficed to convince me of its impracticability. I felt convinced that our enemies were quite shrewd enough to anticipate and make due provision for any such attempt on our part. I felt certain, indeed, that would the fog but lift for a moment, of which, however, there was not the most remote probability, we should find ourselves completely hemmed in by a cordon of canoes lying silently and patiently in waiting for the undertaking of some such attempt on our part. And, doubtless, all their arrangements were so framed that, in the event of our making any such attempt, a simple signal would announce our whereabouts and enable the entire flotilla to close in at once upon us; in which case our fate must be certain and speedy. No, I decided, the risk was altogether too great and the prospects of success too infinitesimal to justify any such attempt.
Then as to the expected attack. They would probably wait an hour or two, in the hope of tempting us to venture afloat; then, failing that, they would cautiously close in upon the island, land, steal up as close as possible to the battery, and then endeavour to overpower us with a sudden rush.
Fortunately it was not absolutely dark, notwithstanding the fog, there being a moon in her first quarter, which, though invisible, imparted a certain luminous quality to the haze; and two or three stars of the first magnitude were faintly visible in the zenith, so that if any fighting had to be done we should at least have light enough to distinguish between friend and foe.
This anticipation of an attempted surprise of course necessitated the maintenance of a keen and incessant look-out I accordingly posted half my small command round the walls, with instructions to fire unhesitatingly at any moving object which might come within their range of vision. But I did not expect an _immediate_ attack; indeed, the more I weighed the chances of such a thing the less did they appear to be, and in the meantime we were in urgent need of water, our stock being almost exhausted. Hitherto we had refrained from drinking the river water, it having a peculiar sweetish taste which scarcely suited our palates, but very soon it would be "river water or nothing," and I thought that probably this pause of expectation, as it were, would afford us as good an opportunity as we were likely to have for refilling our breakers.
I therefore directed the party who were not engaged upon sentry duty to make ready for a trip to the river with two of the empty breakers. But before engaging so large a portion of my little force in an expedition which, though of the briefest, might expose them to great, because unexpected, dangers, I resolved to reconnoitre the ground in person, and with this object in view slipped noiselessly over the parapet to the ground outside, and throwing myself at full length upon the grass, already wet with the heavy dew, commenced a slow and disagreeable journey to the water side. I intended at first to take a look at the cutter _en passant_, but a moment's thought decided me against this course, it being just possible that I might find a few savages either already established in possession or keeping a stealthy watch upon the boat in readiness to pounce upon any incautious white man who might venture to approach her. I accordingly set out in a direction about at right angles to that which would have led me down to the boat, and though this entailed a considerably longer journey I regarded it as also a very much safer one.
After a somewhat long and tedious journey--long, that is to say, in point of time, though the distance traversed was very short--I reached the water's edge without adventure, and without having seen the slightest sign indicating the presence of savages upon the island. I therefore hastened back to the battery--narrowly escaping being shot by one of our people, who, in his excessive alertness, fired upon me without first giving the challenge--and hastily gathering together the watering-party led them to the brink of the river and succeeded in securing a couple of breakers of water, which I considered would be sufficient to last us for the next twenty-four hours.
Then ensued a long period of tense, incessant, and painful watching for the enemy, who, I anticipated, might make their appearance at any moment. But hour after hour dragged laggingly away, the whole force kept incessantly on the _qui vive_ to guard against the expected attempt at surprise, the men, wearied out by their excessive exertions of the previous day, needing a continuous, uninterrupted round of visits from me to prevent their falling asleep upon their arms.
And thus the long night at length wore itself away; a faint glimmer of dawn appeared in the eastern sky, rapidly brightening, the fog assumed a rosy flush, and presently up rose the glorious sun, gleaming like a white-hot ball through the haze, a faint breeze from the westward sprang up, the mist rolled away like a curtain, and there lay the noble river around us, sparkling like a sheet of molten silver under the morning sunbeams. And there, too, lay the flotilla of canoes, completely hemming us in on every side, thus fully justifying the caution which had prevented my attempting to effect an escape down the river during the preceding night.
It was exasperating now to the last degree to know that our night's rest had been thrown away for nothing, and that, for all the benefit our vigilance had been to us, all hands might just as well have lain down and gone to sleep all night; but repining was of no use; we had naturally expected an attack and had held ourselves in readiness to meet it, and the only thing that remained was to snatch what rest we could during the day. It was a great advantage to be able to once more _see_ our enemies; and as there seemed to be no immediate disposition on their part to make a move, I gave orders for breakfast to be got under weigh as speedily as possible, stationing a look-out at each angle of the battery during the discussion of the meal. We had scarcely settled ourselves when the alarm was given that the canoes were advancing, and, leaping to our feet, we found that such was indeed the case, the whole fleet having tripped their anchors and begun paddling in toward the island.
We at once opened fire upon them from the nine-pounders as a matter of course, but the rascals had not only learned wisdom but had also evidently very sharp eyes, for at the moment when the match was about to be applied to the guns the canoes immediately in the line of fire smartly swerved from their course and the shot went hissing harmlessly past, missing their mark by the merest hair's-breadth.
Before we had time to load again the savages had effected a landing upon the beach, and then ensued a repetition of the previous day's fighting, excepting that our antagonists fought with their energies renewed by a quiet night's rest and more obstinately than ever, whilst we were weary and fagged by our long and fruitless watch. During the desperate struggle which consumed the next quarter of an hour half a dozen natives managed at different times to actually force their way into the battery, but luckily for us they got in only one at a time and they were promptly despatched.
At last they were beaten off and compelled to retire to their canoes as before, carrying away with them their killed and wounded--of whom I counted no less than thirty being borne away by their comrades--our lads "freshening their way" for them with a hot musketry fire so long as they remained within range.
Then followed another brief interval during which we finished our scanty breakfast, after which, having seen the guns and muskets loaded afresh, I undertook to maintain a look-out, and ordered the men to lie down and snatch such rest as they could get.
But our foes, wily as savages always are, had evidently in their recent hand-to-hand struggle with us detected the evidences of our extreme fatigue, and were by no means disposed to allow us much time or opportunity to recuperate our exhausted energies, for the men had scarcely flung themselves upon the ground, where sleep instantly seized upon them, when the canoes were once more put in motion and again the unhappy blue-jackets were called upon to resist an attack. I now began to feel a strong suspicion that the enemy had quite counted upon our being kept upon the alert during the whole of the previous night, the perfect silence which they had maintained being, as they very probably surmised, rather a harassing than a reassuring circumstance to us, and that they fully intended to take the fullest possible advantage of this during the ensuing day. But their heavy losses in killed and wounded had at the same time made them increasingly wary, and for the next hour or two they contented themselves with a continuous series of demonstrations which drew our fire and kept us incessantly on the alert, without actually renewing their attack.
At length the wind dropped away to a flat calm and the rays of the unclouded sun beat remorselessly down upon us with a fierce intensity which in our exhausted condition was positive agony. A burning unquenchable thirst took possession of us, and the men resorted to the water-kegs so incessantly that the water diminished with startling rapidity, and foreseeing the possible difficulty of obtaining a further supply I was at last reluctantly compelled to put them upon an allowance, so that very speedily we had thirst added to our other miseries. And during all this time our aching eyes were every moment directed down the river in the hope, which grew less and less as the day wore on, of detecting the approach of the boats which we felt certain were on their way to effect our rescue.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
RESCUED.
Finally the long, harassing, anxious day drew to a close, the sun set, the night-mists gathered once more about us, and the hoped-for rescue had not appeared.
We were by this time completely worn out, and I foresaw that unless the men could obtain a little rest our pertinacious enemies must inevitably prove victorious.
Of course in this matter of rest everything depended upon the behaviour of the foe. If from principle or superstition, or for any other reason, it was their invariable habit to abstain from fighting at night all might yet be well with us, for though our stock of provisions and water was getting low, and the ammunition for our muskets was getting short, I felt convinced that, could our lads but secure three or tour hours of unbroken rest, they were quite equal to holding the battery for another twenty-four hours at least. Unfortunately I knew nothing whatever about the fighting customs of the natives, and was consequently quite without a guide of any kind beyond my own reason. I felt convinced that the blacks had fully realised the advantage to them of our fagged condition during the past day, and had little doubt but that they were acute enough to trace it to its correct source; the question then was, would they allow us to pass an undisturbed night and thus sacrifice an important advantage? I greatly doubted it. But they might allow a few hours' cessation of hostilities in the hope of lulling us into a feeling of false security, and thus making us the victims of an easy, yet well- executed surprise. The more I thought about the matter the more probable did this course of action appear; and at last I resolved to put it to the test by dividing the men into watches and allowing them an hour's sleep at a time.
But before doing this I thought I would repeat my experiment of the previous night and endeavour to secure a little more water, and this I did with such signal success that we actually refilled all our breakers, besides giving every man an opportunity to completely slake his thirst.
It was just eight o'clock p.m. by the time that we had completed our preparations, and I then made half the men lie down, which they did, falling instantly asleep. This of course necessitated increased vigilance on the part of the watchers, each of whom had to guard a double length of parapet; but the first hour passed peacefully away, and the sleepers were awakened in order that we might have our turn. It was really amusing, notwithstanding the gravity of our situation, to hear each man protest as he sat up and rubbed his eyes that we had not treated them fairly, and that they had only that moment fallen asleep. But when assured to the contrary they roused up at once, and I was greatly gratified to see that, short as had been their period of rest, it had undoubtedly done them a world of good. The "watch on deck" was placed under the command of the man Tom who had done such good service with the carronade on board the cutter, he being, in my opinion, the most trustworthy man in the party; and giving him the most stringent orders to keep a bright look-out, to fire at once and unhesitatingly on any moving object which might make its appearance, and to call me in the event of anything taking place out of the common, I flung myself upon the ground with my back to the sod parapet, and in the act of folding my arms across my chest fell asleep.
To be cruelly awakened the next instant, almost before I had had time to fully realise the blessedness of the gift of sleep.
"Well, Tom, what is it? Has the enemy hove in sight!" I exclaimed pettishly, rubbing away at my eyes to force them open.
"No, sir; everything's still quiet, thank God."
"Then what did you wake me for, in Heaven's name!"
"Four bells, sir; our turn for a spell of sleep again, sir," was the exasperating reply.
"Four bells! Nonsense!"
I could not believe it. As in the case of the others it really seemed as though I had not actually had time to get to sleep at all, yet I had slept soundly for an hour, and on staggering to my feet, though the abrupt awakening had inflicted upon me positive suffering, I found when fairly awake, that I was very distinctly the better for my short nap, which seemed to have made up, at least partially, in soundness what it lacked in duration.
Another hour passed peacefully--and this time not quite so laggingly-- away; our turn again arrived for a rest; and once more did we enjoy for a brief space the bliss of perfect oblivion. At midnight we were called again, Tom reporting that neither sight nor sound had occurred during his watch to disturb him. We now began to feel really refreshed, and during the next hour some of the men in my watch actually found superfluous energy enough to hum under their breath a snatch or two of a forecastle song as they paced vigilantly to and fro over the short stretch of ground which constituted their "beat."
As the silent hour flitted away without disquieting sight or sound of any kind I began to feel sanguine that we were going to be blessed with uninterrupted peace for the remainder of the night, and inwardly resolved that if matters still continued satisfactory after my watch had had its next hour's sleep I would extend the period of sleep to two hours for the next watch, which, with what they had already had, ought to put them in excellent trim for the fatigues of the succeeding day, whatever they might be. And with this resolve still uppermost in my mind I laid down and once more dropped to sleep when my turn came at one o'clock a.m.
Two o'clock arrived, our watch was called, and still there had been no sign of the enemy. I thought we might now safely reckon upon being allowed to pass the remainder of the night undisturbed; I accordingly informed the retiring watch that unless we happened to be attacked in the interim they would now be allowed to sleep for a spell of two hours instead of one, and they forthwith composed themselves for a good long nap.
But it was not to be. An hour later one of the men startled us all into instant wakefulness by sharply giving the challenge, which was instantly repeated all round the battery, and peering anxiously into the fog I detected the indistinct presence of several shapeless objects lying prone upon the ground where I knew that nothing of the kind ought to be. These objects were quite motionless; but the man who had first given the challenge assured me that his attention had first been attracted to them by a stealthy movement. Ordering the man to at once rouse the sleepers, cautioning them individually to take up their proper stations an noiselessly behind the parapet, I waited until every man had gained his post, and then taking a steady aim at one of the objects I discharged my musket. With a shriek of pain the object at which I had fired half raised itself to an erect position and then fell heavily forward. At the same moment a loud blood-curdling yell resounded upon the heavy night air, and the foggy background instantly became alive with the forms of the savages who sprang to their feet and came bounding toward the battery, hurling their spears as they came.
"Take steady aim, my men; select your mark, and each bring down your man if possible; keep cool now. Ah! I am hit!" I exclaimed, as a spear came whizzing in over the parapet, passing clean through the fleshy part of my right thigh. In the excitement of the moment it did not take me a second to relieve myself of my unpleasant encumbrance by drawing the spear shaft right through the wound; and the next moment I found myself engaged with the rest in resisting the hottest and most determined assault to which we had hitherto been subjected. Luckily for us the battery was only a small affair, and our party was therefore large enough to take pretty good care of it, otherwise that night attack would have ended the business. But our men had now had the benefit and refreshment of three hours' sound sleep, and they fought with such renewed energy, such dogged determination, that the assault again failed, and the savages were once more driven off. That satisfied them for the time being. They had deferred their attack until the early hours of the morning, doubtless hoping to find us worn out with ceaseless watching, and perchance at length overcome with sleep; and instead of that we had been found more alert than ever; in their anxiety to take us unawares they had rather overdone it, in fact, and the result was that they left us undisturbed for the short remainder of the night.
There was, however, no more rest for us; after this well-planned attempt at a surprise I dare not allow any of my small party to again go off duty, and sunrise found us still anxiously watching for another attack. When the mist at length cleared away we discovered the hostile canoes still closely hemming us in; but they now seemed to have tired of their fruitless efforts to take the battery by assault, and had apparently made up their minds to try the effect of a regular siege. This was bad enough; for our provisions, though husbanded with the utmost care, were only sufficient to allow us a mere mouthful each for two meals during that day; but to be spared the fatigue of constantly fighting was something to be grateful for; and I felt certain that the relief expedition _must_ appear before the lapse of many hours longer. We consequently sat down to our scanty morning meal not only with excellent appetites but also in very fair spirits, considering what we had lately been called upon to endure; and, the meal over, I next devoted my attention to the wounded, of whom there were by this time several, and did what I could to make them and myself as comfortable as possible.
About an hour after sunrise a little air from the eastward sprang up, and by nine a.m. it was blowing quite a free breeze, which, though it certainly refreshed us greatly, and was in pleasing contrast to the suffocating heat of the day before, I was rather sorry to see; for I knew that, combined with the current, it would seriously retard the advance of our friends up the river. To tell the truth, I was getting to be a trifle anxious about this matter; I could not at all understand why it was that we had been left to take care of ourselves so long. If the French boat had reached the creek in safety she would doubtless arrive about ten or eleven p.m., or a few hours only after our establishment of ourselves upon the island. Forty hours or thereabouts had elapsed since then, yet there was no sign of help. Could it be possible that the Frenchmen had _not_ escaped after all? In that case we might have to wait another day, or even a couple of days; for I thought it scarcely probable that Captain Vernon would take alarm on the instant of our becoming overdue. I was anxiously weighing all these surmises in my mind, and endeavouring to arrive at a fair and reasonable estimate of the longest possible time we might still be expected to hold out, when the look-out men raised a simultaneous cheer, followed by a joyous shout of--
"The boats! The boats! Here they come. _Hurrah_!" With one bound I reached the parapet; and, sure enough, at a distance of only three- quarters of a mile away, and just sweeping fairly into view from behind the next island below us, the launch, pinnace, and second cutter of the _Daphne_ appeared, with their ensigns streaming in the breeze and the quick-flashing oar-blades and the bayonets of the "jollies" gleaming brightly in the sun.
"Up, lads! and give them a cheer, just to let them know where we are," I exclaimed exultantly; and at the word up scrambled the whole of our little party except poor old Mildmay, who was too seriously hurt to move without assistance--and from the top of the parapet we sent echoing down to them upon the wings of the breeze three such ringing cheers as must have assured them of the sincerity of our delight at their appearance. As the sound reached the boats I saw the officers rise in the stern- sheets and wave their caps to us in response; the oar-blades flashed quicker in the sun; the foam gathered in increasing volume under the bows of the boats as their crews put on an extra spurt; and presently a flash and a puff of fleecy smoke started out simultaneously from each boat, and the _boom_ of the three reports came dull and heavy to us against the opposing breeze.
Of course we fully expected that the mere appearance of the boats would suffice to put our sable enemies to flight, but nothing of the kind happened; on the contrary, the canoes resolutely faced the new-comers, and evinced a very decided disposition to dispute their passage up the river.
We should beat them to a certainty; no one in their sober senses could for a moment doubt that; but in the meantime, if it actually came to a hand-to-hand tussle between whites and blacks we in the battery, who had already had so many opportunities of observing their perfect fearlessness, knew very well that the latter could make matters decidedly difficult and unpleasant for our friends.
But it was no time just then for cogitation, the moment for decisive action had arrived, and I forthwith took the necessary steps to enable our party to do their share of the work in hand.
"That will do, lads," I exclaimed, as the men on the parapet paused to recover the breath they had expended in their vociferous greeting to the boats. "Jump down and man the guns. Load and double shot them; and you, Tom, place the remainder of those fuzes in the magazine in such a way that they will do their work effectually when required. We will give the canoes another broadside, just to `freshen their way' and show them that we are in earnest; and then I shall abandon and blow up the battery previous to shoving off to join our lads yonder."
The men turned to with a will; the guns were loaded; and I then went with Tom to personally inspect the arrangement of the fuzes.
When all was ready I gave the word to fire; the six guns belched forth their contents simultaneously; and without waiting to see what damage had been done, the men seized their muskets, the water-kegs, and our few other belongings; and with two hands specially detailed to convey the master carefully down to the boat, all hands, excepting Tom and myself, left the battery and made the best of their way down to the cutter, which, after depositing poor old Mildmay as comfortably as possible in the stern-sheets, they got afloat.
"Step your mast," I shouted, "and see all ready for hoisting the sail."
We waited patiently until we saw that everything was ready on board the cutter; and then Tom and I ignited the fuzes in the three magazines. It was awfully risky work, as the fuzes were fearfully short; but it had to be done, and it was done coolly and smartly, after which we bounded over the low parapet and ran for our lives down to the boat. "Shove off and give way for your lives, men," I panted, as we tumbled in over the gunwale with a considerable loss of shin-leather; and in another instant we were surging away from the island as fast as the oars and sail would drive us. The men were just belaying the halliards of the lug when--_boom_--a dull heavy report came from the battery; a great black cloud of smoke and dust, liberally intermixed with clods and stones and masses of earth, shot up into the air; and when it cleared away _the battery was gone_.
"Now, Tom, jump forward, my man, and get that carronade loaded with grape or canister or langridge, _anything_ you happen to have handy, and be smart about it, my fine fellow," I exclaimed, as I saw a group of canoes separate themselves from the rest and form in line across our course, evidently for the purpose of opposing our passage and preventing our effecting a junction with our friends. "Load your muskets, men, and draw your cutlasses; we must get through that line of canoes somehow, and I mean to do it."
The men obeyed without a word; their blood was by this time thoroughly aroused; they were all a-quiver with eager excitement; and as I looked at them sitting there upon the thwarts, facing forward, with their naked cutlasses beside them and their loaded muskets firmly grasped in their hands, their fingers just feeling the triggers, their teeth clenched, and their eyes flashing, I felt that nothing short of a frigate with her crew at quarters would stop them.
The rescuing party was by this time smartly engaged with the main body of the canoes, and by their tardy progress I knew that they already had their hands fully occupied. The detachment which had assumed the responsibility of intercepting us had separated itself some distance from the main body, and was now formed in a double line right across our course, altering its position from time to time in such a manner as to keep always square ahead of us. I saw that it would be useless to attempt to dodge them; we had not time for that; so I directed the coxswain to steer straight for the broadside of the midship canoe, the craft, that is to say, which occupied the centre of the opposing line. She was a biggish craft for a canoe, being somewhere about fifty feet long, and manned by forty negroes; the canoe which lay on her starboard side, or beyond her, being about the same size. There were sixteen more canoes in the line; and altogether they presented the appearance of a very formidable barrier. But I had had an opportunity of learning pretty well what they were when Smellie and I, bound hand and foot, took our memorable cruise up the river in one of them, and I knew that they were, after all, but very crank, flimsy, fragile affairs, not to be compared for a moment in strength with the stout boat which carried us at such a gallant pace over the swirling river. So I determined to give our foolhardy opponents the stem, trusting to the weight and momentum of the boat to enable us to break through the line.
On rushed the cutter, the breeze roaring merrily over her, and the broad lag-sail dragging at her like a team of cart-horses; whilst Tom crouched in the bows, squinting along the sights of his piece, and holding himself in readiness to fire at the instant that he should get the order. We were within a hundred feet of the line of canoes when the crew of the big craft began to see danger; they had hoped, by their persistent demonstration of barring our path, to intimidate us, but, now that it was too late, they saw that they had failed, that we meant mischief; and, setting up a loud yell of consternation, they plied their paddles desperately in an effort to avoid the impending collision. It was unavailing; the canoes ahead and astern of them, confused like themselves, and only imperfectly comprehending what their comrade would be at, closed in upon instead of separating from them; and immediate dire confusion was the result. When within twenty yards of them Tom delivered the contents of his carronade; and an immediate outburst of groans, yells, and shrieks bore testimony to the accuracy of his aim. Before the smoke had fairly cleared away the cutter was upon them. The big canoe nearest us had been torn nearly in halves by the discharge of the carronade, and we swept over her almost without feeling it. The other big fellow was, however, afloat and apparently uninjured. Another yell of terror went up from her occupants as our sail overshadowed them; there was a violent shock as our strong iron-bound stem crashed down upon their gunwale; the canoe heeled over; and the cutter leaped upward as she crushed her way through and over this second adversary.
For a few seconds we were involved in a confused medley of canoes and wreckage, of drowning savages wildly clutching at the gunwales of the boat in an ineffectual effort to save themselves; there was a rattling volley of musketry, a flash or two of cutlass blades, and then away sped the cutter once more. _We were through_.
Our carronade was quickly loaded again, but happily further destruction of human life was unnecessary. The savages, who seemed to have depended implicitly upon the power of their detached squadron to stop us, became demoralised when they saw the cutter dash irresistibly through the opposing line, and receiving at the same time very severe treatment at the hands of the rescuing party, they broke up suddenly and beat a precipitate retreat, each canoe seemingly striving to outdo the rest in the speed of its flight. And thus ended victoriously for us the fight which we had been for over forty hours maintaining against such apparently overwhelming odds.
We soon found ourselves alongside the launch; and hearty were the congratulations and eager the questions which were showered upon us by her crew, quickly repeated by those of the other two boats, which joined in almost immediately afterwards.
"You seem to have been in rather a bad fix," exclaimed Armitage, who was in command of the boats, as he shook me heartily by the hand. "Tell us all about it."
I detailed as succinctly as possible all that had transpired since our departure from the ship, and wound up by a suggestion that if they had any spare rations they would be most acceptable.
"Rations!" exclaimed Armitage; "to be sure we have, my boy; but let us adjourn to this island of yours, where we can get them properly cooked. I feel curious to see the spot which you held so pluckily for so long a time. But, by the by, where is the French boat all this time?"
"The French boat? Has she not turned up at the creek?" I exclaimed in surprise. "We felt certain of her escape, and indeed depended upon the information she would convey of our predicament for the despatch of assistance."
"She had not put in an appearance up to the time of our starting at noon yesterday, nor have we seen any sign of her during our passage up the stream," was the reply. "You were due to return, you know, the evening before last, and when yesterday morning came, without your appearance, Captain Vernon became uneasy. He allowed you until noon, however; but when noon passed, leaving you still _non est_, he came to the conclusion that something was amiss, and despatched us in quest of you at once. So this is the scene of the struggle, eh?" as the boats grounded on the beach of the island. "A pretty scene of ruin it is."
And so it was. The battery had been completely obliterated by the explosion, nothing remaining to mark its site but the scattered fragments of the sod walls and the dismounted guns; the charred remains of the barrack, a short distance away, aiding to complete the picture of destruction. An immense number of native spears were lying scattered about all over the ground, and these were promptly collected by the seamen as souvenirs of the struggle.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.
AN AWFUL CATASTROPHE.
Meanwhile the Spaniards were still lying _perdu_ on board the hulk as they had remained from the moment of our driving them out the battery. During the discussion of our much-needed meal the question of what steps we should take with regard to them had been canvassed; and, our appetites at length satisfied, Armitage and I walked across the island to make a closer inspection of the position of the craft.
I had wondered greatly, at odd times during our protracted struggle with the savages, how the Spaniards had managed to transfer so rapidly from the barrack to the hulk the large number of slaves which the former must have contained, and now the riddle was solved. On arriving abreast of the hulk we found that a small timber jetty had been constructed from the shore to a point within fifty yards of the hulk, and we could see in a moment that by easing off the moorings of the hulk, the current would carry her fairly alongside this jetty, where, without doubt, she must have been lying when we first hove in sight. The slaves had evidently been marched straight on board her over the jetty, and her bow and stern moorings then hove in until she had been hauled far enough away from the jetty to render her capture by its means impossible.
After a little further conversation with Armitage it was agreed that the Spaniards should be hailed and ordered to surrender, and this was accordingly done. We had no very great hope of success, as we felt sure the Spaniards must be fully aware of the difficulty we should experience in capturing the hulk. As before stated, she towered so high out of the water and her sides were so bare that the Spaniards, small as was their number, could effectually resist all our efforts to capture her by boarding; to fire into and sink her would only result in the destruction of all the slaves on board her; and as she was moored with heavy chains, instead of hemp hawsers, to cut her adrift and let her ground upon the island was quite as impracticable as would have been any attempt to board her.
We were therefore very agreeably surprised when the Spaniards, in response to our hail, at once consented to abandon the hulk, provided we would allow them to depart unmolested in their boat. This arrangement suited us very well, we being just then anything but anxious to hamper ourselves with prisoners, and the required promise was unhesitatingly made. The Spaniards thereupon provisioned their boat, lowered her into the water, and half an hour later disappeared round a bend of the river on their way down stream. Taking immediate possession of the hulk, we dropped her in alongside the jetty once more, and landed the slaves upon the island. They were all, for a wonder, in fairly good condition, having evidently been well taken care of, with the view of fitting them as thoroughly as possible to withstand the terrible hardships of the notorious Middle Passage.
Having at length cleared the hulk we next transferred the slaves in batches to the boats, by which they were conveyed across the stream to the mainland, where they were freed and left to shift for themselves, the provisions found on board the hulk being distributed as evenly as possible among them. Landed thus in a possibly hostile country--for they were evidently a different race of people from those with whom we had recently had so desperate a struggle--unarmed, and with only a small supply of provisions, their situation was perhaps not very much better than it had been when they lay prisoners on board the hulk, but it was all we had it in our power to do for them under the circumstances, and we could only hope that their wit would prove equal to the task of steering them clear of the many dangers to which they were exposed, and conducting them safely back to their own country. There were rather more than eight hundred of them altogether, counting in the piccaninnies, and the transfer of them to the mainland fully occupied us until within half an hour of sunset. As we were by that time pretty well fagged out, and as it was manifestly too late to make any progress worth speaking of on our way back to the creek that night, we resolved to remain until daylight upon the island, which we did without receiving molestation or annoyance of any kind from anybody.
At eight o'clock on the following morning, having previously breakfasted, we started down the river, keeping a bright look-out for the French boat all the way down, and exploring all the most likely creeks and indentations on the south bank of the river, without discovering any trace of her. This protracted search so seriously delayed our progress that we were two whole days making the passage back to the creek, and on our arrival there we discovered that three survivors of the French party had turned up on board the _Vestale_ the previous day, reporting the capture of the boat by the natives, and the massacre of all hands except the three who had managed somehow to slip their bonds and make good their escape in a canoe. They had reported that their capture was due to our _abandonment_ of them, it appeared, and the insinuation, which Captain Vernon had indignantly repudiated, had occasioned a very serious outbreak of ill-feeling between the two ships, so much so indeed that the commander of the _Vestale_ had left the river in high dudgeon on the morning of the day of our arrival, refusing absolutely to co-operate with us any further. I was, of course, subjected to a very severe cross-examination by Captain Vernon on the subject; but my detailed narrative of the affair, which was confirmed in every particular by poor old Mildmay, soon satisfied him that the fault, if fault there was, rested not with us; and both Mildmay and myself were fully exonerated from all blame. Nay more--the master generously represented my defence of the battery in such a light that I received the skipper's highest commendations and renewed promises of support and assistance in my career.
At sunrise next morning we weighed and stood out to sea, bound on a cruise to the westward.
The next two months passed away in the most drearily uneventful manner, the ship being at sea the whole time. At the end of that period, being in latitude 4 degrees south and longitude 5 degrees east on our way back to the Congo, the ship standing to the northward and eastward at the time, under all plain sail, with light baffling south-easterly airs, the look-out aloft, just before being relieved at noon, reported two sail, close together, hove-to broad on our lee bow. The usual form of questions being duly put by Armitage, who happened to be the officer of the watch, the further information was elicited that one of them was a brig and the other a full-rigged ship, but of what nationality they were it was difficult to say, nothing but the heads of their topgallant-sails being visible above the horizon from our fore-topmast crosstrees. The matter being reported to Captain Vernon, orders were given for our course to be so altered as to allow of our edging down upon the strangers; the fact of their being hove-to so close together having a somewhat suspicious appearance.
By three o'clock p.m. we had neared the two vessels sufficiently to bring their hulls into view from the main-royal-yard; they were then lying broadside-on to us with their heads to the eastward, the ship being between us and the brig; but by the aid of our glasses we were able to make out that they had apparently dropped alongside each other, and the skipper gave it as his decided opinion that foul play was going on on the part of one or the other of the two craft. This opinion was shortly afterwards confirmed by the appearance of thick clouds of black smoke arising from the ship; the brig hauling off and standing to the westward under every stitch of canvas she could spread.
"Undoubtedly a most daring act of piracy, committed under our _very_ noses, too," commented the skipper to me as the smoke rose up into the clear atmosphere and hung like a great pall immediately over the doomed ship. We were walking together fore and aft upon the quarter-deck at the time, whistling most earnestly and devoutly for a wind, as indeed were all hands fore and aft. Suddenly Captain Vernon paused, and, wetting the back of his hand, held it up to the air.
"The wind is failing us," he remarked, and abruptly dived below to his cabin.
At the same moment I noticed that the corvette was heading three or four points to the eastward of her course.
"Hard up with your helm, man," I exclaimed impatiently to the man at the wheel. "Where are you taking the ship?"
"The wheel _is_ hard over, sir," explained the poor fellow with patient deference; "but she's lost steerage-way."
Just then the skipper returned to the deck.
"Pipe away the first and second cutters, Mr Hawkesley," he exclaimed sharply. "Take charge of them yourself with one of the midshipmen to help you, and pull down to the burning ship. As likely as not you will find that a similar trick has been played there to the one by which that unfortunate man Richards and his crew so nearly lost their lives. Let the crews of the boats take their cutlasses and pistols with them, so as to be prepared in the event of interference from the brig's crew, and make all the haste you can. Your first duty is to save the crew; your next to save the ship if possible. The glass is rising, so there will be no wind; but I shall do what I can to shorten the distance between us and the brig yonder. When you have done all that is possible on board the ship, make a dash for the brig, unless you see the recall signal flying."
Three minutes later the two cutters were darting swiftly away over the long glassy undulations of the ground-swell toward the great cloud of smoke on the horizon which served as a beacon for us; the men pulling a long steady stroke, which, whilst it sent the boats through the water at a very fair pace, could be maintained for three or four hours at least.
We were scarcely a mile away from the _Daphne_ when she had the rest of her boats in the water and ahead of her towing, whilst, dangling from the yard-arms aloft, could be seen hammocks and bags of shot suspended there to assist--by the swinging motion imparted to them by the rise and fall of the vessel over the swell--the ship's progress through the water. The brig was hull-down to us; but from the steadiness with which her head was kept pointing to the westward I conjectured that she was either sweeping or being towed by her boats.
The sun set in a perfectly clear and cloudless sky, just as we had brought the ship hull-up; but by that time she was a mass of flame fore and aft, and I began to fear that we should be too late to save her crew or to do any good whatever on board her. We kept steadily on, however, and reached her half an hour later.
The three masts went over the side when we were within a cable's length of the burning ship, and on arriving within fifty feet of her we found it impossible to approach any nearer, owing to the intense heat. It was manifestly impossible that any living thing could be in the midst of that fiercely flaming furnace, so we were compelled to content ourselves with merely ascertaining the name of the unfortunate craft, which with considerable difficulty we at length made out to be the _Highland Chieftain_ of Glasgow--after which we left her.
On pulling out clear of the smoke and glare of the flames once more we found ourselves to be about six miles distant from the brig, a distance of about eleven miles intervening between us and the _Daphne_. Night had by this time closed completely down upon us; the deep clear violet sky above us was thickly powdered with stars, which were waveringly reflected in the deep indigo of the water beneath, and away to the eastward the broad disc of the full moon was just rising clear of the horizon and casting a long rippling wake of golden light from the ocean's rim clear down to us.
Our first glance was of course in the direction of the _Daphne_. Her towering spread of canvas alternately appeared and vanished as the enormous idly flapping sails caught and lost again, with the heave of the vessel, the glint of the golden moon-beams; but, save this, all was dark and still on board her; no lanterns flashed in her rigging as a recall signal, so I exultingly gave the order for the boats to be headed straight for the brig, determined to win her if dash and courage could do it.
"Pull steadily, lads," I cautioned, as the two crews bent their backs, and with a ringing cheer started the boats in racing style; "no racing now, we cannot afford the strength for it, all you have will be wanted when we get alongside the chase; she is doubtless well manned with a determined crew who will not give in without a tough struggle, so husband your strength as much as possible. Mr Peters," to the midshipman in charge of the second cutter, "drop in my wake, sir, if you please, and see that your men do not overtask themselves."
The men obediently eased down at once, and we jogged steadily along at a pace of about four knots an hour; but their eagerness soon got the better of them, the pace gradually increased, and I had to constantly check them, or we should soon have been tearing away as fiercely as ever.
This state of things lasted for about half an hour, and then the gleam of lanterns suddenly appeared in the _Daphne's_ rigging. It was the recall signal, and the men gave audible vent to their feeling of disappointment in an involuntary groan.
"Never mind, men," I said; "I have no doubt Captain Vernon has some good reason for it. Answer the signal, coxswain. Ah! I told you so; the sloop has a little breeze, and here it comes creeping up astern of us. Step the mast, take the covers off the sails, and get the canvas on the boats. Do you see that bright red star close to the horizon, coxswain? Starboard a bit. So, steady, now you have it fair over the boat's stem. Steer for it, and we shall just drop alongside the loop nicely, without troubling her to wait for us."
The breeze soon reached us, toying coyly with the boat's canvas at first, but gradually bellying out the sails until at last they "went to sleep." The breeze was, after all, merely the gentlest of zephyrs, only just sufficient to give a ship steerage-way; but, very fortunately for us, the boats were provided, by a whim of poor Austin's, with a suit each of enormous lateen sails made of light duck, with yards of such a length that they had to be jointed in the middle to enable them to be stowed in the boats; they were just the thing for light airs, and under their persuasive influence we were soon gliding smoothly through the scarcely ruffled water quite as fast as the men could have propelled us with the oars. An hour later we slid handsomely up alongside the sloop, which by this time was slipping along at the rate of about five knots under studding-sails and everything else that would hold a breath of wind, and the boats were hoisted in without any interruption to the ship's progress.
"Well, Mr Hawkesley, what news from the burning ship?" exclaimed the skipper as I stepped up to him to make my report.
I explained to him the state in which we had found the vessel when we reached her, and gave him her name.
"Ah!" he remarked. "Well, it is a bad job, a very bad business altogether. I can only hope we may find the crew uninjured on board the brig when we catch her; but I think it is rather doubtful. Now run away down into my cabin and tell Baines to give you some dinner. I expect everything will be cleared away in the ward-room by this."
On descending to the cabin I found that the skipper had been considerate enough to give orders that a nice little dinner should be ready for me on my return, and those orders having been carried out to the letter I was enabled to sit down in peace and enjoy the meal for which the long pull in the boats had given me a most voracious appetite. The meal over, it being then my watch below, I turned in.
On relieving Mr Armitage at midnight I found that the weather was still fine, the wind the merest shade fresher than it had been when I left the deck, and the chase directly ahead, about twelve miles distant, her upper canvas showing distinctly in the brilliant rays of the moon. We had gained upon her about a couple of miles during the four hours I had been below, and Captain Vernon--who had been on deck during the whole of the previous watch, and was just about to retire for the night--was in high spirits, and confident in his belief that, if all went well, we should make the capture before sunset on the following day. The best helmsman in my watch was ordered to the wheel. I made a regular tour of the decks, taking an extra pull at a halliard here, easing off an inch or so of this brace or that sheet, and, in short, doing everything possible to increase the speed of the ship, and so my watch passed away; the _Daphne_ having crept another couple of miles nearer to the chase during the interval.
Thus matters went on until noon of the following day, when the wind once more showed symptoms of failing, whilst the sky became overcast, threatening a change of weather. We had by this time shortened the distance between ourselves and the chase until a space of only some seven miles or so separated us, and everybody on board, fore and aft, was in a fever of impatience to get alongside the brig, which our glasses had already assured us was none other than the notorious _Black Venus_. She had already proved herself so slippery a customer that an almost superstitious feeling had sprung up in our breasts with regard to her; we felt that however closely we might succeed in approaching her, however helplessly she might seem to be in our power, there could be no dependence whatever upon appearances, and that until we had absolutely succeeded in placing a prize crew upon her decks, and her own crew in irons, we could not feel by any means certain that she was ours. Hence the extraordinary feeling of excitement and impatience which prevailed on board the _Daphne_ on that memorable afternoon.
About two o'clock the wind changed, and we were obliged to take in the studding-sail on the port side and get a pull upon the port braces. Meanwhile a heavy bank of clouds had gathered in the south-western quarter, and was gradually working up against the wind, until by three o'clock p.m. the sun was obscured and the entire heavens blotted out by the huge murky mass of seething vapour. It was my watch below, but, like everybody else, I was much too excited to remain anywhere but on deck, and, to confess the truth, I did not half like the appearance of things in general. According to my notions we were about to experience one of those sudden and violent atmospheric changes which are so frequently met with in the tropics; yet there was the ship with a whole cloud of studding-sails set on the starboard side, as well as every other rag of canvas that could be coaxed to do an ounce of work. "If," thought I, "my knowledge of weather is worth anything, all hands of us will be pretty busy before long, and we shall be lucky indeed if we do not lose some of our spars, as well as an acre or two of those flying- kites up aloft there." I even forgot myself so far as to gently insinuate such a possibility to Mr Armitage, but I was so sharply snubbed for my pains that I determined to interfere no further whilst off duty, but to keep my eyes open and be ready to lend a hand whenever and wherever required.
Captain Vernon was of course on deck, and from the anxious way in which he from time to time glanced, first at the portentous sky overhead, next at the chase, and finally at our immense spread of canvas, I felt sure that he, to some extent, shared my apprehensions.
At length, after a more than usually anxious glance round, he went to the skylight and took a peep apparently at the barometer. I was watching him, and I saw him start and take another keen look at it. Then he suddenly dived down the companion-way into the cabin to make a closer inspection of it, as I conjectured. My curiosity was aroused, and I was walking aft to take a look at the instrument through the skylight on my own account, when the canvas suddenly flapped, and the next second, without further warning of any description, a perfect tornado burst upon us.
The ship was taken flat aback, and over she went, bowing helplessly before the irresistible strength of the hurricane. I thought I heard Armitage's voice shouting an order of some kind, but if such was the case it was impossible to distinguish the words through the deafening rush of the wind, which completely swallowed up all other sounds. As I felt the deck rapidly heeling under my feet I made a desperate scrambling spring for the nearest port on the weather side; for I somehow seemed to realise instinctively that the _Daphne's_ brief career was ended--that she would never again recover herself, but would "turn the turtle" altogether. The ominous words of the riggers on that day when, in the first flush of my new-born dignity, I went down to inspect the craft which was to be my future home, recurred to my mind as vividly as though they had that moment been spoken, and I felt that the prophecy lurking behind them was then in the very act of fulfilment. I was fortunate enough to reach and grasp one of the gun-tackles, and drawing myself up to windward by its aid, I passed out through the open port on to the upturned weather side of the ship, where I paused for a moment to glance behind, or rather beneath me. I shall never forget the sight which then met my gaze. The ship was lying over on her beam-ends with her lower yard-arms deeply buried in the sea. The whole of the lee side of the deck was submerged; the water was pouring in tons down the open hatchways, the lee coamings of which were already under water, and the watch below could be seen ineffectually endeavouring to make their way up on deck through these openings, the rush of water down which irresistibly drove them back again at each attempt. As for the watch on deck they were already either swimming about in the sea to leeward or clinging convulsively to the rigging, whither a few had instinctively betaken themselves when the ship first went over. But I had time only for a momentary glance; the sloop had hung stationary in this position for just the barest perceptible space of time; then with a sudden jar she began to settle once more, and I had time only to scramble breathlessly along her wet and slippery sides and on to her bilge when she rolled fairly over and floated keel upwards. And as she did so, a hideous shriek rang out from her interior and became audible even above the awful rush of the gale.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.
AN ABDUCTION AND AN IMPORTANT CAPTURE.
For a few moments I felt bewildered--stunned--by the awful suddenness of this frightful catastrophe; the piercing shrieks of despair, too, which continued to issue from the interior of the vessel, unmanned me, and I crouched there upon the upturned bottom of the fabric like one in a dream. I felt that it _was_ a dream; the disaster was too complete and too unexpected to be real, and I waited there, frozen with horror, anxiously looking for the moment when I should awake and be released from the dreadful nightmare.
But the sight of some half-a-dozen men battling for their lives in the water to leeward of the hull, and vainly struggling to reach the main- topgallant-mast--which had gone at the first stroke of the hurricane, and having somehow broken adrift from the topmast-head, now lay floating, with all attached, a few yards away--brought my senses back to me, and abandoning my precarious refuge I sprang into the sea and assisted the men, one after the other, to reach the floating spars. As I looked round me, in the vain hope of discovering further survivors, a few more spars floated up to the surface--a spare topmast, a studding- sail boom or two, the fore-topgallant-mast, with royal-mast, yards, and sails attached; and finally a hen-coop with seven or eight drowned fowls in it. All these I at once took measures to secure, knowing that our only hope of ultimate escape--and a very frail and slender hope it then appeared--rested upon the possibility of our being able to construct a raft with them. In this attempt we were fortunately successful, and sunset found us established on a small but fairly substantial and well- constructed raft. We mustered seven hands all told, six seamen and myself--_seven only out of our entire crew_! And so far we were safe. But as I looked, first at the frail structure which supported us, and then at the boundless waste of angry sea by which we were environed, and upon which we were helplessly tossed to and fro, I thought in my haste that it would have been better after all if we had shared the fate of our comrades, now at rest in their ocean grave and beyond the reach of those sufferings which seemed only too surely to await us. Then better thoughts came to me. I reflected that whilst there was life there was hope, and that the Hand which had been outstretched to preserve us whilst others had been allowed to perish, was also able to save us to the uttermost, if such should be the Divine Will. And was it not our duty to submit to that Will, to endure patiently whatever might be in store for us? Assuredly it was; and I humbly bowed my head in silent thanksgiving and prayer--thanksgiving for my preservation so far, and prayer that I might be given strength and patience to endure whatever privation or sufferings might come to me in the future.
Whilst constructing the raft we had been too busy to note more than the bare fact that we were being gradually but perceptibly swept away from the capsized hull of the unfortunate _Daphne_; but when our work was at length completed and we had a moment to look around us, our first glances were directed to windward in search of the wreck She was nowhere to be seen, and we had no doubt that, whilst we had been so busily employed, the wreck had gradually settled deeper and deeper into the water until she had gone down altogether.
Most fortunately--or most providentially I ought rather to say--for us, the tornado had been as brief in its duration as it had been disastrous in its effects, otherwise we could never have hoped to survive. In little more than ten minutes from the capsizing of the sloop the strength of the hurricane was spent, and the wind dropped to a fresh working breeze. Of this circumstance the _Black Venus_ promptly availed herself--her crew having undoubtedly observed the disaster--by bearing up and standing to the eastward under every inch of canvas she could spread. Our first impression on witnessing this manoeuvre was that, animated by some lingering spark of humanity in their breasts, her people were returning in quest of possible survivors; but this hope was speedily extinguished by the sight of the brig sweeping to leeward and passing us at a distance of about half a mile, with her crew busily engaged in the operation of crowding sail upon their vessel. We stood up and waved to her as she passed, and I have no doubt whatever that we _were_ seen; but no notice was taken of us, and she soon swept out of sight to leeward. I hardly expected any other result, and was consequently by no means discouraged at this fresh instance of inhumanity; indeed, had they taken it into their heads to rescue us, it is probable that our lot among them would have been little if any better than it was out there on the open ocean, drifting about upon our tiny raft.
When night fell we had had sufficient time to fully realise the peril and hopelessness of our position; and I think most of us fully made up our minds that we were destined to a lingering death from starvation, unless, indeed, the end should happen to be precipitated by the springing up of another gale or some equally fell disaster.
But our gloomy anticipations were destined to be speedily and pleasantly dissipated, for at dawn on the following morning we were agreeably surprised by the sight of a sail in the northern quarter--the craft evidently heading directly for us. The wind was blowing from the westward at the time, a five-knot breeze; the weather was clear and the sea had gone down, leaving nothing but the swell from the blow of the preceding day. We accordingly set to work and unhesitatingly cut adrift one of the smaller spars of which our raft was constructed, and, hastily securing the crazy fabric afresh, reared the spar on end, with my shirt--the only white one among us--lashed to its upper extremity as a signal.
The hour which followed was one of most agonising suspense. Would she or would she not alter her course before observing our signal? The helmsman was not steering quite as steadily as he might have done, and our hearts went into our mouths and a cry of anguish involuntarily escaped our lips every time the stranger showed a tendency to luff to windward or fall off to leeward of her course. At length, however, our apprehensions were set at rest; for just as her hull was rising above our limited horizon we saw a sudden flash from her side, followed by a puff of white smoke, and a few seconds later the sharp ringing report of a gun came wafted down to us. Then her topgallant-sails and royals fluttered a moment in the cool morning breeze as they were rapidly sheeted-home and mast-headed; and half an hour later the _Virginia_-- yes, there could be no doubt about it, it was our latest prize; and there, abaft the main rigging, stood the well-known figure of Smellie himself--the _Virginia_ hove-to close to windward of us, a boat was lowered, and we soon found ourselves standing safe and sound on the brig's deck, the cynosure of all eyes and the somewhat bewildered recipients of our former comrades' eager questions.
As for Smellie, with the considerate kindness which was always one of his most prominent characteristics, he first gave orders that the half- a-dozen hands rescued with me should receive every attention, and then carried me off to his own cabin and rigged me in a jury suit of his own clothes--which, by the way, were several sizes too big for me--whilst my own togs were drying; and then, giving orders for breakfast to be served in the cabin at the earliest possible moment, he sat down and listened to my story.
His distress at the loss of so many friends was keen and sincere, but it did not for a moment obscure his sound common sense. A few minutes sufficed me to give him a hasty outline of the disaster and to make him acquainted with the direction of our drift during the night; the which he had no sooner ascertained than he altered the brig's course as much as was necessary to take her over the scene of the catastrophe, at the same time sending three hands aloft to keep a sharp look-out for wreckage or any other indications that we were nearing the spot, and especially for possible survivors.
Half an hour later we passed a grating, then a spare studding-sail boom, then a couple of hen-coops close together; after which fragments of wreckage became increasingly frequent until we reached a spot where one of the _Daphne's_ boats was found floating with her stern torn out of her; several hatch-covers, the mizen topgallant-mast and sail, three dead sheep, a wash-deck tub, and other relics being in company; after which the wreckage suddenly ceased. We had evidently passed over the spot where the _Daphne_ had gone down. And the brig was immediately hove-to and all the boats despatched upon a search expedition--unhappily a vain one, for not a sign of another survivor could be found, nor even a dead body to which we could give decent and Christian burial.
This melancholy fact at length indubitably established, Smellie gave the order to make sail, shaping a course for the Congo, whither we felt sure the _Black Venus_ had made the best of her way.
Crowding sail upon the _Virginia_ we made the passage to the river's mouth in a trifle over five days, during the last three of which the wind was light and variable with us, anchoring in Banana Creek at two p.m. on the fifth day from that on which we had been picked up. The _Virginia_ having succeeded in completing her complement of officers and men at Sierra Leone, the half-dozen picked up with me had been acting as supernumeraries on board, whilst I had simply been Smellie's guest. I was very much gratified, therefore, when he invited me to go with him in the boat on a search expedition to ascertain, if possible, the whereabouts of the redoubtable _Black Venus_.
We started in the gig that same afternoon as soon as the ship was moored, Smellie being of opinion that we should find the object of our quest snugly moored within the creek below Don Manuel's house, where we had seen her on the eventful evening when we captured the _Josefa_; and this creek being situate at some distance up the river, it was necessary that we should make an early start in order to be back on board before the rising of the evening mists.
We reached the creek in due course without adventure, and began cautiously to ascend it. Mile after mile we made our way, landing at the extremity of every reach and carefully reconnoitring the succeeding one before entering it with the boat; but our search was in vain--we arrived at the head of the creek without finding a single trace of the brig, or indeed of any other vessel.
Being there, it was only natural that Smellie and I should feel a strong desire to see once more the kind host and gentle hostess who had so generously nursed and entertained us in the time of our sore need. Leaving the boat at the head of the creek, therefore, in charge of the coxswain, with instructions to the latter to fire a couple of muskets in rapid succession should our presence be required, or, in the event of that being inadvisable, to make the best of his way along the footpath and up to the house, we set out--the bright flush on Smellie's bronzed cheek, the joyous sparkle in his eyes, and the eager spring in his elastic footstep betraying plainly enough the pleasurable anticipations which occupied his mind.
Traversing the path with rapid footsteps we soon reached the palisading which inclosed the garden, passed through the gate, and found ourselves in sight of the house. There it stood just as we had last seen it, door and windows wide open, the muslin curtains at the windows waving idly in the fitful breeze, and the bamboo lounging-chairs--one of them overturned--under the verandah.
We stepped briskly out, warm work though we had found it breasting the hill, and passed up the main avenue leading to the front door--Smellie keeping his eyes intently fixed upon the said front door, doubtless in the hope of seeing Dona Antonia emerge, and of enjoying her first glance of surprise and delight. I of course had no such inducement to look straight ahead, and my glances therefore wandered carelessly here and there to the right and left, noting the exquisite shapes and colours of the flowers and fruit and the luxuriant foliage and delightful shade of the trees.
Whilst thus engaged my wandering thoughts were suddenly arrested by the appearance of several large and heavy footprints in the sandy soil of the footpath; and whilst I was still idly wondering what visitors Don Manuel could have so recently had and from whence they could possibly have come, my eye lighted upon a single drop of blood; then another, then quite a little line of blood-drops. They were, however, only such as would result from a trifling cut or scratch; so I said nothing about it. A little further on, up the pathway, a tall thorny shrub thrust its branches somewhat obtrusively over the border of the path; and one of the twigs--a good stout one--was broken and hung to its parent branch by a scrap of bark only. Curiosity prompted me to pause for a moment to examine the twig; and I then saw that one of the thorns was similarly broken, its point being stained with blood still scarcely dry. This solved the riddle. Someone passing hastily had evidently been caught by the thorn and rather severely scratched. A few paces further on a shred of white muslin hung from another bush; and I began to fear that Dona Antonia had been the sufferer.
Beaching the house we walked unceremoniously in, delighted at the idea of the surprise we should give our friends. Proceeding to the parlour, or usual sitting-room, we found it empty, with, to our great surprise, the table and one or two chairs capsized, a torn scarf lying on the floor, and other evidences of a struggle of some sort. The sight brought us abruptly to a stand-still on the threshold--Smellie and I looking at each other inquiringly, as though each would ask the other what could be the meaning of it all. Then with a quick stride my companion passed in before me, glanced round the room, and uttered a low exclamation of horror. I at once followed, glanced in the direction indicated by Smellie's outstretched finger, and there, behind the door, lay the body of poor Pedro, face downwards on the floor, a little pool of coagulating blood being just visible on the matting beneath his forehead.
Quickly stooping we turned him over on his back. He was quite dead, though not yet cold, the cause of death being clearly indicated by a small bullet-wound fair in the centre of his forehead.
My thoughts flew back in an instant to the night on which we last stood under that same roof, to the attempted abduction of Dona Antonia; and the conviction at once seized upon me that we were now looking upon another piece of Senor Madera's work.
The same thought evidently struck Smellie, for he turned to me and exclaimed breathlessly:
"Dona Antonia!--where can she be?"
And without waiting for an answer he dashed into the passage and began calling loudly:
"Antonia! Antonia mia! where are you, darling! It is I--Harold."
Then, receiving no answer, he shouted alternately for Don Manuel and old Madre Dolores.
This time he was more successful, for as he paused for breath we heard a voice far down the garden-path replying in Spanish, "Hola! Hola! Who calls for me so loudly?"
And looking in that direction we saw Don Manuel sauntering up the path with his gun thrown carelessly over his shoulder and a well-filled bag of "specimens" by his side.
We hastened out to meet him, and received a right joyous and hearty greeting, to which we hastily responded; and then poor Smellie in his anxiety blurted out:
"And where is Dona Antonia?"
"Is she not in the house?" asked Don Manuel.
"I cannot find her anywhere," replied Smellie, "and I greatly fear--" then his natural caution returned to him and he checked himself. "By the way," he continued, "have you seen anything of your friend Senor Madera lately."
"No," answered Don Manuel, "he has never had the assurance to appear here since the night on which he made his audacious attempt to abduct my daughter; but I noticed just now that his ship is in the creek below there, so I hastened home, deeming it only prudent to be on the spot whilst he favours us with his unwelcome proximity."
"His ship in the creek!" exclaimed Smellie incredulously. "Then she must have arrived within the last half-hour, for it is barely that since we passed from the mouth to the head of the creek, and no ship was in it then."
A little cross-questioning, however, elicited the fact that there were _two_ creeks near Don Manuel's house; we had explored the western creek, and it was the other which at that moment sheltered Senor Madera's ship.
Smellie then, with infinite tact and patience, gradually broke to the poor old gentleman the news of the tragedy which had been enacted in the house during its owner's brief absence, together with our fears as to the fate which had befallen Dona Antonia.
The poor old fellow was at first most frightfully agitated, as of course might reasonably have been expected; indeed in the first paroxysm of his grief and rage I almost feared he would lose his senses altogether. But Smellie's gentle firmness and sound reasoning soon brought him to a calmer frame of mind, and then we instituted a thorough but fruitless search of the house.
I then thought it time to mention the various little signs I had observed on the garden-path; and we forthwith directed our steps to the several spots, carefully examining the ground foot by foot, with the result that we were soon enabled to arrive at something like a definite conclusion. Our examination showed that at least half a dozen men had visited the house probably not more than half an hour before our arrival; that there had been a struggle, in which the unfortunate Pedro had lost his life; and that Dona Antonia, and also in all probability poor old Madre Dolores, who could nowhere be found, had been forcibly carried off. Having come to this conclusion, we next patiently tracked the footprints, which led us through the wood down to the head of the creek referred to by Don Manuel, on the muddy banks of which we distinctly traced not only the heavy footprints of the abductors, but also the lighter ones of, presumably, Dona Antonia and her nurse, as well as the mark of the boat's keel where she had been grounded. This much determined, Don Manuel next led us to a spot from which he assured us that Senor Madera's vessel could be seen; and there, sure enough, we saw our old foe the _Black Venus_ snugly moored in the creek.
A council of war was at once held as to what should be our next proceeding. It was manifestly impossible to attack the brig there and then; our little force was wholly inadequate to the capture of the vessel, and any attempt to do so would only have resulted in putting her crew upon their guard. Don Manuel informed us that, from his knowledge of the creek, he was certain there would not be a sufficient depth of water over the sand-bar at its mouth to allow of the brig sailing before high-water, which would be at about half-past six o'clock that evening; but we were unanimously of opinion that, having secured his prey, Senor Madera _would_ sail then. As to what might happen in the interim, it would not bear thinking of, and we could only hope and pray for the best. Having by this time obtained all the light which it was possible to gain on the matter, we prepared to return to the _Virginia_, Don Manuel eagerly accepting Smellie's invitation to accompany us. But before doing this, there lay before us the melancholy task of burying poor Pedro's body, and with the aid of half a dozen men from the gig this was accomplished as speedily as possible, after which the house was shut up, and we hastened down to the boat and made the best of our way back to our ship.
Poor Smellie behaved most admirably under the very trying circumstances. That he was fearfully agitated and anxious, I, who knew him so well, could easily see; but with a determination and firmness of will which I heartily envied he resolutely put aside all other considerations and devoted all his energies to the solution of the problem of what it would be best to do. We were a silent and thoughtful party as we wended our way back to the ship; but once there, the skipper promptly led the way to his cabin and informed Don Manuel and me that he had decided upon a plan of action.
It was exceedingly simple. He was, he said, more firmly convinced than ever that the _Black Venus_ would sail that night. The weather was clear and fine, the barometer high; and we might therefore reckon with certainty upon the springing up of the land-breeze shortly after sunset. This breeze would be a fair wind _out_ of the river; but so long as it lasted no ship could re-enter against it and the strong current. Smellie's plan, therefore, was simply to go outside as soon as the evening mists gathered sufficiently to conceal our movements, and there await the _Black Venus_, trusting to the speed of the _Virginia_ and our own manoeuvring to enable us to get promptly alongside her.
The plan looked very promising, and it was adopted. The messenger was at once passed, and the ship hove short; after which we awaited with such patience as we could muster for the gathering of the mist. At length, about seven p.m., the anchor was tripped, and the _Virginia_ glided gracefully out of the creek to seaward, under topsails, jib, and boom mainsail. We knew almost to a hair's-breadth the course which the _Black Venus_ must steer for the first seven or eight miles after clearing Shark Point, and Smellie placed us right across this track, jamming the vessel close upon a wind and wearing short round every twenty minutes; by which plan we were never more than ten minutes sail from the line over which we expected the enemy to pass.
A careful calculation, based upon our knowledge of the _Black Venus's_ extraordinary sailing powers, showed that we might look for her about half-past nine o'clock; and half an hour previous to that we began to make our preparations for according to her a suitable reception. The decks were cleared for action, the magazine was opened, arms and ammunition were served out to the crew, who were then sent to quarters; the guns were loaded each with a round-shot and a charge of grape on the top of it, and all the canvas was loosed and made ready for setting at a moment's notice. Then all the sharpest eyes available in the ship were set upon the watch for our slippery foe, and we were ready.
The night-mists to which frequent reference has been made are, it ought to be explained, confined to the river itself; and though on such occasions as that of which we are now treating they are carried out to seaward by the land-breeze a few miles beyond the river's mouth, they soon get dissipated; so that whilst in the river itself the fog may be so thick as to render it impossible to see further than half the ship's length ahead, it will be perfectly clear at a distance of seven or eight miles outside. It was just upon the outer or seaward skirts of the fog- bank that we had taken up our station and were hovering to and fro.
The _Virginia_ had just gone round, and was stretching to the southward upon the port tack, when, from my station on the heel of the bowsprit, I thought I detected a sudden thickening of the haze at a spot about three points on the weather-bow. Straining my eyes to their utmost I gazed intently into the darkness; the appearance became more pronounced, more defined every second, and as I watched it assumed the form of an irregularly-shaped truncated pyramid.
"Sail ho! broad on the weather-bow!" I exclaimed joyously; and in a moment half a dozen voices exultingly reiterated the cry of "Sail ho!"
Yes, there could be no mistake about it; for whilst the words were still upon our lips the apparition grew more substantial, assumed the misty outline of a ship in full sail, and finally shot out from among the fog- wreaths clear and well-defined--a brig running before the wind under studding-sails.
I hastened aft to where Smellie stood grasping the maintopmast backstay, and was greeted by him with the characteristic remark of:
"What a fellow he must be, and what nerve he must have! Fancy a man running out of that river and through the fog under studding-sails." Then, turning to the helmsman, he said:
"_Now_ we have him fairly, I think. Up with your helm, my man, and steer for his jib-boom end. Mr Costigan,"--to the first lieutenant--"make sail, if you please."
"Oi, oi, sorr," answered that worthy in a rich Hibernian brogue. "Let go and overhaul the fore and main clewgarnets; board the fore and main tacks and aft wid the sheets. Fore and main topmast-staysail and jib halliards, hoist away. Sheet home and set the fore and main-topgallant- sails, and be smart about it. Aisy now, there, wid that main tack; don't ye see, you spalpeens, that the ship is bearin' up. Man the braces, fore and aft; ease up to leeward and round in to windward as the ship pays off. Well of all, belay, and coil up. Misther Hawkesley, am I to have the pleasure of showin' ye the way on board the hooker yonder?"
"Thanks, no, I think not, Costigan," I answered with a laugh. "I propose to lend my valuable aid to the alter division of the boarders; you are a host in yourself, you know, and can manage very well without me. But I shall keep a look-out for you in the waist of the brig."
"Very well, it's there I'll mate ye, young gintleman, or my name's not Denis Costigan."
And away hurried the impetuous Irishman to place himself at the head of the forward division of boarders.
The brig had sighted us almost as quickly as we had her, and she made one or two attempts to dodge us. But it was of no use, she had run into our arms, as it were; we were much too close together when the vessels became visible to each other to render anything like dodging at all possible; moreover Smellie, standing there on the breach of one of the guns, watched the chase with so unwavering an eye and met any deviation on her part so promptly with a corresponding swerve on the part of the _Virginia_, that Senor Madera soon scornfully gave up the attempt, and held steadily forward upon his course.
The sister brigs, for such they eventually proved to be, now running on almost parallel courses, soon narrowed the space between them to a bare hundred feet, the _Virginia_, however, having been so carefully steered as to give her a slight lead. This seemed to be the moment for which Senor Madera had waited, for he now suddenly threw open his ports, and without attempting the mockery of hoisting an ensign of any kind, poured into us the whole contents of his double-shotted starboard broadside, aiming high, however, with the evident hope of knocking away some of our more important spars. Our lower canvas was immediately riddled and a few unimportant ropes were cut; but beyond this we fortunately sustained no damage.
By way of reply to this, Smellie, without removing his eyes from the chase, waved his hand gently to the helmsman; the wheel was put a half a dozen spokes or so over to port, and the _Virginia_ slewed slightly more toward her antagonist.
"Now, steady men," cautioned the skipper. "Do not fire until I give the word, then pour your broadside in upon her decks--not a shot below the sheer-strake for your lives." I well knew of whom he was thinking when he said this; Antonia was doubtless in the cabin, and it was her safety for which he was thus careful. "And as soon as you have fired your broadside," he continued, "draw your cutlasses and stand by to board. Are the grappling-irons all ready?"
"All ready, sir," came the reply from the tars who were standing by to throw them, and then there ensued a few breathless moments of intense silence.
Gradually the two brigs neared each other, until the lap and swirl of the water along our antagonists' sides could be distinctly heard. At that moment a rattling volley of small-arms was discharged from the _Black Venus_, and I saw Smellie start and reel on his elevated perch. The next instant, however, he had recovered himself, and once more waving to the helmsman, he gave the word:
"_Fire_!"
Prompt at the command, our broadside rattled out, and amid the crashing of timber and the shrieks of the wounded I felt the jar of collision between the two vessels.
"Heave!" shouted Smellie. "Boarders away!" And with a simultaneous spring fore and aft, away we went over the bulwarks and down on to the crowded decks of the _Black Venus_.
The fight was short but stubborn. Our antagonists fought with the desperate bravery of men who already felt the halters settling round their necks; but whoever heard of British tars yielding an enemy's deck when once their feet were firmly planted upon it? Besides, almost every individual man among us felt that we had a long score of disappointments and floutings to wipe out, and steadily but irresistibly we drove the pirates into the waist of their ship, where, huddled closely together, it was impossible for them to use their arms effectively. Finally, Smellie and Madera, after several unsuccessful efforts to get at each other, managed to cross swords, and after a few rapid passes the latter fell, run through the body by the skipper. In the very act of falling, however, he whipped a pistol from his belt and aiming point blank at the skipper, fired, the ball passing through Smellie's lungs. The poor fellow turned blindly, and with the blood spurting from his mouth reeled into my arms.
I knew very little of the fight after this, for summoning a couple of men I at once proceeded to remove the skipper on board his own vessel; but before we had got him fairly down on deck a cheer from our lads told us that victory had once more declared herself on our side, and that the redoubtable _Black Venus_ was ours.
Getting Smellie below and into his cot with all speed, I waited until the arrival of the surgeon upon the scene, when, handing the patient over to his tender mercies, I hastened back on board the prize, and went straight below into her cabin. It was a magnificently furnished apartment, and fitted with every luxury, even to a guitar. But it was empty. Could it be possible that we had been deceived, after all, as to the circumstances of Dona Antonia's abduction? Perhaps she was concealed somewhere. I shouted:
"Dona Antonia! Dona Antonia! are you here? Fear not; it is I--Dick Hawkesley. We have captured this vessel; Madera is wounded, if not slain outright; your father is at hand, and you are free."
"Who calls?" I heard a voice--Madre Dolores'--exclaim from an adjacent berth, the door of which was closed. "Who calls?"
"I--Dick Hawkesley," I replied. "Don't you recognise my voice, Madre?"
"Ay, to be sure I do--_rum_" was the reply. A sound of the withdrawal of bolts followed; the door cautiously opened, and the Madre, with her eyes gleaming and a cocked pistol pointed straight in my direction, protruded her head through the opening. One look was sufficient. With a wild cry of delight she dashed the pistol to the floor, exploding it in the act, and sending the ball within a hair's-breadth of my starboard ankle, and rushing forward flung her arms convulsively about my neck, pouring out a torrent of Spanish endearments between the kisses which the poor old soul liberally bestowed upon me. I submitted with a good grace for a moment, and then gently but firmly withdrew myself from her embraces, to meet the glance of Dona Antonia, who stood in the doorway of the state-room, looking on with a curiously mingled expression of fear, doubt, and amusement.
A few words sufficed to fully explain to her the state of affairs, and then hastily enveloping her and old Dolores in the first wraps that came to hand, I conveyed them with all speed on board the _Virginia_ and presented them to Don Manuel.
My story is now ended, or nearly so; my adventures on the Congo and the west coast terminating with the capture of the _Black Venus_; a few additional words, therefore, will suffice to fittingly dismiss the principal personages who have figured in this history, and to bring the history itself to a symmetrical conclusion.
We returned with our prize to Banana Creek, on the morning following the action, and there remained for a couple of days to bury the dead, and to refit. Don Manuel embraced this opportunity to make a flying visit to his house, from which he returned after an absence of a few hours only, bringing with him a small but solidly constructed and extremely heavy oak chest, which he explained to me in confidence contained his daughter's dowry, and which eventually proved to be the receptacle of a goodly store of Spanish dollars.
From Banana Creek the two brigs proceeded in company to Sierra Leone, where the _Black Venus_ was soon afterwards adjudicated upon and condemned as a pirate, my evidence and that of the other six survivors from the _Daphne_ being accepted as conclusive of the fact that she had been guilty of at least _one_ act of piracy; namely, in the case of the _Highland Chieftain_. Her crew were committed to prison upon heavy sentences, meted out in proportion to the comparative guilt of the parties; but additional evidence shortly afterwards cropping up--that of poor Richards of the _Juliet_ amongst it--additional charges were preferred against them; and Madera, who proved to be the half-brother of the fictitious Monsieur Le Breton, late of the _Virginia_, with his officers and several of his men, suffered the penalty of death by hanging.
Smellie's wound proving unexpectedly troublesome, he was ordered home that he might have the benefit of a more temperate climate to assist his recovery, and he accordingly took passage for London in a tidy little barque, the _Lilian_, Don Manuel and his daughter, with old Dolores, all of whom had gone on to Sierra Leone with us, also engaging berths in the same vessel. The survivors from the _Daphne_ being also ordered home to stand their trial for the loss of that vessel, I thought I could not do better than secure one of the remaining berths in the _Lilian's_ cabin-- the men being accommodated in the steerage. Thus we had the mutual pleasure of each other's society all the way home.
The passage was a long but uneventful one, and by the time that we arrived in the Chops of the Channel Smellie's wound had taken so favourable a turn that he was almost as well as ever, save and except for a little lingering weakness and shakiness in his lower spars, which, somehow, obstinately continued to need the assistance and support of Dona Antonia's fair arm whenever the two promenaded the deck together. My gallant superior was extremely anxious to be married immediately on the ship's arrival, and after the usual protestations and pleadings for delay with which engaged maidens delight to torment their lovers, Dona Antonia so far yielded as to consent to the wedding taking place on the earliest possible day after my trial, so that I might be present at the ceremony.
And this arrangement was duly carried out; the trial by court-martial being, of course, a mere form, from which I and my fellow-survivors emerged with a full acquittal, accompanied, in my case, by a few very gracious and complimentary remarks from the president on the manner in which I had conducted myself during my short period of service.
As for Smellie, he found himself fully confirmed in his rank of commander, with the gracious intimation that, in appreciation of his valued services, an appointment would be at his disposal whenever he felt himself sufficiently recovered to ask for it, which he did after a six months' sojourn at home with his young wife. I sailed with him in the capacity of midshipman, and in the West Indies and elsewhere we passed through several stirring adventures together, the record of which may possibly be given in the future.
THE END.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Congo Rovers, by Harry Collingwood |
22782-8 | Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Transcriber's Note:
The spelling and accents of Sanskrit names is not consistent in the book. The Table of Contents is not part of the original book.
THE BUDDHA
A DRAMA IN FIVE ACTS AND
FOUR INTERLUDES
BY
PAUL CARUS
CHICAGO
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
LONDON: 149 Strand
1913
* * * * *
CONTENTS
DIRECTIONS TO THE STAGE MANAGER.
CAST OF CHARACTERS.
GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN TERMS.
ACT I.
ACT II.
ACT III.
ACT IV.
ACT V.
* * * * *
DIRECTIONS TO THE STAGE MANAGER.
The scenery can be made very attractive by both historical accuracy and a display of Oriental luxury, but the drama may easily be performed with simple means at a small cost without losing its dramatic effect. Some of the changes, however, should be very rapid. The interludes can be replaced by lantern slide pictures, or may be omitted.
If the interludes are retained there need not be any intermission in the whole drama.
The music for the Buddha's Hymn of Victory, pages 5 and 39 (see _The Open Court_, XIX, 49); the dirge on page 19, (_Open Court_, XIX, 567); Yasodhara's Song, page 37 (_Open Court_, XVIII, 625); and the Doxology, page 63 and at the end (_Open Court_, XVIII, 627), may be found in a collection entitled _Buddhist Hymns_ (Chicago, Open Court Publishing Co., 1911).
COPYRIGHT BY
THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO.
1913
* * * * *
CAST OF CHARACTERS.
_All vowels to be pronounced as in Italian._
Siddháttha Gótama, Prince of the Sakyas, later on the Buddha _B_
Suddhodana, King of the Sakyas, father of Siddháttha _S_
Pajapati, Queen of the Sakyas, aunt and stepmother of Siddháttha _P_
Princess Yasodhara, Siddháttha's wife _Y_
Rahula, Yasodhara's son _R_
Devadatta, brother of Yasodhara _Dd_
Kala Udayin, a gardener's son _K_
Gopa, Yasodhara's maid _G_
Visakha, a Brahman, Prime Minister of Suddhodana _V_
Devala, a Sakya Captain _D_
Bimbisara, King of Magadha _Bb_
Ambapali, King Bimbisara's favorite _Ap_
Nagadeva, Prime Minister of Mágadha, leader of an embassy _N_
General Siha, in the service of King Bimbisara _GS_
Jeta, Prince of Northern Kosala _J_
Anatha Pindika, a wealthy man of Savattha _A_
Mara, the Evil One _M_
Channa, Prince Siddháttha's groom _Ch_
Master of Ceremonies at Magadha _Mc_
General Siha's Captain _C_
A Brahman Priest _Pr_
A Farmer _F_
Servant _St_
Ministers, Officers, Soldiers, Trumpeters, Villagers, A Shepherd. Singers: Mara's Daughters, Angels, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva.
* * * * *
GLOSSARY OF FOREIGN TERMS.
Buddha, the Enlightened One, the Saviour.
Bodhi, enlightenment or wisdom.
Bodhisatta, a seeker of the bodhi, one who endeavors to become a Buddha.
Bodhi tree, the tree under which Buddha acquires enlightenment.
Muni, thinker or sage.
Sakyamuni, the Sage of the Sakyas, the Buddha.
Tathagata, a title of Buddha, which probably means "The Perfect One," or "he who has reached completion."
Nirvana (in Pali, "Nibbana") eternal bliss.
Kapilavatthu, capital of the Sakyas.
Kosala, an Indian state divided into Northern and Southern Kosala.
Savátthi, capital of Northern Kosala.
Jetavana, the pleasure garden of Prince Jeta at Savátthi.
Mágadha, a large kingdom in the Ganges Valley.
Rajagáha, capital of Magadha.
Uruvela, a place near Benares.
Arada and U'draka, two philosophers.
Licchávi, a princely house of Vesali.
Nirgrántha (lit. "liberated from bonds"), a name adopted by the adherents of the Jaina sect.
Indra, in the time of Buddha worshiped by the people as the most powerful god.
Issara, the Lord, a name of God Indra.
Yama, the god of death.
Káli, a Brahman goddess, called also Durga.
* * * * *
ACT I.
FIRST SCENE.
[A tropical garden in Kapilavatthu, in the background mountains, at a distance the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. On the right near the front a marble bench surrounded with bushes. Further back the palace entrance of the Raja's residence. Above the entrance a balcony. On the left a fortified gate with a guard house; all built luxuriously in antique Indian style.]
_Present_: SUDDHODANA, _the king_ (_S_); PAJAPATI, _the queen_ (_P_), _and the minister of state_ VISAKHA (_V_).
_S._ My son Siddhattha truly loves his wife, And since their wedlock has been blessed by this Sweet, promising, this hale and healthy child, His melancholy will give way to joy, And we reclaim his noble energies To do good service for our race and state. New int'rests and new duties give new courage And thus this babe will prove his father's saviour For he will tie his soul to life again.
_P._ I fear his grief lies deeper than you think.
_S._ What sayest thou, my trusty counselor?
_V._ This is the last hope which I have for him, I followed your advice and tried all means To cure Siddhattha of his pensive mood. I taught him all that will appeal to man: The sports of youth, the joy of poetry And art, the grandeur of our ancient lore, The pleasures e'en of wanton sense; but naught Would satisfy the yearnings of his heart.
_S._ Yet for religion he shows interest: He ponders on the problems of the world.
_V._ Indeed he ponders on life's meaning much, Investigates the origin of things But irreligious are his ways of thought. He shows no reverence for Issara, And Indra is to him a fairy tale. He grudgeth to the gods a sacrifice And sheddeth tears at immolated lambs. Oh no! he's not religious. If he were, His ills could easily be cured by faith, By confidence in Issara, the Lord.
_S._ What then is your opinion of the case?
_V._ Siddhattha is a youth of rarest worth, And he surpasseth men in every virtue Except in one.--He is too independent: He recognizeth no authority, Neither of men nor gods. He suffereth [_More and more impressively_] From the incurable disease of thought.
_S._ Cure thought with thought, teach him philosophy, Show him the purpose of our holy writ. Instruct him in the meaning of the Vedas, Reveal to him their esoteric sense.
_V._ My lord, I did, but he is critical, He makes objections and will not believe. He raises questions which I cannot answer, And his conclusions are most dangerous.
_P._ It seems to me that you exaggerate; Siddhattha is not dangerous. He is As gentle as my sister was, his mother, And almost overkind to every one.
_V._ I know, my gracious lady, but e'en kindness May harmful be, if it is out of place.
_S._ I see no danger in his gentle nature.
_V._ But he lacks strength, decision, warlike spirit.
_S._ That cometh with maturer years.
_V._ I doubt it: Your son, my Lord, not only hath no faith In holy writ, neither does he believe In caste-distinction, and he would upset The sanctioned order of our institutions. He would abolish sacrifice and holdeth The Brahman ritual in deep contempt.
_S._ Your words alarm me.
_V._ Rightly so; I fear That he will stir the people to rebellion; But since a child is born to him, his mind May turn from dreams to practical affairs. There are some men who care not for themselves, Who scorn high caste, position, wealth and honor, So far as they themselves may be concerned, But they are anxious for their children's fortune, And so Siddhattha soon may change his views.
_S._ Let us be patient for a while yet longer. Keep everything unpleasant out of sight, Invite him merry company. Remove His gloomy cousin Devadatta. He tries To reach a state of bliss by fasts, His very play is penance and contrition.
_P._ Ananda is a better boon companion, He is not so morose as Devadatta.
_S._ Neither is he the right friend for my son. I grant he has a loving disposition, But he is pensive too. Surround Siddhattha With lads such as the gardner's jolly son, Kala Udayin. Like a lark he warbles! Would there were more like him. He jokes and laughs And never makes a sullen face. But tell me How is to-day Kala Udayin's father?
_V._ His sickness turns from bad to worse. I fear He cannot live.
_S._ [_with concern_] Have him removed from here; Siddhattha likes him much and if he knew Udayin's sorry fate, it might undo All good effects of joyful fatherhood.
_V._ The best will be to move him in the night.
_S._ Move him by night, and do it soon.--But hush, Yasodhara is coming with her babe.
YASODHARA (_Y_) _and two attendant maids, one carries an umbrella, shading the Princess; the other,_ GOPA (_G_), _carries the infant_.
_P._ [_meets her and kisses her._] Welcome, thou sweetest flower of our garden, Thou ray of sunshine in Siddhattha's life.
_S._ My dearest daughter! how is Rahula?
_Y._ My royal father, Rahula is growing, And he increases daily in his weight; To-day he smiled at me most cunningly. I'll lay him down, for he is fast asleep.
_All enter the palace. The stage remains empty a moment. Soft, serious music (Buddha's "Hymn of Victory") is heard._
SECOND SCENE.
SIDDHATTHA (_B_) _and_ KALA UDAYIN (_K_) _enter_.
_K._ My sweet Prince, when you are king you must appoint me court jester. Will you, my good Lord? We two are good contrasts: You full of dignity upon a royal throne, a golden crown upon your head, the scepter in your hand, and I dressed in motley with cap and bells. Heigh ho! That will be jolly. And after all we are so much alike!
_B._ A royal crown shall never grace my head.
_K._ And why should it not, sweet Prince?
_B._ I have a higher aim, a greater mission. What is a kingdom? What are wealth and power? What crown and scepter? They are transient things, I yearn for the Immortal state, Nirvana.
_K._ Then wilt thou be a Buddha? Oh, even then will I follow thee.
_He kneels down with clasped hands._
Wilt thou a holy Buddha be, O keep me in thy company Though I'm a jester. I'll be good. Let me attain beatitude.
_B._ Rise Kala, rise, I am a mortal man, I'm not omniscient, nor have I yet Attained the goal of goals, enlightenment.-- Tell me, why dost thou think we are alike?
_K._ My Lord, you have no ambition to be a king; you think the world is full of vanity, and you consider that life and its glory will pass away. That is exactly what I think. I agree with you. Only, you are of a serious disposition and take the matter to heart, while I think it is great fun. What is the use of thinking so much. We are all like bubbles: we float in the air, and then the bubble bursts and this life is over. I am now a poor boy. I fear no change. In a future incarnation I may be born as the son of a king, like you. And think of it, after a few million years, this whole world, this big bulky stupid institution, this home of so many villains, and a couple of good ones like us two among them, the theater of rascalities, of vanities, of follies, will be scattered to the winds, as if it had never existed. Be merry, my Prince, so long as the comedy lasts.
DEVADATTA (_Dd._) _appears in the background. His cheeks are sunken and his face is gloomy. His eye has a fanatic expression._
_B._ Consider, it may prove a tragedy.
_K._ Let it be what it may be. To me it will be what I think it is. It is a huge joke.
_B._ But who will laugh at it, my friend?
_K._ I will.
_B._ Kala, the time will come when thou wilt weep.
_K._ Well then? And if I weep I shall shed tears.
Tears are a sweet relief In anguish pain and grief. I'll make the best of all, Whatever may befall.
_B._ Thy prattle seemeth foolish, but it hideth A deep philosophy.
_K._ Why then, good Lord, Why wilt thou not its merry lesson learn?
_B._ Good Kala listen, and thou'lt understand: There is a difference between our aims: Thou clingest to this world of transiency, But I seek the Etern. Thou seest not The misery of life, for thou art happy-- Happy at least at present, though the next Moment may find thee writhing in lament. I seek a place of refuge whence I can Extend my hand to help those in distress. I will attain the state of Buddhahood To bring deliverance to all mankind.
_Dd._ Why do you waste your time, Siddhattha, with this frivolous lad? What profit can there be in gossip such as you two carry on?
_K._ You always scold, you hollow-eyed sour face! You always moralize. Even your good brother-in-law is too worldly for you.
_Dd._ I did not speak to you, I addressed myself to Siddhattha.
_B._ Udayin has a heart, a human heart, And all my sympathy goes out to him.
_Dd._ If you intend to lead a religious life and go into homelessness, you had better devote yourself to fasts and contemplations.
_K._ You do not talk to me, but I will talk to you, and I will tell you that in all your religious exercises you think of yourself, while Siddhattha thinks of others. I wish you would go into homelessness. Nobody would miss you here.
_Addressing himself to_ SIDDHATTHA.
But, good my Lord, you must not go into homelessness, because you will do more harm than good.
_B._ How can that be, my good Kala Udayin?
_K._ There comes your noble wife, Yasodhara.
YASODHARA _comes, her maids with umbrellas keep at a respectful distance_.
_Y._ Come see our boy, he is a lovely child; He just woke up. He maketh you forget, The sad thoughts of your heart on world and life, For he, the darling babe, is life himself.
KALA _flirts with_ GOPA, _one of_ YASODHARA'S _maids_.
_B._ I'll follow thee at once.
_Y._ [_Addressing Devadatta_] And brother, will you come along?
_Dd._ Not I. This child is but the beginning of new misery. It continues the old error in the eternal round on the wheel of life.
_She goes into the house._ DEVADATTA _withdraws into the garden_.
_B._ Now Kala speak.
_K._ O Prince Siddhattha, do not go into homelessness, do not leave us. I cannot live without you. You are my comfort, my teacher, my guide. I do not follow your instructions, but I love to hear them. Oh I could not live without you. Do not go, sweet Prince. Think of your wife, your dear good lovely wife, it will break her heart. Think of your child. Do not go, noble Prince. Let somebody else become the saviour of the world. Somebody else can just as well become the deliverer and the Buddha. I am sure there are many who would like to fill that place, and somebody can do it who has a less comfortable home to leave, who has a less lovely wife, who is not heir to a kingdom, and who has not such a sweet promising little boy as you have. I cannot live without you.
_B._ Wouldst thou go with me?
_K._ [_kneels_] Yes my Lord, I would. Take me along and I will cheer you up.
_B._ Wouldst thou go begging food from house to house? With bowl in hand, a homeless mendicant?
_K._ No sir, that would not suit me.
_B._ Wouldst thou by night sleep under forest trees?
_K._ No sir, I would catch cold. That's not for me. [_Rises_] If you needs must go, sir, you had better go alone. That life is not for me. I will go and hear the nightingale.
SIDDHATTHA _follows the Princess into the palace_.
_K._ A Buddha's life Is not for every one. He has no wife No pleasure and no fun. He cannot laugh, He cannot cry; He cannot love He cannot sigh. He's always preaching, preaching. He's always teaching, teach |
22782-8 | ing. He wonders at time's transiency And ponders on man's misery, And findeth his salvation In dreary resignation. That life I see Is not for me: 'Twould be ill spent; I would not find enlightenment. I lift not the world's woe And in my quest for truth would fail [_Muses a moment._] So I had better go And listen to the nightingale.
_KALA UDAYIN exit._
[During the last scene twilight has gradually set in.]
THIRD SCENE.
[The scene changes by open curtain. A veil comes down, and when its goes up again we see the bed chamber of Siddhattha and Yasodhara dimly lit by tapers.]
_YASODHARA (Y) on the bed with babe in arms, two maids in waiting. SIDDHATTHA (B) comes in. A halo of light (not too strong) surrounds his head. The princess rises, lays the babe down and advances toward her husband._
_Y._ O good my Lord, my Prince, my Husband!
_A pause. She changes her voice as if ashamed of her show of feeling. With a matter-of-fact intonation._
Rahula fell asleep again.
_B._ Why art thou sad, my good Yasodhara? I see a tear that glitters in thine eye.
_Y._ An unspeakable melancholy steals over my soul when I hear you speak of your religious longings.
_B._ Wouldest thou not rejoice if I fulfilled My mission; if I reached the highest goal?
_Y._ Oh! Siddhattha! you do not love me.
_B._ My heart embraces all the world--and thee.
_Y._ If you loved me truly, there would not be much room for all the world. You think of the world all day long, and have not a minute's time for your wife.
_B._ I have, my dear!
_Y._ My noble Husband!
_B._ Speak!
_Y._ Scarcely do I dare to call you by that name. You are kind and gentle, but for a husband you are too lofty, too distant in your dignity. It may be wrong in me, it may be sinful, but I wish you were less lofty and more loving.
_B._ My dearest "Wife," I call thee so on purpose-- My dearest "Wife," thou dost not understand: The misery and ills of all the world Weigh heavy on my heart. I'll find no peace Until at last a remedy be found.
_Y._ Why dost thou trouble about others? Think of thy son, thy sweetest Rahula, and if thou lovest me a little only, think of me.
_B._ I think of thee, my loving Wife, but when I think of thee I think of all--of all The loving wives, the happy trembling mothers All over in the world. Happy they are, But trembling for their babes. Oh! bear in mind, We all are in the net of sorrow caught. This world is full of pain, disease and death; And even death brings no relief. Because The wheel of life rolls on. The ills continue In births that constantly repeat themselves.
_Y._ Oh! do not speak of it my Lord, it makes me sad. Why do you think of misery, while here we are surrounded by wealth and comfort, and even the prospects of our future are most auspicious. Why borrow trouble before it comes?
_B._ My dear Yasodhara, change is the law Of being. Now we prosper, but the wheel Goes round and brings the high into the dust.
_Y._ You suffer from bad dreams;
_B._ Listen to me.
_They sit down._
In this luxurious palace and these gardens, Surrounding it, was I brought up with care. I saw naught but the fair, the beautiful, The pleasant side of life.
_Y._ I know, Siddhattha-- I know it very well.
_B._ You know, my father Has kept me ignorant of evil things. I might have thought that such is life throughout, But I began to doubt and asked for leave To see the world outside these palace walls. Not without difficulty did I gain Permission, and with Channa in a chariot I drove away--when suddenly before me I saw a sight I'd never seen before. There was a man with wrinkled face, bleared eyes, And stooping gait, a sight most pitiable.
_YASODHARA is much moved._
While I was horror-struck, Channa passed by Indifferent, for _he_ had seen such men. Too well he knew the common fate of all; But I, the first time in my life, did learn That, _if_ we but live long enough, we all Shall be such miserable wretched dotards.
_Y._ Too sudden came this saddening truth to you.
_B._ Channa sped on his horses out of town, But there again! what an ungainly sight! A man lay on the road-side, weak and helpless, With trembling frame and feverish cramps. I shut mine eyes to so much racking pain, Still I could hear his groaning and his moaning. "Oh, Channa," said I to the charioteer: "Why does this happen? How deserves this man The wretchedness of his great agonies?" "How do I know?" said Channa, "for we all Are subject to distemper and disease. Sometimes the best are stricken--and must die!" "Must die?" cried I, "What does that word portend?" For, you must know, I never heard of death. My father had forbidden, at his court To speak to me of anything unpleasant. "Yea, die!" said Channa, "Look around and see!" Along the road a funeral procession Moved slowly, solemnly and mournfully And on the bier a corpse, stark, stiff and cold.
_Y._ Do not be troubled, death is still far off.
_B._ Oh do not feel secure, for the three evils Surround us constantly and everywhere, And even now death hovers o'er our house. When I was born my mother went to heaven, Which means, she died when she gave life to me.
_Y._ My Lord don't think of evils that are past.
_B._ The world's impermanence is still the same, And all material things are conformations Subject to pain, decay and dissolution. Yet unconcerned in blessed carelessness Man hunteth after pleasure. Transiency Has set its mark on life, and there is none Who can escape its curse. There is no mortal Who's always happy. Misery surprises The luckiest with unexpected terror. Then, in addition, unseen powers breed Most heinous maladies and fever heat. E'en if we were exceptions, thou must grant That finally we too will meet our doom. The ghastly specter Death, the stern king Yama, Awaiteth all of us. Such is our fate!
_Y._ O put away these gloomy thoughts, and think Of life and love, and of thy lovely child.
_B._ Could we be truly happy while the world Is filled with misery? Mine eyes are opened; I see how death his gruesome revel holds. He owns the world and sways its destinies. One creature ruthlessly preys on the other, And man, the cleverest, preys on them all. Nor is he free, for man preys upon man! Nowhere is peace, and everywhere is war; Life's mighty problem must be solved at last.-- I have a mission to fulfil.
_Y._ And me Wouldst sacrifice for a philosophy, For the idea of an idle quest!
_B._ 'Tis not for me to ask whether my quest Be vain: for me 'tis to obey the call.
_Y._ [_with passionate outburst_] Siddhattha, O my Lord, my husband, what wilt thou do? Dost thou forget the promise made me on our wedding day?
_B_. Yasodhara, a higher duty calls. The time will come, and it is close at hand, When I shall wander into homelessness. I'll leave this palace and its splendid gardens I'll leave the pleasures of this world behind To go in quest of Truth, of saving Truth.
_YASODHARA sinks on her knees before him and clasps his knees._
_Y._ And me, my Lord, thy quest will make a widow! Oh, stay, and build thee here a happy home.
_B._ My dear Yasodhara, it cannot be.
_The Prince stands lost in thought. Rahula is restless. YASODHARA rises and turns toward the child._
_Y_. He wakes again. I come, my babe, I come.
[The veil comes down again, and when it rises it shows the garden before the palace as in the first scene, but it is night and all is wrapped in darkness.]
FOURTH SCENE.
_King SUDDHODANA (S) and his minister VISAKHA (V) come out of the entrance._ _Later on Captain DEVALA (D) and soldiers._
_S._ Unfortunate, most unfortunate, that Udayin died. Siddhattha will miss the gardener and will ask for him.
_V._ The Prince loves flowers, and he knows them all by name; he loves trees and shrubs, and praises them for yielding fruit and grain for feeding us without the need of shedding blood.
_S._ Have the body removed so long as it is dark.
_V_. The moon is full to-day and must rise in a little while.
_S._ Double the guards at the gate. I am afraid my son will flee. It would be a disgrace on my house to have him become a mendicant. The kings of Kosala, of Magadha, and all the others look with envy on our sturdy people; they dislike our free institutions and our warlike spirit. They would scoff at us if a Sakya prince had become a monk. But if Siddhattha does flee, I swear by Lord Indra that I shall disown him; I will no longer recognize him as my son. I will disinherit him and make Rahula my heir apparent.
_VISAKHA looks at SUDDHODANA in amazement._
_S_. I am serious and I will do it. I swore an oath, and Issara will help me to keep it. Now go to the captain of the guards and do as I bid you.
_Exit. The Minister alone._
_V._ Oh! What a chance for me! Siddhattha will flee, if he be not prevented; he will be disinherited. Rahula is a babe, and it will take twenty years before he grows up to manhood.--[_He muses._] I may proceed on different lines, and one of them must certainly lead to success. I may marry the Princess and become the stepfather of the heir apparent, his guardian, the man who has him in his power--Hm! Hm! I need not plan too far ahead. And if that plan did not work, the King of Magadha would make me raja of the Sakyas, if I would recognize him as my liege.
_The full moon rises and the scene becomes gradually brighter. VISAKHA knocks at the gate._
Who is on guard?
_Officer comes out._
_D._ I am, my Lord, 'tis Captain Devala.
_V._ 'Tis well. King Suddhodana requests you to double your guard to-night, for he has reasons. Further he wants you to remove the corpse of Udayin, the gardener who died to-day of an infectious disease. Be on your guard, for where a dead body lies there are ghosts--and [_in a half whisper_] when you see demons or gods, keep yourselves, you and your men, locked up in the guard house, and the spook will pass without harm.
_D._ Your order shall be punctiliously obeyed.
_Pays his military salute and returns to the guard house._
_V._ That settles the guard, and should Siddhattha flee he will find no obstacle.
_Two men come out of the guard house and enter the palace with a bier. KALA UDAYIN comes back from the garden. VISAKHA retires into the background._
_K._ The nightingale is a sweet bird, but I like the lark better. The nightingale is more artistic, but his song is melancholy, he is so sentimental! The lark has a mere twitter like my own song, I like the lark better. How beautiful is this summer night; How glorious is the moon; how fragrant are the roses in the garden! It is a most auspicious night, and all breathes happiness.
_VISAKHA from his hiding place watches KALA._
_V._ He comes in time, his presence will prosper my plans.
[Kala is lost in thought. Music, from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, somber and as if coming from a distance, is heard.]
_K._ [_while the music plays_] What a strange presentiment is stealing over my soul. Perhaps I was too happy! What does Siddhattha say?
"All conformations always are transient,[A] Harrassed by sorrow, lacking a self."
[Footnote A: The quoted lines run in the same rhythm as the melody and should be pronounced accordingly. See _Buddhist Hymns_, p. 22.]
_The men come with the corpse on the bier. KALA stops them._
_K._ What do you carry? Who is this? [_he shrieks_] My father! [_The carriers set the corpse down and Kala sinks down by the bier._] Oh, my father! my dearest father! How did you die? Why did you leave me? Oh, my father! [_he sobs_].
_The moon sinks behind a cloud._
_SIDDHATTHA comes._
_B._ What may the trouble be? I heard a shriek.
_KALA raises himself half way up. The scene is bright again._
_K._ Oh, my Prince! See here! My father is dead! Now I know the truth as well as you. Now I feel the pain. The time has come for me to lament. I was so happy and I would not believe you.--Oh ye who are happy, think in the hour of happiness that all is subject to suffering, and the hour of suffering will come to you too. Nay more than that, the hour of death will come; it has come to my father, it will come to you and to me, and then my caroling will stop forever. Oh, my poor father!
_B._ How rarely is thy advent welcome, Death, E'en this poor gardener who a servant was His livelong days, leaves in our hearts a gap. His son lamenteth him, and I not less; He was my loving friend; my educator, He had me on his knees so many a time, To tell me how the flowers will grow and blow, And how they prosper after rainy days. May gentle lilies from thy ashes spring, Decked with the purity of thine own heart, And with their fragrance give the same delight That in thy present life thou gavest us.
_The carriers lift up the body and carry it out._
Oh, fare thee well, thou good and worthy friend, Oh, fare thee well, but thy departure is To me a token that my time has come.
_Turning to KALA who all the while was lying prostrate weeping._
Weep not, companion of my childhood days, But bear in mind the courage of thy mirth. Remember all the virtues of thy father And let them live again in thine own heart. Thou must not yield to weakness and lamenting, Tend to life's duties: Go and call me Channa, Bid him to saddle Kanthaka, my steed, And let him ready be for a night's ride.
_KALA exit. SIDDHATTHA alone._
The hour has come! and now my last farewell To thee my wife and Rahula my son.
_SIDDHATTHA makes a few steps and halts._
This is the greatest sacrifice I bring: I leave behind a crown without regret; I leave the luxury of wealth and power; I care for them as though they were but ashes But I must also leave my wife and child: Here I must prove the courage of my heart.
_Enters the house._
FIFTH SCENE.
[The veil of clouds comes down, and when it rises we see Yasodhara's bedroom again.]
_SIDDHATTHA (B) enters. YASODHARA (Y) sleeps with the babe in her arms._
_B._ Here lie the rarest treasures of this life, My noble wife, my dear boy Rahula.
_SIDDHATTHA approaches the bed._
Your sleep is sweet in your sweet innocence, And I will not disturb your blissful rest. I will go out in search for saving Truth And shall not come again unless 't be found Farewell my wife and Rahula my son. Must I be gone? Is this, in sooth, my duty?
_He goes toward the door. There he stops._
Perchance on their account I ought to stay. But no! my father can take care of them. It is my tender heart that makes me weak. This is the greatest sacrifice I bring.
SIXTH SCENE
[Change of scene, as rapid as before. The garden before the palace]
_CHANNA (Ch.) enters with a horse._
_Channa._ My Prince, here is your steed!
_MARA (M), a superhuman figure, gaudily dressed, hovering in the air, suddenly appears and addresses SIDDHATTHA (B)._
_M._ It is a shame to leave your wife and child.
_B._ [_Addressing the vision in the air._] Mara, thou here? thou wicked one, thou tempter!
_K._ Oh do not leave us Prince. Think of the wrong you do. You wrong your royal father, you wrong your wife, you wrong your child.
_B._ What sayest thou? Thou sayest I do wrong? The same rebuke is echoed in my heart; It is so sweet, so loving, so alluring! And shall I listen to its tender voice? How pleasant would it be to stay at home, And to enjoy my wife's love and my child's! Is that my duty? Say, is that my duty?
_K._ Surely my Lord, your duties lie at home.
_SIDDHATTHA wavers as if in doubt. He stands pondering for a moment._
_B._ Who will instruct me where my duty lies?
_M._ I will instruct thee, I will guide thee right.
_K._ How can you doubt, my Prince? And can you not Search for the truth here in this pleasant garden? There're spots enough where you can think and ponder, And meditate among the fragrant flowers.
_B._ Here I shall never reach my goal.
_K._ Stay here. A kingdom is your sure inheritance, While Buddahood is but a doubtful prize.
_B._ And shall the world wait for another Buddha? So many millions clamor for the truth!
_With determination._
I hear the call and naught shall hold me back. I see my duty and I will obey.
_M._ Wilt thou not stay, my noble Prince Siddhattha? The wheel of empire turns, and thee I shall Make king of kings to rule the whole broad earth. Think of the good which thou wilt do as king! And then as king of kings thy mighty power Will spread the good religion o'er the world.
_B._ I know thee Mara, tempter, Evil One, Prince of this world, I know thy voice, thy meaning. The gifts thou offerest are transient treasures, And thy dominion is mere vanity. I go to found a kingdom in the realm Of the immortal state which lasts for aye. Thou hinderest and dost not help the truth.
_K._ Thou speakest to the empty air, my Prince, For I see no one whom thou thus addressest.
_CHANNA helps SIDDHATTHA to mount, and while the gate opens leads the horse out of the gate, and KALA enters into the palace. VISAKHA is coming to the front._
_V._ He is gone. He has made room for me. The time will come when this kingdom will be mine.
_Y._ [_from the balcony_] Siddhattha! Siddhattha! Where are you? He is gone! He has departed into homelessness! [_She faints._]
[CURTAIN]
_FIRST INTERLUDE._
_Living pictures accompanied by appropriate music, as an introduction to Act II._
1. BEGGING FOOD.
A scene of the Prince's life as a mendicant friar.
A Hindu village, Siddhattha stands bowl in hand before a hut; a woman dishes some rice from a kettle into his bowl; villagers, including children, stand around gazing at him,--a few with clasped hands.
2. THE KING GREETS THE MENDICANT.
Tradition tells that King Bimbisara, hearing of the noble monk, went out to see him and offered him to take part in the government. This being refused, the King requested him to visit Rajagaha, the royal residence, as soon as Siddhattha had become a Buddha.
Siddhattha is seated under a tree near a brook; the king stands before him, surrounded by his retinue.
3 PREACHING TO THE VILLAGERS.
Under the tree in the market place of a Hindu village The Buddha is seated in the attitude of a preacher. The villagers stand or squat around intently listening.
4. SAVED FROM STARVATION
In company with other monks, Siddhattha sought for a while enlightenment by self-mortification.
Being exhausted by severe fasts, the mendicant faints, and Nanda, the shepherd's daughter, passing by, refreshes him with rice milk. His five disciples at a distance fear that he has given up his quest for truth.
ACT II.
FIRST SCENE
[Seven years have elapsed since the first act. A room in the royal palace at Magadha]
_Present: NAGADEVA (N), the prime minister, GENERAL SIHA (GS), commander-in-chief of the Magadha forces. Later on the MASTER OF CEREMONIES (MC), KING BIMBISARA (Bb.), a trumpeter and a small body guard._
_N._ It is a joy to serve this mighty king Whose power extendeth over many lands. In peace he ruleth wisely, and his subjects Obey him willingly for he is just. In war he swoops upon his enemies As doth a hawk upon a helpless chicken, Quick in attack, lucky in every fight. Indeed he earned his name deservedly, The warlike Bimbisara.
_GS._ At his side I fought with him in many a doubtful battle With all the odds against us, but his daring, Joined to a rare instinctive foresight By which he could anticipate all dangers, Would win the day and ne'er was he defeated! In this our latest war he took great risks, Might have been taken by his foes, and would Have lost his liberty, his throne, his life; But venturing much he won, and by exposing His own high person in the brunt of battle He stirred the courage of his followers To do great deeds of valor.
_MASTER OF CEREMONIES enters with a trumpeter._
_MC._ Noble lords, Mis majesty, our royal lord, is coming To meet you here in private council.
_Trumpeter blows a signal._
_GS._ Hail the victorious, warlike Bimbisara!
_Both kneel as the king enters preceded and followed by a small body guard._
_Bb._ Be greeted noble lords.
_N._ We wish you joy and the continuance of your good fortune.
_Bb._ I have a matter to bespeak with you, Far-reaching weighty plans of great importance. I wish to be alone with you.
_Turning to the captain of his body guards._
Captain, have this room guarded by your soldiers. The gong shall call you when I need your service.
_The soldiers march out of the room._
Be seated, my good lords. You helped me gain a wondrous victory Which proves I have the favor of the gods. I probed your skill, your courage and your faith And found you both most able and most trusty. Therefore you are to me much more than vassals And servants of the state; you are my helpers, Indeed my friends and nearest to my heart. A king needs friends who share his secret thoughts, Who stand by him in all vicissitudes, Who bear with him responsibilities, And above all, who frankly speak the truth. I ask you, will you be such friends to me?
_GS._ I will with all my heart.
_N._ And I not less.
_Bb._ I, my dear friends, I promise you in turn That I shall not resent your words of truth If spoken in good faith with best intentions. I may not always follow your advice, But you are free to say whate'er you please, Whate'er you may deem best for me to know, Whate'er will benefit the empire and my people. Now listen what I have to say to you. I will reveal to you my inmost heart: This is an age of greatest expectations; Riches accumulate in our cities, Commerce and trade are flourishing, and Our caravans exchange our native goods For gold and precious produce from abroad. What India needs is unity of rule. The valley of the holy Ganges should Be governed by one king, a king of kings. There should no longer be a rivalry, A clash of interests between the states, And all the princes should obey the rule Of the one man who guides and guards the whole. This therefore is my plan: you Nagadeva Must gain the favor of our neighbor kings, So as to make them recognize our sway. If voluntarily they will submit, They shall be welcome as our worthy vassals. If they resist (_turning to Siha_) my gallant general You must reduce them to subjection. A treaty with the rajas in the east, In southern and in northern Kosala, Speedeth my plans, the Sakyas only Defy our sovereign will, and keep aloof. If they yield not, their power must be broken! There is a task for you and for my army.
_N._ Permit, my noble king, that I advise you. I know the Sakya minister of state, And he is willing to betray his master. The Sakya prince, the only son and heir, Siddhattha Gotama he's called by name, Went into homelessness and has turned monk, Leaving behind his wife and a small son. The min |
22782-8 | ister aspireth to the throne, And if we help him in his plans, he will Acknowledge you as sovereign over him. And that will save your army blood and trouble.
_Bb._ What is his name.
_N._ Visakha, noble King.
_Bb._ I wish to see him. Let him visit you And as by accident I want to meet him.
_GS._ Allow me, mighty King, a word of warning.
_Bb._ Speak freely.
_GS._
_With unconcealed indignation, almost entreatingly._
Do not listen to a traitor. Send me with all the army of the kingdom, Bid me lead captive all the Sakyas; do it In open fight but not by treachery. My King, avoid alliance with Visakha, His very breath contaminates. He lowers Ourselves to his low level.
_Bb._ Thank you Siha. I will be slow. [_Pondering_] But it is too important!
_Argues with himself._
May I not listen to a traitor's words, Nor hear him,--profit by his information?
_GS._ Oh do it not!
_Bb._ Siha, thou art a soldier. I honor thee, thou speakest like a soldier, But think how much diplomacy will help, How many lives and property it saves. Without the brutal means of war it will Better accomplish all our ends; it spares The enemy as well. A prosperous country Will serve me better than a city sacked And villages destroyed by fire.
_GS._ Pardon, my liege, I do not trust a traitor.
_Bb._ I will be on my guard, but I shall see him, 'T shall be by way of reconnoitering. You in the meantime keep the army ready, For one way or another I must conquer The Sakya king and make him do my bidding.
_The King rises indicating that his two counselors are dismissed. They rise also._
The world is growing wider every day And our souls broaden with the general progress. A new era dawns upon us. Let us all Help to mature the fruitage of the times.
SECOND SCENE
[The garden before the palace of King SUDDHODANA as in Act I]
_Presents YASODHARA (Y) with her maid GOPA (G) and RAHULA (R)._
_Y._ Repeat that verse once more and then we will stop our lesson.
_R._ With goodness meet an evil deed, With loving kindness conquer wrath, With generosity quench greed, And lies by walking on truth's path.
_Y._ Now you can run about in the garden or play with the Captain's son.
_R._ Mother, I do not believe that goodness always works in this life.
_Y._ Why do you think so?
_R._ Because there are very bad boys, so bad that only a whipping will cure them.
_Y._ Rahula!
_R._ Truly, mother, truly. Even the gardener says so.
_Y._ You must set the bad boys a good example.
_R._ No use, mother; they remain bad. I have tried it.
_Y._ You must have patience.
_R._ No use, mother; and the gardener says, A viper remains a viper.
_Y._ Even poisonous reptiles can be tamed.
_R._ Yes, but the gardener first pulls their fangs. Would you like me to play with a viper?
_Y._ No, my boy.
_Excitement at the gate. KALA enters and soldiers of the guard surround him._
_R._ What is going on?--O Mother! Kala Udayin is back!
_KALA UDAYIN (K) appears among the guards. RAHULA runs to the gate._
_R._ Kala! Welcome home! Shake hands!
_K._ Be heartily greeted, my boy.
_R._ Did you see father?
_K._ I did, Rahula.
_R._ Tell me all.
_K._ I will tell mother.
_R._ Come to mother. She has been expecting you for many days.
_KALA kneels to the Princess._
_Y._ Gopa, take his bundle. [_The maid takes his bundle and carries it into the house._] What news do you bring of Prince Siddhattha?
_K._ I followed the Prince from place to place and saw him last near Benares in the forest of Uruvela.
_Y._ How is his health, and will he come back?
_K._ His health is probably good, but he does not think of coming back--not yet. O my dear lady! If you could see him! he is as thin as a skeleton. I could count all his ribs.
_R._ What is the trouble with father.
_K._ He is fasting. He lives on a hempcorn a day; think of it, one little hempcorn a day!
_Y._ Oh, he will die! My poor husband. I must follow him and attend to his wants. He needs his wife's loving care. I will leave my home and follow him.
_K._ Could you help him, princess? He might not like it, and the monks abhor women. Moreover, I was told that he takes food again, every morning a cup of rice milk. The day I left he looked better. Still, he was pretty pale.
_Y._ Tell me all you know of him.
_K._ I went first to Rajagaha, and there I heard wondrous tales about the noble monk Gotama. All the people knew about him, they called him a "sage" or "muni" and the "Bodhisatta."
_R._ What does that mean, Kala?
_K._ Bodhisatta is the man who seeks the bodhi--and the bodhi is enlightenment or Buddhahood.
_Y._ What did the people of Rajagaha say?
_K._ When Prince Siddhattha came to Rajagaha, he created a great excitement in the city. Never had been seen a mendicant of such noble appearance, and crowds flocked to him. They thought he was a Buddha and greeted him as a Buddha; but he said to them "I am not a Buddha; I am a Bodhisatta, I seek Buddhahood, and I am determined to find it."
_Y._ Did you meet people who saw him?
_K._ Indeed, I did. They say he looked like a god. The news spread all over the capital, and King Bimbisara himself went out with his ministers to see the Bodhisatta. King Bimbisara came to the place where the stranger stayed--under a forest tree near a brook--and greeted him most respectfully saying, "Great monk, remain here with me in Rajagaha; I see that you are wise and worthy. Live with me at the royal palace. Be my adviser and counselor. You are not made for a mendicant. Your hands are fit to hold the reins of empire. Stay here, I beg you, and you shall not lack honor and rank." "Nay," replied Siddhattha, "let me go my way in quest of enlightenment. I am bent on solving the problem of existence, and I will become a Buddha." Said the King, "Hear then, great monk. Go in quest of enlightenment, and when you have found it come back to Rajagaha."
_Y._ Is King Bimbisara so religious?
_K._ King Bimbisara is ambitious. As is well known, he is a warrior and a conqueror; but that is not all. He wants to be the greatest monarch of all ages and he would have all the great events happen under his rule. This is what he said to the Bodhisatta: "When I was a youth I uttered five wishes, and they were these: I prayed, May I be crowned King. This wish has been fulfilled. Then I wished, May the holy Buddha, the Blessed One, appear on earth while I am King, and may he come to my kingdom. This was my second wish, and while I gaze upon you I know that it will be fulfilled. Further I wished, May I see the blessed Buddha and pay my respects to him. This was my third wish. My fourth wish was, May the Blessed One preach the doctrine to me, and my fifth and greatest wish was this, May I understand the doctrine. I beg you, therefore, great monk, when you have become a Buddha come back and preach the doctrine to me and accept me as your disciple."
_Y._ And whither did Siddhattha go from Rajagaha?
_K._ He visited the great philosophers Arada and Udraka, but he found no satisfaction in their theories. So he went on to Uruvela where the ascetics live. I followed the Bodhisatta and learned that he stayed with five disciples in the forest. I found shelter near by in the cottage of the chief shepherd, a good old man with a pretty daughter, Nanda. There I watched Siddhattha and his disciples from a distance. He was the youngest but the wisest of them, and they reverenced him as master. He outdid them all in fasting. One day Nanda, the shepherd's daughter, saw him faint, and he might have died from exhaustion right on the spot if Nanda had not given him rice milk to drink.
_Y._ O good Kala, what shall I do? What shall I do? Here I sit at home, a poor, helpless woman, unable to assist him or to take care of him! O Kala, advise me, what can I do?
_KING SUDDHODANA (S) and VISAKHA (V) come out of the palace. The Princess retires into the palace. GOPA hides behind the bushes._
_S._ I am glad to see you back. Have you seen my son?
_K._ I have sire.
_S._ Where did you find him?
_K._ At Uruvela, the place of mortification where saints try to see visions and reach a state of bliss.
_V._ And has Siddhattha succeeded?
_K._ It does not seem so; he is starving himself to death.
_V._ Is he dying?
_K._ Not exactly, but I do not see how he can live--on that diet.
_S._ Oh, Visakha, how have I been deprived of my son through a whim!
_Both return into the palace. VISAKHA comes back._
_V._ It seems that Siddhattha is ruining himself.
_K._ At the rate he is going now, he won't stand it long. He may not live another month. It is pitiable. You should have seen him. That beautiful young man looks like a consumptive in his last stage. I did not dare to tell what I thought. The Princess would not have borne the sad news.
_V._ Too bad. It looks pretty hopeless.
_K._ I do not see how the Prince can survive.
_V._ What is the idea of these fasts?
_K._ These pious recluses believe that the self is imprisoned in the body and that the senses are the prison gates. They want to liberate the soul, and many of them behold visions, but Siddhattha seems to doubt whether the saints of Uruvela proceed on the right track. Indeed he denies the very existence of the self.
_V._ I know he does. His views should be branded as purely human wisdom. As the senses are finger touch, eye touch, ear touch, nose and tongue touch, so the mind is to him mere thought touch. He claimed that the mind originates through a co-operation of the senses.
_K._ His disciples begin to break away from him.
_V._ That is right. They ought to have done so long ago. I always said that Siddhattha is an unbeliever. He spurns faith and relies too much on his own observation and reasoning. He will never find enlightenment. He is too negative, too nihilistic, and his quest of Buddhahood will end in a lamentable failure.
_K._ It would be a pity, sir. He is certainly in earnest to find the truth--the real truth, not what the priests say nor the Vedas declare, but the truth, provable truth.
_V._ Yes that is his fault. When the king speaks with you tell him all, explain the hopelessness of his situation. The king ought to know the facts.
_VISAKHA retires into the palace._
_K._ [_Calls in a low voice_] Gopa, Gopa!
[_GOPA appears from behind the bush._]
_K._ [_Aside_] I knew she would not be far.
_G._ What do you want?
_K._ I want to have a talk with you.
_G._ Well?
_K._ Let us set our marriage day.
_G._ I do not care to marry you--just yet.
_K._ I want a kiss, Gopa.
_G._ You shan't have it!
_K._ I will leave Kapilavatthu and go back to the Bodhisatta.
_G._ He will tell you that a youth must not kiss a girl.
_K._ That rule holds only for monks.
_G._ Go and turn monk. Then it applies to you.
_K._ The world would die out if everybody turned monk.
_G._ First, you are not everybody, and secondly, would it not be a blessing if the whole world would try to be sanctified?
_K._ Pshaw! Mankind consists of different castes and professions, of soldiers and merchants, of peasants and artisans and teachers. Mankind is like a body with various limbs, a head and hands, feet and chest and neck. A man who were head only could not live, and if mankind consisted of Buddhas only we would starve. We need a Buddha, but there must also be householders. |
22782-8 | Now quick give me a kiss.
_She pouts._
_K._ If you do not kiss me I shall go back to the forest of Uruvela. Nanda, the shepherd's daughter, is a very pretty girl. She is as pretty as you are. She is,--well, her cheeks are rosier than yours. She is a little taller, and she is so graceful when she milks the kine. The shepherd needs a helper. I am sure he would like to have a son-in-law.
_RAHULA enters._
_R._ Gopa! Mother wants you.
_G._ [_Kisses K. quickly_] Here is a kiss, but you must forget Nanda. [_Runs away._]
_K._ Stay a moment longer!
_G._ I have no time. [_Exit._]
_K._ I knew she would come around,--and she is much prettier than Nanda. Nanda is a buxom country lass, a pleasant girl, but Gopa is as proper as a princess. [_He continues with unction._] Bodhisatta longs for the blessed state of Nirvana, and when he has found it, he will be calm and without passion. He will walk on earth as a god among men. No emotion will disturb the peace of his mind, and the happiness of the great Brahma will be as nothing in comparison to the infinite bliss of his Buddhahood. [_With a lighter tone_]: I adore him, but I do not envy him. I do not long for the happiness of a god. I am a man with human faults and human yearnings. I am satisfied with the happiness and the sufferings of a man. Since I am assured of Gopa's love, I care not for Nirvana. I think that this world is good enough for me.
_V._ [_Looks around like a spy._] How peaceful lies this palace, yet I see The war clouds lour upon its roofs. The storm will break with sudden vehemence upon These harmless unsuspecting people. Woe to them, Their doom is certain. Desperate resistance Succumbs before the overwhelming forces Of Bimbisara.--And what will become Of poor Yasodhara?--I like her well. I might still save her from her people's ruin. A princess, sweet and noble, and herself Descended from an ancient royal house. But I hate that little youngster Rahula. Whate'er betide, my deep-laid schemes will speed And I shall profit by my master's doom.
[Music: Chopin's Nocturno. Opus 37, No. 2.]
[CURTAIN]
THIRD SCENE.
[Darkness covers the scene. Distant thunder and lightning. Gradually it grows light again and the scene of YASODHARA'S bedroom becomes visible. All luxury has been removed; she sleeps on a mat on the floor, RAHULA in bed.]
_R._ Mother! Mother!
_Y._ Sleep my boy, it is almost midnight.
_R._ Take me up, Mother.
_YASODHARA picks RAHULA up._
_R._ Why do you sleep on the floor, Mother?
_Y._ Because father does so. Let me lay you down on your couch, you must sleep.
_R._ Tell me more of father.
_Y._ I will to-morrow.
_R._ Tell me now. Is father a king?
_Y._ No, my son. But he is going to found a kingdom.
_R._ Will he be king of it?
_Y._ I do not know, my boy, but his kingdom will not be like other kingdoms. It will be the kingdom of truth--a spiritual kingdom, a kingdom of righteousness.
_R._ Is father rich?
_Y._ He scorns riches.
_R._ Why does he?
_Y._ He seeks other riches, the riches of religion, of the mind, of spirit.
_R._ Did he find them?
_Y._ I believe he did.
_R._ He sends you news through Kala Udayin.
_Y._ No, Rahula, I send Kala Udayin out to watch him and when Kala comes back he tells me what he saw and heard. Kala does not speak to father.
_R._ Why does Kala not speak to father?
_Y._ Grandfather forbade him. When we sent out Devadatta and Ananda, they became attached to the life of a hermit. They joined father and did not come back; but Kala will not turn monk.
_R._ But this time he will speak to father.
_Y._ How do you know?
_R._ I heard grandfather bid him to.
_Y._ What did he bid him?
_R._ He bade Kala that he should tell father to visit us.
_She can scarcely conceal her joy._
_Y._ You heard grandfather say so?
_R._ I did, mother; grandfather said that he became old, and before he died he wanted to see his son again.
_Y._ Why! did he really say so?
_R._ He did.
_Y._ Oh you darling son, then you will see him, too.
_R._ People say that he will be a Buddha.
_Y._ Yes, my son, some say he will be a Buddha and others doubt it.
_R._ Mother, what is a Buddha?
_Y._ A Buddha is a man who has found the truth.
_R._ How does a man find the truth?
_Y._ By enlightenment. He must find out the cause of evil.
_R._ Why must he find out the cause of evil?
_Y._ He teaches the people how to avoid evil.
_R._ Has father found the cause of evil?
_Y._ Kala Udayin says he has.
_R._ What is the cause of evil?
_Y._ Father says that selfishness is the cause of evil and selfishness comes from the belief in self.
_R._ Self?
_Y._ Yes, self! Man, as a rule, believes that he is a self.
_R._ What? A self?
_Y._ Yes, a being by himself, who lives only for himself, and the thought of self makes him selfish; and selfishness begets all evils.
_R._ [_with a childlike serious conviction_] I believe it, mother.
_Y_. Father says there is no self, that self is an illusion.
_R._ What does that mean?
_Y._ It means that we are not separate beings. I think a thought and speak it out and you hear it. I believe in that thought and so do you. Whose is it then, yours or mine?
_R._ It belongs to both.
_Y._ But where does the thought come from? If it is true it belongs to the truth, and it was true before I thought it.
_R._ Yes, mother.
_Y._ And if it was wrong, it is evil, and it was evil before we thought it.
_R._ Yes, mother.
_Y._ And so are all our thoughts, but almost everybody assumes that his self thinks these thoughts and invents them; and that is an illusion.
_R._ I see.
_Y._ [_to herself_] His eyes close. He is tired. [TO RAHULA] Now go to sleep again, Rahula, and dream of your father. I will sing you one of father's songs.
_YASODHARA lays RAHULA down in the high bed and sings:_
By ourselves is evil done, By ourselves we pain endure. By ourselves we cease from wrong, By ourselves become we pure. No one saves us but ourselves, No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path, Buddhas merely teach the way.
_The boy sleeps. Then YASODHARA herself lies down on the mat on the floor. Above her appears the vision of her dream. Under the Bodhi tree in a forest landscape SIDDHATTHA sits. He is surrounded by a halo of light. MARA approaches to tempt him._
_M._ Thou art ahungered, worthy Sakyamuni, Ahungered art thou from continued fasts, And thou wilt starve unless thou take and eat. I bring delicious food, take, eat and live.
_B._ I shall not eat until my quest be done. Much better 'tis to die in glorious battle Than flee and lead a coward's life, defeated. I shall not eat, O Mara, take thee hence.
_M._ Wilt thou not listen to my good advice?
_B._ The tempter always calls his councils good, But pleasures which he promises are evil.
_M._ I will not suffer thee to stay, Siddhattha, And shall disturb thy daring quest of truth. I'll split the Bodhi tree by lightning And frighten thee away with rumbling thunder.
_All is wrapped in darkness, except SIDDHATTHA and the Bohdi tree. Thunder and lightning. After a while the noise abates. It grows light again. MARA'S daughters appear._
_M._ Go forth my daughters, tempt the holy man, And lure him from the seat of Buddahood.
_Three graceful women, MARA'S daughters, sing in a low enticing voice._
[Melody: The Mermaids' Song from Weber's Oberon.]
Sweetest on earth 'tis in pleasure to live, Love thou must ask for, and love thou must give. Pain we can soothe and assuage every smart, Yea, we will grant thee the wish of thy heart. Power bestow we, enjoyment and mirth, Health and wealth also, and all that has worth. Lo, of life's happiness naught shalt thou miss, Satisfied longings are greatest of bliss.
_While they sing they circle around the Bodhi tree and pose in graceful attitudes._
[Siddhattha does not mind Mara's daughters. They withdraw, and grotesque monsters appear in threatening attitudes, exhibiting a savage war dance, always approaching the tree and turning their weapons against the Sakyamuni, but as soon as they approach the halo they droop, unable to hurt him. Lotus flowers rain down. Sakyamuni raises his right hand. A flash of lightning and a sudden clap of thunder. The spook vanishes in darkness while the Buddha under the Bodhi tree alone remains visible in a halo of light. The forest landscape reappears in full light as before.]
_B._ The wheel of life turns round through birth and death, Its twelve-linked chain of causes takes its start In ignorance and ends in suffering. The truth is found, the fourfold noble truth; All life is sorrow, sorrow's cause is lust, But from our sorrow we can escape If we abandon lust and thought of self. The eightfold noble path of righteousness Delivers from all evil: it will bring Sweet peace of mind and leadeth to Nirvana.
[With music accompaniment]
Through many births I sought in vain The builder of this house of pain. Now, builder, thee I plainly see! This is the last abode for me. Thy gable's yoke, thy rafters broke, My heart has peace; all lust will cease.
[The following words fit exactly the music of Haydn's Chorus with Soli No. 13[B] in The Creation, and the spirit of the composition is very appropriate for this scene]
[Footnote B: Peters' Edition, pp 44-55 "Die Himmel erzahlen, etc." In a few places where the fugas set in, the words "The wicked Mara's host" should read "The wicked one's,--the wicked Mara's host," etc.]
_Chorus of Angels._
Behold the great muni, His heart unmoved by hatred, The wicked Mara's host 'Gainst him did not prevail.
_Trio of BRAHMA VISHNU SHIVA._
Victorious Buddha Thou art wise and pure, The darkness is gone And enlightenment gained.
_Chorus of Angels as above._
Proclaim the truth To all the world. Truth will bring salvation. Glory to the truth!
_Chorus of Angels as above._
[Lotus flowers rain down thicker and thicker, clouds cover the scene, but the Buddha under the Bodhi tree remains still dimly but sufficiently visible.]
_YASODHARA wakes up. She rises and lights a candle from a rush lamp. She kneels with clasped hands before the vision of the BUDDHA._
_Y._ Oh Siddhattha, my Lord and Husband, no longer my Husband, but the Buddha. In thee I take my refuge. In thee and thy word, I believe. Thy doctrine shall guide me. Accept me as thy faithful disciple, a disciple of the Buddha, my Lord, the Tathagata, the great thinker, the Saviour of mankind.
[CURTAIN.]
_SECOND INTERLUDE_.
_Living pictures accompanied by appropriate music to introduce the Third Act._
1. THE FOUNDATION OF THE KINGDOM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS.
Buddha preaches to his five disciples the way of salvation, which speech, preserved in a special book, is frequently compared to Christ's Sermon on the Mount.
Buddha stands with raised hand, while five monks stand or sit or squat around him in devout attitude.
2. ENTERING THE CAPITAL.
When Buddha came to Rajagaha, the people met him on the way and accompanied him into the city in triumphal procession which is analogous to Christ's entry into Jerusalem.
The Buddha with bowl in one hand and staff in the other is followed by yellow-robed monks. The people strew flowers, carry palm branches and wave kerchiefs.
3. THE COURTESAN.
Ambapali, the Buddhist Mary Magdalen, came to Buddha, worshiping him and invited him to take his meal at her home. To the astonishment of several moralists, he accepted and honored the penitent sinner.
A beautifully dressed woman with clasped hands kneels before Buddha, a maid in attendance behind her. Some well dressed people of high caste watch the scene with an expression of indignation.
4. THE PHILANTHROPIST.
The wealthiest man of Savatthi invites the Buddha to his home and offers to build a resthouse for the Buddha and his brotherhood.
Anatha Pindika kneels before the Buddha, holding in one hand the picture and plan of a building. Buddha indicates by his lowered hand acceptance of the gift. Buddha attended by two monks, Anatha Pindika accompanied by the architect.
5. PRINCE JETA.
It is told that the most beautiful spot in Savatthi was the royal park of Prince Jeta, which Anatha Pindika wanted to buy for the brotherhood of Buddha. The owner was unwilling to sell and made the exorbitant demand to have the whole ground covered with gold as its price. But Anatha Pindika had the gold carried to the garden and paid the price.
The scene is laid in the garden. Anatha Pindika with bags of gold stands in commanding attitude. His servants spread the coins while Prince Jeta throws up his hands in astonishment.
(Anatha Pindika is not the real name of the founder of the Jetavana. The name means, "[He who gives to] the indigent, alms.")
ACT III.
FIRST SCENE
[A Brahman temple with a statue of Durga; before the idol an altar. In the background a landscape with farms and a sheep-fold.]
_Enter from the right GENERAL SIHA (GS.) with a CAPTAIN (C) and some soldiers._
_GS._ Pitch the tents on the slope of yonder hill where that farmhouse stands.
_C._ It shall be done, my general.
_GS._ What crowd is gathered there with flags and flowers?
_C._ It is the farmer's family led by the village priest, and neighbors flock around to swell their number.
_GS._ The priest handles a big knife that flashes in the sun. I see his hands are stained with gore. They seem to celebrate a feast in honor of a god.
_C._ The villagers inform me that the occasion of it is sad. One of the farmer's children died of late, and others being sick the father invokes the goddess Kali to preserve the rest of his family. They are arrayed for a procession and having offered a young sheep at the altar of the homestead they have started out. See how the crowd are wending their way hither to the temple.
_GENERAL SIHA looks around and contemplates the scenery, then turns to the CAPTAIN._
_GS._ Now pitch the tents before the sun goes down.
_In the meantime, the BUDDHA enters with two disciples. They sit down under a tree. The Captain bows to them reverently and leaves the stage._
_GS._ Greetings to you, holy monks.
_B._ Peace be with thee, and may thy sword ne'er reek with blood.
_GS._ I draw the sword for my king, for my country and for the restoration of order where enemies or rebels have disturbed it.
_B._ Thou lookst courageous and thy very words Possess a ring of simple honesty.
_GS._ I serve a mighty king who means to do the right. He prefers to establish his rule by treaty and spares an enemy who sues for peace.
_B._ Thou speakst of Bimbisara, King of Magadha?
_GS._ Indeed I speak of the great Bimbisara, and he is born to sway the world. My sympathy and my allegiance go with him. I am Siha, his general.
_B._ Thy name is known throughout the Indian lands.
_GS._ When I chose my profession I prayed to the gods that they would never let it be my lot to fight for any unjust cause.
_B._ Let this thy prayer be a sacred vow Which thou wilt keep inviolate. Our fate, Or say the gods, create conditions; but thou Thyself must act. Thou art responsible, Thou shapest thine own life, and not the gods.
_GS._ Thy words please me! What is thy doctrine, venerable monk?
_B._ I teach the middle way between extremes. Neither mortifications of the body Nor self-indulgence should be practised. We must make up our minds and walk On the eightfold noble path of righteousness.
_GS._ Who art thou, wondrous monk? Thy doctrine is so plain, and so convincing that I grant thou speakest truth. The people ought to know thee and accept thy creed. Who art thou?
_B._ Born of the Sakya race, they call me Sakyamuni.
_GS._ Blessed be this day on which I meet the greatest man of our age. I heard of thee from the Nirgranthas, thine own enemies, the rival sect of thy new order, and they say that thou deniest the soul, thou teachest extinction, thou leadest man to non-existence, and that Nirvana is with thee an empty naught--annihilation.--Is that true?
_B._ I teach extinction, noble general, Of hatred, greed, and lust, but I insist On doing what is right and just and good; On doing resolutely what we do, On searching for the truth, on setting up Its lamp and following its holy light. Nirvana is attained when passions are Extinct and when the heart is blessed with peace.
_GS._ Thou art more than a mortal, holy man. Auspicious is this day on which I've met thee. The people call thee Buddha, perhaps rightly so! A feeling of deep reverence comes over me and the truth dawns on me. Truly thou art the teacher of the world. If thy doctrine impressed the people a new era would begin, an era in which mankind would be wiser and nobler, happier and better.
[Barbaric music is heard behind the stage, the drum being prominent.]
_Voices behind the stage:_ Maha Kali! Kali Ma!
_GS._ Behold how wretched are these people in their ignorance.
_B._ They must be taught and they will learn the truth.
[The procession enters. A small band of musicians comes with primitive instruments, among them drums. They are followed first by dancers, then by a priest (_Pr._) flourishing in his bloody hand a large knife. By his side walks a shepherd carrying a lamb. Behind them the farmer's (_F._) family and other people]
_GS._ What horrible sounds! And the crowd behave like madmen.
_Pr._ Maha Kali!
_Crowd._ Kali Ma!
_Pr._ Goddess of the black countenance! Great Black Mother!
_Crowd._ Maha Kali! Kali Ma! Maha Kali! Kali Ma! Maha Kali! Kali Ma!
[The priest steps to the altar; the crowd kneels in a large circle. At the priest's signal the farmer approaches the altar and kneels. His behavior betrays superstitious timidity and great awkwardness. The shepherd exhibits the lamb first to the priest and then to the dancers who in fantastic dancing step advance and retreat while the music plays. Finally the lamb is placed on the altar.]
_Pr._ Have Mercy on us! Slay the demon of disease. Keep away Yama the horrible one, the god of Death.
_Crowd._ Kali Ma, have mercy on us!
_Pr._ Thou art Parvati, the wife of Siva. Thou hast conquered the giant Durga, the evil one, and now thyself art called the goddess Durga. Thou art Mahishamardini, the slayer of Mahisha. Thou art Kalaratri, Nightly Darkness, abyss of all mysteries. Thou art Jagaddhatri, mother of the world. Thou art Jagadgauri, renowned throughout the world. Thou art Katyayina, refulgent with a thousand suns. Thou art Singhavahini, seated on a lion thou wonest victory over Raktavija, leader of the giants' army. Great Mother of Life, accept our offering, the blood of this lamb.
_Crowd._ Maha Kali, accept our offering! Kali Ma, accept our offering! Kali Durga, great Goddess, accept our offering!
_The priest turns toward the lamb and raises his knife. BUDDHA steps to the altar and places his hand gently upon the priest's arm._
_B._ Hold!
_Pr._ Meddler!
_B._ Pause before thou sheddest blood.
_Pr._ How dar'st thou rudely interfere, strange monk, With our most sacred sacrifice? This lamb Is offered to the goddess. Thou disturbest Our holy ritual.
_He lifts his knife against BUDDHA, but SIHA draws his sword and knocks the knife out of the priest's hand._
_GS._ Keep peace, bold priest!
_Pr._ The vengeance of the gods will be upon you.
_B._ If there be gods they must be potent, noble, And great and holy; and if the gods are holy, They do not need the offering of a victim, They do not want the life of this poor trembling lamb.
_Pr._ The gods are kind; they take the lamb in place of this poor stricken man. We must do penance for his sins, for the sins of his wife, for the sins of his children.
_Farmer._ I crave forgiveness for the sins for which my dear good child has had to die.
_Pr._ His sins are great and nothing can wash them away but blood.
_B._ Herein thou errest, priest. Blood does not cleanse. It washes not away the stain of sin; The slaughter of a victim heaps but guilt On guilt, and does not right a wrong. Rise, Rise, my good friend. Take comfort!
_The farmer rises._
Be a man.
_The others rise gradually._
_F._ What shall I do, good master?
_B._ Right all the wrongs thou didst and sin no more.
_Pr._ This lamb was given to the goddess. It is mine.
_GS._ Are you the steward of the goddess' property?
_SIHA steps close to the priest who retires step by step and finally hurries off the stage._
Come, shepherd, take the frightened lambkin up And bear it to its mother in the fold.
[The shepherd takes up the lamb and stands ready to carry it away. The musicians slink away. The lambbearers and the people walk off in procession, followed by the Buddha with his disciples. General Siha remains alone on the stage. A trumpet call at a short distance and another one close by.]
_GS._ What does that signal mean?
_An officer accompanied by a trumpeter enters. A third trumpet call on the stage. The officer delivers a letter._
_Officer._ A dispatch from his majesty Bimbisara to his faithful and most noble general, Siha.
_GS._ _Breaks the seal and reads to himself._
"The Sakyas are a stubborn little nation. Their institutions are free; their laws differ from those of the other surrounding states. These people are a source of discontent and revolution, and are a sore in my eye. Therefore, the Sakyas must be crushed, even if they sue for peace. Keep the army near the border and be ready for a sudden attack."
_With an expression of grief._
War is unavoidable and I am to be the means by which the Sakyas will be wiped off the earth. It is my duty, for the King commands it. A soldier should not argue, he obeys.
_Draws his sword and looks at it._
This sword is consecrated to the service of my king. Never have I drawn it except in honest fight.
_Lost in contemplation._
Is Sakyamuni the Buddha?--Is he truly the Buddha? Buddhas are wise; Buddhas are omniscient; Buddhas foresee the future.-- Is Sakyamuni truly the Buddha?--I believe he is. And if he is the Buddha, is it right to wage a war against his people?--What shall I do? Oh, ye gods, teach me my duty! Oh, ye gods, may it not be my lot to fight for an unrighteous cause! Cursed be the sword that sheds innocent blood.
SECOND SCENE.
[Bimbisara's court at Rajagaha]
_Present: KING BIMBISARA (Bb.), VISAKHA (V), and NAGADEVA (N)._
_V._ The Sakyas will make a hard fight, great King, and the war will cost blood. These northern settlers are taller and stronger than other races and possess the courage of the inhabitants of their former frigid homes. It would be easier to take possession of their state if I married Princess Yasodhara and gradually assumed the government under your protection. Your mighty friendship would support me on the throne and you could rule through me.
_Bb._ That sounds acceptable, but in the meantime, I prepare for war.
_V._ Even in war I shall be of service to you. I can lead your army where it will not meet with resistance, and I know the names of those who are dissatisfied. Many could be induced to join your forces; and I can betray the very person of the raja into your hands.
_Bb._ _Nodding kindly to VISAKHA, then turning to NAGADEVA._
Is our kingdom in readiness?
_N._ Great King, it is. General Siha stands in the field with a strong force ready to strike. There are another fifty thousand within call to make a sudden dash upon any of our neighbors should they dare come to the aid of Sakya. Our treasury is well filled, and the people of Magadha are prosperous. We could stand even a protracted war far better than any other state in India.
_Bb._ The time seems favorable; the risk is small, and the spoil will be great. Convene my generals in the assembly hall.
_They bow low and pass out. AMBAPALI (Ap.) enters._
_Ap._ Are they gone, my Lord, and what did you decide?
_Bb._ I propose to go to war.
_Ap._ You are rightly called "the Warlike."
_Bb._ I want to round off my kingdom and expand my power northward until it reaches the Himalayas.
_Ap._ The gods will speed you and the blessings of the saints shall be upon your people.
_Servant enters._
_St._ There is a holy man who wants to see your Highness. His name is Devadatta.
_Bb._ Show him in.
_Servant exit._
_Ap._ Is he not one of the disciples of the Buddha?
_Bb._ I believe he is.
_AMBAPALI retires._
_DEVADATTA enters._
_Dd._ Hail, great King! Protector of religion and victor of many battles!
_Bb._ What brings you to my presence? I always rejoice to see holy men. Their coming is auspicious, and I am happy to be of service to them.
_Dd._ Great King, I implore your assistance for the brotherhood which I have founded. We need your royal support and the holiness of our lives will surround you as a halo with heavenly protection.
_Bb._ Are you not a disciple of Gotama, who is called the Buddha?
_Dd._ No longer, mighty King, I was his disciple so long as I believed in him; but he is not holy. I have abandoned him. He is not austere; his disciples do not practise self-mortifications, and he speaks kindly and dines with sinners. My disciples do not dress in worldly garments; they would not accept the invitation of women; they would not touch animal food. He who calls himself the Buddha is unworthy of that high title; he is a pretender who has not reached the highest goal. My rules are much more strict than his, and my brotherhood alone is holy.
_Bb._ Holiness is a mighty thing.
_Dd._ Yea, and our vows will shield your government, your throne, your army and your people against any misfortune.
_Bb._ I shall send my treasurer to investigate and will do what is right.
_Dd._ Maharaja, be assured of my deepest gratitude.
_Bows low, exit._
_Ap._ [_re-enters, excited_] My royal friend, do not trust that man [_pointing toward the door where DEVADATTA went out_]. He is false. He may be holy, but he is treacherous. He may be virtuous; he may shun joy and the blessings of life, he may practise all penances, he may torture and mortify his body. But there is no true goodwill in him. His holiness is egotistic, and his religion is hypocrisy. Support his brotherhood with money or gifts as you see fit, but do not believe what he says about the Buddha.
_Bb._ [_With an inquiring look_] Why?
_Ap._ I know what he meant when he scoffed at him. When the Buddha stayed at Vesali, I invited that noblest of all monks to take his meal with me. I am not holy; I am a worldly woman; I am not a saint; but I have a warm heart, I feel for others and I want to do what is right. When I heard that the Buddha stayed in the mango grove, I thought to myself, I will go and see him. If he is truly all-wise, he will judge my heart and he will judge me in mercy. He will know my needs and will not refuse me. I went to the mango grove and he looked upon me with compassion; he accepted my invitation in the presence of witnesses, openly, fearlessly, and in kindness. There were the proud Licchavi princes, and close to him stood the envious Devadatta. How they scowled; how they condemned the great and kindly saint! How they whispered, "Shame on him!" and I saw how they despised me--yet they did not dare to speak out or to censure him publicly. Then, my gracious King, I knew that he was truly the Lord Buddha, the Allwise.
_Bb._ My dear friend, I accept every word you say as true. I know the goodness of your heart, I know your worth, your loving kindness, and if you were of royal birth you would be worthy to wear a crown. The Buddha did not demean himself when he honored you.
_Ap._ Allow me one question. Did the Buddha ever beg you to support his brotherhood?
_Bb._ No, he did not; but I will give him all the assistance he may need.
_Ap._ Did he ever offer you the support of his vows, or did he ever praise the efficacy of his holiness?
_Bb._ He never did.
_Ap._ Neither does he stand in need of self-recommendation, for his very presence is a blessing, because he spreads goodwill and kindliness, and the people who hear him are ashamed of doing anything unrighteous. Devadatta extends to you the promise, if you but support his disciples, of an unconditional protection through his holiness. The Buddha's protection is not so cheaply earned. I heard him say that every one must protect himself by his own righteousness, and no prayer, no sacrifice, no religious devotion, nor even penance or fasts could protect a man from the wrongs which he does.
_Bb._ The Buddha's presence would be more auspicious than ten Devadattas.
_Ap._ Oh, most assuredly! And what a contempt I have for the virtuous indignation of men who, overmoral themselves, judge haughtily of others; yet, if you look into their souls you discover that they are heartless and self-seeking villains.
_Bb._ Your judgment is well grounded.
_Ap._ The Buddha alone possesses greatness, and the Buddha does not seek honor, but the people adore him.
_Bb._ Rajagaha must become the center of India. I will send for the Buddha and invite him to visit me. His sojourn here will make the kingdom of Magadha more famous than conquests and victories.
_The servant enters._
_St._ Mighty King, the prime minister Nagadeva.
_Bb._ He is welcome. Fare thee well, sweet heart; affairs of state call me.
_N._ Mighty King, the generals are assembled. They hail thee as their war lord, and are anxious for laurels, for glory, for booty!
[TRUMPETS, CURTAIN.]
_THIRD INTERLUDE._
_Living pictures accompanied by appropriate music._
1. SENDING OUT THE DISCIPLES.
The Buddha called his disciples together, and having ordained them, bade them spread the Gospel, with these words translated from the Buddhist Canon:
"Go ye now, O disciples, and wander forth for the benefit of the many, for the welfare of mankind, out of compassion for the world. Preach the doctrine which is glorious in the beginning, glorious in the middle, and glorious in the end, in the spirit as well as in the letter. There are beings whose eyes are scarcely covered with dust, but if the doctrine is not preached to them they cannot attain salvation. Proclaim to them a life of holiness. They will understand the doctrine and accept it."
The Pali expression _kalyamo dhamma_ is here translated "glorious doctrine." The dictionary defines the first word as "excellent, beautiful, glorious." This closely corresponds to the Christian term, which, as derived from the Greek, reads "evangel" and in its Saxon equivalent "gospel" or "good tidings."
2. THE RICH YOUTH.
Yasa, the son of a wealthy nobleman of Benares, came by night to the Blessed One and exclaimed: "What misery!" But the Buddha answered, "There is no misery for him who has entered the Path."
Yasa, richly dressed, with an expression of distress, before the Buddha who comforts him. The scene is framed in darkness, the two figures being lit up by a torch.
3. A CHILD'S OFFERING.
Old frescoes in the Ajanta Caves show a mother sending a gift through her child. It looks as if they were Buddhist illustrations of Christ's injunction, "Suffer little children to come unto me."
ACT IV.
FIRST SCENE
[A room in the Jetavana. The wheel of the law pictured on one side and the wheel of becoming on the other. Otherwise swastikas and lotus flowers serve as ornaments. A large opening exhibits a view into a garden with running water. On the right side there is a platform with low seats, on the other there is a low table with a divan, on which Anatha Pindika is seated, looking over palmleaf manuscripts.]
_Present: ANATHA PINDIKA (A); Servant (St.); PRINCE JETA (J); later on KALA UDAYIN (K) and the BUDDHA (B)._
_A servant enters._
_St._ His Highness the Prince Jeta.
_A._ Show him in.
_JETA enters. A. rises to meet him with bows._
You are most welcome, my Prince.
_J._ I have come from my brother, the King, to express to you his thanks for having bought my pleasure grounds for the noble and great purpose of affording a worthy resthouse to the Buddha and his brotherhood.
_A._ Kindly tender my gratitude to your royal brother for his gracious message.
_J._ I hear that King Bimbisara has sent an embassy to the Buddha to induce him to come back to Rajagaha. Has the Buddha received these men?
_A._ Not yet. He will see them this morning.
_J._ We ought to keep him here. He is a wonderful man, and I consider our city fortunate to have him reside with us. What astonishes me is his way of conquering the hearts of all men, even of his opponents, and he is so sensible.
_A._ What do you mean?
_J._ I am not a religious man; I am too worldly, but him I would follow.
_A._ Why?
_J._ He is perhaps the only religious reformer who does not go to extremes. He rejects on the one hand austerities, self-mortifications, penances, and severe fasts as useless, and on the other hand, he would not allow his followers to indulge in pleasures; but he insists most sensibly on keeping between the two extremes and proclaims the middle path of leading a righteous life. There is nothing absurd about him. Think of Devadatta. He insists that the monks should dress in rags picked up in cemeteries. The Buddha appeals to common sense, and therefore I say, he is a wonderful man.
_A._ He is more than a man; he is enlightenment incarnate.
A stream of blessings goes out from him.
_J._ He has grown into an international power, and kings do well not to ignore his influence.
_A._ I think so myself, and I am so glad that his influence is always for good, never for evil, and his ways are so marvelously gentle.
_J._ Indeed that is a blessing. If he were not so absolutely indifferent to his own affairs he might become positively dangerous. His lay disciples count in thousands of thousands. The farmers in the country, the merchants in the towns, the lawyers, the artisans, and even the soldiers believe in him. Lately General Siha became a lay member of the Buddha's brotherhood, and many other prominent officers followed his example.
_A._ He would never have gained this influence if he were not truly the Buddha.
_J._ I want to tell you that a war is threatening, but please do not speak of it, it is a deep secret. A spy in the secret service of my royal brother has found out that King Bimbisara intends to fall upon the Sakyas and deprive them of their independence. The Brahman Visakha, minister of state, has turned traitor and promises to deliver his country into the hands of King Bimbisara on the condition that he be made Raja in Suddhodana's place.
_A._ The country of the Sakyas is but small, and their independence will not last long; it is a mere question of time.
_J._ But consider that the Buddha hails from Kapilavatthu. He is the son of Suddhodana, the Sakya raja.
_A._ Indeed he is and may I be permitted to inform him of the danger that threatens his father's house?
_J._ I give you full liberty, for he will use discretion and not betray his informant. I deem Bimbisara's plan dangerous to himself. A war with the Sakyas may cost Bimbisara his throne, for the people of Rajagaha believe in the Buddha, and I learn that even now the war rumors have made them restless.
_Servant (St.) enters._
_St._ Here is a man with the name Kala Udayin, who has a message for the Blessed One.
_A._ Show him in.
_J._ I leave you now and hope that you will keep the Buddha as long as possible in Savatthi.
_Exit._
_KALA UDAYIN enters and bows to ANATHA PINDIKA._
_A._ You want to see the Blessed One? I will call him.
_ANATHA PINDIKA exit._
_K._ [_Alone_] This is the place where Prince Siddhattha lives! Indeed a most delightful spot and more pleasant than many a royal palace. And how the people speak of him! They call him the Blessed One, the Buddha, the Tathagata, the Sakyamuni, the great Sage. The wealthiest man of Kosala has bought these extensive and most beautiful grounds and presented them to the brotherhood of his disciples, so that the Buddha would stay here from time to time, and that the people of the city would have him for their guest.
_BUDDHA accompanied by ANATHA PINDIKA comes in. He is followed by two disciples. The BUDDHA sits down on the seat on the platform, having on either hand one of his disciples. ANATHA PINDIKA stands below with clasped hands._
_KALA UDAYIN sinks to his knees with clasped hands._
_B._ My friend, what brings you here?
_K._ A message from your royal father: He bade me tell you that he is growing old, and before he dies, he wants to see his son once more. Would you deign to accept his invitation?
_B._ Tell me, my friend, how is my father? Is old age truly telling on him?
_K._ Not yet so visibly, but he worries much.
_B._ And how is Rahula? He is now seven years old and must be quite a boy.
_K._ He is, my Lord; and how he talks of his father. He knows everything you are doing.
_B._ Who tells him?
_K._ His mother does.
_B._ And tell me how the princess fares?
_K._ She imposes upon herself the observances which the mendicant friars keep. She will have no preference over him who once was her husband. She sleeps on the floor, she does no longer use unguents or perfumes. She wears a simple yellow robe and observes the regulation of the brotherhood in taking food.
_The BUDDHA nods and with a distant look sits a few moments in silence._
_B._ And she is a good mother?
_K._ There could be no better.
_St._ [_announces_] An embassy of the most potent King of Magadha, the great Bimbisara.
_B._ [_Addressing himself to the servant_] Let them come in, [_turning to K._] Kala Udayin, bring my father greetings, and say that I shall come.
_KALA UDAYIN exit._
_A number of men, the embassy of King BIMBISARA, led by NAGADEVA, most gorgeously dressed, file in. They let themselves down on one knee, clasp their hands and rise again._
_N._ Most gracious Lord, all-wise and blessed Bud |
22782-8 | dha, Our noble sov'reign bids me tender you His most respectful greetings, and he hopes That you return and visit Rajagaha, For he is very anxious to be honored By your auspicious presence in his kingdom.
_B._ My Lords, express to your most mighty King That the Tathagata can not accept This friendly invitation, for he will Start for his home, the country of the Sakyas, To see his aged father and his kin. If war or other ills befall his people, He wants to live, if need be, die with them.
_N._ Lord Buddha, speak a word of truth to us, For I'm aware thou art omniscient. Our royal master wants to hear from thee.
_B._ All bodily existence passeth by For it is compound and will be dissolved; But there is Law; it is the Uncreate, It is th' Etern, which is without beginning And without end. That must our refuge be. He who relies on the Impermanent, And, being strong, attempts to crush the weak, Will soon break down. This is the law of deeds, For as we sow, such will our harvest be. Rely on Truth, the Uncreate, th' Etern, Be guided by the rule of Righteousness. This is my message to the King, your Lord, And may he be advised to rule his country With love of peace, with goodness, and with wisdom. My blessing be on him and on his people.
_They kneel, clasp their hands, circumambulate the BUDDHA and file out._
_JETA returns in excitement._
_J._ The war is on! King Bimbisara's army Is building bridges to attack the Sakyas.
[CURTAIN. Trumpet signals, military music.]
_FOURTH INTERLUDE._
_Living Pictures Accompanied by Appropriate Music._
1. KING BIMBISARA ON THE ROYAL ELEPHANT.
The king is seated under a canopy, together with his minister and field marshal. On the head of the elephant, the driver; and retinue on either side.
2. THE WANDERER.
The Buddha was in the habit of wandering through the country from place to place.
The picture shows him with a staff in his right hand and a bowl in his left in an Indian landscape.
3. KING BIMBISARA IN CAMP.
Standing before the royal tent he addresses his generals.
ACT V.
FIRST SCENE.
[Reception hall of the Raja Suddhodana; Indian pompous style; columns and beyond an outlook into a tropical palm-garden. Seats scattered through the room. On the left a compartment, open toward the audience, is separated from the main room by hanging carpets.]
_Near the right side SUDDHODANA is seated with PAJAPATI and YASODHARA. RAHULA in the background (viz., in the garden) in the care of a nurse._
_S._ The time is troublesome, and it appears that war is imminent.
_P._ Oh do not fret; Visakha is a cunning diplomat: I hope he'll be successful, and he will Persuade King Bimbisara to keep peace.
_S._ I do hope too, but hope against conviction.
_VISAKHA and DEVALA enter._
There come the Brahman and the gallant Captain.
_V._ [Kneeling on one foot to the King] Hail Maharaja!
_D._ Hail, my gracious King.
_S._ Welcome my worthy messengers!
_They kneel to PAJAPATI._
_P._ Be welcome.
_S._ Tell me at once, how did your mission speed?
_V._ There is a subtle influence against you At Bimbisara's court; there is a party Bound to have war, and they will have it too, Unless we meet them by diplomacy. Leave it to me, and I'll preserve the peace.
_S._ Had not my son turned mendicant, how useful Could he at present be! I need a general, A trusty man of youthful strength and courage To take the helm and lead the ship of state Through storm and danger, for our foes are strong.
_V._ Great Raja, I am privy to your grief, I know the hope you'd set upon Siddhattha. What brilliant gifts the boy inherited, From you, his royal father, and how he, Forgetful of his filial duty, left you, And his fair wife and child, to turn a beggar.
_S._ All this is true, remind me not of it, 'Tis a disgrace to our most royal house, And all the Rajas in the Indian land, Will point to us and mock the Sakya tribe.
_RAHULA comes in with childlike joy and brings his mother a rose._
_R._ Here, mother, is a rose. I picked it from the bush where the nightingale sings. I thought, if father had been here, he would have brought the rose to you. He loves the flowers and so do you.
_Y._ My darling!
_S._ [_with a touch of anger_] Yasodhara, I wish you would not speak to him too much of his father.
_R._ Why should mother not mention father? I love him and I should know all about him. I want to join the Buddha's brotherhood.
_S._ Do you love him more than your grandfather?
_R._ I love my grandfather too, I love mother, and you, dear grandmother [_turning to PAJAPATI_]. You are always so kind to me. I love you all. But father I love in a different manner. I love him as Buddha. I clasp my hands to him as to a god; and so do you mother, do you not?
_Y._ [_Puts her hand on Rahula's mouth_] Hush! I thank you for the rose, my child; now run away and bring another rose to grandfather, and one for your grandmother Pajapati.
_R._ Yes mother, and one I keep for father when he comes.
_Runs off._
_V._ Your grandson needs a father, Maha Raja!
And let me tender you my humble service. I see Yasodhara, the noble princess, Pine patiently away and spend in mourning Her life's best years of youth and happiness. She has been cruelly deserted, has Been widowed by Siddhattha for a whim. Give her to me in marriage, and I'll prove A better father than that runaway, A better father to your little grandson, A better husband to his widowed wife.
_S._ You are at liberty to ask my daughter.
_V._ Fair Princess, cease to mourn, and grant my suit. Thou shalt see better days than heretofore.
_Y._ I pledged my troth to Gotama Siddhattha, And I shall never break my faith to him.
_V._ Siddhattha is no more, he has turned monk And you are free, you are Siddhattha's widow.
_S._ My daughter, do not think that I oppose Visakha's suit, for on the contrary I do support it, and I wish you would Accept him as a husband, for I need Alliance with a brave and trusty man.
_V._ Princess Yasodhara, here is my hand, Do not refuse me.
_Y._ Brahman, spare your words.
_V._ The time will come when you will sore regret. O King, compel her to obey; make use Of your good right as master of this house, For I alone can save the Sakya state.
_P._ O worthy Brahman, do not threaten us.
_V._ Decide, O Maharaja; thou art Lord! Thy bidding must be done. Shall women rule, Or art thou master still in thine own home?
_S._ I am master here; but not a tyrant; Among our people master means a leader. The Sakya yeomen justly pride themselves On their free institutions. I'm the first Among them, not an autocrat nor despot; I serve them as adviser, guide and father; Shall I who never would infringe upon The right of any poorest peasant woman, Compel a princess of the royal house To marry 'gainst her will? No sir, not I. I wished the Princess to accept your suit, But I shall never say, She must be yours.
_V._ King of the Sakyas, you forget yourself, I am a Brahman and of noble birth. I served you faithfully for many years, But now I quit your service, for I know That Bimbisara, King of Magadha, The mightiest of Indian rulers, Will welcome me as friend and counselor.
_He bows to the KING and PAJAPATI, and leaves. For a moment they are all silent._
_S._ I fear me that means war.
_D._ Indeed it does.
If you remember, King, Visakha said There was a subtle influence against you At Bimbisara's court. It dawns on me That he, Visakha, is the cause of it. I saw him whisper with a courtier, then He spoke in secret with a general, And with the King too he was closeted. The hypocrite has thrown away his mask, And since he spoke out boldly, I know now That he has been intriguing all the time.
_S._ He thinks I hate my son, but I do not. I'm only angry, I am disappointed, Because he did not heed my dearest wish. I love him still and I invited him To visit his old home and me, his father. I sent Udayin with a kindly greeting. Oh, I'd forgive him all, and e'en his flight, Had only he not turned a mendicant. It hurts my pride to see a Sakya prince, And mine own son, go round from house to house With bowl in hand to beg his daily food.
_RAHULA comes in excited._
_R._ Grandfather, here is your rose, and grandma, here is yours. And oh! did you hear the news?
_Y._ What is it, boy? Why are you so excited?
_P._ Who told you any news?
_R._ The guards at the gate. They say that my father has come. All the people rush out of their houses and greet him with clasped hands. They strew flowers on the road and hail him as the Buddha!
_Y._ [_rises_] Why, is it possible?
_Wants to retire._
_S._ Stay here. Kala Udayin comes.
_KALA enter and kneels._
_K._ I bow in humble reverence before the King. And my respectful salutations to all the members of the royal house [_turning to GOPA_] and to you.
_S._ Bring you good news, Udayin?
_K._ Your noble son, my King, is coming.
_S._ Where did you find him?
_K._ At the Jetavana at Savatthi.
_S._ What kind of a place is that?
_K._ It is the most wonderful pleasure park I ever saw. O King, your garden here is a paltry affair in comparison with the Jetavana.
_S._ There he lives in luxury?
_K._ Oh no Sir. Not at all. He could live in luxury, if he wanted to, but he leads a simple life, as simple as the humblest servant in your home, and when he wanders through the country after the rainy season he lives like any mendicant friar. He overtook me on my way, and when he came hither to Kapilavatthu, his home, he did as usual. Last night he slept in the forest, and this morning he went from house to house with bowl in hand, begging his food, and he spoke a blessing wherever people greeted him kindly, or gave him to eat.
_S._ Oh my son, my son! Why didst thou not go straight to the palace where thy father has food enough for thee and all thy disciples!
_K._ He always follows the rule of the mendicants.
_S._ Oh my son! Why dost thou shame thy father in his own home?
_K._ The Blessed One deems it no shame to beg. He is as modest as a pauper and shows no pride, but wherever he comes, he is greeted like a king, nay like a king of kings, and the wealthiest and most powerful rulers come to do him reverence.
_S._ And he is here, this wonderful man? And he is my son Siddhattha?
_K._ Yes, he is here, and it is your son, but no longer Siddhattha, the Sakya prince, but Sakya muni, the sage of the Sakyas, the Buddha, the Blessed One. When I spoke to him and gave him your message, he inquired for you and the Queen Pajapati [_YASODHARA rises_] and for you, most honored Princess and for Rahula. Yes, he inquired for you and how Rahula had grown.
_Y._ Did he speak kindly of us?
_K._ He always speaks kindly, and he is always calm.
[Music a song, Buddhist Doxology, at a distance]
_K._ O listen to the music. Here he comes, the glorious Buddha. He must be at the gate.
_Y._ [_rises again and withdraws._] I must be gone.
_P._ O stay, Yasodhara.
_Y._ No, I will hide me from his very sight; and if I am to him of any value, he will ask for me.
_S._ Stay, Yasodhara.
_Y._ He fled from me because I was a hindrance In his great quest, and he may shun me still.
_S._ Stay none the less.
_P._ Nay, let her withdraw; she is in tears and would break down.
_YASODHARA and PAJAPATI withdraw to the partition behind the curtains._
_S._ You say, that my son is greeted even by kings with clasped hands?
_K._ Yea, even kings kneel to him.
_S._ I shall do nothing of the kind. He is my son, my disobedient son, and I am still his father.
_PAJAPATI returns._
_The procession of the BUDDHA comes. Two monks precede and stand at either side of the BUDDHA. Accompanying monks and other public come into the garden, crowding up to the columns. They all kneel with clasped hands, except SUDDHODANA._
_B._ My blessing to this house, to you, O King, And also to the Queen Pajapati, My dear good aunt and loving foster mother.
_S._ At last thou comest back, my wayward son, But why didst shame me? Why didst thou go begging Here in my capital? Thou art descended From ancestors who are a royal race.
_B._ My ancestors are Buddhas of past ages, Their thinking has descended unto me, Their habits and their rules of life I follow, And not the regulations of a court.
_The people rise to their feet again; KALA joins GOPA._
_S._ Tell me, what are the rules of former Buddhas?
_B._ They greet you with a stanza in return For any food or hospitality.
_S._ I shall be glad to hear what you will say.
_B._ Awake from sleep, dispel the dream; Before the truth's bright ray Things truly are not what they seem But truth points out the way. Truth, truth alone will bring you bliss, In the next life and e'en in this.
_RAHULA brings a rose to BUDDHA._
_R._ Here, father, is a rose I saved for you On the big bush where nests the nightingale.
_B._ And this is Rahula! How you have grown! Where is your mother?
_S._ Yasodhara was here, But would not stay. On hearing that you came She left the room and said that if at all You cared for her, you would not fail to ask.
_B._ But I want to see her, lead me to the place.
_BUDDHA hands his bowl to the King, PAJAPATI rises and leads the way. At a distance a flourish of trumpets._
_D._ What military signals do I hear?
_S._ Go, Captain Devala, see what it means.
_DEVALA exit. SUDDHODANA hands the bowl to one of the disciples._
_B._ Ye two disciples shall attend the meeting. Above all passion has the Buddha risen, But he will comfort her who loves him dearly. The Princess' heart is filled with deepest grief, And in no wise shall any one rebuke her In whatsoever way she greeteth him.
_PAJAPATI opens the curtain leading to the apartment where YASODHARA sits. BUDDHA, PAJAPATI and SUDDHODANA enter. YASODHARA sinks down before him and holds his feet, weeping. The flourish of trumpets is repeated._
_S._ [_Grows restless, turns to PAJAPATI_] These warlike trumpets have a foreign sound And may forbode the enemy's attack.
_He leaves the apartment where YASODHARA is and re-enters the hall, going toward the entrance in the background between the columns._
_B._ Yasodhara, I bring thee happy tidings, Deliverance is found, let go thy grief.
_YASODHARA looking up to BUDDHA with deep emotion._
_Y._ Oh Lord, how did I long for your return, But in your eyes I have become as naught.
_B._ My faithful helpmate and my former wife, Thou hast been dear to me, dear art thou still, But truth is dearer, and to truth I cling, While on my quest of truth in former lives, And also now in this existence, thou With voluntary sacrifice hast aided me, Imagine not that thou a hindrance art To me or to my work and holy mission. Next to my sainted mother thou art blessed Among the women of this world. Rejoice And let grief pass from thy suffering soul.
_Y._ [_In a kneeling posture_] Grant me a boon, my Lord, a precious boon.
_R._ Yea, father, grant the boon that mother wants.
_B._ Speak, Princess, and I listen to thy word. I know thy heart, Yasodhara; I know That naught but worthy thoughts dwell in thy mind.
_Y._ Grant me to help thee in thy noble mission. I want to join the band of thy disciples.
_She pauses and the BUDDHA hesitates to answer._
I shall be happy if I do thy work.
_B._ Dost thou not know this boon is but a burden?
_Y._ The heavier it be, my Lord, the more I welcome it.
_R._ Oh grant the boon!
_B._ Not yet Yasodhara, have women been admitted; But I foresee the time will come.
_Y._ My Lord The time is here if thou but grant the boon.
_The BUDDHA places his right hand in blessing upon YASODHARA'S head._
_B._ So let it be, and so thy boon be granted; I may not hinder thee if thou insistest.
_As PAJAPATI helps YASODHARA to rise, a third flourish of trumpets is heard, this time near by and loud. DEVALA returns in great excitement and addresses SUDDHODANA._
_D._ My noble liege, an embassy is coming From Bimbisara, King of Magadha. They are the kingdom's highest ministers, And sullen do they look and their retainers.
_S._ 'Tis most unfortunate, but let them in.
_D._ There's more to be announced.
_S._ You look excited.
_D._ It is but the beginning of the end: Our scouts are captured, one of them escaped.
_He hesitates._
_S._ Well, Devala?
_D._ He carries evil news.
_S._ [_With great anxiety_] By Issara! Speak, man! Don't hesitate.
_DEVALA covers his eyes with his hands and sobs._
_S._ Tell me the worst. Tell me the worst at once.
_D._ O that I had no tongue to tell the tidings.
_S._ I will be brave, speak freely! Be a man!
_In the meantime the BUDDHA together with the others has entered the main hall._
_D._ Our cause is lost. We are surrounded, Three bridges have been built and General Siha Stands ready with an overwhelming army To crush us.
_S._ Once I had a son! But he Alas! turned mendicant and fails me now! In him no drop of warrior blood is left, No spark of honor gloweth in his heart And our ancestral pride goes down in shame.
_B._ Transient, my noble father, are all things. All kingdoms finally must pass away, But if thou tak'st thy refuge in the truth, Thou wilt be free from all vicissitudes. The kingdom of the truth alone endures.
_S._ [_With indignation._] Siddhattha, spare thy monkish rant, Far better than thy cowardly submission, Far nobler and befitting it would be, To draw the sword and die a hero's death.
_The embassy in solemn procession files in as before at the Jetavana. The BUDDHA withdraws and is not noticed by the embassy. Prime Minister NAGADEVA (N) addresses King SUDDHODANA._
_N._ Oh Maharaja, listen to our message!
The ruler of the mighty Magadha, King Bimbisara, sends you kindly greetings. He wants you to entreat the Blessed One, The holy Buddha, who now stays with you, Who, as he learneth, is your noble son, To come to Rajagaha on a visit. There have been rumors of intended war, And armies are maneuvering nearby, But be assured, our noble King means peace. He would not draw the sword against your state, Nor wage a war against the Buddha's father.
_SUDDHODANA'S eye searches for the BUDDHA who has been standing behind a column and now steps forward._
_S._ Oh noble son, oh blessed, highest Buddha, Thou art indeed a King of Kings on earth!
_He kneels down. All members of the embassy do the same._
No crown thou wear'st, no scepter's in thy hand, Thou needest neither lance, nor sword nor shield, And yet thou rulest, with mere word and thought, Thou sway'st the destinies of all the world, I did not know thy power and thy great worth; But now I bow me down in humble faith, And I take refuge in the truth thou preachest. Henceforth I will devote myself to spread The kingdom of good will and righteousness.
[Music Buddhist Doxology]
[CURTAIN]
* * * * *
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Buddha, by Paul Carus |
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+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's note: | | | | All non-italic genus names in the text have been italicized. | +--------------------------------------------------------------+
[Illustration: NATURE SERIES]
ORIGIN AND METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS.
[Illustration]
Nature Series
ON THE ORIGIN AND METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS
BY
Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D.
Principal of the London Working Men's College; President of the London Chamber of Commerce; and Vice-Chairman of the London County Council
With Numerous Illustrations
London Macmillan and Co. and New York 1890
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved
Richard Clay and Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.
First Edition 1873. Reprinted 1874. New Edition 1890.
PREFACE.
For some years, much of my leisure time has been devoted to the study of the anatomy, development, and habits of the Annulosa, and especially of Insects, on which subjects I have published various memoirs, chiefly in the Transactions of the Royal, Linnæan, and Entomological Societies: of these papers I subjoin a list. Although the details, of which these memoirs necessarily for the most part consist, offer little interest, excepting to those persons who are specially devoted to Entomology, still there are portions which, having reference to the nature of metamorphoses and to the origin of insects, are of a more general character. I have also briefly referred to these questions in a Monograph of the Collembola and Thysanura, recently published by the Ray Society, and in the Opening Address to the Biological Section of the British Association at Brighton in 1872. Under these circumstances, it has been suggested to me that a small volume, containing, at somewhat greater length, in a more accessible form, and with the advantage of illustrations, the conclusions to which I have been led on this interesting subject, might not be altogether without interest to the general reader. The result, which has already appeared in the pages of _Nature_, is now submitted to the public, with some additions. I am well aware that it has no pretence to be in any sense a complete treatise; that the subject itself is one as to which our knowledge is still very incomplete, and on which the highest authorities are much divided in opinion. Whatever differences of opinion, however, there may be as to the views here put forward, the facts on which they are based will, I believe, be found correct. On this point I speak with the more confidence, on account of the valuable assistance I have received from many friends: to Mr. and Mrs. Busk and Dr. Hooker I am especially indebted.
The papers above referred to are as follows:—
1. _On Labidocera._—Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. xi., 1853.
2. On Two New Sub-genera of Calanidæ.—Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. xii., 1853.
3. On Two New Species of Calanidæ.—Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. xii., No. lxvii., 1853.
4. On Two New Species of Calanidæ.—Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. xii., No. lxix., 1853.
5. On some Arctic Calanidæ.—Annals and Magazine of Natural History, 1854.
6. On the Freshwater Entomostraca of South America.—Transactions of the Entomological Society, vol. iii., 1855.
7. On some New Entomostraca.—Transactions of the Entomological Society, vol. iv., 1856.
8. On some Marine Entomostraca found at Weymouth.—Annals and Magazine of Natural History, vol. xx., 1857.
9. On the Respiration of Insects.—Entomological Annual, 1857.
10. An Account of the Two Methods of Reproduction in _Daphnia_.—Transactions of the Royal Society, 1857.
11. On the Ova and Pseudova of Insects.—Transactions of the Royal Society, 1858.
12. On the Arrangement of the Cutaneous Muscles of _Pygæra Bucephala_.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, vol. xxii., 1858.
13. On the Freshwater Entomostraca of South America.—Entomological Society’s Transactions, 1858.
14. On _Coccus Hesperidum_.—Royal Society Proceedings, vol. ix., 1858.
15. On the Distribution of Tracheæ in Insects.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, vol. xxiii., 1860.
16. On the Generative Organs and on the Formation of the Egg in Annulosa. Transactions of the Royal Society, 1861.
17. On _Sphærularia Bombi._—Natural History Review, 1861.
18. On some Oceanic Entomostraca.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, vol. xxiii., 1860.
19. On the Thysanura. Part 1.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1862.
20. On the Development of Lonchoptera.—Entomological Society’s Transactions, 1862.
21. On the Thysanura. Part 2.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1862.
22. On the Development of Chloëon. Part 1.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1863.
23. On Two Aquatic Hymenoptera.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1863.
24. On some little-known Species of Freshwater Entomostraca.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, vol. xxiv., 1863.
25. On _Sphærularia Bombi_.—Natural History Review, 1864.
26. On the Development of Chloëon. Part 2.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1865.
27. Metamorphoses of Insects.—Journal of the Royal Institution, 1866.
28. On _Pauropus_.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1866.
29. On the Thysanura. Part 3.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1867.
30. Address to the Entomological Society.—Entomological Society’s Transactions, 1867.
31. On the Larva of Micropeplus Staphilinoides.—Entomological Society’s Transactions, 1868.
32. On the Thysanura. Part 4.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1869.
33. Addresses to the Entomological Society.—Entomological Society’s Transactions, 1867-1868.
34. On the Origin of Insects.—Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. xi.
35. Opening Address to the Biological Section of the British Association.—British Association Report, 1872.
36. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 1.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1873.
37. On British Wild Flowers considered in relation to Insects, 1874.
38. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 2.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1874.
39. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 3.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1875.
40. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 4.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1877.
41. On some Points in the Anatomy of Ants.—Quekett Lecture, 1877.—Microscopical Journal.
42. On the Colors of Caterpillars.—Entomological Society’s Transactions, 1878.
43. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 5.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1878.
44. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 6.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1879.
45. On the Anatomy of Ants.—Linnean Society’s Transactions, 1880.
46. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 7.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1880.
47. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 8.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1881.
48. On Fruits and Seeds.—Journal of the Royal Institution, 1881.
49. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 9.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1881.
50. On the Limits of Vision among some of the lower Animals.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1881.
51. Observations on Ants, Bees, and Wasps. Part 10.—Journal of the Linnean Society, 1882.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS.
Introduction.—Stages in the Life of an Insect.—Classification of Insects.—Characters derived from the Wings; from the parts of the Mouth; from the Metamorphoses.—The Classes of Insects: Hymenoptera, Strepsiptera, Coleoptera, Euplexoptera, Orthoptera, Thysanoptera, Neuroptera, Trichoptera, Diptera, Aphaniptera, Heteroptera, Homoptera, Lepidoptera _page_ 1-26
CHAPTER II.
THE INFLUENCE OF EXTERNAL CONDITIONS ON THE FORM AND STRUCTURE OF LARVÆ.
Larvæ depend partly on the group to which they belong.—Wood-eating Larvæ.—Larvæ of Lamellicorns.—Larvæ depend also in part on mode of life.—Larvæ of Hymenoptera, of _Sirex_; of _Tenthredo_; of Ichneumons; of Bees.—Rudimentary legs of Bee Embryo.—Beetles, _Weevils_, _Scolytus_, _Crioceris_, _Sitaris_, Metamorphoses of Pteromalidæ. _Platygaster_, _Polynema_.—Influence of external conditions.—Developmental and adaptive Metamorphoses _page_ 27-41
CHAPTER III.
THE NATURE OF METAMORPHOSES.
The life history of an Insect must be considered as a whole.—Vagueness of the term Larva.—Some larvæ much more advanced than others.—Organs develope in different order, in different groups.—Suppressed stages.—Apod condition of _Phryganea_; of _Aphis_; of _Chrysopa_.—Libellulidæ.—_Donacia_.—Spiders.—Myriapods.—Apod stage of Homomorphous Insects once probably longer than now.—Suppression of embryonic stages.—Metamorphoses of Hydroida, Crustacea, Isopods, and Amphipods.—Echinoderms.—Variations in development induced by the influence of external conditions. _page_ 41-62
CHAPTER IV.
THE ORIGIN OF METAMORPHOSES.
Origin of Metamorphoses.—Views of Messrs. Kirby and Spence.—Nature of the question.—Young animals often more similar than mature.—Views of Darwin, Herbert Spencer, Johannes Müller, Fritz Müller, and Agassiz.—Effect of size of egg.—Insects leave the egg in a more or less developed condition.—Consideration of pupal condition.—Quiescence of pupa.—Period of quiescence at each moult.—Changes not so abrupt as generally supposed.—Change in mouth-parts.—Difficulty in reference to Darwinian theory.—Mouth-parts of _Campodea_ and Collembola, as intermediate between the mandibulate and haustellate types.—Change in mouth-parts as connected with pupal conditions.—Origin of wings.—Use of wings under water.—Connection of metamorphoses with alternation of generations.—Parthenogenetic larvæ of _Cecidomyia_.—In alternation of generations one form always agamic.—Dimorphism and Dieidism.—Summary and Conclusions _page_ 62-81
CHAPTER V.
THE ORIGIN OF INSECTS.
The Origin of Insects.—Mistaken views of Darwinian theory.—Natural selection a _vera causa_.—Application of Darwin’s views to Insects.—Similarity of young Crustacea as compared with mature forms; ditto in Insects.—Type of Insecta.—Two principal types of larvæ: Hexapod and Apod.—Conclusions to be drawn from them.—_Campodea_ the modern representative of the Insect-stock.—_Campodea_, perhaps derived from Tardigrade.—Vermiform or Apod type of larva.—Views of Fritz Müller, Brauer, and Packard.—Represents a still earlier ancestor.—Modern representatives.—_Notommata_, _Albertia_, _Lindia_.—Earlier forms difficult to trace.—Lowest forms of animal life.—Yolk-segmentation.—Embryology and Evolution.—Light thrown by the evolution of the individual on that of the species _page_ 82-108
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATES.
PLATE I. p. 7.
FIG.
1. Cricket. Westwood, Intro. to the Modern Classification of Insects, vol. i. p. 440.
2. Earwig. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. i. p. 399.
3. _Aphis_. Packard, Guide to the Study of Insects, pp. 521, 522.
4. _Scolytus_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. i. p. 350.
5. _Anthrax_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 538.
6. _Balaninus_.
7. _Cynips_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 121.
8. Ant (_Formica_). Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 218.
9. Wasp. Ormerod, Nat. Hist. of Wasps, pl. i. fig. 1.
PLATE II. p. 8.
FIG.
1. Larva of Cricket. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. i. p. 440.
2. Larva of _Aphis_. Packard, loc. cit. pp. 521, 522.
3. Larva of Earwig. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. i. p. 399.
4. Larva of _Scolytus_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. i. p. 350.
5. Larva of _Anthrax_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 546.
6. Larva of _Balaninus_.
7. Larva of _Cynips_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 121.
8. Larva of Ant (_Formica_). Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 226.
9. Larva of Wasp. Newport, Art. Insecta, Todd’s Cycl. Anat. and Phys., p. 871.
PLATE III. p. 14.
FIG.
1. _Chloëon_. Linn. Trans. 1866.
2. _Meloë_. Spry and Shuckard, Coleoptera Delineated, pl. 56.
3. _Calepteryx_.
4. _Sitaris_. Spry and Shuckard, loc. cit. pl. 56.
5. _Campodea_. Suites à Buffon. Aptéres.
6. _Acilius_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. i. p. 100.
7. _Termes_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 12.
8. _Stylops_. Duncan, Met. of Insects, p. 387; Packard, p. 482.
9. _Thrips_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. 1.
PLATE IV. p. 15.
FIG.
1. Larva of _Chloëon_. Linn. Trans. 1863.
2. Larva of _Meloë_. Chapuis and Candèze, Mem. Soc. Roy. Liége, 1853, pp. 1, 7.
3. Larva of _Calepteryx_. Dufour, Ann. Sci. Nat. 1852.
4. Larva of _Sitaris_. Duncan, Met. of Insects, p. 309.
5. Larva of _Campodea_. Gervais’ Suites à Buffon. Aptéres.
6. Larva of _Acilius_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. i. p. 100.
7. Larva of _Termes_. Duncan, loc. cit. p. 348.
8. Larva of _Stylops_. Westwood, Trans. Ent. Soc. 1839, vol. ii. pl. xv. fig. 13a.
9. Larva of _Thrips_. Westwood, loc. cit. vol. ii. p. i.
PLATE V. p. 99.
FIG.
1-5. _Protamœba_.
6-9. _Protamyxa aurantiaca_. Haeckel Beit. zur. Monog. der Moneren, pl. 1.
10-18. _Magosphœra planula_. Haeckel, loc. cit. pl. v.
PLATE VI. p. 105.
FIG.
1-4. Yolk-segmentation in _Laomedea_. After Allman. Mon. of Tubularian Hydroids. Ray Society.
5-9. Yolk-segmentation in _Filaria_. After Van Beneden. Mem. sur les Vers Intestinaux.
10-13. Yolk-segmentation in _Echinus_. After Derbès. Ann. des. Sci. Nat. 1847.
14-17. Yolk-segmentation in _Lacinularia_. After Huxley. J. of Mic. Sci. 1853.
18-21. Yolk-segmentation in _Purpura_. After Koren and Danielssen. Ann. des. Sci. Nat. 1853.
22-24. Yolk-segmentation in _Amphioxus_. After Haeckel. Naturliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, pl. x.
25-29. Yolk-segmentation in Vertebrate. After Allen Thompson. Art. Ovum. Cyclop. of Anatomy and Physiology.
DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES.
FIG. 1. Larva of the Cockchafer (_Melolontha_)
2. Larva of _Cetonia_.
3. Larva of _Trox_.
4. Larva of _Oryctes_.
5. Larva of _Aphodius_.
6. Larva of _Lucanus_.
7. Larva of _Brachytarsus_.
8. Larva of _Crioceris_.
9. Larva of _Sitaris humeralis_.
10. Larva of _Sitaris humeralis_, in the second stage.
11. Larva of _Sitaris humeralis_, in the third stage.
12. Larva of _Sitaris humeralis_, in the fourth stage.
13. Pupa of _Sitaris_.
14. Larva of _Sirex_.
15. Egg of _Rhynchites_, showing the parasitic larva.
16. The parasitic larva, more magnified.
17. Egg of _Platygaster_.
18. Egg of _Platygaster_, showing the central cell.
19. Egg of _Platygaster_, after the division of the central cell.
20. Egg of _Platygaster_, more advanced.
21. Egg of _Platygaster_, more advanced.
22. Egg of _Platygaster_, showing the rudiment of the embryo.
23. Larva of _Platygaster_.—_mo_, mouth; _a_, antenna; _kf_, hooked feet; _r_, toothed process; _lfg_, lateral process; _f_, branches of the tail.
24. Larva of another species of _Platygaster_. (The letters indicate the same parts as in the preceding figure.)
25. Larva of a third species of _Platygaster_. (The letters indicate the same parts as in the preceding figure.)
26. Larva of _Platygaster_ in the second stage.—_mo_, mouth; _slkf_, œsophagus; _gsae_, supra-œsophagal ganglion; _lm_, muscles; _bsm_, nervous system; _gagh_, rudiments of the reproductive glands.
27. Larva of _Platygaster_ in the third stage.—_mo_, mouth; _ma_, mandibles; _gsae_, supra-œsophagal ganglion; _slk_, œsophagus; _ag_, ducts of the salivary glands; _bnm_, ventral nervous system; _sp_, salivary glands; _msl_, stomach; _im_, imaginal discs; _tr_, tracheæ; _fk_, fatty tissue; _ed_, intestine; _ga_, rudiments of reproductive organs; _ew_, wider portion of intestine; _ao_, posterior opening.
28. Embryo of _Polynema_.
29. Larva of _Polynema_.—_asch_, rudiments of the antennæ; _flsch_, of the wings; _bsch_, of the legs; _vfg_, lateral projections; _gsch_, rudiments of the ovipositor; _fk_, fatty tissue.
30. Egg of _Phryganea_ (Mystacides).—_A_¹, mandibular segment; _C_¹-_C_⁵, maxillary, labial, and three thoracic segments; _D_, abdomen.
31. Egg of _Phryganea_ somewhat more advanced.—_b_, mandibles; _c_, maxillæ; _cfs_, rudiments of the three pairs of legs.
32. Egg of _Pholcus opilionides_, showing the Protozonites.
33. Embryo of _Julus_.
34. Colony of _Bougainvillea fruticosa_, natural size, attached to the underside of a piece of floating timber.
35. Portion of the same, more magnified.
36. The Medusa from the same species.
37. Larva of Prawn, Nauplius stage.
38. Larva of Prawn, more advanced, Zoëa stage.
39. Larva of Echino-cidaris œquituberculata seen from above × 6/10.
40. Larva of _Echinus_ × 100.—_A_, front arm; _F_, arms of the mouth-process; _B_, posterior side arm; _E_¹, accessory arm of the mouth-process; _a_, mouth; _a_¹, œsophagus; _b_, stomach; _b_¹, intestine; _o_, posterior orifice; _d_, ciliated bands; _f_, ciliated epaulets; _c_, disc of future _Echinus_.
41. _Comatula rosacea_.
42. Larva of _Comatula rosacea_.
43. Larva of _Comatula rosacea_, more advanced.
44. Larva of _Comatula rosacea_, in the Pentacrinus state.
45. Larva of Starfish (Bipinnaria), × 100.
46. Larva of Starfish (Bipinnaria), × 100, seen from the side.—_a_, mouth; _b_, œsophagus; _c_, stomach; _c_¹, intestine.
47. Larva of another Bipinnaria, showing the commencement of the Starfish.—_g_, canal of the ciliated sac; _i_, rudiments of tentacles; _d_, ciliated band.
48. Larva of Moth (_Agrotis_).
49. Larva of Beetle (_Haltica_).
50. Larva of Saw-fly (_Cimbex_).
51. Larva of _Julus_.
52. _Agrotis suffusa_.
53. _Haltica_.
54. _Cimbex_.
55. _Julus_.
56. Tardigrade.
57. Larva of _Cecidomyia_.
58. _Lindia torulosa_.
59. _Prorhynchus stagnalis_.
60. Egg of Tardigrade.
61. Egg of Tardigrade, after the yolk has subdivided.
62. Egg of Tardigrade, in the next stage.
63. Egg of Tardigrade, more advanced.
ON THE ORIGIN AND METAMORPHOSES OF INSECTS.
CHAPTER I.
_THE CLASSIFICATION OF INSECTS._
About forty years ago the civil and ecclesiastical authorities of St. Fernando in Chili arrested a certain M. Renous on a charge of witchcraft, because he kept some caterpillars which turned into butterflies.[1] This was no doubt an extreme case of ignorance; it is now almost universally known that the great majority of insects quit the egg in a state very different from that which they ultimately assume; and the general statement in works on entomology has been that the life of an insect may be divided into four periods.
Thus, according to Kirby and Spence,[2] “The states through which insects pass are four: the _egg_, the _larva_, the _pupa_, and the _imago_.” Burmeister,[3] also, says that, excluding certain very rare anomalies, “we may observe four distinct periods of existence in every insect,—namely, those of the egg, the larva, the pupa, and the imago, or perfect insect.” In fact, however, the various groups of insects differ widely from one another in the metamorphoses they pass through: in some, as in the grasshoppers and crickets, the changes consist principally in a gradual increase of size, and in the acquisition of wings; while others, as for instance the common fly, acquire their full bulk in a form very different from that which they ultimately assume, and pass through a period of inaction in which not only is the whole form of the body altered, not only are legs and wings acquired, but even the internal organs themselves are almost entirely disintegrated and re-formed. It will be my object, after having briefly described these changes, to throw some light on the causes to which they are due, and on the indications they afford of the stages through which insects have been evolved.
The following list gives the orders or principal groups into which the Class Insecta may be divided. I will not, indeed, here enter upon my own views, but will adopt the system given by Mr. Westwood in his excellent “Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects,” from which also, as a standard authority, most of the figures on Plates I. to IV., when not otherwise acknowledged, have been taken. He divides insects into thirteen groups, and with reference to eight of them it may be said that there is little difference of opinion among entomologists. These orders are by far the most numerous, and I have placed them in capital letters. As regards the other five there is still much difference of opinion. It must also be observed that Prof. Westwood omits the parasitic Anoplura, as well as the Thysanura and Collembola.
ORDERS OF INSECTS ACCORDING TO WESTWOOD.
1. HYMENOPTERA Bees, Wasps, Ants, &c. 2. STREPSIPTERA _Stylops_, _Zenos_, &c. 3. COLEOPTERA Beetles. 4. EUPLEXOPTERA Earwigs. 5. ORTHOPTERA Grasshoppers, Crickets, Cockroaches, &c. 6. THYSANOPTERA _Thrips_. 7. NEUROPTERA _Ephemeras_, &c. 8. TRICHOPTERA _Phryganea_. 9. DIPTERA Flies and Gnats. 10. APHANIPTERA Fleas. 11. HETEROPTERA Bugs. 12. HOMOPTERA _Aphis_, _Coccus_, &c. 13. LEPIDOPTERA Butterflies and Moths.
Of these thirteen orders, the eight which I have placed in capital letters—namely the first, third, fifth, seventh, ninth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, are much the most important in the number and variety of their species; the other five form comparatively small groups. The Strepsiptera are minute insects, parasitic on Hymenoptera: Rossi, by whom they were discovered, regarded them as Hymenopterous; Lamarck placed them among the Diptera; by others they have been considered to be most closely allied to the Coleoptera, but they are now generally treated as an independent order.
The Euplexoptera or Earwigs are only too familiar to most of us. Linnæus classed them among the Coleoptera, from which, however, they differ in their transformations. Fabricius, Olivier, and Latreille regarded them as Orthoptera; but Dr. Leach, on account of the structure of their wings, considered them as forming the type of a distinct order, in which view he has been followed by Westwood, Kirby, and many other entomologists.
The Thysanoptera, consisting of the Linnæan genus _Thrips_, are minute insects well known to gardeners, differing from the Coleoptera in the nature of their metamorphoses, in which they resemble the Orthoptera and Hemiptera. The structure of the wings and mouth-parts, however, are considered to exclude them from these two orders.
The Trichoptera, or Caddis worms, offer many points of resemblance to the Neuroptera, while in others they approach more nearly to the Lepidoptera. According to Westwood, the genus _Phryganea_ “forms the connecting link between the Neuroptera and Lepidoptera.”
The last of these small aberrant orders is that of the Aphaniptera, constituted for the family Pulicidæ. In their transformations, as in many other respects, they closely resemble the Diptera. Strauss Durckheim indeed said that “_la puce est un diptère sans ailes_.” Westwood, however, regards it as constituting a separate order.
As indicated by the names of these orders, the structure of the wings affords extremely natural and convenient characters by which the various groups may be distinguished from one another. The mouth-parts also are very important; and, regarded from this point of view, the Insecta have been divided into two series—the Mandibulata and Haustellata, or mandibulate and suctorial groups, between which, as I have elsewhere shown,[4] the Collembola (_Podura_, _Smynthurus_, &c.) occupy an intermediate position. These two series are:—
MANDIBULATA.
Hymenoptera. Strepsiptera. Coleoptera. Euplexoptera. Orthoptera. Trichoptera? Thysanoptera?
HAUSTELLATA.
Lepidoptera. Diptera. Aphaniptera. Hemiptera. Homoptera.
Again—and this is the most important from my present point of view—insects have sometimes been divided into two other series, according to the nature of their metamorphoses: “Heteromorpha,” to use the terminology of Prof. Westwood,[5] “or those in which there is no resemblance between the parent and the offspring; and Homomorpha, or those in which the larva resembles the imago, except in the absence of wings. In the former the larva is generally worm-like, of a soft and fleshy consistence, and furnished with a mouth, and often with six short legs attached in pairs to the three segments succeeding the head. In the Homomorpha, including the Orthoptera, Hemiptera, Homoptera, and certain Neuroptera, the body, legs, and |
38207-0 | antennæ are nearly similar in their form to those of the perfect insect, but the wings are wanting.”
HETEROMORPHA.
Hymenoptera. Strepsiptera. Coleoptera. Trichoptera. Diptera. Aphaniptera. Lepidoptera.
HOMOMORPHA.
Euplexoptera. Orthoptera. Hemiptera. Homoptera. Thysanoptera. Neuroptera.
But though the Homomorphic insects do not pass through such striking changes of form as the Heteromorphic, and are active throughout life, still it was until within the last few years generally (though erroneously) considered, that in them, as in the Heteromorpha, the life fell into four distinct periods; those of (1) the egg, (2) the larva, characterized by the absence of wings, (3) the pupa with imperfect wings, and (4) the imago, or perfect insect.
I have, however, elsewhere[6] shown that there are not, as a matter of fact, four well-marked stages, and four only, but that in many cases the process is much more gradual.
The species belonging to the order Hymenoptera are among the most interesting of insects. To this order belong the gallflies, the sawflies, the ichneumons, and, above all, the ants and bees. We are accustomed to class the Anthropoid apes next to man in the scale of creation, but if we were to judge animals by their works, the chimpanzee and the gorilla must certainly give place to the bee and the ant. The larvæ of the sawflies, which live on leaves, and of the Siricidæ or long-tailed wasps, which feed on wood, are very much like caterpillars, having three pairs of legs, and in the former case abdominal pro-legs as well: but in the great majority of Hymenoptera the larvæ are legless, fleshy grubs (Plate II., Figs. 7-9); and the various modes by which the females provide for, or secure to, them a sufficient supply of appropriate nourishment constitutes one of the most interesting pages of Natural History.
The species of Hymenoptera are very numerous; in this country alone there are about 3,000 kinds, most of which are very small. In the pupa state they are inactive, and show distinctly all the limbs of the perfect insect, encased in distinct sheaths, and folded on the breast. In the perfect state they are highly organized and very active. The working ants and some few species are wingless, but the great majority have four strong membranous wings, a character distinguishing them at once from the true flies, which have only one pair of wings.
The saw-flies are so called because they possess at the end of the body a curious organ, corresponding to the sting of a wasp, but which is in the form of a fine-toothed saw. With this instrument the female sawfly cuts a slit in the stem or leaf of a plant, into which she introduces her egg. The larva much resembles a caterpillar, both in form and habits. To this group belongs the nigger, or black caterpillar of the turnip, which is often in sufficient numbers to do much mischief. Some species make galls, but the greater number of galls are formed by insects of another family, the Cynipidæ.
[Illustration: PLATE I.[7]—MATURE INSECTS.
Fig. 1, Cricket; 2, Earwig; 3, _Aphis_; 4, _Scolytus_; 5, Anthrax; 6, _Balaninus_; 7, _Cynips_; 8, Ant; 9, Wasp.]
[Illustration: PLATE II.—LARVÆ OF THE INSECTS REPRESENTED ON PLATE I.
Fig. 1, Larva of Cricket; 2, Larva of Aphis; 3, Larva of Earwig; 4, Larva of _Scolytus_ (Beetle); 5, Larva of _Anthrax_ (Fly); 6, Larva of _Balaninus_ (Nut Weevil); 7, Larva of _Cynips_; 8, Larva of Ant; 9, Larva of Wasp.]
In the Cynipidæ (Plate I., Fig. 7) the female is provided with an organ corresponding to the saw of the sawfly, but resembling a needle. With this she stings or punctures the surface of leaves, buds, stalks, or even roots of various plants. In the wound thus produced she lays one or more eggs. The effects of this proceeding, and particularly of the irritating fluid which she injects into the wound, is to produce a tumour or gall, within which the egg hatches, and on which the larva, a thick fleshy grub (Plate II., Fig. 7), feeds. In some species each gall contains a single larva; in others, several live together.
The oak supports several kinds of gallflies: one produces the well-known oak-apple, one a small swelling on the leaf resembling a currant, another a gall somewhat like an acorn, another attacks the root; the species making the bullet-like galls, which are now so common, has only existed for a few years in this country; the beautiful little spangles so common in autumn on the under side of oak leaves are the work of another species, the _Cynus longipennis_. One curious point about this group is, that in some of the commonest species the females alone are known, no one yet having ever succeeded in finding a male.
Another great family of the Hymenoptera is that of the ichneumons; the females lay their eggs either in or on other insects, within the bodies of which the larvæ live. These larvæ are thick, fleshy, legless grubs, and feed on the fatty tissues of their hosts, but do not attack the vital organs. When full-grown, the grubs eat their way through the skin of the insect, and turn into chrysalides. Almost every kind of insect is subject to the attacks of these little creatures, which are no doubt useful in preventing the too great multiplication of insects, and especially of caterpillars. Some species are so minute that they actually lay their eggs within those of other insects (Figs. 15, 16). These parasites assume very curious forms in their larval state.
But of all the Hymenoptera, the group containing the ant, the bee, and the wasp is the most interesting. This is especially the case with the social species, though the solitary ones also are extremely remarkable. The solitary bee or wasp, for instance, forms a cell generally in the ground, places in it a sufficient amount of food, lays an egg, and closes the cell. In the case of bees, the food consists of honey; in that of wasps, the larva requires animal food, and the mother therefore places a certain number of insects in the cell, each species having its own special prey, some selecting small caterpillars, some beetles, some spiders. _Cerceris bupresticida_, as its name denotes, attacks beetles belonging to the genus _Buprestis_. Now if the Cerceris were to kill the beetle before placing it in the cell, it would decay, and the young larva, when hatched, would find only a mass of corruption. On the other hand, if the beetle were buried uninjured, in its struggles to escape it would be almost certain to destroy the egg. The wasp has, however, the instinct of stinging its prey in the centre of the nervous system, thus depriving it of motion, and let us hope of suffering, but not of life; consequently, when the young larva leaves the egg, it finds ready a sufficient store of wholesome food.
Other wasps are social, and, like the bees and ants, dwell together in communities. They live for one season, dying in autumn, except some of the females, which hibernate, awake in the spring, and form new colonies. These, however, do not, under ordinary circumstances, live through a second winter. One specimen which I kept tame through last spring and summer, lived until the end of February, but then died. The larvæ of wasps (Plate II., Fig. 9) are fat, fleshy, legless grubs. When full-grown they spin for themselves a silken covering, within which they turn into chrysalides. The oval bodies which are so numerous in ants’ nests, and which are generally called ants’ eggs, are really not eggs but cocoons. Ants are very fond of the honey-dew which is formed by the Aphides, and have been seen to tap the Aphides with their antennæ, as if to induce them to emit some of the sweet secretion. There is a species of _Aphis_ which lives on the roots of grass, and some ants collect these into their nests, keeping them, in fact, just as we do cows. Moreover they collect the eggs in the autumn and tend them through the winter (when they are of no use) with the same care as their own, so as to have a supply of young Aphides in the spring. This is one of the most remarkable facts I know in the whole history of animal life. One species of red ant does no work for itself, but makes slaves of a black kind, which then do everything for their masters. The slave makers will not even put food into their own mouths, but would starve in the midst of plenty, if they had not a slave to feed them. I found, however, that I could keep them in life and health for months if I gave them a slave for an hour or two in a week to clean and feed them.
Ants also keep a variety of beetles and other insects in their nests. That they have some reason for this seems clear, because they readily attack any unwelcome intruder; but what that reason is, we do not yet know. If these insects are to be regarded as the domestic animals of the ants, then we must admit that the ants possess more domestic animals than we do.
Some indeed of these beetles produce a secretion which is licked by the ants like the honey-dew; there are others, however, which have not yet been shown to be of any use to the ants, and yet are rarely, if ever, found, excepting in ants’ nests.
M. Lespès, who regards these insects as true domestic animals, has recorded[8] some interesting observations on the relations between one of them (_Claviger Duvalii_) and the ants (_Lasius niger_) with which it lives. This species of _Claviger_ is never met with except in ants’ nests, though on the other hand there are many communities of _Lasius_ which possess none of these beetles; and M. Lespès found that when he placed _Clavigers_ in a nest of ants which had none of their own, the beetles were immediately killed and eaten, the ants themselves being on the other hand kindly received by other communities of the same species. He concludes from these observations that some communities of ants are more advanced in civilization than others; the suggestion is no doubt ingenious, and the fact curiously resembles the experience of navigators who have endeavoured to introduce domestic animals among barbarous tribes; but M. Lespès has not yet, so far as I am aware, published the details of his observations, without which it is impossible to form a decided opinion. I have sometimes wondered whether the ants have any feeling of reverence for these beetles; but the whole subject is as yet very obscure, and would well repay careful study.
[Illustration: PLATE III.—MATURE INSECTS.
Fig. 1, _Chloëon_; 2, _Meloë_ (after Shuckard); 3, _Calepteryx_; 4, _Sitaris_ (after Shuckard); 5, _Campodea_ (after Gervais); 6, _Acilius_; 7, _Termes_; 8, _Stylops_ (female); 9, _Thrips_.]
[Illustration: PLATE IV. YOUNG FORMS OF THE INSECTS REPRESENTED ON PLATE III.—Fig. 1, Larva of _Chloëon_; 2, Larva of _Meloë_ (after Chapuis and Candèze); 3, Larva of _Calepteryx_ (after Léon Dufour); 4, Larva of _Sitaris_; 5, Larva of _Campodea_; 6, Larva of _Acilius_; 7, Larva of Termes (after Blanchard); 8, Larva of _Stylops_; 9, Larva of _Thrips_.]
The order Strepsiptera are a small, but very remarkable group of insects, parasitic on bees and wasps. The larva (Pl. IV., Fig. 8) is minute, six-legged, and very active; it passes through its transformations within the body of the bee or wasp. The male and female are very dissimilar. The males are minute, very active, short-lived, and excitable, with one pair of large membranous wings. The females (Pl. III., Fig. 8), on the contrary, are almost motionless, and shaped very much like a bottle; they never quit the body of the bee, but only thrust out the top of the bottle between the abdominal rings of the bee.
In the order Coleoptera, the larvæ differ very much in form. The majority are elongated, active, hexapod, and more or less depressed; but those of the Weevils (Pl. II., Fig. 6), of _Scolytus_ (Pl. II., Fig. 4), &c., which are vegetable feeders, and live surrounded by their food,—as, for instance, in grain, nuts, &c.,—are apod, white, fleshy grubs, not unlike those of bees and ants. The larvæ of the Longicorns, which live inside trees, are long, soft, and fleshy, with six short legs. The Geodephaga, corresponding with the Linnæan genera _Cicindela_ and _Carabus_, have six-legged, slender, carnivorous larvæ; those of _Cicindela_, which waylay their prey, being less active than the hunting larvæ of the Carabidæ. The Hydradephaga, or water-beetles (Dyticidæ and Gyrinidæ), have long and narrow larvæ (Pl. IV., Fig. 6), with strong sickle-shaped jaws, short antennæ, four palpi, and six small eyes on each side of the head; they are very voracious. The larvæ of the Staphylinidæ are by no means unlike the perfect insect, and are found in similar situations; their jaws are powerful, and their legs moderately strong. The larvæ of the Lamellicorn beetles (Figs. 1-6)—cockchafers, stag-beetles, &c.—feed on vegetable substances or on dead animal matter. They are long, soft, fleshy grubs, with the abdomen somewhat curved, and generally lie on their side. The larvæ of the Elateridæ, known as wireworms, are long and slender, with short legs. That of the glowworm (Lampyridæ) is not unlike the apterous female. The male glowworm, on the contrary, is very different. It has long, thin, brown wing-cases, and often flies into rooms at night, attracted by the light, which it probably mistakes for that of its mate.
The metamorphoses of the Cantharidæ are very remarkable, and will be described subsequently. The larvæ are active and hexapod. The Phytophaga (_Crioceris_, _Galeruca_, _Haltica_, _Chrysomela_, &c.) are vegetable feeders, both as larvæ and in the perfect state. The larvæ are furnished with legs, and are not unlike the caterpillars of certain Lepidoptera.
The larva of _Coccinella_ (the Ladybird) is somewhat depressed, of an elongated ovate form, with a small head, and moderately strong legs. It feeds on Aphides.
Thus, then, we see that there are among the Coleoptera many different forms of larvæ. Macleay considered that there were five principal types.
1. Carnivorous hexapod larvæ, with an elongated, more or less flattened body, six eyes on each side of the head, and sharp falciform mandibles (_Carabus_, _Dyticus_, &c.).
2. Herbivorous hexapod larvæ, with fleshy, cylindrical bodies, somewhat curved, so that they lie on their side.
3. Apod grub-like larvæ, with scarcely the rudiments of antennæ (_Curculio_).
4. Hexapod antenniferous larvæ, with a subovate body, the second segment being somewhat larger than the others (_Chrysomela_, _Coccinella_).
5. Hexapod antenniferous larvæ, of oblong form, somewhat resembling the former, but with caudal appendages (_Meloë_, _Sitaris_).
The pupa of the Coleoptera is quiescent, and “the parts of the future beetle are plainly perceivable, being encased in distinct sheaths; the head is applied against the breast; the antennæ lie along the sides of the thorax; the elytra and wings are short and folded at the sides of the body, meeting on the under side of the abdomen; the two anterior pairs of legs are entirely exposed, but the hind pair are covered by wing-cases, the extremity of the thigh only appearing beyond the sides of the body.”[9]
In the next three orders—namely, the Orthoptera (grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, walking-stick insects, cockroaches, &c.), Euplexoptera (earwigs), and Thysanoptera, a small group of insects well known to gardeners under the name of _Thrips_ (Pl. I. and II., Figs. 1 and 2)—the larvæ when they quit the egg already much resemble the mature form, differing, in fact, principally in the absence of wings, which are more or less gradually acquired, as the insect increases in size. They are active throughout life. Those specimens which have rudimentary wings are, however, usually called pupæ.
The Neuroptera present, perhaps, more differences in the character of their metamorphoses than any other order of insects. Their larvæ are generally active, hexapod little creatures, and do not vary from one another in appearance so much, for instance, as those of the Coleoptera, but their pupæ differ essentially; some groups, namely, the Psocidæ, Termitidæ, Libellulidæ, Ephemeridæ, and Perlidæ, remaining active throughout life, like the Orthoptera; while a second division, including the Myrmeleonidæ, Hemerobiidæ, Sialidæ, Panorpidæ, Raphidiidæ, and Mantispidæ, have quiescent pupæ, which, however, in some cases, acquire more or less power of locomotion shortly before they assume the mature state; thus that of _Raphidia_, though motionless at first, at length acquires strength enough to walk, even while still enclosed in the pupa skin, which is very thin.[10]
One of the most remarkable families belonging to this order is that of the Termites, or white ants. They abound in the tropics, where they are a perfect pest, and a serious impediment to human development. Their colonies are extremely numerous, and they attack woodwork and furniture of all kinds, generally working from within, so that their presence is often unsuspected, until it is suddenly found that they have completely eaten away the interior of some post or table, leaving nothing but a thin outer shell. Their nests, which are made of earth, are sometimes ten or twelve feet high, and strong enough to bear a man. One species, _Termes lucifugus_, is found in the South of France, where it has been carefully studied by Latreille. He found in these communities five kinds of individuals—(1) males; (2) females, which grow to a very large size, their bodies being distended with eggs, of which they sometimes lay as many as 80,000 in a day; (3) a form described by some observers as Pupæ, but by others as neuters. These differ very much from the others, having a long, soft body without wings, but with an immense head, and very large, strong jaws. These individuals act as soldiers, doing apparently no work, but keeping watch over the nest and attacking intruders with great boldness. (4) Apterous, eyeless individuals, somewhat resembling the winged ones, but with a larger and more rounded head; these constitute the greater part of the community, and, like the workers of ants and bees, perform all the labour, building the nest and collecting food. (5) Latreille mentions another kind of individual which he regards as the pupa, and which resembles the workers, but has four white tubercles on the back, where the wings afterwards make their appearance. There is still, however, much difference of opinion among entomologists, with reference to the true nature of these different classes of individuals. M. Lespès, who has recently studied the same species, describes a second kind of male and a second kind of female, and the subject, indeed, is one which offers a most promising field for future study.
Another interesting family of Neuroptera is that of the Ephemeræ, or Mayflies (Pl. III., Fig. 1), so well known to fishermen. The larvæ (Pl. IV., Fig. 1) are semi-transparent, active, six-legged little creatures, which live in water; having at first no gills, they respire through the general surface of the body. They grow rapidly and change their skin every few days. After one or two moults they acquire seven pairs of branchiæ, or gills, which are generally in the form of leaves, one pair to the segment. When the larvæ are about half grown, the posterior angles of the two posterior thoracic segments begin to elongate. These elongations become more and more marked with every change of skin. One morning, in the month of June, some years ago, I observed a full-grown larva, which had a glistening appearance, owing to the presence of a film of air under the skin. I put it under the microscope, and, having added a drop of water with a pipette, looked through the glass. To my astonishment, the insect was gone, and an empty skin only remained. I then caught a second specimen, in a similar condition, and put it under the microscope, hoping to see it come out. Nor was I disappointed. Very few moments had elapsed, when I had the satisfaction of seeing the thorax open along the middle of the back; the two sides turned over; the insect literally walked out of itself, unfolded its wings, and in an instant flew up to the window. Several times since, I have had the pleasure of witnessing this marvellous change, and it is really wonderful how rapidly it takes place: from the moment when the skin first cracks, not ten seconds are over before the insect has flown away.
Another family of Neuroptera, the Dragon-flies, or Horse-stingers, as they are sometimes called, from a mistaken idea that they sting severely enough to hurt a horse, though in fact they are quite harmless, also spend their early days in the water. The larvæ are brown, sluggish, ugly creatures, with six legs. They feed on small water-animals, for which they wait very patiently, either at the bottom of the water, or on some aquatic plant. The lower jaws are attached to a long folding rod; and when any unwary little creature approaches too near the larva, this apparatus is shot out with such velocity that the prey which comes within its reach seldom escapes. In their perfect condition, also, Dragon-flies feed on other insects, and may often be seen hawking round ponds. The so-called Ant-lions in many respects resemble the Dragon-flies, but the habits of the larvæ are very dissimilar. They do not live in the water, but prefer dry places, where they bury themselves in the loose sand, and seize with their long jaws any small insect which may pass. The true Ant-lion makes itself a round, shallow pit in loose ground or sand, and buries itself at the bottom. Any inattentive little insect which steps over the edge of this pit immediately falls to the bottom, and is instantaneously seized by the Ant-lion. Should the insect escape, and attempt to climb up the side of the pit, the Ant-lion is said to throw sand at it, knocking it down again.
One other family of Neuroptera which I must mention, is the Hemerobiidæ. The perfect insect is a beautiful, lace-winged, very delicate, green creature, something like a tender Dragon-fly, and with bright, green, touching eyes. The female deposits her eggs on leaves, not directly on the plant itself, but attached to it by a long white slender footstalk. The larva has six legs and powerful jaws, and makes itself very useful in destroying the Hop-fly.
The insects forming the order Trichoptera are well known in their larval condition, under the name of caddis worms. These larvæ are not altogether unlike caterpillars in form, but they live in water—which is the case with very few lepidopterous larvæ—and form for themselves cylindrical cases or tubes, built up of sand, little stones, bits of stick, leaves, or even shells. They generally feed on vegetable substances, but will also attack minute freshwater animals. When full grown, the larva fastens its case to a stone, the stem of a plant, or some other fixed substance, and closes the two ends with an open grating of silken threads, so as to admit the free access of water, while excluding enemies. It then turns into a pupa which bears some resemblance to the perfect insect, “except that the antennæ, palpi, wings, and legs are shorter, enclosed in separate sheaths, and arranged upon the breast.” The pupa remains quiet in the tube until nearly ready to emerge, when it comes to the surface, and in some cases creeps out of the water. It is not therefore so completely motionless as the pupæ of Lepidoptera.
The Diptera, or Flies, comprise insects with two wings only, the hinder pair being represented by minute club-shaped organs called “haltères.” Flies quit the egg generally in the form of fat, fleshy, legless grubs. They feed principally on decaying animal or vegetable matter, and are no doubt useful as scavengers. Other species, as the gadflies, deposit their eggs on the bodies of animals, within which the grubs feed, when hatched. The mouth is generally furnished with two hooks which serve instead of jaws. The pupæ of Diptera are of two kinds. In the true flies, the outer skin of the full-grown larva is not shed, but contracts and hardens, thus assuming the appearance of an oval brownish shell or case, within which the insect changes into a chrysalis. The pupæ of the gnats, on the contrary, have the limbs distinct and enclosed in sheaths. They are generally inactive, but some of the aquatic species continue to swim about.
One group of Flies, which is parasitic on horses, sheep, bats, and other animals, has been called the Pupipara, because it was supposed that they were not born until they had arrived at the condition of pupæ. They come into the world in the form of smooth, ovate bodies, much resembling ordinary dipterous pupæ, but as Leuckart has shown,[11] they are true, though abnormal, larvæ.
The next order, that of the Aphaniptera, is very small in number, containing only the different species of Flea. The larva is long, cylindrical, and legless; the chrysalis is motionless, and the perfect insect is too well known, at least, as regards its habits, to need any description.
The Heteroptera, unlike the preceding orders of insects, quit the egg in a form differing from that of the perfect insect principally in the absence of wings, which are gradually acquired. In their metamorphoses they resemble the Orthoptera, and are active through life. The majority are dull in colour, though some few are very beautiful. The species constituting this group, though very numerous, are generally small, and not so familiarly known to us as those of the other large orders, with indeed one exception, the well-known Bug. This is not, apparently, an indigenous insect, but seems to have been introduced. The word is indeed used by old writers, but either as meaning a bugbear, or in a general sense, and not with reference to this particular insect. In this country it never acquires wings, but is stated to do so sometimes in warmer climates. The Heteroptera cannot exactly be said either to sting or bite. The jaws, of which, as usual among insects, there are two pairs, are like needles, which are driven into the flesh, and the blood is then sucked up the lower lip, which has the form of a tube. This peculiar structure of the mouth prevails throughout the whole order; consequently their nutriment consists almost entirely of the juices of animals or plants. The Homoptera agree with the Heteroptera in the structure of the mouth, and in the metamorphoses. They differ principally in the front wings, which in Homoptera are membranous throughout, while in the Heteroptera, the front part is thickened and leathery. As in the Heteroptera, however, so also in the Homoptera, some species do not acquire wings. The Cicada, celebrated for its chirp, and the lanthorn fly, belong to this group. So also does the so-called Cuckoo-spit, so common in our gardens, which has the curious faculty of secreting round itself a quantity of frothy fluid which serves to protect it from its enemies. But the best known insects of this group are the Aphides or Plant-lice; while the most useful belong to the Coccidæ, or scale insects, from one species of which we obtain the substance called lac, so extensively used in the manufacture of sealing-wax and varnish. Several species also have been used in dyeing, especially the Cochineal insect of Mexico, a species which lives on the cactus. The male _Coccus_ is a minute, active insect, with four large wings; while the female, on the contrary, never acquires wings, but is very sluggish, broad, more or less flattened, and in fact, when full grown, looks like a small brown, red, or white scale.
The larva of the order Lepidoptera are familiar to us all, under the name of caterpillars. The insects of this order in their larval condition are almost all phytophagous, and are very uniform both in structure and in habits. The body is long and cylindrical, consisting of thirteen segments; the head is armed with powerful jaws; the three following segments, the future prothorax, mesothorax, and meta-thorax, each bears a pair of simple articulated legs. Of the posterior segments, five also bear false or pro-legs, which are short, unjointed, and provided with a number of hooklets. A caterpillar leads a dull and uneventful life; it eats ravenously, and grows rapidly, casting its skin several times during the process, which generally lasts only a few weeks; though in some cases, as for instance that of the goat-moth, it extends over a period of two or three years, after which the larva changes into a quiescent pupa or chrysalis.
CHAPTER II.
_THE INFLUENCE OF EXTERNAL CONDITIONS ON THE FORM AND STRUCTURE OF LARVÆ._
The facts recapitulated briefly in the preceding chapter show, that the forms of insect larvæ depend greatly on the group to which they belong. Thus the same tree may harbour larvæ of Diptera, Hymenoptera, Coleoptera, and Lepidoptera; each presenting the form typical of the family to which it belongs.
If, again, we take a group, such, for instance, as the Lamellicorn beetles, we shall find larvæ extremely similar in form, yet very different in habits. Those, for instance, of the common cockchafer (Fig. 1) feed on the roots of grass; those of _Cetonia aurata_ (Fig. 2) inhabit ants’ nests; the larvæ of the genus _Trox_ (Fig. 3) are found on dry animal substances; of _Oryctes_ (Fig. 4) in tan-pits; of _Aphodius_ (Fig. 5) in dung; of _Lucanus_ (the stag-beetle, Fig. 6) in wood.
[Illustration: FIG. 1, Larva of the Cockchafer (_Melolontha_). (Westwood, Int. to the Modern Classification of Insects, vol. i. p. 194.). 2, Larva of _Cetonia_. 3, Larva of _Trox_. 4, Larva of _Oryctes_. 5, Larva of _Aphodius_ (Chapuis and Candèze, Mém. Soc. Roy. Liège, 1853). 6, Larva of _Lucanus_. (Packard, Guide to the Study of Insects, Fig. 403).]
On the other hand, in the present chapter it will be my object to show that the form of the larva depends very much on the conditions of its life. Thus, those larvæ which are internal parasites, whether in animals or plants, are vermiform, as are those which live in cells, and depend on their parents for food. On the other hand, larvæ which burrow in wood have strong jaws and generally somewhat weak thoracic legs; whilst those which feed on leaves have the thoracic legs more developed, but less so than the carnivorous species. Now, the Hymenoptera, as a general rule, belong to the first category: the larvæ of the Ichneumons, &c., which live in animals,—those of the Cynipidæ, inhabiting galls,—and those of ants, bees, wasps, &c., which are fed by their parents, are fleshy, apodal grubs; though the remarkable fact that the embryos of bees in one stage of their development possess rudiments of thoracic legs which subsequently disappear, seems to show, not indeed that the larvæ of bees were ever hexapod, but that bees are descended from ancestors which had hexapod larvæ, and that the present apod condition of these larvæ is not original, but results from their mode of life.
On the other hand, the larvæ of _Sirex_ (Fig. 14) being wood-burrowers, possess well-developed thoracic legs. Again, the larvæ of the Tenthredinidæ, which feed upon leaves, closely resemble the caterpillars of Lepidoptera, even to the presence of abdominal pro-legs.
[Illustration: FIG. 7, Larva of _Brachytarsus_ (Ratzeburg, Forst. Insecten). 8, Larva of _Crioceris_ (Westwood, loc. cit.).]
The larvæ of most Coleoptera (Beetles) are active, hexapod, and more or less flattened: but those which live inside vegetable tissues, such as the weevils, are apod fleshy grubs, like those of Hymenoptera. Pl. II., Fig. 6, represents the larva of the nut-weevil, _Balaninus_ (Pl. I., Fig. 6), and it will be seen that it closely resembles Pl. II., Fig. 5, which represents that of a fly (_Anthrax_), Pl. I., Fig. 5, and Pl. II., Figs. 7, 8, and 9, which represent respectively those of a _Cynips_ or gall-fly (Pl. I., Fig. 7), an ant (Pl. I., Fig. 8), and wasp (Pl. I., Fig. 9). Nor is _Balaninus_ the only genus of Coleoptera which affords us examples of this fact. Thus in the genus _Scolytus_ (Pl. I., Fig. 4), the larvæ (Pl. II., Fig. 4), which, as already mentioned, feed on the bark of the elm, closely resemble those just described, as also do those of _Brachytarsus_ (Fig. 7). On the other hand, the larvæ of certain beetles feed on leaves, like the caterpillars of Lepidoptera; thus that of _Crioceris Asparagi_ (Fig. 8)—which, as its name denotes, feeds on the asparagus—closely resembles the larvæ of certain Lepidoptera, as for instance of _Thecla spini_. From this point of view the transformations of the genus _Sitaris_ (Pl. III., Fig. 4), which have been very carefully investigated by M. Fabre, are peculiarly interesting.[12]
[Illustration: FIG. 9, Larva of _Sitaris numeralis_ (Fabre, Ann. des Sci. Nat., sér. 4, tome vii.). 10, Larva of _Sitaris humeralis_, in the second stage. 11, Larva of _Sitaris humeralis_, in the third stage. 12, Larva of _Sitaris humeralis_, in the fourth stage. 13, Pupa of _Sitaris_.]
The genus _Sitaris_ (a small beetle allied to Cantharis, the blister-fly, and to _Meloë_, the oil-beetle) is parasitic on a kind of Bee (Anthophora), which excavates subterranean galleries, each leading to a cell. The eggs of the _Sitaris_, which are deposited at the entrance of these galleries, are hatched at the end of September or beginning of October; and M. Fabre not unnaturally expected that the young larvæ, which are active little creatures with six serviceable legs (Fig. 9), would at once eat their way into the cells of the Anthophora. No such thing: till the month of April following they remain without leaving their birthplace, and consequently without food; nor do they in this long time change either in form or size. M. Fabre ascertained this, not only by examining the burrows of the _Anthophoras_, but also by direct observation of some young larvæ kept in captivity. In April, however, his captives at last awoke from their long lethargy, and hurried anxiously about their prisons. Naturally inferring that they were in search of food, M. Fabre supposed that this would consist either of the larvæ or pupæ of the Anthophora, or of the honey with which it stores its cell. All three were tried without success. The first two were neglected, and the larvæ, when placed on the latter, either hurried away, or perished in the attempt, being evidently unable to deal with the sticky substance. M. Fabre was in despair: “Jamais expérience,” he says, “n’a éprouvé pareille déconfiture. Larves, nymphes, cellules, miel, je vous ai tous offert; que voulez-vous donc, bestioles maudites?” The first ray of light came to him from our countryman, Newport, who ascertained that a small parasite found by Léon Dufour on one of the wild bees, and named by him Triungulinus, was, in fact, the larva of _Meloë_. The larvæ of _Sitaris_ much resembled Dufour’s Triungulinus; and acting on this hint, M. Fabre examined many specimens of Anthophora, and found on them at last the larvæ of his _Sitaris_. The males of Anthophora emerge from the pupæ sooner than the females, and M. Fabre ascertained that, as they come out of their galleries, the little _Sitaris_ larvæ fasten upon them. Not, however, for long: instinct teaches them that they are not yet in the straight path of development; and, watching their opportunity, they pass from the male to the female bee. Guided by these indications, M. Fabre examined several cells of the Anthophora: in some, the egg of the Anthophora floated by itself on the surface of the honey; in others, on the egg, as on a raft, sat the still more minute larva of the _Sitaris_. The mystery was solved. At the moment when the egg is laid the _Sitaris_ larva springs upon it. Even while the poor mother is carefully fastening up her cell, her mortal enemy is beginning to devour her offspring: for the egg of the Anthophora serves not only as a raft, but as a repast. The honey which is enough for either, would be too little for both; and the _Sitaris_, therefore, at its first meal, relieves itself from its only rival. After eight days the egg is consumed, and on the empty shell the _Sitaris_ undergoes its first transformation, and makes its appearance in a very different form, as shown in Fig. 10.
The honey which was fatal before is now necessary; the activity which before was necessary is now useless; consequently, with the change of skin, the active, slim larva changes into a white, fleshy grub, so organized as to float on the surface of the honey, with the mouth beneath, and the spiracles above the surface: “grâce à l’embonpoint du ventre,” says M. Fabre, “la larve est à l’abri de l’asphyxie.” In this state it remains until the honey is consumed; then the animal contracts, and detaches itself from its skin, within which the further transformations take place. In the next stage, which M. Fabre calls the pseudo-chrysalis (Fig. 11), the larva has a solid corneous envelope and an oval shape; and in its colour, consistency, and immobility reminds one of a Dipterous pupa. The time passed in this condition varies much. When it has elapsed, the animal moults again, again changes its form, and assumes that shown in Fig. 12; after this it becomes a pupa (Fig. 13) without any remarkable peculiarities. Finally, after these wonderful changes and adventures, in the month of August the perfect _Sitaris_ (Pl. III., Fig. 4) makes its appearance.
On the other hand, there are cases in which larvæ diverge remarkably from the ordinary |
38207-0 | type of the group to which they belong, without, as it seems in our present imperfect state of information, any sufficient reason.
Thus the ordinary type of Hymenopterous larva, as we have already seen, is a fleshy apod grub; although those of the leaf-eating and wood-boring groups, Tenthredinidæ and Siricidæ (Fig. 14), are caterpillars, more or less closely resembling those of Lepidoptera. There is, however, a group of minute Hymenoptera, the larvæ of which reside within the eggs or larvæ of other insects. It is difficult to understand why these larvæ should differ from those of Ichneumons, which are also parasitic Hymenoptera, and should be, as will be seen by the accompanying figures, of such remarkable and grotesque forms. The first known of these curious larvæ was observed by De Filippi,[13] who, having collected some of the transparent eggs of a small Beetle (_Rhynchites betuleti_), to his great surprise found more than half of them attacked by a parasite, which proved to be the larva of a minute Hymenopterous insect belonging to the Pteromalidæ. Fig. 15 shows the egg of the Beetle, with the parasitic larva, which is represented on a larger scale in Fig. 16.
[Illustration: FIG. 14, Larva of _Sirex_ (Westwood, loc. cit.). 15, Egg of _Rhynchites_, showing the parasitic Larva in the interior. 16, the parasitic Larva more magnified.]
More recently this group has been studied by M. Ganin,[14] who thus describes the development of _Platygaster_. The egg, as in allied Hymenopterous families, for instance in _Cynips_, is elongated and club-shaped (Fig. 17). After a while a large nucleated cell appears in the centre (Fig. 18). This nucleated cell divides (Fig. 19) and subdivides. The outermost cells continue the same process, thus forming an outer investing layer. The central, on the contrary, enlarges considerably, and develops within itself a number of daughter cells (Figs. 20 and 21), which gradually form a mulberry-like mass, thus giving rise to the embryo (Fig. 22).
[Illustration: FIG. 17, Egg of _Platygaster_ (after Ganin). 18, Egg of _Platygaster_ showing the central cell. 19, Egg of _Platygaster_ after the division of the central wall. 20, Egg of Platygaster more advanced. 21, Egg of _Platygaster_ more advanced. 22, Egg of Platygaster showing the rudiment of the embryo.]
Ganin met with the larvæ of _Platygaster_ in those of a small gnat, _Cecidomyia_. Sometimes as many as fifteen parasites occurred in one gnat, but as a rule only one of these attained maturity. The three species of _Platygaster _differ considerably in form, as shown in Figs. 23-25. They creep about within the larva of _Cecidomyia_ by means of the strong hooked feet, _kf_, somewhat aided by movements of the tail. They possess a mouth, stomach, and muscles, but the nervous, vascular, and respiratory systems do not make their appearance until later. After some time the larva (Fig. 23) changes its skin, assuming the form represented in Fig. 26. In this moult the last abdominal segment of the first larva is entirely thrown off: not merely the outer skin, as in the case of the other segments, but also the hypodermis and the muscles. This larva, as will be seen by the figure, resembles a barrel or egg in form, and is .870 mm. in length, the external appendages having disappeared, and the segments being indicated only by the arrangement of the muscles. _slkf_ is the œsophagus leading into a wide stomach which occupies nearly the whole body, _gsae_ is the rudiment of the supra-œsophageal ganglia, _bsm_ the ventral nervous cords. The ventral nervous mass has the form of a broad band, with straight sides; it consists of embryonal cells, and remains in this undeveloped condition during the whole larval state.
[Illustration: FIG. 23, Larva of _Platygaster_ (after Ganin)—_mo_, mouth; _a_, antenna; _kf_, hooked feet; _z_, toothed process; _lfg_, lateral process; _f_, branches of the tail. 24, Larva of another species of _Platygaster_. The letters indicate the same parts as in the preceding figure. 25, Larva of a third species of _Platygaster_. The letters indicate the same parts as in the preceding figures. 26, Larva of _Platygaster_ in the second stage—_mo_, mouth; _slkf_, œsophagus; _gsae_, supra-œsophageal ganglion; _lm_, muscles; _bsm_, nervous system; _ga_, _gh_, rudiments of the reproductive glands. 27, Larva of _Platygaster_ in the third stage—_mo_, mouth; _md_, mandibles; _gsae_, supra-œsophageal ganglion; _slk_, œsophagus; _ag_, ducts of the salivary glands; _bnm_, ventral nervous system; _sp_, salivary glands; _msl_, stomach; _im_, imaginal discs; _tr_, tracheæ; _fk_, fatty tissue; _ed_, intestine; _ga_, rudiments of reproductive organs; _ew_, wider portion of intestine; _ao_, posterior opening.]
At the next moult the larva enters its third state, which, as far as the external form (Fig. 27) is concerned, differs from the second only in being somewhat more elongated. The internal organs, however, are much more complex and complete. The tracheæ have made their appearance, and the mouth is provided with a pair of mandibles. From this point the metamorphoses of _Platygaster_ do not appear to differ materially from those of other parasitic Hymenoptera.
An allied genus, _Polynema_, has also very curious larvæ. The perfect insect is aquatic in its habits, swimming by means of its wings; flying, if we may say so, under water.[15] It lays its eggs inside those of Dragon-flies; and the embryo, as shown in Fig. 28, has the form of a bottle-shaped mass of undifferentiated embryonal cells, covered by a thin cuticle, but without any trace of further organization. Protected by the egg-shell of the Dragon-fly, and bathed in the nourishing fluid of the Dragon-fly’s egg, the young _Polynema_ imbibes nourishment through its whole surface, and increases rapidly in size. The digestive canal gradually makes its appearance; the cellular mass forms a new skin beneath the original cuticle, distinctly divided into segments, and provided with certain appendages. After a while the old cuticle is thrown off, and the larva gradually assumes the form shown in Fig. 29. The subsequent metamorphoses of _Polynema_ offer no special peculiarities.
[Illustration: FIG. 28, Embryo of _Polynema_ (after Ganin). 29, Larva of _Polynema_—_asch_, rudiments of the antenna; _flsch_, rudiments of the wings; _bsch_, rudiments of the legs; _vfg_. lateral projections; _gsch_, rudiments of the ovipositor; _fk_, fatty tissue.]
From these facts—and, if necessary, many more of the same nature might have been brought forward—it seems to me evident that while the form of any given larva depends to a certain extent on the group of insects to which it belongs, it is also greatly influenced by the external conditions to which it is subjected; that it is a function of the life which the larva leads and of the group to which it belongs.
The larvæ of insects are generally regarded as being nothing more than immature states—as stages in the development of the egg into the imago; and this might more especially appear to be the case with those insects in which the larvæ offer a general resemblance in form and structure (excepting of course so far as relates to the wings) to the perfect insect. Nevertheless we see that this would be a very incomplete view of the case. The larva and pupa undergo changes which have no relation to the form which the insect will ultimately assume. With a general tendency to this goal, as regards size and the development of the wings, there are coincident other changes having reference only to existing wants and condition. Nor is there in this, I think, anything which need surprise us. External circumstances act on the insect in its preparatory states, as well as in its perfect condition. Those who believe that animals are susceptible of great, though gradual, change through the influence of external conditions, whether acting, as Mr. Darwin has suggested, through natural selection, or in any other manner, will see no reason why these changes should be confined to the mature animal. And it is evident that creatures which, like the majority of insects, live during the successive periods of their existence in very different circumstances, may undergo considerable changes in their larval organization, in consequence of forces acting on them while in that condition; not, indeed, without affecting, but certainly without affecting to any corresponding extent, their ultimate form.
I conclude, therefore, that the form of the larva in insects, whenever it departs from the hexapod _Campodea_ type, has been modified by the conditions under which it lives. The external forces acting upon it are different from those which affect the mature form; and thus changes are produced in the young which have reference to its immediate wants, rather than to its final form.
And, lastly, as a consequence, that metamorphoses may be divided into two kinds, developmental and adaptional or adaptive.
CHAPTER III.
_ON THE NATURE OF METAMORPHOSES._
In the preceding chapters we have considered the life history of insects after they have quitted the egg; but it is obvious that to treat the subject in a satisfactory manner we must take the development as a whole, from the commencement of the changes in the egg, up to the maturity of the animal, and not suffer ourselves to be confused by the fact that insects leave the egg in very different stages of embryonal development. For though all young insects when they quit the egg are termed “larvæ,” whatever their form may be (the case of the so-called Pupipara not constituting a true exception), still it must be remembered that some of these larvæ are much more advanced than others. It is evident that the larva of a fly, as regards its stage of development, corresponds in reality neither with that of a moth nor with that of a grasshopper. The maggots of flies, in which the appendages of the head are rudimentary, belong to a lower grade than the grubs of bees, &c., which have antennæ, mandibles, maxillæ, labrum, labium, and, in fact, all the mouth parts of a perfect insect.
The caterpillars of Lepidoptera are generally classed with the vermiform larva of Diptera and Hymenoptera, and contrasted with those of Orthoptera, Hemiptera, &c.; but, in truth, the possession of thoracic legs places them, together with the similar larvæ of the Tenthredinidæ, on a decidedly higher level. Thus, then, the period of growth (that in which the animal eats and increases in size) occupies sometimes one stage in the development of an insect, sometimes another; sometimes, as for instance in the case of _Chloëon_, it continues through more than one; or, in other words, growth is accompanied by development. But, in fact, the question is even more complicated than this. It is not only that the larvæ of insects at their birth offer the most various grades of development, from the grub of a fly to the young of a grasshopper or a cricket; but that, if we were to classify larvæ according to their development, we should have to deal, not with a simple case of gradations only, but with a series of gradations, which would be different according to the organ which we took as our test.
Apart, however, from the adaptive changes to which special reference was made in the previous chapter, the differences which larvæ present are those of gradation, not of direction. The development of a grasshopper does not pursue a different course from that of a butterfly, but the embryo attains a higher state before quitting the egg in the former than in the latter: while in most Hymenoptera, as for instance in Bees, Wasps, Ants, &c., the young are hatched without thoracic appendages; in the Orthoptera, on the contrary, the legs are fully developed before the young animal quits the egg.
Prof. Owen,[16] indeed, goes so far as to say that the Orthoptera and other Homomorphous insects are, “at one stage of their development, apodal and acephalous larvæ, like the maggot of the fly; but instead of quitting the egg in this stage, they are quickly transformed into another, in which the head and rudimental thoracic feet are developed to the degree which characterizes the hexapod larvæ of the _Carabi_ and _Petalocera_.”
[Illustration: FIG. 30, Egg of _Phryganea_ (Mystacides)—_A_¹, mandibular segment; _C_¹ to _C_⁵, maxillary, labial, and three thoracic segments; _D_, abdomen (after Zaddach). 31, Egg of _Phryganea_ somewhat more advanced—_b_, mandibles; _c_, maxillæ; _cfs_, rudiments of the three pairs of legs.]
I quite believe that this may have been true of such larvæ at an early geological period, but the fact now appears to be, so far at least as can be judged from the observations yet recorded, that the legs of those larvæ which leave the egg with these appendages generally make their appearance before the body-walls have closed, or the internal organs have approached to completion. Indeed, when the legs first appear, they are merely short projections, which it is not always easy to distinguish from the segments themselves. It must, however, be admitted, that the observations are neither so numerous, nor in most cases so full, as could be wished.
Fig. 30 represents an egg of a May-fly (_Phryganea_), as represented by Zaddach in his excellent memoir,[17] just before the appearance of the appendages. It will be seen that a great part of the yolk is still undifferentiated, that the side walls are incomplete, the back quite open, and the segments merely indicated by undulations. This stage is rapidly passed through, and Zaddach only once met with an egg in this condition; in every other specimen which had indications of segments, the rudiments of the legs had also made their appearance, as in Fig. 31, which, however, as will be seen, does not in other respects show much advance on Fig. 30.
Again in _Aphis_, the embryology of which has been so well worked out by Huxley,[18] the case is very similar, although the legs are somewhat later in making their appearance. When the young was 1/140th of an inch in length, he found the cephalic portion of the embryo beginning, he says, “to extend upwards again over the anterior face of the germ, so as to constitute its anterior and a small part of its superior wall. This portion is divided by a median fissure into two lobes, which play an important part in the development of the head, and will be termed the ‘procephalic lobes.’ I have already made use of this term for the corresponding parts in the embryos of Crustacea. The rudimentary thorax presents traces of a division into three segments; and the dorso-lateral margins of the cephalic blastoderm, behind the procephalic lobes, have a sinuous margin. It is in embryos between this and 1/100th of an inch in length, that the rudiments of the appendages make their appearance; and by the growth of the cephalic, thoracic, and abdominal blastoderm, curious changes are effected in the relative position of those regions.”
In _Chrysopa oculata_, one of the Hemerobiidæ, Packard has described[19] and figured a stage in which the body segments have made their appearance, but in which he says “there are no indications of limbs. The primitive band is fully formed, the protozorites being distinctly marked, the transverse impressed lines indicating the primitive segments being distinct, and the median furrow easily discerned.” Here also, again, the dorsal walls are incomplete, and the internal organs as yet unformed.
In certain Dragon-flies (_Calepteryx_), and _Hemiptera_ (_Hydrometra_), the legs, according to Brandt,[20] appear at a still earlier stage.
According to the observations of Kölliker,[21] it would appear that in the Coleopterous genus _Donacia_ the segments and appendages appear simultaneously.
Kölliker himself, however, frankly admits that “meæ de hoc insecto observationes satis sunt manca,” and it is possible that he may never have met with an embryo in the state immediately preceding the appearance of the legs; especially as it appears from the observations of Kowalevski that in _Hydrophilus_ the appendages do not make their appearance until after the segments.[22]
On the whole, as far as we can judge from the observations as yet recorded, it seems that in Homomorphous insects the ventral wall is developed and divided into segments, before the appearance of the legs; but that the latter are formed almost simultaneously with the cephalic appendages, and before either the dorsal walls of the body or the internal organs.
[Illustration: FIG. 32.—Egg of _Pholcus opilionides_ (after Claparède).]
As it is interesting, from this point of view, to compare the development of other Articulata with that of insects, I give a figure (Fig. 32), representing an early stage in the development of a spider (_Pholcus_) after Claparède,[23] who says, “C’est à ce moment qu’a lieu la formation des _protozonites_ ou segments primordiaux du corps de l’embryon. Le rudiment ventral s’épaissit suivant six zônes disposées transversalement entre le capuchon anal et le capuchon céphalique.”
[Illustration: FIG. 33.—Embryo of _Julus_ (after Newport).]
Among Centipedes the development of _Julus_ has been described by Newport.[24] The first period, from the deposition of the egg to the gradual bursting of the shell, and exposure of the embryo within it, which, however, remains for some time longer in connection with the shell, lasts for twenty-five days. The segments of the body, originally six in number, make their appearance on the twentieth day after the deposition of the egg, at which time there were no traces of legs. The larva, when it leaves the egg, is a soft, white, legless grub (Fig. 33), consisting of a head and seven segments, the head being somewhat firmer in texture than the rest of the body. It exhibits rudimentary antennæ, but the legs are still only represented by very slight papilliform processes on the undersides of the segments to which they belong.
As already mentioned, it is possible that at one time the vermiform state of the Homomorphous insects—which, as we have seen, is now so short, and passed through at so early a stage of development—was more important, more prolonged, and accompanied by a more complete condition of the internal organs. The compression, and even disappearance of those embryonal stages which are no longer adapted to the mode of life—which do not benefit the animal—is a phenomenon not without a parallel in other parts of the animal or even of the vegetable kingdom. Just as in language long compound words have a tendency to concision, and single letters sometimes linger on, indicating the history of a word, like the “l” in “alms,” or the “b” in “debt,” long |
38207-0 | after they have ceased to influence the sound; so in embryology useless stages, interesting as illustrations of past history, but without direct advantage under present conditions, are rapidly passed through, and even, as it would appear, in some cases altogether omitted.
[Illustration: FIG. 34.—Colony of _Bougainvillea fruticosa_, natural size, to the underside of a piece of floating timber (after Allman).]
For instance, among the Hydroida, in the great majority of cases, the egg produces a body more or less resembling the common _Hydra_ of our ponds, and known technically as the “trophosome,” which develops into the well-known Medusæ or jelly-fishes. The group, however, for which Prof. Allman has proposed the term Monopsea,[25] and of which the genus _Ægina_ may be taken as the type, is, as he says, distinguished by the absence of a hydriform stage, “the ovum becoming developed through direct metamorphosis into a medusiform body, just as in the other orders it is developed into a hydriform body.” Fig. 34 represents, after Allman, a colony of _Bougainvillea fruticosa_ of the natural size. It is a British species, which is found growing on buoys, floating timber, &c., and, says Allman,[26] “when in health and vigour, offers a spectacle unsurpassed in interest by any other species—every branchlet crowned by its graceful hydranth and budding with Medusæ in all stages of development (Fig. 35), some still in the condition of minute buds, in which no trace of the definite Medusa-form can yet be detected; others, in which the outlines of the Medusa can be distinctly traced within the transparent _ectothèque_ (external layer); others, again, just casting off this thin outer pellicle, and others completely freed from it, struggling with convulsive efforts to break loose from the colony, and finally launched forth in the full enjoyment of their freedom into the surrounding water. I know of no form in which so many of the characteristic features of a typical hydroid are more finely expressed than in this beautiful species.”
[Illustration: FIG. 35.—Portion of colony of _Bougainvillea fruticosa_, more magnified.]
[Illustration: FIG. 36.—The Medusa form of the same species.]
Fig. 36 represents the Medusa form of this species, and the development thus described may be regarded as typical of the Hydroida; yet, as already mentioned, the Æginidæ do not present us with any stage corresponding to the fixed condition of _Bougainvillea_, but, on the contrary, are developed into Medusæ direct from the egg.
On the other hand, there are groups in which the Medusiform stage becomes less and less important.
[Illustration: FIG. 37, Larva of Prawn, Nauplius stage (after F. Müller). 38, Larva of Prawn, more advanced, Zoëa stage.]
The great majority of the higher Crustacea go through well-marked metamorphoses. Figs. 37 and 38 represent two stages in the development of the prawn. In the first (Fig. 37), representing the young animal as it quits the egg, the body is more or less oval and unsegmented; there is a median frontal eye, and three pairs of natatory feet, the first pair simple, while the two posterior are two-branched. Very similar larvæ occur in various other groups of Crustacea. They were at first regarded as mature forms, and O. F. Müller gave them the name of Nauplius. So also, the second or Zoëa form (Fig. 38) was at first supposed to be a mature animal, until its true nature was discovered by Vaughan Thompson.
The Zoëa form of larva differs from the perfect prawn or crab in the absence of the middle portion of the body and its appendages. The mandibles have no palpi, the maxillipeds or foot-jaws are used as feet, whereas in the mature form they serve as jaws. Branchiæ are either wanting or rudimentary, respiration being principally effected through the walls of the carapace. The abdomen and tail are destitute of articulate appendages. The development of Zoëa into the perfect animal has been well described by Mr. Spence Bate[27] in the case of the common crab (_Carcinus mænas_).
All crabs, as far as we know, with the exception of a species of land crab (_Gegarcinus_), described by Westwood, pass through a stage more or less resembling that shown in Fig. 38. On the other hand, the great group of Edriopthalma, comprising Amphipoda (shore-hoppers, &c.) and Isopoda (wood-lice, &c.) pass through no such metamorphosis; the development is direct, as in the Orthoptera. It is true that one species, _Tanais Dulongii_, though a typical Isopod in form and general character, is said to retain in some points, and especially in the mode of respiration, some peculiarities of the Zoëa type; but this is quite an exceptional case. In _Mysis_, says F. Müller,[28] “there is still a trace of the Nauplius stage; being transferred back to a period when it had not to provide for itself, the Nauplius has become degraded into a mere skin; in _Ligia_ this larva-skin has lost the traces of limbs, and in _Philoscia_ it is scarcely demonstrable.”
The Echinodermata in most cases “go through a very well-marked metamorphosis, which often has more than one larval stage.... The mass of more or less differentiated sarcode, of which the larva, or pseud-embryo, as opposed to the Echinoderm within it, is made up, always carries upon its exterior certain bilaterally-arranged ciliated bands, by the action of which the whole organism is moved from place to place; and it may be strengthened by the super-addition to it of a framework of calcareous rods.”[29] Müller considered that the mouth and pharynx of the larva were either absorbed or cast off with the calcareous rods, but were never converted into the corresponding organs of the perfect Echinoderm. According to A. Agassiz, however, this is not the case, but on the contrary “the whole larva and all its appendages are gradually drawn into the body, and appropriated.”[30]
Fig. 39 represents the larva of a sea-egg (_Echino cidaris_) after Müller.[31] The body is transparent, shaped somewhat like a double easel, but with two long horns in front, which, as well as the posterior processes, are supported by calcareous rods. This larva swims by means of minute vibratile hairs, or ciliæ. It has a mouth, stomach, and in fact a well-defined alimentary canal; but no nerves or other internal organs have yet been discovered in it. After swimming about in this condition for a while, it begins to show signs of change. An involution of the integument takes place on one side of the back, and continues to deepen till it reaches a mass or store of what is called blastema, or the raw material of the animal body. This blastema then begins to change, and gradually assumes the form of the perfect Echinoderm.[32]
[Illustration: FIG. 39.—Larva of _Echino cidaris_, seen from above × 6/10 (after Müller).]
[Illustration: FIG. 40, Larva of _Echinus_, × 100. _A_, front arm; _F_, arms of the mouth process; _B_, posterior side arm; _E_₁, accessory arm of the mouth process; _a_, mouth; _a´_, œsophagus; _b_, stomach; _b´_, intestine; _o_, posterior orifice; _d_, ciliated bands; _f_, ciliated epaulets; _c_, disc of future _Echinus_ (after Müller).]
Fig. 40 represents a larva, probably of another sea-egg (_Echinus lividus_), from the Mediterranean, and shows the commencement of the sea-egg within the body of the larva. The capital letters denote the different arms: _a_ is the mouth, _a´_ the œsophagus, _b_ the stomach, _b´_ the intestine, _f_ the ciliated lobes or epaulets, _c_ the young sea-egg.
The development of the beautiful _Comatula rosacea_ (Fig. 41) has been described in the “Philosophical Transactions,” by Prof. Wyville Thomson and Dr. Carpenter.[33] The larva quits the egg, as shown in Fig. 42, in the form of an oval body about 1/30 inch in length, something like a barrel, surrounded by four bands or hoops of long vibratile hairs or ciliæ. There is also a tuft of still longer hairs at the narrower posterior end of the body. Gradually a number of minute calcareous spines and plates make their appearance (Fig. 43) in the body of this larva, and at length arrange themselves in a definite order, so as to form a bent calcareous club or rod with an enlarged head.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.—_Comatula rosacea_ (after Forbes).]
[Illustration: FIG. 42, Larva of Comatula rosacea (after Thomson). 43, Larva of _Comatula rosacea_, more advanced. 44, Larva of Comatula rosacea, in the Pentacrinus state.]
As this process continues, the little creature gradually loses its power of swimming, and, sinking to the bottom, looses the bands of ciliæ, and attaches itself by its base to some stone or other solid substance, the knob of the club being free. The calcareous framework increases in size, and the expanded head forms itself into a cup, round which from five to fifteen delicate tentacles, as shown in Fig. 44, make their appearance.
In this stage the young animal resembles one of the stalked Crinoids, a family of Echinoderms very abundant in earlier geological periods, but which has almost disappeared, being, as we see, now represented by the young states of existing more advanced, free, species. This attached, plant-like condition of _Comatula_ was indeed at first supposed to be a mature form, and was named Pentacrinus; but we now know that it is only a stage in the development of _Comatula_. The so-called Pentacrinus increases considerably in size, and after various gradual changes, which time does not now permit me to describe, quits the stalk, and becomes a free _Comatula_.
The metamorphoses of the Starfishes are also very remarkable. Sars discovered, in the year 1835, a curious little creature about an inch in length, which he named _Bipinnaria asterigera_ (Figs. 45-47), and which he then supposed to be allied to the ciliograde Medusæ. Subsequent observations, however, made in 1844, suggested to him that it was the larva of a Starfish, and in 1847 MM. Koren and Danielssen satisfied themselves that this was the case.
Figs. 45 and 46 represent the front and side view of a Bipinnaria found by Müller[34] near Marseilles. _a_ is the mouth, _b_ the œsophagus, _c_ the stomach, _c_´ the intestine. Fig. 47 represents a somewhat older specimen, in which the Starfish (_k_) is already beginning to make its appearance.
[Illustration: FIG. 45, Larva of Starfish (Bipinnaria), × 100 (after Müller). 46, Larva of Starfish (Bipinnaria), × 100, seen from the side—_a_, mouth; _b_, œsophagus; _c_, stomach; _c´_, intestine. 47, Larva of another Bipinnaria, showing the commencement of the Starfish—_g_, canal of the ciliated sac; _i_, rudiments of tentacles; _d_, ciliated band.]
But while certain Starfishes thus go through metamorphoses similar in character, and not less remarkable than those of sea-eggs, there are others—as, for instance, the genus _Asteracanthion_—in which development may be said to be direct—the organs and appendages special to the Pseud-embryo being in abeyance; while in another genus, _Pteraster_, they are reduced to a mere investing membrane.[35]
Among the Ophiurans also we find two well-marked types of development. Some passing through metamorphoses, while others, as for instance _Ophiopholis bellis_, “is developed very much after the method of _Asteracanthion Mülleri_, without passing through the Plutean stage.”[36]
Even in the same species of Echinoderm the degree of development attained by the larva differs to a certain extent according to the temperature, the supply of food, &c. Thus in _Comatula_, specimens which are liberally supplied with sea-water, and kept warm, hurry as it were through their early stages, and the free larva becomes distorted by the growing Pentacrinus (see Fig. 43), almost before it has attained its perfect form. On the other hand, under less favourable conditions, if the temperature is low and food less abundant, the early stages are prolonged, the larva is longer lived, and reaches a much higher degree of independent development. Similar differences occur in the development of other animals, as for instance, in the Hydroids,[37] and among the insects themselves, in Flies;[38] and it is obvious that these facts throw much light on the nature and origin of the metamorphoses of insects, which subject we shall now proceed to consider.
CHAPTER IV.
_ON THE ORIGIN OF METAMORPHOSES._
The question still remains, Why do insects pass through metamorphoses? Messrs. Kirby and Spence tell us they “can only answer that such is the will of the Creator;”[39] this, however, is a general confession of faith, not an explanation of metamorphoses. So indeed they themselves appear to have felt; for they immediately proceed to make a suggestion. “Yet one reason,” they say, “for this conformation may be hazarded. A very important part assigned to insects in the economy of nature, as we shall hereafter show, is that of speedily removing superabundant and decaying animal and vegetable matter. For such agents an insatiable voracity is an indispensable qualification, and not less so unusual powers of multiplication. But these faculties are in a great degree incompatible; an insect occupied in the work of reproduction could not continue its voracious feeding. Its life, therefore, after leaving the egg, is divided into three stages.”
But there are some insects—as, for instance, the Aphides—which certainly are not among the least voracious, and which grow and breed at the same time. There are also many scavengers among other groups of animals—such, for instance, as the dog, the pig, and the vulture—which undergo no metamorphosis.
It is certainly true that, as a general rule, growth and reproduction do not occur together; and it follows, almost as a necessary consequence, that in such cases the first must precede the second. But this has no immediate connection with the occurrence of metamorphoses. The question is not, why an insect does not generally begin to breed until it has ceased to grow, but why, in attaining to its perfect form, it passes through such remarkable changes; why these changes are so sudden and apparently violent; and why they are so often closed by a state of immobility—that of the chrysalis or pupa; for undoubtedly the quiescent and death-like condition of the pupa is one of the most remarkable phenomena of insect-metamorphoses.
In the first place, it must be observed that many animals which differ considerably in their mature state, resemble one another more nearly when young. Thus birds of the same genus, or of closely allied genera, which, when mature, differ much in colour, are often very similarly coloured when young. The young of the lion and the puma are often striped, and the fœtal Black whale has teeth, like its ally the Sperm whale.
In fact, the great majority of animals do go through well-marked metamorphoses, though in many cases they are passed through within the egg, and thus do not come within the popular ken. “La larve,” says, Quatrefages, “n’est qu’un embryon à vie indépendante.”[40] Those naturalists who accept in any form the theory of evolution, consider that “the embryonal state of each species reproduces more or less completely the form and structure of its less modified progenitors.”[41] “Each organism,” says Herbert Spencer,[42] “exhibits within a short space of time a series of changes which, when supposed to occupy a period indefinitely great, and to go on in various ways instead of one way, give us a tolerably clear conception of organic evolution in general.”
The naturalists of the older school do not, as Darwin and Fritz Müller have already pointed out, dispute these facts, though they explain them in a different manner—generally by the existence of a supposed tendency to diverge from an original type. Thus Johannes Müller says, “The idea of development is not that of mere increase of size, but that of progress from what is not yet distinguished, but which potentially contains the distinction in itself, to the actually distinct. It is clear that the less an organ is developed, so much the more does it approach the type, and that during its development it acquires more and more peculiarities. The types discovered by comparative anatomy and developmental history must therefore agree.” And again, “What is true in this idea is, that every embryo at first bears only the type of its section, from which the type of the class, order, &c., is only afterwards developed.” Agassiz also observes that “the embryos of different animals resemble each other the more the younger they are.”
There are, no doubt, cases in which the earlier states are rapidly passed through, or but obscurely indicated; yet we may almost state it as a general proposition, that either before or after birth animals undergo metamorphoses. The state of development of the young animal at birth varies immensely. The kangaroo (_Macropus major_), which attains a height of seven feet ten inches, does not when born exceed one inch and two lines in length; the chick leaves the egg in a much more advanced condition than the thrush; and so, among insects, the young cricket is much more highly developed, when it leaves the egg, than the larva of the fly or of the bee; and, as I have already mentioned, differences occur even within the limit of one species, though not of course to anything like the same extent.
In oviparous animals the condition of the young at birth depends much on the size of the egg: where the egg is large, the abundant supply of nourishment enables the embryo to attain a high stage of development; where the egg is small, and the yolk consequently scanty, the embryo requires an additional supply of food before it can do so. In the former case the embryo is more likely to survive; but when the eggs are large, they cannot be numerous, and a multiplicity of germs may be therefore in some circumstances a great advantage. Even in the same species the development of the egg presents certain differences.[43]
The metamorphoses of insects depend then primarily on the fact that the young quit the egg at a more or less early stage of development; and that consequently the external forces, acting upon them in this state, are very different from those by which they are affected when they arrive at maturity.
Hence it follows that, while in many instances mature forms, differing greatly from one another, arise from very similar larvæ, in other cases, as we have seen, among some the parasitic Hymenoptera, insects agreeing closely with one another, are produced from larvæ which are very unlike. The same phenomenon occurs in other groups. Thus, while in many cases very dissimilar jelly-fishes arise from almost identical Hydroids, we have also the reverse of the proposition in the fact that in some species, Hydroids of an entirely distinct character produce very similar Medusæ.[44]
We may now pass to the second part of our subject: the apparent suddenness and abruptness of the changes which insects undergo during metamorphosis. But before doing so I must repeat that these changes are not always, even apparently, sudden and great. The development of an Orthopterous insect, say a grasshopper, from its leaving the egg to maturity, is so gradual that the ordinary nomenclature of entomological works (larva state and pupa state) does not apply to it; and even in the case of Lepidoptera, the change from the caterpillar to the chrysalis and from this to the butterfly is in reality less rapid than might at first sight be supposed; the internal organs are metamorphosed very gradually, and even the sudden and striking change in external form is very deceptive, consisting merely of a throwing off of the outer skin—the drawing aside, as it were of a curtain and the revelation of a form which, far from being new, has been in preparation for days; sometimes even for months.
Swammerdam, indeed, supposed (and his view was adopted by Kirby and Spence) that the larva contained within itself “the germ of the future butterfly, enclosed in what will be the case of the pupa, which is itself included in three or more skins, one over the other, that will successively cover the larva.” This was a mistake; but it is true that, if a larva be examined shortly before it is full grown, the future pupa may be traced within it. In the same manner, if we examine a pupa which is about to disclose the butterfly, we find the future insect, soft indeed and imperfect, but still easily recognizable, lying more or less loosely within the pupa-skin.
One important difference between an insect and a vertebrate animal is, that whereas in the latter—as, for instance, in ourselves—the muscles are attached to an internal bony skeleton, in insects no such skeleton exists. They have no bones, and their muscles are attached to the skin; whence the necessity for the hard and horny dermal investment of insects, so different from the softness and suppleness of our own skin. The chitine, or horny substance, of which the outside of an insect consists, is formed by a layer of cells lying beneath it, and, once secreted, cannot be altered. From this the result is, that without a change of skin, a change of form is impossible. In some cases, as for instance in _Chloëon_, each change of skin is accompanied by a change of form, and thus the perfect insect is gradually evolved. In others, as in caterpillars, several changes of skin take place without any material alteration of form, and the change, instead of being spread over many, is confined to the last two moults.
One explanation of this difference between the larvæ which change their form with every change of skin, and those which do not, is, I believe, to be found in the structure of the mouth. That of the caterpillar is provided with a pair of strong jaws, fitted to eat leaves; and the digestive organs are adapted for this kind of food. On the contrary, the mouth of the butterfly is suctorial; it has a long proboscis, beautifully adapted to suck the nectar from flowers, but which would be quite useless, and indeed only an embarrassment to the larva. The digestive organs also of the butterfly are adapted for the assimilation, not of leaves, but of honey. Now it is evident that if the mouth-parts of the larva were slowly metamorphosed into those of the perfect insect, through a number of small changes, the insect would in the meantime be unable to feed, and liable to perish of starvation in the midst of plenty. In the Orthoptera, and among those insects in which the changes are gradual, the mouth of the so-called larva resembles that of the perfect insect, and the principal difference consists in the presence of wings.
Similar considerations throw much light on the nature of the chrysalis or pupa state—that remarkable period of death-like quiescence which is one of the most striking characteristics of insect metamorphosis. The quiescence of the pupa is mainly owing to the rapidity of the changes going on in it. In that of a butterfly, not only (as has been already mentioned) are the mouth and the digestive organs undergoing change, but the muscles are in a similar state of transition. The powerful ones which move the wings are in process of formation; and even the nervous system, by which the movements are set on foot and regulated, is in a state of rapid change.[45]
It must not be forgotten that all insects are inactive for a longer or shorter space of time after each moult. The slighter the change, as a general rule, the shorter is the period of inaction. Thus, after the ordinary moult of a caterpillar, the insect only requires a short rest until the new skin is hardened. When, however, the change is great, the period of inaction is correspondingly prolonged. Most pupæ indeed have some slight powers of motion; those which assume the chrysalis state in wood or beneath the ground usually come to the surface when about to assume the perfect state, and the aquatic pupæ of certain Diptera swim about with much activity. Among the Neuroptera, certain families have pupæ as quiescent as those of the Lepidoptera: others—as, for instance, _Raphidia_—are quiescent at first, but at length acquire sufficient strength to walk, though still enclosed within the pupa-skin: a power dependent partly on the fact that this skin is very thin. Others again—as, for instance, dragon-flies—are not quiescent on assuming the so-called pupa state for any longer time than at their other changes of skin. The inactivity of the pupa is therefore not a new condition peculiar to this stage, but a prolongation of the inaction which has accompanied every previous change of skin.
Nevertheless the metamorphoses of insects have always seemed to me one of the greatest difficulties of the Darwinian theory. In most cases, the development of the individual reproduces to a certain extent that of the race; but the motionless, imbecile pupa cannot represent a mature form. No one, so far as I know, has yet attempted to explain, in accordance with Mr. Darwin’s views, a life-history in which the mouth is first mandibulate and then suctorial, as, for example, in a butterfly. A clue to the difficulty may, I think, be found in the distinction between developmental and adaptive changes; to which I have called attention in a previous chapter. The larva of an insect is by no means a mere stage in the development of the perfect animal. On the contrary, it is subject to the influence of natural selection, and undergoes changes which have reference entirely to its own requirements and condition. It is evident, then, that while the embryonic development of an animal in the egg may be an epitome of its specific history, this is by no means the case with species in which the immature forms have a separate and independent existence. If an animal which, when young, pursues one mode of life, and lives on one kind of food, subsequently, either from its own growth in size and strength, or from any change of season, alters its habits or food, however slightly, it immediately becomes subject to the action of new forces: natural selection affects it in two different, and, it may be, very distinct manners, gradually tending to changes which may become so great as to involve an intermediate period of change and quiescence.
There are, however, peculiar difficulties in those cases in which, as among the Lepidoptera, the same species is mandibulate as a larva, and suctorial as an imago. From this point of view _Campodea_ and the Collembola (_Podura_, &c.) are peculiarly interesting. There are in insects three principal types of mouth:—
First, the mandibulate;
Secondly, the suctorial; and
Thirdly, that of _Campodea_ and the Collembola generally,
in which the mandibles and maxillæ are retracted, but have some freedom of motion, and can be used for biting and chewing soft substances. This type is, in some respects, intermediate between the other two. Assuming that certain representatives of such a type were placed under conditions which made a suctorial mouth advantageous, those individuals in which the mandibles and maxillæ were best calculated to pierce or prick would be favoured by natural selection, and their power of lateral motion would tend to fall into abeyance; while, on the other hand, if masticatory jaws were an advantage, the opposite process would take place.
There is yet a third possibility—namely, that during the first portion of life, the power of mastication should be an advantage, and during the second that of suction, or _vice versâ_. A certain kind of food might abound at one season and fail at another; might be suitable for the animal at one age and not at another. Now in such cases we should have two forces acting successively on each individual, and tending to modify the organization of the mouth in different directions. It cannot be denied that the innumerable variations in the mouth-parts of insects have special reference to their mode of life, and are of some advantage to the species in which they occur. Hence, no believer in natural selection can doubt the possibility of the three cases above suggested, the last of which seems to throw some light on the possible origin of species which are mandibulate in one period of life and not in another. Granting then the transition from the one condition to the other, this would no doubt take place contemporaneously with a change of skin. At such times we know that, even when there is no change in form, the softness of the organs temporarily precludes the insect from feeding for a time, as, for instance, in the case of caterpillars. If, however, any considerable change were involved, this period of fasting must be prolonged, and would lead to the existence of a third condition, that of the pupa, intermediate between the other two. Since the acquisition of wings is a more conspicuous change than any relating to the mouth, we are apt to associate with it the existence of a pupa-state: but the case of the Orthoptera (grasshoppers, &c.) is sufficient proof that the development of wings is perfectly compatible with permanent activity; the necessity for prolonged rest is in reality much more intimately connected with the change in the constitution of the mouth, although in many cases, no doubt, this is accompanied by changes in the legs, and in the internal organization. An originally mandibulate mouth, however, like that of a beetle, could not, I think, have been directly modified into a suctorial organ like that of a butterfly or a gnat, because the intermediate stages would necessarily be injurious. Neither, on the other hand, for the same reasons, could the mouth of the Hemiptera be modified into a mandibulate type like that of the Coleoptera. But in _Campodea_ and the _Collembola_ we have a type of animal closely resembling certain larvæ which occur both in the mandibulate and suctorial series of insects, possessing a mouth neither distinctly mandibulate nor distinctly suctorial, but constituted on a peculiar type, capable of modification in either direction by gradual change, without loss of utility.
In discussing this subject, it is necessary also to take into consideration the nature and origin of wings. Whence are they derived? why are there normally two pairs? and why are they attached to the meso-and meta-thorax? These questions are as difficult as they are interesting. It has been suggested, and I think with justice, that the wings of insects originally served for aquatic and respiratory purposes.
In the larva of _Chloëon_ (Pl. IV., Fig. 1), for instance, which in other respects so singularly resembles _Campodea_ (Pl. III., Fig. 5), several of the segments are provided with foliaceous expansions which serve as respiratory organs. These so-called branchiæ are in constant agitation, and the muscles which move them in several points resemble those of true wings. It is true that in _Chloëon_ the vibration of the branchiæ is scarcely, if at all, utilized for the purpose of locomotion; the branchiæ are, in fact, placed too far back to act efficiently. The situation of these branchiæ differs in different groups; indeed, it seems probable that originally there were a pair on each segment. In such a case, those branchiæ situated near the centre of the body, neither too much in front nor too far back, would serve the most efficiently as propellers: the same causes which determined the position of the legs would also affect the wings. Thus a division of labour would be effected; the branchiæ on the thorax would be devoted to locomotion; those on the abdomen to respiration. This would tend to increase the development of the thoracic segments, already somewhat enlarged, in order to receive the muscles of the legs.
That wings may be of use to insects under water is proved by the very interesting case of _Polynema natans_,[46] which uses its wings for swimming. This, however, is a rare case, and it is possible that the principal use of the wings was, primordially, to enable the mature forms to pass from pond to pond, thus securing fresh habitats and avoiding in-and-in breeding. If this were so, the development of wings would gradually have been relegated to a late period of life; and by the tendency to the inheritance of characters at corresponding ages, which Mr. Darwin has pointed out,[47] the development of wings would have thus become associated with the maturity of the insect. Thus the late acquisition of wings in the Insecta generally seems to be itself an indication of their descent from a stock which was at one period, if not originally, aquatic, and which probably resembled the present larvæ of _Chloëon_ in form, but had thoracic as well as abdominal branchiæ.
Finally, from the subject of metamorphosis we pass naturally to that most remarkable phenomenon which is known as the “Alternation of Generations:” for the first systematic view of which we are indebted to my eminent friend Prof Steenstrup.[48]
I have always felt it very difficult to understand why any species should have been created in this double character; nor, so far as I am aware, has any explanation of the fact yet been attempted. Nevertheless insects offer, in their metamorphoses, a phenomenon not altogether dissimilar, and give a clue to the manner in which alternation of generations may have originated.
The caterpillar owes its difference from the butterfly to the undeveloped state in which it leaves the egg; but its actual form is mainly due to the influence of the conditions under which it lives. If the caterpillar, instead of changing into one butterfly, produced several, we should have an instance of alternation of generations. Until lately, however, we knew of no such case among insects; each larva produced one imago, and that not by generation, but by development. It has long been known, indeed, that there are species in which certain individuals remain always apterous, while others acquire wings. Many entomologists, however, regard these abnormal individuals as perfect, though wingless insects; and therefore I shall found no argument upon these cases, although they appear to me deserving of more attention than they have yet received.
Recently, however, Prof. Wagner[49] has discovered that, among certain small gnats, the larvæ do not directly produce in all cases perfect insects, but give birth to other larvæ, which undergo metamorphoses of the usual character, and eventually become gnats. His observations have been confirmed, as regards this main fact, by other naturalists; and Grimm has met with a species of _Chironomus_ in which the pupæ lay eggs.[50]
Here, then, we have a distinct case of alternation of generations, as characterized by Steenstrup. Probably other cases will be discovered in which insects undeniably in the larval state will be found fertile. Nay, it seems to me possible, if not probable, that some larvæ which do not now breed may, in the course of ages, acquire the power of doing so. If this idea is correct, it shows how the remarkable phenomenon, known as alternation of generations, may have originated.
Summing up, then, the preceding argument, we find among insects various modes of development; from simple growth on the one hand, to well-marked instances of the so-called alternation of generation on the other. In the wingless species of Orthoptera there is little external difference, excepting in size, between the young larva and the perfect insect. The growth is gradual, and there is nothing which would, in ordinary language, be called a metamorphosis. In the majority of Orthoptera, though the presence of wings produces a marked difference between the larva and the imago, the habits are nearly the same throughout life, and consequently the action of external circumstances affects the larva in the same manner as it does the perfect insect.
This is not the case with the Neuroptera. The larvæ do not live under the same conditions as the perfect insects: external forces accordingly affect them in a different manner; and we have seen that they pass through some changes which bear no reference to the form of the perfect insect: these changes, however, are for the most part very gradual. The caterpillars of Lepidoptera have even more extensive modifications to undergo; the mouth of the larva, for instance, being remarkably unlike that of the perfect insect. A change in this organ, however, could hardly take place while the insect was growing fast, and consequently feeding voraciously; nor, even if the change could be thus effected, would the mouth, in its intermediate stages, be in any way fitted for biting and chewing leaves. The same reasoning applies also to the digestive organs. Hence the caterpillar undergoes little, if any, change, except in size, and the metamorphosis is concentrated, so to say, into the last two moults. The changes then become so rapid and extensive, that the intermediate period is necessarily one of quiescence. In some exceptional cases, as in _Sitaris_ (_ante_, p. 30) we even find that, the conditions of life not being uniform throughout the larval period, the larva itself undergoes metamorphoses.
Owing to the fact that the organs connected with the reproduction of the species come to maturity at a late period, larvæ are generally incapable of breeding. There are, however, some flies which have viviparous larvæ, and thus offer a typical case of alternation of generations.
Thus, then, we find among insects every gradation, from simple growth to alternation of generations; and see how, from the single fact of the very early period of development at which certain animals quit the egg, we can throw some light on their metamorphoses, and for the still more remarkable phenomenon that, among many of the lower animals, the species is represented by two very different forms. We may even conclude, from the same considerations, that this phenomenon may in the course of ages become still more common than it is at present. As long, however, as the external organs arrive at their mature form before the internal generative organs are fully developed, we have metamorphosis; but if the reverse is the case, then alternation of generations often results.
The same considerations throw much light on the remarkable circumstance, that in alternation of generations the reproduction is, as a general rule, agamic in one form. This results from the fact that reproduction by distinct sexes requires the perfection both of the external and internal organs; and if the phenomenon arise, as has just been suggested, from the fact that the internal organs arrive at maturity before the external ones, reproduction will result in those species only which have the power of agamic multiplication.
Moreover, it is evident that we have in the animal kingdom two kinds of dimorphism.
This term has usually been applied to those cases in which animals or plants present themselves at maturity under two forms. Ants and Bees afford us familiar instances among animals; and among plants the interesting case of the genus _Primula_ has recently been described by Mr. Darwin. Even more recently he has made known to us the still more remarkable phenomenon afforded by the genus _Lythrum_, in which there are three distinct forms, and which therefore offers an instance of polymorphism.[51]
The other kind of dimorphism or polymorphism differs from the first in being the result of the differentiating action of external circumstances, not on the mature, but on the young individual. Such different forms, therefore, stand towards one another in the relation of succession. In the first kind the chain of being divides at the extremity; in the other it is composed of dissimilar links. Many instances of this second form of dimorphism have been described under the name of alternation of generations.
The term, however, has met with much opposition, and is clearly inapplicable to the differences exhibited by insects in various periods of their life. Strictly speaking, the phenomena are frequently not alternate, and in the opinion of some eminent naturalists they are not, strictly speaking, cases of generation at all.[52]
In order, then, to have some name for these remarkable phenomena, and to distinguish them from those cases in which the _mature_ animal or plant is represented by two or more different forms, I think it would be convenient to retain exclusively for these latter the terms dimorphism and polymorphism; and those cases in which animals or plants pass through a succession of different forms might be distinguished by the name of dieidism or polyeidism.
The conclusions, then, which I think we may draw from the preceding considerations, are:—
1. That the occurrence of metamorphoses arises from the immaturity of the condition in which some animals quit the egg.
2. That the form of the insect larva depends in great measure on the conditions in which it lives. The external forces acting upon it are different from those which affect the mature form; and thus changes are produced in the young, having reference to its immediate wants, rather than to its final form.
3. That metamorphoses may therefore be divided into two kinds, developmental and adaptional or adaptive.
4. That the apparent abruptness of the changes which insects undergo, arises in great measure from the hardness of their skin, which admits of no gradual alteration of form, and which is itself necessary in order to afford sufficient support to the muscles.
5. The immobility of the pupa or chrysalis depends on the rapidity of the changes going on in it.
6. Although the majority of insects go through three well-marked stages after leaving the egg, still a large number arrive at maturity through a greater or smaller number of slight changes.
7. When the external organs arrive at this final form before the organs of reproduction are matured, these changes are known as metamorphoses; when, on the contrary, the organs of reproduction are functionally perfect before the external organs, or when the creature has the power of budding, then the phenomenon is known as alternation of generations.
CHAPTER V.
_ON THE ORIGIN OF INSECTS._
“Personne,” says Carl Vogt, “en Europe au moins, n’ose plus soutenir la Création indépendante et de toutes pièces des espèces,” and though this statement is perhaps not strictly correct, still it is no doubt true, that the Doctrine of Evolution, in some form or other, is accepted by most, if not by all, the greatest naturalists of Europe. Yet it is surprising how much, in spite of all that has been written, Mr. Darwin’s views are still misunderstood. Thus Browning, in one of his recent poems, says:—
“That mass man sprang from was a jelly lump Once on a time; he kept an after course Through fish and insect, reptile, bird, and beast, Till he attained to be an ape at last, Or last but one.”[53]
This theory, though it would be regarded by many as a fair statement of his views, is one which Mr. Darwin would entirely repudiate. Whether fish and insect, reptile, bird and beast, are derived from one original stock or not, they are certainly not links in one sequence. I do not, however, propose to discuss the question of Natural Selection, but may observe that it is one thing to acknowledge that in Natural Selection, or the survival of the fittest, Mr. Darwin has called attention to a _vera causa_, has pointed out the true explanation of certain phenomena; but it is quite another thing to maintain that all animals are descended from some primordial source.
For my own part, I am satisfied that Natural Selection is a true cause, and, whatever may be the final result of our present inquiries—whether animated nature be derived from one ancestral source, or from many—the publication of the Origin of Species will none the less have constituted an epoch in the History of Biology. But, how far the present condition of living beings is due to that cause; how far, on the other hand, the action of Natural Selection has been modified and checked by other natural laws—by the unalterability of types, by atavism, &c.; how many types of life originally came into being; and whether they arose simultaneously or successively,—these and many other similar questions remain unsolved, even admitting the theory of Natural Selection. All this has indeed been clearly pointed out by Mr. Darwin himself, and would not need repetition but for the careless criticism by which in too many cases the true question has been obscured. Without, however, discussing the argument for and against Mr. Darwin’s conclusions, so often do we meet with travesties of it like that which I have just quoted, that it is well worth while to consider the stages through which some group, say for instance that of insects, have probably come to be what they are, assuming them to have developed under natural laws from simpler organisms. The question is one of great difficulty. It is hardly necessary to say that insects cannot have passed through all the lower forms of animal life, and naturalists do not at present agree as to the actual line of their development.
In the case of insects, the gradual course of evolution through which the present condition of the group has probably been reached, has been discussed by Mr. Darwin, by Fritz Müller, Haeckel, Brauer, myself and others.
In other instances Palæontology throws much light on this question. Leidy has shown that the milk-teeth of the genus _Equus_ resemble the permanent teeth of the ancient _Anchitherium_, while the milk-teeth of _Anchitherium_ again approximate to the dental system of the still earlier _Merychippus_. Rütimeyer, while calling attention to this interesting observation, adds that the milk-teeth of _Equus caballus_ in the same way, and still more those of _E. fossilis_, resemble the permanent teeth of _Hipparion_.
“If we were not acquainted with the horse,” says Flower,[54] “we could scarcely conceive of an animal whose only support was the tip of a single toe on each extremity, to say nothing of the singular conformation of its teeth and other organs. So striking have these characters appeared to many zoologists, that the animals possessing them have been reckoned as an order apart, called Solidungula; but palæontology has revealed that in the structure of its skull, its teeth, its limbs, the horse is nothing more than a modified _Palæotherium_; and though still with gaps in certain places, many of the intermediate stages of these modifications are already known to us, being the _Palæotherium_, _Anchitherium_, _Merychippus_, and _Hipparion_.”
“All Echinoids,” says A. Agassiz,[55] “pass, in their early stages, through a condition which recalls to us the first Echinoids which made their appearance in geological ages.” On embryological grounds, he observes, we should “place true Echini lowest, then the Clypeastroids, next the Echinolamps, and finally the Spatangoids.” Now among the Echinoids of the Trias there are no Clypeastroids, Echinolamps, or Spatangoids. The Clypeastroids make their appearance in the Lias, the Echinolamps in the Jurassic, while the Spatangoids commence in the Cretaceous period.
Again[56] “in the Radiates, the Acalephs in their first stages of growth, that is, in their Hydroid condition, remind us of the adult forms among Polyps, showing the structural rank of the Acalephs to be the highest, since they pass beyond a stage which is permanent with the Polyps; while the Adult forms of the Acalephs have in their turn a certain resemblance to the embryonic phases of the class next above them, the Echinoderms; within the limits of the classes, the same correspondence exists as between the different orders; the embryonic forms of the highest Polyps recall the adult forms of the lower ones, and the same is true of the Acalephs as far as these phenomena have been followed and compared among them.” Indeed, the accomplished authors from whom I have taken the above quotation, do not hesitate to say[57] that “whenever such comparisons have been successfully carried out, the result is always the same; the present representatives of the fossil types recall in their embryonic condition the ancient forms, and often explain their true position in the animal kingdom.”
Fossil insects are unfortunately rare, there being but few strata in which the remains of this group are well preserved. Moreover, well-characterized Orthoptera and Neuroptera occur as early as the Devonian strata; Coleoptera and Hemiptera in the Coal-measures; Hymenoptera and Diptera in the Jurassic; Lepidoptera, on the contrary, not until the Tertiary. But although it appears from these facts that, as far as our present information goes, the Orthoptera and Neuroptera are the most ancient orders, it is not, I think, conceivable that the latter should have been derived from any known species of the former; on the other hand, the earliest known Neuroptera and Orthoptera, though in some respects less specialized than existing forms, are as truly, and as well characterized, Insects, as any now existing; nor are we acquainted with any earlier forms, which in any way tend to bridge over the gap between them and lower groups, though, as we shall see, there are types yet existing which throw much light on the subject.
In the consideration then of this question, we must rely principally on Embryology and Development. I have already referred to the cases in which species, very unlike in their mature condition, are very similar one to another when young. Haeckel, in his “Naturliche Schöpfungsgeschichte,” gives a diagram which illustrates this very well as regards Crustacea. Pls. 1-4 show the same to be the case with Insects.
The Stag-beetle, the Dragon-fly, the Moth, the Bee, the Ant, the Gnat, the Grasshopper,—these and other less familiar types seem at first to have little in common. They differ in size, in form, in colour, in habits, and modes of life. Yet the researches of entomologists, following the clue supplied by the illustrious Savigny, have proved, not only that while differing greatly in details, they are constructed on one common plan; but also that other groups, as for instance, Crustacea (Lobsters, Crabs, &c.) and Arachnida (Spiders and Mites), can be shown to be fundamentally similar. In Pl. 4 I have figured the larvæ of an _Ephemera_ (Fig. 1), of a _Meloë_ (Fig. 2), of a Dragon-fly (Fig. 3), of a Sitaris (Fig. 4), of a _Campodea_ (Fig. 5), of a _Dyticus_ (Fig. 6), of a Termite (Fig. 7), of a _Stylops_ (Fig. 8), and of a _Thrips_ (Fig. 9). All these larvæ possess many characters in common. The mature forms are represented in the corresponding figures of Plate 3, and it will at once be seen how considerably they differ from one another. The same fact is also illustrated in Figs. 48-55, where Figs. 48-51 represent the larval states of the mature forms represented in Figs. 52-55. Fig. 48 is the larva of a moth, _Agrotis suffusa_ (Fig. 52); Fig. 49 of a beetle, _Haltica_ (Fig. 53); Fig. 50 of a Saw-fly, _Cimbex_ (Fig. 54); and Fig. 51 of a Centipede, _Julus_ (Fig. 55).
[Illustration: FIG. 48, Larva of Moth (_Agrotis suffusa_), after Packard. 49, Larva of Beetle (_Haltica_), after Westwood. 50, Larva of Saw-fly (_Cimbex_), Brischke and Zaddach. Beob. ub d. arten. der Blatt und Holzwespen, Fig. 8. 51, Larva of _Julus_. Newport, Philos. Transactions, 1841.]
Thus, then, although it can be demonstrated that perfect insects, however much they differ in appearance, are yet reducible to one type, the fact becomes much more evident if we compare the larvæ. M. Brauer[58] and I[59] have pointed out that two types of larvæ, which I have proposed to call _Campodea_-form and _Lindia_-form, and which Packard has named Leptiform and Eruciform, run through the principal groups of insects. This is obviously a fact of great importance: as all individual _Meloës_ are derived from a form resembling Pl. 2, Fig. 2, it is surely no rash hypothesis to suggest that the genus itself may have been so.
[Illustration: FIG. 52, _Agrotis suffusa_ (after Packard). 53, _Haltica_ (after Westwood).]
[Illustration: FIG. 54, _Cimbex_, Brischae and Zaddach. l.c. T. 2, Fig. 9.]
[Illustration: FIG. 55. _Julus_ (after Gervais).]
Firstly, however, let me say a word as to the general Insect type. It may be described shortly as consisting of animals possessing a head, with mouth parts, eyes and antennæ; a many segmented body, with three pairs of legs on the segments immediately following the head; with, when mature, either one or two pairs of wings, generally with caudal appendages I will not now enter into a description of their internal anatomy. It will be seen that, except as regards the wings, Pl. 4, Fig. 4, representing the larva of a small beetle named _Sitaris_, answers very well to this description. Many other Beetles are developed from larvæ closely resembling those of _Meloë_ (Pl. 4, Fig. 2), and Sitaris (Pl. 4, Fig. 4); in fact—except those species the larvæ of which, as, for instance of the Weevils (Pl. 2, Fig. 6), are internal feeders, and do not require legs—we may say that the Coleoptera generally are derived from larvæ of this type.
I will now pass to a second order, the Neuroptera. Pl. 4, Fig. 1, represents the larva of _Chloëon_, a species the metamorphoses of which I described some years ago in the Linnean Transactions,[60] and it is obvious that in essential points it closely resembles the form to which I have just alluded.
The Orthoptera, again, the order to which Grasshoppers, Crickets, Locusts, &c. belong, commence life in a similar condition; and the same may also be said of the Trichoptera.
The larvæ of Bees when they quit the egg are entirely legless, but in an earlier stage they possess well-marked rudiments of thoracic legs, showing, as it seems to me, that their apodal condition is an adaptation to their circumstances. Other Hymenopterous larvæ, those for example of _Sirex_ (Fig. 9), and of the Saw-flies (Fig. 50) have well-developed thoracic legs.
From the difference in external form, and especially from the large comparative size of the abdomen, these larvæ, as well as those of Lepidoptera (Fig. 48), have generally been classed with the maggots of Flies, Weevils, &c., rather than with the more active form of larva just adverted to. This seems to me, as I have already pointed out,[61] to be a mistake. The caterpillar type differs, no doubt, in its general appearance, owing to its greater clumsiness, but still essentially agrees with that already described.
No Dipterous larva, so far as I know, belongs truly to this type; in fact, the early stages of the pupa in the Diptera seem in some respects to correspond to the larvæ of other Insect orders. The Development of the Diptera is, however, as Weissman[62] has shown, very abnormal in other respects.
Thus, then, we find in many of the principal groups of insects that, greatly as they differ from one another in their mature condition, when they leave the egg they more nearly resemble the typical insect type; consisting of a head; a three-segmented thorax, with three pairs of legs; and a many-jointed abdomen, often with anal appendages. Now, is there any mature animal which answers to this description? We need not have been surprised if this type, through which it would appear that insects must have passed so many ages since (for winged Neuroptera have been found in the carboniferous strata) had long ago become extinct. Yet it is not so. The interesting genus _Campodea_ (Pl. 3, Fig. 5) still lives; it inhabits damp earth, and closely resembles the larva of _Chloëon_ (Pl. 2, Fig. 1), constituting, indeed, a type which, as shown in Pl. 4, occurs in many orders of insects. It is true that the mouth-parts of _Campodea_ do not resemble either the strongly mandibulate form which prevails among the larvæ of Coleoptera, Orthoptera, Neuroptera, Hymenoptera, Lepidoptera; or the suctorial type of the Homoptera and Heteroptera. It is, however, not the less interesting or significant on that account, since, as I have elsewhere[63] pointed out, its mouth-parts are intermediate between the mandibulate and haustellate types; a fact which seems to me most suggestive.
It appears, then, that there are good grounds for considering that the various types of insects are descended from ancestors more or less resembling the genus _Campodea_, with a body divided into head, thorax, and abdomen: the head provided with mouth-parts, eyes, and one pair of antennæ; the thorax with three pairs of legs; and the abdomen, in all probability, with caudal appendages.
If these views are correct, the genus _Campodea_ must be regarded as a form of remarkable interest since it is the living representative of a primæval type, from which not only the Collembola and Thysanura, but the other great orders of insects have derived their origin.
From what lower group the _Campodea_ type was itself derived is a question of great difficulty. Fritz Müller indeed says,[64] “if all the classes of Arthropoda (Crustacea, Insecta, Myriopoda, and Arachnida) are indeed all branches of a common stem (and of this there can scarcely be a doubt), it is evident that the water-inhabiting and water-breathing Crustacea must be regarded as the original stem from which the other terrestrial classes, with their tracheal respiration, have branched off.” Haeckel, moreover, is of the opinion that the Tracheata are developed from the Crustacea, and probably from the Zoëpoda. For my own part, though I feel very great diffidence in expressing an opinion at variance with that of such high authorities, I am rather disposed to suggest that the _Campodea_ type may possibly have been derived from a less highly developed one, resembling the modern Tardigrade,[65] a (Fig. 56) smaller and much less highly organized being than _Campodea_. It possesses two eyes, three anterior pairs of legs, and one at the posterior end of the body, giving it a curious resemblance to some Lepidopterous larvæ.
[Illustration: FIG. 56, Tardigrade (after Dujardin).]
These legs, however, as will be seen, are reduced to mere projections. But for them, the Tardigrada would closely resemble the vermiform larva so common among insects. Among Trichoptera the larva early acquires three pairs of legs, but as Zaddach has shown,[66] there is a stage, though it is quickly passed through, in which the divisions of the body are indicated, but no trace of legs is yet present. Indeed, there appear to be reasons for considering that while among Crustacea the appendages appear before the segments, in Insects the segments precede the appendages, although this stage of development is very transitory, and apparently, in some cases, altogether suppressed. I say “apparently,” because, as I have already mentioned, I am not yet satisfied that it will not eventually be found to be so in all cases. Zaddach, in his careful observations of the embryology of _Phryganea_, only once found a specimen in this stage, which also, according to the researches of Huxley,[67] seems to be little more than indicated in _Aphis_. It is therefore possible that in other cases, when no such stage has been observed, it not really may be absent, but, from its transitoriness, may have hitherto escaped attention.
Fritz Müller has expressed the opinion[68] that this vermiform type is of comparatively recent origin. He says: “The ancient insects approached more nearly to the existing Orthoptera, and perhaps to the wingless Blattidæ, than to any other order, and the complete metamorphosis of the Beetles, Lepidoptera, &c., is of later origin.” “There were,” he adds, “perfect insects before larvæ and pupæ.” This opinion has been adopted by Mr. Packard[69] in his “Embryological Studies on Hexapodous Insects.”
M. Brauer[70] also considers that the vermiform larva is a more recent type than the Hexapod form, and is to be regarded not as a developmental form, but as an adaptational modification of the earlier active hexapod type. In proof of this he quotes the case of _Sitaris_.
Considering, however, the peculiar habits of this genus, to which I have already referred, and also that the vermiform type is altogether lower in organization and less differentiated than the _Campodea_ form, I cannot but regard this case as exceptional; one in which the development has been, as it were, to use an expression of Fritz Müller’s, “falsified” by the struggle for existence, and which therefore does not truly indicate the successive stages of evolution. On the whole, the facts seem to me to point to the conclusion that, though the grub-like larvæ of Coleoptera and some other insects, owe their present form mainly to the influence of external circumstances, and partially also to atavism, still the _Campodea_ type is itself derived from earlier vermiform ancestors. Nicolas Wagner has shown in the case of a small gnat, allied to _Cecidomyia_, that even now, in some instances, the vermiform larvæ possess the power of reproduction. Such a larva (as, for instance, Fig. 57) very closely resembles some of the Rotatoria, such for instance as _Albertia_ or _Notommata_, which however possess vibratile cilia. There is, indeed, one genus—_Lindia_ (Fig. 58)—in which these ciliæ are altogether absent, and which, though resembling _Macrobiotus_ in many respects, differs from that genus in being entirely destitute of legs. I have never met with it myself, but it is described by Dujardin, who found it in a ditch near Paris, as being oblong, vermiform, divided into rings, and terminating posteriorly in two short conical appendages. The jaws are not unlike those of the larvæ of Flies, and indeed many naturalists meeting with such a creature would, I am sure, regard it as a small Dipterous larva; yet Dujardin figures a specimen containing an egg, and seems to have no doubt that it is a mature form.[71]
For the next descending stage we must, I think, look among the Infusoria, through such genera as _Chætonotus_ or _Ichthydium_. Other forms of the Rotatoria, such for instance as _Rattulus_, and still more the very remarkable species discovered in 1871 by Mr. Hudson,[72] and described under the name of _Pedalion mira_, seem to lead to the Crustacea through the Nauplius form. Dr. Cobbold tells me that he regards the _Gordii_ as the lowest of the Scolecida; Mr. E. Ray Lankester considers some of the Turbellaria, such genera as _Mesosto |
38207-0 | mum_, _Vortex_, &c., to be the lowest of existing worms; excluding the parasitic groups. Haeckel[73] also regards the Turbellaria as forming the nearest approach to the Infusoria. The true worms seem, however, to constitute a separate branch of the animal kingdom.
We may take, as an illustration of the lower worms, the genus Prorhynchus (Fig. 59), which consists of a hollow cylindrical body, containing a straight simple tube, the digestive organ.
But however simple such a creature as this may be, there are others which are far less complex, far less differentiated; which therefore, on Mr. Darwin’s principles, may be considered still more closely to represent the primæval ancestor from which these more highly-developed types have been derived, and which, in spite of their great antiquity—in spite of, or perhaps in consequence of, their simplicity, still maintain themselves almost unaltered.
Thus the form which Haeckel has described[74] under the name _Protamœba primitiva_, Pl. 5, Fig. 1-5, consists of a homogeneous and structureless substance, which continually alters its form; putting out and drawing in again more or less elongated processes, and creeping about like a true _Amœba_, from which, however, _Protamœba_ differs, in the absence of a nucleus. It seems difficult to imagine anything simpler; indeed, as described, it appears to be an illustration of properties without structure. It takes into itself any suitable particle with which it comes in contact, absorbs that which is nutritious, and rejects the rest. From time to time a constriction appears at the centre (Pl. 5, Fig. 2), its form approximates more and more to that of an hour-glass (Pl. 5, Fig. 3), and at length the two halves separate, and each commences an independent existence (Pl. 5, Fig. 5).
[Illustration: FIG. 59, _Prorhynchus stagnaus_.[75]]
[Illustration: PLATE V.
FIGS. 1-5, _Protamœba_; 6-9, _Protamyxa Aurantiaca_, Haeckel, Beit. zur Monog. der Moneren, pl. 1; 10-18, _Magosphæra planula_, Haeckel, loc. cit. pl. 5.]
In the true _Amœbas_, on the contrary, we find a differentiation between the exterior and the interior: the body being more or less distinctly divisible into an outer layer and an inner parenchyme. In the _Amœbas_, as in _Protamœba_, multiplication takes place by self-division, and nothing corresponding to sexual reproduction has yet been discovered.
Somewhat more advanced, but still of great simplicity, is the _Protomyxa aurantiaca_ (Pl. 5, Fig. 8), discovered by Haeckel[76] on dead shells of _Spirula_, where it appears as a minute orange speck, which shows well against the clear white of the _Spirula_. Examined with a microscope, the speck is seen to be a spherical mass of orange-coloured, homogeneous, albuminous matter, surrounded by a delicate, structureless membrane. It is obvious from this description that these bodies closely resemble eggs, for which indeed Haeckel at first mistook them. Gradually, however, the yellow sphere broke itself up into smaller spherules (Pl. 5, Fig. 9), after which the containing membrane burst, and the separate spherules, losing their globular form, crept out as small _Amœbæ_ (Pl. 5, Fig. 6), or amœboid bodies. These little bodies moved about, assimilated the minute particles of organic matter, with which they came in contact, and gradually increased in size (Pl. 5, Fig. 7) with more or less rapidity according to the amount of nourishment they were able to obtain. They threw out arms in various directions, and if divided each section maintained its individual existence. After a while their movements ceased, they contracted into a ball, and again secreted round themselves a clear structureless envelope.
This completes their life history as observed by Haeckel, who found it easy to retain them in his glasses in perfect health, and who watched them closely.
As another illustration I may take the _Magosphæra planula_, discovered by Haeckel on the coast of Norway.
In one stage of its existence (Pl. 5, Fig. 10) it is a minute mass of gelatinous matter, which continually alters its form, moves about, feeds, and in fact behaves altogether like the _Amœba_ just described. It does not, however, remain always in this condition. After a while it contracts into a spherical form (Pl. 5, Fig. ii), and secretes round itself a structureless envelope, which, with the nucleus, gives it a very close resemblance to a minute egg.
Gradually the nucleus divides, and the protoplasm also separates into two spherules (Pl. 5, Fig. 12); these two subdivide into four (Pl. 5, Fig. 13), and so on (Pl. 5, Fig 14), until at length thirty-two are present, compressed into a more or less polygonal form (Pl. 5, Fig. 15). Here this process ends. The separate spherules now begin to lose their smooth outline, to throw out processes, and to show amœboid movements like those of the creatures just described. The processes or pseudopods grow gradually longer, thinner, and more pointed. Their movements become more active, until at length they take the form of ciliæ. The spherical _Magosphæra_, the upper surface of which has thus become covered with ciliæ, now begins to rotate within the cyst or envelope, which at length gives way and sets free the contained sphere, which then swims about freely in the water (Pl. 5, Fig. 16), thus closely resembling _Synura_, or one of the Volvocineæ. After swimming about in this condition for a certain time, the sphere breaks up into the separate cells of which it is composed (Pl. 5, Fig. 17). As long as the individual cells remained together, they had undergone no changes of form, but after separating they show considerable contractility, and gradually alter their form, until they become undistinguishable from true _Amœbæ_ (Pl. 5, Fig. 18). Finally, according to Haeckel, these amœboid bodies, after living for a certain time in this condition, return to a state of rest, again contract into a spherical form, and secrete round themselves a structureless envelope. The life history of some other low organisms, as for instance _Gregarina_, is of a similar character.
It may be said, and said truly, that the difference between such beings as these and the _Campodea_, or Tardigrade, is immense. But if it be considered incredible that even during the long lapse of geological time such great changes should have taken place as are implied in the belief that there is genetic connection between them and these lower groups, let us consider what happens under our eyes in the development of each one of these little creatures in the proverbially short space of their individual life.
I will take for instance the first stages, and for the sake of brevity only the first stages, of the life-history of a Tardigrade.[77] As shown in Fig. 60, the egg is at first a round body or cell, with a clear central nucleus—the germinal vesicle; it increases in size, and after a while the yolk and the germinal vesicle divide into two (Fig. 61), then into four (Fig. 62), and so on, just as we have seen to be the case in _Magosphæra_. From the minute cells (Fig. 63) arising through this process of yolk-segmentation, the body of the Tardigrade is then built up.[78]
[Illustration: FIG. 60, Egg of Tardigrade, Kaufmann, Zeit f. Wiss. Zool. 1851, Pl. 1. 61, Egg of Tardigrade after the yolk has subdivided. 62, Egg of Tardigrade in the next stage. 63, Egg of Tardigrade more advanced.]
Though I will not now attempt to point out the full bearing of these facts on the study of embryology generally, yet I cannot resist calling attention to the similarity of the development of _Magosphæra_ with the first stages of development of other animals, because it appears to me to possess a significance, the importance of which it would be difficult to overestimate.
Among the Zoophytes Prof. Allman thus describes[79] the process in _Laomedea_, as representing the Hydroids (Pl. 6, Fig. 1, represents the young egg):—“The first step observable in the segmentation-process is the cleavage of the yolk into two segments (Pl. 6, Fig. 2), immediately followed by the cleavage of these into other two, so that the vitellus is now composed of four cleavage spheres (Pl. 6, Fig. 3).” These spheres again divide (Pl. 6, Fig. 4) and subdivide, thus at length forming minute cells, of which the body of the embryo is built up.
In Pl. 6, Figs. 5-9 represent the corresponding stages in the development of a small parasitic worm—the _Filaria mustelarum_—as given by Van Beneden.[80] The first process is that within the egg, which represents, so to say, the encysted condition of _Magosphæra_, the yolk divides itself into two balls (Pl. 6, Fig. 6), then into four, eight, and so on, the cells thus constituted finally forming the young worm. I have myself observed the same stages in the eggs of the very remarkable and abnormal _Sphærularia bombi_.[81]
Among the Echinoderms M. Derbès thus describes the first stages (Pl. 6, Figs. 10-13) in the development of the egg of an _Echinus_ (_Echinus esculentus_):—“Le jaune commence à se segmenter, d’abord en deux, puis en quatre et ainsi de suite, chacune des nouvelles cellules se partageant à son tour en deux.”[82] Sars has observed the same thing in the starfish.[83]
[Illustration: PLATE. 6.]
In the Rotatoria, as shown by Huxley in _Lacinularia_,[84] and by Williamson in _Melicerta_,[85] the yolk is at first a single globular mass, the first changes which take place in it being as follows:—“The central nucleus becomes drawn out and subdivides into two, this division being followed by a corresponding segmentation of the yolk. The same process is repeated again and again, until at length the entire yolk is converted into a mass of minute cells.” Among the Crustacea the total segmentation of the yolk occurs among the Copepoda, Rhizocephala, and Cirripedia. Sars has described the same process in one of the nudibranchiate mollusca[86] (_Tritonia_), Müller in Entochocha,[87] Haeckel in Ascidia,[88] Lacaze Duthiers in _Dentalium_.[89] Figures 18 to 21, Pl. 6, are taken from Koren and Danielssen’s[90] memoir on the development of _Purpura lapillus_.
Figs. 22-24 show the same stages in a fish (_Amphioxus_) as given by Haeckel, and it is unnecessary to point out the great similarity.
Lastly, figures 25 to 29, Pl. 6, are given by Dr. Allen Thomson,[91] as illustrating the first stages in the development of the vertebrata.
I might have given many other examples, but the above are probably sufficient, and will show that the processes which constitute the life-history of the lowest organized beings very closely resemble the first stages in the development of more advanced groups; that as Allen Thomson has truly observed,[92] “the occurrence of segmentation and the regularity of its phenomena are so constant that we may regard it as one of the best established series of facts in organic nature.”
It is true that normal yolk-segmentation is not universal in the animal kingdom; that there are great groups in which the yolk does not divide in this manner,—perhaps owing to some difference in its relation to the germinal vesicle, or perhaps because one of the suppressed stages in embryological development, many examples might be given, not only in zoology, but, as I may state on the authority of Dr. Hooker, in botany also. But, however, this may be, it is surely not uninteresting, nor without significance, to find that changes which constitute the life-history of the lowest creatures for the initial stages even of the highest.
Returning, in conclusion, to the immediate subject of this work, I have pointed out that many beetles and other insects are derived from larvæ closely resembling _Campodea_.
Since, then, individual insects are certainly in many cases developed from larvæ closely resembling the genus _Campodea_, why should it be regarded as incredible that insects as a group have gone through similar stages? That the ancestors of beetles under the influence of varying external conditions, and in the lapse of geological ages, should have undergone changes which the individual beetle passes through under our own eyes and in the space of a few days, is surely no wild or extravagant hypothesis. Again, other insects come from vermiform larvæ much resembling the genus _Lindia_, and it has been also repeatedly shown that in many particulars the embryo of the more specialized forms resembles the full-grown representatives of lower types. I conclude, therefore, that the Insecta generally are descended from ancestors resembling the existing genus _Campodea_, and that these again have arisen from others belonging to a type represented more or less closely by the existing genus _Lindia_.
Of course it may be argued that these facts have not really the significance which they seem to me to possess. It may be said that when Divine power created insects, they were created with these remarkable developmental processes. By such arguments the conclusions of geologists were long disputed. When God made the rocks, it was tersely said, He made the fossils in them. No one, I suppose, would now be found to maintain such a theory; and I believe the time will come when it will be generally admitted that the structure of the embryo, and its developmental changes, indicate as truly the course of organic development in ancient times as the contents of rocks and their sequence teach us the past history of the earth itself.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Darwin’s “Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Countries visited by H.M.S. _Beagle_,” p. 326.
[2] Introduction to Entomology, vi. p. 50.
[3] Manual of Entomology, p. 30.
[4] Linnean Journal, vol. xi.
[5] Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects, p. 17.
[6] Linnean Transactions, 1863—“On the Development of _Chloëon_.”
[7] The figures on the first four plates are principally borrowed from Mr. Westwood’s excellent “Introduction to the Modern Classification of Insects.”
[8] “Sur la Domestication des _Clavigers_ par les Fourmis.” Bull. de la Soc. d’Anthropologie de Paris, 1868, p. 315.
[9] Westwood’s Introduction, vol. i. p. 36.
[10] Westwood’s Introduction, vol. ii. p. 52.
[11] Die Fortpflanzung und Entwickelung der Pupiparen. Von Dr. R. Leuckart. Halle. 1848.
[12] Ann. des Sci. Nat., sér. 4, tome vii. See also _Natural History Review_, April 1862.
[13] Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist. 1852.
[14] Zeits. für Wiss. Zool. 1869.
[15] Transactions of the Linnean Society, 1863.
[16] Lectures on the Anatomy, &c. of the Invertebrate Animals.
[17] Untersuchungen über die Entwickelung und den Bau der Gliederthiere, 1854.
[18] Linnean Transactions, vol. xxii. 1858.
[19] “Embryological Studies on Hexapodous Insects.” Peabody Academy of Science. Third Memoir.
[20] Mém. de l’Acad. Imp. des Sci. de St. Pétersbourg. 1869.
[21] Observationes de Prima Insectorum Genesi, p. 14.
[22] Mém. de l’Acad. Imp. des Sci. de St. Pétersbourg. tome xvi. 1871, p. 35.
[23] Recherches sur l’Evolution des Araignées.
[24] Philosophical Transactions, 1841.
[25] Monog. of the Gymnoblastic or Tubularian Hydroids. See also Hincks, British Hydroid Zoophytes. Pl. x.
[26] Loc. cit. p. 315.
[27] Philosophical Transactions, 1859, p. 589.
[28] “Facts for Darwin,” Eng. Trans. p. 127.
[29] Rolleston, “Forms of Animal Life,” p. 146.
[30] A. Agassiz, “Embryology of the Starfish,” p. 25; “Embryology of Echinoderms.” Mem. of Am. Ac. of Arts and Sciences N.S. vol. ix. p. 9.
[31] Ueber die Gattungen der Seeigellarven. Siebente Abhandlung. Kön. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Berlin. Von Joh. Müller, 1855, Pl. iii. fig. 3.
[32] Huxley, Introduction to the Classification of Animals, p. 45.
[33] Philosophical Transactions, 1865 and 1866.
[34] Loc. cit. Zweit. Abh. Pl. i., figs. 8 and 9.
[35] Thomson, on the Embryology of the Echinodermata, _Natural History Review_, 1863, p. 415. See also Agassiz, “Embryology of the Starfish,” p. 62.
[36] A. Agassiz, Embryology of Echinoderms, p. 18.
[37] Hincks. British Hydroid Zoophytes, pp. 120-147.
[38] Zeits. für Wiss. Zool. 1864, p. 228.
[39] Introduction to Entomology, 6th ed. vol. i. p. 61.
[40] Métamorphoses de l’Homme et des Animaux, p. 133. See also Carpenter, Principles of Physiology. 1851, p. 389.
[41] Darwin, Origin of Species, 4th ed. p. 532.
[42] Principles of Biology, vi. p. 349.
[43] For differences in larva consequent on variation in the external condition, see _ante_, p. 61.
[44] See Hincks. British Hydroid Zoophytes, P. lxii. Agassiz, Sea-side Studies, p. 43.
[45] See Newport, Phil. Trans., 1832.
[46] Linnean Transactions, 1862.
[47] Origin of Species, 4th ed., pp. 14 and 97.
[48] On the Alternation of Generations. By J. J. Steenstrup. Trans. by C. Busk, Esq. Ray Society. 1842.
[49] Zeit. für Wiss. Zool. 1863.
[50] Mém. de l’Acad. Imp. de St. Pétersbourg. vol. xv. 1870.
[51] Of course all animals in which the sexes are distinct are in one sense dimorphic.
[52] “There is no such thing as a true case of ‘alternation of generations in the animal kingdom;’ there is only an alternation of true generation with the totally distinct process of gemmation or fission.”—HUXLEY _on Animal Individuality_, Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist. June 1852.
[53] Prince Hohenstiel Schwangau, p. 68.
[54] Journal of the Royal Institution. April 1873.
[55] “Embryology of Echinoderms,” l. c. p. 15.
[56] Mr. and Mrs. Agassiz: “Sea-side Studies,” p. 139.
[57] l. c. p. 138.
[58] Wien. Zool. Bot. Gesells, 1869.
[59] Linnean Transactions, 1863.
[60] Linnean Transactions, 1866, vol. xxv.
[61] Linnean Transactions, vol. xxiv. p. 65.
[62] Siebold und Kolliker’s Zeitschr. f. Wiss. Zool., 1864.
[63] Linnean Journal, vol. xi.
[64] Facts for Darwin, p. 120.
[65] A still nearer approach is afforded by the genus _Peripatus_, which since the above was written has been carefully described, especially by Moseley and Hutton. There are several species, scattered over the southern hemisphere. In general appearance they look like a link between a caterpillar and a centipede. They have a pair of antennæ, two pairs of jaws, and (according to the species) from fourteen to thirty-three pairs of legs. They breathe by means of tracheæ, which open diffusely all over the body.
[66] Unters. üb. die Entwick, und den Bau der Gliederthiere, p. 73.
[67] Linnean Transactions, v. xxii.
[68] Facts for Darwin, trans. by Dallas, p. 118. See also Darwin, “Origin of Species,” p. 530. 4th ed.
[69] Mem. Peabody Academy of Science, v. I. No, 3.
[70] Wien. Zool. Bott. Gesells. 1869, p. 310.
[71] See also the descriptions given by Dujardin (Ann. des Sci. Nat. 1851, v. xv.) and Claparède (Anat. und Entwickl. der Wirbel osen Thiere) of the interesting genus _Echinoderes_, which these two eminent naturalists unite in regarding as intermediate between the Annelides and the Crustacea.
[72] “On a New Rotifer.” _Monthly Microscopical Journal_, Sept. 1871.
[73] Generelle Morphologie, vol. ii. p. 79.
[74] Monographie der Moneren, p. 43.
[75] Gegenbaur. Grund. d. Vergleich. Anat. p. 210. See also Dr. M. S. Schultze, Beiträge zur Naturg. der. Turbellarien. 1851. Pl. vi. fig. 1.
[76] Monographieder Moneren, p. 10.
[77] See Kauffmann, Ueber die Entwickelung and systematische Stellung der Tardigraden. Zeits. f. Wiss. Zool. 1851, p. 220.
[78] It is true that among the Insecta generally the first stages of development differ in appearance considerably from those above described; those of _Platygaster_, as figured by Ganin (ante Figs. 17-22), being very exceptional.
[79] Monograph of the Gymnoblastic or Tubularian Hydroids, by G. J. Allman, Ray Soc. 1871, p. 86.
[80] Mém. sur les Vers Intestinaux, 1858.
[81] Natural History Review, 1861, p. 44.
[82] Ann. des Sci. Nat. 1847, p. 90.
[83] Fauna littoralis Norvegiæ, pl. viii.
[84] Trans. of the Microsc. Soc. of London, 1851.
[85] Quarterly Journal of Microsc. Science, 1853.
[86] Wiegmann’s Archiv., 1840, p. 196.
[87] Ueber die Erzeugung von Schnecken in Holothurier. Berlin, Bericht, 1851. Ann. Nat. Hist. 1852, v. ix. Müller’s Archiv., 1852.
[88] Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, pl. x.
[89] Ann. des Sci. Nat. 1853, p. 89.
[90] Ann. des Sci. Nat. 1857, pl. vi.
[91] Cyclopædia of Anatomy and Physiology. Art. Ovum, p. 4.
[92] Thomson, loc. cit. Article, Ovum, p. 139.
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BOOKS FOR YOUNG MEN
MERRIWELL SERIES
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Dick Merriwell’s Assurance
OR,
IN HIS BROTHER’S FOOTSTEPS
BY BURT L. STANDISH
Author of the famous MERRIWELL STORIES.
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Dick Merriwell’s Assurance
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DICK MERRIWELL’S ASSURANCE.
---
CHAPTER I. ARLINGTON GETS THE CHANCE.
When the Fardale Military Academy arranged to play a baseball game with the Great Northern A. A. it was generally believed that the cadets would be “snowed under.” The Great Northern was a semi-professional organization, and it had been necessary to give the team a large guarantee in order to bring it to Fardale.
Captain Merriwell, of the Fardales, had taken no part in the arrangements for this game. He had advised neither for nor against it.
The success of the Fardale team had been such that the athletic committee of the school, on receiving the proposition from the Great Northern, had decided to make the game, even though it was known that the schoolboys would be pitted against semi-professionals who were much older and many of whom made a regular business of baseball. It was generally believed among the cadets that their team had risen superior to the school nines with which they were scheduled to play.
This being the case, there was a great rejoicing at the academy when it was known that the Great Northern A. A. would appear there. There were a few who predicted overwhelming defeat for Fardale. These, however, were greatly in the minority; the main body of cadets were confident of victory.
When Captain Merriwell’s opinion was sought in advance, he simply declared that Fardale was going to capture the game if possible. On being asked if he did not consider it almost a sure thing, he replied that no baseball game could be a sure thing unless one team greatly outclassed the other, for that element called “luck” often decided the result of a contest on the diamond.
Brad Buckhart, Merriwell’s chum and roommate, was the only one who knew Dick was in no condition to pitch his best. Dick’s side had been injured by an assault upon him in a billiard room, when he had been thrown against a table. It had not recovered, and if he went into the box with the idea of pitching nine innings when the Great Northern appeared, it was quite likely he would retard his recovery to such an extent that he might remain out of condition for the rest of the spring season. It was Brad who urged Dick to let some one else pitch against the athletic organization. The Texan chose the opportunity to do this privately in their room.
“If you get knocked out for fair and can’t pitch any more this season, I certain see where we land in the ditch,” said Brad; “this yere game don’t amount to such a lot, pard; what if we do lose it? It won’t hurt our standing any at all in the school series, and it certain will be the natural thing any man with a good nut on him will expect. What if you did go in against these Great Northern chaps and win, but knocked yourself out so you had to stay on the bench and see Fairport, Rivermouth, Hudsonville, Springvale, and the rest of them eat us up? Wouldn’t that be fine! Wouldn’t that make you tired! You didn’t have anything to do with arranging for this game, and so there’s no responsibility on your shoulders.”
Dick shook his head.
“I have little to do with arranging any of the games,” he said; “but I feel just as much responsible, Buckhart. Every one knows this is going to be a tough old struggle. If I put some one else in to pitch they will have the impression that I was afraid to go against the Great Northern.”
“What do you care! You’re a whole lot independent, and I certain never knew you to mind what any one thought, as long as you believed you were right.”
“It’s not that, Brad. I can’t afford to lose the confidence of the team. As long as the fellows behind me believe in me implicitly, they play better baseball. Let them lose confidence in me, in even a small degree, and it will affect their playing.”
“Then it’s up to you to let them know your condition. It’s up to you to keep it secret no longer that your side is hurt. Pard, you’re a plenty queer. Why, some pitchers squeal and say they have lame arms, or something, every time there is a tough game in sight. But you never want to let any one know you are in bad shape, no matter what the circumstances may be. Tell you what, partner, if you don’t explain about your side so it will be understood, I sure am going to do it myself.”
“You will do nothing of the sort, Buckhart; when I get ready to tell, I’ll tell. If you stop to think a moment you will see the bad effect of putting another man into the box. It will look as if I felt shaky about going against these fellows, and put some one else in to take chances and suffer blame and defeat if we are beaten.”
“Oh, rot! Any one who knows you well knows you better than that. And there is Chet Arlington. He is just seething to pitch a game.”
Dick smiled.
“You can see yourself how it would seem if I should ask Arlington to pitch this game. He wanted to pitch against Hilsboro, and was not given the chance. He felt that he might win that game. If I should put him in now, and Fardale lost the game, which it is quite possible she may, there would be many who would fancy I had not given him a fair show. He might think so himself. You can see that, old man.”
“Well, I suppose that’s so,” admitted the Texan. “Never thought of it that way. No, pard, you can’t ask him to pitch; but, all the same, you can’t pitch yourself. What are you going to do?”
“It’s a problem I can’t answer now,” said Dick.
Arlington was the one who settled the problem. That very day he stopped Merriwell on the parade ground, drew him aside, and said:
“See here, Captain Merriwell, I am going to ask you just one more favor. If you don’t grant it, this will be the last time I’ll ever ask anything of you.”
“What is it?” demanded Dick.
“I want to pitch Saturday.”
“Do you?”
“Sure thing. May I?”
“Do you realize what you are asking?”
“You bet I do!” warmly retorted Chet. “You turned me down the last time I asked such a favor, and I thought I’d never ask another.”
“I didn’t turn you down. I thought seriously of using you against Hilsboro, but you went round telling that I had promised to put you into that game when I had done nothing of the sort. You knew I had done nothing of the sort, but you tried to force me into it by circulating the report that I had. This is true, Arlington, and you cannot deny it.”
“Well, maybe that’s right,” confessed Chester. “I did wrong about that, Merriwell. I am willing to acknowledge it to any one.”
Instantly Dick’s face cleared.
“Now that you have acknowledged it to me you don’t have to say anything more about it,” he nodded. “We’ll let it drop. But I want you to think this matter over before you plunge. You know the kind of a team we have to meet Saturday. Those fellows are professionals. Our chance of beating them is a small one. I don’t want you to go around telling that I said this, but you should understand the facts. If you pitch that game you may lose it. If I put you in, there will be many ready to say I did it because I didn’t dare pitch myself.”
“Any one who says such a thing is a chump!” exclaimed Chester. “You don’t have to pay any attention to such talk.”
“But you know it will be said.”
“Put me in and I will tell everybody the truth-that I begged you to do so. Why should you pitch this game, anyhow? It’s not a school game, and it will be no disgrace to lose it. If I pitch, I am going to do my utmost to win. You know what it will mean to me if I do win. It will put me on my feet here. It will give me a reputation. The actual fact is that by letting me pitch you will be doing a great favor to one who has done you no favors.”
“Is that the way you look at it, Arlington? Tell me the truth. Is that the way you look at it?”
“I swear that’s the way I look at it.”
“Then say nothing and get into the best condition possible for that game.”
Chester’s face brightened.
“Now, that’s great stuff, Captain Merriwell!” he said. “I won’t forget this of you, and you see if I don’t work like a dog to take that game!”
“I hope you take it,” said Dick.
CHAPTER II. FARDALE’S BRILLIANT OPENING.
The game of the Great Northern being well advertised and the day fair and bright, a large crowd turned out. The Great Northern boys seemed to think the whole thing something of a lark. They looked on the cadets with amusement, fancying they could win the game with ease.
At the usual hour the game was called, with the visitors at bat. When Chester Arlington went into the box for Fardale and Dick Merriwell was seen sitting on the bench, there came from the cadets a murmur of surprise and disappointment.
“Well, what do you think of that?” exclaimed Hector Marsh, who was seated with his usual companions, Walker, Preston, and Shaw. “Arlington is going to pitch this game.”
“This is clever of Merriwell,” said Preston. “He is sending a lamb to the slaughter. He knows which side his bread is buttered on. We can’t beat those fellows.”
“Well, I will say one thing,” observed Walker. “This is the first time I have ever known Merriwell to decline to face the music.”
“It shows just how big a chump Arlington is,” growled Marsh. “Why, poor fellow! he oughter know better!”
“I was counting on seeing the mighty Merriwell knocked out of the box to-day,” said Preston. “This is a great disappointment to me.”
“It’s ten to one Arlington won’t last three innings,” nodded Walker. “Perhaps Merriwell will go in after that, and we will have the pleasure of seeing both of them get their bumps.”
Chester had been taking good care of himself for several days and was feeling in fine fettle. He was full of confidence, as usual, and believed he would be able to astonish every one by his work that day.
“Well! well! well!” roared one of the Great Northern players from the bench, as their first batter stepped out. “See him pound the leather! Watch him drive it a mile!”
Up popped Ted Smart, who cried:
“Please don’t drive it a mile, sir! Please don’t drive it more than half a mile! I know you will hit it very, very hard, but I hope you won’t spoil the ball!”
Arlington was ready to pitch, and now the players behind him opened up.
“Put it right over, old boy,” said Earl Gardner.
“Trim his whiskers!” chattered Chip Jolliby.
“Let ’im see ’ow ’ard ’e can ’it hit,” advised Billy Bradley, the English boy.
“Dern my picter! I am right here behind ye!” piped Obediah Tubbs.
“Put it into the pocket!” growled Buckhart, holding up his big mitt. “Put it right there, old man!”
Having toed the slab, Arlington whistled in the first ball, which was a sharp inshoot.
The batter struck, and the ball plunked into the Texan’s glove.
“Oh, dear me!” came from Ted Smart. “Didn’t he hit it hard!”
The entire Fardale team was chattering away now in a lively fashion, every player on his toes and ready to do his duty.
Having led the batter to swing at the first one, Chester sought to “pull” him with an outcurve.
Ligner was wary, however and refused to go after it.
“Get ’em over! Get ’em over, young feller!” he growled. “Can’t you find the plate?”
Chester tried a high one, and again Ligner missed it.
“Wasn’t that an awful hit!” came from Smart. “I didn’t expect him to hit it so far!”
Arlington was doing his best at the very outset. He could not lead Ligner into reaching for wide ones. As a result, he was compelled to put the ball over.
Then the batter did hit it. He drove it like a shot straight at Gardner, who never flinched. The ball struck in Earl’s hands, but dropped to the ground. Quick as thought Gardner picked it up and sent it across to first, and the first batter was out.
Ligner paused near the base and stood with his hands on his hips, staring at Gardner.
“Burned your mitts a little, kid, didn’t it?” he cried. “Next time I will take your paws off. You will learn better than to stand in front of those after a while.”
At this the cadets set up a derisive shout.
“That fellow is foolish, Mr. Man!” cried Smart, as soon as he could be heard. “He never will seem to dodge ’em!”
“That’s the first one, Arlington,” said Gardner. “They’re half gone—half gone!”
“You must be good at arithmetic!” derisively called one of the visitors from the bench.
“Beautiful work, Gardner!” said Arlington, in satisfaction. “A fellow can pitch with that kind of support!”
The second hitter was a stocky young Irish lad by the name of O’Rouke.
“He’s easy,” asserted Ligner. “All you have to do is wait, and he will put a pretty one right over.”
Chester surveyed O’Rouke critically, his toe on the pitching plate. His pose was one of grace, and he knew it. He knew also that in the grand stand were several girls who were watching him anxiously. He had seen his sister, accompanied by Doris Templeton and Zona Desmond, enter the grand stand, and occasionally his eyes sought them.
“June,” said Zona, “I think your brother is just splendid! I think he is the handsomest fellow in the whole school!”
June smiled.
“I am glad you think so,” she said.
“I know lots of girls who think so,” declared Zona, flashing Doris a glance.
“I hope he wins this game to-day,” murmured June. “It will mean so much to him. It will give him courage and confidence.”
“Of course he will,” nodded Zona.
“Oh, it isn’t sure. It is going to be a hard game. Every one says Dick Merriwell acknowledged it would be a hard game.”
“Why didn’t he pitch?”
“Yes, why didn’t he?” broke from Doris.
“I don’t know,” June confessed. “It does seem strange he should use Chester in such a game.”
“Perhaps he was afraid,” suggested Zona.
“Oh, I don’t believe that!” June exclaimed immediately.
“Nor I,” said Doris.
“Still you can’t tell,” persisted Zona. “Of course, he would hate to lose a game. It would hurt his record.”
“I don’t believe he would put any one else in to pitch for that reason,” declared Chester’s sister. “It’s not like him.”
“You think it isn’t like him,” smiled Zona, in a knowing manner. “But I believe you’re mistaken.”
“Why are you always against Dick, Zona?” demanded Doris, with a touch of resentment.
“Oh, I’m not! You’re quite mistaken if you think I am. Only I don’t believe he is such a very superior boy, anyway. Even Chester says his success is mainly good luck.”
“Like other fellows,” observed June, “Chester says many things he doesn’t mean.”
At this point O’Rouke hit the ball and drove out a liner, which Obediah Tubbs failed to reach, although he jumped for it.
The batter was a swift runner, and he started instantly when the bat hit the ball. Getting such a good start, he crossed first and dashed for second.
Both Jolliby and Flint raced after the ball, but Jolliby’s legs carried him to it first. He caught it up and wheeled, seeing that O’Rouke was trying to stretch the hit into a two-bagger.
In the matter of throwing the lanky centre-fielder of the home team was a wonder. He now sent the ball on a dead line into the hands of Obediah Tubbs, who received it and jumped into the air as O’Rouke slid, spikes first, for the bag. The runner made the slide in that manner in order to drive Tubbs away; but the leap of the fat boy in the air permitted him to escape being spiked, and he came down with all his weight fairly on the sliding player.
Obediah’s bulk stopped O’Rouke as if the fellow had struck a stone wall. His foot was six inches from the bag, and Tubbs had fallen on him.
“Judgment!” cried the fat boy shrilly. “Dern my picter! He came near opening a seam in me that time! But, by Jim! I bet he won’t try to put his calks into me again!”
In truth the breath had been knocked out of O’Rouke, and he lay still for four or five seconds after Obed got up.
“The man is out!” was the umpire’s decision.
“What a shame!” yelled Ted Smart.
Arlington walked down toward second, receiving the ball from Tubbs as the latter tossed it to him.
“You nailed him fast, Obed, my boy,” he said.
“You bet I did, by jinks!” grinned Tubbs.
“Why didn’t they get an elephant to play second base!” snarled O’Rouke, as he brushed the dust from his suit and walked off the diamond.
“Struck a snag, didn’t you, Mike?” asked Tom Grace, the captain of the Great Northern, as O’Rouke returned to the bench.
“That’s what I did,” nodded the fellow. “I thought I’d fix him with my spikes that trip, but he just jumped into the air and came down on me like a brick block. I thought he had broken every rib in my body. You fellows want to look out for him when you slide to second.”
Hardy, the next batter, sent a nasty little bounder down to Bradley, who fumbled it long enough for the batter to safely reach first.
“Now we’re going, boys,” laughed Grace, as he stepped out to hit. “We might as well clinch the game right here in this inning.”
“Of course you will do it!” cried Ted Smart. “We know you will! We’ll take delight in seeing you clinch the game!”
Chester held Hardy close to first, but the fellow was a good base runner, and he started to steal on the second ball pitched.
Grace gave his bat a wild flourish in front of Buckhart, but the Texan was undisturbed by this, and he proceeded to snap the ball on a line to Tubbs, who caught it in time to be waiting for Hardy as the latter made a desperate lunge for the bag.
“Tag, you’re it!” piped the fat boy, as he “nailed” the ball onto the runner.
Three men were out, and the Great Northern had not scored in the first inning. Although they were surprised by the result, the players trotted onto the field, laughing and joking. There were three pitchers with the team, and they had decided to use their weakest man in the box, for they were sure he would be good enough to hold the cadets down.
The next surprise came when Gardner bunted the second ball pitched and scudded down to first with such speed that he reached the bag safely.
“Dear me, isn’t that too bad!” cried Ted Smart, as the Fardale cheer died away.
“That’s the tut-tut-tut-time you fuf-fuf-fuf-fooled him!” laughed Chip Jolliby, prancing about on the coach line back of first base.
Barron Black, the second hitter, finally picked out a good one and sacrificed himself in driving Gardner down to second.
With one man out, Dave Flint came up. Flint was beyond question one of the finest batters on the Fardale team. He seldom lifted a ball into the air, and his line drives were generally safety placed. On this occasion he selected an outcurve that was on the outer corner and lined it into right field.
With a good lead off second, Gardner literally flew over third and came home on the throw to the plate. This throw enabled Flint to reach second.
“That doesn’t amount to anything,” declared the captain of the visitors. “We can give you a dozen runs and then beat you out.”
“’Ow remarkable!” drawled Billy Bradley. “’Ow hextremely confident you hare!”
Dick was directing the game by signals from the bench, having a bat in his hands, which he held in various ways understood by all the players. At the same time he was talking to Arlington.
“You’re getting the support,” he said. “If they back you up that way you will make those fellows hustle to win this game. They are overconfident now and think they can take it anyhow. The time for us to get a start is right away.”
“But they are hitters!” retorted Chester. “By George! I did my best to fool those fellows and they got at the ball!”
Dick nodded.
“They know how to hit, all right,” he admitted. “It depends a great deal on your success in keeping them from hitting safely at critical times. I want you to win this game, Arlington, and I sincerely hope you do.”
Billy Bradley was the batter, but his hit to right bounded straight into the fielder’s hands, and he was thrown out at first. At the same time Flint was held on third by the catcher.
Chip Jolliby now strode out, and Factor, the pitcher, paused to laugh at him.
“Where did this chalk mark come from?” chuckled Factor. “Bet you have to stand twice in a place to cast a shadow.”
“You’re awful fuf-fuf-fuf-funny!” chattered Chip. “Just you pup-pup-pup-pitch the ball, and perhaps you won’t fuf-fuf-fuf-feel so fuf-fuf-fuf-funny!”
“Try this,” invited Factor, as he sent in a high one.
Jolliby caught it on the end of the bat and drove it over the infield, bringing Flint home.
Then came big Bob Singleton. The cadets were wildly excited, for they believed Bob would improve this opportunity to slug the ball. Singleton went after it hard, but Factor was on his mettle, and big Bob finally fanned, which retired Fardale with two runs in the first.
“What are you doing, Factor?” muttered Grace, as he walked in with the pitcher. “They hit you that trip.”
“Oh, what’s the use!” returned Factor. “We can take this game any time we want it. I am not going to pitch my arm off for a lot of kids like these.”
“Better not fool with them too much. We can’t afford to let them beat us.”
“They can’t win this game in a thousand years!” was the retort.
Although the Great Northern went after runs in the second inning and succeeded in getting a man on third and another on second, with only one man out, a beautiful play extinguished their hopes and shut them off with startling suddenness. At this the cadets rose in a body and gave the Fardale cheer.
“That was squeezing out of a tight corner,” confessed Arlington, as he reached the bench. “They had me guessing then.”
“Get at it, boys, and make some more runs!” urged Dick.
Obediah Tubbs was distinctly seen to shut his eyes and dodge awkwardly as the first ball was pitched. It struck him glancingly, and the umpire sent him to first.
“The next time I will take a wing off you, Fatty!” declared Factor. “You want to look out for that!”
“Dern your picter! You will have to put more speed into it than that!” retorted Obed, having reached the bag. “I’d never knowed I was hit if the empire hadn’t told me to take my base.”
Buckhart seemed eager to hit, and Factor now tried to coax him into going after bad ones. The result was that Brad finally worked out a pass to first, and two runners were on the bags when Arlington stepped out to the plate.
There was a hush.
“Now watch him!” growled Hector Marsh, nudging Fred Preston. “He thinks he will do something great! Bet he strikes out.”
“I will bet he doesn’t get a safe hit,” said Preston.
“Look at the pose he assumes!” sneered Walker. “Wouldn’t that freeze your feet!”
After a wide out, Chester let a good one pass, and a strike was called on him. Factor tried to deceive him with a drop, but Chester was wary and stopped the swing of his bat so quickly that the umpire declared it a ball.
“Oh, hit it! hit it!” exclaimed the pitcher. “What are you making motions like that for?”
Arlington did not reply. With the next ball pitched, however, he swung and met it full and fair. At first it seemed certain the ball would go over the fence, and a roar of delight rose from the cadets. It struck against the top of the fence, however, and bounded back. Although it did not go over, this hit was sufficient to let both Tubbs and Buckhart score.
Immediately the cadets began to sing “Fardale’s Way.”
Factor now keyed himself up and pitched at his best. Gardner drove out a short fly that was captured, while Black followed with a longer one that was taken by an outfielder, on which Arlington reached third. Flint now came up once more and was given an ovation. This time he drove a hot one along the ground, and Grace barely touched it as it went bounding past. On this Arlington scored.
The Fardale boys were wild with delight. They shouted until they were hoarse.
Bradley did his best to follow the good example that had been set for him, but at last Factor woke up and struck the latter out, which retired the home team; but not, however, until three tallies had been added to their score, which left them, at the close of the second inning, five in the lead.
CHAPTER III. GREAT NORTHERN FINDS ARLINGTON.
By this time the cadets were jubilant, and Chester Arlington was greatly puffed up over his success. The Fardale boys had anticipated nothing like this, and they were beginning to believe their team would take the game with ease.
“This is Arlington’s day,” declared Clint Shaw. “He struck it right this time.”
“He’s pitching a great game,” muttered Tom Walker.
“Rats!” growled Marsh. “Pitching nothing! It’s the support he’s had. Those chaps have hit him right along, but good luck has prevented them from piling up runs.”
“There has been lots of luck to it,” nodded Preston.
“I should say so!” snarled Marsh; “but you fellows wait—wait and see! If they keep on hitting the ball that way, they will put him to the stable before the game is over.”
Again Arlington’s support enabled him to hold the enemy down and keep them from scoring.
Chester was in high spirits as he came in to the bench and sat down beside Merriwell.
“I thought I could hold them down to-day,” he laughed.
“You’re doing well,” declared Dick. “Keep the good work up.”
At the first opportunity Buckhart slid up to Dick’s side and muttered:
“You want to watch him close, partner. See how those fellows found the ball. Don’t sit still and let them pound out a victory when they get started. If we can hold them down now we have got the game. Arlington will take all the credit if we win.”
“He deserves some credit,” declared Dick.
“But you can see the kind of support he is getting. Why, Gardner could pitch a winning game with that support!”
Although June Arlington was well pleased by what was happening, she knew enough about baseball to understand that great credit was due her brother’s backers for the success he was having.
Zona Desmond, however, did not look at it in this light.
“I knew what he could do if he had the chance,” laughed Zona. “He hasn’t been given a fair show before this. Now, just look what is happening, and he is pitching against the hardest team Fardale will have to face this season. Aren’t you delighted, June?”
“Of course I am,” nodded June.
“But I think it was funny of Dick to put him into such a hard game,” declared Zona. “If Dick is the greatest pitcher in this school, why doesn’t he pitch the hard games and let the other fellows pitch the easier ones?”
“Perhaps he has a good reason for not pitching to-day.”
The yellow-haired girl gave her head a toss.
“Very likely he didn’t care about taking chances himself. He was afraid.”
“You know better, Zona!” burst from Doris. “You know Dick is not afraid of anything!”
“Oh, that’s what you think! Other people may think differently.”
“I am sure Doris is right,” said June quietly. “I know Dick is afraid of nothing.”
“Well, it is a fine thing for a fellow when every girl he knows seems to fancy him such a wonder!” retorted Zona, with an unpleasant laugh.
The third inning proved to be a whitewash, Fardale not even succeeding in getting a player down to first.
In the fourth inning the Great Northern got a man to third base with only one out. But Chester’s success made him confident of shutting off the score. His confidence vanished, however, when the next player lined the ball out for two bags and the enemy secured a run.
Buckhart glanced toward Captain Merriwell and shook his head. Nevertheless, Dick did not seem at all disturbed, although Tom Grace was roaring with laughter on the coaching line and declaring that the slaughter had begun.
“Accidents will happen, old man,” said Gardner, as he returned the ball to Chet. “Don’t mind that.”
“But you should have stopped it!” declared Arlington.
“Why, I couldn’t touch it!”
“You didn’t try!”
Earl’s face flushed.
“Oh, he has had his lesson!” averred Grace. “He knows how those liners feel! Bet his hands are burning yet!”
“If you’re afraid,” said Chet, “you had better let some one else play that position.”
This injustice touched Gardner keenly, but he made no retort.
The following batter lifted a long one into the field, and the runner on second believed he saw his opportunity to score.
By a splendid run Black succeeded in pulling the fly down, upon which he immediately threw to Gardner, who wheeled and snapped the ball to Tubbs for a double play.
This splendid work delighted the cadets and relieved Arlington. As he came in to the bench, however, Chester was growling at Gardner.
“If you had stopped the liner,” he said, “they could not have scored! You didn’t go after it until it was past you!”
Earl was beginning to get sore over this, and he gave Chet a resentful look as he warmly retorted:
“If you’re not satisfied with my playing I will get out of the game!”
“That will do, both of you!” said Dick sharply. “No one was to blame for that run. And no man in Gardner’s place could have touched the ball.”
At this Chester suddenly shut up, although he continued to feel angered because the run had been made.
“We still have a good lead,” said Dick. “Get into it, fellows, and hold them down! Perhaps you can add a few tallies right here!”
The cadets had not lost their confidence, and by a combination of good work and good luck they also landed a man on third with only one out.
By this time Factor was nervous. He had not anticipated this sort of a game, and he realized that his reputation with his own team depended on his success in the present contest. Fully aware that he was regarded as the weakest pitcher the Great Northern had, and that he had been used against the schoolboys because Grace did not wish to wear out a better man, he saw before him the prospect of release in case Fardale should win.
The cheering and singing of the cadets seemed once more to put vigor and determination into the players, and they went after Factor hotly. The next batter happened to be Singleton, and big Bob got in one of his wonderful long drives to the fence, on which he took three bags and sent a man ahead of him home.
Factor’s nervousness increased.
“What’s the matter with you, Bill?” growled Tom Grace. “Are you going to let those kids blanket you? You claim to be a pitcher!”
Factor set his teeth, determined to end it right there.
Once more Obediah Tubbs managed to get hit by the ball, and this added to the unsteadiness of the visiting pitcher. Then came Buckhart, who smashed the leather a fierce one, scoring Singleton and landing Tubbs on third, while he himself took second.
Arlington walked out, smiling and confident, resolved to clinch his own game then and there. As a result of his overconfidence Factor was able to make him swing ineffectively twice and might have struck him out had he not lost control and hit Chet with the ball.
This filled the bases.
Grace called for “time” and walked into the diamond.
“See here, Bill Factor,” he said under his breath, “if you’re off your trolley you had better go to the bench. I will put Peterson in.”
“Don’t,” begged Factor. “I’m all right! I can win this game!”
“Play ball! Play ball!” roared the cadets.
“Dear me!” shouted Ted Smart, waving his arms in the air. “It can’t be you’re frightened! Why, of course you’re not frightened! We know you will win! You can’t help winning! It’s just as easy as can be. You’re only playing a lot of kids, you know.”
“Poor old Factor! Poor old Factor!” sang a lot of the cadets in unison.
“I will give you one more show,” growled Grace. “It’s your last chance!”
This knowledge did not add to Factor’s steadiness, and, after having one strike and two balls called, Gardner tucked in a beautiful little single that scored two men.
Immediately Grace ordered Factor out of the box and replaced him with Peterson, who was a left-hander. Peterson had a nasty drop that curved in toward the batter’s ankles, and in short order he retired the home team.
At this stage of the game, however, the score was eight to one in favor of Fardale, and Arlington confidently declared he would never let the enemy overtake them.
The next two innings proved to be hard ones, and neither side scored.
The cadets saw that in Peterson they had a problem that was difficult to solve. Had this pitcher been put in at the beginning of the game, it is doubtful if Fardale would have obtained a run. As it was, it began to appear as if the schoolboys had secured a lead sufficient to give them the game.
No longer were the members of the athletic team laughing and joking, for at last they realized that they were “up against the real thing.”
As the innings passed and the home team continued to hold its lead, Arlington’s confidence increased until it reached the point where he was altogether too sure. Overconfidence is often as fatal in a hard game of baseball as lack of confidence. It has defeated many a team that should have been victorious.
The seventh proved to be a disastrous inning for Fardale. The visitors came to bat with the head of their list up.
Ligner justified his name and his position by catching an outcurve near the end of the bat and driving out a two-bagger. O’Rouke followed with a clean single to right field, and Ligner came home with three feet to spare. The throw to the plate in an effort to stop this run let O’Rouke advance to second.
Yet Arlington had lost none of his confidence, and it still seemed that the cadets had a safe lead.
Chester believed he had found Hardy’s weak spot, which was a high ball close to the shoulder, but he had not discovered that the batter was one of those rare men who have no weak spots. This being the case, Chet was not a little surprised and disgusted when Hardy dropped back on a close one, caught it fairly, and singled. O’Rouke was held at third by the catcher, although it seemed that he might have scored.
It was now up to Tom Grace, the captain of the Great Northern, and the look on this man’s face indicated he meant business. Chester was smiling as Grace took his position to hit.
“Having a good time, my boy?” inquired the batter.
“Splendid!” retorted Arlington.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself. I hope you don’t meet with any disappointment.”
“Don’t worry about me,” advised Chet, as he whistled in a high ball.
“Get ’em down, kid! Get ’em down!” cried Grace. “You have got to do it or furnish me with a stepladder! I am only five feet ten, and I can’t reach that high!”
When Arlington tried a slow drop, Grace stepped forward to the limit of his box and picked it up with a sweep of the bat that drove it over the infield and out between Black and Jolliby, neither of whom could catch it.
O’Rouke scored and Hardy followed him to the plate, making the third run of the inning without a man retired.
No wonder the smile faded from Arlington’s face.
By this time Hector Marsh was convulsed with delight, although he was trying to conceal the fact.
“Here’s where they make a hundred!” he muttered in Preston’s ear. “They are onto little Chet at last, and he will never stop them.”
“It begins to look that way,” confessed Fred. “Wait a minute and you will see Merriwell take Arlington out.”
“He’s a fool if he does!” declared Hec. “This game isn’t important, and this is Merriwell’s opportunity to let Arlington stay in and get his bumps.”
June Arlington had grown pale, for she realized the danger, and it was with difficulty she repressed her agitation.
“Why don’t they catch those balls?” exclaimed Zona Desmond.
“They can’t,” asserted Doris.
“I don’t believe they’re trying,” declared Zona. “They are jealous because Chester is pitching so well, and they don’t want to catch them. What do you think, June?”
“I am afraid Dick will have to go in to save the game,” confessed June.
“Nonsense!” cried Zona, tossing her head. “How can he save it?”
“He might stop that hitting.”
“If those fellows will catch the ball it will be all right. I tell you they are not supporting your brother, June.”
“I don’t think that is the matter.”
“Well, I do! Any one can see it is!”
Again Brad Buckhart had cast an appealing look toward Dick. All along the Texan had felt the visitors had a hitting team and might make a spurt any time, and now he was sure the dangerous moment of the game had been reached.
Chester set his teeth and faced Minot, the next batter.
Minot was a good waiter, and he compelled the Fardale pitcher to put the ball over the plate. Getting one that satisfied him, the batter drove it swiftly along the ground between first and second.
By a rapid play, which was astonishing for one so corpulent, Tubbs cuffed the ball to one side, although he did not capture it. Singleton was compelled to get off first to secure the ball, which permitted Minot to reach the bag in safety.
With two men on the bases, Brinkley followed the example that had been set by his companions and drove out a two-bagger, which scored Grace and Minot.
Still not a Great Northern man had been put out in the inning.
Although the cadets had cheered Tubbs for stopping the ball, there seemed a note of apprehension in their voices.
Hal Darrell was talking with Day and Whitney, and now Darrell said:
“See here, Day, old man, we’re going to lose this game if something isn’t done right away.”
“What do you think ought to be done?” questioned the chairman of the committee.
“I think Merriwell ought to get in and pitch the game out.”
“Why doesn’t he do it?” exclaimed Whitney. “He is there on the bench, and he can go in any time.”
“Perhaps he thinks it won’t be right to take Arlington out now.”
“Do you favor interfering?” asked Day.
“Surely I am not in favor of keeping still and seeing this game lost,” answered Hal.
“Perhaps Arlington will take a brace,” observed Whitney.
“He’s got to take a brace pretty quick,” said Darrell. “If he doesn’t this game will be gone to the dogs before he knows it.”
“If the next man hits safely,” said Day, “I will speak to Merriwell.”
He had his opportunity a moment later, for Costigan, after fouling twice, drove out a grounder that could not be touched by the infield, and Brinkley took a chance to score on it. The ball was thrown to the plate, but the throw was bad and pulled Buckhart off so far that he could not tag Brinkley in time to stop the run.
The Great Northern had now made six runs in this fatal inning, and Fardale was but one score in the lead. Costigan was on second, and not one of the hilarious visitors was out.
“The game is lost!” declared Darrell.
Immediately Day hurried to Dick.
“Look here, Captain Merriwell,” he panted, “you have got to take that fellow out.”
“Is that an order from you?” asked Dick.
“It is an order from the committee.”
“All right,” said Dick, as he quickly rose to his feet and made a signal.
Immediately Buckhart stepped onto the home plate to prevent Wallace from hitting.
Dick walked onto the diamond.
Instantly the cadets rose in a mass and roared his name.
“Well! well! well!” laughed Tom Grace. “At last we have put a blanket on your pitcher. He gets to the stable. Back, back to the stable, my pretty boy.”
Chester was white as a sheet. The moment he saw Merriwell rise from the bench he dropped the ball and walked out of the box.
“I am sorry, Arlington,” said Dick, in a low tone; “but I have got to take you out.”
“I am glad of it!” declared Chet. “It is fiendish luck! What’s the matter with those duffers behind me? Have they gone to pieces?”
“You are being hit hard, that’s all,” said Dick. “You’ve pitched a fine game up to this inning, but those Great Northern chaps are hitters, and they have solved your delivery.”
“That’s what you think,” retorted Chet; “but I know I’m not getting proper support. I am ready to go out.”
Although he was in no condition to pitch, Dick warmed up a little and went into the box.
“Now we will give this baby his bumps,” laughed Grace.
Merriwell had been studying the batters, and he felt that his only chance to stop the hitting was to “use his head.” He could not depend on his best curves, for his side was too lame to permit him to throw them.
Chester had been using speed, and now Dick began pitching a slow ball, which proved troublesome to the batters. After swinging twice at these slow ones, Wallace snapped:
“Oh! put a little ginger into your arm! What’s the matter with you? Speed up, kid—speed up!”
“Well, here’s speed for you,” retorted Dick; but again he threw a provokingly slow ball, with the result that Wallace popped up a little fly that dropped into Merriwell’s hands.
Like a flash Dick whirled and threw to second, catching Costigan off the bag, and two men were out.
“Ha! ha! ha! ’Rah! ’rah! ’rah! Ziggerboom! Riggerboom! Merriwell! Merriwell! Merriwell!” burst from the cadets.
“Talk about luck!” grated Chester Arlington, who had witnessed this play. “That’s his luck! Why can’t I have some of it?”
“Say, youngster,” called Tom Grace, “let me see your horseshoe. Where do you keep it?”
Dick paid no attention to this. He concentrated every faculty on the effort to retire Peterson, knowing the Great Northern pitcher was not nearly as good a hitter as Ligner, who followed him.
Peterson finally lifted a high infield fly, which Earl Gardner smothered, and the joy of the cadets was expressed in another wild cheer, for at last the enemy had been checked, with Fardale still one run in the lead.
Arlington was savage enough when the boys came in to the bench.
“I had that game won,” he declared. “It was not my fault they made those runs. Why didn’t you chaps keep on playing baseball?”
This was more than Chip Jolliby could stand.
“Oh, go sus-sus-sus-soak your head!” he chattered, in disgust. “You need something to take the sus-sus-sus-welling out of it.”
“Be careful!” panted Chet. “I won’t stand that from anybody.”
“Don’t talk to us about support!” indignantly exclaimed Earl Gardner. “No fellow ever got better support on this field than you got.”
“That’s all right,” muttered Chet. “I saw you shirk. I saw you dodge a liner.”
“After the game I will tell you what I think about that,” returned Earl. “I can’t waste breath on you now.”
Although Fardale made a great effort to again increase her lead, Peterson was too clever for the boys, and they could not score on him. In the eighth inning Dick again worked his slow ball with success, only one single being made off his delivery.
“We have got ’em, pard!” muttered Buckhart, as the cadets again gathered at their bench. “You saved the game!”
“I hope so,” said Dick; “but we ought to have a few more runs.”
“Don’t fool with the kids, Peterson,” called Grace.
Peterson had no intention of fooling, and he struck out the first two hitters who faced him in the eighth. The next man lifted a foul that was captured by Wallace.
The Great Northern now came up for their last time at bat, and their captain urged them to wait for Dick’s slow ones.
“He can’t use speed,” said Grace. “He’s got a lame side. A fellow told me that before the game. Don’t get eager, fellows. Make him put the ball over, and don’t go after it too soon.”
This advice was taken, and the first batter got a safe hit.
The next man sacrificed him to second, and there seemed a possibility that the visitors would tie the score. At this point the strain and excitement was intense.
By steady headwork Dick caused the next hitter to bat an easy one to Bradley, who threw the fellow out at first.
“Whoop!” roared Buckhart, relieved and delighted. “We’ve got them now. They are done to a turn. You hear me warble!”
There is an old saying that “no game is over until it is finished.” This proved to be the case now, for the next hitter met one of Dick’s slow ones and drove it far into the outfield. In their desperate dash to catch this fly neither Flint nor Jolliby heard Dick’s warning cry to them.
“Take it, Jolliby!” was Merriwell’s command.
Flint did not stop, and the two collided just as the ball struck Chip’s hands.
Both went down, and the ball bounded away.
Right there misfortune fell heavily on Fardale, for both of the fellows were temporarily stunned and so bewildered that they had lost sight of the ball. It is certain that the Great Northern would have scored one run, but she could not have made two scores had either Jolliby or Flint found the ball quickly and returned it to the diamond. By the time Dave got the ball the man who had hit it was past third and coming home.
Flint made a magnificent throw to the plate, but Buckhart received the ball a moment too late, and at last the Great Northern was in the lead.
“There you have it!” muttered Chester Arlington, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “There is support for you, Mr. Merriwell.”
“Why, we knew how it would be!” laughed Tom Grace. “We were fooling with you youngsters all the time.”
“Talk about horseshoes!” roared Buckhart. “If that wasn’t a case of horseshoes for you fellows, I hope to be lynched for a horse thief!”
Now, for all of his side, Dick set his teeth and began to use speed and curves. Buckhart shook his head warningly, for he knew every speedy ball pitched by Merriwell was injuring his lame side. The jump ball and the combination curve proved too much for the next hitter. He fanned three times without touching the leather.
The Great Northern was out at last, but she had a lead of one run, and the general impression was that Fardale had lost the game.
Nevertheless Dick encouraged his players to struggle to the last, and they made a magnificent effort to win the game in the final half of the ninth. With one man out a runner was advanced to third, but Peterson again deceived the following batters, and Fardale failed to score.
The Great Northern had won the game, by a score of nine to eight.
CHAPTER IV. BY FAIR MEANS OR FOUL.
It was a hard game to lose, and the Fardale boys felt pretty sore over it. Not a few blamed Dick for not putting Arlington out earlier in the fatal seventh. It was generally admitted that Fardale would have won had Flint heard Dick’s cry to Jolliby as he was running after that long fly.
Among the cadets, there were a few fellows who seemed to feel well satisfied over the result, although they took care not to let this be generally known.
Hector Marsh found it difficult to repress his pleasure and pretend to be regretful. To Preston he secretly said:
“If I had planned that game it couldn’t have pleased me better. Arlington got his bumps and was taken out by Merriwell, and then Merriwell lost the game. Two mighty idols have tottered a little this day. You bet your life Arlington is sore!”
“I know he is,” nodded Preston. “Any one could see that when he went to the bench.”
“He will hate Merriwell for taking him out.”
“I don’t think Merriwell did it on his own responsibility. I saw Day speak to him.”
“That won’t make any difference to Arlington; he will be just as sore with Dick.”
In truth Chester was in bad humor. Having pulled on his sweater, he refused to accompany the rest of the team to the gymnasium when they retired there to bathe and change their clothes. He watched for his sister and her companions as they came down from the grand stand, and joined them.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked, with a sneering smile on his face. “Wasn’t that a fine game?”
“Oh, Chester, I am awfully sorry!” exclaimed June. “It was too bad!”
“Well, I am not sorry. I am glad of it! If those fellows had supported me right through the game the way they started off we might have won in a walk.”
“Just what I said,” agreed Zona. “I knew I was right about it!”
Seeing the mood her brother was in, June said nothing to arouse him further. As they left the grounds they found Mrs. Arlington’s carriage, with a driver on the seat, waiting outside.
“Come, girls,” said June; “there is room for all of us.”
Doris, however, who was on the verge of shedding tears over the game, was anxious to get away by herself, and declared she meant to make a short cut to Lakeside Academy.
“I will go with you,” said Zona. And they started off while Chester was helping his sister into the carriage.
Arlington did not permit them to go far alone, for he hastened to overtake them, expressing his desire to accompany them.
“We don’t need any one,” said Doris, immediately feeling sorry she had not accepted June’s invitation.
“You can’t be sure about that,” said Chet. “You have to go through the woods, and there are tramps in this vicinity.”
“I am glad you’re going along with us,” said Zona. “I told the girls you were not being supported. They couldn’t seem to see it that way, but I knew it.”
“Oh! June doesn’t know much about baseball, anyway,” said Chet. “She couldn’t tell whether I was getting proper support or not. But I think even Miss Templeton will acknowledge that Merriwell wasn’t supported. Look how those two chumps ran into each other and lost that fly.”
“That was too bad,” confessed Doris, in a low tone. “I think Dick would have saved the game but for that.”
Arlington laughed.
“Why didn’t he leave me in the box?” he cried. “It would have been just as well, and it might have been better. I could have stopped that streak just as well as he did. After putting me in to pitch this kind of a game, it was up to him to let me finish it.”
“Did he ask you to pitch?” inquired Doris.
“Of course he did! I didn’t want to pitch that game. I knew what I was going against. He didn’t want to pitch it, either, and that’s why he put me in.”
“You can’t mean that he was afraid to pitch this game?”
Chet shrugged his shoulders.
“I don’t know what you call it. If he wasn’t afraid, why didn’t he pitch it? He’s ready enough to pitch a game he thinks he can win.”
“Now, that’s just what I said,” cried Zona. “I thought it strange he should put you in to pitch such a game, when he thinks himself the greatest pitcher in the school.”
“Well, you know he is a fine pitcher!” flashed Doris. “Every one knows that.”
“Oh, of course, of course!” laughed Chester. “But he’s got brains enough to know when he is outclassed. Those chaps are professionals. What makes me tired is the fact that every one seems to think Mr. Merriwell perfect in every respect. I don’t pretend to be perfect myself. I have one or two faults, and he has his. For one thing, he talks too much to fellows he is friendly with. I could tell you something that would interest you, Doris.”
“Me?”
“Yes, indeed!”
“Why, what could you tell me?”
“Oh, never mind,” said Chet tantalizingly. “You think he is all right. I won’t say anything about it.”
Doris flushed.
“Do you mean to insinuate that he has been talking about me?” she asked.
“I won’t say another word,” declared Arlington, shaking his head. “I didn’t mean to say that much.”
At the same time he winked slyly at Zona.
They walked on in silence, Doris having grown pale. After a time she suddenly turned to Chester, saying:
“I don’t think it right for you to insinuate anything without making an explanation. You ought to tell me what you meant.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he declared. “Forget it!”
But it was not easy for Doris to forget, and when they came to the rustic bridge over Ripple Brook she paused there, looking down into the water.
Behind Doris’ back Chet made a signal to Zona, who did not understand it at first; but she finally drew aside.
Arlington leaned his elbows on the rail close beside Doris, speaking in a low tone.
“Do you want me to tell you the truth?” he asked. “Do you want me to tell you just what Dick Merriwell said?”
“I don’t believe he said anything.”
“All right; we will let it drop.”
But, girllike, Doris’ curiosity was aroused, and she felt a strong desire to hear what Arlington seemed willing to tell.
“If he did say anything, go ahead and tell me,” she finally urged. “But don’t tell me anything save the truth.”
“No danger that I will do that,” he asserted, with an air of apparent sincerity. “Of course, you met Dick first and were friends with him before my sister came to Fardale. I have heard all about it. I know the whole business. I know, too, that you and Hal Darrell were pretty good friends before Dick interfered between you.”
“He never interfered.”
“Well, that’s what I have heard. Why, a fellow at school told me that Merriwell himself said he cut Darrell out with you.”
Again the girl’s cheeks blazed.
“I don’t believe he said it,” she indignantly declared.
“Well, that’s the talk at school. They say he brags about it to his friends. He claims he can get any girl stuck on him if he tries.”
“Somebody has been lying about him.”
“If that is true, how do the boys know that your father and Hal’s father, who were great chums, put it up to make a match between you when you were old enough? Who told that? Isn’t that one of the secrets you told Dick Merriwell yourself?”
Doris refused to answer. Her heart was beating furiously and she felt herself trembling a little.
“Miss Templeton,” Chet went on, “I don’t like to see you deceived by any fellow. You ought to know by this time that Dick Merriwell thinks more of my sister than he does of any one else. I will tell you what I have heard that he has said about this affair. He has told his friends that he hoped you would let him alone and take up with Darrell again.”
Quick as a flash, Doris straightened up, her eyes full of fire.
“Whoever has said such a thing, Chester Arlington, has lied,” she blazed.
Again he shrugged his shoulders.
“Perhaps they have,” he admitted. “I am only repeating the gossip of the school.”
“Well, I wish to hear no more of it. I wish you to let me alone. Come, Zona!”
Doris stamped her foot.
“You will leave us this minute!” she cried. “You pretend to be a gentleman. If you are you will not force yourself on us any more!”
“Oh, very well,” smiled Chester. “Sometime you won’t feel this way toward me. Good day!”
He lingered on the bridge and watched the girls as they climbed the path and disappeared into the budding woods. Zona turned to look back and waved her hand at him, to which he replied in like manner. When they had vanished, he muttered:
“The seed is planted; we will see what it grows into. I will win by fair means or foul!”
CHAPTER V. A TROUBLED HEART.
“What is the matter, Doris?” asked Zona, as the path at length brought them through the woods and in sight of Lakeside Academy.
Doris shook her head and swallowed down a choking lump in her throat.
“Nothing,” she answered.
In a moment Zona’s arm was about her.
“Tell me,” she urged. “I am your friend. What was it Chester said to you? I could hear but little of it.”
“He said enough to prove conclusively that he is no gentleman!” declared the troubled girl.
“Oh! I am sure you’re wrong about that. He is naturally a gentleman, Doris. If he told you anything, he told it because he believed you should know.”
“But it isn’t true—it can’t be true. Dick wouldn’t say such things to his best friends. I will never believe the academy boys are talking such gossip.”
Again Zona urged her companion to tell, and Doris finally consented. With her cheeks burning, she repeated what Chester Arlington had said.
“What do you think of that, Zona?” she demanded.
The girl with the yellow hair turned her face away.
“I—don’t—know,” she murmured, finding it difficult to reply.
“You don’t know,” cried the other, grasping her arm. “Why, you don’t believe the boys are saying such things, do you?”
Suddenly, with a |
61830-0 | burst of absolute frankness, Zona turned toward her friend:
“Do you want me to tell you the actual truth?” she asked. “Perhaps it will be the best thing I can do. It will be better for you, better for Hal, better for Dick, better for every one.”
Although her heart was seized with apprehension, Doris urged Zona to speak.
“To begin with,” said Zona, “you know it’s true that your father and Hal’s, who have always been true friends, agreed long ago to make a match between you, if possible.”
“I know that,” murmured Doris. “And that’s the very thing I have resented most. As if we had no minds of our own. In France they make such matches, I believe, but not in this country. Any girl with the least spirit would resent it. It’s the very thing to make a girl detest a fellow.”
“But you don’t detest Hal?”
“Well, I thought I did. But for this foolish agreement between our parents I might have liked him very well.”
“Of course you would; you couldn’t help it. He’s a splendid fellow, and he’s done everything for you. All the girls like him, but as soon as you gave him the shake, he would have nothing to do with any of them.”
“I wish he would,” passionately exclaimed Doris. “I’d like him better myself if he would!”
“No doubt of that,” smiled Zona, showing her fine teeth. “At the same time down in your heart you know you like him very well as it is. You have given him the cold shoulder simply because you were provoked over that agreement, and because Dick Merriwell happened to be convenient as a friend. Hal has been too earnest in his attentions, Doris.”
“Not of late. He despises me now.”
“Don’t think that! He is paying you back in your own coin, that’s all.”
“But this has nothing to do with the gossip Chester Arlington spoke of. How does this prove Dick said he was sorry he had ever become so friendly? I know he is not the boy to boast that he cut Hal out.”
“If there was no such gossip, Doris, how did Chester know about it? You say you want me to tell you the truth? Well, I will, even though you get angry with me. I have heard such talk myself.”
“You?” breathed Doris, as she started away and stared at her companion, her hands clinched. “You, Zona?”
“Yes,” nodded Zona grimly. “Why, it is the most natural thing in the world. Dick has his friends and confidants, and he is liable to trust them with his secrets and tell them his thoughts. You know girls have to talk; they can’t help it. They have their little secrets, and it often happens these secrets are betrayed by the ones they trust. Brad Buckhart is Dick’s closest friend. Why shouldn’t he talk things over with Brad? It’s perfectly natural. Brad might tell some one else, and in that way it could leak out. If there was no foundation of the truth in it you may think it never happened.”
“But I can’t—I can’t believe it!” murmured the distressed girl. “I shall go to him and ask him about it myself.”
Zona shook her head.
“You will do nothing of the sort,” she asserted.
“Why not?”
“You have too much pride.”
“Pride?”
“Yes. You know you can’t face Dick and ask him about it. What would he think of you? He would fancy you were running after him, and I am sure you don’t want him to believe that.”
“No, no!” panted Doris.
“Now, be reasonable, dear. When you think it over you know well enough that you like Hal Darrell as well as you do Dick. It is only because you were proud and spirited that you gave him the cold shoulder. At the same time you must see that Dick likes June Arlington. Of course, it is nothing but friendship, but it is friendship of a sort that means something. Many a time you have told me how much Dick has done for Chester. Why should he do all those things? Wasn’t it for the sake of June, and not for Chester? You’re not the girl to run after any fellow. You know a fellow gets tired of a girl who chases after him.”
“Oh, I decided long ago that Dick and I could never be anything but ordinary friends.”
“Then let him see it—let him understand it.”
“How?”
“That’s easy. Suppose you receive attentions from Hal? That will open his eyes. He will understand what you mean quick enough. At the same time, if he still likes you more than he does June, it will bring him round pretty quick.”
“I don’t want to bring him round. If he bothered me I’d soon show him that I didn’t want his attentions.”
“Well,” laughed Zona, “at least you would have the satisfaction of doing that. If he didn’t come round you would know beyond question that he liked June better.”
“Oh, I don’t know what to do!” cried Doris. “I am just as miserable and wretched as I can be. It seems to me that every one is false and treacherous.”
“Not every one, dear,” murmured Zona, again clasping her friend. “You know you can trust me.”
Doris began to quiver:
“I—I—believe I—must cry!”
She could not keep back the tears of vexation and injured pride which welled from her eyes.
When the two girls reached the academy and were met by others who inquired about the game, Zona explained how Fardale had lost, and declared that both she and Doris had felt so badly over it they came near “crying their eyes out.”
Alone in her room, Doris gave way to her feelings, and the result of that “good cry” relieved the strain on her nerves so that she felt much better after it. Still she continued to think with perplexity and vexation of what Chester Arlington had told her.
Shortly after sunset, with the dusk of evening coming on, a carriage stopped before the academy, and June Arlington ran up the steps. She found Doris and Zona together in their room.
“Oh, girls!” she exclaimed. “I have a splendid plan! Mother has agreed to it, and I think it will be just fine! I am going to have the members of the baseball team and a few others at my house this evening, and I want you to come. I am going to invite several of the girls here, and we will have a jolly time. You know the boys feel so badly over that game that I think we ought to cheer them up. Now, what girls shall we invite?”
“That’s splendid!” laughed Zona. “Why, it’s almost an impromptu party! I wonder if we can obtain leave to go, Doris?”
“I think I can fix that,” said June. “I will see Miss Tartington about it myself. I don’t believe she will object.”
June and Zona eagerly talked over the plans, deciding on the girls to be invited. Doris took little part in this, which June finally noticed.
“What’s the matter?” she questioned.
“Oh, she was just about heartbroken over that game,” quickly explained Zona. “She can’t seem to forget it.”
“Nor I,” confessed June. “And I think I should feel worse than any one, for my brother pitched. We will make you forget it to-night, Doris.”
“I am not feeling well,” said Doris. “I—I don’t know as I can go.”
“Oh, goodness! What nonsense! Of course you will come. Why, we couldn’t get along without you.”
“Of course you will!” Zona joined in.
Suddenly through Doris’ mind flashed the thought:
“It is my opportunity to show him I don’t care.”
Immediately she said:
“Well, June, if Miss Tartington gives permission I will come.”
CHAPTER VI. A RISING CLOUD.
June’s party came off as arranged, and a jolly party it proved to be. Besides the members of the baseball team, Darrell, Smart, and one or two others were invited. Obediah Tubbs was on deck, with his “weather eye” peeled for pie. Chip Jolliby, stammering and awkward, yet bubbling with good nature, provided considerable amusement. There were games of various sorts, card-playing, music, and singing. Billy Bradley found a jolly little black-eyed girl, who interested him immensely, and to whom he gave pronounced attention. He was trying to entertain her when Ted Smart drifted up.
“When do the drinkables float on?” inquired Ted. “I suppose they are going to have lemonade, or fruit punch, or something? It’s about time.” He pulled out his watch and looked at it. “By the way,” he chirped, “why should a thirsty man always carry a watch?”
“’Anged hif Hi ’now!” confessed Billy. “’E surely can’t drink hout hof hit.”
“Why not?” chuckled Ted. “Every watch has a spring inside.”
At this the little dark-eyed girl laughed heartily, while Billy slowly scratched his head, a puzzled look on his face.
“Hi suppose that’s one hof your blooming Hamerican jokes!” he half growled. “Still Hi dunno ’ow ’e can get a drink hout hof hit.”
“Oh, Mr. Bradley!” laughed the girl. “How funny you are!”
“Lordy! Lordy!” muttered Ted. “I will have to show him the spring. Why, don’t you see, Sir William, any watch has a spring in it? A man who is thirsty can wet his whistle at a spring.”
Still it was some moments before Billy managed to grasp the point. When he did he suddenly hit his knee a slap and gave a shout:
“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “That’s a good one, don’t y’ ’now!”
“How wonderfully quick you are to catch on!” chuckled Ted. “But I know another good one.”
“Go a’ead and give hit to hus,” urged the Cockney youth.
“What’s the hardest kind of soap?” asked Ted.
“The ’ardest kind?” repeated Bill. “Why, there’s lots of ’ard soaps.”
“But what’s the hardest kind?” persisted Ted. “Give it up?”
“Hi suppose Hi’ll ’ave to. What his the ’ardest kind hof soap?”
“Why, Castile, of course. Don’t you see, Sir William—cast-steel soap must be very hard.”
Still Bradley failed to tumble, and his perplexity added to the merriment of the dark-eyed girl.
“He’s a wonder, Billy is!” exclaimed Ted. “But just wait till he springs these conundrums and see how he will convulse everybody.”
“The ’ardest kind of soap,” muttered Bradley, wrinkling his brows. “Castile is the ’ardest kind hof soap.”
“Why, of course,” said the girl. “Steel is hard, isn’t it? He made it plain enough. Cast steel, Mr. Bradley, don’t you see?”
“Ow-wow!” gasped Billy. “Dear me! I hunderstand!”
“Let me whisper something in your ear,” said Ted. “Those are strictly new. I don’t think any one here has ever heard them before. If you want to bump this bunch good and hard, just spring them.”
“Hall right,” said Billy. “Hif Hi hever get a chance Hi’ll double them up.”
Ted went on his way, and soon he had the entire party puzzling over the answers to his conundrums, which he sprang one after another.
Suddenly Chip Jolliby unfolded himself and rose by sections to his full height.
“Wait a minute!” he cried. “I have a gug-gug-gug-good one!”
Instantly all gave him their attention.
“What is the difference between an auction and seasickness?” grinned the tall boy.
There were several guesses at the answer, but no one gave it. Finally Jolliby was urged to explain the difference between an auction and seasickness.
“Why,” he laughed, “one is a sale of effects and the other is the effects of a sail.”
Smart produced his handkerchief and began to sob.
“What’s the matter?” asked one of the girls.
“I have been robbed!” moaned Ted. “That was my pet property. I owned that. My happiness is ruined!”
“I’ll tell you where you can always find happiness,” declared Dick at once.
“Where?” cried Ted.
“In the dictionary,” answered Merriwell.
And immediately Smart fell off his chair with a thud.
“Don’t feel so bad over it, my little man,” said Buckhart, as he patted Ted on the head. “You’re a bright little fellow. You’re a wonderfully witty little chap.”
“Say, Texas,” chirped Ted, looking up, “bet you can’t tell what makes every one sick save the one who swallows it.”
“I am not good at guessing,” said Brad. “What is it?”
“Flattery,” answered Smart, and cheered up at once.
Catching Billy’s eye, Ted winked at him and nodded. Billy fancied he saw his opportunity.
“Hi have a beautiful conundrum, don’t y’ ’now,” he declared, and immediately received the attention of every one. “What’s the ’ardest kind hof soap?”
When all professed their inability to answer this conundrum and demanded the answer from him, the Cockney youth threw out his chest.
“Why,” he said, “that’s heasy. The ’ardest kind hof soap his cast-hiron soap, hof course.”
Having told this, he fetched his knee a resounding crack and then clung to his sides, as he doubled up with laughter. When he straightened up and looked around he was astonished to see a lot of blank faces, for no one save himself was laughing. Ted Smart had crammed his handkerchief into his mouth to keep from shouting.
“I am afraid we don’t catch the point, Billy,” said Dick. “You will have to explain it again.”
“What’s the matter, hanyhow?” exploded Bradley. “Hit’s dead heasy! You will see hit in a minute. Hi didn’t see hit at first. Why, think of it! Why, of course, cast hiron is the ’ardest kind hof soap!”
“Not having seen any cast-iron soap,” said Singleton, “we will have to take your word for it.”
Bradley was both disappointed and disgusted.
“Hit’s mighty queer, don’t y’ ’now!” he growled, “that nobody sees the point when Hi spring a joke! Some’ow, Hi can’t see the point now, myself. Hi thought Hi could, but Hi ’ave forgotten just what hit was. Now Hi ’ave got another one, and hit his better than that.”
Smart started to crawl behind the piano.
“Give us the other one,” urged the boys and girls.
“Well,” said Bill, “why should a thirsty man halways carry a watch? There you hare!”
Again, after a little, they gave it up and urged him to explain why a thirsty man should carry a watch.
“Why, don’t you hunderstand?” said Billy. “A watch ’as a well in hit.”
Once more, being satisfied he had hit the nail on the head this time, the Cockney youth laughed loudly. In the midst of his laughter he stopped with his mouth wide open, suddenly realizing that no one else was laughing.
From behind the piano came a sound like sobs of distress.
“Say, what’s the matter with you now?” snapped Billy.
“I don’t think I ever saw a well in a watch,” confessed Gardner.
“Did Hi say a well?” gasped Billy. “That was a mistake; Hi meant a cistern. That’s hit! Don’t you see?—a cistern!”
Then, when they failed to laugh, he gripped Tubbs by the shoulder and shook him.
“Why don’t you laugh, you fat chump?” he shouted. “If you don’t laugh Hi will ’ave to ’it you.”
“He! he!” said Obediah moanfully.
Somehow this was more than they could stand, and suddenly the entire party burst into shrieks of laughter. Immediately a look of happiness and relief overspread Billy’s face, and in the midst of all this commotion and merriment he stood in the middle of the floor repeatedly slapping his knee and crying:
“Hi knew you would see the point! Hi thought you couldn’t ’elp seeing the point! Hit’s hawful funny! Hit’s the funniest joke Hi hever ’eard!”
Out from behind the piano rolled Smart, who lay on the floor, clinging to his sides and gasping for breath. From one side to another he rolled, and his merriment caused tears to fill his eyes.
“You little wretch!” chuckled Dick, as he pounced on Ted. “This is some of your work.”
“Kill me!” gasped Ted. “Put me out of my misery. Kill me and save my life!”
At last Bradley was satisfied, but he was not destined to be left in peace. One after another the boys came round to him with a watch, asking him to point out the cistern in it. Those who had no watch borrowed one in order to put the question. Finally Billy became indignant.
“Hi ham no blamed watchmaker, don’t y’ ’now!” he shouted. “Get haway from me, the ’ole hof you!”
All through the evening Doris gave Dick scarcely a look or a word. Once he spoke to her and tried to enter into conversation with her, but she quickly excused herself and left him. On the other hand, she had nothing but smiles for Darrell. At first Hal remained reserved, but beneath her sunniness he gradually thawed.
Zona Desmond improved the first opportunity to speak privately with Arlington. They were standing in a little alcove, and she observed that Chet was watching Doris closely.
“You have something to thank me for, Mr. Arlington,” she declared.
“Indeed,” he said, lifting his eyebrows. “How’s that?”
“I have saved you from a lot of trouble.”
“Have you?”
“Yes.”
“Then be sure of my thanks. But I am certain I do not understand what you mean. How have you saved me a lot of trouble?”
“You know what you told Doris on the bridge this afternoon?”
Chet shrugged his shoulders.
“Yes.”
“Well, do you know what she was going to do?”
“I am sure I do not.”
“Well, she was just determined to go straight to Dick Merriwell and demand to know if it was the truth. What if she had done that? You would have found yourself in a fix.”
“I knew well enough that she wouldn’t.”
“How did you know?”
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, she has a little pride of her own. She could not do that without humbling her own pride.”
“Still, Chester, she was just angry enough to do it. And it was I who stopped her. If it hadn’t been for me you never would have known of those things you told her. You know you fibbed when you said it was the gossip of the school.”
He laughed easily.
“There is such a thing as lying in a good cause,” he said. “Merriwell doesn’t care a snap for her, and any one can see that. Look at him now. There he is in the corner, talking to my sister.”
“At least,” said Zona, watching her companion slyly, “you have done a good thing for Hal Darrell.”
Instantly a cloud came to Arlington’s face.
“I am not spending any time doing that fellow good turns!” he muttered.
“But see how Doris is taking up with him to-night.”
“I see!”
Inwardly Zona was laughing. Things were occurring to satisfy her. She knew well enough that Chester had sought to break the friendship between Doris and Dick, with the object of placing himself in favor with Doris. In this he had failed completely.
“It was a shame for Dick Merriwell to come between them,” asserted Zona. “And your fib will be pardonable if Doris and Hal again become friendly as of old.”
“Oh, yes!” he grated. “It will be a fine thing, won’t it!”
“Why not?” she innocently asked.
“Never mind!” he growled. “Let it go!”
When refreshments were served in the dining room, Arlington made a desperate venture in offering Doris his arm to escort her to the table.
“I hope you will give me that much pleasure to-night,” he said.
“You will have to excuse me,” she murmured. “I have promised Hal.”
Even as she spoke Hal appeared, and she accepted his arm.
Chester clinched his hands and glared after them.
“I don’t see that I have made much out of this,” he thought savagely. “I have simply smoothed out things for Merriwell and left myself in a hole. But I won’t give it up! I am not beaten yet. I will trap Mr. Darrell if I live long enough.”
Zona appeared at his side.
“Come Mr. Thundercloud,” she laughed. “Why, you’re the picture of tragedy and revenge! Don’t let anybody get onto it.”
“What do I care for this bunch of flubs!” he exclaimed.
“We’re the only ones left,” reminded Zona, as Billy escorted the little dark-eyed girl from the room. “Aren’t you coming?”
“No!”
“You’re not? What are you going to do?”
“I am going upstairs,” said Chet. “I have got a headache.”
Although she urged him not to do this, he persisted, and to her chagrin she was left to enter the dining room alone. June met her at the door.
“I was just looking for you,” she said. “Where is Chester?”
“He has a headache,” said Zona. “He’s gone upstairs.”
Having excused herself for a few moments, June went in search of her brother. She found him pacing the floor in an upper room.
“Come, Chester,” she urged; “aren’t you going to join us?”
“Oh, what’s the use! I don’t want anything. Let me alone.”
“But you must come. Think how it looks! What will the others think?”
“I don’t care!”
“But I care, Chester. You must come down for my sake.”
“Tell ’em I’ve got a headache! Tell ’em anything.”
“No, no; I can’t do that! They will know better. You must come down. Please come, Chester. I am sure I would do as much for you.”
“All right. I will come, June; but it’s a mistake. The best thing you can do is to leave me here. I am dangerous to-night.”
Nevertheless, she succeeded in leading him down to the dining room, and he took a seat at the table. However, he did not participate in the talk and laughter of the company, and after a while his gloomy spirits began to dampen the pleasure of the others.
Obediah Tubbs seemed to be the only one who was not disturbed, and he was so absorbed in eating pie, several of which had been provided for him, that he failed to notice the growing shadow.
When refreshments were over June urged some of the boys to sing, and she accompanied them on the piano. They sang “Fardale’s Way,” “Fair Fardale,” and two or three similar songs; but at last the party began to break up.
In turning from the piano, Darrell bumped full and fair against Arlington.
“I beg your pardon,” said Hal.
“Well, you’d better,” flashed Chet. “You ran against me on purpose.”
“Nothing of the sort.”
“You mean to call me a liar?” hissed Arlington. “I won’t take that front any fellow anywhere.”
In another moment he would have struck Hal in the face, but his wrist was seized by Dick, and some of the others stepped quickly between them. The girls were frightened, and June’s distress was completed by this ungentlemanly act on the part of her brother.
“Chester!” she entreated. “For my sake—please! please!”
“All right,” he said. “Take your hands off me, Merriwell. I will see that fellow again.”
Then he strode out of the room, and the departing guests saw no more of him that night.
CHAPTER VII. ARLINGTON MAKES MORE TROUBLE.
In making their trip through that section the Great Northern Athletic Association had succeeded in arranging a game with Rivermouth, to be played the following Monday morning after the game with Fardale.
Having been defeated by the Great Northern, the Fardale boys anxiously awaited the result of the game at Rivermouth.
It was generally believed that Rivermouth would be disastrously defeated. This being the case, when a telephone message was received, late Monday afternoon, that Rivermouth had won by a score of five to three, few were willing to believe it. His disbelief led Anson Day to call up the captain of the Rivermouth team and ask for the actual facts. To do this Day was obliged to visit a telephone pay station in the village, and his return was eagerly awaited by the boys at the academy.
It was one of those times when there were no drills or exercises of any sort, and the cadets were enjoying a brief leisure, many of them rambling over the parade ground, when Day, accompanied by one or two friends, came down the road from the village.
“’Ere ’e comes!” exclaimed Billy Bradley. “Now we will know ’ow ’ard Rivermouth was beaten.”
The boys flocked around Day.
“What was the score?” they eagerly demanded.
“Five to three,” answered the chairman of the athletic committee.
“Dern my picter!” squeaked Obediah Tubbs; “that was close! I s’posed the Great Northern would beat ’em worse than that.”
“But the Great Northern didn’t win,” declared Anson. “The report that Rivermouth took the game was correct.”
“I knew it!” cried Ted Smart. “I was certain Rivermouth would win.”
Somebody gave him a punch in the ribs.
“You’re a fibber!” roared an excited cadet.
“Look here, Day,” said Bob Singleton, “are you sure you have this straight? Why, it can’t be possible!”
“I have it straight,” asserted Day positively.
At this the boys groaned.
“Well, wouldn’t that skin you alive!” chattered Jolliby.
“Great Cæsar!” muttered Barron Black. “If Rivermouth defeated those fellows what are we going to do against Rivermouth Saturday? We have to play her then, and it begins to look as if we were due for a trimming.”
“Oh! we could have beaten the Great Northern all right with Merriwell in the box,” asserted Hector Marsh, who had forced his way into the group. “We all know how the game was lost.”
“Hold on!” exclaimed Mel Fraser, Arlington’s roommate. “You can’t say that. Didn’t Merriwell go in? Wasn’t the game lost with him in the box? Don’t pile this whole thing onto Chester.”
“Waugh!” exclaimed Brad Buckhart. “They made two runs off Dick and seven off Arlington. That’s the size of it. And one run was made through a fielding blunder.”
At that moment a stocky, square-shouldered boy, who had remained silent, spoke up:
“I lost the game,” he said. “I am the only one to blame. Every one tells me that Merriwell shouted for Jolliby to take that fly. I didn’t hear him.”
The speaker was Dave Flint.
“I suppose that lets Merriwell out,” half sneered Fraser. “All the same he was in the box when the game was lost.”
Instantly Buckhart was aroused.
“I want to tell you fellows one thing,” he said. “I am going to tell it right here and now. I have kept still just as long as I propose to. My pard had no business to go in to pitch. He was not in condition.”
“Oh, was that it?” inquired Fraser insinuatingly. “Strange we never heard about it before.”
“Nothing strange in it!” fiercely retorted the Texan. “Dick don’t go around any whatever telling his troubles. Any one who knows anything about him could see Saturday that he used neither speed nor curves. He couldn’t. He was a heap used up. He had a lame side that kept him from pitching at his best. He had it a week ago, too, and he won that game by setting his teeth and pitching when every ball he threw nearly cut him in two. If he hadn’t pitched against Hilsboro his side would have been all right last Saturday. That is straight goods, and any galoot who says different is a prevaricator. You hear me warble!”
“Why didn’t he tell us about his side?” asked Earl Gardner.
“Why didn’t he? Because he didn’t want to knock the confidence out of his team. That’s why he didn’t tell.”
“How did he get this lame side?” inquired Fraser, still in a sneering manner.
Buckhart took a stride and confronted Arlington’s roommate.
“I will tell you how he got it,” he snorted. “He got it while doing Chet Arlington a good turn. He was jumped on by a bunch of Arlington’s associates and knocked against the edge of a pool table. That’s how he got it, Cadet Fraser.”
“We will take your word for it,” said Fraser, backing off, as he was somewhat afraid of the fighting Texan.
“Well, it’s a right good thing that you do,” growled Buckhart.
At this point a burst of laughter caused the boys to start and turn. They saw Chester Arlington pushing into the crowd.
“Well, I have expected something like that,” cried Chet. “I didn’t believe Dick Merriwell would take his medicine without making some sort of an excuse. A lame side, eh? Well, that sounds first rate; but, if you fellows have noticed it, it is a fact that a pitcher who loses a game always has a lame shoulder, a lame arm, or a lame side to put the blame on after the game is over.”
Buckhart’s face grew dark as a thunder cloud. He confronted Chester, who continued to laugh in that aggravating manner.
“Look here, you,” said the Texan in a low tone; “do you mean to call me a liar?”
“Oh, not at all!” said Chet easily. “Of course Merriwell told you all about his lame side. I don’t doubt that a bit.”
“Then do you mean to say that my pard lied? Waugh! I’d swallow it a heap better if you called me a truth twister. Maybe Dick will swallow these yer things from you, but hang me if I do!”
The fury of the Texan burst forth in a twinkling, and he struck full and fair at Chester’s face; but Arlington ducked, and his cap was knocked from his head. Instantly the boys pressed between them and pushed them apart. They remonstrated with Brad, who for the time being seemed to have wholly lost control of himself.
Hal Darrell was one of those who seized Buckhart.
“Hold on there, old man!” hissed Hal in Brad’s ear. “I am the one who is laying for that fellow. I am the one to settle a score with him.”
At last the Texan was quieted and led away.
After this the boys knew that at any time there might come a clash between Arlington and Darrell or between Arlington and Buckhart.
Chester, however, kept by himself a great deal of the time, and the days slipped by without the expected encounter taking place.
Dick took little part in practice during the week, although he was on the baseball ground every day and saw that the team put in the proper work and was given needed coaching.
As Saturday grew near the apprehension of the cadets over the result of the game with Rivermouth increased. There were all sorts of rumors about the great improvement of the Rivermouth team, which was said to be superior to anything the place had turned out in many seasons.
Brad’s statement concerning Dick’s lame side was also accepted as a fact by the great mass of cadets. With Dick out of condition to pitch, it seemed that Rivermouth would have an easy thing.
“I am sorry you said anything about my side, old man,” declared Dick one day. “It was a mistake. I told you to keep still.”
“Pard,” cried the Texan, “I couldn’t do it—I just couldn’t keep my face closed and hear what they were saying. I had to spit her out.”
“And the result has been the very thing I feared. The boys have lost confidence. They are afraid of Rivermouth.”
“I am plumb sorry, partner. I reckon you’re right. I am tired of answering questions about your side.”
“Yes; they all want to know about it. Even Professor Gunn has heard about it and made inquiries.”
“We will never have any peace in this yere school until Arlington gets out,” averred the Westerner. “I have it pretty straight that he has been telling some rotten things about you lately. Just what he has told I don’t know, but I am going to find out if I can.”
“You pay too much attention to Arlington,” declared Dick. “I have found that the fellow who lies about another usually hurts himself the most. Lies, like curses and chickens, come home to roost.”
“That may be the way you look at it, pard; but the galoot who lies about me has to fight or run.”
“It’s useless to fight Arlington. If you whip him it simply makes him worse. Unless he straightens out of his own accord, he will eventually bring about his destruction.”
“Mebbe that’s right, but I can’t look at it just that way. Say, pard, are you going to try to pitch this game against Rivermouth?”
Dick nodded.
“I am going to pitch that game!” he grimly declared.
CHAPTER VIII. FARDALE WINS!
Never in all her baseball career had Rivermouth been more confident of victory than she was on that gray Saturday when she came to Fardale. Accompanied by a hundred rooters, the players marched from the station to Fardale field.
The cadets were waiting for them, and a crowd of spectators had assembled.
“Here they come!” was the cry, as the visiting team and its supporters were seen marching down the hill.
As the Rivermouth boys poured through the gate, and the visitors marched onto the diamond, Fardale received them with a welcoming cheer.
Little time was wasted. The visitors took the field for practice, and went at it in a sharp and snapping manner, which seemed to denote what they could do. Their supporters packed in a solid mass on the side reserved for them, and cheered the clever plays made by the practicing boys.
“Well, what do you think, pard?” asked Buckhart, as Dick stood watching the enemy.
“They’re overconfident,” declared Merriwell in a low tone. “It may be the cause of their defeat. If we get down to business at the very start and fight hard we may take some of the assurance out of them.”
“How’s your side?”
“Oh, it’s still lame; but I find I can pitch with my left hand without straining it. I am going to see what I can do that way.”
“Great tarantulas!” gasped Buckhart. “Why, do you know that Peterson, a left-hander, pitched against them Monday, and they biffed him for eleven clean hits? You know how hard it was for us to hit him. Well, they found him pie.”
“All the same,” said Dick in the same quiet manner, “I shall begin with my left hand, and use it as long as possible. When I am compelled to do so, to save the game, I may use my right.”
Ted Smart left the seats and came out to Dick.
“Say! Guess!” chirped the little fellow. “Arlington feels sure you will win, doesn’t he?”
“I dunno.”
“He must!” said Ted in his queer way. “He’s betting on Rivermouth!”
“Is that so?” muttered Buckhart.
“That’s what they say,” nodded Ted. “Of course he wants to give his money away. It’s just like him. He loves to give his money away. That’s why he’s betting on Rivermouth.”
“Well, we will do our best to see that he gives it away this yere day,” asserted the Westerner.
It was a fact that Chester had bet on Rivermouth. He made no effort to hide his belief that the visitors would win.
The game began promptly on time, with Rivermouth at the bat. The first man started off in a manner to delight the visitors, for he drove out a single with perfect ease.
Buckhart shook his head a little and pounded his fist into the hole in his big mitt.
Still Merriwell continued to pitch with his left hand, and the next batter, in an effort to sacrifice the base runner to second, rolled the ball into Dick’s hands. Scooping it up quickly, Dick snapped it to Gardner, who covered the bag for Tubbs. Earl whistled it up to Singleton, and the handsome double play set the cadets into a roar.
“Dern my picter!” squeaked Obediah Tubbs. “That was too easy!”
The third batter tried hard for a hit. He simply lifted an infield fly that was easily captured, and Rivermouth was quickly retired in this manner without accomplishing anything, for all of her propitious start.
The visitors had a new pitcher, a long, lank, green-looking freshman, whose movements were very awkward, but who soon revealed the fact that he had an exasperatingly hard ball to hit safely. He was not a “strike-out” pitcher. He was one of the kind who kept batters popping up little flies or knocking easy grounders into the diamond.
Gardner and Black were both thrown out at first, and Flint reached the bag only through an error by shortstop. Bradley tried hard for a single, but popped a little fly into the lank pitcher’s hands.
The second inning was a fast one, for once more only one cadet reached first, and there he “died.”
“They can’t do anything with you!” yelled a Rivermouth rooter. “They are up against it to-day! You will make monkeys of them, the same as you did the Great Northern chaps.”
Three innings passed without a score. In the fourth Rivermouth got a runner to third; but two men were out, and, with three balls and no strikes called against him, Dick braced wonderfully, putting two straight ones over the plate and then fanning the batter with a drop.
This seemed to revive the confidence of the home team somewhat, and Jolliby started off with a hit in Fardale’s half. On Singleton’s out at first Chip reached second.
Tubbs bunted and came near beating the ball to first. Although he was thrown out by a narrow margin, Jolliby was landed on third.
Buckhart tried his best for a hit, but drove the ball along the ground at Armstrong. The pitcher snapped it up, whirled toward third, and held Chip close to that bag, after which he turned and threw to first. The throw was a trifle wide, and it bounded out of the baseman’s mitt. By the time the ball was picked up Buckhart had crossed the bag.
“Well! well! well!” roared the cadets in great relief.
“Up!” shouted the leader of the cheering, with an upward motion of both arms. “All up for Merriwell!”
Every boy in blue rose to his feet as Dick advanced to the plate, bat in hand.
“’Ere’s where we win the game, don’t y’ ’now!” shrieked Billy Bradley. “He will do the trick!”
When Dick struck wide of the first ball with an awkward swing of the bat some were surprised. Others, however, saw the object, for Buckhart took second on that pitch, and Merriwell’s flourish had been for the purpose of bothering the catcher. He had not tried to touch the ball.
“A hit now will win this game!” panted Earl Gardner.
“He will get it,” said Barron Black confidently.
Armstrong was on his mettle, and did his best to deceive Merriwell. He led the batter to swing at a deceptive in-drop, and two strikes were called.
“Sit down! sit down!” yelled a Rivermouth fellow. “The inning is over! He will never disturb Armstrong!”
Barely had the words been uttered when Dick met one of Armstrong’s curves and sent the ball skimming along the ground at great speed.
The shortstop sprang to get in front of it, while Jolliby made a daring dash for the plate. The ball took an erratic bound just before reaching the shortstop and went over his shoulder.
Then there was a shriek from the cadets.
“’Ome! ’ome!” yelled Billy Bradley, who was on the coaching line near third.
Buckhart dashed over the bag and swung toward the home plate.
The left-fielder had come in for the ball, and he made a beautiful throw to the plate. Buckhart was tagged barely a second before he reached home, and was out.
However, Fardale had scored a run, as Jolliby had reached the plate safely.
The game continued to be of the sort to keep every one keyed to a high pitch. Repeatedly Rivermouth seemed to be on the verge of scoring, but in each instance the home team managed to crawl out of the hole and save itself.
With seven complete innings played and no other run secured, it began to seem as if one score would settle that game.
In the first half of the eighth, however, a peculiar thing happened. The first two batters were easy outs. By this time, although they continued to cheer their team valiantly, the hearts of the Rivermouth cheerers were growing faint. The next hitter managed to drive out a clean one that looked to be good for two bases. It passed over Tubbs’ head just out of reach and went bounding away toward the fence.
Jolliby raced for it. The ball reached the fence and disappeared.
The Rivermouth runner was astonished on reaching second to find a coacher back of third wildly shrieking and motioning for him to come on. Wondering what had happened, he made for third, feeling certain he must stop there. In the meantime, Jolliby and Flint had reached the fence where the ball had disappeared, and were seen kneeling on the ground.
At that spot there was a small hole in the fence, and by a rare freak of fortune the ball had passed through this opening. Jolliby peered through a crack and could see the sphere outside the fence at a little distance, lying on the ground. He thrust his long arm through the hole and found himself barely able to touch the ball with the ends of his fingers. In trying to get hold of it he pushed it farther away.
Thus, while Chip was vainly seeking to stretch his arm far enough to get the ball, the Rivermouth runner came home with the tying score.
The spectators of both sides were shaking with excitement. The eighth inning ended with a score of one to one. In the ninth Rivermouth apparently started off with grim determination to win the game then and there. Two hits and a bad error filled the bags, with only one man out.
Chester Arlington, who had been watching the game with intense interest, now nodded and smiled.
“She’s over!” he declared. “The jig is up! Rivermouth wins right here!”
For the first time during the game Dick began to pitch with his right hand. Regardless of his right side, he used speed and curves. The next batter fanned twice in his eagerness to get a hit.
“Steady, old man!” cautioned the Rivermouth captain. “We have this thing clinched.”
Then the batter hit the ball a savage crack, and it shot on a dead line, so that it seemed certain to pass over Obediah Tubbs at least eight feet from the ground and somewhat to one side of the fat boy.
Obediah made a marvelous leap into the air.
Spat!
He had the ball! It was a most astonishing catch, and a wild cheer of delight went up from the cadets as the fat boy quickly stepped onto second and made a double play, the runner having left the bag.
Somehow this strange blighting of their high hopes seemed to take the snap out of Rivermouth.
The first Fardale batter drove an easy one to third base, but the baseman fell all over himself in trying to pick it up. A comedy of errors followed. The infielders apparently sought to outdo one another in bungling plays, and the bags were filled.
Then Armstrong took a brace and struck out a batter. The next player connected with the ball in time to settle the game. The ball was lifted over the infield, the shortstop failing to get back for it, and Fardale scored the winning run in the last half of the ninth, thus capturing one of the hardest games ever played on that field.
CHAPTER IX. THE POWER OF A SUPERIOR MIND.
Near noon Saturday a steam yacht ran into Fardale harbor and lay alongside the wharf to coal. This yacht was the property of Mrs. Arlington. During the game June had invited Doris Templeton to accompany her on board the yacht that evening.
“I will call for you at Lakeside Academy,” said June. “If you can go, I will take you over in a carriage.”
Doris readily agreed to go if possible.
June was on hand according to agreement, and Doris was able to accompany her. As they were driving away from the academy, June said:
“I wasn’t sure you would come. I almost thought you might not.”
To the surprise of Doris, it seemed as if there was something of disappointment and regret in her companion’s voice.
“Why, don’t you want me to?” she asked in surprise.
“Oh, yes—yes, of course.”
Still Doris was not satisfied, and a feeling of uneasiness began to creep over her. Having reached the wharf at which the yacht lay, they left the carriage and went on board. The captain was on hand and apparently expecting them. He escorted them to the cabin.
Somehow June seemed strangely nervous and excited; Doris fancied she was not at all like herself. The yacht was commodious and comfortable, although not extremely large, and it interested Doris exceedingly. Indeed, she was so absorbed in looking about that she did not notice a strange tremor of movement which ran over the craft. June observed it, and her face paled, but she said nothing.
At length Doris noted with surprise that something of a suspicious nature was happening.
“Why—what is it?” she questioned, looking at June in alarm. “The yacht is moving! How is that?”
Even as she spoke a boy appeared in the doorway and bowed smilingly.
“It means that we are going to take a little cruise,” he declared. “I am delighted to have such agreeable company.”
It was Chet Arlington!
Doris turned even paler than June.
“Chester Arlington,” she cried, “you don’t mean that? You can’t mean it! Why, you wouldn’t dare!”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s plain you don’t know me. I have taken a fancy to make a little cruise on this yacht, and, of course, I am not to blame if you chance to be aboard at the time, I am sure you will enjoy it. You can’t help it. I will do my best to make it pleasant for you.”
At this June suddenly sprang toward her brother.
“Chester!” she exclaimed, catching her breath; “you promised me——”
“Oh, never mind. That’s all right, sis. Don’t get excited.”
“But you promised me we would take a run only a short distance and then return.”
“I have not said how far we are going,” he coolly answered. “But it seems to me we may not be able to get back into the harbor to-night. It’s a little dangerous after dark.”
“You can get back if you can get out.”
“We will talk that over later. Make yourselves at home, girls.”
“Chester, order Captain Long to run back at once!” cried June.
“Sorry I can’t oblige you, sis.”
“You won’t do it for me?” she questioned.
“No, not even for you, June.”
“Perhaps he will do it for me,” said a calm voice, and the sound of that voice caused Chester to give a mighty start and turn, his own face blanching.
Another boy had descended the companionway and stood just outside the door.
“Merriwell!” gasped Chet.
“Exactly,” said Dick.
“How did you get on board?”
“Never mind that now,” said the uninvited guest, as his dark eyes were steadily fixed on Chester. “I want you to give your captain immediate orders to run back to the wharf!”
“Hanged if I do!”
“But you will!”
“I won’t!”
Another step Dick took, and this brought him into the cabin, where the light was full and fair upon his face. In his dark eyes there was a strange magnetic power which Arlington felt. Chester experienced a queer thrill and gazed in fascination at those intense eyes. Dick lifted his hand and seemed by some marvelous power to keep Chet’s gaze steady and unmoved.
The two girls looked on in awe, feeling that between these lads there was now a mighty battle of minds. Arlington felt that his own determination was weakening and surrendering. He struggled to the last, but was not equal to the conflict.
Finally Dick spoke once more, and to Chester it seemed that the words he uttered came from a great distance.
“Chester Arlington, a week ago you told Doris Templeton something about me. Did you tell her the truth, or did you lie?”
“I lied!” was the whispered reply.
“Now,” said Dick, stepping forward and taking Chester’s arm, “we will go and tell the captain to put back to the wharf.”
Arlington permitted Merriwell to lead him from the cabin.
“Oh, June!” palpitated Doris, “I don’t understand it yet! Can’t you explain?”
“Yes, I will,” said June, although it plainly cost her a great effort. “Chester made me promise to bring you on board. He threatened to do something reckless if I didn’t. He said he would simply back off into the harbor as a joke. But I feared he might not be telling the truth. I was afraid I couldn’t trust him, and I sent a note to Dick Merriwell, asking him to come on board. I also arranged with the captain that he should be permitted to do so. That’s how he happened to be here.”
“June,” said Doris, “do you think Dick will make the captain turn back?”
“I think my brother will give that order, as Dick requested. Let’s go on deck.”
When they reached the deck they discovered that the yacht was already slackening headway. It came to a full stop, backed up a short distance, and then swung slowly around.
The girls stood, each with an arm about the other, as the dark buildings on shore drew nearer and nearer. At length, with the sound of signal bells in the engine room, the yacht came softly to the wharf, and two sailors threw out a plank after the hawsers were made fast.
Dick appeared before June and Doris, while in the background was seen the form of another boy, who stood there without approaching or interfering.
“Come, Doris,” said Merriwell, “I will take you to the academy. June, you did well to write me that note and arrange it for me to come aboard. Good night, June!”
“Good night, Dick!” she murmured. “Good night, Doris!”
They passed over the plank, and the gloom on shore soon hid them from June’s eyes.
CHAPTER X. PERSISTENT CHESTER.
Spr-rr-rr-rr—crash!
“Hooray! A strike!”
“That does it!”
It was a rainy afternoon, and the members of the team were putting in the usual hour for the baseball practice in the gymnasium.
Darrell, Jolliby, Tubbs, and Merriwell were just finishing a bowling match on the new alleys, Dick and Obediah being matched against Hal and Chip.
Up to the last frame it had seemed as if Darrell and Jolliby were the winners. It looked like a forlorn hope when Merriwell took his place to bowl for the last time, as he needed eighteen pins to tie and nineteen to win. Nothing but a spare or a strike could save him. With a spare, his chance of getting nine pins on the last bowl would be very slim.
This being the situation, there was great excitement when Dick sent his first ball curving into the pins, striking number one quarteringly, and raking down the whole bunch.
“Dern my picter!” palpitated Obediah Tubbs, his eyes bulging.
“Wouldn’t that sus-sus-sus-sus-scald you!” chattered Jolliby.
“How sorry I am!” shouted Ted Smart, who was setting up the pins.
“Talk about luck!” sneered Arlington, who was one of the spectators. “What do you think of that? That was a case of horseshoes, all right!”
“Luck! Waugh!” snorted Buckhart. “Didn’t he hit ’em right?”
“I have seen them hit a hundred times in that way without making a strike,” retorted Chet. “But he has to get nine pins with his next ball in order to tie. He can’t do it.”
Up to this point Dick had been bowling for sport and for the fine exercise it provided. It must not be understood that he was not trying to do his best, for he always did at anything. But now Arlington’s words aroused him, and he was seized with a sudden powerful desire to win.
“Bet you a horse he gets them!” exclaimed the Texan.
“If he does,” declared Chet, “it will be more of his slobby luck. When it comes to bowling he is a mark. I can bowl a little myself. I’d like to get at him once at this. But he doesn’t dare to give me a show on these new alleys.”
“Hi suppose you’re a wonderful bowler?” put in Billy Bradley. “I suppose you ’ave an hastonishing record?”
“I have bowled one hundred and thirty-eight in a single string of candlepins,” asserted Chet.
“And then you woke up!” observed Buckhart. “You’re pretty clever—let you tell it.”
Chester was not a whit abashed. He continued to boastingly assert that he knew he was able at any time. barring accident, to defeat Merriwell or any other boy in the school at candlepins.
“Dern his picter!” muttered Obediah Tubbs, nudging Dick, who was apparently unconscious of Arlington’s presence. “Don’t you hear what he is saying? By Jim, he needs a good lesson!”
Merriwell, however, felt it was an impossibility to teach Arlington a lesson he would remember, for even his experience on the yacht had had no lasting effect.
“Ken you git nine pins?” anxiously whispered the fat boy.
“I can try,” was Dick’s quiet answer, as he lifted the polished candlepin ball and stood with his eyes fixed on the pins.
“Watch him!” muttered Arlington, seeking to divert the bowler’s attention. “He knows we’re all looking at him. See him get two pins with that ball.”
It’s a sure thing that mind as well as body plays a prominent part in scientific bowling. Not only does it require brains to secure the best result, but the bowler must fix his mind on the object he desires to accomplish most, seeing in advance what success he would attain, and must, in rolling a curving ball, behold in advance the sweeping movement he wills the ball to take. It is sometimes the case that a player may secure a good string by rolling carelessly, without any particular mental effort. This is always a matter of chance. But the heady bowler who uses his brains, and seems to control the ball with his mind, is one who persistently and repeatedly accomplishes surprising results.
Arlington knew something of this, and he understood that it was often a fatal mistake for a player to let his mind be diverted in the least, at the moment when he starts to deliver the ball. This being the case, it was Chester’s object to “rattle” Dick if possible. He failed utterly.
Advancing three steps to the line, Dick sent the ball down the polished alley, striking the pins with a clattering crash, leaving but one standing on the corner.
Dick had won the string with a ball to spare.
The boys gave a shout of satisfaction, while Arlington bit his lip in disgust.
“Dern my picter!” cried Obediah Tubbs. “I kinder thought that I was going to beat you by my rotten bowling, Dick; but you pulled us out of the hole.”
“That was clever,” laughed Chet, as he stepped onto the runway of the alley; “but still I believe it was nothing more than luck. As I have just said, I can bowl a little myself, and I don’t depend on luck. I challenge you to go me a string, Merriwell.”
Dick was becoming wearied by these repeated challenges on the part of Arlington. Defeat after defeat made no difference with Chester. He persisted with bulldog determination in his efforts to beat Merriwell at something.
Hal Darrell was annoyed by the insolent manner in which Chester forced himself among them. His eyes blazed as he said in a low tone:
“This party is made up. We’re bowling among ourselves now! When we have finished, get your friends and take the alley! Don’t butt in!”
“I am not speaking to you, sir!” retorted Chet haughtily. “I have issued the challenge to Mr. Merriwell. Perhaps he doesn’t dare accept. If that’s the case, of course I will retire.”
“Gug-gug-gug-gug-go chase yourself!” said Jolliby. “You know he isn’t afuf-fuf-fuf-fuf-fraid of you!”
“Actions speak louder than words,” said Chet. “I am here on the spot, and I have issued my challenge. I am feeling just like bowling him now, and it will show he hasn’t the nerve if he tries to put it off.”
“Dern his picter!” whispered Obediah Tubbs. “You will have to trim him, Dick. There ain’t no way out of it.”
Suddenly Dick’s mind was made up.
“One string settles it, does it, Arlington?” he asked.
“That will be all you will care for,” laughed Chet. “You will get all the satisfaction you want in one string.”
“Get off your coat,” said Dick. “I will bowl you one string.”
Among the spectators who gathered around were a few sympathizers with Chester. These chaps were in every instance dissatisfied fellows, who themselves had failed to be particularly successful at anything, through lack of determination or industry, and who were envious of others who succeeded.
Chet joyously removed his coat and hung it on a hook. He also took off his collar and tie and rolled up his sleeve, displaying his forearms.
A coin was flipped to decide who should lead off, and the lead fell on Arlington.
“Get them right on the spot, every one of them, boy!” he called to Smart.
“I will do it,” retorted Ted. “It will be such a beautiful sight to see them standing there after you roll! They will be all up for Merriwell when you get through!”
Arlington examined the balls, and picked out and placed aside two that were slightly marred. Then, having weighed several of them in his hands, he selected one and slightly dampened his fingers with the sponge.
As Chet started to roll Buckhart started to say something, but Dick silenced him with a gesture and a look.
With his eyes on the pins, Arlington balanced himself on the balls of his feet, ran lightly forward three steps, and sent the ball spinning whirringly down the polished surface of the alley. It struck the head pin squarely and cut a hole through the bunch, leaving five standing, three on one side and two on the other.
“Hard luck!” exclaimed one of the fellows who sympathized with him.
“Oh, that’s all right!” retorted Chet with supreme confidence. “I will clean them off.”
He then assumed a new position on the alley and rolled for three pins on one side. It seemed that he would hit them perfectly, but the ball missed the pin in advance by the narrowest margin and clipped off the other two.
“Now that was hard luck!” he exclaimed. “Never mind; I will take the two on the other corner and start with nine.”
“That’s the talk!” cried a spectator.
Chester rolled with care and hit the nearest pin, which set its mate swaying, and the latter finally fell.
“Nine pins!” announced Gardner, who was scoring.
“I don’t believe Smart had them on the spots,” declared Chet, standing with his hands on hips and glaring at the two pins left upright. “That ball should have taken them, sure.”
“What a shame!” cried Smart. “I am so disappointed!”
“That will do for you!” flared Chet. “While you’re setting up pins, you’re supposed to be dead!”
Arlington sat down with an air of dissatisfaction.
It was now Dick’s turn, and he was ready by the time Ted had the pins up.
Dick’s ball seemed to strike them handsomely, and he swept down eight pins, leaving, however, one standing on each corner.
“Now that was hard lul-lul-lul-luck!” came from Jolliby.
Merriwell said nothing. Picking up another ball, he took his position on the left side of the runway and prepared to try for one of the pins. As he started to bowl some of his friends uttered low exclamations of dismay, for it seemed that the wooden sphere would leave the alley four or five feet before it reached the pin. Nevertheless, this did not happen, for the ball took a pretty curve and clung to the edge of the alley until it struck the pin fairly and sent it spinning against the buffer.
“Ha!” was the cry. “He did it!”
“Well, there is one remaining on the other corner,” laughed Chet. “Let’s see him pick that off.”
“He will do it, you bet your boots!” declared Buckhart.
Dick now got into position at the right hand of the runway and rolled what is called a “cross-alley” ball. That is, he rolled the ball so that it started on the right side of the alley, crossing diagonally to the left on a perfect line for the pin at the corner. In this manner this pin was picked off, and Gardner called:
“Ten pins for Merriwell!”
“Beautiful work!” exclaimed one of the boys, while several clapped their hands softly.
“Evidently you’re going to stretch yourself, Merriwell,” laughed Arlington, maintaining that insolent atmosphere. “You will have to stretch yourself, all right, my fine fellow. I haven’t started to bowl yet.”
“You’d better start right away,” said Buckhart, whereupon Dick promptly stepped over to Brad, to whom he spoke in a low tone.
“Don’t make any talk, old man,” he said. “I have more friends here than he has, and I want him to have just as good a show as I do. If he beats me let him do it fairly; if I beat him I will do so without taking any advantage.”
“Well, you’re a whole lot scrupulous!” growled the Texan. “That galoot certain has missed no opportunity to take advantage of you.”
“Do you wish me to put myself on the same level?”
“You can’t get down to his level in a year if you try!”
The pins were up and Arlington was ready. He thrust up his right sleeve a little farther, so that the lower portion of his swelling biceps could be seen.
Chester did not use a curve, but rolled a ball with a moderate amount of speed, starting his first one in each set from the right side of the alley and sending it toward the head pin. This time he barely missed the pin in advance, and the ball lopped off the entire side of the bunch, leaving four standing on the opposite side.
“That would have been a strike if he had touched the head pin,” declared one of the spectators.
“It is a spare now,” averred Arlington, with unshaken confidence. “I can’t miss them.”
At this statement some one laughed.
“Oh, laugh away!” exclaimed Chet. “But just watch this ball a moment!”
Chester rolled his second ball. This time he used a trifle too much speed. The ball seemed to hit the head pin squarely, and the pin took one of those peculiar, freakish jumps that carried it clean over the others without touching them.
Arlington stood still in the middle of the runway with his hands on his hips, glaring at the pins.
“I’d like to have some one tell how that happened,” he finally cried.
“Hard luck!” said a voice. “You should have had your spare!”
“I know it!” growled Chet, picking up another ball.
He then did a foolish thing, for, having missed the spare, he rolled the final ball carelessly, the result being that it simply clipped off the corner pin.
In a close candlepin bowling match every point counts, and the winner often is the man who can best pick off single pins.
“Eight pins for Arlington!” said Gardner, as he recorded it on the score board, making a total of seventeen.
Dick had hard luck with his first ball, cutting two pins out of one side of the bunch.
“That’s a shame,” said Chester, laughing.
Although Dick took the greatest pains, his next ball cut out two pins on the opposite side, and left in the worst possible position the ones standing.
At this Chester laughed heartily.
“A wooster!” he shouted. “You’ll get five pins on this roll, if you’re lucky.”
Brad Buckhart was both angry and disgusted.
“Well, that was beastly luck!” he muttered.
“Pick off two of the corner ones, Merriwell, old man,” advised Barron Black, who was an interested spectator.
Dick paused a moment in consideration. He had once been able to get eight pins out of a similar break by hitting the head pin, although he knew the chances were ten to one that he could not score more than two, while the odds were decidedly against obtaining more than one in hitting them in that manner.
Nevertheless he decided to take chances and roll for all he could get. With this in his mind, he sent the third ball straight for the head pin. He gave it a twisting whirl as it left his hand, using great speed.
The head pin was struck and sent flying against the others. To the astonishment of Arlington and the surprise of every one, those pins flew in such a peculiar manner that all save one went down.
“Well, what do you think of that?” exclaimed Chet.
“I think it was great luck,” smiled Dick quietly, as he turned to sit down on the bench.
“Luck!” said Buckhart. “It was science. You hear me chirp!”
“Science!” sneered Arlington. “Why, it wouldn’t happen in a hundred times! Science, indeed!”
Gardner recorded the score on the board, the total giving Dick nineteen points and putting him two in the lead.
“I think I will have to let myself out if I am going to beat his luck with my science,” said Chet.
When the pins were up, he sent the first ball into them in such a manner that they all fell, save two. Those two were widely separated, but at one side of the alley a deadwood fell, lay spinning a moment, and then began to roll toward the other side.
“Look at that deadwood!” burst from Arlington. “Why, the confounded alley isn’t level! The left-hand corner is lower than the other, or that pin wouldn’t roll across in such a manner.”
“The left-hand corner is lower,” immediately agreed one of the spectators. “We discovered that several days ago.”
“Well, that puts a big element of chance into the game,” declared Chet. “When the pins roll like that there is no telling what may happen.”
The rolling pin, however, stopped against one of the two left standing, and Chester studied its position.
“That isn’t so bad,” he finally declared. “If I can hit that deadwood fairly I know I can get the pin it rests against, and the deadwood ought to drop the other pin. Watch me do it.”
Having called their attention in this manner, he chose his ball and with careless ease and assurance sent it straight at the end of the deadwood.
The ball did not swerve a fraction of an inch during its course down the alley. It struck the deadwood perfectly, and in a twinkling both pins were down.
Arlington had made his first spare.
Exclamations of satisfaction and applause burst from a number of the witnesses, while Dick Merriwell generously clapped his hands and said:
“That was a beautiful shot, Arlington.”
“Oh, I knew I could do it!” smiled Chester in a most conceited and lofty manner. “I can always do a thing like that when I have to. You can’t beat me at this little game, Merriwell.”
Ted Smart heard these words, even though he was standing up the pins at the far end of the alley.
“If there’s anything I admire it’s a chap that never boasts!” cried Ted. “There’s the modest fellow for you!”
“Until you finish setting up those pins you’d better be seen and not heard!” warmly retorted Arlington.
Dick followed with a handsome break, leaving only two pins standing.
“There is a spare for him,” declared Black.
“If he gets it,” said Chet instantly.
A deadwood had fallen in such a manner that it seemed certain Dick could not miss sweeping down the pins with it. While he was picking up his next ball, however, this deadwood began to roll toward the lower side of the alley, and by the time he was ready it was too far from the standing pins to be any use against them.
“Fine old alley!” laughed Arlington. “That’s how, by being out of level, it robs him of almost a sure spare.”
Dick used a curve, and again it seemed that his ball would leave the alley on the right side. Once more it curved in time to cling to the edge, but it failed to touch the pin in advance and simply removed the one on the extreme corner.
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Chet. “That’s the time he didn’t do it! The cant on the alley surely did me a good turn then. He would have made it had the deadwood remained where it fell.”
Merriwell made no complaint, but chose his third ball, and with it sent the last standing pin against the buffer, which gave him another score of ten, with a total of twenty-nine.
“Twenty-nine,” said Chester, as he rose and looked at the score board. “I must get two pins with my first ball in order to tie him. Well, here goes for eight pins.”
Crash! He sent the ball into the pins. Six fell.
“Only six!” he exclaimed, as if disappointed.
“That puts you four in the lead in the third box,” said one of the spectators.
“That ball should have been good for eight or nine,” asserted Chester.
“Dern my picter!” exclaimed Tubbs. “He beats the earth!”
“Sus-sus-sus-sixteen looks pretty good for him in that box,” stuttered Jolliby.
“Sixteen is better than the average spare,” confessed Mel Fraser, who had heard the match was taking place and hurried to the gymnasium to witness it.
“No bigger than the ordinary spare that I make,” declared Chet, wagging his head.
“Well, there is another spare for you, if you hit them right,” said Fraser.
“Oh, I will get it, all right,” promised Arlington, posing with his second ball ready. “Just watch this!”
Once more, however, his confidence was too great, and to his unspeakable disgust he missed the pins entirely.
Instantly he caught up the third ball and sent it with a snapping movement flying down the alley. This ball took off only one pin, which gave Chester seven in his fourth box and a total of forty.
“If the alley had been level, I must have made another spare with my second ball!” he growled as he sat down.
This was not true, for the ball had swerved, at most, less than half an inch in its course.
Dick slowly moistened his fingers with the sponge.
“Now let’s see him get another ten!” cried Arlington. “He can’t make all nines and tens.”
Dick’s curve was a fraction too wide, for the ball missed the head pin and gave him a poor break.
“I told you!” laughed Chet. “He couldn’t keep up that string of tens.”
Buckhart started to say something, but remembered Dick’s warning and stopped.
For all of the bad break, Merriwell sent his next ball into the pins in such a manner that they fell handsomely and only one was left standing.
“Well, he has nine!” nodded Chester. “I think he will leave that one standing.”
“You’ve got another th-th-th-th-think coming!” burst from Jolliby, as Dick picked off the tenth pin.
“Ten!” called Gardner, making the record on the board. “Thirty-nine for Merriwell in the fourth box!”
Arlington rose and stood with his hands on his hips, looking at the score board. He whistled softly.
“Thirty-nine,” he said. “Why, he’s only one behind!”
“And he hasn’t made a spare yet,” observed Barron Black.
“I see I must get down to business,” said Chester. “I have fooled with him just as long as I can.”
Having made this remark, he chose a ball and rolled.
Crash!
Every pin fell!
“A strike!” shouted Fraser.
“Well, wouldn’t that ju-ju-ju-jar you!” chattered Jolliby.
“I rather think it will jar Mr. Merriwell a little,” said Chet, as he gracefully sat down, his face wreathed in smiles.
Dick did not look disturbed. There was in his eyes that strange, grim determination so often seen there on the diamond and the gridiron.
“There’s a strike!” cried one of the watchers, as Merriwell’s first ball smashed into the pins, sending them flying.
It was not. On the corner one pin remained tottering and swaying a little until it settled and stood still.
Not a word of complaint came from Dick. Instead, he rolled his next ball with great precision, and removed the standing pin, thus getting a spare.
“That’s all right,” exclaimed Black. “It wouldn’t surprise me to see him get as many pins on his spare as Arlington does on his strike.”
CHAPTER XI. THE WINNER.
“Oh! it wouldn’t surprise you, eh?” sneered Chet. “Well, if he gets as many pins on his spare as I do on my strike, I’ll eat my hat!”
This confidence on Arlington’s part caused more than one to smile. Chester sent his first ball smashing into the pins, and five fell.
“Here’s where I get another spare!” he laughed, picking another ball from the return.
In truth, the standing pins were in such a position that a spare could be made without difficulty in case they were hit correctly. Arlington took pains to be very graceful in his movements as he sent the ball down the alley, and the mere fact that he thought of himself, without fixing his mind on the object he wished to accomplish, may have kept him from success. At any rate, he missed the pin he wished to hit and secured only two of the remaining five.
“Seventeen on his strike! Fifty-seven in all!” announced Gardner, as he jotted down Chet’s score in the fifth box.
With his last ball Chester obtained two more pins, making nine in the sixth frame, with a total of sixty-six.
“There, I guess that will hold you for a while,” he said, with a glance at Dick, as he sat down. “Let’s see you get seven pins with your first ball!”
Dick did his best, and hit the pins in what seemed to be a perfect manner, yet he secured but five of them, which gave him fifteen on his spare and fifty-four as a total in the fifth box. This left him three points behind Chester.
A moment later, however, a shout arose, for with his second ball Dick cleaned the alley.
He had made another spare.
“What do you think of that for luck?” cried Arlington.
“Luck!” burst from Buckhart. “Why, he earned it! It was good bowling.”
Rising and facing the score board, Chester saw at once that Merriwell needed only two pins on his spare to get sixty-six in the sixth box.
A grim look came to Chet’s face. At last he realized that the game was not going to be as easy as he had anticipated.
“It’s up to you to get a spare yourself, Chester,” said Mel Fraser.
“Dern my picter!” piped Obediah Tubbs. “I’ll bet he’ll need it.”
“Pretty poor bowling! Pretty poor bowling!” cried Smart, as he reset the pins.
Arlington stood quite still with his ball poised and his eyes fastened on the head pin.
Sp-rr-rr-rr—crash!
Then there was a shout, for Chester had made another strike. Instantly his look of anxiety disappeared, and he smiled again as he sat down.
“I can’t bother with spares now,” he said. “I will have to scoop a few strikes.”
“Gug-gug-gug-gug-great thutteration!” stuttered Jolliby. “This is gug-gug-gug-gug-getting almighty hot!”
Although Dick rolled with the greatest care, he made a bad break with his first ball and was able to secure only eight pins in the seventh box, making a total of seventy-four.
Arlington seemed on his mettle, for his first ball gave him eight pins, and he followed this up by cutting off the remaining two, thus making another spare, which gave him twenty in his seventh box and a total of eighty-six.
“That clinches it,” he nodded.
“Sure thing!” agreed Mel Fraser. “This is going to be a corking old string!”
Of all Dick’s friends Brad Buckhart was the only one who seemed entirely unshaken in confidence. The Texan remained firm in his belief that Dick would win.
With only three boxes to roll and Arlington twelve points ahead in the seventh box, the case looked desperate indeed. But Merriwell was one who never gave up as long as there was a shred of hope left, and now he delighted his friends by sending a graceful curve into the pins and sweeping them all down except one on the corner. This pin stood and tottered until a rolling deadwood struck it.
Then it fell!
“Whoop!” burst from the Texan, as he smote his thigh a crack. “There it is! There’s a strike for you!”
“He needs it,” said Fraser.
“Well, he has it,” retorted Buckhart. “This yere game isn’t finished yet, not by a long shot! You hear me chirp!”
Arlington was not disturbed by Dick’s success. With his nerves perfectly steady he prepared for the next effort. But he only got six pins, which gave him sixteen on his spare and a hundred and two, all told, in the eighth frame.
“Look at that! Look at that!” smiled Fraser. “There’s a score for you! One hundred and two on eight rolls! He will make a hundred and twenty!”
“I am afraid he is out of reach,” muttered Barron Black. “I am afraid Merriwell can’t touch him.”
“Hi dunno habout that,” said Billy Bradley. “There’s a chance left, don’t y’ ’now!”
“A mighty slim one!”
“Well, Dick his the boy to make hit hif hit can be done. ’Ere he goes!”
Seven pins fell with the first ball, and but one was left standing when Dick rolled the second. This gave him nineteen on his strike, with a total of ninety-three against Chester’s one hundred and two. At that point Arlington was nine points in the lead.
With the remaining ball Dick tried to secure the last pin standing, but barely brushed it, and it did not fall. At the end of the ninth the score stood one hundred and eleven to one hundred and two in Arlington’s favor.
Chester made ready for the final effort.
“He can’t beat me now,” Chet was exultantly thinking. “I have him at last!”
Then, although handicapped by a poor break, he succeeded in securing ten pins in the final box, making in all a total of one hundred and twenty-one, which was indeed splendid bowling.
“It takes nineteen to tie and twenty to win,” said Fraser. “It is settled now beyond question.”
“Wait a minute and see,” nodded Buckhart.
Barely had the pins been reset when Dick sent his first ball into them and swept them down in a twinkling, leaving not even a deadwood on the alley.
Buckhart nearly had a fit.
“I knew it!” he cried. “I was dead certain of it.”
Although Chester was somewhat disturbed, he simply shrugged his shoulders and observed:
“It is necessary for him to make nine points with his next two balls in order to tie. If he makes ten he wins.”
“He will never do it,” asserted Fraser.
“Say, if we were anywhere else, I would bet my last dollar on that!” Buckhart exclaimed. “You wait and see if he doesn’t do it!”
“Isn’t it too bad!” Smart was heard saying to himself, as he reset the pins. “How sorry I am! I hate to see him win!”
Dick picked two balls from the runway. Holding a ball in each hand, he prepared to roll.
Now there was a hush. Arlington felt his nerves quivering a little. To himself he was asking if it could be possible that Merriwell’s usual luck would stand by him and enable him to win at the finish.
With a soft, whirring sound the ball sped down the alley. When it struck the pins they flew.
“Seven!” was the shout. “Two more ties!”
“He will get ’em, too!” declared Buckhart. “He will win!”
One of the deadwoods had fallen on the higher side of the alley, while there were two in the gutter. This pin in the gutter Smart instantly removed. As he did this, the deadwood started to roll toward the lower side of the alley.
Already Dick was on the point of bowling, and he delivered his ball while the deadwood was in motion.
Arlington was on his feet now, and he saw that Merriwell’s last ball was curving gracefully toward the pins.
“He has them! He has them!” breathed Chet, in unspeakable dismay, for he felt certain the ball would hit the pins perfectly.
A moment later a groan came from some of the witnesses, for the curving ball touched the deadwood, which had rolled into its path. The ball was deflected just enough to miss the two head pins and clip off the one at the corner.
In this unfortunate manner Merriwell had been prevented from securing at least two of the pins and probably three.
Arlington had won by a single pin.
Chester’s triumph was complete, and he made the most of it. Fraser hastened to shake his hand and congratulate him.
The disappointment of Dick’s friends seemed acute, but Dick accepted defeat with the same composure that was habitual with him in times of triumph.
“You hold the record on the alley, Arlington,” he said. “One hundred and nineteen was the record before.”
“Oh, that’s a poor string for me!” asserted Chester laughingly.
Brad Buckhart was furious, but he managed to suppress his anger.
Dick slipped on his coat and walked away.
“Of all the beastly luck I ever saw!” growled the Texan, joining him. “Why didn’t you challenge him to bowl again?”
“Because our agreement at the start was that we were to roll only one string. That settled it.”
“But you should have won! You would have won only for that rolling deadwood!”
“Forget it!” smiled Dick. “It is of no consequence.”
“What? No consequence? No consequence to have that fellow beat you? Why, pard, he is not in your class at anything!”
“He is a clever fellow, Brad; you can’t deny that.”
“All the same, he can’t beat you again once out of ten times.”
“I don’t know about that. In fact, I am inclined to think your statement altogether extravagant.”
Ten minutes later Dick had changed his clothes for a gymnasium suit and came forth to engage in a fencing bout with Darrell. Both boys were clever with the foils, and soon a number of cadets were watching them. Arlington and Fraser joined the spectators.
It was a beautiful spectacle to watch the graceful movements of the two lads, and the clever work of both was applauded. Dick was beyond question the superior of Darrell, who accepted the situation with good grace.
Arlington, however, did not hesitate to comment on Merriwell’s style and work. These comments were not wholly complimentary.
“Look at that lunge!” he exclaimed derisively. “Why, any one could parry that! His wrist is stiff. He loses half his opportunities to counter.”
“Still,” observed Fraser, “he is called the best fencer in the school.”
At this Chet laughed derisively.
“Wait,” he said. “If he dares I will try him a go. Come on, and I will get into a suit.”
Arlington hastened to the dressing room, returning as soon as possible in a gymnasium suit.
Dick was resting, and Chet walked straight up to him.
“I’d like to tackle you,” he declared. “What do you say?”
“All right,” nodded Dick.
Professor Broad, instructor in gymnastics, was near at hand, and was selected to act as referee.
Once more an eager and excited throng of boys assembled to witness a contest between Arlington and Merriwell.
In Dick’s eyes there was a slight gleam of fire as the two boys faced each other. Chester was smiling in that supremely confident manner of his.
“On guard!” called Professor Broad.
At this the two lads made the graceful movement of coming on guard.
“Engage!”
The foils met with a steely, hissing sound.
“Here’s where a rolling deadwood doesn’t spoil the match,” observed Buckhart.
Chester entered into the bout in earnest, forcing the attack from the start. His movements were quick, and he was catlike on his feet. Repeatedly he lunged and recovered in time to prevent a counter.
Dick watched Arlington’s style and movements closely, seeking to discover his capabilities.
“Why, Chester is playing with him!” declared Fraser. “He is keeping him busy, too.”
“Juj-juj-juj-just you wait a bit,” stuttered Jolliby. “Merriwell hasn’t bub-bub-bub-begun yet.”
A dozen times, in scarcely more than as many seconds, Chester sought to counter on his adversary, and a dozen times he was foiled by a simple movement of Dick’s wrist. At last, like a flash of lightning, Merriwell lunged, and the button of his foil counted in quarte.
Arlington’s backward spring was made too late to avoid this. He lighted on the balls of his feet and came forward in a twinkling, seeking to catch Dick off guard after that thrust.
Once more Chester’s effort was foiled by a graceful and easy movement on Merriwell’s part. And again Dick scored, this time in prime.
“Well! well! well!” cried Buckhart. “Didn’t I say so? Didn’t I know it?”
Chester flushed and showed symptoms of anger.
“Oh, this is just the beginning!” he declared.
“If this was the real thing it would be all over for you now,” asserted the Texan. “You’d have a surgeon trying to patch you up by this time.”
“That will do,” said Professor Broad sharply. “The spectators will make no remarks.”
“Well, I opine I can think,” muttered Brad to himself.
Enraged by the success of Merriwell, Arlington continued the bout with redoubled energy. For some moments he succeeded in keeping Dick on the defensive, but all the while Merriwell was watching for another opening, which he found at last. His thrust was so swift that the eye could scarcely follow it, and he scored in second.
A savage exclamation escaped Chet’s lips.
“Play fair! Play fair!” he cried.
“I’ll call the fouls,” said the athletic instructor.
This seemed to excite and enrage Arlington more than ever, and he flung himself into the contest with great fury.
In warding off the fellow’s thrusts and avoiding his fierce attacks, Merriwell now displayed marvelous skill. He was supple as a panther and quick as a flash of light, and the look on his handsome face was that of one who conquered by mastering himself.
Chester’s breast was heaving and his lips parted. He was rapidly becoming winded through his own furious movements. When his attacks showed signs of weakening Dick began to push the engagement, and from that moment to the finish he played with Chet in a manner that revealed his superiority to every spectator. Again and again he scored without once being touched by the button on Arlington’s foil.
“I knew it!” muttered Brad Buckhart, in deep satisfaction.
At last, determined to make one count, at least, Chester risked all in a thrust which left him quite unguarded. The point of his weapon was caught by the point of Merriwell’s, and it slipped and passed through to one side until the guards of the foils touched. Then, with a single light, quick turn of the wrist, Dick snapped Chester’s foil from his hand and sent it spinning into the air. As it fell he caught it gracefully, gave it a turn in his hand, and held it hilt first toward his antagonist.
Arlington’s face grew purple with rage. With a quick movement, he seized the proffered foil, and an instant later the blade whistled through the air as he sought to strike Dick across the mask with it.
Down dropped Merriwell, his left foot sliding back and the fingers of his left hand lightly touching the floor. At the same instant he thrust, and the button of his foil struck against Chester’s padded jacket with such force that the blade was doubled into a half circle.
For all of this thrust Dick was up and away before Chet could recover.
“Try that again! Try that again!” grated Arlington.
Even as he uttered the words, while he was following Dick up, the latter once more dropped and thrust. To every one it seemed that Chester was beyond reach, yet that movement on the part of his antagonist gave Dick such a long lunge that he easily counted.
“There you have it!” whispered Buckhart, in great satisfaction.
Arlington was astounded.
“What do you think of that, professor?” he demanded. “Is it allowable?”
“Perfectly,” answered Broad.
“All right! all right!” snarled Chet, once more seeking to engage his antagonist.
By this time Arlington realized that he was in no way a match for Dick with the foils. Still he vowed to himself he would not stop until he had countered once on Merriwell.
At last Dick lowered the point of his foil in such a manner that Chester fancied the opening was such that he could not be checked.
Nevertheless, with a sidelong movement of his hand, the marvelous young fencer caught Chet’s blade and turned it so that again the foils slid past until the guards touched.
Once more there came that twisting snap of the wrist, and once more Arlington’s blade was sent spinning into the air.
Chet stood panting and baffled, making no attempt to pick the weapon up.
“I should say that was about enough,” declared Broad, who saw that Arlington was too angry to continue. “You had better try some one for whom you are more nearly a match.”
“Oh! I am a match for him,” panted Chet. “He will find it out yet!”
With that, overcome with chagrin and shame, Arlington turned and hastened to the dressing room.
CHAPTER XII. A DASTARDLY DEED.
The following afternoon there was an extra drill of Arlington’s class, in which he was compelled to take part. He detested this work, and his heart was full of envy as he stood in line with his classmates, bearing a rifle, and saw the members of the baseball team, several of whom had been excused from drill, hastening away to the ball ground.
“Oh, this is a fine old school!” he thought. “Now if I was on the baseball team I could get out of this work.”
His mind wandered so that he failed to hear the command, twice repeated, of “right dress,” and at length the cadet officer in command was compelled to speak directly to him.
“Dress, Cadet Arlington!” was the order.
Chet’s face grew crimson as he moved into line with his companions. He was destined to suffer still further annoyance, for the inspecting officer, on looking his rifle over, reprimanded him sharply for not having it in perfect order.
“What does he think!” Arlington mentally exclaimed. “Does he fancy I am going to spend my time rubbing at a useless old gun with a greased rag? That’s a fine occupation for a gentleman’s son!”
When drill was over, and he could get away, Arlington hastened toward the ball ground, arriving there to find the boys on the point of leaving. In vain he looked around for Merriwell.
“Hello, Arlington!” said Jack Harwood. “Why, you look ugly enough to chew nails!”
“I am! I am sick of a school where a lot of fellows can get excused from drill in order to put in baseball practice. I believe in using every one alike.”
“Do you?” smiled Jack. “Why, it has been hinted here that you fancy you should be used better than any one else.”
“Well, I haven’t been! I have been used worse! Merriwell is the only fellow who can do just as he pleases around here. Where is he?”
“Why, I saw him a while ago,” said Jack. “I saw him strike off to the south.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“With a ball suit on?”
“Yes.”
“Wonder where he was going?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll bet I do!” muttered Chet.
Five minutes later Arlington was also hurrying away.
“Let me catch him!” he growled. “I know where he has gone! He is playing a double game.”
Coming to the woods, he hurried along the path that led to the rustic bridge over Ripple Brook. As he approached the vicinity of the bridge he moved with great caution, coming at last to a point where he could look down along the path and see the bridge. There he suddenly halted. Leaning on the rail of the bridge, he saw Zona Desmond.
Beyond Zona, at the opposite end of the bridge, partly hidden from view, he beheld another girl in company with Dick, who was talking to her. The foliage prevented him from obtaining more than a glimpse of them, and immediately he hissed:
“I knew it! He came here to meet Doris. If ever there was a two-faced duffer, it is Merriwell; but I will fix him—I will fix him!”
Backing away a short distance, he turned and fled along the path, retracing his course. He did not stop running until he was within sight of the academy. There were some boys on the parade ground, and he hastened toward them.
“Seen anything of Darrell?” he asked.
“Why, yes,” answered one. “There he is over yonder.”
Reaching Hal, Chet touched him on the shoulder.
“I have something to tell you,” he said.
Darrell frowned.
“All right; tell away.”
“It’s private.”
“Private?”
“Yes. It will interest you, and you won’t care to have everybody hear it.”
Chet drew aside and, after a moment’s hesitation, Hal followed him. He did not trust Arlington, whom he regarded with the greatest aversion, yet something led him to listen to the fellow’s words.
“I presume,” said Chester, “you think Dick Merriwell is one of your friends? You fancy him a fine sort of a chum, don’t you?”
“We’re not chums,” retorted Hal. “We’re simply friends.”
“Oh! you’re friends, are you?” was the sneering retort. “I suppose you are such friends that you are always open and aboveboard with each other. You wouldn’t deceive each other for the world, would you? You don’t have an idea that Merriwell would fool you?”
“He is not that kind.”
“Oh! isn’t he? That shows how little you know him.”
“I am sick of this business, Arlington,” declared Darrell. “No fellow in this school has done as much for you as Merriwell. Yet you continue to backbite him. What sort of a cock-and-bull story have you faked up now?”
“Oh! I am not going to tell you any story, but if you want to see something with your own eyes that will wake you up, just follow me and get a move on.”
“I can’t waste time in chasing you about.”
“Well, you’d better—you’d better!” nodded Chet. “I will show you something that will make you sizzle.”
“What will you show me?”
“Come and see. I will prove to you by the evidence of your own eyes that Dick Merriwell is a double-faced sneak. If I don’t prove it——”
“If you don’t prove it,” said Hal grimly, “I will make you wish you had! Go ahead!”
“You will follow?” |
61830-0 |
“Yes. Lead on.”
Not a few of the boys were surprised to see Chet and Hal walking rapidly away in company. As soon as they were some distance from the academy and not liable to attract attention, Arlington started into a run.
“We must hurry!” he called. “Get a gait on you, Darrell!”
Coming to the path through the woods, they ran along this, with Chet in advance and Hal close at his heels.
“I am a fool!” thought Darrell more than once. “I know it. I ought to be kicked for taking any stock in him.”
Approaching a spot from which they might peer down the path to the bridge, Chester slackened his pace and cautioned his companion to move silently.
At last Darrell reached out and seized Chet by the collar, stopping him in his tracks.
“Now, hold on,” he said, in a low tone, “I want you to tell me just what you are going to show me.”
“You will see in a minute.”
“What is it?” demanded Hal. “I refuse to play the monkey any longer unless I know why I do it.”
“Don’t speak so loud!” whispered Arlington. “We will be in sight of the bridge in a minute. There is some one down there by the bridge, or was a short time ago.”
“Merriwell?”
“Yes.”
“Who else?”
“Oh, two girls!”
“Who are they?”
“Well, one is Zona Desmond; but she didn’t go there to meet Merriwell. She just came to accompany a chum. Now you ought to guess who the other girl is. You know who she chums with.”
Hal’s eyes gleamed.
“See here,” he said, “you don’t mean to tell me that Doris Templeton met Merriwell at the rustic bridge by appointment?”
“Don’t I?”
“Do you?”
“It looks like it. I saw them together down there.”
“I believe you lie!” grated Hal. “Why, Doris told me herself——”
Chester began to laugh.
“So she told you she would never have anything more to do with Merriwell, did she? Ha! ha! She probably thought so then; but you know how he fascinates the girls. They can’t resist him. He is a perfect sneak! He charms them!”
“Your sister——”
“Now don’t say a word about her!” harshly exclaimed Chester, in a low tone. “I’d give fifty dollars to have her here now so I could show her! I have done everything possible to break her foolish friendship with that fellow.”
Darrell felt his blood burning hot in his veins. His admiration for Doris had remained unchanged through everything, but the manner in which he believed she had “turned him down” for Dick had made him bitter and morose. At last her eyes had been opened to the fact that Merriwell admired June Arlington more than any one else, and again she had turned to Darrell. This had filled him with deepest satisfaction, and over and over he vowed Merriwell should never again interfere between them.
Now—now, what if they had met by appointment at the bridge!
“Go on, Arlington!” he said. “Hustle! Prove it—or you will wish you had!”
Once more they stole softly forward, quickly coming to the spot where the bridge could be seen.
Chester had feared the trio might have left the bridge during his absence; but his heart gave a leap of triumph as he saw they were still there. Dick was talking to both of the girls now, while Zona was idly tossing pebbles into the pool below the bridge.
“There!” panted Chet. “There they are! Now you see! Now you’re satisfied!”
Hal stood quite still for a moment, then began to retreat softly, drawing back so that he could not be seen by the three on the bridge.
Chester followed, eagerly demanding:
“What are you going to do? Aren’t you going down there and pitch into him?”
“You poor fool,” retorted Hal, in the greatest disgust. “You miserable, sneaking spy!”
“Here! here!” grated Arlington. “What do you mean by talking like that?”
“Why, you blithering idiot,” said Darrell, “that’s not Doris down there with them! That’s your own sister, June!”
Arlington stood still a moment as if turned to stone. Then he whirled and peered forth along the path toward the bridge.
Darrell had spoken the truth. In his eagerness and excitement Chester had not paused to obtain a good view of the girl with Merriwell, being convinced on seeing Zona that her companion must be Doris.
“Well, I’ll be blowed!” he growled, backing away. “I swear I thought it was Doris!”
Darrell stood looking at him, with an expression of supreme contempt on his face.
“Arlington,” he said, “you’re not only an ingrate, but you’re a liar and a sneak! That’s my opinion of you.”
“Be careful!” palpitated Chet, quivering with disappointment and rage. “I won’t stand that from any fellow!”
“You will have to stand it from me!” retorted Hal, in the same low tone. “You know it’s the truth, too! You have been lying about Merriwell, and now you play the spy upon him! Why, I thought you had reformed—and that you were going to be honorable and upright! Is this your honor? There is not a particle of decency in your miserable body! You don’t know what it is to be decent! You’re a disgrace to your sister and to your family! You are a disgrace to Fardale! I was a fool to take any stock in you and follow you here! I am ashamed of it! Here and now I quit you, and I want you to keep away from me at all times in the future!”
With that Hal turned his back on Chester and started to move away.
Shaking with rage, Arlington made two swift, silent steps and leaped on Hal’s back, grasping him by the throat and hurling him to the ground.
Hal made a desperate effort to turn on his assailant, and together they rolled over and over in the path until they came to the top of the slope, down which they plunged, crashing into the bushes at one side. Arlington’s hold was broken, but he continued fighting savagely.
The girls and Dick had been startled by the sounds, and now Merriwell came running up the path. June and Zona followed.
When Dick reached the struggling boys he found Hal holding Chet down, and was in time to see Darrell lifting his clinched fist. With a leap he seized Darrell’s fist and prevented the blow.
“Hold on, Hal!” he exclaimed. “Don’t hit him!”
June saw her brother and uttered a cry of alarm as she ran forward.
“The spy! The sneak!” grated Darrell.
“Let me up!” panted Arlington.
“Don’t! don’t—don’t strike my brother!” burst from June’s lips.
“The girls, Hal—think of the girls!” urged Dick.
“He jumped on me!” declared Chester. “He jumped on my back!”
“You liar!” hissed Darrell.
“Let him up, Hal,” urged Dick. “It’s the best thing you can do. Let him up.”
June added her pleading, and Darrell finally rose to his feet. Arlington scrambled up, livid with rage.
“You will pay for this!” he palpitated, shaking his fist at Darrell. “I will fix you for this!”
He seemed on the point of again attacking the boy he had so treacherously assaulted. June seized his arm.
“Stop, Chester—for my sake, stop!”
“For your sake!” he snarled, turning on her. “Why should I do anything for you? What do you mean by coming here to meet this duffer, Merriwell? I thought better of you! You’re a fine sister to have! I’m ashamed of you! You’re a disgrace!”
“Chester!” she gasped.
“I mean it!” he raged. “Now, you come along with me!”
Saying which he seized her roughly by the arm, giving it a jerk that made her utter a cry of pain.
That was too much for Dick, who suddenly tore him from June and sent him staggering to one side.
“Don’t put your hands on her again, Arlington!” he said, in a low tone, his eyes blazing.
“You’re crazy, Chester!” exclaimed June.
“Well, isn’t it enough to make a fellow crazy! What will your mother say when I tell her? Nice sort of a girl you are!”
Dick quickly stepped toward Chet.
“Another insulting word from your lips and you will regret it!” he declared.
Their eyes met, and for a moment there was a silent battle between them. At last Chester looked down.
“Oh, this doesn’t end it!” he muttered.
“Take the girls away, Merriwell,” urged Hal. “I’ll take care of him.”
“No, no!” panted June.
Turning his back on Arlington, Dick stepped to June’s side.
“Come,” he said, “let me take you back to the academy. He will be all right when he cools down. It isn’t safe for you to trust yourself with him now. He is beside himself with rage.”
It was quickly arranged that Hal should act as Zona’s escort, and the four set off down the path. Chester watched them a few moments and then deliberately started to follow, at the same time crying:
“You’re both cowards! Merriwell is a coward and a sneak! I dare him to come back!”
“Pay no attention to him, Hal!” said Dick.
Although they disregarded Arlington, he continued to follow them all the way through the woods.
“How did it happen?” asked June. “Why, I don’t understand it! Chester has been so good lately, and I thought he had changed.”
“How did you two come to be there, Darrell?” asked Dick.
Hal flushed.
“I will tell you sometime,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it now.”
Coming to the border of the woods where they were in full view of Lakeside Academy, Dick paused.
“I think I can handle Chester better than any one else,” he said. “I am going back. Darrell, take the girls to the academy.”
June clung to his arm.
“Dick, you—you won’t——”
“Trust me,” he said.
“I do,” she whispered. “I trust you fully, Dick.”
Arlington saw Merriwell turn back and wondered at it.
“He’s coming!” panted Chet. “I wonder what he thinks he’s going to do?”
After a moment he turned and fled along the path, and, although Dick followed at a rapid walk, Chester soon disappeared from view.
Wondering if Arlington would not stop, Dick continued to hurry along. The bridge was reached and recrossed, but nowhere could Chet be seen. Near the spot where the encounter had occurred Merriwell paused a moment.
“Strange,” he muttered. “Strange Darrell should be here with him!”
On the ground near his feet he saw a jackknife, and he stooped to pick it up. As he bent over something came whizzing through the air and struck him on the side of the head. It was a heavy stone, and Dick fell senseless to the ground.
As the stricken boy lay there the bushes were parted and a pair of eyes peered out at him. They were set in a pale, wrathful face, and the voice of Arlington muttered:
“Soaked you that time!”
Then, as Dick continued to remain motionless, Chester came creeping from the bushes and hesitatingly approached him.
“Hit him plumb on the head,” he said. “That was a big stone, too. By George! perhaps I cracked his skull!”
Drawing a little nearer and feeling a quiver of apprehension run over him, Chester bent and turned the prostrate lad upon his back. As he did so he saw a streak of blood across Merriwell’s temple.
A gasp came from the lips of the young scoundrel and he straightened up.
“Heavens!” he muttered, “I believe I have fixed him! Must have hit him fairly on the temple. If I did he’s dead, that’s all!”
Fear grew upon him as he stared at the pallid face of the unconscious lad. Bending over, he placed his hand on Dick’s breast. With a cry he started back.
“He’s dead!” he whispered. “I have killed him! Good Lord! what a scrape!”
He was trembling in every limb. Suddenly he crouched like a hunted thing and began staring around.
“No one saw me!” he whispered. “They can’t prove it! What will I do? Darrell will find him when he comes back!”
Through his mind ran a wild plan to carry the body away into the woods and conceal it somewhere. With this object in view, he again bent over Merriwell; but suddenly terror seized him to such an extent that he could not touch the silent figure.
“No, no!” he half screamed, as he quickly drew back. “I can’t do it—I can’t! I won’t put my hands on him again!”
With his heart pounding furiously in his bosom, he began to retreat, his eyes still fixed on the boy he had so treacherously struck down. Step by step, foot by foot, he backed away. The bushes closed around him. He paused a moment to take a last look at that still form and then vanished.
With a feeling of horror and guilt growing upon him, he hurried away into the silent woods. Now and then he cast an apprehensive glance backward over his shoulder, for time after time he felt that the spirit of the lad he had slain was following him.
“They will call it murder!” he groaned. “But I’ll deny it! I’ll swear I never did it! How can they prove it against me?”
The woods grew thicker and thicker. Finally he found himself crashing and floundering through a dense jungle. Before him the tangled bushes seemed to bar his way, and, as he sought to force a passage, they resisted and held him back.
“You can’t stop me!” he snarled. “You can’t hold me! I know what you are trying to do. You want him to catch me!”
At length he paused, panting and exhausted. For some moments he stood listening to the silence of the forest. Behind him at a distance a twig snapped. It seemed as loud as a pistol shot, and he gave a great start.
“He’s coming! he’s coming!” he palpitated, and then tore his way through the tangled underbrush. The branches whipped his face and tore his clothes. He tripped and fell on his hands and knees. He crept onward. Finally he sank on his stomach, prostrate on the dank ground, where he lay trembling and breathing heavily. Somewhere in the dense wood a tree toad piped mournfully.
“Peep! peep! peep!” cried the little fellow, and there was unutterable sadness and lamentation in the sound.
“Dry up!” whispered the haunted lad. “Be still and let me listen!”
But the only voice he could hear, save that of the tree toad, was the voice of his conscience, which seemed to whisper over and over:
“You’re a murderer! You’re a murderer!”
“Who says so?” he almost shouted. “It’s a lie! It’s a lie! I am not a murderer!”
But a gloomy echo answered:
“Murderer!”
CHAPTER XIII. FORCED TO FIGHT.
Until the shadows began to deepen and night was close at hand, Chet lay hidden in the thicket.
“I am getting what is due me,” he finally confessed. “No fellow ever treated me better than Merriwell has. What a fool I have been! It’s too late now—too late! I may as well go forth and confess. Let them hang me; what do I care!”
Then the horror of the scaffold, the shadow of which seemed upon him, made his blood run cold through all his body.
“They won’t hang me!” he half sobbed. “Why, they can’t! My father is a rich man! He will save me! They will never hang the son of D. Roscoe Arlington!”
But still, although he kept telling himself over and over that he would escape such a fate, the benumbing fear of it would not leave him.
“What a disgrace it will be to my mother! And June—how can she bear it! Poor June! Never any fellow had a better sister. But how have I treated her! This very day I insulted her before Merriwell and Darrell. Oh, if I could begin over again! But it is too late—too late!”
Then he noted that darkness was coming on, and the shadows added to his terror.
“I can’t stay here any longer,” he said. “I must get out of the woods.”
Wearily he dragged himself to his feet and forced his way through the thicket. Again the branches whipped against him and tore at his clothes. At times, with savage rage, he snatched himself free from the clinging twigs.
At last the darkness grew so great that the wretched lad feared he would be unable to find his way out of the wood. This fear seemed to give him new energy, and he plunged on and on, escaping at length from the jungle-like thicket and finally coming to the edge of the timber.
In the west, where the sun had vanished, there was a faint, reddish tinge as of a conflagration. Overhead the sky was dark and grim.
“There is the academy,” he murmured, as he saw gleaming lights in the distance. “Shall I go back there? What shall I do? I might run away, but it would do no good. They would overtake me. They would know then that I was guilty. If I go back I may be able to bluff it through. What a fool I was! Why didn’t I rob Merriwell of his trinkets and money and bury them somewhere in the woods? Then they might think it was done by a tramp. But it is too late for that now.”
It was difficult, indeed, for him to return to the academy, but he set his teeth and started on a run. Across the fields he went, leaping the fences. In this manner he finally came into the road not far from the academy and unexpectedly ran fairly into a number of boys who were walking along that road.
“Whoop!” cried one. “Whoever is this yere galoot? Whoever is this rambling maverick?”
Chester was seized by several hands, but he attempted to break away.
“Let me alone!” he cried. “Mind your own business!”
“What?” roared the voice of Buckhart. “Chaw me up! I opine I recognize that musical voice. See here, pard, here’s the fine gent you’re looking for.”
Then Arlington came near swooning, for, in spite of the darkness, he saw before him Dick Merriwell. And around Dick’s head there was a white bandage.
“So it’s you!” exclaimed Dick, confronting his enemy. “And you are the whelp who struck me down in the woods! I am looking for you!”
“You’re a liar!” instantly cried Chester. “I haven’t touched you!”
“Fighting talk, pard!” said Buckhart.
“Oh, yes!” sneered Chester, “you want to force a fight on me, do you? That’s Merriwell’s game, is it? He has a lot of his friends with him, and I am alone. I will fight him, but give me a fair show. Let me have some of my friends with me. I will fight him any time.”
“I will meet you in Chadwick’s pasture in an hour,” said Dick.
“I will be there!” hotly retorted Chester. “And I will have some friends with me.”
“I will bet a bunch of longhorns he won’t come,” said the Texan.
“You’re a liar, too!” blazed Chet. “I tell you I’ll be there!”
“We will take his word for it,” came quietly from Dick. “If he doesn’t keep the appointment—well, we’ll know what to think of him then.”
Before the expiration of an hour Dick and his companions crossed Chadwick’s pasture and descended into the little hollow where so many encounters had taken place. With Merriwell were Buckhart, Smart, Jolliby, and Tubbs.
“By Jim!” exclaimed Obediah, “I am hungry! Anybody got a pie in his pocket?”
“You don’t mean a pup-pup-pup-pie?” asserted Jolliby. “What you need is a dud-dud-dud-drink. How would some whisky gug-gug-gug-go?”
“I don’t drink whisky,” piped the fat boy. “It takes the coat off a fellow’s stomach.”
“Worse than that,” chuckled Smart. “It takes the coat off a fellow’s back.”
“I think this yere is a fool piece of business, anyhow!” growled the Texan. “I’ll bet Arlington doesn’t show up. He certain knows he is about to get a good trimming if he does, and he is not looking for that.”
“I think he will be here,” said Dick quietly.
“Well, it’s about time he was here now. Where is he?”
“Wait and sus-sus-sus-see,” advised Jolliby. “I didn’t suppose Dick would fuf-fuf-fuf-fight him, anyhow.”
“I don’t know what you think I am made of, Jolliby,” said young Merriwell grimly. “I have stood almost everything from Arlington, but the time has passed for me to stand any more. He struck me down in the wood. What could I do about it? If I reported it, it is possible he would be expelled. In that case he would think me afraid of him. Even now, because of his sister’s sake I have stood so much, he seems to fancy I fear him. I have got to get that out of his head.”
Buckhart laughed.
“You will get it out of his head all right to-night if he shows up.”
The sound of voices now came to their ears, and several persons were seen approaching through the darkness.
“Here they cuc-cuc-cuc-come!” whispered Jolliby.
There were four of them, as Dick and his friends saw when the approaching party drew nearer. One fellow advanced quickly and spoke to them.
“I see you’re waiting,” he said. “Arlington is ready, too.”
It was Mel Fraser.
“Yes, we’re waiting,” said Brad. “Let him strip and get into gear. We will settle this thing in a hurry.”
“He is all ready without stripping,” asserted Fraser. “He don’t need to take off his coat. Here he is.”
He made a motion toward one of his companions, who stepped out from the others.
Dick tossed his coat aside and announced his readiness.
“Fly at it!” exclaimed Buckhart. “And may the best man win!”
A moment later the two met and the fight was on.
Although the moon was obscured by clouds, there was a faint, hazy light that enabled the spectators, by pressing close, to watch the struggle.
“Get into it, pard!” growled Buckhart.
“Go for him, Arlington!” cried the companions of Dick’s antagonist. With the bandage showing plainly about his head, Merriwell circled round his enemy, moving to the left. No word came from the lips of the other lad.
There was a moment of sparring, and then Merriwell’s foe closed in swiftly, leading with a blow at Dick’s head.
Dick ducked and tried to counter on the fellow’s body, but was blocked.
“That’s the stuff, Arlington!” shouted Fraser. “Keep him going! Keep after him!”
During the next few moments Dick busied his antagonist to such an extent that the fellow had no chance to keep after him. Indeed, it was with considerable difficulty that he avoided the varied attacks made upon him.
Nevertheless, his defense was so skillful that Merriwell was somewhat astonished.
“Arlington has been taking lessons,” he decided. “This is not his style of fighting.”
Finally Dick received a blow on the shoulder that jarred him slightly, and the enemy sought to follow up the slight advantage thus gained. In doing so, he left an opening that Merriwell improved, and a sudden cry rose from the spectators, for, following the smack of a hard fist, one of the fighters went down.
“It is Arlington, by Jim!” squeaked Tubbs. “Dick soaked him a good one that time!”
“You bub-bub-bub-bet your life!” chattered Jolliby.
The fellow recovered in a twinkling and sprang to his feet. Dick was waiting, and they went at it again with still greater fury. Round and round they circled, their feet sounding thuddingly on the solid ground.
The spectators grew more and more excited. Buckhart was in a perfect fever.
“Put your brand on him! Put your brand on him!” palpitated the Texan.
“Don’t hit him!” entreated Smart. “It would be a shame to hit him!”
“Keep him going, old man!” urged Fraser. “He’s up against the real thing to-night.”
The fight was so fast and furious that it kept every spectator on edge. Once or twice the circle was forced to fall back swiftly to get away from the struggling lads. Several times Dick’s antagonist sought without success to close with him, but seemed at last to accomplish his object.
“Down with him!” hissed Fraser.
But it was not Dick who went down. He managed to twist his opponent over his hip and throw him heavily. Immediately he rose to his feet and waited for the other to get up.
“Why didn’t you soak him when you had him?” asked Brad.
“I can’t hit a chap when he is down,” declared Dick.
“Give him the same chance at you and see what he will do!”
“That makes no difference to me.”
The fallen boy rose slowly, but was at Dick in a twinkling as soon as he reached his feet. Apparently he sought to take Merriwell by surprise, rushing unexpectedly and savagely. However, he was the one surprised, for Merriwell’s hard fist struck him a blow that stopped him in his tracks. His hands fell for a moment, and Buckhart palpitated:
“Now! now—put him out!”
Dick might have struck the final blow, but for some reason he held his hand, giving the other time to recover.
After that, Merriwell’s enemy was wary and cautious for several seconds. Dick followed him up and pressed the fight, but was given no good opening for a telling blow.
“Waugh!” growled the Texan. “I certain don’t understand this yere pard of mine any. Here that galoot soaks him on the head and knocks him silly, but he continues to let him have more than an even show in this go.”
“Dick always fuf-fuf-fuf-fights fair,” said Jolliby.
Merriwell’s foe seemed to recover rapidly, for soon he was once more meeting Dick halfway, and the fight seemed fiercer than ever.
This kind of battle could not last long, for some time one or both of the boys were bound to weaken. Plainly, it was a struggle in which staying power must tell.
In the end Dick’s splendid condition and fine training told. His foe was breathing heavily, although persisting in the same fierce style of fighting.
Several times Dick tried to end the encounter with a telling blow, but the skill of the other chap enabled him to avoid this until his wind began to fail. Finally Merriwell forced his enemy to retreat and kept close after him.
“It’s all over!” half laughed Buckhart, as Dick struck Arlington repeatedly. “There he goes!”
Even as the words were spoken, Dick landed a sledge-hammer blow on the jaw of his antagonist, and Arlington went down like a log.
“I knew it!” declared the Texan.
The fallen chap did not stir.
“Give me a match,” cried Dick. “Quick—give me a match!”
Some one thrust a match into his fingers, and he struck it, protecting the blaze with his hands and throwing the light full on the face of the chap who lay prone on the ground.
“Look!” he cried. “Here’s the Chester Arlington I’ve been fighting!”
Then there were many exclamations of astonishment, for it was seen that the fellow was not Arlington at all, although he wore Arlington’s clothes and was built very much the same as Chester.
“Dern my picter!” piped Obediah Tubbs, in astonishment. “What kind of a gol-dinged game is this?”
“Cuc-cuc-cuc-crooked work!” burst from Jolliby. “Where is Mel Fraser?”
But Fraser had backed away, and now he suddenly took to his heels and fled.
“Here, you!” growled one of the fallen chap’s companions. “Let him alone! We will take care of him!”
“Whoop!” roared Buckhart.
“You will take care of him, will you? Well, I opine we will take care of you. Get into them, fellows!”
Instantly he went at them, and he was followed by Jolliby and Tubbs, who were fierce with rage and indignation at the trick.
The young toughs could not stand before such an assault, and they, like Fraser, turned and fled. Tubbs would have pursued, but he tripped and fell heavily, upon which all stopped, permitting the fleeing boys to escape.
“Well, of all the low-down tricks I ever heard of this takes the prize!” declared the Texan. “What do you think of it, pard? It’s mighty queer you didn’t tumble.”
“I did,” said Dick.
“When?”
“Some time before the finish. I saw his style of fighting was not like Arlington’s.”
“Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you let us know?”
“It was too late then. There was but one thing to do, and I did it. Arlington’s proxy got what was coming to Chester.”
“Hang a sus-sus-sus-sneak!” cried Chip. “Confound a cuc-cuc-cuc-coward! That’s what Arlington is! He didn’t dare fuf-fuf-fuf-fight you!”
“Oh, don’t say such hard things about him!” half sobbed Smart. “See how kind and self-sacrificing he was. He permitted another fellow to take his place and enjoy the pleasure of this little scrap. Wasn’t that splendid of him? Wasn’t it perfectly fine?”
“I hope this chap isn’t hurt much,” said Dick; and as he uttered the words the fellow stirred and attempted to sit up.
“By Jim! I guess he is all right,” said Tubbs.
“Dud-dud-dud-do you know him, Dick?” asked Chip.
“I have seen him. He is well known in town. His name is Moran.”
“Yes, that’s my name,” acknowledged the fellow. “Where are the others? Where’s my gang?”
“The whole bunch stampeded,” answered Brad.
Moran was surprised and disgusted.
“They’re a fine lot,” he muttered. “Look here! what sort of a slugger did I go against? Arlington told me the fellow would be easy.”
“Well, you’re a fine specimen,” growled the Texan. “Whatever were you trying to celebrate?”
“I got the coin, and I reckon I earned it, too,” was the retort.
“So Arlington paid you for this job, did he?” questioned Dick.
“Sure thing! But I made a mistake. I put the price too low.”
Merriwell’s indignation was unbounded.
“You’re lucky to get off so easy,” he declared.
“Easy!” exclaimed Moran. “Why, you t’umped me up in fine style. Where did you learn to handle your dukes that way? I am the champion of Fardale, but you’re too much for me.”
“Dern your picter!” said Tubbs. “What you need is a coat of tar and feathers.”
“No,” said Jolliby. “That’s wh-wh-wh-what Arlington needs.”
Moran slowly rose to his feet.
“Anyhow, I have got a good suit of clothes out of him,” he said. “That will help pay the extra for the slugging I went against. But that don’t settle it; he will hear from me again. He lied to me; you bet I will soak him for it, too!”
“Now, that’s where you’re talking, stranger,” nodded Brad. “If you agree to soak him good and plenty we will let you off; otherwise, it’s up to us to finish this job.”
“Let me alone and see if I don’t put it all over him the first chance I get. I swear I will, or my name is not Tom Moran!”
“Please don’t hit him,” entreated Smart. “That would be too bad.”
“Oh, I won’t hit him,” growled the fellow. “I will just knock the stuffing out of him!”
“All right,” said Dick. “We’ll let you go with that understanding.”
CHAPTER XIV. A RECKLESS YOUTH.
Chester did not return to the academy that night. This was nothing remarkable, for his mother had made arrangements which enabled him to frequently stop with her without obtaining permission. A written excuse from Mrs. Arlington was all that Chester needed to present in case of such infringements on the rules of the school.
Nevertheless, when he failed to appear the following day, Fraser worried, and knew that more than the ordinary excuse would be required from him.
Dick watched in vain for Arlington. Obtaining leave the following evening, he went into town. He contemplated calling at Mrs. Arlington’s before returning to the academy, with the intention of asking June about her brother.
The necessity of doing this was avoided, for, as he was leaving the post office, he saw June pass on the opposite side of the street. She was alone, and immediately Dick hastened after her. To his surprise, she turned into the street that led toward the harbor. Wondering where she could be going, he followed, until the crest of the small hill was reached, and the harbor lights lay twinkling beyond.
By this time she had discovered that some one was behind her, and Merriwell noticed that she quickened her steps. Immediately he made haste to overtake her, at the same time calling her name.
In surprise she stopped.
“Is it you, Dick?” she exclaimed. “Why, I saw some one coming, and I was afraid.”
“Afraid, June? Then why did you choose this street? Why did you come this way alone? I was surprised when I saw you take such a course.”
She seemed at a loss for a reply.
“Surely you know this part of the town is not safe for you to be in after dark without an escort?” he said.
“My mother’s yacht is down there,” she murmured. “I didn’t know but what I might find Chester on——”
“He has not appeared at the academy to-day, June.”
“I know it. He told me he was not going back there to-day.”
“Then you saw him?”
“Yes. He came to the house near noon. I was surprised to see him. Oh, Dick, I am afraid it is no use. I am afraid Chester may as well leave Fardale.”
“Perhaps it would be better for him,” Dick admitted.
“But father should know—father should take him in hand. If he goes away of his own accord, as he has threatened, there is no telling what he may do.”
“You fear that he is contemplating something of the kind?”
“I do. He must be kept here a little longer. Mother expects father to come on in a week or two.”
“In your anxiety about your brother, June, you are rashly venturing into a dangerous part of the village. Better wait until morning before seeking him.”
“I can’t!” she exclaimed. “I am sure he is again with bad companions. I can’t ask you to do anything more for me.”
“But I will do anything for you, June. Let me see you safely home, and then I will try to find your brother.”
“Oh! will you?”
“I give you my promise.”
“Dick! Dick! you have done so many things for me. I am grateful, be sure of that.”
“Don’t talk about gratitude, June. Come, let’s turn back.”
She permitted him to accompany her until they were again in the vicinity of the post office. There she paused and begged him to leave her and go in search of Chester. This he finally consented to do.
Passing once more over the hill, Merriwell came again into the disreputable portion of the village, wondering if Arlington could be found on board his mother’s yacht, and, if so, how he could be approached.
Passing one of the cheap saloons of that locality Dick paused, for to his ears came the sound of singing. The voice was a melodious one, and he was sure he recognized it as that of the boy he sought. The song was a reckless drinking melody, and the singer was joined when it came to the chorus by several hoarse voices, roaring as follows:
"We’ll send her round again, boys, So drink your bumpers dry; “Whisky was made for men, boys, And men will drink and die!”
“He is in there,” muttered Dick, “and it is plain he is carousing with a lot of desperate characters.”
Approaching the place, Dick quickly discovered why he had heard the singing so plainly, for a window stood open. He did not enter, but passed round the corner and paused near this window, where he looked into the low, smoky barroom. It was a sailor’s resort, and a number of rough-looking men were inside.
Standing in front of the bar, glass in hand, was Chester Arlington, swaying slightly as he sang the second stanza of the drinking song.
Again the sailors joined in the chorus, some of them thumping the tables at which they were seated, while Arlington beat time in an extravagant manner.
As they finished, Arlington hurled his glass, liquor and all, crashing against the wall.
“That’s the stuff!” he cried. “It takes men to drink fire-water. It’s not pap for babies. I know a chap who thinks he is a man, and who is proud because he doesn’t drink. Bah! he makes me sick. I’d like to fill him to the chin. I’d like to put him under the table. Have another one on me, boys! Set ’em up, Johnnie, old man—set ’em up!”
“You’re all right, my hearty!” huskily cried one of the sailors, reeling up and slapping Chet on the shoulder.
“Look here, my friend,” said Chet, bracing with his feet wide apart and giving the sailor a savage look, “don’t get so free with me. I will treat you all right, but keep your distance. I am Chester Arlington! I am the son of D. Roscoe Arlington. My mother’s yacht lies off Gibb’s wharf.”
“You’re all right,” reiterated the sailor. “’Scuse me. Didn’t mean anything particular. You spend your money.”
“You bet your life I do! I know how to spend it. I know how to live while I live. I don’t dry up and die, and think I am still living. Say, Johnnie, this is awful booze. Haven’t you anything better?”
“This is good enough for my customers,” answered the bartender. “They don’t kick. You claim to be a man, and this is the sort of stuff men drink.”
“All right; I can drink as much as anybody else.”
He dashed off the vile stuff that was provided, then crossed the door toward the window, where two or three men were sitting at a table.
Already Dick had recognized one face at the table as that of Tom Moran.
“Hello, boys!” said Chet, as he dropped on a chair. “What’s the matter with me? I’m all right! Who said I was intoxicated?”
“Not a soul,” laughed Moran. “Certainly, you’re all right.”
“Rotten bad booze, just the same,” asserted Chet. “Wouldn’t I like to drive a quart of that stuff into Dick Merriwell! He is a model chap, he is. He never drinks. If I had him where I wanted him I’d make him drink and I’d make him smoke. Have a cigarette?”
Fumblingly Chester produced a package of cigarettes, which he offered to his companions, none of whom accepted.
“All right,” he said; “I will smoke alone. Have cigars on me? Johnnie, give these gentlemen cigars.”
Cigars were provided, and all began to smoke.
“Wish I had Merriwell where I could get my hands on him to-night,” growled Chet, thumping the table. “Captain Long’s ashore, and I can run the old yacht myself. I’d like to get Merriwell onto her. I’d carry him out to sea, and I’d fill him to the muzzle.”
“When does Long return?” asked Moran.
“He won’t be back for two days. Gone to New York on business. Old lady sent him. Sailors will stand by me. They’ll do anything I want them to do—all but that dago, Tony. He can’t be trusted. Can’t trust a dago, anyhow. Say, you fellers! will you stand by me? I’ll pay. I can get the coin. Will you help me shanghai this Merriwell? I will fix it up somehow; I will get him in the trap. We’ll run him off.”
“Why, of course,” said one of the sailors. “You can count on this crowd for anything.”
“Then I’ll do it!” vowed Chet, again striking the table. “You bet your life! I know how. I’ll fake up a letter from my sister. I’ll make appointment for him, and we’ll jump on him. Then we’ll sack him onto the yacht and give him a little cruise. That’s the stuff! He’ll smoke cigarettes! He’ll drink booze before I am through with him!”
In his present condition any sort of a wild scheme seemed feasible to Arlington.
“You ought to have it in for him, Tom,” he said, nodding at Moran. “You bear marks of his knuckles on your mug now.”
“That’s right!” growled the young bruiser; “but you told me he was easy!”
“Ought to have been easy for you. You ought to do him up without half trying. Wait till we get him on the yacht. Then you can thump him if you want to. Then you can get square with him. What do you say?”
“Go ahead,” said Moran. “Give me the chance.”
“I’ll fix it,” averred Chet. “I’ll soak him if it is the last thing I ever do around here! Might as well get out of this old town, anyway! Got to leave this rotten old school! When I do leave I want to have Merriwell fixed so he can’t hold up his head again and say he don’t drink and don’t smoke. If it wasn’t for Tony we’d be all right. I can depend on the rest of the crew. Where’s Lazaro? He is my right-hand man. He ought to be here now. Where is he?”
No one seemed to know.
“Told him to be here,” Chet mumbled, dropping his cigarette and looking around in vain for it.
While he was searching for the cigarette a slim, dark-faced man entered and approached the table.
“Here comes Tony,” said one of the sailors.
Arlington braced up and stared at the newcomer.
“Who invited you?” he demanded.
“I beg da pard, Mist’ Arlington,” said the Italian, respectfully touching his cap. “I t’ink I better tella you. Nobod’ on da yacht. I t’ink you better know. Mebbe your mother no lika it.”
“What’s that to you, you dago dog!” snarled Chet. “You pay attention to your own business!”
Instantly the dark face of the Italian grew darker and his black eyes glittered.
“Tony no dago doga!” he hissed. “He no gita drunk! He minda his bis’!”
“What’s that?” growled Chet, pushing back from the table.
“Your sist’ very fina girl,” asserted the Italian. “You maka her feel very bada. You ought to be ashameda.”
Somehow Arlington managed to throw off, for a moment, the effects of the liquor, and he rose quickly to his feet, taking a single step. Evidently Tony was unprepared for what happened, for he fancied Chester was too intoxicated to do anything of the sort. At any rate, he could not avoid Arlington’s blow, which made him stagger.
“You cur!” snarled the enraged youth. “Don’t dare speak of my sister! Don’t dare refer to her!”
With a savage Italian oath, Tony plunged his hand into his pocket, and the lights flashed on a glittering blade of steel, which his shaking fingers brought forth.
Fortunately for Arlington, the two sailors and Tom Moran seized the enraged Italian.
“Leta go! Leta go! He strika me!”
“Put up that knife!” growled one of the men. “Do you want to hang?”
“He strika me!” palpitated Tony, struggling to get at Chet.
The sight of the knife caused Chester to pale a little and shrink away.
“Hang onto him!” he ordered. “Don’t let the murderous fellow break away from you!”
One of the sailors attempted to reason with the Italian, but it was some moments before Tony quieted down and put up the knife. By that time several others had taken a hand, and there was no possibility that the infuriated Italian could reach Chester.
As soon as he saw this, Arlington once more became bold and reckless in his manner, and applied several scornful epithets to Tony.
“Get out of here, now!” he commanded. “Go back to the yacht and stay there!”
Without a word the Italian turned and left the saloon.
Dick had been prepared to leap through the window to Arlington’s protection in case it was necessary, and he was relieved when the affair terminated in this manner. At the same time, he felt that Chester had made a desperate and bitter enemy in Tony.
When the Italian was gone Arlington sat down at the table and once more ordered drinks.
“I will have that fellow discharged,” he declared.
“If you don’t,” said Moran, “the chances are that he will stick a knife between your shoulders some dark night.”
“Oh, I am not afraid of the dog!” averred Chet. “I am afraid of no one! The man doesn’t live that I am afraid to face!”
“How about Dick Merriwell?” inquired Moran.
“Why, I don’t give a rap for him! He’s a common bruiser, and that’s why I don’t fight with him! I paid you, didn’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Well, what are you kicking for? You have no kick coming. Drink up.”
By this time Dick had decided that it would be anything but an easy task to get Arlington away from his companions while in such a condition. He could not return and tell June, and he was wondering what could be done when suddenly, without the least warning, he was struck to the ground by some one who had noiselessly approached from behind.
CHAPTER XV. A FRIEND IN NEED.
Bound hand and foot, Dick Merriwell lay on the floor of the deck of Mrs. Arlington’s yacht and heard Chester giving orders which indicated that he meant to put out from the wharf and leave the harbor as soon as the engineer could get up steam.
Dick had been carried there by his captors, who, after striking him down, bound him firmly before he could recover and resist.
Chester came and stood near him, swaying a little as he looked down at the unlucky youth.
“Got you this time, Merriwell,” he declared thickly. “So you were sneaking around and looking into the windows, were you? Well, you made a bad mess of it. Where’s Lazaro?”
“Here, sir,” answered a voice, and a man approached.
“Lazaro, you’re all right!” asserted Chet. “Lazaro, you’re a dandy! How did you happen to spot him, Lazaro?”
“I saw some one standing near the window. The light shone on him. He seemed to be listening and watching. I crept near. Then I saw it was the fellow you had pointed out to me. I hit him with my sand bag.”
“Good boy, Lazaro—good boy!” cried Chet. "I hit him with something harder than a sand bag a short time ago, but he has a hard head. Can’t knock him out very easy. We’ll give him a little sea voyage. I’m dry.
“Whisky was made for men, boys, And men will drink and die.”
“Arlington,” said Dick, “you’re intoxicated. You had better wait a while before carrying out your foolish plan. What good will it do you?”
Chester laughed recklessly.
“Oh, it’s great sport!” he declared. “You will enjoy it. We will make you enjoy it. You don’t know what it is to be a man and drink and smoke like a man, do you? Well, I will teach you. Lazaro, tell that fool engineer to hurry up with his steam.”
“He is doing his best, Mr. Arlington. We will cast off directly.”
“Here, you chaps!” called Chet. “Some of the sailors come here. I want you!”
They approached.
“Take this fellow and lug him into the cabin,” was the command. “Dump him down on the floor and let him lay there.”
Dick was lifted and carried below. After a few minutes Chet came stumbling down the companionway and entered the cabin. He was followed by Tom Moran.
“Here he is, Moran,” chuckled the reckless boy. “Here’s the proud and mighty Mr. Merriwell. He is very quiet now.”
“He seems to be,” said Moran.
“He is the chap who gave you those marks. Take it out of him if you want to, I don’t care.”
“Why, I can’t do that when he is tied and helpless,” said Moran.
“Can’t you? Well, now that’s funny. I thought you were just fierce to get at him? I thought you were just palpitating to hammer him?”
“Not this way,” said Chet’s companion, shaking his head.
“What if I order you to?” asked Arlington.
“It won’t do you any good,” grimly answered the young bruiser. “I fights square when I fights, |
61830-0 | and I don’t punch up any man who can’t punch back.”
“Ho! ho! ho!” laughed Chet. “All right. You will enjoy my little picnic with him. What do you think of a chap who thinks he is better than other people because he doesn’t drink, or smoke, or swear, or have any bad habits? He’s never tasted of liquor, and boasts of it. Well, he will get a taste to-night. You bet your life! Within an hour he will be drunk as a fool. Where’s Lazaro?”
“Here, sir,” answered a voice, and Lazaro appeared.
“I want some whisky, Lazaro. Do you know where the keys of the wine locker are kept?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Well, get them.”
“Captain Long——”
“Hang Captain Long! I am captain now! I want those keys!”
“Very well, sir.”
Chester lighted a cigarette and puffed at it.
Dick was sitting up now, with his back against a locker.
“Get hold of him, Moran!” ordered Arlington. “Let’s sit him up where we can look at him.”
The captive was lifted to a seat on the locker.
“There you are,” said Chet, standing in front of Dick, with his feet apart and puffing at the cigarette. “How do you like the smell of this?”
He blew a whiff of smoke into Dick’s face.
“Never smoke, eh? Well, you bet you will smoke to-night! Here, confound you! take this and smoke, if you don’t want to be skinned alive!”
He attempted to thrust the cigarette between Dick’s lips, but it fell to the floor. In trying to pick it up, he fell awkwardly himself, and Moran assisted him to his feet.
“Where’s Lazaro?” he demanded. “Why, the keys ought to be right here! Where’s he gone?”
“I don’t know,” answered Moran.
“Well, I’ll find him! I’ll find him! I want the keys! I want to get at that booze!”
Staggering a little, he left the cabin and stumbled up the companionway to the deck, leaving Moran alone with Dick.
As soon as Chester was gone and Moran felt sure he was alone with Dick, he spoke in a low tone:
“That drunken fool is crazy, Merriwell. He is bound to get us all in a bad mess. I am willing enough to drink his liquor and take his money; but he is going too far to suit me.”
“What are you going to do about it?” asked Dick quietly.
“Well, I am not going to see him carry this thing much farther,” asserted the other. “He thinks I am a chump. He doesn’t know that I am dead sore on him. Your little finger is more of a man than the whole of his worthless body.”
“Thank you!” returned Merriwell, with a grim smile. “But that does me little good. Whoever tied me up this way certainly fixed me good and solid. I have tried my best to get my hands free, but I can’t budge them.”
“See here,” said Moran, “the whole crew is drunk and reckless. If I am caught—well, I don’t care, I will chance it. Here, let me get at those cords! Quick!”
Dick turned on the locker so that Moran was able to get at the cords which bound the captive boy’s hands behind his back. Working swiftly, the young bruiser loosened the cords until it seemed certain that Dick could free himself with a very small effort.
“Now let them be just that way,” said Moran. “They will think you are all safe and solid. When the time comes I’ll get you out of this.”
“I will see that you lose nothing by it,” promised Dick.
“Oh, that’s all right. I ain’t——Keep still! Here he comes!”
Chester was heard talking to some one as he once more stumbled down the companionway, and he was followed by Lazaro and two sailors on entering the cabin. He had the keys, and in a few minutes the wine locker was opened and a bottle of whisky produced.
“Now,” cried Chet, “we will all drink! Mr. Merriwell will take a drink! I have brought some men with me who will see that he takes a drink! If he refuses they will strip him and give him a taste of the rope’s end.”
Glasses were brought out and Arlington filled them, spilling much of the whisky in doing so. His condition was both pitiful and disgusting.
“Now, Mr. Merriwell,” he said with sarcastic dignity—"now, Captain Merriwell, I invite you to drink with me. I am sure you won’t refuse. Lazaro, hold the whisky to the young gentleman’s lips. Let him taste the kind of stuff that real men drink. It will do him good. See that he drinks it. Make him drink it! Confound him! Drive it into him!"
Lazaro took a glass of the stuff and started to obey.
“Wait!” commanded Chet. “Come to think of it, I would like that job myself. I want to be the first person to put a drink into him. Give me the booze.”
In taking the glass from Lazaro’s hand he dropped it, and the stuff was spilled as the glass smashed on the floor.
“Never mind that; plenty more,” laughed Arlington. “Give him another geyser! Fill her up!”
Another glass of liquor was handed him, and he stepped in front of Dick, who was vainly trying to catch his eye.
“Oh, you’re a wonder, you are!” sneered Chet. “You think you can make me obey you just when you want to, but I know you. I know better than to let you catch me this time. Here, you, drink—hang you, drink!”
He bent over and held the glass to Dick’s lips.
“Drink!” he again snarled.
Merriwell’s lips remained firmly closed.
“Won’t you!” grated Chester. “I bet you will! I know you will! I will choke you till you do it!”
With his left hand he seized Dick by the throat.
A moment later Merriwell rose to his feet, tearing his hands free, and struck Chet a blow that sent him clean across the cabin. With his feet still bound, Dick was unable to follow up this advantage.
Chester recovered and gave a cry to Lazaro and the sailors:
“Jump on him! Down him!” he panted.
As they started toward Merriwell another surprising thing happened, for Tom Moran suddenly produced a pistol, which he leveled at them.
“Hold up, you drunken dogs!” he exclaimed. “This thing has gone too far! It stops right here! Back up, or I will blow you full of holes!”
They halted in their tracks.
“What?—what?—what?” gasped Chet, in astonishment. “What ails you, Moran? What do you mean?”
“I mean that I am not a crazy fool, if you are. I don’t care to go to the jug for this piece of business. Here you, Merriwell, take this knife and cut those ropes that hold your feet.”
With his free hand Moran produced a jackknife, which he quickly passed to Dick, who opened it and freed his feet with a single slash at the ropes.
“Now, I think we’re pretty near good for this whole drunken gang,” said Moran. “I’ve had a little booze to-night myself, but I have some sense left.”
“You traitor!” palpitated Arlington; and then, with a sudden lurch, he staggered toward the companionway.
Dick had closed the heavy jackknife given him by Moran, but he still held it in his hand. As Arlington reeled to one side Merriwell saw crouching, just beyond the cabin door, a dark-faced man, whose beady eyes glittered in a deadly manner and whose hand clutched the haft of a knife.
It was Tony!
Suddenly the Italian sprang forward, for Arlington had stopped a few feet away, and his back was toward the door. The glittering knife was lifted for a murderous blow.
Whiz!—something flew through the air and struck Tony fairly between the eyes.
It was the heavy jackknife, which Dick had thrown at the Italian. Tony was knocked backward and dazed for a moment. The knife fell from his hand and struck, point first, in the floor, where it stood quivering.
Filled with sudden horror, for all of his intoxicated condition, Arlington staggered aside and stood staring at the Italian.
With a bound, Dick caught up the knife.
“Get out of here, all of you!” he cried. “Be lively about it! Look out for that Italian there! Take care of him!”
As they hesitated, Dick turned to Chester.
“Do you want to be carved up?” he asked. “If you don’t, tell your intoxicated men here to take care of that chap.”
The fact that he had escaped by such a hair’s breadth and that Merriwell was now free seemed to overcome Arlington.
“Look out for him, Lazaro! Look out for him, boys. Take the dago away!”
“But this fellow?” questioned Lazaro, with a motion toward Dick.
“Don’t mind this fellow,” said Moran, still holding his pistol ready for use. “No one will trouble him any more to-night. I promise you that. Get on out of here!”
“Cursa you!” hissed Tony, glaring at Chester. “I geta you yeta!”
“Take him away,” Chester urged, retreating from the door.
The sailors seized Tony and hustled him up the companionway to the deck.
Arlington stood swaying slightly, one hand to his head. The situation seemed to bewilder him.
“What are you trying to do, Moran?” he hazily asked.
“It’s a good thing for you,” was the reply, “that this fellow you fancied tied so hard and fast happened to be free just then. He saved your life.”
“Did he?” mumbled Chet.
“That’s what he did. Now it’s up to you to see that he goes ashore without further molestation.”
“All right! All right!” said Chester. “I’ll run away! I’ll be gone in the morning! Engineer getting steam up! I’ll get out of here!”
Suddenly Dick stepped toward Arlington, seized him by the shoulders, and sternly said:
“Look at me! You’re not going to do anything of the sort! I wouldn’t care a rap what you did if it wasn’t for your sister. You could run away, or do anything you chose to do. Already you have caused her untold worriment and distress. If I can prevent it, you shall cause her no more at present. You’re going ashore with me, Arlington.”
The manner in which Dick uttered the final words seemed to indicate there was not the least doubt in his mind on that point.
“Who says so?” whispered Chet thickly.
“I say so, and I mean it. You will go. We will go on deck now, and you will order the engineer to bank his fire. Come along!”
Moran looked on in surprise, for he began to perceive that the tables were turned and Merriwell was master of the situation in every respect.
“Just a joke,” mumbled Chester. “Just a little fun. Didn’t mean anything by it. Confound that dago! He tried to stab me, didn’t he? Did you stop him, Merriwell? What did you do? I didn’t see.”
“Never mind what I did. Come on, now. Follow us, Moran, and see that the Italian gets no fresh opportunity to use a knife. Arlington must go ashore, for his life wouldn’t be safe if he remained here.”
“Guess that’s so,” acknowledged Chester, as he permitted himself to be led up the companionway to the deck.
Having reached the deck, Dick again told Chester to order the fires banked.
Lazaro was waiting near, and he concealed his surprise, if he felt any, when Arlington gave this order. The yacht had not left the wharf, and a few minutes later, accompanied by Dick and Moran, Arlington was on shore.
“Just a little joke,” he kept muttering. “Didn’t mean anything by it. Drank too much. Made a fool of myself, I guess. Wonder if June knows ’bout it. She’s good girl. Nobody can say anything ’bout her to me. I won’t stand for it! She’s all right!”
“We will get him over to the hotel, Moran,” said Dick. “I wonder if there is any way to do it without his being seen?”
“Tell you what I can do,” suggested Moran. “I can get a closed carriage and come for you.”
“That’s it,” said Dick. “We will be on the road somewhere between here and the hotel. Just you hustle. I’ll watch for you.”
“All right,” was the assurance. “Depend on me.”
And Moran started away on a run.
* * * * * * * *
Arlington awoke the next morning in a room at the Fardale House. He had a splitting headache, and his mouth was dry as a pine board. When he stirred a groan came from his lips.
“Oh, murder!” he muttered. “What is the matter with me? Where am I?”
Dick Merriwell rose from a couch near the window.
“You must feel pretty rocky this morning, Arlington,” he said.
Chester stared at him in blank astonishment.
“What the dickens are you doing here?” he questioned. “Where did you come from?”
“Why, I found you on a little toot last night and managed to get you in here without attracting much attention. I stayed with you to see that you came out of it all right. Want a drink of water?”
“Give me a bathtub full! I will drink it all!”
“Here you are,” said Dick. “A whole pitcherful.”
Arlington seized the pitcher and drank greedily.
“Oh, my head!” he muttered. “What sort of stuff was I drinking, anyhow? And I had such a beastly dream! Why, I dreamed about kidnapping you and taking you aboard the old lady’s yacht and having a devil of a time. Then there was a dago trying to stab me, and all that kind of stuff. I’ll never touch any more cheap booze!”
“That was a pretty bad dream,” said Dick. “But, as long as it was a dream, it’s best to forget it. You will have to take a cold bath and brace up to get back to the academy.”
“A cold bath!” gasped Chet, shaking with horror. “I can’t do that! Great Cæsar! I can’t do that! Not this morning!”
“You will have to, just the same,” asserted Dick. “I am here to see you through this thing.”
In spite of Arlington’s protestations, Dick forced him to get out of bed, compelled him to take a cold bath, made him drink a strong cup of coffee, and finally led him like a lamb back to the academy. And for a time, at least, it seemed as if Chester Arlington had really learned a lesson that he took to heart.
CHAPTER XVI. DARRELL CALLED INTO THE GAME.
Fairport’s new grand stand was filled long before the time arrived for the game with Fardale to begin.
As Hal Darrell entered he was both surprised and pleased to see, seated together, three girls, two of whom he knew, for they were Doris Templeton and Zona Desmond.
Zona smiled on Hal and bowed to him, but Doris seemed anxiously watching the Fardale players, who were grouped about their captain, near the bench.
“Oh, Doris!” cried Zona; “here is Hal! I say, here is Hal, Doris! Are you asleep?”
The girl addressed gave a slight start and greeted Hal with a fleeting smile and a welcoming word.
“This is my cousin, Miss Dale, Mr. Darrell,” said Zona. “She lives here, you know, and that’s how Doris and I happened to be here to-day.”
Hal bowed, cap in hand.
Bessie Dale, a freckled, vivacious, lively little girl, gave him a smile and a nod.
“I suppose you came to see your team beaten to-day, didn’t you?” she said, laughing.
“I expect so,” was his surprising answer.
“You don’t mean it, Hal!” cried Doris quickly.
“Why not?” he said. “Fairport has been winning right along this season, and Fardale might be in better shape.”
“What’s the matter?” Doris questioned. “I knew something was wrong. I could tell it by their actions.”
“Oh, I don’t know that there is anything particular the matter, but the whole team is in bad shape. It has struck one of those streaks when a team goes down hill. They have fallen off in their batting and in their fielding.”
“I told you Fairport would win to-day,” said Bessie Dale. “Of course, I am sorry for you girls, and I know you think your great Captain Merriwell can’t be defeated.”
Doris made a place at her side, and Hal sat down.
“Can’t you find out what the trouble is?” she asked.
“I am not particularly anxious about it,” he indifferently retorted, speaking in a low tone. “In fact, I don’t care a rap if Mr. Merriwell does get his bumps to-day.”
“How can you say so, Hal! I don’t understand you!”
“I have good reasons,” he grimly retorted. “I have heard a few things lately. He needn’t take me for a chump.”
“I am sure he doesn’t, Hal.”
“And I fail to see why you should be so greatly interested in him. If you knew everything——”
Darrell checked himself, as if fearing he would say too much.
“If I knew everything!” palpitated Doris. “Why, I know that it is Fardale against Fairport, and you are a Fardale boy! Isn’t Dick in condition to pitch to-day?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“You know he has not been in the best condition lately. Oh, Hal, why didn’t you stick to baseball? You might be in the game, and you were a good pitcher.”
“If I had stuck to it I’d not pitch this game,” he declared.
Believing Hal constantly loyal to Fardale, these words from him continued to puzzle Doris.
“Why, I am sure you would do anything to win for your own team.”
“Under certain conditions I would. But I, like others, have grown weary of doing things for which another person gets all the credit.”
“I wish you would explain!” she exclaimed, her annoyance increasing. “You’re not a bit like yourself to-day, Hal! I am surprised at you!”
“Some time I will explain—perhaps. When I do you will understand. I have heard things that have opened my eyes.”
“You can’t believe all you hear, Hal.”
“Well, I have seen things, too.”
At this moment Merriwell was seen approaching the grand stand.
“Wonder what he wants!” muttered Darrell.
Dick entered and came up to them, bowing and lifting his cap.
“What’s the matter?” asked Zona. “Is it anything serious?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “I am glad to see you and Doris here at the game. It’s a surprise.”
Zona then introduced him to her cousin, and in her tantalizing way Bessie Dale said:
“This gives me an opportunity to offer you my sympathy in advance, Mr. Merriwell. Of course, you know our boys are going to win to-day. They haven’t lost a game since getting their new suits.”
“Well, it’s about time their streak was broken,” retorted Dick. “I thank you for your sympathy, but hope we will not need it.”
“Oh, but you will! You haven’t seen Jack Ware pitch this year! All the fellows say he is a perfect wizard, and I hear your team is not batting very well now.”
“You may hear almost anything, Miss Dale. I say, Hal, can’t you give us a lift to-day? We need you.”
“Need me!” muttered Darrell in surprise. “Why do you need me?”
“Gardner was taken ill on his way here, and is too sick to play. He is out there, but he says he can’t go into the game.”
“Well, you have a substitute.”
“Yes, but not a man who can fill his place, without shifting the team around, which is a bad thing. I want to keep the boys in their regular positions.”
“Well, you know I am not in practice.”
“You have practiced some. You have been out a few times with the team.”
“All the same, I am not in shape to play, and I don’t care to go into a game and make an exhibition of myself.”
“You will not make an exhibition of yourself. You can play at short if you will, and it will fill the gap left by Gardner. I know you want to see us win this game. You will do this—for old Fardale?”
“I can’t,” persisted Darrell.
In a moment Doris’ hand fell on his arm.
“Please do, Hal,” she urged anxiously.
He saw a look exchanged between her and Dick, and somehow it made his blood hot.
“What if I go out there and lose the game?” he exclaimed.
“If you do no one can blame you,” said Doris.
“Certainly not,” agreed Dick. “All we can expect of you is that you will do your best for the old school. You can get into Gardner’s suit in time for the game. Come on, Darrell!”
A moment more Hal hesitated, but at last he rose.
“All right!” he half growled. “I will play, but I don’t stand for any kicks after the game.”
He followed Dick from the grand stand, and they were joined by Gardner, who looked pale and ill, indeed. Beneath the grand stand there was a dressing room, and to this they repaired in order that Hal and Earl might exchange garments.
“I am sorry one of your players is ill,” said Bessie Dale. “You will have that as an excuse for your defeat.”
“Not at all!” quickly retorted Doris. “Hal can play as well as Gardner. He might have been a better player if he had kept at it. The team will not be weakened by taking him on.”
“That’s right,” said Zona. “Still, I am beginning to feel as if Fairport might win.”
At this Bessie laughed outright.
“You will feel more so after you see them play a while,” she averred.
After a short time Dick and Hal emerged from the dressing room and hurried to join the Fardale players. As they walked out Merriwell said:
“I am going to change the batting order to-day, Darrell. Gardner has been batting at the head of the list. He was a good man to lead off. I am going to put you in fourth place, which is a more important position.”
To this Darrell made no reply.
Following is the batting order of both teams as given to the scorers:
FARDALE. FAIRPORT.
Black, lf. Crockett, 2d b. Bradley, 3d b. Dustan, rf. Flint, rf. Roberts, ss. Darrell, ss. Conway, cf. Jolliby, cf. Macon, 3d b. Singleton, 1st b. Milliken, lf. Tubbs, 2d b. Anson, 1st b. Buckhart, c. Warren, c. Merriwell, p. Ware, p.
Roberts, Macon, and Anson were three new men on the home team; otherwise the team was about the same as it had been the year before.
Preliminary practice on both sides was sharp and snappy, and it keyed the spectators up to a point of intense interest and eagerness.
Five minutes after the time set for the game to begin the umpire walked out to his position and Fairport trotted onto the field.
“Now they start!” exclaimed Zona. “Oh, girls, isn’t it awfully exciting! I am just as nervous as I can be!”
“I can’t blame you,” smiled Bessie Dale in that tantalizing manner of hers. “It’s natural you should be. But I am not. See how calm and confident I am.”
“How do you feel, Doris?” asked Zona.
Doris could not have described her feelings had she tried. Somehow there was in her heart a sense of doubt and dread. An inward voice seemed warning her that all was not as it should be.
“Play ball!” cried the umpire.
“Now we’re off!” squeaked Obediah Tubbs. “Git right after her, fellers!”
A year before Ware had been rather slender and slight, but in the last twelve months he had developed wonderfully, and was now a rather well-built chap. With the ball in his hands, which were pressed together in front of his breast, he settled himself on his feet with his toe upon the slab.
Barron Black took his place at the plate, and barely was he in position when the Fairport player delivered the ball, which whistled past the batter’s shoulders, so near that the latter was driven back a little.
Warren snapped the ball back to Ware, who sent it in a second time with astonishing quickness, catching Barron slightly off his balance and thus securing a called strike.
Instantly Dick spoke to the players near him on the bench.
“Look out for that trick of his, boys. You saw how he worked it. Don’t let him play that on you. Be ready for the next one when he drives you back with an inshoot.”
With two strikes and two balls called, Black hit a hot one along the ground between Macon and Roberts. Macon managed to touch it so that it was deflected and bounded straight into Roberts’ hands.
The shortstop sent it humming across to first, and the leading Fardale batter was out.
“There you are!” shouted the Fairport crowd. “That’s the way we do it!”
“’Ow hunfortunate!” muttered Billy Bradley, as he walked into the batter’s box.
Billy got a wide one and let it pass for a ball. Then came a swift inshoot that made him jump away, and once more Warren snapped the ball to Ware, who instantly returned it.
Bradley had remembered Dick’s cautioning words, and he was not fooled by this piece of business. The ball was a straight, swift one, and he met it with a resounding crack. Out on a line it went, but Roberts thrust up his bare right hand and gathered it in with a—spat!
It was swift and beautiful work, and the crowd had good cause to cheer heartily.
“’Orseshoes!” shouted Bradley, who had dropped his bat and started for first, only to stop suddenly when he witnessed the spectacular one-hand catch.
“Didn’t I tell you, girls!” laughed Bessie Dale.
“You told us,” admitted Doris. “But both of our boys hit your wizard of a pitcher.”
“They hit the ball, but they didn’t get safe hits. Safe hits count, you know.”
“Had that last one been six inches higher Bradley would have made two bases on it,” asserted Doris.
“Oh, yes, if, if!” said Bessie. “But if’s don’t count in this game.”
Dave Flint took his place to strike.
“Here’s your third victim, Jack, old boy!” bellowed Anson, from first base. “He is just as easy as the others.”
Ware smiled in a confident manner. He threw the first ball straight at Dave’s head, but Flint avoided it with ease. The next one was a drop, and the boy with the scar gently lifted it over the infield for a safe single.
“There! there!” breathed Doris Templeton. “Now you see!”
“Here comes Hal!” exclaimed Zona. “What will he do?”
“Oh, I hope he gets a hit!” exclaimed Doris, her hands pressed together and her anxiety betrayed in her face.
“Jack Ware won’t let him,” retorted Bessie Dale. “Jack never lets any one get a hit off him at a critical time.”
“This isn’t critical yet,” said Zona. “This is only the beginning of the game.”
“That’s true,” nodded Bessie. “If he did get a hit it isn’t likely your team could score off it.”
“Well! well! well! what’s this?” cried Roberts, dancing around in his position back of the base line between second and third.
“Fruit!” roared Anson, stooping and pounding his mitt with his fist. “Ripe fruit! Pluck it, Jack, old boy!”
“He’s a pitcher, Ware!” said Macon. “Pitchers can’t hit a house! You’ve got him!”
“Put them right over the pan!” roared Conway from centre field. “We’re all behind you.”
“He never got a hit in his life,” asserted Crockett. “We have seen him before.”
Now, whatever had been Hal’s intention on walking out to the plate, suddenly a flash of anger came into his eyes and his jaw squared. Ware sent a high one humming past Hal’s head, whereupon the latter looked skyward in a derisive manner.
“Hello! he is an astronomer!” chuckled Roberts. “He is looking for new planets!”
“Fan the astronomer!” shouted Anson.
“Astronomer!” snickered Warren, as he crouched under the bat. “That fits you, old man! You can hit a star easier than that ball!”
Again a high one sped through the air, and again Hal threw his head up in the same contemptuous manner.
“Sus-sus-sus-say,” chattered Chip Jolliby, “don’t you want a sus-sus-sus-stepladder, Darrell?”
“Get ’em down! Get ’em down!” growled Brad Buckhart.
“Keep those men still on the bench, Mr. Umpire!” cried Don Roberts, captain of the home team. “They’re breaking the rules!”
Instantly Dick was on his feet. “You broke the rules first yourself!” he declared. “You have no right to address the batter when he is in the box! If you want to coach your pitcher, coach him; but confine your remarks to proper coaching.”
Instantly there rose a cheer from the small crowd of Fardale spectators. There were others who applauded and others who laughed and scoffed. This made no difference to Dick, for he knew his position was right.
The umpire knew it, too, and he turned to Roberts, saying:
“If your team talks to the batter, you can’t object if the players talk from the bench.”
“All right! all right!” snapped Roberts. “We’ll see who can do the most talking to-day. I rather think they will get all they want of it.”
“That’s courtesy!” growled Brad Buckhart. “You hear me chirp! That’s politeness! That’s being used handsomely when we’re away from home!”
“Never mind, old man,” said Dick, as he sat down. “We can stand it if we run against nothing worse than that to-day. I don’t believe there is a man on the team they can rattle by their talk.”
“Darrell is rattled now. Look at him! He is fighting mad!”
“I don’t believe he is rattled, just the same. I think he will hit the ball, even if he doesn’t get a——”
Crack! Hal hit it. He hit it savagely, too, and it went out like a bullet.
Flint was running when bat and ball met, and the speed of the stocky lad as he dashed over second and tore down toward third was surprising to all who did not know his ability.
It was a clean two-bagger, and as Hal dashed down to second he saw Conway gathering up the ball. With the ball in Conway’s hands, good judgment should have stopped Darrell at second base. Flint, however, had crossed third and was trying to score. Darrell became ambitious to stretch his two-base hit into a three-bagger, or his anger robbed him of judgment, or perchance, he was reckless of consequences, for he kept on toward third.
Conway lined the ball into Crockett’s hands. Crockett whirled, and a single glance showed him it was too late to cut off the run.
“Third!” rang out Roberts’ clear voice. “Third it!”
On a dead line the ball sped from Crockett’s hands into those of Macon, who put it onto Hal with ease.
This made the third man out.
“Well, of all the fool tricks!” muttered Buckhart, in disgust. “What made him try that? Tubbs was squawking for him to hold second. He lost his head completely.”
Dick said nothing, but somehow a strange feeling of uncertainty came over him. As he walked out to the pitcher’s box he spoke to Hal, slowly shaking his head.
“That was a mistake, Darrell,” he said. “You had a pretty two-bagger. Should have anchored fast at second.”
“Are you beginning to kick so soon?” retorted Darrell in a low tone.
He did not wait for a reply from Dick, but turned his back and sought his position.
“Oh, well! Oh, well!” cried Crockett. “One measly little run doesn’t count in this game. Here’s where we go after a dozen.”
“Dern my picter! I hope you git um!” cried Obediah Tubbs derisively. “We’ll stand round and watch yer while yer do it.”
“You see he did get a hit, Bessie!” triumphantly exclaimed Zona Desmond.
“Yes, and I saw him get out at third,” returned Zona’s cousin. “That was fine playing, wasn’t it! What do you think of it, Doris?”
“I am afraid he tried for too much,” confessed Doris.
But in her heart there was another fear, of which she whispered no suspicion.
CHAPTER XVII. AT THE CRITICAL MOMENT.
“Start her up, Crock! Start her up, old boy! Start her up!” cried Roberts, as the first Fairport batter walked out.
“Show us ’ow you do it,” invited Billy Bradley.
“Dern my picter! I am afraid of that dozen runs they are going to git!” piped Obediah Tubbs.
“Put it over, captain, old boy, and see what they will do with it,” urged Bob Singleton.
“Let her sis-sis-sis-sizz!” chattered Jolliby, as he reached centre field. “We’re all watching yer!”
“Put her into the old pocket, pard!” rumbled Buckhart, holding up his big mitt behind the bat.
Dick began with a speedy one, close to Crockett’s knees.
“One ball!” called the umpire.
“What are you trying to do?” muttered Crockett. “Trying to take my props off?”
“Wee! wee!” squeaked Obediah Tubbs, prancing around like a baby elephant. “Near skinned him of his kneecaps that time!”
A high ball followed. To Crockett it seemed as if the ball would pass over the plate level with his shoulders. As he swung to meet it the ball seemed to take a singular outward and upward sweep, and he missed.
“What sort of a curve was that?” growled Anson, who had been watching closely. “Looked like a high out-rise to me.”
“Out-rise!” sneered Warren. “Who ever heard of an out-rise?”
“Well, that’s what it looked like,” nodded Anson. “You know this fellow has some mighty odd curves.”
“Well, we’re ready for his old jump ball to-day,” retorted Warren. “We’ve practiced to hit a sharp rise, and he will find his jump ball n. g.”
“But you know he has a queer combination rise and drop,” said Milliken.
“Don’t know anything of the kind,” asserted Warren. “It’s an impossibility. The way he delivers a ball makes it seem to rise and drop, that’s all.”
“Well, anyhow, he has the reputation of throwing it,” said Milliken.
Crockett was anxious to start the thing with a hit, and Dick found himself compelled to work cautiously with the fellow, for, even though desiring a hit, the batter was one who refused to be deceived by ordinary methods.
With three balls and two strikes called, the batter and pitcher paused an instant to look hard at each other.
There was a hush.
With his toe on the very outer edge of the slab at one side of his box, Merriwell suddenly rose to his full height in the air, stretched his arm far upward as he brought it over, and the ball left his hand at the moment when he seemed reaching highest in the air. Downward from that height the sphere shot toward the outside corner of the plate, over which it passed about a foot from the ground.
It was a most deceptive ball to strike at, for it passed over the plate at least a foot lower than expected by the batter, who swung hard for it and missed.
Buckhart was close under the stick, and the ball plunked into his big mitt.
“You’re out!” declared the umpire.
Crockett retired to the bench, flinging aside his bat.
“Say,” he muttered, “this fellow has some new wrinkles this year. He threw one or two queer ones that time. Did you see that last ball? I don’t know how I missed it.”
“It was a drop, wasn’t it?” asked Anson.
“Drop—nothing! It was a straight ball, but he threw it with his hand stretched high, and it came down at an angle and on a line. Next time I will be watching for it.”
“Well, there’s your first batter gone, Bessie,” said Zona Desmond. “He didn’t hit the ball, did he!”
“They can’t all hit,” retorted Zona’s cousin. “But you watch Dustan! He never strikes out!”
“Oh, doesn’t he?”
“No, indeed!”
“Perhaps he will this time.”
“It will be the first time this year, if he does.”
Dustan was watching for Merriwell’s jump ball, against which all Fairport players had been warned, and for which they had practiced batting against a professional pitcher who could throw a quick rise.
Something led Dustan to fancy Merriwell had thrown the jump at the very start, for the first ball came speeding in almost shoulder high.
The batter made an instantaneous calculation and struck above the course of the ball.
To his surprise, he swung over it by at least eight inches.
“Hang it!” he whispered to himself. “That was a straight one! If I had known, I might have knocked the cover off!”
Zona Desmond pinched her cousin.
“He didn’t hit it that time,” she said.
“That’s all right,” confidently returned Bessie. “I have seen him get a hit lots of times after two strikes were called on him. It seems to put him on his mettle to have two strikes on him.”
Dustan had a “good eye,” and he refused to wiggle his bat at the next two balls, both of which were wide. Then he saw Merriwell make the same movements as he did on delivering the first ball, and instantly Dustan calculated on another straight one. Apparently he had made no miscalculation, but the ball took a sharp drop just in time to prevent him from hitting it.
“Two strikes!” sang the umpire.
“There he goes! There he goes!” laughed Zona, giving Bessie a little shake. “What do you think about it now?”
“I think just the same,” was the confident answer. “Even if he doesn’t get a safe hit, he will hit the ball.”
“Do you believe he will hit it, Doris?” asked Zona.
Doris did not reply. In fact, she did not hear the question. Her eyes were fastened on Dick Merriwell, and she was deaf to the words of her nearby friends.
“Ye-ee-ee!” squealed Tubbs, once more prancing about awkwardly. “What you trying to do, captain? Why don’t you give us fellers a show? We’re all going to sleep out here!”
“Don’t worry, Fatty,” advised a Fairport spectator; “you will have all you want of it before this game is over.”
“Do tell!” grinned Obed. “Won’t that be just splendid! Anybody got a pie in his pocket? I’m hungry.”
“There is a pie in the box doing the pitching,” laughed the same spectator. “Our boys will feed off him before the game is over.”
“Dustan will get a hit now,” averred another watching youth.
Dustan was on his nerve. He set his feet firmly and gripped his bat, while he watched every move made by the Fardale pitcher. He saw Dick go through the motions of delivering a swift ball, and apparently such a ball followed. It came straight enough and seemingly just where the batter wanted it, whereupon he slashed at it. To his unspeakable surprise the ball seemed to halt and hang in the air in such a manner that he struck too soon. Too late he realized this, and his rage caused him to hurl the bat to the ground as he heard the ball strike with the usual plunk in the catcher’s big mitt.
Dustan had struck out for the first time that season.
Zona Desmond actually pounded her cousin on the shoulder.
“There, there!” she palpitated. “What do you think about it now?”
Bessie could not conceal her surprise and dismay.
“Why, I don’t see how it happened!” she said.
“You will see lots more things just like that happen to-day,” asserted Zona, whose courage had now risen to the highest point.
“Oh, the game is young yet! Here comes Captain Roberts.”
“And Captain Roberts is third on the list,” asserted the exuberant Fardale girl. “They retire in order this inning.”
Roberts was a first-class hitter, and he connected with the first ball pitched, driving it swiftly along the ground.
Darrell got in front of the ball, but, somehow, he let it go through his hands, and it sped on over the short grass outside the diamond.
A groan came from the little bunch of Fardale boys on the bleachers.
“Wasn’t that a shame!” exclaimed Zona Desmond. “Why didn’t he stop that ball, Doris?”
Doris shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “You know such things will happen.”
But in her heart the feeling of doubt and anxiety was rapidly increasing.
Roberts, by swift running, reached second, as Darrell had not been backed up by a fielder, and there was some delay in returning the ball to the diamond.
Pausing on second, the captain of the home team shouted with laughter.
“Why didn’t you strike me out?” he derisively inquired.
“Dern your picter!” said Tubbs. “You ought to be out! You didn’t get a hit! You made them two bases on an error!”
“But your shortstop never touched the ball.”
“If he didn’t,” said Tubbs, “he ought ter have touched it. There wasn’t anything to prevent.”
Dick caught the fat boy’s eye and shook his head warningly. To Darrell he made no complaint.
Hal was a trifle pale, and he had turned toward Dick as if expecting a reprimand, holding himself ready to retort.
“Right after him, Conway!” cried Roberts, dancing about close to second base. “A clean hit ties the score.”
For the first time, after throwing two called balls to the next batter, Dick tried the jump ball. Of course, he was not aware that the Fairport batters had been putting in special practice at hitting a sharp rise.
This was exactly what Conway had been wishing for, and he hit the ball hard and fair. Out over the infield on a line it sped, somewhat to the right of centre field. Had it been a high fly Jolliby might have secured it. Being a liner, Chip could not get to it, and it went bounding past him. He raced after it, while Roberts came home and Conway went to second.
Conway, like Darrell, fancied he saw an opportunity to stretch the hit into a three-bagger. In fact, he fancied there was a bare possibility he might reach home on it. With this thought in his mind, he passed over second and kept on toward third.
Jolliby caught up the ball and whirled swiftly toward the diamond. He saw that the runner was making for third. To the spectators it did not seem that Conway could be prevented from reaching that bag.
Then Chip made one of those famous throws of his. Without losing a moment of time, he sent the ball on a line from his position far out into the field straight to third base. An ordinary thrower would have thrown it in to Tubbs, who was the nearest infielder. Had this been done, Conway must have reached third in safety, but the ball came straight into the hands of Bradley, who caught it about a foot from the ground and quickly put it onto Conway, who had made a slide, under orders from the coacher.
“Out at third!” declared the umpire.
A shout of joy arose from the little knot of Fardale boys.
The score was tied at the end of the first inning, each side having obtained a tally.
“You see, some one else can make the same kind of a mistake, Merriwell,” said Darrell, as he walked in to the bench. “I haven’t heard Roberts kicking at Conway.”
“No one is kicking at you, Darrell,” replied Dick quietly. “It’s all right. You were doing your best, and that’s all any fellow can do.”
Still Hal did not seem satisfied. In truth, strange though it is, he might have been better satisfied had Dick condemned his carelessness in getting put out in the first inning.
Jolliby picked out his pet bat and was ready to take his place at the plate.
“Don’t try any slugging, Chip,” advised Dick in a low tone. “Just go after a clean single, or be contented to take a base if you can get it.”
The lanky boy walked into the batter’s box and was ready as Warren crouched behind the stick and gave the signal.
Ware threw three balls in succession without tempting Jolliby to swing at one of them.
“Got him in a hole, Chip!” exclaimed Barron Black. “Make him put it over!”
Chip stood and watched two straight ones cut the plate.
“I wonder if you will dud-dud-dud-do that again!” he stuttered, as he gripped his bat.
“I can try it,” retorted Ware.
Apparently the pitcher threw another straight one, but it was a sharp drop, and Chip missed.
“That’s what a fuf-fuf-fuf-feller gits fer waiting!” he chattered, as he retired in deep disgust to the bench.
“That’s playing the game,” asserted Dick. “Any batter who will swing at the ball after having three balls called by the umpire without any strikes doesn’t know his business.”
“Well, if you’re sus-sus-satisfied,” said Chip, “I don’t sus-sus-sus-suppose I got any kuk-kuk-kuk-kick coming.”
Bessie Dale was laughing.
“You see how easy that was for Jack Ware,” she said. “He is just beginning to pitch now.”
“Oh, he won’t keep that up,” said Zona. “He was careless. See those clouds in the west? I am afraid we’re going to have a shower before this game is over.”
“Better pray for it to come before five innings are finished,” said Bessie. “If it doesn’t you will lose the game.”
“You’re not ahead of us now.”
“We will be pretty soon.”
Ware did his best to deceive big Bob Singleton, but Bob got in one of his lucky cracks and lined out a beautiful three-bagger. He would have tried to make it a homer, but Dick was on hand at the coach line back of third base and stopped him there.
There was a shout of derisive laughter from the Fairport boys as Obediah Tubbs waddled out to strike.
“Laff! Dern your picters!” shrilled the fat boy indignantly. “Mebbe you will laff out t’other corner of your mouth pritty soon!”
Then, in a desperate endeavor to hit the first ball pitched, Obed swung with such violence that he was thrown off his feet, for he missed entirely. The bat flew out of his hands and sailed into the middle of the diamond, while he fell flat on his back, with a great grunt, as if the breath had been jarred from his body.
At this there was another shout of laughter.
“Pick up the poor little thing!” cried one.
“Hit it where you missed it, Fatty,” advised another.
“Look out for his bat!” shrieked a third. “He’ll kill somebody with it!”
“Ding your old ground!” squeaked Obediah, as he rolled over and awkwardly rose to his feet. “It ain’t solid nohow! It wiggles!”
Roberts gravely brought the bat to Tubbs, presenting it to him with a profound bow.
“You may not need it,” he said. “It may not do you any good, but here it is.”
“Oh, you think I won’t need it, do you?” piped the corpulent lad indignantly. “Well, I’ll show you!”
When Roberts was again in position, Ware once more whistled a ball over, and a second time Obediah struck, missed, and threw his bat. This time it went spinning down toward third, and Macon made a comedy run to get out of the way.
“It’s a plot!” shouted Roberts. “He is trying to kill our team or maim us so we can’t play the game.”
“Drat that bat!” said Obediah. “This is the golldingedest, slipperyest thing I ever got holt of!”
Once more it was returned to him.
Ware was laughing. He regarded the fat boy with derision, fancying Obediah could not hit effectively unless by a blundering chance. This led the pitcher to use a swift straight ball, over the centre of the plate, and what followed caused him to come near collapsing, for this time Tubbs’ bat fell on the ball with a sharp report, and the liner that was driven out could not be caught by any one.
“Laff! Dern your picters—laff!” squealed Obed, as he wildly ran down to first, his short arms held out at an angle from his shoulders and his hands pawing at the air as if seeking to assist in propelling him along.
If any one fancied Obediah would be satisfied to stop at first he was mistaken, for the fat boy streaked on over the bag, darted promptly to the left, and made for second. Conway secured the ball and threw it swiftly to Crockett.
Crockett fancied he would have plenty of time to tag Tubbs, for he did not conceive that the fat boy would attempt to slide. Such an attempt, however, Tubbs made, and Crockett tagged him a moment too late, for Tubbs lay with his hand on the bag as he was touched with the ball.
Then the little Fardale crowd rose and cheered in earnest, shouting Obediah’s name.
Singleton had scored on the hit.
When the ball was tossed to Ware he angrily threw it on the ground at his feet and walked around it.
“Talk about your horseshoes!” he growled. “That was the worst accident that ever happened!”
“He! he!” exclaimed Obediah, as he rose to his feet. “Fooled you that time, Mr. Pitcher! You’re pretty slick yourself, but you can be fooled!”
Buckhart was the next batter.
Apparently Ware continued to be very angry, and he did not seem to give much attention to Tubbs. This being the case, Obediah edged off from second, elated over his success and feeling a strong desire to create further enthusiasm by stealing to third.
Suddenly Warren put his hand up to his mask, as if to change it as he crouched under the bat.
Instantly Ware whirled and snapped the ball into the hands of Roberts, who had darted past Tubbs and was in position to receive the throw and tag Obediah before the fat boy could get back to the bag.
The coacher had uttered a cry of warning, but it came too late.
“Out at second!” announced the umpire.
Then the Fairport crowd had a chance to cheer.
Tubbs looked ashamed and disgusted as he walked from the field.
“Dern my picter!” he kept muttering over and over to himself, paying no attention whatever to the derisive laughter and words of the spectators.
“Carelessness, Tubbs,” said Dick. “You haven’t been trapped that way before this year.”
“And I won’t be ag’in,” promised Obediah.
Buckhart was disgusted by what had happened, but, nevertheless, he hit the ball hard and fair, lifting it far into left field.
After a sharp run, Milliken caught it, and Fardale’s last chance in the second inning had vanished.
In her half of this inning Fairport made a strong bid for a run, getting a man safe on third; but Dick’s pitching proved too much for them, and Ware, the last hitter, went out on a weak pop fly.
“There!” said Zona Desmond, nudging her cousin. “You see we’re one score ahead on even innings! Let the shower come! If it doesn’t hurry too much, I fancy we will be ahead when the game stops. How many innings make a game?”
“Why, five, of course,” said Bessie.
“Then they will have to play three more, or it will be no game. My, I don’t believe they will have time! That shower is coming, and it is coming fast.”
“Your side had a lot of luck that time,” declared Bessie, who was still confident; “but you can’t always make runs by luck.”
“What do you call luck?” asked Zona.
“Why, wasn’t it luck when that big fat boy hit the ball?”
“I guess not! He’s a good batter!”
“He looks it!” tittered Bessie.
“He is, isn’t he, Doris?”
“What did you say?” asked Doris.
“My goodness! You haven’t opened your lips since the game began! And you don’t even seem to know we’re here! What’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing,” answered the girl questioned. But both her companions could see that there was something the matter.
In the third inning Dick led off with a clean hit. Black sacrificed him to second. Bradley tried hard to line the ball out, but finally fanned.
Ware was of the opinion that Dave Flint was dangerous, and in trying to fool the boy with the scar he finally gave Flint a pass to first.
Again Darrell came up.
Doris Templeton caught her breath.
“Hit it, Hal!” she murmured.
“Oh, he won’t get a hit!” declared Bessie Dale. “He’s a nice fellow, but he can’t hit Jack Ware.”
Hal slashed at the ball in a reckless manner without seeming to use judgment. He missed the first three pitched and was out in such short order that every one was surprised for a moment.
Flint and Merriwell had been left on the bases.
“That’s the time you handed ’em hot, Jack, old man!” cried Roberts.
The home team once more started with the head of the batting order. Crockett refused to be fooled as he had been in the first inning, and finally caught a good one on the end of his bat, lifting it over the infield.
Tubbs ran back for it, but caught his heel and fell down just as the ball would have struck his hands. Crockett crossed first and saw Obediah wildly pawing around in the grass at his feet in search of the ball. Immediately the runner turned and scudded toward second.
Obed had one eye rolled up toward first, and, as soon as Crockett was well down toward second, which had been covered by Darrell, the fat boy picked up the ball and gave it a snap toward the base without rising to his feet.
Crockett was trapped and would have been in a bad place, but the ball struck on the end of Hal’s fingers and bounded off.
The runner laughed with derisive relief as he reached the bag.
“Why didn’t you take your time, Tubbs?” demanded Darrell. “You had an hour. You snapped that ball so quick I wasn’t ready for the throw.”
Not a word did Obediah retort, but the look on his face expressed a great deal.
Dustan now came up and attempted to sacrifice Crockett to third. In trying to do this the batter made a little slow bunt that rolled along the first base line.
Singleton ran in for the ball, but fancied it would roll foul and paused, letting Dustan go to first. The ball struck a slight rise and rolled over the chalk mark into the diamond, where it finally stopped.
It was a fair hit.
“Well! well! well!” laughed Roberts. “We’re doing it this time!”
“Talk about ’orseshoes!” exclaimed Billy Bradley. “You must ’ave your pockets full!”
“Pitch the ball! pitch the ball!” cried Roberts, who had observed the rising cloud and feared the shower would break before five innings had been played. “Make him pitch the ball, Mr. Umpire!”
When Dick did pitch the ball Dustan started for second, Crockett having reached third.
Unhesitatingly Buckhart lined the sphere down to Tubbs.
Crockett jumped off third, as if determined to make a dash for the home plate.
Tubbs did not wait for Dustan, who had paused, but returned the ball to Buckhart.
Crockett had whirled and plunged back toward third.
Dustan reached second.
Seeing this, Buckhart snapped the ball to Bradley, who put it onto Crockett, but the umpire declared the man safe.
“There you are!” laughed Roberts. “That was all right, boys!”
There was a muttering of thunder in the west.
Roberts managed to hit a sharp grounder that went out between second and third. It was a clean hit, and on it both Crockett and Dustan scored.
Not one of the home team was out.
“That wasn’t my fault,” said Darrell. “He hit you that time, Captain Merriwell.”
Dick used speed for Conway, who, pretending to make an effort to avoid a close one, permitted himself to be hit. Although this seemed apparent, the umpire allowed him to take first.
Macon tried hard for a hit, but Dick was too much for the fellow, and he struck out.
“They’ve sus-sus-sus-stopped right here!” yelled Jolliby.
Milliken slashed away twice without finding anything more than the empty air, which led Roberts to growl at him. The fellow swung by guess at the very next ball, without using the least judgment and really seeming to shut his eyes. What followed was one of those rare accidental hits that are made by incompetent batters. Had the fellow sought to met Dick’s sharp curve, using his best judgment in doing so, it is likely he would have missed cleanly. As it was, he hit the ball and drove it out on a line for two bases, which was as much a surprise to himself as to any one else. Two more scores came in, making four in the third inning for Fairport.
The thunder rumbled nearer.
“Hustle this thing, fellows!” panted Roberts. “We’ve got this game nailed! You can hold them down, can’t you, Ware?”
“Sure!” answered Ware.
“Fan, Anson—fan!” hissed the captain of the home team.
Immediately Anson struck out, and Warren followed his example.
Believing they had the game safely in hand, the home players were doing their best to hurry through five innings.
The visitors saw their design, and Dick urged his men to go after the ball earnestly at the beginning of the fourth. Jolliby did his best, but was thrown out at first. Singleton lifted a fly that was captured. Tubbs reached first on an error, and Buckhart lifted a foul back of third that was secured by Macon. Fardale’s chance in the fourth was passed.
The clouds were hanging black overhead now, and a few sprinkles of rain came pattering down.
“What shall I do, captain?” asked Ware of Roberts, as he picked up his bat.
“Fan,” answered Roberts. “Get out just as quick as you can.”
Ware obeyed, and both Crockett and Dustan did the same thing, much to Buckhart’s disgust.
“Waugh!” exploded the Texan. “What sort of an old baseball game is this yere? Are you chaps playing a kids’ game? Why don’t you play ball?”
“That will be all right!” laughed Roberts. “Just you fellows play one more inning. That’s all we want.”
Then, as his team took the field, he again urged them to hold Fardale down.
Merriwell again led off with a handsome clean drive for one bag. Black strained every nerve to get a hit, but popped up an infield fly, on which Dick stuck to first and Barron was declared out.
The raindrops came thicker. There was a flash of lightning, and the thunder rumbled more nearly overhead. Still the spectators lingered, wishing to see that inning through.
Bradley finally got a safe hit, and Flint worked Ware for a pass to first, which filled the bases.
At this critical point Darrell again came up.
A long hit might tie the score.
Would Darrell make it?
Dick was watching him closely and anxiously. Twice Hal struck, seeming to try hard to hit the ball, but when he swung the third time Dick felt certain he made an effort to miss. He was out.
It depended on Jolliby now. Chip was rather pale as he gripped his bat and took his position. The second ball pitched he hit hard and fair.
At the same moment there was another flash of lightning, and the thunder followed it quickly.
The men on bases ran without stopping to see the result, for with two out there was no reason why they should hesitate.
Conway ran hard to get under the ball, and, as it was coming down, leaped high into the air and caught it.
A great shout of joy arose from the Fairport crowd, for in Fardale’s half of the fifth inning she had made no scores, and Fairport was three ahead.
If the final half could be played out before the rain fell heavily Fairport would win the game.
Roberts shouted for his men to hurry in, and Buckhart rushed to Dick, urging him to delay as much as possible.
“We’re beaten if you don’t, for she’s going to rain in a minute. Hold her up, if you can.”
Then the Texan himself fumbled and fooled with his body protector in adjusting it until Roberts angrily called the umpire’s attention and demanded that Fardale be made to play.
“Trot out your batter!” said Dick. “We will play.”
“He is waiting,” said Roberts. “Why don’t you go ahead and pitch?”
“Yes, go ahead and pitch!” palpitated Buckhart, suddenly getting under the bat, as he saw Conway in position to strike.
Conway was not the right hitter. Roberts was the man, and Buckhart knew it.
At this point the scorer for the home team discovered the mistake and invited Roberts to hasten into the batters’ box.
Even as he did so, the heavens seemed to open and the rain came down in torrents.
“Time!” called the umpire, and the players scudded for shelter, while the crowd on the bleachers followed their example.
“Now,” said Buckhart, “let her rain thirty minutes! That’s all we ask!”
It did rain thirty minutes. In fact, it rained an hour before stopping, and the umpire declared it no game.
CHAPTER XVIII. CHARGE AND CONFESSION.
Among themselves the Fardale boys confessed that the rain had come just in time to save them from defeat. Of course, many of them were confident they would have won out had it held off until nine innings were played. But had it delayed until the close of the fifth inning the score would have been five to two in favor of Fairport.
“Talk about luck!” growled Don Roberts, as he accompanied Merriwell to the hotel after the rain had ceased. “You fellows certainly had it in that shower. Why, we had the game clinched!”
“You had a five-inning game clinched,” confessed Dick. “You certainly worked hard, Roberts, old man, to play five innings before the rain fell.”
“But, between you and me,” said Don, taking Dick’s arm, “we gained a lap on you through the bad playing of one man on your team. You know whom I mean.”
“I don’t put it onto any one man,” retorted the Fardale captain. “The simple truth is that I was not pitching my game to-day.”
Roberts laughed.
“Our fellows were hitting well, Merriwell; but your shortstop made several bad breaks. The only thing he did during the game was to get that first two-bagger. And he spoiled it by trying to make three bases. I don’t know how it looked to you, but, by George! it actually seemed to me that he was trying to throw you fellows down.”
Dick shook his head.
“Darrell isn’t that kind of a chap,” he asserted. “He has always been loyal to Fardale, and there is no reason why he should wish to see us defeated.”
“All right,” said Roberts. “You know best.”
“I had to put him into the game to fill a gap. Our regular shortstop, Gardner, was taken ill.”
“Well, take my advice, don’t fill any more gaps with Darrell. When are we going to play this game off? Of course, we will have to do it some time. We’re confident we can beat you this year, and we don’t want to let the chance slip.”
“Why, I don’t know,” answered Dick. “Our dates are pretty well filled.”
“Then you had better make a date,” grinned Don. “Of course, if you’re afraid——”
“You know better!” retorted Dick quickly. “Let me run over the schedule. Let’s see!”
Then Dick mentioned the games Fardale had to play, and Roberts confessed that for the rest of the season the cadets had their time pretty well taken up.
“We might play you Wednesday,” said Merriwell.
“Next Wednesday?”
“Yes.”
“But we have a game for Wednesday. It is not very important, but we have it arranged. We play a country team from Charlesford.”
“I am afraid that’s the only time we can meet you. If you’re so very anxious to play us, isn’t it possible for you to cancel this engagement with Charlesford?”
“Of course, we can do that,” admitted Roberts. “It won’t be much of a game, anyhow, for those fellows are not in our class. We made a date with them simply to fill in.”
“Then it looks like an easy matter to cut it out. What do you say, Roberts?”
“I will cut it out, Merriwell, if you fellows will come here Wednesday.”
“How about expenses?”
“We will give you the same guarantee as to-day.”
Dick shook his head.
“It won’t do, old man. This rain cut our guarantee in two. According to arrangements made, we can’t afford the expense. If you’re so anxious to play us, you will have to give us a regular guarantee under any circumstances, rain or no rain. We will do this by you if you will come to Fardale.”
“By Jing, Merriwell! we can’t do it! We can’t afford it. We’re running behind now. I am worrying about our bills. You see we had to give rain checks to-day because the game was not finished.”
“Well, if you can’t pay us what we want to come Wednesday, why don’t you accept my offer and take a like amount to come to Fardale? You know you will be treated right there.”
“But the umpire——”
“Bring your umpire, if you want to,” said Dick. “This chap we had to-day was all right. We’re satisfied with him. We will pay his bills, too. It shan’t cost you a cent to bring him.”
Roberts clapped Dick on the shoulder.
“That’s generous, Merriwell!” he exclaimed.
“That’s a good, square offer! I think we’ll do it. I will try to let you know before you leave. You can’t get a train for an hour. I will see Hoffmore, our manager, and talk it over with him.”
“Do,” urged Dick.
At the hotel the Fardale boys spent the time while waiting for the train in talking over the game.
One of the silent but interested spectators of the game had been Chester Arlington. For once, at least, Chet made himself conspicuous by his retirement. As Dick reached the hotel, however, Arlington stepped out and came face to face with him on the steps.
To the surprise of the Fardale captain Chester said:
“See here, Merriwell, I suppose you’re onto this business to-day? You must have your eyes opened by this time?”
“What do you mean?” asked Dick, unable to repress his surprise.
“Why, it was plain enough to everybody,” declared Chet. “That game was thrown away, or would have been thrown away if it had been played out. You have an idea that I am the only fellow in the school who has ever done anything to injure you. But this very day the fellow you had playing at short did his best to throw you down. I mean Darrell. He wanted to see you beaten.”
“Stop, Arlington!” exclaimed Dick sharply. “You’re not the fellow to make such a charge against any one.”
“It’s the truth,” declared Chet. “Don’t you believe it? Why, you ought to see it’s the truth! You’re not blind!”
“Better not let Darrell hear you,” warned Dick.
“You refuse to believe?”
“Yes, I refuse to believe any clean, upright fellow like Hal Darrell would stoop to such a trick. There is no reason in the world why he should do it. What was his object? What could he gain by it? Don’t talk to me like that, Arlington! Better keep your mouth shut!”
Chester stared at Dick a moment, then exclaimed:
“You do believe it! I can see you believe it! You just don’t want to acknowledge it! You refuse to acknowledge anything bad about Darrell!”
“Get away from me, Arlington!” commanded the dark-eyed lad. “Don’t come to me with any of your accusations! As I just told you, you are not the chap to accuse any one. I wish to hear no more from you.”
With which Dick passed Chester and entered the hotel.
Now it happened Hal Darrell was sitting at an open window directly above, and he had heard every word that passed between the two boys beneath. At first his face turned pale, and he trembled with rage at Arlington’s charge against him. When Merriwell refused to believe, and defended him vigorously, his face softened and the look of anger turned to one of shame. He drew back a little in order that he might not be seen, yet listened until Dick entered the hotel, leaving Chester on the steps.
Springing to his feet, Hal paced the floor, his hands clinched and his appearance one of intense excitement.
“Arlington was right!” he muttered. “I did try to do it! Merriwell refuses to believe it of me. I ought to be kicked! No matter what he has said about me, I had no right to seek revenge in such a manner. I was an idiot! No matter what he has said—how do I know he ever said it? I can’t prove it. I can’t go to him and ask him. I’d like to get away from every one! I am ashamed to look any of the fellows in the face!”
He had changed his clothes, and at the first opportunity he sought to slip out of the hotel, thinking that he would wander off and stay by himself until the time came to take the train. At the outer door he suddenly paused, for on the steps was Chester Arlington, talking to Doris, Zona, and Bessie.
“There wasn’t any luck about it,” laughed Chet. “With proper support Merriwell would have won the game hands down.”
“With proper support!” cried Bessie Dale. “Didn’t he get proper support?”
“Not by a good deal!” retorted Arlington. “One fellow on our team tried to give the game away, and he succeeded pretty well, too. You know him. Miss Templeton—you know him very well. I don’t have to call any names.”
“I don’t want you to call any names!” flashed Doris. “I don’t want to listen to any of your insinuations, sir!”
“Oh, that’s all right,” chuckled Chet. “But I fancy you know enough about baseball so you can see through it, when you think it over. Just take my advice and think it over. Whose bad playing gave Fairport several runs? Who might have won that game with a hit, and didn’t try to hit the ball?”
Instantly Darrell stepped out, his face livid with rage.
“I presume you mean me, Arlington?” he grated. “Why don’t you make your talk to me? Come out here where we are alone and repeat it!”
Instantly Doris seized his arm.
“No, no, Hal!” she exclaimed. “You shall not fight with him!”
“There’s no way out of it!” declared Hal fiercely. “I’ve got to thrash him!”
“Not now! Not here, Hal! Please come with me! Please walk with me!”
She clung fast to his arm.
Arlington stood with his hands in his pockets, regarding Darrell with a sneering smile. He seemed cool and indifferent.
Doris continued to urge Hal to accompany her, and he finally consented.
“Why should you pay any attention to him?” she asked, as they walked down the street side by side. “No one will believe him.”
“It’s not that,” retorted Hal. “No fellow can stand for such talk about him. Of course, I couldn’t hit him then, with you three girls present, but I’ll get at him.”
“No one will believe it,” persisted Doris. “Let him go ahead and tell it as much as he likes. It can’t hurt you.”
“He told Merriwell something a short time ago. I heard him.”
“But Dick won’t take any stock in it. Dick knows you too well, Hal. He knows you were out of practice. He knows Arlington told an untruth.”
Hal shook his head.
“Doris!” he suddenly and fiercely declared, “the worst part of it is that Arlington told the truth! I am ashamed of myself! I never did such a thing before. You will despise me now, but I can’t help it. I did try to throw that game!”
She shrank from him, and he saw her face pale.
“That’s right,” he said. “Hate me! Despise me! I deserve it! I don’t suppose you will ever speak to me again?”
“Hal, how could you?” she murmured in distress. “No one else could have made me believe it! I was full of doubts and fears, but I decided it could not be possible.”
“Then even you suspected me? If you did, Doris, certainly all the rest of the fellows must. They will think me a fine sort of chap now! They will put me in the class with Chet Arlington! Any boy who will go back on his school team is a mighty cheap sort of a duffer! Are you going back to the hotel?”
“Not now, Hal,” she gently answered, as she took his arm. “I am going to walk with you. You must tell me just why you did it.”
For some time they walked in silence along the street, coming at length to the outskirts of the village, where they paused opposite an old gate, upon which they leaned. Everything was fresh and green after the shower, and the sweet breath of spring was in the balmy air.
“You know you can trust me, Hal,” said Doris. “And I know you didn’t seek to betray your own team without cause.”
“But I can’t tell you the reason,” he protested. “It’s better that I should not tell you. It will simply annoy you and hurt your feelings.”
“Instead of that, Hal, I feel confident that it would justify you in some degree in my eyes. How could it annoy me?”
“Because you are concerned.”
“I?” she exclaimed in surprise.
“Yes.”
“How is that possible? Now, you must tell me. I will never be contented until you do.”
Suddenly he turned and faced her, and in his eyes she saw the old-time look of admiration, which he could not conceal.
“Doris, it would have been better for us had we never known Dick Merriwell. You liked me before you met him.”
Quickly her hand fell on his arm.
“I liked you then, Hal, and I like you still.”
“But you are changed.”
“I don’t think so. You can’t seem to understand me, Hal. Frankly I confess to you that I admire Dick, but I like you none the less.”
“Then why have you treated me in such a——”
“Hal, haven’t you any pride of your own? Certainly you have! Do you fancy your father and my father patching up a match between us, just as if we were creatures of wood and stone, and had no minds of our own? That’s what I resented. If that had never happened——”
“And just because of that you are going to treat me as if you detested me?”
“That is something I have never done. Far from detesting you, Hal—far from disliking you in the least, I have never liked you better than now.”
His face flushed and the eager light in his eyes grew.
“Do you mean it, Doris?” he whispered, bending nearer.
“I mean it, Hal.”
“Then he lied—he lied!” cried Darrell. “You never said it!”
“Never said what?”
“You haven’t heard the gossip at the academy. I didn’t mean for you to hear it. They say this Merriwell boasted of cutting me out with you. They said he told his friends you were glad to be rid of me—you were tired of me. He told them you said so yourself. It was a lie, Doris?”
Her face was a trifle pale now, but she restrained herself and demanded:
“So that was the reason for your doing as you did to-day, Hal? Was that all the reason?”
“No; he said more. He said that he was tired of you. That you couldn’t hold a candle to June Arlington, and he wished to be rid of you. When I heard it I would have fought him, but the one who told me pledged me to secrecy. I have betrayed the secret now to you. I was looking for some excuse to pick up trouble with Merriwell—something that would not involve you. I was ready to do anything to quarrel with him without bringing you into trouble. I fancied he would be furious with me to-day and would take me out of the game. I didn’t believe he would leave me in long enough, after seeing me play as I did, to let me lose the game. That would have given me the excuse I sought.”
After a moment’s silence Doris said:
“Hal, I believe you made a serious mistake. Who told you that?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Can’t you tell me?”
“No, not even you, Doris, for I gave my promise I would never breathe the person’s name.”
“Why should you believe such things of Dick Merriwell? You ought to see it is not like him.”
“But you, Doris—don’t you fancy some of these things may be true?”
She turned her head away in order that he might not read the truth in her face. She did not tell him that she had heard the same things, and had been placed in such an embarrassing position that it was impossible for her to learn the truth without sacrificing her pride. She did not confess that her own mind had been filled with doubts and misgivings.
“We should not believe them, Hal, until we know beyond dispute that they are true.”
“If they are—if they are, I will kill Dick Merriwell!” panted Darrell.
She well understood his passionate and revengeful disposition, and felt that he might be led hastily into something he would ever after regret in case he afterward found that the gossip of the school had no real foundation of truth in it. She believed it her duty to prevent him from any rash action and to hold him in check.
“Hal,” she said, “you must promise me you will have no trouble with Dick—for my sake. I am not blind. I can see through some things. If I have treated you shabbily, it was because of my pride. Let’s forget it. Let’s let things be as they were long ago before we came to Fardale.”
“Do you mean it?” he cried eagerly.
“I mean it, Hal. We will be friends, just as we were of old. If there is a shadow of truth in this gossiping talk, which I don’t wish to believe, Dick Merriwell will soon see that he has made a mistake in thinking I care—I will not speak to him. Promise me—promise me you will not quarrel!”
“I promise, Doris,” he said earnestly. “We must walk back now, for we cannot miss our train.”
When they arrived at the station, however, it was nearly train time, and the Fardale boys were there, while the Fairport lads had come down to see them off. There was a great crowd on the platform.
“Oh, here you are, Doris!” exclaimed Zona Desmond, as with Bessie Dale she hastened to meet her friend. “We have been worrying about you.”
“No need of worrying about me,” laughed Doris. “Hal can take care of me; can’t you, Hal?”
“I think I can,” he declared. And the light in his eyes and the look on his face made such a change in him that Zona was astonished. Not only was she astonished, but suddenly she grew worried; and, at the first opportunity, while Doris was speaking with Bessie, she drew Hal a little to one side and whispered anxiously:
“What have you been telling her? I hope you didn’t breathe a word of what I told you. If you did she will never forgive me.”
“Don’t worry,” he retorted. “Whatever I have said, I have not mentioned your name.”
“You mustn’t,” said Zona. “If you do I will never tell you anything else as long as I live, Hal Darrell!”
“It is all right,” he again assured her. “Here comes the train.”
The train drew up at the station, and the Fardale crowd boarded the cars, while the Fairport boys merrily bade them “so-long!”
“We will see you again Wednesday, Merriwell!” cried Don Roberts. “We will finish the game then.”
“And we will give you the handsome trimming you so narrowly missed to-day!” asserted Jack Ware.
“Anticipation is sometimes more satisfactory than realization!” laughingly retorted Dick. “Look out that you are not disappointed Wednesday!”
As the train pulled out the Fairport boys gave a lusty cheer, which was answered from the open windows of the cars.
“Well, by juj-juj-juj-jingoes!” said Chip Jolliby. “I am gug-gug-gug-glad of one thing: We’re not going home bub-bub-bub-bub-beaten.”
“But we did come within a hair of it,” said Barron Black. “If we had not lost Gardner——”
“’Ush, there is Darrell!” cautioned Bradley.
“I don’t care if he hears me!” said Black. “He came as near doing us up to-day as possible, and I don’t believe he wanted us to win.”
“’E’ll fight hif ’e ’ears you,” said the cockney youth.
“He is too interested in Doris Templeton to hear anything,” asserted Barron. “See how he is laughing and talking with her. Why, I haven’t seen him that way for months! He has been sullen, and sour, and grouchy all the time. What’s come over him so suddenly?”
“Fellers!” piped Obediah Tubbs, rising and waving his fat hands in the air, “I perpose a little music; let’s sing—let’s all sing! Let’s sing some classic air by some great composer!”
Up popped Ted Smart, who had been remarkably quiet.
“What composer is most noted of modern times?” he propounded.
“Give it up,” said some one. “What composer is the most noted?”
“Chloroform!” cried Ted, and promptly sat down.
“Somebody ought to give him a medal, by Jim!” squeaked the fat boy. “Why does your mouth make me think of a tavern door? Give it up? He! he! Because it’s always open.”
“That’s funny!” sneered Ted. “That’s dreadful funny, but you will have to write it out for us. Wait until you have had a square meal. Why isn’t it best to write on an empty stomach?”
“You tell,” invited Tubbs. “You’re so all-fired bright, go ahead and tell why it isn’t best to write on an empty stomach.”
“Because there is plenty of paper to write on,” said Ted serenely.
“Hello, Darrell!” called Dick, “what is the best land for girls?”
“America,” answered Darrell promptly. “The girls of America beat the world. You couldn’t tell of a better land for them.”
“Oh, yes, I can,” was the reply.
“Name it.”
“Lapland.”
There was a little burst of applause and laughter. When it subsided Billy Bradley gravely asked:
“’Ow his that? Hi never ’eard there were prettier girls in Lapland than hanywhere else.”
This caused another shout of laughter, and Billy scratched his head in a puzzled manner, trying to discover the cause of the merriment.
Ted Smart looked sad and disgusted.
“See here, Dick Merriwell, you ought to be put in jail for that! That’s stealing! I own the copyright on that conundrum! But I bet you can’t tell the difference between a jeweler and a jailer.”
“One sells watches and the other watches cells,” answered Dick, laughing. “Give us something new.”
“Confound you!” snapped Ted. “If I had a gun I’d use it on you! But, speaking of guns, what does a seventy-four-gun ship and her crew weigh with all on board?”
“What’s the answer?” laughed Dick. “What does she weigh?”
“She weighs anchor,” smiled Ted, satisfied at last.
“Great Cæsar!” exclaimed Jolliby. “These are coming fuf-fuf-fuf-fast!”
Immediately Smart bobbed up again.
“Speaking of Cæsar,” he said, “what proof have we that he was acquainted with the Irish?”
“Hacquainted with the Hirish!” said Bradley. “’Ow was ’e? ’E couldn’t ’ave been!”
“History proves it,” asserted Ted.
“Hi don’t believe hit,” declared Billy. “What’s there in ’istory that proves Cæsar was hacquainted with the Hirish?”
“Why,” grinned Smart, “after he crossed the Rhine, didn’t he come back to bridge it?”
“What ’as that got to do with hit?” snorted the Cockney youth.
“Why, don’t you see, Sir William, he came back to Bridget.”
Again Billy was puzzled and confused. The fact that the boys were laughing simply added to his bewilderment.
“Hi’d like to see one hof your blooming Hamerican jokes that ever had a point to it!” he shouted. “Now, hif you want to get something really funny you hought to read _Punch_, don’t y’ ’now.”
“I always read a copy just before attending a funeral!” said Smart. “It makes me cry! It makes me sad for a whole day!”
Some one started a song, and the boys took it up. Earl Gardner was the only fellow on the train who did not seem to be enjoying himself. Earl was still ill, and he showed it plainly.
Suddenly, without the least warning, there came a jarring sensation and a succession of crashes. The cars bumped and rocked, and then the entire train left the track and plunged down a low embankment.
It had been derailed!
CHAPTER XIX. THE OUTCOME OF THE WRECK.
Confusion and chaos followed. Dick Merriwell was hurled against the roof of the car as it plunged over into the ditch, and, although he was partly stunned, and lay still, when the crashing was followed by some moments of appalling silence, his wits were not benumbed, and his mind was actively at work. Wondering how badly he was hurt, he sought to drag himself from beneath some of the broken timbers. This was not a very difficult job, and, to his intense relief, he discovered that he seemed to have no broken limbs and apparently had escaped serious injury.
Then all around him suddenly rose screams and shouts of pain and fear. The horror of it was intense, for it seemed certain that many of that gay party had been maimed and killed in the wreck. Dick’s second thought was of the girls. They had been seated a short distance ahead of him on the opposite side of the car, and now he endeavored to find them. He saw before him a muscular youth, who had found the tools always kept for use in such cases, and was already wielding an axe in an endeavor to cut and smash a hole through the side of the car.
It was Buckhart. For once Brad uttered no whoop, spoke no word, but bent every nerve to the task before him.
“Brad!” cried Dick.
“Hey, pard!” was the retort. “Thank the Lord you’re alive!”
“Doris?” was Dick’s next word. And the sturdy Texan answered:
“She must be right here somewhere, partner. Look for her while I am making a hole to freedom.”
All around them were excited and bruised lads. Some had been cut by broken glass or timbers, and two or three were so frantic that they interfered with Buckhart as he swung the axe.
“Keep them back a moment, Black!” cried Dick. “Brad will open her up and you can all get out.”
Then he continued to search for Doris.
Buckhart was not long in making an opening large enough for the boys to crawl forth. One by one they crawled out at that point, while the Texan turned to look for Dick amid the wreck of the smashed car.
Merriwell found the girl he sought. She had been pinned down by a seat. In the dim light her face showed deathly pale and her eyes were closed. His first thought was that she was dead. But even as he stooped over her with a cry, her eyes unclosed and looked into his.
“Doris!” he exclaimed.
“Dick—oh, Dick!” was her only answer.
In a moment he was doing everything in his power to drag her free. Her skirt was caught somewhere and seemed to hold her fast. He seized hold of it with his hands and gave a mighty pull that ripped her free. Then swiftly, yet with strange gentleness, under such circumstances, he drew her from beneath the seat and lifted her in his arms.
“Doris, are you badly hurt?”
“I don’t know, Dick. I think I fainted.”
He asked no further questions, for at that moment he found Brad Buckhart with Zona Desmond near at hand. The Texan aided Zona over the débris and enabled her to creep out by the opening he had made. He followed and assisted Doris, Dick coming last.
When they were outside a scene of terrible confusion met their gaze. All around them were excited boys and appalled men and women. A few cool-headed ones were working steadily to rescue from the wreck those who still remained in it. At a little distance lay several who had been injured.
From the overturned engine a cloud of steam and smoke arose. The express and baggage car were piled on top of the locomotive.
As he gazed on the spectacle, Dick found himself wondering that so many had escaped. He thought of his friends, and near at hand he saw Chip Jolliby with a bloody cheek, yet apparently otherwise unharmed.
Dave Flint had a blood-stained handkerchief tied about his wrist, while Obediah Tubbs sat on the ground and tenderly clung to his fat stomach, complaining that some “dern fool” had kicked all the wind out of him.
Doris clung to Dick.
“Isn’t it awful?” she shuddered.
“Who is missing?” was Merriwell’s question.
“Hi believe almost everybody got out, don’t y’ ’now,” answered the familiar voice of Billy Bradley.
“Hal!” exclaimed Doris—"where is Hal?"
“Has anybody seen Hal?” Dick demanded.
No one had seen him.
“Great tarantulas!” burst from Buckhart. “I opine he must be in there now, pard!”
Even as the Texan uttered these words, Dick thrust Doris Templeton upon him and plunged back into the wreck, though the express car was afire and the flames were spreading rapidly.
“I’m with yer, partner!” shouted the Texan; but Dick paused long enough to order him to remain and look after the girls.
To those waiting Merriwell’s reappearance every minute seemed an hour. When he could stand it no longer, Brad surrendered the girls into other hands and started to crawl back into the car. He had not entirely disappeared from the view of those outside before he found Dick, who was assisting Hal to get out. Darrell had been shocked senseless, and there was a bad scalp wound on his head, from which blood trickled down one side of his face.
“There you are, pard!” exultantly cried Buckhart. “Let me give you a lift.”
“Clear the way!” answered Dick. “You can help us move. We’re all right, aren’t we, Darrell?”
“Yes, yes,” muttered Hal thickly. “Where is Doris?”
“She’s all right. I took good care to look after her. She’s outside.”
“Hurt?”
“I don’t think she is hurt a bit.”
“Thank God!” said Hal.
When Doris saw him, as he crept forth with his face blood-stained, she uttered a scream and hastened to him.
“Hal! Hal!”
He looked at her and smiled.
“Well, you are all right!” he exclaimed thankfully. “Dick told me the truth.”
“But you—you?”
“Oh, it’s nothing but a scratch. Don’t worry about me.”
“I am so glad, Hal—so glad!” she sobbed joyfully. “Isn’t it just marvelous we escaped?”
“It’s a wonder every one on the train wasn’t killed.”
It was, indeed, a wonder. Still, among them all, the fireman was the only one who lost his life. The engineer escaped with scarcely a scratch. The expressman had a broken leg, and others were injured, yet none very seriously. The marvelous escape of so many from such a terrible disaster caused no end of newspaper comment and wonderment.
There was plenty of excitement at Fardale when news of the catastrophe reached that place. A special train had been made up and sent to the relief of the victims, and this train took the Fardale passengers back to town some three hours behind time.
As it drew up at the station, those on board looked out on a vast crowd packed on the platform and banked back beyond it, until swallowed by the darkness. It seemed that, besides the academy boys, every man, woman, and child in the village was there.
When the train stopped Dick Merriwell was almost the first person to appear on the platform of the car. At sight of him a wild roar of joy went up from the cadets. The lights fell on their upturned faces, and he saw them fling their hands into the air as they hoarsely shouted his name. It gave him an indescribable thrill.
“There he is, boys!” howled one of the cadets, with a powerful voice. “There’s Dick Merriwell! He’s all right!”
“Merriwell! Merriwell! Merriwell!” they shrieked.
Dick lifted his hand, and in a few moments their shouting died away.
“Fellows,” he cried, in that clear, musical voice of his, “it gives me unspeakable happiness to inform you that we are all all right. Not one of our party was seriously injured.”
This set them wild again, and they cheered each person who emerged from the car. As the fortunate ones descended the steps to the platform they were seized and hugged, one after another. Some of those excited boys actually shed tears. It seemed that their emotions must quite exhaust them when Hal Darrell made his appearance, a blood-stained handkerchief about his head and Doris clinging to his arm. The yell that went up then was even louder than anything yet.
Somehow, in a slight lull, Ted Smart made his shrill voice heard.
“There’s our mascot!” he shrieked. “She gave us luck! ’Rah for Doris Templeton, the mascot of Fardale! All ready!” he cried, dragging himself up the car steps and lifting his arms. “All together now!”
For the first time the cadets cheered in unison, guided by Ted’s jerking arms.
“’Rah! ’rah! ’rah! ’Rah! ’rah! ’rah! ’Rah! ’rah! ’rah! Doris Templeton! Doris Templeton! Doris Templeton!”
Then Zona was seen, and they cheered for her.
Mrs. Arlington and June had been sitting in a carriage close to the platform, with a great crowd packed around them. The face of the woman was pale and anxious, but it brightened as she saw her son, apparently unscathed, descend from the train.
Without pausing to say anything to her mother, June left the carriage, and the boys made a passage for her so that she reached her brother.
“Chester, you’re not hurt?”
“Not a bit, sis,” he answered.
“Then go quickly to mother. She is in the carriage there, and she is almost distracted.”
Leaving him, June turned and flung her arms about Doris.
“Oh, I’m so glad!” she panted. “Even after the message came that no one from Fardale had been seriously injured we were in doubt, and almost died from anxiety. Weren’t you hurt a bit, Doris?”
“I think my side was bruised a little, that’s all.”
“And Zona?”
“She says she was not hurt.”
“Come, both of you—come to the carriage.”
Mrs. Arlington was urging Chester to get into the carriage.
“My poor boy!” she said, her hands trembling. “It was a terrible shock to me when I heard about that wreck. But it didn’t seem right that my boy could be killed if any one else escaped. Get in, Chester.”
“Oh, say, mom, don’t drag me off in this old turnout! I want to stay with the gang. They will march back to the academy, and I want to march with them.”
“You have changed so! You are so different, Chester! Why, you even seem to enjoy the company of these common boys!”
“That’s all right, mom. After a narrow squeak like this there is bound to be things doing, and I propose to keep with the push.”
By this time June, with Doris and Zona, returned to the carriage.
“What are you doing, child?” asked Mrs. Arlington grimly. “Have you completely forgotten your brother?”
“Not by any means, mother. I found he was unhurt, and then I thought of some one else. I wish to take my friends home with me.”
“That’s the talk!” exclaimed Chet. “Get right in, girls! Take them right along, mom!”
Mrs. Arlington said nothing more, and Chester almost lifted each one of the girls into the carriage. They lingered a few moments to witness the joyous demonstration on the platform and listen to the cheering of the cadets.
“If we’d known you were all in such good shape,” said Anson Day, “we would have brought the band.”
At length, when the confusion had subsided somewhat, the cadets formed near the station, with the ball players at the head of the procession, and away they marched, followed by the immense crowd. One of the leaders struck up “Fair Fardale,” and every boy in the ranks took up the song. Singing thus, and followed by the laughing villagers, scores of whom found their eyes dimmed with blurring mists, the boys paraded the main street of the village and finally turned toward the academy.
CHAPTER XX. DICK’S CONFIDENCE.
The following day Earl Gardner was ill in bed. Among the others, although more serious results had been anticipated, no one was laid up. True, some of them were stiff and lame, but all were up and about.
Late in the afternoon, while Dick was alone in his room, there came a knock on his door, and Darrell entered.
“Hello, Hal!” cried Dick. “Sit down, old man.”
Darrell seemed strangely awkward and ill at ease.
“They tell me Gardner is in bed,” he said.
Dick nodded.
“Yes; I am afraid he is in for a sick spell. It’s lucky none of the rest of us are in bed. How’s your head, old man?”
“Oh, I’d hardly know anything had happened to it. Just cut my scalp a little, that’s all.”
“It looked pretty serious for you when I found you covered with blood in that mess, Hal.”
“I came to speak about that, Merriwell. They tell me you crawled back into that wreck after every one save me was out of it. You did that for me, and yet you must have known——”
He stopped, biting his lip.
“Go ahead, Hal,” urged Dick. “I must have known—what?”
“Well, you know what happened in that baseball game. You saw the kind of a game I put up, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“What did you think of it?”
“You were out of practice.”
“Oh, you know I didn’t play like that just because I was out of practice. See here, Merriwell, I am disgusted with myself! You’re a white man, and I feel like a cur!”
“That’s a bad way to feel, Darrell,” said Dick.
“But that’s just the way I do feel. You must know that it is a blamed hard thing for me to come here and tell you this, but I have thought it all over, and I made up my mind to do it, no matter how hard it was. Merriwell, I was sore on you Saturday. I can’t explain just why, but I was dead sore. I didn’t expect to stay in that game long enough to lose it for you. I thought you would take me out. Frankly and squarely, I was looking for trouble. Had you put me out of the game it would have given me the excuse I sought.”
“I am sorry to hear you say this, Darrell. Why should you have to pick up trouble with me? There was a time when we did not pull together very well, but I fancied that time was passed.”
“So did I.”
“But now——”
“I tell you I can’t explain it, for certain reasons,” said Hal; “but I frankly confess I acted the part of a cheap duffer. I am thoroughly ashamed of myself, and that’s why I came to you to ask your pardon. But for that shower I would have lost the game for Fardale. And to-day I’d be in the depths of remorse. I am conscience-stricken as it is. What can they think of me? I know the fellows are not all fools. They must have seen through my wretched work. I am certain they did, for some of them have given me the scornful eye. They have no confidence in me. You can have no confidence in me.”
Dick arose and advanced to Hal’s side. The latter was sitting now, with his elbows on the table and his head on his hand.
“You’re mistaken, old man,” said Dick gently. “I still have confidence in you.”
Darrell looked up quickly.
“Is it possible?” he asked.
“Why shouldn’t I?” exclaimed Dick. “A fellow who has manhood enough to confess a mistake or a fault is just the sort to win my confidence. You come here like a man and acknowledge your mistake. I suspected you before that, and yet I hated to believe.”
“I knew you couldn’t help suspecting me. I am always doing some confoundedly foolish thing! I have a miserable disposition, Merriwell. I can’t seem to control it at times.”
“A chap who recognizes his own weaknesses and fights against them stands a good chance to win. The one who can’t see his failings, or refuses to see them, is the fellow who fails.”
“Perhaps that is right.”
“I know it is right, Darrell.”
“Still, even now you wouldn’t give me another show? You say you have confidence in me; but, knowing as much as you do, would you dare put me into the game against Fairport?”
Dick stood squarely before his visitor.
“Darrell, you can play baseball, and I know it. I was sorry when you refused to come out with the others this spring. We lost a good man in you. Gardner is ill, and it seems likely now he will not be able to play Wednesday. Do you want to fill his place?”
Instantly Hal sprang to his feet.
“Do I?” he exclaimed. “You bet your life I do! But you won’t use me? It isn’t possible.”
“Come out for practice to-morrow,” urged Dick. “We will have Monday and Tuesday to practice, and you may be able to improve some in that time. If you can get into your old form you will be all right.”
“And Wednesday?” questioned Hal.
“If Gardner is not in condition to play Wednesday you shall fill his place.”
Hal seized Dick’s hand.
“Merriwell,” he chokingly exclaimed, “you’re the whitest fellow in the world! I will never again believe any gossiping lies about you.”
“So you have been hearing gossip of some sort, have you?” questioned Dick. “Well, never mind; I don’t wish to hear it myself. The quickest way to kill gossip is to scorn it.”
“Not always,” asserted Hal. “In some cases a fellow has to find where it started and choke it off there.”
There was no small surprise among the cadets when Darrell appeared on the field the following afternoon in a baseball suit. Already it had been whispered about that, through his deliberate crookedness, Fardale had nearly lost the game at Fairport. If Darrell observed the indignant glances bestowed upon him he made no sign.
That night Anson Day stopped Dick near the gymnasium.
“See here, Captain Merriwell,” said the chairman of the athletic committee, “I have a question to ask you.”
“All right,” smiled Dick. “Ask away.”
“You used Darrell in practice to-day, I observed.”
“Yes.”
“Do you trust him?”
“Yes.”
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“But, great Scott! you’re not blind, and the boys are saying that Darrell tried to throw the game at Fairport. Didn’t you see anything suspicious?”
“No matter what I saw, Day, I am satisfied that Hal Darrell is loyal to Fardale and will do his level best to win if he plays Wednesday.”
“Then you mean to play him, do you?”
“Some one must fill Gardner’s place.”
“There are others.”
“No other man as good as Darrell.”
“I am afraid you’re making a mistake, Merriwell,” said Day, seriously shaking his head. “I am not the only one who thinks so.”
“Wait. Wednesday you shall see that I am making no mistake. Darrell will prove it.”
CHAPTER XXI. DARRELL REDEEMS HIMSELF.
Never had any visiting team been more confident of success on Fardale field than was Fairport when she faced the cadets on Wednesday. The assurance of her supporters was demonstrated by the large number of rooters who came with the team.
Both sides lined up for the contest just as they had on Saturday. For Fardale, Darrell was again at short, in spite of suspicions and doubts.
Fairport went first to bat.
“No shower to-day!” laughed Roberts, as Crockett walked out to the plate, his bat on his shoulder. “There will be no such good luck for poor old Fardale!”
“Dern your picter!” squeaked Obediah Tubbs. “Mebbe you will be wishing for a shower before this game is over.”
Dick was in the pitcher’s box.
“Right off—start right off, captain!” cried Black, from left field.
“Put hit hover!” urged Billy. “’E can’t ’it hanything!”
“Try his eye, old boy—try his eye!” urged Darrell.
“He is a mark,” averred Singleton.
“Right there, pard—right there!” said Buckhart, holding up his mitt.
Chester Arlington and Mel Fraser were sitting side by side. Chester smiled derisively, and observed:
“For a dead cold fact, Merriwell beats anything I ever saw. I reckoned he would be furious with Darrell, but he is letting the fellow into this game. Wouldn’t that give you chilblains?”
“Do you suppose he knows what Darrell tried to do?” asked Mel Fraser.
“Oh, he has sense enough to know that!”
“Then why has he given him another show?”
“Ask me! I will never tell. There they go!”
Dick delivered the first ball and Crockett fouled it.
“That’s touching him!” chuckled Roberts. “You’ll hit it on the trade-mark next time, Crock!”
The batter did hit the next ball, but it was one of those exasperating pop flies which fell into Bradley’s hands, and Crockett retired to the bench.
“Start us off, Dustan!” urged Roberts. “Give us a hit here! Let’s clinch the game in the first inning.”
Up popped Ted Smart on the bleachers.
“Please don’t make too many runs in the first inning!” he entreated. “Please don’t make more than ten or fifteen runs in this inning! Just give us a little show! Don’t bury us at the very start! It isn’t fair.”
Dustan proved to be a good waiter and finally compelled Dick to put the ball over. He then sent a swift one skimming along the ground, and Tubbs failed to stop it. It was a safe hit.
“Here we go!” yelled Milliken, as he capered down to the coaching line. “We’re off! We’re off!”
“Don’t mind that, captain,” said Darrell. “It doesn’t amount to anything!”
Roberts was ready to strike.
“I wish he’d drive a hot one down to Darrell!” muttered Arlington. “You’d see Darrell let it go. I will bet my life on that.”
Even as he spoke he had his wish. Roberts hit a savage grounder in Darrell’s direction. It was not straight at Hal, but some distance to one side. Apparently it could not be touched, although Darrell made a spring for it.
“Clean hit!” burst from Arlington.
A second later he gasped in astonishment, for Darrell had flung himself at full length on the ground, with one hand outstretched, and stopped the ball. Not only did he stop it, but it stuck fast in his fingers, and he sat up instantly with it in his possession.
Without making an attempt to rise, Darrell snapped the ball to Tubbs, who had covered second.
Dustan was off first and away toward second even before bat and ball met. Nevertheless, Darrell’s astonishing stop and snap throw to Tubbs was so rapidly performed that Dustan was out “on a force.” He saw this and remained on his feet in an endeavor to bother Tubbs so he could not throw to first; but Tubbs sent the ball whistling past the fellow’s ear so close that Dustan felt the wind from it.
Straight into Singleton’s big mitt sped the ball, and then the umpire was heard crying:
“Out at second! Out at first!”
Darrell’s astounding stop of that hot grounder had enabled him to take part in a most brilliant double play. Those who had expected to see Darrell do something quite different were electrified. Instantly the cadets burst forth into a cheer over this sensational piece of work.
“Well, what do you think of that?” gasped Mel Fraser, nudging Arlington.
Chester sat still a moment without replying, but finally said:
“He’s got a long head on him. He did it to fool them. Just wait and see if he doesn’t do something to lose this game before it is over. He will if he has a chance.”
Zona, Doris, and June were together in the grand stand, and apparently Hal’s play had filled them all with the greatest enthusiasm and admiration.
“Wasn’t it splendid!” breathed Doris, her eyes shining.
“I didn’t think he could stop it,” confessed Zona.
“I don’t see how he did stop it,” asserted June. “I thought it was past him before he flung himself on the ground.”
“And then the way he threw it without getting up!” laughed Doris. “Oh, Hal! I am proud of you!”
“I wish we had Bessie here,” said Zona. “We’d show her to-day!”
Fardale came in to the bench, and Dick walked at Hal’s side.
“That was one of the finest stops I ever saw, Darrell,” he said.
“Thank you,” answered Hal. “I was afraid I couldn’t get it.”
“And I never had an idea you could touch it; but you did, and that double play was a fancy one.”
At first Don Roberts had seemed too astounded to say anything; but now, as he took his position on the field, he cried:
“That’s all right, fellows! They can’t have that rabbit’s-foot luck all through the game. Just get right after them now!”
Jack Ware threw a few swift ones to Anson to limber up his arm. As Black reached the plate and took his position, Ware whirled and delivered the ball.
It was a swift, high one, and Barron did his best to meet it, but failed.
“One strike!”
Behind Ware the visitors chattered away like a flock of magpies.
“Keep him fanning, old boy!”
“Put ’em right over!”
“He can’t touch you!”
“He’s fruit! He’s fruit!”
“Got your speed to-day, Jack!”
“Oh, what fancy work!”
Ware worked carefully with Black until three balls and two strikes were called. Suddenly he delivered that big out-rise, and, believing it was a straight ball, Barron made the mistake of swinging for it.
“You’re out!” declared the umpire, as the ball plunked into Warren’s mitt.
“That’s the first one, Jack!”
“Got him easy.”
“The others are just as easy!”
“Keep ’em going.”
“They will never touch you to-day.”
“Let’s see ’ow ’e does hit!” muttered Bradley, as he got into position. “Let’s see hif ’e can do the same trick with me!”
It began to seem that Ware would repeat the performance with Bradley, for Billy slashed at the first ball and missed it, then let the second one pass, only to hear a strike declared.
“Got him in a hole!” shouted Roberts. “Got him foul, Jack, old boy!”
As two strikes and no balls were called, the Fairport pitcher immediately began to try to “work” Billy. Bradley was wise, and, although he pretended to be eager to get a hit, he let the bad ones pass. In this manner three balls were called in succession.
“Make him put it over this time, Bradley!” cried Dick.
Ware faced the alternative of putting the ball over the plate or letting Billy “walk.” Knowing this, he endeavored to get one over; but, as often happens with the best of pitchers, he failed. Bradley declined to swing and was given a “pass.”
Flint strode out to the plate.
“Dern their picters!” squealed Obediah Tubbs, prancing up and down on the coach line back of first. “We’ve got ’em guessing now! Get a lead, Bradley. Let him throw it over. He can’t catch you in a year.”
In order to hold the runner close to first, Ware snapped the ball over to Anson twice before delivering it to the batter. When he did deliver it he tried a drop.
Now Flint was a bad man to deceive with a drop. When he got under one and hit it, he always lifted it a wonderfully long distance.
Knowing the batter’s ability for heavy hitting, the fielders had fallen back as soon as he came to the plate. Flint smashed the first ball a fearful crack, and away it slid toward the outfield.
“A fence ball!” shrieked Tubbs, in delight. “Git up and git, Bradley!”
Fearing the ball might be caught, Billy lingered near first; but now he fancied there was no chance that the fielder would capture it, and away he scooted.
Running in the same direction as the ball, Conway turned at the critical moment, looked over his shoulder, and saw it coming. He leaped high in the air and caught it. By this time Bradley had crossed second, and he was astonished when he heard Jolliby yelling at him from the coaching line near third.
“Gug-gug-gug-go back! Tut-tut-tut-turn round! He’s gug-gug-gug-got it!”
Stopping as quickly as possible, Bradley turned and saw Conway preparing to throw the ball into the diamond. Although Billy literally tore up the chalk along the base line in his endeavor to get back to first, he did not succeed, for the ball reached Anson’s hands ahead of him, and three men were out.
Neither side had scored in the first inning.
The five innings following were quite as exciting, and still neither side was able to get a man around the bases and across the rubber. It was not entirely a pitchers’ battle. At times both teams hit the ball, but the fast playing kept either Fardale or Fairport from scoring a tally. In critical moments Dick rose to the occasion, and his masterly pitching prevented the enemy from obtaining their object.
Jack Ware was also doing clever work. The home players came up time after time with determination in their eyes, resolved to bat out a victory. And time after time Ware, by his clever headwork, prevented them from accomplishing their purpose.
Hal Darrell had a remarkable number of “chances,” and he accepted them all. Indeed, his playing was one of the features of the game.
This remarkable work by Hal disturbed Arlington’s nerves and aroused his resentment.
“Well, look at the lobster! I believe he is actually trying to redeem himself for his rotten playing at Fairport.”
“He is not only trying,” said Fraser, “but he is doing it. The boys were all against him at the beginning of the game, and now they are all with him.”
Doris Templeton’s heart was beating with keenest satisfaction and joy. To her ears the cheers for Darrell were sweetest music.
“Just see, Zona!” she finally exclaimed. “Isn’t he doing splendid to-day?”
“Who? Brad?” asked Zona, who had been watching the clever work of the sturdy backstop from Texas.
“No! I mean Hal.”
“Oh, yes,” answered Zona. “He is playing a great game to-day. Don’t you think so, June?”
“I don’t believe I ever saw him pitch better,” said June.
“Pitch?” cried both girls. “Why, he isn’t pitching! He is playing shortstop.”
“Oh!” exclaimed June, getting quite red. “I—I mean—I mean I never saw him play better.”
But she did not deceive her companions. Both knew who had chained her attention.
In the seventh inning, after striking out Conway, the first batter, Dick saw Macon drive a hot grounder through Bradley and make two bags on the cockney youth’s error.
Immediately the Fairport rooters rose to their feet.
“This is the fatal seventh!” shouted one. “Here’s where we do the trick!”
This was followed by the Fairport cheer, and Milliken, the tall left-fielder, managed to connect with one of Dick’s drops, lifting it over the infield.
It was a safe hit, but should have carried Macon no farther than third base. Tubbs secured the ball and made a quick throw in an endeavor to nip Macon at third. Bradley was not expecting the throw, and did not see the ball until it was close upon him. He put up his hands, but misjudged it, and it struck his fingers without being stopped.
Billy was after the ball in a twinkling, but Macon saw his opening and scudded for the home plate. When Bradley caught the ball he made a desperate effort to shut the run off, but threw low, and on a bad bounce the sphere got past Buckhart.
Already Milliken had raced down to second, and now he pranced on to third, amid the wild cheering of the visitors.
“Blocked ball! Blocked ball!” was the shout. “Come home, Macon!”
The runner had paused at third, and now Buckhart whistled the ball to Dick, who remained in the box. At the same time Brad rushed back to the plate. Milliken fancied he saw his chance to score before Merriwell could return the ball to Buckhart, and he did his best to add another run to the one already obtained.
The Texan flew over the ground with giant strides. He got into position behind the bat and received the swift one that Merriwell sent humming into his mitt.
Macon threw himself forward in a desperate and beautiful slide for the rubber. At the same moment the stalwart catcher made a headlong dive at the runner and tagged him a moment before his hand reached the plate.
Merriwell had made no mistake in permitting Fairport to bring her umpire to Fardale. This fellow knew his business, and he was within eight feet of the plate when Brad tagged the sliding runner.
“You’re out!” he shouted.
Although the decision was rather close, there was no question about its justness, and the surprising success of this quick work brought a sharp cheer from the relieved cadets.
“Splendid work, Brad, old man!” laughed Dick, who had also dashed forward.
“Splendid work!” growled the Texan. “What were those crazy galoots shooting at? The way they threw the ball round was a howling shame! They simply presented Fairport with a run!”
“That can’t be helped, Brad.”
“Mebbe not, pard; but this is the kind of a game that one run may win.”
“We haven’t had our turn yet.”
“You will never get it to-day,” chuckled Anson, who was at bat.
“That’s what you think,” smiled Dick. “Fardale always has a show sometime during the game.”
Obediah Tubbs was walking round and round second base, a look of unspeakable disgust on his fat face.
“Be careful about careless throwing, boys,” was all Dick said in the way of a reprimand.
“Well,” said Mel Fraser, nudging Arlington, “they have scored at last.”
“Yes,” retorted Chester sourly; “but it wasn’t Merriwell’s fault, and it wasn’t Darrell’s fault.”
Encouraged by what had happened, Anson tried hard for a hit; but now Dick used both speed and curves, and Fairport’s lusty first baseman vainly fanned the air. The visitors were compelled to be content with one run in the seventh.
“Hold ’em down, Ware, my boy!” urged Roberts. “Let every man play for his life! We have them where we want them.”
In truth it seemed that Ware meant to hold Fardale down, for in the last half of the seventh he permitted only three hitters to face him, and only one of them connected with the ball. This fellow drove a weak grounder into the diamond and was thrown out before he could get much more than halfway to first. In the eighth Fairport again made a strong bid for a run; but, although one of the visitors reached second on a scratch hit and an error, he got no farther.
Jolliby was the first batter in the last half, and he brought the home crowd up in a twinkling with a beautiful line drive for two bags.
With his massive “slugger” in his hand, big Bob Singleton followed Chip to the plate.
Singleton hit the second ball pitched, and it went straight up into the air a most astounding distance. As it came down Warren found the task of judging it a most perplexing one. The ball twisted off to one side, and all fancied the Fairport catcher could not touch it. He made a sidelong spring, however, and it plunked into his big mitt. Singleton was out.
“Dern my picter! It’s up to me!” squeaked Tubbs, as he waddled out.
Ware knew Obediah was one of those erratic hitters who did the most surprising things at the most unexpected times, and now he tried hard to strike the fat boy out. Obed saw what the pitcher was endeavoring to accomplish, and wisely held back until Ware was forced to put the ball over. Then Tubbs fell on one of the swift ones, and away it flew into left field.
Milliken’s long legs carried him in front of the ball, and he held it. Without delay he lined it to Macon, and Jolliby was compelled to remain at second.
“That’s where you do it!” triumphantly shouted one of the Fairport crowd. “That’s where you surprise us!”
“’Old hon!” said Billy. “We ain’t done yet, don’t y’ hunderstand!”
Never in his life had Buckhart been more anxious for a hit. The very fact that he was so keenly anxious caused him to be deceived on the third strike by Ware, and he swung at a bad one. When he realized what had happened the Texan hurled down his bat in chagrin.
Fairport now had her last opportunity at bat, but her best hitters were easy for Merriwell, who was in his finest form. They were quickly retired, and the home team came to the bench.
Dick was the first hitter.
“Tap it out, captain,” urged Black, “and I will sacrifice you to second.”
Merriwell made no reply, but walked to the plate and dropped a clean hit over the infield.
On the instant the cadets were all up, cheering madly.
Black “made good” and cleverly sacrificed Dick to second.
“They are working hard for a run, Jack, my boy!” laughed Roberts, “but they will never get it off you! This game ends one to nothing!”
“Dern my picter!” cried Obediah Tubbs. “I wisht I thought it!”
But when Bradley failed to touch the ball in three efforts, and was out, all knew the situation was more than serious for Fardale.
The hopes of the cadets now centred on Flint.
Dave cracked a fierce one along the ground at Roberts. The captain of the visiting team made a dive for it, got his hands on it, but did not stop it cleanly. In fact, it got through him a distance of four or five feet before he could pick it up. Flint was on first and Merriwell had safely reached third.
“Darrell!” was the shout, as Hal walked out. He was almost deathly pale, but his hands were firm as iron as they gripped the bat.
His pallor was no more intense than Chester Arlington’s, who stood watching him near the grand stand.
Hal let the first ball pass, although it was straight over. He did it that Flint might get down to second, and Dave improved the opportunity. Warren made a bluff of throwing to Crockett, but simply returned the ball to Ware.
“A clean hit wins this game, Arlington,” said Mel Fraser.
“And this is Darrell’s time to throw Merriwell down,” returned Chester. “He will do it, too.”
When Hal swung and missed the next ball Chester was more confident than ever that the result he predicted would follow.
With two balls and two strikes called Hal went after one of Ware’s high straight ones. He met it full and fair and drove it on a line into the outfield. No fielder could reach it, and pandemonium followed, for Merriwell and Flint came home, and Darrell had won the game with a handsome two-bagger.
When the shouting cadets poured onto the field and made a rush toward the players they found Dick Merriwell at Darrell’s side. Dick was patting Hal on the shoulder and softly saying in his ear:
“Well done, old man! You redeemed yourself nobly to-day!”
CHAPTER XXII. AN INQUISITIVE STRANGER.
In a train, bound for Fardale, sat a peculiar-looking man and a hunchback boy. The man was “Cap’n” Wiley, sometimes known as the marine marvel, an eccentric individual who claimed to be a sailor. Wiley had met Frank Merriwell, while the latter and his friends had been playing baseball in the West.
The boy was known only as Abe. He had been reared amid wild and reckless men, in a Western mining camp, where Frank had first seen him. The boy’s helplessness, and his apparent superiority to his surroundings, had interested Merriwell, who, learning that he had absolutely no relatives, so far as he knew, assumed charge of the boy, and started to bring him East with him.
Wiley, for years a world-rover, had decided to visit his old home in Maine, and had joined Frank on his eastward journey. On reaching Kansas City, Frank had been called to St. Joseph on business, and had left the boy in charge of the sailor; and to explain their presence on the Fardale train, and the events which followed, it will be necessary to follow them from the West.
As soon as Frank left, Wiley at once set out to show his young friend the sights, and they finally drifted into one of the best restaurants in Kansas City, where Wiley proceeded to order a lavish meal. When the food was set before them the sailor, in his breezy and characteristic manner, summoned the waiter.
“What!” he exclaimed, gazing suspiciously at the meal; “is this the smell of cheese I hear? Waiter, where are those humming birds’ tongues on toast? Don’t be reluctant about spreading before me a copious display of the culinary art. I have a delicate appetite, and when I eat I eat like a prince. This bill of fare seems crude, and limited, and unfinished. The list upon it might suit ordinary mortals, but what I yearn for are a few pickled eels’ feet.”
“I am afraid, sir, we cannot satisfy you!” returned the waiter haughtily. “Unless you can discover what suits your taste upon our bill of fare, you will have to go elsewhere.”
“Look here, William,” cried the sailor, “don’t look at me in that tone of voice. I don’t approve of it. You should be obsequious and attentive to one of my lofty station and high caste, for I am liable to press into your palm, as a small token, a gold doubloon, when I depart. It pays, William, to bow and scrape a little to me. I like it. Now here is my friend Abe—gaze at him, Sir William. You may not be aware of it, but Abe is a genius. He is the musical wonder of the century. Behold at his side his wonderful violin, from which he draws the most excruciating melodies. When he greases his bow and lets it slide over the quivering strings, the sounds which emanate from that instrument are sufficient to appal every one with admiration. You will observe that Abe is delicate. I couldn’t think of offending him by ordering a common sole-leather steak for him to masticate. The soul of a genius cannot survive on steak. It lives mainly on inspiration. Were you ever inspired, William? My boy, I have, on various occasions, devoured whole quarters of inspiration at a single sitting. Suppose you bring us a quart of inspiration? Make it Mumm’s extra dry.”
In spite of his dignity, the waiter could not help smiling at the marine marvel’s words and eccentric manner.
“Do you wish champagne, sir?” he inquired.
Wiley gently touched his lips with the corner of his napkin.
“Champagne! There is but one fault to find with it; whoever indulges to his full limit in the sparkling fluid invariably has real pain the following morning. No, William, on second thought, having with me my unsophisticated young friend, I will remain on the water wagon. Should I set a bad example for him, my quivering conscience would smite me a painful smote. As long as this place cannot provide the little delicacies I have mentioned, Abe and I will plow into this spread before us and do our best to calm our ravenous appetites. Stand behind my chair, William, and endeavor to anticipate my slightest want. When I depart I will look over my counterfeit money and find a hundred-dollar bill for you.”
There were a number of persons dining in the restaurant, and Wiley had attracted considerable attention. One of the guests now rose from his table and advanced toward the sailor and the boy. As Abe saw this man he gave a little gasp, and whispered to his companion:
“Look, cap’n—look! There is a man who has been following me about. He is coming!”
“I behold him advancing,” said the marine marvel, also in a low tone. “Paragorically speaking, his eyes are gimlets and his nose is an interrogation point. I think he intends to ask questions.”
The person who approached was a slim man in black, with his coat buttoned tightly across his breast. He was smooth-shaven, keen-eyed, and about forty years of age.
“Excuse me,” he said, as he paused at the table. “I believe I have heard of you before.”
“No doubt of it—no doubt whatever,” instantly retorted Wiley. “I am notorious from the equator to the Arctic circle. My face is spread broadcast from Kalamazoo to Hongkong.”
“You are a baseball player?”
“I am; I confess it. I am one of the finest baseball players this great and glorious country has ever produced. I am lingering here a day or two before proceeding East to take charge of the New York Nationals. Once or twice I have suspected that I would never again prance forth upon the diamond and toy with the leather sphere; but I am unable to restrain my natural inclination, and the ozone of this gorgeous spring atmosphere has set the baseball fever throbbing once more in my pulmonary artery. Are you interested in the great American game, sir?”
“I am what is called a fan,” answered the stranger, with a faint smile. “I presume that is how it happens that I have heard of you. If I remember right, you were with Frank Merriwell’s team last season?”
“On one glorious occasion I delivered the goods for that organization. I presume you read an account of it in the newspapers? The press of the entire country literally palpitated with it.”
“I saw an account of it somewhere. Who is your young friend?”
The man nodded toward the hunchback.
“Whom?” said Wiley. “Why, he is Master Abe, the wizard violinist. He’s one of the greatest musicians of modern times. His playing would draw tears from eyes of stone. You should hear him, sir. He has thrilled the hearts of thousands. Why, when we were abroad together he played before the crowned heads of the foreign countries.”
Abe looked surprised.
“Then he has traveled abroad?” questioned the stranger.
“Has he?” cried the sailor. “You may wager your coin without parsimony upon it. We traveled together through Europe, Oorup, Eerup, slid through Greece, and knocked the stuffing out of Turkey. His greatest triumph was when he played before Emperor William, of Germany. The emperor was spellbound. In his excitement the ends of his mustache became entangled in his eyebrows, and it required fourteen attendants with currycombs and brushes to clear them out. At the close of the performance, when the last throbbing note of music had died away, and Abe had lowered his violin, the emperor sprang to his feet and shouted:
”_‘Ich liebe dich! Gott in Himmel!_ Frankfurters and harncase! Likewise pumpernickle!’ Then he fell on Abe’s neck, weeping as if his heart would break. We were entertained at the royal palace, where we dined in state. That night I slept in a beautiful bed with rustling silken curtains, and then—I woke up."
“Why, cap’n!” gasped Abe.
“Hush!” said Wiley, behind his hand. “You may have forgotten it, but I remember it just as well as I remember our trip abroad.”
“Who is the instructor of this wonderful young musician?” asked the stranger.
“Instructor?” exclaimed the marine marvel. “Why, such a prodigious prodigy needs no instructor save his own intuition. Nature has been his instructor. He has listened to the singing of the brook, the wind, the trees, the birds, and the grasshoppers. All those palpitating melodies he has incorporated into his wonderful curriculum of music.”
“What did you say the boy’s name was?” asked the inquisitive stranger.
“It is Abe—Master Abe.”
“But his name in full?”
“His name in full, sir? He has never been full!”
“I mean his complete name.”
“That’s it; that’s the whole of it.”
“But what is his history?”
“My dear inquisitorial friend,” said the sailor, “you are projecting yourself into our repast and retiring mastication. Speaking about names, it occurs to me that I have never been introduced to you.”
“I beg your pardon. My name is Nathan Callgaul.”
“Thanks for the information, Mr. Allgaul.”
“Callgaul, Cap’n Wiley—Callgaul!”
“Well, you may call it gaul or anything you choose, but it occurs to me that your intense curiosity in regard to us is becoming exasperatingly annoying. You had better retire and permit us to persue the even tenor eleven of our ways.”
“Oh! very well,” said Nathan Callgaul, shrugging his shoulders. “I have no desire to annoy you.”
“You can’t gnaw me,” retorted the sailor. “I wouldn’t permit such familiarity. So long, Mr. Tallgaul. See you later—I don’t think.”
As the stranger retired Wiley fell upon the food with an air of ravenous greediness.
“Cold!” he muttered. “Cold as Mr. Somegaul’s nerve. William, will you kindly present the check to the gentleman and explain that he has ruined this meal and therefore should pay the bill? It will save me the price, and that will be nice. My! my! there is another poetic accident!”
“Cap’n,” said Abe, who seemed strangely agitated, “somehow I am afraid of that man. I know he has been watching me. He was on the train when we came here to this city. I have seen him a number of times since. Something tells me to look out for him.”
“My boy, you are troubled with the hallucinations of genius. I am quite sure Mr. Barrel-of-gaul is entirely harmless. He is simply one of those exasperatingly inquisitive persons who desire to know every one’s business better than their own. Fly at the hash, Abe, and satisfy the cravings of the inner man.”
Although he tried to eat, the boy found little satisfaction in it, and his relief seemed intense when the man in black finally left the restaurant.
“Is he gone?” said Wiley. “Why, William, you failed to present him with the check! He has departed without settling, William! That was a terrible oversight on your part, and I fear you will regret it.”
Having paid the bill, Wiley paused ere leaving and looked the expectant waiter in the eye.
“William,” he said, “it was my intention to give you a large tip. You have been very faithful and attentive, William. I have no fault to find with you on that account; but you are expensive. You permitted Mr. Too-much-gaul to ruin my repast, and then you failed to present him with the check. That being the case, I shall deduct the amount of the check from the tip I contemplated making you, which leaves you exactly seventy-five cents indebted to me. Do you wish to pay it now, or shall I let it stand against you?”
The waiter was too astonished to reply, and before he could recover Wiley had teetered out with Abe at his side.
CHAPTER XXIII. WHAT HAPPENED TO ABE.
“Abe,” said the sailor, as they reached the street, “I entertain palpitating fears that I shall never place my lily-white hands on the balance due me from William. I am afraid he will not settle. I shall have to charge it up to profit and loss.”
“Why, cap’n,” said the boy wonderingly, “I believe he expected you to give him something. I think he was disappointed.”
"Haven’t a doubt of it, my boy; but this world is full of bitter disappointments. I have encountered a number of them in my time. A person gets used to it after a while. Disappointments roll from me like water off a duck’s back. Once on a time they filled me with bitterness, and heartburning, and other painful emotions too numerous to mention. Once on a time I had a girl who threw me down for a homelier chap. Abe, it then seemed that for me the sun had eternally set and Stygian night lay spread before me for all time. I even thought of taking a shotgun and discharging it into that vacuum where my brains are supposed to be. I longed to rest in my cold, cold grave, where all would be peace, and silence, and relief. In my mind’s eye I saw above me a little mound of earth, with daisies, forget-me-nots, hollyhocks, cowslips, and other aristocratic flowers growing all over it. I saw the cruel, cruel girl weeping above that mound, and it gave me untold satisfaction.
“The only thing that saved me from destruction was my thirst. I was seized by an awful thirst, and when I had quenched it I felt a great deal better. What I drank helped me to forget my sorrows, and the next day I had another girl. As I inspected this other girl with my critical eye, I arrived at the conclusion that she just about knocked the spots off number one. And ever since that time I have faced disappointments with philosophical complaisance, firm in my belief that every disappointment and fizzle I made is simply a blessing in disguise. That’s why I stroll through life with such serene urbanity. That’s why I smile in the face of the finger of scorn and the tongue of gossip. Excuse me if my metaphor is slightly mixed.”
“What are you talking about, anyway, captain?”
“I don’t know, Abe. I often wonder what I am talking about. At one time I engaged a cultured person to translate my language for me. But when he explained it to me, some of the things I said so shocked me that I immediately discharged him. I concluded that it was better for me to pass through life in blissful ignorance of the real meaning of my own fluent conversation. But stay, Abe, stay! Methinks I have forgotten something. Even so, I have left my hundred-dollar meerschaum pipe in that restaurant. I placed it on the table at my elbow, and came away without it. It’s ten chances to one that the waiter has already gathered it unto his person, and is now chortling with glee over his good fortune. Pause here a moment, while I hasten back to recover my property. I will return before any elongated amount of time has evaporated.” Saying which, Wiley quickly dashed back into the restaurant, leaving the boy waiting upon the sidewalk.
Barely had the sailor disappeared when a closed cab stopped at the curb, and from it sprang two black-bearded men, whose slouch hats were pulled low down over their eyes. Before Abe could dream that he was in the slightest danger, these men seized him. One of them clapped a broad hand over his mouth, to prevent him from making an outcry, and in a most astonishing manner he was snapped up, carried to the cab, and lifted into it. If passing pedestrians observed this daring piece of work it was completed before one of them thought of interfering. The cab door closed with a bang. The driver whipped up his horses, and the astonished and frightened hunchback was borne swiftly away.
“Keep still, boy!” growled one of the bearded men. “If you raise a yell you’ll be sorry. We’re not going to hurt you.”
Abe had managed to cling to his fiddle, which was a habit of his at all times. He was terrified, shocked, and almost smothered.
“Don’t!” he begged. “What have I done to you? Let me go, please! Let me go!”
“We’ll let you go,” was the retort. “We’re just going to give you a little ride. You will enjoy it.”
“Look out for him,” cautioned the other man. “He may set up a whoop.”
“I know he won’t, because I’ll choke the gizzard out of him if he does. Don’t you even peep, kid!”
“I never hurt you,” whispered the agitated boy. “Let me get out. Cap’n Wiley will miss me. He told me to wait.”
“You didn’t have time to wait, kid. You was in a hurry. You met some very dear friends, who took a great interest in you, and you couldn’t linger for Cap’n Wiley.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Oh, we will take you to a nice place, where there are lots of pretty things, and you will enjoy yourself. Eh, Sam?”
“Sure, Bill!” agreed Sam.
“I don’t want to go.”
“Oh! yes, you do; yes, you do. Perhaps you think you don’t want to go, but you do. You will have a nice time—eh, Sam?”
“Sure, Bill! He will enjoy himself immensely.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Oh, it’s just a little joke—a fine little joke on Cap’n Wiley. Ha! ha! He will be all fussed up when he comes out and finds you gone. To-morrow morning you can go back to him. The joke will be all over then—eh, Sam?”
“Sure, Bill; it will be all over as far as we are concerned. We won’t have anything further to do with it.”
Then the two ruffians laughed in a manner that made the unfortunate boy’s blood run cold. He felt sure they were scoundrels, yet why they should seek to hurt him was beyond his understanding. Once before he had been kidnapped in a similar manner, and the experience through which he passed was so terrible that the memory haunted his waking hours and troubled his dreams. He was now terrified by the thought that he must again pass through a similar experience. Yet, somehow, the suddenness of what had happened robbed him of strength to struggle, and convinced him it would be folly for him to shout for aid.
The cab rolled on, turning corner after corner, and to the boy the ride seemed almost interminable. Finally it came to an end, and one of the men flung the door open as soon as the cab stopped. He sprang out and looked around.
“All right,” he said. “Chuck the kid out, Sam. No one near.”
The boy was thrust out by Sam, and instantly Bill caught him up, turned like a flash, and ran up the steps of a house. Even as he reached the door it opened for him, and then, for the first time, Abe uttered a cry which rang sharp and shrill, and full of unspeakable terror, along the dark block. He attempted to struggle, but his puny strength was of no avail, and a moment later the door closed heavily behind him.
In the darkness of that house the boy was carried up a flight of stairs and thrust into a room. The door closed upon him, and he was alone. For some moments he stood shaking like a leaf, his legs seeming almost too weak to bear him.
“What does it mean?” he breathed. “It must mean that Frank’s enemies have done this. What good could it do them to hurt me?”
His only satisfaction lay in the fact that his dear fiddle was still in his possession.
After a time he felt for the door and found it; but, as he expected, it remained immovable beneath his touch. There seemed to be no window to the room.
“I can’t get away!” he sobbed. “I will never get away any more unless Frank finds me. He found me once and saved me. He can’t find me now!”
Until he met Frank Merriwell, Abe had never heard the name of God save as an oath. He had known absolutely nothing of religion.
Frank himself, a firm believer in all things good, had found time to teach the lad, and now little Abe knelt in that dark room and prayed. It was a simple prayer, but who can say it was not heard by the One to whom it was addressed?
“Dear God,” he sobbed, “I am alone, a poor little hunchback boy. I never hurt nobody in my life. I wouldn’t hurt nobody if I could. Dear God, Frank says you know everything, see everything, and are good and kind to every one. I know what Frank says is true, for he couldn’t say anything that is not true. Please, God, don’t let the bad men take me away from Frank. If they do I shall die! Frank is the only one in the whole world who has ever been kind to me. I love him, dear God, and so won’t you please, please let him find me again! Amen!”
Even as he uttered the final word there came a sound at the door. He leaped to his feet, shaking with excitement, his heart filled with the belief that somehow his prayer had been answered thus quickly.
The door opened. Abe fell back with a little gasp of disappointment, for into the room stepped a masked man who carried a lighted lamp in his hand. This man closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it, the lamp held high, while he stared through the twin holes of the mask at the cowering hunchback.
There were some moments of silence. The man with the lamp was first to speak.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
“It’s Abe, sir—only Abe.”
“Is that all the name you know?” came the harsh, cold voice from beyond the mask.
“That’s all, sir.”
“Don’t lie to me, boy! Tell me the truth!”
“I am not lying. Frank says it is wicked to lie.”
“Where were you born?”
“I don’t know.”
“See here, boy, I want you to tell me all you know about yourself. It’s the best thing you can do. If you don’t know where you were born, at least you do know where you have lived.”
“Always, until Frank found me, I lived down in Camp Broncho.”
“That’s in Arizona, is it?”
“I think so.”
“How did you come to be in Camp Broncho? Who left you there?”
“Oh, I can’t remember much about it. Once there was a man named Black Dorson, and I used to play the fiddle for him and get money for him, and he beat me; but one night he was shot, and after that I lived the best way I could.”
The masked man advanced into the room and placed the lamp on a small table.
“You don’t remember anything about yourself before you lived with Black Dorson?”
“I don’t seem to remember much. Sometimes I almost remember, but it is like a dream.”
“What is it you almost remember?”
“Oh, I can’t tell! I can’t tell! It is all confused! I think it must be a dream, for I know it cannot be true. It seems that once I had a home and was not a little miserable hunchback that everybody kicked and cursed.”
Again the man stood still some moments, staring at the boy.
“What are you going to do with me?” asked Abe. “Are you going to kill me?”
“It may be true!” he muttered. “I believe he looks like her!”
Then he suddenly commanded:
“Boy, take off your coat!”
“What for?” panted Abe. “What are you going to do?”
“Take off your coat! Don’t be scared. I am not going to hurt you.”
Realizing the folly of refusing to obey, the boy pulled off his coat as directed.
“Shove up your right sleeve above the elbow,” ordered the man.
With shaking fingers the lad obeyed.
The wearer of the mask then gripped Abe’s wrist with his left hand, still keeping his right behind him, as he had done almost constantly since entering the room. He drew the boy nearer to the light and seemed gazing eagerly and excitedly at the thin, bared arm.
“Push your sleeve higher,” he directed.
Abe did so.
Suddenly a low, savage exclamation came from the hidden lips of the man.
“There it is!” he almost panted. “There is the mark!”
On the lad’s arm, just above the elbow, were the faint outlines of a blue star, as if it had been tattooed in the flesh years before. Hundreds of times Abe had gazed at this mark upon his arm and wondered over it. To him it was a mystery and one he fancied would never be solved.
Suddenly the man threw the boy’s wrist aside, and through the eyeholes of the mask Abe fancied he caught a reddish gleam. And now suddenly upon him fell a feeling of hopeless fear more intense than any he had yet experienced.
“He will kill me now!” he whispered. “I know he will!”
“It is her brat!” muttered the man. “Shawmut lied to me. The kid still lives!”
He turned as if to depart, and for a moment the hand he had so persistently held behind his back dropped at his side. In a twinkling Abe seized it, as he began wildly pleading for mercy. Only a few words escaped his lips, for the touch of that hand, cold, and clammy, and deathlike, silenced him. It was as if he had grasped the fingers of a corpse, and he saw that the hand, scarcely larger than a child’s, was white as chalk.
With a terrible oath the masked man lifted his other hand and struck the boy down. Then he caught up the lamp and hurried out of the room, the door closing with a click behind him.
CHAPTER XXIV. AN APPEAL TO BIAL KEENE.
“There is the house, Frank,” declared Wiley. “I am dead sure of it. I saw them shanghai Abe. I saw them chuck him into the cab. I was too late to render assistance, but like a bloodhound on the trail I followed that cab.”
Frank Merriwell and Wiley were standing in the dark shadow of a building almost directly across the street from the house into which the hunchback lad had been taken. Having completed his business in St. Joseph sooner than he thought he could, Merry returned to his hotel in Kansas City and found Wiley almost tearing his hair in despair. Overjoyed by Frank’s appearance, the sailor lost no time in telling how he had dined with Abe in the restaurant, had left the boy outside to return for his pipe, and, on again leaving the restaurant, had seen the unfortunate lad bundled into the cab and carried off. Fleet of foot as a deer, Wiley had followed the cab, but had found no opportunity to rescue the captured boy. Nevertheless, he had spotted the house into which Abe was taken, had obtained its number, and the name of the street, and was contemplating the advisability of appealing to the police when Frank showed up.
Merry commanded the sailor to take him to the house.
“Unless he was taken out as soon as they brought him here,” asserted Wiley, “he is still there.”
“An obvious fact, if you have made no error. Cap’n, I am afraid I will never be able to trust you again. Whenever I do you fail me. I warned you to look out for Abe.”
“Crush not my sensitive spirits with incrimination,” entreated the marine marvel. “Why should I have anticipated trouble for Abe at such a time? Your enemies seemed beaten to a white froth, and before you I fancied there was nothing but peace and salubrity.”
“Whenever I crush one enemy,” muttered Frank, “it seems that another rises to take his place.”
“You are certain this is a plot of your enemies?”
“What else can it be? Why should any one kidnap that boy unless they did it to injure me in some manner?”
“Ask me a question upon which I can expatiate astutely. This one is too much for me, Frank. What are you going to do?”
“I am going to find Abe.”
“How? How are you going to get into that house? If you demand admission it will be refused.”
“I can appeal to the police.”
“Yes, but——”
“But first I shall see Bial Keene.”
“Who is Bial Keene?”
“One of the cleverest private detectives in the country. I have employed him before, and I know his ability.”
“Then it’s up to you, Frank, to put your mud hooks onto him at once, and get him into the game. Time is valuable. Some gazaboo once observed that time is money, but I notice that I have a great deal more time than money.”
“Wiley,” said Merry, “I want you to stay right here and shadow this house. Don’t take your eyes off it for a moment. I am going to find Bial Keene, if possible.”
“Yours to command. I will stick to that house like glue. Depend on me for that, Frank.”
“If you see anything that leads you to believe Abe is being removed from the house, follow him.”
“Ay, ay, sir. When it comes to that little trick, Wind-jammer Wiley is the boy!”
Having left Wiley there, Merry hastened to the nearest point where a cab could be found, and was soon being carried toward the office of Scott & Keene, Kansas City’s two famous private detectives.
His one fear was that Bial Keene would not be at his office and could not be found. He knew Keene’s house address, yet it was possible the man would be engaged in some piece of work, so that he would be neither at the office nor the house. Having reached the office building, Merry instructed the cab driver to wait. As it was after hours, the place seemed almost deserted. The watchman was on hand, however, and promptly stopped Frank.
“I must see Mr. Keene,” explained Frank.
“Mr. Keene is probably at home.”
“Are you certain?”
“It makes no difference. You can’t see him here at this hour.”
“Not if I have an appointment with him?”
“He has said nothing to me about an appointment with any one.”
“See here, watchman, don’t you remember me? I am Frank Merriwell. It was not many months ago that I was here, and upon that occasion a man fell down the elevator shaft and was killed. I think you should recall the affair.”
“I do,” confessed the watchman.
“Then you know that Mr. Keene was in my employ at that time. I must see him again on a most important affair. Here, watchman, is something for you. I shall consider it a favor if you permit me to proceed to Mr. Keene’s office.”
As Merry spoke he pressed some money into the Watchman’s hand. The man seemed to hesitate, but finally said:
“It’s against orders, but I will chance it. I may get into trouble.”
“You will not,” assured Frank.
The watchman escorted Merry up several flights of Stairs and finally paused before the door of the detective’s rooms. There he gave a peculiar knock, with the result that the outer door was finally opened.
The man who opened it was neither Scott nor Keene, but the watchman knew him, and said:
“Jones, here is a gentleman to see Mr. Keene on important business. It’s all right, I am sure.”
“I don’t know about that,” returned Jones. “If he wishes to see Mr. Keene he can do so in the morning.”
“My business cannot wait until morning,” declared Merry. “I must find him to-night.”
“What’s your name?”
“Merriwell.”
“Frank Merriwell?”
“That’s right.”
“If you will wait a moment right where you are I will see about the matter. I am not certain Mr. Keene is in his private office, but I can telephone him if he is not. Excuse me.”
The door was closed, leaving Merry outside with the watchman, who whispered:
“Keene is in there. He will see you, all right.”
This proved to be true, for, a few moments later, the door was again thrown open and Jones invited Merry to enter.
“Mr. Keene was studying over a very perplexing matter, sir,” he said, in explanation, “and I was doubtful if he would care to be interrupted; but immediately on hearing your name he told me to bring you in. He is in his private office.”
The door of this private office was opened and Frank entered. A tall, dark-eyed, clean-shaven, keen-faced man arose from before a desk and held out his hand.
“Mr. Merriwell,” he said, “I am glad to see you again. It is something of a surprise, as that little Alaskan business you wished looked after has fallen through.”
“Yes,” said Frank, “there is no necessity for following it up. Milton Sukes is dead and will trouble me no further; but I have other enemies who are giving me trouble.”
“Not this man, Macklyn Morgan? Why, I understand that he lost a leg recently, and it hardly seems that he will be very energetic and troublesome to you in the future.”
“How did you know that he lost a leg?”
Keene smiled the least bit.
“I have been keeping track of you, Merriwell, and know all about your desperate fight to hold your mines. I thought you might need my services again, and for that reason I decided to keep fully informed of all that transpired.”
“Well, Keene, I do need you and need you bad. I hope the matter on which you are engaged this evening may be put aside for a short time, at least, as it is of the greatest importance that you give me assistance without delay.”
“I will do anything I can, Merriwell. I think this affair may rest until to-morrow. It was by a bare chance that you found me here at this hour. I wished to be alone to study over a case which I had on hand, which is decidedly bothersome, and so I chose to come here when everything was quiet. Sit down, sir, and tell me what you desire.”
In a short time Merriwell had related the facts of the affair, explaining in a few words how on a former occasion his enemies had tried to strike at him through the hunchback boy, and how he had followed the trail of Abe’s kidnappers to Camp Nowhar, at last succeeding in rescuing the little cripple.
Keene frowned and tapped his desk with his knuckles as he sat in silence after hearing of this. When a few moments had passed he observed:
“It seems rather singular that your enemies should try the same trick over. Besides that, it is a weak method of striking at you. I can see how Sukes did it in order to divert your attention at the time when you were exerting yourself to ruin his illegal business. But is there any reason now why any one should wish to bother you to prevent you from accomplishing any purpose you have in mind?”
“I know of no reason, Keene.”
“Merriwell, there is a mystery behind this that you have not penetrated. I don’t know why I think so, but in some cases I depend on intuition. In this case intuition tells me that this second kidnapping of the hunchback means something entirely different than the first affair. What it means I am not now prepared to say. You say the house to which the boy was taken is on Euclid Avenue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“This fellow, Wiley, in whose charge the boy was left, has told you so?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is Wiley reliable? Can you trust him in everything?”
“He is a strange character, Mr. Keene; but I believe he would not deceive me. In fact, I am positive he would not. I even became convinced by his own actions that he was false to me, yet in the end he proved himself true as steel, and he saved my life. I am satisfied he spoke the truth when he told me how Abe was captured, and how he followed the kidnappers to that house. I have left him there to watch the house. On you I must depend for aid in rescuing the boy.”
“You shall have it,” declared Bial Keene, as he rose to his feet. “We will lose no time.”
He flung open the door to the outer room and called:
“Jones!”
“Yes, sir,” was the answer, as the man outside appeared.
“Jones, go to police headquarters and tell them that I need six of their best men |
61830-0 | in plain clothes. Tell them the department shall have the entire credit of an important piece of work, if those six men are sent without delay to the corner of Euclid Avenue and Tenth Street. Not a moment must be lost. Accompany the officers to the same corner. That’s all.”
“Yes, sir.”
Instantly Jones wheeled and hastened from the office.
“Are you armed, Mr. Merriwell?” asked Keene quietly.
“I am not. I do not habitually carry a weapon.”
The detective opened a drawer and picked out a business-like revolver.
“Slip this into your pocket,” he directed. “You may need it.”
Frank took the pistol, and Keene then armed himself with two revolvers, after which he slipped on his topcoat and clapped on his head a hat with a wide, slouching brim.
“Come, Mr. Merriwell,” he said. “We’re off to see what we can do.”
CHAPTER XXV. THE SIGNAL WHISTLE.
The door of the shadowed house on Euclid Avenue opened and two bearded men came out. As they descended the steps they mumbled in low tones to each other. Neither of them saw certain shadowy figures lurking in the dark places, nor suspected the fact that the house was under surveillance. Nor did they become aware of the fact that they were followed as they walked away. These men were the ruffians, Sam and Bill, who had kidnapped the hunchback boy. From the house they proceeded to a saloon several blocks away. Entering this saloon, they sat down at a table in a little back room and ordered drinks.
“Well, pal,” growled Bill, “we’ve got our coin.”
“Yes, we’ve got it,” returned the other, “and I suppose we ought to be satisfied.”
“Are you satisfied?”
“I call it a measly, bum price for the job we done.”
They drank the liquor placed before them and ordered cigars.
“At the very least,” declared Sam, “the gent should have paid us a hundred apiece.”
Bill nodded.
“You’re right about that, pal. He was right eager to git his paws on that kid. I wonder just what he wanted hunchy for?”
“No telling. I dunno; but I do know he wanted him a heap bad.”
“Lemme whisper something to yer, pal. I have heard a little something that aroused my suspicions. I reckon the kid is some lost heir, or something of that sort, and the gentleman what wants him is the individual who will profit by it if hunchy disappears from the face of the earth. That being the case, it is dead certain we might have squeezed the old guy for twice the money he paid us.”
At this both the men growled, and one of them struck the table with his clinched fist.
“Dern these false whiskers!” grated Sam, as he gave a jerk at them. “I am going to take mine off.”
“Don’t do it here, pal,” cautioned Bill. “Somebody may see yer. What will they think if ye do? You came in here wearing whiskers, and you can’t go out clean-shaved without attracting attention.”
“All right,” said Sam; “I’ll keep the things on till we mosey out of here, but I’m going to get rid of them at the first opportunity.”
“I’ve been thinking of something, pal,” nodded Bill. “I’ve been thinking we got out altogether too easy. We should have hit the bloke up for another fifty. I opine we might have frightened him into coughing up.”
“Did you ring, gents?” inquired one of the bartenders, thrusting his head into the room.
“Naw, we didn’t ring,” said Sam.
“We didn’t,” agreed Bill; “but you may bring us two more whiskies.”
“Got ter talk kinder low and quiet-like here,” said Sam. “They are nosey around this place. Notice how that chap looked at us?”
“Mebbe he didn’t like the cut of our whiskers.”
The bartender soon returned with the drinks, which were promptly paid for, and he departed.
“Sam,” said Bill, having dashed off his drink at a single gulp, “have you the nerve to stand by me?”
“Nerve? What do you want? What do you mean?”
“I mean that I am just about ready to go back there, and light on that gent all spraddled out, and squeeze him hard. If you back me up we’ll go, and I’ll bet we will make him cough up fifty plunks to each of us.”
Sam’s eyes gleamed a little.
“Do you think it can be done, Bill?”
“We can make our bluff. I’ll threaten him if I have to.”
“That might be dangerous.”
“Go on! He has only one other chap and that old woman there in the house with him. What if we go back and tell him we will peach if he doesn’t crack down the extra coin? What if I tell him I know something about the kid?”
“The game might work, Bill.”
“Well, if it doesn’t work, it is worth playing. Are you with me?”
“Sure thing! Let’s have another drink and I’ll be ready.”
Again they ordered drinks, which they disposed of.
“Wait here a minute for me, pal,” said Sam. “I will be right back.”
He then left the room, and Bill sat puffing a cigar, while he revolved in his mind the scheme of getting more money from the man who had employed them to kidnap the hunchback. At length Bill grew impatient because of Sam’s delay in returning.
“What’s the matter with him?” he growled. “He acts as if we had time to burn. If we’re going back there, the sooner we go the better it will be.”
Still his companion delayed about reappearing, and finally Bill rose to his feet in a huff.
“Let him go!” he growled. “I’ll go back alone! I’ll get the whole of it!”
But as he started toward the door the other man reappeared.
“Well, where yer been?” Bill angrily demanded. “Did yer think we had a month to do this little trick in?”
“Oh. that’s all right, Bill,” was the husky reply. “I ran into Sheeny Joe out here and had hard work to shake him.”
“Well, come, Sam; if yer going to stick by me through this thing, let’s get a move on!”
Together they left the saloon and turned their steps toward the house on Euclid Avenue.
As they reached the steps of the house Sam huskily whispered:
“Mebbe we can’t git in, pal.”
“I will get in,” vowed Bill. “I know the signal. If he refuses to answer I’ll kick the door down.”
But the signal was answered directly by an old woman, who peered out suspiciously from the partly open door. The sound of a chain told the two ruffians that it would be useless for them to attempt to force the door open.
“Who is it?” demanded the woman.
“Let us in, Mag,” said Bill. “We’ve important business with the boss.”
“Go ’way from here!” rasped the old hag. “He can’t be disturbed any more to-night.”
“Well, he better be disturbed!” said Bill. “If he knows what’s good for him, he’ll see us! We’re dead onto something that means a heap to him. The police——”
“The police?” hissed the woman.
“There’s something doing, Mag, and the boss should know about it. It’s for his good we’ve come back here. You know he trusts us, so unhook that chain and let us in quick before we are seen here.”
After a little pause the chain rattled again, and then the door swung open.
“If you know anything the boss better know, why, all right,” mumbled the old woman; “but if you’re lying, look out! That’s all!”
“Take us to him!” ordered Bill.
A few moments later the two ruffians stood in the presence of a man with iron-gray hair and mustache and deeply furrowed features. The eyes of this man were sharp and restless, while his right hand was small as that of a woman and white as snow.
“What’s this stuff Mag tells me?” he demanded, in a cold, hard voice. “Why are you two back here?”
“We come back here for your own good, Mr. Jarvis,” declared Bill. “Eh, Sam?”
“Sure, Bill,” nodded the second ruffian.
“For my own good? You said something about the police.”
“That’s what we did, Mr. Jarvis.”
“What did you mean?”
“You tell him, Bill,” urged Sam, backing off a little and standing in the doorway of the room.
“What ails yer?” growled Bill in disgust. “Are you afraid? Well, I’m not afraid of the Old Boy himself.”
Instantly the suspicions of the man with the corpse-like hand were aroused.
“What are you two rascals up to?” he demanded harshly. “Speak up, both of you!”
“Look here, Mr. Jarvis,” said Bill, wagging his head. “We opine we’ve done a good turn for you to-night.”
“You were paid for it.”
“Paid!” snarled the disguised desperado. “Paid for that job! Well, I should say not! Why, Mr. Jarvis, we know a thing or two—eh, Sam?”
“Sure, Bill,” agreed Sam from the doorway.
“We know that kid is a heap valuable to you. We know he is a lost heir and he can make you a lot of trouble.”
The face of the man called Jarvis hardened and his eyes grew dangerous.
“You fools!” he said in a low tone. “What are you trying to do? What do you want?”
“We want more money,” asserted Bill gruffly. “And we’re going to get it, too!”
“Are you?”
“You bet your boots we are! We wasn’t half paid for that job, and you have to crack down as much more coin!”
“So you’re trying to intimidate me, are you? I am a bad man to try that trick on. I made a bargain with you, and stood by it. You have been paid, and that ends it!”
“Not by a blamed sight!” cried Bill. “Either you pay us what we ask, or else——”
“Or else—what? What will you do? Be careful!”
“Well, we were speaking of the police. It’s a right easy matter to put them onto your track. It’s a right easy matter to tell Mr. Frank Merriwell where the kid is. He is some dangerous, and you know it. Let him get started after you and he will give you a whole lot of trouble.”
“So you threaten me?” said Jarvis in a voice that was now soft and smooth. “So you come back here for the purpose of forcing me to give up more money to you? I am afraid you don’t quite know me. You fool! Do you think I am alone in this house—alone with old Mag? Not by any means! There are others who will answer the call if I press that button.”
“But you won’t press it,” asserted Bill. “Will he, Sam?”
There was no answer, for Sam had retreated and disappeared into the adjoining room.
Jarvis laughed softly.
“You are a great bluffer, Bill, but Sam hasn’t the nerve. The chances are that he is already on his ways to the street. He knows better than to try to carry this thing through with me.”
“Here, Sam!” savagely called Bill. “Come back here!”
Still there was no answer.
“Go!” commanded Jarvis in a sudden terrible tone, pointing toward the door. “Go at once, and never trouble me again! If you do, I’ll put you where the dogs will not disturb you!”
But Bill was a stayer, and he declined to be baffled in such a manner.
“I have come for more money, and I’ll stay here till I get it,” he declared.
Jarvis took a step toward the push button.
“Don’t touch it!” grated Bill, also stepping forward, and at the same time thrusting one hand into his bosom. “If you do I’ll cut your heart out!”
Jarvis seemed to hesitate, and the ruffian fancied he was intimidated.
“I mean business,” Bill asserted. “You cough up, or I will carve you!”
“Oh, very well,” Jarvis finally said. “I presume it’s the easiest way to get rid of you. Sam gets nothing, but I will pay you. I have the money here.”
He thrust his hand into his pocket, but when he drew it forth a revolver gleamed in his fingers and the muzzle was turned on the disguised desperado.
“Put up that knife, you dog!” he commanded; “or I will blow a hole in you! You threatened to betray me to the police! Why, you idiot! You would not dare show your face to the police of this city! They want you, and they would nab you the moment you appeared before them! You can’t bluff me!”
Bill uttered an oath.
“Here, Sam, you infernal coward!” he called. “Where are you?”
“I am here,” was the answer, and Bill’s companion once more appeared in the doorway. His eyes surveyed the scene.
“What did you sneak for?” hissed Bill. “You gave him a chance to pull a gun on me! Had you remained here——”
“It would have made no difference,” asserted Jarvis.
“Perhaps not,” said Sam, as he lifted his fingers to his lips.
From those lips suddenly came a clear, shrill, peculiar whistle that caused Bill and Jarvis to start in astonishment.
“What the devil does that mean?” Jarvis demanded.
“The boy knows,” laughed Sam in a singularly changed voice. “He heard the whistle, and he is not the only one. Mr. Jarvis, the police are at your door. Listen! They are in this house now.”
“A thousand furies!” snarled the astonished man. “What have you done?”
“I opened the door for them!”
“You—you opened the door? Why, you fool! You will go to prison yourself—you and your dog of a pal here!”
“Perhaps he will go,” said Sam; “but not I. They are not looking for me.”
“Not looking for you? Who are you?”
Like a flash the false beard was torn from the face of the man who had given the signal whistle, and at the same time he cried:
“I am Frank Merriwell! Surrender, both of you, for you are trapped and cannot escape!”
Even as he uttered these words, mingled with the distant wailing of the violin came the sound of rushing feet. Behind him appeared several men, one of them wearing a long, dark overcoat and a wide-brimmed hat.
“Ah!” cried Bial Keene. “I see you have your birds, Merriwell.”
CHAPTER XXVI. BOUND FOR FARDALE.
“Well, Abe,” said Captain Wiley, as the train on which they were traveling approached Fardale, “it strikes my acute perception that we must be drawing near our goal. This gang of salubrious young bloods in the car are evidently going to Fardale. However, by their appearance to my optical vision and from the conversation that is trickling from their lips, and tickling the tympanum of my ears, I am led to infer that they are members of a baseball team, together with a number of enthusiastic rooters. It strikes me that there will be a little baseball doing in Fardale this afternoon, on which occasion we will take in the sport, my boy—we will take in the sport. There will be but one drawback. Little Walter will have to sit still and see others perambulate over the diamond and swat the ball on the trade-mark.”
“Fardale!” exclaimed the hunchback, his eyes glowing. “I have heard so much about it! And Dick is there!”
“Yes, beyond question we shall encounter Richard Merriwell at Fardale. It will be a surprise to him, Abe. I know that he will palpitate with joy when he beholds our beaming countenances.”
“And Frank is coming soon?”
“As soon as he can. He said it was possible he might arrive almost as soon as we did. I have in a secret chamber of my cranium a conviction that Frank Merriwell himself will soon again be seen upon the baseball field. Abe, he is a wiz! He is the greatest pitcher this grand and glorious country has ever produced. When he sends the sphere whirling through the atmosphere and causes it to cut curious capers, the batter who faces him invariably hits nothing solider than the empty ozone.”
“Frank has been kind to me,” murmured Abe. “But I did fear I might never see him again when those men seized me and carried me away in Kansas City.”
“There was where Little Walter got in his fine work. I trailed them to their lair and then sicked Merry on them. It was a fine piece of business he did. There was but one fizzle to the affair. The gent named Jarvis, who was at the bottom of the infamous plot, managed to escape. Either he or one of his tools in the house turned off the lights. In the darkness he shot Bill; but when the lights flared again luminously, he had vanished like a spook into thin air. With the assistance of Bial Keene, Frank is doing his best to again get track of Mr. Jarvis and to learn why you were kidnapped. He will do it, too, my boy; mark that!”
“It’s so different here in this part of the country,” said the hunchback, as he gazed from the car window at the flying landscape. “It doesn’t seem like the country I know. There are such fine houses and such big towns! I am afraid in the cities, cap’n. There are so many, many people. I didn’t think there could be half so many people in the whole world.”
“And I don’t think you have seen half the people there are in this little old world,” said Wiley with a smile.
In the car with them the youthful members of the baseball team joked, and laughed, and sang. Just ahead of them sat two young chaps, who were earnestly discussing baseball; and now Wiley became interested in their conversation.
“If we win to-day,” said one, “it will be the first time Fardale has been defeated this season by a school team.”
“Oh, we are going to trim them to-day, Andy!” confidently asserted the other. “It’s all settled.”
“You think it is all settled, Paul,” said Andy. “But the game is not so easily settled with Dick Merriwell against us.”
“My dear fellow,” chuckled Paul, “we have everything on our side this day. Even the umpire will be with us; but keep it quiet—keep it quiet!”
Wiley pricked up his ears and listened more intently.
“How do you know the umpire will be with us?”
“That’s all right. Nort Madison is out for Fardale’s scalp on this occasion, and he has left no stone unturned to accomplish the trick. We even know Merriwell’s system of signals from the box.”
“Do you mean to tell me that Madison has things fixed with the umpire?”
“Oh, Nort is too clever to fix things himself; but he has arranged it all right. If that old game is close toward the end, we will get the favors, and don’t you forget it!”
“Merriwell’s signals?”
“Why, he has had it fixed so every member of his team knows the kind of a ball he will pitch from his movements, or from the position he assumes. For instance, if he intends to throw that nasty combination ball of his, he gives a hitch at his trousers with both hands. When he is going to throw a drop, just before toeing the slab he stands for a moment with his feet both planted squarely together. When he lifts both hands above his head with the ball hidden in them, he is going to throw an outcurve. For an inshoot he settles on his right foot with a little jerking movement. And so on.”
“How did Madison find out all those signals?”
“That’s all right, my boy. Merriwell has a great many friends at Fardale Academy, but he likewise has an enemy or two. His enemies would dearly love to see him batted out of the box.”
“One of his enemies gave away those signals, eh?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
Wiley settled back in his seat. The look on his face was one of deep disgust.
“Is that the way they play baseball in these parts?” he muttered. “I have done a few questionable things myself in my abbreviated span of life, but a chap who will give away the signals of his own team ought to be presented with a nice, beautiful coat of tar and feathers.”
“If they know those signs they will be able to beat Fardale to-day, won’t they?” anxiously whispered Abe.
“Not on your tintype!” retorted the sailor. “Little Walter will lose no precious moments in putting Richard Merriwell wise on what’s doing.”
The two lads in front of them continued their conversation.
“Merriwell has always had enemies in this school, hasn’t he?” said Andy.
“The same as any fellow who is unusually successful,” nodded Paul. “But he has one now who is more powerful and determined than his former enemies.”
“Do you mean Chester Arlington?”
“That’s his name.”
“Arlington!” whispered Wiley. “Jot it down in your memory, Abe. He is the crooked duck we have to keep our optics on.”
Ahead of them, at a little distance, a flush youngster was offering to give odds that Franklin would defeat Fardale that day.
“You must have money to burn, Tommy,” laughed a friend.
“I have,” declared the one called Tommy, as he flourished a small roll of bills. “I will bet two to one we beat Fardale for fair!”
Immediately Wiley popped up.
“Tom, I will provide you with a match, as long as you have legal tender to combusticate. I have a few germ-infested dollars which I am willing to risk on the result of this baseball game.”
Tom seemed surprised.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Me! I am nobody but a rover of the briny deep. I am a sailor, and to me baseball is an unknown quantity. I never saw a game in my life, but I am willing to take any kind of a bet—almost—when the odds are two to one. So, Tommy, my dear, pick out the honorable gent who will hold the stakes and stick up as much cash as you like. I will cover it with half as much, and my bet goes that Fardale beats you to a crisp to-day.”
Wiley’s words and manner seemed to amuse the boys in the car, for they laughed uproariously and urged Tom to get after the money.
Tommy was not really anxious to bet, but thus encouraged by his comrades, he placed his money in the hands of his companion.
“Now make good!” he cried, nodding at Wiley. “I don’t believe you have ten dollars in your clothes.”
“It’s plain you are of a skeptical disposition,” said the sailor. “However, I will soon alleviate your skepticism.”
Saying which, he plunged a hand into his pocket, and drew forth a wad of bills.
“How much have you ventured, Tom?” he asked.
“Thirty dollars,” boldly retorted Tom.
“Only thirty? Dear me! I was looking for a hundred or so from you. Why, fifteen dollars doesn’t begin to make a hole in my pile. Here it is, and just gaze on this package I have remaining. Now, my sporty young gentlemen, if there are others among you who wish to help along the good cause by similar bets, I will be delighted to take everything offered as long as my money lasts. Smoke up, youngsters—smoke up!”
He stood laughing at them in a manner that was most provoking.
“Is it possible?” he exclaimed. “Can it be that the betting is all over and I am to win only a measly thirty plunks! It is a shame! I had fancied you fellows had more nerve. Can’t you scrape up a few coppers among you?”
Thus challenged, the boys felt their pride assailed, and straightway they began forming a pool. By doing this they raised nearly fifty dollars, which was placed in the hands of the stakeholder, and Wiley put up an amount equal to half of it.
“This is assuredly a snap!” he declared. “To-morrow I will celebrate on my winnings. I will open a bottle of sarsaparilla and buy a pint of peanuts.”
“You must be a dead-game sport!” sneered one of the boys. “Where do you hail from?”
“I hailed, rained, or snowed from any old place. Of late I have been out into the wild and untrammeled West, hobnobbing with cowboys, redskins, and rattlesnakes. Indeed, I acquired a habit of sleeping with two or three rattlesnakes in my bed every night. That’s a handy habit to have, for it gives a chap an excuse to absorb whisky. It was a dull and uneventful day that passed without my being bitten two or three times by a rattlesnake. I am a temperance man by principle and it became extremely worrisome to me to be compelled to thus often fill my system with alcohol. I was troubled with the fear that I might acquire the habit, and outside a rattlesnake country no person has ever seen me under the influence of liquor. Down in dear old Camden, Maine, I am worthy chief of the Good Templars.”
By this time every one in the car seemed interested in Wiley, and soon he was relating some of his marvelous yarns, to which they listened with amusement and wonder. He kept this up until the train whistled for Fardale.
“Here we are, cap’n!” excitedly whispered Abe, seizing his sleeve and pulling him down into the seat. “We’re almost there!”
As the train drew up at the station they looked out and saw on the platform a great crowd of cadets, who promptly began to cheer. The Franklin boys piled off in a hurry and were received with demonstrations of enthusiasm.
In the midst of this excitement Wiley and Little Abe were unnoticed.
CHAPTER XXVII. A CHANGE OF SIGNALS.
Franklin had various reasons for her self-confidence. Principal among these was the fact that her team was stronger than ever before. It was also known that since Dick’s unfortunate injury of his side he had found it impossible to use the highest speed and the most difficult curves to any great extent in any game. He was compelled to depend on headwork rather than curves and speed. But that was not all. Some traitor in the Fardale camp had betrayed Dick’s signals to the enemy. With the aid of these signals Merriwell kept his whole team posted on the kind of balls he was pitching; but now the enemy would be equally well posted. The batter would know just what was coming, and Franklin felt sure she would biff the ball all over the field. Still another thing added to the confidence of the visitors. It had been secretly whispered about that Nort Madison had fixed things with the umpire. In case the game was close near the finish, Franklin would get all the favors.
No wonder the visitors marched confidently to Fardale Field. No wonder those among them who had bet on their team were already planning how they would spend their winnings.
Never was there a more beautiful day. The air was soft and balmy, and the sunshine was full of mellowness. All the world was fresh and green. It was just the day to bring out a great crowd of spectators to witness a baseball game, and a crowd was present at Fardale Field.
At two o’clock the Franklin players, in their dark-blue suits and red caps and stockings, entered the inclosure and marched across to their bench.
Immediately the faithful ones who had accompanied them from Franklin to Fardale rose and gave them a hearty cheer.
Bat bags were opened, and bats brought forth and arranged in a line on the ground, in front of the visitors’ bench. These bats were guarded by a colored boy, who was the mascot of the team. Within three minutes after entering the inclosure the Franklin players were engaged in desultory practice.
“Here, Tipton, Knealy,” called Captain Madison; “you fellows get some batting practice. Take your time about warming up, Westcott. You know just how much throwing you want to do before the game. How’s that ankle, Gannon? All right? That support stiffens it, does it? I see you have fixed your mitt, Dickson. What did you do, take some of the wadding out of it? Well, you have a fine little pocket in it now. You will never drop a ball to-day. Here, Colter, go over there and pitch for those fellows to bat. You know the kind of ball to throw for them. You know what we’re laying to hit to-day. Is your arm all right, Dustan? Well, work the stiffness out of it.”
From one to another he went, talking to them and giving them snap and ginger so that, although, regular practice was not commenced for at least ten minnues after their appearance on the ground, they went at their individual efforts with an air of earnestness, which indicated their vim and determination to leave the field winners.
After a little time, the Fardale players appeared, following at the heels of their captain. They were greeted with the Fardale cheer.
As the cadets stopped cheering, the leader of the Franklin crowd gave a signal and the Franklin rooters generously saluted the home team.
Almost instantly the cadets responded with a cheer for Franklin.
“Now one for Merriwell!” said the leader of the Franklin cheerers, and their ringing salute was finished with Dick’s name thrice repeated.
Even as this was taking place the cadets prepared for a response, and Nort Madison was given a similar ovation. The enthusiasm and cheering was something to set the blood dancing, and make all present feel the unbounded joy and delight of youth. In after years, when time and fortune had separated them from their schoolfellows, scores of those boys would think of that day and long again to feel their blood thrill with the old-time ardent ecstasy.
Happy is the man who bears with him the memory of happy schooldays! Happy and fortune-favored is the boy who finds himself surrounded with congenial schoolmates, who takes keen delight in honest sports and games.
Of course, on this beautiful day a large number of girls from Lakeside Academy were present in the grand stand. Zona and Doris were there, and June was with them.
The field practice of the visiting team was of the highest order. In fact, if anything, Franklin made a better showing than Fardale in practice. Gardner, who had recovered from his illness, was again in his old position at short. Obediah Tubbs had a split finger, and, therefore, his position at second was filled by Hal Darrell. Obed sat on the bench and looked very sad and downcast because he was not in the game.
Franklin’s team was made up mainly of old players. The battery, however, was new to Fardale, Westcott, the pitcher, being a handsome, ruddy-cheeked fellow, with dark eyes and wavy hair. The two teams lined up as follows:
FRANKLIN. FARDALE.
Dustan, rf. Darrell, 2d b. Gibbs, 3d b. Black, lf. Gannon, rf. Flint, rf. Madison, 1st b. Gardner, ss. Jarley, ss. Bradley, 3d b. Knealy, cf. Jolliby, cf. Tipton, 2d b. Singleton, 1st b. Dickson, c. Buckhart, c. Westcott, p. Merriwell, p.
The time for the game to be called came, and the umpire walked onto the field. Franklin went first to bat, and the home team trotted into their positions.
Just as the game was about to begin a jolly-faced chap in a new golf suit, closely followed by a hunchback boy, came onto the ground, and, regardless of restrictions, proceeded directly to the bench of the home team. Springing onto this bench, he stood upright and cried:
“I will wager eleventeen thousand dollars on the home team!”
Immediately one of the ground officials hastened toward him and notified him that he would have to retire from that bench and take his seat on the bleachers.
“What, me?” exclaimed the chap in a golf suit. “You can’t mean me! Haven’t you made a mistake? I am Cap’n Wiley, and Richard Merriwell is an old side partner of mine.”
Immediately Dick called to the official and told him to let the sailor and his companion remain on the bench.
Standing with his hands on his hips, Brad Buckhart surveyed Wiley and Abe with unspeakable astonishment.
“Is this yere a dream?” he exclaimed. “Or do my eyes behold the only and original marine marvel?”
“Ahoy, there, Buck, you magnificent son of the Lone Star State!” cried the captain, as he made a salute. “It gives my optics a sensation of delectation to once more behold your sturdy form. Go ahead, boys, and cut your capers. You will excuse me if I occasionally indulge in a hornpipe around the bench here.”
“Play ball!” cried the umpire.
“They’re off!” shouted Wiley. “Let the excitement sizzle!”
Dick gave a sudden hitch at his trousers with one hand and then pitched the ball.
It was a rise.
Dustan was prepared for it, and the bat met the ball with a resounding crack.
“Ah!” cried the Franklin spectators.
It was a clean two-bagger.
“Here we go!” laughed Nort Madison, dancing round on the coaching line. “Get a lead, Dustan! We’ll jump into this game and win it at the start!”
Gibbs, a stocky-looking chap, was the next hitter.
Dick settled his right foot on the ground with a jerking movement and delivered a sharp inshoot.
Almost before the ball left Merriwell’s hands Gibbs fell back a little from the plate, and he, like Dustan, met it fairly and squarely.
It was a single to right field, and Dustan, having a good lead off second, literally flew over third on his way toward the home plate.
Dave Flint secured the ball and did his best to stop a score. On that throw to the plate Gibbs took second.
Dustan made a beautiful slide and was safe.
How the Franklin crowd did cheer! This was the sort of work to delight them. Only two men had faced Merriwell. Only two balls had been pitched, yet two clean hits and a score was the result.
“Got ’em on the run! Got ’em on the run!” cried Madison. “Keep it going, Gannon! We might as well make a hundred in the first inning!”
To confess the truth, Dick had been surprised by the manner in which the visitors started off. He knew Gannon was a clever hitter, and there seemed every prospect that another score, at least, would be made by the enemy before Fardale could check them.
“It’s all right, Merriwell!” declared big Bob Singleton. “Accidents will happen!”
“Bet they don’t know ’ow they did hit!” said Billy Bradley.
There was on Dick’s face a grim look of determination. He was determined to prevent Gannon from following up the hitting. Giving a sudden hitch at his waistband with both hands, he whistled the combination ball over the plate.
Gannon fouled it.
“You touched him, Gan, old boy!” cried Madison. “Let him try that again!”
Young Merriwell lifted both hands above his head and then seemed to throw one that was bound to pass over the very centre of the plate.
Gannon stood without moving his bat, and the ball took a sudden outcurve.
“One ball!” was the umpire’s decision.
“Make him put ’em over, Gan!” urged Madison.
The batter nodded.
An inshoot followed, but it was too close to be a strike, and Gannon simply let it pass, falling back slightly from the plate.
“Two balls!”
“He can’t fool you that way!” declared the Franklin captain laughingly. “Your eye is peeled to-day, old man.”
A high ball followed, and once more Gannon refused to go after it.
“Got him in a hole!” was the cry.
Naturally Gannon would not strike at the next one, and Dick knew it, therefore he used a speedy one, sending it straight over the plate. The batter hit it, and the ball went zipping along the ground, Darrell failing to touch it by scarcely more than an inch.
Gibbs landed on third.
Nort Madison himself was the next batter.
“Well! well! well!” shouted Dickson, who was near third. “We win this game right here!”
Little Abe sat with his hands clasped, his face showing his intense anxiety and excitement.
“What’s the matter, cap’n?” he asked. “Are they really winning the game?”
“Well, if there’s not a change in things pretty quick, it looks as if they might,” confessed the sailor. “I expected to arrive here before this old game started. Had I done so, I would have warned Richard Merriwell to cut out those signals. Every batter knows just what he is going to throw. That’s why they are hitting him this way.”
Madison missed the first ball. The next one was wide, and he let it pass. The third was a drop, and he drove it far into the outfield.
Jolliby made a desperate run and a wonderful one-hand catch.
Knowing the ability of Fardale’s centre-fielder, Gibbs had stuck close by third. When the ball fell into Jolliby’s hands Gibbs scooted for the plate.
Chip made a magnificent throw into Buckhart’s hands, but failed to stop the score.
“Rah! rah! rah!” cheered the Franklin crowd.
“Well, brand me good and deep if this doesn’t beat anything I ever saw!” growled Buckhart, in deep disgust.
Dick advanced to the plate and the Texan met him in front of it.
“We’ve got to stop this hitting streak right away, Brad,” said the Fardale captain. “There’s something wrong.”
“Sure thing, pard,” nodded Buckhart; “but whatever it is I can’t make out.”
“The signs of the times are altogether too apparent!” shouted Cap’n Wiley.
Dick gave a slight start as he heard these words.
“You signal, Brad,” he instantly said. “No matter what sort of a signal I make, I will take your sign for the ball.”
Then they returned to their positions.
Dick received a sign for a drop from the Texan, but gave a hitch at his trousers with his hand, which meant under ordinary circumstances that he would use a rise.
He threw a drop.
Jarley struck over it at least eighteen inches and looked surprised.
“The signs of the times are not so apparent!” chirped Wiley from the bench, a grin of delight overspreading his swarthy face.
When the ball was returned to Dick, he held it with both hands and lifted it above his head, which was his usual signal for an outcurve.
At the same time Brad gave him a sign calling for a straight ball.
Dick threw a straight one.
Jarley leaned forward and swung at it, expecting it would curve over the outside corner. Instead the ball struck the bat close to his fingers and went bounding slowly and weakly down to Merriwell, who easily picked it up and tossed it over to Singleton for an “out.”
“The tempest has abated,” chuckled Wiley. “It is growing calmer.”
Knealy, the next hitter, watched Dick’s signals closely, and, to his surprise, every ball delivered took a curve he did not anticipate. The result was that he struck out in short order, and Franklin was retired with two runs in the first inning.
CHAPTER XXVIII. AGAINST TEN MEN.
“Ah! ha! Richard Merriwell,” exclaimed Wiley, as he grasped Dick’s hand. “It thrills my palpitating organism to again press your perspiring palm.”
“How does it happen that you are here, Wiley?” Dick asked.
“The tale is one too long to unfold under such agitating circumstances. Suffice it to say that men with evil ways have looked with covetous eyes on my friend Abe, and your brother decided that it was expedient that we should waft ourselves thitherward to a region of safety. He will follow. It’s possible that he may arrive to-morrow, or even to-night.”
“Indeed!” exclaimed Dick delightedly. “Frank coming so soon?”
“Do you doubt my veracity? The mere thought that any one could suspect me of a falsehood pains me keenly. Truth—I love it! Truth—I adore it! This is easily understood, for you know familiarity breeds contempt.”
“What did you mean a few moments ago when you spoke of the signs of the times?” asked Dick.
“By chance this day I took passage on the craft by which your opponents made this port. I heard them discussing, among themselves, certain things. I heard them talking over the fact that you habitually gave your signals from the box when pitching. It seems that here at Fardale you have a traitor whose name is Arlington. This chap has betrayed you to Franklin. He has given away your signals. That was why those first batters hit you so expertly. They knew exactly what was coming, and, therefore, they placed the stick against the sphere with firmness and precision. Had you continued to use those signs there is no telling how many runs they would have made.”
“Did you hear them say Arlington was the traitor?” asked Dick.
“I heard his name mentioned.”
“That’s enough, pard!” growled Buckhart savagely. “You can see what sort of a reformer he is. There’s not a decent bone in his whole onery body! You hear me warble!”
“I’m afraid you’re right,” admitted Dick.
Although Fardale made a strong bid for a run in the first inning, Darrell leading off with a hit, and finally reaching third, the pitching of Westcott was of such a puzzling nature that the following batters could not drive Hal home. Bradley was the third man out, being retired on an easy pop fly to the infield.
While this was taking place Dick had informed his players that he would continue to signal from the box, but that his signals would mean nothing, as it was his intention to follow the signs made by Buckhart.
This plan proved most baffling to Franklin in the second inning, for when a batter expected a drop he was certain to get a rise, an outcurve, or something entirely different than he anticipated. Only one man of the three who faced Merriwell touched the ball at all. This was Dickson, who fouled by accident.
As Merriwell easily struck out Westcott, the cadets rose and cheered.
Chester Arlington was with them, and he seemed to join heartily in this cheering. Apparently no one was more delighted than he. In case he was the traitor, he was playing the hypocrite well.
“What’s the matter, captain?” asked Westcott, as Franklin took the field. “We’re not touching Merriwell now.”
“There’s something wrong,” answered Nort Madison. “He has changed his signals.”
“Why do you suppose he did it?”
“He must have tumbled to the fact that we were onto them. There’s no other explanation. This is going to be a hard game, but we are two runs to the good. We must hold Fardale down. Pitch for your life, old man!”
Never had Westcott pitched more cleverly. Jolliby lifted a foul back of first base, and Madison gathered it in.
“One!” counted the visiting spectators, in unison.
Singleton did his best to get a hit, but finally struck out on a high drop that fell past his shoulders.
“Two!” chorused the Franklin crowd.
“Let me get at him!” muttered Buckhart. “Let’s see if he can fan me that way!”
“Don’t swing your head off,” advised Dick. “Try for a safe single.”
In attempting to follow this advice, Brad missed twice. The delight of the visitors over this annoyed him. He set his teeth, and his eyes took on a steely gleam.
With all his strength the Texan cracked out a long high liner to left field, but it was caught.
“Three!” roared the Franklin crowd.
Buckhart had reached first, and he walked back, growling his disgust.
“This is now a most salubrious little game!” chuckled Wiley. “Why, these youngsters know how to play baseball! What’s the matter with you, Abe? What are you staring that way for?”
The hunchback drew closer to his companion on the bench.
“There’s a man over there who is watching me,” he answered.
“Over where?”
“Over there in that crowd. I saw him in front of the hotel.”
“Point him out.”
“I can’t now. He has disappeared.”
“What did he look like?”
“He has a sandy beard, and is dressed in a brown suit.”
“Abe, my boy, you’re dreaming. You’re nervous. Forget it, Abe. Your enemies are far away. We have fooled them handsomely.”
“Perhaps so; but I am afraid, cap’n, they are near. Something tells me they are near.”
“Well, just you linger by my side, and you will be all right. Have no fear of the minions of iniquity, for my good right arm will defend you to the extremest extremity. I have vowed to Frank that never again shall harm befall you while you are in my charge. And Little Walter always makes good.”
Although the boy tried to throw off the feeling of apprehension that weighed heavily upon him, he was unable to do so.
The head of Franklin’s batting list again came up in the third inning. Dustan had started off at first with a beautiful hit, and he tried to repeat the performance. This time, however, he, like those before him, was handsomely fooled by Merriwell’s curves, and he cast down his bat in disgust, on striking out.
“This is getting monotonous for us, captain!” cried Darrell. “You’re not giving us anything to do. Do let them hit it once in a while.”
“Don’t worry!” retorted Nort Madison. “We’ll get after him again before long.”
“Pay no attention to his signals, Gibbs,” advised Dustan in a low tone, as the second batter walked out to the plate.
Gibbs did not find this easy to do, but he finally succeeded in hitting a furious grounder past Dick. Darrell went for it and made one of his phenomenal pick-ups, electrifying the cadets and bringing a shout of joy from their lips as he tossed the ball to Singleton and put Gibbs out.
Gannon was desperate after having two strikes called on him, and he managed to throw out his elbow at an inshoot so that it was hit by the ball.
“What do you think of that, Mr. Umpire?” exclaimed Dick. “You saw him do it!”
The umpire paid no attention to Dick, but motioned for Gannon to take first.
“You can see what you’re up against!” cried Wiley.
By this time Madison had lost his jovial humor, and at once he exclaimed:
“Keep that man still on the bench, or have him put off, Mr. Umpire!”
“You will have to keep still there!” said the umpire, with a motion toward the sailor.
“For me that will be a most difficult task,” muttered Wiley. “I am afraid I shall explode if I try it.”
Madison fouled the second ball pitched and followed this up by driving the third one straight at Gardner. The ball was twisting fiercely when it struck Earl’s hands, and he failed to hold it. By the time he had recovered it Gannon was on second and Madison close to first. Earl did not throw to Singleton.
“Rotten!” he muttered, his face flushing.
“That’s all right, old man,” assured Dick. “Don’t worry about that.”
Madison hopped about near first, slapping his knee and laughing.
“Got ’em going again, fellows!” he cried. “Keep it up, Jarley, my boy! They are rattled!”
“I wish I thought it!” squeaked Obediah Tubbs from the bench.
Dick worked carefully with Jarley, getting two strikes on him, while two balls had also been called. He then put a speedy one over the inside corner, but the umpire declared it a ball.
Buckhart signaled for a drop. Dick threw the ball so it seemed as if it must pass the plate higher than Jarley’s head. It was a magnificent sharp drop, and cut down across the batter’s shoulders.
Jarley let it pass.
“Take your base!” directed the umpire.
“Robbery!” whooped Wiley. “That was a beaut!”
The umpire gave him a look.
“Forget it! Forget it!” growled the sailor in a low tone. “I am onto your tricks!”
The bases were now filled, and Knealy was at the bat.
“A little single, Knealy, old huckleberry!” cried Madison from second. “That’s all you want!”
“Dern his picter! he will never get it!” squealed Obediah Tubbs.
In a few moments, however, it began to look as if a run might be forced in. Although Dick “cut the corners,” the umpire refused to call strikes, and three balls in succession were declared.
This was too much for Dick, who turned on the umpire, asking in a low tone:
“What’s your price for this job?”
“What’s that?” fiercely demanded the fellow. “Are you offering to buy me?”
“On the contrary, I am wondering how much you get.”
“You play ball!” was the angry command. “You’re getting all that’s coming to you!”
“Look here, Madison,” said Dick; “you’re in a position where you can see. I want you to watch this business.”
“Oh, don’t insinuate!” retorted Madison. “Isn’t this your own umpire?”
“Selected at your special request,” reminded Dick. “I don’t forget that!”
“You play ball!” again commanded the umpire. “You’re delaying the game, and I shall call strikes on you.”
Immediately Dick sent a straight speedy one over the plate, about waist high. The umpire was compelled to declare it a strike. Merriwell followed it by another in the same place.
“Two strikes!” said the umpire, after a moment’s hesitation.
“Strike him out, Merriwell!” shouted the cadets.
Dick whistled the next ball straight over, just a little lower than the batter’s shoulders. The batter crouched and let it pass.
“Four balls; take your base!” directed the umpire, and Gannon was forced home.
“What do you think about that, Madison?” asked Dick.
“It was high,” instantly asserted the captain of the visiting team, as he trotted up to third base.
“We’re up against ten men, pard!” shouted Buckhart.
The cadets on the bleachers expressed their feelings by groans and hisses for the umpire.
“Dern his picter! he better be keerful!” squeaked Obediah Tubbs. “This is a putty bad place for him to try them tricks!”
“That’s right!” sneered Madison, nodding toward the Fardale crowd. “Do your best to intimidate the umpire! That’s the way to play baseball! That’s a fine sort of a game!”
Dick now decided to take all chances of being hit and use a straight ball. This he did with splendid control, sending it over the very heart of the plate.
The disapprobation of the cadets had caused the umpire to look a trifle nervous, and he declared the first two balls pitched to be strikes, although Tipton let both pass.
“Now, are you satisfied?” demanded Madison. “You have bulldozed the umpire so he is giving you everything.”
Dick made no response, but whistled over another straight one. Tipton hit it, and the ball rose high into the air.
Gardner ran back for it; while Darrell also seemed determined to get under it.
“Gardner! Gardner!” called Dick sharply. “Take it, Earl!”
The ball fell into Earl’s hands, while Hal crouched low close behind him.
Earl muffed the ball.
“Ah!” burst from the Franklin crowd.
The ball fell into Darrell’s hands, and he held it.
“Ah!” roared the Fardale crowd.
Up in the grand stand Doris Templeton embraced June, giving her a hug of joy.
“Hal did it!” she breathed.
“That was splendid!” agreed June.
“Oh, I don’t think it was such a wonderful thing!” declared Zona. “It just fell right into his hands, and he couldn’t help holding it.”
Doris gave her a resentful look.
Dick waited for Hal and walked in to the bench with him.
CHAPTER XXIX. FARDALE’S FIRST RUN.
“You saved us that time, old man,” smiled Merriwell, with his hand on Darrell’s arm. “That was clever backing up.”
Darrell flushed and looked pleased over this compliment.
As Dick reached the bench, Wiley rose and said:
“Mate Richard, if you wish to put yonder perfidious rogue out of the game, and thus give yourself a fair chance with an honest umpire, I stand ready to take my solemn oath that I know he is crooked. While on the train to-day I heard some of those fellows saying they had the umpire fixed. If you permit him to continue his sinuous course you are destined to lose this game.”
“Are you telling me the truth when you say you heard such a thing on the train?” asked Dick.
Wiley gave a little sob.
“How can you doubt my veracity?” he murmured. “Here is Abe. He heard it also. Am I not speaking the unadulterated and undefiled truth, Abe?”
“It is true,” declared the hunchback.
Immediately Dick called Captain Madison.
“Look here, Madison,” he said grimly, “we want another umpire.”
“Oh, do you?” sneered the captain of the visiting team. “You want everything your own way I presume. Well, we are satisfied with this umpire.”
“I am not.”
“That makes no difference to me. He will stay in there until the game is finished.”
“I don’t think so,” retorted Dick quietly. “I have evidence that there is a double deal in this affair. I have the proof, Madison. Some of your players were heard saying that the umpire was fixed.”
“Who said so?”
“Come up here to the bench.”
Madison followed Dick to the bench.
“Here is the man who says so,” said Merriwell, indicating Wiley, who bowed gracefully and smiled serenely into Madison’s face.
“That chap?” sneered the Franklin captain. “Why, who would believe him?”
“He is not the only one who heard it,” asserted Dick. “We want no trouble here, Madison; but we’re looking for a square deal and we propose to have it. You named this chap as umpire, and we agreed to him, even though we were not fully satisfied. It was my desire to please you fellows. Are you here to win a square game? or are you here to steal one?”
Madison flushed and looked furious.
“I don’t like that sort of talk, Merriwell!” he exclaimed.
“I presume you don’t. All Fardale asks is a square deal. You know as well as I do that I didn’t get a square deal in the last inning. I know as well as you do that there has been monkey business with that umpire.”
“An umpire can’t be taken out of a game after it begins.”
“He can, if both captains agree on his removal.”
“If you don’t like the way this game is going, I can take my team and go home,” declared Madison threateningly.
“If you do so, Nort, you know Fardale will refuse to have any dealings whatever with you in the future. You have a good lead in the game now, and you may win it. If you wish to quit under such circumstances, why—go ahead.”
“What will you do if I don’t quit? What will you do if I simply decline to change umpires, and continue the game?”
“I shall step out onto the field and make an announcement. I shall state for all to hear just what I know in regard to that umpire.”
“Oh, well, we won’t have any fuss over it!” exclaimed Nort, suddenly weakening. “I don’t want to keep a fellow in there that you’re kicking about. Go ahead and take him out?”
“Who shall we put in his place?”
“Any one you please. I don’t care. Where is your regular umpire?”
“Tell you what we will do,” said Dick. “We will take a man from the bench and you take one of your men, and we will let the two finish umpiring the game. That will make it perfectly satisfactory on both sides. What do you say to that?”
“All right; I’m agreeable,” nodded Madison.
The umpire was greatly astonished when he was called to leave the field. He walked off in high indignation, expressing his feelings in mutterings.
The approval of this act on the part of the two captains came from the cadets and the spectators in a burst of applause.
The game continued with two of the substitutes acting as umpires, Obediah Tubbs being one of these, while Franklin furnished the other. These fellows alternated with every inning in deciding on the balls and strikes, so that both sides were given a fair show.
Merriwell was the first batter up for Fardale in the third inning, and, after having two strikes called on him, he hit a grounder past Gibbs, secured first on it, turned toward second, and drew the ball from Jarley, to whom it had been returned by Gannon. Jarley snapped the ball over so quickly in order to catch Dick that he made a bad throw.
Madison stretched himself for it, but barely touched it with the end of his mitt.
Dick danced down to second.
“Now that’s too bad!” piped the voice of Ted Smart. “I’m just as sorry as I can be! I am afraid we’re going to get some scores!”
“Don’t be afraid, little fellow,” said Gibbs mockingly. “There is not the least danger of it.”
“Oh, I am so anxious!” said Ted. “I am so nervous and excited! Why, I should just hate to see us getting any scores now!”
As Darrell walked out to bat he glanced toward Dick, who was on second, and received a signal to bunt.
Although Darrell longed to swing hard at the ball, he obeyed the signal, and bunted toward first base, doing his best to outrun the ball.
Dick was off for third almost before Hal bunted toward first base, and he secured it easily. In the confusion Darrell reached first safely.
Black knew his business, and refused to go after the first ball pitched to him, although it was a good one. This gave Hal a chance to try to steal second, and he improved it. Dickson snapped the ball to Westcott, who turned like a flash and threw it to Tipton. Although this was done swiftly, Hal slid under Tipton and lay with his hand on the bag as the ball came into the second baseman’s hand. Dick made a fake dash off third, so that Tipton did not attempt to tag Darrell. Instead he threw the ball to Gibbs, but threw it so high that Gibbs was compelled to spring into the air for it.
Immediately Madison’s voice was heard ordering his players to stop throwing the ball around in such a manner. Tipton’s high throw had frightened him, for Dick would have scored easily had Gibbs failed to catch it.
The cadets now had an opportunity to cheer their team on, and they began singing “Fardale’s Way.”
Chester Arlington joined earnestly in this song:
“It’s no use groaning, it’s no use moaning, It’s no use feeling sore; Keep on staying, keep on playing, As you’ve done before; Fight, you sinner, you’re a winner, If you stick and stay; Never give in while you’re living— That is Fardale’s way!”
Wiley sat on the bench, and smiled serenely as his ears drank in this song.
“Surely this is salubrious,” he murmured. “This is the real stuff. Reminds me of my college days when I used to warble the songs of my dear old alma mater.”
Black also glanced toward Dick, who again gave a signal to bunt. Black bunted the first ball pitched, dropping it down about eight feet in front of the plate and off to one side toward third.
Dick was on his way for the home plate even before the bat touched the ball. He had taken chances on Black’s success in bunting safely and started as soon as Westcott swung his arm.
Westcott caught up the ball and snapped it to Dickson, but was too late. Dick had scored. At the same time Darrell had moved up to third, and Black reached first in safety.
“I am willing to admit the kids know how to play the game,” chuckled Wiley. "This would not please Frank Wilbur. He believes in beefing it out. He has a delectable little habit of sitting on the bleachers and youping persistently: ‘Beef it! beef it! beef it!’ That may have been the style of playing in his day, but modern baseball is somewhat different."
Dave Flint was not a first-class bunter. For this reason Dick gave Dave a signal to hit the ball.
Flint did hit it. He met it full and fair, and sent it onto a dead line into the hands of Jarley, who was almost lifted off his feet.
Nevertheless the Franklin shortstop clung to the ball and snapped it over to third so quickly that Darrell was caught off the bag and put out.
This brought a yell of joy from the Franklin crowd.
“Hard luck, Dave,” said Dick, as Flint returned to the bench.
“Bad judgment!” declared Flint. “I tried to drive it ten feet to the right of him, and I put it straight into his hands.”
“Well, you did your best,” said Dick, “and that’s all any one can do. Angels can do no better, you know.”
“It’s a shame!” declared the boy with the scarred cheek, as he sat down on the bench. “We had a chance to win this game right there!”
“The chance will come again,” asserted young Merriwell confidently. “It is not over yet. Black is on second and Gardner has a crack. A single to right field may score Black.”
But now Westcott aroused himself, and, although Gardner tried his level best to make a hit, it was no use. He finally struck out, and at the close of the third inning the score stood three to one in Franklin’s favor.
“Why, this is a fine little game!” nodded Wiley. “This is the sort of a game to provide undiluted amusement for the numerous visitors assembled to observe the seething conflict.”
Suddenly Abe clutched the sailor nervously, as he exclaimed:
“There! there! That umpire is talking to the sandy man who watched me! Look at him!”
“There must be a hazy cloud over my optics,” said Wiley, “for I assure you I fail to see the parties in question. Where are they?”
“Over there in the crowd,” declared the boy, pointing. “They saw me! The sandy man has gone again!”
“Abe, what you need is something for your nerves. When I get that way I take a little spirits fermenti.”
Although Abe declared he was certain he was being watched, Wiley fancied it a case of nervousness and gave little attention to anything save the game.
CHAPTER XXX. THE LAST EFFORT.
The three innings which followed were exciting enough to keep the spectators nerved to the highest pitch. In each inning the contesting teams struggled hard for more scores, but good work and fast fielding prevented either side from obtaining a tally.
Franklin came up into the first half of the seventh with Jarley at bat. The clever little shortstop of the visitors bunted the first ball pitched, and managed to reach first ahead of it. Knealy followed with a bunt and was out at first, but Jarley went down to second.
“Lace it, Tipton—good old Tip!” sang the Franklin crowd.
Tipton smashed a hot one down to the first-base line, and Jarley stretched himself for third.
The ball carromed off Singleton’s mitt, and by the time he had secured it and reached first Tipton had crossed the bag, while Jarley was safe on third.
“This is our inning!” shouted Madison. “Push ’em hard, fellows! Don’t let up!”
Dick sent the first ball to Dickson straight over the centre of the plate, and Dickson flourished his bat at it without trying to hit it.
Tipton improved the opportunity to dash down toward second.
With a runner on third, it was dangerous for Buckhart to throw the ball to second, but Brad did not hesitate. Quick as a flash, with a short-arm movement, he lined it down.
Tipton stopped before reaching second, with the idea of throwing Darrell off in an effort to run him down.
At the same time Jarley scudded for the home plate.
Darrell did not even glance toward Tipton, but immediately lined the ball back to Buckhart.
Brad was in position and caught it.
Jarley slid, but the Texan pinned him fast to the ground before his hand could reach the plate, and he was out on a close decision.
The disappointment of the Franklin crowd was only exceeded by the delight of the cadets. Nort Madison attempted to dispute the umpire’s decision. He claimed that Jarley was safe, but those who had watched the plate closely knew this was not so.
Wiley hugged himself.
“Beyond question,” he murmured, “I shall have to get into gear and take to the diamond. This arouses me to the limit.”
After two strikes and two balls were called, Dickson managed to catch one of Merriwell’s shoots and drop it over the infield. On this safe hit Tipton ran as if his life depended upon it, and the coacher near third sent him home.
Darrell secured the ball and tried to stop the run at the plate, but was a moment too late to do so.
“That clinches it!” laughed Madison. “We win a scalp to-day, boys!”
“Oh, has Fardale lost the game, cap’n?” anxiously asked little Abe.
“Not yet,” declared Wiley. “Strange things may happen before this game ends.”
Westcott was the weakest hitter on the visiting team, and Dick had little trouble in striking him out.
“Now, fellows,” said the Fardale captain, as his players gathered around him at the bench, “it’s up to us to cut loose. We haven’t made a run since the third inning.”
“Here’s where we turn the trick, pard,” declared Buckhart.
But again Fardale was unable to accomplish the feat. The best she could do was to get a man to second, where he “died.”
The visitors danced in to the bench, cheered by their admirers.
In the grand stand Doris and June were worrying over the probable outcome of the game.
“I’m afraid they can’t win!” said Doris, almost in tears. “That horrid umpire defeated them at the first of the game!”
“There are two more innings to play,” reminded June. “At least, Doris, you should be satisfied with the game Hal Darrell has put up to-day.”
“Yes, indeed!” laughed Zona. “He has outdone himself. He can play almost as well as Chester.”
Doris opened her lips to make some retort, but closed them at once.
The eighth was fast and furious. Dustan smashed a whistling liner at Gardner, who muffed it, but caught it up in time to throw the runner out at first. Gibbs hit a twister into the air, and Bradley got under it.
When the ball struck in Billy’s hands, it twisted out before he could close his fingers on it, and Gibbs reached first in safety.
Gannon followed with a two-bagger to left field, but Gibbs was held on third by the coacher.
“Now, what do you think?” shouted Nort Madison.
“We think you’re the next victim!” growled big Bob Singleton, as Madison stepped out to strike.
“You’ve got another think coming to you,” Nort confidently retorted. “This is my turn to get a hit.”
Brad signaled for a drop, but Dick shook his head and continued to shake his head until the Texan asked for the combination ball. With this ball Merriwell made Madison swing twice ineffectively.
Then Dick tried a rise.
Madison let it pass, and it was pronounced a ball.
“Get ’em down, Merriwell—get ’em down!” exclaimed the batter. “I can’t reach those!”
“Try this,” invited Dick.
Then he threw one of his high ones, which dropped like a flash and shot down past the batter’s shoulders. Madison fancied it would pass higher than his head and made no move to strike at it.
“You’re out!” squealed Obediah Tubbs, whose turn it was to umpire behind the pitcher.
“What’s the matter with you?” burst from Madison. “That was higher than my head! Give us a show, will you?”
“Dern your picter, you’re out!” piped Obed excitedly.
“Do you see that?” demanded Madison, shaking his finger at the Franklin umpire. “Now you want to even up for that! Your turn comes the next inning!”
At this the cadets uttered a derisive groan.
Madison was filled with rage as he took his seat on the bench.
Jarley quickly put an end to Franklin’s chance in the eighth inning by swinging at the first ball and lifting it into the air for Merriwell to capture when it came down. The score remained unchanged.
“Get after them, Black,” urged Dick, in a low tone, as Barron walked out.
Black said not a word, but picked out a good one and hit it hard, but Tipton made a marvelous stop and threw Black out at first.
“Only five more men, Westcott!” called Madison. “They will all be easy!”
Flint was determined, and he secured a clean single.
Gardner followed with a grounder that Jarley fumbled long enough to let Gardner reach first and Flint get safely to second.
“Dear me!” muttered Billy Bradley, who was deathly pale, as he picked up his bat. “’Ow Hi wish somebody helse ’ad to ’it in my place!”
Nevertheless, Billy made a handsome single, and Flint scored on it.
“Abe, my boy,” said Wiley, “Fardale wins right here.”
Jolliby, however, lifted a long fly to right field and was out, although Gardner advanced from second to third on it.
Big Bob Singleton had not made a safe hit for the day. He redeemed himself now by cracking out a beautiful drive, on which Gardner scored.
Buckhart did his best to get a hit, but Westcott revived again, and the Texan fell a victim to his curves, and made the third out for Fardale, which left the home team one run behind the visitors.
In the first half of the ninth inning, with the Franklin umpire at work behind him, Dick quickly discovered that he was receiving no favors. Having made this discovery, he used the jump ball a great deal, leading the batter into thinking, whenever possible, that he was throwing straight ones. Through this he succeeded in striking out two of them and causing the third to put up an easy fly.
Fardale came up in the ninth with Merriwell first at bat.
Dick looked determined to try for a home run as he strode up to the plate, gripping the end of his bat. When Westcott delivered the ball, however, Merriwell suddenly shortened his hold and bunted. He was off like a flash, and by great running succeeded in crossing first ahead of the ball.
As Darrell came out to strike, Dick made a signal that Hal understood. Darrell let the first one pass. On the second ball pitched Merriwell, who had been watching Westcott’s feet, scudded for second base.
Dickson lined the ball down to Tipton, but Dick slid under handsomely and was again declared safe.
“He will stay right there,” asserted Madison.
Nort was mistaken, however, for on the very next ball pitched, which proved to be a little wild, Dick, having secured a good lead off second, made a dash for third, and again was declared safe after a sensational slide.
The cadets rose and cheered wildly.
A moment later Darrell put up a weak foul and was out.
Dick was crouching near third, every nerve strained, as Westcott pitched the first ball to Black.
Barron missed it.
Dickson tossed the ball back to Westcott. Then, as Dickson made that tossing movement, when it was too late for him to retain the ball, Dick electrified every beholder by starting for the home plate at astonishing speed. By the time the ball reached Westcott’s hands Merriwell was at least halfway home. In his eagerness to return it to Dickson, Westcott made a poor throw. Dickson fumbled the ball, and Merriwell slid home safely in a cloud of dust, while the Fardale boys split their throats with a great cheer.
By his daring base-running Dick had tied the score.
Madison was furious. In the midst of the excitement he said something to the umpire, and, following this, Black was declared out on three strikes, although but one of them had passed over the plate. Flint was now the hitter, and he had his eye peeled for a good one. The first ball was at least a foot beyond the plate, yet the umpire declared it a strike. The next one was too high, but another strike was called.
The watching cadets roared their disapprobation.
“Robbery!” they shouted.
Having discovered what the umpire was trying to do, Flint went for the next ball, even though it was above his shoulders. He met it full and fair, and sent it sailing far over the fence for a home run; and the uproar that followed as the boy with the scarred cheek trotted around the bases was simply indescribable. Down onto the field poured the rejoicing cadets, and, forgetting everything else, Wiley plunged into their midst, eager to shake hands with the winners.
Barely had Wiley left little Abe, when the sandy man the hunchback had seen watching him appeared at the bench. Immediately Abe rose and fled in great fear. He ran toward the crowd, but could see nothing of Wiley. Then he turned for the gate, through which he dashed. In doing so he plunged straight into the arms of a man who seemed waiting for him. Instantly he was caught up and carried toward a closed carriage.
“Help!” he faintly cried.
“Shut up, you brat!” hissed the voice of Jarvis, for Abe’s captor was the man with the icy hand.
The carriage door was flung open, and, in another moment, Abe would have been thrust in. Just then an athletic lad dashed at Jarvis and struck him a heavy blow behind the ear, causing him to stagger.
“Drop that boy, you whelp!” rang out a clear voice. “What are you trying to do?”
Jarvis clung to Abe, but managed to draw a pistol.
“Interfere with me, will you, you fool!” he snarled.
Then the pistol spoke, and Chester Arlington, who had attempted to save Abe, dropped to the ground.
But Arlington was not alone. Several other boys had witnessed the encounter, and with shouts they charged on the man. Somehow Abe managed to struggle from Jarvis’ hands and plunge beneath the carriage. The sound of the pistol had caused the horses to begin prancing, and with a fierce oath Jarvis yelled at the driver and leaped into the carriage, slamming the door behind him.
The driver cracked his whip, and away went the horses.
The wheels did not pass over the hunchback, for he was between them, and he seemed unhurt when the cadets picked him up.
Not so Chester Arlington. The bullet had grazed his head and rendered him unconscious. Blood was flowing down the side of his face, and the horrified boys believed he had been killed. When a doctor examined the injury, however, it was found that the bullet had grazed Chester’s skull, but there was no reason why the wound should be serious. Indeed, Arlington recovered rapidly, and among the first to congratulate him on his bravery in attacking Abe’s enemy single-handed was Dick Merriwell.
Although a number of the cadets had attempted to follow the closed carriage, it dashed away at a furious pace and the boys were distanced.
The sheriff in Fardale was notified and requested to secure Abe’s assailant, if possible. Although the officer did his best to comply, Jarvis managed to hide until nightfall, when he escaped from Fardale.
On the following day Frank Merriwell arrived. When he heard what had taken place, Merry shook his head and expressed great regret that Abe’s enemies had not been captured.
“I am afraid we have not seen the last of them,” he declared. “If what Bial Keene tells me is true, they are almost certain to give Abe further trouble.”
“Why should they?” innocently questioned the hunchback. “I have never done anything to them. Why should they hurt me?”
“My dear boy, Keene has discovered that you are the rightful heir to a rich estate. He expects soon to clear up the entire mystery. He is now certain that this man Jarvis, the man with the ice-cold hand, is your own uncle, who long years ago had you kidnapped from your home by scoundrels, and he supposed that you had been put out of the way forever. Leave everything to me, Abe, and to Bial Keene. We will baffle your enemies, and some day you shall possess the riches that are rightfully yours.”
THE END.
No. 110 of the MERRIWELL SERIES, by Burt L. Standish, is entitled “Dick Merriwell’s Long Slide.” It is a story rich in fun and thrills, teeming with intense vigor.
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Transcriber’s Note
Retaining (or not) hyphenation that occurs on line breaks is decided by comparison with other instances in the text.
Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original. The following issues should be noted, along with the resolutions.
7.3 and see Fair[i]port Removed. 25.15 Fardale not even succeed[i]ing Removed. 26.1 “You didn’t try![’/”] Replaced. 28.12 “Don’t[,]” begged Factor. Added. 43.23 “I didn’t mean[t] to say that much.” Removed. 49.2 in your heart you[r] know Removed. 55.12 “By Jove!” he excla[i]med. Inserted. 70.28 a clash betwe[e]n Arlington and Darrell Inserted. 83.29 “Hanged if I do![”] Added. 85.23 for me to come ab[roa/oar]d. Transposed. 92.8 you’re sup[p]osed to be dead! Inserted. 105.32 although handicap[p]ed by a poor break Inserted. 106.4 It takes ninete[e]n to tie Inserted. 146.2 Cigar[s] were provided Added. 155.8 but I can’t budge them.[”] Added. 169.1 It’s natural you should be[.] Added. 170.31 “But if’s don’t count in this game[.”] Added. 171.28 pounding his mit[t] with his fist Added. 180.31 conceal her su[r]prise Inserted. 181.19 “Wh[at/y] didn’t he stop that ball, Doris?” Replaced. 186.5 When Roberts was again in position[,] Added. 198.8 will come her[e] Wednesday. Added. 210.7 burst of applause and laughter[.] Added. 210.27 satisfied at last[.] Added. 228.19 Darrell’s aston[n]ishing Removed. 242.27 dining in the rest[a]urant Inserted. 249.22 But when he ex[p]lained it to me Inserted. 252.26 and th[r]ust into a room. Inserted. 266.3 As they descended the steps the[m/y] mumbled Replaced. 274.19 “I opened the door for them[?/!]” Replaced. 307.6 Black knew his busines[s] Added. 307.25 Chester Arlington joine[ de/d e]arnestly Replaced. 318.21 Abe would have been th[r]ust in. Inserted.
End of Project Gutenberg's Dick Merriwell's Assurance, by Burt L. Standish |
59467-8 | Produced by Annie R. McGuire
[Illustration: HARPER'S ROUND TABLE]
Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. All Rights Reserved.
* * * * *
PUBLISHED WEEKLY. NEW YORK, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1896. FIVE CENTS A COPY.
VOL. XVII.--NO. 885. TWO DOLLARS A YEAR.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
THE LOST HOMER.
BY WEBB DONNELL.
"Not back yet, Ned?" The tone hardly indicated that Mrs. Sinclair expected an affirmative answer. The disappointed look on Ned's face told its own woful tale.
"No, mother," said Ned, looking out of the window upon the valley sloping to the Hudson, a quarter of a mile away. "No, he isn't back yet, and I've given up all hope that he ever will come back."
Ned drummed dismally on the window-pane before he went on. "If Helen 'tossed' Fleetwing a hundred miles out at sea, the pigeon would have been here before dark that day, for the steamer sailed at noon."
"Yes, one would think so," assented Mrs. Sinclair.
"Now it's the third day," went on the boy at the window, disconsolately. "Helen either forgot to set the bird free until the steamer was too far out for him to be able to fly back, or Fleetwing has been shot by a pot-hunter. When can we hear from Helen, mother?"
"Well, the steamer is due at Queenstown next Friday," said Mrs. Sinclair, "Then it will be six or seven days before her letter can get back to us. I guess we will have to wait ten days longer, Neddie; but I'm just as sorry as I can be about Fleetwing, dear."
"Yes, mother," said Ned, brightening at the sympathy.
"And we'll hope for the best," went on Mrs. Sinclair. "You know, homing-pigeons have returned to their lofts after weeks of absence. We won't give up Fleetwing till we hear from Helen, anyway."
"I know that some homers are out a long time from the loft and then get back all right," said Ned, "but Fleetwing always attends strictly to business. You know, he came straight home from the World's Fair flight from Chicago, more than a thousand miles."
Ned Sinclair's hobby--most boys of fifteen have one or more--was homing-pigeons. He had become interested in the subject through a visit to a pigeon-loving uncle, who taught him the secrets of caring for pigeons, homing and training them to make longer and still longer flights to their loft from far-away points.
Ned's father had built for him a splendid loft in the chamber of the stable, with a wire-covered "flight" stretching out over the green grass at the side. Great pains had been taken in stocking the loft to get only the best "strains" of homers, and the result appeared in the speedy return of almost every bird that Ned had ever sent away to be liberated.
Very often a bird would be intrusted to a friend going upon a journey, with a request that it be liberated at a certain hour and place.
Mr. Sinclair, too, had almost always taken a bird or two with him when he went down to New York city on business, a hundred miles from home. It had frequently happened that in an hour after being liberated from the Grand Central Station the swift little homer would trip the alighting-board at his own loft window, far up the Hudson, and so ring the little electric bell that in the house announced a pigeon's arrival home.
Then, later on, Ned had joined a Homing-pigeon Club in a near-by city, and successively from the two-hundred, the three-hundred, and the five-hundred mile "stations" his homers had flown home, making excellent records for speed.
While the record made in the World's Fair flight was not at all noteworthy for speed, Ned's birds did make the long distance, and returned to their loft, though thoroughly tired out--something that could not be said of many Eastern lofts that sent birds to Chicago for that contest.
A few days before, Ned's sister Helen had started with a party of friends for a trip through Europe. Ned had proposed that she take one of his homers a hundred miles out to sea, then send a message back to them from the steamer. He had selected the most reliable pigeon in the loft, and had packed it carefully in a light basket. Then he had waited patiently on the day the steamer sailed from New York for the tinkle of the little bell that should tell of its return home.
Again and again he visited the loft, thinking the bell might have rung in his absence from the house, but always to return disappointed. It was not until Helen's hastily scribbled note from Queenstown arrived that any clew to the mystery was given.
"Tell Ned," the note ran, "how sorry I am that I could not follow out his directions about the pigeon. Beth was taken frightfully seasick before we were down the bay, and I was so anxiously attending to her for some hours that I entirely forgot about liberating Fleetwing and sending a message home. When I did have a chance to think about it the steward said we were two hundred and fifty miles out. Then I didn't know what to do. I couldn't carry a homing-pigeon all over Europe with me, and I hesitated about liberating it so far out for fear it might not reach land, especially as the weather was not very clear. I had to decide quickly, and so concluded the best thing to do was to set Fleetwing free, but not to hamper him at all with a message tied to his flight feathers. I 'tossed' the little fellow from the deck, and he went straight up into the air, circled a moment, and then flew away America-ward. I _do_ hope he got home safely."
"That explains it," said Ned. "Probably a thick fog came up, and Fleetwing lost his way, and got exhausted before he could get to land. That's the end of _that_ bird," he concluded, dismally.
But Ned was not altogether correct in his conclusions, though a fog did gather over the sea soon after Fleetwing turned his breast landward, and the bird did become nearly exhausted before he finally reached the shore. But reach it he did, after a brave struggle in the air, and then he did what exhausted homing-pigeons will sometimes do. He alighted at a strange pigeon-loft in one of the towns above New York city. The sight of other pigeons, homers like himself, and his own utterly wearied condition, made him very willing to stop for rest, despite his strongly rooted homing instinct. Then, as has been the case with many another of his race, the charms of new comradeship caused him to linger in the new quarters.
Two mornings later a man entered this loft and caught a half-dozen of the pigeons, Fleetwing among the number. The man evidently did not keep homing-pigeons for the love of it, since he did not know his birds by sight, but took those that came first to hand. He packed the pigeons carefully in a hamper, carried them out to the street, where a carriage was in waiting, and was driven to the railway station.
A few hours later, with the hamper of homing-pigeons still beside him, he went on board a great transatlantic steamship in New York and sailed for Europe.
Two weeks later, while Ned Sinclair was hunting for a tennis-ball in the bottom of the hall closet, he heard the pigeon bell ring loud and clear. He started suddenly.
"What's that?" He said to himself, excitedly. "There's no pigeon out of the 'flight'!"
He hurried out to the loft, tennis and all else but pigeons banished wholly from his mind.
In the loft, pecking in a quite-at-home way at a pan of split-pease and hemp seed was Fleetwing, the lost homer. Ned knew him instantly.
"Where under the sun--" he began, excitedly, but stopped on catching sight of the bird's wing and tail feathers. They certainly had something most unusual attached to them.
Ned caught the pigeon and investigated the mystery. The quills of two of the flight feathers of each wing, and of three of the tail feathers, had bits of thin oil-silk bound firmly about them, and these were tied with strong silk threads.
It took but a moment to cut the thread and to unroll the silk from one of the quills. Within were three small stones, that flashed and sparkled in the light. The other feathers had similar revelations to make.
Here was an incident quite new to the homing-pigeon fancy. As a rule, it may be said, homing-pigeons do not go flying about the country for weeks at a time, finally returning to their own lofts loaded with what even to the inexpert eye appeared marvellously like diamonds. The stones had not yet been cut as for setting, but their quality appeared even in their unfinished state.
It is small wonder that Ned was highly excited over the occurrence. His delight at the safe return of his favorite homer, that he had given up for lost, was quite over-balanced by his astonishment at the treasures he had brought back.
He hurried from the loft to find his father and mother to show them the stones. Very soon every member of the family was very nearly as excited over the matter as was Ned.
"If it were a strange homer I should think it might be a case of attempted smuggling," said Mr. Sinclair, remembering that the most persistent and ingenious attempts are being made constantly to get diamonds into the United States without payment of the high import duty, "but that Fleetwing should become engaged in any such disreputable work is perfectly inexplicable!" he continued, with a laugh.
"Are you sure it _is_ Fleetwing, Ned?" asked Mrs. Sinclair.
"I'm certain sure of that, mother," said Ned, fingering the pieces of oil-silk. "I should know him anywhere; but to be perfectly certain about it, I examined his seamless leg-band, and it has his loft number and my initials."
As he spoke, smoothing out the pieces of silk in his fingers, Ned suddenly started, and held one piece up to the light. It had a line of writing across it that could be deciphered readily.
"Take at once to No. -- L---- Street," the line read.
Mr. Sinclair had already planned to go to New York city on business the following day. Ho took the stones and the bits of oil-silk with him.
Some hours later an official of the United States Treasury Department was looking them over most intently. He touched a button beside his desk, and a messenger appeared.
"Ask Mr. Armstrong to come here a moment," he said.
When the expert appeared, the official handed the stones to him without a word.
"They are diamonds of exceptionally fine quality," said Mr. Armstrong, after a moment's examination.
"We shall have to condemn the property, Mr. Sinclair," said the Treasury official, "as there can be no doubt that an attempt was being made to smuggle them into the country. In fact, we had already discovered that homing-pigeons were being used in this way, the birds being carried to Europe, then brought back and liberated, with their burden of diamonds, before reaching Quarantine. But how on earth your boy's homer became pressed into this service," continued the official, "I can't conceive. He deserves a medal, at any rate," he went on, "for flying straight to his own loft with the diamonds."
The Treasury official picked up the bits of oil-silk.
"I feel quite hopeful," he said, "that with this clew we may be able to break up this particular attempt to rob Uncle Sam of his just dues."
Ned was a very interested listener to the story his father had to tell that night, and an exceedingly interested reader, a little later on, of a letter that came from the national Treasury Department, enclosing a handsome sum of money as his share of the value of the diamonds, since Ned--or Ned's pigeon--stood in the place of the "informer," who is given a generous share of the value that is thus turned in to the government through his efforts.
The money made Ned's eyes sparkle. "Here's a pony, a dog-cart, and a russet-leather harness," he shouted; and then, with a fine realization of the eternal fitness of things, he rushed off to give Fleetwing an extra dish of hemp seed.
PET SQUIRRELS.
BY JAMES STEELE.
The five varieties of squirrels that are found in North America are commonly known as the red squirrel, the gray, the flying, the striped squirrel or chipmonk, and the fox and black squirrels. These last two are extremely rare, and are found only in the West. In the Middle and Eastern States the red squirrel is the most abundant. He is to be seen almost everywhere in the woods, and his noisy impudent call, which has earned him the name of _chickaree_, is one of the most familiar sounds in the woods and trees along the road-side. The larger and shyer gray squirrel, although still abundant, is not so numerous or so often seen as the red squirrel, and the flyers are still more rare. The chipmonk finds his home among the stone walls and along the fences; he has little value as a pet. The red and gray are easily caught and tamed, but the flying-squirrel makes the best pet of all.
The red squirrel lives in a hole in the ground, or the hollow of a tree, and both he and the chipmonk can be caught in an ordinary box-trap placed upon the ground near their familiar haunts. They are usually easy victims.
The gray squirrel, who lives in a nest that he builds himself, is much more wary than the red squirrel or the chipmonk. The trap for him should be set in his runway on the ground, or in the branches of the tree which he frequents.
The flying-squirrel lives sometimes, like the chickaree, in a hole in a dead limb, or he often takes the old abandoned nest of a gray squirrel for his home, lining it with very much softer material than the former occupant used. But most frequently he lives in the hollow of some limb. While he does not really fly, in the time sense of the word, the curious parachutelike folds of skin extending from the fore to the hind legs enable him to make very long leaps, sometimes a distance of forty feet from one tree to another, although this is unusual. He is the brightest and most interesting of all the squirrels, and when once tamed he makes the most affectionate and loyal pet.
A good way to catch a flying-squirrel that lives in a hollow limb--usually an old woodpecker's hole--is to take a stocking, put it over the hole, and then have some one beat with a stick upon the limb below. Presently the little fellow will come plunging out, and, of course, into the stocking, where he can be tied up, carried home, and emptied, as it were, into the cage.
To tame a squirrel is no easy matter, especially if he is a very old one. His bite is very severe, but when once tamed he can be handled with impunity so long as he is not hurt.
To teach a squirrel to become accustomed to handling, however, requires some patience. Every time he is fed it is well to make a little clucking sound, or something he will recognize as a friendly call meaning feeding-time. After having tamed him so that he will eat while you are watching him, which he will sometimes do in one or two days, get him accustomed to having your hand around the cage. Then lasso or noose him around his body with a small cord, and take him out of the cage without lifting him by the cord. Take care, for he will bite and sink his little teeth almost through the bone of your finger if he has the chance.
Now take a glove that has been stuffed full of cotton, and stroke him gently with it. If he attempts to bite, which he is almost certain to do, give him a little tweak. Repeat this as often as he tries to bite, and he will soon learn that if he sits still he is all right. Now feed him from the thick glove. In a surprisingly short time he will give up all idea of biting, and you can stroke him or pick him up with your hand, and carry him about in your pocket. He will grow wonderfully attached to you, and when once tamed thoroughly he will never run away; although he may pay short visits to his mates, he will return to you. But pray remember this, that his deadly enemy is the cat.
His cage should be made as much as possible of metal, and kept scrupulously clean. It should be provided with an exercising wheel, or treadmill, although when a squirrel is perfectly tame and permitted to run about he will get all the exercise he needs on his little excursions about the house or up in the trees.
Never give a squirrel any seasoned cake or soft bread to eat. Nuts, grains, such as dried corn, and now and then a bit of apple, are enough for him, and he should always have access to plenty of fresh, clean water. Do not make the mistake of supposing that when your squirrel has become on sufficiently good terms with you to be permitted to take little trips among his old haunts he will forage for himself. When he once becomes accustomed to being fed he speedily forgets how to find food for himself in the natural way.
Squirrels are remarkably intelligent, and a whole book might be written about them and their habits, after the manner in which Mr. Frank Buckland wrote his celebrated volume about rats. A little incident that happened to one of my own pet squirrels shows how intelligent they are, and how appreciative of kindness. A little flyer that was seated on the window-sill of an upper-story room suddenly disappeared. Thinking he had gone out upon the roof, I called him in the usual way repeatedly, but no squirrel came.
I searched for him for some time, and finally concluded that he had decided to take a vacation. Three days after the little fellow had disappeared I was sitting with my uncle upon the piazza, when we heard a scratching noise, which appeared to come from a tin leader or rain pipe that extended from the roof down the corner of the house to a cistern. The pipe made a sharp angle at the piazza, and it was from this point that the sound seemed to come. As soon as we began to talk the sound stopped, to be repeated the moment we became quiet. I tapped the pipe gently, and spoke, and the frantic scratching from the inside convinced me of the truth at once. It was poor little "Chatters"; and now the question was how to get him out.
At last the plan was suggested of removing a section of the pipe and lowering a cord, which was done. I shall never forget the sensations I felt when I lowered that miniature life-line. Presently I felt a tug, and soon, sure enough, I could feel something climbing up. It was suggested that it might be a rat, but in a moment a little squirrel's head appeared, and "Chatters" gave one leap, landed on my shoulder, and then quickly hid himself in my pocket. If any boy spends his summer in the country, he will find more pleasure taming these little animals than cruelly pursuing them with sling-shot or stones, or shooting them with a rifle for the sake of so-called "sport."
THE REBELS DID NOT RUN.
A CUBAN WAR PICTURE.
BY THOMAS R. DAWLEY, JR.
Darkness turned to the gray of dawn and revealed the hazy outline of the Cuban camp. An expanse of wood and bush and swamp, dotted here and there with lofty palms. A labyrinth of winding paths guarded by impenetrable thickets. Within an open space, far within, scattered with the palm-leaf tents of the Cuban patriots, smouldered the camp-fires.
[Illustration: A GAUNT PEASANT MOUNTED ON A SHAGGY PONY.]
Maceo had crossed the Trocha! The word spread through the rebel camp, and the camp bestirred itself. A gaunt peasant, mounted on a shag-headed pony, brought the news, and it was voiced from mouth to mouth. The gray fog lifted slowly. Through the dim haze the rebels saw the gaunt peasant on his shag-headed pony as though fastened there.
Maceo had crossed the Trocha! The camp was impatient to hear the rest. Nearly two months had passed since the rebel general had gone with his army down into Pinar del Rio to fulfil his promise of marching from one end of Cuba to the other. The Spaniards drew a line across a narrow part of the island, and put their soldiers there, and called it the Trocha. They said they had Maceo entrapped. He never could pass the Trocha.
The rebels had waited patiently, longingly, for the chief's return. Morning after morning they had huddled over their fires, or those who had blankets remained swathed in them until the sun came out and warmed the steaming earth. Then the rebels foraged. They chewed sugar-cane for breakfast, and stewed beef and sweet-potatoes for dinner. They begged cigarettes from their comrades, and there were many who went without. The Spaniards had not been after them for days, for they had gone off to hold the Trocha or chase Maceo down in Pinar del Rio.
Occasionally the Havana papers found their way into the camp. They brought news always discouraging. Maceo was continually fleeing before the valor of Spanish arms. He would certainly be forced to throw himself against the Trocha, where disastrous defeat awaited him. Once a battle was fought, and, according to the papers, Maceo had left six hundred of their comrades on the field. The camp doubted. A giant mulatto, who had seen eight years' service in the last war, said the Spaniards lied! They always lied!
Thus down the labyrinth of winding paths, through wood and bush and swamp, the rebel camp had waited. And now Maceo had crossed the Trocha! The peasant brought the news, and the peasant did not lie.
The morning mists rolled up and away. The camp-fires crackled with a new vigor as their smoke followed the mists. The air was cool and crisp, for Cuban winters know cold nights and mornings. Ill-clad rebels gathered around the fires, while others refused to unwind themselves from tattered blankets captured in the last raid. They looked over the fires and through the smoke. The gaunt peasant was still there. He was big and bony. He looked like a giant on the little dingy horse; his bones were so big, and the horse was so little. And it seemed that his bones swung on hinges, well oiled. He gesticulated wildly. His arms went up and down, and his body turned from side to side. A rebel chief, tall and dignified, |
59467-8 | with grizzled mustaches, stood by his brown tent and listened carefully to every word he said.
Maceo had crossed the Trocha! The peasant did not lie. Once more he threw out his arms wildly. Then he brought both palms down upon the pommel of his saddle, and straightening his long arms, hunched his shoulders upon them and rested there. He had finished.
The chief's whistle sounded through the camp. The rebel band was happy. It had been in the swamp so long. It was impatient. It longed for a move; anything for a move, and the chief's whistle meant that it was going to move now.
The sun warmed the earth, and the camp rose. There was a hurrying to and fro, a sound of cracking twigs and numerous voices. Sorry-looking nags were pulled away from scattered heaps of cane-top fodder bordering the camp, over which they had been chewing and dreaming all night.
A mule which did not propose to budge was called a rude name. Cubans are not violent. They are not addicted to using harsh words. The Cuban simply tugged at the mule's long halter-rope, called him by his wrong name, turned and tugged again. The mule was obdurate. A half-naked black spanked the animal suddenly. The mule relented and stepped quickly forward, and the Cuban fell headlong. The half-naked black grinned with a scared expression; another roared. The fallen rebel picked himself up, and laughed too.
There was a jingling of bridle-bits and a rustling of saddle-gear; a cry of impatience as a girth broke in the attempt to tighten it. A little Major yelled an order to a distant subaltern. A Captain demanded his spurs from an orderly; another his gun. The negro element worked mechanically and said little.
The last rope was coiled, the last buckle tightened, and the men flung themselves astride their saddles.
The rebel band was moving.
Two scouts with long machetes at their sides and carbines ready resting upon their thighs galloped down the path. Others followed. They wound in and around and through the wooded expanse. The path forked and twined and forked again, leaving little islands of dense brush and scrubby trees. The scouts followed these twining paths, each in his own way, and the rebel band came scurrying on behind.
The many twining paths merged into a grove of guava-trees, and were lost in the dry matted grass. Out came the scouts from between the islands of brush. Into the guava grove they spurred their horses, bending here and dodging there to escape the low branches, and out upon the open they halted.
A long savanna spread before them. A scout urged his horse out upon the plain, and he was followed by another. The two galloped to the right and rose on a ridge overlooking a stretch of country beyond. There they paused; and as one, bending in his saddle, peered into the distance, the other shielded his eyes and looked too. Then they wheeled and rode up and down the ridge. Nothing! Nothing but cane-fields, palm-trees, and a tall chimney in the distance.
The halted ones advanced. In a reeling, waving line they came sweeping over the plain. They wheeled to the left and they wheeled to the right, and as the plain narrowed they wheeled together again, and plunged into a road through a broad field of cane bearing the marks of repeated forages.
Led by the tall grizzly chief, the rank and file emerged from the guava grove and scurried into one long, ragged, irregular column aiming straight for the road.
The road aimed for the tall chimney.
The grizzly chief could see his advance galloping on ahead, and his rank and file came swinging on behind. The cane-field changed from green to brown and black. It had been burned. Beneath the tall chimney could be discerned rootless walls, charred riblike rafters, and broken sheds grinning between dark green mango-trees.
Suddenly, where the road seemed to end between the mango-trees and a gray wall, appeared two horsemen. The gallop of the advance changed to a walk. It moved cautiously. Two little puffs of smoke and the crack of distant rifles told that the enemy was there. The rebel band halted, and the advance-guard came swinging back down the road.
A Lieutenant touched his hat and said, "Orders, my chief?"
"Tell them to spread out and reconnoitre! Maceo has crossed the Trocha, and we must advance to meet him."
The Lieutenant spurred ahead and met the flying guard. It stopped. The men looked over their shoulders worriedly as the Lieutenant delivered his message.
"Maceo has crossed the Trocha." The words were like magic, and the men turned and urged their horses into the burned field. The charred and rotten cane broke beneath the horses' hoofs as they made a wide circle, with the tall chimney for a centre. The horsemen at the end of the road disappeared.
The rebel band advanced. Again the horsemen appeared at the top of the road--two, four, six, eight, dozens of them. In rapid succession they rode out from the gray walls and dark mango-trees. There was another crack of rifles and puffs of blue smoke.
"Remingtons!" exclaimed the chief, as the advance-guard cautiously halted in the wide circle which it had mapped out for itself. "A local guerilla force!" And raising himself in his stirrups, the grizzly chief turned to his men, and flourishing his long blade, shouted: "Scatter out! Advance, and let them have it!"
To the sound of thumping hoofs and snapping canes the rank and file of the rebel band went plunging through the field.
The guerrilleros drew up in one serried rank just where the ground sloped into the cane-fields. They would meet the on-coming storm. They knew the rebels would run; they always ran. And they raised their loaded carbines and fired. As the smoke cleared away they saw a wide circle of yelling rebels and their horses dashing through the cane. They stuffed cartridges into their carbines and fired again.
Their shots were answered. They saw the puffs of smoke, they heard the "ping! ping!" of rebel Winchesters, and they saw the circle growing smaller as the horses grew larger. It seemed that they were monsters as they reared above the cane, crushing it down with their heavy hoofs and breasts. They saw gleaming steel flashing high in the sunlight, and they heard the rebel cry, "Á la machete!"
"Crack! crack!" rang out the Spanish Remingtons. "Ping! ping!" answered the rebel Winchesters, and a Spaniard cried, "I'm hurt!" as he swayed from his saddle. A comrade caught him and swung him back, and the serried rank could stand it no longer. It gave way--broke and ran. Helter-skelter by the ruined buildings, through the yard, scampered the frightened ponies. Down by a gaping broken wall the road commenced again. With loose rein and unguiding bridle the horses reared and plunged into one another, jolting the wounded man terribly. His carbine clanked on the ground, and he knew his only chance was to hang on.
The fleeing Spaniards heard the rebel yells close behind them, and the "ping! ping!" of their Winchesters. "Tack! tack!" the bullets struck the gaping corner wall, and a long stretch of road lay before them.
In the distance a church tower, and red tile roofs spread beneath it. The sunlight glinted upon them as it never had done before, and to the fleeing Spaniards they seemed as though made of gold and silver. Would they ever reach the sheltering cover?
And now rang out a fierce, exultant yell. The guerilleros knew that the rebels had reached the corner wall. They dug their spurs frantically into their horses' sides as they clung closer to their necks.
Again the rebel cry of victory rang out. But the distance was greater, and the Spaniards knew that the band was not pursuing.
Maceo had crossed the Trocha! And that was the time the rebels did not run.
[Illustration]
THE REASON WHY.
Now the football season's here Our muscles we prepare, And, 'though perhaps it may seem queer, We cultivate our hair.
We don't do this, you must well know, Because we have to, but We let it sprout and tangle so Because we have to butt.
IN THE OLD HERRICK HOUSE.[1]
[1] Begun in HARPER'S ROUND TABLE No. 879.
BY ELLEN DOUGLAS DELAND.
CHAPTER VII.
"Come, do hurry up, Elizabeth, and promise," urged Valentine. "The time is going on, and the aunts will come home and catch us. You must be down stairs as if nothing had happened when they do come. Of course I know you are not going to give me away. If I had not thought I could depend on you pretty well, I should not have come. We were good friends when we were here before, and, after all, you are my own sister."
"I know, Val, and I want to help you," said Elizabeth, slowly; "but--"
"But what?"
"It does not seem right to deceive Aunt Caroline."
"Oh, what difference does that make? I am sure you used to deceive her enough when you came to this room all the time and had the Brady girls here, and everything else. You have changed very much, I think."
"I know I have changed. You see, I am a whole year older, and in a year you learn lots of things, and I am sure it is not right to deceive any one."
"I do call it a shame," exclaimed Valentine, walking about the room. "Here have I come all this distance expecting to find a sister who would help me, and now you go and turn your back on me. There is no use expecting anything of a girl. There never was one that was worth anything but Marjorie. I was going to tell you the whole story, and you know you like to hear things."
"Oh, I know I do!" cried poor Elizabeth. "I am just crazy to hear. What shall I do about it? I wish I had some one to advise me."
"Come, Elizabeth--there's a good girl! Don't tell, and I will begin right away to explain. I know you won't, so I will tell you, anyhow! You see, the other day at school--"
"Wait, wait, Val!" interrupted Elizabeth. "I must not hear, for if you once tell me I shall have to keep to it, for it would be a bargain; but if you don't I can decide later. I am going down stairs to think it over."
Valentine, left alone, scarcely knew what to think.
"I am in for it now," he said to himself. "Who ever would have thought of that meek little Elizabeth going back on me? I'm in an awful scrape, and I have a good mind to run away now, only I might meet Aunt Caroline on the doorstep, just as the Brady girls did. No, I have got to stick it out, now that I am here, and perhaps after all Elizabeth will come around. She is awfully curious to know what it is all about, that is one thing, and it may bring her to her senses. It is awfully poky up in this room all alone, and I do wish she would come back."
It was an hour and more before she did. Then the door was quietly opened, and Elizabeth stood before him.
"Well, you are going to promise now, aren't you?"
"No, Val, I have come to suggest something. If you will come over to one of the other rooms and hide, I will help you all I can. Aunt Caroline would not find you if you were in one of the other rooms--the one next to mine, for instance. Even that does not seem quite right, but it is better than being here. I have been thinking it over, and I am sure it is not right to have you here when Aunt Caroline told me never to come into this room again, and I actually had to go to her desk to steal the key. Will you come to one of the other rooms?"
"No. It has got to be this room or none. I might just as well go sit in the parlor as be in any room but this. Great Scott! how the fellows will laugh!"
"What fellows?"
"Never mind. Do you think I am going to tell you anything, Miss Spoilsport, Tattletale, and everything else?"
"Oh, Val, I am so sorry! I do want to help you!" Elizabeth was crying now.
"Oh, don't stand there blubbering! Go down and tell auntie all about it. How Val came and made you steal the key, and made you open the door, and made you do everything else. It was all his fault--oh yes!"
"Val, you are hateful!" cried Elizabeth, drying her eyes. "You know I am not that kind of a girl at all. I am sure I want to help you, and I want to know dreadfully why you came, but I know if I asked any one but you whether I ought to have let you into this room, they would say no. Mrs. Loring would, I know."
"And who is Mrs. Loring?"
"Patsy's mother."
"Oh, Patsy again! Everything is Patsy now. That is the reason you don't want to help me, because you have got a new friend. Even your own brother is of no account now."
"That is not a bit true, and you have no right to say it; and I don't think you are a very good brother to ask me to do what is not right."
"But there is no harm in it, really, Elizabeth! I am not doing the room any harm, and it can't possibly hurt Aunt Caroline to have me here. Where is the wrong of it?"
"The key," persisted Elizabeth. "I ought not to have taken the key."
"Oh, nonsense! You got it, and that's all there is about it. You can't undo what you have done, and now the best thing is to keep quiet about it and it won't hurt any one. But if you were to go and tell it would make a terrible fuss, and every one would be upset, and nobody would be a bit better for it."
There seemed to be some truth in this reasoning. After all, it would be easy to keep her aunt in ignorance, thought Elizabeth. She would never do such a thing again; but now that it was done--
Valentine saw that his argument had some effect, and he hastened to follow it up.
"And I do want to tell you all about it!" he added, craftily.
"Oh, Val," said Elizabeth, hurriedly. "I want to hear about it and I want to help you. And, after all, it is too late about the room. I--I--think I'll promise!"
"That you won't tell?"
"That I won't tell."
"Elizabeth, good for you! You're a brick! I knew you would come out all right. I just knew it."
"But wait! I have not altogether promised. Only almost."
"Oh, it's the same thing. I'm sure of you now!"
And Valentine capered about the room in excitement, until Elizabeth remembered that it was important that he should not be heard, and warned him to keep still.
"After all, it is not a secret for always," he said. "In two weeks you can tell them all about it if you want to. You see I am not binding you down forever." This with an air of generosity.
"It will be harder to tell then than now," remarked Elizabeth. "But I must go! I hear some one calling me. I'll tell you for certain when I come back."
She slipped out of the room, and it was but just in time. Her aunts had returned, and Miss Herrick wished to see her in the library. She met the maid who was looking for her on the stairs. The library was directly under the closed room, and Elizabeth wished that she could again warn Valentine to be very quiet. He was so careless.
She found her aunt in an unwonted frame of mind. Miss Herrick put her arm about Elizabeth and drew her to her side.
"I have been hearing very good accounts of my niece," she said. "I met Mrs. Arnold this afternoon, and she told me that your teacher speaks very highly of you, Elizabeth."
How this demonstration would have pleased Elizabeth yesterday, or even this morning! Now she felt like a hypocrite.
"And she is very anxious that I should allow you to take drawing-lessons." Here Miss Herrick paused and sighed heavily. "And you wish to yourself, do you not, Elizabeth?"
It had been the dearest wish of Elizabeth's heart since she began school, but now she felt as if she would be doing wrong if she were to take advantage of her aunt's kindness.
"I--I don't know," she faltered.
"If that is not human nature," exclaimed Miss Rebecca, who had not spoken before. "When you were not allowed to draw, nothing could keep a pencil out of your hand, and now that you are given permission you don't wish to do it."
"Oh, I do want to, Aunt Rebecca!" cried Elizabeth, recovering herself; "I want to, dreadfully. Are you really going to let me, Aunt Caroline?"
"I suppose so. Mrs. Arnold put it before me in such a light that I could not very well refuse. She says she has an excellent teacher, and if you have so much talent, Elizabeth, it seems wrong not to give my consent. But it is very hard for me to say yes! You must be a very good girl if I do."
Elizabeth hid her face in her aunt's shoulder. If she had heard this earlier she would not have yielded to Valentine's entreaties. It was too late now. She had allowed him to stay in the locked room, she had almost promised not to tell. There was a weight like lead on her heart.
"Stand up straight, Elizabeth," said Miss Herrick, her momentary tenderness passing. "Naturally you cannot understand my repugnance to the idea of your perfecting yourself in drawing and painting, and it is not to be expected that you should. It is connected with events which happened before you were born." Again she paused.
At any other time Elizabeth's curiosity would have been aroused, and her indignation also, at the fact that there were more mysteries, but now she paid no heed. If only she were not deceiving her aunt!
"There must be something queer about our family," she thought, desperately, "that we are all the time hiding something from one another. I do wish I were one of the Lorings. They never have any mysteries or secrets, and it is so nice."
Suddenly there was a loud thump overhead. Miss Herrick started and looked terrified. Elizabeth exclaimed aloud, and then again hid her face behind her aunt. Even Miss Rebecca seemed stirred from her usual indifference.
"What was that?" murmured Miss Herrick. "Was it--was it in the room overhead?"
Miss Rebecca nodded. "It sounded so," she said.
"What can it be?"
They listened, but there was no further sound.
"Shall I go and see, Aunt Caroline?" asked Elizabeth, in a timid voice.
"You, child! Why should you go? If we hear anything more I will send James. It is very strange."
"Perhaps the cat has been shut up somewhere," suggested Miss Rebecca; "or probably one of the servants has been in one of the empty rooms getting something. It does not necessarily follow that it is _that_ room, Caroline. I would not give it another thought."
"True, the box of oranges was put in the upper store-room. You are right, Rebecca. Strange how my thoughts always fly to the one place when I hear anything overhead. I suppose it was because we were talking about the drawing-lessons when it happened."
And she relapsed again into thought.
"So the locked room has something to do with Aunt Caroline not liking to have me learn to draw," said Elizabeth to herself. "I thought so. But, oh dear, it will never do for Val to make so much noise! I must go and tell him."
She slipped away very soon, and after going to her own room crept down the short flight of stairs and along the passageway to the door of the mysterious chamber. She found Valentine sitting on the floor, convulsed with laughter.
"Did you hear me?" he asked, in a stage whisper. "I haven't dared to move since. I upset a chair. Giminy! it scared me to death! And I expected the whole family to march in the door the very next minute. Didn't you hear me at all?"
"Hear you! I should think we did. It was a very narrow escape, and I have come to tell you that you must be more careful. You had better not stir at all, for we are in the library, right underneath. And oh, Val, I do feel so guilty! Aunt Caroline is so kind, and says I can take drawing-lessons, and here I am deceiving her! I suppose you would not let me off now?"
"Well, I should like to see myself letting you off now! No, sir. You have just the same as promised, and that is the end of it."
Elizabeth sighed deeply and was about to leave him, but he detained her.
"I say, Elizabeth, what about dinner? I'm awfully hungry."
"Hungry again? Why, I brought you a lot of things to eat."
"Gee whiz, girl! Do you think I can live for hours on crackers and cake? Don't you think you can smuggle up some dinner for me?"
"I will try," said Elizabeth, though somewhat doubtfully; "but I don't see how I am to do it."
"Put some things in a basket, and pretend they are for the Brady girls."
"I have not had anything to do with the Brady girls for ages," returned Elizabeth, with some contempt. "Not since I ran away."
"Ran away? You ran away? Ho, ho! so you're not so awfully good after all! What did you run away for?"
"I can't tell you. I can never tell you. And now I must go."
"Well, I like that," said Valentine, as he closed the door behind her; "she ran away, and isn't going to tell me about it! But I hope she will remember my dinner."
It was easy enough to remember his dinner, but not so simple a matter to secure it. Elizabeth was so absorbed in thinking it over that she forgot to eat anything herself.
"You are not eating a morsel," said Miss Herrick. "This will never do! I had hoped that going to school and companionship with other children would keep up your appetite. Don't you feel well?"
"Oh yes, Aunt Caroline, only I am not hungry. Perhaps, if you don't mind, I could have something to eat later."
It was an inspiration. In this way she could get something for Valentine. But she was doomed to disappointment.
"I do not approve of eating just before you go to bed," said her aunt. "Eat now or not at all."
Elizabeth was quite desperate. She must take the chance of finding something in the pantry. When dinner was over and her aunts had returned to the library she slipped into the pantry. Unfortunately nothing had been left there. All that she could find for Valentine were a few more crackers and some bread. However, it would keep him from starving.
Her brother received them with small thanks, but they were better than nothing. Then he wanted Elizabeth to stay with him, but this she would not do.
"I must go down stairs again to say good-night, and then I must go to bed," she said, firmly.
"Come here instead, and I will tell you the whole story," suggested Valentine, who had no desire for a lonely evening.
"No, this is the last time I am coming to-night. I--I think, Val, I will not hear your story at all. If I have deceived Aunt Caroline I have deceived her, but I am not going to be paid for it. I have been thinking it over. You are not to tell me. Good-night!"
It was half an hour later, and Valentine had come to the conclusion that he might as well go to bed himself, when there was a faint tap at the door. The room was lighted by but one candle--they had thought that a gas-light might show beneath the door, and attract attention--and the place was so gloomy and mysterious that when the knock came Valentine was startled in spite of himself.
"It is ghosts, maybe," he muttered. "This room is so queer and uncanny."
The tap was repeated, and he moved cautiously to the door. There stood Elizabeth, her dark eyes shining in the candle-light, and a deep color burning in her cheeks. For a moment she said nothing. Valentine was the first to speak.
"Good for you! So you have come to hear the story. Come in," he whispered.
"No, I am not coming in. I have only come to tell you that--that--"
"What?"
An awful dread seized Valentine's heart.
"That I cannot give that promise. I am going down now. I have been thinking and thinking, and I know it isn't right to deceive, and I don't want to hide anything. There is too much hiding in our family. I am going down now to tell Aunt Caroline you are here."
Valentine did not speak. She could scarcely see his face, for it was in shadow, but somehow it frightened her.
"Oh, Val, say something! I am so sorry, but I must. Will you ever forgive me?"
"No. You have the same as broken your promise."
He closed the door, and she turned and ran down stairs. Her aunts were sitting as she had left them. Miss Herrick was writing notes at the desk, while her sister read by the lamp on the table. The shelves which lined the walls were filled with books, and the engravings and etchings which hung above added to the sombre aspect of the room. It was absolutely still except for the scratching of Miss Herrick's pen, and for a moment or two Elizabeth stood there in the silence unnoticed.
"Aunt Caroline," she said at last.
It was in such a weak voice that no one heard her.
"Aunt Caroline!" she repeated.
"Yes," said Miss Herrick; but still her pen travelled swiftly across the page. It was provoking to be interrupted.
"Aunt Caroline!" said Elizabeth for the third time.
"What is it, Elizabeth?" said her aunt, at last laying down her pen. "I hear you, and I have answered. Don't stand there repeating my name like a parrot. Why are you not in bed?"
"Because I have something to tell you. I could not go to bed. I--I have something to tell you."
"So it appears. Suppose you tell me now, instead of this endless repetition. Come, I have no time to waste."
"Aunt Caroline," said Elizabeth, drawing nearer, and standing with her hands clasped behind her back, as she did when she had anything of importance to say, "Val is here."
"Val? What Val? What do you mean?"
"My brother Val."
"Is here? Oh no! you are mistaken, Elizabeth. Let me feel your hands. You ate no dinner, and you are feverish. Your eyes are very staring. Rebecca, do you suppose the child is delirious, or is she walking in her sleep?"
"I am not either, Aunt Caroline. I am not de--that long word, and I am wide awake. Val is here. He came this afternoon, and he is up in the locked room."
Miss Herrick rose to her feet, and even Miss Rebecca dropped her book.
"She is certainly ill. Rebecca, ring the bell for James to go for the doctor."
[Illustration: "I TELL YOU I AM NOT ILL, AUNT CAROLINE," CRIED ELIZABETH.]
"I tell you I am not ill, Aunt Caroline," cried Elizabeth. "Val came and said that he wanted to hide, and that he must hide in that room. I got the key from your desk--you left your desk unlocked--and I let him into the room. It was very wrong, Aunt Caroline. I know it was wrong. And I am so sorry. That is the reason I am telling you, because I ought not to have done it. If you don't believe that he is here, come and see."
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
A VIRGINIA CAVALIER.
BY MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The next day, the 31st of October, 1753, George set forth on his arduous mission. He had before him nearly six hundred miles of travelling, much of it through an unbroken wilderness, where snow and ice and rain and hail at that season were to be expected. In the conference with the Governor and his advisers, which lasted until after midnight, George had been given _carte blanche_ in selecting his escort, which was not to exceed seven persons, until he reached Logstown, when he could take as many Indians as he thought wise. He quickly made up his mind as to whom he wanted. He wished first a person of gentle breeding, as an interpreter between himself and the French officers. He remembered Captain Jacob Vanbraam, a Dutch officer, now retired, and living at Fredericksburg, who might be induced to make the journey. Then there were Gist and John Davidson. It was thought best, however, to take an Indian along as interpreter for the Indians, as they might complain, in case of a misunderstanding, that Davidson had fooled them. In regard to the other three persons George concluded that it would be well to wait until he reached Greenway Court, which was directly in the route of his outward journey, as he would be most likely to find in that vicinity a person better used to such an expedition than in the lower country. Armed with full credentials by the Governor, and with a belt around his body containing a large sum in gold and negotiable bills, George at daylight took the road he had traversed the night before.
He determined not to take Billy on the expedition, but he rather dreaded the wild howlings and wailings which he thought it was certain Billy would set up when he found he could not go. George therefore thought it well as they trotted along to make Billy ride up with him, and describe all the anticipated hardships of the coming journey. He did not soften one line in the picture, and enlarged particularly upon the scarcity of food, and the chances of starving in the wilderness, or being scalped and roasted by Indians. Billy's countenance during this was a study. Between his devotion to George and his terror of the impending expedition Billy was in torment, and when at last George told him he must remain either at Mount Vernon or Ferry Farm, Billy did not know whether to howl or to grin.
George reached Fredericksburg that night, and went immediately to Captain Vanbraam's house. The Dutchman, a stout, middle-aged man, yet of a soldierly appearance, at once agreed to go, and, in the few hours necessary for his preparations George took the opportunity of crossing the river and spending the night with his mother and sister and brothers at Ferry Farm. His mother was full of fear for him, but she realized that this brave and gifted son was no longer solely hers--his country had need of him as soon as he came of age. Next morning Betty went with him across the river, and bade him good-by with the smiling lips and tear-filled eyes that always marked her farewells with George, her best beloved. Billy wept vociferously, but was secretly much relieved at being left behind. Four days afterwards George and Captain Vanbraam reached Greenway Court, having sent an express on the way to Gist and Davidson, who lived on the Great North Mountain.
When George burst into Lord Fairfax's library one night about dusk the Earl knew not whether to be most delighted or surprised. He immediately began to tell the Earl of his forth-coming plan, thanking him at the same time for procuring him such preferment. "And I assure you, sir," he said, with sparkling eyes, "although at first I felt a strange sinking of the heart, and was appalled at the idea that I was unequal to the task, as soon as the command was laid upon me I felt my spirits rise and my fears disappear. If I succeed I shall be very happy, and if I fail the world will say I was but a boy, after all. Why did his Excellency send an inexperienced young man on such an errand? But I shall certainly do my best."
"Angels can do no more," the Earl quoted.
George's eagerness and his boyish enthusiasm pleased the Earl, who had no taste for solemn youngsters; and he listened, smiling, as George poured forth his hopes, plans, and aspirations. When he spoke of the additional men to be taken, Lord Fairfax said:
"I know of two capable ones. Black Bear would make an excellent Indian interpreter, and Lance would be the very man to note the French fortifications. He has as good a military eye as I ever knew."
George gasped with delight.
"Do you mean, sir," he cried, "that you will really let me have Lance?"
"Go and ask him."
The young Major, who had impressed the Governor and councillors with his gravity and dignity, now jumped up and ran to the armory, bawling "Lance! Lance!" at the top of a pair of powerful lungs. Lance promptly appeared, and in three words George told him the plan. Old Lance nearly wrung George's hand off at the news.
"Well, sir, it makes me feel nigh thirty years younger to be going among the mounseers again. Maybe you think, sir, I never saw a French fort; but I tell you, sir, I have seen more French forts, ay, and been at the taking too, than they have between here and Canada."
Black Bear was across the mountain, but a messenger was sent at once for him, and he was told to bring another trusty Indian along. Within two days from reaching Greenway Court the party was ready to start. Lord Fairfax saw George set off, in high health and spirits, and full of restrained enthusiasm. He wore the buckskin shirt and leggings of a huntsman to make the journey in, but in his saddle-bags was a fine new Major's uniform of the provincial army, and he carried the rapier given him many years before by Lord Fairfax.
Seven days' hard travelling, at the beginning of the wintry season, brought the party to Logstown, not far from what is now Pittsburg. The journey had been hard, snow having fallen early, and, the fords being swollen, the party were obliged to swim their horses across the mountain streams. But George had not found time heavy on his hands. Captain Vanbraam and Lance discovered that they had served in different campaigns in the same region, and, without forgetting the status between an officer and a private soldier, they were extremely good comrades, much to George's delight.
On their arrival at Logstown, Black Bear at once went in search of his father, the great chief of one of the Six Nations, and the other chiefs were assembled in the course of a day or two. George foun |
59467-8 | d them much incensed against the French, but, like all their tribe, before they could act they had to have many meetings and a great oratorical display. George, who loved not speech-making, made them but one brief address, and by using all his powers managed to get Tanacharison and representatives of the other tribes off, and in a few days more they arrived at a French outpost. It was merely a log house with the French colors flying over it. George, waiting until dusk, and leaving his Indian allies out of sight, taking only with him Vanbraam and Lance, as his servant, rode up to the door and knocked. Three French officers appeared, and on seeing two gentlemen in uniform, the senior, Captain Joncaire, civilly asked them, in broken English, to alight and sup with them.
George, with equal politeness, told them that he was the bearer of a letter to M. de St.-Pierre, the commandant at the French fort farther up, but would be pleased to accept their hospitality.
Inside the house was quite comfortable, and the party, except Lance, who waited on the table, soon sat down to supper. As George had frankly informed them of his mission, it behooved them to be prudent, and so they were until the wine began to flow. Captain Vanbraam had not thought it his duty to let on that he understood French, and the conversation had been conducted in such English as the French could command. George, although he could not speak French, could understand it a little, especially with the help of the abundant gestures the French used.
He had always had a contempt for men who "put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains," and the spectacle soon presented by the French officers made him vow inwardly that never, so long as he lived, would he put himself in the condition they were then in. These men, brave and otherwise discreet, passed the bottle so often that they soon lost all sense of prudence, and, turning from broken English to French, told things in regard to their military plans which they would rather have died than betray. Captain Joncaire, forgetting, in his maudlin state, that George had said he did not understand French well, turned to him and said, in French:
"Ah, you English mean to drive us out. Well, let me tell you we are not to be driven out. We expect to go to war with your country soon, and this is a good place to begin. We know that you can raise two men to our one, but you have a dilatory, foolish Governor in Virginia, and he will let us overrun the country before he does anything to stop us."
As he kept on, giving information about his people that he should never have done, and which George partly understood, such keen contempt came into George's eyes that a gleam of soberness returned to Captain Joncaire, and for a few minutes he said no more. But "when the wine is in the wit is out," and the Frenchmen continued to talk in the foolish manner which awaits the wisest man when he makes a beast of himself with liquor.
At ten o'clock George and Captain Vanbraam had to tear themselves away from the Frenchmen, who, drunker than ever, tried to hold them back by embracing them.
As they made their way back to their camp Captain Vanbraam repeated every word the drunken officers had said. George spoke little. The spectacle was not only disgusting but painful to him.
Next morning, early, Captain Joncaire sought out their camp, and professed great surprise at seeing the Indians, whom he declared to be his friends. He invited them to the house, where George well knew there would be liquor and cajolery in plenty for them.
"My dear Major Washington," cried Joncaire, after a while, and coloring slightly as he spoke, "I am afraid you had us at a disadvantage last night. We talked rather wildly, I fancy, but don't put too much confidence in what we said when the wine was flowing."
"I am compelled to put confidence in what Captain Joncaire and his officers say, drunk or sober," was George's reply, delivered not without sarcasm, at which Captain Joncaire winced. The Frenchmen invited the Indians to their post, and George had the mortification of seeing them all carried off, except Tanacharison and his son Black Bear; and when, in the evening, he sent for the chiefs, they returned to him stupidly drunk and loaded with presents from the French.
"We must get them away as soon as possible," said George to his white followers and his two faithful Indians. Tanacharison, a venerable old chief and a man of great eloquence, watched the Indians in their drunken sleep, and when they wakened, although it was near sun-down, so worked upon them by a speech he made them, that they agreed to leave with the rest of the party. George and Captain Vanbraam went to the French post to bid the officers a polite farewell.
Captain Joncaire said many civil things to them, and sent them a handsome present of provisions, but was evidently chagrined at the Indians being carried off under his very nose.
Eleven days more of travelling through intense cold, with the snow deep on the ground, brought the party to Fort Le Boeuf, on French Creek, about fifteen miles from Lake Erie. This was commanded by M. Legardeur de St.-Pierre, an old French officer of great ability, and a chevalier of the military order of St. Louis.
The party reached the fort late in the evening, and found it a stout place, well adapted for defence. George rode up to the gate--his horse now a sorry-looking creature--and asked to be conducted to the commandant. As soon as the message was delivered M. de St.-Pierre came out in person, and, receiving the letter from the Governor of Virginia with great respect, raising his hat in taking it, invited Major Washington's party in.
Although strictly attending to the commandant's conversation, George used his keen eyes to the utmost advantage, and he felt sure that Lance was doing the same thing. There were over a hundred soldiers in the fort, and not less than thirty officers.
George and his party were led through a court-yard, around which were barracks and officers' quarters, protected by bastions well provided with artillery. Arrived at the commandant's quarters, M. de St.-Pierre said, courteously, in English,
"When you and your party have refreshed yourselves for a day or two, Major Washington, we will discuss the matters contained in the Governor's letter."
Now this was just what George did not desire. He knew that every artifice would be practised on his Indian allies to win them to the French, as Captain Joncaire had done, with much greater prospect of success. How would he persuade them to leave the good food, the seductive liquor, and the presents that he felt sure the French were ready to shower upon them? His only dependence was upon Tanacharison and Black Bear. How often did he rejoice inwardly over that bucket of water he had given to Black Bear the night of the attack at Greenway Court, six years before! His reply, therefore, to the French commandant was polite but positive:
"I thank you, sir, for your kindness, but I am ready at this moment to proceed to the consideration of his Excellency's letter."
This slightly disconcerted M. de St.-Pierre, who had some inward contempt for the youth of the ambassador sent by the Governor.
"I shall have to send for my second in command, Captain Reparti," he said, "who left us this morning to visit another post."
"I hope, monsieur, that you will send for him at your earliest convenience, for my orders are peremptory--to deliver the letter and return with an answer at the earliest possible moment."
"If I send this evening," remarked M. de St.-Pierre, "my messenger might lose his way in the darkness."
"If you will kindly give me the directions, sir," answered George, with much politeness, "I have men in my party who can make the journey by night, although they have never traversed this part of the country before."
"I will send, however, immediately," said M. de St.-Pierre, coloring slightly, and comprehending that he was dealing with a natural diplomatist.
After a very agreeable dinner George was shown to his room, where Lance, as his servant, awaited him. Scarcely was the door closed before George began, anxiously,
"Where are the Indians?"
"In the barrack-room, sir. The French soldiers are promising them guns and powder and shot and hatchets, and pouring liquor down all of them except Tanacharison and Black Bear, who won't drink, and who mean to be true to us. But, sir, you can't blame the poor devils for taking what the French give them."
"We must get away from here as soon as possible," cried George. "What have you noticed in the fort, Lance?"
"That it's mighty well made, sir; the mounseers are fine engineers, and they know how to build a fort. They have eight six-pounders mounted in the bastions, and a four-pounder at the gate-house. But they have got a lot more places pierced for guns, and you may depend upon it, sir, they have a-plenty more guns than they choose to show stowed away somewhere."
Next morning, Captain Reparti having arrived, M. de St.-Pierre and his officers considered the Governor's letter privately, and then, admitting George, with his interpreter, Captain Vanbraam, an answer was dictated denying the right of the English to any part of the country watered by the Ohio River. This was an important and dangerous announcement, and although not a word was said about war, yet every man present knew that if this contention were maintained England and France must fight, and the country must be drenched with blood. George, with perfect composure, received the letter, and, rising, said:
"My mission, sir, is accomplished. I have delivered the Governor's letter, and your reply, M. de St.-Pierre, shall be conveyed not only to the Governor, but to his Britannic Majesty. I am now ready to take my leave."
"Do not be in so great a hurry to leave us, Major Washington," said M. de St.-Pierre, suavely. "Some of my young officers promised a few guns to your Indian allies, by way of making them satisfied to remain during our negotiation, which I thought would be longer, and the guns cannot arrive until to-morrow morning."
As George knew the impossibility of getting the Indians off without the guns, he consented with the utmost readiness to remain; but he would have given half his fortune to have got off.
The day was one of intense nervous strain on him. His sole dependence in managing the Indians were Tanacharison and Black Bear. And what if they should betray him? But at night the old chief and his son came to him and promised most solemnly to get the chiefs away as soon as the guns should arrive in the morning. George had a luxurious bed in his rude though comfortable quarters, but he slept not one wink that night. By daylight he was up. Soon after Lance sidled up to him in the court-yard, and said,
"Sir, the guns have come--I saw them myself; but the Frenchies will not say a word about it unless they are asked."
Just then M. de St.-Pierre, wrapped in a great surtout, appeared, coming out of his quarters.
"Good-morning, Major Washington!" he cried.
"Good-morning, M. de St.-Pierre!" replied George, gayly. "I must give orders to my party for an early start, as the guns you promised the Indians have arrived, and I have no further excuse for remaining."
"Sacre bleu!" burst out M. de St.-Pierre; "I did not expect the guns so soon!" At which he looked into George's eyes, and suddenly both burst out laughing. The Frenchman saw that his _ruse_ was understood.
The party were soon collected, and after a hearty breakfast George took his leave, and, much to the chagrin of the French, succeeded in carrying off all his Indian allies with him. They rapidly retraced their road, and when they made their first halt, ten miles from Fort Le Boeuf, George exclaimed, aside to Lance,
"This is the first easy moment I have known for twenty-four hours."
"'Tis the first I have had, sir, since we got to the first post, fourteen days ago!"
It was now the latter part of December. The horses, gaunt and starved, were no longer fit for riding, and George set the example of dismounting and going on foot. Their progress with so large a party was not rapid, and George determined to leave Captain Vanbraam, with the horses and provisions, to follow, while he, in his health and strength, set off at a more rapid gait, in order that he might reach Williamsburg with M. de St.-Pierre's defiant letter as soon as possible. Lance, with his experience as a foot-soldier, easily proved his superiority when they were reduced to walking, so George chose him as a companion. Christmas day was spent in a long, hard march, and on the next day George, dressing himself in his buckskin shirt and leggings, with his gun and valuable papers, and giving most of the money for the expedition to Captain Vanbraam, struck off with Lance for a more rapid progress.
The two walked steadily all day, and covered almost twice as much ground as the party following them. At night, with their flints, they struck a roaring fire in the forest, and took turns in watching and sleeping. By daylight they were again afoot.
"I never saw such a good pair of legs as you have, sir, in all my life," said Lance, on this day, as they trudged along. "My regiment was counted to have the best legs for steady work in all the Duke of Marlborough's army, and mine were considered the best pair in the regiment, but you put me to my trumps."
"Perhaps if you were as young as I you would put me to _my_ trumps, for--"
[Illustration: WITH A SPRING, GEORGE HAD THE SAVAGE BY THE THROAT.]
At this moment a shot rang out on the frozen air, and a bullet made a clean hole through George's buckskin cap. One glance showed him an Indian crouching in the brushwood. With a spring as quick and sure as a panther's, George had the savage by the throat, and wrenched the firelock, still smoking, from his hand. Behind him half a dozen Indian figures were seen stealing off through the trees. Lance walked up, and raising a hatchet over the Indian's head, said, coolly,
"Mr. Washington, we must kill him as we would a snake."
"No," replied George, "I will not have him killed."[2]
[2] Washington, in his journal, speaks of the Indian firing at him at short range, but says nothing of his preventing his companion from killing the would-be murderer. But his companion expressly says that he would have killed the Indian on the spot had not Washington forbidden him. The Indians became very superstitious about Washington's immunity from bullets, especially after Braddock's defeat. In that battle he was the target for the best marksmen among them, and not only escaped without a scratch, although two horses were killed under him and his clothes riddled with bullets, but he was the only officer of Braddock's military family who survived.
The Indian, standing perfectly erect and apparently unconcerned, understood well enough that the question of his life or death was under discussion, but with a more than Roman fortitude he awaited his fate, glancing indifferently meanwhile at the glittering edge of the hatchet still held over him.
George took the hatchet from Lance's hand, and said to the Indian, in English: "Though you have tried to kill me, I will spare your life. But I will not trust you behind me. Walk ten paces in front of us, in the direction of the Alleghany River."
The Indian turned, and, after getting his bearings, started off in a manner which showed he understood what was required of him.
The Indians have keen ears, so that George and Lance dared not speak in his hearing, but by exchanging signs they conveyed to each other that there were enemies on their path, of whom this fellow was only one.
Steadily the three tramped for hours, Lance carrying the Indian's gun. When darkness came on they stopped and made the Indian make the fire, which he did, scowling, as being squaw's work. They then divided with him their scanty ration of dried venison, and, George taking charge of the guns, Lance slept two hours. He was then wakened by George, who lay down by the fire and slept two hours, when he too was wakened. George then said to the Indian, who had remained sleepless and upright all the time:
"We |
59467-8 | have determined to let you go, as we have not food enough for three men. Go back to your tribe, and tell them that we spared your life; but before you go pile wood on the fire, for we may have to remain here, on account of the rise in the river, for several days."
This was a _ruse_, but the Indian fell at once into the trap. After replenishing the fire he started off in a northwesterly direction. As soon as George and Lance were sure that he was out of sight they made off in the opposite direction, and after some hours of trudging through snow and ice they found themselves on the bank of the river. They had hoped to find it frozen over, but, instead, there was only a fringe of ice-cakes along the shores and swirling about in the main channel.
Lance looked at George in some discouragement, but George only said, cheerfully: "It is lucky you have the hatchet, Lance. We must make a raft."
The short winter day was nearly done before a rude raft was made, and on it the two embarked. The piercing wind dashed their frail contrivance about, and it was buffeted to and fro by the floating ice. They could not make the opposite shore, but were forced to land on an island, where they spent the night. The hardships told on the older man, and George saw, by the despairing look in Lance's eyes, that he could do no more that day. Wood, however, was plentiful, and a great fire was made.
"Cheer up, Lance!" cried George, when the fire began to blaze: "there is still more dried venison left. You shall sleep to-night, and in the morning the river will be frozen over, and one more day's march will bring us to civilization."
Lance was deeply mortified at his temporary collapse, but there was no denying it. George had but little sleep that night. Five days afterwards the two parted--Lance to return to Greenway Court, and George to press on to Williamsburg. By that time they had secured horses.
"Good-by, my friend," said George. "Tell my lord that nothing but the urgency of the case prevented me from giving myself the happiness of seeing him, and that no day has passed since he sent you with me that I have not thanked him in my heart for your company."
A subtle quiver came upon Lance's rugged face.
"Mr. Washington," he said, "I thank you humbly for what you have said; but mark my words, sir, the time will come, if it is not already here, that my lord will be thankful for every hour that you have spent with him, and proud for every step of advancement he has helped you to."
"I hope so, my friend," cried George, gayly, and turning to go.
Lance watched the tall, lithe young figure in hunting-clothes, worn and torn, riding jauntily off, until George was out of sight. Then he himself struck out for Greenway Court. Four days afterwards a tattered figure rode up to Mount Vernon. The negroes laughed and cried and yah-yahed at seeing "Marse George" in such a plight. Spending only one night there, in order to get some clothes and necessaries, he left at daybreak for Williamsburg, where he arrived and reported to the Governor, exactly eleven weeks from the day he started on this terrible journey.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
TURKEY, "THE SICK MAN."
BY V. GRIBAYÉDOFF.
It is now forty-three years since Czar Nicholas I., in conversation with the British ambassador at St. Petersburg, referred to Turkey as the "Sick Man," and suggested that Great Britain and Russia deal him his death-blow and divide up his heritage. We all know that Great Britain not only rejected the proposition, but, with France and Turkey as allies, not long after declared war on the Russian Empire. This Crimean war cost the great powers engaged in it thousands and thousands of men and millions and millions of money, and when peace was signed in 1856, Russia found herself deprived of some territory on the Roumanian frontier and of the right to maintain a fleet in the Black Sea.
The result acted as medicine on the "Sick Man." Propped up on each side by the western powers, he raised his head and endeavored to feel himself again. He has had several relapses since that period, one notably in 1877-8, when the Russian troops encamped within view of Constantinople. Great Britain again came to his rescue, and prevented some of the amputations planned by the Muscovite--amputations which would surely have led to his demise from sheer loss of blood. For this good service England did a little amputating on her own account, and added to her dominions the fertile island of Cyprus, in the Mediterranean. The "Sick Man" thus obtained another lease of life, but recent events would indicate that his end is at last approaching--as one writer has put it, from sheer inner putrition; and this time there is no sympathizing friend to stretch a helping hand, none to ward off his well-merited fate!
Even those Englishmen who have been most bitterly opposed in the past to a conciliatory policy toward Russia are beginning to recognize the mistake of upholding Turkish rule in Europe. As one English religious journal recently remarked, while advocating the substitution of the Russian for the Turkish flag in Constantinople, "The Czar's rule is bad enough, but there is in the hearts of the Russian people the seed of better things." And it really seems an anomaly that England, of all countries--England, the land of John Howard, of William Wilberforce, of David Livingstone--should have been instrumental in maintaining that pestiferous charnel-house on the banks of the Bosporus! Better a thousand times that the Turkish government should be abolished!
[Illustration: SOME OF THE "IRREGULARS."]
The recent massacres in Armenia and Constantinople are but repetitions of the events of former years. When the Russian troops crossed the Danube in 1853 they found many Bulgarian villages pillaged and their inhabitants massacred by the irregular Turkish troops. The horrible stories that are being told to us daily from Armenia are the same as those told in 1853 from Bulgaria. Towns were burned to ashes, and the inhabitants were burned with them or were killed in attempting to escape from them. Nevertheless, the innate barbarity of the Turk did not prevent the western powers from coming to his help in those days!
In 1861 there were other terrible massacres in the Ottoman Empire, the Christian Maronites of the Lebanon being the victims this time. In the course of a few days five thousand men, women, and children were slaughtered in and around Damascus. This pill was even too much for the Sultan's complacent western friends, and that potentate was obliged to submit to the landing of a French army of intervention in Syria. The many thousands of murders in the Lebanon district were avenged by the execution of about fifty Mussulman ringleaders, after which the French withdrew, with colors flying, to the time of "Partant pour la Syrie."
[Illustration: YILDIZ KIOSK, THE SULTAN'S PALACE.]
In 1876 the barbarities of the Turks in Bulgaria aroused, as we know, the indignation of the whole civilized world. Here was a brilliant opportunity for putting an end, once and for all, to Mussulman authority over a Christian population, and yet such was the jealousy of the great European powers, one for another, that they could not agree, and at the eleventh hour, as the Russians were about to grasp the prize--Constantinople--a British fleet was sent to the Sea of Marmora, and the Turk was saved once more, as above stated, to perpetrate further atrocities in the name of law and order!
It is a long lane that has no turning, and let us trust, therefore, that the symptoms pointing to the Porte's approaching dissolution are not deceptive. When the end does come it will come with a crash. A glance at the photographs on these pages will convey an idea of the kind of men still at the Sultan's beck and call. They certainly do not look as if they would give up to the Giaour without a struggle. Indeed, if the lessons of history count for anything, the unspeakable Turk will fight tooth and nail to maintain his supremacy. Since the days of Osman, founder of the present dynasty, nay, even as far back as the first century of the Christian era, the ancestors of the modern Turk were redoubtable warriors and conquerors. Even in the present century, although usually unfortunate in the outcome of their wars, they have given evidence of the old fearlessness and disregard for death. The defense of Plevna furnishes a brilliant example of Turkish bravery and obstinacy.
[Illustration: TURKISH ZOUAVES.]
The pictures here presented have a peculiar interest at this moment. They represent the regiments garrisoned in Constantinople upon whom the Sultan can count in any emergency. These men are well clothed, well fed, and receive their pay with regularity, unlike the troops in the provinces, who have been wretchedly neglected of late years. These crack regiments are the regular imperial guard, line infantry, zouaves, and marines. They are picked men of Turkish race, and are decidedly more respectable than the irregulars shown in another group. It is the latter who, after the Sultan himself, are to be held accountable for the recent horrible massacres. It is they who organized themselves into marauding bands and spread death and devastation among the unhappy Armenians, with the cognizance of the camarilla at the Yildiz Kiosk, or Sultan's palace.
[Illustration: TROOP OF THE SULTAN'S BODY-GUARD.]
When the final day of reckoning arrives, it is sincerely to be hoped that this gentry will come in for some attention. The civilized world has an old score against them. May it speak in no uncertain tone--in the same voice that thundered ten thousand Turkish assassins to their doom at the sea-fight at Navarino of blessed memory! Those were the days of noble impulses and lofty aspirations, when international jealousies were powerless to sway the councils of nations and stifle the cry of the oppressed. Those were the days of Canning and of Byron. Would that some such men were alive to-day to teach Europe her sacred duty.
THE VOYAGE OF THE "RATTLETRAP."
BY HAYDEN CARRUTH.
X.
After we got back to the Rattletrap we promised ourselves plenty of sport the next day watching the freighters with their long teams and wagon trains. Jack could not recover from his first glimpse of Henderson.
"Rather a neat little turnout to take a young lady out driving with," he said, after we had gone to bed. "Twenty-two oxen and four wagons. Plenty of room. Take along her father and mother. And the rest of the family. And her school-mates. And the whole town. Good team to go after the doctor with if somebody was sick--mile and a half an hour. That trotting-cow man at Yankton ought to come up here and show Henderson a little speed. Still, I dare say Henderson could best Old Browny, on a good day for sleeping, and when he didn't have Blacky to pull him along."
But we got small sight of the trail the next day, as the rain we had left behind came upon us again in greater force than ever. It began toward morning, and when we looked out, just as it was becoming light, we found it coming down in sheets--"cold, wet sheets," as Ollie said, too.
We could watch the road from the front of the wagon, and saw a number of freighters go by, usually with empty wagons, as it soon became too muddy for those with loads. We saw one fourteen-ox team with four wagons, and another man with twelve oxen and three wagons. There were also a number of mule teams, and we noticed one of twelve mules and five wagons, and several of ten mules and three or four wagons. With these the driver always rode the nigh-wheel animal--that is, the left-hand rear one.
"I'm going to put a saddle on Old Blacky and ride him after this," said Jack. "Bound to be in the fashion. Wonder how Henderson is getting along in the mud? A mile in two hours, I suppose. Must be impossible for him to see the head oxen through this rain."
The downpour never stopped all day. We tried letter-writing, but it was too cold to hold the pen; and Jack's efforts at playing the banjo proved equally unsuccessful. We fell back on reading, but even this did not seem to be very satisfactory. So we finally settled down to watching the rain and listening to the wind.
When evening came we shut down the front of the cover and tried to warm up the cabin a little by leaving the oil-stove burning, but it didn't seem to make much difference. So we soon went to bed, rather damp, somewhat cold, and a little dispirited. I think we all staid awake for a long time listening to the beating of the rain on the cover, and wondering about the weather of the morrow.
When we awoke in the morning it did not take long to find out about the weather. The rain had ceased and the sky was clear, but it was colder. Outside we found ice on the little pools of water in the footprints of the horses. We were stiff and cold. Some of us may have thought of the comforts of home, but none of us said anything about them.
"This is what I like," said Jack. "Don't feel I'm living unless I find my shoes frozen in the morning. Like to break the ice when I go to wash my face and hands, and to have my hair freeze before I can comb it."
But we observed that he kept as close to the camp-fire which we started as any of us. We went up to Smith's to look after the horses. While Jack and I were at the sheds Ollie staid in the road watching the freight teams. A big swarthy man, over six feet in height, came along, and after looking over the fence at Smith's house some time, said to Ollie,
"Do you s'pose Smith's at home?"
"Oh, I guess so," answered Ollie.
"I'd like to see him," went on the man, with an uneasy air.
"Probably you'll find him eating breakfast," said Ollie.
"I don't like to go in," said the man.
"Why not?"
[Illustration: "I'M AFRAID OF THE DOG."]
"I'm--I'm afraid of the dog."
"Oh!" replied Ollie. "Well, I'm not. Come on," and he stalked ahead very bravely, while the man followed cautiously behind.
"He's a Mexican," said Smith in explanation afterwards. "All Mexicans are afraid of dogs."
"That's a pretty broad statement," said Jack, after Smith had gone. "I believe, if there was a good reward offered, that I could find a Mexican who isn't afraid of dogs. Though perhaps it's the hair they're afraid of; Mexican dogs don't have any, you know."
"Don't any of them have hair?" asked Ollie.
"Not a hair," answered his truthful uncle. "I don't suppose a Mexican dog would know a hair if he saw it."
"I think that's a bigger story than Smith's," said Ollie.
It was Sunday, and we spent most of the day in the wagon, though we took a long walk up the valley in the afternoon. The first thing Ollie said the next morning was, "When are we going to see the buffaloes?"
Smith had been telling us about them the evening before. They were down town, and belonged to a Dr. McGillicuddie. They had been brought in recently from the Rosebud Indian Agency, and had been captured some time before in the Bad Lands.
We followed the trail, now as deep with mud as it had been with dust, meeting many freighters on the way, and found the buffaloes near the Deadwood stage barn.
"See!" exclaimed Ollie; "there they are in the yard."
"Don't say 'yard,'" returned Jack; "say 'corral,' with a good, strong accent on the last syllable. A yard is a corral, and a farm a ranch, and a revolver a six-shooter--and a lot more. _Don't_ be green, Oliver."
"Oh, bother!" replied Ollie. "There's ten of 'em. See the big fellow!"
"They're nice ones, that's so," answered Jack. "I'd like to see the Yankton man we heard about try to milk that cow over in the corner."
[Illustration: SOME SAID IT WAS A GRIZZLY, AND OTHERS A SILVER-TIP.]
After we had seen the buffaloes we wandered about town and jingled our spurs, which were quite in the fashion. We encountered a big crowd in front of one of the markets, and found that a hunter had just come in from the mountains to the west with the carcass of the biggest bear ever brought into Rapid City. Some said it was a grizzly, and others a silver-tip, and one man tried to settle the difficulty by saying that there wasn't any difference between them. But it was certainly a big bear, and filled the whole wagon-box. Ollie sidled through the crowd, and asked so many questions of the man, who was named Reynolds, that he good-naturedly gave Ollie one of the largest of the claws. It was five inches long.
At noon we went down to the camp of the freighters on the outskirts of town, near Rapid Creek. There must have been fifty "outfits"--Jack said that was the right word--and several hundred mules as many oxen, and a few horses. The animals were, most of them, wandering about wherever they pleased, the mules and horses taking their dinner out of nose-bags, and the mules keeping up a gentle exercise by kicking at one another. It seemed a hopeless confusion, but the men were sitting about on the ground, calmly cooking their dinners over little camp-fires. One man, whom we had got acquainted with in the morning at Smith's, asked us to have dinner with him, and made the invitation so pressing that we accepted. He had several gallons of coffee and plenty of bacon and canned fruit, and a peculiar kind of bread, which he had baked himself.
"I'm a-thinking," he said, "there ain't enough sal'ratus in that there bread; but I'm a poor cook, anyhow."
[Illustration: THE RECEIPT FOR THE SAL'RATUS BREAD.]
The bread seemed to us to be already composed chiefly of saleratus, so his apology struck us as unnecessary. He very kindly wrote out the receipt on a shingle for Jack, but I stole it away from him after we got home and burned it in the camp-fire; so we escaped _that_.
"Your pancakes are bad enough," I said to him. "We don't care to try your saleratus bread."
Jack was a good deal worked up about the loss of his receipt, and experimented a long time to produce something like the freighter's bread without it, but as Snoozer wouldn't try the stuff he made, and he was afraid to do so himself, nothing came of it.
We enjoyed our dinner with the man, however, and Jack added further to his vocabulary in finding that the drivers of the ox teams were called "bullwhackers," and those of the mules and horses "muleskinners."
In the afternoon we climbed the hill above our camp. It gave us a long view off to the east across the level country, while away to the west were the mountain-peaks rising higher and higher. It was still cold, and the raw northeast wind moaned through the pines in a way which made us think of winter.
We went to bed early that night, so as to get a good start for Deadwood the next day. We brought the horses down from the ranch in the evening, blanketed them, and stood them out of the wind among some trees.
"Four o'clock must see us rolling out of our comfortable beds and getting ready to start," said Jack, as we turned in. "We must play we are freighters."
Jack planned better than he knew; we really "rolled out" in an exceedingly lively manner at three o'clock. We were sleeping soundly at that hour, when we were awakened by the motion of the wagon. Jack and I sat up. It was swaying from side to side, and we could hear the wheels bumping on the stones. The back end was considerably lower than the front.
"It's running down the bank!" I cried, and we both plunged through the darkness for the brake-handle. We fell over Ollie and Snoozer, and were instantly hopelessly tangled. It seemed an age, with the wagon swaying more and more, before we found the handle. Jack pushed it up hard, we heard the brake grind on the wheels outside; then there was a great bump and splash, and the wagon tilted half over and stopped. We found ourselves lying on the side of the cover, with cold water rising about us. We were not long in getting out, and discovered that the Rattletrap was capsized in the mill-race.
"Old Blacky did it!" cried Jack, as he danced around and shook his wet clothes. "I know he did. The old sinner!"
We got out the lantern and lit it. Only the hind end of the wagon was really in the race; one front wheel still clung to the bank, and the other was up in the air. Ollie got in and began to pass things out to Jack, while I went up the hill after the horses. Jack was right. Old Blacky was evidently the author of our misfortune. He had broken loose in some manner, and probably begun his favorite operation of making his toilet on the corner of the wagon by rubbing against it. The brake had carelessly been left off, he had pushed the wagon back a few feet, and it had gone over the bank. I soon had the harness on the horses, and got them down the hill. We hitched them to the hind wheel with a long rope, Jack wading in the water to his waist, and pulled the wagon upright. Then we attached them to the end of the tongue, and after hard work drew it out of the race. By this time we were chilled through and through. Our beds and nearly everything we had were soaking with water.
"How do you like it, Uncle Jack?" inquired Ollie. "Do you feel that you are living now?"
Jack's teeth were chattering. "Y--yes," he said; "but I won't be if we don't get a fire started pretty quick."
There were some timbers from an old bridge near by, and we soon had a good fire, around which we tramped in a procession till our clothes were fairly dry. The wind was chilly, and it was a dark cloudy morning. The unfortunate Snoozer had gone down with the rest of us, and was the picture of despair, till Ollie rubbed him with a dry corner of a blanket, and gave him a good place beside the fire.
By the time two or three hours had elapsed we began to feel partially dry, and decided to start on, relying on exercise to keep ourselves warm. We had had breakfast in the mean time, and, on the whole, were feeling rather cheerful again. We opened the cover and spread out the bedding, inside and outside, and hung some of it on a long pole which we stuck into the wagon from the rear. Altogether we presented a rather funny appearance as we started out along the trail, but no one paid much attention to us. The freighters were already astir, and we were constantly passing or meeting their long trains. Among others we passed Eugene Brooks, the man with whom we had taken dinner. We told him of our mishap, and he laughed, and said:
"That's nothing in this country. Something's always happening here which would kill folks anywhere else. You stay here awhile and you'll be as tough as your old black horse."
Brooks had an outfit of five spans of mules and two wagons. We staid with him a half-hour, and then went on. As we could not reach Deadwood that day, he advised us to camp that night where the trail crossed Thunder Butte Creek, a branch of La Belle Fourche.
The trail led for the most part through valleys or along the sides of hills, and was generally not far from level, though there was, of course, a constant though hardly perceptible rise as we got farther into the mountains. We camped at noon at Elk Creek, and made further progress at drying our household effects. We pressed on during the afternoon, and passed through the town of Sturgis, where we laid in some stores of provisions to take the place of those spoiled by the water, and also a quantity of horse-feed. We congratulated ourselves later on our good luck in doing this.
As the afternoon wore away we found ourselves getting up above the timber-line. The mountains began to shut in our view in all directions, and the valleys were narrowing. As night drew nearer, Jack said:
"Seems to me it's about time we got to this Thunder Butte Creek. He said that if we passed Sturgis we'd have to go on to that if we wanted water."
We soon met a man, and inquired of him the distance to the desired stream. "Two miles," he replied, promptly. We went on as much as a mile and met another man, to whom we put the same question. "Three miles," he answered, with great decision.
"That creek seems to be retreating," said Jack, after the man had gone on. "We've got to hurry and catch it, or it will run clean into Deadwood and crawl down a gold-mine."
It was growing dark. We forged ahead for another mile, and by this time it was quite as dark as it was going to be, with a cloudy sky, and mountains and pines shutting out half of that. I was walking ahead with the lantern, and came to a place where the trail divided.
"The road forks here," I called. "Which do you suppose is right?"
"Which seems to be the most travelled?" asked Jack.
"Can't see any difference," I replied. "We'll have to leave it to the instinct of the horses."
"Yes, I'd like to put myself in the grasp of Old Blacky's instinct. The old scoundrel would go wrong if he knew which was right."
"Well," I returned, "come on and see which way he turns, and then go the other way." (Jack always declared that the old fellow understood what I said.)
He drove up to the forks, and Blacky turned to the right. Jack drew over to the left, and we went up that road. We continued to go up it for fully three miles, though we soon became convinced that it was wrong. It constantly grew narrower and apparently less travelled. We were soon winding along a mountain-side among the pines, and around and above and below great rocks.
"We'll go till we find a decent place to camp, and then stop for the night," said Jack.
We finally came to a little level bench covered with giant pines, and we could hear water beyond. I went on with the lantern, and found a small stream leaping down a gulch.
"This is the place to stop," I said, and we soon had our camp established, and a good fire roaring up into the tree-tops. Ollie found plenty of dry pine wood, and we blanketed the horses and stood under a protecting ledge. It was cold, and the wind roared down the gulch and moaned in the pines, but we scarcely felt it blow. We finished drying our bedding and had a good supper. Jack got out his banjo and tried to compete with the brook and the pines. We went to bed feeling that we were glad we had missed the road, since it had brought so delightful a camping-place.
Ollie was the first to wake in the morning. It was quite light.
"What makes the cover sag down so?" he asked.
Jack opened his eyes, reached up with the whipstock and raised it. Something slid off the outside with a rush.
"Open the front and you'll see," answered Jack.
Ollie did so, and we all looked out. The ground was deep with snow, and it was still falling in great feathery flakes. Old Blacky was loose, and looked in at us with a wicked gleam in his eyes.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
[Illustration: INTERSCHOLASTIC SPORT]
The championship season in football is now fairly under way in almost every section of the country, and the reports that come in from all sides are of a most promising nature for the welfare of the sport. More players in a greater number of schools spread over a broader area of the country are at work on the gridiron this year than ever before, and the colleges may feel confident of receiving a higher grade of raw material in the future than has ever come in with any previous Freshman class.
In the Boston Association the number of schools in the Junior League has become so large as to make it necessary to divide it into two sections, the winners of each to play off to decide the championship; and then, of course, the champion of the Juniors must play the tail-ender in the Senior League to determine whether or not they exchange places. Newton, Somerville, Chelsea, and Medford form one division of the Junior League; Roxbury Latin, Dedham, Hyde Park, and Dorchester the other. Dorchester and Medford are new-comers, and thus, to a certain extent, unknown quantities. Somerville High, having won the championship of the Junior League last year, will now move up into the Senior ranks, and from present appearances the team ought to make a good showing. In the game with Tufts College, Somerville held the collegians down to one touch-down in a twenty-minute half. They developed good team-work in their aggressive play, but when on the defence they were not so strong. This is the natural result of practice work against a weaker team, such as a second eleven usually is. The only way to develop a strong defence is to practise against stronger opponents, hence the advisability of as many matches with outsiders as possible.
The weak spots in the Somerville team are the guards. They are somewhat light, but with training and careful coaching should develop well, Almeida, the captain, is a good man, and is playing an unusually strong game at quarter for a captain. If he can manage his men as well as they were managed last season, Somerville need have no fears of losing its position in the Senior League. The backs, Pipe and Cuddy, are doing as well as can be expected so early in the season, and if Hanlon, at full-back, can keep on improving in his kicking, the team will be well taken care of back of the line.
From present appearances it looks as if English High would have fully as good a team as last year, and the eleven is certainly as strong as any other in the League to-day. Five of the old champions are back, and they form an excellent nucleus for an exceptionally good lot of new material. Kimball, who will probably hold centre, is pretty green, but will improve. He will doubtless be guarded by Walker, who is a new man, and by Carroll, who was last year's substitute centre. If these three men are finally selected, they will make as heavy a centre as there is on any team in the association. The position of quarter-back is still open, as it is not known yet definitely whether Sherlock will return to school. If he does not, however, Mansfield and Mann will make good substitutes, and can be trained into excellent players. Mann is a fast runner, and will make a good running quarter if he takes the place.
The Boston Latin School loses a good many of last year's team, but is fortunate in having an unusually large number of men anxious for positions on the eleven. The practice work so far has been of the first order, and the number of candidates has made it possible for the old men to get good practice. Those who are trying are not all by any means new to the game. Some were substitutes to the team which won the championship in 1895.
The men of last tear's team who are left to represent Boston Latin this year are Lowe, who played left guard; Teevens, who was substitute tackle in 1894, but who played back of the line last year; Daly, last year's right half-back, who, however, will doubtless make a try for full-back this fall; and Brayton, who is a candidate for guard. The new men, besides being a promising lot, are all pretty heavy, and so we may expect to see the Latin School represented by a heavy team in the coming championship.
The schedule for the championship series in the Senior League was made up at a recent meeting of the football committee as follows:
Boston Latin.--Oct. 30, Brookline High at South End; Nov. 6, Hopkinson at South End; Nov. 13, Cambridge High and Latin at South End; Nov. 26, English High at South End.
Cambridge Manual.--Oct. 30, Boston Latin or Cambridge High and Latin, Soldiers' Field; Nov. 6, Brookline High at Soldiers' Field; Nov. 13, Hopkinson at Soldiers' Field; Nov. 20, English High at Soldiers' Field.
English High.--Nov. 6, Cambridge High and Latin at South End; Nov. 12, Brookline High at South End; Nov. 17, Hopkinson at South End; Nov. 20, Cambridge Manual at Soldiers' Field; Nov. 26, Boston Latin at South End.
Cambridge High and Latin.--Oct. 31, Hopkinson (undecided); Nov. 6, English High at South End; Nov. 13, Boston Latin at South End; Nov. 18, Brookline (undecided).
Brookline High.--Oct. 30, Boston Latin at South End; Nov. 6, Cambridge Manual at Soldiers' Field; Nov. 12, English High at South End; Nov. 18, Cambridge High and Latin at Soldiers' Field or South End; Nov. 24, Hopkinson at Soldiers' Field.
Hopkinson.--Oct. 31, Cambridge High and Latin at South End (?); Nov. 6, Boston Latin at South End; Nov. 13, Cambridge Manual at Soldiers' Field; Nov. 17, English High at South End; Nov. 24, Brookline High at Soldiers' Field.
The schools of Maine are beginning to practise for their championship season, and several minor games have already been played. Portland High ought to have a fairly strong team, although it is perhaps too early yet to form any idea of what the new material will develop into. Bangor High is practising hard, and of last year's team there are again in school Connors, McCann, Snow, Hall, Hunt, Knaide, and Crowley. The Cony High-School, of Augusta, is looking forward confidently to winning the championship, and the eleven is practising hard every day. Several of last year's team are back, notably Savage and Sawyer, the guard and tackle. The regular League schedule, however, has not yet been arranged.
The Cook County High-School League, of Chicago, had a little trouble over its elections recently, but it is to be hoped that if any ill feeling resulted, it has all been smoothed over by this time. It seems to be a natural desire among a great many of us to go ahead regardless of rules sometimes, and this always results in trouble afterwards. When it comes to an election, nothing should ever be attempted that is not strictly in conformity with the regulations of the association. The desire for office or the enthusiasm of supporters should not be allowed to influence any candidate. A man elected under any circumstances except those of absolute regularity can never feel satisfied with his position, and will always suffer the loss of a certain amount of self-respect.
At the last meeting of the League's committee this trouble over the election was satisfactorily arranged, and a schedule for the championship series was laid out as follows:
Oct. 10.--West Division at North Division, Lake View at Oak Park, English High at Hyde Park, Northwest at Englewood, Chicago Manual at Evanston.
Oct. 17.--Hyde Park at West Division, Englewood at Lake View, North Division at English High, Evanston at Northwest, Oak Park at Chicago Manual.
Oct. 21.--West Division at Englewood, Chicago Manual at Hyde Park, Northwest at North Division, Lake View at Evanston, English High at Oak Park.
Oct. 24.--Evanston at West Division, Chicago Manual at Lake View, Oak Park at Englewood, Hyde Park at North Division, Northwest at English High.
Oct. 31.--Northwest at Oak Park, North Division at Chicago Manual, Englewood at Evanston, West Division at Oak Park, English High at Lake View.
Nov. 4.--North Division at Lake View, Evanston at English High, Hyde Park at Oak Park, West Division at Northwest, Englewood at Chicago Manual.
Nov. 7.--Lake View at Hyde Park, Oak Park at Evanston, Englewood at North Division, Northwest at Chicago Manual, English High at West Division.
Nov. 14.--Hyde Park at Evanston, English High at Englewood, Chicago Manual at West Division, North Division at Oak Park, Lake View at Northwest.
Nov. 21.--Hyde Park at Englewood, Northwest at Oak Park, Evanston at North Division, Chicago Manual at English High, West Division at Lake View.
The home grounds of the different teams are: Englewood, Hyde Park, and Chicago Manual, Washington Park; Lake View and North Division, Lincoln Park; English High and West Division, Douglas Park; Northwest Division, Humboldt Park; Evanston, Evanston; and Oak Park on the Oak Park Club baseball-grounds.
The New Jersey Interscholastic A.A. has arranged its football schedule, and the games will be played in the following order:
Oct. 10.--Newark Academy _vs._ Pingry, at Newark. Oct. 15.--Stevens Prep. _vs._ Montclair H.-S. at Montclair. Oct. 24.--Pingry _vs._ Stevens Prep. at Elizabeth. Oct. 24.--Newark _vs._ Montclair at Montclair. Oct. 31.--Stevens _vs._ Newark at Hoboken. Nov. 7.--Pingry _vs._ Montclair at Elizabeth.
It is probable that the Wisconsin Interscholastic League will soon fall to pieces, inasmuch as three of the strongest members have withdrawn from it. The reason given for this action on their part is that the high-schools in the State are so widely separated, that the time and expense incurred in travelling to and from games are so great, that these contests must be abandoned. The Milwaukee schools, however, have decided to keep up interscholastic sport so far as they are themselves concerned, and have adopted a constitution and drawn up a set of rules to govern their own games, which shall take the place of the old League regulations. These rules were made by delegates representing three schools. They debar all undesirable persons from taking part in any of the contests, and a committee has been appointed to see that athletics are kept pure not only in Milwaukee, but to enforce the Milwaukee standard against all out-of-town teams that desire to hold contests with members of this new association.
From all accounts it would seem that athletics in Wisconsin must have been about as impure and un-amateur and shamefacedly semi-professional as could possibly be. The trouble all came about, as it usually does, gradually. One school committed some small offence, and then another school committed a larger one, excusing itself on the ground that its neighbor was the first sinner. Madison High-School, so far as I am able to learn, seems to have been the worst transgressor. It is a great boaster of championships, and it is true that the Madison High-School football team has never been defeated. It has seemed to many, however, that the authorities of that school ought to take some steps to prevent men who are students at the University of Wisconsin from playing on the High-School team. Such men actually did play on the school teams while members of the university, by taking some single subject in the High-School. With university men on the school teams, victory naturally came to Madison very frequently when it met other schools, and this afforded a bad example.
The contagion reached Milwaukee, and the High-Schools there did a great many things which are doubtless now regretted by the better element. To such a point have they come in Wisconsin that the _Mercury_, which is the paper of the Milwaukee East-Side High-School, says, in a leading editorial: "There must be an entire revolution in the High-School athletics of this State. Otherwise Wisconsin will have a league professing purity in athletics, but really composed of professionals and 'ringers' and some unquestioned amateurs.... Numerous charges have been wafted to our ears, but we will deal only with those which we can substantiate." So long as the _Mercury_ can substantiate the charges, it may be interesting to the readers of this Department to hear what those charges are.
It would seem that the first case of irregularity occurred in last year's football season, when, according to the _Mercury_, the Madison eleven had two players who were regular members of the University of Wisconsin. The next case was in the Milwaukee East Side High-School itself. Members of that institution had the rules of the League suspended until after the date of the field meeting in order to allow one of their men, who had not been regularly enrolled since December, as the rules required, to enter and compete. "The next irregularity," says the _Mercury_, "was the entrance of a professional from the interior of the State, but that resulted satisfactorily. He was ruled out." The editorial then goes on to tell another story of professionalism in which two schools, holding a majority vote, refused to obey the rules of the Association, and legislated so as to allow certain individuals to represent their schools in a track-athletic meeting who had no more right to do so than any professional performers that they might have called on for similar work. It is to be hoped that the new spirit which seems to be awakening in Milwaukee will have sufficient influence and power to root out these evils in the future, or the sports of that State will get into a sad condition, where the young are so crafty and bold in their adoption of unfair methods.
With the awakening spirit of purity in athletics the prospects for football in Wisconsin seem to be brighter than ever before. The Madison High and the East Side and South Side high-schools at Milwaukee will undoubtedly be the strongest three high-school teams in the State. Madison has more old players back than the others, and thus has a slight advantage to start with; and it has the additional advantage of good coachers from the neighboring university. The Milwaukee schools, however, will put heavier men into the field.
The St. John's Military Academy will be stronger on the gridiron this year than it has been for some time, and ought to come out pretty well in interscholastic contests. The amateur spirit has had some pretty hard rubs at St. John's, as has been told of before in this Department, but I understand that this year no instructors will be permitted to play on the team, and none but students of the institution will be allowed to wear the school colors. It has not always been possible to say this of St. John's teams.
[Illustration: LINE-UP OF THE BROOKLYN HIGH-SCHOOL ELEVEN.]
All the schools of the Long Island League are working hard at football this year, much harder than they have worked for the past few seasons, and we may therefore expect to see a better general average across the river. St. Paul's School always has had a strong team, and expects to have the best that ever represented the school this year. The Boys' High-School of Brooklyn has an energetic captain, Dickson, and promises to put a strong eleven into the field.
[Illustration: THE BERKELEY OVAL FOOTBALL FIELD.]
The trouble with last year's High-School team was that the men were too light, and became discouraged early in the season, and did not work with that determination which alone can insure success on the football field. A number of the old men are back, however, this fall, and the new material seems to be heavier than any which has before been available.
The unusually large number of students at the Buffalo High-School this year seems to have bred a lively interest in football. The first team the High-School ever put into the field was in 1892, but so little interest was taken in its work by the students at large and the players themselves, that they were able to accomplish but little. This year, however, a change seems to have come over the spirit of B.H.-S., and large crowds watch the practice every afternoon. The eleven is light when compared with some of the teams which it will meet during the season, but the men play well together, and the new rules are so arranged that a light eleven is not under such a disadvantage as it used to be in years past. Vayers, the captain, knows the game thoroughly, and has the ability of imparting knowledge to those under him.
The Andover football team this year seems to be rich in candidates for positions behind the line, whereas very few good men can be found for the rush-line itself. Nevertheless, Captain Barker is working hard with such material as he has, and no doubt by the close of the season he will have developed an eleven of the usual Andover calibre. It seems very improbable that a game with Exeter will be arranged this year, although there has been a renewal of interest in the subject lately, and considerable thought and some activity among the graduates of the two schools.
The papers on the "Science of Football" which have been appearing in this Department during the past few weeks, written by Mr. W. H. Lewis, of the Harvard football team of 1893, are published now in book form, with much additional material, and many more illustrations and diagrams than were given originally in the ROUND TABLE. The book will be found especially valuable to beginners, for whom it is intended rather than for the more experienced player, and the chapter on training will be found especially serviceable to the captains of school teams.
"TRACK ATHLETICS IN DETAIL."--ILLUSTRATED.--8VO, CLOTH, ORNAMENTAL, $1.25.
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This was an unusual request, and the father said: "Certainly. Have you none at your end of the table?"
"Not enough for all the meat you are going to give me," replied the little boy. And he was served at once.
[Illustration: ROYAL BAKING POWDER]
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[Illustration: THOMPSON'S EYE WATER]
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[Illustration: PISO'S CURE FOR CONSUMPTION]
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[Illustration: BICYCLING]
This Department is conducted in the interest of Bicyclers, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject. Our maps and tours contain many valuable data kindly supplied from the official maps and road-books of the League of American Wheelmen. Recognizing the value of the work being done by the L.A.W., the Editor will be pleased to furnish subscribers with membership blanks and information so far as possible.
There are several well-known rules in bicycling to-day which have established themselves by custom, and yet many of which, perhaps, will not be found in any book. They are, none the less, rules to be followed, because they are founded on experience. Riding in the city is very different from riding in the country, and there are certain differences in riding in small towns from either the country or the city. In the country there is no reason why one should not ride on side-paths or sidewalks if the road is better there. There is much less traffic, not so many pedestrians, and no one has any objection to this side-path riding there.
It is very different in towns, however. There, whether the law forbids sidewalk riding or not, no bicyclist should leave the street. In towns and in cities bicycles become in every way subject to the laws of carriages; a wheelman should keep always on the right-hand side of the road on principle. When a horse and carriage or another wheel is approaching, he should turn to the right, although both the driver of the horse and carriage and the rider of the wheel must give him room to pass on the right. In overtaking and passing either carriages or bicycles, you should pass to the left, turning, in other words, from the right-hand side of the road in towards the centre. In turning a corner, there are several rules to be observed, and in practice they ought all to be observed invariably. If you are turning into a street to the left a wide circle should be made, keeping well to the right, leaving room always at the corner for any vehicle, whether bicycle or carriage, to easily pass.
In fact, a good principle is to keep straight on until the cross-road is nearly passed, then turn to the left, and running into the cross-road close to the curb at the right. Where there is a road with a walk, or a car track, or anything of the sort in the centre that divides the avenue into two roadways, always keep on the right hand of the two, and when it is necessary to cross in order to get into a side road, do the crossing as quickly as possible. If this one rule alone were followed, many accidents would be avoided.
The use of bells and brakes constitutes an important part of city riding. Every man or woman who rides in a city should have a brake. There are times when nothing can save a fall except a very powerful brake. You may be riding close behind a horse-car, a cable-car, or carriage, when either the cars are obliged to stop suddenly, or perhaps a horse falls down. The sharp turn required to avoid running into the cars or carriage on a slippery pavement would throw the rider. Back-pedalling is of no use in the emergency, and a brake is the only thing that will save a collision. In like manner, in riding at night, and turning a corner, some one may come upon you suddenly when only a brake will save a collision. Bells are of just as much use. It is always safe, and therefore advisable, to ring your bell as you cross a cross-street. One should never overtake and pass another bicyclist, especially a woman, without giving a distinct notice by ringing a bell. The rider may be new to the wheel, or a hundred different things might happen to change the direction of the leading rider, and the notice given by ringing the bell will often save a catastrophe. No corner should be turned without notice being given by ringing the bell. No carriage should be overtaken and passed without the same notice.
Of course this looks as if one would be kept ringing the bicycle bell continually in the city, which is indeed the case; but after a moment's thought it will appear that any vehicle which moves without noise is obliged to give notice by ringing bells just as frequently. Cable-cars, trolley-cars, horse-cars, etc., are all ringing bells continually, and yet the newspapers each day contain notices of accidents from one or the other. Hence one should make up his mind that if he is to ride in the city he must be continually on the watch, and must continually be giving notice of his presence by the only noise-making method at his command--the bell.
[Illustration: THE CAMERA CLUB]
This Department is conducted in the interest of Amateur Photographers, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on the subject so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor Camera Club Department.
A CAMERA CLUB PRINT EXCHANGE.
There is scarcely a State in the Union but what is represented in our Camera Club, and its membership extends to Canada, the maritime provinces, and Europe. Correspondence and local photographic chapters are formed among the members, who find that the exchange of ideas and experiences are of the greatest help to the amateur who wishes to improve.
A few weeks ago one of our members living in a Western State, wishing to have a picture of the Treasury Building in Washington, wrote to the editor, asking if some member of the Camera Club living in that city would not be willing to send him a print of it in exchange for one of some Western views, a list of which he enclosed in his letter. By a singular coincidence the same mail which brought this letter brought one from a member residing in Washington, who stated that she had made some fine negatives of the government buildings, and asking suggestions in regard to the printing and mounting. The address of the young lady was sent to our Western correspondent, and the exchange of prints made to their mutual satisfaction.
This incident has suggested to the editor the idea of forming a photographic-print exchange for the benefit of the members of the club who wish to form a collection of views from different localities. Suppose some member of the club wished photographs of the State Houses. He could state his wish, and say what pictures he had to offer in exchange. Members residing in the capitals of the different States, who cared to make the exchange, could correspond with the member wishing the pictures.
If the starting of a photographic-print exchange meets the favor of the club, a limited space could be given each week to the printing of the requests. The print exchange would enable one to make a fine collection of views, and the members would receive many helpful suggestions from seeing the work of other amateurs. The addresses and wants would be published in the Camera Club Department of the ROUND TABLE, but the correspondence would of course be carried on by mail, and not through the Camera Club.
Some of our amateurs have been abroad, and have made fine negatives of foreign scenes: the stay-at-home amateurs might, through the print exchange, be able to obtain some of these pictures. Amateurs who make a specialty of some particular subject or branch of photography might add to their collection, and in many ways the exchange would be a source of pleasure and profit.
The plan of exchanging prints is not a new one to our amateurs, for several of the prize-winners in our photographic contest exchanged prints of the prize pictures.
In making exchanges it is better to send unmounted prints, as the pictures can then be mounted on cards of uniform size, or placed in an album.
[Illustration: STAMPS]
This Department is conducted in the interest of stamp and coin collectors, and the Editor will be pleased to answer any question on these subjects so far as possible. Correspondents should address Editor Stamp Department.
It is now reported that instead of 200,000 sets (except the 5c.) Nova Scotia cents issue, there were 200,000 stamps only, divided as follows:
1c. 52,000 2c. 54,000 8-1/2c. 54,000 10c. 28,000 12-1/2c. 12,000
The price paid was about $10,000, and the entire quantity of stamps has been divided into 2000 lots, each containing the same number of stamps, and the price was fixed at $6 per lot. Stanley Gibbons, of London, the English agent, stated in a letter that 80 sets would cost $500, and that single sets would retail at $6. In Stanley Gibbons's paper announcing prices of the Nova Scotia sets, advertisements of other dealers appeared offering sets at $2.40 to $3.60. Harry Hilckes, of London, states that sets have been offered to him at 62c. per set. The difference between $6 and 62c. per set is simply ridiculous. Collectors should not pay fancy prices for s |
59467-8 | tamps which are common.
The French government announces the early withdrawal of the 75-centime adhesive stamp, the 5c. and 60c. envelopes, and the 3c. newspaper wrapper.
The new Japanese stamps which were to be issued in Japan on September 12, 1896, were received on letters in London on September 5.
The S.S.S.S. adds the following to its list of speculative stamps the collection of which should be discouraged:
Uruguay (Suarez memorial), 1c. black and violet; 5c. black and blue; 10c. black and red. Venezuela (Miranda), 5c., 10c., 25c., and 50c., and 1c. Bolivar.
The desire to differentiate minute varieties on the part of advanced collectors gives point to a story which is going the rounds of the philatelic press. A certain dealer secured a lot of U.S. stamps with original gum, etc. Some were older than other copies of the same issue, others were a little "off," still others had had the gum soaked off, etc. He began marking them "uncancelled"; a better copy became "unused," a still better one "original gum"; then advancing, "old original gum," "older original gum," "very old original gum"; and still there were a few which seemed to him should be classed by themselves, so after much thought they were labelled "pre-historic gum."
MCHENRY COAL.--The 1827 dime can be bought for 20c.
W. G. CRAWFORD.--I do not understand your inquiry regarding postal-cards. There is a "Postal-Card Society" in existence which is quite active, but stamp-collectors, as a rule, confine themselves to adhesive stamps. In many instances, however, cut square envelopes are added. Entire envelopes of the U.S. are coming into favor gradually.
W. T. HOLDEN, 36 Marcy Ave., Brooklyn, N. Y., wishes to exchange stamps. I believe dealers are eligible to membership in the Dorchester Stamp Exchange. I do not know the New York Stamp Exchange. All the philatelic societies in New York have exchange circuits of their own, confined to their own membership. Dealers are not eligible to membership in "The Philatelic Society, New York"; but members who afterward become dealers can continue their membership if they wish.
H. O. KOERPER.--The 1839 dime is offered by dealers at 20c. each; the 3c. piece in fair condition from 10c. to 20c. each. Worn copies of either are worth face only. U.S. fractional currency which is not fresh and clean is worth face only.
L. V. GREEN.--Continental, Colonial, and Confederate paper money is extremely plentiful. With a few exceptions, dealers do not care to buy, except in large quantities. One house held Confederate money in _bales_, and sold it by the pound. The copies mentioned by you have no money value.
T. A. B. OSAGE.--No illustration of the St. Louis stamp appeared in No. 871 HARPER'S ROUND TABLE, page 875. It was illustrated in No. 826 (August 26, 1895). You say you have a copy of the 5c. St. Louis, and ask its value. It is impossible to express any opinion as to the value of a rare stamp until after examination. I am always glad to oblige a subscriber to the ROUND TABLE, but I cannot be responsible for the loss of stamps in transit. If you wish me to examine it I will do so, provided it be sent by express prepaid. When returned, it would be sent express at your expense. In the case of less valuable stamps, they can be sent by registered mail, and an addressed envelope stamped for return in the same way should be enclosed with the stamps. If stamps are sent in the regular mail, they will be returned the same way, provided an addressed and stamped envelope be enclosed.
MARY WILLIS.--French assignats are worthless. The French government made thousands of millions, which gradually sunk in value from par with gold to absolutely nothing within four years. The same was true of Colonial and Continental currency in this country, with the solitary exception of Vermont Colonials, which were redeemed at par.
G. T. T.--Your 1853 quarter is the common variety, worth face only.
PHILATUS.
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[Illustration: STAMPS]
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[Illustration: THOMPSON'S EYE WATER]
[Illustration: Commit to Memory]
the best things in Prose and Poetry, always including good Songs and Hymns. It is surprising how little good work of this kind seems to be done in the Schools, if one must judge from the small number of people who can repeat, without mistake or omission, as many as =Three= good songs or hymns.
[Illustration: Clear, Sharp, Definite,]
and accurate Memory work is a most excellent thing, whether in School or out of it, among all ages and all classes. But let that which is so learned be worth learning and worth retaining. The Franklin Square Song Collection presents a large number of
[Illustration: Old and New Songs]
and Hymns, in great variety and very carefully selected, comprising Sixteen Hundred in the Eight Numbers thus far issued, together with much choice and profitable Reading Matter relating to Music and Musicians. In the complete and varied
[Illustration: Table of Contents,]
which is sent free on application to the Publishers, there are found dozens of the best things in the World, which are well worth committing to memory; and they who know most of such good things, and appreciate and enjoy them most, are really among the best educated people in any country. They have the best result of Education. For above Contents, with sample pages of Music, address
Harper & Brothers, New York.
The Importance of Care.
Not infrequently has the Table urged upon its readers the desirability of good penmanship and careful selection of words in letter-writing. Here are three stories, all vouched for as true, which emphasize the points anew:
A Cincinnati grocer's house found that cranberries had risen to $6 per bushel. The purchasing clerk immediately sent this note by the firm's teamster, "One hundred bushels per Simmons." (Simmons was the driver's name.) The well-meaning correspondent thought the scrawl read, "One hundred bushels persimmons," and boys were straightway set to work, for persimmons were plentiful. The wagon made its appearance next day loaded down with eighty bushels. The remaining twenty bushels were to follow next day, and when the correspondent found out his mistake he angrily demanded why the order did not read _by_ Simmons?
A New England clergyman wrote a letter to the General Court. The clerk came to a sentence which he read, "I address you not as magistrates, but as Indian devils." The Court was wroth until the "Indian devils" were found to be "individuals."
An English gentleman, in writing to a Lincolnshire friend, mentioned the latter's kindness to him, and said he should soon send him a suitable "equivalent." The friend read the word "elephant," and immediately built a handsome barn for the reception of his elephantine majesty. But much to his surprise a barrel of oysters was the "equivalent."
* * * * *
Minimized Writing.
Mention was made in the Table, not long since, of the microscopic ring presented to Queen Elizabeth, consisting of a silver penny on which Bales "put more things than would fill several duodecimo pages." For a long time, Pliny's remark that Cicero had once seen Homer's Iliad in a nutshell was considered an exaggeration, at least. But an old French writer named Huet proves the statement to be true. A sheet of sheep-skin 10x8 can be neatly folded up so as to fit the shell of a large walnut. In its breadth the strip will contain one line of thirty verses, and in its length, 250 lines. Each side of the page would, then, contain 7500 verses, or the whole of the Iliad! Huet proved this fact in the presence of the Dauphin, using a sheet of paper and a crow-quill pen.
In the library of St. John's College, Oxford, is a head of Charles I. made up of minute lines of script which at a little distance resemble common engraving lines. The lines of the head and ruff form the Psalms, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer. There is a portrait of Queen Anne in the British Museum "not much above the size of the hand." This drawing, too, is made up of microscopic lines and scratches which form the contents of an entire folio!
Elizabeth's silver penny ring was surpassed by the farthing of Peter Almunus, an Italian monk. On the coin were engrossed the Acts of the Apostles and the Gospel according to St. John. Another example of microscopic writing was presented to Elizabeth in the shape of a piece of parchment the size of a finger, containing the Decalogue, the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the name of the giver, and the date. A pair of spectacles accompanied this Lilliputian manuscript.
Ælian tells us of an artist who wrote a "distich in letters of gold, which he enclosed in the rind of a grain of corn," while Menage writes of microscopic sentences, pictures, and portraits. He mentions reading an Italian poem in praise of the Princess, "written by an officer in the space of a foot and a half."
With Pope we would say:
"Why has not man a microscopic eye? For this plain reason--man is not a fly."
MAURICE MAXWELL.
* * * * *
A Story about Holland's Young Queen.
Queen Wilhelmina, of Holland, who once applied for membership in the Order of the Round Table, and purchased a set of Columbian stamps through the Editor of the Round Table Stamp Department, has become betrothed to her second cousin, although yet in her early teens. When the German Emperor paid a visit to The Hague, in 1893, the Queen desired to be present at the banquet given in his honor. This, of course, was out of the question. To all the pleadings of her daughter the Queen Regent turned a deaf ear. "You are too young and must go to bed." As, however, the child Queen persisted in her demands, there remained for the Regent but one alternative--to herself conduct the young lady to her bedroom. This she did, but not without one final energetic protest from the disappointed Queen. "I will go to the balcony and tell the Dutch people how you abuse their Queen."
Of course the young lady did nothing of the kind, but sobbed herself to sleep instead, and next day dutifully begged her mother's pardon.
* * * * *
Kinks.
No. 41.--A PROSE CHARADE.
I am a combination of the animal and vegetable kingdom, generally made by boys, and carried in their pockets. Part of me once belonged to a two-legged farm animal, and helped to do what Maxim, Langley, and Lielenthal have as yet failed in. The next important part grew in the forest and was shaped by a jack-knife. The third and last part grew in the ground. Many a fly has met death at my hands, but my chief merit is noise. What am I?
* * * * *
No. 42.--POLITICAL QUESTIONS.
1. What legislature is known as the "House of Keys"?
2. What early American hero boasted of having killed, while in Austria, thirty men merely to prove to a party of ladies that he was brave?
3. Who burned up the "copy" of the first _Congressional Record_?
4. Who made the principal address at Gettysburg, now forgotten, on the day that Lincoln made his famous impromptu one?
* * * * *
No. 43.--A STAR.
[Illustration]
1 to 2, part of a woman's cap; 1 to 3, an explosion of thunder; 4 to 5, a soothing ointment; 4 to 3, a soft mass; 5 to 2, a wooden mallet.
B.
* * * * *
NO. 44.--SINGLE ACROSTIC.
The following words, all the same length, give for their initials, when, read downward, the full name of a President of the United States: To attempt; firmness; something that comes to us all; to answer; to succeed; value; to varnish; keen; to dance; dexterity; to toil; to command; a recess in a wall.
F. X. M.
* * * * *
No. 45.--NUMERICAL ENIGMA.
I am composed of three words and nineteen letters. 1. My 11, 6, 3, 19, 5, is to mount. 2. My 10, 11, 12, 18, is a low place between hills. 3. My 13, 11, 10, 12, 5, is a dipper with a handle. 4. My 19, 1, 2, 4, 18, is to clear up. 5. My 14, 15, 17, 8, is the dearest place on earth. 6. My 7, 3, 18, 13, 10, to sway.
* * * * *
Answers to Kinks.
No 37.
2803 miles--found by taking all the letters in the lines that are employed in the Roman notation, setting down their common value in figures, and adding all together. Count i as figure 1.
* * * * *
No. 38.
R W A R W A V E S R A V A G E S R E G E T S E T S
* * * * *
No. 39.--Niagara.
* * * * *
No. 40.
1.--1. Baret. 2. Abode. 3. Rosin. 4. Edict. 5. Tents.
2.--1. Prong. 2. Racer. 3. Ochre. 4. Nerve. 5. Green.
3.--1. Sharp. 2. Honor. 3. Angle. 4. Rolls. 5. Press.
* * * * *
A Clever Chapter Memorial.
The prettiest memorial that we have ever seen of any Round Table Chapter comes to us from the Kearsarge Chapter, of Hudson, N. Y. It is a small volume, bound in white cloth, neatly printed, and containing about half a hundred pages. This Chapter has fourteen members and has had two jolly and profitable years. Its clever editors, Messrs. L. G. Price, M. A. Jones, Paul Rowley, C. S. Keating, and S. J. Salls, dedicate their neat book to the Chapter--and its friends. They explain the objects of the Order, and define a Knight: "A nineteenth century relic of the past, distinguished for his chivalry, honor, and appetite"--the Kearsarge variety, we presume. In some cyclopædic information it defines _gavel_:
"Something the Chapter needs, but hasn't got; Different from gabble, which it has, but needeth not."
There is a witty salutatory, a list of the officers and members, minutes of the year, done in college class-day oratory style, football, skating, bicycling, tennis, and debating records, and a skit in one act, "Tales of a Soda-Water Fountain," which is clever in composition and exceedingly droll. Here is the Chapter yell:
Hobble, gobble! Razzle, dazzle! Sis! Boom! Ah! Kearsarge Chapter, Rah! Rah! Rah!
Ten pages of advertising help out the "Business Manager's Cinch." The editors hope it will be "a credit to the Chapter." It is indeed. No mention is made of price, but we presume other Chapters can buy copies. The treasurer is Allen Rossman, Hudson.
* * * * *
Proposed International Club.
Efforts are being made to form a Correspondence Chapter, its members to be Ladies, and those whose homes are widely scattered, in order that they may describe each other's homes, and have those descriptions of interest. Three members interested in it are: Donna Vittoria Colonna, Colonna Palace, Rome, Italy; Miss Isma Fincham, Roydon, Queenstown, South Africa; and Miss Florence E. Cowan, Kingman, Arizona. The last-named desires to hear from Miss Marie Ojetti, Rome, Italy, from the members in Australia and New Zealand, and all others, fourteen to eighteen years of age, who may wish to join.
* * * * *
Questions and Answers.
Robert Burdette Dale asks about the Panama Canal. The projector of it was M. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the man who success fully financed and constructed the Suez Canal. For his Panama venture he obtained vast sums from the French middle classes. The United States consul at Colon reported, about one year ago, that $400,000,000 had been spent upon the canal, but that comparatively little progress had been made toward completion. Yet he said in the same report that $100,000,000 would complete it. The discrepancy is due to the cause you mention--profligacy in the management thus far.
Charges of fraud were made in France, and the last days of the great engineer were embittered by the wreck of his hopes and of many poor French families. Direct fraud was not, we believe, traced to M. Ferdinand, but rather he was the victim of over-confidence and of unscrupulous men. At present about 1000 men are employed on the canal, chiefly to protect machinery and work already done. The Nicaragua Canal is to be 170 miles long, and its estimated cost $100,000,000. Its survey crosses no rivers; but were a canal to do so, it would, if on the same level, let the river run into the canal and act as a water-feeder. If not on a level, either the river or the canal would be crossed by an aqueduct. Mountains are tunnelled, or the route laid out around them.
Don Rathburn, write to Hon. George D. Perkins, Sioux City, your member of Congress, who will give you full particulars about entering Annapolis. At least he can tell you if there be a vacancy from your district. Only one person at a time may be at Annapolis from one district. Hence, ordinarily, one is appointed every four years. If, in this busy political season, Mr. Perkins does not reply promptly, write to Hon. Hilary A. Herbert, Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D. C. Elizabeth Barber, 126 Court Street, Oshkosh, Wis., wants numbers 783 and 787 HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE. These issues are out of the publisher's stock. If any reader has them and is willing to sell them, Miss Barber will pay both price and postage. Thomas Skelley will do the same to get numbers 787, 792, and 796, and Nicholas J. Healy, 203 West Street, New York city, to get number 821. The last named is informed that he can get number 833 by applying to the publishers. These numbers are wanted to complete volumes for binding. Ralph B. Hughes, Richmond, Mo., a member of our Order, says: "I am much interested in the collection of the colloquial songs of this country, and would be very glad to receive a copy of the words of any of these songs from any of the readers of the ROUND TABLE. I want plantation songs, negro and steamboat deck hands' songs, sailors' and soldiers' songs. Any one who will send me these songs will confer a favor, which I would be glad to repay in any way that I can. I have a small collection of these songs, many of which are very interesting, and I would like to enlarge it."
"Fortunatus" can find, probably, no place where "fine needle-work may be readily sold at a good price." The reason is an over-supply. She can try two ways to earn money with her needle. One is to secure the names of well-to-do women and write them personal letters, mentioning the wares for sale, and asking if they may be sent for inspection. A few replies--perhaps ten out of fifty letters--will be received, and it is safe, as a rule, to send the article on approval, with stamp for its return. If any be lost, charge it to profit and loss, which is in every business. The other is to place the work on sale at exchanges, which are found in all cities. To reach them, address "Woman's Exchange." A small commission is charged, and generally hints are given you about what class of articles sell best.
* * * * *
Can You give these Directions?
Malcolm I. Davis asks how to make an Æolian-harp for his library window. Some time ago we gave directions for such harp, but several who followed them said their harps were capable of being improved--"might be better," one Connecticut member wrote. Will some one give us directions for making a harp warranted to be the best.
[Illustration: IVORY SOAP]
'Tis wisest to economize By blending, in the home supplies, The highest worth and widest scope. Now Ivory, being pure and good For laundry, bath and toilet, would Save fully half the bills for soap.
Copyright, 1896, by The Procter & Gamble Co., Cin'ti.
[Illustration: THOMPSON'S EYE WATER]
HARPER'S NEW CATALOGUE,
Thoroughly revised, classified, and indexed, will be sent by mail to any address on receipt of ten cents.
_Just Published_
A PRIMER OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL
By W. H. LEWIS. Illustrated from Instantaneous Photographs and with Diagrams. 16mo, Paper, 75 cents.
Mr. Lewis, an old Harvard football centre-rush, has put together in this book the result of his experiences in practical football. The work, therefore, is not so much a treatise on the game as a series of practical suggestions, to be used by captains in teaching their men and coaching their teams. The book is divided respectively into the "individual" and "team" play. The part on the "individual" discusses, first, the individual plays, such as passing, kicking, running, falling on the ball, and so on, and then the work of the individual players themselves. The second part discusses, first, offensive and then defensive team play. It will be seen, therefore, that the book is unique of its kind, and in its small compass will be eminently suited for use from day to day in the field or during the discussion after practice.
* * * * *
RECENT POPULAR BOOKS
* * * * *
WITH MY NEIGHBORS
By MARGARET E. SANGSTER. 16mo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.25.
Mrs. Sangster is a gentle mentor, and while she preaches with great earnestness, it is the sweet womanliness that shines through all she says that attracts and holds the reader.... "With My Neighbors" is wholesome and sweet.... A little book that fulfils an admirable mission.--_Chicago Evening Post._
THE OLD INFANT, AND SIMILAR STORIES
By WILL CARLETON. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1.25.
Every one breathes the sympathy of a whole-souled man, whose humor, while pungent, is always kindly.... There is always that trembling in the laugh that betokens the presence of a tear ready to fall. Will Carleton is always a poet, whether he writes in verse or not.--_N. Y. Commercial Advertiser._
SHAKESPEARE THE BOY
With Sketches of the Home and School Life, the Games and Sports, the Manners, Customs, and Folk-Lore of the Time. By WILLIAM J. ROLFE, Litt.D., Editor of "Rolfe's English Classics," etc. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1.25.
Clearly, forcibly, yet simply, has Prof. Rolfe presented the story of a boy's life, a great boy, a boy of high aspirations, for the literary pleasure of the student and the scholar, as well as for the captivation and delight of the undergraduate and the children, with whom in all ages is Shakespeare a favorite.--_Boston Courier._
* * * * *
HARPER & BROTHERS, Publishers, New York
[Illustration: THE LITTLE RABBIT'S MISTAKE.]
"HELLO, SOME RABBIT'S LOST ITS TAIL! TOO BAD, I DO DECLARE!" (HE SAW A FLUFFY THISTLE-DOWN AFLOAT UP IN THE AIR.)
* * * * *
THAT SETTLES IT.
TEDDY. "I tell you it's so."
NELLIE. "I say it is not."
TEDDY. "Well, mamma says it's so; and if mamma says it's so, it's so even if it isn't so!"
* * * * *
PRIDE GOETH BEFORE A FALL.
The following anecdote was new many years ago, but will bear repeating. A certain Spanish knight, very poor but proud, and rightly so, as his birth was as high as a King's, arrived late one very dark night at an inn in France. Riding up to the entrance on his forlorn nag, he fell to battering the gate. He finally awakened the landlord, who, peering out into the night, called,
"Who is there?"
"Don Juan Pedro Hernandez Rodriguez de Vellanova, Count of Malofra, Knight Santiago and Alcantara," replied the Spaniard.
"I am very sorry," shouted the landlord, "but I haven't room enough for all those gentlemen you mention." And he slammed the window and retired.
* * * * *
WELL TO REMEMBER.
What is good for one is not always good for another. This is illustrated in a short tale told some time ago about a French medical student. While in London on a visit the student lodged in the house with a man very sick with a fever, who was continually besieged by his nurse to drink very nauseating liquids which were lukewarm. The sick man found this almost impossible to do, until one day he whispered to his nurse,
"Bring me a salt herring and I will drink as much as you please."
The woman indulged him in his request; he ate the herring, drank the liquids, underwent the required perspiration, and recovered.
The French student, thinking this very clever, inserted in his journal, "Salt herring cures an Englishman of fever."
On his return to France he prescribed the same remedy to his first patient with a fever. The patient died. On which he inserted in his journal: "N.B.--A salt herring cures an Englishman, but kills a Frenchman."
* * * * *
A LONG CHASE.
It was noticed, at one of the boys' clubs over on the East Side, that a little negro who attended regularly always sought a certain book each evening, and laughed uproariously apparently at the same picture. One of the supervisors approached and saw that the picture represented a bull chasing a small colored boy across a field. He asked the little fellow what amused him so.
"Gosh!" answered the boy, "he 'ain't kotched him yet!"
* * * * *
A new pair of shoes came home for Davy, aged five. He was delighted with them until they had been put on his feet. Then he exclaimed, with a pout, "Oh, my! they're so tight I can't wink my toes!"
* * * * *
One of King George's ministers was once asked why he did not promote merit. "Because," replied the minister, "merit did not promote me!"
* * * * *
David Garrick, the celebrated actor, was once urged to become a candidate for Parliament. "No, I thank you," replied Garrick. "I would rather play the part of a great man on the stage than the part of a fool in Parliament."
* * * * *
Just before the sea fight between the fleets of Admiral Duncan and Admiral de Winter, the former called his men together, and said,
"Lads, there is a hard winter coming on; see that you keep up a good fire!"
* * * * *
"Now, boys," said the new school-teacher, "I want you to be so quiet that we can hear a pin drop."
There was a cavernous silence for a second, then a voice in the rear muttered, "Now, then, let her drop!"
* * * * *
[Illustration: PURE FOLLY.]
MRS. DACHSHUND. "MY SON, HOW OFTEN MUST I TELL YOU NOT TO GET INTO AN ARGUMENT WITH THAT GOAT?"
SON. "WHY?"
MRS. DACHSHUND. "BECAUSE HE'S ENTIRELY TOO HEADSTRONG."
End of Project Gutenberg's Harper's Round Table, October 13, 1896, by Various |
65495-0 | Transcriber's note: Italic font is indicated by _underscores_.
WHAT CHEER
OR
ROGER WILLIAMS IN BANISHMENT
_A POEM_
BY JOB DURFEE
“And surely betweene my friends of the Bay and Plimouth, I was sorely tost for fourteen weeks, in a bitter cold winter season, not knowing what bed or bread did meane.”--_Roger Williams’s Letter to Mason._
REVISED AND EDITED
BY
THOMAS DURFEE
PROVIDENCE PRESTON & ROUNDS 1896
Copyright, 1896, By THOMAS DURFEE.
_Snow & Farnham, Printers, Providence._
NOTICE.
The Editor owes it to the reader to say that, in preparing the following poem for re-publication, he has ventured to omit some of the stanzas and to make changes in others. The stanzas were omitted because, in his opinion, they broke the continuity or retarded the flow of the narration, slackening the reader’s interest, and could be omitted with advantage to the poem. The changes have been mostly slight and formal, and, when more extensive, have been made to modify (not the meaning, but) only the expression; making it clearer or more direct, or giving it an easier metrical movement.
PROVIDENCE, R. I., May, 1896.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION vii
WHAT CHEER 1
NOTES 177
APPENDIX 215
ADDENDA.
LIFE’S VOYAGE 221
HYMN BY TWILIGHT 223
REYNARD’S SOLILOQUY 224
A SUMMONS TO THE COUNTRY 225
INTRODUCTION.
TO THE REV. ROMEO ELTON,
PROFESSOR OF LANGUAGES IN BROWN UNIVERSITY.
What time, dear Elton, we were wont to rove From classic Brown along fair Seekonk’s vale, And, in the murmurs of his storied cove, Hear barbarous voices still our Founder hail; E’en then my bosom with young rapture hove To give to deathless verse the exile’s tale; And every ripple’s moan or breeze’s sigh Brought back whole centuries as it murmured by.
But soon the transient dream of youth was gone, And different labors to our lots were given; You at the shrine of peace and glory shone,-- Sublime your toils, for still your theme was Heaven; I, upon life’s tempestuous billows thrown,-- A little bark before the tempest driven,-- Strove for a time the surging tide to breast, And up its rolling mountains sought for rest.
Wearied at length with the unceasing strife, I gave my pinnace to the harbor’s lee, And left that ocean, still with tempests rife, To mad ambition’s heartless rivalry; No longer venturing for exalted life, (For storms and quicksands have no charms for me,) I, in the listless labors of the swain, Provoke no turmoil and awake no pain.
To drive the team afield and guide the plough, Or lead the herds to graze the dewy mead, Wakes not the glance of lynx-eyed rival now, And makes no heart with disappointment bleed; Once more I joy to see the rivers flow. The lambkins sport, and brindled oxen feed, And o’er the tranquil soul returns the dream, Which once she cherished by fair Seekonk’s stream.
And when stern winter breathes the chilling storm, And night comes down on earth in mantle hoar, I guide the herds and flocks to shelter warm, And sate their hunger from the gathered store; Then round the cottage hearth the circle form Of childhood lovelier than the vernal flower, Partake its harmless glee and prattle gay, And soothe my soul to tune the artless lay.
Thus were the numbers taught at first to flow, Scarce conscious that they bore a tale along; Beneath my hand still would the pages grow,-- They were not labor, but the joy of song; Still every line would unsung beauties show In Williams’ soul, and still the strain prolong; Till, all in rapture with the theme sublime, My thoughts spontaneous sought the embodying rhyme.
No man was he of heart with love confined, With blessings only for his bosom friend,-- His glowing soul embraced the human kind,-- He toiled and suffered for earth’s farthest end. Touched by the truths of his unyielding mind, The human soul did her long bondage rend; Stern Persecution paused--blushed--dropped the rod: He strove like man, but conquered like a God.
And now, my Elton, as in hours of ease, With aimless joy I filled this frail balloon, So like blind impulse bids me trust the breeze, And soar on dancing winds to fate unknown; And be my lot whatever chance decrees-- Let gales propitious gently waft me on, Or tempests dash far down oblivious night,-- Whate’er the goal, I tempt the heedless flight.
_Tiverton, R. I., September, 1832._
WHATCHEER.
CANTO FIRST.
[SCENES. The Fireside at Salem--The Wilderness--The Wigwam.]
I sing of trials, toils and sufferings great, Which FATHER WILLIAMS in his exile bore, That he the conscience-bound might liberate, And to the soul her sacred rights restore;-- How, after flying persecution’s hate, And roving long by Narraganset’s shore, In lone Mooshausick’s vale at last he sate, And gave soul-liberty her Guardian State.
II.
He was a man of spirit true and bold; Fearless to speak his thoughts whate’er they were; His frame, though light, was of an iron mould, And fitted well fatigue and change to bear; For God ordained that he should breast the cold And wet of northern wilds in winter drear, And of red savages protection pray From Christians, but--more savage still than they.
III.
Midwinter reigned; and Salem’s infant town, Where late were cleft the forests’ skirts away, Showed its low roofs, and, from their thatching brown Sheeted with ice, sent back the sun’s last ray; The school-boys left the slippery hillock’s crown, So keen the blast came o’er the eastern bay; And pale in vapors thick the sun went down, And the glassed forest cast a sombre frown.
IV.
The busy house-wife guarded well the door, That night, against the gathering winter storm-- Did well the walls of all the cot explore Where’er the snow-gust might a passage form; And to the couch of age and childhood bore With anxious care the mantle thick and warm; And then of fuel gathered ample store, And bade the blaze up the rude chimney roar.
V.
That night sate Williams, with his children, by The blazing hearth--his consort at his side; And often did she heave the heavy sigh As still her task of needle-work she plied; And, from the lashes of her azure eye, Did often brush the starting tear aside; For they at Spring the savage wilds must try,-- ’Twas so decreed by ruthless bigotry.
VI.
Beside the good-man lay his Bible’s fair Broad open page upon the accustomed stand, And many a passage had he noted there, Of Israel wandering o’er the desert’s sand, And each assurance he had marked with care, Made by Jehovah, of the _promised land_; And from the sacred page had learned to dare The exile’s peril, and his ills to bear.
VII.
And, while the holy book he pondered o’er, And often told, to cheer his consort’s breast, How, for their faith, the blest apostles bore The exile’s wanderings and the dungeon’s pest, A heavy foot approached his humble door, And some one, opening, instant entrance prest: A well-known elder was he, strict and sour,-- Strong in a church ensphered in civil power.
VIII.
“I come,” he said in accents hard and stern, “The Governor’s and Council’s word to bear: They are convened, and hear, with deep concern, That thou abusest their indulgence fair; Ay, with resentment and abhorrence learn That still thou dost thy specious tenets share With visitors, who, smit therewith, discern Strange godliness in thee, and from us turn.
IX.
“Till spring we gave; and thou wast not to teach Thy interdicted doctrines here the while, But curb thy tongue, or with submissive speech The church regain, and quit thy errors vile; Of which condition thou committest breach, And dost her saints from Salem’s church beguile; And plan, ’tis said, to found in easy reach A State where Antichrist himself may preach.
X.
“From such a State our blessed elders see The church may, even here, the infection share; And therefore have the Council made decree, That to the wilderness thou shalt not fare; But have their mandate hither sent by me, That thou to Boston presently repair;-- Where waits a ship now ready for the sea, To carry back thy heresy and thee.”
XI.
Williams replied, “Thy message is unkind,-- In sooth, I think it even somewhat rude; The snow falls fast, and searching is the wind And wildly howls through the benighted wood. The path to Boston is a little blind, Nor are my nerves in their robuster mood;-- My soul has seldom at her lot repined,-- But to submission now she’s disinclined.
XII.
“A voyage to England, and to start to-night And brave the ocean at this season drear? ’Twould scantly give the hardy tar delight, Much less my consort and these pledges dear. Go, and the Council tell, that we’re not quite In health to bear a trial so severe,-- That if we yield ’twill be to lawless might, And not to their kind feelings or their right.”
XIII.
“Much do I grieve,” the elder then replied, “To bear this answer to the Governor; ’Twill show that thou hast Church and State defied, And will I ween make not a little stir; And should a pinnace, on the morn espied O’er yonder waters speeding, bring with her A squad of soldiers, Underhill their guide, Be not surprised, but--Williams, quell thy pride!”
XIV.
This said, he turned and hastily withdrew, And all but Williams now were left in tears; His wife, still comely, lost her blooming hue, Her nature yielding to her rising fears; A giddy whirling passed her senses through, She almost heard the blazing musketeers, And trembling to her couch retired to sigh, And seek relief in prayer to God on high.
XV.
“O! for a friend,” still as he paced the floor, Sire Williams cried, “a friend in my sore need, To help me now some hidden way explore, By which my glorious purpose may succeed; But closed to-night is every cottage door; Yet there is one who is a friend indeed, Forever present to the meek and poor-- I will thy counsels, mighty Lord, implore.”
XVI.
Here dropt the friend of conscience on his knees, And prayed, with hand and heart to Heaven upreared; “O, thou, the God who parted Egypt’s seas, And cloud or fire in Israel’s van appeared, Send down thine angel now, if so it please, That forth from Church within the State ensphered He guide my steps, to where there yet may be A Church not ruled by men, but ruled by Thee.”
XVII.
Our Father ceased.--The tempest roared around With double fury at this moment drear, The cottage trembled, and the very ground Did seem to feel the element’s career; With ice and snow the window-panes were bound, Nor through their dimness could the earth appear, And still in gusts the wind a passage found Down the rude chimney with a roaring sound.
XVIII.
A voice divine it did to Williams seem;-- He sat awhile within himself retired, Then seemed to rouse, as from a transient dream, Just as the lamp’s last flickering ray expired; Around the room soft falls a quivering beam, Cast from the brands that on the hearth are fired; The tempest lulls apace, until he seems To hear from neighboring woods the panther’s screams.
XIX.
“But what is that?--a knocking?--and once more? Some way-lost wanderer seeks a shelter here; Ah, wretched man, amid the boisterous roar Of snow and wind, thy sufferings are severe!” He raised the bar that kept the outer door, And with the snow-gust from the darkness drear, A stranger entered, whose large garments bore Proof of the storm in clinging snowflakes hoar.
XX.
Aged he seemed, and staff of length had he, Which well would holy pilgrim have become, But yet he sought, with quiet dignity And easy step, the centre of the room; Then by the glimmering light our Sire could see His flowing beard, white as the lily’s bloom; Age had his temples scored; but,--glancing free, As from the imprint of a century,
XXI.
His eyes beamed youth; and such a solemn mien, Joined with such majesty and graceful air, Our Founder thought he ne’er before had seen In mortal form; and at the offered chair The stranger gently shook his brow serene, And by the act revealed his long white hair, As fell the fleecy covering from it clean, Where down his shoulder hung its tresses sheen.
XXII.
And when he spake his voice was low and clear, But yet so deeply thrilling in its tone, The listening soul seemed rapt into a sphere Where angels speak in music of their own. “Williams,” it said, “I come on message here, Of mighty moment to this age unknown, Thou must not dally, or the tempest fear, But fly at morn into the forest drear.
XXIII.
“Thou art to voyage an unexploréd flood; No chart is there thy lonely bark to steer; Beneath her, rocks--around her, tempests rude, And persecution’s billows in her rear, Shall shake thy soul till it is near subdued: But when the welcome of ‘What cheer! What cheer!’ Shall greet thine ears from Indian multitude, Cast thou thine _Anchor_ there, and _trust in God_.”
XXIV.
The stranger ceased, and gently past away, Though Williams to retain him still was fain; “The night was dark, and wild the tempest’s sway, And lone the desert,” but ’twas all in vain; He only in soft accents seemed to say, “Perchance I may behold thee yet again, What time thy day shall more auspicious be, And hope shall turn to joy in victory.”
XXV.
The stranger past, and Williams, by the fire, Long mused on this mysterious event: Was it some seraph, robed in man’s attire, Come down to urge and hallow his intent?-- To counsel--kindle--and his breast inspire With words of high prophetic sentiment? Or had he dreamed and in his mind, as clear As if in corporal presence, seen the seer?
XXVI.
’Twas strange--mysterious! Yet, if dream it were, ’Twas such as chosen men of old had known, When Jacob saw the heaven-ascending stair, And Joseph hoarded for the dearth foreshown. Ah! did the Omniscient hear his earnest prayer, And did e’en Heaven the glorious project own! Then would he, by the morrow’s earliest ray, Unto the distant forest make his way.
XXVII.
He sought for rest, but feverous was his plight For peaceful and refreshing sleep, I trow; Still mused he on the morrow’s toilsome flight, Through unknown wilds and trackless wastes of snow; How to elude the persecutor’s sight, Or shun the eager quest of following foe, Tasked his invention with no labor light-- And long, and slow, and lagging was the night.
XXVIII.
And if by fits came intervening sleep, Through deserts wild and rugged roved his soul, Here rose the rock--there sunk the headlong steep, And fiercely round him seemed the storm to howl; The while from sheltered glen his foes would peep With taunts and jeers, and with revilings foul Scoff at his efforts; and their clamors deep Came mingled with that awful tempest’s sweep.
XXIX.
Morn came at last; and by the dawning day, Our Founder rose his secret flight to take; His wife and infant still in slumber lay;-- And shall he now that blissful slumber break? Oh, yes, for he believes that trials may, Within the mind, its mightier powers awake, And that the storms, which gloom the pilgrim’s way, Prepare the soul for her eternal day.
XXX.
“Mary!” (she woke) “prepare the meet attire, My pocket-compass and my mantle strong, My flint and steel to yield the needful fire, Food for a week, if that be not too long; My hatchet, too--its service I require To clip my fuel desert wilds among; With these I go to found, in forests drear, A State where none shall persecution fear.”
XXXI.
“What! goest thou, Roger, in this chilling storm? Wait! wait at least until its rage is o’er; Its wrath will bar e’en persecution’s arm From thee and me until it fails to roar. Oh, what protecting hand from lurking harm Will be thy shield by night?--What friendly door Will give thee refuge at the dire alarm Of hungry wolves, and beasts in human form?”
XXXII.
“Oh cease, my Mary, cease!--Thou dost complain That Heaven itself doth interpose to save,-- Doth wing this tempest’s fury to restrain The quest of foes, and prompt my soul to brave The desert’s perils, that I may maintain The conscience free against who would enslave;-- Wait till the storm shall cease to sweep the plain, And we are doomed to cross yon heaving main.”
XXXIII.
No more he said, for she in silence went From place to place until her task was o’er; Williams, the while, the fleeting moments spent To scrawl a message to delay the more-- Aye, to mislead the beagles on the scent, Till he could safely reach far wood or shore; And, haply, hope its vain illusion lent That friends might plead, and bigotry relent.
XXXIV.
Then he to Heaven his weeping spouse commends, And craves its blessing on his purpose bold;-- Still Salem lies in sleep, and forth he wends To breast the driving storm and chilling cold; While the lone mother from the window sends A look where all her aching heart is told; Dimly she marks him as his course he bends Across the fields, and toward the forest tends.
XXXV.
To show him parting, to the light she rears His child, yet ignorant of human woe; And soon its guileless silver voice she hears, “O! where is father going in the snow?” The tender accents start the mother’s tears, “He does, my child, to barbarous red men go, To seek protection from hard brethren here For thee and me, and all to him that’s dear.”
XXXVI.
So forth he ventured;--even like the dove That earliest from the window of the ark, Went forth on venturous wings, to soar above The world of waters heaving wild and dark O’er sunken realms of death, the while she strove Some high emergent mountain peak to mark, Where she might rest, beyond the billow’s sweep, And build herself a home amid the deep.
XXXVII.
The boundless forests now our Founder trod, And due southwestwardly his course he took; The lofty pines and cedars round him nod,-- Loud roars the tempest through the leafless oak; The snow lies deep upon the frozen sod, And still the storm’s descending torrents choke The heavens above; and only fancy could,-- So dim the view,--conceive the solitude
XXXVIII.
Of the wide forests that before him lay: His ever steady onward pace alone Told that from home he lengthened yet his way, While the same forms--the same drear hollow moan, Seemed ever round him lingering to stay, And every step of progress to disown; As with all sail the bark may breast the tide, Nor yet advance, but rather backward glide.
XXXIX.
Above his head the branches writhe and bend, Or in the mingled wreck their ruin flies; The storm redoubles, and the whirlwinds blend The rising snow-drift with descending skies: And oft the crags a friendly shelter lend His breathless bosom, and his sightless eyes; But, when the transient gust its fury spends, Amid the storm again his way he wends.
XL.
Still truly does his course the magnet keep-- No toils fatigue him, and no fears appal; Oft turns he at the glimpse of swampy deep, Or thicket dense, or crag abrupt and tall, Or backward treads to shun the headlong steep, Or pass above the tumbling waterfall; Yet still rejoices when the torrent’s leap, Or crag abrupt, or thicket dense, or swamp’s far sweep
XLI.
Assures him progress.--From gray morn till noon-- Hour after hour--from that drear noon until The evening’s gathering darkness had begun To clothe with deeper glooms the vale and hill, Sire Williams journeyed in the forest lone; And then night’s thickening shades began to fill His soul with doubt--for shelter he had none-- And all the outstretched waste was clad with one
XLII.
Vast mantle hoar. And he began to hear, At times, the fox’s bark, and the fierce howl Of wolf, sometimes afar--sometimes so near, That in the very glen they seemed to prowl Where now he, wearied, paused--and then his ear Started to note some shaggy monster’s growl, That from his snow-clad rocky den did peer, Shrunk with gaunt famine in that tempest drear,
XLIII.
And scenting human blood:--yea, and so nigh, Thrice did our northern tiger seem to come, He thought he heard the fagots crackling by, And saw, through driven snow and twilight gloom, Peer from the thickets his fierce burning eye, Scanning his destined prey, and through the broom, Thrice stealing on his ears, the whining cry Swelled by degrees above the tempest high.
XLIV.
Wayworn he stood--and fast that stormy night Was gathering round him over hill and dale; He looked around and by the lingering light, Found he had paused within a narrow vale; On either hand a snow-clad rocky height Ascended high, a shelter from the gale, Whilst deep between them, in thick glooms bedight, A swampy dingle lay before his sight.
XLV.
Through the white billows thither did he wade, And deep within its solemn bosom trod; Then on the snow with oft repeated tread Hardened a flooring for his night’s abode;-- All there was calm, for the thick branches made A screen above, and round him closely stood The trunks of cedars and of pines arrayed,-- To the rude tempest a firm barricade.
XLVI.
And now his hatchet, with resounding stroke, Hewed down the boscage that around him rose, And of dry pine the brittle branches broke, To yield him fuel for the night’s repose: The gathered heap an ample store bespoke; He smites the steel--the tinder brightly glows; Fired by the match forth burst the kindling flame, And light upon night’s seated darkness came.
XLVII.
High branched the pines, and far the colonnade Of tapering trunks stood glimmering through the glen; And then rejoiced he in that lonely glade So far away from persecuting men, That he might break of honesty the bread, And blessing crave in his own way again;-- Of up-piled brush a seat and board he made, Spread his plain fare, and piously he prayed.
XLVIII.
“Father of mercies! thou the wanderer’s guide In this dire storm along the howling waste, Thanks for the shelter thou dost here provide, Thanks for the mercies of the day that’s past; Thanks for the frugal fare thou hast supplied; And O! may still thy tender mercies last; And may thy light on every falsehood shine, Till man’s freed spirit owns no law but thine!”
XLIX.
Our father ceased, and with keen relish he Refreshed his wearied frame in that lone dell; Ah! little can his far posterity Conceive the pleasures of that frugal meal; For naught he knew of lavish luxury, And toil and fast had done their office well; No costliest viands culled from land and sea Could half so sweet to pampered palates be.
L.
His hunger sated with his simple fare, He would, in weariness, have sought repose; But at the kindling blaze, heard wide and far, The howlings drear of forest monsters rose; And, lured around him by the vivid glare, Came darkling with light foot along the snows Whole packs of wolves, from their far mountain lair, And the fierce cat, which scarce the blaze might scare.
LI.
Growling they come, and in dark groups they stand, Show the white fang, and roll the brightening eye; Till urged by famine’s rage, the shaggy band Seemed even the flame’s bright terrors to defy; Then mid the group he hurled the blazing brand; Swift they disperse, and raise the scattered cry; But, rallying soon, back to the siege they came, And in their rage scarce faltered at the flame.
LII.
Yet Williams deemed that persecution took A form in them less odious than in men; He on their proper solitude had broke,-- Ay, and had trespassed on their native glen; His human shape they scantly too might brook, For it their enemy had ever been; But bigot man to probe the conscience sought, And scathed his brother for his secret thought.
LIII.
Oft he recruited now the sinking blaze-- His stock of fuel seemed too scant to last; Yet, in the terror of the glittering rays, Was now the anchor of his safety cast; With utmost reach the boscage did he raze, Or clipt the branches overhead that past; And still the burning pyre at times would raise, Or hurl the firebrand at the monster’s gaze.
LIV.
At length the groups a panic seemed to seize, And soon he knew the terrifying cause; For swelling slow beneath the arching trees, Trilled the long whine the dreadful panther draws; A sound that might the boldest bosom freeze; ’Twas followed by a drear and awful pause; Naught marred the silence save the murmuring breeze, And the far storm, like roar of distant seas.
LV.
Of all the dangerous monsters of the wood, None did the hunter dread like panther dire, For man and beast he fearlessly pursued;-- Whilst others shunned, he was allured by fire; And Williams knew how perilous his mood, And braced his nerves to battle with his ire; Beside the rising blaze he firmly stood, And every avenue of danger viewed.
LVI.
In God he trusted for deliverance,-- He thought of Daniel in the lion’s den; He waited silent for the fierce advance,-- He heard the fagots break along the glen; Another long-drawn yell, and the fierce glance Of two bright burning eye-balls, looking then Out of the darkness, did yet more enhance The terrors of the menacing mischance.
LVII.
But at this moment from the darkness broke A human voice, in Narraganset’s tongue; “Neemat!” (my brother) in kind tone it spoke, “How comes Awanux these drear wilds among?” And at the accents the dark thickets shook, And from them lightly the red hunter sprung, And from his belt familiarly he took And fired his calumet, and curled its smoke.
LVIII.
Then to our Founder passed the simple cheer, In sign of friendship to a wandering man, “Let not,” he said, “my brother quake with fear, ’Twas _Waban’s_ cry at which the monsters ran.” Williams received the pledge of faith sincere; Yet warily his guest began to scan. Tall did his straight and active form appear, And armed but with the hunter’s simple gear.
LIX.
The bear’s dark fur loose o’er his shoulders cast, His hand did only at the breast confine, The wampum wreath, which round his forehead past, Did with the flame’s reflected brightness shine; The beaver’s girdle closely swathed his waist; It’s skirts hung low, all trimm’d with ’broidery fine; The well-formed ankles the close gaiters bound, With furs befringed, and starred with tinsel round.
LX.
Nature’s kind feelings did his visage grace; His gently arching brow was shorn all bare, And the slight smile now fading from his face, The aspect left of serious goodness there; Though bright his eyes beneath his forehead’s base, They rather seemed to smile than fiercely glare; And the free dignity of Waban’s race Seemed moving in his limbs and breathing from his face.
LXI.
Williams the pledge of friendship now returned, And thanks o’erflowing to the hunter gave: “From the Great Spirit sure my brother learned His brother’s danger, when he came to save.” “Waban,” he answered, “from his lodge discerned A stranger’s fire, and heard the monsters rave. Waban has long within these wilds sojourned; But ne’er before has pale Awanux burned
LXII.
“His fire within this unfrequented glade. Wanders my brother from his homeward way? The storm is thick, he surely may have strayed; Or has he hunted through the weary day The rapid moose; or in this lonely shade Seeks he to trap the deer, or make essay To catch the wily beavers, who have made Their cunning wigwams in the river’s bed?”
LXIII.
“’Twere hard to tell my brother of the woods What cause has forced his pale-faced brother here, The red and white men have their different moods, And Narraganset’s tongue lacks terms, I fear, To tell the strifes among white multitudes-- Strifes yet unknown within these forests drear, Where undisturbed ye worship various gods, And persecution leave to white abodes.
LXIV.
“Let it suffice, (for weary is the night,) That late across the mighty lake I came, Seeking protection here of brethren white, From those pale chiefs who had, with scourge and flame, Driven them as me o’er sea in dangerous flight;-- Our wrongs, as our offenses, were the same: God we had worshipped as to us seemed right, And roused the vengeance of our men of might.
LXV.
“My brethren then had persecution fled, And much I hoped with them a home to find; But to our common God whene’er we prayed, My honest worship did not suit their mind; It differed greatly from their own, they said; Their anger kindled, and, with speech unkind, They drove me from my family and home, An exile in this dreadful storm to roam.
LXVI.
“And now, my brother, through the wilds I go, To seek some far--some lone sequestered glen-- Where burning fagot nevermore shall glow, Fired by the wrath of persecuting men; Where all may worship, as their gods they know, Or conscience lights and leads their varying ken;-- Where ages after ages still may bow, And from free hearts free orisons may flow.”
LXVII.
Waban a while mused on our Founder’s tale, And silent sate in meditative mood; For much he wondered why his brothers pale For differing worship sought their kindred’s blood. At last he thought that they must surely fail To know the Great Spirit as a father good, Or Chepian[1] was their god, and had inclined Them to indulge a fell and cruel mind.
[1] The name of the Indian devil.
LXVIII.
Then pity blended with his wonder grew; Here was a victim of that Evil One, Who from him and his angry servants flew To seek a shelter in the forest lone. “Brother,” he said, “thy brother much doth rue (Hearing thy tales,) that thou art forced to shun Thy well-framed wigwam--thy familiar fire, And sleep so far amid this tempest dire.
LXIX.
“Now, brother, hear, what Waban has to say: The night is cold, and fast the snows descend; Still round thy sleep will howl the beasts of prey;-- Will not my brother to my wigwam wend? It smokes well-sheltered and not far away; There may my brother this drear season spend, And shun the wrath of Chepian’s angry men, Until Sowaniu’s breezes scatter flowers again.
LXX.
“Right welcome to the red man’s lodge shall be His pale-faced brother, safe from Sachems pale; Waban’s nausamp and venison shall be free When hunger craves, and, when his store shall fail, His dart is true, and swift and far will he Pursue the bounding deer o’er hill and dale;-- When melts the snow we may together raise, On Seekonk’s banks, our common field of maize.”
LXXI.
Williams replied, “My brother sure is kind, But his red friends are doubtless with him here; And they may teach my kindred, left behind, To track my footsteps through the forest drear;-- To journey homeward I have little mind; My course is with the sun to wilds less near, Where I would form, if granted the domain, A tribe which never should the soul enchain.”
LXXII.
“Alone is Waban,” was the sad reply; “His wife and child have to that country gone Where go our spirits when our bodies die, And left thy brother in his lodge alone: He goes by day to catch the beavers shy, And sits by night in his still house to moan, And much ’twould please him should the wanderer come, And tell him where the loved ones’ spirits roam.”
LXXIII.
“Brother, I thank thee--thou art kind indeed,” Our Founder said--“and with thee I will go; Would that my brethren of the Christian creed Did half thy charity and goodness know! Waban, thou wilt thy brother’s purpose speed, And all the boundaries of those countries show Which lie adjoining Narraganset’s bay, And name the chiefs, and count the tribes they sway.”
LXXIV.
“Waban can do it”--was the quick reply, And Williams followed him, as fast he led Through bush and brake with blazing brand held high; The wolves around them gathered as they sped; But Waban often raised the mimic cry Of the fierce panther, and as oft they fled; Until the path descending swiftly steep, Led to his wigwam in the valley deep.
LXXV.
Then Williams noted, through the deepest night, The sparkles rising from the roof unseen, And, by the glancing of the firebrand’s light, Above him marked the thickening branches’ screen; For denser here, and of a loftier height, The pines and cedars arched their sombre green, With boughs deprest beneath the burden hoar; And further off did seem the tempest’s roar.
LXXVI.
An undressed deerskin closed the entrance rude Of the frail mansion of our Founder’s friend; “Brother,” he said, “this is my poor abode, But thou art welcome--it will well defend Thee from the bitter tempest,” and he showed The open pass. Beneath its arch they bend: From mid the room the blazing fagots sent The smoke and sparkles through the vault’s low vent,
LXXVII.
And, shining round, did for the ceiling show The braided mat of many colors made,-- Veiled here and there, where, hanging in a row, The beavers’ hides their silvery coats displayed; And here and there were antlers, from the brow Of bounding buck, around the room arrayed; And also, hung among the hunter’s gear, The dusky haunches of the moose and deer.
LXXVIII.
Hard-by the blazing hearth, raised from the ground Three braided pallets stood, with furs bespread, Where once red Waban, wife and child had found The humble settle, and still humbler bed; But now, alas! beneath the grassy mound, Two of the three sate with the silent dead;[2] The wampum girdle, that his spouse once wore, Gleamed on her garb of furs the settle o’er.
[2] The Indians bury their dead in a sitting posture.
LXXIX.
The room was warm, and plenteous the cheer Which Waban then did to our Founder bring; In trays the nocake,[3] and the joints of deer, And in the gourd-shell water from the spring; And, all the while, kept pouring in his ear How he had pierced the wild duck on the wing; And westward lately had the moose pursued Afar, and struck him in Mooshausick’s wood.
[3] A corruption of the Indian Nokehick--parched meal.
LXXX.
Slightly our Founder tasted of the fare, For toil and chill much more than hunger prest; This Waban noted, and with tender care, The vacant pallet showed, and urged him rest; Waban he said, would still the fire repair, And still in comfort keep his pale-faced guest, “And may the Manittoo of dreams,” he said, “The happiest visions on thy slumbers shed.
LXXXI.
“Upon this pallet she was wont to lay Herself to sleep whose spirit now is gone; And may that spirit to thy visions say Where now she dwells, and where my little son; Whether on that blest island far away, O’er the blue hills beyond the setting sun, They with their kindred joy, or nearer home, Still lingering, wait until the father come.”
LXXXII.
Williams replied, that he would speak at morn Of that far journey which the spirit takes; And name the Guide, who never soul forlorn, Whilst passing through death’s gloomy night, forsakes. His brother, then, on fitting day in turn, Would name the bounds, by rivers, bays, and lakes, Of neighboring chiefs, and say what Sachems might His mission threaten, or its hopes invite.
LXXXIII.
Our Founder slept; and on that night, I ween, Deep was the slumber of that pallet low, Calm were its dreams as was his breast serene-- Such sleep can persecutors never know; He slept, until the dawning light was seen Down through the dome to shine upon his brow; Then Waban woke him to his simple cheer Of the pure fount, nausamp,[4] and savory deer.
[4] The word _samp_ is a corruption of the Indian _nausamp_, and has the same meaning.
CANTO SECOND.
[SCENES. The Wigwam--The Wilderness--Pawtucket Falls--Seekonk’s Meads--The Wigwam.]
It was the morning of a Sabbath day, When Williams rose to Waban’s simple cheer, But knew not where, save that vast forests lay Betwixt his home and the lone wigwam here; Yet ’twas a place of peace; no thing of clay, ’Twixt God and conscience in communion near, Came, with profane and impious control, To check the heavenward wanderings of his soul.
II.
God loves the wilderness; in deserts lone, Where all is silent, where no living thing Mars the hushed solitudes, where Heaven looks down, And Earth looks up, each as if marvelling That aught should be; and, through the vast unknown, Thought-breathing silence seems as uttering The present God,--there does He rear his throne, And, tranced in boundless thoughts, the soul doth own
III.
And feel his strength within.--This day once more, In place thus sacred, did our Founder keep; None, save the Deity he bent before, Marked the devotions of his feelings deep. None, do I say? yet there was Waban poor; Alas! his mind in utter night did sleep; He saw our Founder at his earnest prayer, But knew not what his supplications were.
IV.
Yet earnestly the pious man besought, That Heaven would deign to shed the Gospel light On the kind pagan’s soul, as yet untaught Save in the dreams of her primordial night; And much he prayed, that to the truth when brought,-- Cleansed of his sins in garments pure and white,-- He might subdue the fierceness of his clan, And gain man refuge from intolerant man.
V.
Williams the task of goodness now essayed, To win the wanderer to a worship new; The utter darkness that his soul arrayed, Concealed her workings from our Founder’s view, Save when some question, rare and strange, betrayed His dream-bewildered glimpses of the true.-- Long was the task; and Williams back began, At earth’s creation and the fall of man.
VI.
He told how God from nothing formed the earth, And gave each creature shape surpassing fair; How He in Eden, at their happy birth, Placed with His blessing the first human pair; How, disobeying, they were driven forth, And they, and theirs, consigned to sad despair, Until, incarnate, God in pity gave Himself for man, and made it just to save.
VII.
He then told how the blessed martyrs bore The chains of dungeons, and the fagot’s flame, Glad that their sufferings might attest the more Their perfect faith in their Redeemer’s name; How His disciples past from shore to shore, Salvation’s joyful tidings to proclaim; How hither now they brought the Gospel’s light To cheer the red men wrapt in pagan night.
VIII.
Waban attentive listened to the strain, And at its close for long in silence sate; His visage did a graver cast attain And all his heart’s deep feelings indicate. At length he uttered thus the mental train:-- “Weak is my soul, and dark is her estate! No book has she to tell of Manit high, Except this outstretched earth and starry sky.
IX.
“Great news Awanux brings the red men here-- News that their legends old doth much excel; Yet give to Waban the attentive ear, And the traditions of his sires he’ll tell. From days afar, down many a rolling year-- Down to thy brothers red--their fathers’ tale Comes to inform them, in their mortal state, What powers they should revere--what deprecate.”
X.
Here Waban paused, and sitting mused a space, As pondering gravely on the mighty theme; Deep thought was graven on his earnest face, And still his groping memory did seem To gather up the legends of his race. At length he roused, as from a passing dream, And from his mat, majestically slow Rearing his form, began in accents low:
XI.
“Brother, that time is distant--far away, When Heaven or Earth or living thing was not, Save our great God, Cawtantowit, who lay Extended through immensity, where naught But shoreless waters were--and dead were they; No living thing did on their bosom float, And silentness the boundless space did fill; For the Great Spirit slept--and all was still.
XII.
“But though he slept, yet, as the human soul To this small frame, his being did pervade The universal space, and ruled the whole; E’en as the soul, when in deep slumber laid, Doth her wild dreams and fantasies control, And give them action, color, shape and shade Just as she wills. But the Great Spirit broke His sleep at last, and all the boundless shook.
XIII.
“In a vast eagle’s form embodied, He Did o’er the deep on outstretched pinions spring; Fire in his eye lit all immensity, Whilst his majestically gliding wing Trembled hoarse thunders to the shuddering sea; And, through their utmost limit quivering, The conscious waters felt their Manittoo, And life, at once, their deepest regions knew.
XIV.
“The mountain whale came spouting from below, The porpoise plunged along the foaming main, The smaller fry in sporting myriads go, With glancing backs above the liquid plain; Yet still refused her giant form to show-- Ay, sullenly below did yet remain Earth-bearing Tortoise, the _Unamis_ vast, And o’er her still the loftly billows past.
XV.
“Then great Cawtantowit in his anger spoke, And from his flaming eyes the lightnings past, And from his wings the tenfold thunders broke. The sullen Tortoise heard his words at last-- And slowly she her rocky grasp forsook, And her huge back of woods and mountains vast From the far depths tow’rd upper light began Slowly to heave.--The affrighted waters ran
XVI.
“Hither and thither, tumultous and far; But still Unamis, heaving from below The full formed earth, first, through the waves did rear The fast sky-climbing Alleghany’s brow, Dark, huge and craggy; from its summits bare The rolling billows fell, and rising now, All its broad forest to the breezy air Came out of Ocean, and, from verdure fair,
XVII.
“Shed the salt showers. Far o’er the deep, Hills after hills still lift their clustered trees, Wild down the rising slopes the waters leap, Then from the up-surging plain the ocean flees, Till lifted from the flood, in vale and steep And rock, and forest waving to the breeze, Earth, on the Tortoise borne, frowned ocean o’er, And spurned the billows from her thundering shore.
XVIII.
“But great Cawtantowit, on his pinions still, O’er the lone earth majestically sprung, And whispered to the mountain, vale and hill, And with new life the teeming regions rung; The feathered songsters tune their carols shrill, Herds upon herds the plain and mountain throng; In the still pools the cunning beavers toil, And the armed seseks[5] their strong folds uncoil.
[5] Sesek--rattlesnake.
XIX.
“Yet man was not.--Then great Cawtantowit spoke To the hard mountain crags and called for man: And sculptured, breathing, from the cleaving rock, Sprang the armed warrior, and a strife began With living things.--Hard as his native block, Was his stone heart, and through it ran Blood cold as ice--and the Great Spirit struck This cruel man, and him to atoms broke.
XX.
“Then He the oak, of fibre hard and fine, With the first red man’s soul and form endowed, And woman made he of the tapering pine, Which ’neath that oak in peaceful beauty bowed; She on the red man’s bosom did recline, Like the bright rainbow on the thunder-cloud. And the Great Spirit saw his work divine, And on the pair let fall His smile benign.
XXI.
“He gave them all these forests far and near, The forms that fly, and those that creeping go, The healthful fountains, and the rivers clear, And all the broods that sport the waves below; Then gave he man the swiftness of the deer, And armed his hands with arrows and the bow, And bade him shelter still his consort dear, And tread his large domain without a peer.
XXII.
“Then did he send Yotaanit on high, (For Gods he fashioned as he formed the land,) And bade him star with fires the azure sky, And kindle the round blaze of Keesuckquand; And then, to cheer by night the hunter’s eye, Bright Nanapaushat sprung from Wamponand; Thus with his will the manittoos comply, And every region knows its deity.[6]
[6] See note.
XXIII.
“All things thus were formed from what was good, And the foul refuse every evil had; But it had felt the influence of the God, (How should it not?) and a black demon, sad And stern and cruel, loving strife and blood, Filled with all malice, and with fury mad, Sprang into life:--such was fell Chepian’s birth, The hate of gods, and terror of the earth.
XXIV.
“Then to the south-west the Great Spirit flew, Whence the soft breezes of the summer come, And from the depths Sowaniu’s[7] island drew, And bade its fields with lasting verdure bloom. O’er it he bent another welkin blue, Which never night nor clouds nor tempests gloom, And kindled suns the lofty arches through, And bade them shine with glory ever new.
[7] Sowaniu--here of three syllables--was written by Williams, “Sowwainiu.”
XXV.
“When thus Cawtantowit had finished all, No more did he on eagle’s pinions roam, There did he limits to his works install, And centre there his everlasting home; There did he cast the eagle and recall His pristine shape, and manit-man become; There still he dwells, the all-pervading soul Of men and manittoos--yea, of creation’s whole.
XXVI.
“All that is good does from Cawtantowit flow; All that is evil Chepian doth supply; Praying for good we to Cawtantowit bow, And shunning evil we to Chepian cry; To oth |
65495-0 | er manittoos we offerings owe, Dwell they in mountain, flood, or lofty sky; And oft they aid us when we hunting go, Or in fierce battle rush upon the foe.
XXVII.
“And manittoos, that never death shall fear, Do likewise in this mortal form abide; What else, my brother, is there beating here? What heaves this breast--what rolls its crimson tide? Whilst, like Cawtantowit, doth the soul appear To live through all and over all preside; And when her mortal mansion here decays, She to Sowaniu’s blessed island strays,
XXVIII.
“There aye to joy; if, whilst she dwelt with men, She wisely counseled and did bravely fight, Or watchful caught the beavers in the glen, Or nimbly followed far the moose’s flight; But if a sluggard and a coward, then To rove all wretched in the glooms of night, Misled by Chepian, a poor wandering ghost,-- In swamps and fens and bogs and brambles lost.
XXIX.
“And now, my brother, rightly worship we, When to Cawtantowit we make our prayer? Or when for help to Chepian we flee, And pray that us from every harm he spare? For every harm is all his own, we see, And good Cawtantowit has ne’er a share-- Then why should not I Chepian sue to be Much sparing of his harm to mine and me?”
XXX.
Williams made answer, “When red warriors brave The fight’s dark tempest and for glory die, Does Waban tremble whilst the battles rave, And at the hurtling arrows wink his eye? Or, basely cowering, does he mercy crave Of the red hatchet o’er him lifted high? Who prays to Chepian is a cringing slave, And, dying, fills at last a coward’s grave.”
XXXI.
Strongly these words to Waban’s pride appealed; Yet back upon him did the memory rush Of by-gone ages, and of many a field Where fought his fathers, who with victory flush, Not to Cawtantowit, but to Chepian kneeled, And thanked his aid.--They cowards! and the blush, That in their worship fear should seem revealed, Was scantly by his tawny hue concealed.
XXXII.
At last he said, “My brother doubtless knows-- He has a book which his Great Spirit wrote: Brave were my fathers, yet did they repose With hope in Chepian, and his aid besought When forth they marched to shed the blood of foes; But maybe they, like Waban, never thought That they were cowards, when they fiercely prayed That Evil One to give their vengeance aid.
XXXIII.
“Waban will think, and should it seem like fear-- Waban ne’er shrunk when round him battle roared, And at the stake when bound, his torturers near, Among the clouds thy brother’s spirit soared And scorned her foes--but should it seem like fear To worship Chepian, whom his sires adored, He will no more be that dread demon’s slave; For ne’er will Waban fill a coward’s grave.”
XXXIV.
Thus in grave converse did they pass the day, Till night returning brought them slumbers sweet; And, with the morrow, shone the sun’s broad ray Serenely down on Waban’s lone retreat. Then Williams might have journeyed on his way, But doubt and darkness still restrained his feet; And so with Waban made he further stay To learn about the tribes that round him lay.
XXXV.
Hence may he secretly to Salem write, And friends approving, still his plans arrange; For Waban soon will bear his peltry light To Salem’s mart, and there may interchange The mute epistles, meant for friendly sight,-- Unseen of eyes inimical or strange, Lest rumor of them reach the bigot’s ear, And persecution find him even here.
XXXVI.
Among the several tribes around to go, And sound the feelings of each different clan, Seemed not unmeet; but little did he know How they might treat a pale-faced outlawed man, Friendless and homeless, wandering to and fro, And flying from his own white brethren’s ban; They, for a price, might strike the fatal blow, Or bear him captive to his ruthless foe.
XXXVII.
Better it were, so deemed our Father well, To seek and win the savage by degrees, Since to his lot the dangerous duty fell, (For such did seem high Heaven’s all-wise decrees), To found unarmed a State where rung the yell Of barbarous nations on the midnight breeze; Against the scalping-knife with no defence Or safeguard but his heart’s benevolence.
XXXVIII.
With only this, his buckler and his brand-- This, yet unproved and doubted by the best,-- In cheerless wilds, mid many a savage band, Spurned from his home, by Christian men opprest, Must he the warrior’s weapon turn, his hand Unnerve, and gently o’er his rugged breast Gain mastery. The panther by the hare Must be approached and softened in his lair.
XXXIX.
That night, returning from the accustomed pool, Came Waban laden with the beavers’ spoils, And joy seemed dancing in his very soul As he displayed the produce of his toils; Much he rejoiced, and Williams heard the whole,-- How long he watched, how many were his foils; Then how the cunning beasts were captured all, As through the fractured ice they sought to crawl.
XL.
“Bravely,” said Williams, “has my brother done, No more the cunning wights will mock his skill. Waban is rich; will he not hie him soon To the pale wigwams, and his girdle fill With the bright wampum?--Ere to-morrow’s sun Shall hide behind the crest of yonder hill, Waban may gain the pale-faced stranger’s town, And in his brother’s wigwam sit him down.”
XLI.
“The hunter goes,” said Waban in reply; Then fired his calumet and curled its smoke, And silent sate in all the dignity Which conscious worth can give the human look. But when the fragrant clouds to mount on high Had ceased, he from the bowl the embers shook, And spread on earth the brown deer’s rustling hide, Expanding to the eye its naked side.
XLII.
Then thus he spake: “My brother doth require Waban to show where neighboring Sachems reign;-- Doubtless he seeks to light his council fire Within some good and valiant chief’s domain, That he may shun the persecutor’s ire, And pray his God without the fear of men. On Waban’s words my brother may repose, Whilst these far feet imprint the distant snows.”
XLIII.
Then from the hearth a quenchéd brand he took, And on the skin traced many a curving line; Here rolled the river, there the winding brook, Here rose the hills, and there the vales decline, Here spreads the bay, and there the ocean broke, Along red Waban’s map of rude design. The work now finished, he to Williams spoke, “Here, brother, on the red man’s country look.
XLIV.
“Here’s Waban’s lodge, thou seest it smokes between Dark rolling Seekonk and Cohannet’s wave;[8] Both floods on-flowing through their borders green, In Narraganset’s basin find their grave. O’er all the country ’twixt those waters sheen Reigns Massasoit, Sachem good and brave; Yet he has subject Keenomps far and near, Who bring him tribute of the slaughtered deer,
[8] Cohannet, the Indian name for Taunton, is here applied to the river.
XLV.
“And bend his battle bow.--Strong is he now, But has been stronger. Ere dark pestilence Devoured his warriors--laid his hundreds low,-- That Sachem’s war-whoop roused to his defence Three thousand bow-men; and he still can show A mighty force, whene’er the kindling sense Of common wrong does in the bosom glow, And prompts to battle with the offending foe.
XLVI.
“His highest chief is Corbitant the stern; He bears a fox’s head and panther’s heart, He ’gainst Awanux does in secret turn, Sharps his keen knife, and points his thirsty dart; His council fires in Mattapoiset[9] burn, Of Pokanoket’s woods his licensed part. Cruel he is, and terrible his train-- Light not your fires within that wolf’s domain.
[9] Mattapoiset, now Swansey.
XLVII.
“Here, tow’rd the winter, where the fountains feed These rolling rivers, do the Nipnets dwell; They Massasoit bring the skin and bead, And rush to war when rings his battle yell; Valiant are they, yet oft their children bleed, When the far West sends down her Maquas fell; Warriors who hungry on their victims steal, And make of human flesh a dreadful meal.
XLVIII.
“Here lies Namasket tow’rd the rising sun; There Massasoit spends his seasons cold; The warriors there are led by Annawan, Of open hand and of a bosom bold; Here farther down, Cohannet’s banks upon, Spreads broad Pocasset, strong Apannow’s hold; The bowmen there tread Massasoit’s land, E’en to Seconnet’s billow-beaten strand.
XLIX.
“Still tow’rd the rising sun might Waban show And count each tribe, and each brave Keenomp name; But then his brother does not wish to go Nearer the pale-face and the fagot’s flame; But rather tow’rd the tomahawk and bow, And would the friendship of the red man claim: Therefore will Waban, on the western shores, Count Narraganset’s men and sagamores.
L.
“Two mighty chiefs--one cautious, wise and old, One young and strong, and terrible in fight-- All Narraganset and Coweset hold; One lodge they build, one council fire they light; One sways in peace, and one in battle bold; Five thousand warriors give their arrows flight; This is Miantonomi, strong and brave, And that Canonicus, his uncle grave.[10]
[10] See note.
LI.
“Dark rolling Seekonk does their realm divide From Pokanoket, Massasoit’s reign; Thence sweeping down the bay, their forests wide Spread their dark foliage to the billowy main; Thence tow’rd the setting sun by ocean’s side, Stretches their realm to where the rebel train, Ruled by grim Uncas, with their hatchets dyed In brother’s blood, on Pequot stream abide.[11]
[11] See note.
LII.
“Canonicus is as the beaver wise, Miantonomi as the panther bold; But tow’rd the faces pale their watchful eyes Are oft in awful thinking silence rolled; And often in their heaving bosoms rise Thoughts that to none but Keenomps they have told; They seem two buffaloes the herds that lead, Scenting the hunters gathering round their mead.
LIII.
“When first his fire Awanux kindled here, Haup’s[12] chief was weak, and broken was his heart; Disease had swept his warriors far and near, And at his breast looked Narraganset’s dart; Awanux gave him strength, and with strange fear Did M’antonomi at the big guns start; He dropt his hatchet; but his hate remains, And only counsel wise his wrath restrains.
[12] Haup, or Mount Hope, the summer residence of Massasoit.
LIV.
“He sees the strangers spreading far around, And earth turn pale as fast their numbers grow, And fiercely would he to the battle bound, And for his country strike the deadly blow, But that behind the Pequot’s yells resound, And on his left the Nipnet bends the bow; And even thus his hatchet scarcely sleeps,-- It dreams of Haup, and in its slumber leaps.
LV.
“But, brother, still Miantonomi is A valiant Sachem--yea, and generous too, And gray Canonicus is just and wise, His hands are ever to his tongue most true; If from their lands my brother’s smoke should rise, Whate’er those Sachems promise, they will do; But Waban still doth not his friend advise To cross the Seekonk where their country lies.
LVI.
“Brother, attend and hear the reasons why;-- There at Mooshausick dwells a dark pawaw, Who hates Awanux, doth his God defy, And Chepian worships with the deepest awe; He’ll give my brother’s town a cloudy sky, And to his councils under-sachems draw; E’en now he whets the Narraganset knife, Points at our clan, and thirsts for human life.
LVII.
“Safer on Seekonk’s hither border may My brother build, and wake his council blaze; Clear are the meads--the trees are swept away By mighty burnings in our fathers’ days. There early verdure spring and flow’rets gay, Long grows the grass, and thrifty is the maize; And good old Massasoit’s sheltering wing Will shield thy weakness from each harmful thing.”
LVIII.
“Brother, I thank thee,” said our Founder here, “Oft have I seen thy chief on Plymouth’s shore; I will to-morrow seek those meadows clear, And thy fair Seekonk’s hither banks explore. But will not Waban pass Namasket near, Where oft that wise and good old Sagamore, Brave Massasoit, spends the season drear?” “He will, my brother”--“Then let Waban hear:
LIX.
“Tell thou that Sachem, generous and wise, That Williams lingers in thy cabin low, That he his children and his country flies, To shun the anger of a Christian foe; And that to him his pale friend lifts his eyes, And asks protection.--Tell him that his woe Springs from this thought, and from this thought alone, God can be worshipped but as God is known.”
LX.
A pause ensued, and Waban silent sate; Yet to himself his lips repeating were; At length he answering broke the pause sedate, “Waban remembers, and the talk will bear.” Then he in silence fired his calumet, And gave its vapors to the wigwam’s air, Whilst Williams wrote, with stationery rude, His first epistle from the lonely wood.
LXI.
’Twas on the inner bark stript from the pine, Our Father penciled this epistle rare; Two blazing pine-knots did his torches shine, Two braided pallets formed his desk and chair; He wrote his wife the brief familiar line, How he had journeyed, and his roof now where; And that poor Waban was his host benign, And bade her cheer and gave him blankets fine.
LXII.
Then bade her send the Indian presents, bought When first they suffered persecution’s thrall,-- The strings of wampum, and the scarlet coat, The tinseled belt and jeweled coronal; The pocket Bible, which his haste forgot, For he had cheering hopes of Waban’s soul; Then gave her solace to the bad unknown, That God o’errules and still protects his own.
LXIII.
And to the hunter Williams now presents The secret charge, with all directions meet; For Waban means to take his journey hence Ere dawns the day upon his lone retreat; And then once more did sleep our Founder’s sense And knowledge steal away till morn complete; When he awoke and found his host was gone, The lodge all silent, and himself alone.
LXIV.
His fast he broke with the accustomed prayer, And trimmed him for his walk to Seekonk’s side; Calm was the morn, and pure the winter air, As from the wigwam forth our Founder hied; So tall the pines--so thick the branches were, That, through their screens, the heavens were scarce espied; But melting snows and dripping foliage prove The South blows warmer in the fields above.
LXV.
Now from the swamp to upland woods he past, Where leafless boughs branched thinner overhead, And saw the welkin by no cloud o’ercast, And felt the settled snows give firmer tread. Now all was calm, no wild and thundering blast Mixed earth with heaven, as through the boughs it sped; And far as eye the boundless forest traced, Glimmered the snow and stretched the lonely waste.
LXVI.
Onward he went, the magnet still his guide, And through the wood his course due westward took; Across his path, with antlers branching wide, The red deer often from the thicket broke; The timid partridge, at his rapid stride, On whirring wings the sheltering bush forsook, And the wild turkey foot and pinion plied, Or from her lofty bough uncouthly cried.
LXVII.
At last a sound like murmurs from the shore Of far-off ocean, when the storm is bound, Grows on his ear, increasing more and more As he advances, till the woods resound And seem to tremble with the constant roar Of many waters--Ay, the very ground Beneath him quivers,--and, through arching trees Bright glimmering and gliding on, he sees
LXVIII.
The river flowing to its dizzy steep ’Twixt fringing forests, from so far as sight Can track its course, and, rushing, oversweep The rocky precipice all frothy white, With noise like thunder in its headlong leap, And springing sun-bows o’er its showery flight, And bursting into foam, tumultuous go Down the deep chasm, to smoke and boil below.
LXIX.
Thence, hurrying onward through the narrow bound Of banks precipitous, its torrents go, Till by the jutting cliffs half wheeling round, They pass from sight among the hills below. There paused our Father, ravished with the sound Of the wild waters, and their rapid flow, And there, alone, rejoiced that he had found Thy Falls, Pawtucket, and where Seekonk wound.
LXX.
And as he dallied on its margin still, His restless thought did on the future pause: Here might his children drive the busy mill, Here whirl the stones, here clash the riving saws; But little did he think the torrent’s will Would ever yield so far to human laws, As from the maid the spindle to receive And spin for her, and her fair raiment weave.
LXXI.
Reluctantly he left the scene, and fast Down Seekonk’s eastern bank pursued his way, Seeking for Waban’s meads; yet often cast His glances o’er the river, where the gray Primeval giants, meet for keel or mast, Stood, towering and distinct, in proud array; And wore to his presaging eyes the air Of lofty ships and stately mansions fair.
LXXII.
Still onward, by the eastern bank he sped; Here stretched the thicket deep, there swampy fen, Here sunk the vale, there rose the hillock’s head; Oaks crowned the mound, and cedars gloomed the glen, Where’er he moved;--at length his footsteps led Where a bright fountain, sparkling like a gem, Burst from the caverned cliff, and, glittering, wound Its copious streamlet, with a murmuring sound,
LXXIII.
Far down the glade; and groves of cedars green, With woven branches on the winter side, Repelled the northern storm, whilst clear and sheen, Crisped by its pebbly bed, the glancing tide Gleamed in the sun, or darkened where the screen Of boughs o’erhung its music-murmuring glide;-- It laughed along;--and its broad Southern glade Was bordered deep by woods of massy shade.
LXXIV.
Charmed with the scene, our sire explored the place, And penetrated deep the thickets round; At length his vision opened on a space Level and broad, and stretching without bound Southward afar; nor rose o’er all its face A tree, or shrub, or rock, or swelling mound; Yet, in large herds dotting the snows, appear, With antic gambols, the far bounding deer;
LXXV.
And, further down, the Narraganset flood, Unfurrowed yet by keel--its fretted blue With isles begemmed, and skirted by the wood Of far Coweset,--opens on his view; So long he had beneath the forest trod, That, when the prospect on his vision grew, His soul as from a prison seemed to fly And range in thought through an immensity.
LXXVI.
Raptured he paused.--Here then was Waban’s mead; In yonder little glen, the fountain by, He’d rear his shelter--here his flocks should feed, Cropping the grass beneath the summer sky; There by his cot he’d sow the foodful seed, And round his garden raise a paling high; And there at twilight, should his herds be seen, Following the tinkling bell from pastures green.
LXXVII.
Ay, here, in fancy, did he almost see A lovely hamlet in the future blest, Where Christians all might mutually agree To leave their God to judge the human breast; A place of refuge whitherto might flee The hapless exile for his faith opprest, And find his lately trammelled conscience free, And for the scourge and gibbet--charity.
LXXVIII.
He thought he saw the various spires ascending Of many churches, all of different kind, And heard the Sabbath bells harmonious blending Their calls to worshippers of various mind; And saw the people as harmonious wending To several worships, as their faith inclined; And felt that Deity might bend the ear, Such harmony from various chords to hear.
LXXIX.
But still across his mind a shadow came-- A doubt that seemed a superstitious fear; For yet no Indian throng, with loud acclaim, Had bid the welcome of Whatcheer! Whatcheer! Till when he should be tossed;--as did proclaim That nameless stranger--that mysterious seer;-- But from Haup’s Sachem he a grant will gain; Such were best welcome from that Sachem’s train.
LXXX.
Full of this thought, he turned at close of day, And gained the humble lodge as night came down; And he could scarcely brook the short delay, Till Waban, coming from the white man’s town, Should from Namasket, where the Sachem lay, The cheering welcome bring, or blasting frown; For thou, Soul-Liberty, couldst then no more Than build thy hopes on that rude sagamore.
CANTO THIRD.
[SCENES. The Wigwam--Massasoit and other Chiefs--The Wilderness--A Night in the Wilderness--The Narraganset or Coweset Country--Coweset Height.]
No pain is keener to the ardent mind, Filled with sublime and glorious intents, Than when strict judgment checks the impulse blind, And bids to watch the pace of slow events To time the action;--for it seems to bind The ethereal soul upon a fire intense, Lit by herself within the kindling breast, Prompting to act, while she restrains to rest.
II.
Two nights had passed, and, Waban lingering still, Williams began to doubt his steadfast faith; Quick was his foot o’er forest, vale and hill, His swerveless eyes aye keeping true his path. Why does he tarry? and the doubts instil Suspicions in our Sire of waking wrath Against his purpose in the barbarous clan, Whose fears e’en then on future dangers ran.
III.
But on the morrow’s morn, while Williams mused,-- Anxious and wondering at the long delay,-- The wigwam’s entrance, by the deer-skin closed, Abruptly opened, and a warrior gay Glided within it. To the sight unused Of Keenomp trimmed as for the battle fray, Williams, recoiling, gazed with fixed surprise On the fierce savage and his fearful guise.
IV.
The eagle’s plumes waved round his hair of jet, Whose crest-like lock played lightly o’er his head; On breast and face the war-paints harshly met, Down from his shoulders hung his blanket red, With seeming blood his hatchet haft was wet,-- Its edge of death was by his girdle stayed; Bright flashed his eyes, and, ready for the strife, Gleamed in his hand the dreadful scalping-knife.
V.
He placed a packet, bound, in Williams’ hands, And fired his pipe, and sitting, curled its smoke, The while our Founder broke the hempen bands, And gave the contents an exploring look. There found he, answered, all his late commands To Waban, ere the wigwam he forsook; And from his wife a brief epistle too, Which told her sorrows since their last adieu:
VI.
How came the messengers with arméd men To search her mansion for “the heretic;” How his escape provoked their wrath--and then How they condemned him for his feigning sick; But with the thought consoled themselves again, That he had perished in the tempest thick; God’s righteous retribution, setting free Their Israel from his heinous heresy.
VII.
But, as he reads, the warrior starting cries, “War! war! my brother.”--Williams drops his hand, And at the voice perceives, in altered guise Till now unknown, the generous Waban stand Erect and tall, with fiercely flashing eyes, The while he pressed the hatchet in its band; “Brother, there’s war!” “With whom?” our Founder said; “Have I not friends among my brothers red?”
VIII.
“Haup’s valiant Sachem is my brother’s friend,” Red Waban answered; “and I come before Him, and the train of Keenomps who attend Him, coming here--our mightiest Sagamore-- To ask my brother that his aid he lend ’Gainst Narraganset’s hatchet stained with gore; Miantonomi lifts it o’er his head, Gives the loud whoop, and names our valiant dead.”
IX.
No time there was for Williams to reply Ere near the lodge there rose a trampling sound, And warriors entered, stained with every dye, Crested and plumed, with--to their girdles bound-- The knife and hatchet; whilst the battle cry Burst from the crowds that flocked the lodge around, And lighted up, in every Keenomp’s eye That stared within, a dreadful sympathy.
X.
Amid the train came Massasoit old, But not too old for direst battle fray; Strong was his arm as was his spirit bold; His judgment, bettered by experience gray, The wildest passions of his tribe controlled, And checked their fury in its headlong way; Still with the whites his peace he had maintained, The terror of whose aid his foes restrained.
XI.
There too came Corbitant, austere of mood, And Annawan, who saw, in after times, Brave Metacom, and all of kindred blood, Slain, or enslaved and sold to foreign climes; And strong Appanow, of Pocasset’s wood, And other chiefs of names unmeet for rhymes; And round our Father, in the fearful trim Of savage war, they gathered, wroth and grim.
XII.
Each fired his pipe, and seat in silence took; Around the room a dreadful ring they made;-- Their eyes stared fiercely through the wreathing smoke, And luridly their gaudy plumage played, The while, obscured, they did scarce earthly look, But seemed like fiends in their infernal shade; And still the vapors rose and naught they spoke, Till Massasoit thus the silence broke:
XIII.
“And is my brother here? What does he seek? Tow’rd Wamponand, upon the passing wing, A singing bird there went; its opening beak Was by Namasket’s wigwam heard to sing That thou art friendless, homeless, poor and weak, Seeking protection from an Indian King. Do the white Sagamores their vengeance wreak, E’en as the red ones, on their brethren?--Speak.”
XIV.
Sire Williams answered: “’Twas no idle song Sung by that bird which passed Namasket near; I am an exile these drear wilds among, And hope for kindness from the red men here. Oft had thy friendship to the pale-faced throng, That first Patuxet[13] peopled, reached my ear; And a whisper told me thou wouldst still be kind To those who fly, and leave their all behind.”
[13] Patuxet is the Indian name for Plymouth.
XV.
Then rose the tawny monarch of the wood To speak his memory, as became a chief; And back he cast his crimson robes, and stood With naked arm outstretched a moment brief; Commanding silence by that attitude, And to his words attention and belief. Often he paused, his eyes on Williams fixt, Whilst rang applause his weighty words betwixt.
XVI.
“Brother,” he said, “full many a rolling year Has cast its leaves and fruitage on the ground, And many a Keenomp, to his country dear, Has sate in death beneath his grassy mound, Since first the pale Awanux kindled here His council blaze, and so began to found His tribes and villages, and far and near, With thundering arms, to wake the red man’s fear.
XVII.
“Brother, attend! When first Awanux came, He was a child, not higher than my knee; Hunger and cold consumed and pinched his frame; Houseless on yonder naked shore was he; Waves roared between him and his corn and game, Snows clad the wilds, and winter vexed the sea; His big canoe shrunk from the angry flood, And death was on the barren strand he trod.
XVIII.
“Brother, attend! I gave the infant food; My lodge was open and my fire was warm; He gathered strength, and felt a richer blood Renew the vigor of his wasted arm; He grew--waxed strong--the trees began to bud; He asked for lands a little town to form; I gave him lands, and taught him how to plant, To fish and hunt,--for he was ignorant.
XIX.
“Brother, attend! Still did Awanux grow; Still did he ask for land;--I gave him more-- And more--and more, till now his hatchet’s blow Is at Namasket heard, with crash and roar Of falling oaks, and, like the whit’ning snow, His growing numbers spread my borders o’er; Scarce do they leave a scant and narrow place Where we may spread the blanket of our race.”
XX.
Here paused the chief, as if to ask reply; Of thankless guests he spoke, and seemed to say That the white strangers grasped too eagerly, Nor heeded aught their benefactor’s sway. Ne’er to the Indian did our Sire deny His share of Heaven’s free gifts; and, to allay The ominous mistrust, he answered mild The dusky king of Pokanoket’s wild:
XXI.
“Brother, I know that all these lands are thine, These rolling rivers, and these waving trees,-- From the Great Spirit came the gift divine; And who would trespass upon boons like these? I would take nothing, if the power were mine, Of all thy lands, lest it should Him displease; But for just meed shouldst thou some part resign, Would the Great Spirit blame the deed benign?”
XXII.
“’Tis not the peäg,” said the sagamore, “Nor knives, nor guns, nor garments red as blood, That buy the lands I hold dominion o’er-- Lands that were fashioned by the red man’s God; But to my friend I give, and take no more Than to his generous bosom seemeth good; But still we pass the belt, and for the lands, He strengthens mine, and I make strong his hands.”
XXIII.
“Weak is my hand, brave chief,” our Sire replied; “Aid do I need, but none can I bestow; Yet on the vacant plain, by Seekonk’s tide, I fain would build, and peaceful neighbors know; But if my brother has that plain denied, Far tow’rds the setting sun will Williams go, And on the lands of other chiefs abide, Whose blankets are with ampler room supplied.”
XXIV.
As thus our Founder spake, this murmur low Circled that savage group of warriors round, “The stranger will to Narraganset go!” “A hungry wolf shall in his path be found!” Rejoined stern Corbitant, whose eyes did glow With kindling wrath;--then from his belt unbound His hatchet and beneath his blanket hid;-- Warrior to warrior glanced, as this he did.
XXV.
Again Haup’s Sachem broke the fearful pause: “Brother, be wise; I gave thy brethren lands; They smoked my pipe, and they espoused my cause; They made me strong; and all the neighboring bands Forsook the Narraganset Sachem’s laws[14] And mine obeyed.--We weakened hostile hands; All dropt their arms and looked, but looked in vain, For my white friends to measure back the main.
[14] See notes to Canto Fourth.
XXVI.
“This leaf, which budded of their hope, now dies; The Narraganset warriors crest their hair; Their hatchets keen from troubled slumber rise And through Coweset make their edges glare; Chiefs strike the war-post,--blood is in their cries, And fierce their yells cleave Pokanoket’s air; They count already with revengeful eyes The future scalps of vanquished enemies;--
XXVII.
“And all for Wampanoag’s life-blood crave. On Seekonk’s marge the storm of war will burst; Lands might I give thee there but that the wave Will there run red with human slaughter first. And yet my brother and his friends are brave; His bulwarks there with guardian thunders pierced, Might frown on harm;--for surely he would fight Both for his own and for the giver’s right.
XXVIII.
“And when the Narragansets by our arms Are from the Seekonk driven far away, No more molested by the wild alarms Of scalping knife and tomahawk’s affray, We may together sit, secure from harms, And smoke the calumet from day to day; And our descendants, all the years to come, Have but one fire--one undivided home.”
XXIX.
“Brother,” said Williams, “these thou seëst are Hands that the blood of man ne’er crimsoned yet; Oft do I lift them to the God of prayer-- Ah! how unseemly if with slaughter wet! But to the hostile Sachems I could bear The pipe of peace, thy snow-white calumet, And quench the flame of strife--how better far Than win thy lands by all-devouring war!
XXX.
“With Waban for my guide, in friendly guise, Sachem, I would the arduous task essay To heal those ancient feuds by counsel wise, And quell the wrath begotten long away; Were this not better than the sacrifice Of armies slain in many a bloody fray? Then may I plant, and, in each neighboring clan, Meet with a friend where’er I meet a man.
XXXI.
“Ha! Yengee,” said the Sachem, “wouldst thou go To soothe the hungry panther scenting blood? Say, canst thou bid Pawtucket’s downward flow Turn and run backward to Woonsocket’s wood? The path to peace is shut;--the eager foe Sharpens his darts, and treads his dances rude, And through the trembling groves the war-whoop trills From bleak Manisses[15] to the Nipnet hills.
[15] Manisses--Block Island.
XXXII.
“Yengee! thou seest these Wampanoags brave-- They are my Keenomps in the battle fray; Would it become Haup’s sagamore to crave Inglorious rest for warriors strong as they? They shrink from nothing but a dastard’s grave: Bound to the stake, upon their lips would play The smile of scorn. How can they crouch and cry For peace?”--he said; and Williams made reply:
XXXIII.
“The Great Spirit, almighty o’er the Whole, Wields earth at will and moulds the hearts of men; At his command torrents may backward roll, The hare may gambol in the panther’s den; In Him I trust, and in His strength my soul Is more than armies.--Let your brother then Ask for himself, if not for thee or thine, That on these lands the sky of peace may shine.
XXIV.
“How could your brother plant, where all around War’s tempest raging pours its showers of blood? Where from each thicket bursts the war-whoop’s sound, And death in ambush lurks in every wood? When would the feet of his dear friends be found To pass along the blood-stained solitude, And bring their all--their dearer far than life-- Beneath uplifted axe and scalping knife?”
XXXV.
Upon our Father’s words to meditate, That wise old chief kept silence for a space; Thus far he had prolonged the shrewd debate, And inly striven his bounties to retrace-- Not, as it seemed at first, from growing hate, But so to magnify his purposed grace, That what he gave should be right worthy thought Of the much needed succor that he sought.
XXXVI.
“Keenomps!” at length thus spake the Sagamore, “Shall our white brother, not for me or mine, But for himself, seek Narraganset’s shore, Disperse the clouds, and let the sunlight shine From the blue sky of peace?--Our wounds are sore But hatchets none too keen; and our design May profit by delay, if he will light His council fire and gathering friends invite.
XXXVII.
“His bow’s now broken, and his knife now dull,-- But when his warriors shall around him throng-- Its sharpened edge will thirst to peel the skull Of Narraganset foe;--and he, more strong, Will wield a mightier weapon, and, more full Of valor, help us guard ourselves from wrong; Whilst many a soul he sends to join the ghosts That cry for vengeance round Sowaniu’s coasts.
XXXVIII.
“On Seekonk’s marge--our battle-stained frontier-- His town will rise, and warlike will he feel; The foe must pass him if he strike us here; Our brother then will hang upon his heel, Hinder his progress, and salute his ear With the big thunders and the muskets’ peal; Lo! from the east the Tarrateen no more Dare pass the Yengee by the ocean shore.”
XXXIX.
As ceased the chief, a fierce smile lit the eyes And curled the muscles of those men of blood; They feared the number of their enemies; This hope was cheering, and all answered--good! All save stern Corbitant, whose visage is Dark and portentous as a slumbering flood, Whose silent bosom holds the imaged storm, And seems the tempest that the skies deform.
XL.
Then rose each Keenomp, in his turn, and spake: Each said his knife was sharp, his hands were strong; But still such counsel as his chief might take He should deem wise, and so advise his throng. At length stern Corbitant did silence break;-- But first unloosened from its leathern thong His scalping knife, and then a circle true With its bare point upon the earth he drew.
XLI.
“So move the hunters,” the grim sachem said, Then near the centre made of scores a few; “Here do the moose and deer the thickets thread To certain death from them whose feet pursue; Do not the Yengees thus around us spread? Are we not hunted thus our forests through? Will Haup’s brave Sachem yield Awanux aid, While weep the spirits of his kindred dead?”
XLII.
“Go! thou dark Corbitant!” the old chief cried, “Unarmed, the stranger seeks our vacant land,-- Far from his friends would plant by Seekonk’s tide, His blood within the hollow of our hand. When to the stranger has a chief denied Food, fire, and space his blanket to expand? Hunted by him!--when come his friends he may, If timid deer we are, turn off the beasts of prey.
XLIII.
“He goes, and goes but for himself alone, To ask that peace between the nations be, And if the belt of Narraganset won He bring to Haup, ’twill be received by me. Now do I charge you, Keenomps, all as one, That on his path no lurking wolves ye be. Who dares with purpose fell his way to haunt, Dies by this hand--e’en were he Corbitant.
XLIV.
“Do thou, swift Waban, with the Yengee go, And point the way to Narraganset’s clan; If thou dar’st walk before the bended bow, Bring back the talks, that we the words may scan; In all things else to him obedience show-- He is thy sachem--be thou Winiams’[16] man. But it were safe that thou the pipe should’st bear Without that painted face and pluméd hair.”
[16] The Wampanoags could not say _l_, but used _n_ in place of it.
XLV.
Then Williams brought his strings of wampum bright, And to the Keenomps each a present made, Which each received, and, mimicking the white, His thanks returned, and uncouth bow essayed; And Corbitant’s grim visage seemed to light With something like a smile that o’er it strayed, To see the wampum wreath our Founder flung, Where glittering on his breast the bauble hung.
XLVI.
To Haup’s old chief a belt, with tinselry Enchased, he gave, and trimmed with gilded wire; Which when he donned, the warriors gazed in glee Upon their Sachem in such brave attire; Then filing singly, each in his degree, They leave the lodge, and through the woods retire; The chief appointing Haup, whereat to be To hear the issue of the embassy.
XLVII.
Waban and Williams only tarried there, And for the journey soon began to trim; The red man doft his plumes, and loosed his hair, And cleansed his visage of its colors grim; Our Founder chose his Indian gifts to bear, And pipe of peace, as well becoming him; And forth they sallied, as from middle sky The sun looked down between the branches high.
XLVIII.
Waban went foremost, upon nimble feet, Through ancient grove and over woodland glade;-- His long black hair and blanket red, so fleet He went, streamed backward in the breeze he made; Often his form did out of sight retreat Behind the crag--behind the thicket’s shade-- And then his voice, along the echoing wood, Told when he paused, or where his way pursued.
XLIX.
At length upon Pawtucket’s marge they stood; They heard the thunder of his falls below; Though narrow was the pass, yet deep the flood, And frail the ice to bridge its dangerous flow; But on the bank a giant of the wood, A towering hemlock, waved its lofty bough; Waban his keen-edged hatchet promptly plied; It bowed, it fell, and bridged the sounding tide.
L.
Upstayed thereon from bank to bank they past, And now they travel under hostile sway: The night around them gathers thick and fast, Till, as more doubtful grows their devious way. Their blankets on the frozen earth they cast, And light the fire, and wait the coming day;-- When safely they their journey may pursue, And greet the chiefs they seek in season due.
LI.
Williams that night lay on the snow-clad ground, With nothing o’er him but the starry blue; In parchéd maize and water pure he found A sweet repast, that woke devotion true; For while he saw the soul constrained and bound, With wings enthralled, but not her eagle view, One pious prayer made every suffering light,-- That he might free and speed her heavenward flight.
LII.
The red man smoked his pipe, or trimmed the fire, And to our Father many a story told Of barbarous battles and of slaughter dire That on Pawtucket’s marge befell of old;-- How always son inherited from sire The same fierce passions in like bosom bold; And wondered that his pale-faced chief could dare The pipe between such angry Sachems bear.
LIII.
“Ten summers since, on yonder margin green,” He thus continued in a sadder tone, “A strong old hunter--Keenomp he had been Of many deeds--dwelt with his daughter lone: She, like the bright-eyed fawn, whose beauteous mien So charms the hunter that he stands like stone; He, like the brawny stag, with burning eye And antlers broad, and sinews that defy
LIV.
“The well-aimed shaft. Then Waban was a boy; And, lonely, loved to go, by moonlight dim Or dewy morn, to see, all life and joy, The Bright-Eyed Fawn. But ah! it chanced to him One morn to seek her at her home’s employ-- And, O! what havoc there!--what horrors grim! The old man lay in gore!--his daughter gone! His lodge in ashes! But the dewy lawn
LV.
“Showed prints of hostile feet. Waban is true-- He followed on the trail--a devious route; Far up the winding stream the morning dew Betrayed their steps, and hers with theirs; here out They turned--leaping from rock to rock, they drew Still onward far, until a thrilling shout, From far Woonsocket, died on Waban’s ears: He pauses--listens--and again he hears--
LVI.
“The _Pequot’s_ yell! My Sachem sure has seen The well-drawn arrow leave the red man’s bow; So Waban went--the steps he made between Him and his foes no memory left--e’en now Waban is there; and, from behind a screen, Formed by the leaf of bush and bending bough, He saw the Bright-Eyed Fawn, bound to the stake-- The fagots heaped around--the flames awake!
LVII.
“Two warriors, standing, mock her cries, and four, In the fire-water drenched, lie here and there In slumber deep, from which they woke no more. One arrow Waban sent;--through shoulder bare Transfixed, one scoffer fell, and quenched in gore His kindling brand. Then, springing from his lair, As panther springs, with the bright glancing knife Did Waban dart, and, hand to hand in strife,
LVIII.
“Cleft down the second, who, with wild amaze, But faintly fought;--straight from the Bright-Eyed Fawn The bands were cut, and from the rising blaze She springs unscathed. The slumberers on the lawn Were not forgot: they slept--they sleep--yet gaze (If gaze that be which is all sightless); dawn, Noon, and night, are one. Broad Antler’s ghost Wandered not long upon Sowaniu’s coast;
LIX.
“Fully avenged, he sought the spirit band Of his brave fathers, whilst the daughter, won By Waban from the cruel Pequot’s hand, Dwelt in his lodge, the mother of his son. All now are gone--gone to the spirit land, And Waban’s left all desolate and lone.” Such tales the evening hours beguiled, and filled With breathless zest, or with blank horror chilled.
LX.
They slept at last, though piercing cold the night, And round them howled the hungry beasts of prey; Nor broke their slumber, till the dawning light Gleamed in the east,--when they resumed their way. Encrusted hard and flashing far and bright, The snow sent back the rising solar ray; Mooshausick’s wave was bridged from shore to shore, And safe they passed the solid water o’er.
LXI.
Westward till now his course did Waban draw; He shunned Weybosset, the accustomed ford, Where dwelt dark Chepian’s priest, that grim Pawaw, Who well he knew the Yengee’s faith abhorred, And who, perchance, if he our Founder saw Bearing the pipe of peace, might ill accord With such kind purpose, and, on evil wing To Narraganset’s host strange omens bring.
LXII.
Now down the western bank their course they speed, Passing Pawtuxet in their onward way; And fast doth Indian town to town succeed, Some large, some small, in populous array; And here and there was many an ample mead, Where green the maize had grown in summer’s ray, And forth there poured, where’er they passed along, Of naked children many a gazing throng.
LXIII.
Their small sunk eyes, like sparks from burning coal, On the white stranger stared; but when they spied The Wampanoag, they began to roll With all the fury--mimicking the pride-- Of their fierce fathers; and the savage soul, Nursed e’en in youth on thoughts in carnage dyed, Instinctively, with simultaneous swell, Sent from their lips the unfledged battle yell.
LXIV.
Their little bows they twanged with threatening mien, Their little war-clubs shook to tell their ires; Their mimic scalping-knives they brandished keen, And acted o’er the stories of their sires; And had their fathers at this moment seen (For they were gone to Potowomet’s fires), Our Founder’s guide, they might have caught the tone Of their young urchins, and the hatchet thrown.
LXV.
Still village after village smoked; the woods All swarmed with life as forward still they fared; For numbers great, but not for multitudes So numberless, had Williams been prepared; Was it for him to tamper with the moods Of these fierce savages, whose arms were bared, Whose souls were ripe, and stalwart bodies trim, For the wild revelry of slaughter grim?
LXVI.
How could he hope a safe abiding place, Far in these forests, and his friends so few-- Among a wild and blood-besotted race, That naught of laws divine or human knew; Their wars proceeding oft from mad caprice, Their hearts as hard ’s the tomahawks they threw:-- Would his temerity by Heaven be blest? Would God nurse zephyrs on the whirlwind’s breast?
LXVII.
Whilst musing thus, and onward moving still, His soul o’ershadowed with suspicious fears, He gained the summit of a towering hill, And downward gazed.--Far stretched beneath appears A woodland plain; and murmurs harsh and shrill, As from accordant voices, on his ears Rise from the midmost groves, and o’er the trees, A hundred smokes curl on the morning breeze.
LXVIII.
And now to sight, through leafless boughs revealed, Now hid where thicker branches wove their screen, Bounding and glancing, in swift circles wheeled Men painted, plumed, and armed with weapons sheen, And flashing clear or by the trees concealed,-- Glimmering again and waved with threatening mien,-- The lifted tomahawks and lances bright Seemed to forestall the frenzied joy of fight.
LXIX.
Mixed with the sound of voices and of feet, Alternate slow and fast, the hollow drum Its measured rote or rolling numbers beat, And ruled in various mood the general hum;-- Now slow the sounds, now rapid their repeat, Till at a sudden pause, did thrilling come That tremulous far undulating swell, From out a thousand lips, the warrior’s yell;--
LXX.
As ’twere from frantic demons. And the face Of Waban paled--then darkened as he said, “The Narragansets there their war-dance trace, They count our scalps, and name our kindred dead; This heart grows big--it cannot ask for peace; ’Twould rather rot upon a gory bed Than hear the spirits of its sires complain, And call for blood,--but ever call in vain.”
LXXI.
“Waban,” said Williams, “dost thou fear to go? Wilt thou thy Yengee sachem leave alone? How will thy Sagamore the speeches know, If homeward now his messenger should run? Not thou, but I will ask the haughty foe To quench his fires, and quell the dance begun; But for thy safety, thou the calumet Shalt bear beside me, till the chiefs are met.”
LXXII.
“Waban,” he answered, “never shook with fear, Nor left his Sachem when he needed friends; It is the thought of many a by-gone year That kindles wrath within my breast, and sends Through all this frame, my boiling blood on fire!-- Still Waban on his pale-faced chief attends, But bears no pipe;--the Wampanoag’s pride Bids him to die, as his brave fathers died.”
LXXIII.
“Waban, at least, will smoke the pipe awhile?” Said Williams gravely to his moody guide, “Its fragrant breath is as on billows oil; It calms the troubled waves of memory’s tide.” The grateful offer seemed to reconcile The peaceful emblem to the warrior’s pride: He fills the bowl--he wakes the kindling fire-- And o’er his head the curling clouds aspire.
LXXIV.
And whilst he sits, the sylvan muse will string Her rustic harp to wake no gentle strain Of barbarous camps, and savage chiefs who sing The song of vengeance to their raptured train; Of councils, and of wizard priests that bring Strange omens, dark dominion to maintain; Of incantations dire, and of that spell By Sesek wrought--which seemed the feat of Hell.
CANTO FOURTH.
[SCENE. The Narraganset Camp at Potowomet.]
The twain have left the height, and sought the glade Where the red warriors wheel the martial dance; A while the thick young cedars round them made A cover that concealed their still advance; But passing quickly through the denser shade, Sire Williams sent abroad his searching glance O’er the rude camp, and saw, on every side, Around the blazing fires the dancers glide.
II.
Hundreds on hundreds thronged the glade, I ween, With painted visages and pluméd hair; There bristled darts, there glittered lances sheen, And brandished knives upon the ambient air Carved fiery circles--whilst, with threatening mien, Their dark locks streaming and their muscles bare, The dancers circled o’er the thundering ground, And leaping, breathed the hard, harsh, aspirated sound.
III.
But chiefly tow’rd the centre pressed the throngs Where plied the bravest chiefs their dances rude:-- There listened to their Sachem’s battle songs, And when he ceased, in leaps his lance pursued; The while the tumult swelled until their lungs, Wrung to the highest effort, filled the wood With the wild war-whoop, tremulous and shrill, Then hushed itself and suddenly was still;
IV.
Till from the groups another Sachem sprung, To tell his deeds, and count his foemen slain; Lancing the war-post as his numbers rung, As if he slew his vanquished foe again; Whilst on his words the listening warriors hung, And drank with greedy ears the bloody strain, Cheering at times with plaudits loud and long, The butcheries numbered in the martial song.
V.
Amid the tumult of this boisterous rout, Williams, unmarked, had gained the central glade, When all at once an unaccustomed shout Startled the groups around the fires arrayed, And staring eyes, and pointing hands about, Proclaimed the strangers to their view betrayed; Then died that hum, like the past whirlwind’s roar, When the dust rises on the distant shore.
VI.
And all were hushed, while round them, man to man They glanced, and wonder in their faces grew, Till through the camp the sullen rumor ran, “Pale-faced Awanux! Wampanoag too!” And warriors, kindling at the words, began To grasp their weapons all that gathering through; When, lo! they opened like a parting tide, And once again their murmurs lulled and died.
VII.
And Williams paused; for, from the severed crowd, A chief advancing trod the breathing plain; Bold was his port, his bearing high and proud, A lance of length did his right hand sustain; The glittering wampum did his brows enshroud, His nodding plumage wore a crimson stain; His armlets gleamed--his belt, with figures traced, Supported skirts with purple pëag laced.
VIII.
His naked limbs were stained a sable hue, His naked chest and face a crimson red; Streamed backward from his brow two ribbons blue, And with his long black hair wild dalliance made; Suspended from his belt, half sheathed from view, His scalping knife and tomahawk were stayed; His eyes below his lowering forehead glowed Like two bright stars beneath a thunder cloud.
IX.
With strong majestic stride and lofty gait, He neared our Founder and his dusky guide, Who, in half tone, could but ejaculate, “Miantonomi!” when his Indian pride Choked further utterance, though still elate, Grasping his axe, with nostrils spreading wide, Self-poised he stood; appearing to await The approaching chief, who glanced disdainful hate.
X.
Our Founder chid his guide, and high displayed The calumet in one white hand, the while He raised the other, and mild gesture made Bespeaking peace. Well did the act beguile And soothe the Sachem’s passion, and he said, Turning from Waban, with a scornful smile: “Has, then, Awanux come to hear the song? Our darts are thirsty, and our arms are strong!”
XI.
Then Williams: “Sachem, in the cause of Him, The great Good Spirit whom we all adore-- Who smiles not on the contests fierce and grim Of his red children in the field of gore-- I have come hither, in unwarlike trim, To crave thy friendship, and of thee implore That these black clouds portending bloody rain May go, and let the sky shine out again.”
XII.
So answering, the calumet of peace He tendered to that warlike Sagamore, Who clenched his hands, and backward stept a pace, “Nay! Nay, Awanux! Wampanoag gore Will M’antonomi’s feet in battle trace Ere dies another moon. He hears no more; ’Tis not for him, amid these Keenomps bold, To talk of peace--that suits his uncle old.”
XIII.
Williams to this: “Then the gray chief is wise; His glance is forward, and around him turns; But o’er the young chief clouds of anger rise, He sees but backward, and his vengeance burns; Show me to him who looks with wisdom’s eyes Upon the nations, and most truly learns, From by-gone toils and dangers of his life, To prize the pipe above the scalping-knife.”
XIV.
At this his bosom the young Sachem struck, And braced his frame, and flashed his kindling eye-- “This breast is generous,” he proudly spoke, “Of like for like abundant its supply; Of good and bad it hath an ample stock; It cheers its friend, it blasts its enemy-- Ten favors does it for each favor done, And ten darts sends for every hostile one.
XV.
“Follow the war-chief;--mid yon heavy cloud Of warriors grim in arms and martial dyes, Sits the gray Sachem in his numbers proud, But prouder still in counsels old and wise.” So spake he, striding tow’rd the lowering crowd. Williams to calmness did his guide advise; And both with cautious step and slow pursued The Sachem tow’rd that fearful multitude.
XVI.
Not more horrific gleams the glistering snake, Where coiled on glowing rocks he basking lies, When, at the approaching step his rattles shake, Flickers his forky tongue, and burn his eyes, Than glared that crowd of warriors round the stake, Arrayed in murderous arms and martial guise; Their turbulent murmurs kindling through the whole The sympathetic wrath of one inspiring soul.
XVII.
But when the Sachem, coming, near them trod, He raised his open hand, and, pausing, spoke: “Keenomps! Awanux, prompted by his God, Brings back the pipe the Wampanoag broke. Our fathers ever answered good with good, And for the bearer of the pipe ne’er woke The storm of vengeance;--list ye to his talk; He brings no message from the tomahawk.”
XVIII.
As thus he spake, the sullen murmurs died, And, hushed and listening, all the warriors stood; Again he moved--and at his onward stride The deep mass parted like a severing flood; And, yielding either way, the living tide Left clear the space through which our Founder trod: Their breath alone he heard--like the hoarse breeze Foreboding tempests to the shuddering trees.
XIX.
At last he came where the old Sachems sate, Who formed the Narraganset senate grave; Renownéd were they once, in fierce debate Of battle dire, as bravest of the brave; But now, as guardians of their little state, To younger hands they prudent counsel gave. Their youth was gone, but their experience sage Had thrice its value in a wise old age.
XX.
On settles, raised around the mounting blaze, Sit gray Wauontom, Keenomp, Sagamore; But he who most attracts our Founder’s gaze Is sage Canonicus, whose tresses hoar Float on the passing breeze; whose brow displays The care-worn soul in many a furrowed score; But whose bright eyes, that underneath it glow, Still show the chief of sixty years ago.
XXI.
Beside him lay the calumet of peace-- It was his sceptre mid the din of arms; No martial dyes did on his visage trace The lines of wrath--for him they had no charms; The neyhom’s[17] mantle did his shoulders grace, With ample folds that stayed the winter’s harms; At every movement, changing in the sun, From plume to plume its glistering glories run.
[17] The neyhom, or wild turkey. See note.
XXII.
Mute were the chiefs and seemed to meditate; Nor turned their heads, nor cast a glance aside, When on the offered mat our Founder sate, And close behind him came his watchful guide. Then spread the warriors round in circle great, And did the earth beneath their numbers hide; They sit, kneel, stand, or climb the forest boughs, Till all around the live enclosure grows.
XXIII.
When ceased the crowd to stir, and died their hum, Long on our Sire the old chief kept his gaze; At length he said: “And has Awanux come? He’s welcome to the red man’s council blaze. What news brings he from the pale stranger’s home? Or from the dog that near his wigwam strays? Our young men see the pipe--what does it seek? Our ears are open--let Awanux speak.”
XXIV.
Sire Williams rose;--a thousand staring eyes Were on him fixed; a thousand ears were spread To catch his words, whilst all around him lies That mass of life hushed in a calmness dread, Like that of dark Ontario, when the skies Are mustering their tempests overhead; And the round moon looks through the gathering storm And, glassed mid tempest shapes, beholds her form.
XXV.
He paused a while; at last he thus began: “Sachem of many moons, and wise as gray! Well knowest thou how short the life of man; These aged oaks have witnessed the decay Of many a generation of thy clan, Which flourished like their leaves, and past away; Why war ye, then, upon a life so brief!-- Why fill its little span with wretchedness and grief?
XXVI.
“But they who seek the pure unmingled goods That last for aye,--to strenuous duty true,-- Count freedom of the soul, in her high moods, The first of gifts from the Great Manittoo:-- For this I wander to these distant woods; For this from persecution’s brands I flew, And left my friends, my kindred, and my home, Through stormy skies and snowy wilds to roam.
XXVII.
“Some thoughts of mine, that the Great Spirit might Rule better His own kingdom than frail men, Awoke the anger of my brothers white, And sent me forth to seek some far-off glen, Where I, unharmed, my council fire might light, And share its freedom with my kindred, when Under the tree of peace, the red men should Smoke the white pipe in friendly neighborhood.
XXVIII.
“On Seekonk’s eastern marge I chose a glade, Fertile and fair, with hope to plant thereon; The Wampanoag would the grant have made, But, momently, the startling rumor run That all Coweset was in arms arrayed Against that chief, and, had the dance begun; Then paused your brother--for he would not bring His friends to sit beneath the hatchet’s swing.
XXIX.
“Then did he take Haup’s calumet to crave That peace between the hostile nations be; Not that the Wampanoag warriors brave Sought from the Narraganset storm to flee; But that no guilty stain, on Seekonk’s wave, Rebuke the Pokanoket Chief or thee,-- The work, perchance, of darts from heedless bows, Confounding pale-faced friends with warring foes.
XXX.
“My motives these; now let the wise chief tell What wrongs he suffers; what redress he seeks. Do not his buried kindred slumber well? What murdered victim’s ghost for vengeance shrieks-- Sends through the echoing woods the warrior’s yell, And from its iron sleep the hatchet wakes? Or does some impious tongue his anger brave, By speaking names made sacred by the grave?”
XXXI.
Then passed a murmur through that concourse wide, And man on man cast the inquiring eye; At length the old chief laid his pipe aside, And, musing, sate, as pondering his reply; Then slowly rose, and drew the pluméd hide From his right shoulder, and, with stature high, Stretched forth his long bare arm and shriveled hand, And pointing round the sky-encircled land;--
XXXII.
“As far,” he said, and solemn was his tone, “As from Coweset’s hill the hunter’s sight Goes tow’rd the Nipnet--tow’rd the rising sun-- And o’er the mighty billows, foaming bright, Where bleak Manisses’ shores they thunder on, Moved Narraganset warriors,--till the White Came from the east, and o’er the waters blue, Brought his loud thunders in the big canoe:
XXXIII.
“Yes, ere he came, Pocasset’s martial band Did at our bidding come to fight the foe, And the tall warriors of the Nipnet land Rushed with swift foot to bend our battle bow; And e’en the dog of Haup did cringing stand Beside our wigwam, and his tribute show. Then we were strong--we fought the Maquas fell, And laughed to hear the bordering Pequot’s yell.
XXXIV.
“But, Yengee, hear: The pale-faced strangers came; No runners told us that they trod our shores; Near the big waters rose their council flame, And to it ran our eastern Sagamores; Haup’s dog forgot the Narraganset name, And ate the offal cast from white men’s doors, Moved at their heels, and after him he drew The strong Pocassets, and the Nipnets too.
XXXV.
“Then the fierce Pequots on our borders broke,-- We sent the belt to claim the accustomed aid; The rebel chiefs the angry hatchet shook-- They were the Yengee’s men, not ours, they said; We stood alone; and, like a steadfast rock, Turned back the torrent to its fountain head, Which else had swept those sluggard tribes away, That by Awanux’ wigwam slumbering lay.
XXXVI.
“These are our wrongs, and who can ever mend The belt thus broken by the rebel train? The falling waters with earth’s bosom blend, And who shall hold them in his palm again? Against the common foe our warriors spend Their blood like rivers--who can wake the slain? Heal up the wounds for other men endured-- Give back the blood which has their rest secured?”
XXXVII.
The Sachem ceased, and mingled murmurs ran Through all that crowd--“He speaks a manittoo! Base Wampanoag! we’ll devour that clan, And drive the Yengees back o’er ocean blue!” And through the concourse motions mixed began, With clash of arms, and twanging of the yew; But when they saw our Founder rise again, Mute stillness hushed the murmurs of the train.
XXXVIII.
“Brother,” said Williams, “thou art old and wise, And know’st the pipe is better than the dart. The barb can drink the blood of enemies; But the pipe’s conquest is the foeman’s heart; It gives to us his strength and energies, And makes the Pequot from our path depart. This, to the good, gives triumph long and just-- That, to the bad, a victory over dust.
XXXIX.
“If, then, my brother can subdue his foes By the white pipe, he will be very strong! The offending chiefs once more will bend his bows, And shout around his fire their battle song; No more will Pequot harass his repose, Or Maqua yells resound these hills among. See not my brothers whence all this distrust?-- The belt between them and the Yengees rust.
XL.
“Hearken a space--Deem not the Yengee weak; Betwixt him and Haup’s chief the chain is bright; If thou on him a finger’s vengeance wreak, The conscious chain will vibrate to the White, And, roused from slumber, will the big guns speak, And flames will flash from every woodland height. Pause, brother, pause--and to the pale-faced train Extend thy friendship, and keep bright the chain.
XLI.
“But hearken still--Thy brother knows no guile; His tongue speaks truly what his heart conceives; Against the Pequots do your bosoms boil, And for the Pequot deeds Awanux grieves; Their hands are laden with the white man’s spoil, And crimsoned with the stain that murder leaves; Soon will the big guns to their nation speak, And, in their aid, may’st thou just vengeance wreak.
XLII.
“Thou would’st compel the Wampanoag’s aid To guard thy borders, and chastise thy foes; Will not my brothers let me them persuade To get them warriors armed with more than bows? Even Awanux, in his strength arrayed, Whose thunder roars and whose red lightning glows? Make him your friend and victory follows sure, And Narraganset rests in peace secure.”
XLIII.
The old chief downward gazed; the warriors round, Some in stern silence sate of doubtful mood, Some gave a scornful smile, some fiercely frowned, And others toiled to sharp their darts for blood; At length the Sachem, rising from the ground, With piercing eyes, full in the visage viewed Our anxious Founder.--“Thou dost speak,” he said, “The words of wisdom, but these ears are dead;
XLIV.
“Dead to a Yengee’s voice. When did the tongue Of the white stranger fail to speak most fair? When did his actions not his speeches wrong, And lay the falsehood of his bosom bare? Fain would I die in peace, and leave this throng To have their glory down the ages fare; But still I feel the stranger’s grasping hand, And still he soothes me with his accents bland.
XLV.
“If true he speak--that should his actions show; May not his heart be darker than yon cloud, And yet his words white as its falling snow? Still, if his speech were true, and not a shroud To hide dark thought, these gray hairs yet might go Down to the grave in peace--and of my blood Might all, whilst rivers roll, or rain descends, Live with the Yengee, kind and loving friends.”
XLVI.
’Twas for our Founder now in turn to pause-- He felt his weakness at rebuff so stern; The kid had leaped beneath the lion’s paws, Whose fangs began to move, and eyes to burn; At length he said, “What bold encroachment draws The Sachem’s mind into this deep concern? How have the Yengees given thee offence? What deeds of theirs have marred thy confidence?”
XLVII.
At this, the Sachem from his girdle took His snow-white pipe, and snapt the stem in twain: “They came intruders, and the pipe was broke,” Said the stern Sachem, and it snapt again; “Our subject chiefs their ruling chiefs forsook, And they were sheltered by the stranger’s train. This fragment shows the serpent’s skin they sent, Filled with round thunders to our royal tent.
XLVIII.
“This shows, they raised their bulwarks high and proud, And poised their big guns at our distant home. This, when at Sowams[18] raged our battle loud, How their round thunders made that battle dumb. This, the fire-water how they have bestowed, And with its madness have our youth o’ercome. This, how amid the Pequot nation they Build the square lodge, and whet him to the fray.
[18] See note to stanza XXXIII.
XLIX.
“This, with the Maqua how a league they made, And filled with arms his all-destroying hand. This, how they claim right over quick and dead-- Our fathers’ buried bones, their children’s land. This, how the earth grows pale, as fast they spread From glade to glade, like snow from Wamponand, When borne o’er ocean on the sounding gales, It crowns the hills and whitens through the vales.
L.
“Take thou the fragments--count their numbers well-- Ten times complains our violated right; They’ll help thy memory, and perchance will tell, Ten causes have we to distrust the White; Scarce can the grave our fathers’ spirits quell-- They come complaining in the dreams of night; Ten times the pipe was by the strangers broke, Ten times the hatchet from its slumbers woke.”
LI.
Williams the fragments took, and, counting ten, He promptly answered with this calm reply: “Sachem, some charity is due to men Who tread upon thy pipe unwittingly. Long had the waters tossed those wandere |
65495-0 | rs, when, Hungry and cold, they came thy borders nigh; And, Sachem, they were ignorant of thy race, They only sought a safe abiding place.
LII.
“And this they found in that deserted strand, Where slept the dead--where living men were not; They knew no wrong in this--a rightful hand Appeared, and welcomed to the vacant spot; Each Sachem seemed as sovereign of his band-- They took his belt, for ’twas a token brought Of friendly greeting--who can this condemn? They aid the Whites, the Whites in turn aid them.
LIII.
“Bound in the skin of the great sachem snake, My brother sent his barbs--but to his foe, Awanux took the challenge by mistake, And let his bullets for an answer go; They deemed the Sachem angry, and did take Some wise precaution ’gainst a secret blow; They raise their bulwarks, and their guns they poise; This was respect to sovereign brave and wise.
LIV.
“No leagues have they with the fierce Maqua made, Nor with the Pequot hostile is the race; But if my brothers, for the fight arrayed, O’er Pokanoket’s borders speed their pace, I dare not say they would forego the aid Of any tribe that would thy battle face; Mohegans, Pequots, Tarrateens would fly To join their force, and swell their battle cry.
LV.
“To these six fragments of the pipe I’ve spoke; Take them again, if I have answered well; But those which tell me that the stem was broke By the fire-water, and of what befel Thee upon Haup--of claims thou canst not brook, Made by those strangers from the nations pale To these broad forests as their own domain-- These will I ask Awanux to explain.
LVI.
“This fragment tells me that his numbers grow, That they are spreading fast, from glade to glade; If the Great Spirit does increase bestow, Will the wise Sachem that great Power upbraid? The lands they take, well does my brother know, They fairly purchase of the nations red; E’en thus would I on Seekonk’s marge abide, If peaceful nations dwelt on either side.
LVII.
“On Seekonk’s bank, betwixt my brothers white And the red nations I might friendly stand, And help them still to understand aright Whate’er was doubtful from each other’s hand; The chain of friendship hold, and keep it bright, And strengthen thus all Narraganset’s band; Till ’gainst our common foes we all unite, And conquer safety through resistless might.
LVIII.
“This question seeks the Sachem’s plain reply: Takes he the pipe--lays he the axe aside? Have I his peace, or does he peace deny, Nor in my honest counsels aught confide? Still chooses he the doubtful strife to try, And brave the Yengees with his foes allied? Say--can he listen to an exiled man, Whose words and deeds might still befriend his clan?”
LIX.
“Brother,” the Sachem said in milder tone, “Six fragments of the pipe, as well explained, My willing hand receives--I ponder on The last in doubt--the three, thou hast retained, Send to Awanux--may he answer soon, And show our blindness has of them complained; Thy heart seems open, and its speech is brave; Queries of weight demand an answer grave.
LX.
“Large is our regal lodge, and furnished well With skins of beaver, bear, and buffalo; Nausamp and venison is its royal meal; And its warm fire is like the summer’s glow: There, with that Wampanoag shalt thou dwell, And all our comforts in full safety know; The whilst, our old chiefs shall, in council great, Upon thy questions gravely meditate.”
LXI.
Here closed the long debate, and, from the ground, Rose the thronged warriors, and hoarse murmurs past Through all that concourse, like the hollow sound Of Narraganset’s waters, when the blast Begins to roll the tumbling billows round The rock-bound cape, which had so lately glassed Its imaged self--its pendant crags and wood-- In the calm bosom of the silent flood.
CANTO FIFTH.
[SCENES. A Sequestered Dale--Open Glade and Grand National Council--The SUMMIT OF HAUP.]
Deep in the dale’s sequestered solitude, Screened from the winter’s storm and chilling blast By branching cedars and thick underwood, And ever with their shadows overcast, Old Narraganset’s regal wigwam stood, Where dwelt her chief, while yet the cold did last, And tempests, driving from the frozen north, Detained his warriors from the work of wrath.
II.
And near it rose an ample council hall, Where oft the Narraganset senate sate, When came the wise men, at their Sachem’s call, On schemes of high emprise to hold debate; And in the shade were shelters meet, for all His grave advisers who should on him wait; And, with the red men just as with the white, Such free provision did delays invite.
III.
Here Father Williams must a while remain. And, with apt converse born of feelings mild, Soothe the stern natures of the warlike train, His destined neighbors in that barbarous wild; Allay distrust and confidence obtain, Until suspicion and fierce wrath, despoiled Of all their terrors, leave the vanquished mind To generous friendship and full faith inclined.
IV.
Day after day he passed from man to man, Whome’er of note the mightier Sachems swayed, And, to the chieftains of each martial clan, In paints all grim--in horrid arms arrayed-- He talked of peace; then o’er the dangers ran, Were war against the Wampanoag made; And then besought them that with friendly eyes, They would behold his smoke from Seekonk rise.
V.
Betwixt the tribes, on either side the stream, Still he the belt would hold--the pipe would bear; But never in his hand should lightning gleam For either Sachem when he rushed to war; And with the Yengees still might it beseem Him to promote an understanding fair, Till wide the tree of peace its branches spread, And white and red men smoked beneath its shade.
VI.
But chiefly did he this free converse hold With M’antonomi, Sachem young and brave, And great Canonicus, sagacious, old And in his speech deliberate and grave. One eve they sate--the storm without was cold, ’Twas ere the council their decision gave, And thus the talk went on among the three, The questions simple and the answers free.
VII.
MIANTONOMI.
Why will my brother dwell amid our foes, Yet seek from us a peaceful neighborhood? May we not think he’ll bend their battle bows, And thirst like them for Narraganset’s blood? Why has he Seekonk’s eastern border chose, And not surveyed Mooshausick’s winding flood? Its banks are green,--its forests waving fair,-- Its fountains cool, the deer abundant there.
VIII.
WILLIAMS.
Ne’er will I dwell among my brother’s foes,-- To make them friends is now thy brother’s toil; Too weak I am to bend their battle bows, Had I the heart for such unseemly broil. The forest fair that by Mooshausick grows, Would long withstand the hardy woodman’s toil. The Seekonk’s marge will easy tillage yield, And soon the spiry maize will clothe its field.
IX.
CANONICUS.
How could my brother’s thoughts his friends offend? Why flies he to the red from faces pale? How can he still the nations red befriend? What can his speeches with his foes avail? No arms he bears, no Yengees him attend, How dares his foot to print this distant vale? The path was shut between the nations red,-- How dared my brother on that path to tread?
X.
WILLIAMS.
The white man labors to enthrall the mind, He will not let its thoughts of God be free; I come the soul’s hard bondage to unbind, And clear her access to the Deity; The pale-faced foes whom I have left behind, Would still accept a favor done by me. I trusted God would guard his servant’s head, Open all paths, and soothe my brothers red.
XI.
CANONICUS.
Thy generous confidence has on me won And oped my ears, to other Yengees deaf. Brother, the spirit of my son is gone-- I burned my lodge to speak my mighty grief; If thou art true I am not left alone, Some comfort is there for the gray-haired chief; If to thy words the fitting deeds be done, I am thy father, thou shalt be my son.
XII.
The kindest reader would fatigued complain, Should I recount each question and reply, That passed between our Father and the train Of barbarous warriors and their Sachems high; But though he languished o’er my humble strain, Till patience left or dullness closed his eye, To Williams it was not an idle song-- The dull reality did days prolong.
XIII.
They had their Corbitants of surly mood, Who scarce would yield obedience to their lord; Alike they thirsted for the Yengees’ blood, And Wampanoag’s and alike abhorred. By gaudy gifts their anger he subdued, Or won their kindness by his soothing word; But one there was who spurned all proffers kind, Whose demon hate was to all goodness blind.
XIV.
It was the grim Pawaw.--He came in ire From his proud dwelling by Mooshausick’s stream; His was the voice of gods and omens dire, And loud he chanted his prophetic dream; “The white man’s gods had set the woods on fire, And Chepian vanished in its fearful gleam; Their fathers’ ghosts came from their hunting ground-- Their children sought, and only ashes found.”
XV.
Gravely attentive did the council hear That crafty priest his awful omens sing. The warriors, ruled by superstitious fear, Half credence gave, and overawed the king. In groups they thronged the forest, far and near, With gathered brows and surly muttering; And still the prophet through the kindling crowds, Moved like a comet through night’s lowering clouds.
XVI.
And as he passed, the varying rumors flew Of secret plans hatched by the Yengees’ hate; And still their fears and doubts and wonder grew, Whilst on that dream the chiefs prolonged debate; For priest he was and politician too, And oft he meddled with affairs of state, Wrought on the fears of superstition’s crew, And the best counsels of the wise o’erthrew.
XVII.
Thus, when the senate dared resist his sway, He still gained triumph with the multitude; Till now the chiefs, half yielding to dismay, Yet vexed and goaded by his rebel mood, Bade that the clans assemble on a day, And Williams meet the prophet of the wood, And in their presence front and overthrow His strange dominion, or all hope forego.
XVIII.
I will not say that devils did enlist To do the bidding of the grim Pawaw; He may have been a wild ventriloquist, Formed by rude nature; but the age which saw The marvels that he wrought, would aye insist His spells surpassed material nature’s law; And that the monarch of the infernal shade Mustered his legions to the wizard’s aid.
XIX.
Great was his fame; for wide the rumor went That all the demons were at his command, And fiends in rocks, and dens, and caverns pent, Came to the beck of his black waving hand; The boldest Keenomps, on resistance bent, Could not the terror of his charms withstand; But still would shrink and shudder at the sound, When spoke his viewless fiends in anger round.
XX.
And it was rumored that he daily held Communion strange with monsters of the wood, Harked to their voices, and their meanings spelled, And muttered answers which they understood; That he had filled with wisdom unexcelled, A cherished serpent of the sesek’s brood,-- Had taught his forky tongue to modulate The voice of man, and speak impending fate.
XXI.
At length the morn of this stern trial rose, And mustering towns poured forth their eager trains, From where wild Pawcatuck’s dark water flows, To where Pawtucket cleaves the sounding plains; From where Aquidnay’s blooming bosom throws The ocean back, unto the far domains Of the rude Nipnet, Narraganset’s wood Rendered in eager throngs the multitude.
XXII.
Swarm upon swarm, far dark’ning all the ground, They gathered, and on Potowomet’s plain, The dusky rabble filled the borders round, While near the centre stood the warrior train; Wild dance their plumes; fierce looks, fierce threats abound, With war of voices like the murmuring main, Wherein these words continually prevail:-- “The priest of Chepian grim!--Awanux weak and pale!”
XXIII.
The council formed upon the open glade; The Sachems sate about the mounting blaze; Five thousand warriors round that senate made A dreadful ring, and stared with fixed amaze; Within the senate, (so the chieftains bade,) Apart sate Williams, obvious to their gaze; And off a little, but confronting him, Appeared the wizard in his hideous trim.
XXIV.
From crown to heel stained black as night he rose, All naked save his waist and heaving chest; The sable fox-hide did his loins enclose, The sable fox-tail formed the nodding crest Above his inky locks, which, dangling loose, Half veiled his cheeks, and reached unto his breast; Around that breast the same black fox’s hair Moved as he breathed, and seemed as growing there.
XXV.
Tall was his form, and in his dexter hand He bore a barb with deadly venom fraught; Whilst in his left, supported by a band, He held a casket, where the rabble thought A manittoo, awaiting his command, Coiled in a serpent’s folds; and there was nought That in brave warriors could awaken fright, Save his dire glance and fascinating might.
XXVI.
For, strange to tell! e’en on the human kind, That serpent ventured his mysterious charm; And there were those who thought the subtle mind Of Chepian’s self inspired his winding form. All sought his omens.--He was aye enshrined, Through winter’s cold, in furs to keep him warm; And never issued to the open light, Till famine roused his rage, or prey provoked his might.
XXVII.
Thus, with strange terrors armed, the wizard stood, And on the casket riveted his eyes, And whispered for a while in ghastly mood, Until responses from it seemed to rise Faintly distinct, whereat the vulgar blood Stayed its career, and even Sachems wise Heard with a thrill,--for these dread accents rose: “Count ye the sands--ye count your pale-faced foes.”
XXVIII.
The prophet looked around, the throngs to scan; And well he noted by the silence dread The moment of effect, and then began,-- Beseeching first his fearful demon’s aid: “Chepian, thou power of evil! dread of man! God of destruction! pouring on the head Of thy opposers, ruins, plagues, and pest,-- Let all thy might thy serpent form invest.”
XXIX.
He said; then turning to the throngs he spoke: “Brothers! dark tempests overcast our sky; The characters upon Cohannet’s rock Set bounds in vain; the stranger doth defy And break our spells; dread Chepian feels the shock; In wrath he sees the approaching deity Of the pale man--and, in his coming stride, Feels scathe and death to his dominion wide.
XXX.
“Now hearken, brothers:--’twas a dismal night, And in his cave sate Tatoban alone; The fading embers shed a dreary light, And the big owl sent forth a hollow moan; The god of tempests sped his rapid flight, And with his footsteps made the forest groan; And whilst he sate, out from the deepest gloom Did the dread form of awful Chepian come.
XXXI.
“‘Sleeps Tatoban!’ the awful demon said, ‘Sleeps Tatoban! my Priest, my Prophet sleep! Does not a pale man my dominion tread? With hostile gods has he not crossed the deep? Prophet! the spirits of your kindred dead Already o’er their children’s ashes weep;-- Arise! go forth, and by thy serpent quell The daring stranger, and his gods expel!
XXXII.
“‘Hast thou forgot, when, by Cohannet’s stream, To curse the strangers every charm was tried? How, at your mutterings, the moon’s pale beam Retired from Heaven, and backward rushed the tide? How I appeared, and, by the embers’ gleam, To the hard rock my lance’s point applied, And scored my mandate--saying to the foe, Thus far thy gods may come--no further go?[19]
[19] See note.
XXXIII.
“‘Rouse, Prophet, rouse! A stranger now doth dare Pass the charmed limits, and our peace invade!’ He said, and, resting on the casket there, Melted from sight into the sombre shade: He chose my serpent for his earthly lair; Swelled his huge volumes, and inspired his head, And taught his tongue to speak the future well, And charms most wise that can the bravest quell.
XXXIV.
“And dar’st thou, stranger, brave his glance of fire? Dar’st thou confront the terror of his charms? Confront grim Chepian in the dread attire Of the great Sesek, whose unearthly arms Wake fear in Sachems? O, thou fool! retire-- Bear off thy gods; for robed in all their harms Thou art unsafe.--No power we yield to thee, Or to thy gods; for Chepian rules by me.”
XXXVI.
Williams replied, “Thou Priest of Beelzebub! Chepian, I mean, if that’s his better name-- I come not hither to assume thy robe Pontifical, or emulate thy fame; Or yet to trouble, with the warrior’s club, Such saints as thou and thy dark demon claim; For be but peaceful, and I let thee still Worship thy manit dark, as suits thy will.
XXXVII.
“But here I sit, to prove thee to thy face A foul impostor, and thy charms a cheat;-- To ope the eyes of a deluded race, Strangely misled by thine infernal feat, That in thy foe they confidence may place, And him, in friendship, as a neighbor greet; So try thy spells, thine utmost powers essay, And if I blench, be thine the victor’s day.”
XXXVIII.
“Die, then!” he said, and down with fury cast The magic casket, and wide open flew Its fur-lined cavern. Forth his volumes vast, Fold following fold, the monstrous serpent drew; Flashed on his burnished scales, the sunbeams past Along his flexuous form in many a hue; Proud of his freedom, o’er the glade he rolled, And mocked the rainbow in his hues of gold.
XXXIX.
High towered his head; in many an ample fold He coiled his volumes, spires o’er spires ascending And lessening as they rose and inward rolled; His rustling scales, their various colors blending, Surpassed the hues of diamond and of gold; Till, from the top pyramidal extending, Swam forth on crooked neck his eyes of flame, Rang his sharp buzz, and on he slowly came.
XL.
Shouted the crowds, as they beheld him rise, “The manittoo! The manittoo!” they cried. In sooth, their demon, from his burning eyes, Seemed looking forth, and his unlabored glide Scarce earthly seemed, the while his glistering dyes In mingling brilliance changed and multiplied, And scarce the curves that moved him did untwist; But o’er them floating, like a globe of mist,
XLI.
His quivering rattles buzzed. With curious eyes, Williams beheld him gradually advance, Then grasped a wand, then paused with fixed surprise, To see the gorgeous radiance, moving, glance The hues of heaven;--to see, now sink, now rise, His bending spires,--his wavering colors dance; And at each change of that deep thrilling hum The motions change--the colors go and come.
XLII.
An odor, strange though not offensive, spread About him, as he near and nearer drew; But, piercing, keen, it filled our Founder’s head, Involved his brain, and passed his senses through; Entranced he sate, while round him rose and played Celestial hues, and music strange and new;-- The heavens, the earth, to various radiance turned, And in a maze of mingling colors burned.
XLIII.
The juggling sesek vanished from his sight; No alien object did his trance confuse; So rang the hum, so danced the colors bright, The hues seemed music, and the music hues; Still swelled the sounds, still livelier flashed the light; His limbs obedience to his will refuse; He strove to rise, he yielded to affright, Like one be-nightmared in the dreams of night.
XLIV.
“Whence this dread power that steals my strength away? This creeping torpor, this Lethean dew? This strange wild rapture mingling with dismay? Ye dangerous beauties! vanish from my view; Creatures of Evil, come ye to betray One victim more, and his sad soul subdue Unto the Tempter, whose infernal spell Brought death to Eden, and gave joy to hell?
XLV.
“And shall my labors thus inglorious end? Shall my defeat give him a triumph new?” The thought was fire, and did new vigor lend; Back rushed his soul through every avenue. A seeming cloud did from his brain ascend, The magic colors vanished from his view; And at his feet, in many a supple sweep, The odious reptile coiled him for the leap.
XLVI.
Swift darts the tongue, the horrid jaws unfold;-- Williams beheld--struck--cleft the head away: In many a loosening coil the body rolled, Collapsed, grew still, and there extended lay, A headless reptile;--all its hues of gold And diamond deadened in its life’s decay; Whilst the foiled wizard looked upon the slain, And choked and yelled, then choked with rage again.
XLVII.
The crowds looked on ’twixt terror and surprise; They gazed--they gaped with fixed astonishment; Their serpent manit braved--ay, slaughtered lies! Is it Awanux that is prevalent? But when they gave full credence to their eyes, Wild wondering clamors through the masses went, Which closed in shouts that through the forest rolled, “The wizard conquered by the Yengee bold!”
XLVIII.
Ill could that juggler a white victor brook, And Hell’s dark passions boiled through all his blood; His eyes shot fire, and from his belt he took His deadly dart,--and in stern silence viewed Its poisoned barb, whose short and horrid crook The jaws of seseks armed,--jaws all imbued With the keen venom gathered from the fangs Of such as died by self-inflicted pangs.
XLIX.
Nothing he spake, but with a hideous yell, Raised his long dart, and, backward as he bent, From starting eye-balls shot the light of Hell; At Williams’ breast the vengeful glance was sent, But as his muscles did the barb impel, Red Waban’s grasp obstructed their descent;-- On earth the weapon falls and pants for blood; The lifted arm still threatening vengeance stood.
L.
Miantonomi, who the scene surveyed, Too long had now his rising wrath concealed; A mighty lance his better hand displayed, And well he knew its haft of length to wield; Backward its hilt the angry Sachem swayed, And ’neath its stroke the staggering wizard reeled; Till from a storm of blows he cringing fled, And madly howling through the forest sped.
LI.
“Go, Priest of Chepian, go!” the Sachem said, “Thy dreams are false--thy charms are all a cheat; Go to thy manit--tell him that his aid Has failed thee once, and thou art sorely beat. Us have thy prophecies too long betrayed, And vacant in the council is thy seat. When aid we need, we will to him apply Who conquers thee, and slays thy deity.”
LII.
A while the throngs sate as in deep amaze-- A while ’twas doubtful what might be their mood; At length wild shoutings they began to raise;-- One transport filled the total multitude; Their Sachem’s boldness cheerly did they praise, For long had they with dread the wizard viewed; Nor less admired our Founder’s courage true, Which did that juggler and his charms subdue.
LIII.
Then rose Canonicus, that shrewd old chief; “Brother!” he said, “much glory hast thou won; Thy deeds this day will scantly gain belief With warriors red, from rise to set of sun: Great Chepian’s priest, within a moment brief, Thou, with thy fearlessness, hast overdone; And thou art greater than his manits are,-- For they were vanquished in the combat fair.
LIV.
“Brother! we take thy calumet of peace, And throw the hatchet into quiet shade; The Wampanoag’s terrors may surcease, And thou mayst plant on Seekonk’s eastern glade; But hearken, brother!--better far would please Thy council fire if by Mooshausick made; But pass we that; for well our brother knows To live our friend surrounded by our foes.
LV.
“Brother! thou wilt our belt of friendship take, And for us win the kindness of the White, That when we war against the Pequot make, His hands may aid us, and his counsels light;-- His thunders speak and all the forests shake,-- His lightnings flash and spread a wild affright Through town and fortress, whereso’er we go, Till not a Pequot lives to tell his nation’s woe.
LVI.
“Brother! we grant thee quiet neighborhood,-- The tree of peace o’ershadows thee and me; And thou mayst hunt in Narraganset’s wood, And catch the fish that in our waters be; But thou must still promote the red man’s good, Keep bright his belt, and make thy counsels free When danger darkens;--and if this be done, I am thy father, thou shalt be my son.”
LVII.
Scarce need I say, Sire Williams cheerly gave The pipe he bore and took the friendly belt; That thanks he tendered to the Sachems brave; That what he uttered he as deeply felt; That he repeated each assurance grave Of friendly favors, whilst he near them dwelt; Nor pause I, now, the customs to describe, By which the truce was honored by the tribe.
LVIII.
He took the Sachem’s friendly calumet, Then scattered wampum mid the warriors all; On Miantonomi’s lofty brow he set, Round waving plumes, the jeweled coronal; The scarlet coat the elder potentate Most trimly graced, and gave delight withal; Then ribbons gave he, various their hue, To counsellors and Keenomps, bold and true.
LIX.
His mission finished, Father Williams sped, With Waban guiding, through the forest lone; Nor cold nor hunger did he longer dread, Or bore them cheerly now, his object won; Quickly to Haup did he the thickets thread-- To Haup, so well to Pilgrim Father known-- And found that Sachem, mid his warriors stern, Alarmed, but hoping still his safe return.
LX.
Gladly he heard from Waban’s faithful tongue Sire Williams’ speeches and the answers given, And wildly shouted all that warrior throng, To learn the dire enchanter’s spell was riven; And wilder shouts the echoing vales prolong, To hear that priest was from the council driven; “The tree of peace” they cried, “will bloom again, The wizard’s banished, and his manit slain.”
LXI.
Then to the elder chief our Father gave The Narraganset friendly calumet; And it was pleasant to behold the grave And stern old Sachem, whilst his eyes were wet With tears of gratitude;--he could outbrave The stake’s grim tortures, and could smiling sit Amid surrounding foes; yet kindness could Subdue to tears this “stoic of the wood.”
LXII.
He clasped our Father by the hand and led Him up, in silence, to the mountain’s crown; And there, from snow-capt outlook at its head, They gazed o’er bay and isle and forest brown. It seemed a summer’s eve in winter bred; The sun in ruddy gold was going down, And calm and far the expanded waters lay, Clad in the glory of the dying day.
LXIII.
There stretched Aquidnay tow’rd the ocean blue, In virgin wildness still of isles the queen; Her forests glimmered with the western hue, Her vales and banks were decked with cedars green, And southward far her swelling bosom drew Its lessening contours, in the distance seen;-- Till, wavering indistinctly, in the gray Encroaching sea-mists they were hid away.
LXIV.
Beneath his feet, Aquidnay’s north extreme Displayed a cove, begemmed with islets gay; Its silvery surface caught the setting beam, Where’er the op’ning hemlocks gave it way; Young nature there, tranced in her earliest dream, Did all her whims in vital forms array; Her feathered tribes round beak and headland glide, Her scaly broods leap from the glassy tide.
LXV.
Out from Aquidnay tow’rd the setting sun, Spread the calm waters like a sea of gold Studded with isles, till Narraganset dun Fringed the far west, and cape and headland bold, With forest shagged, cast their huge shadows down, And glassed them in the wave; while silence old Resumed her reign, save that by times did rise, On Williams’ ears, the sea-birds’ jangling cries.
LXVI.
Or the lone fowler, in his light canoe, Round jutting point all warily did glide, And pause awhile to watch, with steadfast view, Where the long-diving loon might break the tide; Then, noiseless, near the myriad seafowl drew, And, baffled, saw them scur, with clangor wide, Up from the foamy flood, and, mounting high, Darken the day, and seek another sky.
LXVII.
Then looking north, from far could he behold, Bright bursting from his source through forests dun, Like liquid silver, broad Cohannet rolled Tow’rd parent ocean;--there his currents run Embrowned by fringing woods;--here molten gold, Gleaming and glittering in the setting sun, They glance by Haup--there, eastward as they pour, They cleave Aquidnay from Pocasset’s shore.
LXVIII.
That rude Pocasset--which, when Williams saw From towering Haup, did one broad forest shew; Here, steep o’er steep, there, leaving Nature’s law, Hill, glade, and swamp,--presenting to the view So mad a maze, that there, if hunter draw His sounding bow, and but a space pursue The wounded deer, he finds his guidance fail, And lost, halloos through tangled brake and dale.
LXIX.
Yet the rude wigwams smoked from many a glade, Where near the shore the oaks were branching wide, Where future gardens might invite the spade, Or furrowing plough the fertile glebe divide, And where, still south, the hills retiring made More ample meadows by the glassy tide; Till far Seaconnet showed her rim of rock, Whereon the ocean’s rolling billows broke.
LXX.
But on Aquidnay dwelt our Founder’s gaze, Enraptured still. “Would Seekonk’s mead compare With yon wild Eden?” While he thus delays, The old chief’s hand does on his bosom bear, As he explains: “Another sachem sways The isle of peace. All Haup’s dominions are Stretched tow’rd the God of frost--look there and choose; All thou hast won, and well a part mayst use.”
LXXI.
Turned by the words that gently woke his ears, Before his eyes a boundless forest lay; The mossy giants of a thousand years, O’er hill and plain their mighty arms display; Mound after mound, far lessening north, appears, Till in blue haze they seem to melt away; Here Seekonk wedded with Mooshausick beamed, And there Cohannet’s liquid silver gleamed.
LXXII.
Here Kikimuet left his woodland height, Bright in the clear, or dark beneath the shade; There Sowams gleamed,--if names the muse aright, Till in the forest far his glories fade; While here and there, rose curling on his sight The village smokes of many a sheltered glade; And, nearer, clustered at the mountain’s base, The foremost town of Pokanoket’s race.
LXXIII.
Embosomed there in massy shades it stood; Its frequent voices, up the silent steep, Came on our Founder’s ear;--in cheerful mood, The tones of childhood shrill, and manhood deep, Told him what sports, what toils were there pursued; Or, wild and clear, the melody would sweep Of girlish voices, warbling plaintive strains, Half chant, half music, over woods and plains.
LXXIV.
Ah! how more lovely than the silence hushed, That lists in horror for the foeman’s tread! A tender joy our Father’s bosom flushed,-- The work was his that had these blessings spread; The storm, that else had o’er the nation rushed, Had by his sufferings and his toils been stayed; And as he mused, his hand the Sachem pressed, For like emotions swelled his rugged breast.
LXXV.
“And oh!” he cried, “what can the Sachem do? How can he give to Winiams recompense? Our foes were many, and our warriors few, But Winiams came, and he was our defence; Go, brother, plant--go, plant our forest through-- All hast thou won by thy benevolence; All hast thou saved from ruthless enemies, Take what thou wilt, and take what best may please.”
LXXVI.
Our Father answered--“give me bounds and deeds-- No lands I take but such as parchment names; To future ages will I leave no seeds To yield a harvest of discordant claims; If name I must, I name fair Seekonk’s meads-- What first I craved still satisfies my aims; These and the friendship of my neighbors are Reward too generous for my toil and care.”
LXXVII.
“My brother gives with palm expanded wide,” The Sachem said, “but with a closing hand Our gifts are half received and half denied; Ha! was he born in the white stranger’s land? My brother’s corn shall wave by Seekonk’s tide-- My brother’s town shall on its margin stand; And on the deer-skin, tested by my bow, My painted voice shall talk, and to far ages go.”
LXXVIII.
While thus they spake, the sun declining low, In Narraganset’s shades, half veiled his light; On rapid pinions did the dark winged crow And broad plumed eagle speed their homeward flight; Warned by the signs, the twain, descending slow, In converse grave, pass down the wooded height; And, in the Sachem’s sylvan palace, share Respite from hunger, toil, and present care.
CANTO SIXTH.
[SCENE. Seekonk’s Mead, or Place of the First Settlement.]
The winds of March o’er Narraganset’s bay Move in their strength--the waves with foam are white; O’er Seekonk’s tide the tossing branches play, The woods roar o’er resounding plain and height; ’Twixt sailing clouds, the sun’s inconstant ray But glances on the scene--then fades from sight; The frequent showers dash from the passing clouds; The hills are peeping through their wintry shrouds.
II.
Dissolving snows each downward channel fill, Each swollen brook a foaming torrent brawls, Old Seekonk murmurs, and from every hill Answer aloud the coming waterfalls; Deep-voiced Pawtucket thunders louder still,-- To dark Mooshausick joyously he calls, Who breaks his bondage, and through forests brown Murmurs the hoarse response and rolls his tribute down.
III.
But hark! that sound, above the cataracts And hollow winds in this wild solitude, Seems passing strange.--Who with the laboring axe, On Seekonk’s eastern marge, invades the wood? Stroke follows stroke;--some sturdy hind attacks Yon ancient groves, which from their birth have stood |
65495-0 | Unmarred by steel, and, startled at the sound, The wild deer snuffs the gales,--then, with a bound,
IV.
Vaults o’er the thickets, and down yonder glen His antlers vanish; on yon shaggy height Sits the lone wolf, half-peering from his den, And howls regardless of the morning light; Unwonted sounds and a strange denizen Vex his repose; soon, cowering with affright, He shrinks away, for with a crackling sound, Yon hemlock bows and thunders to the ground.
V.
Who on the prostrate trunk has risen now, And does with cleaving steel the blows renew? Broad is the beaver on his manly brow, His mantle gray, his hosen azure blue; His feet are dripping with dissolving snow, His garments sated with the morning dew;-- Our Founder is he, and, though changed by long And grievous suffering, steadfast still and strong.
VI.
Hard by yon little fountain clear and sheen, Whose swollen streamlet murmurs down the glade, Where groves of hemlock and of cedars green Oppose to northern storms a barricade, Stands the first mansion of his rude demesne, A slender wigwam by red Waban made; Their common shelter from the wintry blast; And place of rest when daily toils are past.
VII.
Yet from the storm he seldom shrinks away, With his own hands he labors now to rear A mansion, where his wife and children may, In happier days, partake the social cheer; And unrelenting bigot ne’er essay To make the free-born spirit quail with fear At threat of scourge, or banishment or death, For free belief, the soul’s sustaining breath.
VIII.
Day after day does he his toil renew; From dawn till dark still doth his axe resound, And falling cedars still the valley strew, Or cumber with their trunks the littered ground; The solid beams and rafters does he hew, Or labors hard to roll or heave them round; Or squares their sides, or shapes the joints aright To match their fellows and the whole unite.
IX.
The beams now hewn, he frames the building square, Each joint adjusting to its counterpart-- Tier over tier with labor does he bear, Timber on timber closes every part, Except where door or lattice to the air A passage yields,--and from the walls now start The rafters, matted over and between,-- Against the storm and cold,--with rushes green.
X.
Long did this task his patient cares engage, ’Twas labor strange to hands like his, I ween, That had far oftener turned the sacred page Than hewed the trunk or delved the grassy green; But toils like these gave honors to the sage; The axe and spade in no one’s hands are mean, And least of all in thine, that toiled to clear The mind’s free march--Illustrious Pioneer!
XI.
His cottage finished, he proceeds to rear A strong rude paling round that verdant glade His field and garden soon will flourish there, And wild marauders may their fruits invade; His maize may be a banquet for the bear, And herds of deer may on his herbage tread; But little thinks he that intruders worse Than these will enter and his labors curse.
XII.
Now milder spring ushers its April showers, And up fair Seekonk woos the southern breeze; The birds are singing in their woodland bowers, Green grows the ground and budding are the trees The purple violets and wild strawberry flowers Invite the visits of the murmuring bees; And down the glade the twittering swallow slips, And in the stream her nimble pinions dips.
XIII.
And now, with vigor and redoubled haste, Our Founder delves to plant the foodful maize; He turns the glebe, does nature’s rankness waste, The boscage burn, and noxious brambles raze; Then o’er the seed, on earth’s brown bosom placed, The fertile mould with careful hand he lays; Nor yet content,--still labors, other whiles, The glade to gladden with a garden’s smiles.
XIV.
Then in the woods he carved the deep alcove, And led the climbing vines from tree to tree; But near the cottage left the birchen grove, Its tassels waving in the breezes free; While o’er the stream their boughs the cedars wove, Where wound a walk adown the murmuring lea; And gadding vines embowered the fount’s bright flow ’Twixt banks of vernal flowers in bloom below.
XV.
Ne’er hatchet touched the overhanging bough, Whereon the robin built her wonted nest; About the borders did the wild rose grow, For there the thrush might soothe her brood to rest; Nor would he banish from her dwelling low The long-eared rabbit, but her young caressed; Fed from his hand they gambolled in the grove, Caressed our Sire in turn, and mimicked human love.
XVI.
And these long toils had Waban’s faithful aid; His twanging bow announced the early dawn; Boldly he pushed into the deepest shade, Or scanned the tracks upon the dewy lawn; With lusty arms he grappled on the glade The growling bear, or caught the bounding fawn, Or, with sure arrow and resounding bow, Brought down the turkey from her lofty bough.
XVII.
Sometimes he would the river’s bed explore, Where with sure grasp the slippery eels he caught; Sometimes he delved along the sandy shore, And to the lodge the shelly tribute brought; And ever shared he with his Sagamore, (For so to call our Founder he was taught,) The produce of his toils; and ’twas his care To parch the maize and spread the frugal fare.
XVIII.
So for a while they two in quietude, With hopes auspicious, urged their task along,-- Lighter of heart; though Williams still would brood, And inly marvel, o’er the missing throng Of friendly Indians, issuing from the wood To greet him with “What-Cheer” in voices strong; And oft would wonder if perchance a vain Illusion had beguiled his troubled brain.
XIX.
But omens dark and dire appeared at last: The grim Pawaw had seen the mansion rise,-- Had from Mooshausick’s highlands often cast On the advancing work his watchful eyes; And often, wafted on the passing blast, Our Sire had heard that wizard’s warning cries:-- Yet hoped that, baffled and chastised, his pride, And courage too, had with his serpent died.
XX.
Vain hope! The close had scarce been made secure, Ere Seekonk’s western marge was blazing bright, And decked with horns, and furs, and paints impure, The prophet with a comrade danced all night Around the flame, and howling, did adjure His manittoo that most abhorred the light To give him aid, and, by or force or fraud, His hated neighbor drive once more abroad.
XXI.
War! war! he threatened:--and when morning came,-- Though quenched the fire,--upon the margin he, All trim for strife, bent his gigantic frame O’er Seekonk’s severing flow, and toward the lea Shook his ensanguined barb and smote the stream, And muttered curses numbering three times three; Then bent his bow, and sent across the flood Darts armed with serpents’ fangs and red with blood.
XXII.
And brandishing his blade, he jeering said, That vengeance gave it eyes and appetite, It soon would eat, but eat in silence dread; That if the red men all were turning white, He’d seek the white men that were turning red; The path was open, and his foot was light; The Shawmut[20] hunters would with greedy ear Hear in what covert couched their stricken deer.
[20] The Indian name for Boston.
XXIII.
Then, with a hideous yell that rent the skies, He sternly turned and tow’rd Mooshausick flew. Waban who watched the scene with blazing eyes, Swift answer gave in shouts of valor true. From threats like these our Sire might harm surmise, But that he deemed the wily wizard knew How heavy was Miantonomi’s spear, And, if ’twere needful, might be made to fear.
XXIV.
But, after this portentous morn, scarce sun Looked on that glade, but brought them fresh alarms; If Waban delved the shores or walked thereon, Missiles around him flew from hidden arms; His snares were plundered ere the morning shone, Clubs smeared with blood and threatening deadly harms Lay in his path, and voices strangely broke From viewless forms on shrub, or tree, or rock.
XXV.
Oft from the vacant air came bitter jeer In gibberish strange, and oft from under ground A hellish mockery smote the hunter’s ear, And he would start; but if he glanced around And Williams saw, he banished every fear; For well he knew his Sachem could confound Such diabolic phantoms,--he who slew, In Potowomet’s glade, the serpent manittoo.
XXVI.
Then taking courage he would seek the brake, Cull the straight haft, and arm it with the bone Or tooth of beaver, and the plumage take From Neyhom wild to wing and guide it on Straight to its mark, or with nice handling make Of sinewy deer the bowstring tough, or hone His glittering scalping-knife, and grimly feel How sharp its point, how keen its edge of steel.
XXVII.
At length, no longer heedful of disguise, Upon the opposing bank the wizard stood, With meet compeer--both armed; their battle cries And challenge fired brave Waban’s martial blood; Scorning all counsel, to the marge he flies, And shoots his arrows o’er the severing flood; To taunts and jeers his bow alone replies, And soon their hostile missiles span the skies.
XXVIII.
From tree to tree the champions fly and fight, Driving or driven from the sheltering screen, Each change, each movement, yielding to the sight Their swarthy members through the foliage green; Whereat their arrows follow, flight on flight, With hideous yells at every pause between; Now down the stream--now at the tumbling falls, The petty battle raves, and wrath to vengeance calls.
XXIX.
Hour after hour thus raged the doubtful fight, Until the combatants their shafts had spent; Then to the river’s marge in peaceful plight, Bearing the pipe with fumes all redolent, The fraudful wizard came, as to invite Across the stream to cheer quite innocent And friendly league a neighbor and a friend; “Come, let the pipe,” he said, “the battle end.
XXX.
“Waban is brave, and Tatoban is brave; Hereafter let us live as neighbors kind, And let thy arrows sleep; no more shall rave This knife and hatchet; Tatoban was blind!” “Go!” Waban cried, “thou and thy dastard slave! Go trap the Neyhom, or the foolish hind; But thinkest thou into thy open snare, To lure the cunning fox, and slay him there?”
XXXI.
Thus closed the strife that day; another came, And all was peace; another sun and still Another rose and set, and still the same Unbroken peace--no threatening sign of ill: Quite undisturbed red Waban trapped his game Or delved the shore--no foe appeared; until Our Sire believed that he might safely bless His weary hours with earth’s best happiness.
XXXII.
Waban, his only counsellor and friend, Warrior and subject in this lone domain, Did now the summons of his chief attend, And, questioned by him, straightway answered plain. “Waban,” said Williams, “do our battles end? Is the war over--have we peace again? No more on yonder bank the prophet stands And wings his darts or whirls his blazing brands.”
XXXIII.
Waban replied, “Did ever noon-day light On midnight break? Did ever tempest shed, Just as it gathered, radiance mild and bright? Heard not my Sachem what the prophet said,-- That if the red men were all turning white, He’d seek such white men as were turning red? Perchance he goes, and Waban has a fear That to his cunning speech they’ll lend an ear.”
XXXIV.
“Waban, fear not; my pale-faced brethren are All Christians, or at least would such be thought; And dost thou think that Beelzebub, how fair Soe’er his speech may be, could move them aught Against their brother? It is better far,-- If it be true such vengeance he have sought,-- Than that he lurk among the bushes here, To fill our days with care and nights with fear.
XXXV.
“But, Waban, I have now a task for thee;-- Think not of him; but let thy mind be here. Whilst snows o’erspread the earth and ice the sea, I parted from my wife and children dear; ’Twas stormy night, the hunter sheltered me, And gave me in his lodge abundant cheer; Then tow’rd the rising sun for me he sped, And saw the home from which the wanderer fled.
XXXVI.
“There too he saw his little children play, And the white hand which gave the blanket red; But now that gloomy time seems far away, For much has happened, many a moon has sped; The lodge is built, the garden smiling gay;-- Will the swift foot once more the forest thread, And guide the children and the snow-white hand, With watchful tendance, to this distant land?”
XXXVII.
Waban replied: “The nimble-foot will go;-- But a gaunt wolf may haunt the hunter’s way, And he will whet his darts, and string his bow, And gird his loins as for the battle fray; The Priest of Chepian ne’er forgets a foe;-- His vengeance lasts until a bloody day Doth feed the crows, or still a bloodier night Gives the gaunt wolf a feast ere dawning light.”
XXXVIII.
“God is our trust!” our pious Founder said, “Arm, and go forth confiding in his might; So far as e’er an exile’s foot dare tread The ground forbidden him, thy sachem white Will go to meet thee; and when morn has shed Five times from eastern skies her golden light, Will wait thee and his wife and children dear, Hidden in Salem woods till thou appear.”
XXXIX.
Our Founder then the brief epistle traced, Entreating first that some kind Salem friend, To aid his little Israel through the waste, Would for a while two well-trained palfreys lend; Then to his wife, with kind expression graced, Did meet directions for her guidance send; Called her from Egypt, bade her cheerly dare The desert pass, and find her Canaan there.
XL.
The morrow dawned, and Waban stood prepared; His knife well sharpened and his bow well strung-- He waited only till his chief declared His purpose full; then on his mantle flung, Girded his loins, his brawny arms he bared, And lightly through the rattling thickets sprung; And soon the thunderings of the partridge tell Where bounds his distant foot from dell to dell.
CANTO SEVENTH.
[SCENES. Seekonk’s Mead--The Wilderness--Salem--The Wilderness--The Night at the Cavern--The New Home.]
Much Williams dreaded that dark priest, I ween, Albeit he hid his fears from Waban’s eyes; His threat’ning arrows and his savage mien Would often now in midnight dreams arise; And, rising, bring of blood a woful scene-- His Mary pale--his children’s wailing cries; And he would start, and marvel how a dream, Delirium’s thought, should so substantial seem.
II.
If in the lonely wilds, by evening dim, That vengeful savage should the path waylay Of all the dearest earth contained for him, Those jewels of the heart, what power could stay His thirst for blood--his fury wild and grim As is the tiger’s bounding on his prey? Oft came obtrusive this appalling thought-- He shook it off--still it returned unsought.
III.
Not long he brooks this torturing delay, But soon tow’rd Salem through the forest goes, Nor will the Muse go with him on his way, And sing in horrid shades each night’s repose, Until she, shuddering, mingle with her lay, And seem herself to bear her hero’s woes; Let it suffice that on the third day’s dawn, He gazed from Salem woods on Salem town.
IV.
He saw the cottage he must tread no more, And sighed that man should be so stern to man; Two harnessed palfreys stood beside the door, And by the windows busy movement ran; Then did his eyes the village downs explore, Ere yet the labors of the day began; But all still slept, save where the watch-dog bayed, Or lowed the kine and cropt the dewy glade.
V.
And many a field new traces of the plough, And many a roof its recent structure showed, And in the harbor many a sable prow, Rocked by the billows, at her anchor rode; And, ah! he saw (to him no temple now) The lowly house where erst in prayer he bowed, And strove to lead his little flock to Heaven; His flock no more,--with strifes now sorely riven.
VI.
He turned his eyes again to that dear spot Where, by the door, the waiting palfreys stood: There, laden now, they bore what Mary thought The tender exiles, in the lonely wood, Would need or miss the most, and likewise aught That would most cheer or comfort their abode; With useful household wares, securely piled, But cumbersome for journeying through the wild.
VII.
He saw red Waban take each palfrey’s rein, And slowly walk the laden beasts before; He saw his Mary, with her little train Of blooming children, issue from the door; He saw her loving neighbors them detain The Almighty’s blessing on them to implore, And heard the farewell hymn, a pensive strain Of mingled voices as they trod the plain.
VIII.
Pleasant it was, and mournful was it too, To see the matron leading by the hand, From all their joys to toils and dangers new, That innocent and happy infant band; For, hand in hand, did they their way pursue, With childish wonder, toward the distant land;-- As little witting of the ills that wait, As that their labors were to found a State.
IX.
Soon Waban passed him where concealed he stood, And slowly led his docile charge along; Then Mary stept into the dusky wood, Still guiding, as she came, the prattling throng; No longer viewless he his darlings viewed, But, wild with rapture, from the thicket sprung: “Oh, father! father!” burst the children’s cry, And Mary claspt him in her ecstacy.
X.
But short the transport--soon must they resume The weary march, and from the dawning gray Hour after hour, to pensive evening’s gloom, Through the lone forest wend their devious way; O’er river, vale, and steep, through brake and broom, And rough ravine, with aching steps they stray; The father’s arms oft bore the lovely weight, Or on the palfrey’s back the weariest sate.
XI.
And thus they past o’er many a rapid flow, Climbed many a hill--through many a valley wound, While wary Waban moved before them slow, And for their feet the smoothest pathway found; River and fen and miry waste and low, The floods had swollen to their utmost bound; Unbridged by frost, no passage do they show, And far about the anxious wanderers go.
XII.
The sun from middle skies now downward bent His course, and for a while on lofty ground They rested, and abroad their glances sent Far o’er the sea of forest that embrowned The landscape. The overarching firmament, The woody waste enclaspt with azure round, And yon bright sun, yon eagle soaring high, And yon lone wigwam’s smoke, are all that cheer the eye.
XIII.
At times the eagle’s scream trills from on high, At times the pecker taps the mouldering bough, Or the far raven wakes her boding cry,-- All else is hushed the vast expanses through: And, ah! they feel in the immensity Of pathless wilds, around them and below, As in mid-ocean feels some shipwrecked crew, Borne wandering onward in the frail canoe.
XIV.
And something was there in red Waban’s mien, Which all the morn had drawn our Founder’s eyes; For still he spake not, and was often seen To bend his ear, or start as with surprise; And now he stood, and, through the thicket’s screen, The shadowy prospect seemed to scrutinize, Then paused, unmoving, till a far-off howl Did, with long echoes, through the stillness roll.
XV.
It seemed a wolf’s, but Waban’s practised ear Could well the language of the forest tell; Again he paused, till from the distance drear, A faint response in dying cadence fell; Then spake in haste;--“Does not my sachem hear The voice of vengeance in the breezes swell? Come! Let us hasten to some friendly town, For murder tracks us through the forest brown!
XVI.
“Comrade to comrade calls!--the demon’s priest Is on our trail!”--No more the red man spoke; And this in Narraganset’s tongue exprest, To Mary nothing told, save as the look And earnest gesture may have stirred her breast With vague alarm.--But these she soon mistook As native to him in his wonted mood, And seemed confirmed as she our Founder viewed.
XVII.
He, in like speech, thus to his faithful guide:-- “Waban, be calm! wake not in bosoms frail A groundless fear; the tokens may have lied; Some other wolf may be upon our trail.” “Waban was hunted,” quickly he replied, “Far tow’rd the white man’s town through yonder vale; When there, the priest oft in his pathway stept, And watched the wigwam where the white hand slept.”
XVIII.
Sire Williams shuddered thus to realize What he had hoped was but his fancy’s fear; But yet he quelled each symptom of surprise, And thus to Waban: “Brother, be your ear Quick as the beaver’s, and your searching eyes Like to the eagle’s, and, the foeman near, Be your heart bolder than the panther’s, when He slays the growling bear and drags him to his den.”
XIX.
They left the steep, and, o’er the woodland plain, Passed with all speed the tender group could make; They ford the rivers, and their course maintain Through ancient groves, where, bare of broom and brake, The lurking foe might scant concealment gain; Waban still moved before, and nothing spake; His rapid glance scanned every thicket near, And when he paused he bent the listening ear.
XX.
Hour after hour the hunter thus did go, His eyes still roving and his ears still spread; His was a spectre’s glide;--but toiling slow, The lagging group pursued with faltering tread. At last he paused beneath a birchen bough, Where the dense alders formed a barricade, And there awaited them.--With anxious breast Williams approached, and thus his guide addrest:
XXI.
“Sees not my brother that the shadows grow Fast tow’rd the east, and that the forest brown Soon hides the sun?--then whither does he go To rest in safety till the morrow’s dawn.” Waban replied, “O’er yonder distant brow, Smokes in the vale Neponset’s peopled town; Thy red friends there will thee in safety keep, There may the white hand and the children sleep.”
XXII.
As thus he spake, across their pathway sped The startled partridge on her whirring wings; An arrow glanced--it grazed the hunter’s head, And the shrill forest with the bowstring rings; Red Waban’s eyes flash fire, and anger dread Flames in his blood, and every muscle strings; He stooped to mark where twanged that hostile bow, Then sprang from tree to tree, to reach the foe.
XXIII.
But ere he gained the purposed point, or viewed The fell assassin, the dry fagots’ crash, The waving coppice, and re-echoing wood, And sounding footfalls down the brakes that dash, Told him how vainly he his foe pursued, Or that pursuit were dangerously rash; And turning slowly he retraced his track, As his foiled leap the lion measures back.
XXIV.
The matron trembled, at the scene dismayed, For she had marked that hostile arrow’s flight, And Williams’ glance, and Waban’s mien betrayed That instant peril did their fears excite; And yet no frantic shrieks her acts degrade; A mother’s cares did every thought invite; And o’er the little scions of her blood She stretched her arms’ frail fence, and trembling stood.
XXV.
Calmer in bearing but with equal dread, The anxious father viewed the threatening harm; And, under God, what was there now to aid, Save his own firmness and red Waban’s arm? Behind--before--a dreary forest spread; Far was Neponset; here the dire alarm Of lurking savage; whilst the gathering night Still added horror to a dubious flight.
XXVI.
He paused a moment, and his means forlorn, To guard the onward march, he thus arrayed: The palfreys shielded by the burdens borne, On either side the moving group, were led, This by himself, that by his eldest born, Whilst nimble Waban scoured the threatening shade, And, keeping wary watch where’er he ran, Now fenced their flanks, now pioneered their van.
XXVII.
Like as the eagle,--when, from airy rest She wards her callow young with watchful eye, And sees the thickets move, by footsteps prest Within the precinct of her nursery,-- Wheels first on outstretched pinions round her nest, Searching below, then darts into the sky For far espial,--gathering every sound,-- And soars aloft or sails along the ground;
XXVIII.
So Waban watched and ran, while, moving slow, The anxious father aids the group along. In dreadful silence sleeps the forest now, Hushed is the prattling of each infant’s tongue; No sound is there, save that of footsteps low, Or of the breeze that sighs the leaves among, Or palfrey’s tramp--whose hoofs, with iron shod, Now clink on rocks, now deaden on the sod.
XXIX.
The sun at last sunk in the western shade, And the thick forest cast a darker frown, And now they paused amid an open glade, More than a bow-shot from the thickets brown; Then Father Williams to the hunter said, “Where! where! O Waban, is Neponset’s town?” And Waban answered, “Full one-half a sleep This march requires to bring us to its steep.”
XXX.
“Then here we rest, to take whate’er may come,” Our Founder said, “and do you all prepare To tread the realms that lie beyond the tomb; There are no foes or persecutors there, To drive the guiltless forth, and bid them roam In savage wilds; yet do not quite despair; When comes the foe,--and come he doubtless will, Brother! we must be firm--if needful, we must kill!”
XXXI.
“Waban is firm,” the hunter said, and smote His naked breast, and raised his stature high; “Yet hear the red man still;--not far remote Is Waban’s rock, where he is wont to lie When the far-striding moose has tired his foot, And night comes down, and tempests rule the sky; There may we rest; the foe’s approach is hard But by one pass, and that will Waban guard.”
XXXII.
The place they sought;--’twas down a rocky dell, Where scarce the palfreys found a footing sure, Where deeper darkness from the forest fell, And thicker boscage did the pass immure; At last, before them, like a citadel, Rose a tall rock, whose frowning frontals lower Over a narrow lea, with brambles dense On either side like an impervious fence.
XXXIII.
“Here,” said the red man, (as he raised a mass Of vines that clustered down the rock’s descent,) “Here’s Waban’s cavern, here is ample space For thee and thine; in this rude tenement Ten hunters oft have found their biding place, Nor in it felt themselves too closely pent; Waban will now below the opening raise, In yon dry fagots’ heap, the mounting blaze.”
XXXIV.
“Stay! stay!” said Williams, “wouldst thou lure the foe? Wouldst start the flame to tell him where we sleep?” The hunter smiled: “My Sachem does not know How true the foe will to our footsteps keep; He hears, perchance, e’en now our accents low, Or marks us from some tree on yonder steep; Waban will wake the fire; ’twill serve to show His posture, numbers, and will aid our blow.”
XXXV.
Williams assented; and while Waban fired The arid fagots, he the burdens took From off the palfreys, that, o’erwrought and tired, Now stretched their toil-worn limbs and stoutly shook Their liberated frames, and fuller breath respired, And quiet grazed the lea. Then to the rock The father hastened with a blazing brand; His wife and children, linking hand in hand,
XXXVI.
Followed his steps. It was a cavern rude, Its floor a level rock, its vaulted roof Of granite masses formed, whose arches stood More firmly for the weight they propped aloof;-- And here and there upon the floor were strewed Extinguished brands, which, with like signs, gave proof That men had dwelt there;--then, through screening vines Sire Williams glances out and marks where shines,
XXXVII.
Full on red Waban’s face, the mounting blaze. Though half a bow-shot from the cavern he Stands at the fire, yet its bright sheen displays His hue and shape, and then could Williams see How well the hunter judged thus far to raise The burning pyre; no passage could there be For hostile foot, save by that glittering flame, Which well would light the arrow’s certain aim.
XXXVIII.
Such furniture, as for their strongest need The wretched exiles had themselves supplied, Was to the cave now brought, with bread to feed The little children clustering by the side Of their fond parents.--Then did thanks succeed To God who deigned such comforts to provide, And earnest prayers that His protecting might Would shield them through the dangers of the night.
XXXIX.
With trembling haste a slight repast they took, And to their several places then repaired; The mother sate deep in the rocky nook Beside her children, and their pallet shared; Red Waban sate upon a jutting rock, Hard by the cavern’s mouth, the pass to guard; While at the entrance, Williams listening stood, Screened by the vines, and every passage viewed.
XL.
Deep night came down o’er forest, vale and hill-- The dismal hootings of the darkling owl, The melancholy notes of Whip-poor-will, And the lone wolf’s far distant long-drawn howl, Answered at times by panther screaming shrill, Such hideous echoes through the forest roll, That Mary shudders, and, from transient sleep, The infants starting up for terror weep.
XLI.
But Williams listened with accustomed ear, The dread of man alone disturbed his breast; Hour after hour, unmarked by danger near, The pass he watches for the savage priest, And still, with eyes turned tow’rd the flame, doth hear Whatever steps the rustling leaves molest; And oft he thought that through the brake he saw The waving fox-tail of the grim Pawaw.
XLII.
At last within the hollow forest rose Strange sounds that were unmeaning to his ear;-- As if there human hands were breaking boughs Green with the verdure of the new-born year; Crash follows crash.--“Are these approaching foes? Do one or more their march thus pioneer?” No answer Waban made, but seemed to shrink Among the vines along the rock’s dark brink.
XLIII.
A moment more, and, bounding o’er the hedge, A monster trotted tow’rd the mounting flame; Then turned and bayed;--’twere doubtful to allege Dog, fox, or wolf, his aspect best became; Still did he howl, with still increasing rage; And Waban rose and gave his arrow aim, But ere its flight, a whistled signal rang; The hybrid turned, and to the forest sprang.
XLIV.
“The fell Pawaw! his dog!” red Waban cried, In tone suppressed, and hid himself again; And Williams feared he had too much relied Upon the courage of that dusky man; He took the hatchet from the hunter’s side, And dropt the feebler bludgeon from his span; “Thy sachem,” said he, “will himself essay To aid his warrior in the approaching fray.”
XLV.
“’Tis good!” said Waban, “so red sachems do-- But there! behold! behold! They come! They come!” And Williams looked, and there, the thickets through, Half in the light, half in the changeful gloom, The forest boughs seemed moving out to view, Branch heaped on branch, a weight most cumbersome For human feet, yet human feet, he knew, That burden bore, and with it dangers new.
XLVI.
Straight to the blaze they moved, and, dashing down The leafy branches on the mounting flame, Put out the light, and smoke and shadow brown, In total darkness, all the glade o’ercame; The mother shrieked; the father, with a groan, Heard the wild cry, and stayed her sinking frame; And both now felt that, with that smothered ray, The last faint trembling hope had died away.
XLVII.
A fearful growl, close to the cavern’s vent, First broke the thrall of horror and surprise; And, by the gleam the smouldering embers sent, That canine hybrid, shooting from his eyes A baleful glare, crouched seemingly intent On the scared infants as his famine’s prize; The father drove the hatchet to his brains, One yell he gave, and writhed in dying pains.
XLVIII.
Seeking the cavern’s mouth along the rock, Some groping hand the vine’s thick foliage stirred; “Where art thou Waban!” and the war-whoop broke; Palsied with fear the trembling mother heard; “Where art thou, Waban!” and, with horrid look, A giant savage through the foliage stared; But, at that moment, from his rocky mound Twanged Waban’s bow with sudden sharpest sound.
XLIX.
Back reeled the savage with a dismal howl, And on the earth like stricken bullock fell. But still new terrors filled the father’s soul; He heard another and more fearful yell; Across the glade a new assailant stole; The blaze reviving showed his movements well; And Williams sprang his warrior to sustain, Just as he strained the yielding bow again.
L.
But as he drew the arrow to the head, The cord snapt short; he dashed the weapon down, And leaping from the rock upon the glade, With glittering scalping-knife and haughty frown, Before the assailant stood, who paused, surveyed,-- Measuring the hunter’s height from heel to crown,-- Then, swift as thought, the vengeful hatchet sent; At Waban’s head the well-aimed weapon went.
LI.
But well the wary hunter knew his foe And read his murderous purpose in his eye; He marked the coming steel, and, bending low, Let it pass on and cleave the air on high; Behind him rings the cliff with shivering blow, And far around its scattered atoms fly; Then with wild yells they wave the scalping-knife, Together rush, and thrust and strike for life.
LII.
O! ’twas a fearful scene--a moment dire; For on the issue of that contest lay The lives of infants, mother, and of sire, And the fair fame that crowns a distant day. Soon closed the champions by the glimmering fire, Limbs locked in limbs in terrible affray; They writhe--they wrench--they stagger to and fro, Hands grasping hands that aim the fatal blow.
LIII.
Now struggling by the flames they past from sight, For Williams lingered yet to guard the cave; And there, enveloped in a deeper night, With fiercer fury did the contest rave;-- The blow, the wrench, the pantings of the fight, The crash of branches and of thickets gave A dreadful note of every effort made, Where life sought life within that shuddering shade.
LIV.
The mother sank beside the father, pale And scared; the children her affright partook; At times they raised the sympathetic wail; At times with breathless terror mutely shook. Williams peered out along the kindling vale; No sign of other foe there met his look; Then with a word that quick return presaged, He rushed tow’rd where the doubtful contest raged.
LV.
He passed the flame and paused--for on his ear There came, with one loud crash, a heavy sound; He listens still; and silence, sudden, drear, Reigns o’er the glade, and through the gloom profound. Who is the victim? Evil-boding fear Tells him that Waban gasps upon the ground; One bubbling groan, as if the life-blood gushed; A shuddering struggle then--and all was hushed.
LVI.
In dire suspense the anxious father stood, Yet did he still unmanly terrors quell; His hand, yet innocent of human blood, Now grasped the axe to meet the victor fell; When from beneath the arches of the wood, Rang the far-trembling, death-announcing yell, So like a demon’s issuing from his pit-- Who but that savage could the sound emit?
LVII.
Then moving slowly in the gloomy wood, Doubtful and darkling through the ghostly shade, A form approached, and as it onward trod, Appeared distinct upon the open glade; ’Twas Waban!--Waban bathed in hostile blood; And by the lock he held a trunkless head. He stooped beside the mounting blaze to shew, Still more distinct, his trophy to the view.
LVIII.
With lips still quivering, and with eyes unglazed, The reeking fragment seemed as living still; Fierce on the horrid thing the victor gazed, The battle’s wrath did still his bosom fill; His eyes looked fire, another yell he raised, That rang rebellowing from hill to hill; Then, by the long dark lock swung from the ground, He whirled on high the ghastly ball around.
LIX.
Around--around--still gathering force it went; Still on his sinews strained the whirling head, Till cleaving from the skull the scalp was rent, And through the air the ponderous body sped; Deep in the hollow woods its force was spent, Thrice bounding from the ground, then falling dead;-- He turned and spoke: “No more the babes shall weep! The grim Pawaw now sleeps! and Waban now can sleep!”
LX.
They passed the turf, as they the cavern sought, Where fell the body of the earliest slain;-- Said Waban, as he paused beside the spot, “The black Priest’s comrade never wakes again;” Then seized the body roughly by the foot, And dragged it, bleeding yet, along the plain Straight to the rocky steep, and o’er it dashed; It dropped in night; re-echoing thickets crashed.
LXI.
Then the rude victor washed the stains away, Cast him on earth, and soon deep slumber showed How lightly in his rugged bosom lay The horrid memory of that scene of blood;-- But Williams watched until the dawning gray, And Mary’s fitful sleep the scenes renewed, While the young dreamers in her circling arms, Oft shrieked and sobbed in slumber’s vain alarms.
LXII.
The morning dawns, and they their march resume; No perils now annoy their toilsome way; The night came down, and with its sober gloom Brought quiet sleep until the morning’s ray; Again they rose, and gained their joyous home On Seekonk’s marge, just at the close of day; And Him they blessed, who had in safety led Them through dire perils, to their humble shed.
CANTO EIGHTH.
[SCENE. The New Home in Seekonk’s Mead.]
Through Seekonk’s groves the morning sun once more Flames in his glory. Waving verdant gold, The boundless forest stands. Wild songsters pour, From every dewy glade and tufted wold, The melody of joy. From shore to shore The tranquil waters dream, and soul-like hold A mirrored world below of softest hue, With underhanging vault of cloudless blue.
II.
And Williams issued from his humble cot, Not as of late in solitary mood, With cheerless heart and ill-foreboding thought, But with light step and breast of quietude; And by him came the partner of his lot, And their young children, with blithe interlude Of prattling speech, softening the graver talk Of the fond parents in their morning walk.
III.
In sooth his buoyant spirits seemed to spread O’er all about him their enlivening flush; Ne’er was the grass so verdant on the glade, Ne’er did the fountain sparkle with such gush; Ne’er had the stream such lovely music made, Ne’er sang so blithe the robin on the bush; The woodland flowers far brighter hues displayed, More sunny was the lawn, more dark the shade.
IV.
They walked and talked; he told his trials o’er; And often Mary brushed aside the tear, And oft they joined to thank kind Heaven once more, That thus his sufferings were rewarded here; Then they would sit beneath the fountain’s bower, And woo the breeze, or smiling bend the ear To childly mirth, which, in its silver tone, Soothed the rude wilds with music erst unknown.
V.
And all was happiness,--security In blest seclusion. The rude storm seemed past, The bow of promise spanned their life’s new sky; No threatening cloud their prospects overcast,-- No shadow lowered; but Heaven with gracious eye Looked smiling down and blest their toils at last. Their Salem friends to join them soon will try,-- That they’re not here is all that brings a sigh.
VI.
Thus for a time did they anticipate The bliss which Heaven for pilgrims has in store, When their freed souls review their former state, And bygone pains enhance their joys the more; But yet one lingering fear of frowning fate, Our Founder’s bosom lightly brooded o’er-- No Indian throng, as promised by the seer, Had bid them welcome with Whatcheer! Whatcheer!
VII.
But let it pass;--perchance it was a dream; His thoughts seemed wandering or disturbed at best, When stood or seemed to stand, in doubtful gleam, That form scarce earthly, and his ears addrest;-- Ay, let it pass--for ill would it beseem So staid a man to be at all deprest By visionary fears or superstitious dread, Whilst Heaven is showering mercies on his head.
VIII.
“Waban,” he said, “a generous feast prepare, We can be cheerful, and yet not be mad; The good man’s smiles may be a praise or prayer; The wicked only should be very sad. God feeds the birds, my Mary, in the air,-- Hear how they thank Him with their voices glad. The heart of man should nearer kindred own, Joy in his smiles and sorrow in his frown.”
IX.
Then forth fared Waban to the winding shore, And quickly laid its shelly treasure bare, Nor failed the woody dingles to explore, And trap the partridge or the nimble hare; And soon beneath a beech, beside the door, On marshalled stones the blazing fagots are; And when with heat the pristine oven glows, Waban his tribute gives, and covers close.
X.
Meanwhile our Founder went from place to place, And did each plan of village grandeur name; This rising mound the future church should grace, Yon little dell the village school should claim; That sloping lawn the council hall should base, Where freemen’s voices should the law proclaim, And ne’er to bigot yield the civil rod, But save the Church by leaving her to God.
XI.
So pass the hours, till westward through the skies The sun begins to turn, and, savory grown, From Waban’s ready feast the vapors rise; The group beneath the beech then sit them down; “Thou kind and generous man,” our Founder cries, “Our brave defender! thy complexion brown Bars not thy presence;--sit thou at the board,-- Of these bright lands God made thy kind the lord.
XII.
“My valliant warrior like a Keenomp fought, And Chepian’s priest before his valor fell! But his white Sachem in the battle wrought Too little for a chief he loves so well.” “The dog--the dog! that had the children caught,” Exclaimed the red man, “does his valor tell; A manit-dog he was, for well he knew Whate’er the priest of Chepian bade him do.
XIII.
“The priest of Chepian and his comrade came To fight the white man and his warrior brave; The fox-eared demon sought for other game, And went to filch it from the rocky cave; My Sachem white a manittoo o’ercame, To demon dark a fatal wound he gave; Brave is my Sachem, for he nobly slew What Waban dreaded most,--that fearful manittoo!”
XIV.
“Brother,” said Williams, “under Power Divine, That shields the just man in dark peril’s hour, Thine was the victory, and the glory thine To quell Apollyon’s priest--a demon’s power! Henceforth the demon must his lands resign, And thou must be Mooshausick’s Sagamore, The right of conquest will do very well, When Hell assails us, and we conquer Hell.
XV.
“But might the choice of either blameless go, Mary! these fruits of suffering and of toils, And racking cares through fourteen weeks of woe, I’d prize far higher than the reeking spoils Of all the nations laid by Cæsar low, When he, the victor in Rome’s civil broils, Sate, like the Jove he worshipped, o’er a world Whose crowns were offered, and whose incense curled.
XVI.
“And there is cause, I trow.--Who cannot see That a dark cloud o’er our New England lowers? The tender conscience struggles to be free; The tyrant struggles, and retains his powers. O, whither shall the hapless victims flee, Where be their shelter when the tempest roars? May it be here--may it be Heaven’s decree, To make its builder of a worm like me.”
XVII.
While thus he spake, the neighboring thickets shook, And from them issued one of mien austere; And Williams knew a Plymouth elder’s look, In doctrines stern--in practice most severe; His gait was slow, and loath he seemed to brook Such signs of comfort and of earthly cheer; And up he came, they scarce could reason why, Like a dark cloud along a cheerful sky.
XVIII.
The gloom that gathered o’er our Father’s breast, He strove with heavy effort to dispel; “Elder!” he said, “thou art an honored guest; To see our ancient friends should please us well; Thy journey long must give the banquet zest; Come and partake our sylvan meal, and tell The while what word or tidings thou mayst bear From Plymouth’s rulers and our brethren there.”
XIX.
“Williams,” he said, “I need no food of thine-- The wilds I thread not without store my own; But I would fain beneath that roof recline To-night, and rest my limbs till morn be shown;-- And there this eve some reasoning, I opine, (For all may err,) a weighty theme upon, May not be deemed amiss.--Perchance a light Will on thee break and set thy feet aright.”
XX.
“Elder, whatever themes,” our Founder said, “My scant attainments fit me to essay, Shall not avoidance have from any dread That thy strict logic may my faults betray; That ‘all may err,’ means that our friends have strayed, And not that we have wandered from the way; It is a maxim to perversion grown, And points to others’ faults to hide our own.
XXI.
“But as my Plymouth visitor requests, We’ll seek that cottage; I have called it mine, These hands have built it; but all friendly guests May call it theirs, and, Elder, it is thine While thou sojournest here. Whoever rests Beneath its roof may not expect a fine, A dungeon, scourge, or even banishment, For heresy avowed, or doubted sentiment.”
XXII.
They sought the cottage.--Its apartments rude, But still a shelter from the cold and heat, A cheerful fire and fur-clad settles shewed, And other comforts, simple, plain, and neat. The Elder paused, and all the mansion viewed, Then, with a long-drawn sigh, he took his seat, And briefly added--“Thou hast labored, friend, Hard--very hard! I hope for worthy end.”
XXIII.
He paused again, then solemnly began A sad relation of the Church’s state; O’er many a schism and false doctrine ran, That had obtruded on its peace of late; But most alarming was our Founder’s plan, To leave things sacred to the free debate; To make faith bow to erring reason’s shrine, And mortal man a judge of creeds divine.
XXIV.
“This simple truth no Christian man denies,” He thus continued, “that the natural mind Is prone to evil as the sparks to rise, And to the good is obstinately blind; Who then sees not, that looks with wisdom’s eyes, That God’s elect should rule the human kind? The good should govern, and the bad submit, And saints alone are for dominion fit?”
XXV.
Our Founder answered, “Art thou from the pit? Get thee behind me, if such thoughts be thine; Did Christ his gospel to the world commit, That his meek followers might in purple shine? He spurned the foul temptation, it is writ, And the Great Tempter felt his power divine; Art thou far wiser than thy Master grown, And spurn’st a heavenly for an earthly crown?”
XXVI.
“Nay--nay, friend Williams!” the grave elder cried, “It is that crown of glory to secure That the True Church should for her saints provide The shield of law ’gainst heresy impure; Quell every schism--crush the towering pride Of the dark Tempter, ere his reign is sure; For many finds he who are servants meet To sow for him the tares among the wheat.
XXVII.
“Men ever busy, searching for the new, Scanning our creed as if it doubtful were, These would we hold perforce our doctrines to, And the vain labor to convert them spare; God may in time their restless souls renew, And give them of his grace a saving share;-- Meanwhile our Church their errors would restrain, And to her creed their wayward minds enchain.”
XXVIII.
“A mortal thou!” our Founder here replied, “Yet judge of conscience,--searcher of the heart Thou, the elect?--but if it be denied, How wilt thou prove it, or its proofs impart? God gave to man that bright angelic guide, A reasoning soul, his being’s better part;-- He gave her freedom; but thou wouldst confine And cramp her action to that creed of thine.
XXIX.
“Who binds the soul extends the reign of hell; She’s formed to err, but, erring, truth to find; Pity her wanderings, but, O never quell The bold aspirings of this angel blind! God is her strength within, and bids her spell, By outward promptings, the eternal Mind: Long may she wander still in quest of light, But day will dawn at last upon a polar night.”
XXX.
“A dangerous tenet that!” the Elder said; “A fallen angel doubtless she may be; If truth she find by natural reason’s aid, It ever leads her to some heresy; Indeed, the truth too often is betrayed To minds ill-fitted for inquiry free; From bad to worse, from worse to worst we go, And end our being in eternal woe.
XXXI.
“Nature’s own truths do oft the mind mislead; From partial glimpses men will judge the whole; And it were better if our Church’s creed Were learning’s object and its utmost goal; Reason would then no higher purpose need, Than, by it, point the yet erratic soul To her high hope and everlasting rest!” Williams this heard, and spake with kindling breast:
XXXII.
“God gave man reason, that his soul might be Free as his glance that spans the universe; All things around him prompt inquiry free, All do his reason to research coerce; The Heavens, the Earth, the many breeding sea, All have their shapes and qualities to nurse The soul’s aspirings, and, from blooming youth To ripe old age, provoke the quest of truth.
XXXIII.
“Truth! I would know thee wert thou e’er so bad, Bad as thy persecutors deem or fear, Wert thou in more than Gorgon terrors clad, Thy glance a death to every feeling dear; Taught thou that God a demon’s passions had, That Earth is Hell, and that the damned dwell here, And death the end of all;--still would I know The total Curse--the sum of being’s woe.
XXXIV.
“Yet fear not this, for each new truth reveals Of God a nearer and a brighter view; Anticipation lags behind, and feels How mean her thought at each discovery new; Her stars were stones fired in revolving wheels-- Truth! thine are worlds self-moved the boundless through Who checks man’s Reason in her heavenward flight, Would shroud, O God! thy glorious works in night!
XXXV.
“Whence didst thou learn that the Almighty’s plan Required thy wisdom to protect and save, That, when he sent his Gospel down to man, Thou to defend it must the soul enslave, Enthrone deceit, and place beneath its ban The honest heart, that dares its sentence brave? Full well I trow the Prince of Darkness fits The blood of martyrs shed by hypocrites.
XXXVI.
“Hearken for once; just as the conscience pure Is here God’s presence to my wayward will-- Not to constrain it, but to kindly lure It on by duty’s path, from every ill; So to the State the Christian Church, secure From human thrall, should be a conscience, still Ne’er to constrain, save by that heavenly light Which bares the Wrong, and maketh plain the Right.”
XXXVII.
“No more, friend Williams,” said the Elder here, “No more will we on this grave theme delay; My hopes were high, and ’twas an object dear To shed some light on thy benighted way; But still wilt thou with sinful purpose steer Thy little bark against the tempest’s sway; On mayst thou go--I cannot say God speed! But would thy object were some better deed.
XXXVIII.
“Couldst thou renounce thy purpose here to base A State where heretics may refuge find, I do not doubt that to some little grace The Plymouth rulers would be well inclined; But as it is, perhaps some other place, Still more remote, may better suit thy mind; But till the morn as may a guest befit, My message hither do I pretermit.”
XXXIX.
Our Founder pondered on the Elder’s word; What could this dark portentous message be, With its delivery until morn deferred, Lest it should mar night’s hospitality. The wrath of Plymouth he had not incurred, He with her Winslow was in amity; Then what strange message had the Elder borne, That utterance sought, and yet was hushed till morn!
XL.
This cause, mysterious, darkling, undefined, Did by degrees each cheerful thought efface, And poured portentous glooms along his mind, That seemed reflected by each friendly face; The matron sighed, and childhood disinclined To mirth or sport, sought slumber’s soft embrace, And soon the gathered night did all dispose, To shun their boding thoughts in dull repose.
XLI.
Morn comes again;--the inmates of the cot Rise from scant slumber, and their guest they greet; “Williams,” he said, “it is my thankless lot, Thee with no pleasant message now to meet; Nor hath our Winslow in his charge forgot (For his behest I bear and words repeat) His former friendship, but right loth is he To vex his neighbors by obliging thee.
XLII.
“In short, thou art on Plymouth’s own domain; Beyond the Seekonk is the forest free,-- This must thou leave, but there thou mayst maintain Thy State unharmed, and still our neighbor be; Fain had I spared thee this deep searching pain, By showing thee thy dangerous heresy; It may not be; hence, therefore, must thou speed; The Narragansets may protect thy creed.”
XLIII.
To breathless statues turned the listeners stood, Silent as marble and as cold and pale; With vacant gaze our Sire the Elder viewed, O’erwhelmed, confounded by this sudden bale; As when some swain, deep in the sheltering wood, Ere he has seen the tempest on the gale, Marks the bright flash; the smitten senses reel; He stands confounded ere he learns to feel.
XLIV.
At length reviving from the stunning shock, His thoughts returning in a broken train, Our Founder thus the speechless stupor broke:-- “I to my ancient friend may yet explain; Just is my title here; the lands I took Are part of Massasoit’s wide domain, And fairly purchased; mine they dearly are; Make this but known, and Plymouth must forbear.”
XLV.
“And didst thou think,” the Elder cried, “to win Of Pagan chief a title here secure? Why not derive it from that man of sin At papal Rome,--the Antichrist impure? Our Church of Truth, against the Heathen thin, Asserts her Canaan, and will make it sure. Thy purchase feigned was by the Prophet shown To Dudley, and by him to us made known.”
XLVI.
“My purchase feigned!” our Founder quickly cried-- “God made that Pagan, and to Him He gave Breath of this air, drink from yon crystal tide, Food from these forest lawns and yonder wave: Yea, He ordained this region, far and wide, To be his home in life, in death his grave. Is thy claim better? Canst thou trace thy right From one superior to the God of might?”
XLVII.
The Elder answered: “Thinkest thou this land For demons foul and their red votaries made? Did not Jehovah, with his own right hand, Tempest for Israel when the Heathen fled? Does Plymouth’s Church less in his favor stand? Or spares he devils for the savage red? As to our title, then, we trace it thus: God gave James Stuart this, and James gave us.”
XLVIII.
“God gave James Stuart this!” our Founder cried, Up-starting from his seat as he began, “God gave James Stuart this!”--a choking tide Of kindling feeling through his bosom ran, To which his better part free speech denied, Since all the Christian strove against the man, And strove not all in vain;--yet, bursting forth, His soul came big with grief that stifled half her wrath.
XLIX.
“God gave James Stuart this!--I marvel when! Fain would I see the deed Omniscience wrote; Elder! there are commandments counting ten, Which Great Jehovah upon Sinai taught; Has He of late exempted Plymouth’s men-- Reversed his justice and made sin no fault? Taught them to covet of their neighbor’s store, And licensed robbery of the weak and poor?
L.
“Behold these hands, which labor has made hard,-- Look at this weather-beaten brow and face,-- And ask yourself if to be thus debarred And hunted from their fruits like beast of chase, Demands not meekness more than God has spared To human hearts in his abundant grace! Followed e’en here!--Again compelled to flee! As if this desert were too good for me!
LI.
“But I can go.--Oh, yes! I can submit;-- God in his mercy will give shelter still; Go--tell your Dudley in the book ’tis writ That the oppressor shall hereafter feel; Yet, gracious Lord, grant that repentance fit Him to receive the everlasting seal Of thy salvation--that his lost estate Be yet revealed, ere it is all too late!
LII.
“Grieve not, my Mary!--Children, do not weep! Though yonder verdant lawns, and opening flowers, And groves whose shades the murmuring streamlets sweep, All perish for us now,--yet on far shores, Perchance by yon blue bay or rolling deep, Far from white brethren, mid barbarian powers, Your father’s hands another glade may form,-- Another roof to shield you from the storm.”
LIII.
As here he ceased, in all the agony Of mental pain he paced the cottage floor; Absorbed in his own woes scarce did he see The Elder pass, and leave his humble door; His toils, cares, hopes, all lost; and poverty Sudden, gaunt, naked, spread its glooms once more. A clashing sound first broke this mental strife; ’Twas Waban, edging sharp his scalping knife.
LIV.
And such an ireful look, (his eyes so bright, So played his muscles and so gnashed his teeth)-- Red warrior ne’er did show, save when in fight His weapon makes the hostile heart a sheath, And forces out the soul. He looked a sprite Kindling a hell within!--Recoiling ’neath The horrid feelings that the image woke, Our Founder shrank, and thus the form bespoke:
LV.
“What fiend, O Waban! thus inflames thy breast?” The spell of frenzy at the accents broke; The red man paused, his hand the bosom pressed, His eyes still flashing fire, and thus he spoke: “My chief was angry with his pale-faced guest, And at my sachem’s ire my own awoke; I can pursue,--for viewless pinions lift My nimble feet to speed thy vengeance swift.”
LVI.
A freezing horror crept through every vein, As Williams heard the son of Nature speak; And humbled stood he, for that ire profane Was but his own that did new semblance take In that wild man;--there stood the ancient Cain And here the modern, better skilled to check The wayward passions, and how dark soe’er The mirror there might be, the real form was here.
LVII.
“Waban!” at length he said, “I grieve to see That all I sowed fell on a barren rock; How could my brother hope to gladden me By such a deed? Thou dost thy sachem shock! O! from thy savage nature try to flee;-- Lay down thy murderous knife and tomahawk, And dwell on better themes. New toils invite, And high rewards my brother shall requite.
LVIII.
“Oft have I heard my hunter name with pride His long, deep, hollow, arrow-winged canoe; Now drag her from the fern to Seekonk’s tide, And bid her skim once more the waters blue; She loves to rove, and we must far and wide Seek other forests for a dwelling new; Our toils here end; a cloud from Wamponand Hangs o’er our glade, and blackens all the land.”
LIX.
A fickle race the red man’s kindred were, Free as the elk that roved their native wood, Here did they dwell to-day, to-morrow there, As want or pleasure ruled the changeful mood; And Waban loved adventures bold and rare, Nor heard with sorrow of a new abode; And forth he goes to seek his long canoe, And trim her breast to skim the waters blue.
LX.
The while the infant group, from noon to night, Passed here and there through all that cultured glade; And sighed and wept, by turns, or sobbed outright, As to its charms their last farewell they bade; “Here father labored--here he slept till light Renewed his toils,” they often thought or said; And still the springing tears suffuse their eyes, They dash them off--but still their sorrows rise.
LXI.
They plucked the blossoms from the blushing bush, They quaffed the waters from the purling rill, Their bread they scattered to the gentle thrush, That seemed half-conscious of the coming ill; The rabbit eyed them from his covert brush, Their crumbs supplied the little sparrow’s bill; And sadly then they sighed their last adieu, “Our little friends, farewell! we sport no more with you.”
LXII.
Meantime the parents in the cottage sate, Their bosoms heaving and their thoughts in gloom. “O! what,” cried Mary, “is our coming fate? And where, my husband, is our future home? Will not dire famine on our footsteps wait, And perils meet us whereso’er we roam? Our harvest gone, who now can food supply? Forced from this roof, where shall our children lie?”
LXIII.
“Trust we in God!” our pious Founder said; “Doubt not the bounty of His providence, Who Israel’s children through the desert led, And in all perils was there sure defence; He did not bid us this far forest tread, To leave us here in want and impotence. Warnings, my Mary, were most strangely given, Such as I sometimes deem were sent from Heaven!
LXIV.
“Well can thy mind that stormy night recall, The last in Salem that I dared abide,-- In fleecy torrents did the tempest fall, Our little dwelling reeled from side to side; The fading brands just glimmered on the wall, Alone I sate, my heart with anguish tried, When lo! a summons at the door I heard, Deemed it a wretch distressed, the pass unbarred.
LXV.
“And straight appeared a venerable seer, Such as on earth none ever saw before; His temples spake at least their hundredth year, In many a long and deeply furrowed score; But, Oh! his eyes, in youthful glory clear, Did from them a celestial radiance pour; And then that face scarce seemed to veil the rays, (Too bright for mortal!) of an angel’s blaze.
LXVI.
“And when he spake, methought the music clear Of tongue seraphic, filled his heavenly tone; It came so full, yet gently, on my ear, It well might serenade the Almighty’s throne; ‘Williams,’ it said, ‘I come on message here Of mighty moment, to this age unknown; Thou must not dally, or the tempest fear, But fly by morn into the forest drear.
LXVII.
“‘Thou art to voyage an unexploréd flood, No chart is there thy lonely bark to steer; Beneath her rocks, around her tempests rude, And persecution’s billows in her rear, Shall shake thy soul till it is near subdued; But when the welcome of _Whatcheer! Whatcheer!_ Shall greet thine ears from Indian multitude, Cast thou the Anchor there, and trust in God.’
LXVIII.
“He went away, and I could not detain Him from departing in the stormy night; He would but promise to be seen again Where faith in freedom should my rest invite. I’ve often dwelt on that prophetic strain, Recalled that voice,--and rightly can recite The words it uttered.--Oh that I had more Their import weighed, and shunned this tyrant shore!
LXIX.
“For, Mary, deem it not a sinful thought, That Heaven should give her counsels to restore The soul to freedom.--Lo! what wonders wrought The God of Christians for the Church of yore; With heathen darkness was the conscience fraught, And tyrants chained it to a barbarous lore; To break like thraldom in a Christian land, Angels may speak, and God disclose his hand.
LXX.
“This spot I rashly chose. No Indian train Glad welcome gave to my enraptured ear, And that mysterious form comes not again, Inspiring courage; therefore hence we steer, Nor land nor dwelling let us think to gain Until the greeting of Whatcheer! Whatcheer! Our journey stays,--there, there is our abode; Our anchor there, our Hope, Almighty God!”
LXXI.
Thus spoke our Sire, and now, with ready hand And spirits lightened, Mary did prepare For their departure to another land,-- Alas! they knew not how and knew not where. At eventide, red Waban from the strand, The children from the glade, with cheerless air Revisited the cot.--One more sad night, And thence they journey at the rising light.
LXXII.
Upon the cottage roof the Whip-poor-will That night sang mournful to the conscious glade; The lonely owl forsook her valley still, And perched and hooted in the neighboring shade; The wolf returned, and lapped the purling rill, Sate on its marge, and at the cottage bayed; From all its howling depths the desert came, And seemed its lost dominion to reclaim.
CANTO NINTH.
[SCENES. Seekonk’s Stream and Banks--Whatcheer Cove and Shore--Mooshausick’s Vale, or Site of Providence.]
’Tis early morn; Pawtucket’s torrent roar, A solemn bass to Nature’s anthem bold, Alone wakes Williams’ ear; its currents pour Along with foaming haste, where they have rolled Ages on ages, fretting here from shore The basin broad, and there ’twixt hill and wold Furrowing their channel deep; far hastening on, Now lost in shades, now glimmering in the sun.
II.
No thraldom had they known save winter’s frost; No exile yet had their free bosom borne; Deep in that glade (now to our Founder lost,) Their wave eternal had a basin worn; Oft thence their flow had borne the stealthy host, In light canoes, before the gray of morn, Darkling to strike the foe,--but now no more They bear the freight of men athirst for gore.
III.
Early that morn, beside the tranquil flood, Where ready trimmed rode Waban’s frail canoe, The banished man, his spouse and children, stood, And bade their lately blooming hopes adieu. The anxious mother had not yet subdued Despondent sorrow, and the briny dew Stole often down her cheeks; hers was the smart-- The searching anguish of the softer heart.
IV.
And, as she viewed the illimitable shade, The haunt of savage men and beasts of prey, She thought of all the dreadful ills arrayed Against her children on their dangerous way; “Ye houseless babes!” in her wild grief she said, “What crimes were yours, what dire offences, say, That even ye should share this cruel doom, Beg of barbarians bread, and savage deserts roam?”
V.
But Father Williams, to his lot resigned, Now rose to feelings of a loftier tone; For Heaven to vigor had restored his mind, And firmly braced it for the task unknown; He scarcely glanced upon the toils behind; His soul inspired did bolder visions own, That from his breast dispelled each dismal gloom, And cheered him onward to his destined home.
VI.
As the bold bird that builds her mansion high On beetling crag or helmlock’s lofty bough, Deep in the desert, far from human eye, And deems herself secure from every foe,-- Aloft in overshadowing branches nigh, Perceives the wild-cat’s threatening eye-balls glow, And spurns her eyry, with ascending flight To some tall ash that crests the mountain’s height;
VII.
So his vain toils he coldly now surveyed; He had but sunk a bolder wing to try; He snatched the weepers from the hated glade, And bore them lightly to the shallop nigh; Then sprang into the stern, and cheerly bade The dusky pilot his deft paddle ply;-- While, shoved from shore, the settling skiff descends Low in the flood, and with the burden bends.
VIII.
Now with a giddy whirl the wheeling prow Veering around points with the downward tide; Then Waban’s paddle cuts the glassy flow; The mimic whirlpools pass on either side; The surface cleaves, the waters boil below;-- The cot, the glade, the forests backward glide; Until the shadows, moving as they flew, Closed round the green and shut the roof from view.
IX.
Pawtucket’s murmurs die upon their ears, As through the smooth expanse the swift canoe Drives on; and now the straitened pass appears With jutting mounds that lofty forests shew;-- Each giant trunk a navy’s timber rears; Their mighty shadows o’er the flood they threw, Shutting the heavens out, till glimmering day Could scarce the long, dark, winding path display.
X.
Deep silence reigned o’er all the sable tide, Broke only by the swarthy pilot’s oar; Under the arching boughs the wanderers glide, And the dark ripplings curl from shore to shore; The startled wood-ducks ’neath the waters hide, Or on fleet pinions through the branches soar; Whilst overhead the rattling boughs, at times, Tell where the streaked raccoon or wild cat climbs.
XI.
Oft on the lofty banks, from jutting rocks The buck looked wildly on the swift canoe; Oft o’er the bramble leaped the wary fox, With bushy tail and fur of ruddy hue; Or wheeling high and gathering still in flocks, The dark-winged crows did by their clamors shew Where the lone owl, upon his moss-grown seat, Maintained, unvanquished yet, his drear retreat.
XII.
Far down the winding pass at length they spy Where wider currents, bright as liquid gold, Spread glimmering in the sun; and to the eye, Still further down, broad Narraganset rolled His host of waters azure as the sky; For breezes from the hoary ocean cooled His heaving breast, and, with rejoicing glance, From shore to shore the wanton waters dance.
XIII.
And now did Williams in his mind debate;-- Should he that night cleave Narraganset’s flood, Or on the Seekonk’s bank till morning wait, And scour the while Mooshausick’s gloomy wood? “Oh, would that Heaven might there predestinate On earth, Soul-Liberty! thy first abode,” (He often thought) “or where, in ocean’s arms, Aquidnay smiles in her wild virgin charms.”
XIV.
While thus he ponders, down the stream he sees, Where from th’ encroaching cove the wood retires, Dark wreaths of smoke rise o’er the lofty trees, And deems that there some village wakes its fires. “Waban,” he says, “seest thou yon dusky breeze? Say, from what town that curling smoke aspires? What valiant sachem holds dominion there? And what the number that he leads to war?”
XV.
“No town--the feast of peace!”--the red man cried, And still with brawny arms impelled the oar; “The clans from Narraganset far and wide, And every tribe from Pokanoket’s shore, There smoke the pipe, and lay the axe aside,-- The pipe my chief to Potowomet bore; Much they rejoice--their ancient hate forego, And deem the White Chief a good Manittoo.”
XVI.
A secret joy o’er Father Williams’ breast Stole like the fragrance of a balmy morn, That breathes on sleep with fearful dreams opprest, And wakes to its delights the wretch forlorn; His toils and wanderings were not all unblest; Some joy to others had his sufferings borne;-- But promised good brings doubt to the distrest, And thus still dubious he his guide addrest:
XVII.
“What singing bird has on the wandering wing Borne these strange tidings to my hunter’s ear? Where, on her pinions poising, did she sing, And with her faithless song his bosom cheer?” Waban replied, that he, while journeying Unto the white man’s town, through forests drear, Had on Cohannet’s banks his brethren met, Bound to the banquet of the calumet.
XVIII.
And now hoarse murmurs reach our Founder’s ear, Rising behind a cape from crowds unseen; Then by the eastern marge they swiftly steer, Till shows a tufted isle its welcome screen; Veering to this, they gain a prospect near Of the red hosts that throng the opposing green;-- Hundreds on hundreds did the fires surround, Ran on the shores or verdant banks embrowned.
XIX.
Along the strand their speed the racers try, And with their flying feet scarce touch the ground; From goal to goal the nimble hunters fly, Crowds shout above them, and the woods resound; Here their lithe limbs the swarthy wrestlers ply,-- They tug, they writhe, they sweat, crowds shout around; And there the circles watch the doubtful game, Or greet the victor with their loud acclaim.
XX.
Then Williams saw, beneath a shady bower, Miantonomi, Sachem young and brave, And Massasoit, Haup’s kind Sagamore, And old Canonicus, so wise and grave, Known by his peaceful pipe and tresses hoar, And by the scarlet coat our Founder gave; Round them their captains intermingled stood, All friendly now, though lately fierce for blood.
XXI.
From chief to chief the calumet they past, Sitting, in silent solemn council, round; Each thrice inhaled, thrice forth the vapors cast,-- First to the power that bids the thunder sound, Then to the gods that ride the angry blast, Then to the fiends that dwell beneath the ground; These made propitious, they the hatchet gave, The bloody hatchet, to a peaceful grave.
XXII.
“Waban,” said Williams, “we may venture now, But pause ye short of the sure arrow’s flight;” Instant the red man drove the foaming prow Along the cleaving flood, and, at the sight Of the red hosts of men, the rose’s glow Fading at once left Mary’s cheek all white; And sudden fears her children’s breasts surprise, And, with their little hands, they veil their eyes.
XXIII.
Full in the front of that vast multitude, Beyond an arrow’s flight their skiff they stayed; A sudden silence hushed the listening wood; The crowds all paused, and with wild eyes surveyed The pale-faced group, which in like stillness viewed The wondering throngs. At length the woodland glade Moves with their numbers; down the banks they pour, Swarming and gathering on the dark’ning shore.
XXIV.
As when some urchin, with a heedless blow, The insect nations of the hive alarms, Down from their cells the watchful myriads flow, And earth and air grow black with murmuring swarms; So from the woods the wondering warriors go, So o’er the dark’ning strand their concourse forms; None save their haughty chiefs remain behind, And they the lofty banks and forest margin lined.
XXV.
Then silence reigned again--but still they stared; Some claspt their knives, and some their arrows drew; Then from his seat his form our Founder reared, The while beneath him rocked the frail canoe; His hand he raised and manly forehead bared, And straight their former friend the Sachems knew; “Netop, Whatcheer!” broke on the listening air; “Whatcheer! Whatcheer!” re-echoed here and there.
XXVI.
Then o’er and the o’er the words burst loud and clear, In shouts that seemed to seek the joyous sky; With open arms and greetings of “Whatcheer,” Lived all the shores, and banks, and summits high; “Whatcheer! Whatcheer!” resounded far and near, “Whatcheer! Whatcheer!” the echoing woods reply; “Whatcheer! Whatcheer!” swells the exulting gales, Sweeps o’er the laughing hills and trembles thro’ the vales.
XXVII.
“Speed! Waban, speed!” with haste our Founder cried, Soon as the hollow echoes died afar; With lusty arm the hunter clove the tide, The swift canoe seemed moving through the air; One instant more and Williams, from her side, Sprang on a rock, (thence giving it to share His deathless fame,) and straight around him stood, In cheerful throngs, the Indian multitude.
XXVIII.
Miantonomi, stepping from the crowd, Stretched forth his brawny hand, and cried “Whatcheer! Welcome, my brother! say, what lowering cloud, O’er Seekonk’s eastern marge, impels thee here? Be it the Pequot in his numbers proud, I hold his greeting in this glittering spear; But oh! perchance my brother seeks this place, To share with us the sacred rites of peace?”
XXIX.
“Not so, brave chief; it is to seek a home, By seer announced, by Heaven to me assigned; Yonder abode lies wrapt in sable gloom, Not of the Pequot, but the Plymouth kind; My promised harvest blighted in the bloom, My voiceless roof,--all, all have I resigned, And hither come to seek Mooshausick’s plain, And beg the gift once proffered me in vain.”
XXX.
Good Massasoit, who did these accents hear, Would now our Founder greet,--and with a face, That spoke a sorrow deep and most sincere: “Long have I strove,” he said, “in thought to trace What Manit most my Plymouth friends revere; For aye their deeds their better words efface, Their tongues much speak of Spirit good and great, Their hands much do the work of Chepian’s hate.”
XXXI.
Here grave Canonicus came from the throng,-- “Welcome, my son!” exclaimed the aged chief, “Bear thou the inflictions of thy kindred’s wrong With man’s stout courage, not with woman’s grief; The lands thou seëst shall to thee belong, And for thy comforts lost, a moment brief Shall all the loss repair;--o’er yonder height Is where till lately Chepian reigned in might.
XXXII.
“Abandoned by his Priest his land now lies,-- Left by that Priest’s own slaves,--for slaves had he Who tilled his field and made his mansion rise, Adorned with mats and colors fair to see; The Priest is gone,--how, nothing care the wise; His timid followers from their labors flee,-- All fear within the fiend’s control to stay; For who but Chepian’s Priest can Chepian sway?”
XXXIII.
So spake Canonicus, the wise and old,-- While shouts on shouts a full accordance shewed,-- Then turned and sought the late forsaken hold; Our Sire, the matron, and her charge pursued; The ready tribes, behind them forming, rolled In march triumphant onward through the wood, Cheering the exile’s home; and as they sped, Earth rumbled under their far-thundering tread.
XXXIV.
The forest branches, woven overhead, Shut out the day and cast a twilight gloom;-- For where long since extends the verdant mead, Shines the fair palace, beauteous gardens bloom, One vault of green o’er-roofed a palisade Of trunks and brambles, boscage, brake and broom;-- Amid which chafed the warriors’ surly mood, And cracked and crashed the thickets as they trod.
XXXV.
They gained the height where now the Muses reign-- Where now Brown’s bounty[21] to the human mind Links earth and heaven; the fruit of honest gain Moulding the youthful soul, by taste refined, To truth’s eternal quest.--How poor and vain, To such high bounty, seems a meaner kind;-- But this in after times;--for forests then Mantled the height and swarmed with savage men.
[21] Brown University.
XXXVI.
Thence, in the vale below, our Founder sees Where dark Mooshausick rolls, and seaward casts, Its waters,--rolling under lofty trees With crossing branches, thick as e’er the masts That shall, thereafter, on the wanton breeze Display their banners, when, in sounding blasts, The cannon utters its triumphant voice, And bids the land through all its States rejoice.
XXXVII.
And thence, with prescient eye, he gazes far O’er the rude sites of palaces and shrines, Where Grecian beauty to the buxom air Shall rise resplendent in its shapely lines; Ay, almost hears the future pavements jar Beneath a people’s wealth, and half divines From thee, Soul-Liberty! what glories wait Thy earliest altars--thy predestined State.
XXXVIII.
Then down the steep, by paths scored in its side, Where frequent deer had sought the floods below, He past, still following his dusky guide And stooping often under drooping bough, To a broad cultured field, expanding wide Betwixt dense thickets and Mooshausick’s flow. Its deep green rows of waving maize foretold Abundant harvest from a fertile mould.
XXXIX.
The Priest’s forsaken lodge rose thereamid, Beside a fountain on a verdant lawn, Spacious as some great Sachem’s, and half-hid In mantling vines wherewith it was o’ergrown; And Williams thought of what his warrior did On that dark bloody night, so direly known,-- Mourning the fate that caused the Sorcerer’s doom; Yet sees its fruit, a temporary home.
XL.
But some last scruples still his mind assail; For, ah! what rites had made the place profane! When thus the chief:--“No more my son bewail Thy comforts lost; let the Great Spirit reign Where Chepian reigned; ay, let thy God prevail; Be thou His Priest, and this thine own domain; From wild Pawtucket to Pawtuxet’s bounds To thee and thine be all the teeming grounds.”
XLI.
High thanks Sire Williams paid;--but as he spake, Came over him a feeling passing strange; A prophet’s rapture in his breast did wake; For, at that moment, down the boundless range Of heavenly spheres did some bright being take Wing to his soul, and wrought to suited change The visual nerve, and straight in outward space Stood manifest in its celestial grace.[22]
[22] See note.
XLII.
At once he cried, “I see! I see the seer! His very form, his very shape and air! By yonder fount;--the same his robes appear; The same his radiant eyes and flowing hair; Mary! my children! come! his accents hear; See age and youth one heavenly beauty share!” They with him moved, (yet ne’er the vision saw,) Until the father paused, transfixed in sacred awe.
XLIII.
For strange to tell, youth’s lingering light began To spread fresh glories o’er that aged face; Till over beard, and hair, and visage wan, Burst the full splendor of angelic grace; A lambent flame about the forehead ran, And rainbow hues the earthly robes displace; The curling locks, like beams of living light, Streamed back and glowed insufferably bright.
XLIV.
The figure seemed to grow; its dazzling eyes Were for a while upon Sire Williams bent, Then upward turned, and, looking to the skies, Spake hope in God with silence eloquent. Still did it brighten, still its stature rise, With Heaven’s own grandeur seeming to augment;-- The pilgrim staff no longer did it hold, But on an Anchor leant that blazed ethereal gold.
XLV.
Our Father gazed, and, from that heavenward eye, Beheld the clear angelic radiance flow; And saw that figure, as it towered on high, With inward glory fill, dilate and grow Translucent,--and then fade,--as from the sky The sunset fades or fades the radiant bow; Until, dissolving in transparent air, It disappeared and left no traces there.
XLVI.
Then low, on bended knees, he drops to own The Heaven-born vision, and his soul declare; His wife and children, near him kneeling down, Send up their hearts upon the wings of prayer; The dusky tribes, in crescent round them shown, Give ear;--hill, vale and forest listeners are; Force to each word their faithful echoes lend, And with their Ruler’s prayers their own ascend.
XLVII.
“Mysterious Power! who dost in wonders speak, We note thy tokens and their import spell; Let Persecution still its vengeance wreak-- Let its fierce billows roll with mountain swell, Here must we Anchor, and their force repel. Here, more securely, shall our bannered State Blazon the conscience sacred--ever free; Here shall she breast the coming storms of fate And ride triumphant o’er the raging sea, Her well-cast Anchor here, her lasting Hope in Thee!
XLVIII.
“Here, thy assurance gives our wanderings rest, And shows where all our future toils must be; Lord! be our labors by thy mercies blest, And send their fruits to far posterity; Let our example still the Conscience free, Where’er she is by tyrant force enchained, And while the thraldom lasts, Oh! let her see Her safety here, where, ever unprofaned By persecution, her free altars are maintained.
XLIX.
“Accept, O Lord! our thanks for mercies past; Thou wast our cloud by day, our fire by night, While yet we journeyed through the dreary vast; Thou Canaan more than givest to our sight;-- Lord! ’tis possessed, not seen from Pisgah’s height. We deeply feel this high beneficence; And ages hence our children shall recite Of Thy protecting grace their Father’s sense, And, when they name their Home, Proclaim Thy PROVIDENCE!”
NOTES.[23]
[23] These notes were mostly written for the poem as first published in 1832;--none after 1847, when the author died.--[EDITOR.]
CANTO FIRST.
STANZA I.
_I_ SING _of trials, toils and sufferings great, Which_ FATHER WILLIAMS _in his exile bore, That he the conscience-bound might liberate, And to the soul her sacred rights restore_.
“ROGER WILLIAMS was born of reputable parents in Wales, A. D. 1598. He was educated at the University of Oxford; was regularly admitted to Orders in the Church of England, and preached for some time as a minister of that Church; but on embracing the doctrines of the Puritans, he rendered himself obnoxious to the laws against the non-conformists, and embarked for America, where he arrived with his wife, whose name was Mary, on the 5th of February, A. D. 1631.” He had scarcely landed ere he began to assert the principle of religious freedom, and insist on a rigid separation from the Church of England. A declaration that the magistrate ought not to interfere in matters of conscience could not fail to excite the jealousy of a government constituted as that of Massachusetts then was; and this jealousy was roused into active hostility when, in the April following his arrival, he was called by the Church of Salem as teaching Elder under their then Pastor, Mr. Skelton.
“Of this appointment,” says Winthrop, “the Governor of Massachusetts was informed, who immediately convened a Court in Boston to take the subject into consideration.” Their deliberations resulted in a letter addressed to Mr. Endicot, of Salem, to this effect:--“That whereas Mr. Williams had refused to join the churches at Boston, because they would not make a public declaration of their repentance, for having communion with the Churches of England while they tarried there, and besides had declared his opinion that the magistrate might not punish the breach of the Sabbath, nor any other offence that was a breach of the first table; and therefore they marveled they would choose him without advising with the council, and withal desired him that they would forbear to proceed until they had considered about it.”
This interference of the government forced him to leave Salem. “He removed to Plymouth, and was engaged assistant to Mr. Ralph Smith, the pastor of the church at that place. Here he remained until he found his views of Religious Toleration and strict non-conformity gave offence to some of his hearers, when he returned again to Salem, and was settled there after Mr. Skelton’s death, which took place on the 2d of August, 1634.” In this situation Williams preached against the cross in the ensign, as a relic of papal superstition. His preaching however, on this topic, does not seem to have been a subject of complaint, only as it led some of his friends to the indiscretion of defacing the colors. His persecutors, in excusing this act to the government of England, say that they did so, “with as much wariness as they might, being doubtful themselves of the lawfulness of a cross in an ensign.” But though he may have given no offence by declaring an opinion on this subject so little at variance with their own, yet when he ventured to speak against the king’s patent, by which he had granted to his subjects the lands which belonged to the Indians; and, above all, to maintain that the civil magistrate ought not to interfere in matters of conscience, except for the preservation of peace, his presence within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts could no longer be tolerated. A summons was granted for his appearance at the next court.
He appeared accordingly. “It was laid to his charge,” says Winthrop, “that, being under question before the magistracy and churches for divers dangerous opinions, viz: That the magistrate ought not to punish for the breaches of the first table, otherwise than in such cases as do disturb the public peace. 2d. That he ought not to tender an oath to an unregenerate man. 3d. That a man ought not to pray with such, though wife, children, &c. 4th. That a man ought not to give thanks after sacrament nor after meat, &c., and that other churches were about to write the church of Salem to admonish him of these errors, notwithstanding the church had since called him to the office of Teacher.”
These charges having been read, all the magistrates and ministers concurred in denouncing the opinions of Williams as erroneous and dangerous, and agreed that the calling him to office at that time was a great contempt of authority. He and the church of Salem were allowed until the next General Court to consider of these charges, and then either to give satisfaction to the Court, or else to expect sentence.
Much warmth of feeling was exhibited in the discussion of these charges; and in the course of the debate it seems the ministers were required to give their opinions severally. All agreed that he who asserted that the civil magistrate ought not to interfere in case of heresy, apostacy, etc., ought to be removed, and that other churches ought to request the magistrates to remove him. Nothing will give a better idea of the state of feeling on this occasion than the fact that when the town of Salem at this time petitioned, claiming some land at Marblehead as belonging to the town, the petition was refused a hearing, on the ground that the church of Salem had chosen Mr. Williams her teacher, and by such choice had offered contempt to the magistrates.
The attendance of all the Ministers of the Bay at the next General Court was requested. This was held in the month of November, 1635. Before this venerable congregation of all the dignitaries of the church, Williams appeared, and defended his opinions. His defence, it seems, was not satisfactory. They offered him further time for conference or disputation. This he declined, and chose to dispute presently. Mr. Hooker was appointed to dispute with him. But Mr. Hooker’s logic, seconded as it was by the whole civil and ecclesiastical power of Massachusetts, could not force him to recognise the right of the civil magistrate to punish heresy, or to admit that the king’s patent could of itself give a just title to the lands of the Indians. The consequence was, that on the following morning he was sentenced to depart, within six weeks, out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
Such were the causes of Williams’ banishment, and such the circumstances under which the decree was passed. He was a man who fearlessly asserted his principles, and practiced upon them to their fullest extent. Persecution could not drive him to a renunciation of his opinions. His observance of any principle which he adopted was conscientiously strict; but this very strictness of observance had its advantages, in enabling him with more certainty to detect any latent error which his opinions involved. He was as free to declare his errors as he was to assert whatever appeared to him to be right. His very honesty in this respect has given occasion to his enemies to brand his character with inconsistency and apostacy; but he remained true to every principle espoused by him, which posterity has since sanctioned, and inconstant in those things only which are unimportant in themselves, and which are unsettled even in the present day. A tacit confession of his own fallibility was implied in the great principle of which he was the earliest asserter, that government ought not to interfere in matters of conscience; and therein consisted a wide difference between his errors, whatever they were, and those of his persecutors. This fact, in estimating the character of Williams, cannot be too well considered.
“Subsequently to his banishment, he was permitted to remain until spring, on condition that he did not attempt to draw others to his opinions.” But the friends of Williams could not consent to see their favorite pastor leave them, without frequently visiting him whilst they yet had an opportunity. In these interviews, the plan of establishing a colony in the Narraganset country, where the principle of Religious Freedom (the assertion of which had been the chief cause of his banishment) should be carried into effect, was discussed and matured. It is also highly probable that he did not fail to do what he conceived to be the duty of a faithful pastor in other respects. At length the rumor of these meetings reached the ears of the civil authorities; and in January, 1635, (O. S.,) “The governor and assistants,” says Winthrop, “met in Boston to consider about Mr. Williams; for they were credibly informed, that he, notwithstanding the injunction laid upon him, (upon liberty granted him to stay until spring,) not to go about to draw others to his opinions, did use to entertain company in his house, and to preach to them even of such points as he had been sentenced for; and it was agreed to send him into England by a ship then ready to depart. The reason was because he had drawn about twenty persons to his opinions, and they were intending to erect a plantation about the Narraganset bay, from whence the infection would easily spread into these churches, the people being many of them much taken with an apprehension of his godliness. Whereupon a warrant was sent to him to come presently to Boston, to be shipped, &c. He returned for answer, (and divers of Salem came with it,) that he could not without hazard of his life, &c. Whereupon a pinnace was sent with commission to Captain Underhill, &c., to apprehend him, and carry him on board the ship, which then rode at Nantascutt. But when they came to his house they found he had been gone three days, but whither they could not learn.”
It thus appears that the object of his government, in directing his immediate apprehension at this time, was to prevent the establishment of a colony in which the civil authority should not be permitted to interfere with the religious opinions of the citizens.
Williams was in the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth year of his age at the time of his banishment. He fled to a wilderness inhabited only by savages. The two principal tribes--the Narragansets and Wampanoags--had, but a short time before he entered their country, been engaged in open hostilities. The government of Plymouth had on one occasion extended its aid to its early friend and ally, Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoags. This interference had smothered, but not extinguished the flame. With these warring tribes, one of which (the Narragansets) was a very martial and numerous people, and exceedingly jealous of the whites, Williams was under the necessity of establishing relations of amity. He himself says that he was forced to travel between their sachems to satisfy them and all their dependent spirits of his honest intentions to live peaceably by them. He acted the part of a peace-maker amongst them, and eventually won, even for the benefit of his persecutors, the confidence of the Narragansets. It was through his influence that all the Indians in the vicinity of Narraganset bay were, shortly after his settlement at Mooshausick, united, and their whole force, under the directions of the very men who had driven him into the wilderness, brought to co-operate with the Massachusetts forces against the Pequots.
[See Winthrop’s Journal, and a Sketch of the Life of Roger Williams, appended to the first volume of the Rhode Island Historical Collections, for the above extracts.]
STANZA XII.
_Much less my consort and these pledges dear._
Williams was the father of six children, viz: Mary, Freeborn, Providence, Mercy, Daniel, and Joseph. I am not able to determine their number at the time of his banishment.
STANZA XLIII.
_Thrice did our northern tiger seem to come._
Frequently called the Panther, the Cat of the Mountain, or Catamount. There is indeed no animal of America entitled to the appellation of the Panther; but this name is frequently applied to the animal mentioned, and is adopted in this production for that reason.
STANZA LVIII.
_’Twas Waban’s cry at which the monsters ran._
The Indians imitate very perfectly the cry of wild beasts, and use that art in conveying signals and for other purposes, during their hunts and other expeditions. The known antipathy between the wolf and the catamount or panther, and the superiority of the latter over the former, may justify the text.
STANZA LXVI.
_Where burning fagot nevermore shall glow, Fired by the wrath of persecuting men._
I know not that the fagot has been generally used in any protestant country for the extirpation of heresy, yet its very general application to that purpose by Roman Catholics has, by common consent, made it the appropriate emblem of persecution in all countries.
STANZA LXIX.
_Until Sowaniu’s breezes scatter flowers again._
Sowaniu, or the Paradise of the Indians, was supposed to be an island in the far southwest. It was the favorite residence of their great god, Cawtantowit, and the land of departed spirits. The balmy southwest was a gale breathed from the heaven of the Indians.
STANZA LXXX.
_“And may the Manittoo of dreams,” he said, &c._
Manittoo--a God. It is a word which seems to have been applied to an extraordinary power, or mysterious influence. Any astonishing effect, produced by a cause which the Indians could not comprehend, they appear to have ascribed to the agency of a Manittoo. It is natural for man to draw his ideas of power or causation, from what he feels in himself; and when he does so, he will ascribe the effects which he observes to the influence of mind. As he advances in knowledge the number of these mysterious agents diminishes, until at last he is forced upon the idea of one great, designing, first cause or agent. Man, from his very constitution, therefore, must be a believer in the existence of God. He approaches a knowledge of his unity by degrees, and improves in his religious opinions in the same manner as he advances to the science of astronomy. How essential then is that freedom of opinion which our Founder sought to establish!
CANTO SECOND.
STANZA XIII.
_In a vast eagle’s form embodied, He Did o’er the deep on outstretched pinions spring._
It was the belief of the Chippewas, a tribe supposed to have descended from the same original stock (Lenni Lenape) with the Narragansets, that, before the earth appeared, all was one vast body of waters; that the Great Spirit, assuming the shape of a mighty eagle, whose eyes were as fire, and the sound of whose wings was as thunder, passed over the abyss, and that, upon his touching the water, the earth rose from the deep. It was a prevailing tradition among the Delawares and other tribes, according to Heckewelder, that the earth was an island, supported on the back of a huge tortoise, called in the text Unamis. It is the object of the author to embrace in the text a selection of their scattered traditions on the subject of creation, and to give them something like the consistency of a system. Waban, therefore, adopting their leading ideas, has drawn out his description into the appropriate sequency of events. Their Creator was a Manittoo, a mysteriously operating power, and of the same nature as that principle of causation which they felt in themselves, as constituting their own being. The term _Cowwewonck_, in the Narraganset dialect, signified the soul, and was derived from _Cowwene_, to sleep; because, said they, it operates when the body sleeps. Hence in the text, whilst the Great Spirit slept, he is represented as commencing the work of creation--operating on the immense of waters as a part of his own being, and imparting to it organic existences, (as the soul from itself creates its own conceptions,) thus giving a sort of dreamy existence to the earth and all living things, ere He assumed the shape of the eagle, and at his fiat imparted to them substantial form and vital energy. The idea, that the earth was raised out of the Ocean, seems to have been pretty general amongst the Aborigines.
STANZA XIX.
_Yet man was not; then great Cawtantowit spoke To the hard mountain crags, and called for man._
According to the traditions of the Narragansets, the Great Spirit formed the first man from a stone, which, disliking, he broke, and then formed another man and woman from a tree; and from this pair sprang the Indians.
STANZA XXII.
_Then did he send Yotaanit on high--_
Yotaanit was the God of Fire; Keesuckquand, God of the Sun; Nanapaushat, of the Moon; and Wamponand was the ruling Deity of the East.
STANZA XXIII.
_All things thus were formed from what was good, And the foul refuse every evil had; But it had felt the influence of the God, (How should it not?)--_
Heckewelder ascribes to the Indians the opinion that nothing bad could proceed from the Great and Good Spirit. Waban is here speaking in conformity to that opinion. Hence he represents the creation of Chepian, or the evil principle, as an incidental but necessary effect, yet forming no part of the original design.
STANZA XXVII.
_And manittoos, that never death shall fear, Do too within this moral form abide._
“They conceive,” says Williams, “that there are many gods, or divine powers, within the body of man--in his pulse, heart, lungs, &c.”
STANZA XXVIII.
_But if a sluggard and a coward, then To rove all wretched in the gloom of night._
“They believe that the soules of men and women go to the southwest--their great and good men to Cawtantowit his house, where they have hopes, as the Turks have, of carnal joys. Murtherers, liars, &c., their soules (say they) wander restless abroad.”--_Williams’ Key._
STANZA XXXVIII.
_This yet unproved and doubted by the best._
The Charter of Pennsylvania was granted in 1681. The philanthropic Penn was preceded by Williams in the adoption of a mild and pacific policy toward the natives. Both seem to have been equally successful.
STANZA XLV.
_Ere dark pestilence Devoured his warriors--laid its hundreds low, That sachem’s war-whoop roused to his defence Three thousand bow-men, and he still can show A mighty force._
The pestilence, to which Waban has reference, is that which shortly preceded the arrival of the Plymouth planters. The Wampanoags, before this calamity, were relatively a powerful people. Patuxet, afterwards Plymouth, was then under the government of their sachem, who, at times, made it his place of residence. Indeed the whole country between Seekonk and the ocean, eastward, seems to have been occupied by tribes more or less subject to him. Those toward the Cape and about Buzzard’s Bay were, however, rather his tributaries than his subjects. The different clans or communities, in this extensive territory, were under the government of many petty sachems, who regarded Ousamequin (afterwards Massasoit) as their chief. Availing themselves of the misfortune of their neighbors, the Narragansets extended their conquests eastward over some of these under-sachems; and when Ousamequin fled from Pawtuxet to Pokanoket, to avoid the devouring sickness, he found not only Aquidnay, but a part of Pokanoket, subject to his enemies. (See note to stanza xxxiii canto iv.) Pokanoket was the Indian name of the neck of land between Taunton river on the east, and Seekonk and Providence rivers on the west. Mount Hope, or Haup as it is called in the text, forms its southeastern extreme. The number of warriors stated in the text as subject to Ousamequin, is hypothetical. Some of the Nipnets were tributary to the Narragansets, but the greater part of them were the allies or subjects of the Wampanoag Chief.
STANZA XLVI.
_His highest chief is Corbitant the stern-- He bears a fox’s head and panther’s heart._
Mr. Winslow, who had frequent conferences with this chief, represents him as “a hollow-hearted friend to the Plymouth planters, a notable politician, &c.” He, with others, was suspected of conspiring against the whites, and Captain Standish was sent, on one occasion, to execute summary justice upon him and his confederates. He, however, escaped, and afterwards made his peace with them through the mediation of Massasoit. His residence was at Mattapoiset, now Swanzey.
STANZA XLVII.
_Yet oft their children bleed When the far west sends down her Maquas fell-- Warriors who hungry on their victims steal, And make of human flesh a dreadful meal._
In compliance with the common orthography, the name of this tribe is written _Maqua_. Williams says, that in the Narraganset dialect they were called Mohawaugsuck, or Mauquauog, from mobo, to eat; and were considered Cannibals. It is probable, from its location, that he speaks of the same tribe under the name of Mitucknechakick, or tree eaters, “a people,” says he, “so called, living between three and four hundred miles west into the land, from their eating Mituckquash--that is, trees. They are men-eaters--they set no corn, but live on the bark of the chestnut and other fine trees,” &c. Again, he says, “The Maquaogs, or men-eaters, that live two or three hundred miles west,” &c. Thus it is plain that the Maquas were considered, by the Narragansets and their neighboring tribes, Cannibals.
STANZA XLVIII.
_Here lies Namasket tow’rd the rising sun._
Namasket was within the limits of the territory which now constitutes the township of Middleborough, and was about fifteen miles from Plymouth.
_Here farther down, Cohannet’s banks upon Spreads broad Pocasset, strong Appanow’s hold._
The territory under that name, now forms a part of Fall River, Mass., and all, or nearly all, Tiverton, R. I. The territory south to the sea, was called Sagkonate, now written Sekonnet, or Seconnet, forming at this time the township of Little Compton. The northeasterly part of the island of Aquidnay was also called Pocasset. This word may be a derivative from the Indian name of the strait separating the island from the mainland. The name of the chieftain in the text must be received exclusively on Waban’s authority.
STANZA L.
_Two mighty chiefs, one cautious, wise, and old, One young and strong, and terrible in fight, All Narraganset and Coweset hold; One lodge they build--one council fire they light._
In a deposition of Williams, dated the 18th June, 1682, he says, that it was the general and constant declaration that the father of Canonicus had three sons--that Canonicus was his heir--that his youngest brother’s son, whose name was Miantonomi, was his marshal, or executioner, and did nothing without his consent.
_Five thousand warriors give their arrows flight._
This is the number at which Williams estimates them. Calendar says they were a numerous, rich, and powerful people, and though they were, by some, said to have been less fierce and warlike than the Pequots, yet it appears that they had, before the English came, not only increased their numbers by receiving many who fled to them from the devouring sickness or plague in other parts of the land, but they had enlarged their territories, both on the eastern and western boundaries. Their numbers must have diminished rapidly, as Hutchinson estimates their warriors in 1675 at two thousand; this estimate, however, might not embrace those tribes which were subject to, or dependant on them, when Williams entered the country. They seem to have been a people greatly in advance of their neighbors. They excelled in the manufacture of Wampumpeag, and supplied other nations with it--also with pendants, bracelets, tobacco pipes of stone, and pots for cookery. After the arrival of the whites, they traded with them for their goods, and supplied other tribes with them at an advance.
STANZA LI.
_Dark rolling Seekonk does their realm divide From Pokanoket, Massasoit’s reign--_
Under the general name of Narraganset, was included Narraganset proper and Coweset. Narraganset proper extended south from what is now Warwick to the ocean; Coweset, from Narraganset northerly to the Nipmuck country, which now forms Oxford, Mass., and some other adjoining towns. The western boundaries of Narraganset and Coweset cannot be definitely ascertained. Gookins says, the Narraganset jurisdiction extended thirty or forty miles from Seekonk river and Narraganset bay, including the islands, southwesterly to a place called Wekapage, four or five miles to the eastward of Pawcatuck river--that it included part of Long Island, Block Island, Coweset and Niantick, and received tribute from some of the Nipmucks. After some research, I am induced to believe that the Nianticks occupied the territory now called Westerly; if so, then the jurisdiction of the Narragansets extended to the Pawcatuck, and perhaps beyond it. The tribe next westward was that which dwelt “in the twist of Pequot river,” now called the Thames; and was under the control of the fierce and warlike Uncas, a chief who had rebelled against Sassacus, the Pequot sachem, and detached from its allegiance a considerable portion of his nation, of which he had formed a distinct tribe.
STANZA LIII.
_Awanux gave him strength, and, with strange fear, Did M’antonomi at the big guns start._
“We cannot conceive,” says Mourt in his journal, “but that he [Massasoit] is willing to have peace with us: for they have seen our people sometimes alone, two or three in the woods at work and fowling, whereas they offered them no harm: and especially, because he hath a potent adversary, the Narrohigansets, that are at war with him, against whom he thinks we may be of some strength to him; for our pieces are terrible unto them.”
STANZA LXXIV.
_At length his vision opened on a space, Level and broad, and stretching without bound Southward afar--nor rose, o’er all its face, A tree, or shrub, or rock or swelling mound._
It may excite our wonder that the barren plains of Seekonk should have been at first selected by our Founder for a place of settlement. But it is possible that at the time when the selection was made they were in a state, as to fertility, different from their present. However this may be, one thing is certain, that Williams made the selection during the winter, when vegetation afforded no criterion of the soil, whilst its very nakedness was in some respects a recommendation. It was an object with the early settlers to establish themselves in the neighborhood of some clearing, and particularly on meadows in the vicinity of rivers. These yielded pasturage through the summer, and forage for their cattle during winter, and land for tillage without the preparatory steps of clearing.
CANTO THIRD.
STANZA VII.
_War! War! my brother._
Williams says that, at the time of his first entering the Narraganset country, a great contest was raging between Canonicus and Miantonomi on one side, and Massasoit or Ousamequin on the other. Williams, at this time, had come to the resolution of settling at Seekonk, on a part of the lands belonging to the latter sachem. But should actual hostilities be commenced between these tribes, his situation would become peculiarly dangerous, occupying as he would, lands on the frontiers of the weaker party. The Narragansets might regard his settlement as a mere trading establishment, supplying their enemies with arms. Besides, the Narragansets and Wampanoags, in many instances, laid claim to the same lands. [See note to stanza thirty-third, canto fourth.] To obtain a peaceable possession of these lands it was necessary to have the consent of both. A reconciliation, therefore, of the contending tribes became indispensable. Williams incidentally mentions that he travelled between them to satisfy them of his intentions to live peaceably by them, and it is hardly possible that the equally necessary object of their reconciliation was neglected. Indeed, we find, shortly after Williams entered their country, these chiefs, so recently hostile, amicably granting their lands to him and his associates, and one of them yielding to the authority of the other. Hence we may infer that Williams not only attempted to pacify them, but that his efforts were crowned with success.
Ousamequin, or Ashumequin, was the name of the Wampanoag chief, until about the time of the Pequot war, when he assumed the name of Massasoit, or Massasoyt, for it is variously written. The latter is used in the text as that by which he is most generally designated. It was common for the Indians to change their names. That of Miantonomi was originally Mecumeh.
STANZA VIII.
_The Narraganset hatchet stained with gore-- Miantonomi lifts it o’er his head, Gives the loud battle yell, and names our valiant dead._
To name the dead was considered a great indignity, and, among chiefs, a sufficient cause for war. Philip pursued one who had thus offended to Nantucket. The life of the offender was saved only by the interference of the whites. To avoid uttering the names of the dead they used circumlocutions, such as _Sachem-aupan_, _Nes-mat-aupan_; the sachem that was here, our brother that was here.
STANZA XI.
_And Annawan, who saw in after times Brave Metacom, and all of kindred blood, Slain, or enslaved and sold to foreign climes._
Metacom was the original name of Philip. Anawan was the last of Philip’s captains that fell into the hands of the English. He was with Philip at the time he was surprised and slain. Church, giving an account of the battle, says, “By this time the enemy perceived they were waylaid on the east of the swamp, and tacked short about. One of the enemy, who seemed to be a great surly old fellow, hallooed with a loud voice, and often called out, ‘Iootash! Iootash!’ Captain Church called to his Indian, |
65495-0 | Peter, and asked who that was that called so. He answered that it was Annawan, Philip’s great captain, calling to his soldiers to stand to it, and fight stoutly.”
STANZA XIX.
_Scarce do they leave a scant and narrow place, Where we may spread the blanket of our race._
“We have not room to spread our blankets,” was a phrase by which the Indians signified that they were straightened in their possessions.--_See Heckewelder_.
STANZA XXII.
_“’Tis not the peag,” said the Sagamore, “Nor knives, nor guns, nor garments red as blood, That buy the lands I hold dominion o’er-- Lands that were fashioned by the red man’s God; But to my friend I give.”_
Williams says the Indians were very shy and jealous of selling their lands to any, and chose rather to make a grant of them to such as they affected; but at the same time expected such gratuities and rewards as made an Indian gift often times a very dear bargain.
Of Peag there were two sorts--the white and black. The former was called Wampom or Wampum, the latter Suckauhock. The first was wrought from the white, the last from the black or purple part of a shell.
STANZA LXI.
_Westward till now his course did Waban draw; He shunned Weybosset, the accustomed ford._
I am informed that Weybosset, in the Indian language, signified a ford, or crossing place. It is now the name of a street in Providence, extending southwesterly from the place in the river so designated by the Indians.
STANZA LXII.
_And fast doth Indian town to town succeed, Some large, some small, in populous array._
“In the Narraganset country (which is the chief people in the land) a man shall come to many townes, some bigger, some lesser, it may be a dozen in 20 miles travell.”--_Williams’ Key._
STANZA LXIV.
_For they were gone to Potowomet’s fires._
The words _Note_ or _Yote_ signified fire; _Potowash_, to make fire; _Wame_ signified all, and _Et_ is a termination denoting place. If this be so, it would seem that Potowamet, signified the place of all the fires, or places where all the tribes assembled and kindled their council or festal fires. The shell-fish, in which the shores of Potowomet abound, and the numerous remains of Indian feasts found on the upland, offer additional proof of the correctness of this inference.
CANTO FOURTH.
STANZA II.
_There bristled darts--there glittered lances sheen._
Lances were arms which distinguished their sachems and other leaders. At this early period the Indians had scarcely become familiarized to the use of fire-arms. The French and Dutch had indeed begun to supply them with these strange implements of death; but the English colonists had taken every precaution to prevent their being furnished with them. There were, however, no restraints on the trade of knives, hatchets, lances, &c.
STANZA XX.
_On settles raised around the mounting blaze Sit gray Wauontom, Keenomp, Sagamore._
Wauontom, a counsellor; Keenomp, a captain; Sagamore, a chief or sachem.
_Is sage Canonicus._
Williams considered Canonicus, at the time he wrote his Key to the Indian Languages, about fourscore years old.
STANZA XXI.
_The Neyhom’s mantle did his shoulders grace._
“Neyhomaushunck, a coat or mantle curiously made of the fairest plumes of the Neyhommauog, or turkies, which commonly their old men make, and is with them as velvet with us.”--_Williams’ Key._
STANZA XXXIII.
_Yes, ere he came, Pocasset’s martial band Did at our bidding come to fight the foe, And the tall warriors of the Nipnet land Rushed with soft foot to bend our battle bow; And e’en the dog of Haup did cringing stand Beside our wigwam, and his tribute show._
The reader will not expect in the text minute historical accuracy, yet it has been the wish of the author, throughout, not to violate KNOWN historical truth; and the following facts, he thinks, give something more than mere probability to the presumption, that Massasoit was, before the arrival of the whites, in some sense, one of the subject sachems of the Narraganset chiefs. The following extract of a deposition of Williams, dated at Narraganset, the 18th of June, A. D. 1682, will shew that Canonicus had authority of some sort over Massasoit, and that the latter had claims, subordinate to those of Canonicus, to certain lands which Williams procured of the last named chief. In this deposition Williams says, “I desire posterity to see the most gracious hand of the Most High, (in whose hands are all things,) that when the hearts of my countrymen and friends and brethren failed me, his infinite wisdom and merits stirred up the barbarous heart of Canonicus to love me as his own son to the last gasp, by which I had not only Miantonomi and all the Coweset sachems my friends, but Ousamequin also, who, because of my great friendship for him at Plymouth, and the authority of Canonicus, consented freely, (being also well gratified by me,) to the Governor Winthrop’s and my enjoyment of Prudence, yea of Providence itself, and all other parts I procured which were upon the point, and in effect, whatever I desired of him.” A distinction seems here to be intended between Prudence and other places. It is probable that Prudence was conquered by the Narragansets, whilst in possession of some under-sachem of Massasoit. And when the latter renounced all claims to this Island, he at the same time assured to Williams the peaceable enjoyment of Providence and all other places purchased of him.
A similar state of things appears in the deed, made by Canonicus and Miantonomi to the settlers of Aquidnay, to have existed both in reference to that island and a part of Pokanoket, where Massasoit resided. This deed or memorandum is as follows: “We, Canonicus and Miantonomi, the two chief sachems of Narraganset, by virtue of our general command of the Bay, as also the particular subjecting of the dead sachem of Aquidnick and Kitackumuckqut, [Kikemuet] themselves and lands unto us, have sold unto Mr. Coddington and his friends united, the great Island of Acquidnick, lying from hence eastward in this bay, as also the marsh or grass upon Quinnannacut, [Conanicut] and the rest of the islands in the bay, (excepting Chubackuweda, formerly sold unto Mr. Winthrope, Governor of Massachusetts, and Mr. Williams of Providence,) also the grass upon the rivers and coasts about Kitakamuckqut, and from thence to Pauparquatsh [Poppasquash] for the full payment of forty fathoms of white beads.”
Ousamaquin was present, and granted the use of the grass and trees on the main land, Pocasset side. Tradition points out the spot on which the battle was fought that decided the fate of Aquidnick, and assigns a date to the arrival of the English at Plymouth. Callender evidently considers it to have taken place during the great sickness or plague which prevailed among the eastern Indians before the coming of the Whites. When the English arrived, Massasoit was at Pokanoket, in a part of that territory so recently wrested by the Narragansets from (probably) one of his under-sachems. He was then in no condition to resist any of the demands of the victors, and there can be little doubt that he submitted to them as a tributary or subject chief. The arrival of the English, however, gave him allies, and enabled him to set the Narragansets at defiance. Hence the hostility of the Narragansets to the Whites; and hence Massasoit’s uniform adherence to them. That Massasoit was considered by the Narragansets a tributary chief, and bound to comply with the requisitions of their sachems, is rendered very probable by the following passage in Winthrop’s Journal. It is under date of April, 1632:
“The Governor received letters from Plymouth signifying that there had been a broil between their men at Sowamset and the Narraganset Indians, who set upon the English house, there to have taken Ousamaquin, the Sagamore of Pokanoscott, [Pokanoket] who fled thither with all the people for refuge, and that Captain Standish, being gone thither to relieve the English which were in the House, sent home in all haste for more men and other provisions, upon intelligence that Canonicus was coming with a great army against them. On that, they wrote to our Governor for some powder to be sent with all possible speed, for it seemed they were unprovided. Upon this the Governor presently dispatched away a messenger with so much powder as he could carry, viz: twenty-seven pounds. The messenger returned and brought a letter from the Governor, signifying that the Indians were retired from Sowamset to fight the Pequins, [Pequots] which was probable; because John Sagamore and Chickatabott were gone, with all their men, to Canonicus, who had sent for them.”
Here Canonicus, on the point of marching against the Pequots, sent to certain sachems of Massachusetts to join him; there is little doubt that the same requisition was made of Massasoit, and attempted to be enforced. He took shelter, however, under the English, and the Narragansets finding that they could not compel obedience without involving themselves in a war with the English, retired and prosecuted the expedition without his assistance. But in 1636, when they were somewhat relieved from the pressure of their enemies, they were probably about engaging in a war with the Wampanoags, to punish this contempt of their chief’s authority. Hence the great contest to which Williams alludes.
As a further proof that Massasoit was in some sort a subordinate sachem of the Narraganset chiefs, it may be added, that the above deed of Aquidnick appears to have been made in his presence, and that he and his tribe were afterwards compensated for their rights in the lands conveyed. Those rights were therefore considered of a character subordinate to those of the Narraganset chiefs.
Since the foregoing remarks were written, the author has noticed a deposition of Williams, quoted by Backus, in his History of the Baptists, and dated twenty-five years after the settlement of Providence was commenced, which applies directly to the question here discussed, and abundantly confirms the views already taken. Williams, in his deposition, says, “After I had obtained this place, now called Providence, of Canonicus and Miantonomi, [the chief Nanhiganset sachems,] Osamaquin laid his claim to this place also. This forced me to repair to the Nanhiganset sachems aforesaid, who declared that Osamaquin was their subject, and had solemnly, himself in person with ten men, subjected himself and his lands unto them at the Nanhiganset, only now he seemed to revolt from his loyalty, under the shelter of the English at Plymouth. This I declared from the Nanhiganset sachems to Osamaquin, who without any stick acknowledged to be true that he had so subjected, as the Nanhiganset sachems had affirmed; [but] that he was not subdued by war, which himself and his father had maintained against the Nanhigansets; but God, said he, subdued us by a plague which swept away my people, and forced me to yield.”
STANZA XXXV.
_They were the Yengee’s men, not ours, they said._
“He [Massasoit] also talked of the French, bidding us not to suffer them to come to Narrohiganset; for it was King James’ his country, and he was King James his man.”--_Mourt’s Journal._
STANZA XXXVII.
_He speaks a Manitoo!_
“There is a general custom among them,” says Williams, “at the apprehension of any excellence in men or women, birds, beasts, or fish, &c., to cry out Manittoo! that is, it is a god; as thus, if they see one man excel others in wisdom, valor, strength, or activity, they cry out Manittoo!”
STANZA XLI.
_And for the Pequot deeds Awanux grieves._
“News came to Plymouth that Captain Stone, who last summer went out of the Bay or Lake, and so to Aquawaticus, where he took in Captain Norton, putting in at the mouth of Connecticut, (on his way to Virginia,) where the Pequins [Pequots] inhabit, was cut off with all his company, being eight in number.”--_Winthrop’s Journal._
STANZA XLV.
_If true he spake--that should his actions show-- May not his heart be darker than yon cloud, And yet his words white as yon falling snow? Still if his speech were true--_
“Canonicus, the old high sachem of the Narraganset bay, (a wise and peaceable prince), once in a solemn oration to myself, in a solemn assembly, using this word, [Wannaumwayean, if he speak true,] said, I have never suffered any wrong to be offered to the English since they landed, nor never will. He often repeated this word, Wannaumwayean, Englishman, if the Englishman speak true, if he meane truly; then shall I goe to my grave in peace, and hope that the English and my posteritie shall live in love and peace together. I replied that he had no cause (as I hoped) to question the Englishman’s Wannaumauonck, that is, faithfulnesse, he having had long experience of their faithfulnesse and trustinesse. He took a stick and broke it into ten pieces, and related ten instances, (laying down a stick at every instance), which gave him cause thus to feare and say. I satisfied him on some presently, and presented the rest to the governors of the English, who I hope will be far from giving just cause to have barbarians question their Wannaumwauonck of faithfulnesse.”--_Williams’ Key._
STANZA XLVII.
_This fragment shows the serpent’s skin they sent, Filled with round thunders to our royal tent._
“The people called Narragansets,” says the N. E. Memorial, “sent messengers unto our plantations with a bundle of arrows tied together with a snake-skin, which the interpreter told them was a threatening and a challenge, upon which the Governor of Plymouth sent them a rough answer, viz.: That, if they loved war better than peace, they might begin when they would; they had done them no wrong, neither did they fear them, nor should they find them unprovided; and by another messenger they sent the snake-skin back again, with bullets in it; but they would not receive it, but sent it back again.” Mr. Davis in a note adds: “The messenger was accompanied by a friendly Indian, Tockamahamon. The messenger inquired for Squanto, who was absent. The bundle of arrows was left for him, and the messenger departed without any explanation. When Squanto returned, and the dubious present was delivered him, he immediately understood the object.” The planters, however, seem to have considered themselves threatened. They immediately began to strengthen their defences, and every precaution was taken against a surprise.
STANZA XLVIII.
_This, when at Sowans raged our battle loud, How their round thunders made that battle dumb._
See the passage from Winthrop, in note to stanza xxxiii.
_This how amid the Pequot nation they Build the square lodge, and whet him to the fray._
The Plymouth Company had established a trading house on the Connecticut, as early as 1633. Their trade with the Pequots in arrow points, knives, hatchets, &c., might very probably give offence to the Narragansets. “We found,” says Winthrop, “that all the sachems of Narraganset, except Canonicus and Miantonomi were the contrivers of Mr. Oldham’s death, and the occasion was because he went to make peace and trade with the Pequots.”
CANTO FIFTH.
STANZA XI.
_Brother, the spirit of my son is gone; I burned my lodge to speak my mighty grief._
Williams says, “The chiefe and most aged peaceable father of the countrey, Canonnicus, having buried his sonne, he burned his own palace, and all his goods in it, (amongst them to a great value), in a solemn remembrance of his son, and in a kind of humble expiation to the gods, who (as they believe) had taken away his sonne from him.”
_I am thy father, thou shalt be my son._
See the extract from Williams’ testimony, in note to stanza xxxiii, of canto iv.
STANZA XXIV.
_The sable fox-hide did his loins enclose-- The sable fox-tail formed his nodding crest._
The Indians had a superstitious regard for the black fox. Williams says, they considered it a Manittoo--a god, spirit, or divine power.
STANZA XXXII.
_Hast thou forgot, when, by Cohannet’s stream, To curse the strangers every charm was tried._
“But before I pass on, let the reader take notice of a very remarkable particular which was made known to the planters at Plymouth some short space after their arrival; that the Indians, before they came to the English to make friendship with them, got all the Pawaws in the country, who, for three days together, in a horrid and devilish manner, did curse and execrate them with their conjurations, which assembly and service they held in a dark and dismal swamp.”--_N. E. Memorial._
_How I appeared, and, by the embers’ gleam, To the hard rock my lance’s point applied, And scored my mandate._
The inscriptions on the rocks by Taunton river have afforded a subject of much speculation to the antiquary. It would not be strange if the Indians ascribed to them a supernatural origin.
STANZA XLII.
_An odor, strange, though not offensive, spread About him, as he near and nearer drew;_
If my recollection serves me, Dr. Good, in his Book of Nature, supposes that the seeming power of fascination in serpents may arise from an odor emitted by them. The tale of the Hunter and the Rattlesnake, in the New England Legends, must furnish the author with a justification for the use which he has made of this serpent in the text; and it ought also to be added, that his description of the serpent, in the act of exercising his mysterious powers, is not essentially different from that in the tale to which he has referred.
STANZA LXIII.
_Here stretched Aquidnay tow’rd the ocean blue._
Aquidnay is the Indian name for Rhode Island. This name is variously written--sometimes Aquidneck, sometimes Aquetnet, and sometimes Aquidnet. Winthrop generally writes it Aquidnay, and the author has chosen so to write it, for no other reason, than that the sound is a little more agreeable. There is some reason to conclude that Aquetnet is nearer its true etymology. See the following note.
STANZA LXX.
_Another sachem sways The Isle of peace._
_Aquene_ signified, in the Narraganset dialect, peace. It is possible that Aquetnet, as the name of this island has been sometimes written, may be its derivative; _et_ is a termination usually denoting place. But whether this be or be not its etymology, the designation is not inapplicable, since the island must have been a place of security against the roving Maquas, Pequots, Tarrateens, &c.
STANZA LXXII.
_There Sowams gleamed,--if names the muse aright, Till in the forest far his glories fade;_
Calender intimates that Sowams is properly the name of a river, where the two Swansey rivers meet and run together for near a mile, when they empty themselves in the Narraganset Bay. Sowamset may, therefore, indicate some town or other place on the banks of the river. These names have been used by some as synonymous.
CANTO SIXTH.
STANZA III.
_Who with the laboring axe, On Seekonk’s eastern marge, invades the wood?_
Nothing is said of Williams, by the histories of the age, from the time he left Salem, until his expulsion from Seekonk, afterwards called Rehoboth. We learn, from some of Williams’ letters, that, after purchasing land from Massasoit, he there built and planted, before he was informed by Governor Winslow that he was within the limits of the Plymouth patent. Until this information, he had supposed himself to be beyond the limits of either Plymouth or Massachusetts. And, certainly, the language of the Plymouth patent was sufficiently equivocal to countenance almost any construction of it in reference to the western (otherwise called southern) bounds of its grant. I will transcribe its words, that the reader may judge for himself. It grants the lands “lying between Cohasset rivulet toward the north, and Narraganset river toward the south, the great Western Ocean toward the east, and a straight line, extending into the main land toward the west, from the mouth of Narraganset river to the utmost bounds of a country called Pokanoket, alias Sowamset, and another straight line, extending directly from the mouth of Cohasset river toward the west, so far into the main land westward, as the utmost limits of Pokanoket, alias Sowamset.”
What is here intended by Narraganset river? Is it the bay or some river falling into the bay? Was it intended by the utmost bounds of Pokanoket? Do the words of the patent include or exclude that territory? The truth is, that the geography of the country was, at that time, very imperfectly understood, and the words of the patent are not a true description of the territory to be granted. The charter of Rhode Island is a proof that the Plymouth patent was not considered as embracing within its limits what is called Pokanoket, alias Sowamset; since that charter covers a considerable part of that very territory. But, if Pokanoket was not included by the Plymouth patent, Williams ought not to have been treated as a trespasser. It is not my purpose to discuss the question of boundaries. These observations are made for the purpose of showing that Williams had his reasons for believing that he was out of the jurisdiction of Plymouth.
STANZA XXII.
_And brandishing his blade, he jeering said, That vengeance gave it eyes and appetite; It soon would eat--but eat in silence dread._
“He [an Indian slain by Standish] bragged of the excellency of his knife: _Hinnaim namen, hinnaim michen, matta cuts_: that is to say, by and by it should see, by and by it should eat, but not speak.”
CANTO SEVENTH.
STANZA V.
_His flock no more,--with strifes now sorely riven._
The opinions for which Williams was banished, were but the beginning of schism in the Massachusetts churches, and his banishment but the commencement of persecution. Many members of the church of Salem still adhered to him, and finally followed him to Providence.
STANZA XXI.
_O’er yonder distant brow Smokes in the vale Neponset’s peopled town._
Neponset is the name of a river in Massachusetts. On the banks of this river there seem to have been several Indian towns or villages, at the time of Williams’ banishment.
STANZA LVII.
_And by the lock he held a trunkless head._
“Timequassin, to cut off, or behead, which they are most skillful to do in fight.”--_Williams’ Key._
CANTO EIGHTH.
STANZA XVI.
_Who cannot see, That a dark cloud o’er our New England lowers? The tender conscience struggles to be free-- The tyrant struggles, and retains his power._
Williams seems to have had a strong presentiment that a season of persecution was approaching, and often expressed a desire that his plantation _might be a shelter for persons distressed for conscience_.
STANZA XIX.
_And there this eve some reasoning, I opine, (For all may err) a weighty theme upon, May not be deemed amiss._
It was the first intention of the author to have drawn the materials of the conversation in the text from the controversy between Williams and Cotton; but, on examination, he was satisfied that it was not suited to a performance of this kind. This controversy originated as follows: A prisoner (one who was doubtless suffering for heretical opinions) addressed a letter to a Mr. Hall, in which he discussed and argued against the right of government to persecute for matters of conscience. Hall sent this letter to Mr. Cotton, who answered it. Hall, dissatisfied with the answer, transmitted it to Williams. In the hands of Williams it remained some time; for he was struggling with all the difficulties incident to his situation at Providence. He however composed a reply to Cotton’s answer, which he entitled the Bloody Tenent. He says it was written whilst engaged at the hoe and oar, toiling for bread--whilst attending on Parliament--in a change of rooms and places; in a variety of strange houses; sometimes in the field, in the midst of travel; where he had been forced to gather and scatter his loose thoughts and papers. And, certainly, considering the circumstances in which it was composed, it is a work calculated to increase our admiration of the man. The Bloody Tenent, together with Mr. Cotton’s answer to the prisoner’s letter, was published in London, at a time when his Puritan brethren in England were addressing him and others in Massachusetts, with most earnest remonstrances against their cruel persecutions of other denominations.
He, in his replies, had been endeavoring to extenuate and excuse the conduct of the civil government, and had taken particular care to exculpate himself. It is easy, therefore, to conceive what a shock this reverend dignitary must have suffered, when his answer to the prisoner’s letter, which went in principle the full length of the most unsparing persecution, together with Williams’ reply, was published and circulated among the brethren there. He instantly raised a cry, that Williams was _persecuting him_, by publishing his answer to the prisoner’s letter, and commenting upon it. But he felt himself under the necessity of doing something more. His brethren in England would require some sort of justification, and one consistent with the sentiments he had already expressed in his letters to them. Hence the controversy between him and Williams, is, on the part of Cotton, a sophistical attempt to avoid the charge of persecuting for matters of conscience. We do not persecute consciences, says he, but we do punish those who commit violence on their own consciences. If the reader should be so curious as to inquire, how Mr. Cotton ascertained when a man committed violence on his own conscience, I will state his process as I understand it. When it was discovered that any member entertained opinions inconsistent with the fundamental doctrines of the order to which he belonged, he was in the first place called before the church, and admonished of his error. If he still persisted, he was summoned before the magistracy, where the charges were specified, and the magistracy determined whether he was or was not convinced in his own mind of his errors. His judges never failed to be satisfied that he was convinced. If the accused afterwards persisted in his opinions, he was considered as one committing violence on his own conscience, and treated as an incorrigible heretic and disturber of the peace, and as such banished, imprisoned, scourged, or hanged, as the enormity of his heretical opinions might require. I have necessarily given the conversation between Williams and the Plymouth elder a turn different from that of the controversy between him and Cotton; but have endeavored to preserve something of the tone of feeling which pervades the latter. I flatter myself, however, that the Plymouth elder is a more moderate man than Mr. Cotton. As a proof, hear Mr. Cotton in his own words set forth the advantages which a state derives from persecuting heretics, and the summary mode in which the civil magistrate may deal with them.
To the question of Williams, What glory to God--what good to the souls and bodies of their subjects, did these princes bring in persecuting? Mr. Cotton thus replies: “The good that is brought to princes and subjects, by the due punishment of apostate seducers and idolaters and blasphemers, is manifold.
First; it putteth away evil from the people, and cutteth off a gangrene which would spread to further ungodliness.
Secondly; It driveth away wolves from worrying and scattering the sheep of Christ; (for false teachers be wolves.)
Thirdly; Such executions upon such evil doers causeth all the country to hear and fear, and do no more such wickedness.
Fourthly; The punishments, executed upon false prophets and seducing teachers, do bring down showers of God’s blessings upon the civil state.
Fifthly; It is an honor to God’s justice that such judgments are executed.”
He says, “If there be stones in the streets the magistrate need not fetch a sword from the smith’s shop, nor a halter from the roper’s, to punish a heretic.”
It will appear that time has made no improvement upon the leading principles of Williams, as gathered from different parts of his replies to Cotton. He says that “the people are the origin of all free power in government.” “That the people are not invested by Christ Jesus with power to rule his Church.” That they can give no such power to the magistrate. “That the kingdom of Christ is spiritual”--that to introduce the civil sword into this spiritual kingdom is “to confound Heaven and earth together, and lay all upon heaps of confusion”--“Is to take Christ and make him king by force (John vi, 15)--to make his kingdom of this world--to set up a civil and temporal Israel--to bound out new earthy lands of Canaan; yea, and to set up a Spanish inquisition, in all parts of the world, to the speedy destruction of millions of souls,” &c.
Cotton says, “that when the kingdoms of this earth become the kingdoms of the Lord, it is not by making Christ a temporal king; but by making the temporal kingdoms nursing fathers to the Church”--“that religion was not to be propagated by the sword; but protected and preserved by it.”
Williams replies, “that the husbandman weeds his garden to increase his grain, and that consequently it is the object of the hand that destroys the heretic to make the Christian”--“That the sword may make a nation of hypocrites, but not of Christians,” &c.
I have thrown together these few detached sentences, that the reader, who may have little inclination to peruse a controversy on a question which happily has no place in the present age, may form some opinion of its character. The discussion occupies two considerable volumes.
STANZA XLI.
_Williams, he said, it is my thankless lot, Thee with no pleasant message now to meet; Nor hath our Winslow, in his charge forgot (For his behest I bear and words repeat) His former friendship, but right loth is he To vex his neighbors by obliging thee._
After Williams had built and planted at Seekonk, he was visited by a messenger from Plymouth with a letter from Winslow, then Governor. Professing his and others’ friendship for him, he lovingly advised Williams, since he had fallen into the edge of their bounds, and they were loath to displease the Bay, to remove but to the other side of the water, and there he had the country before him, and might be as free as themselves, and they should be loving neighbors together.--See Williams’ letter to Mason. Mass. His. Col.
STANZA XLV.
_Thy purchase feigned was by the prophet shown To Dudley, and by him to us made known._
Williams, in his letter to Mason, says, that Governor Winthrop and some of the council of Massachusetts were disposed to recall him from banishment, and confer upon him some mark of distinguished favor for his services. “It is known,” says Williams, “who hindered--who never promoted the liberty of other men’s consciences.” Mr. Davis, in a note to his edition of the New England Memorial, conjectures that he alludes to Mr. Dudley. The reader will not consider me as doing violence to historical probability, by supposing that this man gave information to the magistrates of Plymouth that Williams had established himself within the limits of their patent, and required his expulsion. He was the author of the following lines:
“Let men of God in courts and churches watch O’er such as do a toleration hatch, Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice To poison all with heresy and vice. If men be left and otherwise combine, My epitaph’s I dy’d no libertine.”
Yet we ought, perhaps, to blame the system, rather than the magistrate whose duty it was to carry it into effect.
STANZA XLVII.
_God gave James Stuart this, and James gave us._
The patents of the companies which settled in this country granted them lands without any reference to the rights of the natives. But the companies never availed themselves of these grants to that extent. Whatever may have been their opinions, they acted under them as if they had only invested them with the right of pre-emption. Cotton Mather is the only historian, that I recollect, who makes a merit of paying the Indians for their lands, and of not expelling them immediately from the soil in virtue of these patents.
CANTO NINTH.
STANZA III.
_Early that morn, beside the tranquil flood, Where, ready trimmed, rode Waban’s frail canoe, The banished man, his spouse and children stood, And bade their lately blooming hopes adieu._
I have represented Williams, throughout this narrative, as unaccompanied by any of his Salem friends. And such, I think, was the fact up to the time he left, or was about leaving, Seekonk. Indeed, there was no necessity for any of his friends to accompany him in his flight from Salem “in the winter’s snow.” They could render him no assistance in negotiations with the Indians.--They could not alleviate his hardships by participating in them. But what seems to settle the question, (if in fact it be a question) is, that he himself, though he frequently alludes to his sufferings and transactions “during the bitter cold winter,” no where intimates that any white man participated in them. He uniformly speaks in the first person singular: “I was sorely tossed for fourteen weeks--I left Salem in the winter’s snow--I found a great contest going on between the chiefs--I travelled between them--I first pitched and began to build and plant at Seekonk--I received a message from Mr. Winslow--I crossed the Seekonk and settled at Mooshausick.” It is strange that he should, on no occasion, mention that some of his friends suffered with him, if any actually did. All accurate information concerning Williams, during these fourteen weeks, must, I apprehend, be drawn from his writings; and I have chosen to follow them. And indeed had he been accompanied by one or more of his friends, they could not have aided the author in the conduct of his narrative, any more than they could have borne a part in the trials and labors of Williams.
Williams says that he mortgaged his house and land in Salem to go through, and all that came with him afterwards were not engaged, but came and went at pleasure; but he was forced to go through and stay by it. (His purchase of the Indians.)
I have not been able to ascertain in what particular part of Seekonk Williams attempted to form his plantation, and have consequently felt myself at liberty to suppose it was in the neighborhood of Pawtucket Falls.
STANZA XXV.
_“Netop, Whatcheer!” broke on the listening air._
Netop--friend. The tradition is, that when Williams in a canoe approached the western banks of the river, at a place now called Whatcheer Cove, he saw a gathering of the natives. When he had come within hail, he was accosted by them in broken English with the friendly salutation, “Wha-cheer! Wha-cheer!” Here he landed, and was kindly received by them. The land which was afterwards set off to him included this spot, and he commemorated the amicable greeting of his Indian friends by naming the field there assigned to him the Manor of Whatcheer, or Whatcheer Manor. This field is now the property of Governor Fenner, and the field adjoining it, which was likewise set forth to Williams, has continued to the present day in the possession of his descendants. We are probably indebted to the name which Williams gave the first mentioned field, for the preservation of this tradition.
STANZA XXXVII.
_Ay, almost hears the future pavements jar Beneath a people’s wealth, and half divines From thee, Soul-Liberty! what glories wait Thy earliest altars--thy predestined state._
To show that Williams was not without a presentiment of the temporal advantages that might arise to his projected settlement, from a full liberty in religious concernments, I quote the following from his memorial to Parliament, prefixed to his Bloody Tenent made more bloody, &c. Speaking of Holland he says: “From Enchuysen, therefore, a den of persecuting lions and mountain leopards, the persecuted fled to Amsterdam, a poor fishing town, yet harborous and favorable to the flying, though dissenting consciences. This confluence of the persecuted, by God’s most gracious coming with them, drew boats--drew trade--drew shipping, and that so mightily in so short a time, that shipping, trade, wealth, greatness, honor, (almost to astonishment in the eyes of all Europe and the world), have appeared to fall, as out of Heaven, in a crown or garland upon the head of this poor fishertown.”
STANZA XL.
_From wild Pawtucket to Pawtuxet’s bounds, To thee and thine be all the teeming grounds._
The first grant made by Canonicus and Miantonomi to Williams, appears to have been a verbal grant of all the lands and meadows upon the two fresh rivers, called Mooshausick and Wanaskatucket; but on the 24th of March, 1637, they confirmed this grant by deed, and, in consideration of the many kindnesses and services he was constantly rendering them, made the bounds Pawtuxet river on the south, Pawtucket on the northwest, and the town of Mashapauge on the west. This grant includes nearly all the county of Providence, and a part of the county of Kent.
STANZA XLI.
_For, at that moment, down the boundless range Of heavenly spheres did some bright being take Wing to his soul, and wrought to suited change The visual nerve, and straight in outward space Stood manifest in its celestial grace._
This passage, it is true, supposes action on the mind by a supernatural being, but it does not suppose the outward bodily manifestation of the angelic form described. It simply supposes the image or conception, wrought in the mind by the supernatural agency, to _externize_ itself through a change effected by a sympathetic action in the visual organ. Or, in other words, it supposes the internal image to become so distinct as to reflect itself into the retina and overcome the action of external objects thereon; whereby the internal image is made to appear in the field of vision as an external reality. In justification of this idea, I am glad to have it in my power to refer to No. C. of the Family Library, entitled “Outlines of Disordered Mental Action, by Professor Upham, of Bowdoin College”--p. 117.
I feel that these remarks are due to the very friendly criticism which this poem has received on the other side of the Atlantic; in which, understanding (as I suppose) the apparition to be represented as an external reality, the reviewer blames it as an extravagance not in accordance with the general character of the narrative.
STANZA XLVII.
_Her well-cast anchor here--her lasting hope in Thee._
The Anchor, with the motto Hope, which formed the device on the seal of the Colony, may be considered as having reference to the dangers and difficulties through which the settlers had passed, and were passing at the time it was adopted. This was done in 1663.
STANZA XLIX.
_And ages hence our children shall recite Of thy protecting grace their Father’s sense, And, when they name their home, proclaim Thy Providence._
Williams carried the philanthropy, which breathes in his great principle of Soul-Liberty, into all the important acts of his life. Although the munificent grant of Canonicus and Miantonomi had been made to him only, he shortly after made it the common property of his friends who joined him at Providence, reserving to himself no more than an equal share, and receiving from them the small sum of thirty pounds, not as purchase money, but as a remuneration for the gratuities which he had made to the Indians out of his own estate.
“The following passage,” says Mr. Benedict, in his history of the Baptists, “explains, in a very pleasing manner, Mr. Williams’s design in these transactions: ‘Notwithstanding I had frequent promise from Miantonomi, my kind friend, that it should not be land that I should want about these bounds mentioned, provided I satisfied the Indians there inhabiting, I having made covenant of peaceable neighborhood with all the sachems and natives round about us, and having _in a sense of God’s merciful Providence to me in my distress, called the place Providence; I desired it might be for a shelter to persons distressed for conscience. I then considered the condition of divers of my countrymen_. I communicated my said purchase unto my loving friends, John Throckmorton and others, who then desired to take shelter here with me. And whereas, by God’s merciful assistance, I was procurer of the purchase, not by moneys nor payment, the natives being so shy and jealous that moneys could not do it, but by that language--acquaintance and favor with the natives, and other advantages which it pleased God to give me, and also bore the charges and venture of all the gratuities which I gave to the great sachems and natives round about us, and lay engaged for a loving and peaceable neighborhood with them to my great charge and travel; it was therefore thought fit that I should receive some consideration and gratuity.’ Thus, after mentioning the said thirty pounds, ‘this sum I received, and in love to my friends and _with respect to a town and place of succor for the distressed as aforesaid_, I do acknowledge this said sum a full satisfaction,’ he went on, in full and strong terms, to confirm those lands to said inhabitants, reserving no more to himself that an equal share with the rest; his wife also signing the deed.”
APPENDIX.
Having in the preceding notes given some account of the principal events which marked the life of Williams up to the time he settled at Mooshausick, it may be agreeable to such of my readers, as have not his biography at hand, to find here some notice of the actions which distinguished the remainder of his days. The following summary is drawn chiefly from Mr. Benedict’s History of the Baptists, and the Sketch of the Life of Williams annexed to the first volume of the Rhode Island Historical Collections.
Williams was soon joined at Providence by a number of his friends from Salem. In a short time their number amounted to forty persons. They then adopted a form of government, by which they admitted none to become their associates, but such as held to the principle of Religious Freedom.
The year following his settlement, a formidable conspiracy of the Indians was planned against the English colonists. He gave his persecutors information of the fact. He addressed a letter to the Commissioners of the United Colonies, “assuring them that the country would suddenly be all on fire, meaning by war--that by strong reasons and arguments he could convince any man thereof that was of another mind--that the Narragansets had been with the plantations combined with Providence, and had solemnly settled a neutrality with them, which fully shewed their counsels and resolutions for war.”[24] Had this plot been carried into effect, it would probably have eventuated in the ruin of the colonies from which he had been banished. Instead of indulging resentment by remaining inactive, he immediately exerted himself to bring about a dissolution of the Indian confederacy. He accomplished what no other man in New England at that time would have attempted. By his influence with the Narragansets, he broke up the combination, and formed treaties between them and the United Colonies, by which the latter had their aid in the war which followed with the Pequots.
[24] _Hutchinson’s State Papers._
The first four years that succeeded Williams’ settlement at Providence, were necessarily occupied by him there about the affairs of the plantations. He travelled amongst the Indians, and secured the friendship of their chiefs and warriors. He promoted the settlement of Rhode Island and Warwick. Much of his time must also have been required in making provisions for the support of his family, cast out, as they were, into the depths of a savage wilderness. Soon after his settlement, he had embraced the leading tenets of the Baptists, and had been baptized. He then formed a society of this order, and preached to it; but resigned his pastoral office on his going to England to solicit the first Charter.
Not being permitted to pass through Massachusetts in order to embark on this voyage, he went by land to Manhattan, [New York,] then under the Dutch. A war between the Dutch and Indians was at that time raging with great violence. In this war, Mrs. Ann Hutchinson and family, who had been banished from Massachusetts, had fallen victims to Indian barbarities; and, as if every step of this remarkable man was to bear the impress of his benevolence, he was here instrumental in pacifying the savages, and stopping the effusion of blood. After this, he took ship for England. Whilst on this voyage, that no time might be lost in laying posterity under obligations to him, he composed his Key to the Indian Languages. This, together with his Bloody Tenent, was published on his arrival in England. Here, as agent for the colonies of Providence, Rhode Island, and Warwick, he obtained a charter of incorporation, signed by the Earl of Warwick, then Governor and Admiral of the English Plantations, and by his council.
On the 17th September, 1644, he landed at Boston, bringing a letter of recommendation to the Governor and Assistants of Massachusetts Bay, from some of the most influential members of the Long Parliament. He thus avoided the penalty incurred by entering their bounds. At the first General Assembly formed under this Charter, a law was passed establishing the most unlimited toleration in matters of conscience. Unconfined to those who professed Christianity, its provisions extended to the whole human family. I mention this, because it has been said that Maryland furnishes the first example of a legislative act of this kind. The Maryland act was passed in 1649, and its privileges extended only to those who professed to believe in Jesus Christ.
Mr. Coddington afterwards procured a Charter, which gave him almost unlimited authority over the islands of Narraganset bay. This caused great discontent. It was called _Coddington’s Obstruction_. Williams and Clark were sent to England, in 1651, to procure its revocation. They effected the object of their mission in October, 1652. Whilst in England, Williams resided with Sir Henry Vane, at his seat in Lincolnshire. He returned in 1652, and brought a letter from Sir Henry, inviting the planters to a close union. The colony, during his absence, had been distracted by many divisions. This letter, together with the earnest solicitations of Williams, restored harmony. He was several times after, as well as before this, elected to the office of President or Governor of the colony.
Williams died in 1683, at Providence, and was buried under arms, in his family burying ground, with every testimony of respect which the colony could manifest.
The religious sentiments of Williams seem to have become more and more liberal as he advanced in life. Whatever rigid forms those sentiments may have assumed, in the early part of his career, they gradually melted down, and blended themselves in that warm and deep feeling of universal benevolence, which had given birth to his great principle of Soul-Liberty. The dominion of that feeling, over every other in his breast, is sufficiently indicated by the firmness with which he adhered to this principle in circumstances the most trying. This feeling naturally sought for a congenial nature in other breasts, and Williams soon learned that there were good men in all societies. He freely joined in worship with all, and imparted his instructions to all who were disposed to hear him. This liberality, however, was not inconsistent with theological discussions, in which he occasionally participated. His dispute with the Friends gave umbrage to some of that order. It occupied two or three days, and eventuated by a publication by Williams, entitled “George Fox digged out of his burroughs.” Although some of this order seem, for a time, to have remembered this dispute to his disadvantage, yet there were others who cherished for him the kindest and most respectful feelings. Among these was Governor Jenks, who though a Quaker, bestows the highest praise on Williams, both as a man and a Christian.
When not engaged abroad on business of the colony, he statedly preached to the Indians in Narraganset; and those amongst them, who would hear no one else, were attentive to him. That branch of the Narragansets, called the Nianticks, seem to have been an object of his peculiar care. They were so far Christianized by his labors that they took no part in Philip’s war, and their present existence, as the only remnant of a once powerful people, may be traced to the effects of his ministry.
Williams retained his influence with the Indians nearly to the last of his and their existence. While Philip was making preparation for war, in 1671, commissioners were sent to Taunton to inquire into the cause. Philip, suspicious of their design, remained in his camp; and when summoned by the commissioners to meet them, he required that they should meet him. Matters remained in this posture until Williams, then seventy years old, with a Mr. Brown offered to become a hostage in his camp. Philip then met the commissioners, delivered up seventy guns and promised fidelity. This event gave the colony four years to prepare for the final struggle.
Whilst, in 1676, this cruel and exterminating war was raging, the Indians approached the town of Providence. Williams, it is said, on seeing their advance, still feeling his wonted confidence in his influence over them, took his staff and left the garrison. But some of the old warriors on seeing him approach, advanced from the main body, and told him, that as for themselves they would do him no harm, nor would any amongst them who had long known him, but their young men could not be restrained. Upon which he returned to the garrison.
ADDENDA.
LIFE’S VOYAGE.
There rose, amid the boundless flood, A little island green; And there a simple race abode That knew no other scene;
Save that a vague tradition ran, That all the starry skies Bore up a brighter race of man, Robed in the rainbow’s dyes.
A youth there was of ardent soul, Who viewed the azure hue, And saw the waves of ocean roll Against its circle blue.
He launched his skiff, with bold intent To seek the nations bright, And o’er the rolling waters went, For many a day and night.
His lusty arms did stoutly strain, Nor soon their vigor spent: All hope was he right soon to gain And climb the firmament;
Where glorious forms, in garments bright, Dipped in the rainbow’s dyes, And streets, star-paved, should lend their light To his enraptured eyes.
And then might he his isle regain, Fraught with a dazzling freight, And lead his kindred o’er the main To that celestial state.
But, whilst he plied the bended oar, The island left his view; And yet afar his bark before, The azure circle flew.
Yet flattering hope did still sustain And give him vigor new; But still before him o’er the main Retired the circle blue.
Though whirlpools yawned; and tempests frowned And beat upon his head, And billows burst his bark around, Hope on that phantom fed;
Nor yet had ceased his labors vain, Had not his vigor failed, And ’neath the fever of his brain, His vital spirit quailed.
Then Death appeared upon the sea, An angel fair and bright; For he is not what mortals say-- A grim and haggard sprite.
And, “Thou dost chase,” he said, “my child! A phantom o’er the main; But though it has thy toils beguiled, Thou hast not toiled in vain.
“Thou hast thus roused each slumbering might, And framed thy soul to be Fit now to climb yon starry height;-- Come, then, and follow me.”
HYMN BY TWILIGHT.
See the hues of evening fading From the sky and tranquil bay; See the groves, with deeper shading, Brown the dale as fails the ray.
Hear the distant torrent falling, Hear the note of whip-poor-will, Hear the shepherd homeward calling Flocks that bleat on lonely hill.
See yon cloud the distance glooming, Hear its far-off thunder roar, Hear the distant ocean’s booming Billows beat the eternal shore.
God is in the hues of heaven Fading from the sky and bay; God is in the shades of even, That chase the heavenly hues away.
God is in the torrent falling, In the song of whip-poor-will, In the voice of shepherd calling, In the bleating on the hill,
In the cloud the distance glooming, In the distant thunder’s roar, In the far-off ocean booming On his everlasting shore.
God! Thou art all substance wreathing Into forms that suit thy will; God! Thou art through all things breathing One harmonious anthem still.
REYNARD’S SOLILOQUY.
(FROM THE SCHOOL OF QUEEN MAB.)
Halloo! halloo! Wild woodland now! How the twinkling stars look down! And rocky and rude is the mountain’s brow, And dark is the forest’s frown. Ha! ha! the dens and brambled fens My wild eyes laugh to greet, And over the clifts and rocky rifts Right merrily dance my feet.
Pure is the gale, and odors rise From the wild woodland hill; Wo-hoo! Wo-hoo! the dark owl cries, And shrilly the whip-poor-will; But the deep tone of the owlet’s moan Is a note of courage all free, And the whip-poor-will’s trill beneath the hill Gives music and motion to me.
The farmers’ geese are very well fed, And fat and sleek are they;-- The blood-hound lies in his dreamy bed, So let me seek my prey. On drumming wings the partridge springs, As over the brakes I fly; But soon, like specks, the lily-white necks Will float before my eye.
Ha! ha! I’ll pause upon this height; The village is all in view; The two-legged bodies are still to-night, And I’ll the game pursue. But hark!--I hear a sound, I fear-- ’Tis surely not yet day-- O! ’tis the sound of the opening hound-- Away! away! away!
O’er bush, o’er brake, o’er rock I go, But nearer they come, I fear; Far off huzzas the two-legged foe-- Wow! wow!--the hounds are near. I’ll double my track, I’ll run me back, I’ll pother the beagles some-- Now for my den I’ll strain again, And gain my mountain home.
A SUMMONS TO THE COUNTRY.
Is it to sit within thy stately hall, Or tread the crowded street, thy chief delight? From all her heights and depths though Nature call Thee to her charms--though grove, and plain, and height, Warble for thee--though Ocean’s stormy might Thunder for thee--though the starred heavens sublime Shine out for thee--though peering orient bright O’er mountain wood, the sire of day and time Doth call for thee--and with retiring light Glance down his hues from their celestial clime To lure thee forth;--yet can all these excite In thy cold breast no chord’s responsive chime? Still wilt thou choose a prison-yard and cell?-- Well! God forgive thy choice, for thou dost penance well.
Transcriber's Notes
The following changes have been made to the text as printed:
1. Marked footnotes have been located immediately below the stanza, heading or paragraph to which they refer.
2. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
3. Page 161 (Canto 8), heading to final stanza: "LXII" changed to "LXXII".
4. Notes, Page 185 (Canto 2): word "STANZA" prepended to heading "XXVIII".
5. Notes, Page 186 (Canto 2): heading "STANZA XXXVII" corrected to "STANZA XXXVIII".
6. Notes, Page 201 (Canto 5, Stanza 11, second note): reference to "stanza xxii" corrected to "stanza xxxiii".
7. Notes, Page 202 (Canto 5): heading "STANZA LXII" corrected to "STANZA LXIII".
The following anomalies in the printed text are noted, but no change has been made:
1. Spelling and hyphenation within the poem have been left unchanged, aside from obvious typographical errors.
2. Some compass directions are hyphenated within the poem, but unhyphenated in the Notes.
3. Within the Notes, the quotes from Williams' writings retain the archaic and sometimes variable spelling of his day.
4. Variant spellings of Native American names have not been amended.
5. Page 158 (Canto 8, Stanza 63), "And in all perils was there sure defence": "there" in the original is a possible reading; "their" a more likely one.
6. "Calendar" (Page 188), "Callender" (Page 196) and "Calender" (Page 203) all appear to refer to John Callender, who wrote "An Historical Discourse ... of the Colony of Rhode-Island", first published 1739. |
18503-8 | Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
OUR DAY
In the Light of Prophecy
[Illustration: JESUS WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM
"If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!" Luke 19:42.]
OUR DAY
In the Light of Prophecy
By W.A. SPICER
"Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." Rom. 15:4.
SOUTHERN PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE FORT WORTH, TEXAS ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Copyrighted, 1917, by REVIEW AND HERALD PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION
Copyrighted in London, England All Rights Reserved
CONTENTS
THE BOOK THAT SPEAKS TO OUR DAY 13
THE WITNESS OF THE CENTURIES 25
PROPHETIC OUTLINE OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY 39
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST 51
SIGNS OF THE APPROACHING END 65
THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE OF 1755 79
THE DARK DAY OF 1780 85
THE FALLING STARS OF 1833 93
THE MEANING OF PRESENT-DAY CONDITIONS 105
THE HISTORIC PROPHECY OF DANIEL 7 117
THE 1260 YEARS OF DANIEL'S PROPHECY 131
DAWN OF A NEW ERA 139
THE WORK OF THE "LITTLE HORN" POWER 145
THE BIBLE SABBATH 159
GLIMPSES OF SABBATH KEEPING AFTER NEW TESTAMENT TIMES 173
THE LAW OF GOD 183
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 191
BAPTISM 199
THE PROPHECY OF DANIEL 8 205
THE CLEANSING OF THE SANCTUARY IN TYPE AND ANTITYPE 213
A GREAT PROPHETIC PERIOD 219
THE PROPHECY FULFILLED 229
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT 239
THE JUDGMENT-HOUR MESSAGE 247
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL 257
SPIRITUALISM: ANCIENT AND MODERN 265
LIFE ONLY IN CHRIST 275
THE END OF THE WICKED 287
ANGELS: THEIR MINISTRY 295
THE TIME OF THE END 303
THE EASTERN QUESTION 321
ARMAGEDDON 337
THE MILLENNIUM 351
THE HOME OF THE SAVED 361
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
JESUS WEEPING OVER JERUSALEM _Frontispiece_
THE GOOD SHEPHERD 12
HEALING THE CENTURION'S SERVANT 16
CHRIST'S WEAPON OF DEFENSE--THE WORD OF GOD 19
ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS 24
THE GREAT IMAGE 38
BABYLON IN HER GLORY 40
THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL 42
THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST 50
CHRIST COMING IN GLORY 58
CHRIST ANSWERING HIS DISCIPLES' QUESTIONS 64
THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM BY THE ROMANS UNDER TITUS, A.D. 70 68
THE CATACOMBS NEAR ROME 72
LISBON FROM ACROSS THE BAY 78
MIDDAY AT SEA, MAY 19, 1780 84
THE GREAT METEORIC SHOWER, NOV. 13, 1833 92
THE SIGN OF FIRE 98
SATAN OFFERS GOLD, AND THE WORLD STAMPEDES TO ITS DESTRUCTION 104
A FAITHFUL AND WISE SERVANT 108
THE SUNSET HOUR 114
PHILIP AND THE EUNUCH 116
ROME ON THE TIBER 124
THE INVASION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BY THE HUNS 128
RAISING THE SIEGE OF ROME, A.D. 538 130
STORMING OF THE BASTILLE PRISON IN PARIS 138
THE TRIPLE CROWN 144
THE LOVE OF POWER--THE POWER OF LOVE 146
CHRISTIANS IN PRISON BENEATH THE COLOSSEUM AWAITING MARTYRDOM 148
THE SHAME OF RELIGIOUS WARS 152
CHRIST AND THE SCRIBES 158
THE SABBATH FROM EDEN TO EDEN 168
CHRIST AND HIS DISCIPLES IN THE CORN-FIELDS 172
WALDENSES HUNTED BY THE ARMIES OF ROME 176
THE GIFT OF GOD 190
THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST 198
SYMBOLS OF MEDO-PERSIA AND GRECIA 204
THE CAMP OF ISRAEL IN THE WILDERNESS 210
OUR GREAT HIGH PRIEST 212
ARTAXERXES SENDING THE JEWS TO REBUILD JERUSALEM, B.C. 457 218
REBUILDING JERUSALEM 224
THE ANOINTING OF JESUS AT HIS BAPTISM 228
THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST 232
THE THIRD ANGEL'S MESSAGE 238
A CHRISTIAN MOTHER EXHORTING HER DAUGHTER TO MARTYRDOM 246
LUCIFER PLOTTING AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD 256
THE REDEMPTION PRICE 260
SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR 264
THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT 270
"HE IS RISEN" 274
LOT FLEEING FROM SODOM 286
PETER DELIVERED FROM PRISON 294
JACOB'S DREAM IN BETHEL 298
MODERN INVENTIONS FULFILLING PROPHECY 302
THE HOE DOUBLE OCTUPLE PRESS 316
FORTIFICATIONS ON THE BOSPORUS 320
MODERN JERUSALEM 329
THE GREAT BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON 336
UNITED STATES BATTLESHIP "NEVADA" 340
MOSES VIEWING THE PROMISED LAND 360
THE SAINTS' ETERNAL HOME 366
THE MASTER AT THE DOOR 369
[Illustration: "FOUNDED UPON A ROCK"
"Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path." Ps. 119:105.]
FOREWORD
These are eventful times. With history-making changes passing rapidly before men's eyes, the questions press upon thoughtful minds in all lands, What do these things mean? What next in the program of world-shaping events?
Like a great searchlight shining across the centuries, the sure Word of Prophecy focuses its bright beams upon Our Day. In this light we see clearly the trend of events, and may understand what comes next in the program of history fulfilling prophecy.
In the Volume of the Book the living God speaks to Our Day of events of the past that have a lesson for the present, and of things to come. Divine prophecy fulfilled before men's eyes is God's challenge to unbelief. The Word of Holy Writ has been the guiding light through all the ages. It is the lamp to our feet today.
"Steadfast, serene, unmovable, the same, Year after year,... Burns on forevermore that quenchless flame; Shines on that inextinguishable light."
[Illustration: THE GOOD SHEPHERD
"The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." John 1:14.]
[Illustration: "PEACE BE TO THIS HOUSE"
"If any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." Rev. 3:20.]
THE BOOK THAT SPEAKS TO OUR DAY
Man may write a true book, but only God, the source of life, can write a living book. "The word of God ... liveth and abideth forever." 1 Peter 1:23. The Bible is the living word of God. We look at the volume; we hold it in our hands. It is like other books in form and printer's art. But the voice of God speaks from these pages, and the word spoken is alive. It is able to do in the heart that receives it what can be done only by divine power.
The Book That Talks
Far in the heart of Africa a missionary read to the people in their own language from the translated Word of God. "See!" they cried; "see! the book talks! The white man has a book that talks!" With that simplicity of speech so common to children of nature, they had exactly described it. This is a book that talks. What the wise man says of its counsels through parents to children, is true of all the book: "When thou goest, it shall lead thee; when thou sleepest, it shall keep thee; and when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee." Prov. 6:22.
Here is companionship, faithful and true, a blessed guide and guardian and friend.
"Holy Bible! book divine! Precious treasure, thou art mine!"
God Its Author
The sixty-six books of Holy Scripture were written by many penmen, over a space of fifteen centuries; yet it is one book, and one voice speaks through all its pages. Spurgeon once said of his experience with this book:
"When I see it, I seem to hear a voice springing up from it, saying, 'I am the book of God; man, read me. I am God's writing; open my leaf, for I was penned by God; read it, for He is my author.'"
This book declares of itself: "All scripture is given by inspiration of God." 2 Tim. 3:16. "The prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1:21. As the rugged verse of the old hymn puts it:
"Let all the heathen writers join To form one perfect book: Great God, if once compared with Thine, How mean their writings look!
"Not the most perfect rules they gave Could show one sin forgiven, Nor lead a step beyond the grave; But Thine conducts to heaven."
It is the voice of the Almighty. Very different it is from the sacred books of the non-Christian religions. In those writings it is man speaking about God; in the Holy Scriptures it is God speaking to man. The difference is as great as heaven is higher than earth. Here it is not man groping in the darkness after God. In this book of God's revelation we see the divine arm reaching down to save the lost, and hear the voice of the loving Father calling to His children, every one and everywhere. "Incline your ear," He calls; "hear, and your soul shall live." Isa. 55:3.
The Word That Creates
We must have something more than instruction; we must have a word of power that is able to tell of sins forgiven, and to conduct us beyond the grave to heaven. One of the greatest of China's sages, Mencius, said, "Instruction can impart information, but not the power to execute." That touches the crucial point. We must have instruction that can come with power divine to execute. We have it only in God's words. Christ said: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." John 6:63.
The words of God are living words. When God spoke in the beginning, "Let there be light," lo, the light sprang out of the darkness. There was power in the word spoken to bring forth. "Let the earth bring forth grass," was the word of the Lord: and the earth was carpeted with its first rich greensward. So through all the work of creation, the creative power was in the word spoken.
"By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth." "He spake, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast." Ps. 33:6, 9.
Even so, when this word speaks instruction to man, there is creative power in the word, if received, to work mightily in the soul that is dead in trespasses and sins. Man must be born again, be re-created. That we know; for Christ says, "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again ["from above," margin], he cannot see the kingdom of God." John 3:3.
And the word of God--the Bible from heaven--received by faith, is the agency by which this new birth "from above" is wrought. This is the declaration of our text: "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever." 1 Peter 1:23.
[Illustration: HEALING THE CENTURION'S SERVANT
"Speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed." Matt. 8:8.]
The Word That Works Within
Not only does the word of God give the new birth, making the believer a new man,--the past forgiven and a new heart within,--but the word that re-creates abides in the believing heart that studies it and clings to it, to work in the life with actual power that is not of the man himself. To the Thessalonians, who had "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God," the apostle wrote:
"For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe." 1 Thess. 2:13.
The word itself works within, and works effectually. There is nothing mechanical about it. The mere letter profits nothing. The Bible on the center table, unstudied and unloved, has no magic power. But God promises to abide by His Spirit of power in the heart that listens to His voice and trembles at His word. Jesus Himself tells us the secret of this power of the word to work in the believing heart:
"If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him." John 14:23.
No wonder, then, that believing and receiving the word brings divine power into the life, making it possible for transformations of character to be wrought, for victories to be won and obedience rendered to every command of God.
Simply believing God's word touches the current of everlasting power, even as the trolley arm of the electric car reaches up and touches the current of power flowing through the wire overhead. The faith that takes the living word brings the power divine into the heart to move all the spiritual mechanism of life's service.
The Word Our Safety and Defense
When Christ came to live as our example in the flesh, and to give His life a sacrifice for sin, He, the divine Son of God, made Himself like unto His brethren. "I can of Mine own self do nothing," He said. John 5:30. Tempted and tried, He found His defense in the Holy Scriptures. When Satan came to tempt Him to sin, the Saviour said, "It is written." He clung to the sure defense. Again the tempter came. He was met with the word, "It is written again." The third time it was the same weapon of defense, "It is written." Matt. 4:1-11.
Christ found safety only in the Scriptures of truth. So the Bible is the Christian's shield against the enemy's attacks. As Jesus studied the Scriptures and kept the words ever in His heart for a defense against temptation, so must every Christian study and meditate upon God's Holy Word if its counsels and precepts are to be his defense in the moment of sudden temptation to sin. "Thy word have I hid in mine heart," said the psalmist, "that I might not sin against Thee." Ps. 119:11. It was the only way for Christ, our Pattern; it is the only way for us.
The Bread of Life
The word of God is the daily food for the soul. "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Matt. 4:4.
Who has not, in hurried times, missed a meal, working on through the day, never thinking of the prolonged fast? But after a time there came a sense of weakening force, a lack of physical power. What was the trouble? At once the reason was evident--one had not taken food, and the system was calling for a renewal of its forces. Just so the spiritual life must needs be fed by the word of God.
[Illustration: CHRIST'S WEAPON OF DEFENSE--THE WORD OF GOD
"Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." Matt. 4:10.]
Do we at times feel a sense of weakening of the spiritual power, a letting down of the vital forces of the soul? Ah, in the hurry of life we have neglected to feed upon the living bread. We can no more sustain spiritual vigor and health without feeding daily upon God's Holy Word than we can maintain physical power without eating our daily bread. Eat of the life-giving word. The taste for it grows with the partaking.
There is life in "every word." The psalmist found the Lord's testimonies "sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb," or, as the marginal reading has it, than "the dropping of honeycombs." Ps. 19:10. We get the picture of the honeycomb inverted, the cell caps broken open, the sweetness dripping down. Just so every word of the Lord is a cell full of sweetness and life for the soul that feasts upon the Holy Scriptures.
The Source of All Doctrine
The Bible is the complete and perfect rule of faith and doctrine. Here every doctrine of salvation is found. Inspiration has declared it in the words of the apostle Paul to Timothy:
"From a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works." 2 Tim. 3:15-17.
The divine command is, "Study." For every generation there has been a message borne by this living word, making call to reformation of life, or giving warning and comfort. "The Bible is not a collection of truths formulated in propositions," said Dr. Samuel Harris, of Yale, "but God's majestic march through history, redeeming men from sin."
In every age God has been ruling and overruling, witnessing by His Spirit through the living word. The experiences recorded of past ages have their special lesson for the present time:
"Whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope." Rom. 15:4.
"Let vs therfore all with feruent desyre," as the Old English of 1549 spelled the exhortation of Erasmus, "thyrste after these spirituall sprynges.... Let vs kisse these swete wordes of Christ with a pure affeccion. Let vs be newe transformed into them, for soche are oure maners as oure studies be."
The Book for All Mankind
It speaks in every tongue to the human heart. Its power to transform has been shown through all the centuries in every clime and among every race. One of the Gospels was put into the Chiluba tongue of Central Africa. After a time a Garenganze chief came to Dan Crawford, the missionary, changed from the spirit of a fierce, wicked barbarian to that of a teachable child. Explaining his conversion, the chief said: "I was startled to find that Christ could speak Chiluba. I heard him speak to me out of the printed page, and what he said was, 'Follow me!'"
Of the Bible's universal speech to all mankind, Dr. Henry van Dyke has said:
"Born in the East, and clothed in Oriental form and imagery, the Bible walks the ways of all the world with familiar feet, and enters land after land to find its own everywhere. It has learned to speak in hundreds of languages to the heart of man. It comes into the palace to tell the monarch that he is the servant of the Most High, and into the cottage to assure the peasant that he is the son of God. Children listen to its stories with wonder and delight, and wise men ponder them as parables of life. It has a word of peace for the time of peril, a word of comfort for the day of calamity, a word of light for the hour of darkness. Its oracles are repeated in the assembly of the people, and its counsels whispered in the ear of the lonely. The wise and the proud tremble at its warnings, but to the wounded and penitent it has a mother's voice....
"Its great words grow richer, as pearls do when they are worn near the heart. No man is poor or desolate who has this treasure for his own. When the landscape darkens and the trembling pilgrim comes to the valley named the Shadow, he is not afraid to enter; he takes the rod and staff of Scripture in his hand; he says to friend and comrade, 'Good-by, we shall meet again,' and comforted by that support, he goes toward the lonely pass as one who climbs through darkness into light."--_The Century Magazine._
[Illustration: RAISING JARIUS'S DAUGHTER
"In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." John 1:4.]
In the days of His life on earth, Jesus was a welcome guest in humble homes in Judea and Galilee. "The common people heard Him gladly." His presence brought peace and comfort to the home. He is no longer with us in bodily presence; but He is the same Saviour still--"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever." Heb. 13:8. By His Spirit, through the living word of Holy Scripture, He enters the home where faith receives Him, and speaks again the gracious salutation, "Peace be to this house."
Christ the Central Theme
All the Bible bears witness of Christ as the Saviour of the world. He Himself said of the Scriptures, "They are they which testify of Me." John 5:39. "To Him give all the prophets witness." Acts 10:43. We see Him as the coming Messiah in promise and prophecy, in type and shadow. His is the divine, living personality standing out in every book that makes up the Sacred Volume. As we read with loving heart, the Author seems near in every page.
"Reading, methinks I bend Before the cross Where died my King, my Friend. The whole world's loss For love of Him is gain."
And having beheld Him giving His life as the divine sacrifice, and rising in triumph over death to be our great High Priest in the heavenly temple, as we read these Sacred Scriptures yet again, in every book, from Genesis to Revelation, we see Him as the coming King of kings, coming to take His children to the eternal home of the saved. The whole book is a bright window through which we gaze on coming glory.
"And yet again I stand Where the seer stood, Gazing across the strand, Beyond the flood: The gates of pearl afar, The streets of gold, The bright and morning Star Mine eyes behold."
"The Word of God ... liveth and abideth forever." 1 Peter 1:23. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away." Matt. 24:35.
[Illustration: ON THE WAY TO EMMAUS
"Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." Luke 24:27.]
[Illustration: THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM
"I am God,... declaring ... from ancient times the things that are not yet done." Isa. 46:9, 10.]
THE WITNESS OF THE CENTURIES
The Sure Word of Prophecy
"We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed." 2 Peter 1:19.
The prophetic scriptures afford infallible evidence that the voice of the living God speaks in Holy Writ. One of the distinguishing marks of divinity is the power that foretells and records the course of history long ages before the events come to pass.
God's Challenge
God's challenge to false religious systems in olden time was this:
"Declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods." Isa. 41:22, 23.
And all the gods of the nations were silent; for they are no gods. The Lord alone, the one who speaks by the Holy Scriptures, is able to tell the end from the beginning.
"I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand." Isa. 46:9, 10.
By this means God has borne witness of Himself through the ages, that it might be known that the Most High rules above all the kingdoms of men, and that men might recognize His purpose to put an end to sin and bring eternal salvation to His people. "I have spoken it," He declares, "I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it."
The fulfilment of the word of prophecy in history is a fascinating story. To the Lord, the future is an open book, even as the present. The word is spoken, telling of the event to come; it is written on the parchment scroll by the prophet's pen. Time passes; centuries come and go. Then, when the hour of the prophecy arrives, lo, there appears the fulfilment. And it is seen in matters pertaining to individuals, as well as in the affairs of cities and empires.
The Word Fulfilled after Long Waiting
In the dream divinely given to the lad Joseph, it was plainly foretold that his brothers would one day come as suppliants before him. His father rebuked him for telling the dream, saying, "Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?" Gen. 37:10. The brothers sold the lad into slavery, to be well rid of him. Yet twenty years later, all unconscious of his identity, these same brethren presented themselves before the prime minister of Egypt, and "fell before him on the ground." Gen. 44:14.
Again: the wicked stronghold of Jericho had been utterly destroyed. Joshua declared:
"Cursed be the man ... that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it." Joshua 6:26.
The hands of angels had thrown down its walls, and its ruin was to stand as a memorial. More than five hundred years later, when the apostate Ahab was ruling, and Israel and Judah had departed from the Lord, Hiel the Bethelite set out to rebuild Jericho. "He laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first-born."
But accident and death may come at any time. The work on the walls went on, no one thinking of the neglected Scriptures with their warning of long ago. So the full account runs:
"He laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord, which He spake by Joshua the son of Nun." 1 Kings 16:34.
The fate of some of the mightiest cities the world ever saw has borne testimony through the centuries to the fulfilment of the prophetic word.
The Witness of Nineveh
Nineveh was founded by Nimrod. He built not only his capital here by the Tigris, but other towns round about, conceiving first of all the idea of grouping the capital and its suburbs into one great city, the "Greater Nineveh," as we would say in these days of Greater London and Greater New York. At the dawn of history Nineveh was "a great city." Gen. 10:11, 12. In Jonah's day it was an "exceeding great city."[A] Sennacherib, of the Bible story, was its beautifier. Rawlinson says:
"The great palace which he raised at Nineveh surpassed in size and splendor all earlier edifices."--_"Second Monarchy," chap. 9._
A description is preserved on the clay cylinder in the king's own words:
"For the wonderment of multitudes of men I raised its head--'the palace which has no rival' I called its name."--_Taylor Cylinder, "Records of the Past." Vol. XII, part 1_.
At the preaching of Jonah the city had repented; but in later years pride of conquest and luxury and wealth were filling it with blood. The prophet Nahum warned it of certain doom, appealing to those who had any fear of God to turn to Him. The message was:
[Illustration: THE SITE OF NINEVEH
"How is she become a desolation!" Zeph. 2:15.]
"The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and He knoweth them that trust in Him." Nahum 1:7.
Some, no doubt, heeded the warning and turned to God for refuge. But the city's life of sin ran on. Then the prophet Zephaniah spoke the word, just as the stroke was to fall:
"Woe to her that is filthy and polluted, to the oppressing city! She obeyed not the voice; she received not correction; she trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God." Zeph. 3:1, 2.
Prophecies uttered against the mighty city had declared:
"He will make an utter end of the place thereof." "The palace shall be dissolved ["molten," margin]." "She is empty, and void, and waste." Nahum 1:8; 2:6, 10. "How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in!" Zeph. 2:15.
The Medes and the Babylonians overthrew Nineveh. The king immolated himself in his burning ("molten") palace. Nineveh became a desolation. Describing a battle that took place there in the seventh century of our era, between the Romans and the Persians, the historian Gibbon bears testimony to the fact that it has indeed become "empty, and void, and waste:"
"Eastward of the Tigris, at the end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been erected: the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long since disappeared; the vacant place afforded a spacious field for the operations of the two armies."--_"The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. 46, par. 24._
And to this day, the site of Nineveh is pointed out across the river from Mosul, only mounds of ruins, these almost obliterated by the drifting sands of centuries. The word spoken is fulfilled, though at the time it was spoken it little seemed to proud and prosperous Nineveh that such a fate could ever be hers.
"Before me rise the walls Of the Titanic city,--brazen gates, Towers, temples, palaces enormous piled,-- Imperial Nineveh, the earthly queen! In all her golden pomp I see her now, Her swarming streets, her splendid festivals.
* * * * *
"Again I look,--and lo!... Her walls are gone, her palaces are dust,-- The desert is around her, and within Like shadows have the mighty passed away."
From Nineveh's mounds we seem to hear a voice that says: "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth forever." 1 Peter 1:24, 25.
The Burden of Tyre
[Illustration: TYRE BY THE SEA
"They shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers." Eze. 26:4.]
Tyre was the greatest maritime city of antiquity. Its inhabitants, the Phoenicians, traded in the ports of all the known world. Ezekiel describes the heart of the seas as its borders. "Thy builders have perfected thy beauty," he says. He tells how all countries traded in its marts and contributed to its wealth. And then, obeying the word of the Lord, the prophet bears a message of rebuke and warning,--"the burden of Tyre,"--and pronounces the coming judgment:
"Thus saith the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, O Tyrus, and will cause many nations to come up against thee.... And they shall destroy the walls of Tyrus, and break down her towers: I will also scrape her dust from her, and make her like the top of a rock. It shall be a place for the spreading of nets in the midst of the sea: for I have spoken it, saith the Lord God." Eze. 26:3-5.
The accounts of travelers bear witness that the prophecy has been fulfilled. As to the site of the island city of Ezekiel's day, Bruce, nearly a century ago, said that he found it a "rock whereon fishers dry their nets." (See "Keith on the Prophecies," p. 329.)
In more recent times, Dr. W.M. Thomson found the whole region of Tyre suggestive only of departed glory:
"There is nothing here, certainly, of that which led Joshua to call it 'the strong city' more than three thousand years ago (Joshua 19:29),--nothing of that mighty metropolis which baffled the proud Nebuchadnezzar and all his power for thirteen years, until 'every head' in his army 'was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled,' in the hard service against Tyrus (Eze. 29:18),--nothing in this wretched roadstead and empty harbor to remind one of the times when merry mariners did sing in her markets--no visible trace of those towering ramparts which so long resisted the utmost efforts of the great Alexander. All have vanished utterly like a troubled dream, and Tyre has sunk under the burden of prophecy.... As she is now, and has long been, Tyre is God's witness; but great, powerful, and populous, she would be the infidel's boast. This, however, she cannot be. Tyre will never rise from her dust to falsify the voice of prophecy.
"Dim is her glory, gone her fame, Her boasted wealth has fled; On her proud rock, alas! her shame, The fisher's net is spread. The Tyrian harp has slumbered long, And Tyria's mirth is low; The timbrel, dulcimer, and song Are hushed, or wake to woe."
--_"The Land and the Book," Vol. II, pp. 626, 627._
The Desolation of Babylon
Yet another city of ancient times there was, the mightiest of them all, whose fate was a subject of prophecy, and whose history bears special testimony for us today; for, more than any other, the Lord used that city as a symbol of the pride of life and the exaltation of the selfish heart against God.
Let us study briefly the desolations pronounced upon Babylon of old.
[Illustration: BABYLON IN THE DUST
"Babylon shall become heaps,... without an inhabitant." Jer. 51:37.]
While Babylon was still the mightiest city of the world, with the period of greatest glory yet before it, the Lord revealed its ignoble end. By the prophet Isaiah He declared:
"Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged." Isa. 13:19-22.
Never could a more doleful future have been pictured for a city full of splendor, the metropolis of the world. About one hundred and seventy-five years after this word was written on the parchment scroll, the Medes and Persians were at the gates of Babylon. Her time had come, and Chaldea's rule was ended.
"Fallen is the golden city! in the dust, Spoiled of her crown, dismantled of her state. She that hath made the Strength of Towers her trust, Weeps by her dead, supremely desolate!
"She that beheld the nations at her gate Thronging in homage, shall be called no more 'Lady of Kingdoms!'--Who shall mourn her fate? Her guilt is full, her march of triumph o'er."
But still, under Medo-Persia, and later under the Greeks, the city itself was populous and prosperous and beautiful. The skeptic of the time may have pointed to it as evidence that here, at least, the Hebrew prophet had missed the mark.
Apollonius, the sage of Tyana, who lived in the days of Nero and the apostles, has left an account of Babylon as he saw it, as late as the first century of our era. Still the Euphrates swept beneath its walls, dividing the city into halves, with great palaces on either side. He says:
"The palaces are roofed with bronze, and a glitter goes off from them; but the chambers of the women and of the men and the porticoes are adorned partly with silver, and partly with golden tapestries or curtains, and partly with solid gold in the form of pictures."
And of the king's judgment hall he reported:
"The roof had been carried up in the form of a dome, to resemble in a manner the heavens, and that it was roofed with sapphire, a stone that is very blue and like heaven to the eye; and there were images of the gods, which they worship, fixed aloft, and looking like golden figures shining out of the ether."--_Philostratus, "Life of Apollonius," book 1, chap. 25._
Evidently Babylon was still "the land of graven images," and the desolation foretold by the prophet had not yet befallen its palaces. But that prophetic word, written eight hundred years before, was still upon the scroll of the Book, the sure Word of God, who sees the end from the beginning.
[Illustration: EGYPT'S GLORY DEPARTED
"The idols of Egypt shall be moved." Isa. 19:1.]
The view given us by Apollonius is perhaps the last glimpse we have of Babylon's passing glory. Even then for centuries the walls had been a quarry from which stones were drawn for Babylon's rival, Seleucia, on the Tigris. And Strabo, the Greek geographer, who also wrote in the first century, had described Babylon as "in great part deserted," adding,
"No one would hesitate to apply to it what one of the comic writers said of Megalopolitæ, in Arcadia, 'The great city is a great desert.'"--_"Geography," book 16, chap. 1._
Already pagan writers had begun to describe its condition in the terms of the prophecy uttered so long before. And now what is its state? The doom foretold has fallen heavy upon the city, upon its palaces, and "upon the graven images of Babylon." For a century and more, travelers' accounts have frequently borne witness to the exact fulfilment of the prophecy in the remarkable desolations of that city, once mistress of the world.
"Babylon shall become heaps," said the prophecy, "and owls shall dwell there." This is what Mr. Layard, the English archeologist, found on his visit in 1845:
"Shapeless heaps of rubbish cover for many an acre the face of the land.... On all sides, fragments of glass, marble, pottery, and inscribed brick are mingled with that peculiar nitrous and blanched soil, which, bred from the remains of ancient habitations, checks or destroys vegetation, and renders the site of Babylon a naked and a hideous waste. Owls [which are of a large gray kind, and often found in flocks of nearly a hundred] start from the scanty thickets, and the foul jackal skulks through the furrows."--_"Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon," chap. 21, p. 413._
The prophecy said, "Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there." The words might be construed to mean that the famous site would never become the place of a Bedouin village. But it is literally true, say travelers, that the Arabs avoid the place even for the temporary pitching of their tents. They consider the spot under a curse. They call the ruins _Mudjelibe_, "the Overturned." (See "Encyclopedia of Islam," art. "Babil.")
As late as 1913, Missionary W.C. Ising visited the site where Professor Koldeway was excavating the ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace. He wrote:
"Involuntarily one is reminded of the prophecy in the thirteenth of Isaiah and many other places, which, in course of time, have been fulfilled to the letter. No one is living on the site of ancient Babylon, and whatever Arabs are employed by the excavators have built their mud huts in the bed of the ancient river, which at the present time is shifted half a mile farther west."--_European Division Quarterly, Fourth Quarter, 1913._
Egypt and Edom
The massive ruins by the Nile bear witness to prophecy fulfilled. When Egypt rivaled Babylon, the word was spoken: "It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations." Eze. 29:15. It was not utterly to pass, as Babylon, but to continue in inferior state. Thus it came to pass. Once populous Edom, famed for wisdom and counsel, now lies desolate, according to the word: "Edom shall be a desolation: every one that goeth by it shall be astonished." Jer. 49:17.
The Testimony of History
[Illustration: RUINS OF EDOM
"Edom shall be a desolate wilderness." Joel 3:19.]
Thus the centuries bear testimony to the fulfilment of the prophetic word. The panorama of all human history moves before us in these writings of the prophets. Flinging their "colossal shadows" across the pages of Holy Writ, as Farrar says, we see--
"The giant forms of empires on their way To ruin."
It is no human book that thus from primitive times forecasts the march of history through the ages.
The Lord not only spoke the word in warning and entreaty for those to whom it first came, but it is written in the Scriptures of truth as a testimony to all time, that the Bible is the word of God, and that all His purposes revealed therein and all the promises of the blessed Book are certain and sure. The prophets who bore messages from God to Nineveh, and Babylon, and Tyre, spoke messages also for our day.
Fulfilled prophecy is the testimony of the centuries to the living God. The evidence of prophecy and its fulfilment is God's challenge and appeal to men to acknowledge Him as the true God and the Holy Scriptures as His word from heaven.
"I have declared the former things from the beginning; and they went forth out of My mouth, and I showed them; I did them suddenly, and they came to pass. Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck is an iron sinew, and thy brow brass; I have even from the beginning declared it to thee; before it came to pass I showed it thee.... Thou hast heard, see all this; and will not ye declare it?" Isa. 48:3-6.
Surely no one can look at the evidence in history of the fulfilment of prophecy without seeing that of a truth the One who spoke these words knew the end from the beginning; and finding the living God in the sure word of prophecy, one must be prepared to listen to His voice in all the Scriptures, when it speaks of sin and the way of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Further, the prophetic word also has much to say of events yet future, of the course of history in modern times. It behooves us to give heed to what that word speaks concerning our own times and the events that are to take place upon the earth before the end. The apostle Peter exhorts us to the study in these words:
"We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day-star arise in your hearts." 2 Peter 1:19.
[Illustration: THE GREAT IMAGE
"He that revealeth secrets maketh known to thee what shall come to pass." Dan. 2:29.]
[Illustration: DANIEL INTERPRETING NEBUCHADNEZZAR'S DREAM
"Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great Image." Dan. 2:31.]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] "In the book of Jonah," says _Records of the Past_, "Nineveh is stated to have been an exceeding great city of three days' journey; and that being the case, the explanation that Calah on the south and Khorsabad on the north were included seems very probable. The distance between these two extreme points is about thirty miles, which, at ten miles a day, would take the time required."--_Vol. XII, part 1, January and February, 1913_.
PROPHETIC OUTLINE OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY
THE PROPHECY OF DANIEL 2
"There is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days."
In a dream by night the Lord gave to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, a clear historical outline of the course of world empire to the end of time and the coming of the eternal kingdom.
The king was a thoughtful monarch; and having reached the height of his power, he was one night meditating upon "what should come to pass hereafter." Not for his sake alone, but for the enlightenment and instruction of men in all time, the Lord answered the wondering question of the king's meditation by giving him the dream. "He that revealeth secrets," said Daniel the prophet, "maketh known to thee what shall come to pass."
[Illustration: BABYLON IN HER GLORY
"Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." Isa. 13:19.]
And that we may know at the beginning that there is nothing fanciful and uncertain about this great historic outline reaching to the end of the world, we note first the assurance with which the prophet closed his interpretation: "The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."
The details of the dream had been taken from the king's mind, while conviction as to the wondrous import of it remained. This was in God's providence, to show the folly of the worldly-wise men of Babylon, and to bring before the king the prophet of the Lord with a divine message. The prophet Daniel, under the inspiration of God, brought his dream again to the king's mind:
"Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee; and the form thereof was terrible.
"This image's head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.
"Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth."
The prophet next declared the interpretation. And now follows the history of the world in miniature.
Babylon
"Thou, O king, art a king of kings: for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory. And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath He given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all. Thou art this head of gold."
[Illustration: THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL
"Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians." Dan. 5:28.]
The parts of the image, then, of various metals, from head to feet, represented successive empires, beginning with Babylon; and the kingdom of Babylon, represented by Nebuchadnezzar, was the head of gold.
History shows how fitly the golden head symbolizes the Babylonian kingdom. Long before, the prophet Isaiah had described it as "the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency." Isa. 13:19. And now, in Nebuchadnezzar's day, it was the golden age of the Babylonian kingdom. No such gorgeous city as its capital ever before stood on earth. And Nebuchadnezzar was the great leader of its conquests, and the beautifier and builder of its walls and palaces. "For the astonishment of men I have built this house," one tablet reads; and hundreds repeat the story.
"Those portals for the astonishment of multitudes of people with beauty I adorned. In order that the battle storm to Imgur-Bel the wall of Babylon might not reach; what no king before me had done."--_East India House Inscription._
Thus Nebuchadnezzar's records of stone today repeat the proud boast faithfully reported in the Scripture, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built?" Dan. 4:30. To the king it seemed that such a city could never fall. One inscription reads:
"Thus I completely made strong the defenses of Babylon. May it last forever."--_Rawlinson, "Fourth Monarchy," Appendix A._
Medo-Persia
But the prophet Daniel, proceeding with the divine interpretation, interrupted all such proud thoughts with the declaration, "After thee shall arise another kingdom inferior to thee."
Now the look was forward into the future. And the word came to pass. Babylon's decline was swift after Nebuchadnezzar's death. Daniel the prophet himself lived to interpret the handwriting on the wall at Belshazzar's feast:
"God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.... Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.... Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians." Dan. 5:26-28.
The breast and arms of silver, in the great image, represented the Medo-Persian kingdom, which followed the Babylonian, "inferior" to it in brilliancy and grandeur, as silver is inferior to gold. Medo-Persia, however, enlarged the borders of the world empire; and the names of Cyrus and Darius are written among the mightiest conquerors of history.
But the prophet does not stop to dwell upon the grandeur of fleeting earthly kingdoms. The interpretation hastens on to reach the setting up of a kingdom that shall not pass away. Following Medo-Persia, a third power was to rise,
Grecia
"And another third kingdom of brass, which shall bear rule over all the earth."
The "third kingdom" after Babylon was Grecia, which overthrew the empire of the Medes and Persians. And Grecia's dominion fulfilled the specifications of the prophecy, which indicated a yet wider expansion of empire. Its sway was to be over "all the earth," said Daniel the prophet, foretelling its history. Arrian, the Greek historian, writing afterward, said that Alexander of Greece seemed truly "lord of all the earth;" and he adds:
"I am persuaded there was no nation, city, nor people then in being whither his name did not reach; for which reason, whatever origin he might boast of, or claim to himself, there seems to me to have been some divine hand presiding both over his birth and actions."--_"History of the Expedition of Alexander the Great," book 7, chap. 30._
The sides of brass in the great image represented Grecia, the brazen metal itself being a fitting symbol of those "brazen-mailed" Greeks, celebrated in ancient poetry and song,
"Among the foremost, armed in glittering brass."
A Power Rising in the West
While Grecia's supremacy under Alexander was disputed by none, there was a power rising in the West that was soon to enter the lists for the prize of world dominion.
Some of the ancient writers say that at the time of his death Alexander had in mind to push westward to strike down the growing power of the city of Rome, of which he had heard. Plutarch says that this man Alexander,
"who shot like a star, with incredible swiftness, from the rising to the setting sun, was meditating to bring the luster of his arms into Italy.... He had heard of the Roman power in Italy."--_"Morals," chap. on "Fortune of the Romans," par. 13._
Lucan, the ancient Roman poet, repeats the thought:
"Driven headlong on by Fate's resistless force, Through Asia's realms he took his dreadful course: His ruthless sword laid human nature waste, And desolation followed where he passed....
"Ev'n to the utmost west he would have gone, Where Tethys' lap receives the setting sun."
--"_Pharsalia._"
But in the prime of his years, Alexander was cut down, and Rome had yet more time in which to develop its strength preparatory to the deciding contest for the mastery of all the world. Sure it is that after Grecia, there followed the Roman Empire, the strongest and mightiest and most crushing of them all. This fourth universal empire the prophet proceeded to describe, as represented by the legs of iron in Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the great image.
Rome
"The fourth kingdom shall be strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things: and as iron that breaketh all these, shall it break in pieces and bruise."
How appropriately the iron of the image fits the character of the fourth great empire! Gibbon, the historian, calls it "the iron monarchy of Rome." It broke in pieces the kingdoms, subduing all, just as prophecy had declared so long before. As iron is strongest of the common metals, so according to the prophecy--"as iron that breaketh all these"--this fourth kingdom was to be more powerful than any before it. Strabo, the geographer, who lived in the days of Tiberius Cæsar, said,
"The Romans have surpassed (in power) all former rulers of whom we have any record."--_"Geography," book 17, chap. 3._
Hippolytus, bishop and martyr, who lived in Rome in the third century,--under the "iron monarchy,"--wrote thus of this prophecy:
"Already the iron rules; already it subdues and breaks all in pieces; already it brings all the unwilling into subjection; already we see these things ourselves."--_"Treatise on Christ and Antichrist," sec. 33._
Hippolytus also saw clearly from the prophecy that the empire of his day would be divided, and he wrote of the kingdoms that were "yet to rise" out of it. For Daniel's interpretation explained clearly the meaning of the mingling of clay with the iron in the feet and toes of the great image.
The Kingdoms of Modern Europe
"Whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters' clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay.
"And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken.
"And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay."
"The kingdom shall be divided." So declared the prophet of God. In the height of its power, Rome scouted the thought that so mighty a fabric could ever be broken up. Horace sang in his "Odes,"
"How, added to a conquered world, Euphrates 'bates his tide, And Huns, beyond our frontiers hurled, O'er straitened deserts ride.
* * * * *
"The Goths beyond the sea may plot, The warlike Basques may plan; Friend, never heed them! vex thee not; For this our mortal span Of little wants."
--_Book 2, Marris's Translation._
But the words were written on the ancient parchment in the days of Babylon, "The kingdom shall be divided;" and true to the word of the prophet, the Roman Empire fell apart with the mixture of nations and peoples that swept into it. The elements did not hold together, even as the mixture of iron and clay in the image did not cleave together. Broken up by the invasions of fresh nations from the north, the Western Empire was divided into lesser kingdoms, out of which have grown the modern nations of western Europe.
Not one word in the outline of the prophecy thus far has failed of fulfilment. These modern kingdoms growing out of divided Rome have never been reunited. "They shall mingle themselves with the seed of men," said the prophecy. Nearly all the reigning houses of Europe today are related by intermarriage; the prophecy said it would be so; but "they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay." So we see it. No statesman, no master of legions, has been able to join these nations together again in one great empire. Charles V had the thought in mind, some think. Napoleon dreamed of doing it. But it was not to be. Nevermore was there to be one universal monarchy.
We may know that as surely as the course of world empire has followed the exact outline of the prophecy put on the inspired record in the days of Babylon of old, just so surely the specifications of the closing portion of the outline will be fulfilled.
The fourth great kingdom was to be divided. Rome was the fourth empire: it was divided. The kingdoms of the divided empire are acting their part before our eyes today.
The Next Great Event
And what next? That is the question for us. Now the prophetic outline that began with ancient Babylon touches the things of our own day. The word spoken before Nebuchadnezzar so long ago is now spoken especially to us:
"In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.
"Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."
"In the days of these kings,"--these kingdoms of our own time,--the next great world-changing event is to be the coming of Christ to begin the setting up of his everlasting kingdom. That is the grand climax toward which all the course of history has been tending. At last the end is to come.
"Down in the feet of iron and of clay, Weak and divided, soon to pass away; What will the next great, glorious drama be?-- Christ and His coming, and eternity."
As the stone, cut out of the mountain "without hands," smote the image, so that all its parts, representative of earthly dominion, were ground to dust and blown away, so Christ's coming kingdom, set up "without hands," by no human power, but by the power of the eternal God, will end all earthly dominion and bring the utter destruction of sin and sinners out of the earth.
"The dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure."
Then may all eyes well be turned toward the next great step foretold in the prophetic outline--the coming of Christ's glorious everlasting kingdom, which shall not pass away.
"Look for the waymarks as you journey on, Look for the waymarks, passing one by one, Down through the ages, past the kingdoms four,-- Where are we standing? Look the waymarks o'er."
[Illustration: PHOTOGRAPH BY MISSIONARY W.C. ISING
Ruins of the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, in which was the hall of Belshazzar's Feast.]
[Illustration: THE ASCENSION OF CHRIST
"This same Jesus ... shall so come in like manner." Acts 1:11.
COPYRIGHT STANDARD PUB. CO.]
[Illustration: THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY INTO JERUSALEM
"Behold, thy King cometh,... lowly, and riding upon an ass." Zech. 9:9.]
THE SECOND COMING OF CHRIST
"Unto them that look for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation." Heb. 9:28.
Too often the second coming of Christ is looked upon simply as a doctrine. It is, however, more than a doctrine merely to be believed; it is an impending event, something that is to take place on earth, and the most stupendous, all-transcendent event for the world since Christ came the first time to die on Calvary for the sins of men.
This second coming of Christ, like His first coming, has been the theme of divine prophecy from the beginning. This was emphasized by the apostle Peter in his second recorded sermon. He pressed upon the people of Jerusalem the fact that the things "which God before had showed by the mouth of all His prophets, that Christ should suffer" (Acts 3:18), had been fulfilled to the letter before their eyes. Not a word had failed. Just so, he said, all that the prophets had spoken of His second coming would be fulfilled:
"He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began." Acts 3:20, 21.
The Promise of His Coming
As iniquity began to abound, God sent a message to the antediluvian world, declaring that Christ's coming in glory would end the reign of sin:
"Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of His saints, to execute judgment upon all." Jude 14, 15.
The promise of Christ's coming was the "blessed hope" in the patriarchal age. In Job's dark hour of trial his heart clung to the promise, and he was kept from despair:
"I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: ... whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." Job 19:25-27.
The psalmist sang of it:
"Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence: a fire shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tempestuous round about Him." Ps. 50:3.
And the prophets of later times were unceasingly moved upon to talk of the glory of that coming, of events preceding it, and of the preparation for it.
"I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silence." "Behold, the Lord hath proclaimed unto the end of the world, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, His reward is with Him, and His work before Him." Isa. 62:6, 11.
The message of His coming is to be heralded to the ends of the earth; for it is "good tidings of great joy" to every one who will receive it.
On that last night with His disciples before the crucifixion, when His heart was sorrowful even unto death, as the burden of all our iniquities was about to be laid upon Him, Christ's love for His own made precious to Him the thought of His second coming to gather them home at last, safe from all sin and trouble; and He said:
"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:1-3.
In that assurance the heart finds rest. O the preciousness of the promise, "I will come again"! "I am coming for you," is the cheering message. "Yes, Lord," we reply, "we will wait, and watch, and be ready, by Thy grace."
The Manner of His Coming
Christ's second coming is to be visible to all the world. There is to be nothing secret or mystical about it. The revelator says:
"Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him." Rev. 1:7.
Christ Himself described the scene to His disciples as it will appear to the eyes of all:
"As the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Matt. 24:27. "Then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory." Mark 13:26.
The day of the Lord--the close of probation, the initial outpouring of the judgments of God--will come "as a thief in the night," but Christ's personal appearing will be visible to all. The heavens will open, the earth quake, the trump of God resound, and such glory as mortal eye has never seen will burst upon the world when He comes as King of kings and Lord of lords.
"He comes not an infant in Bethlehem born, He comes not to lie in a manger; He comes not again to be treated with scorn, He comes not a shelterless stranger; He comes not to Gethsemane, To weep and sweat blood in the garden; He comes not to die on the tree, To purchase for rebels a pardon. Oh, no; glory, bright glory, Environs Him now."
[Illustration: THE TRANSFIGURATION A TYPE OF HIS COMING
"Behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with Him." Matt. 17:3.]
"This Same Jesus"
The Lord would have His children understand that this One who comes in power and glory is the same Saviour of men who once walked by blue Galilee. As the disciples were watching their Saviour, and ours, ascending bodily into heaven from Olivet, until "a cloud received Him out of their sight," suddenly two angels stood by them, who said:
"Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." Acts 1:9, 11.
[Illustration: CHRIST SET AT NAUGHT BY THE ROMANS
"Behold your King!" John 19:14.]
"This same Jesus"! It was the loving Friend and Elder Brother, Son of man as well as Son of God, who was passing from their sight. He will come back the "same Jesus," though in glory indescribable, having "all the holy angels with Him."
The prophet Habakkuk thus described Christ's glorious appearing, as it was represented to him in vision:
"His glory covered the heavens, And the earth was full of His praise. And His brightness was as the light; He had rays coming forth from His hand; And there was the hiding of His power."
Hab. 3:3, 4, A.R.V.
Surely it is the "same Jesus," and the mark of the cruel nails is the shining badge of His power to save.
"I shall know Him By the print of the nails in His hands."
As the redeemed see Him who was crucified for them coming in glory, they will cry, "Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation." Isa. 25:9.
But that day will be a day of darkness as well as of light. The unready, the unrepentant, will realize too late that in rejecting Christ's pardon and love and sacrifice, they have rejected the only means by which they might have been prepared to meet the coming King, before whose face no sin can endure. "Every eye shall see Him," the apostle says, and he describes the terror of that day to the unprepared:
"The kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" Rev. 6:15-17.
The scenes of that great day are so beyond human comprehension that it is difficult to realize that such a time is actually before us.
"Then, O my Lord, prepare My soul for that great day."
The Purpose of His Coming
The Scriptures make very clear the purpose of Christ's second coming and the events of that great day. It has been the hope of the children of God through all the ages. The apostle Paul calls it the "blessed hope."
"The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." Titus 2:11-13.
The saints of God have fallen asleep in death with their faith reaching forward to Christ's glorious appearing. So the veteran apostle fell, with eyes upon "that day."
"I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing." 2 Tim. 4:6-8.
Christ's second coming is the grand climax of the plan of salvation. Not till then are the children of God ushered into the eternal kingdom. Then the crowns of life are bestowed, and the saved all go together through the gates into the city--patriarch and prophet, apostle and reformer, and the child of God of this last generation. Of the ancient worthies it is written:
"These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." Heb. 11:39, 40.
What a glorious day it will be when the ransomed of all the ages, march in together through the gates into the city!
It is to take His children to their eternal home that Christ comes the second time. This was His promise to the disciples:
"I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:2, 3.
Not in detail, but in their general order, let us follow the events of that great day.
[Illustration: CHRIST COMING IN GLORY
"The Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him." Matt. 25:31.]
The Prelude to His Coming
as the revelator saw it and heard it in a vision of the last day:
"There came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth,... and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God." Rev. 16:17-19.
"The heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places." Rev. 6:14.
His Glorious Appearing
Then bursts upon the world the glory of our Saviour's coming:
"Then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet." Matt. 24:30, 31.
"I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in Thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for Thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe." Rev. 14:14, 15.
The Resurrection of the Just, and the Translation of the Living Righteous
The time to reap has come, and the wheat is gathered at last into the garner of the Lord:
"We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." 1 Cor. 15:51, 52.
"He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." Matt. 24:31.
"This we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words." 1 Thess. 4:15-18.
[Illustration: THE EMPTY TOMB
"Christ the first fruits; afterward they that are Christ's at His coming." 1 Cor. 15:23.]
The righteous dead are raised to life as the trump of God sounds and the voice of the Archangel calls to His sleeping saints, and the living righteous are transformed from mortality to immortality. Then all together, with the escort of the angels, they follow the Saviour to the heavenly mansions that He has prepared in the city of God.
The Destruction of the Wicked
Before the glorious majesty of the coming King no sin can endure; for true it is that "our God is a consuming fire"--now, in the day of His mercy, consuming sin out of the heart that by faith approaches the throne of grace, but in that day consuming the unrepentant sinner with his sin.
"Where will the sinner hide in that day, in that day? Where will the sinner hide in that day? It will be in vain to call, 'Ye mountains on us fall!' For His hand will find out all in that day."
It is the great day long foretold by seer and prophet.
Again let us read the description of what it will mean to the unsaved to see Christ coming in glory; for the terror of that day must warn us now to keep within the refuge of the Saviour's loving grace:
"The kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" Rev. 6:15-17.
The same glory that transforms the righteous is a consuming fire to those who have rejected Christ's salvation:
"Then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming." 2 Thess. 2:8.
"When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power." 2 Thess. 1:7-9.
The Climax of Human History
Thus the second coming of Christ brings the resurrection and translation of the righteous, the death of the wicked, and the end of the world. The resurrection of the wicked does not then take place, but only that of the just; save for some of the wicked dead who had a special part in warring against Christ,--"they also which pierced Him" (Rev. 1:7). These are raised to see His coming, necessarily to fall again before the consuming glory of His presence.
The righteous are taken to reign with Christ in the heavenly city for a thousand years, and during the same period the earth lies in desolation and chaos, uninhabited by man, a dark abyss, the dreary prison house of Satan. Of the two resurrections, first of the just and then of the unjust, we are told:
"They [the righteous] lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power." Rev. 20:4-6.
It is at the end of the thousand years that the resurrection of the wicked takes place. Then the city of God descends, "the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven," and the wicked come forth to condemnation and the second death, from which there is no waking.
"Now is the Accepted Time"
Now is the day of salvation, when by Christ's grace we may prepare for that great day. To be found among His redeemed ones in that day will be of infinitely greater worth than anything this world can give, of pleasure, or possessions, or honor. Nothing will count then but the blessed hope.
Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, found the personal Saviour in the days of the Methodist revival in England. All her wealth and all her social influence were devoted to Christ, even though titled friends took umbrage at her close association with the poor and the humble who gave heed to the message of the hour, and pressed into the kingdom. She wrote of her joy in being numbered with the children of God:
"I love to meet among them now, Before Thy gracious throne to bow, Though weakest of them all; Nor can I bear the piercing thought, To have my worthless name left out, When Thou for them shalt call.
"Prevent, prevent it by Thy grace. Be Thou, dear Lord, my hiding place In that expected day. Thy pardoning voice, O let me hear, To still each unbelieving fear, Nor let me fall, I pray."
One night, at a royal ball, the Prince of Wales asked a titled lady where the Countess of Huntingdon was. "Oh, I suppose she is praying with some of her beggars somewhere!" was the flippant answer. "Ah," said the crown prince, "in the last day I think I should be glad to hold the hem of Lady Huntingdon's mantle." True it is that the greatest gift of grace now, as it will be then, is to be numbered among the obedient children of God.
"Let me among Thy saints be found, Whene'er the Archangel's trump shall sound, To see Thy smiling face; Then joyfully Thy praise I'll sing, While heaven's resounding mansions ring With shouts of endless grace."
[Illustration: CHRIST ANSWERING HIS DISCIPLES' QUESTIONS
"When shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" Matt. 24:3.]
[Illustration: THE DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE FORETOLD
"There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." Matt. 24:2.]
SIGNS OF THE APPROACHING END
OUR SAVIOUR'S GREAT PROPHECY
Part I
Christ had spoken of the coming desolation of the sacred temple at Jerusalem. The disciples were astonished. "Master, see," said one, "what manner of stones and what buildings are here!" The Saviour replied:
"Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down" Mark 13:2.
"What Shall be the Sign?"
As soon as they were alone on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city, the disciples came to Jesus, saying:
"Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" Matt. 24:3.
Replying to this question, the Saviour spoke first of the fall of Jerusalem; He foretold in a sentence the experiences of His church through dark ages to follow; then He described the events of the latter days, the signs showing His second advent near at hand; and, finally, He pictured the scenes of His own glorious appearing in the clouds of heaven. The fullest record of the discourse is found in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew.
A Striking Parallel
The first portion of the prophetic discourse (verses 4-14) deals with general conditions that were to prevail both in the last days of the Jewish state, and on a yet larger scale in the course of history leading to the last days of the world. There was so close a parallel between these times that Christ, in one description, answered both questions asked, When shall these things come upon Jerusalem? and, What shall be the signs of the end of the world?
The prophetic word foretold the rise of false Christs, the coming of wars, famines, and earthquakes in "divers places." The believers saw these things fulfilled in that generation before Jerusalem fell; but as we read the prophecy, we see the wider application and yet larger fulfilment through the course of history since that day, these calamities increasing in the earth as the end draws near. Before the end of the Jewish state, the believers carried the gospel to all the known world of their day. (See Col. 1:23.) In these latter days we are seeing the yet wider proclamation of the gospel, as foretold in the fourteenth verse, "This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come."
The Last Days of Jerusalem
We may note briefly some of the events of Jerusalem's last days. Christ had forewarned the believers:
"Take heed that no man deceive you. For many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many."
Having rejected the true Christ, the nation was open to deception by the false. We catch just a glimpse of the fulfilment in the book of Acts; in secular history the full story is told. Ridpath says:
"Never was a people so turbulent, so excited with expectation of a deliverer who should restore the ancient kingdom, so fired with bigotry and fanaticism, as were the wretched Jews of this period. One Christ came after another. Revolt was succeeded by revolt, instigated by some pseudo-prophet or pretended king."--_"History of the World," Vol. I, p. 849 (Part III, chap. 19)._
During the Saviour's life and ministry a divine hand had to a great extent held the elements of violence in check, but as the |
18503-8 | light was rejected more and more, the spirit of evil came to hold sway unrestrained. Dr. Mears well describes the changed conditions in these words:
"The narrative of the evangelists presents a tranquil scene, a succession of attractive pictures, in striking contrast to the bloody and tumultuous events which crowd each other in the pages of Josephus."--_"From Exile to Overthrow," pp. 256, 257._
Thus the events led rapidly on toward the day of Jerusalem's fall, so long foretold by the prophets.
The Sign to the Believers
The disciples had asked for a sign, and Christ gave them a token by which they might know when the time to flee from Jerusalem had come. Here Luke's Gospel gives the fullest record:
"When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled." Luke 21:20-22.
[Illustration: THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM BY THE ROMANS UNDER TITUS, A.D. 70
"When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh." Luke 21:20.]
The unbelieving in Jerusalem and Judea could not conceive that their city, so long protected and favored of God, could be destroyed. Not even the appearance of the Roman armies could shake their blind self-confidence. But at the first sight of the encircling armies, the Christians knew that the time for flight was at hand. But how to flee was the question, with the compassing lines drawn close about the city. Moreover, the Zealots, the furious war party in power, would be little likely to allow any number to pass out to the Roman forces.
Just here God's providence made a way of escape. Cestius, the Roman commander, after having partially undermined one of the temple walls, suddenly decided to defer pushing the attack. "He retired from the city," says Josephus, "without any reason in the world." (See "Wars," book 2, chap. 19.) And the Zealots flew out after the retiring Romans, furiously attacking the rear guards.
Then those watching Christians knew that the time for quick flight had come, according to Christ's prophecy uttered many years before. They fled out of the city and out of the country round about.
Through all the years, Christ's prophecy had exhorted them, "Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day." Matt. 24:20. The prayer was answered, for it was in the autumn and on a week day that the flight was made.[B] Watching for the sign, and instantly obeying, they were delivered.
Thus it was that when the Romans returned later to the siege, never to give up till the city fell, none of the Christians were overwhelmed in its destruction. Even so are we to watch the signs of our own times, that we may escape those things that are coming upon the earth, and be ready to "stand before the Son of man."
The Prophetic Word Fulfilled
Christ had declared that the temple, the pride of the nation, would be utterly destroyed. In the last siege, the Roman commander tried to spare the magnificent pile. When the Jews made it their chief fortress, because of its massive strength, Titus remonstrated with them, saying:
"If you will but change the place whereon you fight, no Roman shall either come near your sanctuary, or offer any affront to it; nay, I will endeavor to preserve you your holy house, whether you will or not."--_Josephus, "Wars of the Jews," book 6, chap. 2._
But the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter. The people seemed possessed with fury. The hardened Roman pagans were astonished at their suicidal rashness. Titus's efforts to save the temple failed, and it went down in ruin, as Christ had foretold.
[Illustration: A PANEL FROM THE ARCH OF TITUS
Showing the golden candlestick and other sacred vessels of the temple being carried in triumph through the streets of Rome.]
The disciples of Christ had called His attention to the immense blocks of stone that composed the temple walls. "See, what manner of stones," one said. When Titus examined these same stones, after the fall of the city, he is said to have declared:
"We have certainly had God for our assistant in this war, and it was no other than God who ejected the Jews out of these fortifications."[C]--_Id., book 6, chap. 9._
Rather, we would say, in the light of Scripture teaching, the destruction that came upon the city was but the fruit of its own way. God's guardian care had long protected the city of David. When His protection was finally thrust aside and the people put themselves in the power of the great destroyer, divine justice could no longer save the city from the judgments that were bound to fall upon persistent transgression against light.
The lesson is one of those written "for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come." Jerusalem, in that generation of great light and high privilege, fell because it knew not the time of its visitation. Still Christ's sad lament bears its warning to the ears of men: "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!" Luke 19:42.
Part II
Having foretold the destruction of Jerusalem, and given to the believers signs by which they might find deliverance in the day of its overthrow, Christ yet more fully answered the second part of the disciples' question, "What shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the world?" Matt. 24:3.
[Illustration: THE CATACOMBS NEAR ROME
In these underground passages persecuted Christians found a hiding place, held their services, and buried their dead.]
The Period of Tribulation
Quickly He passed to the events of the latter days. But first He sketched, in a few words, the tribulations through which His church was to pass during the intervening centuries. Daniel the prophet had written of this experience, foretelling the long period during which the papal power was to "wear out the saints of the Most High." Dan. 7:25. Of these times, Christ said in His prophetic discourse:
"Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect's sake those days shall be shortened." Matt. 24:21, 22.
It is evident that Christ referred to the time of tribulation foretold by Daniel, not to the trials attending the flight of the Christians from Jerusalem, for their flight was a deliverance of the elect from trial. However much the weak may have suffered temporarily in fleeing from their homes, the great suffering of that time came upon the unbelieving, who had no shelter.
This prophecy given by our Saviour presents the picture of a long-continued persecution of His own elect, and foretells the shortening of the allotted time. God was to intervene in some special way to save His people. And it was even so. The elect did suffer all through the centuries of intolerance, until the rise of the Reformation and the spreading abroad of God's Word broke the power of ecclesiasticism, thus shortening the days of bitter tribulation.
The End Drawing Near
According to Daniel's further prophecy, the period of trial and persecution was to reach "even to the time of the end." Dan. 11:35. Naturally, then, we should look for the signs of the latter days to begin to appear following these days of tribulation. And so we find the next words of Christ's discourse introducing the topic of His second coming. From now on the prophetic outline deals with events leading down to the end of the age.
First the Saviour utters a warning against false ideas concerning His second coming. That no theories of a secret coming or of a mystic coming might deceive the unwary, He says in plain words:
"If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect. Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, He is in the desert; go not forth: behold, He is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Matt. 24:23-27.
Today we see the need of this warning. Some of the most subtle deceptions are found in the teaching that Christ has already come, secretly, or that He comes in the chamber of death, or in the spiritualistic séance. Against all these errors we are forewarned, as well as against any agencies that may come showing marvelous signs and wonders. The close of human probation, the coming of the day of God, will be as a thief in the night; and Christ's coming itself will overtake the unwatchful all unprepared. Nevertheless, when He comes, "every eye shall see Him," and all the glory of heaven will burst upon a quaking world.
Signs in the Heavens and the Earth
Now the Saviour's outline of prophecy presents the signs which were to show when the coming of the Lord was near. Referring again to the days of tribulation foretold by the prophet Daniel, Christ says:
"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven." Matt. 24:29, 30.
In Luke's record of the same prophetic discourse, additional signs are given, describing conditions in the earth as Christ's coming draws near. His account reads:
"There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." Luke 21:25-28.
Yet again, the prophet John, in the Revelation, foretells these signs in the sun and moon and stars, as they were presented to him in a vision of the last days. But his record shows that this series of signs was to be preceded by a great earthquake. He describes the order of events as follows:
"I beheld when He had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; and the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Rev. 6:12, 13.
In these scriptures four great signs of Christ's approaching advent are listed for our study, as follows:
1. The great earthquake. 2. The darkening of the sun and moon. 3. The falling of the stars. 4. Distress of nations, and other signs.
The Time When the Signs Begin
Christ's prophecy points out approximately the time when the first of the signs that He gave, the darkening of the sun, should appear,--"immediately after the tribulation of those days." And the "great earthquake" of John's vision was to precede this sign in the heavens.
The Reformation of the sixteenth century began to cut short the days of tribulation; but some countries shut out the liberalizing influences of the Word of God, and there the persecution continued.
Even as late as near the end of the seventeenth century, in 1685, France revoked the Edict of Nantes, that had granted toleration, and persecution raged as of old. The church was driven again to the desert. Speaking of the early decades of the eighteenth century, Kurtz says:
"In France the persecution of the Huguenots continued.... The 'pastors of the desert' performed their duties at the risk of their lives."--_"Church History," Vol. III, p. 88._
There was severe persecution of the Moravians in Austria, in these times, many of the persecuted finding refuge in Saxony. It was in 1722 that Christian David led the first band of Moravian refugees to settle on the estates of Count Zinzendorf, who organized through them the great pioneer movement of modern missions.
But by the middle of the century, the era of enlightenment and the force of world opinion, in the good providence of God, had so permeated the Catholic states of Europe that general violent persecution had ceased. One incident will suffice as evidence of this.
The scene was in France, where alone, of all the Catholic states, there were any great numbers of Protestants. In 1762 a Huguenot of Toulouse, unjustly charged with crime, was put to torture and to death, under the pressure of the old persecuting spirit. Many Huguenots thought the persecutions of former times were reviving, and prepared to flee to Switzerland. But Voltaire took up the matter, and so wrought upon public opinion that the Paris parliament reviewed the case, and the king paid the man's family a large indemnity.
This shows that by the middle of that century the days of any general persecution had ceased. In the nature of the case, we may not point to the exact year and say, Here the days of tribulation ended.
From these times, then, we are to scan the record of history to learn if the appointed signs began to appear. As we look, we find the events recorded, following on in the order predicted:
1. The Lisbon earthquake, cf 1755. 2. The dark day, cf 1780. 3. The falling stars, cf 1833. 4. General conditions and movements betokening the end.
"There shall be signs," the Saviour said. We are to study the record of events, watching to catch the signs of the approaching end as earnestly as the mariner watches the beacon lights when he nears the longed-for haven on a dark and stormy night.
[Illustration: AN ANCIENT FLOUR MILL
"Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left." Matt. 24:41.]
FOOTNOTES:
[B] It was in the autumn that the army of Cestius closed in upon Jerusalem. According to the careful record of Graetz, the Jewish historian, it was evidently on a Wednesday that the Roman army retired, pursued by all the forces of the city. This was the instant for the flight of the Christians. Next day "the Zealots, shouting exultant war songs, returned to Jerusalem (8th October)."--_"History of the Jews," Vol. II, p. 268._ The day before was the time for unhindered flight.
[C] Apollonius, the friend and counselor of Titus, left a similar testimony to the latter's conviction that there was something supernatural about the forces of destruction let loose upon Jerusalem: "After Titus had taken Jerusalem, and when the country all round was filled with corpses, the neighboring races offered him a crown: but he disclaimed any such honor to himself, saying that it was not he himself that had accomplished this exploit, but that he had merely lent his arms to God, who had so manifested His wrath."--_Philostratus, "Life of Apollonius," book 6, chap. 29._
[Illustration: LISBON FROM ACROSS THE BAY
The scene of the great earthquake and tidal wave, Nov. 1, 1755, when in six minutes sixty thousand people perished.]
THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE OF 1755
"Lo, There Was a Great Earthquake"
The first of a series of signs of the approaching end is thus described by the revelator:
"I beheld when He had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake." Rev. 6:12.
[Illustration: THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE
"There shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." Matt. 24:7.]
The verses immediately preceding this scripture plainly describe the days of persecution of the saints of God, and the era of protest and reform that cut short that time of tribulation. Then this first sign appears. This is in harmony with Christ's statement that the signs of His second coming should begin to appear following the tribulation of those days.
Just about the close of the days of tribulation occurred the Lisbon earthquake, as it is called, though its effects reached far beyond Portugal. Prof. W.H. Hobbs, geologist, says of it:
"Among the earth movements which in historic times have affected the kingdom of Portugal, that of Nov. 1, 1755, takes first rank, as it does, also, in some respects, among all recorded earthquakes.... In six minutes sixty thousand people perished."--_"Earthquakes," pp. 142, 143._
"Lo, there was a great earthquake," the revelator said. It was indeed "a great earthquake," and great was its influence. In all the world, men's hearts were mightily stirred. James Parton, an English author, says of it:
"The Lisbon earthquake of Nov. 1, 1755, appears to have put both the theologians and philosophers on the defensive.... At twenty minutes to ten that morning, Lisbon was firm and magnificent, on one of the most picturesque and commanding sites in the world,--a city of superb approach, placed precisely where every circumstance had concurred to say to the founders, Build here! In six minutes the city was in ruins.... Half the world felt the convulsion.... For many weeks, as we see in the letters and memoirs of that time, people in distant parts of Europe went to bed in alarm, relieved in the morning to find that they had escaped the fate of Lisbon one night more."--_"Life of Voltaire," Vol. II, pp. 208, 209._
The World Set to Thinking
This earthquake set men to thinking of the great day of God. Voltaire, the French philosopher, was "profoundly moved" by it, we are told. "It was the last judgment for that region," he wrote; "nothing was wanting to it except the trumpet." More than a month afterward, while still the perturbations of the earth were continuing, this skeptic wrote a poem upon the problem presented, voicing the sentiment:
"My heart oppress'd demands Aid of the God who formed me with his hands. Sons of the God supreme to suffer all Fated alike, we on our Father call.... Sad is the present if no future state, No blissful retribution mortals wait, If fate's decrees the thinking being doom To lose existence in the silent tomb. _All may be well_; that hope can man sustain. _All now is well_; 'tis an illusion vain. The sages held me forth delusive light, Divine instructions only can be right. Humbly I sigh, submissive suffer pain, Nor more the ways of Providence arraign."
--"_Poem on the Destruction of Lisbon,_" _Smollet's translation; Works, Vol. XXXIII, ed. 1761._
Just at the time, plans were under way for the opening of a theater at Lausanne for the special performance of some of Voltaire's rationalistic dramas. But the enterprise was deferred. One writer says:
"The earthquake had made all men thoughtful. They mistrusted their love of the drama, and filled the churches instead."--_Tallentyre, "Life of Voltaire," p. 319._
So, in an age of rationalism and unbelief, men's thoughts were turned toward God, and human helplessness and earth's instability were recognized.
Extent of the Lisbon Earthquake
As to the extent of the earthquake, a writer of the period shows that it was felt in Sweden and in Africa and in the West Indies, adding:
"The effects were distributed over very nearly four millions of square English miles of the earth's surface, and greatly surpassed anything of the kind ever recorded in history."--_"History and Philosophy of Earthquakes" (London, 1757), p. 333._
The commander of an English ship, lying off Lisbon at the time, thus described the scene in a letter to the ship's owners:
"Almost all the palaces and large churches were rent down, or part fallen, and scarce one house of this vast city is left habitable. Everybody that was not crushed to death ran out into the large places, and those near the river ran down to save themselves by boats, or any other floating convenience, running, crying, and calling to the ships for assistance; but whilst the multitude were gathered near the riverside, the water rose to such a height that it overflowed the lower part of the city, which so terrified the miserable and already dismayed inhabitants, who ran to and fro with dreadful cries, which we heard plainly on board, that it made them believe the dissolution of the world was at hand; every one falling on his knees and entreating the Almighty for His assistance.... By two o'clock the ships' boats began to ply, and took multitudes on board.... The fear, the sorrow, the cries and lamentations of the poor inhabitants are unexpressible; every one begging pardon, and embracing each other, crying, Forgive me, friend, brother, sister! Oh! what will become of us! neither water nor land will protect us, and the third element, fire, seems now to threaten our total destruction! as in effect it happened. The conflagration lasted a whole week."--_Thomas Hunter, "Historical Account of Earthquakes" (Liverpool, 1756), pp. 72-74._
Recognized as a Sign
Looking down through the ages, the prophet of the Revelation saw the coming of the latter days, when signs of the approaching end were to begin to appear. Just there he beheld "a great earthquake." The terrible event was noted by inspiration as a sign of the coming of the final judgment. Earthquakes there had been before, and increasing earthquakes were to follow after,--"earthquakes in divers places,"--as Christ foretold, speaking of the signs of His second coming. But as befitted this first of the series of signs of the approaching end, a conviction from God seemed to come into the hearts of men in that generation, that this was indeed a token to remind the world of a coming day of doom.
In the year of the disaster, an English poet, John Biddolf, published a book of verse, pointing some of the lessons of the hour, from which we quote a few descriptive stanzas:
"Calm was the sky; the sun serenely bright Shot o'er the sea long dazzling streams of light. Through orange groves soft breathing breezes play'd And gathered sweets like bees where'er they stray'd. In fair relievo stood the lofty town, Set off by radiant lights and shadows brown.
"Ill-fated city! there were revels kept; Devoid of fear, they ate, they drank, they slept. No friendly voice like that of ancient Rome Was sent to give them warning of their doom: No airy warriors to each other clung, Such as 'tis said o'er destin'd Sion hung, But like a nightly thief their dreadful fate Unlooked for came and undermined their state....
"Lo, what a sudden change! On ruin's brink The proud turn humble, and the thoughtless think. Dark, gloomy sadness overclouds the gay, And hypocrites for once sincerely pray.... But let it not be thought their horrid deeds Had pulled this dreadful judgment on their heads, Or that for crimes too horrible to tell, Like guilty Sodom, thunderstruck they fell....
"Who can with curious eyes this globe survey, And not behold it tottering with decay? All things created, God's designs fulfil, And natural causes work His destined will. And that eternal Word, which cannot lie, To mortals hath revealed in prophecy That in these latter days such signs should come, Preludes and prologues to the general doom. But not the Son of man can tell that day; Then, lest it find you sleeping, watch and pray."
Thus this first of the predicted latter-day signs bore its message to men. Its immediate scene was set in the Old World, but its warning was world-wide. The next sign foretold was to appear in the New World, but like the Lisbon earthquake, its message of warning was for all men.
[Illustration: THE FLOOD
"So shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Matt. 24:39.]
[Illustration: MIDDAY AT SEA MAY 19, 1780
"Between one and two he was obliged to light a large candle to steer by." See p. 89.]
[Illustration: SIGNS IN THE HEAVENS
"Can ye not discern the signs of the times?" Matt. 16:3.]
THE DARK DAY OF 1780
"The Sun Shall be Darkened"
We recall that in the vision of latter-day signs given to the prophet John, he saw the "great earthquake" followed by a sign in the heavens:
"The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood." Rev. 6:12.
Of this event our Saviour spoke, in giving the signs of His second coming which were to begin to appear following the cutting short of the days of persecution. We repeat His words:
"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light." Matt. 24:29.
The Prophecy Fulfilled
True to the order of the prophecy, following the great earthquake of 1755 in Europe, there came, in America, the second sign of the approaching end, the wonderful darkening of the sun, known in history as "The Dark Day."
This sign appeared at the time indicated in the prophecy, "immediately after the tribulation of those days;" or as Mark has it, "in those days, after that tribulation." On May 19, 1780, the sun was darkened, and the following night the moon did not give her light. Whatever explanation men may have to offer as to the cause of the phenomenon, the fact remains that when the time of the prophecy came, the sign appeared.
The first volume of the "Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences," published in Boston in 1785, contains a paper entitled, "An Account of a Very Uncommon Darkness in the States of New England, May 19, 1780. By Samuel Williams, A.M., Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy in the University at Cambridge [Massachusetts]."
Of the extent, duration, and degree of darkness on that occasion, this scientific observer said:
"The extent of this darkness was very remarkable.... From the accounts that have been received, it seems to have extended all over the New England States. It was observed as far east as Falmouth [Portland, Maine]. To the westward, we hear of its reaching to the furthest parts of Connecticut, and Albany. To the southward, it was observed all along the seacoasts. And to the north as far as our settlements extend....
"With regard to its duration, it continued in this place at least fourteen hours: but it is probable this was not exactly the same in different parts of the country. The appearance and effects were such as tended to make the prospect extremely dull and gloomy. Candles were lighted up in the houses; the birds having sung their evening songs, disappeared, and became silent; the fowls retired to roost; the cocks were crowing all around as at break of day; objects could not be distinguished but at a very little distance; and everything bore the appearance and gloom of night." (See pages 234-246.)
Whittier has commemorated it in the poem, "Abraham Davenport:"
"'Twas on a May day of the far old year Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell Over the bloom and sweet life of the spring, Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon, A horror of great darkness....
"Birds ceased to sing, and all the barnyard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom blast of the trumpet shatter The black sky."
The words of the poet are substantiated by the plain prose of the dictionary maker. In the department explanatory of "Noted Names," Webster's Unabridged Dictionary (edition 1883) says:
"_The Dark Day_, May 19, 1780--so called on account of a remarkable darkness on that day extending over all New England.... The obscuration began about ten o'clock in the morning, and continued till the middle of the next night, but with difference of degree and duration in different places.... The true cause of this remarkable phenomenon is not known."
Cause Unknown
At the time, some explained the darkness as being due to smoke from forest fires, others to the exceptional rise of vapors and atmospheric dust in the warm spring following the melting of unusually heavy winter snows. But forest fires were not of extraordinary occurrence in these regions, and many a springtime since has seen the melting of heavy winter snows and the rise of vapors; yet May 19, 1780, still stands unique in the annals of modern times as "the dark day." However observers and writers disagreed as to the nature of the mantle of darkness that was drawn over New England that day, they were _one_ in recognizing the extraordinary character of the event.
The facts are fully covered by the statement in the dictionary, "The true cause of this remarkable phenomenon is not known."
What we do know is that the Saviour's prophecy declared, "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light." And when the time for it came, the sign appeared.
Contemporary Records
Though the comparatively small-sized newspapers of the day were crowded with news of the progress of the Revolutionary War, then raging, no little space was given to reports and discussions of this remarkable darkening of the sun.
A correspondent of the Boston _Gazette and Country Journal_ (of May 29, 1780) reported observations made at Ipswich Hamlet, Mass., "by several gentlemen of liberal education:"
"About eleven o'clock the darkness was such as to demand our attention, and put us upon making observations. At half past eleven, in a room with three windows, twenty-four panes each, all open toward the southeast and south, large print could not be read by persons of good eyes.
"About twelve o'clock, the windows being still open, a candle cast a shade so well defined on the wall, as that profiles were taken with as much ease as they could have been in the night.
"About one o'clock a glint of light which had continued to this time in the east, shut in, and the darkness was greater than it had been for any time before.... We dined about two, the windows all open, and two candles burning on the table.
"In the time of the greatest darkness some of the ... fowls went to their roost. Cocks crowed in answer to one another as they commonly do in the night. Woodcocks, which are night birds, whistled as they do _only_ in the dark. Frogs peeped. In short, there was the appearance of midnight at noonday.
"About three o'clock the light in the west increased, the motion of the clouds [became] more quick, their color higher and more brassy than at any time before. There appeared to be quick flashes or coruscations, not unlike the aurora borealis.... About half past four our company, which had passed an unexpected night very cheerfully together, broke up."
Of the night following, this gentleman (then at Salem) wrote:
"Perhaps it never was darker since the children of Israel left the house of bondage. This gross darkness held till about one o'clock, although the moon had fulled but the day before."
The Boston _Independent Chronicle_ of June 8 quoted from Thomas's _Massachusetts Spy_:
"During the whole time a sickly, melancholy gloom overcast the face of nature. Nor was the darkness of the night less uncommon and terrifying than that of the day; notwithstanding there was almost a full moon, no object was discernible, but by the help of some artificial light, which when seen from the neighboring houses and other places at a distance, appeared through a kind of Egyptian darkness, which seemed almost impervious to the rays.
"This unusual phenomenon excited the fears and apprehensions of many people. Some considered it as a portentous omen of the wrath of Heaven in vengeance denounced against the land, others as the immediate harbinger of the last day, when 'the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light.'"
Not only over the land, but out at sea also, the unnatural darkness of the day and night of May 19, 1780, was observed. In the _Independent Chronicle_ of June 15, 1780, a correspondent, telling of interviews with various observers, said:
"I have also seen a very sensible captain of a vessel, who was that morning about forty leagues southeast of Boston. He says the cloud which appeared at the west was the blackest he ever saw. About eleven o'clock there was a little rain, and it grew dark. Between one and two he was obliged to light a large candle to steer by.... Between nine and ten at night, he ordered his men to take in some of the sails, but it was so dark that they could not find the way from one mast to the other."
Thoughts Turned to the Judgment
This writer commented as follows concerning the feelings awakened by the event:
"Various have been the sentiments of people concerning the designs of Providence in spreading the unusual darkness over us. Some suppose it portentous of the last scene. I wish it may have some good effect on the minds of the wicked, and that they may be excited to prepare for that solemn day."
The _Independent Chronicle_ of June 22, 1780, printed a letter from Dr. Samuel Stearns, who had been appealed to because of his knowledge "in philosophy and astronomy." First, he disposed of one suggestion that had been made:
"That the darkness was not caused by an eclipse is manifest by the various positions of the planets of our system at that time; for the moon was more than one hundred and fifty degrees from the sun all that day."
Then, in the rather heavy language of the science of that period, this writer told how the action of the sun's heat was continually projecting into the atmosphere particles of earthy matter; and in his opinion it was some "vast collection of such particles that caused the late uncommon darkness." But as to the real accounting for the phenomenon he wrote:
"The primary cause must be imputed to Him that walketh through the circuit of heaven, who stretcheth out the heaven like a curtain, who maketh the clouds His chariot, who walketh upon the wings of the wind. It was He, at whose voice the stormy winds are obedient, that commanded these exhalations to be collected and condensed together, that with them He might darken both the day and the night; which darkness was, perhaps, not only a token of His indignation against the crying iniquities and abominations of the people, but an omen of some future destruction."
Thus men's minds were exercised by this sign "in the sun, and in the moon."
The early records of New York City tell of the interest excited there, though evidently the darkness was not so marked as it was farther north.
In the Connecticut Legislature
President Timothy Dwight, of Yale College, a contemporary, left the following account of one of the historic incidents of the day:
"The legislature of Connecticut was then in session at Hartford. A very general opinion prevailed that the day of judgment was at hand. The house of representatives, being unable to transact their business, adjourned. A proposal to adjourn the council [a second legislative body called the Governor's Council] was under consideration. When the opinion of Colonel Davenport was asked, he answered, 'I am against an adjournment. The day of judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for an adjournment; if it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. I wish therefore that candles may be brought.'"--_Barber, "Connecticut Historical Collections," p. 403._
It was this striking incident that Whittier described with the poet's pen:
"Meanwhile in the old Statehouse, dim as ghosts, Sat the lawgivers of Connecticut, Trembling beneath their legislative robes. 'It is the Lord's great day! Let us adjourn,' Some said; and then, as with one accord, All eyes were turned to Abraham Davenport. He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice The intolerable hush. 'This well may be The day of judgment which the world awaits; But be it so or not, I only know My present duty, and my Lord's command To occupy till He come. So at the post Where He hath set me in His providence I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face,-- No faithless servant, frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; And therefore, with all reverence, I would say, Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles.'"
Thus, in a manner that arrested the attention of men and put awe and solemnity into their hearts, with thoughts of the coming of the great day of God, the first of the predicted signs in the heavens was revealed.
At a later time, when students of the Bible seemed moved upon simultaneously, in both Europe and America, to give attention to the doctrine of Christ's second coming, it was more generally understood that these signs had come in fulfilment of prophecy.
As we look to the past, we see how truly the tokens of the coming King began to appear as the church of Christ emerged fully from the long, dark period of tribulation. A new era was dawning, in which the Lord was to fill the earth with light before His second appearing, according to His word to Daniel the prophet:
"Thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Dan. 12:4.
At last the time of the end was at hand, and the signs of the latter days had begun to appear in the earth and in the heavens. The Lord was preparing to send to all the world the closing gospel message of Christ's soon coming in glory.
[Illustration: THE GREAT METEORIC SHOWER NOVEMBER 13, 1833
"The stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Rev. 6:13.]
[Illustration: A STAR HERALDS HIS FIRST ADVENT
"We have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him." Matt. 2:2.]
THE FALLING STARS OF 1833
"The Stars Shall Fall from Heaven"
A great impetus was given to the study of divine prophecy by the events of the closing years of the eighteenth century. Observers had seen the papal power receive a "deadly wound" in the events and effects of the French Revolution; and it was understood that the world was entering a new era of enlightenment and liberty.
Bible students began to see more clearly the lesson of the great outlines of historic prophecy, and hearts were stirred with the evidences that the coming of the Lord was drawing near. In Europe and America, in the early decades of the nineteenth century, there was the beginning of a revival of the study and preaching of the advent idea.
Another Sign in the Heavens
Just here appeared another great sign in the heavens, foretold by the word of prophecy. Of the sign that was to follow the darkening of the sun and moon, Christ's prophecy says:
"The stars shall fall from heaven." Matt. 24:29.
The prophet John beheld the spectacle in a vision of the last days, and described it in these words:
"The stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Rev. 6:13.
On Nov. 13, 1833, came the wondrous celestial exhibition of falling stars, which is listed as one of the most remarkable phenomena of the astronomical story.
Meteoric displays, swarms of shooting stars, have been observed at various times all through the ages; but this phenomenon, coming in the order given by the prophecy, that is, following the darkening of the sun, constituted the sublime display answering to the pen-picture of the Apocalypse,--as if all the stars of heaven were falling to the earth.
The essential thing about a sign is that it shall be seen, that the circumstances of its appearance shall fasten attention. Not in America alone, but equally in all the civilized world, as a topic of study, this sign in the heavens commanded the attention of men.
An English scientist, Rev. Thomas Milner, F.R.G.S., wrote:
"The attention of astronomers in Europe, and all over the world, was, as may be imagined, strongly roused by intelligence of this celestial display on the Western continent."--_"The Gallery of Nature" (London, 1852), p. 141._
This writer called it "by far the most splendid display on record."--_Id., p. 139._
Another English astronomical writer of more recent date says:
"Once for all, then, as the result of the star fall of 1833, the study of luminous meteors became an integral part of astronomy."--_Clerke, "History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century," p. 329._
This same work describes the extent of the display as follows:
"On the night of Nov. 12-13, 1833, a tempest of falling stars broke over the earth. North America bore the brunt of its pelting. From the Gulf of Mexico to Halifax, until daylight with some difficulty put an end to the display, the sky was scored in every direction with shining tracks and illuminated with majestic fireballs."--_Page 328._
The Spectacle Described
The closest scientific observations were made by Prof. Denison Olmsted, professor of astronomy at Yale, who wrote in the _American Journal of Science_:
"The morning of Nov. 13, 1833, was rendered memorable by an exhibition of the phenomenon called shooting stars, which was probably more extensive and magnificent than any similar one hitherto recorded.... Probably no celestial phenomenon has ever occurred in this country, since its first settlement, which was viewed with so much admiration and delight by one class of spectators, or with so much astonishment and fear by another class. For some time after the occurrence, the 'meteoric phenomenon' was the principal topic of conversation in every circle."--_Volume XXV (1834), pp. 363, 364._
Prof. Simon Newcomb, the astronomer, declares this phenomenal exhibition of falling stars "the most remarkable one ever observed." (See "Astronomy for Everybody," p. 280.)
This was not merely a display of an unusual number of falling stars, such as Humboldt observed in South America in 1799, or such as we find recorded of other times before and since. It was a "shower" of falling stars, just such a spectacle as one must picture from the words of the prophecy, "And the stars of heaven fell."
The French astronomer Flammarion says of the density of the shower:
"The Boston observer, Olmsted, compared them, at the moment of maximum, to half the number of flakes which we perceive in the air during an ordinary shower of snow."--_"Popular Astronomy," p. 536._
This affords us a better idea of the scene than the estimate of 34,640 stars an hour, which was made by Professor Olmsted after the rain of the stars had greatly abated, so that he was able to make an attempt at counting.
Dr. Humphreys, president of St. John's College, Annapolis, said of the appearance at the Maryland capital:
"In the words of most, they fell _like flakes of snow_."--_American Journal of Science, Vol. XXV (1834), p. 372._
Nothing less than this could have presented the counterpart of the prophetic picture.
Thoughtful hearts were solemnized by the unwonted spectacle. Prof. Alexander Twining, civil engineer, "late tutor in Yale College," giving his views as to the nature of the flaming visitants from space, wrote:
"Had they held on their course unabated for three seconds longer, half a continent must, to all appearance, have been involved in unheard-of calamity. But that almighty Being who made the world, and knew its dangers, gave it also its armature--endowing the atmospheric medium around it with protecting, no less than with life-sustaining, properties....
"Considered as one of the rare and wonderful displays of the Creator's preserving care, as well as the terrible magnitude and power of His agencies, it is not meet that such occurrences as those of November 13 should leave no more solid and permanent effect upon the human mind than the impression of a splendid scene."--_American Journal of Science, Vol. XXVI (1834), p. 351._
Multitudes felt that the great Creator had spoken to men in this notable wonder of His heavens. Again and again in the records and reminiscences of that time, testimony is borne to the fact that observers were impressed with the likeness of the scene to that described in the divine prophecy as one of the signs of the end of the world.
The Prophetic Picture Reproduced
The New York _Journal of Commerce_ emphasized the exactness of detail with which the prophecy described the scene as it appeared in 1833. This is the apocalyptic picture, as the ancient prophet saw it in vision:
"The stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Rev. 6:13.
A correspondent of the _Journal of Commerce_ draws the picture as it was seen nearly eighteen centuries later, the likeness to the prophetic description being emphasized in every line:
"No philosopher or scholar has told or recorded an event like that of yesterday morning. A prophet eighteen hundred years ago foretold it exactly, if we will be at the trouble of understanding stars falling to mean falling stars."--_New York Journal of Commerce, Nov. 14, 1833._
In this connection was noted by the same writer the special appropriateness of the prophet's figure of the fig tree casting the green figs in a mighty wind:
"Here is the exactness of the prophet. The falling stars did not come as if from _several_ trees shaken, but from _one_. Those which appeared in the east fell toward the east: those which appeared in the north fell toward the north; those which appeared in the west fell toward the west; and those which appeared in the south (for I went out of my residence into the park) fell toward the south; and they fell not as ripe fruit falls; far from it; but they _flew_, they were _cast_, like the unripe fig, which at first refuses to leave the branch; and when it does break its hold, flies swiftly, straight off, descending; and in the multitude falling, some cross the track of others, as they are thrown with more or less force."
Professor Olmsted's long and carefully elaborated account in the _American Journal of Science_, gave a report from a correspondent in Bowling Green, Mo., as follows:
"Though there was no moon, when we first observed them; their brilliancy was so great that we could, at times, read common-sized print without much difficulty, and the light which they afforded was much whiter than that of the moon, in the clearest and coldest night, when the ground is covered with snow. The air itself, the face of the earth as far as we could behold it, all the surrounding objects, and the very countenances of men, wore the aspect and hue of death, occasioned by the continued, pallid glare of these countless meteors, which in all their grandeur flamed 'lawless through the sky.'
"There was a grand and indescribable gloom on all around, an awe-inspiring sublimity on all above; while--
"'The sanguine flood Rolled a broad slaughter o'er the plains of heaven, And nature's self did seem to totter on the brink of time!'
"... There was scarcely a space in the firmament which was not filled at every instant with these falling stars, nor on it could you in general perceive any particular difference in appearance; still at times they seemed to shower down in groups--calling to mind the fig tree, casting her untimely figs when shaken by a mighty wind."--_Volume XXV (1834), p. 382._
[Illustration: THE SIGN OF FIRE
"As this sign of fire in the watchtower was a signal to God's people anciently to flee from the coming danger (see Jer. 6:1), so the signs appearing now in the heavens and in the earth are God's signals of warning to the people of our day."]
A Sign to All the World
It was not in North America alone, but in all the civilized world, that the attention of men was called to the prophetic word by the discussions of this event. Thus the English scientific writer, Thomas Milner, writing for the British public, spoke as follows of the profound impression made:
"In many districts, the mass of the population were terror-struck, and the more enlightened were awed at contemplating so vivid a picture of the apocalyptic image--that of the stars of heaven falling to the earth, even as a fig tree casting her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind."--_"The Gallery of Nature" (London, 1852), p. 140._
So the sign in the heavens made its solemn appeal to all the world. It brought to the multitudes who saw it, thoughts of God and the last great day. An observer living at the time in Georgia, wrote, "Everybody felt that it was the judgment, and that the end of the world had come." Another, in Kentucky, wrote, "In every direction I could hear men, women, and children screaming, 'The judgment day is come!'"
Rather, it was a signal that the hour of God's judgment was drawing near. The signs so long foretold were appearing, one by one, to register their enduring mark on the record of fulfilling prophecy.
Immediately following these times, there began an awakening concerning the vital Bible doctrine of the second coming of Christ, which has grown into the definite advent movement that is carrying the gospel message of preparation for the coming of the Lord to every nation and tongue and people.
The Sign of 1833 Emphasized by Other Displays
We have mentioned the fact that Humboldt had observed an extraordinary fall of meteorites in South America, thirty-three years, before, in 1799. And he reported at the time that the oldest inhabitants there had a recollection of a similar display in 1766.
From these reports, scientists deduced the theory that these showers were to be expected every thirty-three years. Hence in 1866 they were watching for a repetition of the 1833 display.
That there was a measure of truth in the deduction was made evident by an unusual fall of meteorites Nov. 14, 1866. This time Europe was the scene of the display. But the event was not to be compared with that of 1833. This appears plain from the account of observations made by Sir Robert Ball and Lord Rosse, the British astronomers.
Sir Robert Ball says that when the meteorites began to fall, he and Lord Rosse went out upon the wall of the observatory housing Lord Rosse's great reflecting telescope:
"There, for the next two or three hours, we witnessed a spectacle which can never fade from my memory. The shooting stars gradually increased in number until sometimes several were seen at once."--_"Story of the Heavens," p. 380._
Grand as the spectacle was, it was but a reminder, apparently, of the star shower of 1833, when not "several" meteorites fell at a time, nor many, merely, but, as it appeared, "the stars of heaven fell unto the earth."
However, the spectacle of 1866, which was observed over a great part of the Old World,[D] served to direct renewed attention to the incomparable event of 1833, as well as to the prophetic descriptions of the "wonders in the heavens" (Joel 2:30) which were to appear as the end drew near.
[Illustration: CHRIST'S PROMISE TO RETURN
"I will come again, and receive you unto Myself." John 14:3.]
Textbooks and astronomical works thereupon began to count it as fully established that every thirty-three years the displays would be repeated. It was confidently predicted that 1899 would witness a repetition, possibly on the scale of 1833.
Professor Langley's "New Astronomy" (published in 1888) said:
"The great November shower, which is coming once more in this century, and which every reader may hope to see toward 1899, is of particular interest to us as the first whose movements were subject to analysis."
Chambers's Astronomy, published in 1889, said:
"The meteors of November 13 may be expected to reappear with great brilliancy in 1899."---_Volume I, p. 635._
But the November date passed in 1899, and the years have passed; and the wondrous scene of 1833 has not been repeated. Clerke's "History of Astronomy in the Nineteenth Century" says:
"We can no longer count upon the Leonids [as the meteorites of 1833 were called, because they seemed to fall from a point in the constellation of Leo]. Their glory, for scenic purposes, is departed."--_Page 338._
The Lord's Signal to Watch
Thus the wisest astronomical predictions made shortly before 1899, based upon the apparently recurrent regularity of the phenomenon, failed; but the predictions of the sure word of prophecy, set down on the sacred record eighteen centuries before, were fulfilled to the letter.
At the close of the days of the predicted tribulation of the church, the signs began to appear--the sun was darkened, the moon withheld its light, and the stars of heaven fell.
The series began at the time specified, the signs came in the order given in Christ's prophecy. The record of history bears witness that the prophecy was fulfilled.
It may be that on a yet more awful and universal scale these phenomena will be seen again in that last shaking of the powers of heaven which is to attend the rolling back of the heavens as a scroll, the immediate prelude to Christ's glorious appearing. But Christ's prophecy, at this point, was not giving a description of events at the very end of the world, but signs by which it might be known when the end was drawing near.
As the signs should be recognized, the Saviour intended that those who loved His appearing should be quickened with hope, and inspired to hasten to the world with the gospel message preparing the way of the Lord. The Lord's word for His children was,
"When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." Luke 21:28.
Long ago these signs began to come to pass. Now may the Lord's believing children well look up and rejoice, knowing that the day of eternal redemption is indeed nigh at hand.
He Will Come for His Own
In the glad time of the harvest, In the grand millennial year, When the King shall take His scepter, And to judge the world appear, Earth and sea shall yield their treasure, All shall stand before the throne; Just awards will then be given, When the King shall claim His own.
O the rapture of His people! Long they've dwelt on earth's low sod, With their hearts e'er turning homeward, Rich in faith and love to God. They will share the life immortal, They will know as they are known, They will pass the pearly portal, When the King shall claim His own.
Long they've toiled within the harvest, Sown the precious seed with tears; Soon they'll drop their heavy burdens In the glad millennial years; They will share the bliss of heaven, Nevermore to sigh or moan; Starry crowns will then be given, When the King shall claim His own.
We shall greet the loved and loving, Who have left us lonely here; Every heartache will be banished When the Saviour shall appear; Never grieved with sin or sorrow, Never weary or alone; O, we long for that glad morrow When the King shall claim His own!
--_L.D. Santee._
[Illustration: SATAN OFFERS GOLD, AND THE WORLD STAMPEDES TO ITS DESTRUCTION
"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you." James 5:1.]
FOOTNOTES:
[D] The display was most brilliant, apparently, in Western Asia. The veteran missionary, Dr. H.H. Jessup, of the Presbyterian Missionary College, of Beirut, describes the scene in his "Fifty-Three Years in Syria:" "On the morning of the fourteenth [November], at three o'clock, I was roused from a deep sleep by the voice of one of the young men calling, 'The stars are all coming down.' ... The meteors poured down like a rain of fire. Many of them were large and varicolored, and left behind them a long train of fire. One immense green meteor came down over Lebanon, seeming as large as the moon, and exploded with a large noise, leaving a green pillar of light in its train. It was vain to attempt to count them, and the display continued until dawn, when their light was obscured by the king of day.... The Mohammedans gave the call to prayer from the minarets, and the common people were in terror."--_Volume I, pp. 316, 317._
[Illustration: THE MISER
"Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days." James 5:3.]
THE MEANING OF PRESENT-DAY CONDITIONS
"THERE SHALL BE SIGNS ... UPON THE EARTH"
From the specific signs in the heavens, which were to herald the coming of the latter days and awaken the church to look for its coming Lord, our Saviour's prophecy passed on to designate certain general conditions in the world which were to continue until the great day of God comes:
"There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." Luke 21:25-27.
Among the developments here foretold, and which contribute to the "distress of nations, with perplexity," we may list the following:
[Illustration: THE ARMING OF THE NATIONS
"Prepare war,... beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears." Joel 3: 9, 10.]
1. Political Unrest--the Arming of the Nations
Following on closely with the signs in the heavens, there appears also the awakening to national aspirations and rivalries in Europe, out of which has grown the arming of the nations. The beginning of the modern race of armaments may be dated from those stirring and eventful years of 1830 to 1848. We have seen the resources of the soil and the inventive genius of man devoted to preparations for war on a scale never before thought of. The prophet Joel foretold these conditions in the last days:
"Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles ["the nations," R.V.]: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong.... Let the heathen be wakened.... Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision [or "cutting off"]: for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision." Joel 3: 9-14.
[Illustration: READY FOR THE CONFLICT
"For the day of the Lord is near." Joel 3: 14.
PHOTO FROM UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N.Y.]
Another prophecy forewarns of the "peace and safety" cry that is to be heard as the end draws near. We are told that many people in the last days will be saying that swords are to be beaten into plowshares, and that the nations will cease from war (Isa. 2:3, 4); but the actual conditions are repeatedly described in prophecy as warlike and perilous. Thus the revelator saw the closing days:
"The nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that Thou shouldst give reward unto Thy servants the prophets, and to the saints, and them that fear Thy name, small and great; and shouldst destroy them which destroy the earth." Rev. 11: 18.
[Illustration: A FAITHFUL AND WISE SERVANT
"Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come." Matt. 24: 42.]
What we see then among the nations proclaims the approaching end.
2. Signs in the Social World
A New Testament prophecy of the latter days says:
"In the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God." 2 Tim. 3: 1-4.
The "perilous times" have come, when, as never before, the world is pleasure mad.
"Unrestrained passion for pleasure," said M. Comte, editor of the French _Relèvement Social_, writing just before the European war, is bringing a terrible train of evils into modern society. Along with it he put "the hunt for money without regard for means," adding:
"This is the theme which manufacturers, business men, men in the public administration, continually harp on with ever the same conviction and ever the same wealth of proof.
"The note is ever the same, and the conclusion identical: _Nous sommes perdus!_ [We are lost!]"--_Quoted in Record of Christian Work, July, 1914._
Many agencies for social and temperance reform are rendering the greatest human service; but for lost humanity the only hope is Christ, the divine Saviour. With an urgency born of the last call, His gospel is sounding to a world on the verge of eternity. Yet with divine love longing to save, the world sweeps on, less and less mindful of eternal interests. Christ's prophecy foretold it as it is:
"As the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Matt. 24: 37-39.
Who can look out upon mankind today without the conviction that this scripture is being fulfilled? The drift is strong toward the world and away from God; but we are bidden to watch and pray, lest the coming day find us unprepared.
3. Signs in the Industrial World
Industrial conditions today add their contribution to the "distress of nations, with perplexity." Through the word of prophecy the Lord long ago foretold these conditions, with a warning to the careless rich, and a warning to the laborer and the poor, not to be drawn into contention over the things of this world, for the Judge is at the door. The prophecy, it will be seen, refers specifically to latter-day conditions.
[Illustration: "AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?"
A night scene on the Thames embankment, London.]
"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you.
[Illustration: THE RICH YOUNG MAN
"Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." Matt. 19: 21.]
"Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts: for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Grudge not one against another, brethren, lest ye be condemned: behold, the Judge standeth before the door." James 5: 1-9.
There is no need to argue that the issues with which the prophecy deals are pressing upon the world with ever-increasing perplexity. We quote but two statements, by men not engaged in agitation, but calmly and thoughtfully setting down the signs of the times.
The late Lord Avebury (Sir John Lubbock) wrote a few years ago in the _Review of Internationalism_:
"The religion of Europe is not Christianity, but the worship of the god of war.... Unless something is done, the condition of the poor in Europe will grow worse and worse. It is no use shutting our eyes. Revolution may not come soon, not probably in our time, but come it will, and as sure as fate there will be an explosion such as the world has never seen."
Of the rapid growth of discontent and its propaganda, Mr. Frederick Townsend Martin, of New York, wrote:
"Fifty years ago there was scarcely a voice of protest; indeed, there was hardly anything to protest against. Twenty-five years ago the protest was clear and distinct, and we understood it. Ten years ago the protest found expression in a dozen weekly publications, but today the protest is circulated not by hundreds or thousands of printed copies of books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers, but actually by the million.
"This propaganda of protest has its daily papers that are distinctive and published for that purpose, and that purpose only. It has its magazines and tens of thousands of weekly papers. Only a fool sneers at such a volume of publicity as that....
"The warnings that hundreds of us are uttering may be ignored. The squandering may go on, the vulgar bacchanalia may be prolonged, the poor may have to writhe under the iron heel of the iron lord--the dance of death may go on until society's E string snaps, and then the Vesuvius of the underworld will belch forth its lava of death and destruction."--_Hearst's Magazine, September, 1913._
Thus hearts grow faint "for looking after those things which are coming on the earth." But while the increasing "distress of nations, with perplexity," abounds, the Lord sends the steadying, assuring message that soon Christ will come to end the reign of sin and strife. He would have His children keep the gospel light glowing, and wait patiently for Him.
4. The Great Missionary Movement
The Saviour's prophecy of the signs of His second coming places the work of world evangelization as the culminating sign. This in itself is a joyful token of the approaching end, a bright signal of hope in a suffering world. He said:
"This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come." Matt. 24: 14.
Before the end, the light of the gospel was to shine into every dark corner of the earth. True to the sure word of prophecy, when the latter days began,--"the time of the end,"--there sprang up the great movement of modern missions which has been one of the leading characteristics of the last century. Here are a few facts showing the missionary developments of a single century:
"In 1800 the foreign missionary societies numbered seven. In 1900 they numbered over 500.
"In 1800 the income of seven societies amounted to about $50,000. In 1900 the income was over $15,000,000.
"In 1800 the number of native communicants enrolled in Protestant mission churches was 7,000. In 1900 there were 1,500,000 native communicants.
"In 1800 the adherents of Protestant churches in heathen lands were estimated at 15,000. In 1900 they numbered 3,500,000.
"In 1800 only one fifth of the human family had the Bible in languages they could read. In 1900 nine tenths of the people of the world had the Word of God in languages and dialects known to them."
Since 1900 the missionary movement has remarkably increased in extent and activity. It is estimated that now there are about 22,000 foreign missionaries in the fields, with many thousands of trained native evangelists and helpers.
The prophecy is fulfilling before our eyes. It is not the conversion of the world that Christ's words foretold, but the evangelization of the world; and when all the world has heard the gospel of the kingdom, "then shall the end come."
Another prophecy--that of Rev. 14: 6-14--shows that the closing phase of this world-wide missionary movement is to be the proclamation of the special gospel message of preparation for the coming of the Lord, calling all men to worship God and keep His commandments, and warning them against following the traditions of men that make void the Word of God.
[Illustration: THE SUNSET HOUR
"The work that centuries might have done Must crowd the hour of setting sun."]
With the coming of this generation there has come just such a message, in the rise and progress of the advent movement, the burden of the message being expressed in the very language of the prophecy--"Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come." Rev. 14: 7. And the movement is spreading rapidly "to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." Thus in vision the prophet on Patmes heard the message given; and when its warning cry had reached all nations, he saw Christ coming in the clouds of heaven to reap the harvest of the earth.
"Even at the Doors"
Of the beginning of the special signs of the last days, Christ said:
"When these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh." Luke 21: 28.
But of the time when these signs should all be seen fulfilled or in process of fulfilment, the Saviour said:
"Now learn a parable of the fig tree: When his branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is nigh: so likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors. Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away." Matt. 24: 32-35.
In this generation we see these things. All about us the signs have appeared. We know, then, by the word that shall not pass away, that the generation has at last appeared that is to see the Saviour coming in power and great glory. "Of that day and hour knoweth no man," but we may know "that it is near, even at the doors"--the day for which the saints of God have hoped through all the ages.
[Illustration: PHILIP AND THE EUNUCH
"Understandest thou what thou readest?" Acts 8:30.]
[Illustration: THE ROYAL PALACE OF BABYLON
"The God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory." Dan. 2:37]
THE HISTORIC PROPHECY OF DANIEL 7
FOUR GREAT UNIVERSAL EMPIRES
Part I
So important is it that we understand the events leading on to the end, that repeatedly the "sure word of prophecy" outlines the course of this world's history, and sets up waymarks along the highway to the everlasting kingdom.
In the light of prophecy we see the hand of God guiding and overruling through all history, shaping events for the carrying out of His purpose to end the reign of sin and to bring in the reign of eternal righteousness. His prophetic word foretells events of history, that we may know that He is the living God over all, and that we may understand that the divine purpose will surely be fulfilled. Above a wicked world there is a God in heaven, waiting only the appointed time for the accomplishment of His purposes.
"I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.... I have spoken it, I also will bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.... My salvation shall not tarry: and I will place salvation in Zion." Isa. 46:9-13.
In the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, recorded in the second chapter of Daniel, the Lord revealed in brief but graphic outline the course of history from the days of Babylon to the end of the world. The four great universal monarchies,--Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome--were represented by the various parts of the metallic image. That prophecy described particularly the division of the Roman Empire into the kingdoms of western Europe. "In the days of these kings," declared the word of the Lord, the God of heaven was to set up His kingdom, bringing an end to all earthly powers.
In the seventh chapter we are taken over the same course of history, in Daniel's vision of the four beasts. Here also chief attention is devoted to the fourth great kingdom; and especially to its divided state; for the events taking place at this time are of the deepest eternal interest to all men.
In this vision Daniel saw four universal empires represented by great beasts. One after another the symbolic beasts arose, did their work, and gave place to the next scenes in the history. The angel clearly explained to Daniel the meaning of the vision:
"These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth. But the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever."
Of necessity, then, it is a repetition of the story of the four universal monarchies dealt with in the second chapter, and ending with the setting up of the everlasting kingdom.
Let us place the view given the prophet in vision alongside the record of history.
First, however, a word as to the manner in which the great beasts appeared to the prophet:
"I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another."
Again and again, in the figurative language of Scripture, winds are used as the symbol for wars; and the sea, or waters, for nations or peoples. (See Jer. 25:31-33; Rev. 17:15.) The prophet saw the clashing of the nations in war, and out of these conflicts arose the kingdoms described in the prophecy.
[Illustration: THE FIRST BEAST
"The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings." Dan. 7:4.]
Babylon
Note the prophetic picture of the prophecy and the corresponding representation in history.
_Prophecy._--"The first was like a lion, and had eagle's wings: I beheld till the wings thereof were plucked, and it was lifted up from the earth, and made stand upon the feet as a man, and a man's heart was given to it."
_History._--As the lion is king of beasts, it was a fitting symbol of Babylon, "the glory of kingdoms." Isa. 13:19. The eagle's wings suggest rapidity of movement and far-reaching conquest. The prophet Habakkuk said of it, "Their horsemen shall come from far; they shall fly as the eagle." This was the characteristic of Babylon under the earlier kings, but especially under Nebuchadnezzar. Berosus, the ancient Chaldean historian, wrote of him:
"This Babylonian king conquered Egypt, and Syria, and Phenicia, and Arabia; and exceeded in his exploits all that had reigned before him in Babylon." (See Flavius Josephus "Against Apion," book 1, par. 19.)
[Illustration: THE SECOND BEAST
"And behold another beast, a second, like to a bear." Dan. 7:5.]
But now, at the time of Daniel's vision, degeneracy had come; the empire was tottering. The lion heart was gone, the eagle's wings were plucked, and within three years from the time the vision was given, Babylon was overthrown.
Medo-Persia
As the dominion passed from Babylon to the next great power, the prophet says:
_Prophecy._--"Behold another beast, a second, like to a bear, and it raised up itself on one side, and it had three ribs in the mouth of it between the teeth of it: and they said thus unto it, Arise, devour much flesh."
_History._--The Medes and Persians overthrew Babylon. Medo-Persia was a dual kingdom, lifting itself up on one side, first the Median branch the stronger, then the Persian, under Cyrus and his successors, rising higher. This two-sided characteristic, noted as a distinguishing mark in the prophecy, was emphasized by the ancient writers also. Æschylus, the Greek poet, who lived in the time of Persia, wrote:
"Asia's brave host, A Mede first led. The virtues of his son Fixed firm the empire.... ... Cyrus third, by fortune graced, Adorned the throne."
--"_Persoe._"
The word spoken in the vision, "Arise, devour much flesh," describes the history from the time when the Persian side rose uppermost. Rawlinson says, "Cyrus proceeded with scarcely a pause on a long career of conquest."
An alliance against Persia was formed by Lydia, Egypt, and Babylon (Herodotus 1:77); and as these three great provinces were subdued, they may well be represented by the three ribs in the mouth of the Medo-Persian bear.
Grecia
Yet another kingdom was to follow, and strikingly the symbol pictures the characteristics of the Greek conquest.
_Prophecy._--"After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard, which had upon the back of it four wings of a fowl; and the beast had also four heads; and dominion was given to it."
_History._--The third kingdom was Grecia. Under Alexander the Great, the Greeks swept into Asia with the quickness of the leopard's spring. And the four wings on the leopard must represent astonishing fleetness. Plutarch speaks of the "incredible swiftness" of Alexander's conquests. Appian wrote:
"The empire of Alexander was splendid in its magnitude, in its armies, in the success and rapidity of its conquests, and it wanted little of being boundless and unexampled, yet in its shortness of duration it was like a brilliant flash of lightning. Although broken into several satrapies, even the parts were splendid."--_"History of Rome," preface, par. 10._
[Illustration: THE THIRD BEAST
"After this I beheld, and lo another, like a leopard." Dan. 7:6.]
Thus the ancient Roman writer pictured the career of Grecia just as represented by the prophetic symbol--the fleetness, the great dominion given it, the division of the empire into satrapies, as suggested by the four heads of the leopard. Out of the conflicts following Alexander's death, there came the fourfold headship of the empire. Rawlinson says, "A quadripartite division of Alexander's domain was recognized." (See "Sixth Monarchy," chap. 3.) The real situation is best represented, as Dr. Albert Barnes says, by "one animal with four heads," just as the prophetic symbol described it centuries before.
Thus the course of empire followed the outline of the "sure word of prophecy" from age to age.
"Armies were ranged in battle's dread array: They fought--their glory withered in its bud; They perished--with them ceased their tyrants' sway; New wars, new heroes came--their story passed away."
There was to be no abiding kingdom till the time came for God's glorious kingdom to be set up.
[Illustration: THE FOURTH BEAST
"After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly." Dan. 7:7.]
Rome
As the prophet watched the moving panorama of history, foretold in symbols, he said:
_Prophecy._--"After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. I considered the horns, and, behold, there came up among them another little horn, before whom there were three of the first horns plucked up by the roots: and, behold, in this horn were eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things."
[Illustration: ROME ON THE TIBER
The palace of the Cæsars appears high on the hill at the left.]
_History._--As the iron of the image of Nebuchadnezzar's dream fitly represented the "iron monarchy of Rome," so here the dreadful beast, with its iron teeth, can be none other than Rome, which followed Grecia in world dominion. It was the most powerful, the most dominating, of all the beasts in the prophetic series. A Roman Catholic writer, Cardinal Manning, compresses into a paragraph the correspondence of history to the likeness of the prophecy:
[Illustration: BATTLE OF ZAMA, B.C. 202
By which Rome broke the power of Carthage, its rival, and "began the conquest of the world."]
"The legions of Rome occupied the circumference of the world. The military roads which sprang from Rome traversed all the earth; the whole world was, as it were, held in peace and in tranquillity by the universal presence of this mighty heathen empire. It was 'exceedingly terrible,' according to the prophecies of Daniel; it was as it were of iron, beating down and subduing the nations."--_"The Temporal Power of the Pope" (London, 1862), p. 122._
Thus far every symbol of the prophet's vision finds its exact and clear counterpart in history. A writer living in the third century, in the days of imperial Rome, rejoiced to see how exactly the prophecy was being fulfilled. Hippolytus (counted a saint by the Catholic Church) wrote:
"Rejoice, blessed Daniel! thou hast not been in error! All these things have come to pass. After this again thou hast told us of the beast, dreadful and terrible. It has iron teeth and claws of brass; it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it. Already the iron rules; already it subdues and breaks all in pieces; already it brings all the unwilling into subjection; already we see these things ourselves. Now we glorify God, being instructed by thee."--_"Treatise on Christ and Antichrist," sec. 33._
Now the prophetic outline comes to the time of the division of the Roman Empire, introducing events of deepest personal interest to us today.
Part II
The Fourth Kingdom and the "Little Horn"
It was the fourth great monarchy, Imperial Rome, and the events to follow it, that engaged the anxious inquiry of the prophet. He says:
"Then I would know the truth of the fourth beast, which was diverse from all the others, exceeding dreadful, whose teeth were of iron, and his nails of brass; which devoured, brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with his feet; and of the ten horns that were in his head, and of the other which came up, and before whom three fell; even of that horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spake very great things, whose look was more stout than his fellows. I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High; and the time came that the saints possessed the kingdom."
The prophet wanted to know the truth about it; and the angel told him the truth. First, the angel said:
"The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces."
The fourth kingdom, as we have seen, was Rome. As Cardinal Manning said of the empire, "It was 'exceeding terrible,' according to the prophecies of Daniel; it was as it were of iron, breaking down and subduing the nations."
Of the ten horns that arose out of this fourth great empire, the angel said:
"The ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise: and another shall rise after them; and he shall be diverse from the first, and he shall subdue three kings."
We look to the history of the Roman Empire, and what do we see?--Just the picture of the prophecy. We see the original Roman Empire of the West divided into lesser kingdoms. We see the barbarian peoples of the North sweeping down upon the empire, breaking it up, and establishing within its boundaries the various kingdoms that are to this day represented by the kingdoms of western Europe.
And as we watch the history at this point, we surely see "another little horn," another land of power, rising among the horns representing the kingdoms of divided Rome--a kingdom, yet a kingdom "diverse" from the others. The work of this power riveted the attention of the prophet; and it is of the greatest importance that we also should watch closely to catch the lesson of the divine prophecy.
Prophetic and Historic Pictures of the "Little Horn"
This is plainly the picture presented by the prophet, as we look again, observing details more closely.
The prophet beheld the division of the Roman Empire into lesser kingdoms. Then, springing up among these kingdoms, he saw the little-horn power subduing three of the ten kingdoms, speaking great words, and making war with the saints of God. It was to be a religious power, then, ruling among the kings of the earth, and asserting religious dominion over the faith and consciences of men. "The same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them."
[Illustration: THE INVASION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BY THE HUNS
"We see the barbarian peoples of the North sweeping down upon the empire, breaking it up, and establishing within its boundaries the various kingdoms that are to this day represented by the kingdoms of Western Europe."--_Page 127._]
We look to history, and this is what plainly appears:
We see, as described in the prophecy, a time when ten contemporaneous kingdoms filled the territory of the original Western Empire. Just there we see an ecclesiastical kingly power rise to religious supremacy--the Roman Papacy. We see, through its influence, three of the ten kingdoms overthrown, "plucked up by the roots"--three Arian or heretical kingdoms. And as we watch the history, we find this power making "war with the saints" and prevailing against them through long ages.
A Roman Catholic writer describes it in a paragraph:
"Long ages ago, when Rome through the neglect of the Western emperors was left to the mercy of the barbarous hordes, the Romans turned to one figure for aid and protection, and asked him to rule them; and thus, in this simple manner, the best title of all to kingly right, commenced the temporal sovereignty of the popes. And meekly stepping to the throne of Cæsar, the vicar of Christ took up the scepter to which the emperors and kings of Europe were to bow in reverence through so many ages."--_Rev. James P. Conroy, in American Catholic Quarterly Review, April, 1911._
Yet again we look at the picture presented in prophecy. Then we turn to history; and precisely where and when the prophet saw the "little horn" coming up, we see the Roman Papacy rising to supremacy. We see this ecclesiastical power wielding a kingly scepter among the kingdoms of divided Rome, exalting itself above them, with a look "more stout than his fellows." We hear it speaking great words, and we see it carrying on warfare against the saints.
Clearly, there was no other power in history, rising at that time and in that place, which suggests the slightest correspondence to the prophecy. In every detail the Roman Papacy does correspond to it.
The prophetic outline has brought us to the rise of the great apostasy, so fully dealt with in the New Testament prophecy; but there are further specifications in this prophecy of the seventh of Daniel which demand brief study.
[Illustration: RAISING THE SIEGE OF ROME, A.D. 538
The crushing defeat of the Goths by the armies of Justinian, who placed Vigilius in the papal chair under the military protection of his famous general, Belisarius.]
[Illustration: ST. PETER'S AND THE VATICAN
The magnificent headquarters of the papal system.]
THE 1260 YEARS OF DANIEL'S PROPHECY
Compressed into forty-four words, the age-long story of the workings of the Roman Papacy is thus told by the angel who interpreted Daniel's vision of the little horn:
"He shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time." Dan. 7:25.
The spirit of this apostasy was abroad in apostolic days. "The mystery of iniquity doth already work," said the apostle Paul. 2 Thess. 2:7. And this power is to continue to work until the end, when it will be destroyed by the brightness of Christ's coming. Verse 8.
A Prophetic Period
But according to the word of the angel to Daniel, there was to be a period during which, in a special sense, the Papacy was to hold supremacy over the saints and the times and the laws of the Most High.
"They shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time." In the Scriptures the word "time," used in this manner, means a year: "at the end of times, even years." Dan. 11:13, margin. Therefore a time (one year) and times (two years) and the dividing of time (half a year) means three years and a half. The same period is mentioned twice in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, once (verse 14) as "a time, and times, and half a time," and again (verse 6) as "a thousand two hundred and threescore days."
[Illustration]
But in the symbolic representations of time in prophecy, a day stands for a year (see Eze. 4:5, 6, and other scriptures). Thus the prophecy foretold a long period of 1260 years during which papal supremacy would continue.
Now we may ask, When was this supremacy to begin? what would mark the rise of the Papacy to acknowledged supremacy? and what events mark the ending of the 1260 years?
A Pivotal Point in History
The answer of history to the voice of prophecy is clear.
The sixth century was a pivotal period in the history of the world. The bishops of Rome had been asserting the claims of that seat (or "see") above all others. Justinian was emperor of the East. Of Justinian and his time Bury says:
"He may be likened to a colossal Janus bestriding the way of passage between the ancient and medieval worlds.... His military achievements decided the course of the history of Italy, and affected the development of Western Europe;... and his ecclesiastical authority influenced the distant future of Christendom."--_"History of the Later Roman Empire," Vol. I, pp. 351-353._
Of this turning point in the world's history, Finlay says:
"The changes of centuries passed in rapid succession before the eyes of one generation."--_"Greece under the Romans," p. 231._
Just here we find the Papacy lifted definitely into acknowledged supremacy. Imperial Rome had already left its ancient seat to the Papacy, the imperial throne being no longer maintained at Rome. The Bishop of Rome was left the chief figure in the ancient seat of the Cæsars. The prophecy of Rev. 13:2 had said of the relation of the old imperial power to the Papacy, "The dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority." The seat was given, and now imperial Rome was to give to papal Rome the definite recognition of its supreme power and "great authority."
Papal Supremacy Officially Recognized
In A.D. 533 the emperor Justinian promulgated a letter, having the force of an imperial decree, recognizing the absolute headship of the Bishop of Rome over the churches. It declared:
"We have been sedulous to subject and unite all the priests of the Orient throughout its whole extent to the see of Your Holiness.... For we do not suffer that anything which is mooted, however clear and unquestionable, pertaining to the state of the churches, should fail to be made known to Your Holiness, as being the head of all the churches. For, as we have said before, we are zealous for the increase of the honor and authority of your see in all respects."--_Cod. Justin., lib. 1, title 1, Baronii "Annales Ecclesiastici," Tom. VII, an. 533, sec. 12 (Translation as given in "The Petrine Claims," by R.F. Littledale, p. 293)._
From this decree (for such it really was) the Roman authorities date the official recognition of the supremacy of the Papacy. Some have taken a later decree by Emperor Phocas (A.D. 606) as a starting point. But Dr. Croly says:
"The highest authorities among the civilians and annalists of Rome spurn the idea that Phocas was the founder of the supremacy of Rome; they ascend to Justinian as the only legitimate source, and rightly date the title from the memorable year 533."--_"The Apocalypse of St. John," pp. 172, 173._
The Sword of Empire Cleaves the Way
The "great authority" had been recognized. But at this time heretical Arian powers compassed the papal seat about. The Arian Vandals were persecuting Catholics in Africa, Corsica, and Sardinia, and an Arian Gothic king ruled Italy from Ravenna, his capital. The imperial arms, however, were at the service of orthodoxy. In 533-534 Justinian's famous general, Belisarius, uprooted the Vandals. The war for the faith and the empire was carried into Italy also, against the Arian Goths. In 536 Belisarius, unopposed, entered Rome at the invitation of the Pope. But the next year the Goths rallied all their forces to retake the city. It was a crisis in the struggle for Italy. "If a single post had given way," says Gibbon, "the Romans, and Rome itself, were irrecoverably lost." The Goths withdrew, defeated, in 538; and this defeat, says Hodgkin, dug "the grave of the Gothic monarchy in Italy."
[Illustration: THE POPE ENTERING ST. PETER'S FROM THE VATICAN
The famous statue of St. Peter may be seen on the right.]
Though the conflict went on for years before the Goths were rooted up, this defeat of 538 was a crucial hour in their history. Finlay says:
"With the conquest of Rome by Belisarius, the history of the ancient city may be considered as terminating; and with his defense against Witiges [538] commences the history of the Middle Ages."--_"Greece under the Romans," p 295._
Roughly speaking, the Middle Ages and the age of papal supremacy and power were the same.
A New Order of Popes
[Illustration: THE VATICAN
A bird's-eye view from the dome of St. Peter's. COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N.Y.]
Not only was there this telling stroke by the imperial sword in 538, helping to clear the way before the Papacy, but at this same time the first of a new order of popes was placed upon the papal throne by the imperial arms. Pope Silverius, accused of sympathy with the Goths, was deposed by Belisarius in 537. The emperor intervened, and the question of the validity of his deposition was held up by the emperor until 538. In that year, as Schaff says:
"Vigilius, a pliant creature of Theodora, ascended the papal chair under the military protection of Belisarius (538-554)."--_"History of the Christian Church," Vol. III, p. 327._
[Illustration: THE FAMOUS SACRED STAIRWAY IN ROME
Here Luther, climbing the stairway on his knees, heard the message, "The just shall live by faith."]
With him begins a new order. Though personally he was humiliated by the emperor's demands, and the Papacy itself was brought into a state of subjection that it had not known even under heretical Gothic kings, yet this very arbitrary use of the papal prerogative by Justinian, strengthened the idea that the Pope of Rome was the supreme authority in religion, to speak for the universal church. In Bemont and Monod's textbook on "Medieval Europe," page 120, we read:
"Down to the sixth century all popes are declared saints in the martyrologies. Vigilius (537[E]-555) is the first of a series of popes who no longer bear this title, which is henceforth sparingly conferred. From this time on the popes, more and more involved in worldly events, no longer belong solely to the church; they are men of the state, and then rulers of the state."
A Persecuting Power
Following Vigilius came Pelagius I (556-560), who ascended the throne by "the military aid of Narses," then the imperial general in Italy. And Pelagius, who had been set in the papal see by imperial power, began to demand that the sword of the empire should be used against bishops or members in the church who did not give way to the authority of the Pope. His letters on this subject "are an unqualified defense of the principles of persecution." (See "Dictionary of Christian Biography," by Smith and Wace, art. "Pope Pelagius.")
The prophecy declared that the Papacy would be given special supremacy during a period of 1260 years.
In A.D. 533 came the memorable imperial declaration recognizing that supremacy, and in A.D. 538 came the stroke with the sword of Rome, cleaving the way; and there began the new order of popes--"men of the state, and then rulers of the state."
Thus decisive events clearly mark the beginning of the prophetic period of the 1260 years. And just 1260 years from the decree of 533, in recognition of the papal supremacy, came a decree, in 1793, aimed against that supremacy; and just 1260 years from that stroke with the sword at Rome in behalf of the Papacy, came a stroke with the sword at Rome against the Papacy.
[Illustration: STORMING OF THE BASTILLE PRISON IN PARIS
An event in the French Revolution which marked the ending of the old autocratic order.]
FOOTNOTES:
[E] The exact date should be 538, as given in the quotation from Schaff's history. "From the death of Silverius [June, 538] the Roman Catholic writers date the episcopacy of Vigilius."--_Bower, "History of the Popes," under year 538._
[Illustration: TAKING THE POPE PRISONER
This was accomplished by Berthier, the French general, in 1798.]
THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA
THE END OF THE 1260 YEARS
As the generation in which the papal power rose to supremacy was a turning-point in the history of the world, so, too, was the generation in which the 1260 years of its supremacy came to an end.
This measuring line of prophecy does more than run from date to date. It connects two great crises in human history, the events of the first tending to establish the papal rule over men, the events of the second signalizing a breaking of those bands.
A Crisis in History
Papal supremacy came at that time of which Finlay says, "The changes of centuries passed in rapid succession before the eyes of one generation." The measuring line of 1260 years runs on through the centuries till, lo, its end touches another time of crisis,--Europe in the convulsions of the French Revolution, when again changes, ordinarily requiring centuries, were wrought out before the eyes of men within the space of a few years. Lamartine wrote of that time:
"These five years are five centuries for France."--_"History of the Girondists," book 61, sec. 16 (Vol. III), p. 544._
And the events of these times proclaimed the prophetic period of papal supremacy ended at last.
Thus, in A.D. 533 came the notable decree of the Papacy's powerful supporter, recognizing its supremacy; and then the decisive stroke by the sword at Rome in A.D. 538, cleaving the way for the new order of popes--the rulers of state.
Exactly 1260 years later, in 1793, came the notable decree of the Papacy's once powerful supporter, France,--"the eldest son of the church,"--aiming to abolish church and religion, followed by a decisive stroke with the sword at Rome against the Papacy, in 1798.
Significant Events of the French Revolution
Of the decree of 1793, W.H. Hutton says:--
"On Nov. 26, 1793, the Convention, of which seventeen bishops and some clergy were members, decreed the abolition of all religion."--_"Age of Revolution," p. 156._
The frenzy of the days of the Terror presented the spectacle of outraged humanity, goaded to desperation by centuries of oppression in the name of religion and divine right, rising up and madly breaking every restraint. Because in the minds of the people the Papacy stood for religion, they blindly struck at religion itself, and at God, in whose name the papal church had done its cruel work through the centuries.
In the prophecy of Rev. 11:3-13 these events of the wild days of the French Revolution are specifically referred to as coming at the close of the prophetic period of the 1260 years. The prophetic picture was so clear that over a hundred years before the time, Jurieu, an eminent French student of prophecy, wrote that he could "not doubt that 'tis France," the chief supporter of the Papacy, that would give the shock as of an earthquake to the great spiritual Babylonian city. He wrote of France, one of the ten parts of divided Rome:
"This tenth part of the city shall fall, with respect to the Papacy; it shall break with Rome, and the Roman religion."--_"The Accomplishment of the Prophecies" (London, 1687), part 2, p. 265._
And so it came to pass. Far beyond France the movement reached. Canon Trevor says of the wave of revolt against absolutism that passed over Europe:
"It is worthy of observation that only those nations which eschewed popery were able to resist the tide. Every throne and every church, without exception, that owned the supremacy of Rome, was prostrated in the dust."--_"Rome and Its Papal Rulers," p. 436._
The decree of the French Convention in 1793 was followed by the stroke with the sword at Rome in 1798. The full history is told in fewest words by a Roman Catholic writer, Rev. Joseph Rickaby, of the Jesuit Society:
"When, in 1797, Pope Pius VI fell grievously ill, Napoleon gave orders that in the event of his death no successor should be elected to his office, and that the Papacy should be discontinued.
"But the Pope recovered. The peace was soon broken; Berthier entered Rome on the tenth of February, 1798, and proclaimed a republic. The aged pontiff refused to violate his oath by recognizing it, and was hurried from prison to prison in France. Broken with fatigue and sorrows, he died on the nineteenth of August, 1799, in the French fortress of Valence, aged eighty-two years. No wonder that half Europe thought Napoleon's veto would be obeyed, and that with the Pope the Papacy was dead."--_"The Modern Papacy," p. 1 (Catholic Truth Society, London)._
These events of the French Revolution marked the ending of the prophetic period of papal supremacy. A "deadly wound" had been given the Papacy. And the blow with the sword at Rome was struck in 1798, just 1260 years from the year 538, when the sword of empire struck that decisive blow against the Goths at Rome, and prepared the way for the new order of popes, the kingly rulers of church and state.
Of the condition of the Papacy at this time Canon Trevor says:
"The Papacy was extinct: not a vestige of its existence remained; and among all the Roman Catholic powers not a finger was stirred in its defense. The Eternal City had no longer prince or pontiff; its bishop was a dying captive in foreign lands; and the decree was already announced that no successor would be allowed in his place."--_"Rome and Its Papal Rulers," p. 440._
"No wonder that half Europe," the Jesuit writer says, "thought Napoleon's veto would be obeyed, and that with the Pope the Papacy was dead." But he adds that "since then the Papacy has been lifted to a pinnacle of spiritual power" unreached before.
The stroke dealt the Papacy by the French Revolution was not to be the ending of it, by any means, according to the prophecy. These events proclaimed the ending of the prophetic period of special supremacy. Another prophecy distinctly indicates that following the deadly blow there would come a revival of the Papacy's influence, just as the Catholic writer describes it. The prophet John, speaking of this same power, says:
"I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast.... And they worshiped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?" Rev. 13:3, 4.
We see the healing process still going on, with evidences multiplying that the world is more and more wondering after the papal power.
A New Era of Liberty and Enlightenment
With the ending of the 1260 years of papal supremacy, a new order was ushered in. The Papacy had stood for absolutism in state as well as church. Now the power of absolutism was broken. "Absolute monarchy," Edmund Burke said at the time, "breathed its last without a struggle." There came the dawn of an era of greater religious liberty and enlightenment, that has spread blessings over all lands.
The prophecy had said of the Papacy, that the saints and the times and laws of the Most High were to be "given into his hand" for 1260 years. As foretold in Christ's prophecy (Matt. 24:22), these days of the tribulation of God's saints were "shortened." The power of the Reformation weakened the oppressing hand, even before the prophetic period ran out. And when the full 1260 years closed, the world saw the grip of that papal hand yet further loosened, and God's providence at work preparing the way for a world-wide proclamation of His gospel, bearing witness against the perversions of the papal apostasy, and restoring to men the Word and laws of the Most High.
The record of history witnesses that this time prophecy of the 1260 years of papal supremacy was exactly fulfilled. The Lord speaks in prophecy that men may know that He is the living God. In these time prophecies of His Word, He gives assurance not only that this troubled world has not escaped from the hand of its Maker, but that its times are in His hand also; and that when the time of His divine purpose fully comes, He will surely cut His work short in righteousness, and end the reign of sin on earth.
As the prophetic period of Dan. 7:25 meets its fulfilment in the history of the Papacy, even so, we shall see, the work of the Roman Church answers to the further specifications regarding the doings of this "little horn" of Daniel's prophecy.
[Illustration: THE TRIPLE CROWN
The Pope's Tiara, from a photograph taken in the Vatican at Rome.]
[Illustration: HUGUENOTS IN PRISON FOR THEIR FAITH
"Others had trial ... of bonds and imprisonment." Heb. 11:36.]
THE WORK OF THE "LITTLE HORN" POWER
The prophetic picture of the rise and work of the "little horn" finds its exact counterpart in the history of the Roman Papacy:
_The Place._--The little horn was seen by the prophet rising in the field of the Roman Empire. That was the very place where the great kingdom of the Papacy appeared, taking the name of Roman.
_The Time._--The rise of the ecclesiastical kingdom of the little-horn power in the prophecy followed the breaking up of the Roman Empire into the ten kingdoms. Just so the ecclesiastical kingdom of the Roman Papacy rises to view in history immediately following the division of the empire.
_The Period of Supremacy._--The prophecy allotted 1260 years to the full supremacy of this power. History responds that from the beginning of the papal supremacy, in the days of Justinian, a period of 1260 years brings us into the stirring events of the last decade of the eighteenth century, that gave to the Papacy a deadly wound.
[Illustration: THE LOVE OF POWER
"He shall speak great words against the Most High." Dan. 7:25.
THE POWER OF LOVE]
One further set of specifications remains for study:
_The Work._--Of the nature and work of the power represented by the little horn, the prophecy declares:
"He shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time." Dan. 7:25.
Do we find in the record that the Church of Rome has fulfilled these specifications also? The Scripture prophecy is absolutely a word-photograph of the workings of the papal church. Look at the main features:
1. Speaking great words against the Most High. 2. Wearing out the saints of the Most High. 3. Thinking to change the times and the laws of the Most High.
Every count in the indictment may be clearly proved, and that by testimony from Roman Catholic sources
"He Shall Speak Great Words Against the Most High"
As Daniel observed the little-horn power, he heard it speaking "very great things." The angel declared that these great swelling words were really against the Most High. And what could be more against the honor of the Most High than that to mortal man should be ascribed the titles and attributes of divinity? Here are some of the "great words:"
"All the names which are attributed to Christ in Scripture, implying His supremacy over the church, are also attributed to the Pope."--_Bellarmine, "On the Authority of Councils," book 2, chap. 17._
This ruling has been actually applied through the ages. Says Elliott:
"Look at the Sicilian ambassadors prostrated before him [Pope Martin IV] with the cry, 'Lamb of God! that takest away the sins of the world!'"--_"Horæ Apocalypticæ," part 4, chap. 5, sec. 2._
[Illustration: CHRISTIANS IN PRISON BENEATH THE COLOSSEUM AWAITING MARTYRDOM
"And shall wear out the saints of the Most High." Dan. 7:25.]
"The Pope is of so great dignity and excellence, that he is not merely man, but as if God, and the vicar of God (_non sit simplex homo, sed quasi Deus, et Dei vicarius_). The Pope alone is called most holy,... divine monarch, and supreme emperor, and king of kings.... The Pope is of so great dignity and power that he constitutes one and the same tribunal with Christ (_faciat unum et idem tribunal cum Christo_), so that whatsoever the Pope does seems to proceed from the mouth of God (_abore Dei_)."--_"Prompta Bibliotheca" (Ferraris), art. "Papa;" Ferraris's Ecclesiastical Dictionary (Roman Catholic), art. "The Pope." Quoted in Guinness's "Romanism and the Reformation," p. 16._
These are no merely extravagant adulations of the Dark Ages, to be repudiated by the moderns; these terms express the unchanging doctrinal claims of the Roman Church, that put man in the place of God. The modern Pope Leo XIII, in an encyclical letter dated June 20, 1894, repeated the claim:
"We hold upon this earth the place of God Almighty."--_"The Great Encyclical Letters of Leo XIII" (New York, Benziger Brothers), p. 304._
Thus does the Papacy "speak great words against the Most High."
"And Shall Wear Out the Saints of the Most High"
All through the Dark Ages we catch glimpses of the ruthless hand of Rome laid upon simple believers in God's Holy Word; but plans for wholesale wearing out of the saints of God were devised as the Waldenses and others rose to a widespread work of witnessing, heralds of the dawn of the coming Reformation,--
"These who gave earliest notice, As the lark Springs from the ground the morn to gratulate; Who, rather, rose the day to antedate, By striking out a solitary spark, When all the world with midnight gloom was dark-- The harbingers of good whom bitter hate In vain endeavored to exterminate."
--_Wordsworth._
Pope Innocent III gave orders concerning them as follows:
"Therefore by this present apostolical writing, we give you a strict command that, by whatever means you can, you destroy all these heresies and expel from your diocese all who are polluted with them. You shall exercise the rigor of ecclesiastical power against them and all those who have made themselves suspected by associating with them. They may not appeal from your judgments, and, if necessary, you may cause the princes and people to suppress them with the sword."--_Quoted from Migne, 214, col. 71, in Thatcher and McNeal's "Source Book for Medieval History," p. 210._
As the truth spread, so also the papal church redoubled its efforts by sword and flame. The historian Lecky says:
"That the Church of Rome has shed more innocent blood than any other institution that has ever existed among mankind, will be questioned by no Protestant who has a competent knowledge of history. The memorials, indeed, of many of her persecutions are now so scanty that it is impossible to form a complete conception of the multitude of her victims, and it is quite certain that no powers of imagination can adequately realize their sufferings."--_"History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe," Vol. II, p. 32._
Motley, in his "Rise of the Dutch Republic" (part 3, chap. 2), tells how Philip II of Spain--who declared that he would "never consent to be the sovereign of heretics"--sent the Duke of Alva to take over the Netherlands:
"Early in the year the most sublime sentence of death was promulgated which has ever been pronounced since the creation of the world. The Roman tyrant [Nero] wished that his enemies' heads were all upon a single neck, that he might strike them off at a blow; the Inquisition assisted Philip to place the heads of all his Netherlands subjects upon a single neck for the same fell purpose. Upon February 16, 1568, a sentence of the Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands to death as heretics. From this universal doom only a few persons, especially named, were excepted. A proclamation of the king, dated ten days later, confirmed this decree of the Inquisition, and ordered it to be carried into instant execution, without regard to age, sex, or condition. This is probably the most concise death warrant that was ever framed. Three millions of people, men, women, and children, were sentenced to the scaffold in three lines."
Roman Catholic writers admit that the papal church has sought to exterminate what it calls heresy, by the power of the sword.
The _Western Watchman_ (St. Louis), Dec. 24, 1908, says:
"The church has persecuted.... Protestants were persecuted in France and Spain with the full approval of the church authorities. We have always defended the persecution of the Huguenots, and the Spanish Inquisition. Wherever and whenever there is honest Catholicity, there will be a clear distinction drawn between truth and error, and Catholicity and all forms of error. When she thinks it good to use physical force, she will use it."
Prof. Alfred Baudrillart, rector of the Catholic Institute of Paris, says:
"The Catholic Church is a respecter of conscience and of liberty.... She has, and she loudly proclaims that she has, a 'horror of blood.' Nevertheless, when confronted by heresy, she does not content herself with persuasion; arguments of an intellectual and moral order appear to her insufficient, and she has recourse to force, to corporal punishment, to torture. She creates tribunals like those of the Inquisition, she calls the laws of the state to her aid, if necessary she encourages a crusade, or a religious war, and all her 'horror of blood' practically culminates into urging the secular power to shed it, which proceeding is almost more odious--for it is less frank--than shedding it herself. Especially did she act thus in the sixteenth century with regard to Protestants. Not content to reform morally, to preach by example, to convert people by eloquent and holy missionaries, she lit in Italy, in the Low Countries, and above all in Spain, the funeral piles of the Inquisition. In France under Francis I and Henry II, in England under Mary Tudor, she tortured the heretics, whilst both in France and Germany during the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century if she did not actually begin, at any rate she encouraged and actively aided, the religious wars."--_"The Catholic Church, the Renaissance and Protestantism" (London, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1908), pp. 182, 183._
She has done it--the Church of Rome has worn out the saints of the Most High. The prophet in vision saw an ecclesiastical kingly power rise among the kingdoms |
18503-8 | of the divided Roman Empire. Its look was more stout than its fellows, and the prophet heard it speaking "very great things," and saw it wearing out the saints of the Most High through the long centuries.
[Illustration: THE SHAME OF RELIGIOUS WARS
Christ viewing the battle fields of history, where millions of His followers have been slain in His name.]
"Guilty!" is the clear verdict of history, against the Church of Rome on these two counts of the prophetic indictment.
"And Think to Change Times and Laws"
The power that was to speak great words against the Most High, and to wear out the saints of the Most High, was further--in its self-exalting opposition to God--to assume to lay hands upon times and laws, evidently the times and the laws of the Most High; for to say that such a power would lay hands on the laws of men, changing or setting aside human legislation, would signify less than the preceding counts. This third specification states a climax in the indictment--the self-exalting, persecuting power was to lay hands upon the very law of the Most High. It is clearly the same power that the apostle Paul said would rise to dominion after his time: "Then shall be revealed the lawless one." 2 Thess. 2:8, A.R.V.
God's Law Unchangeable
Just as the laws of a government express its character, so the law of God is a reflection of the divine character. "The law of the Lord is perfect." Ps. 19:7. "Wherefore the law is holy," said the apostle, "and the commandment holy, and just, and good." Rom. 7:12.
Jesus declared, "I delight to do Thy will, O My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart." Ps. 40:8. And He maintained the unchangeable, enduring integrity of that law: "Verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Matt. 5:18.
But in Daniel's prophecy is foretold the rise of this power that was to _think_ to change the times and the laws of the Most High.
Here, again, the evidence points straight to the Church of Rome; for it is a fact that the Papacy has laid violent hands on the law of God--upon the precept, too, that deals with sacred time--and has _thought_ to change it.
In a volume to be seen in the British Museum, dated 1545, the following comment on Dan. 7:25 is attributed to Philipp Melanchthon, the Reformer, associate of Luther (reproduced with the old English spelling):
"He changeth the tymes and lawes that any of the sixe worke dayes commanded of God will make them unholy and idle dayes when he lyste, or of their owne holy dayes abolished make worke dayes agen, or when they changed ye Saterday into Sondaye.... They have changed God's lawes and turned them into their owne tradicions to be kept above God's precepts."--_"Exposition of Daniel the Prophete," Gathered out of Philipp Melanchthon, Johan Ecolampadius, etc., by George Joye, 1545, p. 119._
This is exactly what the power represented by the little horn was to assume to do. The commandment of God is plain:
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.... For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Ex. 20:8-11.
A Change in Practice
But in general practice there has been a change--the first day is commonly observed instead of the seventh day, which the Lord declares he blessed and made holy. The Roman Catholic Church points exultingly to the fact that this change, so universally allowed today, has come about solely through church tradition without Scriptural authority. For instance, one Catholic writer says:
"You will tell me that Saturday was the _Jewish_ Sabbath, but that the _Christian_ Sabbath has been changed to Sunday. Changed! but by whom? Who has authority to change an express commandment of Almighty God? When God has spoken and said, Thou shalt keep holy the seventh day, who shall dare to say, Nay, thou mayest work and do all manner of worldly business on the seventh day; but thou shalt keep holy the first day in its stead? This is a most important question, which I know not how you can answer.
"You are a Protestant, and you profess to go by the Bible and the Bible only; and yet in so important a matter as the observance of one day in seven as a holy day, you go against the plain letter of the Bible, and put another day in the place of that day which the Bible has commanded. The command to keep holy the seventh day is one of the ten commandments; you believe that the other nine are still binding; who gave you authority to tamper with the fourth? If you are consistent with your own principles, if you really follow the Bible and the Bible only, you ought to be able to produce some portion of the New Testament in which this fourth commandment is expressly altered."--_"Library of Christian Doctrine: Why Don't You Keep the Holy Sabbath Day?" (Burns and Oates London), p. 3._
Every one who studies the question must recognize the fact that there is no change authorized in Scripture. As Canon Eyton, of the Church of England, says:
"There is no word, no hint, in the New Testament about abstaining from work on Sunday.... Into the rest of Sunday no divine law enters."--_"The Ten Commandments" (Trübner & Co.), London._
Dr. Heylyn, of the Church of England, wrote:
"Take which you will, either the Fathers or the moderns, and we shall find no Lord's day instituted by any apostolical mandate; no Sabbath set on foot by them upon the first day of the week."--_"History of the Sabbath," part 2, chap. 1._
Authorities, both Protestant and Catholic, freely acknowledge that there is no divine authority for Sunday keeping. There has been a change in practice and teaching, but with no Scriptural authority.
What the Papacy Claims
The prophecy of Daniel 7 forewarned all that the ecclesiastical power that was to rise upon the division of the Roman Empire would _think_ to change the times and the laws of the Most High. The Papacy steps forward and claims boldly that the church has power to set aside Scripture, to institute holy times, and even to change the day made holy and commanded by the Almighty as the day of rest for His people.
In a Catholic work, "An Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine," by Dr. Henry Turberville, page 61, we read:
"_Question._--By whom was the change [of the Sabbath] made?
"_Answer._--By the rulers of the church, the apostles who kept the Lord's day....
"_Ques._--How do you prove that the church hath power to establish feasts and holy days?
"_Ans._--By the very fact of changing the Sabbath to Sunday; this change Protestants allow; and therefore they contradict themselves by keeping Sunday strictly and breaking most other feasts commanded by the same church.
"_Ques._--How prove you that?
"_Ans._--Because by keeping Sunday they acknowledge the church's power to ordain feasts and to command them under sin; and by not keeping the rest commanded by her, they deny that she has power."
It is the doctrine taught in the standard catechisms of the Roman Church:
"_Question._--Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept?
"_Answer._--Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her,--she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority."--_Keenan's "Doctrinal Catechism," p. 174._
Thus the Papacy proclaims itself the power that has _thought_ to change the precepts of the Most High.
On every count, the Roman Church is the counterpart of the little horn of Daniel 7. Before our eyes--in the common practice of Christendom--the commandment of God regarding sacred time is made void by the traditions of men.
The prophecy indicated that there would come a call for a reformation in this matter. Speaking of the warfare against the saints and the times and laws of the Most High, to be waged by the little-horn power, the angel said:
"They shall be given into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time." Dan. 7:25.
In other words, when the 1260 years should expire, we should expect, according to the prophecy, to see a breaking of the Papacy's persecuting power over believers, a spreading abroad of the Holy Scriptures, and a work of reformation that would lift up the truths of God's Word, and call believers to keep once again the holy time and the holy law of the Most High.
The prophecy of Daniel 7 is one of God's special messages for all men in these last days, picturing the rise and history of the Papacy, and warning all against accepting its perversions of God's truth or recognizing its attempted change in the law of the Most High. Thank God for the "sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place." We are to follow the Lord and obey him, not this power that has risen up in opposition to him.
The angel's interpretation in this chapter does not leave the apostasy triumphant:
"The judgment shall sit, and they shall take away his dominion, to consume and to destroy it unto the end."
Then the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdoms of the Most High, "and all dominions shall serve and obey Him."
"O, how shall we stand that moment of searching, When all our sins those books reveal? When from that court, each case decided, Shall be granted no appeal?"
[Illustration: CHRIST AND THE SCRIBES
"In vain they do worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." Matt. 15:9.]
[Illustration: CREATION
"In six days the Lord made heaven and earth,... and rested the seventh day." Ex. 20:11.]
THE BIBLE SABBATH
"He answered and said, Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up." Matt. 15:13.
The scribes had come to Jesus with the complaint, "Why do Thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?" Jesus answered them with another question, "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?"
They had thought that Christ was introducing novelties, preaching new things, contrary to established church custom and practice. He showed them that He really stood for the old and established things of God's Word, and that their own religious customs, however old, were really the novelties, without divine authority. He said,
"In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men." And finally He added the words quoted above, "Every plant, which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up."
Let the principles be applied to the question of Sabbath observance. Sometimes in our day those who preach the word of God regarding the abiding holiness of the seventh-day Sabbath are accused of preaching new doctrines, contrary to the traditions and customs of the church. But really, the observance of Sunday, the first day, is the innovation; the seventh-day Sabbath is of ancient foundation.
Is the Seventh-day Sabbath a Plant of Our Heavenly Father's Planting?
Which of these two institutions has our heavenly Father planted? It is possible to ascertain to a surety; for every plant of His planting, every doctrine of His truth, will be found rooted in the Holy Scriptures. 2 Tim. 3:16, 17.
The Old Testament Record
_From the Beginning._--When the Creator made the earth and man upon it, He made the seventh day of the weekly cycle His holy Sabbath.
"Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.... And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made." Gen. 2:1-3.
To sanctify is "to set apart," and so the day made holy and blessed by God was set apart for man. Then it was, as Jesus said, that "the Sabbath was made for man." Mark 2:27. Here the Sabbath institution was planted at the beginning of the world.
_At the Exodus._--The people of Israel, in their bondage in Egypt, had fallen away from the knowledge of God and become corrupted by the idolatrous worship of Egypt, Hence, as the Lord called them out to be His people, He tested their loyalty to His law by observing how they regarded His holy Sabbath:
"Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in My law, or no." Ex. 16:4.
So through the forty years the Lord sent the manna for them to gather on the six working days, withholding it on the Sabbath. (This scripture shows also that the Sabbath was a part of God's law before He spoke it from Sinai.)
[Illustration: HOREB, THE SACRED MOUNT
A modern view of the summit of Mt. Sinai.]
_At Sinai._--When the time came that the Lord would speak His holy law from heaven, the eternal foundation of His moral government, the Sabbath precept was enshrined in the heart of it:
"Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." Ex. 20:8-11.
_Through Israel's History._--Sabbath keeping was the great mark of loyalty to God. When Israel fell into idolatry, they "observed times" (see 2 Kings 21:6),--doubtless such heathen festivals to the sun god and other deities as were common among the idolatrous nations. These observances of other days meant Sabbath breaking. "Neither shall ye ... observe times.... Ye shall keep My Sabbaths." Lev. 19:26-30. The Lord had promised concerning Jerusalem:
"If ye diligently hearken unto Me, saith the Lord, to bring in no burden through the gates of this city on the Sabbath day, but hallow the Sabbath day, to do no work therein; then shall there enter into the gates of this city kings and princes sitting upon the throne of David,... and this city shall remain forever." Jer. 17:24, 25.
The divine pleading was slighted, and Jerusalem's fall and the Babylonian captivity came as the result of the Israelites' disregard of God's holy day.
Thus throughout the inspired record of the Old Testament the seventh-day Sabbath appears as a plant of the heavenly Father's own planting.
The New Testament Record
_The Example and Teaching of Jesus._--It was Christ's "custom" to worship on the seventh day. Luke 4:16.
Jesus, who Himself made the Sabbath at creation (John 1:3), taught that it was "made for man,"--for the human race,--and declared, "The Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath." Mark 2:27, 28. It is, therefore, "the Lord's day." Rev. 1:10.
He did on the Sabbath only that which was "lawful," or according to the law of God's holy day. Matt. 12:12.
He kept His Father's commandments throughout His earthly life. John 15:10.
And giving instruction regarding events to take place many years after His ascension, He showed that He recognized the continued existence of the Sabbath in the command, "Pray ye that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath day." Matt. 24:20.
[Illustration: CHRIST HEALING THE MAN WITH A WITHERED HAND
"It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." Matt. 12:12.]
_Among New Testament Disciples._--The women, after the crucifixion, "rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment." Luke 23:56.
Inspiration says that the apostle Paul's custom was to preach the gospel publicly Sabbath after Sabbath. Acts 13:14; 16:13; 17:1, 2; 18:4. When the Gentiles of Antioch heard the gospel preached by the apostle one Sabbath, they "besought that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath." Acts 13:42.
Throughout the New Testament, written years after Christ's ascension, the Holy Spirit, speaking of the seventh day, calls it "the Sabbath" upwards of fifty times. "Sabbath" means rest; therefore when the Holy Spirit, in the Christian age, calls the seventh day the rest day, it must infallibly be the day of rest for Christians, the Christian Sabbath.
In the Levitical or sacrificial ordinances of the sanctuary services there were annual sabbaths and feasts, associated with meats and drinks and ceremonial observances. But in appointing these the Lord specifically distinguished between them and the one and only weekly Sabbath, which was from the beginning. "These are the feasts of the Lord," He said, "beside the Sabbaths of the Lord." Lev. 23:37, 38.
The annual festivals and sabbaths, like all the ordinances of the Levitical service, were shadows of things to come, and found their fulfilment in the great sacrifice of Calvary. Col. 2:16, 17.
But the Sabbath of the Lord was made blessed and holy by God at the creation, before sin had entered the world, before any sacrificial or shadowy service was instituted to point to a coming Redeemer. It is a fundamental and primary institution, a part of the moral order of God's government for man, the same as the obligations set forth in each of the other commandments.
And Inspiration declares the eternal perpetuity of the blessed Sabbath day in the future home of the saved, when the prophet describes the felicity of the redeemed, as from month to month, and "from one Sabbath to another," all flesh shall come to worship before the Lord. Isa. 66:23.
Thus we find the seventh-day Sabbath a plant of the heavenly Father's planting, rooted deep in all Holy Scripture, and abiding eternally in the world to come.
Is the First-day Rest an Institution of God's Planting?
In the beginning, the first day was employed by God in the work of creation. Gen. 1:1-5.
Throughout all the Old Testament history it was one of "the six working days." Eze. 46:1.
It was the day of Christ's resurrection; but Inspiration says specifically that "the Sabbath was past" when that "first day of the week" came. Mark 16:1, 2. Inspiration called this first day merely by the ordinary secular name in common business use, with never a suggestion of attaching any sacredness to the day. For some of the disciples it was a day of journeying, in which the risen Christ joined them. Luke 24:13-29. Later He appeared to the other disciples in Jerusalem, gathered not in meeting, but at supper in their common dwelling house. Mark 16:14.
The only religious meeting recorded as occurring on the first day of the week was that held at Troas. (See Acts 20:6-13.) The context shows that it was an evening meeting, after the Sabbath,--Saturday night, as we would call it, for the Bible reckoning is from evening to evening. It was the last time the believers were ever to see the apostle's face, and as they lingered after the close of the Sabbath, he held an all-night farewell meeting, breaking bread with the believers, and leaving at daybreak Sunday morning for the eighteen- or twenty-mile journey afoot, across country to Assos. And while he spent the first day traveling afoot, his companions were journeying by boat.
Conybeare and Howson (of the Church of England), in that standard work, "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," tell the plain fact of the inspired record, save that manifestly they should not have applied the title "Jewish" to God's Sabbath; for it was not the Sabbath of the Jews, but "the Sabbath of the Lord thy God:"
"It was the evening which succeeded the Jewish Sabbath. On the Sunday morning the vessel was about to sail."--_Chapter 20, p. 520._
Describing the road between Troas and Assos, they add:
"Strength and peace were surely sought and obtained by the apostle from the Redeemer as he pursued his lonely road that Sunday afternoon in spring among the oak woods and the streams of Ida."--_Id., p. 522._
Once again the "first day of the week" is mentioned, in 1 Cor. 16:2. But that scripture says no word of any sacredness of the day or of any religious observance of it. The apostle was gathering a fund for the poor at Jerusalem, and asked every believer to "lay by" something every first day of the week, so that the money would be ready when he came. As Dean Stanley (Church of England) comments:
"There is nothing to prove public assemblies, inasmuch as the phrase [Greek: par heautô] ('by himself, at his own house') implies that the collection was to be made individually and in private."
And Neander's Church History says:
"All mentioned here is easily explained, if one simply thinks of the ordinary beginning of the week in secular life."--_Vol. I, p. 339 (German ed.)._
To meet the emergency of need in Judea, these believers were asked to look over their business affairs at the beginning of each week, until Paul should come, laying aside a gift as God had prospered them.
No Sunday Sacredness in the New Testament
This is the record--not one suggestion in all the New Testament of Sunday sacredness, to say nothing of precept or commandment of the Lord. The late R.W. Dale, D.D., a leading Congregationalist of England, wrote:
"It is quite clear that, however rigidly or devotedly we may spend Sunday, we are not keeping the Sabbath.... The Sabbath was founded on a specific, divine command. We can plead no such command for the observance of Sunday.... There is not a single line in the New Testament to suggest that we incur any penalty by violating the supposed sanctity of Sunday."--_"The Ten Commandments," pp. 106, 107._
That religious classic, Smith and Cheetham's "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," says that the "notion of a formal substitution" of the first day for the seventh,
"and the transference to it, perhaps in a spiritualized form, of the Sabbatical obligation established by the promulgation of the fourth commandment, has no basis whatever, either in Holy Scripture or in Christian antiquity."--_Article "Sabbath."_
Dr. E.F. Hiscox, author of "The Baptist Manual," says:
"There was and is a commandment to 'keep holy the Sabbath day,' but that Sabbath was not Sunday. It will, however, be readily said, and with some show of triumph, that the Sabbath was transferred from the seventh to the first day of the week.... Where can the record of such a transaction be found? Not in the New Testament--absolutely not."--_The New York Examiner, Nov. 16, 1893._
Such declarations by well-known scholars might be multiplied, but it is not necessary. The record is open--any one may see it. There is not a word in the Holy Scripture of any first-day sacredness. The Sunday institution is not a plant of our heavenly Father's planting.
How the Change Came About
There has been no change of the Sabbath by divine authority. Men may choose to rest on any other day, but that cannot make such a day God's rest day, His holy Sabbath. One cannot change one's birthday by celebrating another day as such. It is a fact of history that on a certain day of the month one was born. That fact cannot be changed by choosing to celebrate another day as the birthday. Just so it is a fact of divine history that God rested on a given day of the week, and on no other. That made the seventh day His rest day.
It is different from other days in character also, for He blessed it and made it holy. To deny the difference between common days and the holy day is to say that when the great Creator blesses and makes holy, it is a vain performance. That cannot be. It would take away all hope of holiness or salvation for men. The blessing is upon the day, as every soul finds who keeps it by faith.
When men choose to set apart another day than that blessed and sanctified of God, it is plainly a setting up of the humanly appointed time against the divinely appointed time. It is exalting man's sabbath against God's Sabbath. It is man exalting himself "above all that is called God." 2 Thess. 2:4.
This was what made the Roman Papacy. The apostle Paul wrote that in his day the spirit of lawlessness was already working. He said it would lead to a "falling away" from the truth of God, and the full exaltation of the man of sin. 2 Thessalonians 2. The falling away came. As Dr. Killen (Presbyterian), of Ireland, says in the preface to his "Ancient Church:"
[Illustration: THE SABBATH FROM EDEN TO EDEN
Blessed and sanctified in Eden. Gen. 2:3. Christ the Lord of the Sabbath. Mark 2:28.
Written by God in His law. Ex. 20:8-11. To be observed in the new earth. Isa. 66:23.]
"In the interval between the days of the apostles and the conversion of Constantine, the Christian commonwealth changed its aspect.... Rites and ceremonies, of which neither Paul nor Peter ever heard, crept into use, and then claimed the rank of divine institutions."
In his "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine," Cardinal Newman (Roman Catholic) tells how rites and ceremonies were borrowed from paganism:
"Confiding then in the power of Christianity to resist the infection of evil, and to transmute the very instruments and appendages of demon worship to an evangelical use,... the rulers of the church from early times were prepared, should the occasion arise, to adopt, or imitate, or sanction the existing rites and customs of the populace, as well as the philosophy of the educated class."--_Pages 371, 372._
Thus along with other adaptations came "the venerable day of the sun" (Sunday). It was by gradual process that it supplanted the Sabbath. Sir William Domville wrote:
"Centuries of the Christian era passed away before Sunday was observed by the Christian church as a Sabbath. History does not furnish us with a single proof or indication that it was at any time so observed previous to the Sabbatical edict of Constantine in A.D. 321."--_"Examination of Six Texts," p. 291._
This law of Constantine's was as follows:
"On the venerable day of the sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country, however, persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits; because it often happens that another day is not so suitable for grain sowing or for vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations, the bounty of heaven should be lost. (Given the 7th day of March, Crispus and Constantine being consuls each of them for the second time.)"--_Schaff, "History of the Christian Church," Vol. III, chap. 5, sec. 75._
Commenting on this law, Prof. Hutton Webster, of the University of Nebraska, says:
"This legislation by Constantine probably bore no relation to Christianity; it appears, on the contrary, that the emperor, in his capacity of Pontifex Maximus, was only adding the day of the sun, the worship of which was then firmly established in the Roman Empire, to the other ferial days of the sacred calendar."
"What began, however, as a pagan ordinance, ended as a Christian regulation; and a long series of imperial decrees, during the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, enjoined with increasing stringency abstinence from labor on Sunday."--_"Rest Days," pp. 122, 270._
Dean Stanley (Church of England) writes:
"The retention of the old pagan name _Dies Solis_, or Sunday, for the weekly Christian festival, is, in a great measure, owing to the union of pagan and Christian sentiment with which the first day of the week was recommended by Constantine to his subjects, pagan and Christian alike, as the 'venerable day of the sun.'"--_"History of the Eastern Church," lecture 6, par. 15._
Thus the Sunday institution comes in, marked by its pagan origin, and adapted to ecclesiastical purposes by the church of the "falling away" that grew into the Roman Papacy. To quote again from the Baptist author, Dr. Hiscox:
"Of course, I quite well know that Sunday did come into use in early Christian history as a religious day, as we learn from the Christian Fathers and other sources. But what a pity that it comes branded with the mark of paganism, and christened with the name of the sun god, when adopted and sanctioned by the papal apostasy, and bequeathed as a sacred legacy to Protestantism."--_New York Examiner, Nov. 16, 1893._
No wonder that with the coming of the latter days, and the proclamation of the message of preparation for Christ's second coming, there should come a call to Christians to follow Christ and Holy Scripture in keeping God's holy Sabbath.
Again the voice of Jesus is heard in protest against traditions that make void the commandment of God.
"Every plant," He says, "which My heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up." Matt. 15:13.
Made for Man
The God that made the earth, And all the worlds on high, Who gave all creatures birth, In earth, and sea, and sky, After six days in work employed, Upon the seventh a rest enjoyed.
The Sabbath day was blessed, Hallowed, and sanctified; It was Jehovah's rest, And so it must abide; 'Twas set apart before the fall, 'Twas made for man, 'twas made for all.
And when from Sinai's mount, Amidst the fire and smoke, Jehovah did recount, And all His precepts spoke, He claimed the rest day as His own, And wrote it with His law on stone.
The Son of God appeared With tidings of great joy; God's precepts He revered, He came not to destroy; None of the law was set aside, But every tittle ratified.
Our Saviour did not die To render null and void The law of the Most High, Which cannot be destroyed; But, bruised for us, our stripes He bore,-- We'll go in peace and sin no more.
--_R.F. Cottrell._
[Illustration: CHRIST AND HIS DISCIPLES IN THE CORN-FIELDS
"The Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day." Matt. 12:8.]
[Illustration: RETURNING FROM THE SAVIOUR'S TOMB
"They returned,... and rested the Sabbath day according to the commandment." Luke 23:56.]
GLIMPSES OF SABBATH KEEPING AFTER NEW TESTAMENT TIMES
Not at once did the innovation of Sunday observance set aside the Sabbath of the Lord in the practice of even the general church. And through history, when the general church had fallen away, we catch glimpses here and there of faithful witnesses to God's holy Sabbath truth.
First Centuries
An old English writer, Professor Brerewood, of Gresham College, London, put in shortest phrase what many writers say:
"They know little who do not know that the ancient Sabbath did remain and was observed by the Eastern churches three hundred years after our Saviour's passion."--_"Treatise on the Sabbath," p. 77._
Fourth Century
Canon 29, of the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 364), shows that the ecclesiastical system was laboring to put an end to Sabbath keeping:
"Christians shall not Judaize and be idle on Saturday [the Sabbath], but shall work on that day; but the Lord's day [as they called Sunday] they shall especially honor, and, as being Christians, shall, if possible, do no work on that day. If, however, they be found Judaizing, they shall be shut out from Christ."--_Hefele, "History of the Councils of the Church," Vol. II, book 6, sec. 93, canon 29._
Fifth Century
Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History shows Rome evidently leading in the effort to abolish any recognition whatever of the Sabbath:
"The people of Constantinople, and of several other cities, assemble together on the Sabbath, as well as on the next day; which custom is never observed at Rome, or at Alexandria."--_Book 7, chap. 19._
Seventh Century
There were true Sabbath keepers in Rome itself, teaching the truth of God among the people, and bringing upon themselves the denunciation of Pope Gregory the Great, who wrote "to his most beloved sons the Roman citizens:"
"It has come to my ears that certain men of perverse spirit have sown among you some things that are wrong and opposed to the holy faith, so as to forbid any work being done on the Sabbath day. What else can I call these but preachers of Antichrist?"--_"History of the Councils" (Labbe and Cossart), Vol. V, col. 1511; see also "Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers," Vol. XIII, book 13, epistle 1._
Eleventh Century
The Pope's legates at Constantinople (A.D. 1054) were called to discuss with Nicetas, "one of the most learned men at that time in the East," says Bower, whose position was "that the Sabbath ought to be kept holy, and that priests should be allowed to marry."--_"History of the Popes," Vol. II, p. 358._
The people of north Scotland, the ancient Culdee church founded by Columba and his followers, far removed from direct papal influence, was still keeping the seventh-day Sabbath in the eleventh century. Of this church Andrew Lang says in his "History of Scotland:"
"They worked on Sunday, but kept Saturday in a Sabbatical manner."--_Volume I, p. 96._
Skene, in his classic work, "Celtic Scotland," says of these Sabbath keepers:
"They seemed to have followed a custom of which we find traces in the early monastic church of Ireland, by which they held Saturday to be the Sabbath, on which they rested from all their labors."--_Book 2, chap. 8._
Margaret, of England, married Malcolm the Great, the Scottish king, in 1069. An ardent Catholic, Queen Margaret at once set about Romanizing the Celtic church. She called in the church leaders, and held long discussions with them. At last, with the help and authority of her royal husband, and quoting the instructions of "the blessed Pope Gregory," she succeeded in turning the ancient Culdee church in Scotland away from the Sabbath. (See "Life of St. Margaret," by Turgot, her confessor.)
Twelfth to Fourteenth Century
Among the numerous sects of southern Europe and the Alpine valleys, that were pursued and persecuted by Rome, were at least some who saw and obeyed the Sabbath truth. Thus, of one of these bodies, the historian Goldastus says:
"They were called Insabbatati, not because they were circumcised, but because they kept the Sabbath according to the Jewish law."--_"Deutsche Biographie," Vol. IX, art. "Goldast.," p. 327._
Fifteenth Century
Sabbath keepers in Norway drew the condemnation of a church council held in 1435:
"The archbishop and the clergy assembled in this provincial council at Bergen do decide that the keeping of Saturday must never be permitted to exist, except as granted in the church law."--_Keyser's "Norske Kirkes Historie," Vol. II, p. 488._
Sixteenth Century
With the setting free of the Word of God by the Reformation, and the protest against the doctrine of papal tradition, multitudes saw that the Sunday institution was not of divine origin; while not a few went farther, recognizing the claims of God's Sabbath. Moravia was a refuge, in those early Reformation days, for many believers in the Reformed doctrines, and among these were Sabbath-keeping Christians:
[Illustration: WALDENSES HUNTED BY THE ARMIES OF ROME
"Destitute, afflicted, tormented;... they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth." Heb. 11:37, 38.]
"Even most prominent men, as the princes of Lichtenstein, held to the observance of the true Sabbath. When persecution finally scattered them, the seeds of truth must have been sown by them in the different portions of the Continent which they visited.... We have found them [Sabbath keepers] in Bohemia. They were also known in Silesia and Poland. Likewise they were in Holland and northern Germany.... There were at this time Sabbath keepers in France,... 'among whom were M. de la Roque, who wrote in defense of the Sabbath against Bossuet, Catholic bishop of Meaux.' That Sabbatarians again appeared in England by the time of the Reformation, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (A.D. 1533-1603), Dr. Chambers testifies in his Cyclopedia [art. 'Sabbath']."--_Andrews and Conradi, "History of the Sabbath," pp. 649, 650._
In this century also, Sabbath keepers appeared in Norway, Sweden, and Finland. In 1554 King Gustavus Vasa, of Sweden, addressed a letter of remonstrance "to the common people in Finland," because so many were turning to keep the seventh day.
Seventeenth Century
There was much discussion in England over the authority for Sunday observance. When other church festivals were ignored, as Easter, King Charles I wanted to know why Sunday should be kept. He wrote:
"It will not be found in Scripture where Saturday is discharged to be kept, or turned into the Sunday; wherefore it must be the church's authority that changed the one and instituted the other; therefore my opinion is that those who will not keep this feast [Easter] may as well return to the observation of Saturday, and refuse the weekly Sunday."--_Cox, "Sabbath Laws," p. 333._
It was during this time that the idea first obtained of enforcing Sunday obligation by the fourth commandment and calling it the Sabbath. It was argued that any "one day in seven" was what the commandment meant. Of this argument, John Milton, the statesman-poet, wrote:
"It is impossible to extort such a sense from the words of the commandment; seeing that the reason for which the command itself was originally given, namely, as a memorial of God's having rested from the creation of the world, cannot be transferred from the seventh day to the first; nor can any new motive be substituted in its place, whether the resurrection of our Lord or any other, without the sanction of a divine commandment."--_"Prose Works" (Bohn), pp. 70, 71._
Again Milton wrote, in a manuscript which his publishers at the time feared to print:
"If we under the gospel are to regulate the time of our public worship by the prescriptions of the decalogue, it will surely be far safer to observe the seventh day, according to the express commandment of God, than on the authority of mere human conjecture to adopt the first."--_Cox, "Sabbath Literature," Vol. II, p. 54._
While kings and poets and ecclesiastics discussed, here and there believers began to follow the plain Word of God and Christ's example in Sabbath keeping.
"Loved Not Their Lives unto the Death"
In 1618 John Traske and his wife, of London, were condemned for keeping the Sabbath of the Lord, the man being whipped from Westminster to the old Fleet Prison, near Ludgate Circus. Both were imprisoned. Mr. Traske recanted under the pressure, after a year, but Mrs. Traske, a gifted school-teacher, was given grace to hold out for sixteen years,--for a time in Maiden Lane prison, and then in the Gate House, by Westminster,--dying in prison for the word of the Lord. An estimable woman she was, says one old chronicler, save for this "whimsy" of hers, that she would keep the seventh day. All that she asked of men, on her prison deathbed, was that she might be buried "in the fields."
By 1661 Sabbath keepers in London had further increased. In that year John James was minister to a considerable congregation, meeting in East London, off the Whitechapel Road. As part of the stern proceedings against dissenting sects after the restoration of the monarchy, he was arrested and condemned to death on "Tyburn Tree." His wife knelt at the feet of King Charles II as he came out of St. James's Palace one day, and pleaded for her husband's life; but the king scornfully rejected her plea, and said that the man should hang. Bogue says:
"For once the king remembered his promise, and Mr. James was sent to join the noble army of martyrs."--_"History of Dissenters," Vol. I, p. 155._
Nothing daunted, the number of Sabbath keepers increased. In a letter by Edward Stennet (between 1668 and 1670), it is stated.
"Here in England are about nine or ten churches that keep the Sabbath, besides many scattered disciples, who have been eminently preserved in this tottering day, when many once eminent churches have been shattered in pieces."--_Cox, "Sabbath Literature," Vol. I, p. 268._
Francis Bampfield was formerly an influential minister of the Church of England, and prebendary of Exeter Cathedral, but later pastor of a Sabbath-keeping congregation meeting in the Pinners Hall, off Broad Street, near the Bank of England. Calamy said of him:
"He was one of the most celebrated preachers in the west of England, and extremely admired by his hearers, till he fell into the Sabbatarian notion, of which he was a zealous asserter."--_"Non-Conformist Memorial," Vol. II, p. 152._
He was arrested while in the pulpit preaching, and in 1683 died of hardships in Newgate prison, for the Sabbath of the Lord. An old writer says that his body was followed to burial by "a very great company of factious and schismatical people;" in other words, dissenters from the state church.
Thomas Bampfield, his brother, Speaker of the House of Parliament at one time, under Cromwell, published a book in defense of the Sabbath of the Lord. In fact, many published the truth in this manner, and doctors of divinity and even bishops wrote replies.
"Sabbatarian Baptists," these English witnesses to God's Sabbath were first called in those times, and then "Seventh Day Baptists." In 1664 Stephen Mumford, from one of these London congregations, was sent over to New England. He settled in Rhode Island, where the Baptist pioneer of religious liberty, Roger Williams, had founded his colony. In 1671 the first Sabbatarian church in America was formed in Rhode Island. Evidently this movement created a stir; for the report went over to England that the Rhode Island colony did not keep the "Sabbath"--meaning Sunday. Roger Williams wrote to his friends in England denying the report, but calling attention to the fact that there was no Scripture for "abolishing the seventh day," and adding:
"You know yourselves do not keep the Sabbath, that is the seventh day."--_"Letters of Roger Williams," Vol. VI, p. 346 (Narragansett Club Publications)._
Through the following century numbers of Seventh Day Baptist churches were founded in America.[F]
Sabbath keepers were springing up also on the continent of Europe, in Bohemia, Moravia, Transylvania, and Russia, where here and there Bible believers saw that tradition had made void one of the commandments of God. Then, as the events at the end of the long period of papal supremacy had moved Bible students to the earnest study of the prophecies, and as the predicted signs of the near approach of Christ's coming began to appear, there arose the great advent awakening in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century.
The prophecies regarding the work of the Papacy in seeking to change the law of God began to be understood, and it was seen that the last message of the everlasting gospel was a call to turn from human traditions to the New Testament standard--"the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14:12. Then began the great movement for Sabbath reform and the proclamation of Christ's second coming, which has given rise to the Seventh-day Adventist people, with a work spreading through all lands, leading thousands every year to keep the Lord's blessed Sabbath day.
Soon Christ is to be revealed in righteousness and judgment. One burden of God's message for the last days is:
"Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment, and do justice: for My salvation is near to come, and My righteousness to be revealed. Blessed is the man that doeth this, and the son of man that layeth hold on it; that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it, and keepeth his hand from doing any evil." Isa. 56:1, 2.
Through all the dark centuries, the Lord had somewhere a little remnant keeping the light of the Sabbath truth glowing. They, too, overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, loving not their lives unto the death. Now, with the clear light shining from the open Book, it is for Christians everywhere to turn from tradition to the way of God's commandments and the example of Jesus Christ.
[Illustration:
"Closing Sabbath! Ah, how soon Have thy sacred moments passed!"]
FOOTNOTES:
[F] In connection with this topic of Sabbath observance in colonial America, it is of interest to note that Count Zinzendorf, the leader of the Moravian missionary movement, was a believer in the sanctity of the Sabbath of God's appointment. In his life, by Bishop Spangenberg, it is stated that the Sabbath question was discussed by Zinzendorf with the Moravians, on his visit to Pennsylvania in 1741. The record states:--
"As a special circumstance it is to be remarked that he determined, with the church in Bethlehem, to celebrate the seventh day as a rest day. The matter was previously fully gone over in the church council, with consideration of all the reasons for and against it, when the unanimous agreement was reached to observe the day Sabbatically.... The Count had already long held the seventh day of the week in special honor."--_Zinzendorfs "Leben," band 5, pp. 1421, 1422._
The Bethlehem congregation evidently did not follow the practice long. "But as for himself," says Spangenberg, "with his house, he adhered firmly to this aforementioned practice until his end."--_Id., p. 1437._
THE LAW OF GOD
I
Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
II
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything: that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
III
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
IV
Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it.
V
Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
VI
Thou shalt not kill.
VII
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
VIII
Thou shalt not steal.
IX
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
X
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor's.
[Illustration: CHRIST'S SERMON ON THE MOUNT
"Whosoever shall do and teach them ... shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Matt. 5:19.]
THE LAW OF GOD
It is a common saying, "The majesty of the law." It means that the character and genius of a government are embodied and expressed in its laws. The words of Inspiration declare to us the majesty of the law of the Most High.
The Character of God's Law
The infinite perfection of the divine character is reflected in it.
"The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." Ps. 19:7.
As God is holiness and justice and goodness, so also is His law.
"Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." Rom. 7:12.
Its Office
The law of God gives knowledge of the righteousness of its great Author.
"Hearken unto Me, ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is My law." Isa. 51:7.
It marks every departure from righteousness as sin.
"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4.
It is not a code merely for the regulation of outward conduct. It is the moral law--the primal standard of righteousness established by the Creator for His creatures. There is not an impulse of the inmost soul that is not reached by it. It is the word which, living and powerful, is "sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Heb. 4:12.
Face to face with this holy law, we hear in it the voice of God saying, "Be ye holy; for I am holy." Every soul must confess its guilt before the searching power of God's law. All things are naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. "Guilty!" we confess. Left alone with our guilt, there could be no ray of hope.
"The threatenings of the broken law Impress the soul with dread; If God His sword of vengeance draw, It strikes the spirit dead."
Thank God, we are not left alone; help is laid upon One mighty to save.
"But Thine illustrious sacrifice Hath answered these demands, And peace and pardon from the skies Are offered by Thy hands."
God's Law from the Beginning
The law of God existed from the beginning. When Adam sinned, he transgressed this holy law; for "sin is the transgression of the law." God's law was not committed to writing until the days of Moses, when the Lord began to make His written revelations to the children of men. But from Adam to Moses the precepts of the law of God were teaching righteousness and convicting of sin.
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (for until the law [the giving of it at Sinai] sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses.)" Rom. 5:12-14.
The declaration of this scripture is: Without the law there can be no sin. But sin and death were from Adam to Moses, in whose day the law was spoken on Sinai; therefore the law of God was in force from the beginning. Its precepts were witnessed to by every preacher of righteousness raised up by God in the days before the deluge and in the patriarchal age following. Of Abraham the Lord says,
"Abraham obeyed My voice, and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes, and My laws." Gen. 26:5.
The Lord called His people out of Egypt, that they might keep his law. His message to Pharaoh was, "Let my people go, that they may serve Me." Ex. 9:1. He delivered them from bondage by His mighty arm, and cleft the Red Sea to lead them forth to obedience, as the psalmist said,
"He brought forth His people with joy, and His chosen with gladness:... that they might observe His statutes, and keep His laws." Ps. 105:43-45.
In Egyptian bondage the children of Abraham must have lost much of the purity of God's truth; yet the Lord held them under obligation to know His law--the Sabbath precept particularly--before they came to Sinai, or ever He had proclaimed the law in their hearing. He tested them in the matter by the giving of the manna, as He said,
"That I may prove them, whether they will walk in My law, or no." Ex. 16:4.
From the beginning, God's holy law demanded the loyal obedience of every human being.
Proclaimed Anew at Sinai
The Lord had delivered the people of Israel from Egyptian bondage that they might serve Him and make His ways known to the nations. This was according to the promise made to Abraham. To them was committed the written revelation of God, and through them was to come in the fulness of time the promised Messiah.
[Illustration: MOSES BREAKING THE TABLES OF THE LAW
"He wrote them upon two tables of stone." Deut. 4:13.]
While the Lord at this time "made known His ways unto Moses," and there was begun the written revelation which grew into "the volume of the book," the Holy Scriptures, one portion of revelation was not left for the prophet of God to speak or for the inspired pen to write. The Lord proclaimed His holy law with His own voice, and gave to men a copy "written with the finger of God." Moses said of this:
"The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. And He declared unto you His covenant, which He commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and He wrote them upon two tables of stone." Deut. 4:12, 13.
This display of majesty and glory indescribable was designed to teach how sacred and holy is the law, and to cause men to fear to transgress its precepts. Ex. 20:20.
It was not for themselves alone that the law was committed to Israel. They were to teach the truth to others. As the New Testament says, it was greatly to their advantage that "unto them were committed the oracles of God." Rom. 3:2. But they "received the lively oracles to give unto us." Through obedience to the divine law, they were to be a light to the nations.
"Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them?" Deut. 4:6, 7.
An interesting comment upon these words is supplied by a speech of Phalerius, librarian to Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt. Urging the king by all means to secure copies of the sacred books of the Jews for his great library in Alexandria, Phalerius said:
"Now it is necessary that thou shouldst have accurate copies of them. And indeed this legislation is full of hidden wisdom, and entirely blameless, as being the legislation of God; for which cause it is, as Hecateus of Abdera says, that the poets and historians make no mention of it, nor of those men who lead their lives according to it, since it is a holy law, and ought not to be published by profane mouths."--_Josephus, "Antiquities," book 12, chap. 2, sec. 4._
Unfaithful as the Jewish people oftentimes were, yet through their testimony and the dealings of God with them, the fame of the living oracles was spread abroad among the ancient nations.
One God--One Moral Standard
"There is one Lawgiver." James 4:12. He is ever the same, and His law is the standard of righteousness for all mankind. There was not one moral standard before Christ and another after. Christ's death upon the cross because man had broken the law, is the divine testimony to all the universe that God's law can never be set aside nor its force suspended. Jesus opened His public teaching with the declaration:
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Matt. 5:17-19.
The moral law of ten commandments is one code, every precept equally sacred and equally binding:
"Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For He that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty." James 2:10-12.
The law of God still speaks with all the force of that voice from Sinai, and it speaks to every soul on earth:
"Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God." Rom. 3:19.
Thus the law of God convicts all men of sin, and would drive every one to Christ for pardon and for the divine gift of the grace and power of obedience.
The ceremonial law--the precepts and ordinances commanded for the sacrificial system--ceased with the sacrifice of Calvary, as all these ceremonial observances pointed forward to the cross. There can be no confounding of the moral law and the ceremonial law. The ceremonial law of types and shadows showed in itself that a primary or higher law--the moral law--had been violated, making necessary a divine sacrifice if transgressors were to be saved from death and restored to obedience.
The Standard in the Judgment
The law of God's moral government, which is the rule of life for every creature, must necessarily be the standard in the great judgment day. The Scripture states the sum of all human obligation and responsibility in the words:
"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil." Eccl. 12:13, 14.
Every son and daughter of Adam's lost race is judgment bound, to answer before the bar of God the demands of the perfect law. Divine justice cannot abate one jot or tittle of the requirements of the holy law, nor by any means clear the guilty. But divine mercy has provided the way by which God can "be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."
[Illustra |
18503-8 | tion: THE GIFT OF GOD
"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." John 3:16.]
[Illustration: CHILDLIKE FAITH
"Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matt. 18:3.]
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH
"How should man be just [righteous] with God?" asked the patriarch Job. It has been the vital question ever since Adam sinned, and lost his righteousness and forfeited his life. The answer of Scripture is:--
"Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." Rom 5:1 "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast." Eph. 2:8, 9.
In the beginning, life and righteousness were the gift of God to man. Only the Creator could bestow the gift at the first; when lost, only creative power can restore it.
Man Cannot Justify Himself
The law of God declares all men sinners. Not only did Adam's posterity inherit of necessity a sinful nature, but every soul of man has wrought sin as the fruit of that nature.
"As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Rom. 5:12.
"There is no difference," Jew or Gentile, bond or free, they are in the same lost condition; "for all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God." Rom. 10:12; 3:23.
The sinner finds himself a transgressor, condemned to death by a holy law. He turns to it with the thought, "I will do what it says, and become righteous and win life." But he cannot undo the fact that he has sinned. A holy law can only cry, "Guilty! guilty!" to one who has transgressed it. The law declares righteousness; it cannot give it. As the Scripture says:
"We know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin." Rom. 3:19, 20.
The guilt exists. No deeds that man can do can undo it or cover it from a righteous law. Not only that, but as soon as the law declares what righteousness is, the sinner finds that its demands are altogether beyond the power of his flesh to meet. It calls for a kind of work that fallen human nature cannot so much as approach. Paul cried out, when struggling under conviction, "We know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin." Rom. 7:14.
The carnal cannot bring forth the spiritual. But the law demands a spiritual work of righteousness. It is impossible for the carnal mind to undertake it. The Scripture says:
"The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Rom. 8:7, 8.
But the awakened sinner is yet in the flesh. He finds the law thundering his guilt and condemning him to death. He cannot wash away the past, nor hide it; he cannot obey God's law with a carnal mind, and that is all the mind he has. He is lost, and helpless of himself, but longs for a way of escape. Paul's cry in the same position is the cry of the despairing heart that has not found the Saviour, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" Rom. 7:24. Thank God, there is an answer to that cry, for every sinner.
"Plunged in a gulf of dark despair, We wretched sinners lay, Without one cheering beam of hope, Or spark of glimmering day.
"With pitying eyes the Prince of grace Beheld our helpless grief: He saw, and, O amazing love! He came to our relief."
The Free Gift of Christ
Following that despairing cry of human helplessness, "Who shall deliver me?" there came the believer's shout of praise, "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord." He is the deliverer; for He "gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us." Rom. 7:25; Gal. 1:4.
The way of escape and salvation is the gift of God's love. "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.
No sinner has need to plead that God may be willing to forgive him; the Lord's infinite love that gave His Son to die, is pleading with the sinner to believe and accept salvation.
In order to be the sinner's Saviour, the divine Son of God must take man's place before the broken law. He came in human flesh, with all its weakness. "I can of Mine own self," He said, "do nothing." He trusted the Father, and lived a life of perfect righteousness in human flesh. He who knew no sin, bore man's sin in His body on the cross. "The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." For man's sin He died, "that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man." In Him was met the penalty of the law. But it was a sinless sacrifice. He "through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God." Heb. 9:14. Therefore death could not hold Him. He rose in the power of an endless life to be man's advocate and priest and savior, ministering His grace and righteousness and life to every one who will receive them.
The righteousness that He wrought out for man in human flesh He longs to put into every human heart. As in His own flesh in Judea He walked and lived the life of righteousness, so now, by the Holy Spirit, He walks in human lives today. That means forgiveness, and deliverance from the power of the flesh, and a new life of power, and righteousness and justification wrought within by the divine indwelling Saviour. How may we receive Him with all this great salvation?--By faith; by believing His promises; "that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." Eph. 3:17.
Christ in all His fulness abiding within,--this is the wonder and mystery of the gospel, "which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." It means an ever-present, ever-living Saviour, able to save to the uttermost.
What abundance of grace is received with His indwelling presence!
_Forgiveness._--"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9.
_Deliverance from the Flesh._--The cleansing by Christ's indwelling power means that the old life of self is subdued. "Our old man is crucified with Him." Rom. 6:6. "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.... And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness." Rom. 8:9, 10.
_A New Heart._--"A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you." Eze. 36:26.
_A New Life._--"Be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Eph. 4:23, 24. It is in blessed fact Christ Jesus living the life in the believer by faith, as the apostle Paul says:
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me." Gal. 2:20.
_Righteousness and Justification._--"This is His name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS." Jer. 23:6. Well does the King James Version print the blessed name in capital letters. It is the great name of salvation to every believer. By faith we receive Him, and by faith His righteousness is imputed unto us. His life of obedience covers all the believer's surrendered life, past and continuous, and in God's sight the life of the believer in Jesus is justified from all sin. It is the triumph of Him who was not only "delivered for our offenses," but was also "raised again for our justification:"
"Therefore as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." Rom. 5:18, 19.
Christ died and rose again to bring this experience to sinners who have struggled helplessly under condemnation. As Christ Jesus with all His righteousness is received by faith, "there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:1.
Praise the Lord! It is all of Christ, and not of any works that we have done. Therefore it is as sure as the oath and promise of God. We can lose the experience only as we let Christ go out of the life by unbelief. God forbid that we should do this; and help us to be quick to repent and again lay hold of Him by faith if ever we find we have let Him go and have lost the covering of His righteousness.
"Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness My beauty are, my glorious dress; 'Mid hosts of sin, in these arrayed, My soul shall never be afraid."
[Illustration: THE LAST PRAYER
"That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.]
Christ's righteousness is, of necessity, the righteousness demanded by the law of God. He lives that law in the believer. This is what justification is. "Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified." Rom. 2:13. Justification by faith makes the man a doer of the law by faith, Christ living every one of its sacred precepts in the believer's life. This is what He died to accomplish, to bring the righteousness of the law to the sinner who could never attain to it himself.
"What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:3, 4.
Christ writes God's law in the new heart: "I will put My laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts." Heb. 8:10. It is the rule of His own righteousness. For before He came into the world to work out perfect righteousness for us in human flesh, He said, through the psalmist, "I delight to do Thy will, O My God: yea, Thy law is within My heart." Ps. 40:8.
It is a perfect righteousness and a full salvation that Christ brings into every believer's heart. In Him all fulness dwells, "and ye are complete in Him."
The wondrous plan of salvation is so deep that only "in the ages to come" will God be able to "show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus." Eph. 2:7. But thank God, even here below sinners saved by grace may "know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge."
"The wonders of redeeming love Our highest thoughts exceed; The Son of God comes from above, For sinful man to bleed.
"He knows the frailties of our frame, For He has borne our grief; Our great High Priest once felt the same, And He can send relief.
"His love will not be satisfied Till He in glory see The faithful ones for whom He died From sin forever free."
--_R.F. Cottrell._
[Illustration: THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST
"Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness." Matt. 3:15.]
[Illustration: THE FORD OF JORDAN
"John also was baptizing in Ænon near to Salim, because there was much water there." John 3:23.]
BAPTISM
THE MEMORIAL OF THE RESURRECTION
Baptism is the divinely appointed memorial of the resurrection of Christ. The great fact of the gospel is that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Cor. 15:3, 4), to be our great High Priest and Saviour.
Baptism is a profession of faith in the Saviour, who went into the grave for us, and rose again to life. It is the great object-lesson to teach the truth that the sinner must die to sin and the world, and have a resurrection by the power of divine grace to a new life of obedience. The ordinance is the sign of an actual experience, the means by which the believer confesses the work of grace in the soul.
The Scriptures teach the essential conditions necessary to baptism:
"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." Mark 16:15, 16.
"What doth hinder me to be baptized? And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest." Acts 8:36, 37.
"Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins." Acts 2:38.
Thus it is seen that instruction in the gospel, belief in Christ, and repentance are conditions to precede baptism.
Baptism for Believers
The experience of which baptism is the sign is thus stated:
"We are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." Rom. 6:4.
"As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ." Gal. 3:27.
"Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead." Col. 2:12.
In this ordinance, commanded of God, the believer is following the example of Christ, who, when baptized by John in Jordan, said, "Thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness."
"Thus through the emblematic grave The glorious suffering Saviour trod; Thou art our Pattern, through the wave We follow Thee, blest Son of God."
The Form of Baptism
The Scriptural form of baptism is shown in these texts:
"Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water." Matt. 3:16.
"They went down both into the water, both Philip and the eunuch; and he baptized him." Acts 8:38.
"Buried with Him by baptism.... For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection." Rom. 6:4, 5.
While the outward form of a religious service, without the spirit and the experience which the form professes, must ever be unacceptable to God, yet when the Lord prescribes a form, it is imperative that His instruction should be followed. The form of the ordinance as commanded by God emphasizes the divine meaning of the service.
Scriptural baptism is a burial "in the likeness" of Christ's burial, as the lifting up of the believer from the watery grave is a likeness of the resurrection of Christ. Of the meaning of the word "baptism," Luther wrote:
"Baptism is a Greek word; in Latin it can be translated immersion, as when we plunge something into water that it may be completely covered with water."--_Opera Lutheri, De Sac. Bap. 1, p. 319 (Baptist Encyclopedia, art. "Baptism")._
Calvin, after arguing that the form is an indifferent matter, says:
"The very word 'baptize,' however, signifies to immerse; and it is certain that immersion was observed by the ancient church."--_"Institutes," lib. 4, cap. 15 (Baptist Encyclopedia, art. "Baptism")._
Of the practice in primitive times, Neander, the church historian, says:
"In respect to the manner of baptizing, in conformity with the original institution and the original import of the symbol, it was generally administered by immersion."--_"History of the Christian Church," Torrey's translation (London edition), Vol. I, p. 429._
The perversion of the ordinance into sprinkling, and that in infancy, takes away the divinely ordained object-lesson; and in the case of the infant must of necessity substitute mere ceremonialism for experience, for the child of unaccountable years can have had no experience of believing and repenting, which are the necessary conditions to fulfil the meaning of baptism. The change in the ordinance, like most of the changes that came about in the days of the "falling away" from the primitive faith and practice, was by gradual process.
Dean Stanley, in his "Christian Institutions," page 24, says that it is not till the third century that "we find one case of the baptism of infants." Of the change from immersion to sprinkling, he says:
"What is the justification of this almost universal departure from the primitive usage? There may have been many reasons, some bad, some good. One, no doubt, was the superstitious feeling already mentioned which regarded baptism as a charm, indispensable to salvation, and which insisted on imparting it to every human being who could be touched with water, however unconscious."
The common practice as late as the twelfth century is thus described by a Roman Catholic cardinal of that time, named Pullus:
"Whilst the candidate for baptism in water is immersed, the death of Christ is suggested; whilst immersed and covered with water, the burial of Christ is shown forth; whilst he is raised from the waters, the resurrection of Christ is proclaimed."--_Patrol. Lat., Vol. CXXX, p. 315 (Baptist Encyclopedia, art. "Baptism")._
Dean Stanley, of Westminster, one of the first scholars of the Church of England, wrote:
"For the first thirteen centuries the almost universal practice of baptism was that of which we read in the New Testament, and which is the very meaning of the word 'baptize,'--that those who were baptized were plunged, submerged, immersed into the water. That practice is still, as we have seen, continued in Eastern churches. In the Western church it still lingers among Roman Catholics in the solitary instance of the Cathedral of Milan; among Protestants in the numerous sects of the Baptists. It lasted long into the Middle Ages.... But since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the practice has become exceedingly rare. With the few exceptions just mentioned, the whole of the Western churches have now substituted for the ancient bath the ceremony of letting fall a few drops of water on the face. The reason of the change is obvious. The practice of immersion, though peculiarly suitable to the Southern and Eastern countries for which it was designed, was not found seasonable in the countries of the North and West. Not by any decree of council or parliament, but by the general sentiment of Christian liberty, this remarkable change was effected. Beginning in the thirteenth century, it has gradually driven the ancient catholic usage out of the whole of Europe."--_"Christian Institutions," pp. 21, 22._
The facts are undeniable, and emphasize the importance of reformation and return in practice to the plain instructions of the Word of God. As the record shows, it was not the spirit of the New Testament church that made this change in the divine ordinance; rather it is the spirit of the church of the "falling away," against which the Lord warns all believers, "because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant."
The Path He Trod
Our Saviour bowed beneath the wave, And meekly sought a watery grave; Come, see the sacred path He trod-- A path well pleasing to our God.
His voice we hear, His footsteps trace. And hither come to seek His face, To do His will, to feel His love, And join our songs with those above.
--_Adoniram Judson._
[Illustration: SYMBOLS OF MEDO-PERSIA AND GRECIA
"The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat is the king of Grecia." Dan. 8:20, 21.]
[Illustration: COINS OF THE MEDO-PERSIAN AND GRECIAN EMPIRES
The ram, symbol of Persia; and the goat, symbol of Grecia.]
THE PROPHECY OF DANIEL 8
A HISTORIC OUTLINE AND A VITAL QUESTION
Another view of the history of empires and kingdoms was brought before the prophet Daniel in the vision of the eighth chapter. In this vision a great prophetic period is given, the end of which reaches to the latter days, touching events of our own times that are of direct interest and importance to every one today.
The vision was given in the third year of Belshazzar, the last king of Babylon. Again, as in moving panorama, there passed before the prophet's vision the scenes of history. Earthly kingdoms were represented under the symbols of beasts.
We shall find the prophecy and the history corresponding in every detail, revealing the overruling hand of God, who knows the end from the beginning, and whose living Word of truth bears its witness through all the ages.
"Truth never dies. The ages come and go; The mountains wear away; the seas retire; Destruction lays earth's mighty cities low, And empires, states, and dynasties expire; But caught and handed onward by the wise, Truth never dies."
The opening scene of this vision, given by the river Ulai, in Persia, is thus described:
_Prophecy._--"Then I lifted up mine eyes, and saw, and, behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beast might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great." Verses 3, 4.
In the angel's interpretation of the vision Daniel was told: "The ram which thou sawest having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia." Verse 20. "The higher came up last."
The two horns represented the dual character of the empire: first the Medes in ascendancy, then the Persians rising to yet greater power. "So that no beast might stand before him," says the prophecy.
_History._--Xenophon says of Cyrus the Persian:
"He was able to extend the fear of himself over so great a part of the world that he astonished all, and no one attempted anything against him."--_"The Cyropædia," book 1, chap. 1._
The line of Medo-Persian conquest was "westward, and northward, and southward," just as the prophet saw the ram pushing its way. As one pen wrote in the days of Persia's supremacy:
"He [Darius] showed the world arms glory-crowned." "Towns untold before him fell." "Burgs over sea ... heard from his lips their fate."
--_"The Persians," by Æschylus._
But the ram pushing westward stirred up an antagonist that was eventually to overcome him. The prophet continues:
_Prophecy._--"As I was considering, behold, a he goat came from the west on the face of the whole earth, and touched not the ground: and the goat had a notable horn between his eyes. And he came to the ram that had two horns,... and ran unto him in the fury of his power.... And there was no power in the ram to stand before him, but he cast him down to the ground, and stamped upon him: and there was none that could deliver the ram out of his hand." Verses 5-7.
The angel's interpretation continued: "The rough goat is the king of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king." Verse 21.
_History._--This "first king" of united Grecia was Alexander the Great.
"With Alexander the New Greece begins."--_Harrison, "Story of Greece," p. 499._
"And it happened, after that Alexander ... had smitten Darius king of the Persians and Medes, that he reigned in his stead, the first over Greece." 1 Maccabees 1:1.
Under Alexander, the Grecian goat ran upon the Persian ram "in the fury of his power." At Arbela, wrote Arrian, the Macedonians charged "with great fury." None was able to deliver the Persian ram. "Wherever you fly," wrote Alexander to the retreating Darius, "thither I will surely pursue you." (See "Anabasis of Alexander the Great," by Arrian, book 2, chap. 14.) Medo-Persia fell before Grecia, as this sure word of prophecy had foretold two hundred years before Alexander's day.
Grecia's expansion and its later history were next unfolded before the prophet's vision:
_Prophecy._--"Therefore the he goat waxed very great: and when he was strong, the great horn was broken; and for it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven." Verse 8.
Of the ram (Persia) it was said it became "great;" of the goat (Grecia); that it became "very great."
_History._--Justin, the Roman, wrote of Alexander:
"So much was the whole world awed by the terror of his name, that all nations came to pay their obedience to him."--_"History of the World," book 12, chap. 13._
"Vain in his hopes, the youth had grasped at all, And his vast thought took in the vanquished ball."
--_Lucan's "Pharsalia" (Nicholas Rowe's translation), book 3._
But the unerring prophecy had said that "when he was strong, the great horn was broken." Suddenly the youthful conqueror was cut down by death, just as he was preparing to celebrate at Babylon a "convention of the whole universe,"
"being thus taken off in the flower of his age, and in the height of his victories."--_Justin, "History of the World," book 13, chap. 1._
The ancient pagan writers, in telling the story, make use of language very similar to that used by divine prophecy in foretelling it. Following Alexander's death the empire was divided "toward the four winds of heaven." Myers says:
"Four well-defined and important monarchies arose out of the ruins.... The great horn was broken; and instead of it came up four notable ones toward the four winds of heaven."--_"History of Greece" (edition 1902), p. 457._
As the prophet watched these four kingdoms of divided Greece, he beheld another power coming into the field of his vision through one of the four kingdoms, and extending its authority more than any before it:
_Prophecy._--"Out of one of them [one of the four kingdoms] came forth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great, toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land." Verse 9.
_History._--Medo-Persia was "great," Grecia was "very great," but this power was to be "exceeding great." Rome followed Grecia. Polybius, the Roman, says:
"Almost the whole inhabited world was conquered, and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome."--_"Histories of Polybius" (Evelyn Shuckburgh's translation), book 1, chap. 1._
One of the odes of Horace tells how the name of Rome grew to might:
"Till her superb dominion spread East, where the sun comes forth in light, And west to where he lays his head."
--_Ode 15, "To Augustus," book 4._
Lucan's lines measured its exceeding greatness from the other points of the compass:
"Though from the frozen pole our empire run, Far as the journeys of the southern sun."
--_"Pharsalia," book 10._
"The empire of the Romans filled the world," says Gibbon. It was "exceeding great," according to the prophecy. In the vision the little horn that grew so great came into the prophet's view as proceeding out of one of the four horns that he had been watching. Rome rose to unquestioned supremacy out of its conquest of Macedonia, one of the four notable kingdoms into which Grecia was divided. It spread forth toward the south, and toward the east, and "toward the pleasant land," Palestine becoming a province of the empire in the century before Christ. And it was a Roman force that destroyed Jerusalem and devastated the pleasant land.
Thus the "sure word of prophecy," with exactness in detail, carries the history through the centuries to the last great universal monarchy, Rome.
But this prophecy does not deal so much with the earlier history of Rome as with the developments of later times. It was the same in the prophetic outline of Daniel 7. After briefly identifying Rome as the last universal monarchy, the vision of the seventh chapter dealt with the rise of papal Rome, described its exaltation of itself against God, and its warfare against the truth and the saints of God. And here again, in the eighth chapter, the same persecuting power is seen developing, exalting itself, and persecuting the saints of God. The prophecy says that "it cast down the truth to the ground; and it practiced, and prospered." Dan. 8:12. The papal history, as given in the study on Daniel 7, need not be repeated here.
[Illustration: THE CAMP OF ISRAEL IN THE WILDERNESS
"Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Dan. 8:14.]
As the prophet watched the work of this lawless power, his heart must have cried out to know how long it was to be allowed to prosper in its evil way; for next he heard the voice of a holy one asking the question for him,
"How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden underfoot?" Dan. 8:13.
The answer was,
"Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Verse 14.
In symbolic prophecy a day stands for a year. Eze. 4:6. This is a long period, therefore, of 2300 years. It reaches to the latter days; for the angel said of it, "At the time of the end shall be the vision." Dan. 8:17.
The question was, "How long?" or literally, "Until when?" and the answer was, "Until two thousand and three hundred days." Then what was to come to deal with the great apostasy?--"Then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." The cleansing of the sanctuary, therefore, must have something to do with meeting the great apostasy, lifting up God's truth that has been trampled underfoot, and cutting short the reign of evil. The cleansing of the sanctuary, with all that is involved in it, must be God's answer to this lawless power.
Error may prosper for a time; but the just balances of the sanctuary will at last pronounce righteous judgment, and the prosperity of evil will be cut short. "I was envious ... when I saw the prosperity of the wicked," said the psalmist, "until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end." Ps. 73:3, 17.
What, then, is involved in the cleansing of the sanctuary, the time of which is marked by the long prophetic period? It is for us to understand; for it is a work pertaining to the latter days.
[Illustration: OUR GREAT HIGH PRIEST
"We have such a high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens." Heb. 8:1.]
[Illustration: THE INTERIOR OF THE SANCTUARY
"A figure for time then present, in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices." Heb. 9:9.]
THE CLEANSING OF THE SANCTUARY IN TYPE AND ANTITYPE
The Bible teaching concerning the sanctuary of the Levitical service shows clearly that the cleansing of the sanctuary is God's answer to error and apostasy.
The priestly service of the earthly sanctuary, or temple, in the days of Israel, was typical of the work of Christ, our High Priest, in the heavenly temple. The earthly priests served after "the example and shadow of heavenly things." Heb. 8:5. And of Christ's ministry in the heavenly temple we are told:
"Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such a high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man." Heb. 8:1, 2.
In the earthly service, the cleansing of the sanctuary was the closing work of the high priest, marking the end of the yearly round of mediatory ministry. The cleansing of the sanctuary in the time of the end must, therefore, according to the sure teaching of the type, be the closing ministry of our great High Priest in the heavenly temple, before He lays aside His priestly work to come in glory.
The Service of the Earthly Tabernacle
There were two distinct phases in the priestly ministry of the tabernacle in Israel. The sanctuary was built with two apartments, the holy place and the most holy.
In the holy place were the candlestick with its seven lights, the table with its ever-renewed "bread of the presence," and the altar of incense, on which sweet incense, symbol of Christ's continual intercession, was burned morning and night.
Within the inner veil was the most holy place, where was the ark containing the tables of the law, written with the finger of God. The cover of the ark was the golden mercy-seat, above which, at either end, stood two cherubim of gold, their wings meeting on high, their faces looking ever toward the mercy-seat. It was a type of the throne of God--the angels about the throne, the law the foundation of His government, the mercy-seat typifying the interposition of mercy and pardon for the sinner; and above it the visible glory of the Lord, the Shekinah.
"There I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy-seat, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony." Ex. 25:22.
Of the service in the first apartment it is stated:
"When these things were thus ordained, the priests went always into the first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of God." Heb. 9:6.
"Day by day the sacrificial victims were slain at the altar before the outer veil, and the blood was 'brought into the sanctuary' by the priest." This was an acknowledgment of transgression of God's law, meriting death, and a confession of faith in the Lamb of God who was to suffer death in the sinner's stead, and whose atoning blood would plead for him before the righteous law.
Thus day by day, either by the sprinkling of the blood "before the Lord" or by eating a portion of the flesh of the burnt offering in the holy place, the ministry of the priests transferred the sin in type to the sanctuary, and the sinner was pardoned.
For a full year, lacking one day, the ministry was in the first apartment, or holy place only. But on that last day of the yearly round of service--"the tenth day of the seventh month"--the high priest entered the second apartment, or most holy place.
"Into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people." Heb. 9:7.
In this service the high priest sprinkled the blood upon the mercy-seat and in the holy place, "because of the uncleanness of the children of Israel." The sanctuary was to be reconciled or cleansed from all the sins registered there in type through the blood of the offerings brought day by day during the year.
As the high priest came out, bearing the sins, he transferred them all to the head of the scapegoat, which was sent away into the wilderness; and thus "all their iniquities" were borne away from the camp into the wilderness, and the sanctuary was cleansed. See Leviticus 16.
This was a solemn time of judgment in Israel. Every man's life came in review that day. Was every sin confessed? Whosoever was not found right with God, when that service was performed, was cut off from having a part with God's people.
"It is a day of atonement, to make an atonement for you before the Lord your God. For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from among his people." Lev. 23:28, 29.
It was indeed an annual day of judgment in Israel. And all this was an "example and shadow of heavenly things." Heb. 8:5.
Christ's Closing Work in Heaven
Therefore the last phase of Christ's ministry as our high priest in the sanctuary of God above, must be a work of judgment, a review of the heavenly record, corresponding to the final ministry in the second apartment of the earthly tabernacle, when that sanctuary was cleansed.
[Illustration: THE MEMORIAL OF HIS SACRIFICE
"As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till He come." 1 Cor. 11:26.]
Daniel the prophet was shown in vision this change in the ministry of our High Priest, namely, from the first to the second apartment of the heavenly temple. He describes the wondrous scene, as God's living throne, with its wheels flaming with glory, moved into the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, for the closing work of Christ's ministry:
"I beheld till the thrones were cast down ["placed," R.V.], and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool: His throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him: thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened." Dan. 7:9, 10.
This scene, as the next verse shows, opens while still on earth the apostasy is exalting itself. But during this same time a solemn judgment work is going forward in heaven above, the finishing of which will give God's answer to the apostasy, and bring the second coming of Christ in glory to end the reign of sin. It is the cleansing of the sanctuary,--the time when in reality and not in type every case registered in the sanctuary comes in final review before God. When that work closes, according to the type, whosoever is not found right with God will be cut off from having any part with His redeemed people.
Then the priestly ministry of Christ will close, and the destiny of every soul will be fixed for all eternity. To that time must apply the words spoken by Jesus:
"He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: ... and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly." Rev. 22:11, 12.
But now the Saviour, from His place of ministry on high, speaks to all the encouraging exhortation and assurance:
"He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before My Father, and before His angels." Rev. 3:5.
To let men on earth know when this judgment work, the cleansing of the sanctuary, began in heaven, the prophetic period of 2300 years was given. It is of most solemn importance that we know when that period begins and ends.
[Illustration: ARTAXERXES SENDING THE JEWS TO REBUILD JERUSALEM, B.C. 457
"From the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks." Dan. 9:25.]
[Illustration: NEHEMIAH, THE KING'S CUPBEARER
"Send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers' sepulchers, that I may build it." Neh. 2:5.]
A GREAT PROPHETIC PERIOD
THE 2300 YEARS OF DANIEL 8:14
The commission to the angel Gabriel was, "Make this man to understand the vision" (Dan. 8:16); therefore in the angel's explanation of the vision of Daniel 8, we must assuredly find the interpretation of the prophetic period of 2300 years, the close of which marks the opening of the judgment work in heaven, or the cleansing of the sanctuary.
The eighth chapter closes, however, with no reference to the beginning of this period of time, a most important measuring line of prophecy. The angel had explained the symbols representing Medo-Persia, Grecia, and Rome, and had dwelt upon the antichristian work of the apostasy that was to develop; but he left the time of the prophetic period unexplained, save to say that it was "true," and that it would be "for many days"--far in the future. Here the angel stopped, for Daniel fainted. In spirit the prophet had been gazing upon the warfare of the great apostasy against God's truth through the ages, and evidently it took all strength from him. Daniel closes the account of this vision with the words, "I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it." Verse 27.
[Illustration: THE 2300 DAYS
The heavy line represents the full 2300 year-day period, the longest prophetic period in the Bible. Beginning in B.C. 457 when the decree was given to restore and build Jerusalem (Ezra 7:11-26; Dan. 9:25), seven weeks (49 years) are measured off to indicate the time occupied in this work of restoration. These, however, are a part of the sixty-nine weeks (483 years) that were to reach to Messiah, the Anointed One. Christ was anointed in 27 A.D., at His baptism. Matt. 3:13-17; Acts 10:38. In the midst of the seventieth week (31 A.D.), Christ was crucified or "cut off," which marked the time when the sacrifices and oblations of the earthly sanctuary were to cease. Dan. 9:25, 27. The remaining three and one-half years of this week reach to 34 A.D., or to the stoning of Stephen, and the great persecution of the church at Jerusalem which followed. Acts 7:59; 8:1. This marked the close of the seventy weeks, or 490 years, allotted to the Jewish people.
But the seventy weeks are a part of the 2300 days; and as they (the seventy weeks) reach to 34 A.D., the remaining 1810 years of the 2300-day period must reach to 1844, when the work of judgment, or cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, was to begin. Rev. 14:6, 7. Then special light began to shine upon the whole sanctuary subject, and Christ's mediatorial or priestly work in it.
Four great events, therefore, are located by this great prophetic period,--the first advent, the crucifixion, the rejection of the Jewish people as a nation, and the beginning of the work of final judgment.]
But the angel had been commanded, "Make this man to understand the vision;" and soon after, as recorded in the next chapter,--possibly within a year,[G]--Gabriel appeared to the prophet with the words:
"O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding.... Therefore understand the matter, and consider the vision." Dan. 9:22, 23.
Thereupon the angel began to deal with the matter of time in the prophecy, the very feature of the vision of the eighth chapter that he had not yet made Daniel understand. Therefore the vision of the 2300 years must be the topic.
The Starting-Point
First of all, the angel said that a short period was to be cut off from the long period, and allotted to the Jewish people; this short period was to reach to the coming of the promised Messiah and the filling up of the measure of Jerusalem's transgressions. The angel's own words are:
"Seventy weeks [490 days, prophetic time, or 490 literal years] are determined [cut off, as the word means] upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy." Verse 24.
This 490-year period "cut off" was to cover the history of the people of Jerusalem until that city had filled out the measure of its transgression. The only prophetic period from which this 490 years can properly be said to be "cut off" is, assuredly, the longer period of 2300 years, which stretches far onward to "the time of the end." The 490 years and the 2300 years, then, must begin at the same time.
It was the time period that the angel Gabriel was yet to explain; and he begins the explanation by showing that the first 490 years of it would reach to the days of the Messiah. Then he gives the event that marks the beginning of the 490 years, which event must necessarily mark the beginning of the 2300 years as well.
This is what he was commissioned to make Daniel "understand" when first the vision of the 2300 years was given. Now he tells him to "understand" it:
"Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined." Dan. 9:25, 26.
The date of the going forth of the commandment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem is the date, therefore, from which the great prophetic measuring line runs; the first 490 years of it to reach to the time and work of the Messiah, at the first advent, the full 2300 years running on to mark the time when the judgment hour in heaven opens. Once the starting-point is fixed, all the events of the long period must follow exactly as scheduled in the time-table of divine prophecy.
Date of the Commencement to Restore Jerusalem
There were several commands issued concerning the restoration of Jerusalem after the Babylonish captivity. Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes Longimanus each issued such a decree. Which one answers to the language of the prophecy as "the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem"?
[Illustration: THE JEWS MOURNING OVER THE RUINS OF JERUSALEM
"I went out by night,... and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down." Neh. 2:13.]
The decree of Artaxerxes was most comprehensive (Ezra 7), authorizing the full restoration of the civil and religious administration of Jerusalem and Judea. And Inspiration specifically sums up all the decrees as completed only in that of Artaxerxes, which thus constituted "the commandment:"
"They builded, and finished it, according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia." Ezra 6:14.
[Illustration: REBUILDING JERUSALEM
"They builded, and finished it, according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia." Ezra 6:14.]
According to this scripture, the full "going forth of the commandment to restore and to build," dates from this decree of Artaxerxes. And this decree went forth "in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king." Ezra 7:7.
What year was this seventh year of Artaxerxes--a date so important to fix to a certainty?
The great chronological standard for the kings of the ancient empires is the canon, or historical rule, of Ptolemy. Ptolemy was a Greek historian, geographer, and astronomer, who lived in the temple of Serapis, near Alexandria, Egypt. From ancient records he prepared a chronological table of the kings of Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome (carrying the Roman list to his own time, which was the second century after Christ). Along with his list of kings and the years of their succession, Ptolemy compiled a record of ancient observations of eclipses. In such and such a year of a king, for instance, on a given day of the month, an eclipse of the sun or moon would be recorded. Astronomers have worked out these observations, and verified them. The learned Dr. William Hales said:
"To the authenticity of these copies of Ptolemy's canon, the strongest testimony is given by their exact agreement throughout, with above twenty dates and computations of eclipses in Ptolemy's Almagest."--_"Chronology," Vol. I, p. 166._
Thus, says James B. Lindsay, an English chronologist, "a foundation is laid for chronology sure as the stars." So the sun and the stars, the divinely appointed timekeepers, bear their witness to the accuracy of the historical record.
We thank God for this, as we desire to know if we may depend upon Ptolemy's canon to help us fix to a certainty the seventh year of Artaxerxes.
According to Ptolemy, Artaxerxes succeeded to the throne in the two hundred and eighty-fourth year of the canon. In modern reckoning, this two hundred and eighty-fourth year runs from Dec. 17, 465 B.C., to Dec. 17, 464 B.C. The canon does not tell at what part of the year a king succeeded to the throne; it only deals with whole years. The question is, to be exact, Did Artaxerxes come to the throne in December, 465 B.C., or at some time in the year 464 B.C.? At what season of the year did the king take the throne? Some historians, dealing with the matter roughly, date the succession from the year 465. But in dealing with divine prophecy, we require certainty upon which to base the reckoning of the seventh year of Artaxerxes, from which date the prophetic period runs.
And in God's providence we do have certainty. Of all the kings of Assyria, Babylon, and Medo-Persia, in Ptolemy's long list, there is but one concerning whose succession the Scriptures give us the very time of the year--and that one is Artaxerxes. The one case in which we need to know to a certainty the season of the year, in order to fix an important date in prophecy, is the one case in which Inspiration gives exactly the particulars. Who cannot see the hand of God in this?
The combined record of Neh. 1:1; 2:1 and Ezra 7:7-9,[H] shows that Artaxerxes came to the throne between the fifth month of the Jewish year and the ninth month,--roughly, between August and December,--or in the autumn. The Bible gives one part of the record, and Ptolemy's canon gives another part; and by the combined record we know that Artaxerxes came to the throne late in the year 464 B.C., and thus the seventh year of his reign would be 457 B.C. This is the date fixed by other sources of reliable chronology also, Sir Isaac Newton having worked out several lines of evidence from ancient authorities, in each case reaching the year 464 B.C. as the first of Artaxerxes, which makes the seventh to be 457 B.C.
In the seventh year of Artaxerxes the commandment went forth to restore and to build Jerusalem, and this event fixes the beginning of the 2300 years, as also of the 490 years cut off from it upon the Jewish people.
That year, 457 B.C., therefore, is a date of profound importance. It stands like the golden milestone in the ancient Forum at Rome, from which ran out all the measurements of distance to the ends of the empire. From this date, 457 B.C., run out the golden threads of time prophecy that touch events in the earthly life and the heavenly ministry of Jesus that are of deepest eternal interest to all mankind today.
The Ransom Paid
Lord, I believe Thy precious blood, Which, at the mercy-seat of God, Forever doth for sinners plead, Can cleanse my guilty soul indeed.
Lord, I believe were sinners more Than sands upon the ocean shore, Thou hast for all a ransom paid, For all a full provision made.
--_Nikolaus Zinzendorf._
[Illustration: THE ANOINTING OF JESUS AT HIS BAPTISM
"God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power." Acts 10:38. (See Matt. 3:16.)]
FOOTNOTES:
[G] The dates placed in the margin of the King James Version indicate a period of fifteen years between the eighth and ninth chapters of Daniel. This was because in former days it was thought that Belshazzar was the Bible name of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, who reigned seventeen years. In that case, from "the third year" of his reign, when the prophecy of Daniel 8 was given, to the "first year of Darius," who succeeded him, when the angel appeared again to Daniel, would be fifteen years. But the unearthing of the buried records of Babylonia during the last half century, reveals the fact that Belshazzar was the son of Nabonidus, associated with him on the throne as king for a few years before the fall of Babylon. The third year of his reign may very likely have been the last year; and Darius immediately followed Belshazzar. The explanation of the ninth chapter might have been within a few weeks or months following the vision of chapter 8, and probably was.
[H] These texts show that the king came to the throne in the autumn, so that the actual years of his reign would run from autumn to autumn. Neh. 1:1 begins the record: "In the month Chisleu, in the _twentieth year_." Neh. 2:1 continues: "It came to pass in the month Nisan, in the _twentieth year_ of Artaxerxes." Thus it is plain that in the monthly calendar of the king's actual reign the month Chisleu came first in order, and then Nisan. Chisleu was the ninth month of the Jewish sacred year, roughly, December. Nisan is the first month, April. And these months, December, April,--in that order,--came in the first year of the king, of course, the same as in his twentieth year. And in the same year also came the fifth month, August; for Ezra 7:7-9 shows that the first and fifth months--in that order--also fell in the same year of his reign. Then we know of a certainty that his reign began somewhere between August and December, that is, in the autumn. The first year of Artaxerxes was from the latter part of 464 B.C. to the latter part of 463, and the seventh year, as readily counted off, would be from near the end of 458 to near the end of 457. Under the commission to Ezra, the people began to go up to Jerusalem in the spring of that year, 457 B.C. (in the first month, or April), and they "came to Jerusalem in the fifth month" (August). Ezra 7:8, 9. Ezra and his associates soon thereafter "delivered the kings commissions unto the king's lieutenants, and to the governors on this side the river: and they furthered the people, and the house of God." Ezra 8:36. With this delivery of the commissions to the king's officers, the commandment to restore and to build had, most certainly, fully gone forth. And from this date, 457 B.C., extends the great prophetic period.
[Illustration: DANIEL'S PRAYER ANSWERED
"I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding." Dan. 9:22.]
THE PROPHECY FULFILLED
EVENTS OF THE "SEVENTY WEEKS" AND END OF THE 2300 YEARS
The angel explained to Daniel the events of the seventy weeks allotted to Jerusalem and its people "to finish the transgression." Seven weeks and threescore and two weeks (69 weeks) of the seventy were to reach to the Messiah. The angel's words were:
"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city, to finish the transgression.... Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks [69 weeks, or 483 days]." Dan. 9:24, 25.
The sixty-nine weeks, symbolic time, are 483 years, which were to reach from the commandment to restore and build Jerusalem to Messiah the Prince.
The Time of the Messiah's Coming
The commandment of Artaxerxes to restore and build Jerusalem, as we have seen, went forth in 457 B.C. Reckoning from that date, 483 full years bring us to A.D. 27, when, according to the prophecy, the Messiah should appear.
Messiah means "anointed." The anointing of Jesus, and His manifestation as the Anointed One, was at His baptism:
"Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon Him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Matt. 3:16, 17.
Thus Jesus was anointed as the Messiah (see Acts 10:38), and John proclaimed: "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." John 1:29.
When did this baptism and anointing take place? The Gospel of Luke supplies the historical facts for fixing the year:
"In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea," etc. Luke 3:1-3.
Tiberius followed Augustus, who died in A.D. 14. But before the latter's death, Tiberius was associated with him on the throne. Some modern historians date this appointment of Tiberius as Cæsar from A.D. 13; but the "History of Rome," by Dion Cassius, a Roman senator, born in the second century, shows, under events of A.D. 12, that Augustus recognized Tiberius as holding the imperial dignity at that time. (Book 56, chap. 26.) Again, Dr. Philip Schaff says:
"There are coins from Antioch in Syria of the date A.U. 765 [A.D. 12], with the head of Tiberius and the inscription, _Kaisar, Sebastos (Augustus)."_--_"History of the Christian Church," Vol. I, p. 120, footnote._
These coins from Syria bear certain witness that the first year of Tiberius should be counted from A.D. 12. Therefore "the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar" would be A.D. 27, just 483 years from the going forth of the commandment to restore Jerusalem. The prophecy of the sixty-nine weeks was fulfilled--the Messiah had come.
Confirming the Covenant
But "one week" of the seventy remained--seven years. Of the Messiah's work during this time the angel said:
"He shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." Dan. 9:27.
Christ's death upon the cross made "the sacrifice and the oblation to cease," so far as their appointed force was concerned. After three years and a half of ministry, "in the midst" of this seven-year period, the prophetic week, the Messiah was lifted up on Calvary. For centuries the sure word of prophecy had pointed to this supreme hour in the working out of the plan of salvation. When the time was fulfilled, the promise of God was fulfilled also, and the divine Sacrifice was offered.
"Paschal Lamb, by God appointed, All our sins on Thee were laid; By Almighty Love anointed, Thou redemption's price hast paid. All Thy people are forgiven Through the virtue of Thy blood; Opened is the gate of heaven, Peace is made 'twixt man and God."
With the offering of the great Sacrifice, all the typical offerings ceased to have significance. The veil of the temple was rent when the Lamb of God expired upon the cross,--sign to all that He had caused "the sacrifice and the oblation to cease."
[Illustration: THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST
"In the midst of the week He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease." Dan. 9:27.]
[Illustration: THE RENT VEIL
"The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom." Mark 15:38.]
The Messiah was to "confirm the covenant with many for one week," filling out the seventy weeks allotted in God's merciful patience especially to the people of the Jews. Three and a half years of Christ's personal ministry on earth had been devoted to the chosen people. Now, after His ascension, He was still, in the persons of His disciples, to press the gospel of the new covenant especially upon the Jewish people--"to the Jew first," and "beginning at Jerusalem."
[Illustration: PETER PREACHING IN THE HOUSE OF CORNELIUS
"They that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." Acts 8:4.]
This last seven-year period, beginning in A.D. 27, ended in A.D. 34. By that time the opposition of the Jews was becoming exceedingly bitter. As a people they were rejecting again the divine invitation extended by the risen Christ through His witnesses. About A.D. 34 Stephen was martyred. The same council that, against all evidence, had rejected the Messiah, again rejected the appeal of the Holy Ghost shining visibly on Stephen's countenance.
The believers in Jerusalem were driven out by persecution; and "they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the word." Acts 8:4. The Gentiles gave heed in Samaria, and the Ethiopian received the gospel on the road to Gaza. The gospel message had fairly passed the boundaries of Jerusalem and was on its way to the "uttermost parts of the earth."
Though the seventy weeks cut off upon the Jewish people and upon the holy city had ended, to the world's end the gospel of Christ's salvation is for that people as well as for all other nations.
The Ending of the 2300 Years
It must not be forgotten that the angel was explaining to Daniel the vision and prophecy of the long prophetic period that was to reach to the cleansing of the sanctuary at the time of the end.
These events of the first seventy weeks of that period were "to seal up the vision and prophecy." Dan. 9:24. The shedding of the blood of the divine Sacrifice "to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness," set Heaven's seal to the vision. As surely as the great Offering had been made, so surely the cleansing of the sanctuary would be accomplished by the ministry of our High Priest in heaven.
And the exact fulfilment of the time schedule for this first portion of the prophetic period, set seal to the declaration that when the full 2300 years should run out, the closing ministry of Christ would surely begin in the heavenly sanctuary.
From 457 B.C., when the commandment of Artaxerxes to restore Jerusalem went forth, the measuring line of the 2300 years reaches to the year A.D. 1844. In that year the time of the prophecy came. Then the cleansing of the sanctuary was to begin.
The prophet John, in the Revelation, beheld the opening of this last phase of the ministry of Christ in the most holy place of the temple of God. "The temple of God was opened in heaven," he says, "and there was seen in His temple the ark of His testament." Rev. 11:19. The prophet heard voices saying, "The nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged." Verse 18.
Again we must quote Daniel's description of the opening of this ministry in the most holy place of the heavenly temple. He saw thrones of judgment set up. He saw the moving throne of the Almighty, with its wheels of naming glory, take its position for the final work of our High Priest in the holy of holies above:
"I beheld till the thrones were cast down [placed], and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure wool: His throne was like the fiery flame, and His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him: thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened." Dan. 7:9, 10.
This was the scene enacted in the heavenly temple when the year 1844 brought the judgment hour. Then began in heaven the work of the investigative judgment, or the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, during which the case of every individual will come in review before God.
When that work of investigation is finished, the ministry of Christ for sin will end, human probation will close, and our Lord will quickly come as King of kings and Lord of lords, to gather His redeemed, while all sinners will be destroyed by "the brightness of His coming." 2 Thess. 2:8.
In the vision of Daniel 8, as the great apostasy was seen warring against God's truth, the question was asked, "How long shall be the vision,... to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden underfoot?" The answer was, in effect, In 1844 the cleansing of the sanctuary will begin in heaven,--the hour of God's judgment, that will give God's answer to sin and apostasy.
We are living in the great antitypical day of atonement, for which all heaven has been waiting. The end is at hand. And while that work is proceeding in heaven above, the Lord proclaims a special message on earth, lifting up again truths long trodden underfoot, and calling men to prepare for the coming of the Lord.
_How Shall We Stand? "For the hour of His judgment is come."_
"The judgment is set, the books have been opened; How shall we stand in that great day When every thought, and word, and action, God, the righteous Judge, shall weigh?
"The work is begun with those who are sleeping, Soon will the living here be tried, Out of the books of God's remembrance, His decision to abide.
"O, how shall we stand that moment of searching, When all our sins those books reveal? When from that court, each case decided, Shall be granted no appeal?"
[Illustration: THE THIRD ANGEL'S MESSAGE
"Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14:12.]
[Illustration: THE GOSPEL COMMISSION
"Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Mark 16:15.]
A WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT
FORETOLD IN THE PROPHECY OF REVELATION 14
While the work of the judgment hour, or period,--the cleansing of the sanctuary,--is proceeding in the heavenly temple above, the Lord sends to the world a special message of preparation for the coming of the Lord.
It would not be the divine way to let this solemn judgment in heaven come unheralded to men. Daniel's prophecy had fixed the time of its beginning; and the question asked in the prophet's hearing, "How long shall be the vision ... to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden underfoot?" suggested that when the time came, the truths of God that had been trodden underfoot through the ages would be lifted up and proclaimed anew to all the world.
With the coming of the judgment hour, in the year 1844, there arose just such a work, a definite gospel movement, that has ever since been carrying the message for the hour to the ends of the earth.
The Way Prepared for the Rise of the Movement
But there was a preliminary work to be done, to prepare the way for the definite advent movement and message.
In the days of Israel of old, as the time for the cleansing of the sanctuary drew near, the people were forewarned of the approach of the solemn hour. The day of atonement--"the tenth day of the seventh month"--was a typical hour of judgment. All the people were to prepare their hearts for that great day.
To this end, the Lord appointed the first day of the seventh month a day of sounding of the trumpets. Lev. 23:24. The silver trumpets, pealing forth on that day, proclaimed to all that the day of atonement was near at hand, when every case would be brought in review before the mercy-seat by the ministry of the high priest in the most holy place of the earthly sanctuary.
True to the type, as the year 1844 drew near, when the great antitypical day of atonement was to open and the closing work of Christ to begin in the most holy place of the heavenly temple, the trumpet call of the approaching judgment hour was set pealing through all Christendom.
Events of the closing years of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the nineteenth, had stirred up Bible students to give greater attention to the study of the prophetic scriptures. It was seen that signs of the latter days were appearing, and that every line of historic prophecy pointed to the near approach of Christ's second coming.
Here and there students of the Word saw that the 2300-year period of Dan. 8:14, as explained in the ninth chapter, would end soon; and some arrived at the correct date, and looked to the year 1844 as the time when the judgment hour would come.
Witnesses were raised up in Europe--in Holland, Germany, Russia, and the Scandinavian countries. Joseph Wolff, the missionary to the Levant, preached in Greece, Palestine, Turkey, Afghanistan, and other regions the coming of the judgment hour. William Miller and many associates preached the message throughout America.
Writing in the days just before 1844, Mourant Brock, a clergyman of the Church of England, said:
"It is not merely in Great Britain that the expectation of the near return of the Redeemer is entertained, and the voice of warning raised, but also in America, India, and on the continent of Europe. In America, about three hundred ministers of the word are thus preaching 'this gospel of the kingdom;' whilst in this country, about seven hundred of the Church of England are raising the same cry."--_"Advent Tracts_," _Vol. II, p. 135 (1844)._
Not all who joined in the awakening cry at this time explained the prophecies alike, or emphasized the definite year 1844 as the beginning of the hour of God's judgment; though in America, Europe, and Asia the clear message of the ending of the prophetic time in 1844 was proclaimed with power by many voices. And as the time came, the world was ringing with the call to prepare to meet the judgment hour, even as the hosts of Israel were called by trumpet peals to prepare for the typical day of atonement.
The nature of the event to come at the end of the 2300 years was not understood by these early heralds of the advent hope. The general expectation was that the judgment hour meant the end of the world and the coming of the Lord. Though the word of prophecy indicated clearly that there was a special work to be done on earth while the judgment hour was proceeding in heaven, this was not clear to Bible students at the time. So when the prophetic period ended and the Lord did not come, believers in the prophetic truths were disappointed and unbelievers scoffed. But the call to prepare for the judgment hour was the message due to the world at that time, and the awakening cry was raised on every continent.
In the days of the Saviour's first advent, the disciples and the populace had proclaimed the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem. They were at once disappointed; instead of enthroning Him as king, they witnessed His crucifixion. But in proclaiming the coming of Zion's King to Jerusalem, they were fulfilling the prophecy that had been uttered, and were giving the message for that day, notwithstanding their mistaken view as to the events that would follow.
Just so the trumpet call of the coming judgment hour was the message for the days of 1844; and the message was given, attended by the power of God. When the hour was at hand, the providence of God raised up faithful witnesses to proclaim it.
All this was preparatory to the rise of the definite advent movement of the prophecy, when the hour of God's judgment should begin.
The Closing Work
In vision, on the Isle of Patmos, the prophet John was given a view of the closing work of the gospel on earth, while the closing ministry of Christ was proceeding in heaven above. The prophet wrote:
"I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters." Rev. 14:6, 7.
The message further warned against following the ways of the great apostasy; and in the vision the prophet was shown people in all lands taking their stand at the call of the message. The angel described them in these words:
"Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Verse 12.
Much as pictures appear to us when thrown in succession upon a screen, these scenes must have passed before the vision of the prophet. He saw the coming of the hour, the rise of the movement, and its extension into all lands; he heard the message sounding, and saw the kind of people doing the work--a people keeping "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus."
[Illustration: PAUL WRITING TO TIMOTHY FROM ROME
"There is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord ... shall give me at that day: and ... unto all them also that love His appearing." 2 Tim. 4:8.]
Centuries had passed, after this word was written in the Book, when the flight of time at last brought the hour of the prophecy--the year 1844. That very year witnessed the rise of the definite advent movement which is still proclaiming the very message of the prophecy to the world.
It was in the year 1844, in New England, that a little group of believers in the blessed hope of Christ's soon coming, saw clearly, from their study of the Bible, that the New Testament platform of "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus," emphasized in this prophecy of the judgment hour, meant the keeping of the fourth commandment as well as the other nine. Thereupon they began to keep and to teach the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh day of the week, made holy and blessed and commanded by God.
One member of this group of commandment-keeping Adventists was Frederick Wheeler, from whose dictation the following statement was prepared, fixing exactly the facts as to the time:
"As a Methodist minister he was convinced of the advent truth by reading William Miller's works in 1842, and joined in preaching the first message [that of the judgment hour]. In March, 1844, he began to keep the true Sabbath, in Washington, N.H."--_Review and Herald (Washington, D.C.), Oct. 4, 1906._
They were but a little band, those believers in New Hampshire, but the time of the prophecy had come, and with the coming of the hour there was the nucleus of the movement forming, believers in the near coming of the Lord, preaching the message of the prophecy, "The hour of His judgment is come," and keeping "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus."
From that small beginning has grown the movement that Seventh-day Adventists stand for, spreading through all the world today.
It was in the year following 1844 that Joseph Bates, of Massachusetts, a retired sea captain, and a preacher of the advent hope, began to keep the Sabbath. Captain Bates wrote and published, and soon others, following his example, embraced the Bible Sabbath.
As the Scripture teaching concerning the sanctuary was studied, light came flooding in. It was seen that the great prophetic period of Daniel 8, which ended in 1844, marked the opening of Christ's ministry in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, the work of the judgment hour in heaven; and there, plainly revealed in Revelation 14, was a special gospel message to be carried to all the world while the judgment hour still continued.
The little company that began to keep the commandments of God as Adventist believers in 1844, did not understand that they were beginning the definite movement foretold by the prophecy. They only determined to turn from traditions that had made void God's law, and to obey the law of the Most High, whose servants they were.
But in the light of the Scripture prophecy and of events, we can see clearly the hand of God leading that little baud into the right pathway when the year of 1844 came; and the work there begun has grown into the world-wide movement of today.
Nearly two thousand years before, it had been written in the "sure word of prophecy" that when the hour of God's judgment came, a people keeping God's commandments would arise and spread forth into all the world with the last gospel message. The long prophetic period of Daniel 8 had fixed the year 1844 as the time when the judgment hour would begin and when the people of the prophecy must appear.
When the year came, that people appeared, keeping "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." When the hour struck, the work began. This advent movement was born of God in fulfilment of prophecy. And the mission of the movement is to lift up again the standard of truths obscured by tradition and trodden underfoot, and to call all men to the New Testament platform of the "commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus," where every believing soul may find safe refuge in these closing moments of the judgment hour in the courts above.
[Illustration: A CHRISTIAN MOTHER EXHORTING HER DAUGHTER TO MARTYRDOM
"Choose you this day whom ye will serve;... as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15.]
THE JUDGMENT-HOUR MESSAGE
THE GOSPEL FOR OUR DAY
The gospel message for this time of the judgment hour is set forth in the vision of Revelation 14:
[Illustration: THE TWO BEASTS OF REVELATION 13
"Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come." Rev. 14:7.]
"I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.
"And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
"And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up forever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.
"Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." Rev. 14:6-12.
When this message has been heralded to all nations, according to prophecy the end will come, for the next scene brought before the prophet's vision was the coming of Christ to reap the harvest of the earth:
"I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle." Verse 14.
The outline of the message given here reveals certain main features:
1. A Gospel Message
It is not a new or another gospel. There is but one gospel. This message is "the everlasting gospel" in terms that meet the situation in the time of the judgment hour. The advent movement carries the blessed message of full salvation from sin by faith in Jesus Christ.
2. A Solemn Warning
The message is God's final answer to the age-long perversions of His truth. Even the warnings uttered vibrate with the saving grace and winning power of God's love in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In the vision of Daniel 8, the prophet was shown the working of apostasy in the latter times, as it "cast down the truth to the ground" and "practiced and prospered." But in answer to the question, "How long?" the great prophetic period of the 2300 years was given, at the end of which (in 1844) the judgment work in heaven was to begin. When that work is finished, Christ's glorious appearing will end the reign of sin and error.
And while the closing judgment work is proceeding in heaven, this message of the judgment hour lifts up on earth the standard of truths trodden underfoot, and the Lord utters His last warning against sin and apostasy. It is a terrible word that He speaks. Bengelius described it as--
"that threatening pronounced which is the greatest in all the Scriptures, and which shall resound powerfully from the mouth of the third angel."--_"Introduction to Apocalypse," Preface xxix (London, 1757)._
The Lord is in earnest with men in this hour when the judgment, now passing on the dead, must also soon seal the eternal destiny of all the living. Hence the message challenges every soul to a decision.
Looking forward to the time when this message should be due, John Wesley wrote:--
"Happy are they who make the right use of these divine messages."--_"Notes on New Testament," on Revelation 14._
These warnings are part of the "everlasting gospel." Whosoever, therefore, preaches the full gospel of Christ in these last days must sound this solemn call.
3. A Call to Loyalty to God
"Fear God," is the call, "Worship Him." In the preceding vision of the thirteenth chapter, the Lord had shown the prophet the work of an ecclesiastical power, symbolized by a leopardlike beast, that was to speak great things, and that was to persecute believers through long centuries, warring against God's truth and His sanctuary. "All the world wondered after the beast." The prophet said,
"All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb." Rev. 13:8.
While worldly influence and the voice of popular religion exalt this ecclesiastical power and give glory to it, the gospel message calls all men to worship God.
"Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him.... If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark,[I] ... the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God."
The issue, it is clear, involves the question of authority. Shall God be recognized as supreme? or shall this ecclesiastical power, whose rise and work were foretold in the prophecy, be recognized as the great authority?
The Work of the Papal Power
Any comparison between this leopard beast of Revelation 13 and the "little horn" of the fourth beast of Daniel 7, shows plainly that the same power is represented in each. The same voice is heard "speaking great things," the same persecuting spirit is shown, the same warfare against God's truth. It is the Roman Papacy, in its exaltation of human authority above the divine, that "lawless one" of Paul's prophecy, setting itself forth as God in the temple of God, treading underfoot the word and the law of the Most High, as foretold by Daniel:
"He shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws." Dan. 7:25.
Against the recognition of the assumed authority of this power, the gospel message of Revelation 14 sounds its solemn warning: "If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark."
The Image to the Papacy
What is this image? Plainly an image to the Papacy must be some religious authority or federation not organically of the Papacy itself, but adopting papal principles and seeking to enforce these principles by civil power, just as the Papacy has ever done, where possible. This development in likeness of the Papacy was shown the prophet in the latter part of the vision of Revelation 13. He saw the image formed, and in vision witnessed its determined efforts to enforce upon men the mark, or sign, of the Papacy:
"He exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.... And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast." Rev. 13:12-17.
The Mark, or Sign, of Papal Authority
The Roman Papacy sets forth the Sunday institution as the mark of the authority of the church to substitute ecclesiastical tradition and custom for the Word of God. Thus, Monsignor Ségur, in "Plain Talks about the Protestantism of Today," says:
"The observance of Sunday by Protestants is an homage they pay, in spite of themselves, to the authority of the church."--_Page 213._
It was to this change in the Sabbath by tradition, contrary to the plain command of God to keep holy the seventh day, that the famous Council of Trent appealed when it gave Rome's answer to the Reformation cry of "The Bible and the Bible only." The council had long debated the ground of its answer. The historian says:
"Finally, at the last opening on the eighteenth of January, 1562, their last scruple was set aside; the archbishop of Rheggio made a speech in which he openly declared that tradition stood above Scripture. The authority of the church could therefore not be bound to the authority of the Scriptures, because the church had changed Sabbath into Sunday, not by the command of Christ, but by its own authority. With this, to be sure, the last illusion was destroyed, and it was declared that tradition does not signify antiquity, but continual inspiration."--_Dr. J.H. Holtzman, "Canon and Tradition," p. 263._
Ever since this memorable council, the Sunday institution has been held forth as the mark of the power of the church to command religious observances. Thus, again, Keenan's "Doctrinal Catechism" says:
"_Question._--Have you any other way of proving that the church has power to institute festivals of precept?"
"_Answer._--Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her,--she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday, the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday, the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority."--_Page 174._
The prophecy of Daniel declared that this power would "think" to change the times and laws of the Most High; and the change of the Sabbath commandment is set forth as the mark of the church's authority above the written law of the Most High.
Most remarkable of all, Protestant organizations are defending the unscriptural observance of the humanly established first-day sabbath in contradiction to the law of God, which declares that "the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." And these organizations, in denial of the Protestant principle of religious liberty, are seeking power to enforce Sunday observance by civil law. But this is to make a very image to the Roman Papacy--a church using the power of the state to enforce religious observance.
It was all foretold in the prophetic word. The prophet was shown (Rev. 13:11-17) this likeness or image to the Papacy--ecclesiastical organizations not of the Papacy itself, but following papal principles in this matter--seeking to compel men to receive the mark of the papal apostasy.
Against the workings of both the Papacy and this image to the Papacy, the last message of the "everlasting gospel" lifts its warning cry:
"If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God."
It is the time of the judgment hour, when God was to lift up the standard of truths long trodden underfoot. In the heavenly sanctuary Christ's closing judgment work is going forward, preparatory to His coming in consuming glory to end the reign of sin. On earth the Lord is sending the last gospel message to men, warning against sin and error, and calling all men to worship God, and to keep "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus."
The Sign of Jehovah's Authority
God also has His sign, or mark, of authority. He bases His claims to supreme authority upon the fact of His creative power. As Creator, His is the authority and the power.
"The Lord is the true God.... He hath made the earth by His power." Jer. 10:10-12.
And the divinely established memorial of this creative power is the holy Sabbath. The Sabbath is the mark, or sign, of the true God:
"Hallow My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God." Eze. 20:20.
On one side is the mark, or sign, of apostasy from God; on the other the mark, or sign, of loyalty to God. Which mark will men receive, as the issue is pressed upon every soul for decision? On which side shall we stand? Under whose banner shall we be found when the judgment hour closes?
[Illustration: PILATE'S FATAL DECISION IN THE HOUR OF TRIAL
"Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus which is called Christ?" Matt. 27:22.]
The test that came to Pilate comes anew to men as Christ's message presses for acceptance. "What shall I do then with Jesus?" asked the Roman governor--and yielded to popular clamor. His fatal decision in the time of testing warns us to decide for Christ and for the word of his salvation now, in this hour of God's judgment.
The message of Rev. 14:6-14 is going to all the world now. Every year thousands of new voices join in telling it. Printing presses are printing it in many languages. Schools and colleges in every continent are educating thousands of Seventh-day Adventist youth, keeping before them, as the highest aim of life, the hastening of the advent message to the world. Sanitariums in many lands, while training medical missionary evangelists, are at the same time ministering to the sick, and teaching the principles of Bible health and temperance. The movement necessarily emphasizes every principle of "the everlasting gospel," while pressing upon all the solemn issue that loyalty to Christ now means to turn from unscriptural tradition and custom to the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. However ancient the custom of observing Sunday, it is but an innovation, setting aside the Word of God and the example of Jesus Christ. As St. Cyprian said: "Usage without truth is only an antiquated error." The clear light of Holy Scripture now calls the believer away from the path of error to the way of light.
"The older error is, it is the worse, Continuation may provoke a curse; If the Dark Age obscured our fathers' sight, Must their sons shut their eyes against the light?"
--_Bishop Ken._
In times past Christian believers have been unwittingly following the lead of the Papacy in this matter. The Lord holds no man accountable for light that he did not have. Reformation is a progressive work. Of the past we may say with Paul:
"The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness." Acts 17:30, 31.
Now, with this "hour of God's judgment" already come, the entire covering of papal tradition is to be torn aside, and when Jesus comes in glory, in every land will be found believers having the faith and keeping the commandments of God.
All this was shown to John on the Isle of Patmos,--the coming of the judgment hour, the rise of the advent movement, and the heralding of the last message to the nations.
What John saw in vision nearly two thousand years ago, we see fulfilling before our eyes today. But it is not enough to see it; we must have a part in it, be a part of it.
[Illustration: LUCIFER PLOTTING AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD
"I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;... I will be like the Most High." Isa. 14:13, 14]
FOOTNOTES:
[I] The use of a mark, or sign, to designate the divinity worshiped, is common in non-Christian religions. One may see the Hindu returning from the temple with the mark of Vishnu or other deity freshly painted upon the forehead. Of the ancient usage, from which this Bible symbol of the "mark" is taken, Dr. John Potter says, in his "Antiquities of Greece:"
"Slaves were not only branded with stigmata for a punishment of their offenses, but (which was the common end of these marks) to distinguish them, in case they should desert their masters; for which purpose it was common to brand their soldiers; only with this difference, that whereas slaves were commonly stigmatized in their forehead, and with the name or some peculiar character belonging to their masters, soldiers were branded in the hand, and with the name or character of their general. After the same manner, it was likewise customary to stigmatize the worshipers and votaries of some of the gods: whence Lucian, speaking of the votaries of the Syrian goddess, affirms, 'They were all branded with certain marks, some in the palms of their hands, and others in their necks: whence it became customary for all the Assyrians thus to stigmatize themselves.' And Theodoret is of opinion that the Jews were forbidden to brand themselves with stigmata [Lev. 19:28], because the idolaters by that ceremony used to consecrate themselves to their false deities.
"The marks used on these occasions were various. Sometimes they contained the name of the god, sometimes his particular ensign; such were the thunderbolt of Jupiter, the trident of Neptune, the ivy of Bacchus: whence Ptolemy Philopater was by some nicknamed Gallus, because his body was marked with the figures of ivy leaves. Or, lastly, they marked themselves with some mystical number, whereby the god's name was described. Thus the sun, which was signified by the number DCVIII, is said to have been represented by these two numeral letters XH (Conf. Martianus Capello). These three ways of stigmatizing are all expressed by St. John in the book of Revelation: 'And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.'"--_Vol. I, pp. 65, 66 (London, 1728)._
[Illustration: SATAN ENTERS THE GARDEN OF EDEN
"The wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23.]
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
The Beginning of the Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan
The great controversy between good and evil, that has been waged on earth ever since man's fall, had its origin in heaven. Certain angels rebelled against God and His government.
"There was war in heaven: Michael and His angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him." Rev. 12:7-9.
Thus came the forces of evil into this world, which have been working through all the ages to draw men from allegiance to God, and to infuse into human hearts the same spirit of disobedience which wrought the ruin of Satan and his angels.
The Cause of the Downfall
Christ stated the principle: "If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!" Matt. 6:23.
The principle finds its utmost application in the great reversal, by which Lucifer, the light bearer in heaven, became Satan, the adversary, the prince of darkness.
[Illustration: CHRIST AND NICODEMUS
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." John 3:3.]
In the pride and self-exaltation of Tyre, of old, the Lord saw manifested the spirit of the god of this world; so, in declaring His message of rebuke to the prince of Tyre, the Lord describes the cause and history of Satan's fall:
"Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God.... Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.... Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness." Eze. 28:13-17.
Likewise, in the swelling pride of Babylon the Lord recognized the spirit of the leader of the rebellious angels. In one of the messages to Babylon is this reference to the vaulting ambition of Lucifer in heaven:
"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer ["day-star," margin], son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High." Isa. 14:12-14.
Lucifer, his powers now perverted to evil, deceived many of the angels, persuading them to join him in rebellion against the government of God; with the result that Satan and all his host were cast out. Christ said, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Luke 10:18.
"Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky."
The Earth as the Battle Ground
Then the great controversy which began in heaven was transferred to this earth, and now centers around man. For "that old serpent," the leader of the fallen angels, deceived man, and persuaded him to distrust God and to choose his own way in preference to God's way. Thus came sin and death into the world. And Satan, who had overcome man at the forbidden tree, became by his own usurpation and by man's perfidy, "the prince of this world."
But Christ gave himself to save man, to deliver him from the bondage of sin, and to restore him to the glorious liberty of the sons of God. The same mighty power that overcame Satan and his angels in heaven is able to overcome his power in human hearts and lives. The controversy is still between Christ and Satan, and man's salvation or destruction is the aim of the contending forces.
[Illustration: THE REDEMPTION PRICE
"That through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." Heb. 2:14.]
There is no neutral ground. Every soul must choose as to which side he will yield allegiance. In this choice lies his eternal destiny.
"Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" Rom. 6:16.
Therefore the Lord pleads with men, "Choose life." Every soul that chooses life has the promise of it, for Christ "is able ... to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him." Heb. 7:25.
The Judgment upon Satan
From the time of Satan's rebellion it was assured, by the very omnipotence of God, that there would come a last judgment when evil would be destroyed from the universe. This execution of judgment upon the fallen angels is thus referred to by Jude:
"The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Verse 6.
The evil spirits themselves know that this day is coming. When Christ was about to cast certain of them out of one who was possessed, they cried out, "Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time?" Matt. 8:29.
Though the judgment of that last day was originally set for Satan and his angels, unrepentant men will have a part in it, because they have joined Satan in his lawless rebellion. To the wicked it will be said:
"Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." Matt. 25:41.
Satan sees that the day is hastening; and the shorter the time in which to work, the greater his fury in seeking to draw souls to perdition.
The warning comes to us in these last days:
"Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." Rev. 12:12.
Christ's second coming ends the reign of Satan in this world. The wicked are slain by the consuming glory of Christ's coming (2 Thess. 2:8); and the righteous are taken to heaven, beyond the reach of Satan's arts (1 Thess. 4:16, 17). The archenemy and his angels are thus left upon an earth devoid of human beings. Here he is chained for a thousand years, in this pit of desolation (Rev. 20:2, 5), his only companions the angels who fell with him, his only occupation the contemplation of the ruin he has wrought and the destruction that still awaits him.
By the second resurrection--that of the wicked dead, after the thousand years--Satan is again set free to ply his arts upon his subjects. As the holy city comes down out of heaven from God, with all the saints, Satan gathers his angels and all the forces of the lost of all the ages, to make an assault upon the city. The result was shown to the prophet in vision:
"They went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceiveth them was cast into the lake of fire." Rev. 20:9, 10.
That is the fate awaiting the author of sin. In the account of Satan's pride and self-exaltation, uttered by the prophet in the message to Tyre, there occurs also this prophecy of the utter destruction that awaits him, when he shall bring his forces against the city of God in that last conflict:
"I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more." Eze. 28:18, 19.
This is the final victory of Christ over evil, in the great controversy that began in heaven. Satan exalted himself--and lost. Christ humbled Himself, even unto the death--and won the eternal triumph.
"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." Heb. 2:14.
[Illustration: JESUS BY THE SEA
"O Galilee, sweet Galilee, What mem'ries rise at thought of thee!"]
[Illustration: SAUL AND THE WITCH OF ENDOR
"When they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits,... should not a people seek unto their God?" Isa. 8:19.]
[Illustration: SATAN'S FIRST LIE
"Ye shall not surely die." Gen. 3:4.]
SPIRITUALISM: ANCIENT AND MODERN
The essential claim of Spiritualism is its assertion of power to hold communication with the spirits of the dead; or rather, it claims to have demonstrated that really there is no death.
"There is no death; What seems so is transition."
The late Prof. Alfred Russel Wallace, the English scientist, said of Spiritualism:--
"It demonstrates, as completely as the fact can be demonstrated, that the so-called dead are still alive."--_"On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism" (London, 1875), p. 212._
First Declaration of the Doctrine
In the very first book of the Bible is a similar claim: "Ye shall not surely die." Gen. 3:4.
But this declaration, while recorded in the Scriptures, is not the word of God. The Lord had declared to man that disobedience would bring death. But Satan, as the tempter in Eden, caused the woman to doubt the word of God: "The serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die." And the woman believed the tempter rather than God, and so sinned against the Creator.
Having tempted man to disobedience, so bringing death into the world, what more natural, in the course of deception, than to endeavor to persuade the human family that, after all, there is no death; that what appears so is only an introduction to fuller life and activity? "Ye shall not surely die."
[Illustration: PHARAOH'S SORCERERS COUNTERFEITING THE WORK OF GOD
"Now the magicians of Egypt, they also did in like manner with their enchantments." Ex. 7:11.]
As mankind departed from right and lost the knowledge of God, dead heroes were deified as gods, and much of the pagan worship consisted in sacrifices to the spirits of the dead, supposed to be living still and concerned with affairs in the land of the living. When Israel fell away from God and joined the Moabites in the worship of Baal-peor, the record says of the nature of the service:
"They joined themselves also unto Baal-peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead." "Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils." Ps. 106:28, 37.
Instead of dealing with the spirits of the dead, the idolatrous worshipers were really putting themselves in direct touch with the agencies of Satan, the fallen angels.
Divine Warnings
This explains the severity of the divine warnings against the ancient practice of necromancy, or mediumship. The Lord said:
"Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God." Lev. 19:31.
[Illustration: DEMONISM IN THE DAYS OF CHRIST
"He said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit." Mark 5:8.]
"When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord." Deut. 18:9-12.
The ancient séance, where the living sought unto the dead for knowledge, was denounced by the prophet Isaiah:
"When they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto the wizards, that chirp and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? on behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead?" Isa. 8:19, A.R.V.
"To the law and to the testimony!" the prophet cries. To seek unto the dead for knowledge is to turn from the law and the testimony, and to take the counsel of the direct agencies of Satan, the great deceiver.
Modern Spiritualism
What Spiritualism is may best be understood by the prophetic warnings concerning the revival of this great deception in the last days. The apostle spoke of these days as a time when seducing spirits would lead many away from the faith:
"Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils." 1 Tim. 4:1.
This deceptive working is an indication of the nearness of Christ's second coming:
"Whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders." 2 Thess. 2:9, A.R.V.
True to the sure word, now that the last days have come, there has arisen the movement of modern Spiritualism, with its signs and wonders, purporting to be wrought by the spirits of the dead. Professor Wallace says:
"Modern Spiritualism dates from March, 1848; it being then that, for the first time, intelligent communications were held with the unknown cause of the mysterious knockings and other sounds similar to those which had disturbed the Mompesson and Wesley families in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries."--_"On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism" (London, 1875), p. 146._
It was in Hydeville, N.Y., in the family of Mr. Fox, that the modern cult originated, it being found that by mysterious but clear sounds of knocking, unseen intelligences were able to communicate answers to questions asked. The rapidity of the spread of the great deception was remarkable. One of the Fox sisters, Mrs. A. Leah Underhill, wrote:
"Since that day, starting from a small country village of western New York, Spiritualism has made its way--against tremendous obstacles and resistance, but under an impulse and a guidance from higher spheres--round the civilized globe. Starting from three sisters, two of them children, and the eldest a little beyond that age,... its ranks of believers, privately or publicly avowed, have grown within thirty-six years to millions."--_"The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism," Introduction._
Many at the time thought, as have many since, that the "rappings" with which the manifestations began were caused by some trickery on the part of the Fox sisters, but men of unimpeachable standing and intelligence certified to the contrary. Horace Greeley, famous editor of the New York _Tribune_, wrote in his paper that the sisters had visited him in his home and courted the fullest investigation as to "the alleged manifestations from the spirit world." As the result of his observations, he wrote:
"Whatever may be the origin or the cause of the 'rappings,' the ladies in whose presence they occur do not make them. We tested this thoroughly and to our entire satisfaction."--_Id., pp. 160, 161._
It was no mere sleight of hand that launched this cult upon the world as the last days came. Beyond all the physical manifestations, the religious idea in Spiritualism has leavened the religious thought of millions. No one can deny that the basic idea is the one that the serpent promulgated in Eden, "Ye shall not surely die."
Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, another of the Fox sisters, says of the discovery of 1848:
"On the night of the thirty-first of March, 1848, we found beyond a shadow of a doubt or peradventure, that death had no power over the spirit.... In a word, we found our so-called dead were all living."--_"Nineteenth Century Miracles" (Manchester, England), p. 554._
[Illustration: THE SALEM WITCHCRAFT
One of the historical settings of Spiritualism. A poor woman accused by her neighbors of practicing witchcraft.]
Now the Scriptures teach plainly what these agencies in Spiritualism are not, and what they are.
What They Are Not
They are not the spirits of the dead communicating messages to the living.
In one of the earliest written portions of Holy Scripture, the Lord declared plainly that the dead have no knowledge of the living:
"He passeth: Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away. His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them." Job 14:20, 21.
The dead have no part in any communications with the living on earth:
"Neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun." Eccl. 9:6
What They Are
Already we have told what they are in quoting the warnings of prophecy concerning the special deceptions of Satan in the last days.
"The working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders." 2 Thess. 2:9.
"Seducing spirits." 1 Tim. 4:1.
And as they were shown to the prophet John in a vision of the very end, he declared:
"They are the spirits of devils, working miracles." Rev. 16:14.
These are the agencies through which come the supernatural manifestations of Spiritualism. It is a terrible deception that leads men and women to seek to satanic agencies, supposing that they are communicating with the spirits of their dead friends. Satan and his angels can readily simulate the personality of the dead, and so deceive those who disobey God in seeking to the dead for knowledge.
The Climax of Deception
That the marvels of Spiritualism would increase as the end nears, was plainly taught by our Saviour in describing the workings of Satan just before the second advent. He left us the warning:
"Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect." Matt. 24:23, 24.
Evidently, then, by the miracle-working power that he possesses, Satan will work mighty deceptions through both human and supernatural agencies. And the crowning deception will be his own manifestation as the Promised One, simulating Christ's second coming. But the power and glory that will fill all earth and the heavens at Christ's coming, cannot be copied by Satan, with all his miracle-working skill. That is why it is so important that we understand the Bible teaching as to the nature and manner of Christ's second advent. The doctrine of the silent, secret, mystical coming is all abroad in the world, the teaching exactly calculated to prepare the way for Satan's purposes of deception. Therefore Christ forewarns us:
"Behold, I have told you before. Wherefore if they shall say unto you, Behold, He is in the desert; go not forth: behold, He is in the secret chambers; believe it not. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be." Matt. 24:25-27.
The teachings of ancient theosophy and spiritualism--the mysticism of the East--have been permeating Christendom in recent years. Mme. Jean Delaire, writing in a London review, said some years ago:
"India has apparently still a mission to fulfil, for her thought is slowly beginning to mold the thought of Europe and of America; our keenest minds are today studying her philosophy; our New Theology is founded upon the old, old Vedanta."--_National Review, September, 1908, p. 131._
This flood of ancient spiritualism from the East has come about according to Isaiah's prophecy of things that were to "come to pass in the latter days:"
"Thou hast forsaken Thy people the house of Jacob, because they are filled with customs from the East, and are soothsayers like the Philistines." Isa. 2:6, A.R.V.
In 1909 one of the leading representatives of theosophical thought, Mrs. Annie Besant, of India, toured America with the message of a coming messiah. She announced:
"My message is very simple: 'Prepare for the coming Christ.' We stand at the cradle of a new subrace, and each race or subrace has its own messiah. Hermes is followed by Zoroaster; Zoroaster by Orpheus; Orpheus by Buddha; Buddha by Christ. We now await with confidence a manifestation of the Supreme Teacher of the world, who was last manifested in Palestine. Everywhere in the West, not less than in the East, the heart of man is throbbing with the glad expectation of the new avatar."
The leaven of the spiritualistic philosophy has been working its way through Christendom during this generation. We see clearly that the evil one is preparing the way for his final work of deception.
[Illustration: HOME OF THE FOX FAMILY, HYDESVILLE, N.Y.
Spiritualism originated in this house March 31, 1848.]
[Illustration: "HE IS RISEN"
"Because I live, ye shall live also." John 14:19.
COPYRIGHT, STANDARD PUB. CO.]
[Illustration: MARY MEETS HER RISEN LORD
"He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." John 11:25.]
LIFE ONLY IN CHRIST
MAN'S NATURE AND STATE IN DEATH
A wide-open door for Spiritualism is afforded by the teaching that man has life in himself--immortality by nature; and that death is not really death, but another form of life.
The Scriptures close this door of false hope, teaching us that man is mortal, that death is really death, and that immortality is the gift of God through Christ by the resurrection from the dead.
Clearly and definitely the Bible teaches that God only has immortality, styling Him "the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality." 1 Tim. 6:15, 16.
This scripture disposes of every idea that man is immortal by nature, and opens the way for a consideration of the Scripture teaching concerning man's nature, his state in death, and the promise of life and immortality in Christ.
Man by Nature Mortal
The word "mortal," as used in that ancient question by Eliphaz, describes man's nature:
"Shall mortal man be more just than God?" Job 4:17.
In the creation, life was conditional upon the creature's relation to Christ the Creator, in whom all things consist:
"All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life." John 1:3,4.
He was, and is, as the psalmist says, "the fountain of life." Cut off from vital connection with Him, there could be no continuance of life. The Lord warned Adam that his life was conditional upon obedience. "In the day that thou eatest thereof," He said of the forbidden tree, "thou shalt surely die." Gen. 2:17. It was a declaration that man was not immortal, but was dependent upon God for life.
When by unbelief and sin man rejected God, the sentence--death eternal--must have been executed had not the plan of salvation intervened. But as the stroke of divine justice was falling upon the sinner, the Son of God interposed Himself and received the blow. "He was bruised for our iniquities." In the divine plan, the great sacrifice for man was as sure then as when, later, it was actually made on Calvary. Christ was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
And there Adam, the sinner, now with a fallen human nature, which would be perpetuated in his descendants in all subsequent time, was granted an extension of life, every moment of which, whether for him or for his posterity, was the purchase of Christ by His own death, in order that in this time of probation man might find forgiveness of sin and assurance of life to come. Adam was not created immortal, but was placed on probation, and had he continued faithful, the gift of immortality must have been given him at some later time, after he had passed the test. As the original plan is carried out through Christ, "the second Adam," the gift of immortality is bestowed finally upon all who pass the test of the judgment and are found in Christ, in whom alone is life.
Having fallen, Adam, now possessed of a sinful nature, must die. "The wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:23. It was impossible that sin or sinners should be immortalized in God's universe. So, inasmuch as the tree of life in Eden had been made the channel of continuance of life to man, the Lord said:
"Now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever: therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden." Gen. 3:22, 23.
This negatives the idea that there could ever be an immortal sinner, who should mar God's creation forever. Sin works out nothing but death. "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." James 1:15. Fallen himself, Adam could bequeath to his posterity only a fallen, mortal nature. So began the sad history summed up in the text:
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Rom. 5:12.
Mortality Universal
Mortality is written upon all creation. Ages ago the wise man wrote, "There is one event unto all: ... they go to the dead." Eccl. 9:3. Human hearts everywhere and in all time have cried out against the remorselessness of the great enemy. "Do people die with you?" was the question met by Livingstone in the untraveled wilds of Africa. "Have you no charm against death?" The Greek as well as the barbarian confessed to the helplessness of man before the great enemy. Centuries before Christ, Sophocles the Athenian wrote:
"Wonders are many! and none is there greater than man, who Steers his ship over the sea, driven on by the south wind, Cleaving the threatening swell of the waters around him.
"He captures the gay-hearted birds; he entangles adroitly Creatures that live on the land and the brood of the ocean, Spreading his well-woven nets. Man full of devices!
"Speech and swift thought free as wind, the building of cities; Shelters to ward off the arrows of rain, and to temper Sharp-biting frost--all these hath he taught himself. Surely Stratagem hath he for all that comes! Never the future Finds him resourceless! Deftly he combats grievous diseases, Oft from their grip doth he free himself. Death alone vainly-- Vainly he seeks to escape; 'gainst death he is helpless."
--_Chorus from Antigone._
What unspeakable pathos in the cry of humanity's helplessness before death, the great enemy! But when Adam went out of Eden, it was with the assurance of life from the dead through the promised Seed, if faithful. It is the message of the one gospel for all time--everlasting life in Christ.
[Illustration: JESUS RAISING THE SON OF THE WIDOW OF NAIN
"The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." Rom. 6:23.]
"God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.
As there is none other name under heaven by which men can be saved, so there is no other way of everlasting life or immortality, save in Christ Jesus our Lord.
When Immortality is Bestowed
Christ said, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." John 11:25.
He has turned death, that would have been eternal, into a little time of sleep, from which he will awaken the believer. In the resurrection of the last day immortality is bestowed, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory." 1 Cor. 15:52-54.
"There is a blessed hope, More precious and more bright Than all the joyless mockery The world esteems delight.
"There is a lovely star That lights the darkest gloom, And sheds a peaceful radiance o'er The prospects of the tomb."
Not until the resurrection, "at the last trump," is immortality conferred upon the redeemed. Note that it is not something immortal putting on immortality; but this "mortal" puts on immortality. Mark this: there is no life after death, save by the resurrection. "If there be no resurrection of the dead,... then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." 1 Cor. 15:13-18.
This resurrection, as stated by the apostle Paul, is not at death, but in the last day, when Christ shall come, and all His children that are in their graves shall hear His voice. Jesus says:
"This is the will of Him that sent Me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on Him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day." John 6:40.
That is why the coming of Christ has been the "blessed hope" of all the ages.
Man's State in Death
Between death and the resurrection, the dead sleep. Jesus declares that death is a sleep. Lazarus was dead, but Jesus said, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." John 11:11. It is the language of Inspiration throughout. The patriarch Job said:
"Man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: so man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more [the heavens will be rolled back as a scroll at Christ's coming], they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep." Job 14:10-12.
This hope of the resurrection at the last day was no indistinct hope to the believer in God's promises. The patriarch continued:
"If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee: Thou wilt have a desire to the work of Thine hands." Verses 14, 15.
Job tells us of the place of his waiting for the Life-giver's call: "If I wait, the grave is mine house." Job 17:13. It is thence that Christ will call His own when He comes. "The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth." John 5:28, 29.
Death is an unconscious sleep. It must of necessity be so; for death is the opposite of life. Therefore there is no consciousness of the passing of time to those who sleep in the grave. It is as if the eyes closed in death one instant, and the next instant, to the believer's consciousness, he awakens to hear the animating voice of Jesus calling him to glad immortality, and to see the angels catching up his loved ones to meet Jesus in the air.
These scriptures, out of many, will suffice to show that man is not conscious in death:
"His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." Ps. 146:4.
"The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything.... Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun." Eccl. 9:5, 6.
Death is a sleep, which will continue until the resurrection. Then the Lord will bring forth from the dust the same person who was laid away in death.
Some have said that this Bible doctrine of the sleep of the dead until the resurrection is a gloomy one. Popular tradition thinks of the blessed dead as going at once to heaven, which, say some, is a beautiful thought. But they forget that the same teaching consigns their unbelieving friends to immediate torment--and that, too, while awaiting the judgment of the last day.
No; the Bible teaching is the cheering doctrine, the "blessed hope." All the faithful of all the ages are going into the kingdom together. This blessed truth appeals to the spirit that loves to wait and share joys and good things with loved ones. Of the faithful of past ages the apostle says:
"These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect." Heb. 11:39, 40.
They are waiting, that all together the saved may enter in. And the time of waiting is but an instant to those who "sleep in Jesus."
David was a man of God, but the apostle Peter, speaking by the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, declared to the people of the city of David: "He is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day.... For David is not ascended into the heavens." Acts 2:29-34. They without us have not been made perfect. They are all awaiting that glad day toward which the apostle Paul turned the last look of his mortal vision:
"I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing." 2 Tim. 4:7, 8.
What joy in that day to march in through the gates into the eternal city, with Adam, and Abel, and Noah, and Abraham, and Paul, and all the faithful, and the loved ones of our own home circles, and dear comrades in service, every one clothed with immortality, the gift of God in Christ Jesus our Redeemer! Horatius Bonar's hymn sings the joyful hope as the loved are laid away to "sleep in Jesus:"
"Softly within that peaceful resting place We lay their wearied limbs, and bid the clay Press lightly on them till the night be past, And the far east give note of coming day.
"The shout is heard, the Archangel's voice goes forth; The trumpet sounds, the dead awake and sing; The living put on glory; one glad band, They hasten up to meet their coming King."
In a word, the Scripture teaches that God alone has immortality, that man is mortal, that death is a sleep, that life after death comes only by the resurrection of the last day, that the righteous are then given immortality. Further, the Scripture teaches that later there will be a resurrection of the unjust, not unto life, but unto death, the second death, from which there is no release.
Every doctrine of Scripture and of the gospel is in accord with this Bible teaching as to man's nature and his state in death. But the traditional view of the natural immortality of the soul and of life in death, nullifies the Bible doctrines of life only in Christ, and the resurrection, and the judgment, and the giving of rewards at Christ's coming, and the final judgment upon the wicked and its execution.
A Few Questions Briefly Considered
_1. The "Living Soul"_
Says one, "Did not the Lord put into man an immortal soul?"
No; the Scripture says:
"The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Gen. 2:7.
The soul was not put into the man, but when the life-giving breath was breathed into his nostrils, the man himself became a living soul, a living being. The ordinary version (King James) gives "a living soul" in the margin of Gen. 1:30, showing that the same expression is used of all the animal creation in the Hebrew text. The famous Methodist commentator, Dr. Adam Clarke, says on this phrase, "living soul:"
"A general term to express all creatures endued with animal life, in any of its infinitely varied gradations."
_2. Are "Soul" and "Spirit" Deathless?_
"Are not the soul and spirit said to be deathless?" questions another.
No. One writer says of the Scriptural use of the words "soul" and "spirit:"
"The Hebrew and Greek words from which they are translated, occur in the Bible, as we have seen, seventeen hundred times. Surely, once at least in that long list we shall be told that the soul is immortal, if this is its high prerogative. Seventeen hundred times we inquire if the soul is once said to be immortal, or the spirit deathless. And the invariable and overwhelming response we meet is, _Not once!"_--_"Here and Hereafter" by U. Smith, p. 65._
On the contrary, the Lord declares, "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Eze. 18:20. It means that the person who sins shall die; for the words "soul," "mind," "heart," and "spirit" are used to express life or the seat of the affections or of the intellect. One may commend his soul to God, or his spirit to God (really his life into the keeping of God), until the great day of the resurrection. The word "soul" is used of all animal life in New Testament usage, as well as in the Old; as, "Every living soul died in the sea." Rev. 16:3.
_3. The Thief on the Cross_
"Did not Christ promise the thief on the cross that he would be with Him that day in Paradise?"
No; for Paradise is where God's throne is, and the tree of life, and the city of God, the capital of Christ's kingdom; and three days later Christ had not yet ascended to the Father. "Touch Me not," He said to Mary after His resurrection; "for I am not yet ascended to My Father." John 20:17. The dying thief, therefore, was not with Him in Paradise three days before.
Nor did the thief's question suggest such a thought. His faith grasped Christ's resurrection, the resurrection of His children, and the coming kingdom; and that day on the cross, in the moment of the deepest humiliation of the Son of God, the repentant sinner cried, "Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom." And the Saviour replied, "Verily I say unto thee today"--this day, when the world scoffs and the darkness presses upon Me, this day I say it--"shalt thou be with Me in Paradise." Luke 23:42, 43.
The punctuation that makes it read, "Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise," is not a part of the sacred text, and puts the Saviour's promise in contradiction with the facts of the whole narrative and the teaching of Scripture.
_4. The Rich Man and Lazarus_
"Then there is the parable of the rich man and Lazarus," one says, "where Lazarus and Dives are talking, though dead--Lazarus in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in torment."
But that is a parable; and no one can set the figures of a parable against the facts of positive Scripture. In parables, lessons are often taught by figurative language and imaginary scenes which could never be real, though the lesson is emphasized the more forcefully.
In the parable of Judges 9, the trees are represented as holding a council and talking with one another. No one mistakes the lesson of the parable, or supposes that the trees actually talked. So in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the lesson is taught that uprightness in this life, even though under deepest poverty, will be rewarded in the future life; while uncharitable selfishness will surely bring one to ruin and destruction.
In the face of the Bible teaching, no one can turn this parable into actual narrative, representing that the saved in glory are now looking over the battlements of heaven and talking with the lost writhing before their eyes in agony amid the flames of unending torment. This is not the picture that the Scriptures give us of heaven, nor of the state of the dead, nor of the time and circumstances of the final rewards or punishments.
[Illustration: From an inscription on an Egyptian monument, representing the weighing of a soul after death.]
[Illustration: LOT FLEEING FROM SODOM
"Even as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them ... are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Jude 7.]
[Illustration: SATAN'S FINAL ASSAULT UPON THE KINGDOM OF GOD
"They went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about." Rev. 20:9]
THE END OF THE WICKED
So soon as ever Lucifer introduced sin into heaven, it was certain, in the righteousness and omnipotence of God, that the day would come when sin would be blotted out of the perfect creation. Inspiration tells us that a time of final reckoning with sin was assured when Satan and a host of the angels with him lifted up the standard of mysterious rebellion against the law and harmony of heaven:
"The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." Jude 6.
Punishment for sin is assured. By listening to Satan's temptation, man became involved in sin. Then a divine Saviour was provided, through whom every soul might escape from the kingdom of darkness, and find salvation and life. But it is inevitable that those who refuse the way of life and reject the salvation of God, must finally be involved with Satan and sin in the day when sin is visited.
By Adam's sin, all his posterity inherited a sinful, dying nature. "In Adam all die," the Scripture says. But not a soul in the last day can plead Adam's sin and the inheritance of a fallen nature as an excuse for his own transgressions. By Christ's gift of His life for us, the sinner, with all his weaknesses, may become a partaker of the divine nature, and escape the power of the fleshly nature. By virtue of Christ's death for all, all recover from the death they die in Adam--the first death. All have a resurrection, the unjust as well as the just; and then every one gives account of himself to God, according to his own life and the use he has made of the light given him of God.
The Two Resurrections
The Scriptures emphasize the fact that there are to be two resurrections. Paul, before Felix, declared his belief the same as that of all the prophets,--"that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Acts 24:15.
Jesus declared it in these words:
"The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." John 5:28, 29.
The first resurrection is that of the just, at Christ's second coming. It is written of this:
"Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with Him a thousand years." Rev. 20:6.
After this, the righteous return with Christ to heaven, and remain there during the thousand years. The wicked living at the time of His coming are slain by the consuming glory of His presence; and they, with all the unjust of all the ages, await in the grave the second resurrection, at the end of the thousand years.
"The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." Rev. 20:5.
At the end of the thousand years the city of God, with the saved, comes down out of heaven and settles upon the earth.
Then the wicked are raised--the second resurrection. Under Satan's leadership they march up to attack the city of God. How naturally, we infer, may Satan persuade the lost that, after all, he was right when he declared to Adam, "Ye shall not surely die." Here are all his servants of all the ages--living. Why may they not be immortal, beyond the power of God to destroy? The old battle that began in heaven is on again. Satan, the archrebel, marshals his hosts of fallen angels and the myriads of fallen men, his legions stretching wide over the earth.
"They went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them." Rev. 20:9.
"This is the second death," the Scripture says. Verse 14. The great day has come when the sinner receives his wages--death--and sin is destroyed.
The Punishment Everlasting
"The wages of sin is death." And the second death is everlasting. There is no resurrection from this death. The Scriptures describe it in terms that affirm utter destruction, resulting in nonexistence.
"Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." 2 Thess. 1:9.
"Behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch." Mal. 4:1.
"They shall be ashes," the third verse of this chapter says. Every expression possible to language is employed to denote utter destruction, everlasting death. That means nonexistence. Sin and sinners are blotted out. The prophet Obadiah, speaking of the visitation upon the heathen--the unbelieving--in "the day of the Lord," says:
"They shall drink, and they shall swallow down, and they shall be as though they had not been." Verse 16.
This is the utter end of sin and all sinners, and of the author of sin. Root and branch they are gone, "as though they had not been." All this is in the description of the last judgment, so fully set forth in the twentieth chapter of Revelation.
"Death and hell [_hades_, the grave] were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." Rev. 20:14. Death and the prison house of death are gone forever. Sin is wiped out of a perfect universe, and not even a trace will remain of the place of the fiery judgment.
"Yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be." Ps. 37:10.
The fires of the last day purify the earth, which comes forth in Eden-like beauty. In the whole creation of God there is no sin, no sinner, but all is harmonious again, as before sin entered the universe. The prophet was given a view of this glorious consummation, and the triumph of the Son of God over sin.
"Every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever." Rev. 5:13.
Some Opinions Briefly Considered
The doctrine of the immortality, the indestructibility, of the soul is responsible for the traditional view that the wicked are kept alive in unending misery through all eternity. How different this picture from that which Holy Scripture gives of the second death! Terrible and awful it is, but it results in the utter destruction of sin and sinners, leaving a clean universe. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul came in from pagan philosophy. Herodotus, "the father of history," said:
"The Egyptians ... were also the first to broach the opinion, that the soul of man is immortal."--_Book 2, par. 123._
Evidently, they passed the doctrine on to the Greeks. Its origin was in the words of Satan in Eden, "Ye shall not surely die." The pagans had their nether world of spirits, or their transmigration of souls with its ceaseless round from body to body, and the Roman Catholics their purgatory with its purifying fires. From these sources and not from the Word of God, the traditional view has come into modern Christendom, representing the Lord as unable or unwilling to end sin, but keeping the sinner alive throughout eternity, to suffer torture that can bring no remedy. The Scripture teaching is far otherwise. However, there are certain Scripture phrases that emphasize the severity of the punishment of sin, which are often taken as supporting the doctrine of never-ending conscious torment.
_1. "Forever and Ever."_--In Rev. 20:10 it is said that the devil and his chief agencies "shall be tormented day and night forever and ever." The phrase emphasizes the surety of their utter destruction.
"Forever" means age-lasting, or life-lasting--so long as a thing exists by its nature. Thus in Ex. 21:6 the servant who loved his master and did not wish to leave his service was to have his ear pierced, "and he shall serve him forever," that is, without release as long as he lives. So the fiery judgment of that last day holds the wicked until life ends; there is no release until life is consumed.
_2. "Everlasting Punishment."_--"These shall go away into everlasting punishment." Matt. 25:46. It is everlasting punishment, not everlasting punishing. The punishment is everlasting death--"who shall be punished with everlasting destruction." 2 Thess. 1:9.
The truth of the utter destruction of sinners is awful enough, but it commends itself to every thought of justice and mercy; for sin must be cleansed from a perfect universe. But the unscriptural view of everlasting conscious torment that never reaches the point of full punishment, is unthinkable. Yet it is urged as a doctrine, and contended for as vital to Christianity.
The following description is taken from a book written for children, entitled "The Sight of Hell." It is printed in Dublin--for children.
"Little child, if you go to hell, there will be a devil at your side to strike you. He will go on striking you every day, forever and ever, without ever stopping. The first stroke will make your body as bad as Job's, covered from head to foot with sores and ulcers. The second stroke will make your body twice as bad as the body of Job.... How then will your body be after the devil has been striking it every moment for a hundred million years without stopping?"--_Quoted in the London Present Truth, April 30, 1914._
What a relief to turn from this to the Bible doctrine of the "everlasting destruction" of the second death, terrible though it be!
_3. "Everlasting Fire," "Eternal Fire," "Unquenchable Fire."_--All these expressions are used in describing the fiery judgment upon sin and sinners. The effect of the fire is everlasting and eternal, and by a common usage in language the adjective that describes the effect is applied to the agent by which the effect is wrought.
A specific example of everlasting fire in the punishment of evil is given in Scripture. Sodom and Gomorrah, those wicked "cities of the plain," were destroyed by a rain of fire from heaven. These cities, Inspiration says, "are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire." Jude 7. The fire was everlasting, eternal, in its effects. The cities of the plain were everlastingly consumed. But the fire went out when the destruction was complete. Unquenchable fire is fire that cannot be quenched. It consumes utterly, until nothing is left; then it goes out of its own accord.
_4. "Where Their Worm Dieth Not."_--Jesus warned of the certain destruction of sin and sinners in the fire of Gehenna; for this is the word translated "hell" in Mark 9:43.
Hades, which is often translated "hell," is the grave, not the place of punishment. Gehenna, here used of the place of punishment, was the name of the valley where the refuse of Jerusalem was cast for burning. The map of Jerusalem, in any ordinary Bible with maps, shows just outside the southern wall a gorge marked "Valley of Hinnom" (Gehenna). It was here that the people, in the olden times, had sacrificed their children to Moloch.
"In order to put an end to these abominations, Josiah polluted it with human bones and other corruptions. 2 Kings 23:10, 13, 14."--_Hastings's "Dictionary of the Bible."_
Here the fires consumed the refuse, and the fire and worms utterly destroyed the carcasses of beasts flung into the place of destruction. It was regarded as a place accursed, and the smoldering fires became symbolical of the fires of the judgment.
The use of this illustration, instead of arguing that the wicked are never destroyed but always live, conveys the opposite idea. What went into the fires of Gehenna was utterly consumed, nothing being left. This was used by Christ as a figure illustrative of the utter destruction of the unrepentant sinner in the day of visitation.
This must suffice. The positive teaching of Holy Scripture is that sin and sinners will be blotted out of existence. There will be a clean universe again when the great controversy between Christ and Satan is ended.
[Illustration: PETER DELIVERED FROM PRISON
"The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them." Ps. 34:7.]
[Illustration: DANIEL IN THE DEN OF LIONS
"My God hath sent His angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me." Dan. 6:22.]
ANGELS: THEIR MINISTRY
The one verse of Scripture which, perhaps, most comprehensively sums up the ministry of the angels of God, is this:
"Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" Heb. 1:14.
This scripture shows us how truly all heaven is engaged in working for the salvation of this poor world, which has wandered from the fold of God. It will surely be a time of rejoicing among all the angelic host when Christ, the Good Shepherd, brings back this lost world, cleansed from sin, once more to the fold of God's perfect creation.
The angels rejoiced when this world was created. The Lord said to Job:
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?... when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" Job 38:4-7.
Before ever this world was created, or man upon it, the angels had been created by the eternal Son, in whom all things consist. For angels are not redeemed men, neither will the redeemed in the world to come ever become angels. Angels are a different order of beings from men, a higher order in creation. We read:
"What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him with glory and honor." Heb. 2:6, 7.
In the life to come, by the wondrous power of Christ's transforming grace, redeemed men are to be made equal to the angels, as Christ stated:
"Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Luke 20:36.
This lifting of sinful man to an equality with the angels, at least in the possession of life and immortality, is an illustration of the gospel principle, "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." Rom. 5:20. But the declaration of equality with angels is a denial of identity with angels. Angels existed before man, and redeemed man will still be man, distinct from the angelic order, though the associate of angels in the service of God.
Attendants at the Throne of God
When the prophet Isaiah was given a view of the heavenly temple, he saw different orders of angels attending the throne of God:
"I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and His train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts." Isa. 6:1-3.
Ezekiel beheld them in glory, attending the moving throne of the Almighty. "The living creatures ran and returned as the appearance of a flash of lightning." Eze. 1:14.
Daniel beheld the angelic host gathered in the most holy place of the temple above, as the time came for the opening of the work of the investigative judgment, the cleansing of the sanctuary. Seeing the throne of God set for this final work of Christ's ministry, the prophet says:
"Thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment was set, and the books were opened." Dan. 7:10.
God's Messengers
The word "angel" means messenger. To and fro these angelic messengers have gone in the service of their Creator. A view of their ever-watchful service is given in the words of the psalmist:
"Bless the Lord, ye His angels, that excel in strength, that do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of His word." Ps. 103:20.
Bearers of Tidings
They visited Abraham's tent with warning of Sodom's overthrow. Genesis 18.
They visited Lot in the city, and urged him to get his family out. Genesis 19.
As Jacob, in fear but repentance, was about to meet Esau, whom he had deceived, "the angels of God met him." Genesis 32. "This is God's host," he said, and he knew that the God of Abraham and Isaac, and his God, also, had not forsaken him.
At a discouraging time in the history of Israel, an angel appeared to Gideon, bringing the message, "The Lord is with thee," and calling him to the work of delivering his people. Judges 6.
[Illustration: JACOB'S DREAM IN BETHEL
"Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" Heb. 1:14.]
As Daniel's prayer reached heaven, even while he still prayed, the angel Gabriel "being caused to fly swiftly," touched him, and said:
"O Daniel, I am now come forth to give thee skill and understanding. At the beginning of thy supplications the commandment came forth, and I am come to show thee." Dan. 9:21-23.
So close is the communication between heaven and earth.
The gladdest tidings ever brought from heaven to earth since the promise of the Deliverer to Adam in Eden, were brought by angels to the shepherds of Bethlehem. First, one angel appeared, saying:
"I bring you good tidings of great joy.... For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."
Such tidings to earth could never be the mission of one lone angel, when all heaven longed to cry the news to a lost world.
"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." Luke 2:13, 14.
Unseen in Halls of Government
One incident related in the book of Daniel draws aside the curtain, and shows how angels doubtless often have worked unseen in kingly courts or halls of legislation. Daniel had prayed for three weeks for light in certain matters that the angel Gabriel had begun to unfold to him. When at last the angel came, overpowering the prophet with the glory of his presence, it was with a statement, first, of the reason for the delay in responding to his prayer. The angel said:
"From the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days: but, lo, Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me; and I remained there with the kings of Persia. Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days." Dan. 10:12-14.
Messengers of Deliverance
The story of deliverance wrought by angels is too long to tell. One need only think of the angels' taking slow-moving Lot by the arms and setting him out of Sodom (Genesis 19); of the angel finding Elijah under a bush in the desert, and first baking a cake for the hungry man before speaking the word to his discouraged heart (1 Kings 19); of Elisha praying that the young man's eyes might be opened to see that there were more angels with them round about than all the Syrians encamped against them:
"The Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha." 2 Kings 6:17.
An angel shut the mouths of the lions when Daniel was cast into their den. Daniel 6. An angel smote off Peter's irons in the prison at Jerusalem, opened the doors, and led him forth. Acts 12. Amid the angry waves sweeping over the foundering ship in the Adriatic, Paul the apostle bade the despairing crew be of good courage, "for there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not." Acts 27:23, 24.
All through the ages, the angels of God have been standing by. Daniel, and Peter, and Paul are dead; but the angels still live. "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" Heb. 1:14.
Guardian Angels
That means that every child of God is under the guardianship of the angels. "The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him, and delivereth them." Ps. 34:7.
Thank God, we are never left alone. Every child of God has a guardian angel commissioned by the loving Father to watch over him. Christ said:
"Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven." Matt. 18:10.
This does not mean that trials never will come, or troubles. In the midst of the trial, the angel of the Lord will stand by to strengthen and to bring help from the God of all comfort. It was in the midst of the fiery furnace that the "form of the Fourth" appeared, walking with the three Hebrew children--Jesus Himself treading the fiery way with them. And when Jesus, in the days of His flesh, was sinking under the crushing burden in Gethsemane, "there appeared an angel unto Him from heaven, strengthening Him." Luke 22:43.
Our Saviour, who knows the comforting power of angel ministry, is the Captain of the heavenly host, and has commissioned them all as ministering spirits to the heirs of salvation.
When He comes in glory for His people, Christ will have "all the holy angels with Him." As the voice of Jesus awakens His sleeping saints and they rise immortal from the opened graves, "He shall send His angels, ... and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." Matt. 24:31.
The angels who have watched over the heirs of salvation through all the ages, know where they are, and they know how to gather them, with their loved ones, to meet the Lord.
The angels who rejoiced when the Lord laid the foundations of the earth, who mourned when man fell, who have all along been working with Christ, their leader, to rescue the lost, will yet rejoice when the Lord brings home His own. What a day will that be in heaven!
[Illustration: MODERN INVENTIONS FULFILLING PROPHECY
"Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Dan. 12:4.]
[Illustration: CAREY IN INDIA TRANSLATING THE BIBLE
"So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." Acts 19:20.]
THE TIME OF THE END
"Thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Dan. 12:4.
Thus the words of the angel, spoken nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, announced the opening of a new era of enlightenment when the latter days should come.
The Time
At the end of the long period of predicted tribulation of the church--the twelve hundred and sixty years of Daniel's prophecy--the world entered upon this era of "the time of the end."
"They shall fall by the sword, and by flame, by captivity, and by spoil, many days.... And some of them of understanding shall fall, to try them, and to purge, and to make them white, even to the time of the end: because it is yet for a time appointed." Dan. 11:33-35.
In practically every outline of prophecy touching this time, the events of the last days are represented as following the end of the prophetic period of tribulation. Christ's prophecy of Matthew 24 so declares. Our Saviour showed that this period of tribulation, would be shortened, "for the elect's sake," and that "immediately after the tribulation of those days" the signs of the end would begin to appear.
Thus, while the full period of the twelve hundred and sixty years ended amid the scenes of the French Revolution, which gave the papal power a deadly wound in the last decade of the eighteenth century, the shortening of the days of tribulation had begun even earlier to spread increasing knowledge and enlightenment over the earth.
The Prophecy Unsealed
The angel's words to Daniel were,
"Shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Dan. 12:4.
"The words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end." Verse 9.
This means that as the time of the end came, men would be impelled to search diligently for light in the prophetic word. Events taking place in fulfilment of the prophecy would be recognized, and with the coming of the time there would come the opening up, or unsealing, of the prophetic scriptures, with their message for men in the last days.
As the time drew near, Bible students were led more and more to search the word of prophecy. Sir Isaac Newton, called "the greatest of philosophers," wrote of prophetic study:
"The giving ear to the prophets is a fundamental character of the true church. For God has so ordered the prophecies, that in the latter days 'the wise may understand, but the wicked shall do wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand.' Dan. 12:9, 10."--_"Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel" (London, 1733), part 1, chap. 1._
Again, this man who had delved so deeply into the laws of nature, but who bowed his heart in childlike faith to listen to the voice of Inspiration, declared his hope that the time of the end was near at hand in his day (he died in 1727). Of this prophecy of the unsealing of the book he wrote:
"'Tis therefore a part of this prophecy, that it should not be understood before the last age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of the prophecy that it is not yet understood. But if the last age, the age of opening these things, be now approaching, as by the great successes of late interpreters it seems to be, we have more encouragement than ever to look into these things. If the general preaching of the gospel be approaching, it is to us and to our posterity that those words mainly belong: In the time of the end the wise shall understand, but none of the wicked shall understand.... 'Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein.'"--_"Observations on the Apocalypse" (London, 1733), chap. 1._
True to the word of the angel, the events of the ending of the twelve hundred and sixty years of papal supremacy, amid the scenes of the French Revolution, drew the attention of Bible students everywhere. It was seen that prophecy was being fulfilled before men's eyes. It gave great impetus to the study of the prophetic scriptures. The great historic prophecies began to be opened up--unsealed--to the understanding. An English historian of that period, John Adolphus, though writing a secular history, remarks upon this awakening interest in prophetic study:
"The downfall of the papal government [in 1798], by whatever means effected, excited perhaps less sympathy than that of any other in Europe: the errors, the oppressions, the tyranny of Rome over the whole Christian world, were remembered with bitterness; many rejoiced, through religious antipathy, in the overthrow of a church which they considered as idolatrous, though attended with the immediate triumph of infidelity; and many saw in these events the accomplishment of prophecies, and the exhibition of signs promised in the most mystical parts of the Holy Scriptures."--_"History of France from 1790 to 1802" (London, 1803), Vol. II, p. 379._
From those tunes of fulfilling prophecy, there arose a distinct movement, reviving the teaching of the doctrine of Christ's second coming, and directly preparing the way for the advent movement that was to come with the days of 1844, when yet fuller light was to break forth from the unsealed prophecies of the book of Daniel. Of the angel that symbolizes the special gospel work for these last days, it is written, "He had in his hand a little book open." Rev. 10:2. The "time of the end" came, and with it has come the opening of the sealed book. The "sure word of prophecy" speaks its message full and clear to the ears of all mankind today.
Increase of Knowledge
"Many shall run to and fro," the prophecy said, "and knowledge shall be increased." It is knowledge of the prophecy and of the things of God that is primarily the topic; but the era that we are discussing has been one of general enlightenment and extension of knowledge.[J] "The entrance of Thy words giveth light," says the psalmist: and when the Reformation of the sixteenth century broke the bands of age-long superstition and error, and set free the Word of God, the way was preparing for the coming of this wonderful era of the diffusion of general knowledge.
The era of reform movement was an era of world exploration and discovery. Diaz had founded the south African cape, and Columbus had given to future generations the New World. The result was voyage after voyage of discovery, and then awakening, colonization, and expansion.
The famous and learned Francis Bacon, who died in 1626, felt in his day that the time spoken of by Daniel's prophecy was drawing near. He wrote:
"Nor should the prophecy of Daniel be forgotten, touching the last ages of the world: 'Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased;' clearly intimating that the thorough passage of the world (which now by so many distant voyages seems to be accomplished, or in course of accomplishment), and the advancement of the sciences, are destined by fate, that is, by divine Providence, to meet in the same age."--_"Novum Organum," book 1, xciii. (Bacon's Works, Spedding and Ellis, Vol. IV, p. 92.)_
When the time indicated in the prophecy fully came, with the last decade of the eighteenth century, there was witnessed the upspringing of movements that have wrought mightily for the enlightenment and evangelization of the world. As the events of the French Revolution announced the closing of the long era of papal supremacy, so also another series of events at the same time announced the opening of the era of increasing knowledge. Speaking of these developments, Lorimer, a Scottish writer, said:
"At the very time when Satan is hoping for, and the timid are fearing, an utter overturn of true religion, there is a revival, and the gospel expands its wings and prepares for a new flight. It is worthy of remembrance that the year 1792, the very year of the French Revolution, was also the year when the Baptist Missionary Society was formed, a society which was followed during the succeeding, and they the worst, years of the Revolution, with new societies of unwonted energy and union, all aiming, and aiming successfully, at the propagation of the gospel of Christ, both at home and abroad. What withering contempt did the great Head of the church thus pour upon the schemes of infidels! And how did He arouse the careless and instruct His own people, by alarming providences, at a season when they greatly needed such a stimulus."--_"Historical Sketches of the Protestant Church in France," p. 522._
Another writer, Dr. D.L. Leonard, historian of the century of missions, says:
"The closing years of the eighteenth century constitute in the history of Protestant missions an epoch indeed, since they witnessed nothing less than a revolution, a renaissance, an effectual and manifold ending of the old, a substantial inauguration of the new. It was then that for the first time since the apostolic period, occurred an outburst of general missionary zeal and activity. Beginning in Great Britain, it soon spread to the Continent and across the Atlantic. It was no mere push of fervor, but a mighty tide set in, which from that day to this has been steadily rising and spreading."--_"A Hundred Years of Missions," p. 69._
The time of the prophecy had come, and the hand of providence was bringing into being agencies that have spread light and knowledge over all lands.
"Look where the missionary's feet have trod-- Flowers in the desert bloom; and fields, for God, Are white to harvest. Skeptics may ignore; Yet on the conquering Word, from shore to shore, Like flaming chariot, rolls. Ask ocean isles, And plains of Ind, where ceaseless summer smiles; Speak to far frozen wastes, where winter's blight Remains;--they tell the love, attest the might Of Him whose messengers across the wave To them salvation bore, hope, freedom gave."
--_Horace D. Woolley._
The organization of foreign missionary enterprise was quickly accompanied by the establishment of Bible societies for a systematic work of translating and world-wide distribution of the Scriptures. In 1804 the British and Foreign Bible Society was organized. Students of the prophetic word felt at the time that these agencies were coming in fulfilment of the prophecy. One writer of those times said:
"The stupendous endeavors of one gigantic community to convey the Scriptures in every language to every part of the globe may well deserve to be considered as an eminent sign even of these eventful times. Unless I be much mistaken, such endeavors are preparatory to the final grand diffusion of Christianity, which is the theme of so many inspired prophets, and which cannot be very far distant in the present day."--_G.S. Faber, D.D., "Dissertation on the Prophecies," Vol. II, p. 406 (1844)._
Now the Word of God, in whole or in part, is speaking in more than five hundred languages, and it is estimated that these tongues, at least in their spoken form, can make the divine message comprehensible to ninety-five per cent of the inhabitants of the earth.
The work of modern missions, that had its birth as the time of the end came, is one of the great world factors today. Nearly thirty million dollars a year are given for Protestant missions, and a force of more than twenty thousand foreign missionaries is in the field, not counting the many thousands of native missionaries and helpers. Truly the time of the end is proving to be an era of increasing light and knowledge.
The Opening of All Lands
As the time came for knowledge to be increased, it was necessary that all lands should be open to receive the enlightening agencies. Thus, as the time of the end came, we see distinctly the hand of Providence swinging open the doors into all countries. It has been an era of world survey and development. Particularly is this true of the last sixty or seventy years. It was in 1844 that the time referred to in the prophecy came for the special advent movement, bearing the judgment-hour message to the world. The range of the movement is thus described in the prophecy:
"I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." Rev. 14:6.
This was a declaration that as the time came for the closing gospel work to be done, the doors of access to every nation and tongue and people would be thrown open. In 1844, or but a few years before, much of the world was closed to missionary endeavor; but as the prophecy indicates, the years following have witnessed the swift and systematic opening of all lands to the gospel message.
It was in 1842 that five treaty ports in China were opened to commerce and to missions,--advance steps in the opening of all China to the gospel. In 1844 Turkey was prevailed upon to recognize the right of Moslems to become Christians, reversing all Moslem tradition. In 1844 Allen Gardiner established the South American Mission. In 1845 Livingstone's determination was formed to open up the African interior.
Dr. A.T. Pierson, speaking of the wonderful way in which Providence opened the doors of access in those times, wrote as follows:
"Most countries shut out Christian missions by organized opposition, so that to attempt to bear the good tidings was simply to dare death for Christ's sake; the only welcome awaiting God's messengers was that of cannibal ovens, merciless prisons, or martyr graves. But, as the little band advanced, on every hand the walls of Jericho fell, and the iron gates opened of their own accord. India, Siam, Burma, China, Japan, Turkey, Africa, Mexico, South America, the Papal States, and Korea were successively and successfully entered. Within five years, from 1853 to 1858, new facilities were given to the entrance and occupation of seven different countries, together embracing half the world's population."--_"Modern Mission Century," p. 25._
[Illustration: INTO THE HEART OF AFRICA
The Victoria Falls railroad bridge over the Zambezi.]
God's providence has laid under tribute every force and every resource for the opening of all lands--missionary endeavor, love of adventure, commercial enterprise, and scientific interest. Railways have been built through regions that were undiscovered seventy years ago, and among the passengers traveling now over the iron trail are men and women of tribes unknown fifty years ago. But the gospel message was to go to every tribe and tongue before the end; and wonderfully Providence has been opening the doors throughout all this "time of the end," and particularly in our generation.
Material Agencies for the Work
The prophecy represents not only a world-wide work, but a quick work in proclaiming the gospel message in the last days. The movement is symbolized in the Revelation by an angel flying in the midst of heaven, from land to land. And as to the closing work, when the end is near at hand, the Scripture says:
"He will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth." Rom. 9:28.
"Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." This is the hope for a quickly finished work in all the earth in our time. Yet the Lord lays hold of material things for service; and wonderfully the hand of Providence has wrought in bringing into existence material agencies for a quick work in carrying the gospel to the world--such agencies as no generation before ours ever had.
Consider the marvelous facilities for world-travel. They are the product of this time of the end. "Many shall run to and fro," said the prophecy. Some interpreters have restricted the Hebrew phrase to a "searching" to and fro for knowledge. Even this would include a literal running to and fro; for the light of increasing knowledge was to be diffused over all the earth. But the best authority on the Hebrew declares for the plain meaning of our English translation: "Many shall run to and fro." In two recent works, Dr. C.H.H. Wright, the English scholar, says of this text:
"The natural meaning must be upheld, i.e., wandering to and fro."--_"Critical Commentary on Daniel," p. 209._
"Why should not that expression be used in the sense in which it is employed in Jeremiah 5:1, namely, of rapid movement hither and thither?"--_"Daniel and His Prophecies," p. 321._
At the time when the first foreign missionary movement was being launched in America, Robert Fulton's steamship, the "Clermont," was making its first trip on the Hudson.
[Illustration: HIEROGLYPHICS
The "Ox Song" of the Egyptian threshing-floor.]
In 1838 the first ships to cross the Atlantic under steam power alone--the "Sirius" and the "Great Western"--came into New York from Liverpool, a few hours apart, forerunners of the fleets that furrow all the seas today, making quick pathways for the gospel messengers to all lands. Verily, they are a gift of God's providence to this generation, when all the world is to hear the gospel message.
[Illustration: CUNEIFORM WRITING
An account of the capture of Babylon, B.C. 538. From the cylinder of Cyrus.]
"He hath made the deep as dry, He hath smote for us a pathway to the ends of all the earth."
In 1825 Stephenson built his first railway passenger locomotive, which may still be seen in the Darlington railway station, in England. It was the beginning of the great revolution in land travel. The late Prof. Alfred Russel Wallace, scientist, wrote:
"From the earliest historic and even prehistoric times till the construction of our great railways in the second quarter of the present century [the nineteenth], there had been absolutely no change in the methods of human locomotion."--_"The Wonderful Century," p. 7._
[Illustration: MANUSCRIPT WRITING
The process by which the books of the great library of Alexandria, Egypt, were made.]
For nearly six thousand years men had traveled in the old way. Why should these revolutionary changes in travel by sea and land come abruptly just at this time?--Because the time foretold in the prophecy was at hand, when the last gospel message was to be carried quickly to all the world--"to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people." We see the hand of the living God opening the doors into all lands, and His wonderful providence laying at the feet of this generation agencies for quickly covering the whole earth.
[Illustration: GUTENBERG'S FIRST TYPES
Reproduced from the first edition of the famous forty-two-line Latin Bible, printed by Gutenberg.]
Later came the electric telegraph, for the quick transmission of news. It was in 1837 that Cooke and Wheatstone in England, and Morse in the United States, made their application for patents on the electric telegraph. It was in 1844 that the first long-distance system was successfully demonstrated--when the historic message was sent from Baltimore to Washington, "What hath God wrought!" Now news of events fulfilling prophecy, and news of progress and conditions in all lands, are daily spread before the world by this agency of our wonderful time.
[Illustration: THE GUTENBERG PRINTING PRESS
On which was produced the first printed Bible, in 1456 A.D.]
[Illustration: THE FRANKLIN PRESS
Operated by two men, it has a maximum speed of 250 impressions per hour.]
As the closing events take place, the Lord has in His providence so ordered it that no one need be ignorant of the signs of the times fulfilling before the eyes of men.
"Speak the word and think the thought, Quick 'tis as with lightning caught-- Over, under, lands or seas To the far antipodes."
Here is an incident illustrating the way in which the electric telegraph may multiply and spread abroad the witness borne to the truth of God in some obscure corner of the earth:
[Illustration: THE HOE DOUBLE OCTUPLE PRESS
The largest printing press in the world. Length, 48 feet; height, 19-1/2 feet; weight, 175 tons; number of parts, 65,000; revolutions, 300 per minute; paper used per hour, 18 tons, or 216 miles of paper three feet wide; production per hour, 300,000 eight-page folded newspapers.]
The Mighty Press
"When old Gutenberg, inventor Of the printing press, and mentor Of the clumsy-fingered typos In a sleepy German town, Used to spread the sheets of vellum On the form, and plainly tell them That the art was then perfected, As he pressed the platen down, He had not the faintest notion Of the rhythmical commotion, Of the brabble and the clamor And the unremitting roar Of the mighty triple decker, While the steel rods flicker, And the papers, ready folded, Fall in thousands to the floor."
Some years ago a young man in Europe--a Seventh-day Adventist--was giving answer for his faith. His conscience would not allow him to do ordinary labor on God's holy Sabbath. He had declared to the court that the oath of loyalty which had been required of him forbade his breaking the Sabbath. "How is that?" asked the judge. The young man replied:
"I was sworn in with a Christian oath, and therefore cannot be under an obligation to violate the commandments of God and work on the Sabbath. One must regard God as the highest authority, and obey Him in the first place."
This witness was borne in a little courtroom, before a small group of men; but the press dispatches took it up, and the description of the scene and report of the words spoken were carried by electric telegraph to the press of at least four continents, and millions read the testimony of the young man to the faith that was in him.
In the days to come, with great events taking place and solemn issues calling upon men to make decision for God and His truth, how quickly, in some great crisis, all the world may be warned, and the last individual decisions be made for eternity!
Modern Printing
The invention of the printer's art had come just in time to give wings to Reformation truth. Luther said of it:
"Printing is the latest and greatest gift by which God enables us to advance the things of the gospel. It is the last bright flame, manifesting itself just previous to the extinction of the world. Thanks be to God, it came before the last day came."--_Michelet's "Life of Luther," p. 291._
While improvements in the art were made through the centuries, it was a slow process, even up to the opening of our generation. During our day, however, inventions have revolutionized the printing process.
In this, as in other things, the methods have been speeded up to meet the necessities of this time of rapid accomplishment. The printing press is one of the chief of the marvelous enlightening agencies of this time of the end. By it the printed pages of truth are set falling over the earth "like the leaves of autumn."
Time fails us to speak of all the wonderful material developments of our day, when knowledge has been increased, and when men are not only searching to and fro, but literally running to and fro. The whole earth is brought within the range of human knowledge, and the light of saving truth is streaming out toward every dark place where the children of men dwell.
Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago it was written upon the prophetic page,
"Shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."
There the word stood on the scroll of prophecy through more than two millenniums. Then, as the time of the end came, lo, the book of prophecy was unsealed, and the new era of increasing knowledge began to spread in wondrous blessing over the earth.
So surely, also, the prophecies of the last events will be accomplished. In the occurrences taking place before our eyes, we see that God is indeed finishing His work in the earth, and cutting it short in righteousness.
[Illustration: FORTIFICATIONS ON THE BOSPORUS
The strategic waterway involved in the Eastern Question.]
FOOTNOTES:
[J] It is not designed to give the reader the idea that this running "to and fro" refers wholly to turning to and fro through the pages of a book. The times in which we live have been characterized by a great increase in Bible study, and consequently in knowledge of the Scriptures; but it is equally true that this has been due in large measure to the fact that there are no longer any "hermit" kingdoms. Travel, a real physical running "to and fro" through the earth, has contributed mightily to the modern increase of knowledge, and in no other field of investigation has this been more true than in the study of the Bible. By increased facilities for travel, all nations have been brought close together physically. Different races and nationalities have become acquainted, missionary zeal has been quickened, and peoples formerly beyond the reach of missionary operations have become easily accessible. In this sense, as well as by private searching of the Scriptures, knowledge has increased.
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF ST. SOPHIA IN CONSTANTINOPLE
The most famous of all Mohammedan temples.
COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N.Y.]
THE EASTERN QUESTION
MODERN HISTORY IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT PROPHECY
Not alone of the history of ancient nations does the "sure word of prophecy" bear witness. Political events of our own and coming days are described.
The nations of the latter day are pictured as preparing war, gathering their forces for the great Armageddon, the battle of the day of God.
As a signal of the last great struggle, the fall, or "drying up," of the power ruling the territory watered by the river Euphrates is foretold. Rev. 16:12. The Euphrates in all modern history has been suggestive of the dominions of the Turkish or Ottoman Empire. And Armageddon, designated as the meeting place of armies in the last clash of nations, is in Palestine, which, through all modern times, has been in possession of the Turkish power.
The index finger of prophecy points, therefore, to this region of the eastern Mediterranean as the pivotal point in the closing history of nations; and with Turkey's fate is wrapped up the fate of all the nations of the world.
All this adds deepest and most solemn import to the study of what is known as the Eastern Question, a question that has been to the fore in international politics much of the time throughout this generation. Wars have been fought over it, cabinets have wrestled with it, and still it holds its place in the first rank of living issues of today.
As every one knows, the Eastern Question involves the dominion or supremacy in the Near East. This region was a pivotal point in the struggles of the nations in ancient times--the meeting place of East and West. Maspero, historian of ancient empires, says of it:
"Some countries seem destined from their origin to become the battle fields of the contending nations.... The nations around are eager for the possession of a country thus situated.... From remote antiquity Syria was in the condition just described. By its position it formed a kind of meeting place, where most of the military nations of the ancient world were bound sooner or later to come violently into collision."--_"Struggle of the Nations," chap. 1._
It is not strange, therefore, that one of the great outlines of historic prophecy should deal with events centering around this pivotal region. The prophecy of Daniel 11 does so, outlining the course of history from ancient times to the final solution of the Eastern Question amid the scenes of the end.
Rise and Fall of Ancient Empires
The prophetic outline of Daniel 11 begins with Persia, in the third year of Cyrus, the conqueror of Babylon. (See Dan. 10:1.) The angel of God appeared to Daniel, and in the longest and most detailed single prophecy in all the Bible, told the story of events connected with this region of the Near East for the centuries to come, until the end. Putting the word of prophecy and the record of history side by side, we see how exactly history has fulfilled prophecy; and we may know certainly that the brief portion of the prophecy yet unfulfilled will surely come to pass.
Persia
_Prophecy._--"Now will I show thee the truth. Behold, there shall stand up yet three kings in Persia; and the fourth shall be far richer than they all: and by his strength through his riches he shall stir up all against the realm of Grecia." Dan. 11:2
_History._--The three kings following Cyrus were (1) Cambyses, (2) Smerdis, (3) Darius; the fourth, Xerxes, was "far richer than they all." He had the treasures of his father, Darius, who was called the "merchant" or "hoarder" by his own people, and Xerxes gathered stores of wealth in addition. When Xerxes was on his way to invade Grecia, a Lydian named Pythius entertained the whole Persian army with feasts, and offered to aid in bearing the expense of the campaign. Xerxes asked who this man of such wealth was. He was answered:
"This is the man, O king! who gave thy father Darius the golden plane tree, and likewise the golden vine; and he is still the wealthiest man we know of in all the world, excepting thee."--_Herodotus, book 7, par. 27._
"Richer than they all," Xerxes, "through his riches," was able, as the prophecy had foretold, to "stir up all against the realm of Grecia." Forty-nine nations marched under his banners to the attack. The Greek poet, Æschylus, who himself fought against the Persians, wrote of Xerxes' mighty host,
"And myriad-peopled Asia's king, a battle-eager lord, From utmost east to utmost west sped on his countless horde, In unnumbered squadrons marching, in fleets of keels untold, Knowing none dared disobey, For stern overseers were they Of the godlike king begotten of the ancient race of Gold."
--_"Persæ," Way's translation._
Xerxes boasted that he was leading "the whole race of mankind to the destruction of Greece." But his invasion ended in the total rout of his forces by land and by sea. It was an advertisement to the world that Persia's might was broken. The prophecy treats it so, and deals no further with Persian history.
Æschylus at the time celebrated the passing of Persia's prestige in the lines,--
"With sacred awe The Persian law No more shall Asia's realms revere; To their lord's hand At his command, No more the exacted tribute bear.
* * * * *
Before the Ionian squadrons Persia flies, Or sinks engulfed beneath the main; Fallen! fallen! is her imperial power, And conquest on her banners waits no more."
--_"Persæ," Potter's translation._
The next great world change was to be the rise of Grecia to dominion. So, although a number of kings followed Xerxes in Persia, the prophecy passes from his disastrous invasion directly to the coming of Grecia under its "mighty king," Alexander the Great.
Grecia
_Prophecy._--"A mighty king shall stand up, that shall rule with great dominion, and do according to his will. And when he shall stand up, his kingdom shall be broken, and shall be divided toward the four winds of heaven; and not to his posterity." Dan. 11:3, 4.
_History._--Alexander the Great stood up and ruled with great dominion, over a kingdom stretching from India to Grecia, with kings yet farther west sending embassies to Babylon to make submission. But in the height of his power, as the prophecy suggests, he was suddenly cut down by death. All his posterity perished, and out of the struggles of his generals for supremacy came (301 B.C.) the division of the empire toward "the four winds," as the prophecy had declared so long before. Rawlinson, the historian, says:
"A quadripartite division of Alexander's dominion was recognized: Macedonia [west], Egypt [south], Asia Minor [north], and Syria [stretching eastward beyond the Euphrates]."--_"Sixth Monarchy," chap. 3._
The Kings of the North and South
Next, a rearrangement of these powers is noted; and it is this that gives us the key to the study of the closing portion of the long prophetic outline dealing with events of our own day. The narrative continues:
_Prophecy._--"The king of the south shall be strong, and one of his princes ... shall be strong above him;... his dominion shall be a great dominion." Verse 5.
_History._--The history testifies that the king of the south (Egypt, under Ptolemy) was strong; but one of the four princes was "strong above him." Seleucus, of Syria and the east, pushed his dominion northward, subduing most of Asia Minor, and extending his boundary into Thrace, on the European side, beyond the Dardanelles. Henceforward, as Mahaffy says,
"there were three great kingdoms--Macedonia, Egypt, Syria--which lasted, each under its own dynasty, till Rome swallowed them up."--_"Alexander's Empire," p. 89._
Thus Seleucus took the territory of the north, and the Syrian power became king of the north, its empire extending from Thrace, in Europe, through Asia Minor to Syria and the Euphrates. The seat of empire was removed from the east, and Antioch, in northern Syria, "once the third city of the world," became the famous capital.
The prophecy next foretold in remarkable detail the contests between these two strong powers, the king of the north (Syria and Asia Minor) and the king of the south (Egypt). The conflict raged back and forth till the coming of the Romans. The Holy Land was the frequent meeting place of the contending armies. The Encyclopedia Britannica describes it:
"Palestine was as of old the battle field for the king of the north and the king of the south.... The history of these times is lost in its details."--_Ninth edition, Vol. XV, art. "Macedonian Empire," p. 144._
We shall not follow the details of this contest as foretold in the prophecy, nor yet the outline of events after the coming of the Roman power ended the rivalry between Syria and Egypt. It is necessary only that we fix the events and geographic terms of this early portion of the prophecy. Then we shall have the key to the closing portion, dealing with events of the last days, when the king of the north again appears.
The Modern King of the North
In the last verses of the chapter we find the king of the north a chief actor in this same region, "at the time of the end." Verse 40. And we are told that when this power comes to its end, it is the signal that the great day of God is at hand. (See Dan. 12:1.)
It becomes a vital question, therefore, what power in these last days is the king of the north, whose end is the signal of the swift ending of the world. Inspiration gives the basis for the answer. The king of the north in the early portion of the prophecy was the power that ruled in Syria and Asia Minor, from the Euphrates to the shores of the Dardanelles. The king of the north, then, of the later portion of the prophecy, must be the power that has been ruling in this same region during the time of the end.
What power has held dominion over this territory in modern times?--The Turkish or Ottoman Empire. At this time Turkey holds almost the identical dominion of the ancient king of the north--from the Euphrates to the sea, and northward over Asia Minor and the shores of the Dardanelles.
Then today Turkey is certainly the king of the north, according to the prophecy of Daniel 11.
Of the later history of the king of the north and his end and the events following it, the prophecy says:
"Tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him: therefore he shall go forth with great fury to destroy, and utterly to make away many.
"And he shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.
"And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great Prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book." Dan. 11:44, 45; 12:1.
[Illustration: CITY OF CONSTANTINOPLE
The capital of the Turkish government.
COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N, Y.]
The opening verse of this scripture describes exactly the history of Turkey in modern times. Turkey's disquietude has come because of tidings out of the east and out of the north. In both these directions there has been a pushing back of the Turkish frontier, particularly in the north. Again and again, during this time of the end, Turkey has gone forth with fury to resist these encroachments and prevent the loss of territory.
The prophecy indicates that in some of these struggles the king of the north will yet transfer his capital:
"He shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain."
Removal to Jerusalem
This prophecy can mean nothing else than that the king of the north will eventually set up his headquarters in Jerusalem; for Jerusalem is "the holy mountain" of the Scriptures. Zech. 8:3.
It is a wise counsel that says, "Tread lightly in the details of unfulfilled prophecy." Just how events are to turn, by what route or processes the steps are to be taken, it is useless to conjecture. But there the prophecy stands. Every word of the early portion of the prophetic outline has been fulfilled to the letter in the history of the ancient empires battling century after century over this region. Every word spoken of the final scenes will as certainly be fulfilled.
In view of this prophecy,--that Jerusalem is yet to be made the headquarters of the king of the north,--it becomes highly significant that the Mohammedans regard Jerusalem as a sacred city. According to Mohammedan tradition, Jerusalem is to play a leading part in the closing history of that people. Hughes, in his "Dictionary of Islam," article "Jerusalem," summarizes the teaching: |
18503-8 |
"In the last days there will be a general flight to Jerusalem."
Speaking of Jerusalem, an old Arab commentator on the Koran, Mukaddasi (A.D. 985), said:
"As to the excellence of the city. Why, is not this to be the place of marshaling on the day of judgment, where the gathering together and the appointment will take place? Verily Makkah [Mecca] and Al Madina have their superiority by reason of the Ka'abah and the prophet,--the blessing of Allah be upon him and his family!--but, in truth, on the day of judgment both cities will come to Jerusalem, and the excellencies of them all will then be united."--_Le Strange, "Palestine under the Moslems," p. 85._
[Illustration: MODERN JERUSALEM
"He shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain." Dan. 11:45.]
Thus Moslem doctrinal teaching and tradition both point out Jerusalem as the rallying place of Moslems before the end. Again and again in recent years, as the pressure has threatened the Turkish hold on Constantinople, the thoughts of Moslems have turned toward Jerusalem as a possible capital. A few years ago a Seventh-day Adventist missionary in Constantinople wrote to his home board:
[Illustration: THE MOSQUE OF OMAR
Situated in Jerusalem, on Mt. Moriah, the site of Solomon's Temple.]
"Within the past few months quite a company of people from the Transcaucasus district have come to Ismid,--old Nicodemia,--bringing all they possess with them. Some of them possess considerable wealth. When asked if they were going to settle in Ismid, they replied that they would settle nowhere permanently at present. They stated that they had come to be prepared to go with their leader when he left Constantinople to go to Jerusalem."
Wherever the capital may first be set up following the forsaking of Constantinople,--and Turkish authorities, we are told, have discussed a number of possible locations in Asia Minor,--there stands the ancient prophecy as to the eventual seat of the king of the north,
"He shall plant the tabernacles of his palace between the seas in the glorious holy mountain."
Following that, what comes? The prophecy declares,
"Yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him."
What Comes When Turkey Falls
The fury of his goings forth "utterly to make away many," the moving of his capital from one place to another, avail nothing in the end. "He shall come to his end, and none shall help him."
The suggestion of the prophecy is that this power has hitherto been helped to stand. Here again every suggestion of the prophetic language finds its response in history. Through these later years of the time of the end the Ottoman Empire has been helped to stand, by either one power or another, or by some combination of powers. The late Lord Salisbury, while premier of Britain, thus stated the reasons for this policy of helping Turkey:
"Turkey is in that remarkable condition in which it has now stood for half a century, mainly because the great powers of the world have resolved that for the peace of Christendom it is necessary that the Ottoman Empire should stand. They came to that conclusion nearly half a century ago. I do not think they have altered it now. The danger, if the Ottoman Empire should fall, would not merely be the danger that would threaten the territories of which that empire consists; it would be the danger that the fire there lit should spread to other nations, and should involve all that is most powerful and civilized in Europe in a dangerous and calamitous contest. That was the danger that was present to the minds of our fathers when they resolved to make the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire a matter of European treaty, and that is a danger which has not passed away."--_Mansion House speech, Nov. 9, 1895._
The veteran premier stated the fear of modern statesmen that Turkey's fall would involve all civilization in a calamitous conflict. The prophecy pictures just such a catastrophe, in these words:
"He shall come to his end, and none shall help him. And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great Prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time."
What modern statesmen have seen impending and have sought to ward off, the ancient prophecy says will surely come to pass when the king of the north comes to his end,--a time of trouble for the nations such as never was.
In the New Testament
In the prophecy of Revelation 16, the last great clash of the nations is represented as following the fall of the power that rules the territory drained by the Euphrates. Describing the last events in human history, under the pouring out of the vials of judgment upon the world, the prophet says:
"The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared." Rev. 16:12.
The water of the Euphrates represents the people or power ruling by it. When anciently the Assyrians dwelt by that river and were about to invade Israel, the prophet said, "The Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria." Isa. 8:7. The waters of the Euphrates meant the Assyrian power.
Just so in this prophecy, the river stands for the people. As the Nile stood for Egypt, and the Tiber for Rome, so in all modern times the Euphrates has stood for Turkey. The "drying up" of the Euphrates must mean the ending of the Turkish power. And in the verses immediately following, Revelation pictures the gathering of the nations of the whole world to Armageddon--"the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Following Turkey's end comes the final clash of nations. The earth quakes, the cities of the nations fall, and the last judgments of God come upon a warring world.
Here, as in Daniel 12, is pictured a time of trouble for the nations such as never was, and the end of the world, when the power ruling in Syria, by the Euphrates, comes to its end.
The Approaching End
For years statesmen and observers have discussed the approaching dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Travelers in Turkey have reported that thoughtful Turkish people held the conviction that the crisis of their nation was near at hand. Years ago Mr. Charles MacFarlane wrote:
"The Turks themselves seem generally to be convinced that their final hour is approaching. 'We are no longer Mussulmans,--the Mussulman saber is broken,--the Osmanlis will be driven out of Europe by the _gaiours_, and driven through Asia to the regions from which they first sprang. It is Kismet! We cannot resist destiny!' I heard words to this effect from many Turks, as well in Asia as in Europe."--_"Kismet; or the Doom of Turkey" (London, 1853), p. 409._
A later Turkish traveler, Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt, says:
"Ancient prophecy and modern superstition alike point to the return of the Crescent into Asia as an event at hand, and to the doom of the Turks.... A well-known prediction to this effect, which has for ages exercised its influence on the vulgar and even on the learned Mohammedan mind,... places the scene of the last struggle in northern Syria, at Homs, on the Orontes. Islam is then finally to retire from the north, and the Turkish rule to cease. Such prophecies often work their own fulfilment."--_"Future of Islam," p. 95._
Thus native tradition and human forebodings have contemplated the break-up of the Turkish power, as the course of the years has witnessed the shrinkage of its territory and the ever-increasing difficulty of its position.
Now and then there has been a renewal of Turkey's vigor and prestige; then again its situation has been rendered yet more precarious. It has been a buffer between the clashing interests of the great powers. Speaking of Turkey's difficult position in this respect, the London _Fortnightly Review_, May, 1915, expressed a common view thus:
"When once the nations of Europe set foot in Asia Minor, the pace of Turkey's further downfall will be set not so much by Turkey's strength or weakness as by the mutual jealousies of the occupying powers."
The storm clouds hang ever low over the Near East; while above all the din of wars and rumors of wars, the voice of divine prophecy declares that when this power comes to its end, the closing events in human history will quickly follow.
[Illustration: CONSTANTINOPLE THE KEY CITY OF THE WORLD
The cross on which the peace of the world has been crucified.]
The solemn truth rings in our ears like a trumpet peal; the age-long Eastern Question is hastening on to its final solution, and its solution brings the end of the world.
In the light of the "sure word of prophecy" the developments of our day in the East become more than matters of grave political concern to statesmen and observers of affairs generally; they are matters of deepest personal, eternal interest to every soul. In watching the trend of international affairs, we are watching the doing of the last things among the nations.
As these things are seen coming to pass exactly as the prophecy foretold, we recognize them as God's call to men in the last generation to turn to Him and prepare their hearts to meet the coming Lord. Let no one think to wait until he sees Turkey come to its end before making his peace with God. The end of this power, as described in Revelation 16, comes during the falling of the seven last plagues. And the last verse of the preceding chapter shows that Christ's ministry for sinners in the heavenly temple has ended before the plagues begin to fall. Human probation will already have closed. The solemn decree will then have been issued in heaven:
"He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly." Rev. 22:11, 12.
"Now is the accepted time," calls the Spirit; "now is the day of salvation." 2 Cor. 6:2. We have not to make ourselves ready. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." 1 John 1:9. Our part is to believe and confess; His part is to forgive and cleanse and make us ready for the coming kingdom.
The Sinner's Plea
With broken heart and contrite sigh, A trembling sinner, Lord, I cry; Thy pardoning grace is rich and free: O God, be merciful to me!
Nor alms, nor deeds that I have done, Can for a single sin atone; To Calvary alone I flee: O God, be merciful to me!
And when, redeemed from sin and hell, With all the ransomed throng I dwell, My raptured song shall ever be, "God has been merciful to me!"
--_Cornelius Elven._
[Illustration: THE GREAT BATTLE OF ARMAGEDDON
The whole world involved in the last great clash of nations. "The nations were angry, and Thy wrath is come." Rev. 11:18.]
[Illustration: THE PLAIN OF ESDRAELON AND MT. MEGIDDO
"He gathered them together into a place called ... Armageddon." Rev. 16:16.]
ARMAGEDDON
THE FINAL CLASH OF EARTHLY EMPIRES
"We are living, we are dwelling, In a grand and awful time, In an age on ages telling, To be living is sublime. Hark! the waking up of nations, Gog and Magog to the fray; Hark! what soundeth? Is creation Groaning for her latter day?"
The sure word of prophecy that foretold the rise and fall of ancient empires, and outlined the general course of world history through the ages, describes also the last great struggle of the nations.
The proverb says, "Peace is the dream of the wise, but war is the history of man." And divine prophecy assures us that the history of this present world will end amid scenes of conflict.
Many in our time have come to think that civilization must reach a better way of composing the rivalries of the nations. The prophecy forewarns us otherwise. In fact, the prophetic word points to the talk of peace and safety amid preparations for war, as a distinct sign of the latter days.
"In the last days," Isaiah says, "many people shall go and say:"
"They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." Isa. 2:2-4.
This is what "many people" were to be saying. But the real conditions in the last days are described as exactly the opposite. The prophet Joel describes the real spirit of the world in these times:
"Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles [the nations]: Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up: beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong." Joel 3:9, 10.
The context shows that the prophet is speaking of the last times, when "the day of the Lord is near." Verse 14.
The Prophecy Fulfilling
This is what we have seen in our time, as never before in the history of man,--the product of the plowshare and the pruning hook being turned into instruments of war.
About twenty-five years ago the late Marquis of Salisbury, speaking as a man grown gray in the service of the state, asked a London audience the question, "What is the great change that marks this time as different from the times when most of us were young men?" The aged statesman answered his own question, saying that it was the arming of the nations, the swift race upon which the powers had then recently entered, to increase their naval and military armaments. It is a sign of our times, answering to the prophetic forecast.
Throughout the present generation the thoughtful have watched with grave forebodings the preparations of the nations for war. Queen Alexandra, of Britain, once said of it:
"I was educated in the school of a king who was, before all things, just; and I have tried, like him, always to preach love and charity, I have always mistrusted warlike preparations, of which nations seem never to tire. Some day this accumulated material of soldiers and guns will burst into flames in a frightful war that will throw humanity into mourning on earth and grieve our universal Father in heaven."
As the race of armaments went forward on a scale never before thought of, statesmen and writers began to make use of the word "Armageddon" to describe the conflict that they saw was inevitable. Years ago the London _Contemporary Review_ said:
"Odd things are happening everywhere.... Russia, Germany, England--these are great names; they palpitate with great ideas; they have vast destinies before them, and millions of armed men in their pay, all awaiting Armageddon."
In June, 1909, Lord Rosebery, in a speech before a press convention in London, commented gravely upon the significance of the feverish haste with which the nations were arming themselves, "as if for some great Armageddon, and that in a time of the profoundest peace."
To quote from a popular American magazine, of the same year:
"Today all Europe is divided into two armed camps, waiting breathlessly for the morrow with its Armageddon."--_Everybody's Magazine, November, 1909._
Thus, everywhere, observers saw that the rivalry of interests among the nations was leading to a conflict so overwhelmingly vast that only the Scriptural word "Armageddon," with its appeal to the imagination, seemed adequately suggestive of its proportions.
Every passing year added to the intensity of feeling and the antagonism of interests. In 1911 the London _Nineteenth Century and After_ said:
[Illustration: UNITED STATES BATTLESHIP "NEVADA"
Photograph taken from the Manhattan Bridge. New York.
COPYRIGHT BY UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD. N.Y.]
"Never was national and racial feeling stronger upon earth than it is now. Never was preparation for war so tremendous and so sustained. Never was striking power so swift and so terribly formidable.... The shadow of conflict and of displacement greater than any which mankind has known since Attila and his Huns were stayed at Châlons, is visibly impending over the world. Almost can the ear of imagination hear the gathering of the legions for the fiery trial of peoples, a sound vast as the trumpet of the Lord of hosts."--_Quoted in the Literary Digest, May 6, 1911._
[Illustration: COMRADES AFTER THE BATTLE
Soldiers bringing in two wounded captives.
PHOTO BY CENTRAL PHOTO SERVICE. N.Y.]
What the ancient prophecy foretold--the preparing of war in the last days, the waking up and arming of the nations--we have seen fulfilling before our eyes in this generation.
Satanic Agencies at Work
In prophecies of the gathering of the nations for the last great struggle, Inspiration draws aside the veil, and allows us to see the agencies that have been stirring up the world for the war. As the prophet John was shown in vision the scenes of the last days, he saw the invisible powers of Satan, "the spirits of devils," going forth "unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Rev. 16:14.
Earnest-minded statesmen have lamented their helplessness to combat the forces and influences pressing the world on toward conflict. In one of his last speeches as premier of Great Britain, the late Marquis of Salisbury was defending yet further calls for army and navy appropriations. He said:
"For years public opinion was in favor of a pacific policy, but now that state of opinion has passed away. The tide has turned, and who am I, and who are we, that we should attempt to stem the tide? If the tide has turned, we shall have to go with it. We are in the presence of forces far larger than we can wield."
What those forces were, the aged statesman did not recognize, but the prophecy tells us. The prophet was shown the evil spirits from Satan going forth everywhere as the end nears, to stir up the whole world to the last great conflict.
Sir Edward Grey, British foreign secretary, described these agencies very accurately. Speaking in the House of Commons, Nov. 27, 1911, he said:
"It is really as if in the atmosphere of the world there were some mischievous influence at work, which troubles and excites every part of it."
It is all coming to pass exactly as the sure word of prophecy foretold.
The conviction that great and decisive events are at hand has taken possession of many hearts in all the world. When the European war broke out in 1914, on a scale unprecedented in human history, it was no wonder that the question sprang to many lips, "Is it Armageddon?"
The question was not lightly asked. The committee of the Church Missionary Society (Church of England), one of the greatest missionary organizations in the world, sent a message to its missionaries in all lands at the outbreak of the war. In this message was a call to prepare for the coming of the Lord:
"It may be that these events will quickly usher in the return of Christ to gather His saints together from the four quarters of the earth.... Many see in the events preceding and accompanying this terrible cataclysm of war the signs of our Lord's near return. If so, blessed will that servant be whom his Lord when He cometh shall find giving 'their food in due season' to those fellow servants who have been put in his charge."--_Church Missionary Review, November, 1914._
Timely as this call was, it was evident, from the prophetic scriptures, that the conflict then opening could not be the Armageddon of the Apocalypse, for the prelude to that final clash of nations is an event yet in the future--the downfall of a nation whose part in the closing scenes is clearly described in the prophecy of the coming Armageddon.
The end of the power which rules over the territory through which the river Euphrates flows, is the prelude to Armageddon. The prophecy says:
"The sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the East might be prepared." Rev. 16:12.
Next follows the gathering of "the whole world" to "the battle of that great day of God Almighty." Verse 14.
Through all modern times Turkey has been identified with the Euphrates. The region of Syria and Asia Minor, long held by Turkey, has been the historic meeting place of the East and the West. In the London _Fortnightly Review_, May, 1915, Mr. J.B. Firth wrote:
"When, with the fall of Ottoman sovereignty at Constantinople, the Turk is driven out of Europe, there will arise once more the eternal question of the possession of Asia Minor. That land is the corridor between Europe and Asia, along which have passed most of the European conquerors--the Russians alone excepted--who have invaded Asia, and most of the Asiatic conquerors who have invaded Europe."
The fall of the Turkish power in this Euphrates region will, in some manner, prepare the way for "the kings of the East" to come up to the final conflict.
The Awakening of the East
The same spirit that has been stirring up the West in preparation for the contest has been working in the East also. Year after year observers have pointed out the great changes taking place in Asia. September, 1909, the London _Contemporary Review_ said:
"The whole of Asia is in the throes of rebirth. At last we may see these three--the yellow race, the Indian race, and the Arab-Persian Mohammedan race. And all that is making for the Armageddon."
A writer in the May, 1913, issue of the London _Nineteenth Century and After_, reviewing the situation at the close of the Balkan War, said:
"A new spirit is abroad in the East. It arose on the shores of the Pacific when Japan proved that the great powers of Europe are not invulnerable. North and south and west it has spread, rousing China out of centuries of slumber, stirring India into ominous questioning, reviving memories of past glory in Persia, breeding discontent in Egypt, and luring Turkey onto the rocks."
With all the nations stirred up by the spirit agencies of the god of this world, the prophet next saw the armies of earth gathering to the last great battle. The prophecy continues:
"And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon." Rev. 16:16.
Armageddon means the hill, or mount, of Megiddo, which overlooks the plain of Esdraelon, the historic battle ground of northern Palestine. Carmack says of it:
"Megiddo was the military key of Syria; it commanded at once the highway northward to Phoenicia and Coele-Syria and the road across Galilee to Damascus and the valley of the Euphrates. It was moreover the chief town in a district of great fertility, the contested possession of many races. The vale of Kishon and the region of Megiddo were inevitable battle fields. Through all history they retained that qualification; there many of the great contests of southwestern Asia have been decided. In the history of Israel it was the scene of frequent battles. From such association the district achieved a dark nobility; it was regarded as a pre-destined place of blood and strife; the poet of the Apocalypse has clothed it with awe as the ground of the final conflict between the powers of light and darkness."--_"Pre-Biblical Syria and Palestine," p. 82._
Thus Armageddon, as the "military key of Syria," marks Palestine and the Near East as the great international storm center in the final conflict.
The Political Storm Center
In vision, nearly two thousand years ago, the prophet saw the forces of the last days gathering around this pivotal region. Today observers recognize the eastern Mediterranean as indeed the pivotal point around which international interests involving East and West naturally revolve.
Some years ago, in discussing railway development in Asia and Africa, and the great highways of sea transportation, the London _Fortnightly Review_ said:
"Palestine is the great center, the meeting of the roads. Whoever holds Palestine, commands the great lines of communication, not only by land, but also by sea."
Again, the Manchester _Guardian_, emphasizing the importance attaching to this strategic center, said during the great war:
"Egypt, as things are,--and the fact cannot be too often emphasized,--is the weak spot in our system of imperial defense by sea power. Not until Palestine is in our possession can Egypt be regarded as safe."--_Quoted in Literary Digest, Feb. 12, 1916, p. 369._
Other nations have recognized the strategic value of a territory so situated. Thus political considerations make this region pointed out by the prophecy a center of conflicting interests. Hogarth, in his book, "The Near East," calls it "the time-honored storm center of the eastern Mediterranean."
The Religious Storm Center
To the conflict of political interests is added the rivalry of religious sentiment. Commenting on the religious associations of Palestine in relation to the international political situation, the London _Spectator_ some years ago stated the matter thus:
"People often ask how it is that the future of Palestine presents such difficulties. The reason is simply that Jerusalem--you cannot separate Jerusalem from Palestine--is the sacred city of so many creeds and warring faiths. Not only is it the holy place of all the Christian churches,--and two of them quarrel bitterly over it, the Greeks and the Latins,--but it is also one of the most sacred places in the Mohammedan world. Mecca and Medina are hardly more sacred than the Mosque of Omar. That is a fact which is often ignored by Europeans, who forget that to turn the Mohammedans out of the temple inclosure would disturb the whole Moslem world, from the Straits Settlements to Albania. We must never forget that Mohammedan pilgrims from India visit Jerusalem, just as Christian pilgrims visit it from Europe. Lastly, Jerusalem is profoundly sacred to the Jews, and the Jews are beginning to be locally numerous and important. Most certainly there are no elements of difficulty wanting in the problem of the future of Palestine."
History records the fact that rivalry over the care of the traditional holy places helped to precipitate one European war--that of the Crimea.
In the study of the Eastern Question, we have seen that the prophecy of Daniel 11 marks Jerusalem as still a storm center in the closing scenes. A British consul in Jerusalem, in the days following the Crimean War, set forth suggestively his view of one of the factors in the Eastern Question. He wrote:
"The very heart and kernel of the Eastern Question can only be reached in the Holy City, Jerusalem, where the Eastern and Western churches are still wrestling as of old for the mastery.... Now as heretofore, disguise the object as they may, they are striving for a prize which has not been destined by divine Providence for either; and this prize is no less than a virtual dominion over the Christian world, from a throne of government within the sanctuaries of the Holy City; and the possession of that throne would involve possession of the key to universal dominion."--_"Stirring Times: Records from Jerusalem Consulate Chronicles," by James Finn, introductory note by editor, p. xxiii._
Foretold in Prophecy
By every consideration--political, racial, and religious--the Near East supplies all the elements for involving the whole world when once the sweeping displacements begin which the prophecy foretold, and for which statesmen in our day have sought to prepare.
Long ages ago the prophet of God, in vision on the Isle of Patmos, was shown the clash of interests and the gathering of the nations around this historic center. Before our eyes today we see events tending to give to this region the very character assigned to it by the prophecy. It was written in the sure word of prophecy in order that, as the events foretold are seen approaching, men may believe and turn to God, and find salvation from the things coming upon the earth.
Into the prophecy of this sixteenth chapter of Revelation, describing the gathering of forces to Armageddon, our Saviour interjects the warning and the appeal:
"Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame." Verse 15.
The last earthly events that the prophecy is dealing with--the pouring out of the seven last plagues, and the clash of Armageddon--come after probation closes. The close of probation, the passing of the ministry of Christ in the heavenly temple, will come as a thief, unannounced. Our only safety is in yielding heart and life to him now for cleansing, and accepting from his hand the garments of his own righteousness, freely offered to every one.
What Comes with Armageddon
Whatever ambitions or aims may be the impelling motives when the gathering to the great conflict comes, one thing is certain: Armageddon is to bring triumph and world dominion to no earthly power. As the nations gather, the Lord intervenes from heaven, and the history of the kingdoms of this world is closed at last. The prophet tells the sequel to Armageddon:
"He gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon. And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done. And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great. And the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. And every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And there fell upon men a great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding great." Rev. 16:16-21.
The fall of the Turkish power is the prelude to the gathering of the nations to the battle of Armageddon. And Armageddon is the prelude to the end of the world and Christ's glorious coming as King of kings and Lord of lords. The armies gathered to battle for supremacy find themselves suddenly arrayed against the armies of heaven. Another prophecy describes the scene when Christ is revealed:
"The kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?" Rev. 6:15-17.
Again, as the great searchlight of divine prophecy lights up the way before us, we see by the course of present-day events that the end is drawing very near. By what sudden turn of affairs the last things to be done in history may be set in motion, none can foresee. The Saviour admonishes every soul, "Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh." Matt. 24:44.
It is for this time of waiting, especially, that Christ spoke the parable of the ten virgins who waited for the bridegroom. All sincerely wanted to meet him; all expected to be ready. But when the cry was raised, "Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him!" only five were ready. The others lacked the oil that was to give them light. We know what the oil represents--the genuine heart experience of the grace and love of Christ.
[Illustration: THE TEN VIRGINS
"They that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut." Matt. 25:10.]
Those overtaken unready, hastened away to get oil. "And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and _they that were ready_ went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut." Matt. 25:10. Those that were ready went in; those that were getting ready were too late. How came some to be ready?--They were ready all the time; they kept ready. This lesson is for us now. Our only safety is in being ready every day, keeping sins forgiven, the life surrendered to God.
[Illustration: THE MILLENNIUM
The millennium is the closing period of God's great week of time--a great sabbath of rest to the earth and to the people of God.
It follows the close of the gospel age, and precedes the setting up of the everlasting kingdom of God on earth.
It comprehends what in the Scriptures is frequently spoken of as "the day of the Lord."
It is bounded at each end by a resurrection.
Its beginning is marked by the pouring out of the seven last plagues, the second coming of Christ, the resurrection of the righteous dead, the binding of Satan, and the translation of the saints to heaven; and its close, by the descent of the New Jerusalem, with Christ and the saints, from heaven, the resurrection of the wicked dead, the loosing of Satan, and the final destruction of the wicked.
During the one thousand years the earth lies desolate; Satan and his angels are confined here; and the saints, with Christ, sit in judgment on the wicked, preparatory to their final punishment.
The wicked dead are then raised; Satan is loosed for a little season, and he and the host of the wicked encompass the camp of the saints and the holy city, when fire comes down from God out of heaven and devours them. The earth is cleansed by the same fire that destroys the wicked, and, renewed, becomes the eternal abode of the saints.
The millennium is one of "the ages to come." Its close will mark the beginning of the new earth state.]
[Illustration: CHRIST COMING FOR HIS OWN
"They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years," Rev. 20:4.]
THE MILLENNIUM
The word "millennium" means "a thousand years." This definite period is referred to specifically in but one chapter of the Bible, the twentieth of Revelation; and in that chapter it is spoken of repeatedly. We find it to be:
The period during which the saints reign with Christ in judgment.
The period during which Satan is bound.
The measure of time between the two resurrections, that of the just and that of the unjust.
An examination of the scriptures bearing upon the millennium will show:
1. The events that mark its beginning.
2. The events that occur during the thousand years.
3. The events that come at the end of the period.
We shall find it clearly taught in these scriptures:
That the millennium begins at the second coming of Christ.
That the reign of the saints with Him in judgment is not on this earth, but in heaven.
That this earth, void of human inhabitants, is Satan's prison house during the thousand years.
That at the end of the thousand years the judgment determined is executed upon Satan and all the wicked.
That this earth, purified by the fires of the last judgment, and renewed, becomes the eternal home of the saved.
1. Events at the Beginning of the Thousand Years
The key to the time is furnished by the declaration that the millennium begins with--
The Resurrection of the Just
Speaking of the risen saints, the Scripture says:
"They lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. But the rest of the dead [the wicked] lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection." Rev. 20:4-6.
There are to be two resurrections. The apostle Paul said that this was the teaching of all Scripture: "There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust." Acts 24:15. The first resurrection, that of the just, marks the beginning of the thousand years.
Christ's Second Coming
When is this first resurrection, in the order of events in this "day of the Lord"? It is at the second advent of Christ. One scripture, out of many, will suffice to state it:
"The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first." 1 Thess. 4:16.
As the Saviour comes in glory, with all the holy angels, the graves are opened, and His voice awakens His children who sleep in the dust.
"He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." Matt. 24:31.
The time of Christ's second coming, therefore, is the beginning of the millennium.
The Righteous Taken to Heaven
The living righteous are translated, and, together with the risen saints, are taken to heaven, as the apostle says:
"Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord." 1 Thess. 4:17.
This was the Saviour's promise:
"In My Father's house are many mansions.... I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also." John 14:2, 3.
The Destruction of the Wicked
At Christ's second coming the wicked are slain. The unbelieving left without shelter in that day, cannot endure the presence of such glory as will burst upon the world:
"The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ." 2 Thess. 1:7, 8.
The Binding of Satan
With the saints in heaven, beyond the reach of Satan's wiles, and with the wicked dead, not to live again till the thousand years are finished, Satan is "bound"--confined by divine power to this earth, which becomes his prison house, there being neither saint nor sinner upon whom to ply his arts of deception. No prisoner was ever more effectually chained. The symbolical language of the prophet pictures the scene:
"I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season." Rev. 20:1-3.
These are the events that mark the beginning of the thousand years: Christ's second coming, the resurrection of the just, the ascent of all the redeemed to the city of God, the death of the wicked, and, in consequence, the binding of Satan.
2. Events During the Thousand Years
In Heaven
Scene after scene of glory is spread before us in the visions the prophets were given of the redeemed in the city of God. The prophet John says:
"After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands.... Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple." Rev. 7:9-15.
They "serve" in the temple of the Lord, the prophet says; while the poet sings:
"Whence came the armies of the sky, John saw in vision bright? Whence came their crowns, their robes, their palms, Too pure for mortal sight?
"From desert waste, and cities full, From dungeons dark, they've come, And now they claim their mansion fair, They've found their long-sought home."
One service in which the saved have part during the thousand years is the work of judgment that still remains, preparatory to the final visitation of sin and the destruction of Satan and all his works. The prophet saw this work going forward in the heavenly courts, the redeemed associated with Christ in the service:
"I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshiped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years." Rev. 20:4.
It was to this work of judging the wicked and the evil angels, that the apostle Paul referred in the counsel to the Corinthians: "Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?... Know ye not that we shall judge angels?" 1 Cor. 6:2, 3.
On Earth
While in heaven above the saved are with Christ and the holy angels before the throne, and follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth, it is to be remembered that on earth all is desolation and emptiness. The wicked have been slain by the glory of Christ's coming. By the quaking of the earth the cities of the nations have fallen in ruin, islands have been removed, and mountains cast into the depths of the sea. The condition of the earth during this time of desolation is thus described by the prophet:
"I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by His fierce anger." Jer. 4:23-26.
"Without form, and void," said the prophet. This is the same phrase that is used in the opening verses of Genesis to describe the chaotic state of the earth in the beginning. At the beginning of creation week the earth was in a state of emptiness and chaos--an "abyss," as it is called in the Greek translation of Genesis. Again, during this thousand-year period, the earth is an "abyss," or a desolate waste. "Abyss" is the meaning of the word translated "bottomless pit" in the text telling of the binding of Satan by the mighty angel of God:
"He laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit." Rev. 20:2, 3. The Revised Version says, "And cast him into the abyss."
Confined to this pit or abyss of desolation, as a prisoner in a prison house, with none to tempt, the author of sin has a thousand years in which to view the ruin that sin has wrought in the earth that once left its Maker's hand beautiful and perfect, unmarred by any curse.
3. Events at the End of the Thousand Years
At the end of the millennium, this earth becomes the scene of events that close the great controversy between Christ and Satan.
The Descent of the Holy City
The judgment work in heaven having been accomplished, the hour has come for the execution of the judgment upon sin and sinners. The holy city comes down out of heaven. The prophet saw its descent in vision:
"I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven." Rev. 21:2.
The Loosing of Satan
"When the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall go out to deceive the nations." Rev. 20:7, 8.
With all the wicked destroyed by the glory of Christ's second coming, Satan had been effectually bound; but now, as the city descends, the voice of Christ calls forth the wicked dead, and Satan is thus loosed, and assumes control again of those who have chosen him as their master.
It is the time of which the Scripture speaks: "The rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished." Verse 5. The prophet saw the hosts of the lost called forth. "The sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell [the "grave," margin] delivered up the dead which were in them." Verse 13.
Thus Satan's subjects come forth to the last judgment. The resurrection of the wicked of all the ages is the loosing of Satan. Here again is his kingdom, and again he plies his deceptions and takes up anew his fight against God. How very natural that Satan should persuade the wicked that he has raised them to life, that his word in the beginning was true, "Ye shall not surely die"! If they are immortal, why may they not yet prevail against God? Satan rallies his angels and the hosts of the wicked, in numbers "as the sand of the sea," to make an attack upon the city of God.
"How vast the concourse! not in number more The waves that break on the resounding shore, The leaves that tremble in the shady grove, The lamps that gild the spangled vaults above; Those overwhelming armies, whose command Said to one empire, Fall; another, Stand; Whose rear lay wrap't in night, while breaking dawn Rous'd the broad front, and called the battle on; Great Xerxes' world in arms, proud Cannæ's field, Where Carthage taught victorious Rome to yield, Immortal Blenheim, fam'd Ramillia's host;-- They all are here, and here they all are lost; Their millions swell, to be discerned in vain, Lost as a billow in th' unbounded main."
--_Edward Young's "Last Day."_
"They went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city." Verse 9.
The Wicked Before the Bar of God
But as the hosts of evil compass the city, they are halted by the glory and majesty of the Redeemer's presence, enthroned as eternal victor over sin. Just here must apply the prophet's words:
"I saw a great white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works." Rev. 20:11, 12.
[Illustration: THE HOLY CITY DESCENDS
"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men." Rev 21:3.]
During the thousand years the records in heaven have been reviewed, and the degrees of guilt established. Now the judgment is to be pronounced and executed. But first the record of the books and the eternal righteousness of God's holy law are flashed by divine power upon the consciences of all the lost--"their conscience also bearing witness" (Rom. 2:15) that they are without excuse.
The Destruction of Sin
Sin is now to be blotted from the universe of God; and those who have chosen to be identified with sin perish with it. All that Infinite Love can do has been done in the gift of Christ to save men from the transgression of the holy law of God. That salvation rejected, there is nothing remaining that heaven can offer. There is no further sacrifice that can be made. "There remaineth no more sacrifice for sins." Heb. 10:26.
Then follows the last scene in the conflict with evil:
"They went up on the breadth of the earth, and compassed the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city: and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them. And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire.... And death and hell [the grave] were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death." Rev. 20:9-14.
The second death ends sin and the author of sin, and death itself. The controversy is ended. Christ's death has purged sin from the universe of God.
The Earth Purified and Made New
The fires that consume the wicked melt the earth and purify it from all trace of the curse. It is the day of which Peter wrote:
"Wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." But after this cleansing of every element of this sin-cursed earth, the promise of God will be fulfilled in the earth made new, as the eternal home of the saved. As Peter says, after telling of the day of burning, "Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 2 Peter 3:12, 13.
"O sweet and blessed country, The home of God's elect! O sweet and blessed country, That eager hearts expect! Jesus, in mercy bring us To that dear land of rest; Who art, with God the Father, And Spirit, ever blest."
[Illustration: MOSES VIEWING THE PROMISED LAND
"Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." Matt. 5:5.]
[Illustration: THE SPIES' RETURN
"The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land." Num. 14:7.]
THE HOME OF THE SAVED
The Land of Peace
The Bible opens with a new heaven and a new earth, perfect from the Creator's hand; with man sinless and having access to the tree of life in the midst of the Eden paradise, out of which flowed a river that spread its life-giving waters through the earth.
The Bible closes with a new heaven and a new earth; with man upright and sinless, having right to the tree of life growing in the midst of Eden; with the river of life flowing out from the garden of God, clear as crystal.
Between the two scenes spreads out the panorama of six thousand years of conflict with sin. It is a story of the fall of man, of the loss of his Eden home, of the curse that marred the earth, of sin and sorrow and death overspreading all.
The Restorer
But from the hour when the shadow of sin fell upon the earth, there has been a light shining in the darkness. Amid the ruin that sin had wrought, there appeared the great Restorer.
The inspired record gives a word-picture of Jesus taking man's place to win back the lost dominion:
"Unto the angels hath He not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak. But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; Thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of Thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that He put all in subjection under Him, He left nothing that is not put under Him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. But we see Jesus." Heb. 2:5-9.
Just where Adam fell and lost his dominion over the earth, we see Jesus, the second Adam, taking man's place and winning back the lost inheritance. That is why the picture of the new earth and man's sinless state depicted in the first two chapters of the Bible is repeated in the last two chapters with even greater fulness of glory. God's original plan and purpose will be carried out, and this earth, renewed, will be the eternal home of sinless men and women, redeemed by grace.
Sin will be found not to have frustrated, but only to have delayed, the purpose of God. And what is six thousand years in working out the divine plan? In our brief span we may divide human history into ancient, medieval, and modern; but in heaven's life a thousand years are but as "a watch in the night;" and these six watches are to heaven but as one night of grief and of loving ministry in rescuing the lost.
It has cost all that heaven had to give. But the infinite Gift was made, and all heaven has wrought at the work. Of the angels it is written, "Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" Heb. 1:14.
Bringing Back the Lost Dominion
Of all the worlds that shine in the heavens, declaring the glory of God, this earth is the one that was lost. Its light went out in darkness. It wandered from the fold of God's perfect creation.
Then the divine Shepherd came to find it and bring it back. And the angels that rejoiced when they saw this earth created,--"when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy,"--will again rejoice as the Lord brings back His own,--this earth, redeemed from the curse, shining in the bright universe again with the perfection of the glory of God.
Christ not only redeems lost men, but He is to redeem this lost earth. "The Son of man," He said, "is come to seek and to save that which was lost." Luke 19:10.
By sinning, man lost not only his righteousness and his life, but his dominion as well. Originally man had dominion "over all the earth." Gen. 1:26. As the psalmist says, "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of Thy hands." Ps. 8:6. He was prince and ruler of the earth. But when he yielded to Satan's temptation, he yielded up that dominion to the enemy, thus placing himself in the power of his foe. Satan thus became the "prince of this world," exercising the dominion wrested from man.
But through Christ, this dominion is to be restored. The prophet of old said:
"Thou, O tower of the flock, the stronghold of the daughter of Zion, unto thee shall it come, even the first dominion; the kingdom shall come to the daughter of Jerusalem." Micah 4:8.
The Hope of the Promise
The promise of the gospel of salvation is the promise not only of life eternal through faith, but of an eternal inheritance in the earth made new, the fulfilment of the Creator's plan when He made this world to be the home of man. This was the star of hope that shone before Adam and Eve as they stepped forth from Eden into a dying world. It was the promise to Abraham, "the promise, that he should be the heir of the world." Rom. 4:13.
It was not the promise of the world in its present state. For the Lord gave Abraham "none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on." Acts 7:5. Abraham himself did not look for the promise to be fulfilled in this sinful earth, but in the earth made new, redeemed from sin. The Scripture says of his hope:
"By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country: ... for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." Heb. 11:9, 10.
It was in the new earth and the New Jerusalem that Abraham, the father of the faithful, expected to receive the eternal inheritance promised to him and to his seed. And there all the faithful will find their inheritance.
"If ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." Gal. 3:29.
The psalmist said, "The meek shall inherit the earth." Ps. 37:11. Christ repeated it: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." Matt. 5:5.
The New Earth and the New Jerusalem
Through the prophet Isaiah the Lord described the re-creation of this earth to be the home of the saved:
"Behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I create: for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and joy in My people: and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying." Isa. 65:17-19.
It is not of old Jerusalem that the prophet is speaking, but of the New Jerusalem, which John saw coming down, with the saints, from God out of heaven. He saw it descending upon the earth at the end of the thousand years, and saw the wicked come forth from their graves to judgment. Then he saw the fires of the last day falling upon the lost, consuming sin and sinners, and purifying the earth itself from every trace of the curse. It is the day of which Peter wrote, "Wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat." But he adds, "Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness." 2 Peter 3:12, 13.
Out from the dissolved elements of the earth and the atmospheric heavens the Creator's power again calls forth new heavens and a new earth, the old creation cleansed and renewed in the perfection of the original Eden paradise. It is coming; for John saw it in vision. "I saw," he says, "a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away." Rev. 21:1.
He saw the city which had come down from heaven--those mansions that Christ is now gone to prepare--the New Jerusalem, the holy capital of the eternal kingdom of the saints, where Christ's own throne is set.
"I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And He that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And He said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful." Rev. 21:3-5.
It passes comprehension; but it is true. And the life of the saved in their eternal inheritance will be just as real as is life upon this present earth.
[Illustration: THE SAINTS' ETERNAL HOME
"I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away." Rev. 21:1.]
"They shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them." "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, saith the Lord." Isa. 65:21, 25.
The whole earth will be as the Eden paradise planted by God in the beginning. And from week to week and from month to month the saved will gather to worship before the glorious throne in the holy city.
"As the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before Me, saith the Lord, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that from one new moon to another, and from one Sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before Me, saith the Lord." Isa. 66:22, 23.
The Glories of the Saints' Eternal Home
As the first two chapters of the Bible tell of earth's original perfection, so the last two chapters constitute one psalm of ecstasy over the indescribable glories of the earth made new, with its city of light, the walls of jasper, the gates of pearl, the river of life flowing from the throne of the Lamb, clear as crystal, with the widespreading tree of life on either side of the river. And supreme above all, Jesus Himself, "the King in His beauty," without whom there would be no glory even in that city foursquare; "for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."
"Oh, heaven without my Saviour Would be no heaven to me; Dim were the walls of jasper, Rayless the crystal sea!
"He gilds earth's darkest valleys With light and joy and peace; Then what must be the radiance Where sin and death shall cease?"
Next to the loveliness and grace of Christ our Saviour, the glories of this world to come have inspired the sweetest hymns of hope for longing hearts. How often has the spirit been lifted above earth's trials as we have sung,
"O that home of the soul! in my visions and dreams Its bright, jasper walls I can see Till I fancy but thinly the veil intervenes Between the fair city and me.
"That unchangeable home is for you and for me, Where Jesus of Nazareth stands; The King of all kingdoms forever is He, And He holdeth our crowns in His hands.
"O how sweet it will be in that beautiful land, So free from all sorrow and pain, With songs on our lips and with harps in our hands, To meet one another again!"
"But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."
Through the ages, the children of the promise have been journeying toward the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God, and they have confessed themselves pilgrims and strangers in this present world. As they have followed the way of righteousness,--oftentimes a thorny path,--it has been with the shining city ever before their vision. As they have fallen in death, it has been with closing eyes fixed upon "that day" when Christ shall come to take His people to the New Jerusalem preparing above
"The Lamb there in His beauty Without a veil is seen. It were a well-spent journey Though seven deaths lay between."
Now earth's course is nearly run. It is but a little way to the holy city, where the water of life flows clear as crystal from the midst of the throne. The water of life is really there; for the Lord showed it to the prophet John in vision, that he might tell us that he saw it. "I John saw the holy city," he says, "and he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal." Rev. 21:2; 22:1.
[Illustration: THE MASTER AT THE DOOR
"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me." Rev 3:20.]
Christ invites every one to share the eternal inheritance, giving assurance of His power to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him. He is knocking at the door of every heart, asking admittance, in order that He may take away all sin, and prepare the soul for the heavenly home.
And the glories of the holy city invite us to come:
"The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." Rev. 22:17.
"He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus."
[Illustration: EVENTIDE
Home to the fold.]
INDEX OF SUBJECTS AND AUTHORITIES
Abraham, parable of rich man and Lazarus, 284
"Abridgment of Christian Doctrine," on change of Sabbath, 156
Adolphus, on study of prophecy, 305
Advent message, Bates as advocate of, 244
Advent movement, extent of, Brock on, 241
Advent movement of 1844, 240
Æschylus, on Medo-Persia, 121
Æschylus, on Xerxes' host, 323
Alexander, conquests of, Plutarch on, 121, 122
Alexander, dominion of, Rawlinson on, 324, 325
Alexander, empire of, Appian on, 122
Alexander, first king of Greece, 207
Alexander, greatness of, Arrian on, 44
Alexander, Justin on, 207
Alexander, Lucan on, 45
Alexandra, Queen, on preparations for war, 339
Alexandria, library at, sacred books of Jews in, 187
Angels attending throne of God, 296
Angels, God's messengers, 297
Angels, guardian, 300
Angels in kingly courts, 299
Angels, messengers of deliverance, 300
Angels, their ministry, 295-301
Antitypical day of atonement, 237, 240, 241
Apollonius, description of Babylon by, 33
Apostasy in last days, Daniel 8, 248
Appearing of Christ, 59
Appian, on Alexander's empire, 122
Arian kingdoms plucked up, 129
Arian powers uprooted by Belisarius, 134
Armageddon, "Contemporary Review" on, 339
Armageddon, "Everybody's Magazine" on, 339
Armageddon, final clash of empires, 337-349
Armageddon, foretold in prophecy, 346, 347
Armageddon, Lord Rosebery on, 339
Armageddon, or Mt. Megiddo, Carmack, on 344
Armageddon, prelude to, 343
Armageddon, sequel of, 347, 348
Arming of the nations, 106, 107
Arrian, on Alexander's greatness, 44
Artaxerxes, date of decree to rebuild Jerusalem, 223
Artaxerxes, date of reign of, 225-227
"Astronomy," Chambers, on falling stars, 101
Atonement, antitypical day of, 237, 240, 241
Avebury, Lord, on war, 112
Babylon, description of, by Apollonius, 33, 34
Babylon, desolation of, 31-35
Babylon, desolation of, Layard on, 35
Babylon, "Encyclopedia of Islam" on, 35
Babylon in prophecy and history, 119, 120
Babylon, prophecy concerning, 39-41
Babylon, prophecy of, confirmed by history, 41-43
Babylon, Strabo on, 34
Bacon, Francis, on increase of knowledge, 306, 307
Ball, Sir Robert, on falling stars, 100
Bampfield, died in prison for Sabbath keeping, 179
Baptism, conditions necessary to, 199, 200
Baptism for believers, 200
Baptism, form of, 200-203
Baptism, manner of, Dean Stanley on, 202
Baptism, manner of, Neander on, 201
Baptism, manner of, Pullus on, 202
"Baptism," meaning of word, Calvin on, 201
"Baptism," meaning of word, Luther on, 201
Baptism, memorial of resurrection, 199-203
Baptism of infants, Dean Stanley on, 202
Baptism of Jesus, time of, 230, 231
Baptists, Sabbatarian, 179
Baptists, Seventh Day, in America, 179, 180
Barnes, Dr. Albert, on division of Grecia, 122
Bates, as a Sabbath keeper, 244
Baudrillart, on papal persecution, 151
Beast, the fourth, of Daniel 7, 126-129
Beasts, empires represented by, 118
Belisarius, Arian powers uprooted by, 134
Bellarmine, on great words of little horn, 147
Bemont and Monod, "Medieval Europe", 137
Bengelius, on judgment-hour warning, 249
Berosus, on exploits of Nebuchadnezzar, 120
Berthier enters Rome, Rickaby on, 141
Besant, Mrs. Annie, on spiritualism of the East, 273
Bible, agency in the new birth, 15, 17
Bible and tradition, 251, 252
Bible, Christ the central theme of, 23
Bible, Dr. Harris on, 20, 21
Bible, Erasmus on, 21
Bible for all mankind, 21
Bible, given to the world, Faber on, 308
Bible, God its author, 14
Bible, language of, Van Dyke on, 21, 22
Bible, our safety and defense, 18
Bible societies, organization of, 308
Bible, source of all doctrine, 20
Bible, speaks to our day, 13
Bible, Spurgeon on authorship of, 14
Bible, Spurgeon's experience with, 14
Bible, the book that talks, 13
Bible, the bread of life, 18
Bible, the Christian's shield, 18
Bible, the living word, 15
Bible, the word that creates, 15
Bible, the word that works within, 17
Biddolf, on lessons from Lisbon earthquake, 82
Bishop of Rome as head of church, Justinian on, 133
Blunt, on doom of Turks, 333
Bogue, on persecution for Sabbath keeping, 178, 179
Bonar's hymn, on state of dead, 282
Bower, on Sabbath observance, 174
Bread of life, Bible as the, 18
Brerewood, on Sabbath in first centuries, 173
Britten, Mrs. Emma, on Spiritualism, 269
Brock, on extent of the advent movement, 241
Bruce, on desolation of Tyre, 31
Bury, on achievements of Justinian, 132
Calamy, on Bampfield as a Sabbatarian, 179
Calvin, on meaning of word "baptism", 201
Canon, Ptolemy's, Lindsay on, 225
Carmack, on Armageddon, or Mt. Megiddo, 344
Chambers, Dr., on Sabbath in England, 177
Chambers, on falling stars, 101
Change of Sabbath, 153-167
Charles I, on Sabbath observance, 177
China open to the gospel, 309
Christ and Satan, controversy between, 257-263
Christ, central theme of Bible, 23
Christ, closing work of, in heaven, 216
Christ, death of, 231
Christ, glorious appearing of, 59
Christ, lost dominion redeemed by, 363
Christ, second coming of, 51-63, 352
Christ, the restorer, 362
Christian work of Countess of Huntingdon, 63
Christs, false, 74
"Church Missionary Review," on war a sign of end, 343
Clarke, Dr. Adam, on "living soul", 283
Cleansing of the sanctuary, 211, 213-217
Clerke, on glory of falling stars, 101, 102
Clerke, on star shower of 1833, 94, 95
Coming of Christ at the door, 115
Coming of Christ, beginning of signs of, 75-77
Coming of Christ, love of pleasure a sign of, 109
Coming of Christ, manner of, 53-55
Coming of Christ, political unrest a sign of, 106
Coming of Christ, prelude to, 59
Coming of Christ, promise of, 52
Coming of Christ, purpose of, 56, 57
Coming of Christ, signs of, 74, 75
Coming of Christ, signs of, in industrial world, 110
Coming of Christ, signs of, in Matthew 24, 65, 66, 112, 113
Coming of Christ, signs of, in the social world, 109
Coming of Christ, signs of, upon the earth, 105
Coming of Christ, the Saviour's prophecy of, 65-77
Coming of Christ, to be as in days of Noah, 109
Coming of Christ, world evangelization a sign of, 112
Commandments, the ten, 182
Comte, M., on passion for pleasure, 10
Connecticut Legislature, Dark Day in, 90
Conroy, on temporal sovereignty of popes, 129
Constantine, Sunday law of, 16
"Contemporary Review," on Armageddon, 339
"Contemporary Review," on awakening of East, 344
Controversy between Christ and Satan, 257
Controversy, earth the battle-ground of, 259
Conybeare and Howson, on the Sabbath, 165
Cottrell, R.F., poem by, 171
Countess of Huntingdon, Christian work of, 63
Covenant, confirming of the, 231
Creative power of the Word, 15
Croly, on Justinian as founder of papal supremacy, 133
Cuneiform writing, 312
Cyrus, conquests of, Rawlinson on, 121
Cyrus, Xenophon on, 206
Dale, on non-sacredness of Sunday, 166
Daniel, book of, unsealed, 304
Daniel 2, prophecy of, 39-49
Daniel 7, prophecy of, 117-129
Daniel 8, prophecy of, 205-211
Daniel, prophecy of 1260 years, 131, 132
Daniel, vision of great beasts, 118
Dark Day, Boston "Gazette" on, 88
Dark Day, cause of unknown, 87
Dark Day, contemporary records of, 88, 89
Dark Day, Dr. Samuel Stearns on, 89, 90
Dark Day, effect on Connecticut Legislature, 90
Dark Day, "Independent Chronicle" on, 88, 89
Dark Day in New England, Williams on, 86
Dark Day, prophecy of, fulfilled, 85
Dark Day, Timothy Dwight on, 90
Dark Day, Webster on, 87
Dark Day, Whittier on, 86, 87, 90, 91
Darkening of the sun, 85
Dead, not agencies of Spiritualism, 271
Dead, sleep of, 280-282
Dead, righteous, raised to life, 60
Death, man's state in, 275, 280-282
Delaire, Mme. Jean, on Theosophy and Spiritualism, 272, 273
Desolation of Babylon, 31
Destruction of the wicked, 61, 353
"Dictionary of Christian Antiquities," on Change of Sabbath, 166
Discontent, F.T. Martin on growth of, 112
Doctrinal Catechism, on change of Sabbath, 156
Doctrinal Catechism, on power of church, 252
Doctrine, Bible the source of, 20
Dominion, bring back the lost, 363
Dream of Nebuchadnezzar, 39, 40
Dwight, on Dark Day, 90
Earth, cleansed and renewed, 364-367
Earth, purified, 359
East, awakening of, 344
East, "Nineteenth Century and After," on new spirit in, 344
Eastern Question, Jerusalem heart of, Finn on, 346
Eastern Question, Maspero on, 322
Eastern Question, relation to end of world, 334
Eastern Question, the, 321-335
Eighteen forty-four, Advent movement in, 240-244
Elliott, on great words of little horn, 147
Elven, Cornelius, poem by, 335
Empires, four great universal, 117-129
Encyclopedia Britannica, on Palestine as battle field, 325, 326
Encyclopedia of Islam, on Babylon, 35
End of the wicked, 287-293
End, time of the, 303-317
Erasmus, on the Bible, 21
Eternal fire, 292, 293
Euphrates dried up, 332
Europe, kingdoms of modern, 46-48
Everlasting fire, 292
Everlasting punishment, 289-293
"Everybody's Magazine," on Armageddon, 339
Evil, origin of, 257-263
Executive judgment, 261-263
Faber, G.S., on Bible given to the world, 308
Faith, justification by, 191-197
Falling stars, 93
Falling stars, sign to world, 99
False Christs, 74
Farrar, on prophecy fulfilled, 35, 36
Ferraris, on titles assumed by Pope, 149
Fig tree, parable of, 115
Finlay, on beginning of history of Middle Ages, 134, 135
Finlay, on rapid changes in sixth century, 132
Fire, everlasting, 292, 293
Fire, lake of, 290
Fire, unquenchable, 292, 293
First angel's message, 239
First day rest, 164-166
Firth, on fall of Ottoman power, 343
Flammarion, on density of star shower, 95
"Forever and ever," meaning of, 291, 292
"Fortnightly Review," on Turkey's position, 333, 334
Fox family, origin of modern Spiritualism, 269
France, decree of, to abolish religion, 140
French Revolution, Lamartine on, 140
French Revolution, significant events of, 140
"Gazette and Country Journal" on dark day, 88
Gehenna, a valley near Jerusalem, 293
Gentiles, gospel carried to, 234, 235
Gibbon, on power of Rome, 46
Gibbon, on Roman Empire, 209
Gibbon, on site of Nineveh, 29
Gibbon, on struggle for Italy, 134
God's challenge to false religious systems, 25
Goldastus, on Sabbath keepers in Alpine valleys, 175
Gospel, agencies for work of, 311
Gospel, China, opened to the, 309
Gospel, doors open to, in all world, 309
Gospel for our day, the, 247, 248
Gospel message, solemn warning in, 248, 249
Gospel, open doors for, Dr. Pierson on, 310
Gospel, printing press an agency of, 318
Gospel, telegraph used in carrying, 318
Gospel, the everlasting, 248
Gospel to the Gentiles, 234, 235
Goths, defeat of, 134
Great controversy, earth the battle ground of, 259
Grecia, Alexander first king of, 207
Grecia, conquests of, under Alexander, 121, 122
Grecia, division of, Dr. Albert Barnes on, 122
Grecia, prophecy and history of, 206, 207, 121, 324
Grecia, prophecy concerning, in Daniel, 244
Greece, division of, 208
Greeley, Spiritualism tested by, 269
Grey, Sir Edward, on Satanic agencies, 342
Guardian angels, 300
Gutenberg's first types, 314
Hales, on authenticity of Ptolemy's canon, 225
Harris, on the Bible, 20-21
Hastings, on Valley of Hinnom, 293
"Hearst's Magazine," on growth of discontent, 112
Heresies, papal order against, 150
Herodotus, on doctrine of immortality, 291
Herodotus, on Pythius, the Lydian, 323
Hieroglyphics, the "Ox Song", 312
Hinnom, Valley of, 293
Hippolytus, on power of Rome, 46
Hippolytus, on prophecy of Rome fulfilled, 126
Hiscox, on change of Sabbath, 166, 167
Hiscox, on Sunday mark of paganism, 170
History, prophecy confirmed by, 35-37
Hobbs, Professor, on Lisbon earthquake, 79
Holtzman, on Bible and tradition, 252
Home of the saved, 361-370
Horace, ode on Rome, 47
Horace, on might of Rome, 208
Hughes, on Jerusalem's part in closing history, 328
Huguenots, persecution of, Kurtz on, 76
Humboldt, on other displays of falling stars, 99
Humphreys, on appearance of falling stars, 96
Hutton, on abolition of religion in France, 140
Hymn on state of dead, by Horatius Bonar, 282
Image of Daniel 2, 118
Image to the Papacy, 251
Immortality, doctrine of, 291
Immortality, doctrine of, Herodotus on, 291
Immortality, God only has, 282
Immortality of the soul, 275-285
Immortality, the gift of God, 275, 282
Immortality, when bestowed, 279
Increase of knowledge, 306-317
"Independent Chronicle," on Dark Day, 88, 89
Infant baptism, Dean Stanley on, 202
Ising, visit of, to site of Nebuchadnezzar's palace, 35
Italy, struggle for, Gibbon on, 134
Jerusalem, Artaxerxes' decree to rebuild, 223-225
Jerusalem, date of decree to restore, 223
Jerusalem, destruction of temple at, 70
Jerusalem, headquarters of king of the North, 328
Jerusalem, heart of Eastern Question, Finn on, 346
Jerusalem, last days of, 66
Jerusalem, last gathering place, Mukaddasi on, 328
Jerusalem, Moslems turn toward, 330
Jerusalem, part of, in closing history, Hughes on, 328
Jerusalem, signs of approaching doom of, 67-69
Jessup on falling stars, 100
Jesus, the restorer, 362
Jesus, time of baptism of, 230
Jews, fanaticism of, Ridpath on, 67
Joseph, prophecy fulfilled to, 26
Josephus, on destruction of temple, 70
Judgment, Christ's work in sanctuary, 216, 217
Judgment hour, many witnesses proclaim, 240, 241
Judgment-hour message, 247-255
Judgment-hour message, a call to loyalty, 249
Judgment-hour message, John Wesley on, 249
Judgment-hour warning, Bengelius on, 249
Judgment, law of God the standard in, 189
Judgment, message of, in 1844, 239
Judgment, the hour of God's, 237
Judgment, time of the investigative, 235-237
Judgment upon Satan, 261-263
Jurieu, on fall of the Papacy, 140, 141
Justification and righteousness, 195
Justification by faith, 191
Justification not by works, 192
Justification, what it is, 196, 197
Justinian, achievements of, Bury on, 132
Justinian as source of papal power, Croly on, 133
Justinian, decree of, in A.D. 533, 133
Justin, on Alexander, 207
Keyser, on Sabbath keeping in Norway, 175
Killen, on change of Sabbath, 169
Kingdom of God, when to be set up, 48
Kingdoms of modern Europe, 46
King of the North, the modern, 326
King of the North, removal of, to Jerusalem, 328
Kings of the North and South, 325
Knowledge, increase of, 306
Knowledge, increase of, Francis Bacon on, 306, 307
Knowledge, increase of, Lorimer on, 307
Kurtz, on persecution of Huguenots, 76
Lake of fire, the, 290
Lamartine, on French Revolution, 140
Langley, on falling stars, 101
Lang, on Sabbath in Scotland, 174
Laodicea, Council of, on Sabbath keeping, 173, 174
Lawgiver, only one, 188
Law of God changed by Papacy, Melanchthon on, 154
Law of God, character of, 183
Law of God, existed from the beginning, 184, 185
Law of God, given anew at Sinai, 186
Law of God, given with his own voice, 187
Law of God, office of, 183, 184
Law of God, relation of, to justification, 191, 193
Law of God, standard in the judgment, 189
Law of God, standard of righteousness, 188
Law of God, the, 182-189
Law of God unchangeable, 153
Layard, on the desolation of Babylon, 35
Lazarus, parable of rich man and, 284, 285
Lecky, on papal persecution, 150
Leo XIII, encyclical letter of, 149
Leonard, Dr., on missionary activity, 307
"Library of Christian Doctrine," on change of Sabbath, 154, 155
Life only in Christ, 275-285
Lindsay, on Ptolemy's Canon, 225
Lisbon earthquake, extent of, 81
Lisbon earthquake, James Parton on, 80
Lisbon earthquake, lessons from, John Biddolf on, 82
Lisbon earthquake, Professor Hobbs on, 79
Lisbon earthquake recognized as a sign, 82
Lisbon earthquake, Voltaire on, 80
Lisbon earthquake, world set to thinking by, 80
Little horn, 208
Little horn and fourth kingdom, 126, 127
Little horn, great words of, Bellarmine on, 147
Little horn, great words of, Elliott on, 147
Little horn in prophecy and history, 127
Little horn, period of supremacy of, 145
Little horn, time of rise of, 145
Little horn, work of, 145-147
Lorimer, on increase of knowledge, 307
Lucan, on Alexander, 45
Lucan, on greatness of Rome, 209
Lucifer, the light-bearer, 258
Luther, on meaning of word "baptism", 201
Luther, on use of printing art, 318
MacFarlane, on approaching end of Turks, 333
Mahaffy, on kingdoms of north and south, 325
Man, nature of, and state in death, 275-285
Manner of Christ's coming, 53
Manning, Cardinal, on power of Rome, 125
Mark, or sign, of papal authority, 251-253
Mark, or sign, use of, Potter on, 250
Martin, on growth of discontent, 112
Maspero, on Eastern Question, 322
Matthew 24, prophecy of, 65-77
Mears, Dr., on conditions after Christ, 67
"Medieval Europe," Bemont and Monod, 137
Medo-Persia, Æschylus on, 121
Medo-Persia in prophecy and history, 120, 121, 206
Medo-Persia, prophecy of, Daniel 2, 43, 44
Megiddo, or Armageddon, Carmack on, 344
Melanchthon, on change of law by Papacy, 154
Message of the judgment hour, 247-255
Messengers of deliverance, angels as, 300
Messiah, covenant confirmed by, 231-235
Messiah, time of baptism of, 230
Michael, standing up of, 327
Middle Ages, beginning of history of, Finlay on, 134, 135
Millennium, beginning of, 351, 352
Millennium, diagram of, 350
Millennium, events at beginning of, 352
Millennium, events at end of, 356
Millennium, events in heaven during, 354
Millennium, events on earth during, 355
Millennium, the, 351-359
Milner, on falling stars, 94
Milton, on Sabbath observance, 177, 178
Missionary activity, Dr. Leonard on, 307
Missionary developments of century, 113
Missionary movement, a sign of Christ's coming, 112
Missionary movement, increased activity of, 113
Missions, open doors for, 309
Missions, Pierson on open doors for, 310
Monarchies, the four universal, 118
Monod, Bemont and, "Medieval Europe", 137
Mortal, the natural state of man, 276
Mortality, universal, 277
Moslems, Jerusalem as capital for, 330
Motley, on persecution in Netherlands, 150
Mukaddasi, on Jerusalem as last gathering place of nations, 328
Myers, on history of Greece, 208
Nations, anger of, 107
Neander, on first-day collections, 166
Neander, on manner of baptism, 201
Nebuchadnezzar, dream of, 39-41
Nebuchadnezzar, exploits of, Berosus on, 120
Nebuchadnezzar, palace of, Ising on, 35
Nebuchadnezzar, stone records of, 43
Necromancy, divine warnings against, 267
Netherlands, persecution in, Motley on, 150
New birth, Bible an agency of, 15
Newcomb, on falling stars, 95
New earth, the, 364-370
New Jerusalem, descent of, 356
New Jerusalem, the, 364-367
Newman, Cardinal, on rites borrowed from paganism, 169
Newton, Sir Isaac, on prophetic study, 304, 305
"Nineteenth Century and After," on new spirit in East, 344
"Nineteenth Century and After," on preparation for war, 339, 341
Nineveh, Rawlinson on, 27
Nineveh, site of, Gibbon on, 29
Nineveh, the witness of, 27
Olmsted, on brilliancy of falling stars, 97
Olmsted, on shooting stars, 95
Origin of evil, 257-263
Ottoman empire, 326
Ottoman power, fall of, Firth on, 343
Our day, gospel for, 247
Paganism, rites borrowed from, Cardinal Newman on 169
Palestine as battle field, Encyclopedia Britannica on, 325, 326
Palestine as great center, "Fortnightly Review" on, 345
Palestine, as political storm center, 345
Palestine, as religious storm center, "Spectator" on, 345
Papacy, a persecuting power, 137
Papacy, change of times and laws by, 153
Papacy, claims of, 155, 156
Papacy, counterpart of little horn, 145, 147
Papacy, end of supremacy of, 139
Papacy, extinction of, Canon Trevor on, 141, 142
Papacy, fall of, Jurieu on, 140, 141
Papacy, France strikes against, 140
Papacy, great words of, Elliott on, 147
Papacy, image to the, 251
Papacy, law changed by, Melanchthon on, 154
Papacy, orders of, to destroy heresy, 150
Papacy, persecution by, Lecky on, 150
Papacy plucked up Arian kingdoms, 129
Papacy, power of, Leo XIII on, 149
Papacy shall wear out saints, 149
Papacy, sign of authority of, 156
Papacy, supremacy of, 129
Papacy, supremacy of acknowledged, 132, 133
Papacy, time of its supremacy, 131, 132
Papal authority, mark of, 251
Papal claims in encyclical letter of Leo XIII, 149
Papal persecution, Baudrillart on, 151
Papal persecution, Lecky on, 150
Papal persecutions, "Western Watchman" on, 151
Papal power, Sunday the mark of, 252
Papal power, work of the, 250
Papal supremacy, beginning of, 132
Papal supremacy, end of, 139
Papal supremacy officially recognized, 133
Parable of the fig tree, 115
Parable of the rich man and Lazarus, 284, 285
Parable of the ten virgins, 348, 349
Parton, on Lisbon earthquake, 80
Peace and safety, 107
Peace prophecies, 338
Persecution after Christ's death, 235
Persecution for Sabbath observance, 178
Persecution in Netherlands, Motley on, 150
Persecution in time of the end 73
Persecution, papal, Baudrillart, on 151
Persecution, papal, Lecky on 150
Persecution, signs of end follow, 73-75
Persecution under Papacy, 149-153
Persecutions, papal, "Western Watchman" on, 151
Persia, rise and fall of, 322-324
Phalerius, king urged by, to secure Jewish sacred books, 187, 188
Pierson, Dr., on open doors for gospel, 310
"Plain Talks," on Sunday observance, 251
Pleasure, passion for, M. Comte on, 109
Pleasure, passion for, sign of Christ's coming, 109
Plutarch, on Alexander, 45
Plutarch, on Alexander's conquests, 121, 122
Political unrest, 106, 107
Polybius, on dominion of Rome, 208
Pope Gregory, on Sabbath observance, 174
Pope Innocent II, orders of, to destroy heresies, 150
Pope Leo XIII, encyclical letter of, 149
Pope Leo XIII, on power of Papacy, 149
Pope taken prisoner, Joseph Rickaby on, 141
Pope, titles assumed by, Ferraris on, 149
Pope Vigilius, date of reign of, Schaff on, 137
Popes, a new order of, 135
Popes declared saints, 137
Popes no longer declared saints, 137
Popes, temporal power of, Conroy on, 129
Potter, on use of a mark, or sign, 250
Present-day conditions, meaning of, 105-115
Press, the Mighty (poem), 317
Pride, cause of Satan's fall, 258
Prince of Tyre, 258
Printing, Gutenberg's first types, 314
Printing, Luther on art of, 318
Printing press, a gospel agency, 318
Printing press, illustrations of, 315, 316
Printing press, the mighty, 317
Prophecies of Christ's coming, 52
Prophecy, Armageddon foretold in, 346, 347
Prophecy concerning Babylon, 31-33, 40
Prophecy fulfilled, Farrar on, 36
Prophecy fulfilled to Joseph, 26
Prophecy fulfilling, Marquis of Salisbury on, 338
Prophecy of Daniel 7, 117-129
Prophecy of Daniel 8, 205-211
Prophecy of Daniel unsealed, 304
Prophecy, of increase of knowledge, 306
Prophecy of Matthew 24, 65-77
Prophecy of the judgment, Revelation 14, 239
Prophecy of Tyre, 30, 31
Prophecy of 2300 years fulfilled, 229-237
Prophecy, study of, John Adolphus on, 305
Prophecy, the sure word of, 25
Prophecy, witness of the centuries to, 25-37
Prophetic outline of world's history, 39-49
Prophetic period, a great, 219-227
Prophetic study, Sir Isaac Newton on, 304, 305
Prophetic word, testimony of history to, 35-37
Protestants, persecution of, the "Western Watchman" on, 151
Ptolemy's canon, authenticity of, Hales on, 225
Ptolemy's canon, Lindsay on, 225
Pullus, on manner of baptism, 202
Punishment, everlasting, 289, 292
Purification of the earth, 359
Pythius, the Lydian, Herodotus on, 323
Railroads, construction of, Wallace on, 313
Rawlinson, on Alexander's dominion, 324, 325
Rawlinson, on Cyrus's conquests, 121
Rawlinson, on division of Alexander's kingdom, 122
Rawlinson, on Nineveh, 27
Reformation a progressive work, 255
Religion, abolition of, by French, Hutton on, 140
Resurrection, baptism the memorial of, 199
Resurrection of the just, 59, 61, 352
Resurrection of the wicked, 62
Resurrection, the second, Satan freed at, 262
Resurrections, the two, 288, 289
Rich man and Lazarus, parable of, 284, 285
Rickaby, on Berthier entering Rome, 141
Ridpath, on fanaticism of Jews, 67
Righteousness and justification, 195-197
Righteousness, God's law the standard of, 188
Righteousness, the gift of Christ, 193, 194
Righteous taken to heaven, 353
Righteous, translation of living, 59-61
Righteous, with Christ a thousand years, 62
Roman Empire divided, 47, 127
Roman Empire, Gibbon on, 209
Roman Papacy, rise of, to supremacy, 129
Romans, power of, Strabo on, 46
Rome, Alexander's plans for conquest of, Plutarch on, 44
Rome, Bishop of, head of church, 133
Rome divided, 48
Rome, dominion of, Polybius on, 208
Rome, greatness of, Lucan on, 209
Rome, in prophecy and history, 123-125, 208
Rome, might of, Horace on, 208
Rome, ode of Horace on, 47
Rome, power of, Cardinal Manning on, 125
Rome, power of, Gibbon on, 46
Rome, power of, Hippolytus on, 46
Rome, prophecy of, in Daniel 2, 45, 46
Rome, prophecy of, fulfilled, 125
Rome, prophecy of, fulfilled, Hippolytus on, 126
Rome, rise of, in West, 44
Rosebery, Lord, on Armageddon, 339
Rosse, astronomical observations by, 100
"Run to and fro," Wright on meaning of, 311
Sabbatarian Baptists, 179
Sabbath, and the first day, 164-166
Sabbath, at time of exodus, 160
Sabbath, change of, "Abridgment of the Christian Doctrine" on, 156
Sabbath, change of, "Dictionary of Christian Antiquities" on, 166
Sabbath, change of, Hiscox on, 166, 167
Sabbath, change of, "Library of Christian Doctrine" on, 154, 155
Sabbath, Conybeare and Howson on, 165
Sabbath, example and teaching of Jesus regarding, 162
Sabbath, given at Sinai, 161
Sabbath, how changed, 167
Sabbath in Alpine valleys, Goldastus on, 175
Sabbath in England, Stennet on, 179
Sabbath in Europe, Dr. Chambers on, 177
Sabbath, in time of disciples, 163
Sabbath keepers in Norway, Keyser on, 175
Sabbath keepers in Scotland, Lang on, 174
Sabbath keepers in Scotland, Skene on, 175
Sabbath keeping, action of Council of Laodicea on, 173, 174
Sabbath keeping after New Testament times, 173-181
Sabbath keeping among Moravians, 180
Sabbath keeping, Bampfield died for, 179
Sabbath keeping, persecution for, Bogue on, 178, 179
Sabbath keeping, Roger Williams on, 180
Sabbath, Killen on change of, 169
Sabbath observance, Bower on, 174
Sabbath observance, Brerewood on, 173
Sabbath observance, Charles I on, 177
Sabbath observance, John Milton on, 177, 178
Sabbath observance, Pope Gregory on, 174
Sabbath observance, Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History on, 174
Sabbath, persecution for keeping, 178
Sabbath, seventh-day, record of, 160-164
Sabbath, the sign of God's authority,253
Sabbath, the Bible,159-170
Sabbath, through Israel's history, 162
Saints, eternal home of, 361, 367
Saints, Papacy to wear out, 149
Saints, time of resurrection of, 352
Salisbury, Lord, on policy of helping Turkey, 331
Salisbury, Marquis of, on preparation for war, 342
Salisbury, Marquis of, on prophecy fulfilling, 338
Sanctuary, Christ's ministry in, 216
Sanctuary, cleansing of, 211, 213-217
Santee, L.D., poem by, 103
Satan, binding of, 353
Satan, cause of fall of, 258
Satan, end of reign of, 262
Satan, judgment upon, 261-263
Satan, the loosing of, 356
Satanic agencies at work, 341-343
Satanic agencies, Sir Edward Grey on, 342
Saved, home of the, 361-370
Schaff, on date of Tiberius's reign, 230
Schaff, on Vigilius made Pope, 135
Second coming of Christ, 51-63
Second coming of Christ, see Coming of Christ.
Ségur, on observance of Sunday by Protestants, 251
Seventh-day Adventists, origin of, 243, 244
Seventh-day Baptists in America, 179, 180
Seventh-day Sabbath, Bible record of, 160-164
Seventy weeks, events of, 229
Seventy weeks, starting point of, 221, 222
Signs in the heavens, 74
Signs of Christ's coming, 74-77
Signs of Christ's coming, given in Matthew 24, 65, 66
Signs of Christ's coming, in industrial world, 110
Signs of Christ's coming, in social world, 109
Signs of the end, 65
Signs of the end, signal to watch, 102
Signs of the last days, 73, 74
Signs upon the earth, 74, 105
Sinai, law of God given anew at, 186
Sinai, Sabbath given at, 161
Sin, the end of, 358
Sin, the origin of, 257
Sin, the wages of, 289
Skene, on Sabbath in Scotland, 175
Sleep of the dead, 280-282
Sophocles, on universal mortality, 277, 278
"Soul" and "spirit," Scriptural use of, 283
Soul, immortality of, 275
Soul, living, Dr. Clarke on, 283
Soul, the "living," comments on, 283
Sozomen's Ecclesiastical History, on Sabbath observance, 174
Spangenberg, on Sabbath-keeping Moravians, 180
"Spirit" and "soul," Scriptural use of, 283
Spirit, death declared to have no power over, 269
Spirits, angels as ministering, 295
Spiritualism, ancient and modern, 265-273
Spiritualism and theosophy, Mme. Jean Delaire on, 272, 273
Spiritualism, first declaration of, 265-267
Spiritualism, modern, originated in Fox family, 269
Spiritualism, modern, Prof. Wallace on, 265, 268
Spiritualism of East, taught by Mrs. Besant, 273
Spiritualism, progress of, Mrs. Underhill on, 269
Spiritualism, satanic agencies of, 271
Spiritualism tested by Greeley, 269
Spiritualism, the climax of deception, 272
Spiritualism, the dead not agencies of, 271
Spiritualism, warnings against, 267
Spurgeon, on authorship of Bible, 14
Spurgeon's experience with Bible, 14
Stanley, Dean, on baptism of infants, 202
Stanley, Dean, on collection on first day, 166
Stanley, Dean, on manner of baptism, 202
Stanley, Dean, on Sunday, day of the sun, 170
Star shower, density of, Flammarion on, 95
Stars, falling, a sign to the world, 99
Stars, falling, brilliancy of, Olmsted on, 97
Stars, falling, Chambers's Astronomy on, 101
Stars, falling, described by Jessup, 100
Stars, falling, glory of, Clerke on, 101, 102
Stars, falling, Humphreys on, 96
Stars, falling, impression made by, Milner on, 99
Stars, falling, "Journal of Commerce" on, 97
Stars, falling, nature of, Twining on, 96
Stars, falling, other displays of, Humboldt on, 99, 100
Stars, falling, Professor Langley on, 101
Stars, falling, Sir Robert Ball on, 100
Stars, falling, Thomas Milner on, 94
Stars, shooting, Olmsted on, 95
Stars, the falling, 93-102
Stearns, Dr. Samuel, on dark day, 89, 90
Stennet, on Sabbath in England, 179
Stephen, stoning of, 234
Stoning of Stephen, 234
Strabo, on desolation of Babylon, 34
Strabo, on power of Romans, 46
Sun, darkening of, 85
Sunday, day of the sun, Dean Stanley on, 170
Sunday, Dean Stanley on collection on, 166
Sunday law, Constantine's, 169
Sunday law, Constantine's, Webster on, 169, 170
Sunday, mark of paganism, Hiscox on, 170
Sunday, mark of papal power, 252
Sunday, Neander on collection on, 166
Sunday, not sacred, Dale on, 166
Sunday observance by Protestants, Ségur on, 251
Sunday observance, "Doctrinal Catechism" on, 252
Sunday previous to Constantine, 169
Sunday rest, not of God, 165
Sunday, sign of papal authority, 156
Tabernacle, service of earthly, 214
Telegraph, first demonstrated, 314
Telegraph, used in carrying gospel, 318
Temple at Jerusalem, destruction of, as predicted, 70
Ten horns of beast, Daniel 7, 127
Ten kingdoms, Daniel 2, 46-48
Ten virgins, parable of, 348, 349
Testimony of history to fulfilment of prophecy, 36
Theosophy and Spiritualism, Mme. Delaire on, 272
Thief on the cross, the, 284
This Same Jesus, 54-56
Thomson, on Tyre's departed glory, 31
Thousand years, diagram of, 350
Thousand years, end of, 289
Thousand years, righteous with Christ, 62
Thwaites, Clara, "The Last Hour," poem, 114
Tiberius Cæsar, time of reign of, 230, 231
Time of the end, 303-317
Times and laws, Papacy to think to change, 153
Tradition and the Bible, Council of Trent on, 252
Translation of the righteous, 59-61
Travel, revolution in, 313
Trent, Council of, on tradition and the Bible, 252
Trevor, Canon, on revolt against absolutism, 141
Tribulation, the period of, 73
Turkey, Lord Salisbury on helping of, 331
Turkey, position of, "Fortnightly Review" on, 333, 334
Turkish power, fall of, prelude to Armageddon, 348
Turks, doom of, Blunt on, 333
Turks, end of, near, MacFarlane on, 333
Twelve hundred and sixty years, 131-137
Twelve hundred and sixty years, end of, 139
Twenty-three hundred days, diagram of, 220
Twenty-three hundred years, ending of, 235
Twenty-three hundred years of Daniel 8, 219
Twenty-three hundred years, prophecy fulfilled, 229-237
Twining, on nature of falling stars, 96
Two resurrections, the, 288, 289
Tyre, desolation of, Bruce on, 31
Tyre, glory departed, Thomson on, 31
Tyre, prophecy concerning, 30, 31
Underhill, Mrs. A.L., on progress of Spiritualism, 269
Universal empires, four great, 117
Unquenchable fire, 292, 293
Valley of Hinnom, Hastings on, 293
Van Dyke, Dr. Henry, on language of Bible, 21, 22
Veil, rending of, 231
Vigilius, Pope, date of reign, Schaff on, 135, 137
Voltaire, on Lisbon earthquake, 80
Wages of sin, 289
Wallace, Alfred Russel, on revolution in travel, 313
Wallace, Alfred Russel, on Spiritualism, 265, 268
War, god of, Lord Avebury on, 112
War, preparation for, Marquis of Salisbury on, 342
War, preparation for, "Nineteenth Century and After", 339-341
War, preparation for, Queen Alexandra on, 339
War, sign of end, "Church Missionary Review" on, 343
Webster, Noah, on dark day, 87
Webster, Prof. Hutton, on Constantine's Sunday law, 169, 170
Weeks, the seventy, starting point of, 221, 222
Wesley, John, on judgment-hour message, 249
"Western Watchman," on persecution of Protestants, 151
Whittier, on dark day, 86, 90
Wicked, before bar of God, 357
Wicked, destruction of, 61, 353
Wicked, end of, 287-293
Wicked, final destruction of, 356-359
Wicked, resurrection of, 62
Williams, on dark day in New England, 86
Williams, Roger, on Sabbath keeping, 180
Word, see Bible.
Word that creates, the, 15
Wordsworth, on dawn of Reformation, 149
World-wide movement, a, 239-245
Wright, on meaning of "run to and fro", 311
Xenophon, on Cyrus, 206
Xerxes' host, Æschylus on, 323
Years, the 1260, of Daniel's prophecy, 131-137
Zinzendorf, a Sabbath keeper, 180
Zinzendorf, Nikolaus, poem by, 227
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Our Day, by W. A. Spicer |
35957-0 | Produced by RStephen Hutcheson, Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
THE GO AHEAD BOYS IN THE ISLAND CAMP
BY ROSS KAY
Author of “The Search for the Spy,” “The Air Scout,” “With Joffre on the Battle Line,” “Dodging the North Sea Mines,” “The Go Ahead Boys on Smugglers’ Island,” “The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave,” etc., etc.
PREFACE
Every one who loves outdoor life knows the charm and the pleasures of camping. To look back on the days passed in a tent by the shore of some forest lake or stream is a source of never-ending enjoyment to those of us who have had that experience. In this book I have tried to describe the adventures of four boys who spent a vacation camping in the Adirondacks, and who indulged in water sports of various kinds while there. Many of the episodes are true or at least founded on the experiences of former boys who enjoyed them. If the boys who may read this tale will derive some of the pleasure in hearing about them that the real boys did in participating in them I shall feel repaid.
--Ross Kay
CONTENTS
· CHAPTER I—MAKING CAMP · CHAPTER II—A MISHAP · CHAPTER III—JOHN HEARS SOMETHING · CHAPTER IV—SETTING SAIL · CHAPTER V—THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS · CHAPTER VI—ADRIFT · CHAPTER VII—AN UNEXPECTED MEETING · CHAPTER VIII—A PREDICAMENT · CHAPTER IX—DANGER · CHAPTER X—WAIT AND SEE · CHAPTER XI—WHAT GEORGE DID · CHAPTER XII—A CHALLENGE · CHAPTER XIII—THE OUTCAST · CHAPTER XIV—TALKING IT OVER · CHAPTER XV—PREPARATION · CHAPTER XVI—GRANT MISSES · CHAPTER XVII—GEORGE’S STRATEGY · CHAPTER XVIII—A CLOSE MATCH · CHAPTER XIX—A CLOSE SHAVE · CHAPTER XX—GEORGE SURPRISES HIS FRIENDS · CHAPTER XXI—HOW THE PLAN WORKED · CHAPTER XXII—A STRANGE PERFORMANCE · CHAPTER XXIII—AN UNEXPECTED HONOR · CHAPTER XXIV—IN QUEST OF GAME · CHAPTER XXV—THE WORM TURNS · CHAPTER XXVI—AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER · CHAPTER XXVII—CONCLUSION
THE GO AHEAD BOYS IN THE ISLAND CAMP
CHAPTER I—MAKING CAMP
“Here is the place to put the tent, String.”
“I think this spot is better.”
“Not at all. It’s higher over here and consequently we won’t be flooded by every rain that comes along and besides that, the flies won’t be so apt to bother us.”
“All right, just as you say.”
The boy addressed as “String” had been named John Clemens by his parents. He was six feet three inches tall, however, and extremely thin so that the nickname applied to him seemed quite appropriate. At any rate his friends thought so and that was the name by which he usually was called.
Talking with him and arguing about the location of the tent was Fred Button, a boy as short as John was tall. He was so small that the nicknames of Stub, Pewee and Pygmy had all been applied to him, the last one sometimes shortened to Pyg much to Fred’s disgust. He had found out long ago, however, that there was no use in showing his irritation at this for it only served to increase the frequency with which the name was applied to him.
These two boys, together with two of their friends, were pitching camp preparatory to spending a summer on one of the Adirondack lakes. Grant Jones was one of these boys and the other was George Washington Sanders. Grant was the most serious-minded of the four and everything he did he did with all his heart. As a result he was a leader not only on the athletic field but in his studies as well. The other boys usually came to him for advice and looked up to him in many ways. The fact that he was of a serious nature, however, did not mean that he was not oftentimes just as full of fun as anybody.
George Washington Sanders having been named after the father of his country, had acquired the name of Pop. He was often in mischief and took especial delight in teasing his three friends. It was almost out of the question to be angry at him, however, for he never lost his temper for more than a moment himself and was always bubbling over with spirits and fun. He was the life of any crowd he was in.
While the argument between John and Fred was in progress Grant and George approached.
“What are you two arguing about?” demanded Grant.
“We’re trying to decide where to put the tent,” replied Fred. “What have you two been doing all this time?”
“Putting the canoes away,” said Grant. “Where are you going to locate the tent, anyway?”
“Well,” said Fred, “John wants it over in that hollow, but I say it ought to be up on this little plateau.”
“I think you’re right, Fred,” said George. “We won’t get so many flies up there.”
“Just what I said,” exclaimed Fred triumphantly. “What do you think about it, Grant?”
“I think your place is better,” said Grant. “Besides everything else we’ll have a good view of the lake from there.”
“All right,” said John, pretending to be very sad. “You all seem to be against me so I guess I’ll have to give in.”
“You see, String,” exclaimed George with a sly twinkle in his eye, “we all know so very much more about this business than you do that you might just as well take our advice in everything.”
“You talk too much, Pop,” said John shortly, which remark drew a laugh of glee from George who had tried to irritate his friend and was delighted at having succeeded.
“I say we all stop talking and get to work on the tent,” said Grant. “We can do all the fooling we want later.”
“Great idea, Grant,” exclaimed George, who was in excellent spirits at the prospect of all the good times ahead of them. “You’re a wonder.”
“You were right when you said Pop talked too much, String,” laughed Grant. “We’ll put him to work now, though.”
In an incredibly short time the white tent was erected on the little bluff overlooking the lake. It was spacious with plenty of room for the four young campers and all their equipment, which was speedily stored away inside.
“How about a few fish for dinner?” exclaimed George, when the tent was in place. “Personally I think they’d taste pretty good.”
“Go ahead and catch some, then,” urged John. “I’ll help you eat them.”
“Oh, I didn’t worry about your not helping me out in that way,” laughed George. “That’s the least of my troubles. What bothers me is who is to clean the fish.”
“The man who catches them always cleans them,” said Fred.
“Oh, no, he doesn’t,” laughed George. “Not in this case, anyway.”
“How about the cook doing it?” inquired John.
“As I am to do the cooking all summer I can’t say I approve of that plan,” laughed Grant. “That seems a little bit too much.”
“Well, he hasn’t caught any fish yet, anyway,” said Fred. “Let him do that first and we’ll argue about them afterwards.”
“Where are you going to fish, Pop?” asked Grant.
“I thought I’d try it off those rocks down on the point there,” said George. “That looks like a likely spot.”
“While you’re fishing I’ll cut some balsam boughs and make four beds in the tent,” said John.
“And I’ll get a place ready to make a fire in,” said Grant. “That’ll take a little time.”
“How about you, Fred?” demanded George. “It looks as if you were about the only loafer in the whole crowd.”
“I’ll help String cut balsam.”
“Very good,” said George haughtily. “You may go now.”
“I’ll put you in the lake if you’re not more careful,” said John threateningly, but he laughed in spite of himself.
A few moments later every boy was busied with his appointed task. George, armed with his fishing rod, made off for the end of the little wooded island. John and Fred disappeared in search of balsam boughs, while Grant remained behind to make a fireplace. This was an interesting piece of work, the secret of which he had learned from a guide some few summers before during a sojourn in the woods.
First he selected eight or ten rocks as nearly the size and shape of cobblestones as he could find. These he placed on the ground in two parallel rows some twelve inches apart. Both little stone walls thus formed he endeavored to make as nearly the same height as possible and before long his fireplace was complete. Between the two rows of stones the fire was to be made; pots and pans could thus be set over the fire and rest upon the rocks which formed the walls of the fireplace; in this way they could be kept from actual contact with the coals and at the same time most of the heat from the fire was concentrated upon them.
This is a very efficient method of making a camp-fire as Grant had learned from previous experience. Of course, in the case of a temporary camp or unless there are plenty of rocks close at hand, it is hardly worth while and it is not the kind of a fire that campers like to sit around in the evening. As a cooking fire, however, it is one of the best.
Grant had hardly finished this task when John and Fred returned to the camp. They were loaded down with balsam boughs and staggered under the weight of the loads they were carrying. With a sigh of relief each boy dropped his bundle on the ground and sat down to regain his breath.
“You fellows look as if you’d been working hard,” laughed Grant.
“We have,” panted John. “Just carry a load like that for a while and see what you think of it.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Grant. “Have you got all you want?”
“All the balsam, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I should hope so,” exclaimed Fred. “At any rate I refuse to go back after any more. My fingers are all gummy and sticky, too.”
“The boughs smell great, though,” said Grant admiringly.
“Don’t they?” exclaimed John. “They’ll be wonderful to sleep on.”
“You see, Grant,” remarked Fred, “String here is so tall we had to cut an extra supply to make a bed long enough for him. I’m really quite worried, too, for fear his feet may stick out beyond the flap of the tent, anyway.”
“I’m not as bad as that I hope,” laughed John. “It would be awful, wouldn’t it, if I couldn’t keep out of the rain?”
“You might stand on your head,” suggested Fred. “Your feet sticking straight up in the air could take the place of umbrellas. They’re big enough so that they’d shelter you, all right.”
“Look here,” exclaimed John, “that sounds like one of Pop’s remarks. I hope you’re not getting as bad as he is.”
“By the way,” said Fred, “where is he? He ought to be back pretty soon.”
“He’s still fishing,” said Grant. “I guess he hasn’t had very good luck.”
“He ought to have taken one of the canoes, anyway,” said John. “He can’t catch anything just standing on the shore.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Grant. “He might get some small perch or bass.”
“What I want is a good big trout,” exclaimed Fred. “I’ll consider this summer a failure unless I get one.”
“Maybe we’ll each get one,” said Grant. “They say there are lots of them around here.”
“Not so much in the lake as in the streams running into it, I guess,” remarked John. “It seems to me that the big trout are always in small pools.”
“Well, I’ll try them all,” said Fred eagerly. “I don’t want just to catch trout; any one can do that. What I want is a big one.”
“One you can take home stuffed, I suppose,” suggested Grant.
“That’s it exactly. I mean to have one, too.”
“Well, we might fix up the beds first,” said John. “It won’t take long. All we want is four piles and we can spread the blankets out on them when we are ready to turn in. Just think of it; a nice soft sweet-smelling bed to sleep on and we won’t feel any of the rocks and roots and bumps that may be under us.”
“It sounds fine all right,” laughed Grant. “We’d better get to work soon, too, for it’ll be dark before long.”
“I should think Pop would be back by now, too,” said John. “You don’t suppose anything could have happened to him, do you?”
“Why, I don’t see how—” began Fred, when he suddenly ceased speaking and listened intently.
“What’s the matter?” demanded Grant.
“Ssh,” whispered Fred. “I thought I heard some one call.”
CHAPTER II—A MISHAP
All three boys bent their heads and listened intently. The only sound that came to them, however, was the soft sighing of the breeze through the treetops and the occasional call of some bird preparing to settle down for the night. The sun was low in the west, just sinking below the fringe of the forest which skirted the little lake. All seemed quiet and serene.
“What did you think you heard, Fred?” demanded Grant after the lapse of several moments.
“I thought I heard a call. In fact I was almost—”
Once more he stopped suddenly and listened. “What was that?” he exclaimed.
“I heard something, too,” whispered John excitedly. “Listen!”
“I don’t hear a thing,” muttered Grant. “I must be deaf.”
“There it is again,” cried Fred suddenly.
“I heard it, too,” exclaimed John. “It came from that end of the island.”
“That’s the direction Pop took,” said Grant in alarm. “Perhaps there has something happened to him.”
“We’ll soon find out anyway,” cried Fred. “Come along!” and he began to run at top speed in the direction George had gone a short time before.
Close behind him followed Grant and John. Every boy was worried and beset with a thousand and one evil thoughts as to what might have befallen their light-hearted and well-loved comrade. Almost everything conceivable in the way of misfortune suggested itself to their anxious minds.
“Keep close to the shore, Fred,” called Grant. “He was fishing, you know.”
Fred did keep as close to the shore as possible, but it was no easy task a great many times. The island was rough and rocky and heavily wooded, the trees growing down to the water’s edge in many places. Crashing through the underbrush and making a great deal of noise the three boys raced along. Whether or not the cry which John and Fred had heard was repeated they could not say, for the tumult of their own mad course drowned out all other noises.
After what seemed a long time they came to the end of the island. Here the forest gave way to the rocks which ran out a considerable distance, forming a small peninsula. At the tip end were several big boulders which had become separated from the main island after long years of action by the water and in order to reach them it was necessary to jump across several feet from one to the other. Towards these boulders the three boys made their way.
“I don’t see anybody,” panted John.
“Nor I,” agreed Fred. “I don’t hear anything, either.”
“Listen,” warned Grant, holding up his hand.
“And look, too,” murmured Fred under his breath.
Suddenly John started forward excitedly. “Look,” he cried, “there he is.”
“Where? Where?” demanded Grant.
“Down there in the water. Don’t you see him?”
“Help! Help!” came the call, and John, Fred and Grant sped to the assistance of their comrade. His head showed above the water and he splashed a great deal in an effort to remain afloat. That he was very rapidly becoming weaker, however, was plain to be seen.
“Give me a hand, somebody,” cried George.
“All right, Pop. We’ll be right with you,” Grant reassured him.
George was struggling in the water close to one of the big boulders. Its sides were so steep and high, however, that he was unable to climb out. From his actions it also appeared as if he were keeping himself afloat merely with his hands.
“Get a stick, Grant,” cried Fred. “You can hold it out for him to take hold of.”
“Where is one? Find one, quick!” exclaimed Grant excitedly.
“Here you are,” said John. “This one will do. Take this.”
He held out a stick some six or eight feet long which had been lying on the shore at his feet. Grant seized it eagerly and hastened to George’s assistance.
“Hurry up, Grant!” called George. “I can’t last much longer!”
“Here you are!” cried Grant, leaning out from the shore as far as he dared and holding the stick toward his friend. “Grab hold of this.”
After one or two unsuccessful attempts George succeeded in catching hold of the stick. Grant drew him up as close to the rock as possible and then Fred and John bending down over the edge seized him by his arms and quickly pulled him out of the water and to safety.
“How did you happen to—” began Fred, when John suddenly interrupted him.
“What have you got around your legs?” he demanded in astonishment.
“My fishing line,” said George, smiling weakly. “It tripped me up.”
“Well, I should think it might,” exclaimed John. “How in the world did you ever get it wound around you like that?”
“I had my rod in one hand,” said George, “and I tried to jump from that rock over there to this one. I landed here all right, but when I jumped the line got twisted around my ankles and I lost my balance. It finally tripped me up and I fell into the water. When I got there the line kept getting more and more tangled up the harder I kicked, until finally I could hardly move my feet at all. I had to keep afloat just by using my hands.”
“That was certainly a bright trick,” exclaimed Fred. “Why, you might have drowned.”
“I thought I was going to be,” said George grimly. “I was getting pretty tired.”
“Where’s your rod?” inquired Fred.
“At the other end of the line. A steel rod doesn’t float, you know.”
“That’s true,” laughed Fred. “Haul in that line, John.”
Of course all the line unrolled from the reel before the rod was rescued but it was finally brought safely to shore. A large section of the line, however, had to be sacrificed as it was found almost impossible to untangle the mass that had wound itself around George’s legs and ankles, and a knife was necessary to free him.
“Where are your fish, Pop?” inquired Fred. “I suppose you dropped them all when you fell in,” and he nudged Grant as he spoke.
“I had only one,” replied George ruefully. “He did fall in and I lost him.”
“What kind was it?”
“A black bass.”
“A big one, I suppose.”
“No, he wasn’t either. He was pretty small. I didn’t have any luck at all.”
“You ought to have taken one of the canoes,” said Grant. “You can’t expect to catch anything from the shore.”
“He’d probably upset the canoe,” said Fred. “I don’t think we should allow him to do anything alone after this.”
“Huh!” was George’s only reply to this sally.
“Feel like walking, Pop?” asked Grant. “If you do we’d better go back to camp and get some dry clothes for you.”
“I was just thinking that,” said George. “I’m commencing to feel chilly. These nights in the Adirondacks are pretty cool, I find.”
“They certainly are,” John agreed. “Let’s go back.”
“I could eat something, too,” remarked Fred. “The cool air also seems to give you an appetite.”
“Come on,” cried Grant, and a moment later the four young campers were retracing their steps to the tent.
Arriving there, George made haste to change his wet garments for some dry ones. Fred and John collected wood for the fire while Grant made ready to cook the dinner. A short time later the odor of sizzling bacon filled the air, lending an even keener edge to four appetites that were sharp already. The first meal in camp was voted a great success by every member of the party, and all agreed that Grant was a wonderful cook.
“Isn’t this great!” exclaimed George, when the dishes had all been washed.
The four young friends were seated around a camp-fire crowned by a great birch log that blazed so brightly it lighted up everything for a considerable distance round about them.
“It surely is,” agreed John. “I don’t see how you could beat this.”
“Just think of it,” said Fred. “We’re here for all summer, too.”
“Oh, the summer will go fast enough. Don’t worry about that,” Grant warned him. “It’ll be over before we know it.”
At last the fire burned low until it was nothing but a mass of glowing embers. John arose to his feet and yawned. “I’m going in and try those new beds we made this afternoon,” he said. “I’m tired.”
“I’m sleepy, too,” exclaimed Grant. “Let’s all turn in.”
The few remaining coals from the fire were carefully scattered so that they could do no damage during the night. These four friends had had enough experience in the woods to know what a forest fire means. They also knew that all good woodsmen were careful about such things and always had regard for the rights of others.
Every one was sleepy and it was not long before four tired and happy boys were stretched upon four sweet-smelling balsam beds, sound asleep. How long he slept John could not tell when he suddenly awoke with the feeling that he had heard a cry for help.
CHAPTER III—JOHN HEARS SOMETHING
John sat upright and peered about him in the darkness, every nerve alert. He heard nothing, however. Perhaps he had been mistaken after all. George’s mishap that afternoon had been on his mind and probably he had dreamed of it.
Somehow the feeling that he had heard a cry still seemed very distinct, however, and it gave him a most unpleasant sensation. He listened intently. He could hear the deep and steady breathing of his three comrades lying asleep around him, and he heaved a sigh of relief. At least nothing had happened to them.
Not a sound came to break the silence of the night and John began to feel sure that he had been deceived. He prepared himself to lie down again and go to sleep. He must have had a nightmare, he thought. Who could be in trouble on a calm, still night like this? At any rate it was none of their party and undoubtedly was no one at all. It had all been a dream, though a most unpleasant one, and John shivered unconsciously at the recollection. His nerves had all been set on edge, but gradually he quieted down and once more settled himself to rest.
Barely had he closed his eyes, however, when the cry was repeated. There was no mistaking it this time, and John instantly was wide awake once more, the cold shivers dancing up and down his spine. Never had he heard such a voice. Some one evidently was in terrible distress mingled with fear with which hopelessness seemed combined. The voice trailed off in a wail of despair that brought John’s heart up into his mouth.
It seemed to him that the cry must have awakened his companions as well, but no, he could still hear their regular breathing even above the violent pounding of his heart. What should he do? There was no question about it this time; it had not been a dream. Some one was in trouble and needed help, and evidently needed it badly. Consequently it was needed quickly, too, and John was determined to do his best.
He leaned over in the darkness and felt for the boy who was lying next to him.
“Grant,” he whispered. “Grant, wake up.”
Grant merely groaned and stirred uneasily.
“Wake up, Grant,” he repeated, shaking his friend by his shoulder. “Wake up, I tell you.”
“What do you want?” demanded Grant sleepily. “What’s the matter?”
“Matter enough,” exclaimed John. “There’s somebody in trouble out here on the lake and he’s calling for help.”
“Is that so?” cried Grant, now wide awake. “Are you sure?”
“I heard him call twice.”
“Was it a man?”
“I think so. I never heard such a voice. It was awful.”
“We’d better go see what we can do then,” exclaimed Grant. “Which direction did the voice come from?”
“I couldn’t say; it seemed to come from all over. Oh, Grant, it was awful.”
“Sure you didn’t dream it?”
“Positive. I know I heard it.”
“Come along then,” said Grant. “We’ll go outside and get one of the canoes and see what we can find. Maybe we’ll hear it again.”
“I don’t know; it sounded to me as though it was the death cry of some one. I never heard such a thing in all my life.”
“Get your sweater and some trousers,” directed Grant. “Don’t wake Fred and Pop yet. We’ll see what we can do first.”
John and Grant rose carefully to their feet and laid aside their blankets. Feeling their way, they soon located their clothes and a moment later, partly dressed, they stepped forth from the tent. The night was clear, and the moon, in its last quarter, lighted up the trees and the water in a ghostly manner.
“Are the paddles—” began Grant, when the cry was repeated. This time it seemed only a short distance from their camp and out on the lake. Perhaps some one had upset a boat and was struggling in the water.
“There it is,” cried John, clutching Grant excitedly by the arm. “Did you hear that? Isn’t that terrible?”
“Is that what you heard before?” demanded Grant.
“Yes, the same voice. Hurry! We mustn’t waste a second.”
“Wait a minute, String,” and in Grant’s voice was the suggestion of a laugh.
“What’s the matter?”
“Well, if that’s what you heard the other times, I wouldn’t be in a great hurry if I were you.”
“Why not? Are you crazy, Grant? Can’t you tell by that voice that some one is in trouble? Aren’t you going to help him?”
“Did you ask me if I was crazy?”
“I did, and I think you are, too. Please hurry, Grant.”
“Oh, no, I’m not crazy,” said Grant, and there was no mistaking the fact that he was laughing now. “I’m not crazy, but you’re loony.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s a loon you hear out there.”
“A loon,” exclaimed John in amazement. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about a bird. That noise you hear is made by a bird named a loon. Haven’t you ever heard one before?”
“Never. I don’t see how a bird could sound so like a human being.”
“That’s what it is just the same,” said Grant, and he was almost doubled up with laughter now. “I think I’d better wake up Pop and Fred and tell them about your friend that’s calling for help.”
“Are you positive it’s a loon?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then don’t ever tell a soul,” begged John eagerly. “I’d never hear the last of it as long as I lived. It would be awful if George ever knew.”
“You’re not the first one who’s ever been fooled,” laughed Grant. “You probably won’t be the last, either.”
“Please don’t tell on me, though, Grant. Promise me you won’t.”
“We’ll see,” said Grant evasively. “I can’t make any promises though.”
“How should I know that it was a loon?” demanded John. “I never heard one before and you yourself say that other people have been fooled the same way.”
“That’s true. Still it’s almost too good a joke on you to keep.”
“What is a loon, anyway?”
“It’s a bird; it belongs to the duck family, I guess. They live around on lakes and ponds like this and spend their nights waking people up and scaring them.”
“I should say they did,” exclaimed John with a shudder. “I never heard such a lonesome-sounding, terrible wail in all my life.”
“There it is again,” said Grant laughingly, as once more the cry of the loon came to their ears across the dark waters of the little lake.
“Let’s go back to sleep,” exclaimed John earnestly. “That sound makes my blood run cold, even though I know it is made by a bird.”
“Don’t you think we ought to tell Fred and Pop about it?” inquired Grant mischievously. “It seems to me they ought to be warned.”
“You can tell them about it if you don’t mention my name in connection with it,” said John. “If you tell on me though, I swear I’ll get even with you if it takes me a year.”
“All right,” laughed Grant, “I won’t say anything about it. At least, not yet,” he added under his breath.
“What did you say?” demanded John, not having caught the last sentence.
“I said, ‘let’s go to bed.’”
“That suits me,” exclaimed John, and a few moments later they had once more crawled quietly over their sleeping comrades and again rolled in their blankets, were sound asleep.
The sun had not been up very long before the camp was astir. Sleepy-eyed the boys emerged from the tent, blinking in the light of the new day. A moment later, however, four white bodies were splashing and swimming around in the cool waters of the lake, and all the cobwebs of sleep were soon brushed away.
“That’s what makes you feel fine,” exclaimed George when they had all come out and were dressing preparatory to eating breakfast. “A swim like that makes me feel as if I could lick my weight in wildcats.”
“You must have slept pretty well last night, Pop,” remarked Grant.
“I did. Never slept harder in my life.”
“Well, I didn’t,” exclaimed Fred. “It seemed to me I was dreaming all night long. Maybe my bed wasn’t fixed just right.”
“What did you dream about, Fred?” asked Grant curiously.
“Oh, all sorts of things. I thought I heard people calling for help. That seemed to be my principal dream for some reason.”
“That’s funny,” said Grant. “You didn’t dream anything like that, did you, String?”
“No, I didn’t,” said John shortly.
CHAPTER IV—SETTING SAIL
“What shall we do to-day?” exclaimed George when breakfast was over.
“We might go fishing,” suggested Fred. “I want a big trout some time this summer, you know.”
“Oh, it’s too sunny for trout to-day,” Grant objected.
“All right then,” said Fred. “What do you want to do?”
“How about taking a sail?”
“Is there enough wind?”
“Of course there is, and unless I’m very much mistaken its going to get stronger all the time.”
“Suppose we take our lunch along,” said John. “We can be gone as long as we want then and can go ashore and eat wherever we happen to be.”
“Good idea, String,” cried George heartily. “I do believe you’re getting smarter every day.”
“What do you think of my scheme?” demanded John, completely ignoring his friend’s sarcasm.
“It’s all right,” said Grant. “I’m in favor of doing it.”
“We can take a couple of rods with us, can’t we?” said Fred. “We might get a few fish for dinner.”
“That’s right,” agreed Grant. “We can anchor and fish from the boat if we want.”
“Let’s get started,” exclaimed John.
A small catboat was a part of the equipment the boys had in order to help them enjoy their summer more thoroughly. It now lay at anchor in a little cove a short distance from the place where the tent was located. It was a natural harbor and afforded excellent shelter for the boats from the squalls and not infrequent storms that were apt to spring up during this season of the year. The lake was between two and three miles in length so that a comparatively heavy sea could be stirred up by the winds.
The island on which the four boys had pitched their tent was the only one in the lake and it was very nearly in the center. It was owned by a friend of John’s father who had obtained permission for his son and his three friends to camp on it that summer. The sailboat and two canoes were included with the island, so that there was no question but that these four boys were very fortunate indeed to be able to enjoy it all.
For months they had been looking forward to this summer and they had planned innumerable excursions and expeditions as part of their camping experiences. Now that the time was really at hand they meant to enjoy every minute of it to the utmost.
“Fred and I will get the boat ready,” exclaimed John. “You two can collect the rods and fix up the lunch.”
“Put me near the food and I’m satisfied,” said George. “Come on, Grant.”
John and Fred made their way down to the spot where the canoes were hauled up on the shore. The catboat lay moored at anchor some fifty or sixty feet out from the bank so that it was necessary to paddle to reach her. One of the canoes was selected and the two boys soon pushed off from shore.
“That’s a pretty good looking boat I should say,” remarked Fred as he glanced approvingly at the little white catboat. “I wonder if she’s fast.”
“She looks so,” said John.
“You can’t always tell by the looks though, you know.”
“That’s true too. We ought to be able to tell pretty soon though.”
“I wonder if they have water sports or anything like that up here in the summer,” said Fred. “If they do it would be fun to enter.”
“It certainly would,” agreed John. “I don’t believe there are enough people on this lake though. As far as I can see we are about the only people here.”
“I thought you said there was another camp down at the north end of the lake.”
“That’s right, there is. I don’t know who’s in it though.”
“We might sail down and find out.”
“Let’s do that; it won’t take long.”
They had now arrived alongside the catboat, which was named the Balsam, and after having made fast the canoe, they quickly climbed on board.
“Any water in her?” exclaimed John.
“I don’t know. I was just going to look.”
“Lift up the flooring there and you can tell. It must have rained since she’s been out here and we’ll probably have to use the pump.”
“We certainly shall,” said Fred, who had raised up the flooring according to John’s suggestion. “Where is the pump anyway?”
“Up there under the deck. You can pump while I get the cover off the sail here and get things in shape a little, or would you rather have me pump?”
“No, I’ll do it. If I get tired, I’ll let you know.”
It did not take long to bail out the boat, however, and before many moments had elapsed the mainsail was hoisted and the Balsam was ready to weigh her anchor and start. The sail flapped idly in the breeze which seemed to be dying down instead of freshening as Grant had predicted. The boom swung back and forth, the pulleys rattling violently as the sheet dragged them first to one side and then the other.
John and Fred sat on the bottom of the boat and waited for their companions to appear with the luncheon. The two boys were dressed in bathing jerseys and white duck trousers. At least they had formerly been white, but constant contact with boats and rocks had colored them considerably. The feet of the young campers were bare, they having removed the moccasins which they usually wore. The day was warm and in fact the sun was quite hot. The previous night had been so cool it did not seem possible that it could be followed by a warm day, but such is often the case in the Adirondacks.
“Where do you suppose they are?” exclaimed Fred at length. “It seems to me they ought to have been ready by this time.”
“Here they come now,” said John. “Look at Pop; that basket is almost as heavy as he is.”
“He’s got lots of food in it, I guess. I’m glad too for I’m hungry a |
35957-0 | lready.”
“Why, you finished breakfast only about an hour ago.”
“I can’t help that. I’m always hungry in this place.”
“Ahoy there!” shouted George from the shore. “Come in and get us.”
“The other canoe doesn’t leak you know,” replied John, neither he nor Fred making any move to do as George had asked.
“We know that,” called George. “What’s the use of taking them both out there though?”
“Why not?” demanded John. “The exercise will do you good.”
“Are you coming after us?” asked Grant.
“Not that we know,” laughed Fred.
“I guess we paddle ourselves then, Pop,” said Grant to his companion.
“All right,” agreed George. “I’ll get square with them though.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“You let me paddle and I’ll show you.”
They spoke in a low tone of voice so that their friends on board the Balsam could not hear them and in silence they embarked upon the second canoe. Grant sat in the bow while George wielded the paddle in the stern. They approached the catboat rapidly where John and Fred sat waiting for them with broad grins upon their faces.
“You must think we run a ferry,” exclaimed Fred as the canoe drew near.
“Not at all,” said Grant. “We just thought that perhaps you’d be glad to do a good turn for us.”
“We’re tired,” grinned John. “Think how hard we had to work to get the sail up and to pump out—”
“Oh, look at that water bug,” cried George suddenly, striking at some object in the water with his paddle. Whether he hit or even saw any bug or not will always remain a mystery. One thing is sure, however, and that is, that a great sheet of water shot up from under the blade of the paddle and completely drenched both John and Fred.
“What are you trying to do?” demanded Fred angrily.
“He did that on purpose,” exclaimed John. “Soak him, Fred.”
“Look out,” cried George, “you’ll get the lunch all wet.”
“You meant to wet us,” Fred insisted.
“Why, Fred,” said George innocently; “I just tried to hit that water bug. How should I know that you would be splashed?”
“Huh,” snorted John. “Just look at me.”
“That’s too bad,” said George with a perfectly straight face. “If you had come in after us we’d have all been in the same canoe and you probably wouldn’t have gotten wet.”
“You admit you did it on purpose then?”
“I don’t at all. I just thought perhaps it was some sort of punishment inflicted on you for being so lazy.”
“Didn’t he do it on purpose, Grant?” demanded Fred.
“I don’t know,” replied Grant, striving desperately to keep from smiling. “I know he didn’t tell me he was going to do it.”
“Well, it was just like him anyway,” said John. “He knew we couldn’t splash him back because he had the lunch in the canoe with him.”
“Take it, will you?” asked Grant, holding the basket up to John. “Here are the fishing rods too.”
George and Grant followed soon after and the second canoe was made fast to one of the thwarts of the other.
“I’ll put the lunch up here,” said Fred, at the same time depositing the basket up forward under the protection of the deck.
“Slide the rods in there too, will you?” exclaimed George. “Look out for the reels that they don’t get caught under anything.”
“Everything ready?” asked John.
“Let ‘er go,” cried George enthusiastically. “I’m ready.”
“Come and help me pull up the anchor then,” said John.
“I’m your man,” cried George. “You know I’m always looking for work.”
“I’ve noticed that,” laughed Grant. “You’re always looking for work so that you’ll know what places to keep away from.”
Four light hearted young campers were now on board the Balsam. In spite of their words a few moments before not one of them had lost his temper. They knew each other too well and were far too sensible not to be able to take a joke. Outsiders, listening to their conversation, might have thought them angry at times, but such was never the case.
“Get your back in it there,” shouted Grant gayly to John and George who were busily engaged in hauling in the anchor chain. George stood close to the bow with John directly behind him as hand-over-hand they pulled in the wet, cold chain.
“This deck is getting slippery,” exclaimed George. “All this water that has splashed up here from the chain has made it so I can scarcely keep my feet.”
“I should say so,” agreed John earnestly and as he spoke one foot slid out from beneath him. He lurched heavily against his companion, and George thrown completely off his balance, waved his arms violently about his head in an effort to save himself, but all to no avail. He fell backward and striking the water with a great splash disappeared from sight.
CHAPTER V—THE UNEXPECTED HAPPENS
“Man overboard!” shouted Grant, running forward as he called. He did not know whether to laugh or to be worried. One thing was certain though and that was that George like his three companions was perfectly at home in the water. All four were expert swimmers so that barring accidents they had little to fear from falling overboard.
“He’s all right,” cried John. “Help me hold this anchor, somebody.”
Grant grasped the chain and one more heave was sufficient to bring the anchor up on the deck of the Balsam. Before this could be done, however, George came to the surface choking and spluttering.
“I’ll fix you for that, String,” he gasped, shaking his fist at John.
“For what?” demanded John.
“You know all right.”
“Why, Pop,” said John reprovingly.
“Keep her up into the wind, Fred,” shouted Grant who was seated at the tiller. “Let your sheet run. Here, Pop, give me your hand.”
“I’d better go down to the stern and get aboard there,” said George. “I think it will be a little easier.”
“All right; go ahead.”
George floated alongside the Balsam until he came to the stern and a moment later had swung himself on board the boat. He was drenched to the skin but laughing in spite of himself.
“Do you want to change your clothes, Pop?” asked Grant.
“No, it’s hot to-day. They’ll dry out in no time.”
“Ease her off then, Fred,” Grant directed. “We may as well get started.”
Fred put the helm over, the sail filled and the Balsam began to slip through the water at a good rate. The four boys sat around the tiny cockpit, Fred at the tiller and Grant tending sheet. In a few moments they had emerged from the little harbor and had entered upon the open waters of the lake.
“Well, String,” observed George who was busily engaged in wringing water from the bottoms of his duck trousers, “you certainly did it well.”
“Did what well?” demanded John.
“Don’t pretend you don’t know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You meant to shove me overboard and I know it so there’s no use in you trying to bluff. You were very skillful about it and I guess you got square with me all right. We’ll call it even and quit.”
“I did do it pretty well, didn’t I?” grinned John.
“Yes, you did, but I think the way I soaked you and Fred was just as good.”
“You didn’t see a water bug then?”
“No, and you didn’t slip either.”
“Yes, I did; on purpose though. Let’s call it off now.”
“I’m agreeable,” laughed George, “even if you did get the better of me.”
“How about me?” demanded Fred. “Pop wet me just as much as he did String and I don’t see that I am even with him yet.”
“You ‘tend to your sailing,” laughed George. “That’ll have to satisfy you.”
“I can steer you on a rock you know,” warned Fred.
“Don’t do it though,” begged Grant. “I’m an innocent party and I’d suffer just as much as the others.”
“Where shall we sail?” asked George.
“Fred and I thought we might go down to the other end of the lake,” said John. “There’s a camp down there, I believe, and we might see who is in it.”
“Go ahead,” exclaimed George. “Meanwhile I think I’ll try to get my clothes dry,” and suiting the action to the word he divested himself of everything he had on, which was not much. The few articles of clothing thus taken off he spread flat on the deck of the boat so that they might get the full benefit of the sun’s rays.
The day was bright and not a cloud appeared in the sky. A gentle breeze blew across the lake barely ruffling the water. Consequently the Balsam sailed on an even keel and scant attention was necessary to keep her pointing in the right direction.
“How about trolling?” exclaimed Fred all at once.
“What do you mean by that?” asked George.
“You mean to say you don’t know what trolling is?”
“If I had I wouldn’t have asked you, would I?” laughed George.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Fred. “Trolling is fishing in a certain way. When you troll you sit in a moving boat and trail your line out behind you. As a rule you use a spoon or live bait so that it gives the appearance of swimming. People usually fish for pickerel that way.”
“Let’s try it,” cried George enthusiastically. “Who’s got a spoon?”
“I have,” said Grant. “Hold this sheet and I’ll put it on my line.”
“Any pickerel in this lake, I wonder,” remarked John.
“There ought to be lots of them,” said Fred.
“Bass and perch too, I guess,” John added.
“Perch are fine eating,” exclaimed George. “I’ve eaten them cooked in a frying pan with lots of butter and bacon,” and he sighed blissfully at the recollection.
“Did you ever eat brook trout fried in bacon and rolled in corn meal?” asked Fred.
“Not yet,” laughed George. “I hope to before long, though.”
“Well when you do you’ll know you’ve tasted the finest thing in the world there is to eat,” said Fred with great conviction.
“Is it better than musk melon?”
“A thousand times.”
“Whew!” whistled George. “Is it better than turkey?”
“A million times.”
“Say,” exclaimed George. “Is it better than ice cream?”
“It’s better than anything, I tell you,” Fred insisted.
“I’ll take your word for it,” laughed George. “I’d like to try it myself pretty soon though.”
“Here’s your spoon,” said Grant, holding out the rod to George.
“You’re going to fish, yourself,” said George firmly.
“Not at all. I got it for you.”
“Why should I try it any more than you?”
“Because I want you to. Go ahead.”
“If you insist, I suppose I’ll have to,” laughed George and dropping the spoon overboard he let the line run out.
“How much line do I need?” he asked.
“Oh, about fifty or sixty feet I should think,” said Grant.
“Well, I don’t know much about it,” remarked John breaking in on the conversation; “but it doesn’t seem to me that we are making enough headway to keep that metal spoon from sinking.”
“I’m afraid not myself,” agreed Grant. “The wind seems to be dying down all the time and we’ll be becalmed if we’re not careful.”
“I’ll try it a few minutes anyway,” said George. “I might get something.”
“All you’ll get is sunburned, I guess,” laughed Fred. “You’d better put your clothes on or you’ll be blistered to-morrow.”
“That’s right, Pop,” said Grant. “I’d get dressed if I were you.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” George agreed. “Here, String, you take the rod.”
Scarcely had John taken the rod in his hands when he felt a violent tug at the line. The reel sang shrilly and then was still.
“You’ve hooked one,” cried Fred excitedly. “Reel in as fast as you can.”
“Bring the boat around, Fred,” shouted Grant. “Come up into the wind.”
Fred did as he was directed, while John strove desperately to reel in his line. At first there was no resistance and then all at once the rod bent double.
“Say!” exclaimed George, “it must be a whale!”
“It’s bottom,” said John disgustedly. “The old spoon sank just as I said it would and I’ve caught a log.”
“Don’t break the line whatever you do,” warned Grant. “Swish your rod back and forth.”
“It’s caught fast,” said John, following Grant’s directions.
“Keep it up, you’ll get it loose yet.”
Suddenly the hook was released and as John reeled in there was no resistance to be felt at all. A moment later the spoon appeared and pierced by the hook was a small chip of water-soaked wood showing that it was some sunken log that had deceived the boys at first.
“That trolling business is great all right, isn’t it?” laughed George, now completely dressed once more and ready for anything.
“I’ll take you out in one of the canoes some day and prove to you that it’s all right,” said Fred warmly. “You—”
He suddenly stopped speaking and looked up. “I thought I felt a drop of rain,” he remarked in surprise.
“You did,” exclaimed Grant. “Just look there. Here comes a squall and we’re in for it all right. This is no joke.”
CHAPTER VI—ADRIFT
“Quick, Fred!” cried Grant. “Bring her up into the wind. You help me let down this sail, Pop.”
An angry gust of wind scudding across the lake, caught the catboat and made her heel far over.
“Let go your sheet, Fred!” shouted Grant. “Quick or we’ll upset.”
He and George sprang forward and feverishly tried to loosen the ropes that held the sail aloft. The wind was increasing in strength now, however, and the boat was becoming more difficult to manage every moment. The sky was inky black and sharp flashes of lightning cut the clouds from end to end. The thunder roared and echoed and reëchoed over the wooded mountains round about. It was now raining hard.
“Keep that sheet clear of everything,” cried Grant, who usually assumed command in every crisis. “Let it run free whatever you do.”
“You hurry with that sail,” retorted Fred.
“They’re doing their best I guess,” said John.
“If they don’t get it down soon we’ll go over,” cried Fried. “I can hardly hold her now.”
“Can I help you, Grant?” asked John, striving to make his way forward. The boom, however, swung violently back and forth threatening to knock him overboard every second. It was almost impossible to keep out of its way in the tiny catboat.
“Go sit down,” cried Grant. “We’ll get it down in a second.”
The rain now fell in torrents. The wind whistled and shrieked all about them and it seemed as if at any moment the sail must be torn to shreds and the mast ripped from its socket. Lucky it was that Fred was an experienced sailor and endowed with nerve as well. The squall drove the boat backwards but Fred managed to keep her nose pointed straight into the teeth of the gale. Otherwise the Balsam could not have lived two minutes.
“Why don’t they hurry with that sail?” exclaimed Fred peevishly.
“They are hurrying,” said John. “The ropes are wet and they’re nervous.”
“Ah, there it comes,” cried Fred suddenly. “Now we’ll stand a chance.”
With a rush the sail came down, its folds almost completely covering the four boys in the boat. The strain on the tiller was greatly relieved however and the Balsam maintained a more even keel.
“Whew!” exclaimed George, groping his way astern. “What a storm this is!”
“I never saw it rain so hard,” said John. “Just look; you can’t see more than about ten feet.”
“We’ll go aground if we’re not careful.”
“How can we stop it?” demanded Fred. “We’re at the mercy of the storm.”
“Throw the anchor overboard,” suggested George.
“A good idea, Pop,” exclaimed Grant. “Come along and I’ll help you.”
“You’ll get struck by lightning,” warned Fred, half seriously. The flashes were blinding and almost continuous. The thunder ripped and roared all around and so near at hand was the center of the storm that sometimes the smell as of something burning could be detected in the air.
“That anchor will never hold us,” said John who sat in the stern, huddled close to Fred. Grant and George were feeling their way forward.
“Don’t throw the lunch basket over by mistake,” called Fred.
“The lunch won’t be worth much now, I’m afraid,” said John ruefully.
“Oh, I don’t know; it’s under the deck.”
“I know, but the boat has a lot of water in her now and if it touches that basket it will soon soak through.”
“How deep is this lake?”
“I’ve no idea. I don’t even know where we are.”
“I’m afraid we’re going to run ashore all of a sudden somewhere.”
“The anchor ought to catch before that happens,” said John. “It’s trailing now you know.”
“I know it is, but suppose we hit a lone rock.”
“We’re running that chance. I don’t know what we can do about it.”
“Are you trying to steer, Fred?” asked Grant who together with George had now crawled back to the stern of the boat.
“I’m trying to keep her headed with the waves; that’s all I can do.”
“I know it. I think the squall’s letting up some though.”
“Perhaps it is,” agreed John. “It does seem a little bit lighter.”
“It isn’t raining so hard either,” observed Grant. “These squalls stop just as quickly as they start sometimes.”
“The lake must be deep here,” said Fred. “How long is that anchor chain?”
“About fifteen feet I guess,” said John.
“That ought to keep us from going ashore anyway,” exclaimed Fred. “Who said this storm was over?”
“It must be coming back,” said Grant. “It certainly let up for awhile though.”
“But it’s making up for it now all right,” observed George. “I’m so glad I took all that trouble to get my clothes dry.”
The four boys looked at one another and could not help laughing. Every one of them was drenched through to the skin and no one had a dry stitch of clothes on. The rain pelted them mercilessly and the water ran off their faces in streams. All huddled together, they made a forlorn looking party.
“This is what all campers get I suppose,” remarked George.
“They certainly do,” agreed Grant. “Some of them get it worse than this too.”
“Do you suppose our tent is still there?” inquired John.
“Let’s hope so,” exclaimed George fervently. “We’d be in a nice fix if we found it blown away when we got back.”
“If we do get back,” said Fred dolefully.
“What’s the matter with you, Fred?” demanded Grant. “You don’t think we’re all going to die or be killed, do you?”
“I don’t know. This is a bad storm and we can’t see where we are.”
“But the anch—”
There was a sudden jolt. Every boy was almost thrown from his seat as the boat came to a quick stop. Then the bow swung slowly around and a moment later the Balsam was pointed straight into the wind, her anchor chain taut.
“We’re aground,” cried George.
“Not at all,” corrected Grant. “The anchor chain has caught, that’s all.”
“Where are we?”
“I can’t see.”
“We must be somewhere near shore,” said John.
“We might be on a shoal.”
“No, there’s land,” cried John. “I can see it.”
“Maybe it’s on our island,” said George. “Wouldn’t that be queer.”
“Well, I wish the old storm would be over so we can see just where we are located,” exclaimed Fred. “I’ve had enough of this.”
“You’d better be thankful the anchor holds and not worry about anything else,” observed Grant. “So far we can’t complain.”
“It’s stopping,” said George suddenly. “The sun will be out in a minute.”
“If it comes out it had better bring an umbrella, that’s all I can say,” observed John.
“A pretty poor joke, String,” said George. “Try another one; it might be better.”
“The sun is coming out,” cried Grant. “The storm is almost over, I guess.”
“Thank goodness!” exclaimed Fred. “Now we can see where we are.”
Little by little the rain abated, the wind died down and the thunder melted away in the distance. Before many moments had passed the sun broke forth from behind a cloud and blue sky appeared.
“Do they have many of these squalls around here, I wonder?” said George. “I don’t think very highly of them myself.”
“Nor I,” agreed Grant. “Just look where it carried us.”
“There’s our island,” exclaimed Fred. “I thought it was in the other direction though.”
“So it was,” said John. “We traveled the whole length of the lake, I guess.”
“Right past our camp?”
“It looks so.”
“Suppose we had hit one of those big rocks where I fell in,” said George. “Our anchor wouldn’t have done us very much good there.”
“I should say not,” agreed Grant. “Isn’t that a camp over there?”
His three companions gazed in the direction he indicated and sure enough a big white tent very similar to their own appeared on shore, a short distance from the spot where the Balsam lay at anchor.
“I don’t see anybody around,” remarked Fred. “Do you suppose they’re all away?”
“The best way to find out is to go and see for ourselves,” exclaimed Grant.
“That’s right,” observed George. “Let’s get the anchor up and sail in.”
“There’s a dock there too, where we can land,” said Fred. “Perhaps the people who are camping here have been caught out in the storm.”
“We’ll soon know anyway,” said Grant, making his way forward to assist George in getting up the anchor.
CHAPTER VII—AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
A few moments later the Balsam was making its way towards the tiny wharf in the little harbor. Two canoes lay bottom up on the shore but no sign of any living being appeared.
“Perhaps they’ve gone to the ball game,” remarked George.
“Ball game!” exclaimed Fred. “What are you talking about?”
“I was just fooling and trying to get a rise out of somebody. Of course I knew I could make somebody bite with you on board.”
“Huh,” snorted Fred. “I thought you’d gone crazy, talking about ball games up here in the woods.”
“You two are always wrangling,” exclaimed Grant. “Stop it.”
“I can’t resist trying to get rises out of Fred,” said George. “He’s so easy.”
“Leave him alone,” said Grant. “I wonder where the people are who own this tent. There doesn’t seem to be a soul around.”
“Let’s go up to the tent and peek in,” suggested John.
“Do you think we ought to do that?” Fred protested.
“Why not? We’re not going to steal anything are we?”
“I’m not,” laughed Fred. “Of course I don’t know about you.”
“Come ahead,” urged George. “We’ll just take one look.”
They made their way up from the dock towards the tent. Still no sign of life appeared and when John had stolen one hasty glance inside the tent he reported that no one was in there either.
“Let’s go back,” exclaimed Fred. “There’s no use in staying around here any longer.”
“Come on,” said Grant. “It’s time to eat too.”
“We might eat our luncheon over on that point,” suggested George, indicating a spot about a mile or so distant from the place where they were.
“Eating suits me all right,” exclaimed John. “I must say I’m hungry.”
“And I’d like to get my clothes dry,” added Fred. “I’m sort of cold.”
Once more they set sail on the Balsam without having caught sight of a single occupant of the camp they had just visited. The sun was now shining brightly and the sky was as blue as ever. No trace of the recent storm remained to mar the beautiful day. It was not long before all four boys were in excellent spirits again and their appetites became keener with each passing moment.
Landing on the point where they had decided to eat their luncheon, they quickly set about making preparations for the meal. A fire was soon started and with every one assisting, the meal was quickly under way.
“How soon will it be ready, Grant?” asked George of the cook.
“Oh, in half an hour.”
“Come on then, String,” exclaimed George. “Let’s go back into the woods here and see if we can’t find some berries or something.”
“Don’t get lost,” warned Grant. “Fred and I are too hungry to spend a lot of time looking for you, you know.”
“Don’t worry about us,” laughed John. “We’ll be gone only a few minutes.”
Leaving Grant and Fred busy with the cooking the two boys plunged into the woods and disappeared from view. The trees were still dripping from the heavy rain, but the fragrant odor of spruce and balsam was stronger than ever. The thick carpet of pine needles under their feet was wet, so that their advance was noiseless.
Suddenly, up from its hiding place almost under their feet, a grouse arose with a roar and whirr of wings. Booming off through the trees it quickly disappeared from view leaving the forest as silent as before. The spell of it was on the two young campers as they stood still and gazed all about them. The green leafy aisles of the woods stretched in all directions around them most beautiful and inviting to the eye. A catbird whined from a nearby tree, but otherwise all was still.
“Did you ever see anything more beautiful?” asked John in a low voice.
“I never did,” replied George solemnly. The beauty and the grandeur of it all made them feel as though they really should not speak above a whisper.
“I don’t see any berries though,” continued John.
“Nor I,” said George. “There’s an open space ahead of us though; perhaps we’ll find some there.”
“Some blueberries wouldn’t taste bad just now.”
In silence they continued their walk, even taking care to step softly so as not to disturb the solemnity of the woods. Ahead of them appeared a break in the trees and an open space showed. Here was the place to find blueberries if any grew in that neighborhood at all. A moment later the two boys came to the edge of the clearing which was perhaps a hundred yards square.
As they were about to step out from the shelter of the trees George suddenly clutched his companion by the arm.
“Look there,” he whispered.
Following George’s directions John saw something that caused his face to grow white and his heart to jump. In the center of the clearing and busily engaged in eating the blueberries which grew in abundance all about was a large black bear.
He seemed entirely oblivious to his surroundings and as the wind blew from him towards the two boys he was not aware of their presence. With one great paw he stripped the berries from the low-lying bushes and with his long, eager tongue he licked them up greedily. That his ancient enemy, man, might be lurking nearby apparently did not occur to him. The two boys stood and watched him, fascinated, not knowing whether to run or whether to hold their ground. The bear was scarcely a hundred feet distant from the spot where they were standing.
“What shall we do?” whispered George.
“Wait.”
“Suppose he comes after us.”
“If he does we’ll run.”
All at once the bear looked up. Perhaps some eddying current of wind had betrayed the presence of the two boys to his sensitive nostrils. It is a well known fact that the eyesight of most wild animals is comparatively poor; their sense of smell, however, is correspondingly sharp and it is on this that they must rely to a large extent for safety.
All around him old bruin gazed while the hearts of the two young campers almost stood still. There they were standing within plain sight, right at the edge of the forest and they could not possibly escape being seen. Anxiety as to what the bear would do made the next few moments very nervous ones.
Suddenly he saw them. George and John held their breath and waited. He looked at them steadily for a moment, one paw held poised in the air. Then he turned and with that clumsy lumbering gait common to his kind ambled off across the clearing. Arriving at the opposite side he turned his head and glanced back at the two boys, still standing in the shadow of the trees. Then he continued his way once more and quickly disappeared from sight.
“Well,” exclaimed George. “What do you think about that?”
“Suppose he’d chased us.”
“He’d never have caught me,” said George grimly. “With a bear after me I know I could at least equal the world’s record for the half-mile.”
“Even so, you’d have finished second,” laughed John.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, I’d have beaten you out, of course.”
“Maybe so,” said George laughingly. “At any rate I guess it would have been a pretty close finish. Imagine what Grant and Fred would have thought if they’d seen us coming, tearing out of the woods with a big black bear after us.”
“I’d have gone right on across the lake too,” said John.
“Do you want some berries?”
“It’s pretty late now I’m afraid. I think perhaps we’d better go back.”
“Perhaps so. Let’s go anyway; we can come back here after luncheon.”
“That bear might have the same idea.”
“That’s true too,” admitted George. “We can bring Fred and Grant along with us if they want to come.”
The two boys made their way back through the forest towards the lake. Knowing that there were such things as bears in the neighborhood they kept a sharp watch all about them. If they had only realized it, no bear was half as anxious to meet them as they were to meet a bear. Wild animals seldom if ever seek trouble of their own accord.
A few moments later George and John emerged from the woods and caught sight of the fire and their two companions.
“Hey, you two!” called Fred. “Where have you been?”
“Are we late?” asked John.
“I should say you were. Grant and I were just about to eat up all the food and not save any for you at all.”
“Thank goodness you didn’t,” exclaimed George, fervently.
“Did you find any berries?” demanded Grant.
“Lots of them. A good many of them are still on the bushes.”
“Didn’t you bring any back?”
“Not a single one.”
“What do you think of that, Fred?” demanded Grant. “These fellows go back in the woods and stuff themselves with a lot of berries and don’t even bring one back to the two who are working hard to prepare food for them.”
“We didn’t eat any ourselves.”
“You didn’t?” exclaimed Grant. “What was the matter with them; weren’t they good?”
“I guess they were,” said John. “We didn’t try any though.”
“What’s the matter?” inquired Fred. “What are you two trying to say anyway? You found a lot of berries but you didn’t bring any back and you didn’t eat any yourself. What’s the reason you didn’t?”
“Somebody was there ahead of us,” said George.
“The owner you mean?” asked Grant. “Wouldn’t he give you any?”
“It wasn’t the owner,” said George. “It was somebody else.”
“I wish you’d stop talking in riddles,” exclaimed Grant impatiently. “Why don’t you tell us what happened!”
“There was a bear there,” said John. “He liked berries too.”
“A bear!” cried Grant and Fred in one breath. “What do you mean?”
“There was a big black bear eating the blueberries,” said George, “so we just decided we didn’t care very much for berries ourselves.”
“Tell us about it,” demanded Grant eagerly.
“I can’t talk unless I have something to eat first,” replied George firmly.
“Nor I,” agreed John.
“Come and eat then,” laughed Fred. “We too have got something to tell you two when you’ve finished.”
CHAPTER VIII—A PREDICAMENT
While all four boys were doing full justice to the meal which Grant had prepared, George and John related the story of their meeting with the bear.
“And now,” exclaimed John when he had finished, “you tell us what you have to say. Fred said there was something.”
“We had an idea while you were gone, that’s all,” said Grant.
“Tell us what it was.”
“Go ahead, Fred.”
“No, you tell them,” urged Fred.
“Well,” said Grant, “it was only this. Fred and I were talking things over and we thought it might be good fun if we took the two canoes and went off on a little trip for a couple of days. What do you think about it?”
“I think it would be great,” exclaimed John heartily. “How about you, Pop?”
“It suits me first rate,” said George eagerly. “Why can’t we start to-night?”
“That’s a little soon I should think,” laughed Grant. “We can go to-morrow though if you say so.”
“We can get some good trout fishing up these streams, you know,” said Fred. “I want to get that big trout.”
“If there’s any big trout caught I expect to be the one to do it,” said George very pompously.
“Huh,” snorted Fred disgustedly, “you couldn’t catch cold.”
“You just wait and see,” muttered George under his breath.
“Do you know anything about trout fishing?” insisted Fred.
“I never did any in my life.”
“And you expect to catch a big trout?” said Fred derisively. “Why, Pop, you’re sort of out of your head, aren’t you?”
“Wait and see,” repeated George confidently.
“Do you know how hard it is to cast a trout fly when you’re standing in the middle of a clump of bushes and the branches of trees are in your way all around you?” continued Fred. “Don’t you know that it takes almost years of practice to do it so that you are accurate and don’t catch your hook on everything in sight?”
“Wait and see,” insisted George. “I have a new system.”
“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed Fred. “You’re a joke.”
“Let’s go back to camp and stop these two arguing,” exclaimed Grant. “They’re at it all day long.”
“We like each other all the more because we do it, don’t we, Pop?” demanded Fred laughingly.
“Yes,” admitted George, “except that you’re awfully conceited at times.”
“Come on,” urged Grant. “They’ll be at it again if we’re not careful.”
Before many moments had passed the Balsam was once more sailing over the clear waters of the lake and in a short time the four boys arrived back at camp. The remainder of the day was spent in planning for the trip they were about to take and in discussing just where they should go. At length an agreement satisfactory to every one was reached, the arrangements were all completed and there was nothing left to do but wait for the morrow in order to start.
The sun had been up but a short time before the camp was astir. Grant set about preparing breakfast while his three companions packed supplies into the two canoes. Food sufficient for three days was loaded on board; blankets were taken along, and trout rods with numerous flies of course were included.
“Breakfast’s ready,” announced Grant as soon as the work of loading was complete.
“So am I,” exclaimed George heartily. “I’m always ready to eat up here.”
“Not only ‘up here’ either,” muttered Fred.
“What did you say?” demanded George, wheeling around so as to face the speaker.
“Nothing.”
“As usual,” laughed George. “Where’s the food?”
“Right here,” exclaimed Grant. “Let’s see you get rid of it.”
No second invitation was needed and it was not long before every crumb and morsel that Grant had prepared had disappeared.
“Let’s get started,” exclaimed George. “All the food is gone so there is no point in staying around here any longer.”
“You’re right, Pop,” laughed John. “I say we go too.”
A few moments later the two canoes emerged from the little harbor and started out across the lake, headed northward. Grant and Fred occupied one of them while George and John paddled the other.
“I’m glad you’re not in my canoe, Fred,” called George gayly. “Small as you are, I’d soon get tired of paddling you around all day.”
“Is that so?” snorted Fred. “Well, you’re not half as glad as I am for I know that I’d be the one that would have to do all the work and you’re too big and fat to make the work pleasant.”
“They’re at it again, String,” laughed Grant. “What shall we do with them?”
“Leave them home,” suggested John.
“Oh, we couldn’t do that. They’d be like the Kilkenny cats.”
“Who were they?” demanded Fred.
“Didn’t you ever hear about them?”
“No. Tell me who they were.”
“I guess you mean _what_ they were.”
“All right, what they were, then.”
“Why,” said Grant, “they were a couple of cats that loved to fight. One day somebody tied their tails together and hung them over a clothes line. Of course they began to fight right away and they fought so furiously that when it was all over there wasn’t a thing left of either of them.”
“I suppose you expect me to believe that story,” snorted Fred.
“I don’t care whether you believe it or not,” laughed Grant. “You wanted to hear it, so I told it to you.”
“Grant says we’re like a couple of cats, Pop,” called Fred.
“Tell him he’d better be careful,” replied George. “Just because we call each other names doesn’t mean that we allow other people to do it.”
“Excuse me for interrupting,” said John laughingly, “but does any one know where we are going?”
“I do,” replied Grant. “We’re going up that river you see straight ahead.”
“Do you know where that leads to?” inquired Fred.
“Yes. We can paddle up it for about two miles and then we have to make a carry over to another river.”
“How long is the carry?” demanded George.
“Oh, about half a mile, I guess.”
“Whew!” exclaimed George; “that’s a long distance to carry canoes and all the stuff we have in them.”
“Getting ready to shirk already, are you?” demanded Fred teasingly.
“Shirk nothing,” said George. “Wait and see if I don’t do my share.”
“Yes and ‘wait and see’ if you don’t catch the biggest trout too,” taunted Fred. “Why, Pop, you’ll be lucky if you catch your breath.”
“Wait and see,” muttered George darkly.
“Yes, ‘wait and see’,” echoed Fred. “If you don’t stop saying that we’ll have to call you, ‘Wait and See.’”
Just at this moment, however, they came to the mouth of the river and the argument was abandoned, for the time being at least.
“This is great!” exclaimed John. “I always did like paddling in a narrow space rather than on a lake or some place like that.”
“I do too,” agreed Grant. “You feel closer to things somehow.”
“You’re no closer to the water, you know,” remarked George with a wink at Fred.
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Grant,” said John. “I think we ought to throw both of them overboard anyway.”
As they progressed, the stream became narrower and the current swifter. Evidently they would be unable to paddle very much farther upstream and the young campers began to keep a sharp lookout for the carry.
“There it is,” exclaimed Fred, suddenly pointing to a small sandy beach a short distance ahead of them.
They soon landed and emptying the canoes, they started off through the woods to transfer them to the next river. It was necessary to leave the baggage behind to await their coming back for it. Two boys to each canoe they set out, the light boats turned upside down and bearing them aloft on their shoulders. In spite of many groanings from George they reached their destination before much time had elapsed, and then resting the canoes on the bank of the stream they returned for the baggage. This was more quickly and more easily transferred so that a short time later they were once more making their way by paddling.
“Say, Grant,” exclaimed John when they had covered a few hundred yards, “how do you know all about these rivers?”
“Didn’t you see that map I have?”
“No. I kept wondering how you knew so much about the country around here. I didn’t know you had a map.”
“Of course I have. I wouldn’t know anything any other way for I’ve never been up here in my life before.”
“String thought you guessed at it,” laughed George.
“No, I didn’t at all,” protested John. “I just didn’t think about it.”
“Does your map say that there are rapids ahead?” asked Fred.
“I didn’t notice. Why?”
“Because I think there are. It seems to me that the current is getting swifter all the time and I think you’ll find that when we go around that bend up yonder you’ll find rapids ahead of us.”
“Shall we run them?” demanded George excitedly.
“We’ll probably be wrecked if we try it,” said Grant.
“We can see how bad they are, anyway,” John suggested.
“Yes,” agreed Fred. “We’ll ‘wait and see.’”
“‘Go ahead’ is my motto when rapids are concerned,” said George.
Rounding the curve in the river they discovered that scarcely a hundred yards farther was another bend in the stream. Meanwhile the current was rapidly becoming swifter and stronger.
“We can’t see yet,” exclaimed George. “We’ll have to go ahead.”
All four boys were excited now, and there was an eager light in every one’s eyes as they were carried along by the swiftly-flowing stream.
Suddenly they came around the second bend, and spread out before their eyes appeared a long stretch of white water. It foamed and danced, here and there broken by a huge rock, black and ugly looking.
“We can’t run those,” cried Grant. “We’ll drown sure.”
“Go ashore then,” shouted Fred, and he drove his paddle desperately into the water. John and George also fought valiantly to divert their course and avoid the rapids. Too late, however, for the current was stronger than they, and with ever increasing speed they were drawn swiftly towards the foaming waters below.
CHAPTER IX—DANGER
“Work, Fred! Work!” urged Grant desperately.
“I’m doing my best,” panted Fred, and from the way he drove his paddle into the water it was evident that what he said was true.
They made a little progress towards the shore. They moved still more swiftly downstream, however, for the current was powerful here. For every foot that they progressed towards shore they were drawn a yard closer to the rapids. Unless they reached the bank very soon they were certain to be forced to run the rapids whether they desired to or not.
George and John in the other canoe were in the same predicament. The two frail little craft seemed no stronger than shells and it was almost unbelievable that they could traverse that foaming stretch of water in safety. No one spoke now; every boy was too busily employed in the desperate struggle he was waging against the river.
The current eddied and swirled. From below came the roar of the water as it raced along in its mad course. Beside them was the shore and safety; below was danger, accident, and possible death.
When the two canoes had rounded the bend in the river the one which John and George occupied had been a trifle closer to shore. Consequently it had just that much advantage over the other. The occupants of the two canoes were too engrossed in their own struggles to take much notice of their companions, but out of the corner of his eye Grant saw that the other canoe had nearly reached its goal.
A moment later he heard a call from the shore sounding above the roar of the rapids below. It was George’s voice.
“Keep it up, Grant!” he shouted. “You’ll make it yet.”
“Stick to it, Fred!” cried Grant, encouraged by the knowledge that their companions had reached safety. “We can make it.”
“I’m sticking to it all right,” replied Fred grimly.
Closer and closer to shore they came. Nearer and nearer sounded the noise of the rapids. Could they win out? Certainly they could if nerve and determination were to count for anything.
Ahead of them Grant could see George frantically urging them on. He was so excited that he had run down into the water, where he stood knee-deep, begging and imploring his comrades to come to him. Inch by inch they seemed to move towards shore. Their muscles were aching from the strain now and it was agony for both boys to keep up the fight, but neither one gave even the slightest thought to quitting.
It almost seemed as if they were going to win out now. George was scarcely ten feet distant; arms outstretched he eagerly awaited a chance to seize the bow of the canoe and draw it and its occupants to safety. His chance did not come, however.
Just out of his eager reach a whirlpool caught the canoe. The bow swung suddenly around and Fred’s paddle was almost wrested from his grasp. In vain he and Grant fought. Twice the frail little boat spun around and then seized by a sudden eddy in the current was borne swiftly and relentlessly towards the rapids below.
“We’re goners!” cried Fred.
“Keep your nerve!” shouted Grant fiercely. “You do the steering from the bow. You can see the rocks from there.”
At racehorse speed the canoe shot forward. With every second its momentum increased until it seemed fairly to fly over the water. White-lipped and with jaws set the two boys sat and awaited their fate. From the shore George and John watched with feverish anxiety.
Now they were almost in the rapids. An eddy caught the canoe and it nearly upset. It escaped, however, and again sped on. Around it the water foamed white and hissed and snarled as it raced along. Black rocks stood out along the treacherous pathway. It seemed as if the canoe must surely come to grief on any one of a dozen of them.
Seated on the bottom of the canoe and with his eyes riveted on the rapids below, Fred wielded his paddle like a madman. First one side and then the other he dipped it, changing so swiftly sometimes as almost to bewilder the onlookers.
They were half way through the dangerous passage now. Was it possible that they could come through those angry waters untouched? It was out of the question; they had merely been lucky so far. At least that was the way George and John felt about it. Any moment they expected to see their comrades upset and disappear from sight beneath those terrible foaming waves.
Still the canoe raced on. One moment it had the speed of a locomotive and the next, caught by some eddying whirlpool, its momentum almost ceased, only to shoot forward suddenly again at a bewildering pace an instant later.
“I believe they’ll get through,” exclaimed George excitedly. He and John were standing on a large boulder which afforded them an excellent view of the rapids.
“Wait,” cautioned John quietly.
“‘Wait and see,’” smiled George.
“Please don’t joke,” muttered John. “I don’t feel like it.”
The onrushing canoe was almost through the rapids now. Could it be that two inexperienced boys were to come through that mad mill race alive? If they could last a moment more they were safe, but ahead of them was the most dangerous part of the rapids. Two huge rocks stood out in midstream scarcely six feet apart. Between them the water rushed and roared like a cataract. Below this spot the rapids ended and the current gradually slowed down to its normal swiftness.
Fred and Grant saw all this in the twinkling of an eye and they knew that the test was now to come. Both boys braced themselves; so swiftly did they move now that it almost seemed as if they were standing still and that it was the two great rocks that were charging down upon them. Closer and closer they came. With bated breath George and John watched from the shore, realizing their companions’ peril.
Fred, in the bow of the canoe, gripped his paddle with all his strength. One moment more and their lot would be decided. The rocks looked like mountains as they bore down upon them. Now they were just ahead, ugly and bristling in their might; now they were alongside; now they were past. Fred and Grant had run the rapids in safety. They could scarcely realize it. The danger was over and they were alive.
“Yea, Fred!” shouted Grant. “We’re through!”
“Thank goodness,” sighed Fred, and he sank back limply against one of the thwarts of the canoe.
“You’re a wonder,” cried Grant.
“It’s a wonder we’re alive, you mean.”
“That’s true, too. But the way you steered!”
“It wasn’t due to any skill on my part; we were just lucky.”
“Anyway,” exclaimed Grant happily, “we ran the rapids and I wouldn’t give up that experience for a million dollars now.”
“Neither would I, _now_,” agreed Fred. “It would take a good deal more than that to make me go through with it again, though.”
They had now reached a point two or three hundred yards below the rapids and decided to go ashore and wait for John and George. It was with a very comfortable feeling that the two boys set their feet on solid ground once more.
“Just look back there and see what we came through,” exclaimed Grant.
“I don’t see how we did it,” said Fred. “I wonder if we really did.”
“You think you were dreaming, I suppose,” laughed Grant. “I can swear we did do it, though, and I guess Pop and String will, too.”
“It doesn’t seem possible.”
“Here we are.”
“I know it. Just look at those rapids, though. They look like Niagara Falls from here.”
“There ought to be good fishing along here,” remarked Grant.
“I should think so. Perhaps Pop can catch his big trout here. The big fellows usually stay in the deep pools below rapids like this.”
“Here they come now,” exclaimed Grant, as John and George appeared, carrying their canoe along the shore.
“We’ll have some fun with them about it, anyway,” said Fred, in a low voice. “Watch me get a rise out of them.”
“Hey, you two,” shouted George, as he spied his friends. “What do you mean by scaring String and me almost out of our wits?”
“Do you suppose we did it on purpose?” laughed Grant.
“Why, that was nothing at all for us,” said Fred, airily.
“Oh, is that so?” demanded George, mimicking Fred’s tone. “Well, if that was nothing, I’d hate to see what something was.”
“That was no effort at all for us,” continued Fred, carelessly.
“Put this canoe down quickly, String,” exclaimed George. “Let me get at that fellow. He ought to be drowned.”
With a sigh of relief John and George deposited their burden on the ground and George immediately advanced threateningly towards Fred.
“Let him alone, Pop,” laughed Grant. “He’s the best steersman this side of the Canadian border.”
“He was pretty good, wasn’t he?” exclaimed John. “How did you two fellows like shooting the rapids?”
“It was wonderful,” said Fred heartily. “I never had such a wonderful sensation in all my life.”
“I’ll bet you were both almost scared to death,” said George, shortly.
“We were,” laughed Fred, “but now that it’s all over we’re glad we did it.”
“Fred thinks there ought to be some good fishing in these pools along here,” said Grant. “What do you say to trying them?”
“That suits me,” said George readily. “I’m hungry, too.”
“We’ll have lunch right here then,” exclaimed Grant, “and afterwards we’ll try our hands at the trout fishing.”
“And Pop will catch the biggest trout that ever swam in the waters of the Adirondacks,” added Fred, nudging John as he spoke.
“Huh,” exclaimed George disgustedly. “I wish you’d stop that talk. I suppose you’ll be worse than ever now that you’ve run these rapids.”
“I didn’t say anything about myself,” smiled Fred. “I was talking about the big trout you were going to catch.”
“I suppose you think you’re the only one here who can shoot rapids or catch fish or do anything at all.”
“I told you I was talking about you, not about myself,” insisted Fred. “I said you’d probably catch the biggest trout in the Adirondacks.”
“You think you’re pretty funny,” snorted George. “You just wait and see.”
CHAPTER X—WAIT AND SEE
When luncheon was over, the four young campers busied themselves with preparations for the afternoon’s fishing. They sat around on the bank joining the different sections of their trout rods and selecting the flies which they considered would be most tempting to the speckled fish they sought to catch.
“We’ll fish from the shore, I suppose,” remarked John.
“Of course,” exclaimed Fred. “The current is too strong here to try it from a canoe.”
“I’m not much good at this game, I’m afraid,” laughed John. “I don’t expect to catch a thing.”
“I don’t know anything about it, either,” said George, “but I certainly expect to catch something just the same.”
“Maybe you’ll have beginner’s luck,” said Grant.
“I don’t care what it is,” laughed George. “I want some fish, though.”
“Well, I’m ready,” said Fred, rising to his feet. “Where are we going?”
“Suppose two of us go upstream and two down,” suggested Grant.
“All right,” exclaimed Fred. “You and I will go up and the others the other way. We’ll meet back here in time for supper.”
“At the latest,” added John.
Fred stepped to the shore and deftly cast his fly out on the w |
35957-0 | aters. Gradually lengthening the amount of line he had out, he kept casting and then drawing the rod back over his head so that the line stretched far behind him. Then, with a short snap of his wrist he would send the fly floating out over the pool again. As it came to rest lightly on the surface of the water he jerked it along for a few feet in imitation of the struggles of a live insect and then he would repeat the performance all over again.
His three friends watched him with absorbing interest.
“That’s a simple performance,” exclaimed George at length. “Why don’t you leave the fly in the water for a second or two and give the fish half a chance to swallow it? It would have to be an awfully quick trout to take your hook.”
“They’re quick enough; don’t worry about that,” smiled Fred.
“But why don’t you let the hook sink a little below the surface?”
“Did you ever see a moth or a bug of some sort light on the water?” Fred inquired.
“Yes. Lots of times.”
“Did you ever see one sink?”
“No, I don’t believe I ever did,” George admitted slowly.
“That’s just it,” exclaimed Fred triumphantly. “If a real insect doesn’t do it, why should an artificial one? The idea is to make the fly appear just as much alive as possible.”
“I haven’t seen you catch anything yet,” remarked George.
Hardly had he spoken, however, when Fred had a strike. His fly had settled like thistledown on the surface of the pool after an almost perfect cast, when there was a rush and the line was drawn swiftly across the pool. The light rod bent almost double and Fred’s three companions jumped to their feet excitedly.
“Yea, Fred!” shouted John. “You’ve hooked a big one. Stick to him.”
“Big one nothing,” said Fred shortly. “It’s a little fellow.”
“Bring him in anyway,” cried George. “The little ones are just as good to eat as any kind.”
The trout may have been small as Fred had predicted, but he put up a valiant fight. After a very pretty struggle, however, he was gradually brought in close to the bank, and with a quick, dexterous scoop of his landing net Fred brought him to shore.
“About ten inches,” he remarked as he held the gamey little fish up for his friends to see. “He was fierce, though; look there,” and he showed the side of the trout’s mouth all torn and bloody, so hard had he attacked the hook.
“Let’s go after some ourselves, String,” exclaimed George eagerly. “I’d rather catch them myself than to watch others.”
“Remember you’re going to get a big one,” reminded Fred.
“Wait and see,” said George gruffly.
Without wasting any more time he and John made their way downstream while Fred and Grant worked slowly in the opposite direction. Fred was the only one of the four who was at all skillful in handling a trout-rod, and, as a consequence, he had the best luck at the start. Grant, however, had captured one prize, and to his delight it proved to be larger than any Fred had caught.
They had progressed slowly towards the rapids, stopping at every pool for a few casts, but both boys seemed to have the idea that their luck would be better farther up. Consequently they did not linger long in any one spot until they reached a point just below the rapids. Here there were several large pools, and each boy selected one and prepared to make a cast.
Grant had experienced considerable difficulty in making his casts, for the branches of the nearby trees and bushes seemed far easier to locate than the spot for which he aimed. Time and again he had found his hook entangled by the overhanging limb of some tree and he had spent many moments in freeing it as a result. It was particularly exasperating to him as he saw Fred with apparent ease drop his fly on any spot he cared to hit.
Grant had just succeeded in disentangling his hook for at least the tenth time when he heard his name called.
“Come over here, Grant!” shouted Fred excitedly. “I need help.”
Grant immediately dropped his rod and started towards the spot where Fred was standing.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded, when he was only a few yards distant from his companion.
“Matter?” exclaimed Fred. “Look at that rod.”
It was bent almost double, and the line whipped back and forth across the pool as if it was possessed.
“Zowie!” cried Grant eagerly. “You’ve hooked a good one this time.”
“I should say I had.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Take that landing net and stand ready to scoop him up in case I can bring him close enough to shore, and don’t lose him beforehand.”
“Don’t lose him,” begged Grant. “Look at him go.”
The light rod was almost in the shape of a horseshoe and it scarcely seemed possible that it could stand the strain. Back and forth and around and across the pool the trout carried the hook. Fred strove to keep a constant pressure on the line in order to tire the fish out; he did not try to check his frequent bold rushes, however, but rather to prevent the line from becoming slack at any time.
One moment he would reel the line in swiftly and there would be almost no resistance at all; the next moment, however, just as he and Grant had come to the conclusion that the struggle was practically ended, off would go the line again while the reel sang loudly.
Fred was white-lipped, he was so excited. But who wouldn’t be, for there is no more thrilling sport in the world than to fight a big trout with a five-ounce rod?
“I believe he’s tiring,” exclaimed Fred at length.
“A little, perhaps,” agreed Fred.
“I wish he’d jump so we could see him.”
“If he does I’ll lose him. That’s one of the things I’m doing my best to prevent.”
“Why so?” demanded Grant in surprise.
“If a fish can jump clear of the water he can very often shake the hook out of his mouth. I’ve seen it happen too often.”
“But I don’t see how you can prevent it.”
“If I keep a steady strain on him all the time, he can’t jump. It’s only when the line is slack that they have a chance to do that.”
“Look at him go!” exclaimed Grant. “Wouldn’t you think he’d be getting tired by this time?”
“He is. His rushes aren’t as long as they were before.”
“Does that mean you’ve got him?”
“Not at all. You’ve never caught a trout until he is safely on the shore.”
Fred had not once taken his eyes from the line while he was talking with Grant. Carefully, coolly and with great skill he played his fish. Never once did he relax his caution, and little by little he seemed to be gaining the mastery. Every rush was shorter than the one before, and after every one he reeled in a bit more of line and brought the trout a trifle nearer to the shore and the net.
“Get ready, Grant,” said Fred in a tense voice.
The handle of the net in his right hand, Grant knelt on the rocks on the edge of the pool. He was just to the left of the spot where his comrade was standing and he now watched the line just as closely as Fred.
“Let me know when to scoop him,” he said.
“You’ll know all right,” replied Fred. “You’ll see him in the water.”
“You tell me, though.”
“All right.”
The plucky trout was tiring rapidly now. His struggles became weaker and weaker. Fred had played him well, but he was too seasoned a fisherman to feel that the fight was ended. Bitter experience had taught him that there is many a slip.
“Get the net ready,” exclaimed Fred after what seemed like a very long time to Grant, who was not comfortable in the position he was in.
Nearer and nearer Fred brought the trout. He still struggled weakly but was practically exhausted now. Relentlessly Fred reeled in the line. Once the trout broke the water with his tail not a dozen feet from shore and Grant held his breath; he thought the fish had escaped.
Not so, however, for a moment later he could see him in the water being drawn remorselessly closer to the net. Grant was in a panic for fear he should not do his part correctly.
“Now, Grant!” cried Fred suddenly.
The trout was in the water almost at Grant’s feet. His struggles were very weak now and thanks to the way Fred handled the rod, was nearly motionless. Carefully Grant lowered the net into the water and moved it along until it was almost underneath the beaten fish; then with a quick motion he raised the net and a moment later the trout lay upon the bank enmeshed in its folds.
“Nice work, Grant!” exclaimed Fred. “You did that like a veteran!”
“Isn’t he a beauty!” cried Grant delightedly.
“He surely is.”
“How much do you suppose he weighs?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’d hate to say; two pounds and a half, I guess.”
“That’s pretty big, isn’t it?” inquired Grant.
“It is for this part of the country and it’s all I’d care to tackle with a five-ounce rod.”
Fred had removed the hook from the fish’s mouth now and he held him up to view.
“He’s all right,” said Grant admiringly.
“What do you suppose Pop will say about him?” grinned Fred. “I don’t believe he can match him, do you?”
“I don’t know,” said Grant doubtfully. “I’d hate to bet on it. You can’t ever be sure what he’ll do.”
“Huh,” laughed Fred derisively. “He couldn’t catch a trout like that to save his life.”
“Wait and see,” cautioned Grant.
CHAPTER XI—WHAT GEORGE DID
“Well, I suppose we might as well go back now,” said Fred. “It’ll be dark before long.”
“All right,” agreed Grant, reluctantly. “I wish I might have caught a trout like that one of yours though.”
“I’ll stay if you want to.”
“No, I guess not,” said Grant. “As you say it will be dark soon and we might as well go back.”
“Get your rod then and we’ll start.”
Grant returned to the spot where he had been standing when Fred called him, and picking up his rod soon joined his companion. Together they made their way back to camp rehearsing the story of the big trout’s capture time and again during the journey.
“The others don’t seem to have returned yet,” remarked Grant when they had arrived at their destination. “Shall we wait for them?”
“I don’t see the use. Let’s clean some of the fish and get ready for supper.”
“You’re not going to eat that big one, are you?”
“I’m not going to touch it yet, that’s sure. I want to show it to Pop first.”
“Aren’t you going to stuff it and take it home?”
“I don’t believe I can,” said Fred. “I don’t know how to do it myself and there isn’t any place around here where I can have it done.”
“That’s too bad; still it will make good eating.”
“After I’ve shown it to Pop,” grinned Fred.
“Here they come now!” exclaimed Grant, and as he spoke John and George appeared through the trees a short distance away.
“What luck did you have?” demanded John as he and his comrade approached the fire which Grant had started.
“Pretty good,” replied Grant. “I caught only one myself but Fred got eight.”
“Good for him,” exclaimed John. “Did you get any big ones?”
“Fred caught one beauty.”
“Let’s see it.”
Nothing loath Fred proudly produced his big trout and held it up for the inspection of his friends.
“Say,” exclaimed George, “that’s a good one all right!”
“He certainly put up a game fight too,” said Grant. “You should have seen it.”
“I wish we had,” said George. “None of the ones we caught gave us any trouble at all.”
“Perhaps you didn’t catch any big enough,” said Fred, preparing to tease George and remind him of his boasts. “How many did you get anyway?”
“Only four all together,” replied George. “String caught three of those.”
He and John seemed unwilling for some reason to talk very much and they had the appearance of holding something back. Perhaps if it had been lighter it would have been possible to see a guilty look on the faces of both boys.
“Let’s see your fish,” urged Fred. “Don’t be afraid of them. I’m surprised that you didn’t catch more than one, Pop. I expected that you’d bring in at least a dozen and that you’d surely get one bigger than mine; here you are with only four little ones between you. Bring them out anyway.”
John opened the creel and dipping his hand inside brought out a trout about ten inches long and laid it on the mossy bank.
“That’ll do for a start,” grinned Fred, who was thoroughly enjoying himself. He knew that he had made good his boast about catching a larger fish than George. He had been somewhat worried up to the present time for as Grant had said it was never possible to say just what George would do. Now, however, all doubts had been swept from his mind and he was perfectly confident that he had beaten his rival.
“There’s another,” said John, bringing out a second fish, if anything a trifle smaller than the first.
“Huh,” laughed Fred, “I’ll bet that’s the one Pop caught.”
“No, it isn’t,” said John. “I caught those two and this one too,” and he placed a third trout by the side of the other two. All three of them were almost exactly the same size.
“They’re not very large, are they?” said John dubiously.
“Oh, they’ll make fine eating,” exclaimed Fred. “Where’s your other fish though? I want to see the one that Pop caught.”
John once more put his hand in the creel and felt all around.
“I don’t feel it here,” he said anxiously.
“Maybe it slipped through a crack in the basket,” said Fred gleefully. “Are you sure you caught a fish, Pop?”
“Why, I thought so,” said George. “Here, String, let me try to find it.”
“Too bad we haven’t got a magnifying glass,” chuckled Fred as John passed the creel over to George. “You know it’s against the law to catch the little bits of ones anyway.”
“Find it, Pop?” inquired John.
“Here it is,” exclaimed George after a moment’s search and he drew forth to the astonished gaze of Grant and Fred a trout that one glance showed was easily larger than the one Fred had caught.
“Where’d you get that fish?” demanded Fred in amazement.
“I caught it.”
“You did? How’d you do it?”
“With a hook and line of course. I told you to ‘wait and see.’”
“Well,” gasped Fred, and he stopped for lack of anything further to say. His three companions, however, burst into gales of laughter all at his expense and all seemed to enjoy the situation very much.
“Let me see him,” demanded Fred, and George very willingly handed over his prize to be inspected.
“Why, look here,” exclaimed Fred. “There’s not a cut or a mark of any kind around his mouth but his stomach has a big gash in it.”
“Certainly,” said George. “That’s where I hooked him.”
“In the stomach?” cried Fred. “What are you talking about?”
“Tell him how you did it, Pop,” urged John gleefully.
“Well,” said George, “it was like this. I tried to fish the way I saw Fred doing it but I couldn’t to save my life. The old hook kept catching on everything in sight.”
“Just like mine,” interposed Grant.
“I finally got disgusted,” continued George. “It didn’t seem to be any use in my trying any longer and I thought that a trout would be an awful fool to bite that silly looking fly anyway. I’ve always fished with worms and I didn’t see why I couldn’t catch trout with worms for bait. I decided to try it anyway, so I rolled over an old log and dug under it with my knife. It wasn’t long before I had a couple of big fat fellows and I soon put one on the hook and took the fly off.
“Well, I fished with the worms for a while but nothing happened and I began to get pretty well discouraged. I quit fishing and lay down on my stomach to get a drink out of one of the pools. The water was just as clear as crystal and just as I lay down I saw a big old trout shoot under a big rock at the bottom of the pool. That proved there were trout in there anyway.
“The rock where he disappeared was right beneath me and I picked up my line with the big worm still on the hook and let it down just as quietly as I could until it was right in front of the rock. Nothing happened for a long time and I thought the trout was gone, but all of a sudden I saw him again.”
“Were you holding the line in your hand?” inquired Grant.
“Yes; it was just like a drop line. The rod was lying in back of me on the ground and all I had done was to let out a lot of line. Well, the old trout sort of poked his nose out and took a look around. He went up to the worm and took a smell of it; at least that’s the way it looked. He didn’t bite it though and a second later he went whizzing back underneath the rock again. I thought he was gone for good but in a few seconds back he came; the worm seemed to attract him even if he didn’t try to eat it. He kept hanging around it all the time, sort of sniffing at it first one side and then the other.
“All of a sudden I had an idea.”
“Whew,” whistled Fred softly.
“I decided,” continued George paying no attention to the interruption, “that I’d try to pull the line up all of a sudden and hook him in the stomach. I didn’t see why such a thing wasn’t possible and I meant to try it the first chance I had. Old Mr. Trout still hung around the worm but it seemed as if he was never going to get right over the hook. Finally he started to swim away slowly and I thought it was all over. He only went a few feet though and then turned back. The worm seemed to fascinate him.
“He went right up to the hook and sort of looked it over again; then he turned his back on it so to speak, and kept perfectly still, just wiggling his fins. I lowered the hook a little and he never moved. I lowered it a little more and held it there. All at once he turned leisurely around and came right square over the hook. I yanked the line with all my might and there he is.”
George pointed proudly to the big trout lying at his feet.
“That’s a great way to fish for trout,” exclaimed Fred in disgust.
“That’s all right, Pop,” laughed Grant. “You caught him anyway, didn’t you?”
“I surely did. I told Fred I’d beat him out and I did it. Why, Fred, you little shrimp, I’d have put salt on his tail and caught him that way if it was necessary in order to take some of the conceit out of you.”
“Bah!” exclaimed Fred in disgust.
CHAPTER XII—A CHALLENGE
Two more days the boys spent among the streams and the trout pools. At the end of that time their supply of food was running low and they decided to return to their island camp.
The return trip was made without any mishap and when they entered the little lake where their island was situated, their tent, standing out prominently on the little bluff where it was pitched, was a welcome sight to all.
“It looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” exclaimed John proudly.
“It certainly does,” agreed Fred. “I’m sort of glad to be back again.”
“We had a great time though,” said George enthusiastically. “There’s one more trip I want to take this summer too.”
“What’s that?” inquired Fred.
“I’d like to climb that mountain over there.”
The four young campers turned their heads and gazed at the peak George indicated, towering high over the lake.
“That’s a go,” exclaimed Grant readily. “I think that it would be good fun.”
“So do I,” agreed John. “Let’s do it soon too.”
“Do you suppose it will be very hard work?” asked Fred.
“Of course it will,” said George. “You wouldn’t let that hold you back though, would you?”
“Not at all, but I don’t want you fellows to get the idea that it will be any easy job. The mountain looks nice and green and smooth from here because it’s all covered with trees, but when we get there we’ll find it’s pretty rough going. Ravines and gullies and steep cliffs and everything else like that will be there to hold us back.”
“All the better,” exclaimed George. “Then when we reach the top we’ll feel as if we had accomplished something.”
“We’ll do it anyway,” said Grant and every one else agreed with him.
Soon they reached their destination. The Balsam still rode at anchor in the little harbor and everything seemed to be as the boys had left it. In a few moments the canoes had been drawn up on shore and their contents unloaded. Grant in the lead, they made their way towards the tent.
He disappeared inside the tent and before his companions had come up with him, reappeared holding a paper in his hand.
“What have you got there?” inquired George curiously.
“I don’t know. I found it inside the tent.”
“See what it is,” exclaimed George.
“It’s a challenge of some kind, I think,” said Grant after a hasty glance at the sheet which he held.
“A challenge?” exclaimed John. “Not for a fight, I hope.”
“Not as bad as that,” laughed Grant. “It’s an athletic challenge.”
“Who from?” demanded Fred.
“I don’t know yet,” said Grant. “Give me a chance.”
“Read it out loud,” urged John. “That’s the best way.”
“We, the undersigned,” read Grant, “hereby challenge the four boys who are camping on the island in the middle of the lake to a set of water sports. The events are to be decided upon by mutual agreement and are to be as many in number as may be agreed upon. We suggest that they include a sailing race, a canoe race, and a swimming race. The day for the sports is to be decided later and on Monday morning we will come over to see you and arrange the details.
Signed, Thomas Adams. Franklin Dunbar. Hugh McNeale. Herbert Halsey.”
“Who are they, do you suppose?” exclaimed John.
“I don’t know,” said Fred. “I never heard of any of them before.”
“They probably live in that camp down at the other end of the lake,” said Grant. “The one we visited the other day, you know.”
“And found nobody there,” added George.
“That’s it. They must be the ones.”
“I guess they are,” agreed John. “How do they know so much about us though? I don’t see how they knew there were four of us.”
“Probably they’ve seen us around,” suggested Grant. “That part of it is easy enough.”
“Well, what do you think of the challenge?” demanded Fred.
“I say we accept it,” exclaimed George eagerly.
“Of course we will,” said Grant. “I think it will be great sport.”
“They may be a good deal older and bigger than we are,” suggested Fred. “If they are we’ll sort of be outclassed.”
“I don’t believe they are,” said Grant. “At any rate I don’t think we’ll be outclassed.”
“We’ll give them a good rub anyway,” exclaimed George. “What sort of sailing and swimming and canoe races do you suppose they mean?”
“They had a catboat like the Balsam,” said John. “Don’t you remember seeing it down by their tent? We’ll use the catboats for the sailing race.”
“A relay swimming race would be a good stunt,” suggested Fred. “In that way we could all be in it.”
“When they come over here we can decide all the details,” said George. “When was it that they said they were coming?”
“Monday, I think,” said John. “Wasn’t it, Grant?”
“Yes. That’s day after to-morrow.”
“We ought to have some judges,” said Fred.
“That’s true,” agreed Grant. “I don’t know where we’ll get any though.”
“Maybe they’ll know somebody,” suggested George.
“We’ll find out all about it on Monday anyway,” said Fred. “Let’s have a little food now. I’ll faint unless I eat pretty soon.”
“Poor little Freddy,” laughed George. “You need a nurse.”
“Huh,” snorted Fred. “Ever since you hooked that trout by the tail you have been too fresh to live. Your turn will come though.”
“What do you mean by that?” demanded George.
“Why, that the freshness will be taken out of you one of these days.”
“Who’ll do it?”
“I don’t know, but I have a sure feeling that something will happen to you unless you mend your ways.”
“Stop your arguing, you two,” exclaimed Grant. “You fight all day long.”
“We’re not fighting,” laughed Fred. “That’s just the way we show how fond we are of each other.”
“Well, I must say you have a queer way of doing it,” said Grant. “I’d hate to see what you’d do if you didn’t like each other.”
“Such a thing could never happen, could it, Fred?” demanded George.
“No, I guess not. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have some one like you around to make fun of,” responded Fred.
“Who caught the big trout?” taunted George.
“Will you keep quiet about that fish?” exclaimed Fred. “All you do is talk about it from morning till night. I never want to hear of it again.”
“You will though,” grinned George.
“Oh, I know that, but I wish something would happen to keep you quiet.”
Such a thing was destined to come about before Fred dreamed it would and it was also something he never would have thought of, possibly.
“I need some wood for this fire,” remarked Grant, who was busied with preparations for dinner. The sun was fast sinking in the west and the light was commencing to fade. A lone kingfisher winged his way across the lake returning to his home, a hole dug in some bank overlooking the water. All was quiet and peaceful.
“I need some wood for this fire,” Grant repeated, for no one had paid any attention to his former statement of this fact.
“You hear that, Pop?” inquired Fred. “Grant needs some wood.”
“Yes, I heard him,” replied George. “What’s the matter with you; your legs haven’t turned to stone, have they? Can’t you get it?”
“I can, but I have to wash the dishes to-night. It seems to me that that’s just about enough for me to do.”
“All right,” sighed George, “I’ll get it. It strikes me, though, that I do about all the work around here that there is to be done.”
“Yes, it’s too bad about you,” jeered Fred. “Take the ax and get out of here.”
“It’s pretty dark,” said George as ax in hand he started for the clump of trees in the rear of the tent. It was growing dark as George had said and it was becoming more and more difficult to pick out the narrow trail. He had advanced but a short distance when a little animal ran out into the p |
35957-0 | ath and trotted along ahead of him.
“Why, look at the cat,” exclaimed George half out loud. “I wonder how it got on the island here.”
As he spoke the little black and white animal left the path and entered a clump of bushes on one side. George had always been extremely fond of pets of all sort and he followed eagerly.
“Here puss, puss, puss,” he called. “Here kitty, kitty, kitty.”
There was no response and he called again. He used his most enticing manner and did his best to coax the little animal out again.
“Wouldn’t they be surprised back at camp,” he thought, “if I should bring in a cat? It would make a fine mascot for us too.”
He bent over the bushes where the cat had disappeared and called again; no response came, however. He bent the twigs aside and stepped in, looking carefully all about him as he went forward. Suddenly he uttered a cry of surprise and started back. He thought he was choking, and springing back into the narrow pathway he turned and ran for the tent as fast as his legs would carry him.
CHAPTER XIII—THE OUTCAST
George’s one idea was to run away, but the remarkable part of the adventure was that it seemed to be impossible to shake off that from which he was trying to escape.
A moment later he arrived at camp and spying his three friends seated around the fire he made his way towards them. As soon as he reached the spot where they were he threw himself upon the ground and commenced to moan and groan violently.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” he cried. “What have I done? What have I done?”
“Why, Pop!” exclaimed Grant in alarm. “What’s the matter with—”
He broke off suddenly in the midst of the sentence and looked at George in horror. All sympathy for the sufferer quickly left him.
“Get out of here!” he cried, but not waiting for George to leave he departed quickly himself. He was accompanied by Fred and John who seemed to be stricken with some strange malady, a mixture of anguish and laughter.
“What shall I do? What shall I do?” cried George as he saw his three friends leaving him.
“Do anything you want,” called Fred. “Drown yourself if you like, but don’t come near me.”
“Where’d you get it, Pop?” shouted John gleefully. “You’d better go soak in the lake for a couple of days.”
“Get away from that fire,” cried Grant. “Our supper is being cooked there and we can’t come back until you leave.”
“I’m not stopping you,” replied George. “Come back and tell me what to do.”
“I told you,” exclaimed Fred. “Go and drown yourself.”
“Where’d you get it, Pop?” repeated John and immediately went off into gales of laughter.
“You caught the trout all right,” laughed Fred. “You caught something else. Something a good deal bigger than that fish too.”
“Isn’t it awful!” exclaimed John holding on to his nose. “I remember my younger brother once ran across a skunk like this and he had to live in the barn for two days.”
“To think that Pop should be the one, too,” said Fred delightedly. “It seems almost too good to be true.”
“It’s true all right enough,” said Grant grimly. “Go up close to him if you don’t believe it.”
“What shall I do?” called George to his three unsympathetic companions. He was standing near the fire, anguish depicted on his face. He was in a sorry plight, for no matter where he went he could not escape the almost overpowering odor that clung to him.
“Take all your clothes off and throw them in the lake,” said Grant. “Then go take a swim yourself.
“After that we might let you come back,” added Fred.
“But I can’t throw away perfectly good clothes,” protested George.
“They’re not ‘good’ any more,” laughed John. “Throw them away.”
“Burn them if you like,” suggested Fred. “Do anything you want with them, only get rid of that smell. You can’t come near us until you do.”
“Is that so?” demanded George and he took a few steps forward. “Who says I can’t come near you?”
“Don’t do it, Pop, don’t do it,” begged Grant. “If you only knew how you smelled.”
“I do know; don’t worry about that. It follows me wherever I go.”
“Please don’t come near us,” exclaimed Grant as George still moved towards them.
“I thought I’d come over and hug Fred,” said George. “He’s so pleased about it all that it seems only fair that I should share the smell with, him.”
“You stay away!” cried Fred in alarm. “Don’t you touch me. Don’t come within forty rods of any of us.”
“Oh, Fred,” grinned George mischievously, “don’t run away from me. I just want to show you how fond of you I am.”
As he spoke George walked slowly towards the group of three boys who stood and watched him anxiously. They knew that George would stop at nothing once he was started and his offer to share the smell of the skunk with Fred gave them ample cause for alarm. Fred was the one most worried and he really had good reason for his alarm, for he knew that George would like nothing better than to rub up against him and inflict the awful odor on him too.
“You keep away from me, Pop!” cried Fred uneasily.
“Don’t you like me?” grinned George.
“Oh, yes, I love you,” exclaimed Fred, knowing well that whatever he might say it would be exactly the wrong thing.
“Then let me hug you,” urged George, advancing steadily nearer.
“I’ll hit you over the head with this rock.”
“Why, Fred, how unkind of you; I really am surprised.”
“You’ll be worse than that if you don’t keep away,” warned Fred, but he backed away a few feet as he saw George steadily approaching.
“Let’s get out of here,” whispered John to Grant and unnoticed by George they withdrew and made their way back to the fire.
“Pop certainly has Fred worried now all right,” laughed John.
“I should say so,” agreed Grant. “The joke was on Pop at first but it certainly is on Fred now. Just look at them.”
George still advanced slowly towards the spot where Fred was standing. He held his arms out, entreating Fred to come to him, but Fred very evidently had no intention of doing any such thing. He was slowly retreating, threatening George meanwhile with all manner of punishment if he was not left alone.
“Come to me, Fred,” begged George, a wide smile on his face. He was content to suffer the discomfort of the terrible odor himself as long as he could worry his friend so effectively.
“Keep away from me, I say!” threatened Fred, brandishing a stick in his right hand. “I swear I’ll hit you over the head with this if you don’t.”
“Oh, Fred, you wouldn’t do that, would you?” exclaimed George, pretending great surprise. “You wouldn’t hit your old friend who only wants to share something nice with you. You can’t be serious.”
“You heard what I said.”
“But Fred—”
“Whew, what a smell!” cried Fred suddenly and he turned and fled as fast as his legs could carry him. Close behind him followed George calling out at every step for Fred to wait and share something nice with him. These invitations however seemed to have no effect upon Fred, for he merely increased his speed.
Now it so happened that the course Fred followed in his flight led behind the tent and down the same narrow trail where George had had his disastrous encounter with Mr. Skunk only a short time before. It also happened that Mr. Skunk had not left the neighborhood with such eagerness as had George; indeed he had been inclined to linger around the same spot where they had met before.
As has been told the path was narrow and hard to follow and the night was growing darker every moment. Unfortunately for Fred a vine stretched across the path just before he came to the spot where George had searched for the “cat.” This vine caught Fred’s toe and he sprawled at full length on the ground; George, but a couple of steps in the rear of him, had to jump over the prostrate body of his friend in order to save himself from meeting the selfsame fate.
When Fred fell he not only surprised but greatly annoyed Mr. Skunk who was lurking only a few feet away. As a result Fred was treated to the same dose that had made George so unpopular around the camp.
Together the two boys returned to camp. They were fellow sufferers now. Though nearly overcome by the powerful stench, they bore with it long enough to walk arm in arm up to the fire and put Grant and John to sudden flight. This provided them much amusement but the smell was too strong to be borne any longer.
“I guess we’ll have to do as Grant advised,” said George.
“What was that?”
“Throw our clothes away and take a swim.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Fred and side by side the two boys made their way down the water’s edge.
CHAPTER XIV—TALKING IT OVER
Monday morning came and found the four young campers eagerly awaiting the arrival of their challengers. There was great speculation as to what they would look like and whether or not any set of games between the two camps would provide an equal contest.
“I believe we can beat them,” exclaimed George confidently.
“Don’t be so sure,” advised Grant. “You’d better wait until you see your opponents before you begin to make any predictions.”
“That’s right,” said Fred. “You’d better not talk too much about it either, Pop. You’ll need all your wind for the swimming and canoe races.”
George gave the speaker a scornful glance but said nothing. The four friends finished their breakfast and lolled about the camp waiting for their rivals to appear.
“There they come now,” exclaimed John after the lapse of about an hour.
“Where?” demanded George. “I don’t see them.”
“That tree is in your way, I guess,” said John. “You’ll see them in a minute or two.”
“There they are!” exclaimed George suddenly. “Their boat looks just like the Balsam, doesn’t it?”
“I think it is the same,” said John. “It seems to me my father told me that there were two catboats on the lake made by the same man and made exactly alike.”
“That’ll be fine,” said Fred eagerly. “No one can claim any advantage because of the boat then, and the best sailors will win.”
“Let’s hope we’re the ones,” laughed Grant. “Come on, who’s coming down to the wharf to meet our guests?”
“We all are, I guess,” exclaimed John, and a moment later the four boys were standing on the tiny dock waiting for the approaching catboat to come into their little harbor.
“They’re good sailors all right,” whispered Fred as he watched the boys in the boat maneuver their craft. “We’ll have to be awfully good to beat them.”
“All the more credit if we do,” said Grant.
“Ahoy, there!” he shouted a moment later. “You’d better anchor a little way out from the dock here. We’ll come out in the canoes after you.”
“All right,” came the reply. “Did you get our challenge?”
“We certainly did,” said Grant.
“Good. I hope you’ll accept it.”
“Of course we will.”
The boat swung around and one of the crew threw the anchor overboard. The sail was quickly lowered and everything was done in a quiet business-like way that instilled a great amount of respect into the hearts of the boys who, from the dock, were watching the proceedings.
A moment later Grant and John each took a canoe and set out from the shore. They came alongside the catboat, which was named the Spruce, and quickly transferred the crew to the canoes, and thence to the shore. One of the boys, Thomas Adams by name, seemed to be the spokesman for the party and he proceeded with Grant’s help to introduce everybody all around.
Much laughter and embarrassment followed but before long all of the boys were quite at their ease. They left the dock and proceeded to the tent and all sat down on the ground in front of it. It seemed that the camp at the end of the lake was very much like the one on the island. It was occupied by four boys of just about the same age as the others and practically of the same size.
“We thought it would be fun,” said Thomas Adams speaking for his three friends as well as himself, “to challenge you fellows to a set of water sports. We heard that there were to be four of you on this island this summer and we saw you the other day just when you were leaving our camp; right after that storm I mean. We were sorry to miss you.”
“We were sorry, too,” said Grant.
“You were away when we came to see you too,” said Thomas.
“Yes,” said George, “we were off trout fishing for a few days.”
“Have any luck?” asked Hugh McNeale one of the other visitors.
“Pretty good,” said George. “We had a lot of fun too.”
“Who caught the biggest fish?”
“Ask Fred here,” grinned George. “He knows all about that.”
Being urged to do so Fred proceeded to relate the story of how George had carried off the prize. He did not spare himself in the telling either and left out no detail of how disappointed he had been to find that George had beaten him out. When he told how George had hooked his trout the story was greeted with gales of laughter and congratulations were showered upon the fortunate fisherman.
“A fellow with schemes like that would be hard to beat in any sort of a game,” laughed Hugh.
“What sort of games are we going to have?” asked John.
“We thought a sailing race would be fun,” said Hugh.
“Yes, and so would swimming and canoe races,” exclaimed Grant. “Do you think three events will be enough?”
“How about a tilting contest?” said Thomas.
“What’s a tilting contest?” asked Fred curiously.
“Didn’t you ever hear of that?”
“Never that I know of.”
“Why, it’s like this,” explained Thomas. “Two fellows get into a canoe; the one in the stern paddles and steers and the fellow in the bow has a great long pole with one end of it all wrapped up with rags or something like that. Another canoe fixed up the same way opposes them and the two attack each other. The fellows with the poles jab at each other and try to upset the other canoe or knock the bow man overboard; if he falls overboard or the canoe upsets of course they lose the match.”
“That sounds fine,” exclaimed George. “I say we include a tilting match by all means.”
“Two from our camp will take on two from yours,” suggested Thomas.
“All right,” agreed Grant. “We’ll enter our star team.”
“Entries will close one second before the match starts,” laughed Franklin Dunbar, a fat, round-faced boy, who had spoken but little thus far.
“And probably our team will be upset and in the water one second after the match starts,” laughed George.
“It’ll be fun anyway,” said Thomas. “When shall we have the games?”
“We were wondering about that too,” said Grant. “I guess almost any time will suit us though.”
“We’ll need some practice,” remarked Fred. “Don’t forget that.”
“Not much,” said Grant. “I say not to practice too much. We don’t want to make professional games out of them, you know.”
“That’s all right, too,” objected Fred. “At the same time we want to make them worth while and the better we all are the more fun they will be too. Don’t you think so?” and he appealed to the four young visitors for their opinion.
“I agree with you,” said Thomas readily. “Our camp wants to beat yours too, and if you fellows don’t take it seriously why there won’t be much honor in it for us if we do win.”
“There’d be plenty of disgrace if we lost under those conditions though,” laughed Franklin Dunbar.
“We don’t know anything about tilting either, Grant,” said George. “We will need a lot of practice for that event.”
“All right,” agreed Grant. “I guess we do need practice. As far as I’m concerned, anything you fellows say suits me. How about a judge though? Suppose we should have a close finish in one of the races, who would we have to decide it for us?”
“My uncle is coming to spend a week with us in camp,” said Hugh McNeale. “He might act as judge if we wanted him.”
“That would be fine,” exclaimed Grant. “When is he coming?”
“Not till week after next.”
“That’s all right,” said Fred. “That would be just about right.”
“Suppose we set two weeks from Wednesday then,” suggested Thomas. “That ought to give us plenty of time to get in shape.”
“All right,” agreed Grant. “We ought to have some sort of name for our teams too. Have you any name for your camp?”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Neither have we. Suppose you call yourselves the red team and we’ll be the blue.”
“Fine,” exclaimed Hugh. “I’ll write a letter to Uncle Jack and tell him what he has ahead of him. I’ll tell him that he really is to be the umpire and that he’ll get the same treatment an umpire does if he doesn’t do his job well.”
The remaining details were speedily arranged and then the four boys of the red team sailed back to their camp, leaving the boys on the island full of excitement and pleasure at the thought of the games ahead of them.
CHAPTER XV—PREPARATION
The days intervening until the time came for the games were busy ones for the boys in the island camp. The Balsam was thoroughly overhauled, and everything removed from her that might tend in any way to retard her speed. Frequent cruises were made and every boy was assigned to some special duty on the boat so that when the race was held there would be no confusion. None of the young campers had any desire to lose the race through inefficiency.
Long swims were indulged in to improve their wind and strengthen their muscles. Canoe races were held and different combinations tried to enable them to select the strongest team. A course a half-mile long was marked out and time-trials held in an effort to decide upon the fastest pair. All four boys were to be in the race but it had been decided that the best policy was to put the best two paddlers in the same canoe. By following this plan it was thought that their chances for winning would be greatly improved. First place was to count two and second one in the sailing and canoe races and in the tilting match. In the swimming race three places were to count, the points to be scored being three for first, two for second and one for third. The team scoring the greatest number of points was to be declared the winner.
Practice for the tilting match occupied very much of the boys’ time. Two long poles had been cut and one end of each was wound with old rags and blankets, thus forming a large soft knob.
“If we’d only saved those clothes that we had on when the skunks got after us,” remarked George, “we could have won a tilting contest from anybody.”
“What do you mean by that!” inquired Grant curiously.
“Simply this. Instead of using rags to wind the poles with we could have used those clothes.”
“What advantage would that have been?”
“Don’t you see?” demanded George. “All we’d have to do would be to point the pole at our opponent. We wouldn’t have to touch him at all; as soon as he got a whiff of that awful odor he’d simply faint and fall overboard and we’d be the winners.”
“A great idea, Pop,” laughed John. “Why didn’t you think of it at the time?”
“In the first place I didn’t know anything about this tilting match at the time; in the second place, even if I had, I don’t believe I’d have kept them. Whew, they were awful!” and George shuddered at the recollection.
“They certainly were,” agreed Fred. “Don’t talk to me about it; my clothes were all in the same condition as yours.”
The same system that was adopted for selecting a team for the canoe race was used for the tilting match. Every possible combination of the four young campers was tried in an effort to find the strongest competitors. Grant and John had been selected for the canoe race, and Grant and George were decided upon for the tilting contest.
It had been taken for granted that Grant would be on both teams; he outshone his companions in every form of game and sport just as he did in his knowledge of books. He and George were heavier than the other two boys and consequently made a more powerful team for the tilting match. Weight would be an asset in that sport, for it is much easier to knock down a light man than it is a heavy one; especially when a tricky and shaky canoe is under your feet.
“I seem to be out of it,” remarked Fred ruefully when the final selections had been made.
“Why are you?” demanded Grant. “You’re going to be in the canoe race just as much as John and I?”
“I know it, but I’m not on the first team.”
“That’s all right, you and Pop might beat us out after all.”
“Huh,” exclaimed Fred. “Pop doesn’t do any work; he just sits there and expects me to do it all.”
“You know that’s not so, Fred,” protested George warmly. “No one in the world works harder than I do.”
“Well, if that’s so,” returned Fred, “all I can say is that there are an awful lot of loafers in the world.”
“All four of us will be in every event except the tilting match,” said John. “You and I are both out of that, Fred.”
“You can save your strength while that’s going on for the swimming race,” said Grant. “We’ll have to depend on you two to win first and second in that.”
“How long is it going to be?” asked George.
“A hundred and seventy-five yards. Tom Adams was over here yesterday while you were away and we decided on that distance.”
“It seems to me like a queer distance though,” said George. “How did you ever happen to hit on that?”
“Why, we wanted to make it a hundred yards and they wanted a two-twenty. We finally compromised on a hundred and seventy-five yards.”
“That’s fair enough,” said George. “How are we going to measure off these different distances?”
“Guess at them, I suppose,” laughed John. “It won’t make any difference whether they’re exact or not, I guess.”
“No, I imagine we’re not going to break any time records so we needn’t bother about such details,” agreed George.
“We haven’t had any practice so far to-day,” remarked Fred. “What’s the matter; are we afraid of getting over-trained?”
“That can be done easily enough, all right,” said Grant. “Don’t you remember what the track coach we had at school last year said?”
“He said I’d never make a runner if that’s what you mean,” laughed George.
“No, not that. What he said about training.”
“What was it?” asked Fred. “I don’t remember.”
“Why, he said it was much better to be under-trained than over-trained. Another thing, when a fellow was training for a certain event he’d never let him run the full distance in practice.”
“Is that so?” exclaimed George. “That doesn’t sound logical to me though.”
“All right,” said Grant, “but you know which school won all the meets held anywhere around home, don’t you?”
“We did,” said George.
“That’s just it,” exclaimed Grant, “and yet you say that trainer was no good.”
“I didn’t mean to say that. All I said was that it didn’t seem reasonable to me not to let a fellow run the full distance.”
“Well, Mr. Smythe used to say that the great temptation for most fellows was to do too much work. They’d go out and run all the afternoon and hang around until they were tired out and then wonder why they felt heavy in the legs and had no life in them.”
“Sailing can’t hurt us anyway,” said John.
“That’s right,” agreed Grant, “and I’m in favor of doing this: stop training for the events to-morrow. That’ll leave us two days to rest up before the games are held and we can devote those two days to learning how little we know about sailing.”
“I know that already,” laughed George. “I’m afraid we’re going to get a good beating in that race.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Fred objected. “They might run on a rock or something.”
“That’s our best chance all right,” said George. “I have an idea that those fellows are all awfully good sailors.”
“I hope we have some wind,” said Grant hopefully. “We’ll never finish the race unless we have a pretty stiff breeze. Personally I think the course is too long.”
“Twice around the lake,” said John. “That’s not so far.”
“It’s pretty far,” insisted Grant. “Wait until you see the buoys out and then you’ll realize it.”
“Who’s going to put them out?”
“The red team,” laughed Grant.
“They’re doing most of the work, aren’t they?” inquired Fred.
“Well, they wanted to; naturally I didn’t object.”
“They’re going to get dinner over here, you know,” said George. “That’ll give us something to do.”
“Just think of it,” exclaimed John. “Won’t we be hungry that day? The swimming and canoe races and the tilting contests all in the morning and then food. You’ll have to cook a lot, Grant.”
“I realize that,” said Grant grimly. “I guess we can feed them though.”
“Suppose we’re all even at the end of the morning,” exclaimed George. “That would certainly make the sailing race exciting, wouldn’t it?”
“It sure would,” Fred agreed. “We’ll have plenty of time to sail it too, Grant. All afternoon ought to be long enough.”
“That’s right,” said Grant. “Yes, I hope we can get around twice in one afternoon.”
“This canoe race is what’s bothering me,” exclaimed George. “That’ll take it out of us all right. It’s hard work paddling and as long as Fred and I aren’t the first team I wonder if it wouldn’t be better if we didn’t go in it at all. If we were fresh for the swimming race that might increase our chances.”
“I know,” said Grant, “but it seems to me that every fellow ought to be in every event.”
“But look here,” George objected. “You and String are a much better pair than Fred and I. You simply walk away from us every time; we can’t possibly beat you so what’s the use?”
“You might get second, and that one point might win for us.”
“I have an idea,” exclaimed John suddenly. “Why not make it a relay race? We can race around the island and if we do that everybody can be in it and it seems to me it would be a lot more fun that way.”
“That’s fine,” exclaimed George warmly. “Fred and I can paddle the first lap and you and Grant the second. Will those other fellows agree to it though?”
“I don’t see why they shouldn’t,” said Grant. “It’s just as fair as the other way; fairer if anything because it gives every one a chance.”
“We’ll have to ask them about it though,” said John. “Why can’t we sail down there now and see them?”
“We can,” said George springing to his feet. “Let’s do it, too.”
A few moments later the Balsam was under way, headed for the end of the lake and the camp of the enemy, the red team.
CHAPTER XVI—GRANT MISSES
The day set for the meet came at last. The first event, the tilting contest, was scheduled for eleven o’clock and a half an hour before that time the red team was on hand. The weather was ideal, bright and sunny and warm, with not too much breeze. This was as the boys desired, for they had hoped that the wind might not spring up until afternoon. At least that is the way they would have arranged matters if they had any power to do so. Strange to say it seemed as if the weather was to turn out just as they had hoped.
Hugh McNeale brought his Uncle Jack along and all the boys were captivated by him at once. He was a big, jolly man, full of fun, and with a laugh that made you feel as if you wanted to join in it every time you heard it. He was enthusiastic over the idea of being the judge and promised to do his very best.
“I also have a trophy for the winning team,” he exclaimed. “It’s something that you boys ought to have had in your camps anyway, but I haven’t seen one in either and so I’m going to give it as a prize.”
“What’s that?” inquired Hugh curiously.
“See for yourself,” exclaimed Mr. Maxwell, for that was the name of Hugh’s uncle. He took a package from underneath his coat and unwrapping it, spread before the admiring gaze of the eight boys a silk American flag about three feet in length.
“Say!” said George enthusiastically. “That’s worth working for, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” agreed the seven other boys, almost with one voice.
“That’s the first prize,” said Mr. Maxwell, evidently greatly pleased with the result the sight of the flag had produced. “Here’s the second,” and from his pocket he drew another flag of the same quality as the first but only half the size.
“I’m ashamed of you boys,” he continued. “Both of these camps should have had a great big American flag flying right out in front of the tent. Let people see that you’re patriotic and be proud of it.”
“We are proud of it,” objected Grant.
“Of course you are,” said Mr. Maxwell readily. “I want you to show it off though. Have a flag, and every time you look at it don’t think only of how beautiful it is. Remember what it stands for and how much you owe to it. Think of the country that stands back of that flag and of the millions of others who along with you have it for their national emblem. You’re all glad you’re Americans and you’re proud of the fact and I want you never to be afraid to admit it. Be loyal to the flag, boys, and by your actions prove that you’re worthy of the protection it affords you. And don’t forget either that it’s your duty as real American citizens to do your part. That’s what so many forget so easily. You can’t expect to receive benefits all the time and not give anything in return, you know.”
“What can we do?” asked George, who along with all the others was deeply impressed by Mr. Maxwell’s words.
“Just this: be good citizens. A good citizen is a man who not only obeys the laws of his country, but who is always working to make his country better. He puts his country’s interests ahead of his own and that’s a hard thing to do sometimes. A good citizen stands by the mayor of his town, and the governor of his state, and the president of his country. Instead of sitting home and criticising them he gets out and works to help them in every way he can and he is loyal to them. Those men are behind this flag and if you are loyal to the flag, prove it by being loyal to the men behind it. Every man must do his part.”
“I guess we’re careless at times and don’t think,” said Grant soberly.
“That’s true,” agreed Mr. Maxwell. “That’s no excuse for us though.”
“But I didn’t come here to make a speech,” he continued laughingly. “I believe what I’ve just said with all my heart though. At present, however, I know there is a tilting contest to be held and we’d better start it at once. I’m anxious to see who gets the first two points towards winning the big flag.”
Without further delay the four boys who were to compete in this event set about preparing themselves for it. Bathing suits were donned so that an upset would not cause any worry and the two canoes were soon ready for the fray.
Grant and George represented the blue team and Thomas Adams and Franklin Dunbar, the red. Grant was bow man, with George to handle the canoe; Thomas was bow man, and Franklin paddled in the opposing boat.
The contest was staged in the little harbor and the judge and spectators took their positions on the tiny wharf. The canoes now faced each other some fifty feet apart, waiting for the signal.
“Not too fast now, Pop,” warned Grant. “I don’t want to fall out of the canoe before we even reach the other one, you know.”
“I know,” replied George. “I’ll be careful.”
“I’m going to stay down on one knee like this, too.”
“That’s a good scheme. Lock your feet around that thwart if you can. We want to beat those fellows.”
“All ready?” came the call from shore.
“All ready,” answered Grant, and Thomas did the same.
“Go,” shouted Mr. Maxwell, and the match was on.
Franklin and George did not try to make speed however. In fact they were both very cautious and as a consequence, the two canoes approached each other slowly. Both pilots seemed willing to let the other man lead off in the attack.
“Careful, Pop,” said Grant, without relaxing his gaze from his opponent’s face for one instant.
“All right. I’m watching them.”
Grant, crouched on one knee, was holding the pole as a mediæval knight would have held his lance in a jousting tournament. Thomas however, stood up in his canoe, gaining a little freedom of action perhaps, but at the same time increasing his chances of going overboard.
The canoes were only a few feet apart now and the bow men braced themselves for the onslaught.
“Let ’em have it now, Grant!” shouted John from the shore. Fred joined him in his exhortations, while Hugh and Herbert Halsey were just as noisy in their zeal to cheer their team on, and for the size of the audience the amount of sound produced was marvelous. Mr. Maxwell was the only one who was silent.
Closer came the two canoes. Now they were within range and Thomas lunged forward savagely at Grant. He ducked the blow and aiming one in return caught his opponent full in the stomach. Thomas uttered a loud grunt and fell backwards. As luck would have it however, he fell in the canoe. The light craft rocked dangerously and narrowly missed upsetting. As it was, some water was shipped and had it not been for the skill of the two occupants it surely would have overturned.
“Quick, Grant!” urged George. “Hit him again before he can get up.”
“Bring me closer to them.”
George thrust his paddle into the water and the canoe shot forward. Franklin, however, with ready presence of mind had swung his canoe around the minute it righted itself and Grant’s lunge at Thomas missed. Before George could bring his boat within range again, their opponents had recovered their balance and were prepared for the second attack.
Once more the canoes approached each other. This time Thomas followed Grant’s example and crouched on one knee. He had evidently learned a lesson and had determined to be more wary.
“Get him, Grant! Get him!” shouted John.
“Careful, George; not too fast,” warned Grant.
He held his pole back waiting an opportunity to strike. This time he was determined that any blow he delivered would end the match; he had been out-lucked before and did not want it to happen again.
Thomas made a feint at him. Grant was anxious and struck back so eagerly that he almost fell out of the canoe.
“That’s the way, Tom,” called Hugh. “You’ll fix him this time.”
Again Thomas feinted and again Grant lunged fiercely at his opponent. Thomas then followed up his bluff with a quick stab that luckily only struck Grant a glancing blow on the shoulder. Had it hit him squarely, the match most certainly would have been ended then and there; as it was only George’s quick action saved them from going over.
“Don’t let him fool you, Grant,” he warned. “Wait for him.”
Again they advanced and as they once more neared each other Thomas repeated his former tactics. He made a feint to lunge at Grant, and as before, Grant was unable to resist the temptation to strike back quickly. This he did and Franklin in the stern of the opposing canoe, anticipating this move, backed water and the blow missed Thomas’ head by inches.
The poles the boys were using were long and heavy. As a result, they were somewhat clumsy and hard to handle. As Grant lunged forward at Thomas, he leaned over the side of the canoe and the weight of his pole prevented him from regaining his balance at once.
Thomas and Franklin had evidently mapped out their plan of campaign beforehand and apparently Grant had acted exactly as they wished him to. Thomas held his pole with a shortened grip and before Grant could recover his equilibrium, he jabbed at him with all his might. The great wad on the end of the pole caught Grant squarely on the chest; he dropped his pole and waved his arms violently about his head in an effort to save himself.
All his efforts were of no use, however. Undoubtedly he would have gone overboard anyway, but just to make sure, Thomas gave him a gentle push with the business end of the pole and over he went. As he disappeared over the side he gave the canoe a shove with his feet and a moment later George joined him in the water.
CHAPTER XVII—GEORGE’S STRATEGY
A moment later Grant and George came to the surface puffing and shaking the water from their eyes and hair. Both boys were laughing.
“Nice work,” said Grant to their two opponents, who sat in their canoe nearby.
“We were lucky,” protested Thomas.
“Lucky, nothing,” exclaimed Grant. “You knew more about the game than we did and you deserved to win.”
The canoe belonging to the defeated boys floated close at hand, bottom side up. The pole and the paddle were a short distance away. These were soon rescued and the canoe being righted, the contestants made their way to shore. John and Fred were the first to congratulate the winners.
“We’ll have to win this canoe race,” exclaimed Fred. “You fellows have two points to our one as it is now, and we can’t afford to let you get twice as many again this time.”
“We’re going to do our best to get twice as many though, you may be sure of that,” laughed Hugh McNeale. “We want that big flag.”
“If you win it, you’ll certainly be welcome to it,” exclaimed John. “We want it ourselves though, I can tell you.”
The best of feeling existed between the two camps, but this fact did not serve to lessen the competition and rivalry. Good sportsmanship adds zest to every game.
“Where are the first pairs for this canoe race?” cried Mr. Maxwell. “We mustn’t let these events lag, you know.”
“We’ll be ready in a minute,” replied Grant. “We want to get all our wind back and remove all the water from this canoe first.”
“That’s right,” said Herbert Halsey. “You fellows take your time.”
The suggestion of the blue team that the next event be made a relay race around the island, had met with an enthusiastic response from their rivals. Two teams from each camp were to compete and each team was to paddle once around. The first pairs consisted of George and Fred, from the blue team and opposed to them were Herbert Halsey and Franklin Dunbar, from the red. Finishing the race were Grant and John, against Hugh McNeale and Thomas Adams. Each camp had selected its strong team to paddle last, hoping to win the race by a powerful finish.
“I guess we’re all ready now,” said Grant, when a few moments had elapsed. “We’ll go ahead any time you say.”
“All right,” said Mr. Maxwell. “Now remember the rules; the starting line is directly opposite this dock and I’ve got some string which we will use for tape at the finish. Each team is to paddle once around the island. When the second relay starts, the two canoes that have finished will be stationed out here about twenty feet apart and this string will be stretched between them; that will be the finish line. All four canoes will be used of course and the second relay must not start until those completing the first have touched the canoes with their paddles. Is it all clear?”
“All clear,” said Grant, and Thomas answered for his side.
“Very well,” exclaimed Mr. Maxwell. “The first canoes may take their places and the second relay had better be ready too.”
George and Fred pushed out from the dock and paddled slowly to the starting point; Herbert and Franklin followed close behind.
When they were in position, and by the way the red team had drawn the course nearest shore, Mr. Maxwell lifted his small megaphone and gave his final instructions.
“Remember,” he called, “once around, and the inside team this lap will be the outside next. Don’t get mixed up.”
“That’ll be a little help to us,” said John in a low voice to Grant. “I hope Fred and Pop can give us a little lead to start out with.”
“I hope so too,” replied Grant.
“On your marks!” shouted Mr. Maxwell.
Four boys sat up alert and eager for the final word.
“Get set!”
Four paddles were raised and held poised for instant action.
“Go!”
The blades were dipped deeply into the water and the race was on. Side by side the two canoes sped along.
“You fellows better go out there and take your places,” said Mr. Maxwell, turning to the four boys who were to continue the race the next relay. “We don’t want any mixup then, you know. It would be a shame to have those boys paddle over half a mile for nothing.”
In response to his suggestion, Grant and John, and Hugh and Thomas, paddled slowly out to the starting line, there to await the arrival of their respective team-mates.
“Take it slow, Fred,” urged George from his position in the stern of the racing canoe. “Don’t kill yourself right at the start.”
They had covered about one hundred yards of their course and all four boys were paddling with every ounce of strength they possessed.
“Dip your paddle deep,” he continued. “Take a long easy stroke. A good steady pace is what we want.”
“They’ll get way ahead of us,” protested Fred.
“What if they do? They’ll be all in at the finish and we’ll start a sprint.”
In response to George’s suggestion they eased up materially. As Fred had predicted the other canoe immediately began to draw away, for its two occupants did not relax their efforts for an instant. Wider and wider the gap opened between them until thirty feet separated the two racers when they came to the first turn.
The island was oval in its shape, very much like an egg. The start had been made from a point about midway between the two ends. The first stretch, therefore, was half the length of the island, then the corner was turned and the whole length of the island was covered, ending with the home stretch, half the length of the island again.
Steadily and strongly, George and Fred paddled. Herbert and Franklin still worked desperately, taking nearly three strokes to the other boys’ two, and as a result, the gap between the two boats continually widened.
“Don’t let it worry you, Fred,” said George. “They can’t keep up that pace very much longer.”
“They’re not weakening yet though, Pop.”
“I know it, but we’ve only covered half the course so far.”
Steadily the red team’s canoe drew away. Forty, fifty feet, they were in the lead now. If any one had been in a position to observe, however, he would have seen that its occupants were beginning to show signs of weakening. Their breath came faster and faster, the perspiration rolled off their faces in streams, and their muscles began to ache and throb.
Relentlessly George and Fred followed them. Not one bit did they increase their efforts, though George had great difficulty in restraining his companion. Powerful, even strokes urged their tiny craft on and now they were holding their own. Just ahead of them was the last turn which was to bring them into the home stretch.
“How do you feel, Fred?” asked George.
“Fine.”
“Are you tired?”
“Not very.”
“I hope not. We’ll start a sprint the second we round that turn and we’ll have to put all we’ve got into it.”
The leading canoe was even now turning the point. The boys in it were plainly tired as their frequent splashing showed. They still worked desperately, however, and it would be no mean task to overtake them.
Grant and John sat in their canoe at the starting point eagerly awaiting the appearance of their team-mates. To their dismay, it was Franklin and Herbert who first hove in sight and to the waiting boys it seemed as if hours elapsed before George and Fred rounded the turn. At last they appeared, however, over thirty yards in the rear.
“Now, Fred!” urged George, as they started on the home stretch. “Let ’em have it.”
Like demons the two boys began to ply their paddles. The light canoe was quick to respond and it fairly flew over the water. Foot by foot and yard by yard they gained on their fast-tiring opponents.
Franklin and Herbert paddled desperately. Their strength was gone however; they had used it all up at the start of the race. Their arms felt like great chunks of lead and it was all the two boys could do to make them respond to the urging of their wills.
At racehorse speed, George and Fred plowed along. The gap between the two canoes began to disappear as if by magic. The steady pace they had maintained had tired them, to be sure, but they still had plenty of reserve strength left and they were using it now when it counted most. The cheers of their team-mates waiting for them came faintly to their ears, spurring them on.
“We’ve got ’em, Fred! We’ve got ’em!” exclaimed George triumphantly. “Stick to it.”
Fifty yards away was the finish line and the canoes were almost on even terms. Forty yards and George and Fred were in the lead. Their rivals were beaten, dead tired, and possessed of scarcely the strength necessary to urge their canoe across the line.
Thirty yards from home and George and Fred enjoyed a lead of nearly five yards. They were moving at easily twice the speed of their opponents now. It seemed certain that Grant and John were to be handed a splendid head-start for the last relay, when an unexpected and most disheartening thing suddenly happened.
CHAPTER XVIII—A CLOSE MATCH
Fifteen yards from the finish Fred’s paddle broke. It snapped off short in his hand and as a result, the canoe almost upset. It seemed as if their splendid effort was to go for nothing. Herbert and Franklin, seeing the plight of their rivals, were endowed with new hope that they might win their relay after all. The hope thus aroused gave them just strength enough to urge their canoe forward across the line. Herbert lifted his paddle and touched the canoe in which Hugh and Thomas waited so impatiently, and then sank back against the thwart exhausted.
The disaster to Fred was nearly fatal. The canoe rocked dangerously and though it did not turn over, it lost every bit of its momentum.
“Sit down, Fred!” shouted George. “I’ll paddle.”
One man against two is a severe handicap, however, even if those two are well nigh exhausted. It must be remembered also that George too, was nearly fagged out. In spite of his usual lightheartedness, he had an indomitable will, however, and not one of the boys had more nerve than he.
He dipped his blade deep into the water, brought the bow of the canoe around so that it pointed in the proper direction, and urged it forward. Meanwhile the other canoe had passed them and crossed the line at least five yards in the lead.
Grant and John were off like a flash, however, and the advantage the red team enjoyed was not insurmountable by any means.
“That was tough luck, boys,” exclaimed Mr. Maxwell earnestly to Fred and George. “You two certainly deserved to win that relay.”
“You surely did,” echoed Franklin Dunbar. “That was about the toughest luck I ever saw.”
“Fred’s too strong,” laughed George. “It’s awfully hard to get any paddle that he won’t break.”
“Don’t pay any attention to what he says, Mr. Maxwell,” urged Fred. “He thinks he can tease me; personally, I think he’s crazy.”
“I hope not,” laughed Mr. Maxwell.
“He’s fresh though,” insisted Fred.
“Not now,” puffed George. “My breath’s gone and I’m all in.”
“That was a great race,” insisted Mr. Maxwell. “I don’t remember ever having seen a better one.”
“We were about twenty-five yards ahead of them at one time, you know,” said Herbert. “I thought we would win easily.”
“So did I,” exclaimed Fred. “You kept drawing away from us all the time and I thought we wouldn’t even be in it. I wanted to paddle harder all the time but Pop here wouldn’t let me. He insisted that we keep up a steady gait and sprint at the end.”
“My system was all right, wasn’t it?” demanded George.
“It surely was. You didn’t count on the paddle breaking, though.”
“Oh, yes, I did. I knew that if you exerted all your strength that any paddle would snap; that’s the reason I wanted you to save it until the end. Suppose you’d cut loose over the other side of the island and the paddle had broken there. We’d have been in a nice fix, wouldn’t we?” and George winked solemnly at their three visitors who seemed much amused at his efforts to secure a rise from his companion.
“Oh, dry up!” exclaimed Fred shortly, and George laughed gleefully at having accomplished his purpose.
Meanwhile the two other canoes were rounding the first turn.
“Sprint, John! Sprint!” Grant urged the moment they had started. “Catch up to them and hang right on to them all the way around.”
Paddling with all their strength Grant and John succeeded in catching up with their opponents. When the bow of their canoe was within a few feet of the stern of the other they eased up a bit and contenting themselves with allowing their rivals to set the pace, they kept their position with bulldog determination.
Thomas and Hugh sprinted. Grant and John followed suit. If the leading canoe slackened its pace the one behind did the same. Like a shadow the two Go Ahead boys dogged their opponents’ course.
Such a proceeding always worries the leader. To know that a step behind him is some one who follows him like grim death and who cannot be shaken off by any means whatsoever, is bound to have its effect in the long run. The pace-maker is irritated and bewildered and sometimes demoralization follows as a result.
Grant was aware of this and he intended to make the most of it. He knew that if Thomas and Hugh discovered that it was out of the question to pull away from the pursuing canoe their confidence would be shaken and once this quality is lost, a great asset is gone.
It is easier to follow the pace than to make it. Another advantage is that the one behind can watch his opponent and note everything that he does. The leader, on the other hand, cannot tell what his rival intends to do and must always be on his guard lest he be taken by surprise.
Thomas and Hugh worked desperately. Evidently they had decided that their best chance was to tire out the boys in the canoe that followed them so relentlessly. With this object in view they started a sprint when they had covered about one-third of the course and they kept it up. Their team-mates had tried to sprint the entire distance, and failed. Could these two do it? George and Fred had been content to allow their rivals to gain on them, but not so Grant and John. Their one idea was to hang on and hang on and hang on, until the time should come when an opportunity offered itself for a quick dash into the lead. This chance had not yet presented itself.
The four boys worked like demons. Down the whole length of the island they raced, neck and neck. The same amount of open water showed between the two canoes all the way along. It almost looked as if the first canoe was towing the other. Maintaining these same positions they approached the last turn.
“Now, String!” said Grant in a low voice. “When they take this curve, I’m going to shoot in between them and the shore. Be ready.”
“All right,” replied John, without looking up from his task for an instant.
The leading canoe now turned and began to round the point of the island. Close behind them followed Grant and John. Thomas and Hugh were not far from shore, so that Grant would not have much room to pass, if indeed such a thing was possible. Just before the canoes entered the straightaway leading to the finish line, the two Go Ahead boys made their bid for the lead.
Grant in the stern swung the canoe in between the other and the shore. The space was limited but their chance had come. It was now or never.
“Now, String!” cried Grant. “Let ’em have it!”
It seemed impossible that the two boys could work any harder than they had been. Every one seems to have some reserve strength, however, no matter how much he may have used before, and it was this store that Grant and John called upon now.
Inch by inch they crept up. Soon Thomas from the stern of his canoe could see out of the corner of his eye the bow of the blue team’s canoe.
“Paddle, Hugh!” he cried. “Paddle for all you’re worth!”
It was a desperate contest, but Grant and John were not to be denied. The difference that setting the pace or following it made, was just enough to give them a slight advantage. As far as skill and strength were concerned, the four boys were remarkably well matched.
Down the home stretch they dashed, and little by little Grant and John gained. They gained steadily also, and it was evident that if the course were long enough they would be returned winners. But could they catch and pass their rivals before the finish line was reached? That was what worried Fred and George, who screamed themselves hoarse in their eagerness to spur their comrades on.
No open water showed between the boats now. A few yards more and the red team was but three-quarters of a length ahead. Soon this was reduced to half a length and still Grant and John gained. The line was but a few yards distant now however. Could they do it?
The veins stood out on their foreheads. Between their clenched teeth their breath came in gasps. Still they struggled on, still they gained slowly, almost imperceptibly and nearer and nearer they came to the finish.
“If the course was only a few yards longer,” groaned George as he watched the stirring finish from the canoe.
A moment later and the two racers were almost on even terms. It was nearly impossible to tell which one was in the lead now, so evenly were they matched. The tape was only a few feet away. With one final effort the four young racers urged their canoes forward; they broke the tape and shot on past. The race was over.
CHAPTER XIX—A CLOSE SHAVE
“Well!” exclaimed George. “I never saw anything to beat that!”
“Who won?” demanded Fred.
“Don’t ask me. I’m not the judge.”
The boys turned and looked at Mr. Maxwell who was seated in the other canoe with Franklin and Herbert. His face was turned towards the two canoes which had just flashed across the finish line. He wore a puzzled expression and was evidently at a loss what to say.
“Who won?” called George.
Mr. Maxwell turned and looked at the speaker sorrowfully. “No one,” he said.
“No one,” exclaimed George. “Why, how can that be?”
“Couldn’t it be a tie?” asked Fred quietly.
“Why, yes, of course. I hadn’t planned for a tie though.”
“I declare the race a tie,” announced the judge solemnly. “If either boat was ahead of the other, I’m sure I didn’t see it, and I wouldn’t dare call it anything else.”
The racers had turned around and were now making their way slowly back. All four of the boys were well nigh exhausted, but they were smiling nevertheless.
“Who won?” called Thomas, for they had not heard the judge’s verdict.
“It was a tie,” said George.
“A tie?” exclaimed Grant, his face falling. “That’s bad.”
“Why is it?” demanded George.
“Because we needed the points.”
“By the way,” exclaimed Hugh, “how do we award the points?”
“Split them, don’t we?” said Fred readily, appealing to Mr. Maxwell.
“Each team gets one and a half. Two for first and one for second makes a total of three, and a half of three is one and a half.”
“Whew!” whistled George. “You certainly are quick at figures.”
A general laugh went up at Fred’s expense but he did not seem to mind.
“That’s the way it’s figured out anyway,” said Mr. Maxwell. “That makes the total points three and a half for the red team and two and a half for the blue.”
“Still one point behind,” exclaimed Grant. “We’ll have to get that back somehow.”
“Well,” said Thomas, “the swimming race comes next and three places count in that. Three for first, two for second, and one for third; you’ll have a fine chance to catch us there.”
“I was just thinking,” interrupted Mr. Maxwell, “that it might be a good idea to reverse the order of these last two events. You boys are pretty well tired out after that canoe race and to swim a hundred and seventy-five yards now would be quite a severe strain. What do you say to our having the sailing race next?”
“Why,” said Grant slowly, “I don’t see any objection to that. What do the rest of you fellows think about it?”
“How about dinner?” exclaimed George. “We could never finish by the time we had planned to eat and I must say I’m hungry right now.”
“So am I,” said Hugh so earnestly that everyone laughed.
“Why don’t we have dinner right now then?” suggested Mr. Maxwell. “As soon as we are through we can start the sailing race.”
“That’s a good scheme,” exclaimed Grant. “Let’s do that.”
“And have the swimming race after the sailing?” queried Thomas.
“That’s right,” said Grant. “The water’s more apt to be quiet later in the day than it is now and that will make it better for swimming.”
“Very true,” agreed Mr. Maxwell. “The wind often seems to go down with the sun and if the wind goes down the water becomes still.”
Without further delay they made their way ashore and preparations for dinner were at once started. Grant usually did all the cooking, but to-day he had an abundance of help. Wood was quickly gathered and a blazing fire was soon under way.
Two of the boys were set to work peeling potatoes which were to be fried in the pan. Others made ready the dishes and collected the knives and forks. Mr. Maxwell had several good sized bass he had caught before breakfast, and, what was even better, he had brought along a dozen and a half ears of green corn, two for everyone present. Was it any wonder that the young campers’ eyes sparkled with anticipation as they saw the dinner being prepared?
Their appetites were keen as only those in the woods can understand. The fragrant odor of sizzling bacon and roasting corn coming to their nostrils only served to increase their eagerness.
“Isn’t this great?” cried George enthusiastically, when at last dinner was announced as ready and the pleasant task of disposing of it had begun. “If anything can beat this, I’d like to know what it is.”
“There is nothing that can tie it even,” laughed Mr. Maxwell, who seemed to be enjoying himself as much as any of the boys.
“I only hope Pop won’t eat so much, he’ll sink the Balsam,” said Fred doubtfully. “We have plenty of ballast aboard as it is.”
“You ‘tend to your own dinner,” advised George very promptly. “I’m too busy to waste any time talking to you now.”
At last the meal was over, and every one had had sufficient to eat.
“All ready to start the race?” inquired Mr. Maxwell.
“Oh,” groaned Franklin, “I don’t feel as if I could move. I’d rather crawl off somewhere and go to sleep. I guess I ate too much.”
“I _know_ I did,” laughed John.
“We’d better start though, I guess,” urged Grant. “The course is long and while there’s a good breeze now you can’t tell how long it will last.”
“That’s right,” agreed Mr. Maxwell. “You’d better get ready.”
The boys at once made their way to their respective boats and made the final preparations for the race. Both boats had had their sails up all the morning in order to dry them out thoroughly and there was very little left to be done.
Mr. Maxwell sat in a canoe near at hand and watched the boys.
“Remember,” he said, “twice around the course. The first lap you go one way and the second in the opposite. Be very careful to round every stake. The start is from the same spot as the canoe race and the finish is there, too. I will fire this pistol as a warning gun, and three minutes later I will fire it again for the start. Be sure not to cross the starting line before I give the second signal.”
“All right,” said Grant. “We’re all ready.”
“So are we,” echoed Thomas from the Spruce.
“Very well then,” said Mr. Maxwell. “Get your anchors up and move out by the starting line.”
This was soon done and a few moments later the two catboats were jockeying back and forth off the entrance to the little harbor. Fred was at the tiller of the Balsam and Hugh guided the Spruce.
The sharp crack of the pistol announced that the race was about to start. Grant had been waiting, watch in hand, for this signal.
“Take a short tack out and back, Fred,” he urged. “I’ll watch the time.”
“Hard-a-lea!” called Fred as he put the tiller over and the Balsam came around into the wind. His crew quickly shifted sides, the sheet was hauled taut, and the trim little boat scudded swiftly along before the fresh breeze.
“Better go back now,” advised Grant when they had covered fifteen or twenty yards. He scarcely lifted his eyes from his watch which he still held in his right hand. “We’ve got a minute and a half more.”
Once more the Balsam came about and began to retrace its short course towards the starting line. The Spruce was just off its starboard side, with bow pointing directly into the wind and consequently was almost stationary.
“We’ll cross the line too soon,” exclaimed John nervously. “We’ll have to come back if we do.”
“Leave that to me,” said Grant confidently, his eyes still on the second-hand of his watch. “I’ll look out for that.”
“We’re not a dozen feet from the line now though,” cried John in alarm. “You’d better come around, Fred.”
“Don’t you do it,” exclaimed Grant sharply.
Closer and closer to the line they came. John, and for that matter Fred and George also were intensely nervous for fear they should cross the line before the signal. Grant, however, seemed confident that they were on the safe side.
“We’ll have to turn around and start all—” began John, when Grant suddenly interrupted him.
“Now,” he cried, and barely the fraction of a second behind his voice came the sound of the starting gun. Almost simultaneously the Balsam crossed the line; away to a splendid start and with a good lead of at least fifteen or twenty feet on the Spruce.
CHAPTER XX—GEORGE SURPRISES HIS FRIENDS
“I take it all back, Grant,” exclaimed John. “You’re all right.”
“It was certainly close though,” said Fred solemnly.
“But ‘close’ doesn’t count in any game, you know,” laughed Grant.
“How about quoits?” inquired George.
“That’s right, Pop,” exclaimed Grant, “it does count in quoits, but I don’t know of any other.”
“We’d better attend to our sailing,” warned Fred. “Trim that sheet in a little, String.”
“That enough?”
“All right,” said Fred. “My, I hope this breeze holds.”
“It’s getting stronger, I think,” said George.
“It does seem to be,” agreed Grant. “It’s dead ahead of us now, but if it doesn’t change, it’ll be right behind us on the last leg of the race. I think it’s always fun to be able to finish straight before the wind.”
“That’s true,” exclaimed John. “We go in the opposite direction the second round, don’t we?”
The Balsam was skimming over the water rapidly on a long tack to leeward. Behind her came the Spruce, also making good time and with about the same distance between the two boats that had separated them at the start.
“They’re pointing up a little more than we are, I think,” remarked Grant, after a glance at their rival.
“We’re all right, though,” said Fred confidently. “I don’t believe in sailing as close hauled as that.”
“Perhaps not,” agreed Grant. “At any rate you know more about it than the rest of us. We’ll have to do as you say whether we like it or not.”
They rounded the first stake thirty yards ahead of the Spruce. Fred’s tactics on the first leg had proved successful, anyway.
“It’s easy,” exclaimed George confidently, as they slid past the stake and settled back for the long reach to the next mark.
“Don’t talk like that, Pop,” urged John earnestly. “Don’t ever boast or get overconfident; you’re sure to regret it if you do.”
“Knock on wood, Pop,” laughed Fred. “That’ll take away all the bad effects.”
The four friends were in excellent spirits, for they enjoyed a comfortable lead which seemed to be steadily increasing.
“There they come around the stake now,” exclaimed Grant, gazing behind them. “They gave it a little more room than we did.”
“And consequently sailed a little bit farther than necessary,” added Fred. “A few feet doesn’t seem very much at the time but in the long run it amounts to a good deal.”
“On the other hand,” said John, “if you cut too close to the stake you’re apt to foul it and then you’re disqualified.”
“The answer to that is easy enough,” laughed Fred. “Don’t hit it.”
“You fellows take more chances than I would,” said John doubtfully. “I believe in playing safe.”
Steadily the Balsam drew away from her rival. The wind was strong now and the lake was dotted with white-caps.
“Perhaps the Balsam is a rough-water sailor,” remarked Grant. “At any rate she seems to be doing splendidly in this breeze.”
“If the breeze should die down they’d probably catch right up to us,” said Fred. “Let’s hope it doesn’t.”
“What makes you think they’d catch us?” demanded John.
“Nothing. Some boats sail better in one kind of a breeze than in others. This seems to be suited to a strong wind and I thought it was possible that the Spruce would do better in a light one.”
“But they’re exactly alike,” objected John.
“I know it,” replied Fred. “That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll sail just alike, though. I’ve seen ten boats all built on the same model, the same size, and everything about them the same, and yet some of them seem to be twice as fast as others.”
“It must be in the one who handles the boat, then,” said George.
“Not at all. I’ve seen them swap crews and the same boats win.”
“How do you explain it?” inquired Grant, who always liked to have a reason for everything.
“I can’t, and I don’t believe any one else can, either. Some boats seem to do well under certain conditions, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Well, the present conditions seem to suit the Balsam pretty well,” exclaimed George. “Let’s hope they continue.”
The second stake was reached with the Balsam still farther in the lead than before. The wind steadily increased in strength and forced the sturdy little catboat through the water at an amazing speed.
“I didn’t know she could go so fast,” exclaimed John enthusiastically.
“None of us did, I guess,” said Grant. “She’s all right though, isn’t she?”
“I should say so,” cried George. “Say, just look at her go,” and he scrambled over to the other side of the boat. The Balsam was heeled far over and the lee rail was awash. Now and then a wave, a little larger than its fellows, slapped lustily against the side and covered the crew with spray.
“We’ll have to reef her if this wind gets much stronger,” said Fred just before they had completed the first round.
“What’s the use?” demanded George. “It’s great this way, and we’re certainly gaining on those fellows all the time.”
“Yes,” said Fred, “but you don’t want to lose the mast, do you?”
“Or we might upset,” added Grant.
“Suppose we do,” cried George. “It won’t hurt us.”
“But we’d lose the race just the same,” said Fred. “Let that sheet out a little there, String. Whenever she heels over like that, give her a little more rope and I’ll bring her up into the wind for a second.”
“That makes us lose time, doesn’t it?” asked Grant.
“I think so. It seems to me that if we stopped and put a reef in the sail we’d sail more evenly and as a result we’d go faster.”
“Those fellows in the Spruce don’t seem to be putting in any reefs, I notice,” remarked George. “If they don’t need them I don’t see why we do.”
“But the breeze is getting so much stronger,” insisted Fred. “It really seems to me that we should put in one reef anyway.”
“How long will it take us?”
“Not two minutes. We can do it in no time.”
“We’d better wait until we round this next stake, I think,” said Grant. “We can do it, then.”
“All right,” agreed George. “I don’t believe in it, though. I love it this way,” and he exclaimed delightedly as the Balsam heeled far over and the spray from the crest of one of the white-caps drenched him from head to foot.
“It’s cold, though,” objected John.
“Nonsense,” cried George. “If you were half a man you wouldn’t mind it.”
John merely shivered, and placing Grant in temporary charge of the sheet he crawled forward and drawing his sweater out from under the deck, he put it on.
“Get ready now,” warned Fred. “The stake is just ahead.”
“And we’re going to take in a reef as soon as we round it. Is that right?” inquired Grant.
“That’s the idea,” said Fred. “Here we go,” and putting the tiller hard over he brought the Balsam cleanly around the mark and headed her up into the wind.
“Let go that topping lift, Pop!” he cried. “Loose your halyards there, Grant! Now, String, let’s get busy!”
He left his post, and ordering and helping his comrades, he took charge of the work of reefing. He had predicted two minutes for the work, but it took at least five, and before they had finished the Spruce was almost up to them.
“Hurry, Fred, hurry!” urged George. “They’re catching us.”
“All right,” cried Fred, springing back to the tiller. “Haul in your sheet there, String!”
The bow of the Balsam swung slowly around and as the sail filled she began to slip through the water once more. Not twenty-five yards behind them now came the Spruce, her full sail spread. Thomas waved his hand and shouted something to the four Go Ahead boys but the wind blew the sound away and the words were lost.
“What did he say?” demanded John.
“I didn’t hear,” said George. “He probably said they’d catch us in a few minutes, and I guess they will, too.”
“You’re a pessimist, Pop,” said Fred, but he looked back anxiously at the Spruce plowing along behind them.
“No, I’m not either,” exclaimed George. “I do think we made a mistake in reefing that sail, though.”
“Wait and see,” said Fred, but he himself appeared to be anxious.
“If the wind should die down we’d be in a nice fix,” said George in a discouraged tone of voice.
“It doesn’t seem to be going down now, though,” said Grant. “Just see us go! And look at all the white-caps. I really think we’re doing better than we did before.”
“But we’re not gaining on them any more,” insisted George gloomily.
“We don’t need to,” laughed Grant. “All we have to do is to hold our lead.”
The relative position of the two boats was unchanged at the end of the first leg on the second round. The Balsam still enjoyed her lead of twenty-five yards over her rival. They had covered only a short distance on the second leg when George suddenly remarked that the wind was dying down.
“I know it is,” he insisted. “Just look; we aren’t tipping half as much as we were.”
“I hope you’re wrong, Pop,” said Fred anxiously.
“But I’m not. Can’t you see it yourself?”
“Perhaps you’re right. At any rate it may only be a lull.”
In silence the four young sailors watched the sail and looked out over the water and gazed fearfully at the Spruce so close behind them now.
“She’s gaining,” announced John.
“No doubt of it,” said George. “What shall we do?”
“What can we do?” demanded John in despair.
“Can’t we take the reef out?”
“If we did,” said Fred, “we’d have to stop, and they’d surely pass us, and whether we’d ever catch them or not would be a question.”
“But won’t they pass us if we don’t take the reef out?” demanded George.
“I don’t know. We’ve got to take a chance either way.”
“And no matter what we do,” added George, “we’re bound to lose.”
“Cheer up, Pop,” urged Grant. “The wind hasn’t gone down very much and they haven’t passed us yet.”
“Can’t we take the reef out while we’re going like this?” demanded George.
“Oh, we can,” said Fred. “It would be awfully hard, though, and dangerous, too; besides that, we might tear the sail.”
“Let me try it,” begged George. “We mustn’t lose this race and that’s all there is about it.”
Working under Fred’s guidance, and taking desperate chances George finally succeeded in shaking the reef out of the sail. The halyards were tightened and once again the Balsam moved along under her full spread of canvas.
“Now I feel better,” sighed George, as he settled back in the cockpit once more. “That short sail worried me.”
“We certainly lost a lot of time fooling around there,” observed Fred. “It was all my fault, too.”
“Forget it,” exclaimed Grant. “We’re still ahead of them, aren’t we?”
“But not much,” said Fred, and he glanced hastily around at the Spruce not more than fifteen yards distant now.
“I hope they don’t get our wind,” said George. “It’s certainly going down and we need every bit of it we can get.”
“You’re right, Pop,” said John. “The wind is lighter and you know what Fred said about the Spruce probably doing better than the Balsam in a light breeze.”
Still maintaining their slight advantage the Balsam turned the last stake and started down the home stretch. The wind was dead astern of both boats now and the sails were stretched at right angles to the mast in order to get the full benefit of the breeze.
“They’ll blanket us, I’m afraid,” muttered Fred gloomily.
“What do you mean by that?” asked George.
“Why, they’ll get right behind us and shut off all our wind.”
“Don’t let them do it, then.”
“You don’t think I’d let them on purpose, do you?”
“They’ll catch us on this straight away, I’m afraid,” said Grant in a low voice. The boats were so close together now it was necessary to speak softly to keep from being overheard.
“Everybody move back towards the stern,” ordered Fred. “Perhaps if we get her bow out of water a little she’ll do better.”
They followed Fred’s directions, but little by little the Spruce crept up on them. The wind was dropping rapidly; it seemed that on this woodland lake storms and winds came and went with equal facility.
The Spruce had blanketed their boat momentarily as Fred had predicted. Drawing even, however, the Balsam once more caught the breeze and the racers moved forward on even terms.
“We certainly have some great finishes, don’t we?” called Hugh from the other boat.
“Well, I should say so!” exclaimed Grant. “They’re heartbreaking.”
All at once George left his seat and moved forward.
“Where are you going, Pop?” demanded Fred. “You’d better come back here and sit down.”
George, however, paid no attention to this advice nor did he deign any answer. He continued serenely on his way until his reached the forward deck. Straightening himself up, his amazed companions saw him place his right hand on the mast and scratch it with his finger-nails.
CHAPTER XXI—HOW THE PLAN WORKED
“He’s gone crazy,” muttered Grant. “What does he think he’s doing?”
George, having completed his strange performance, returned to the stern of the Balsam and quietly resumed his seat.
“What were you trying to do?” demanded John curiously.
“I scratched the mast.”
“I know you did. Why did you do it?”
“To give us more breeze.”
“I suppose scratching the mast is going to make the wind blow,” and John laughed loudly. “I think you’re crazy, Pop.”
“Wait and see,” said George calmly. “I remember that I once read somewhere about sailors scratching the mast when they wanted a breeze, so I thought I’d try it. We need to try everything if we want to win this race. They’re ahead of us now.”
“All right,” smiled John. “I guess you didn’t do any harm anyway.”
“That’s the way I figured,” exclaimed George. “All sailors are superstitious and they believe in those things. As long as we’re sailing, why don’t we try them ourselves?”
“Where’s your breeze?” demanded Grant.
“There it comes,” said George, pointing astern of them. A puff of wind was approaching and a patch of the water could be seen to be ruffled by its breath. A moment later it struck the Balsam and in answer the little catboat increased its speed.
“Why won’t the breeze help them as much as it does us?” inquired Fred.
“We’ll hope they won’t get any of it,” said George. “You notice that that last puff didn’t hit them and that we gained a little by it.”
“It’s certainly close,” said Grant. “We don’t want another tie, though, and we don’t want second place, either.”
“Only a quarter of a mile to go,” said Fred. “We’ll need more wind.”
“Scratch the mast again, Pop,” urged John.
George did so and another gust of wind caught them and drove them along a little faster.
“Isn’t that queer?” exclaimed Grant. “It seems to work though. Try it again, Pop.”
Again George scratched the mast and once more a puff of wind caught their sail. The Balsam was now several feet ahead of her rival and rapidly approaching the finish.
“Don’t do it any more, Pop,” urged Fred. “At least don’t do it as long as we are ahead. If they catch up to us try it again. Of course it’s all luck, but it is certainly strange, isn’t it?”
“It surely is,” agreed John. “How do you account for it?”
“You can’t account for it,” exclaimed Grant. “You don’t suppose that scratching the mast really makes the wind blow, do you? It has just happened that way, that’s all.”
Nearer and nearer the two boats came to the finish. Waiting for them was Mr. Maxwell, seated in one of the canoes, on a line with the tape.
“A little more sheet, String,” said Fred. “That’ll do.”
“They’re almost up to us,” whispered John, doing as Fred had ordered. “Let Pop scratch the mast again.”
George was eagerly awaiting a signal to do this very thing. Fred nodded to him, and using both hands this time George scratched the mast lustily. Call it coincidence or luck or whatever you like, a strong puff of wind struck the Balsam almost immediately. She heeled over and for the first time in a half-hour made such speed that it was possible to hear the water rippling under her bow.
“Here we go!” cried George lustily, and with a rush the Balsam swept forward and crossed the line a good six feet ahead of their rival.
“Balsam wins!” shouted Mr. Maxwell, and a hearty cheer for the victor was immediately given by the crew of the defeated boat.
“How did you like my stunt?” grinned George proudly, addressing his remarks to his three companions. “Any time you want to win a sailing race just come to me and I’ll tell you how to do it.”
“Huh!” snorted Fred, “I suppose you‘ll have a big head for the next year on account of that.”
“Look here, Fred,” exclaimed George, winking at his other friends. “I wouldn’t say very much if I were you. You insisted upon reefing the sail and as a result we nearly lost the race; if it hadn’t been for my great brain and cleverness we surely would have been beaten. However, as long as it turned out the way it did I will forgive you.”
“I made an error of judgment and yours was nothing but luck,” retorted Fred. “I want you to remember that, too.”
The boats were now returning to their moorings and when they had been made fast the crews went ashore and met on the dock to talk things over.
“You boys certainly have the closest finishes I’ve ever seen,” exclaimed Mr. Maxwell. “You don’t try to fix them that way, do you?”
“Not if we can help it, I tell you,” said Thomas laughingly. “I thought we were going to win this last race.”
“So did we,” exclaimed Grant. “You would have won, too, if it hadn’t been for George here. At least that’s what he says, anyway.”
“What did he do?” inquired Mr. Maxwell curiously.
“I scratched the mast,” said George.
“‘Scratched the mast’!” exclaimed Mr. Maxwell. “Why did you do that?”
“To bring us more wind.”
“You must be superstitious,” laughed Mr. Maxwell.
“Well,” said George, “I never used to be, but I am sort of that way now; it worked so beautifully.”
“Where did you ever hear of such a thing?”
“I read about it in some book and as things looked pretty desperate for us I thought I’d try it.”
“You mean to say that all you have to do when you want a breeze is to go up and scratch the mast?”
“Oh, I don’t think it would work every time,” laughed George. “I guess it will give you help only when you need it very badly. If you tried it all the time I suppose you’d soon wear out the charm.”
“Well, you won, anyway,” said Mr. Maxwell laughingly. “That makes you all tied with four and a half points for each team. The swimming race will have to decide it.”
“Is every one ready for that now?” asked Grant.
“The red team is ready for anything,” laughed Thomas.
“All right,” said Mr. Maxwell. “The race will start just as soon as possible and remember that the points will be decided, three for first, two for second, and one for third this time.”
CHAPTER XXII—A STRANGE PERFORMANCE
A course had been measured one hundred and seventy-five yards in length. The start was from a large rock that stood out of the water some fifteen yards off shore and the finish was at the dock.
The contestants made their way to the starting point by way of the shore; at least they walked until they came to a spot directly opposite the big rock and then waded out as far as possible, swimming the last few yards. Before many moments had elapsed the eight boys were lined up in a row waiting for the signal. Mr. Maxwell stood on the dock, a pistol in his hand.
“We’re counting on you, Grant,” John had said as they walked along the shore. “You’ve simply got to win.”
“Suppose I do,” said Grant. “That’ll mean three points for us and unless we take one of the other places, too, that’ll give the red team three points. If that happens the meet will end in a tie.”
“Maybe George can get a place. He’s not a bad swimmer, you know.”
“I know he isn’t, but you’re just as good yourself.”
“The trouble is we’ve never seen these other fellows swim and we have no idea whether they’re any good or not.”
“Well, if we do our best we shan’t have any reason to kick, I guess,” laughed Grant.
He was far and away the best swimmer of the four Go Ahead boys, and so often had he proved his superiority over them that it was now taken for granted. He was the only one who had mastered the crawl stroke. He knew it so well that it was almost second nature to him now, but to his three companions it still remained a mystery. That it is not an easy thing to acquire will be vouched for by any one who has attempted it. Fred was a wretched swimmer and knew perfectly well that he stood no chance in the race; he entered merely because he did not wish to miss anything. John and George were about on a par, both of them good average performers, but nothing more.
“All ready?” shouted Mr. Maxwell through his megaphone.
“Everybody ready?” asked Thomas.
Every one said he was and Thomas waved his hand to the judge. All eyes were fixed upon the figure standing on the dock, his right arm upraised with the pistol in his hand.
They had not long to wait. A flash and then the sharp report of the revolver, and almost together eight gleaming white bodies hit the water. Fred was the one exception; his position had been next to George and when the signal for the start was given he had been a trifle slow in diving.
A mad scramble ensued the moment all the contestants were in the water together and there was much splashing and confusion. Fred was behind the others and consequently bore the brunt of the whole mixup. He had not taken two strokes when George, who was ahead of him, struck him violently in the stomach with his foot.
It was a powerful blow and well nigh knocked all the wind right out of Fred’s body. “Ugh!” he groaned and sank from sight.
George turned in alarm to see who it was that had been on the receiving end of his effort and was just in time to see Fred reappear puffing and gasping. This sight seemed to tickle George immensely and he began to laugh. Fred choked and gargled and wheezed and try as he would, George could not control his laughter.
Meanwhile the other six contestants were far ahead and one glance convinced George that he and Fred were hopelessly out of the race.
“What’s the matter with you?” exclaimed Fred angrily.
“I didn’t mean to kick you,” said George, and once more he burst into loud and uncontrollable laughter.
“I’m not talking about that,” cried Fred even more aroused by the spectacle of his friend’s mirth. “Why did you drop out of the race?”
“I got laughing so when I saw your face that I forgot all about the race and everything else. I never saw such a funny sight in all my life.”
“Huh,” snorted Fred. “You’re a nice one. We’ll probably lose the meet on account of you.”
“I couldn’t help it,” cried George, and once more he began to laugh. “I just started laughing and I couldn’t stop.”
“Come ashore before you drown, you idiot!” exclaimed Fred, and side by side they made their way to land.
The other contestants were now strung out in a long line. Grant was easily in the lead and it seemed a foregone conclusion that he would win the race. Like some great fish he plowed through the water. His feet worked fast and evenly while his hands reached out with a great sweep and drove him speedily along. His face was under water most of the time; every few strokes he rolled over on one side, sucked in a great mouthful of air and then continued as before.
The real race was for second place and there were three in it. Hugh, Thomas, and John went along almost abreast. John could see that Grant would win the race easily enough, but he realized that in order to win the meet it was necessary for him to finish at least third. He was a good swimmer but was not a racer. Many times he had covered long distances in the water but had paid scant attention to developing his speed.
He used a powerful overhand stroke and when he was moving slowly he was practically tireless. He now was worried, however. He did not dare look around to see where George was for fear he might lose a few precious inches. He did not expect to see Fred, for he knew that |
35957-0 | his small comrade was a very poor swimmer. He had considered himself and George about on a par and he wondered how it could have happened that he had outdistanced him so far. Had he known the truth undoubtedly he would have been just as angry as Fred had been and his speed certainly would not have been benefited as a result.
Ahead of him he saw Grant and ahead of Grant he spied the dock and Mr. Maxwell standing on it waiting. It seemed very far away. Beside him swam Hugh and Thomas, one on his right and the other on his left. They were breathing hard and splashing heavily, but still they did not seem to be slowing up.
John put forth every effort. He too was becoming short of wind and his arms and legs began to feel the strain. It had been a hard day and this last contest was a severe test for all the boys.
“I must beat one of them! I must! I must!” John kept saying to himself over and over again. Then the next time he saw his rivals Thomas was several feet ahead of him and gaining.
John groaned. Hugh still kept abreast of him and try as hard as he could John seemed powerless to shake him off. He gritted his teeth and strove desperately to make his arms go still faster. Nature could not be forced however; his arms seemed made of lead and every time he raised them he wondered if it would not be the last.
Far ahead he saw Grant only a few feet from the dock. Thomas, too, was many yards in advance of him now. “I simply can’t keep it up any longer,” thought John, and the next instant, “Don’t quit,” he told himself, and he forced his tired muscles to carry him along a few strokes more. He set his jaw determinedly and decided he’d keep it up till he reached the dock no matter what happened later.
Suddenly an idea struck him. “Perhaps Hugh is just as tired as I am,” he thought. “In that case all I have to do is to keep on swimming at a moderate pace and I’ll beat him.”
Hugh was certainly splashing more than he had been and evidently was in trouble. “I’ll get him yet,” thought John and for a moment he felt stronger. “I’ve forgotten the others though,” he suddenly realized and the fear that some one would creep past him before the finish assailed him all at once. He decided to roll over on his back and look.
He did so and behind him he saw only two swimmers. They were not near enough to be dangerous however and John did not even recognize them. That two of the contestants were missing he did not notice at all.
Often when swimming long distances he had turned over up on his back in order to rest and now he was surprised to find how even a few strokes in that position relieved his aching muscles. The finish was close at hand now, however, and he dared not continue in that fashion any longer. He rolled over and resumed his overhand stroke.
Grant was already on the dock standing beside Mr. Maxwell. Thomas had just reached the goal and was pulling himself up out of the water. To his surprise John noticed that in spite of the fact that he had been swimming on his back Hugh had not gained anything on him. His brief rest had refreshed him considerably and with added confidence he struck out for the finish. Without really noticing it he was aware that Hugh was floundering more than ever. He did not turn to look, however, but concentrated every effort on his swimming, and still struggled on towards the goal.
He lost sight of Hugh; he saw nothing but the dock ahead of him. His lungs cried for mercy and his muscles ached, but vigorously he still kept going. After what seemed centuries he reached the dock, not knowing whether he had beaten Hugh out or not. In fact he did not care much now. He had gained the dock at last and he was happy.
He raised his eyes to look about him and what he saw was very strange indeed. Mr. Maxwell, standing fully clothed on the dock, suddenly dove right over his head into the water.
CHAPTER XXIII—AN UNEXPECTED HONOR
Tired as he was John realized that this was strange proceeding. He tried to pull himself up on the dock, but he was too weak and slipped back into the water.
“Grant,” he called, “give me a lift.”
“Come ahead,” cried Grant, bending over and extending his hand to John.
With this help the tired boy lifted himself out of the water and sank down on the dock almost completely exhausted. He lay flat on his back, his eyes closed.
“Where’s Hugh?” he panted. “Did I beat him?”
There was no answer.
“Grant,” said John. “Did I beat Hugh?”
Still no reply, and he opened his eyes to see what the reason for the silence was. He slowly raised himself to one elbow and looked about him. Black spots danced before his eyes and at first he saw nothing; then his eyes suddenly became accustomed to the surroundings and he gasped. For the moment he had forgotten that he had seen Mr. Maxwell jump into the water but he remembered it now and he saw the reason for it.
Grant had finished the race and not greatly tired had been standing alongside Mr. Maxwell watching the others approach. The race between John and Hugh was what interested them most for they saw that Thomas would finish an easy second and so the final outcome of the meet depended on these two.
“A pretty tight race,” remarked Grant.
“I should—” began Mr. Maxwell when he suddenly stopped and stared.
John had just turned over on his stomach again for the final dash. Hugh was at his shoulder and the onlookers were enjoying the close finish. Suddenly, however, Hugh disappeared from sight. He simply sank beneath the water with no warning whatsoever and John reached the dock alone.
“He’s exhausted,” cried Mr. Maxwell, and without waiting an instant he dived into the water, fully clothed as he was, to rescue his nephew.
When John opened his eyes he saw Mr. Maxwell in the water, swimming for the dock with one hand and holding Hugh by the hair of his head with the other.
“What’s the trouble, Grant?” demanded John.
“Hugh sank.”
“What was the matter with him?”
“He was tired out, I guess. Here, let me have him now,” he said to Mr. Maxwell and leaning out from the dock he seized Hugh by the arms. His uncle gave the half-drowned boy a boost and he was soon stretched out at full length on the little wharf.
“That was a close call,” exclaimed Mr. Maxwell grimly as he clambered out after him. “It’s a lucky thing he was so near the dock. Where are the rest of the boys?”
“Here are two of them,” said Grant as Franklin and Herbert swam leisurely up to the dock. Seeing that they were hopelessly beaten they had not exerted themselves the last seventy-five yards of the race.
“Where are the other two?” exclaimed John anxiously. He had recovered most of his breath and strength now and not seeing George or Fred was fearful lest the fate that Hugh had so narrowly escaped had befallen them.
“Turn around and you’ll see.”
George and Fred came walking towards the dock.
“Where did you two come from?” demanded John in surprise. “The last I saw of you was when we all dived off that rock together. How did you get up on shore that way?”
“Have you ever been kicked by a mule?” asked Fred.
“What are you talking about?” John was completely mystified.
“I asked if you’d ever been kicked by a mule.”
“What has that got to do with this race?”
“Simply this,” said Fred. “A mule kicked me in the stomach at the start of the race and I had to quit.”
“I think you’re crazy,” exclaimed John. “What happened to you, Pop?”
“He was the mule,” said Fred. “Who won the race anyway?”
“Tell us what you’re talking about first,” said John, beginning to get a little bit angry. “Stop talking in riddles.”
Fred explained how his stomach had come in contact with George’s foot and how, as a result, they had both been compelled to give up the race. The tale provided much amusement to the listeners and even Hugh, who had partly revived, joined in the laughter.
“I’m no mule though,” insisted George.
“You’ve got a kick like one just the same,” laughed Fred. “Tell me,” he continued, “who won the race.”
“Grant won,” replied Mr. Maxwell.
“Good work, Grant,” cried Fred. “Who was second?”
“Thomas.”
“When you tell me who was third you’ll also tell me whether we won the meet or not. Who was it?”
“John was third,” said Grant.
“John?” exclaimed George in mock surprise. “It can’t be possible.”
“Don’t get so fresh,” said John and he gave George a violent push which sent him flying off the end of the wharf into the water.
“Serves him right,” said Fred approvingly. “He’s very much too fresh.”
George came to the surface, gasping and choking.
“Congratulations, String,” he cried as soon as he had shaken the water out of his eyes. “Glad you got a place; I thought you would.”
“You can’t keep that fellow down,” laughed Fred. “There’s no use in trying. He’s fresh and he knows it, but no matter what you do to him he keeps it up just the same.”
“He’s not fresh,” laughed Mr. Maxwell. “He’s just full of spirits.”
“I don’t know what we’d do without him anyway,” said Grant feelingly. “There are not many dull moments when Pop is around.”
“I would suggest,” said Mr. Maxwell, “that you boys go and put your clothes on. The sun is beginning to go down and it’ll be cold soon.”
“I’m cold now,” exclaimed John. “I’m going to get my clothes all right.”
He hurried off towards the tent closely followed by the seven other boys. A brisk rub down with heavy towels soon got their blood to circulating once more and no one felt any ill effects from all their exercises and exertion of the day.
“Now I shall present the prizes,” said Mr. Maxwell when the boys were assembled in front of the tent. “The blue team wins the meet by the margin of eight points to six. I congratulate them and take great pleasure in presenting to them the big American flag. They all know how I feel about it and I expect them to treat it as it should be treated.”
“Three cheers for the blue team,” cried Thomas lustily and they were given with a will, as Grant stepped forward to receive the trophy.
“And now the second prize,” said Mr. Maxwell. “It’s not as big as the first but the size doesn’t count. Everything depends on whether our hearts are with the flag or not. If I should happen to come back to this lake unexpectedly any time this summer I shall expect to see both these flags flying in front of their respective tents.”
“We’ll promise that all right,” said Thomas readily, and as he took the emblem from Mr. Maxwell’s hand, Grant led a cheer for the red team.
“One more prize,” continued Mr. Maxwell. “I brought something which I decided should go to the boy who in my judgment gave the best individual performance. That is who in any one event showed the most nerve and grit. Perhaps he didn’t win the event but he worked hardest and that is what to my mind deserves the credit.”
He produced a large four-bladed pocket knife and held it up for the eight boys to see. This was a surprise to them all and they looked at one another in amazement. They also cast many envious glances at the knife which was certainly a beauty and one of which any boy could well be proud.
“It was an awful job deciding,” said Mr. Maxwell. “Every one did so well I was almost in despair as to whom to give it to. I have finally decided, however, and I feel sure you’ll all think the boy deserves it.”
Not one of the boys had the least idea who was to become the fortunate owner of the knife and in keen suspense they all waited.
“I will now ask the winner to step forward,” continued Mr. Maxwell. “I watched him closely in the contest which I think entitles him to the prize and I don’t remember ever having seen a finer exhibition of pluck. I know just how tired he was and how much nerve he required to keep himself going. He didn’t win the race himself but he did win the meet for his team and I think he should have the credit. John, here is your knife. That was a great race you swam a few minutes ago.”
John was completely taken by surprise. He had not for a moment expected that he was to be the fortunate one and he was almost overcome.
“Yea, String!” shouted George heartily. “Let’s give the old thin fellow three cheers.”
Congratulations were in order and there was much laughter and fun. Every one was in excellent spirits and all pronounced the meet a decided success. The day was fast waning now and the party of visitors prepared to leave the island for their camp at the other end of the land. The four Go Ahead boys escorted them to their boat and good-bys were said. Promises that the eight boys would see one another soon were made and the Spruce weighed anchor and glided out of the little harbor.
“Well,” exclaimed Grant when their guests had gone, “I think we had a pretty fine time to-day.”
“We certainly did,” agreed Fred. “What we want now is a pole for our flag. It ought to be set right up in front of the tent there.”
“I’ll get the ax right now and we’ll go and cut one,” said George. “Come along, Fred.”
CHAPTER XXIV—IN QUEST OF GAME
The days and weeks slipped by and still the life in the island camp did not pall on on the four Go Ahead boys. They were busy every moment with the thousand and one duties and pleasures of camp life and the summer days drifted by like a succession of pleasant dreams.
One of the boys’ favorite occupations was shooting at a target. Fred was the owner of a little twenty-two caliber, hammerless rifle, and many an hour was spent by the boys in practice with this small gun. It was surprising how skillful they had become.
Grant and John were lying on the wharf one afternoon trying to shoot the heads off some water lilies that grew near the shore on the opposite side of the harbor.
“Now just suppose that one was an Indian,” exclaimed John, taking careful aim at an unsuspecting lily bud. The sharp spit of the little rifle followed and the bullet struck the water some two feet the other side of the “Indian.”
“You’ll have to do better than that,” laughed Grant. “We’ll all be scalped in a minute unless you get him. Let me try.”
John passed over the gun and on his first attempt Grant split the bulb clearly in halves.
“Good shot, Grant,” exclaimed John. “You saved our lives.”
“Just suppose that had been a lion or a tiger or a rhinoceros or some animal like that charging down upon us,” said Grant. “Suppose we were caught in a little ravine and we either had to kill the animal or be killed ourselves. What would you do?”
“I’d probably be so scared I’d faint or something,” laughed John.
“It would take nerve all right, wouldn’t it?”
“More than I’ve got, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I think most people are brave when it comes right down to the point.”
“I hope I’d be, anyway,” exclaimed John. “I think a coward is about the worst thing in the world.”
“Some people that seem the most timid have the most nerve when it’s really needed,” remarked Grant. “The ones that talk the loudest are not always the bravest by a long shot.
“Perhaps they try to make up by noise what they lack in nerve,” laughed John. “I’ve noticed that too, and I’ve also discovered that it doesn’t pay to make fun of anybody. Do you remember that boy at home? Everybody used to call him a ‘sis’ and a ‘willie-boy’ but when Bob Jackson’s dog fell into the mill-race he was the only one who had nerve enough to jump in after him. That taught me a lesson, I can tell you.”
“I wonder what animal is the most dangerous in the world.”
“A lion is, I guess.”
“I don’t think so. Lions are mostly scavengers they say and I’ve heard that tigers are worse than they are. A tiger doesn’t give any warning at all when he attacks.”
“Well, I’d just as soon not meet either one of them on a lonely road,” laughed John.
“Nor I,” agreed Grant. “I’ve heard though that a rhinoceros or an African buffalo is worse than either a lion or a tiger.”
“How about a grizzly bear?”
“They’re all pretty bad, I guess,” said Grant. “I wouldn’t stop to argue with any one of them.”
“Let me have that gun again,” exclaimed John. “If we’re going to meet all these ferocious wild animals we’ll need more practice in shooting.”
Just at this moment, however, George and Fred appeared. They came out of the clump of trees behind the tent and seemed very much excited about something.
“Hey, Grant!” called Fred. “Where’s the gun?”
“Right here. What’s the matter?”
“Do you remember what you said about wanting to shoot one of those big herons and have it stuffed?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, Pop and I discovered one just now in that little marsh over on the other side of the island.”
“Bring the gun along and maybe you’ll get a shot at it,” exclaimed George. “You’d better hurry though.”
“He won’t be there now,” said Grant.
“Why won’t he?” demanded Fred. “You won’t get him if you sit there and do nothing, like a great big galoot though. Let me have the gun if you don’t want it yourself.”
“Oh, I’ll go with you,” exclaimed Grant rising to his feet. “I don’t think for a minute he’ll still be there though. What was he doing?”
“Looking for fish, I guess,” said George. “He was wading around in the swamp on those great long legs of his; he looked as if he was on stilts.”
“Grant doesn’t seem very eager, Pop,” remarked Fred. “I wish he’d give us the gun.”
“Come along,” cried Grant. “I’ve been waiting for you to start.”
“Huh,” snorted Fred; “listen to that, I think we ought to have the bird anyway; we discovered him.”
“Did he see you?” asked John. The four boys were now hurrying along guided by Fred who was slightly in the lead.
“I can truthfully say that he did not,” said George decidedly and Fred snickered.
“What’s the matter?” inquired Grant suspiciously. “What are you laughing at?”
“Nothing,” said Fred quickly, but as he looked back at his companions the suspicion of a smile lurked upon his countenance.
“There’s something funny about this,” exclaimed Grant. “I tell you right now that if you two are putting up a game on me there’ll be trouble.”
“I don’t believe they saw a heron at all,” said John.
“I tell you we did,” exclaimed Fred earnestly. “Pop and I will both swear to it; we saw one in the swamp over here. Of course we can’t guarantee that he’ll still be there when you slowpokes arrive.”
“That’s right,” chimed in George. “We certainly did see one not five minutes before we came back to the dock to tell you about it. I don’t see why you need be so suspicious about it.”
“Well, I wouldn’t trust you two,” said Grant. “You’ve acted sort of funny about it too.”
“You only think we have,” retorted Fred. “Careful now, the marsh is just ahead of us.”
“Why don’t we sneak up behind those bushes?” suggested George, pointing to a clump of elderberries a few yards in front of them.
“That’s a good scheme,” exclaimed Fred. “We can hide behind them and get a good view of the marsh without being seen ourselves.”
Stealthily the four boys made their way until they reached the spot George had designated. On the other side of the bushes and extending for a hundred yards or so was the swamp where the heron was reported to have been seen.
“Careful now,” whispered Fred as they crouched behind the clump of elderberry bushes. “We don’t want to scare him away.”
“If he’s still there,” muttered Grant. He had been suspicious of Fred and George; their manner had seemed somewhat peculiar to him but they were serious enough now and his doubts were removed.
“Do you see him?” asked John eagerly, as Fred peered out through an opening in the bushes.
“Not yet.”
“Where was he when you saw him before?” demanded Grant.
“Down by that point. I don’t see him there now though.”
“Let me look,” pleaded Grant excitedly. “I haven’t seen him yet.”
“Look along the shore,” directed Fred, yielding his place to Grant. “He’s more likely to be there than any place else I think.”
As Grant searched the marsh George suddenly made a peculiar noise. It might have passed for a sob or a chuckle or he could have even been accused of choking.
“Stop that,” cried Fred fiercely, hitting George sharply in the ribs with his fist.
“What’s the matter with you two?” exclaimed Grant. He turned quickly around and eyed his two companions narrowly.
“I choked,” stammered George. “I couldn’t help it.”
“If you’ve been fooling me you’ll do worse than choke,” muttered Grant fiercely. “You two are acting very queerly it seems to me.”
“Because I choked?” demanded George. “I don’t see what there is queer about that.”
“Will you swear you saw a heron here?” demanded Grant.
“I will,” exclaimed Fred. “I declare to you, Grant, there was one here. We saw him first down by that point where I showed you.”
“He’s not there now,” said Grant. “That much is sure.”
“He may have moved along you know. Just because he isn’t in that same spot doesn’t mean that he has left.”
“Well, I don’t see him anyway.”
“Let me look,” exclaimed George. “My eyes are better than yours.”
Grant exchanged places with George who now seemed to have recovered from his recent affliction; he scanned the nearby marsh eagerly and was quiet and serious now.
“Well?” demanded Grant after a moment had elapsed.
George turned and looked at the speaker. “Come here,” he whispered, crooking his finger mysteriously.
Grant, much excited now, crowded up close beside George. Together they peered out across the swamp.
“See that dead log lying on the beach down there?” inquired George.
“Yes.”
“Do you see anything the other side of it?”
“No.”
“Not a thing?”
“I don’t see anything but the old dead limb of a tree sticking up.”
“That’s not a dead limb, Grant.”
“Sure enough,” cried Grant excitedly. “Say,” he exclaimed, “I saw that thing before but I thought it was a stick.”
“It’s not though,” said George triumphantly. “It’s a heron and Fred and I accept your apology for all you’ve thought about us.”
“Why doesn’t it move?” demanded Grant.
“Don’t you know that herons often stand like that for a long, long time? If you’re going to shoot that fellow you’d better get a move on yourself though.”
“I can’t hit him from here.”
“Don’t try. Sneak up closer.”
“Give me the gun, Grant,” exclaimed Fred. “If you don’t care anything about shooting him I’d like a try at it myself.”
“No, you don’t,” said Grant quickly, and rising to his feet he crouched low and began to run swiftly down towards the shore of the lake.
“Follow those bushes along the shore,” directed George. “Don’t let him see you, whatever you do.”
“He’s all right so far,” said Fred. “He’s got good protection down as far as the water anyway.”
“I hope he gets it,” exclaimed John eagerly. “He’s certainly a good shot and that ought to help some.”
“Oh, he’ll get it all right,” said George. He and Fred looked at each other for a moment and then both burst into silent but uncontrollable laughter.
“What’s the matter with you two?” demanded John, completely taken aback by their strange behavior.
“Oh, String,” said George. “If you only knew.”
“Well, why don’t you tell me?” exclaimed John. “What sort of a game have you put up on Grant anyway?”
“Do you see that heron he’s after?”
“Yes, of course I do.”
“Well, it’s dead. Fred and I found it on the shore and stuck it up behind that log. Just wait till Grant finds it out,” and the two conspirators hugged each other delightedly.
CHAPTER XXV—THE WORM TURNS
Meanwhile Grant was stalking his game. He crouched low and making as much speed as was consistent with quietness, he hurried along.
“Just look at him!” cried George ecstatically, as now and again the hunter could be seen to stop and peer cautiously in the direction of his prey.
“I should think the fact that it hasn’t moved would make him suspicious,” remarked John.
“He thinks herons always act that way,” chuckled Fred. “I can hardly wait for him to shoot.”
“You follows nearly queered your whole game a couple of times all right,” said John. “We were both suspicious of you. Why, twice you had grins on your faces so long you could almost pin them in the back.”
“It was so funny,” laughed George. “To think how we planned the whole thing and how easily he fell into it. Why, it was almost too easy.”
“Don’t be too sure,” warned John. “He hasn’t fired yet, you know.”
“He will all right,” said Fred confidently. “The old bird has been dead for about a month and you just ought to smell it.”
“Won’t he be mad?” exclaimed George. This thought seemed to give him special pleasure.
“He’ll probably shoot us,” laughed Fred.
“Where is he now?” inquired John. “I don’t see him.”
“He’s down behind that rock,” said George. “There he comes.”
“He’d better shoot pretty soon,” chuckled Fred. “The bird will fly away if he isn’t careful.”
“Isn’t this rich?” exclaimed George. “Just think of putting up a game on Grant like this.”
“Look at him!” cried Fred. “He’s almost on his hands and knees now.”
“Shoot, Grant, shoot!” urged George.
Nearer and nearer to the heron Grant crept. He had his gun half raised as he stole along, prepared to shoot at any moment. His three companions intently watched him, thoroughly enjoying the whole affair.
“If he doesn’t shoot pretty soon he’ll see that it’s dead,” said John.
“He’s trying to get up behind that bush, I think,” said George.
“He’s taking a chance,” laughed Fred. “The heron will see him and fly away if he isn’t more careful.”
“There he goes!” exclaimed George. “He’s going to shoot.”
“And now for the fun,” cried Fred. “Won’t he be mad though?”
Grant stopped and sinking to one knee he raised the little rifle to his shoulder.
“Don’t miss him, Grant,” chuckled Fred.
The gun spoke, and a moment later the faint report came to the ears of the three boys who watched from behind the elderberry bushes.
“Did he hit him?” laughed George. “What’s he doing?”
Grant had jumped to his feet after the first shot and started to run along the shore. He came to the log where the dead heron had been propped up but he did not stop there. He continued on past this spot and the conspirators for the first time had an inkling that all was not going as they had hoped.
“What’s happened?” demanded John in surprise. “What’s he after?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Fred blankly.
Some fifty or sixty feet beyond the spot where the dead log lay Grant continued. Not one of his friends had been looking at this place for their attention had been riveted on the dead heron.
The grass grew level with Grant’s knees where he was now. He leaned over and seemed to be looking down at something on the ground at his feet.
“What do you suppose it is?” demanded George curiously.
“Look,” exclaimed John and as he spoke Grant lifted from the grass a great blue heron. He held it by the feet and turning towards the bush where his companions were he waved his gun. Then he slung the big bird over his shoulder and started to retrace his steps.
George, Fred, and John had watched these proceedings in open-mouthed amazement.
“Well, what do you know about that?” exclaimed George limply.
“I guess he’s got us all right,” sighed Fred. “Let’s skip back to camp before he gets hold of us.”
“We’d better stay and face the music,” said George with a sigh. “Doesn’t that beat all? Just when we thought we had him good and fooled, he turns around and puts the joke on us.”
“I don’t see yet what happened,” exclaimed John.
“Why, he saw another heron, that’s all,” said Fred. “It was a live one too, I guess.”
“Where’s the one you and Pop fixed up for him?”
“Still there behind the log.”
“Grant never even looked at it,” said George. “He’ll make our lives miserable all the rest of the summer.”
“It’s almost over now,” said Fred. “He can’t tease us long.”
In silence the three boys sat and watched their comrade approach. John did not dread the meeting so much, for he had not been one of the original conspirators, but Fred and George looked forward to Grant’s arrival with anything but pleasure.
“What do you think of him?” cried Grant as he held up his prize for his friends to see. “Isn’t he a beauty?”
“He’s all right,” said George weakly.
“What’s the matter, Pop?” demanded Grant. “You don’t seem very enthusiastic. Don’t you like his looks?”
“He’s fine,” replied George in a hollow voice.
“Where did you find him?” demanded Fred bluntly.
“Right where I shot him,” said Grant. “You saw the spot where I picked him up, didn’t you?”
“We saw it all right,” said Fred grimly. “We haven’t a word to say either. You have the joke on us all right, Grant. All I ask is that you don’t rub it in too much.”
“I won’t,” laughed Grant. “It was awfully funny the way it turned out. I never suspected at first that the heron you pointed out to me was dead. I kept sneaking up as close as I dared and the thing never moved a bit and it began to strike me as sort of queer. Then I remembered how you fellows had snickered a couple of times and I felt pretty sure that something was wrong.
“All of a sudden I saw this bird just a few yards beyond the log. I knew then that my chance had come to turn the joke on you, but I was so anxious my arm was shaking like a leaf. I was afraid I surely would miss and when I saw that I hadn’t, I can tell you I felt pretty good. Here’s the heron and if you two fellows want yours you’ll find him down by that log. He smells a little strong though.”
“Let’s go back to camp,” exclaimed George.
“All right,” laughed Grant. “As long as you don’t like the subject, I won’t say too much about it.”
Laughing and joking they made their way back towards their camp. George and Fred realized how badly they had fared in their attempt to play a practical joke, but they were good sports and consequently good losers. They joined in the fun at their own expense, and were unstinted in their praise of the prize Grant had gained.
“We certainly got more than we were looking for that time,” said George laughingly. “You are——”
He suddenly ceased speaking and gazed in surprise in the direction of the tent.
“What’s the matter?” demanded John anxiously.
“Some man with a big black beard just ran around the other side of the tent,” exclaimed George.
CHAPTER XXVI—AN UNEXPECTED ENCOUNTER
“Are you sure you saw a man?” asked Grant skeptically.
“I know I did,” replied George with the utmost conviction.
“What did he look like?”
“He looked like a tramp; a rough looking sort of a fellow with a black beard and an old slouch hat.”
“Only one man?”
“That’s all I saw.”
“What shall we do?” demanded Fred blankly.
“We’ll go down and see what he wants,” said George in a matter of fact tone. “What else is there to do?”
“Suppose he’s looking for trouble?” suggested Fred.
“Well then, he’ll find it,” said George grimly. “There are four of us to his one.”
“He may not be alone,” said Fred. “I think we’d better go slow.”
“Grant has a gun.”
“But he’s not going to use it,” said Grant quickly. “You don’t catch me shooting at anybody, tramp or no tramp. I don’t want any blood on my head.”
“Suppose they attack us?” demanded George.
“‘They,’” exclaimed Grant. “I thought you said you saw only one.”
“That’s all I did see. There may be more of them though.”
“Probably a couple of guides,” said John. “Let’s go find out anyway.”
“I’d be careful,” warned Fred. “There’s no use in taking chances.”
“What’s the matter with you, Fred?” demanded George. “What are you so nervous about?”
“I don’t know. It seems funny to me though that a man like that should be hanging around our tent.”
“He’s probably waiting for us to come back.”
“Then why did he duck behind the tent the minute he saw us?”
“Maybe he didn’t see us at all.”
“The thing to do is to go down there and find out,” exclaimed Grant. “Come on, Pop, you and I will go anyway.”
“And so will I,” added John.
“I’ll go myself,” said Fred. “I’m not afraid; all I said was that I thought we ought to be careful.”
“We’ll be careful,” George assured him. “Come along.”
The little band once again started towards the tent. As Fred had remarked it seemed a strange thing that any man like the one George had seen should be loitering around their camp. They had had no visitors that summer aside from their opponents in the water sports and Mr. Maxwell, and the appearance of a stranger on the island was unusual enough to cause them some alarm.
Side by side they walked towards the spot where their tent was pitched. No further sign of their visitor appeared and this in itself made the four boys somewhat uneasy.
“Where did he go, do you suppose?” whispered John.
“Are you sure you saw a man, Pop?” demanded Grant.
“Of course I did. Do you think I’m crazy?”
“Where is he then? No one else saw him.”
George made no reply to this remark and in complete silence they continued on their way. At length they came to the tent itself but no one was to be seen. They peered inside, but it was empty of any living person. Grant turned to George triumphantly.
“You’re seeing things to-day,” he laughed. He laid the heron on the ground in front of the tent and placed his gun inside.
“I saw a man,” insisted George.
“And you tried to make me see a live heron that was dead,” said Grant.
“It’s certainly strange,” muttered George. “I know I saw a man. I’d take my dying oath on it.”
“But where is he?” demanded Grant.
“That’s just what I say,” rejoined George. “Where is he?”
“He doesn’t seem to be—” began John, when he suddenly stopped. “Look,” he cried and pointed towards the shore.
Two men were seated under a small tree which grew half-way between the wharf and the tent. Their backs were towards the boys so that it was impossible to see who they were. The back view however was not very reassuring. The strangers appeared to be rough and unkempt and were busily engaged in eating some food they had evidently helped themselves to from the stores of the four young campers. Both men seemed entirely unaware that they were being watched.
“How did they get there without our seeing them?” whispered John. “Pop saw one of them up by the tent.”
“The tent is between that tree and the place where we were standing,” said George. “It shut off our view and they probably walked down there while we were coming towards the tent.”
“What shall we do?” whispered Fred.
“Yell at them,” suggested John.
“Don’t you do it,” cautioned Grant quickly.
“For goodness’ sake,” exclaimed George suddenly in a low voice. “Don’t any one of you fellows move,” he ordered them. “Just wait here for me.”
He turned and darted quickly inside the tent while his three companions were completely mystified by his strange behavior. They gazed after him in amazement.
“What’s he after?” asked John in a whisper.
“Maybe he went for the gun,” suggested Fred.
“I wonder if he did,” exclaimed Grant. “We mustn’t have that,” and he started to follow George inside the tent.
Just as he was about to lift the flap and enter, however, George suddenly appeared. He held one of the young campers’ big balsam pillows in each hand and he wore a queer expression on his face. His three friends looked at him in amazement not unmixed with alarm.
“What are you going to do?” demanded Grant.
“Ssh!” hissed George. “Watch me.”
He cautiously stole forward in the direction of the two men. His companions were too surprised to make any effort to restrain him. Open-mouthed they stood and watched him stealthily approach the tree underneath which the two rough-looking men were seated.
CHAPTER XXVII—CONCLUSION
“He’s gone crazy,” muttered Grant. “We should have held him back.”
On tip-toe and evidently trying to make as little noise as possible, George stole forward. Nearer and nearer he approached, the pillows still held firmly in his hands. He slackened his pace as he came closer and redoubled his efforts to move cautiously.
“They’ll turn and see him in a second,” whispered Fred, as much to himself as to anybody else. All three of the boys were tense with excitement as they riveted their attention on their companion who to them was doing such a remarkable thing.
George was scarcely ten feet distant from the men now. All at once he stopped. He slowly drew back his right arm and taking careful aim he let fly the pillow which he held. True to its mark it sped. It struck the larger of the two men squarely in the neck. The second pillow followed the other an instant later and it too scored a hit. Both had been aimed at the same man.
No sooner had George completed his bombardment than he uttered a wild whoop and rushed forward. He dashed straight towards the man he had been so successful in hitting and threw both arms around him.
Grant, Fred, and John were too taken aback to do more than stand and gaze stupidly at the strange proceedings taking place before their eyes. George’s actions to them were a complete mystery.
Suddenly he ceased hugging the rough looking man he had pounced upon so eagerly and turned to his three camp-mates.
“Grant!” he cried. “John! Fred! Come here and see who this is.”
“Who is it?” exclaimed John blankly. “Thomas and Hugh?”
“Here’s your father, Fred,” called George loudly. “Don’t you want to see him?”
Fred started violently at these words. He stared ahead of him and then suddenly gave vent to a wild shriek.
“Dad!” he cried and rushing pell mell down the gradual incline he threw himself upon the smaller of the two “tramps.”
“Why it’s Mr. Button and Mr. Sanders,” exclaimed Grant in surprise. “Where do you suppose they came from?”
“All dressed up to look like tramps,” added John. “What do you suppose they are trying to do?”
“Play a joke on us, I guess,” laughed Grant. “Lets go down and see them.”
They soon joined the little group gathered underneath the tree and a happy gathering it was.
“What do you think of these two tramps, Grant?” inquired George when greetings had been exchanged all around.
“What do you think of a boy who would hit his poor old father in the back of the neck with two big pillows?” laughed Mr. Sanders. “That strikes me as pretty rough treatment.”
“It surely is,” agreed Grant. “We usually take him down and duck him when he gets fresh that way.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” said Mr. Sanders sorrowfully. “He has gotten so husky this summer I’d hate to tackle him now.”
“We didn’t know you were coming up here,” said Fred, addressing his father and Mr. Sanders.
“And we didn’t want you to know it either,” laughed Mr. Button. “We planned a surprise for you.”
“You gave it to us all right,” said John grimly. “We were sure you were two thugs of some kind who had come up here to rob us.”
“How do you like our costumes?” demanded Mr. Sanders jovially. “Do we really look like a couple of desperate characters?”
“You certainly do, Dad,” said George. “I never saw worse.”
“How did you dare to throw those big heavy pillows at me then?”
“I recognized you right away, even from the back. You need a pretty good disguise to fool your son you know.”
“So it seems,” admitted Mr. Sanders and he rubbed the back of his neck ruefully.
“Didn’t you see us coming?” asked John.
“No,” said Mr. Button. “We arrived here about twenty minutes ago and didn’t find a soul around anywhere. So we just made ourselves at home and decided we’d have a little luncheon.”
“I saw one of you duck behind the tent,” said George. “Then when we didn’t see you again it sort of worried us. Imagine how we felt when we saw these two rough looking men sitting under the tree here.”
“Where had you boys been?” asked Mr. Sanders.
“We went out to shoot a blue heron,” said Grant. “Ask George about it; he’ll be glad to tell you all the details,” and he nudged John who was standing next to him.
“I was the goat all right,” laughed George, and he proceeded to recount the story of how he and Fred had tried to put up a game on Grant but had had the tables turned on them.
The tale caused much merriment on the part of Mr. Button and Mr. Sanders. Curiously enough these two men happened to be the fathers of the boys who had been the victims of their own joke.
“It served them right, Grant,” laughed Mr. Button. “I hate these practical jokers and am always glad to see them fooled. I notice it usually happens that way too.”
The party had moved up to a spot directly in front of the tent now and all were seated in a circle on the ground. The day was waning and the sun was beginning to sink low in the western sky. A gray haze hung over the surrounding hills and forests. A strong wind blew off the lake.
“You know that breeze is cold,” exclaimed Mr. Button with a slight shiver, and he drew his coat closer about him.
“Why shouldn’t it be?” demanded Mr. Sanders. “It’s almost fall now and the summer is practically over.”
“I know it is,” exclaimed George. “I hate to think of it too.”
“You’ve had a good time up here, have you?” inquired Mr. Button.
“Wonderful,” replied all the young campers with one accord.
“You certainly look so,” laughed Mr. Sanders. “You’re as tanned as a lot of Indians and you look just about as wiry.”
“It’s been great fun,” said John. “We’ve been out in the air all summer and on the water so much we ought to be healthy.”
“We’ll have to come back here again next summer,” exclaimed George. “What do you say to that, Dad?”
“Personally I should think you’d rather go to some other place next time. I like different experiences myself.”
“So do I,” agreed Grant. “There are so many wonderful places and things in the world that it’s worth trying to visit and see all of them you can, I think.”
“That suits me,” exclaimed George. “What do you say, Dad? We’ll go to some other place next time.”
“As far as I’m concerned you may,” said Mr. Sanders. “Go ahead.”
THE END
* * * * *
THE OUTDOOR CHUMS SERIES
By CAPTAIN QUINCY ALLEN
The Outdoor Chums
On the Lake In the Forest On the Gulf After Big Game On A House Boat In the Big Woods At Cabin Point
For lovers of the great outdoors (and what boy is not?) this “Outdoor Chums” series will be a rare treat. After you have read the first book and followed the fortunes of the “Chums,” you will realize the pleasure the other seven volumes have in store for you.
These rollicking lads know field, forest, mountain, sea and stream—and the books contain much valuable information on woodcraft and the living of an outdoor life.
The Goldsmith Publishing Co.
CLEVELAND, O.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Go Ahead Boys in the Island Camp, by Ross Kay |
30837-8 | Produced by Malcolm Farmer, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
A CITY SCHOOLGIRL AND HER FRIENDS
BY MAY BALDWIN
Author of 'Corah's School Chums,' 'Two Schoolgirls of Florence,' 'Sarah's School Friend,' 'The Girls' Eton,' &c.
WITH SIX COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS By T. J. Overnell
LONDON: 38 Soho Square, W. W. & R. CHAMBERS, LIMITED EDINBURGH: 339 High Street 1912
Edinburgh: Printed by W. & R. Chambers, Limited.
[Illustration: She ran off, turning round to wave her hand to her sister.]
CONTENTS.
I. HARD FACTS
II. THE NEW LAIRD OF LOMORE
III. FRIENDS IN NEED
IV. UPS AND DOWNS
V. THE NEW LIFE
VI. IN LONELY LODGINGS
VII. KIND-HEARTED LONDONERS
VIII. GOOD MANNERS
IX. THE ENTERPRISE CLUB
X. BLEAK HOUSE HOSTEL
XI. 'THE RANK IS BUT THE GUINEA'S STAMP'
XII. 'SAVE'
XIII. YOUNG HOUSE-HUNTERS
XIV. OFF TO A HOME AGAIN
XV. EVA'S PRESENTIMENT
XVI. VAVA'S BUSINESS LETTER
XVII. A SUNDAY AT HEATHER ROAD
XVIII. STELLA'S SURPRISING REQUEST
XIX. THE JUNIOR PARTNER
XX. VAVA ON FRIENDS
XXI. EVA'S CONDUCT AND ITS SAD EFFECTS
XXII. DANTE'S IDYLL
XXIII. STELLA'S PRIDE
XXIV. BADLY BEGUN AND MADLY ENDED
XXV. UNDER A CLOUD
XXVI. MORE CLOUDS
XXVII. THE VALUE OF A GOOD CHARACTER
XXVIII. VAVA GETS A SHOCK
XXIX. THINGS STRAIGHTEN OUT
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
She ran off, turning round to wave her hand to her sister
'Vava,' said Stella, 'do not say such dreadful things'
'I'm quite well, thank you, Mr. Jones; but my algebra isn't.'
'My lamb, you should not answer your sister as you do'
'Where have you been, Vava Wharton?' demanded Miss Briggs
Stella goes to the prize distribution
A CITY SCHOOLGIRL AND HER FRIENDS.
CHAPTER I.
HARD FACTS.
'These are the facts, Miss Wharton; hard facts no doubt, but you wished for the truth, and indeed I could not have hidden it from you even if I had wished to do so.' So said a keen but kindly faced old gentleman, as he sat in an office surrounded by despatch and deed boxes which proclaimed his profession to be that of a lawyer.
The young lady to whom these remarks were addressed, and who was a pretty girl of twenty-one, dressed in deep and obviously recent mourning, now replied, with a sad smile, 'But I did not want you to hide anything from me; I wanted to hear the truth, Mr. Stacey, and I thank you very much for telling it to me. Then I may understand that we have just fifty pounds a year to live upon between the two of us?'
'That is all, I am sorry to say; at least all that you can count upon with any certainty for the present, for the shares, of which I have been trying to tell you, at present bring in nothing, and may never do so. Of course there is the furniture, which might fetch a hundred or two, for there are two or three valuable pieces; and, besides that, your father had some nice china and some fine old silver,' observed Mr. Stacey.
'Oh I could not sell that!' said the girl hastily, and her colour rose.
The old lawyer shook his head. 'It is not a case of _could_; it is a case of _must_, my dear young lady,' he said not unkindly.
'But why? You say there are no debts to pay. Why, then, should we part with all that is left to us of home?' argued the girl, the tears coming into her eyes.
'Why? Because you must live, you and Vava, and I don't quite see how you are to do that on fifty pounds a year--twenty-five pounds apiece--even if we get your sister into a school where they would take her on half-terms as a kind of pupil-teacher,' explained the lawyer patiently.
'Send Vava to a school as a pupil-teacher, to be looked down upon and despised by the other girls who were richer than she, to waste half her time in teaching, and let her go away from me? I could not do it!' cried the girl impulsively. Then, as she saw the old man, who had been a lifelong friend of her father's as well as his lawyer, shrug his shoulders, as much as to say she was hopeless, she added more quietly, 'We have never been parted in our lives, Mr. Stacey, and we are sad enough as it is,' and her lips quivered. 'She would be so lonely without me, and I without her; and surely it is as cheap for two to live together as one? Besides, I am going to earn money; I was my father's secretary for three years, and he always said I was a very good one. I can typewrite quite quickly; I have typewritten all his letters for him for the last three years and copied all his manuscripts, and I scarcely ever made a mistake.'
Her listener looked doubtful for a moment; but now that she had some practical suggestion to make, the interview began to take a more business-like appearance, and the old man was ready to listen to her.
'Yes,' he said, 'your father often told me that you were better than any trained secretary he ever had, and I have no doubt your three years' experience has been useful to you; but unfortunately there is no one here who happens to want a secretary'----
Before he could get any further, Stella Wharton interrupted eagerly, 'But we do not think of staying here, and I have thought the whole matter over. I knew I should have to earn my own living, and of course the proper place to do that is in London.'
Mr. Stacey's look of consternation would have been amusing if he had not been so serious. 'You and Vava go and live in London alone! The thing is impossible!'
'Why impossible?' asked Stella quietly. 'Hundreds and thousands of girls do it who are not even as old as I am.'
'Yes, but not girls like you,' said the lawyer. He stopped from sheer inability to express what he meant and felt, which was that such an exceptionally pretty girl as Stella Wharton ought not to start life alone in London and be thrown on her own resources, even though she was a thoroughly trustworthy girl and had a younger sister to live with her. 'You do not know anything about London, or even what a town is like; you have lived in this little Scotch village (for it is not much more), as far as I know, all your life, and the thing would never do. It's--it's impossible!' he wound up; 'you could not possibly do it!'
'It is not a case of _could_; it is a case of _must_,' quoted Stella, with the ghost of a smile, as she repeated the old man's words of a few minutes ago.
'Yes, yes,' he said; 'you must live, I know that; but even supposing that it would be possible for you to earn your living, and even to earn it as a secretary, you would not be able to earn enough at first to keep yourself, let alone keep your sister as well.'
'We could live on very little,' pleaded Stella; and here she brought out from her purse a slip from a newspaper. 'I thought of answering this.' So saying, she handed it to the old lawyer, who read an advertisement for a secretary in a City office who could typewrite quickly and correctly, and transcribe difficult manuscripts in French and English.
'You might be able to do this,' said the lawyer, 'for, to be sure, you are both excellent French scholars; but a City office'----He looked most disapproving. 'Well,' he said, 'there is no harm in answering it; or suppose you let me answer it for you?'
'I was going to ask you whether you would give me a testimonial; but if you would write for me it would be very, very kind of you,' replied Stella.
'Very well,' said Mr. Stacey with a sigh, 'I shall write to this man; but no doubt he will have hundreds of other applications. The pay is good, and girls who can typewrite are to be found by the thousand nowadays.'
'Yes,' said Stella eagerly; 'but he says "an educated person," and I read in the papers the other day that three-quarters of the girls who go in for typewriting cannot even write their own language, so they probably would not be able to write French.'
'But thirty-five shillings a week! How are you going to live upon thirty-five shillings a week?' inquired the lawyer.
'It will be forty-five shillings a week,' corrected Stella.
'Well, forty-five shillings a week between two of you; that is not a hundred and fifty pounds a year. It would take that for you alone to live in London.'
'I have calculated it all out, Mr. Stacey; and if you would not mind looking at this sheet of paper I think you will see that we could do it;' and Stella handed the lawyer a second piece of paper, upon which, in a very neat and legible hand, the girl had written out her idea of the probable cost of living for two people in London in lodgings.
'Rent ten pounds a year!' ejaculated the lawyer, reading the first item on the list in a tone of mingled surprise and amusement. 'That shows how much you know of London and its prices. Where do you suppose you would get lodgings for two people at eight shillings per week? Why, a couple of rooms would cost a guinea at least.'
Stella Wharton's expressive face fell as she said, 'I didn't know that. The Misses Burns have a very nice little house here for twenty pounds a year, and I thought lodgings could not possibly be as much, for we would be content with two rooms at first.'
The lawyer read the items through with as grave an air and as attentively as if he were reading an important document dealing with thousands of pounds; and when he had finished he handed it back to her, saying, 'I see, you have thought the matter out carefully, and, at all events, there is no need to settle anything just yet, for you have another month before everything can be settled up here. I shall write to-night in answer to this advertisement.' And then shaking hands very kindly with the girl, the lawyer showed her out.
Stella made her way back to the old Manor House, in which she had lived with her father, mother (who had died some years ago), and her younger sister Vava, ever since she was born, and where a week ago her father had suddenly died, leaving his two daughters, as will have been seen, very inadequately provided for. At the gate, or, more correctly speaking, upon the gate, was Vava, who swung lightly over and into the road to meet her sister.
'Well,' she said, 'what had Mr. Stacey to say?'
'A great deal,' said Stella gravely, as Vava took her arm and hung on to her elder sister.
There were seven years between the two girls, the gap between having been filled by three brothers, who had all died.
'Stella,' said Vava in a coaxing tone, as they turned in at the gate and walked up the long drive, 'you need not be afraid of telling me about it, because I know it all--everything.'
'What do you know?' inquired Stella, smiling in spite of her sadness.
'I know everything that Mr. Stacey said to you,' announced the younger girl confidently.
'How can you possibly know that, Vava, seeing that I have not told you a single word and that you were not at the interview?' Stella was always very matter-of-fact, and Vava would say that she was slow.
'I knew what he was going to say before he ever opened his mouth. He was going to tell you that we had lost all our money, and that this Manor House is not ours any longer, that I must go to a cheap school, and that you must go and be a governess, or something horrid like that,' announced Vava.
'Vava, who told you?' cried Stella, surprised out of her caution, for she had not meant to tell her younger sister the real facts of the case.
'Mrs. Stacey has been here, and she told me that there were some other people coming to the Manor House. When I said we didn't want them, she said the Manor House was not ours, and that we should not be able to keep them out. When I asked her why, she said because we had no money.'
'Mrs. Stacey was quite wrong, and she had no business to speak to you like that. I am sure Mr. Stacey would be very angry if he knew,' said Stella, who looked rather angry herself. 'Besides which,' she added in a calmer tone, 'we have not lost all our money; we have more than a thousand pounds. And you were not quite right about Mr. Stacey either, for he did not suggest that I should go out as a governess, and he is at this minute answering an advertisement for a secretaryship for me.'
Vava was silent for a minute; then she said in a queer little voice, very unlike her usual cheerful one, 'But he did say I was to go to a school, didn't he?'
'Would you dislike that very much?' said Stella, more to try her sister than because she had much doubt of the answer.
'I should hate it, Stella; I would rather scrub floors than be a charity-girl with a red cloak and a round hat and short hair, with perhaps people giving me pennies as I walked along the street.'
'There is no chance of your going to a charity school,' replied Stella, 'there will be enough money to send you to a proper boarding-school, if that is necessary, for there are lots of schools where you do not pay much more than fifty pounds a year; but I should like you to live with me in London, and go to day-school there.'
'Oh Stella, how lovely! and we could go to the Zoo and Madame Tussaud's and the Tower every day for a walk!' cried Vava with delight.
'I am afraid we could not go daily expeditions, Vava, because I should be in an office all day and you will be at school; but we should have Saturdays and Sundays together, and anything would be better than being parted--wouldn't it?--even if we are poor.'
Vava did not answer, but the squeeze that she gave to Stella's arm was quite answer enough. They had arrived at the door of the Manor House, and the old housekeeper came forward to meet them.
'My dears, come into my little room and have some tea; you must be perished with cold, and I have got some lovely scones that cook has made on purpose for you. Come straight in, won't you, Miss Stella?'
'Thank you, nursie,' said Stella with a pleasant smile, as she followed the housekeeper to her room; while Vava danced along in front of the old woman, calling her all sorts of affectionate names for her thoughtfulness in getting hot scones for them on this cold day.
It was not a usual thing for the girls to have tea with the housekeeper, though they did sometimes do it. But Stella, though surprised at the way the housekeeper asked them, thought it was to save them from having a lonely tea in the dining-room without their father; and to the housekeeper's relief she went straight to the latter's room, and partook very cheerfully of the homely meal set before them. Twice during the meal Stella thought that she heard voices in the passage which she did not recognise as belonging to the servants, who, indeed, were not in the habit of speaking in such loud tones about the house; but she paid no attention to it.
The housekeeper, who had formerly been the girls' nurse, and was still called 'nursie' by them, talked more than usual.
At last Vava observed, 'Nursie, I believe you are feverish.'
'Miss Vava!' exclaimed the old woman, 'what can you be thinking about? What makes you think I am feverish? I am not a bit hot, unless this big fire is making my face a bit red.'
'I am not talking about your face; it is your voice that is feverish, and your eyes are glittering dreadfully,' said Vava.
'Vava,' said Stella, 'do not say such dreadful things.' She also looked at the housekeeper, who did look nervous, if not feverish, as Vava had suggested, and whose face certainly got very flushed as a knock came to the door.
The butler, throwing it open, said to a gentleman and a lady who accompanied him, 'This is the housekeeper's room, sir, and this'----Here he caught sight of Stella and Vava, and with a muttered, 'I beg your pardon, young ladies, I am sure,' he shut the door, and his footsteps were heard hurrying down the passage.
CHAPTER II.
THE NEW LAIRD OF LOMORE.
The three occupants of the housekeeper's room took the unexpected visitors in very different and characteristic ways. The housekeeper became what Vava called more 'feverish' than ever; Stella stared in grave surprise at this liberty on the part of the butler; while Vava grew red with anger, and, guessing at once what it meant, cried indignantly, 'How dare they come walking over our house before we are out of it? Stella, why don't you go and tell David he ought to be ashamed of himself letting them in? What is he thinking of to take such a liberty?'
Stella turned her eyes, which justified her name, and looked at her excited younger sister. She had not understood the meaning of the intrusion until her quicker-witted sister told her, and she was not too pleased herself at old David's behaviour, which even she, quiet and attached to the old servant as she was, felt was taking too much upon himself.
But, before she could speak, the old housekeeper broke in, rather nervously, 'Miss Stella, dearie, you must not be angry with David; it's my fault as well as his; we only wanted to save you both worry and annoyance; and so it would, for you would never have known aught about it but for David bringing them in here. He must be daft, after my telling him he was to be sure and keep them out of your sight.'
'But I don't understand. I suppose these are the people who want to take the house, and, if so, of course they wish to see it? Still, I think they should have written just to ask my leave; and, at any rate, David should have done so before he showed them over our house,' Stella answered with dignity.
'That's just it; you don't understand, my bairn; and I don't rightly understand it myself. It's their house--something about a mortgage--now the poor Laird's gone, and they only waited until he was under the ground to come tearing up from London in their motor to look at their property, and it was more than David could do to put them off, and so, sooner than have you troubled by their impudence'----said the housekeeper.
'It is not very considerate, perhaps, but they have a right to ask to see their own house without being called impudent; and though you mean it kindly, nursie, you and David, I think I should know what is going on in this house,' interrupted Stella.
'We'd just better get out of it as soon as we can. Mrs. Stacey came to ask us to go and stay with them; she told me to give you the invitation. But I'd rather go to the manse; Mrs. Monro would be sure to take us!' cried Vava.
However, before Vava had uttered the last word, another knock came at the door, and in answer to Stella's 'Come in!' David M'Taggart entered, looking rather shamefaced. In broad Scotch, which it will perhaps be best to spare English readers, he said, 'I'm sorry to trouble you, Miss Stella, but the leddy will not take no for an answer; she wants to see you.'
Stella unconsciously put on her most dignified air, and said, 'I do not understand why she should wish to see me. It is the house they have bought, not us; and if she wishes to know when it will be at her disposal, you may tell her we will be out of it'--she hesitated a moment, and her voice trembled as she added, 'as soon as we can move the furniture; in a week, if possible.'
Still David lingered. 'It's just that--the furniture, I mean--that she'll be after, I'm thinking. I know it's hard on you, missie. But you must just be brave and the Laird's daughter; and, if you could make up your mind to it, just see the leddy and her husband; they're no' bad, though they're no' the quality.'
David M'Taggart had nursed Stella in his arms as a baby, and had been the old Laird's right hand. In fact, when Mr. Wharton was deep in his literary labours, David had kept things about the place straighter than they would otherwise have been; and if his education had been better, and he had been allowed, he would probably have managed the money matters of his late master, and prevented the Laird allowing them to get into the disastrous state they were found to be in after his death, of which state the late Laird was, happily for him, though unfortunately for his daughters, quite ignorant.
Stella listened to David's advice, and replied, 'Very well, David, I will see this lady. What is her name?'
'It's a fine name--Mrs. Montague Jones she calls herself; but it's with him I'd do business, if I may be so bold as to say so, for he's a fair man, and not so keen on a bargain as she.'
To this piece of advice the girl made no reply, but followed the old butler out of the room and down the wide staircase to the drawing-room. At the door she paused involuntarily, as David threw it open for her and announced, 'This is Miss Wharton, mem.'
The short, thick-set business man, who was standing looking out of one of the windows, turned sharply round at the words; and, as he told his wife afterwards, was 'fairly taken aback to see that beautiful young lady standing there like a princess in the doorway and looking down upon us.'
And his wife--a handsome woman herself, who was sitting at a table examining some old silver, of which the Laird had a fine collection--though she answered him rather sharply to the effect that the 'looking down' ought to be on their side rather than the Whartons', was conscious somehow of a feeling of inferiority. However, she rose, and, coming forward, said civilly and kindly enough, 'I must apologise, Miss Wharton, for this intrusion, and it's only because I think we may be able to be of use to you'----Here Mrs. Montague Jones stopped abruptly, for Stella's pride had risen, and she stiffened visibly.
'My wife doesn't mean that, Miss Wharton. What we wished to ask was a favour to us, for which we would willingly make a return. I'm a business man, and you are a young lady who knows nothing about business,' Mr. Montague Jones now put in.
But Stella did not look any better pleased as she answered civilly but distantly, 'In that case would it not be better to address yourself to our lawyer, who is a man of business?' Stella had been her father's secretary for so long that she spoke in a slightly stilted English with a Scotch accent.
'Quite right, and so we did, but he told us he could do nothing without you'--Mr. Stacey had said that he could do nothing _with_ her on this particular matter--'and we have taken the liberty of coming straight to the fountain-head, so to speak. It's about this furniture now.'
But Stella interrupted hastily, 'I am afraid you have given yourself unnecessary trouble'--and her looks said 'and me too'--'for I have no intention of parting with it.'
A gleam came into the man's eye, whether of anger at her haughtiness or admiration at the spirit which could refuse a possibly advantageous business offer was not clear, with poverty staring her in the face; but he laid a hand on his wife's arm to prevent her speaking, and continued quietly, and in a kind and friendly tone, 'No one has asked you to do that, Miss Wharton. I feel with you that however valuable furniture or silver or that kind of thing may be, it is doubly valuable to the owner, especially when, as in your case, it has been in the family for a long time, and I should be the last to counsel you to part with it.'
Miss Wharton looked surprised, and so did Mrs. Jones, who stared at her husband in amazement.
'In that case, I fail to see'----began the girl, and then hesitated.
'You fail to see what proposal I have to make about the furniture? If you'll have a little patience I'll tell you. I've just seen your lawyer, and a very nice man he is, and has your interests at heart, for which you may be thankful, as they are not all so. I hear you are thinking of going to London. Now, you can't take all this fine furniture with you; it would get knocked to pieces on the way there, besides costing no end of money, and you'd want a mansion to put it in when you got there, which you won't have just yet, though you will have again one day, I hope. Now what, may I ask, do you mean to do with it?'
'I don't know. I shall warehouse it here, I suppose,' said Stella, who had no clear ideas on the subject.
'That's just what I was going to suggest. Why not leave it all here, with the exception of any little things or specially valuable belongings that you 'd like to put away, and let us pay a fair sum for the use of them. They'll not spoil, for they are old and well-made, and there'll only be the wife and me and Jamie, that's our son and heir--ahem! a quiet, well-behaved young fellow--and none of us will knock it about; besides, your man M'Taggart has agreed--condescended I might say--to stay on with us for the present, and he'll be free to write and tell you if it's being badly used; and we'll put a clause in the agreement that if M'Taggart thinks it is in bad hands you have the right to order its removal in twenty-four hours,' announced Mr. Jones.
'Really, Monty'----cried his wife; but her husband pressed her arm, and patiently waited for Stella's reply.
The girl puckered her brows; it would be a way out of the difficulty. But she did not feel equal to settling the matter herself, and answered doubtfully, 'If Mr. Stacey approves, I should have no objection--that is to say, I would agree; but I should like some of my mother's things put away.'
'Oh of course, we quite understand that, Miss Wharton, and we will have everything put down in black and white by your lawyer,' said Mr. Montague Jones.
Stella, who had taken the seat offered her by her undesired visitor, now rose to put an end to the interview; and then a sudden thought struck her. These people had motored from the south, and perhaps had come far that day--at any rate from the nearest town, a good many miles off--and she had not even offered them a cup of tea, and her Scotch hospitality forbade her to let them depart without doing so much. She accordingly offered it, and Mrs. Jones accepted the offer so gladly that her young hostess felt ashamed of herself; and, ringing the bell, she ordered in tea.
The interval of waiting might have been rather awkward; but not long after David had answered the summons the door opened, and in walked Vava.
Mr. and Mrs. Jones had an idea that Scotch girls in general were plain and hard-featured, hence their surprise at Stella's appearance; and Vava, though she was at an awkward age, and had not Stella's beauty, was a bright, fresh-looking girl, with merry, laughing eyes which no trouble could dim for long, and she too fitted in with her surroundings.
'How do you do? David will bring the tea in a minute, and there are still some scones left,' she announced, without waiting to be introduced.
Mr. Jones shook her hand heartily. 'That's good hearing; we lunched early, and I've been with lawyers ever since, and worried with business, about which you luckily know nothing; and scones--which we poor ignorant Londoners call "scoones"--sounds very inviting.'
'So they are, deliciously inviting; but as for your business, I just do know something about it,' Vava observed.
'Vava!' cried Stella horrified.
Mr. Jones laughed, not in the least embarrassed, though he had not meant to be taken up so. 'Ah well, business is business and pleasure is pleasure, and I don't believe in mixing them, though some people do. Business is over for this afternoon, and now I am having the pleasure of making your acquaintance.'
'Do you go to school, Miss Wharton?' inquired his wife, putting the first question ladies seem invariably to put to girls in their teens.
'No, but I am going to a day-school when we get to London. Do you know any nice ones there, not too dear?' inquired Vava.
Stella coloured hotly, and looked despairingly at Vava, who was evidently in a mood to say dreadful things, as Stella considered them.
But Mr. Jones stepped into the breach. 'If you take my advice you'll go to my school; it's one of the best in London.'
'Do you keep a school? I didn't know rich people did that,' said Vava.
'I don't keep it exactly, but I am chairman of the governors, and on speech-days I go there, dressed in my chain and brass breastplate and things, and listen to how all the girls have been getting on, and I frown at the idle ones, and praise the good ones, and if you were to come there I should praise and clap you. It's a first-class school though the fees are very low,' he wound up, as if this were an important detail.
'Nothing is decided yet,' said Stella, rather shortly, and frowning at the too candid Vava.
'No, and of course there is no hurry; and, if you will excuse my talking of business, I should like just to say that if you wished to stay here a month or more we should be delighted. As for that school, it is a famous City foundation, and I will send you the prospectus when I return home, if you will allow me,' said Mrs. Jones, whom tea and scones had made quite friendly.
'A City school!' said Vava. 'Is that a charity school?'
'Oh dear no!' cried Mrs. Jones hastily. 'My niece used to go there.'
Stella gave a ghost of a smile, but said nothing; and soon her visitors left, with profuse thanks and promises to see the lawyer and let him arrange matters.
It was consequently with lightened hearts that the two orphans stood looking after their visitors in the darkening day.
CHAPTER III.
FRIENDS IN NEED.
'They are not quite ladies and gentlemen--I mean, a lady and gentleman--but they are rather kind, and I think they will take care of our furniture, Stella; so I should let them have it till we are rich again and can buy this place back from them,' said Vava, as she stood on the steps watching the tail-light of the Montague Joneses' well-appointed car disappear down the drive.
'How do you know anything about that?' inquired her sister in surprise; for unless her sister had been listening at the door, a meanness of which she knew her to be incapable, she could not imagine how she could guess what the new owners of Lomore had been proposing.
'Ah, ha! a little bird told me. But I quite approve; it will save us the trouble of moving it about, and you'll see we shall be back here again before long; that's another thing a little bird told me,' cried Vava, loosing her sister's arm to hop on one foot down the stone steps, and then try to perform the same feat up them.
'Vava! do be sensible at your age, and tell me what you mean by your nonsense about a little bird telling you a private conversation which no one could honourably know anything about,' said her sister severely.
Vava was sobered for the minute; and, giving a last hop on to the top step, she stood on her two feet before her sister and retorted, 'What do you mean by your insinuations, pray? Do you imagine I have been listening through the keyhole? because, if so, I decline to parley with you further. And as for my age, why shouldn't I do gymnastics? When I go to an English school I shall have to do far sillier things than that. And, oh Stella! do you think I shall go to that City school? I don't think I should like to be taught by Mr. Montague Jones, though he is a kind old man.'
'Mr. Montague Jones does not teach there; he told you that, and I don't know at all where you will go to school. Perhaps it will be a boarding-school after all, for we cannot live in London unless I get this post as secretary, or some other like it; and you would perhaps be best away from me, for you do not obey me,' replied her elder sister.
'If you mean that you want to know how I knew about the Joneses and their offering to take care of our furniture, David told me; and if you want to know how he knew--which I can see you do, because you have screwed your eyebrows into a question-mark--Mr. Jones told him himself, when David said he knew we would never sell it--for it is half mine, isn't it, although you are my guardian?--and it's to look after it and the place for us till we get it back that David is staying with them, though "they are not the quality," as he says.'
This explanation satisfied Miss Wharton, and she only said, in answer to Vava's last remark, 'Yes, the furniture is half yours, of course, and I should have told you about this offer, as I am legally responsible for it and all your property. And talking of property, Vava, it is very hard I know, but this place is no longer ours, nor can it ever be again, for we have no rich relations to leave us enough money to buy it back; nor shall we ever have enough ourselves even if the Joneses wanted to sell it, which I don't fancy they will, for they have bought it for their son and heir, as they called him to me.'
'How hateful! a Londoner Laird of Lomore! Oh but he sha'n't be that long, for I am going to earn a fortune and turn him out!' cried Vava, her eyes flashing.
Stella laughed at her younger sister's vehemence, and inquired, 'In what way are you going to earn money, pray?'
'I'm going to invent something. I read the other day in that ladies' magazine of a man who invented a very simple little thing to save candles, and he made thousands and thousands of pounds by it; and I've got an idea too--it's a thing to save matches,' announced Vava.
'Matches! Why should one save matches? They are cheap enough without saving them,' exclaimed Stella.
'Not in every country. Don't you remember Mrs. M'Ewan saying that when they were abroad last year they paid a penny a box, and for such bad ones too? Well, my idea is to make them light at both ends; you always throw away half the match, and now it will do for twice,' explained Vava.
Stella did not laugh for fear of hurting Vava's feelings and arousing her wrath, but only said, 'You do think of odd things, Vava; but I wish you would not say all you think. I am often quite nervous of what you may say or do next.'
'You needn't be nervous now, because I am going to be quite grown-up and proper, and not give you any more trouble,' announced Vava, who meant what she said, though she did not always act up to her excellent resolutions, as will be seen.
In fact, only two days later she made her sister nervous, besides annoying her; for, as the elder girl was walking towards the village to Mr. Stacey's office, in answer to a message from him requesting her to call, she saw her sister, whom she had missed for the last hour, sitting beside Mr. Montague Jones in his motor, being whirled past her at a terrible speed, or at least so it seemed to her. Whether Vava saw her or not Stella could not be sure; but she took no notice of her, neither did Mr. Jones, whom she supposed did not recognise her. Rather ruffled at the occurrence, Miss Wharton continued her way to the lawyer's, her pretty head held still more erect, and a slightly scornful smile on her face at the way her sister's indignation against the London Laird had evaporated.
'Well, Miss Wharton, my dear, I have good news for you--at least, I suppose I must call it good news, though it means that we shall lose you, for the people whose advertisement I answered have written offering you the post of secretary to the junior partner of a very good firm in the City of London--Baines, Jones & Co. Your hours will be ten till four, short hours for London clerks--er, secretaries I mean; and your work will be to translate French letters for him and write French answers, which he will dictate in English. You see it is a position of trust, because they don't know much French and have to trust to your translating their letters faithfully, and that I was able to assure them you would do. In fact, after what I said they were quite ready to take you, and it is the best I can do for you--not what I should like for your father's daughter, but it might be worse. You will have a nice little room to yourself with your typewriter, and need have nothing to do with any one, and I may tell you that if you give satisfaction your salary will be raised.'
'Thank you very much, Mr. Stacey,' replied Stella briefly. She was grateful, and the old man knew it; but the vision his words brought up of her future life in a stuffy, dingy City office, sitting at a typewriter writing dull business letters--a very different thing from the literary work she had helped her father with--depressed her for a moment. Then she roused herself, and went on to speak of the arrangement which had been agreed upon between the lawyer and Mr. Montague Jones about the furniture, and which only needed her signature to be settled.
'Ah, yes, they have been most generous,' began the lawyer; but he hastened to correct himself when he saw Stella's face stiffen--'fair, I should say, and anxious to meet your wishes. I think we are fortunate in falling into their hands, and may safely trust them.' How fortunate, Mr. Stacey did not dare to say.
'Yes, I think they will take care of our furniture, and they evidently wish to be friendly, which is more than I do, though Vava seems to have taken to them,' replied Stella.
'And they to her. Here is the prospectus of that school Mr. Montague Jones is governor of. He is evidently a little afraid of you and your stately airs'--here the lawyer's eyes twinkled--'not that he thinks the less of you for them, quite the contrary. However, to resume, it seems an excellent school; the teaching staff is first-rate, the building palatial, and the fees most moderate--two guineas a term. Moreover, as it is in the City, not far from your own office, you could go there and back together, which would be a great thing,' explained the lawyer.
He was a busy man, for not only every one in the sleepy little town, but all round, great and small, came to him for advice, and Stella, knowing this, was grateful for his interest in her affairs; and on his advice agreed, if it proved to come up to the prospectus, to send Vava to the City school. This business being settled, she turned homeward with a feeling that now she had no more to do with Lomore, and that the sooner they left it and began their new life in London the better. In fact, this was practically what Mr. Stacey said: Messrs Baines, Jones & Co. would like her to begin at her earliest convenience, and the new term began next Tuesday, and this was Wednesday.
Vava was on the gate when her sister arrived. 'Where have you been? I've been such a lovely drive with the Montagues--well, never mind their other name; it's horribly common anyway. I met them up the road, and they asked if we would come for a run, and we came back to fetch you; but you had gone to Mr. Stacey's, so I was sure you would not mind; and--what do you think?--they are going to drive us up to London in their car!' the girl cried, pouring out the words so fast that her sister could hardly follow her.
'Drive us to London? Indeed, they are going to do no such thing! I do not care to accept favours from strangers; and really, Vava, I don't know what you mean by knowing my affairs before I know them myself. I don't know when we are going to London yet. Perhaps not for a week or two, and at any rate not with those people, who may be very kind, but are not educated; he can't even speak the King's English. No, if we can't make friends in our own class we will go without.'
Vava looked down at her sister, who stood with one hand on the gate, looking so stiff and proud that her face, which was really a sweet one, was almost forbidding. 'All right,' she said, swinging her feet to and fro in a way that made Stella quite nervous--'all right, then; we'll go in a stuffy railway-carriage, and have to sit up all night, and I shall be sick, as I was when we went to Edinburgh; but you won't care as long as you can stick your head up and look down on people who try to be friendly and nice to you, just because he says "dy" instead of "day;" and what does it matter? We pronounce some words quite wrong, according to the English, and I dare say they'll laugh at us when we go south. Mrs. M'Ewan said the waiter at the hotel couldn't understand her when she asked for water.'
Mrs. M'Ewan was a neighbouring laird's wife, and spoke very broad Scotch.
Stella made no answer to this tirade of her younger sister's, who swung herself off the gate and walked back to the house with Stella in no good-humour.
There they found a note from Mrs. Jones, which, to Stella's surprise, was quite grammatically written, asking whether they would honour them by occupying two seats in their car when they went back to town. 'My husband is so taken by your sister, and hearing that the train made her sick, he ventured to suggest your coming with us. He begs me to say that he feels under such obligations to you for lending us your beautiful old furniture and plate--which no money could repay or replace--that he would be glad if you would accept this attention as a mark of our gratitude.'
'That will fetch the proud hussy, if anything will. Poor girls, I am very sorry for them, especially the elder, for she'll have a lot of humble pie to eat before she's done,' Mr. Montague Jones had said to his wife; but this remark, needless to say, she did not mention in the letter. She only added that they were not particular which day they returned to town, but would go any day that suited Miss Wharton.
Mr. Jones may not have been an educated man--in fact, he would have been the first to acknowledge it; but he certainly was a tactful man, and understood managing people, as indeed he well might, for he had managed a large place of business for many years, and done so successfully, as his wealth testified.
So, after reading the letter over slowly, Stella turned to her sister with a half-ashamed smile and said, 'If you like we will go with the Montague Joneses; but only on one condition, and that is that you promise not to get too intimate, or to ask me to be friendly with them in town. They may not want to know us, for we shall be very poor; but I won't be patronised by any one, and I don't want them to call.'
Vava looked as if she were going to say something, but thought better of it, and gave the desired promise.
CHAPTER IV.
UPS AND DOWNS.
There was nothing now to keep them at Lomore. Mr. Stacey's clerks had made an inventory of the contents of the house; David M'Taggart and Mrs. Morrison had packed their 'young leddies'' personal belongings, part in boxes to be taken to London, and part locked away in a room in the old home, of which David M'Taggart had the key, and into which, he solemnly assured his late young mistresses, no one should enter but himself.
So all that remained for the two orphans to do was to say good-bye to their friends, which they hurried over as much as possible, for partings are painful in any case, and it was especially so in this one, and the most painful was the parting from 'nursie,' as they called Mrs. Morrison.
'And remember, my bairns, if you are ill or want me at any time, I'm here and ready to come to you. I've a good bit laid by for a rainy day, and I've no need to work any more, thank the Lord, and don't mean to work for any but a Wharton, if he was as rich as Dives; so if ever you should want a maid who needs no wages I'll be waiting for the call, and will be with you as fast as the train will take me, for you're like my own bairns,' said the loyal old servant, who had spent forty of her fifty-five years of life in the service of the Laird of Lomore, as had her father and grandfather before her, and was still as hale and hearty as a woman of thirty.
The two girls clung to her, but could not say a word, and Mr. Montague Jones, who had brought the car to the house to fetch them, turned his head away and cleared his throat suspiciously, feeling, as he told his wife afterwards, like a veritable robber who had stolen their home, and turned these two helpless and innocent girls adrift in the wide world, of which they knew nothing.
Mrs. Montague Jones did her best to be pleasant to her companion, who was Stella, for Vava was sitting beside Mr. Jones and the chauffeur; but though the girl was perfectly civil, and expressed her gratitude for their kindness, Stella was so reserved and unresponsive that it is to be feared that Mrs. Jones did not enjoy her return trip as much as she had done the one northward to take possession of the coveted property, which foolish speculations had caused the late Laird to mortgage up to its full value.
Poor proud Stella, in her innocence it had not occurred to her that she would be entertained at the best hotels on the way south; nor did she know that the journey was being made very leisurely, and, to tell the truth, by rather indirect routes, so that their thoughts might be distracted, and that they might be shown pretty scenery and interesting cathedrals and old towns. But there was no getting out of it now.
'Though if I had had any idea of the obligation we were putting ourselves under I would never have come, not even to prevent your being train-sick, Vava,' she declared to her sister.
'Then it's a very good thing you did not know; we're having a glorious time, and what is a few pounds to them? Nothing, as Mr. Montague Jones says; he is enjoying these sights twice as much for seeing us enjoy them; though, for that matter, you don't look much as if you were enjoying yourself, except when we are going over cathedrals, or looking at some extra-special view, and then, though I say it as shouldn't, your face is worth looking at,' affirmed Vava.
Stella laughed at the candid flattery, and took a hint from the equally candid criticism, and tried to be more agreeable to her kind hostess, with the result that Mrs. Montague Jones was emboldened to ask her if she would not stay a few days with them in Belgrave Square until they had found rooms.
But Stella withdrew into her shell at once. 'Oh no, thank you; you are very kind, but we have the address of some lodgings which Mrs. Monro, our minister's wife, knows, and they are expecting us.'
They were now at their last stage, and Stella handed Mrs. Monro's card to Mr. Jones, and on it was written the address. He took it and read it, and said, 'Vincent Street, Westminster; that's not far from us. We shall hope to see you sometimes; it's a poky little street, and you'll be glad to get out of it, though even Belgrave Square will seem sooty and confined after Lomore.'
It was not as tactful a speech as it might have been, and was received in such freezing silence by Stella that his wife did not dare to second the invitation, and the two girls were deposited at their new abode without any promise of meeting again, as far as Stella was concerned. As for Vava, she shook hands with Mr. Jones very warmly, and kissed Mrs. Jones; but neither did she say anything but good-bye, which, truth to say, she said in such a cheerful tone as to surprise her sister.
But the cheeriness soon subsided at sight of their rooms, for which the landlady, impressed by the grandeur of their arrival, hastened to apologise. 'And where all that luggage that arrived yesterday is to go I don't know; I've no place for it here, miss; so I just told the railway-man to keep all but these two port-manteaus at their storerooms,' she added.
'Perhaps that was best,' said Stella quietly. And then, the woman having taken her departure, she sat down on the bed, a large double one, which filled up half the dingy room, and looked round the apartment and into the tiny sitting-room with distaste.
'It's horrid, and--one thing's certain, I won't have that man staring at me!' cried Vava impulsively, jumping up, and mounting on a chair in order to take down a large portrait of a stolid-faced policeman.
'Vava, come down and leave it alone! What can you be thinking of? That is the landlady's husband, no doubt. Mrs. Monro said he was a policeman, and so we should be safe with him. You will hurt her feelings!' cried Stella.
'Then let her have him in her own bedroom. How can I sleep with him looking as if he were going to take me to prison all the time?' said Vava. However, she did not take 'him' down, but came down herself; and as the Joneses had thoughtfully had a substantial tea before they deposited their passengers, the girls decided that they would want nothing that night but a glass of milk, and went out in the dusk to see what they could of London, and get out of their close and confined lodgings.
'It went to my heart, Monty, to leave those two poor girls in that dreadful place. This world's very unfair somehow,' said Mrs. Jones, as she and her husband entered their own handsome house.
'And yet you were not too pleased at my offer about the furniture, and wanted to make me force them to sell it outright,' her husband reminded her.
'Oh well, business is business; but now that I know those two Misses Wharton I feel glad the furniture is still theirs, though what good it'll do them now or ever--unless some duke comes along and marries Miss Stella for her pretty face--I don't know.'
'The money I pay for hire will do them good'--Mr. Jones was paying fifty pounds a year--'and it needn't be a duke. I'd not mind her for a daughter myself.'
'Pray don't put such ideas into Jamie's head; not that she would not be a good wife, for she's a good girl, but she'd never look at a Jones. And if that's your plan, I'm sorry she ever came to town, for it will only upset Jamie. I do hope he won't fall in love with her!' cried Jamie's mother in alarm.
'Who spoke of Jamie? The girl's up here to earn her living, and has no idea of love-making, thank goodness! As for Jamie, he's all right, and can look after himself at his age, I should hope. I only meant that I'd like as ornamental a wife for him when he reigns up there as I've got to face me,' said Mr. Montague Jones gallantly. Then in the bustle of home-coming and the joy of meeting the aforementioned Jamie, the Whartons were banished as subjects of conversation, although a little later their name cropped up in connection with their property and other matters.
The Whartons themselves never mentioned their late hosts. London in the dusk, with its brilliant lights, its roar of traffic, and its hurrying crowds, claimed their attention.
'Oh Stella, it's awful--just awful!' cried Vava, clinging to her sister's arm in alarm.
'See, there is a park in front of us; let us go in there; it will be quieter,' replied Stella, as she pressed Vava's arm and hurried her over the crossing into Hyde Park, in which direction they had fortunately strayed.
Vava drew a great breath of relief as they began to cross the park diagonally. 'Thank goodness! I can breathe here, and needn't be looking all the time to see where those horrid, screechy motors are coming to, tearing along as they do,' she said, quite forgetful of the fact that she herself had not many hours before been tearing along in one of these same 'horrid motors.'
It was January, and the air was cold, but the Highland girls did not mind that, and took such a long walk, turning and twisting in the park, so as to avoid the streets, that they were tired out when they reached their lodgings. They slept soundly, and the next morning awoke with more courage to face their new life. The first thing was to visit the City school, and this they did together.
'I have heard of you, Miss Wharton,' said Miss Upjohn, the head-mistress, 'and I hope I shall be able to persuade you to entrust your sister to us.' She then proceeded to give her visitor a detailed account of the school, its staff, and its aims. 'Our term begins to-morrow, and that,' she continued, pointing to a large card on the table, 'is our motto for the week. We have a new one each week, and this week, as it is the beginning of the new year, we have taken "Truth and honour." The school motto is "Love as brethren," and I shall make a little speech upon it to-morrow morning after prayers.'
Stella listened in her dignified, reserved way, and it was only when she smiled that the head-mistress understood Mr. Montague Jones's enthusiastic way of speaking of her.
Vava was more responsive. 'Oh Stella, this is a lovely school! Do let me come here. And for our gymnastics we wear a red drill-dress--what fun! And what nice big rooms! I can breathe here!' she cried.
Stella smiled again. 'I don't know what to say; it seems so funny to take the first school one sees without looking about; but we have no time to spare. The only thing I am afraid of is, if you will excuse my saying so, the companions she will find here; it is not a very aristocratic part of London, and I should not like Vava to mix with the children I see in this street.'
Miss Upjohn smiled too. 'I understand your feelings; but I can assure you that though there is a mixture here, as in all big schools--even the best--our girls do not come from the streets; they come from very good neighbourhoods. I do not think your sister will come to any harm by mixing with them, and I will myself take special care of her and let her sit at lunch with one of our teachers, who dine here in the middle of the day.'
Miss Wharton did not know that she owed this concession to Mr. Jones's representations; she did not even know that it was a concession, for she had been used to a good deal of attention both from her position and her beauty; but she knew that Miss Upjohn was being very kind and friendly, and she felt sure her sister would be safe with such a high-principled woman. So before they left the big, ugly red-brick building, which Mr. Jones had truly called palatial, it was decided that Vava should go there the next day and be duly enrolled as a day-scholar at the City School for Girls.
'And now that all that is comfortably settled, let us go and see the Tower; it is in the City, so it must be near,' observed Vava.
But she was mistaken; it was not near. However, as they were walking along--for they were too unused to cities to think it necessary to go everywhere in buses and trams--Stella gave a little exclamation of surprise.
'What is it, Stella? What frightened you?' inquired Vava, looking up at her sister.
'I am not frightened, only surprised. There is the office that I shall go to every day, quite close to your school, so that I can see you to your door before I go there. I am so glad,' explained Stella.
'So am I glad, Stella. Now I sha'n't feel lonely, for I don't mind telling you that I felt just a wee bit frightened at the thought of being away from you among strangers, and no one I knew anywhere near; and here you will be quite near me, so that I can run in and see you whenever I want!' exclaimed the girl.
'Oh but you must not do that; you must not run about the streets alone! London is not Lomore, you know; besides, you will have no time to pay visits in school-hours, nor shall I have time to receive them. You must remember I am only a paid servant to these people,' said Stella, with proud humility. She then continued, 'I cannot receive visitors as if it were my own house, though, of course, if anything were really the matter Miss Upjohn could send for me. It is nice for us both to know we are only a few minutes' walk from each other.'
Not for many a day did Stella and Vava Wharton know to whose kind interest they owed this fact, nor to whom they were indebted for many a privilege, both in the former's office and the latter's school; though it was to one and the same person. At an |
30837-8 | y rate, this knowledge of their nearness to each other made their first day in London a happier one than it would otherwise have been.
The Tower proved as fascinating as it always does to girls who love history when they see the fortress for the first time, and the sisters spent a long time in it and its surroundings, and went back to Vincent Street resigned to, if not content with, their lot, the worst part of which was their lodgings. Stella felt that the house could never be in the least a home to them, and was not situated in a nice part for them to live in, though she did not see what she could do better, with their limited means and knowledge of London.
CHAPTER V.
THE NEW LIFE.
'But, Stella, you have not to be at your office till ten o'clock! What will you do with yourself for this half-hour?' asked Vava next morning as her sister left her at the gates of the City School for Girls five minutes before school opened, which was half-past nine.
The two sisters had walked together to the City along the Embankment. To girls used to tramping miles over the moors, the walk was nothing, though they found that the pavements tired their feet.
'I shall take a walk, or go into a shop and have a bun,' replied Stella, for on second thoughts she shunned a walk alone through these streets crowded with men, who looked curiously, though not disrespectfully, at the tall, slight, beautiful girl, who walked with a leisurely, unbusiness-like air through the City.
'Yes, go and have a bun, and I will come to the office at half-past three and wait for you in the sitting-room,' said Vava, who felt for her sister being stared at so.
'I don't think there will be much of a sitting-room to wait in, Vava; but when you come to fetch me, just take one of your lesson-books and read quietly until I come down; and, remember, don't talk to any one,' Stella admonished her sister.
Vava looked astonished and as if she were going to argue the question; but the school-bell rang at that moment, and she ran off, turning round to wave her hand to her sister, who stood watching her until she joined a group of girls, with whom she seemed to be conversing in a most friendly way, and not in the least as if it were the first time in her life that she had ever seen them.
With a sigh, Stella turned away; she could not be like that, she could not help being stiff and reserved. Vava was quite different, and her elder sister found herself hoping fearfully that she would not get too intimate with these 'City girls.' However, she consoled herself with the thought that it could only be in school-hours, and that even in the dinner interval she would be with the young teacher who was to take special care of her, and who, at all events, would be an educated woman.
And then, as she felt somehow that her sauntering walk attracted too much attention, she turned into a baker's shop, and, addressing the pleasant-faced woman behind the counter, said, 'May I have a bun, please, and rest here for half-an-hour until my office opens?'
'Indeed you may, miss, and if you like to step into my parlour you'll find a fire there; it's no weather to be walking about the streets, and none too pleasant for a young lady like you, not but what I say if you show respect to yourself others will show it to you; still, my parlour's the best place on a day like this,' said the baker's wife; for it was a cold, frosty January day.
Stella thanked her kindly Samaritan, who little knew how nervous and miserable her self-contained and dignified visitor felt as she sat there, nor how reluctantly she rose to go to Baines, Jones & Co.'s office.
The junior partner of the firm was not often so punctual at his office as he was on this morning, on which ten o'clock found him sitting in his private room, much to the perturbation of the clerks, who hurried in at or just after the hour of ten.
'There's a lady to see you, sir,' said a young clerk, handing him a card.
'Oh--er, yes; show her into this room,' said the junior partner, with an embarrassment which amazed the clerk, who forthwith went and informed his fellow-clerks that the young boss's best girl had called upon him, and 'he doesn't seem too pleased, though she's handsome enough in all conscience--a regular beauty, and no mistake, and a cut above him too; though what she means by running after him to the City goodness knows!'
'There's no knowing what girls will do nowadays,' said a wise youth of sixteen, who was promptly told to shut up.
But Stella, quite unconscious of these criticisms on her conduct, walked quietly into the junior partner's room, and, bowing gravely, said, 'I am Miss Wharton;' and waited for him to speak.
The junior partner rose from his seat and put a chair for her. 'I am very glad to see you, Miss Wharton. I hope you had a pleasant run--journey south?'
Stella might almost have been carved in stone as she answered, 'Yes, thank you. Will you kindly tell me my duties?'
If her employer felt snubbed he did not show it, but told her what he wanted her to do, and then showed her the room in which she was to work, which was through the clerks' room. Suddenly a thought seemed to strike him. 'There is another door to this room, and by it you could come along the corridor to me when necessary without coming through the clerks' office; and that is the housekeeper's room opposite. She will make you tea, and give you hot water or anything you want,' he said, opening a door on to the corridor.
Stella gravely bowed her thanks. She was grateful for the thought, and she found her new employer very quiet and civil. When the morning was over, and she took him his letters, which he was thankful to find correctly done, he showed his kindness further by saying, 'There is a ladies' club near here where lady-clerks can go and lunch very reasonably and comfortably; the housekeeper will show you the way, if you like. You will find it convenient to stay there till two o'clock; the City is a dull place for young ladies.'
Stella thanked him again, and took his advice; but when she had left the room the junior partner got up, stretched his long limbs, for he was a tall, athletic man, who looked more as if he should have been on a yacht than in a City office. 'Whew! what an iceberg! And to think that that imperial beauty is my clerk, and that I have to give her orders from ten to four, and be repressed and snubbed by her! As if I wanted to take a liberty! Why, I dare not even mention the weather! Well, so be it; she's a good typist, and has a good business head for all it's so pretty.--Well, Mrs. Ryan, what is it? Come in. Did you take Miss Wharton to the Enterprise Club--isn't that its name?'
'Yes, sir, I did, and right glad she was to be in such a place, so bright and comfortable, poor, sweet young lady. But I came to ask you, sir, couldn't she begin at half-past nine and stop at half-past three?' inquired the kind-hearted Irishwoman, explaining about Vava and her hours.
'H'm, it would suit her better, no doubt; but I don't know about me. Oh yes, I could leave her work to do. By all means. Thanks for telling me; I'll arrange it,' said the junior partner kindly, and added, 'And take the little sister into your room if we have not quite finished, Mrs. Ryan; the waiting-room is no place for her, if she is anything like her sister.'
'The City's no place for either of them, Mr. James; but they could not have found a better master than you, go where they might,' said the good woman.
Mr. James laughed; but he did not like to hear himself spoken of as Stella's master, and thought with a grim smile how angry she would have been if she had heard the expression.
The clerks meanwhile had a subject for conversation which kept their tongues wagging in an undertone, to the neglect of their work.
'The new lady-clerk! Who would have believed it? And she gave me her card for all the world like a duchess.' Here there was a snigger, and one of his fellow-clerks asked how duchesses gave their cards. And then the buzz went on, and all were on the _qui vive_ for the door to open; but, as is known, Stella did not pass through the room again, and the next time they met her she was with the housekeeper, to whom she was talking quite pleasantly. So that she could condescend when she liked, they discovered.
All the same, Stella might have been set down as proud and stuck-up, and been more unpopular than she was, though that probably would have troubled her little but for what occurred that afternoon, which, much as it annoyed her, was a very good thing.
The junior partner, it will be remembered, had had to wait for his typist while she packed up and took leave of her Highland home, and then motored leisurely to town, and certain foreign letters had got in arrears, and the junior partner was anxious to get through them.
Consequently, when Vava called for her sister the latter was very busy. The girl knew where the office was, but she did not know which door she ought to knock at; then she saw 'Baines, Jones & Co.--Clerks' Room.' One of the girls at school had called Stella a 'clerk,' when Vava had said 'secretary,' which sounded better. So at this door the girl knocked, and in answer to a loud 'Come in!' she entered.
Twenty heads were lifted and looked at her; but Vava was not self-conscious. She went forward, and with a friendly smile said, 'I have called for my sister. May I sit here till she is ready?'
'Certainly--that is, yes. Take a seat, miss, till I tell the boss,' said a youth, stammering rather, for it was awkward to refuse a young lady; but that was not the place for her to wait.
'No, don't tell any one. Stella said I was not to interrupt her, as she's only a paid servant like you; so just you go on with your work, and don't waste your time like the idle apprentice in the tale.'
Vava had not spoken loud, and did not know that her words were overheard by the whole room; still less was she aware that the young man of about thirty who had come in while she was speaking was the young boss and her sister's employer.
The boy to whom she had spoken had his back to him, and answered in rather an aggrieved tone, 'I'm not wasting my time; I had to answer you, and I must tell Mr. Jones, for I don't know that he'd like you to wait here; this isn't the lady's waiting-room, you know!'
'Mr. Jones won't mind,' said that gentleman, coming forward, and adding, 'So you are Miss Wharton's sister?'
'Yes, but I don't want to be in the way; you all seem very busy. Can I help you? I can write an awfully good hand, just like Stella's; she taught me, you know,' said Vava.
A smile went round the room; but Mr. Jones said quite gravely, 'That is very kind of you, and perhaps when we are hard pressed I shall take advantage of that offer; but your sister has done so much to-day that I think she will soon be ready for you.'
'Oh are you Mr. Jones?' said Vava, holding out her hand. 'I know some more Joneses, only they are'----
'Yes, it's a very common name, almost the commonest in England and Wales--rather a nuisance. But come along with me, and I will take you to your sister,' he said.
'Good-bye,' said Vava, nodding to the boy she had called the 'idle apprentice.'
'So the beauty's name is Stella!' observed one of the young men.
But he got no further. 'Shut up, Jim, and don't be such a cad as to take advantage of that youngster's friendly ways. If ever I hear any of you making free with Miss Wharton's name he'll regret it,' said the clerk in charge of the room, and his feelings on the subject were evidently shared by the rest of his fellow-clerks, for one or two of them said, by way of agreement, 'Yes, she's a nice little girl; evidently just up from the country, and not used to this kind of life, and in mourning too.'
So Stella was allowed to come and go, with no more attention or notice than the raising of their hats as they passed her, and it is to be doubted whether she could at the end of six months have recognised one of them if she had been required for any reason to do so.
Mr. Jones meanwhile took Vava into his own room, and sitting down began to talk to her of her new school and schoolfellows.
'They're all right, and the school is all right, and I like the mistresses, especially the one that takes my class--she looks so honest,' announced Vava.
'Don't the others look honest?' inquired Mr. Jones, looking amused. He had noticed that Vava spoke a little evasively of the school and its pupils as being 'all right,' which sounded qualified praise, and he was, or appeared to be, very much interested in her conversation.
'Oh I don't know; I didn't mean anything. I just liked Miss Courteney's face best, and I shall get to like the girls when I can understand them.' Here Vava laughed. 'They say some words so funnily;' and she tried to imitate them.
Mr. James Jones laughed heartily, and Vava, encouraged by him, was taking off some of her schoolfellows when Stella came to the door. Her face was a study, and both Mr. Jones and Vava jumped up with the air of culprits, as if they had been discovered doing wrong.
'I have brought the letters.--Vava, go into the housekeeper's room, please; you are interrupting Mr. Jones,' said the elder sister, holding open the door 'like an avenging angel,' as the junior partner afterwards said.
CHAPTER VI.
IN LONELY LODGINGS.
When the two girls stood outside the door they turned and looked at each other for a moment, and then without a word Stella led the way down the corridor to her own little room.
Nothing could have had a greater effect upon Vava, who would far rather have had a good scolding than this silent disapproval. 'Is this your sitting-room, Stella? What a nice one, and you have a fire; it has been rather cold at school,' said the girl in a repressed voice as she spread out her hands to the blaze.
Then Stella's heart melted. To be sure, Vava had been very disobedient; she had been told to speak to no one, but to learn her lessons quietly while she was waiting. Instead of which, Stella--remembering the voices she had heard in the next room--felt sure she had been talking in her free way with every one. Still, it was their first day alone in London, and Vava looked so unlike herself with the joy and brightness gone out of her face, so she said kindly, if gravely, 'Yes, this is my room, and another time, please, come straight here, unless I come and call for you, which would be better, I think, if you do not obey me. But let me hear about school. I hope they have fires there?'
'Oh yes, but I was sitting near a window, and my feet and hands got cold with having to sit still so long, I suppose; the girls say they get chilblains as soon as they come back to school,' replied Vava.
'You must wear mittens and warm house-shoes. But about the school, Vava--do you like it? Are you glad to go to school?'
'Not much; but, Stella, don't send me away from you. I will do what you tell me, really; I promise I will, unless I forget. I forgot to-day, or I would not have talked to any one. I know you're awfully angry with me; but I think I was a little flustered by all the crowds in the streets, and I just went into the first room where I saw Baines, Jones & Co. written!' cried Vava eagerly.
'I understand that you were bewildered; but you must try and remember that you are not at Lomore, and that you must not make friends without my leave, or else I shall feel that I cannot take care of you, and that it's not right to keep you with me,' said Stella.
'Then I shall die in this dreadful place without you,' declared Vava in tragic tones.
'Vava, something has happened. What is it? What has made you take such a dislike to London? You liked it well enough yesterday,' exclaimed Stella anxiously. She had been putting on her hat and coat as she spoke, and had just said this, when Mrs. Ryan, the housekeeper, came in with a tray, on which there were two cups of tea and delicious thin bread and butter and cakes.
'I have brought you a warm cup of tea to keep the cold out on your way home, and one for this young lady, who is your sister, as is plain to see. Dear, dear! and to think of you two poor lambs all alone! My dear, don't be offended with me; but if, as you say, you have no relations or friends in London, I hope you'll count me as one, and come to me if you are in any trouble, just as if I were'--a fine tact made the old Irishwoman say, 'your old housekeeper,' instead of 'your mother.'
Stella held out her hand and smiled. 'Thank you, Mrs. Ryan; indeed you are a friend, and I will come to you for advice,' she said.
'And, do you know, you remind me a little of nursie, our housekeeper at Lomore, only she is Scotch; but I can understand your way of speaking, and that's more than I can the people at school,' Vava remarked, with such a tone of disgust that the other two laughed.
But Stella looked relieved. 'So that's it, is it? I suppose they laughed at you for talking with a Scotch accent? I have often told you, Vava, that you should not copy old Duncan as you did,' protested Stella; for Vava talked much broader Scotch than Stella, and used words which are not in use or understood south of the Border.
'They're stupid things, and I don't want to talk like them. Anyway, they don't pronounce lots of their words right; they say "wat" and "ware" for "what" and "where;" so of course I got a lot of mistakes in my English dictation. But I beat them in my French,' she wound up triumphantly.
'You'll soon get used to that, miss, and there isn't a better school in London than the one you're at; there's no money spared on it, for it's a rich company that has it, though I don't know exactly why they have it,' said Mrs. Ryan.
'I do; a rich merchant's wife founded it!' cried Vava, and poured forth the history of the foundation of the school to her two listeners, till Stella stopped her.
'Now, Vava, we must not keep Mrs. Ryan.--My sister does not understand that the City is the place for business, not for paying visits or amusing one's self; and you might tell her that she must not make acquaintance with strangers,' said Stella, turning to Mrs. Ryan.
Mrs. Ryan raised her hands in amazement at such imprudence. 'Indeed no. There was a young girl I knew up from the country, and one day she was taking her ticket at one of the London stations, and there was rather a crowd, so, being timid, she stepped back and waited; then who should come up to her but a gentleman, as she called him, and, taking off his hat as polite as could be, says, "Can I take your ticket for you, miss? It's not fit for you to be pushing into a rough crowd like that;" and she, like the silly she was, thanks him and hands him her purse with all her week's money in it; and off he goes.' Here Mrs. Ryan ended, and nodded her head at Vava.
But Vava in her innocence did not understand the moral of the story, and said simply, 'That was very kind of him?'
'Yes, very kind! But he never got the ticket, and the poor girl never saw her purse nor the kind gentleman again,' explained Mrs. Ryan.
Vava's eyes were wide with horror. 'What a wicked, cruel man! But everybody can't be wicked like that!' she cried.
'No, indeed; thank God, there are many good people here; but there are rogues as well, and as you are too young to know the one from the other you must not talk to any of them,' Mrs. Ryan said.
The story made Vava very thoughtful. 'I wonder whether Mr. Jones is a rogue?' she said musingly.
But Mrs. Ryan was scandalised. 'Sakes alive, miss, don't say such a thing in his own office! He is one of the best and most respected gentlemen in the City of London, as I well know, having worked for him and his father this thirty years!' she exclaimed.
'Vava lets her tongue run away with her.--Come, Vava, we really must be going,' said Stella hastily, and she took her younger sister off with her.
It was dusk now, but the two enjoyed their walk back along the Embankment, for it did not occur to them to take a bus or train; three miles was nothing to them. Moreover, they had had tea, and were in no hurry to get back to their cramped lodgings. It was well that Vava could not see her sister's amused smile, which broke out several times on the way home at the remembrance of the younger girl's suggestion that the junior partner might be a rogue; and it is to be feared that Stella would not have been sorry if her employer--whom she suspected unjustly of thinking a good deal of himself and of wishing to patronise her and pity her for having 'come down in the world'--had heard Vava's remark.
It might have gratified her if she had known that Mrs. Ryan went straight to her master and told him the whole story.
Mr. James, as she called him, laughed heartily. 'I'm sure that's what her elder sister thinks me. Well, it does not much matter, as long as she does her work as well as she did to-day, so business-like and correctly--first accurate young woman I have ever met with; and the poor thing will have a better time here than she would with many firms. You will be sure to look after her well, Mrs. Ryan? My father is most particular that she should be comfortable--as comfortable as possible, that is to say; so be sure and give her tea before she goes, or anything she wants.'
From which conversation it will be seen that Mr. Stacey had found a good berth for his young client, and had evidently given her a high testimonial.
It was six o'clock by the time the girls reached Vincent Street, and they seated themselves on uncomfortable arm-chairs in front of the smoky fire, which they lit as soon as they got in. Vava had her lessons to do; but after their tea-supper, for which the landlady declined to cook anything but eggs--'London eggs,' as Vava said--Stella looked round for something to do. There was no piano, she had no books, nor was she fond of fancy-work, and of useful work she had none, for 'nursie' had always done most of the mending for her young ladies, though she had taught them both to work. Before they left home she had set their wardrobes in thorough order. 'So that you'll not have to trouble about them for a long while yet; and perhaps, who knows, the Lord may have made a way for me to come to you before they need looking to again,' the old woman had said, with some kind of idea that her beautiful young mistress would not somehow be left by Providence in a position for which she was so unfitted, in the old housekeeper's opinion.
So now Stella looked round for something to do, and finding nothing, passed a dreary evening, till Vava had finished preparing her lessons, and said with a yawn, 'Let's go to bed, Stella. What's the good of sitting up, staring at this horrid wall-paper with those hideous flowers that aren't like any flowers that ever grew in a garden?'
Stella gave a sigh, which, in spite of all her resolutions to be brave, she could not suppress. 'It is not very comfortable here, to be sure; but I don't know where else to go. There is a large kind of ladies' residential club near here, but I do not know if we should like it, and we should have no private sitting-room; so you would have to prepare your lessons in your bedroom, which I dislike,' she replied.
'Oh that would be horrid; the room would get so hot and stuffy, and we should not sleep. I wish we could have a little house of our own. I am sure there must be little houses to let that we could afford, like the one Dr M'Farlane's sisters lived in at Lomore.'
'We will go and have a look to-morrow on our way home,' said Stella, smiling. She was glad of something to look forward to besides going to the City. She had only had one day of it; but she disliked it intensely, and asked herself how she was to bear her life with nothing but this to look forward to through the long years. Yet, if she had but known it, she was extremely fortunate, and her lot was a far better one than it might have been but for the influence of kind friends.
And so the two tired heads were laid down to rest, intending, in their ignorance, to look for a small house which they could rent, and which would be more comfortable and no more expensive than their present abode. Next day, however, was wet, and they had quite enough walking to the City and back, and came in at five o'clock, with another long evening before them, lightened in Stella's case by a book from the library of her City Club for Lady-Clerks; so that it was not until Friday that the two girls looked about on their way home for a small house to let.
Vava, who seemed singularly uncommunicative about her life at school, was quite eager in the search for this ideal small house, and looked up each street they passed by to see if there were any prospect of its being found there.
'I think, Vava, it will be no use looking so near the City. Mrs. Ryan tells me that rents are very high here; Westminster is a cheaper part,' said Stella.
'Still, there's no harm in looking, I'm sure. I have seen quite small houses that can't cost much,' said Vava; and at last she cried out with delight at sight of quite a small-looking house, jammed between two large buildings, which bore the words, 'To Let.' It was situated in one of the narrow streets leading from the Strand to the river.
Stella looked doubtfully at it. 'I think it is larger than it looks, Vava, and we really only need five or six rooms; and you know we must not give too much rent, for I do not want to spend all our income,' she said gravely.
'I'm sure this will be quite cheap. Do let's ask,' said Vava impatiently.
So urged, Stella rang the bell marked 'Caretaker;' and after a long wait, a grim and unfriendly-looking man appeared.
'Would you please tell me the rent of this house?' inquired Stella.
'Do you want an office in it?' inquired the caretaker.
'No-o. I wanted to know the rent of the whole house,' said the girl.
The man looked at her curiously; but she looked so grave and dignified that he concluded that she was sent by some one else. 'Well, the rent's three hundred pounds on a long lease, you may tell them,' he informed her.
'Thank you,' said Stella quietly, and turned away.
'Three hundred pounds for that dirty little house! Oh London is a horrid place, Stella! Let's go back to Lomore!' cried Vava.
Stella wished they could; but her sense of duty came to her aid, and she said, 'That is quite impossible, Vava; we must stay in London. So the best thing we can do is to try and be as happy as we can here, and do our duty. We will live upon as little as we can, and save money, so that we can go away for our holidays.'
These same holidays, if she had but known it, were a most unusual thing; for Stella was to have a month in the summer, and ten days at Easter. And the two began to plan a delightful Easter at the seaside somewhere, and by the time they got home to their lodgings Vava was quite cheerful again.
CHAPTER VII.
KIND-HEARTED LONDONERS.
'Oh Stella, it's a mist, a blacky-yellow mist--I mean a fog! How horrid! What shall I do here all by myself while you are in the City? And how will you get there? I shall be so frightened all the morning, thinking you are lost. Can't I come with you? I will sit quite quietly in your room while you are writing, and perhaps I could help you!' cried Vava on the second Saturday morning, when she woke up to find London quite dark and enveloped in a yellow fog.
'I can't take you with me, Vava; it would never do. That is not my room; it is Messrs Baines & Jones's room. If I brought you there to help me it would look as if I had too much to do, which is not true,' replied Stella.
'Then let me stop with Mrs. Ryan. I will do my lessons, and sew that horrid piece of needlework I have to get done by next sewing-lesson. Don't leave me in this poky little place by myself,' pleaded Vava.
As a matter of fact, Stella hated these Saturdays, when she had to go to the City alone, because Vava had no school that day, and to-day she was really nervous of the fog. So she said doubtfully, 'If you promise to stop quietly in Mrs. Ryan's room, and not go out of it on any excuse until I come to fetch you, I will take you, though it is rather extravagant, for we shall have to go by omnibus.'
'Never mind, it will be my Saturday's treat,' said Vava; and the two set out for the City.
Mrs. Ryan held up her hands at sight of them. 'There's brave young ladies! Not one of the young ladies of Philips's downstairs have come yet, and three of them that live some way off have sent telephone messages to say it's too thick their way, and they want to be excused.'
'I want to be excused for bringing Vava. She would not be left alone, and was sure you would not mind her sitting quietly in your room doing her lessons. I hope you will not mind?' said Stella.
'Mind! Why, I'm only too glad of a bit of company, and Miss Vava's as welcome as the sunshine would be, for it's what she reminds me of!' cried Mrs. Ryan heartily.
Mr. James looked up in surprise at sight of Stella. 'Miss Wharton! I did not expect you to-day; it is one of the worst fogs we have had for years. I wonder you found your way, as you are not used to London!' he exclaimed.
'The omnibus took me all the way,' said Stella gravely, and opened her note-book to take down her instructions; and Mr. James, who very seldom ventured to make even a remark like that, turned to business; but when his secretary had gone, and the darkness became thicker still, he looked uneasily out of the window, and then rang for the housekeeper.
'Mrs. Ryan, the fog is getting worse; I don't think that Miss Wharton ought to go home alone,' he began, looking disturbed.
'She's not alone, sir, begging your pardon; her little sister is here in my room,' observed the housekeeper.
The young man looked relieved. 'That's a good thing; she has really got more sense than the elder one in some ways. But how on earth are they to get back? I'd offer to take them in my car, only she'd fly down my throat,' he said with an aggrieved air.
'And begging your pardon again, sir, I think the more of Miss Wharton for her proper pride; but if I might make so bold as to suggest it, you might send the motor back for them,' suggested Mrs. Ryan.
'By all means; they're welcome to it as much as they like. I'll tell you what, Mrs. Ryan, they'll have to stop till it comes back. Suppose you give them lunch? I'll have it sent in, and you will tell them it's the custom of the firm. I'd like to give that little girl some pleasure; I'm sure her life's dull enough. I hear her sister won't let her make friends with the girls at school, and they don't know a soul else in London, for she told Miss Upjohn so,' said Mr. James, who talked to Mrs. Ryan very freely, as she was an old servant of the family.
Mrs. Ryan was only too pleased to do anything for the Misses Wharton, to whom she had taken a great fancy, and promised to see to the lunch.
Vava sat and learnt her lessons very conscientiously while Mrs. Ryan went about her duties. After a while Mr. James, who had a message to give the housekeeper, and probably found time hang heavy on his hands this morning--for it was not a day for callers--came to the housekeeper's room.
'Well, and what have you got to say about our English climate?' was his greeting.
Vava put down her English grammar with relief. 'Nothing good,' she said, laughing and shaking her head.
'It's like swallowing nasty-tasting flannel, isn't it?' he agreed.
'Yes, and it's getting worse; it was bad enough getting here, and how on earth we are going to get back nobody knows,' said Vava, as she looked out of the window at the fog, which got thicker and thicker, and was enough to frighten any country-bred girl, though Vava would not own it.
'Then I must be "nobody," because I know,' he said.
Vava looked up in surprise, and then guessing that he meant to take them home, a kindness she knew Stella would not accept, she said, 'We shall go in a bus, thank you, and I'm not as afraid as you think, for I've often been out in a mist at home, and they are more dangerous than this, for they come on suddenly, and you can't see a thing.'
'Mrs. Ryan does not approve of the bus; besides, they do not seem to be running. So she suggests your going in my car, which will come back for you after it has taken me home. Will you tell your sister it's the only thing to do?' asked Mr. James.
It did not strike Vava that the junior partner might have given his own message to his secretary, and agreed to deliver it; and, as Mrs. Ryan backed her up, Stella gave way.
'Baines & Jones are a very good firm to work for, and they look after their people well. After all, why shouldn't they? They're rich enough, and it's good policy, for they get well served; so you may eat this lunch quite comfortably, for they say you are the best lady they've had for a long time; you know French so well, and you write first-rate business letters. So you've earned your lunch for that, if you hadn't earned it by coming through such an awful fog to-day,' explained Mrs. Ryan, as she served lunch for the two sisters.
Mrs. Ryan would not exactly say, as her master told her, that it was the custom to give lunch; in fact, at sight of the menu she was told to get she was half-afraid Miss Wharton would refuse it, for chicken and cherry-tart with cream, followed by coffee and dessert, was rather a grand lunch to send in for a City clerk.
But Stella in her ignorance supposed it was usual; City dinners always were rich, like the givers, she knew.
'Isn't this lovely? I wish it would often be a fog; this is better than going to a stuffy restaurant,' announced Vava; and Mrs. Ryan determined to tell the kind-hearted giver of the pleasure his lunch had given.
But there was more pleasure to come. In about an hour the motor came back for them, and they started off very slowly. After a quarter of an hour they came to a stop, owing to a block at one of the bridges over the Thames.
'It's funny it should be so thick here; it's lovely a few miles out,' said the chauffeur, turning to address his passengers.
'How I wish we were a few miles out too, then!' cried Vava impulsively.
The two girls did not see a half-amused look that came into the staid and respectable man's eyes as he replied, 'Well, miss, I have to take a run down to Brighton, and if you would let me turn off south over this bridge I could take you there almost as soon as I could take you home at the rate we're going, and perhaps by the time we got back it would be fine again?'
Put like this, it sounded almost a favour to the chauffeur to let him get his business over first; though, perhaps, if they had had time to think, Stella at least would have bethought her that Brighton was slightly out of the way from the City to Westminster!
But Vava's cry of 'Oh do, Stella, do! I should so like to see the sea again,' settled it.
'There's plenty of rugs there, miss,' said the man, as he turned over the bridge with the same amused smile, and, as he had said, soon brought them into a better atmosphere, and finally to Brighton, where the sun was shining.
'If you'll let me know what time you wish to go back, miss, I'll meet you wherever you like,' said the chauffeur, touching his hat.
'As soon as your business is done, of course,' said Stella.
'Oh well'--here the man coughed--'yes, of course. Well, my business won't take long; but I haven't to get back for anything to-day, and my master said I could stop a bit. But, of course, if you are in a hurry'----he replied.
Stella looked doubtful, and consulted her watch. It was half-past three; they had another hour and a half of daylight, and it was very nice by the sea.
'There's no hurry at all, Stella; there's lots to see and do here.--You'll want to have some dinner, won't you?' Vava added, turning to the man.
'I'd be glad to see some friends I've got down here, and they'll look after me. Would seven o'clock suit you, young ladies?'
Again Stella agreed; but a feeling, which she could not define, that she was being managed somehow came over her. But she forgot it in the pleasure of the brisk walk by the sea, the visit to the aquarium, and, finally, listening to the band on the pier.
'Stella, I've come to the conclusion that we are wrong about London people,' announced Vava, as they sat in a sheltered corner listening to the music.
'How, Vava?' asked her sister.
'Nursie always used to say they were hard and selfish and suspicious, and I find that they are very kind. First there were the Montague Joneses, and now there's Mrs. Ryan and your Mr. Jones and this chauffeur, all being as kind as can be,' explained Vava.
'He's not my Mr. Jones,' said Stella sharply, taking up the offensive words. Then she continued, 'Yes, they are kind; but I do not much like accepting kindnesses we cannot return.'
'But we do return it by enjoying ourselves and thanking them, and you heard Mrs. Ryan say that the firm wanted to reward your good work, or, at least, that was what she meant, and you do work hard, and do overtime too sometimes; and I am going to knit a Shetland shawl for Mrs. Ryan, so that will be doing her a kindness in return,' declared Vava.
Stella sighed. 'I wish I were like you, able to enjoy everything, Vava,' she said half-sadly. To the proud, reserved girl, her present life was intolerable.
'Oh don't, Stella! Fancy, if you were like me, really! We should get into all sorts of muddles; besides, people would not be so kind to us!' she added shrewdly.
Stella refrained from asking her what she meant; for she knew too, and, funnily enough, resented the attention which her beauty brought her. However, Vava's words did good; and Stella, whatever she might say, did enjoy the trip. And she thanked the chauffeur so prettily that the man was quite captivated.
'I am sure, miss, it's been a pleasure, and I only hope I shall have the same pleasure again;' and he would have said more, but on the whole he thought it wiser not to do so.
'This has been the nicest day we have spent since we came to London,' Vava assured the man, smiling and nodding at him as he respectfully took his leave.
Stella looked very grave as she put her latch-key into the front-door of their lodgings. 'I am not sure that it is a wise thing to take these treats; it only seems to make you dissatisfied with the outings that I can afford.'
'Indeed it does not, only I liked seeing the sea, and I do love rushing through the country in a motor; but I enjoyed the Tower very much, and I shall enjoy the Houses of Parliament next Saturday all the more for having had a change in between. Besides, it was delightful to get out of that awful fog; we could not have done anything to-day if we had stayed in London except sit in this little room with the gas lit. It was kind of Mr. James.'
'Yes,' agreed Stella; but she did not think it necessary to tell Vava that she was not going to accept such kindnesses in future, however much Mrs. Ryan might say it was 'the custom of the firm.'
CHAPTER VIII.
GOOD MANNERS.
'Do you think you can walk to school by yourself this morning, Vava?' inquired Stella a little doubtfully as they stood at the parting of their ways one week-day morning in the City. Stella had always walked to the school-gates with her younger sister; but to-day she had work waiting her at the office, and she was anxious to get there early.
'Of course I can; I'm the only girl in the whole school who is taken to school like a kindergarten child, and some of them even come quite alone without their nurses or any grown-up person!' cried Vava, airing what was rather a grievance with her.
Stella put on her most dignified air. 'Very possibly; but I do not wish to be taught manners by your schoolfellows or their parents. That class of person does not go in for chaperons,' she said in her clear voice.
'Oh Stella!' cried Vava, flushing crimson and looking very vexed.
'What is the matter, Vava?' exclaimed Stella in astonishment.
'That was one of the girls in my form, and she heard you!' protested Vava.
Stella looked as vexed as Vava; she would not for worlds hurt any one's feelings willingly, and she knew too that she ought not to have said what she did; but pride was Stella's besetting sin, and she hated having to mix with people whom she considered her inferiors, and her present life and surroundings only made her prouder.
'I am sorry; I forgot we were so near the school. Perhaps she did not understand me. You say the girls find your Scotch accent difficult to follow?' suggested the girl.
'Well, good-bye,' said Vava; and went off one way, while Stella turned down the street leading to her office without further comment.
When she had left her sister, Stella thought no more of her unfortunate speech. It had been unwise; but, after all, it was quite true. And if the girl had overheard it all, the worst she could think was that Vava's sister was proud, and that she thought herself superior to the pupils of the City School for Girls, which last, Stella privately thought, they could see for themselves.
But Vava did not forget it, and looked very gloomy as she walked along, her eyes looking straight in front of her, not seeing any one.
'Hallo, Vava Wharton! Where are you--in the moon, wool-gathering?' inquired a hearty voice beside her, and a rather stout, common-looking girl, who, however, was nicely dressed and had a pleasant face, patted her on the back.
'Oh Doreen! you startled me. I was thinking!' ejaculated Vava.
'Not very pleasant thoughts, by the look of you,' said Doreen, with a sharp look at Vava's grave face.
'No, they were not,' admitted Vava.
'What's the row? Not any trouble at home, I hope?' asked the girl kindly, and her rough, boisterous voice grew quite gentle.
'I have no home,' said Vava.
'I'm sorry; but you have a sister, and, I say, isn't she a beauty? You're lucky to have her; I have no sister. If it's anything I can help about you may as well tell me; come, out with it. You'll be in the dumps all day if you've got it on your mind. Is it the lessons?'
'No, it's nothing to do with school; at least--well, it's something my sister said about school just now that is bothering me.'
'Doesn't she think you are getting on well, or working hard enough? Because, if that is all, you just introduce me to her to-morrow morning, and let me talk to her, and I'll soon teach her different,' said the girl cheerfully.
Vava thought to herself that Doreen would not have made this suggestion if she had overheard Stella's opinion of her schoolfellows, and she felt that, kind though she was, Doreen was the last girl she would like to introduce to her sister. 'It was just a stupid remark my sister made about the manners at school,' explained Vava.
'The manners at school? Why, we're supposed to have very good manners! I'm sure we're always being drilled in good manners by Miss Upjohn, and the inspectors and visitors always say there's such a good tone among the girls!' exclaimed Doreen, and she looked at Vava as if she suspected her of having taken some tales to her sister, or made some complaint about them. Then as Vava did not answer, for she could not very well explain the true facts of the case, Doreen went on, 'I suppose you think we are not too civil to you about your Scotch accent; but, if we laughed, we didn't mean it unkindly. It's no use being too thin-skinned in this world. I should think your sister was rather too delicate for roughing it in London; she looks as if she ought to be a duchess, not a City clerk.'
'That's just it!' burst forth Vava impulsively.
'Is that what's bothering you? Well, I shouldn't worry about that. Some rich man will come along and marry her before long, you'll see; she's far too pretty to remain single. But,' she added, as a thought struck her, 'why did you first say it was our bad manners that upset you, and then that it was your sister being a clerk?'
Then Vava told the whole story, adding, 'I hope you are not offended? Stella only meant'----
'She only meant that you are a cut above the rest of us, and it's quite true, and of course we know that. Why, the first day you came in with her we thought it was some grand visitor coming. I'm sorry Rosie Brown overheard it; she can be nasty when she likes, and she considers herself some one too, for her father is an alderman. Anyway, I'm glad you've told me, and I'll tackle her if she says anything,' declared Doreen, not letting Vava finish her apology.
'Oh I hope she won't; the girls will be so annoyed!' cried Vava in a fright.
'It's not your fault; they won't blame you; I'm sure you're pleasant and friendly enough with them all. Anyhow, as I said before, I'll give them a piece of my mind if they say anything, and I'll be your friend if you'll let me. Of course, I know you are a lady and I'm not, and I don't talk good grammar and you do, though you roll your "r's" and say "w_h_at" in a funny way; but I'd like to talk better if you'll learn me. You see, I am to be a teacher one day, and it'll stand in my way, and father says a good education is a fortune,' answered Doreen.
'I'll teach you, not "learn" you, if I can; for our governess did teach us grammar, and our father was very particular how we spoke, so I suppose we do speak better than a great many girls,' said Vava, laughing and looking quite bright again.
'And we'll be chums?' demanded the girl.
'Yes, if you like,' agreed Vava, not seeing very well how she was to get out of it, but wondering what Stella would say to her choice of a friend. As they entered the playground she saw Rosie Brown the centre of a little group of girls, who looked up as she came in, and then looked away again, without nodding good-morning as usual.
Vava's heart sank; but Doreen said in her loud cheery voice, 'Hallo, you there! What are you all confabbing about so mysteriously? Nice manners that!' she wound up purposely.
'Oh we can't all have the manners of your friend Lady Clara Vere de Vere! I wonder she condescends to talk to you or come to our school at all with the people of our class,' said one of the girls.
Vava's colour rose, but she walked on without taking the least notice of what was said.
Not so, Doreen. She stopped in front of them, and demanded loudly, 'What do you mean by that? I have no titled friend, because I'm only a tradesman's daughter, and very proud of the fact, for he earned every penny he's got honestly, which is more than you can say of some grand people.'
'We don't mean anything to do with you, Doreen; you don't give yourself airs or despise us; but if you knew what Vava Wharton thinks of you, you wouldn't walk with her!' said Rosie Brown.
'Wouldn't I? Well, I just should, then, for she's my chum, and any one who speaks against her speaks against me. And, pray, how do you know what she thinks of me? Has she been telling you?' inquired Doreen, standing square and uncompromising before the angry group.
'She thinks you're no class, as she does the rest of us,' said Rosie Brown.
Doreen turned on her. 'Does she? She's never shown any signs of it. No one could be nicer and more friendly than Vava Wharton has been ever since she has been here, and I shouldn't have thought she was one to go behind my back and say I was no class, especially to you, Rosie. Anyway, I've a right to know what she said about me,' demanded Doreen, who knew very well what Rosie meant, and that she was putting her in an awkward position.
'If she didn't, that stuck-up sister of hers did,' said Rosie sulkily.
'Well, I shouldn't call her stuck-up after she has been talking to you,' observed Doreen sarcastically.
'_She_ talk to me! She wouldn't demean herself by addressing a word to any one under a duke. I happened to overhear a remark she made,' said Rosie, falling into the trap.
'And you repeated a private remark that you listened to? That's nice and honourable, anyway. I wonder what Miss Upjohn would say if she heard of it? But you mind one thing, all of you--if you choose to take any notice of anything heard by eavesdropping, you can. I call it playing it low down; but you're not going to annoy Vava Wharton, who is not to blame one bit, and if you do I'll just go straight to the head-mistress and tell her, and we'll see what she says about honour,' announced Doreen. Having said so, she turned on her heel and followed Vava into the cloak-room, leaving the little group of girls--to whom she had given 'a piece of her mind,' as she called it--looking rather crestfallen.
'All the same, she does consider herself better than us, or why does she say good-bye so quickly if she sees her sister, and sit next a mistress at lunch?' inquired Rosie.
'It's a free country, I suppose she can do as she likes. I believe she told me she had come from a lonely part of Scotland, and wasn't used to living in a great city, and that crowds rather frightened her,' observed a girl who looked rather ashamed of having listened to this tittle-tattle.
'It's all right. I've shut her up, mean eavesdropper, and made them all feel ashamed of themselves; so don't you worry about it any more,' Doreen whispered to Vava, as she took off her boots and put on school-shoes.
'Oh thank you,' was all Vava said, and she felt very grateful and friendly toward Doreen; but during the day she found herself wondering what Stella would say to this new friend, for she was sure Doreen would expect to be introduced to Stella if they met on the way to school, which they were pretty sure to do. And, grateful as she was to Doreen for her championship, she found herself wishing that the girl was a little more refined. However, Vava was no snob, and she determined to face facts and tell Stella she must be friends with Doreen, and so she did.
Stella heard her without making any remark, until Vava said, 'And, of course, you need not speak to her if she comes up to us in the street; she's sure to do that, because she has not very good manners.'
'She has very good principles and a good heart, which are more important, and I shall certainly stop and thank her for being so kind to you this morning,' remarked Stella.
Vava was so surprised that she stared at Stella. 'But--but she's not a lady, Stella, and she talks dreadful grammar sometimes; but she asked me to correct her, so she is trying to improve,' Vava observed.
'I don't suppose you will learn bad grammar from her, and as you only see her in school you will not be too much in her company.'
All the same, Vava was glad the next morning that they did not meet Doreen, and sorry the morning after when they did. To her surprise, Doreen only nodded when she caught sight of them, and walked on the other side of the street.
'Who is that, Vava?' inquired Stella, seeing her nod to some one.
'That is Doreen,' replied Vava.
'Tell her to come and speak to me; I should like to know her,' announced Stella.
Vava ran across to Doreen, and gave Stella's message.
'Does she really? May I really?' stammered Doreen, quite flustered.
'Yes, of course; she's not a bit stiff when you know her,' Vava assured her, for she guessed that Doreen was a little afraid of the stately lady in black.
But Stella gave her lovely smile, and Doreen forgot her fears as she gazed in frank admiration at Miss Wharton, who said, 'Thank you for being so nice to Vava yesterday. I ought not to have said what I did, for, after all, you showed better manners than I.'
'Oh but I didn't. I'd love to have manners like you; and father said, when I told him last night, that it was only a natural remark, and that people would always be divided into classes as long as the world lasted, and that it was very hard on you having to come down from your class and mix with us; but that you'd find we'd a lot of good in us, though we had no manners,' cried Doreen eagerly.
'I am sure of it,' said Stella, who did not seem to mind the girl's plain speaking.
Doreen looked at Stella suddenly, and gave a great sigh. She was quite at ease with her, Vava noticed with surprise, and with still greater surprise that Stella seemed to like her and not to notice her rough speech. 'Well, what was that sigh for?' Stella asked, smiling.
'You are so beautiful,' said Doreen bluntly.
Stella coloured a little, and laughed as she said, 'I am glad you think so; I don't think I am very different from other girls.' And then they said good-bye to each other.
'She is as different as chalk from cheese!' cried Doreen enthusiastically to Vava.
'I don't think she's proud of being pretty; she never seems to notice that,' said Vava; and she went into school much happier than she had felt the day before, and relieved to think that she might make friends with Doreen, whose fine character made her rather popular at school.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ENTERPRISE CLUB.
In one of the City of London's busiest thoroughfares, among the numerous plates bearing the names and callings of the occupants of the different chambers or offices in a certain big building, is a small plate with the words 'Enterprise Club.' That is all the outward sign of the fact that the only ladies' club in the City, a veritable haven of refuge for lady-clerks and secretaries, has its quarters here.
It was here that Stella sat one lunch-time, looking so worried that a ladylike-looking girl, to whom she had spoken once or twice, asked her if she had a headache.
'No, no, thank you; I am quite well,' replied Stella, her brows still knitted.
The girls at the Enterprise contented themselves with a nod of the head, or a 'Good-morning,' to Stella, whom they put down as proud and stuck-up. But this girl had gone a little farther, and had even elicited the fact that she had a younger sister; and to-day, seeing Miss Wharton look so grave, it occurred to her that it might be something connected with this younger sister that was troubling her, and she asked, 'Is your sister quite well? I have never seen her here. Doesn't she ever come?'
'My sister? No, she is not a member; she is only a schoolgirl. I did not think it would be allowed,' said Stella.
'She could come as a visitor, and I am sure if you asked the secretary she would make an exception and allow her to join. It would be so nice if she could stay and play cards or dominoes after office hours on these cold winter afternoons,' suggested the girl.
Stella's face brightened up so wonderfully that her companion guessed that this was the difficulty. 'If she could, I should be so glad; she is very good, but she feels the dullness of life in lodgings, and I am beginning to be quite anxious about her. She would like to come here sometimes, I am sure.'
'Then let us ask the secretary at once, and she can come this evening,' suggested the good-natured girl.
The secretary gave a ready consent, and that afternoon, instead of going straight home, Vava was brought into the Enterprise Club, and sank with a little exclamation of pleasure into one of the comfortable easy-chairs, and looked round the tastefully furnished room. She was soon invited to play a game of draughts by one of the younger girls, for Vava did not inspire awe as Stella did.
'If next Saturday is wet or horrid like last Saturday, I shall ask Stella to bring me here,' Vava announced, as she moved one of her 'men.'
'On Saturday! I should have thought you would want to get away from the City as soon as possible! I should, I know,' said the other.
'But you are staying this evening,' Vava pointed out.
'That is because my chum Amy is working late; I always wait for her rather than go home alone; but on Saturdays we generally go for a long bicycle ride or something, to get some fresh air and fresh ideas,' announced the girl, hopping over two of Vava's 'men.'
'I wish I rode a bicycle; but we always rode horses in Scotland--at least Stella did; I had a pony,' explained Vava.
'This must be a change for you!' cried the other; but said no more, for the game absorbed her attention.
But the result of this conversation was that, the next Saturday being wet, Vava's opponent suddenly said to her chum, 'Amy, we can't cycle to-day; suppose we lunch at the Enterprise, and have some games with those two new girls in mourning?'
'Oh the Misses Wharton? Have you fallen in love with the beautiful Miss Wharton too?' replied the girl called Amy.
'Is that their name? But it isn't Miss Wharton I am thinking of; it's her younger sister. Fancy, they have been used to riding their own horses, and now they walk to the City and back! She wants to stay at the Enterprise on Saturday, so they can't have very nice "diggings,"' replied her companion.
'It's not a bad place to spend a wet afternoon in; so, if you like, we will lunch there; it's just as comfortable as Bleak House,' replied Amy.
'Yes, but one gets tired of living in a crowd. Oh how I wish we could afford a cottage in the country!' said the younger girl.
'But we cannot, Eva; so let us try to be contented with our lot,' replied Amy.
By way of showing her content, Eva grumbled loudly at it to Vava. The four were sitting at the same table, having lunch, and she found only too willing a listener in Vava Wharton to sympathise with her.
'Cheer up, Eva; things might be worse. Here we are sitting on a wet and bitterly cold afternoon in a pleasant, warm room, in comfortable chairs, surrounded by newspapers, magazines, and fashion papers! What more could you have if you were a fashionable young lady?' inquired her chum Amy.
'I could have this room as my own, and money to spend on the fashions I look at, and somewhere to show them off better than a stuffy office or Bleak House,' retorted Eva.
'Bleak House! That is the name of one of Dickens's books!' exclaimed Vava.
'It is the name of a large hostel or boarding-house for ladies who earn their own living, where Eva and I live, and it is really quite comfortable, only that it is not home,' said Amy, and she looked sympathetically at Eva, who was only sixteen, and had begun early to work for her daily bread.
There was silence for a moment, and the four young faces looked as grave as if they had the cares of the world upon their shoulders.
Suddenly Eva broke out, 'I wouldn't mind if I had something different to look forward to; but to think of going on for years the same dull grind and back to the same crowd of girls, who can talk of nothing but their office or else roller-skating; and Amy does not approve of going out to amusements every evening.'
'We wanted to take a house, but it is too expensive, and the one we looked at was dreadfully dear, although it had no garden. Oh how I would love a house with a garden! Some of the girls at school have gardens, and even greenhouses, for they bring leaves and flowers to school for our painting and botany lessons, and yet they are not rich,' observed Vava.
'All houses are not dear. Girls! I have an idea; let's take a house between us--the four of us!' cried Eva suddenly.
Stella looked up, startled at this abrupt suggestion; but Eva's chum Amy, who was used to her ways, only smiled, and said jestingly, 'Where do you mean to take a house, and how would you furnish it?'
'In the suburbs; and as for furnishing, we could do that on the hire-system. It shall have a garden and a lawn and a tree--I must have a tree; it's so ideal to sit and have tea in the garden under a tree, or read a book in a canvas-chair on a summer's day,' replied Eva.
'I don't care for the hire-system, and houses with gardens and lawns and trees are not to be found in London. I am afraid we must wait until we are old ladies, and can retire on our savings and live in some little country village,' said Amy, laying her hand upon Eva's and smiling at her.
Possibly the conversation would have ended here but for Vava, and something that she said. 'But couldn't we have a little house in an unfashionable part? All the girls at school have houses or flats of their own; it would be so nice to have a home.'
'So we will have a home. Why shouldn't we? Lots of families live on two hundred pounds a year, and that would be a pound a week each. Why, the Smiths are a family of five, and they have only about two hundred, and they have a garden and an arbour covered with ivy and creepers and things!' cried Eva.
'Oh where is that?' asked Vava eagerly, her eyes shining.
'My dear Eva!' protested Amy, looking apologetically at Stella, who was very grave and silent.
'Well, what is the matter?' demanded Eva.
'You do talk such nonsense. How can four people, who are strangers to each other, suddenly take a house and live together? Why, we do not even know each other's names!' said Amy, laughing.
'My name is Eva Barnes, and this is my greatest and best friend, Amy Overall,' said Eva promptly; and then, turning to Vava, she added, 'Let's talk it over by ourselves; old people are always cautious,' and she and Vava began to talk in low tones. Presently Eva took out a pencil and note-book, and began making elaborate calculations.
The two 'elders' smiled at them. They were not more than twenty-one and twenty-four respectively; but they let the younger ones whisper nonsense together, while they talked of books; and Stella found that Amy Overall had read the same sort of books that she had, which surprised her, for hers had been chosen for her by her literary father.
'My father was a professor at Cambridge, and that is why I have read these books,' explained Amy, delighted to find some one whose tastes were congenial; in fact, it is to be doubted which of the two was most pleased.
They were so interested in discussing a certain author that they took little notice of the other two. Every now and then a low laugh told them that the two younger girls were enjoying themselves as much as the 'old people,' as they called their elders.
'Now,' cried Eva, 'let us lay a statement of accounts before them!'
The elders stopped in their conversation, and looked at Eva and Vava, whose faces were flushed with excitement, and whose eyes were dancing as Stella had not seen Vava's dance since she left Lomore, not even on their motor drive.
Amy took the sheet of paper Eva handed her, saying, 'Eva is a great mathematician; she takes after her father.'
'Barnes! Did he write an arithmetic?' inquired Vava; and when Eva nodded, she added, 'Why, I use it at school!'
'What accounts have you been making out?' asked Stella in a friendly tone, for this last fact seemed a link between them as the daughters of literary men.
'Our new house and its expenses,' announced Vava.
Amy looked half-fearfully at Stella, for she thought she would be annoyed at the girl's persistence; but, to her surprise, Stella read the paper through with apparent interest.
'Rent, £34; taxes, £12; food, £90; firing and gas, £20; servant, £12; washing, £12, extras, £20--total, £200,' she read out.
'That's only the summary of it; here are the details. We have made out a menu for a week and washing for four people and household linen,' explained Eva.
'It is a step which requires consideration; we might not care for each other's company on closer acquaintance,' said Stella.
But Vava interrupted impulsively, 'We have arranged for that; we would have two sitting-rooms, and only come together when we liked; and, anyway, they couldn't be as disagreeable as our landlady. Fancy, she won't cook in the evenings, and she always wants to know if we are not going out to friends on Sunday, and it makes us feel as if we ought to go somewhere out of her way.'
Stella did not quite like Vava's frankness. Seeing which, Amy hastened to say, 'That was our experience in lodgings, and one of the reasons we gave them up. It is very difficult to know what to do; but at Bleak House we have not that difficulty. I should like you to see it. Would you'--here she hesitated and coloured--'would you and your sister give us the pleasure of your company to-morrow? We are so many that a few more make no difference, and we are encouraged to bring our friends.'
It would have been difficult to refuse an invitation so diffidently given; besides, Stella liked Amy Overall, and Vava's eyes were begging her to say 'Yes,' and she did so, and was rewarded by the evident pleasure which she had given every one.
'Stella, couldn't we do it, don't you think?' pleaded Vava on the way home.
'Take a house, do you mean? I don't know, Vava; we may some day--who knows?--but not yet awhile,' replied Stella, who was anxious not to damp her sister's delight in these castles in the air.
'If you only knew how horrid it is to hear the other girls talking of going home; they have all got homes but me,' said Vava wistfully.
Stella tried to comfort her, and began to talk of their visit next day, and of how they could get there after church, and Vava cheered up at the thought of a day with Eva, who was so little older than she that they got on very well together.
Amy meanwhile was taking Eva to task. 'You surely were not serious; and, if not, do you think it was kind to raise hopes and put ideas which can never be realised into that child's head?' she demanded severely.
'I was quite serious; it was a sudden inspiration, and, mark my words, it will be realised!' declared Eva.
'Not by me; I am not going to run into all sorts of expenses which a house always entails,' said Amy.
'Now, isn't that funny? It is always the unexpected that happens; one would have expected the cautious Scotch Miss Wharton to be the one to make objections, whereas she is inclined to risk it--I could see that in the corner of her eye--and you are the timid one,' declared Eva.
'On the contrary, Miss Wharton was only too polite to crush you. When she says she's ready to take a house with us I shall certainly be ready to agree,' replied Amy Overall, feeling certain that she would not be asked to do so.
'All right; that's a promise of which I shall remind you before long, you will see,' said Eva; and then talked of the morrow and what they should do with their visitors.
CHAPTER X.
BLEAK HOUSE HOSTEL.
'What are we going to do with those two girls to-day, Amy?' demanded Eva at breakfast, which, being Sunday, they were having late.
'Entertain them,' responded Amy.
'Don't be tiresome; you know quite well what I mean. What are we to do to entertain them? They will get here at half-past twelve, after they have been to church. We can't go to church in the afternoon; besides, we don't know what kind of church they go to, and dinner can't last longer than a quarter to two, because the servants like to have the tables all cleared by two o'clock, and I suppose they won't go away till after tea at four o'clock,' argued Eva.
'I hope they won't go away until after supper. I want them to have a nice day; they are very lonely, Eva. You know what we felt like when we first came to town, and how we determined we would always be friendly to other lonely girls from the country, and I thought you liked the Misses Wharton so much that you wanted to live with them!' cried Amy Overall in surprise at this change of front.
'That's just it, I do want to live with them; at least I want to have a house to myself again.'
'A house to yourself! Is that your latest? That is more ridiculous than your last idea, and still less likely to come about,' said Amy.
'It is the same idea. I call it "to myself," with only three others in it, especially when I am part-owner; and the reason I don't want the Whartons to stay too long to-day is for fear that they should be bored, and find that we are not their sort, and not want to take a house with us after all,' explained Eva.
'Well, really, Eva, your way of looking at things does surprise me sometimes; and I hope you won't be angry, but it does not always seem to me to be quite straight.'
'What isn't quite straight?' demanded Eva, flushing up.
Amy was a little slow in expressing herself; but she said hesitatingly, 'I mean that it would be honest, in my opinion, to face facts, and if we were likely to bore each other to find it out before we entered upon a plan which would throw us together for a great many Sundays as well as other days.'
'That is quite a different thing. We shall not have to entertain each other for a whole day; we shall go our own ways, and read books, or write letters; but we can't ask the Misses Wharton to read books to-day, and one can't talk for hours together--at least I can't; perhaps you can, as you are so very righteous,' retorted Eva, who was annoyed.
'I thought we might go to a picture-gallery after dinner, and then come back for tea and a talk, and there is always some nice music here in the evening,' suggested Amy, taking no notice of Eva's last remark.
Eva recovered her temper as quickly as she lost it. 'That will be a good plan; but--they are Scotch, and I don't believe they allow music on Sundays,' she suddenly bethought herself.
'You are thinking of that story we read the other day. Those were strict people; I don't believe the Whartons are like that.' But she looked rather doubtful.
Eva smiled wickedly. 'So perhaps, after all, we shall have to talk all the time.'
'I don't think Miss Wharton and I will get tired of each other, even if such a dreadful thing happened as our being obliged to entertain each other for a few hours,' said Amy calmly.
But when the Whartons came it turned out that they had no objection to music nor to a picture-gallery, provided they had been to church first.
Vava and Eva paired off, and the latter began at once, 'Tell me, are you as sick of lodgings as ever?'
'Yes, of course; I should never like them. But why do you ask?' demanded Vava, who looked so pretty in her prettily made Sunday-frock that Eva was more than ever attracted to her.
'Because Amy and I have decided that we are quite ready if you two are,' said Eva.
Vava flushed with pleasure. 'Really? Then Miss Overall doesn't think it a mad idea? Stella did not believe you were serious, or that Miss Overall would like it; but if she does I shouldn't wonder if Stella would agree to doing it. She said it might be possible some day; but not yet, of course.'
'Some day may mean years hence, when we are all dead, or too old to enjoy a garden of our own. Just fancy sowing flower-seeds and watching them growing every day, and having our own vegetables! We could have salad every evening in the summer, and lettuces freshly picked from a dear little bed!' urged Eva.
Vava listened with growing enthusiasm. 'It would be almost like home again. I have grown radishes in my little garden, because nursie liked them for tea. If only nursie were with us I should be quite happy, I think!' she exclaimed.
The two younger girls were in Eva's little bedroom, taking off Vava's outdoor things, a process which they had prolonged so as to talk confidentially together. Stella Wharton and Amy Overall, on the contrary, had long since gone down to the big drawing-room, where about thirty girls of various ages were sitting about, reading or talking.
It seemed to Stella, who was not used to crowds, that the babel was terrific, and Amy, seeing this, rose, saying, 'If you don't mind staying here alone for a few minutes I will ask the housekeeper to let us have a private sitting-room for an hour or so? We can talk better there.'
Amy had arranged for the private sitting-room, and was just going to tell Vava and Eva that there was no need for them to sit in a cold bedroom, when Eva appeared in the passage.
'I was just coming to you, Amy. I want to speak to you alone for a moment,' said Eva hurriedly, taking her friend's arm; and, turning back with her to the latter's room, she added, 'What do you think, Amy, the Whartons are quite ready to start housekeeping if only you will, and as they are cautious Scotch people it's sure to be all right!'
'Who told you that, Eva? You mean that Vava is quite ready, don't you? I can scarcely believe that Miss Wharton, who really seems a very thoughtful, serious person, has said she is ready to start a house with strangers. It seems incredible!' objected Amy, and she looked rather curiously at Eva.
'There's nothing so incredible in wanting to live in a house instead of horrid lodgings. They are miserable where they are, and jump at the thought of making other arrangements, which they can only do if you chum with them. And, after all, what's all the fuss and caution about? What is there so very serious in taking a little house for a year? Of course we may get tired of it and each other, though I don't think that likely; but twelve months is not so long to put up with what we don't like, and, anyway, it will be great fun at first. What is your objection now?' demanded Eva, who poured out all this eloquence so rapidly and energetically as to overwhelm the slow-thinking Amy.
'It's--it's not such a light or easy matter, Eva. There are the weekly bills to be thought of, and the furnishing, and the rent, and a servant, and--oh! a hundred things,' wound up the elder girl, with knitted brows.
'The weekly bills won't come to more than we can pay weekly, and as for a servant--what do we want with one? We will each do our own room before we start, and we are out all day, and only sleep there, except on Saturday and Sunday; and then, among the four of us, surely we can manage a little house. We will lead the simple life; every one is talking about the simple life, and how one goes in for too many luxuries and is over-civilised, and we will just go back to primitive ways. Now, Amy, be a Christian and say "Yes." You are always telling me that one must be self-sacrificing in this world; sacrifice yourself, and make those two lonely girls happy, to say nothing of me, who am stifled in this crowded barracks of a place,' declared Eva.
Eva did not look very stifled, and in justice to the ladies' hostel it should be stated that it was not in the least crowded or stifling; this was a mere figure of speech on Eva's part, who, as will have been seen, was apt to turn things round to suit herself. She was only sixteen; very young to be thrown upon the world and her own resources. With the exception of Amy, she was unfortunately not under very good influences, and when she wanted to believe a thing was true she generally managed to do so, and though she would have scorned to tell a lie she made things appear to be what she wished them to be. At any rate, she managed to deceive both Vava and Amy, and make each of them believe that consent had been given on both sides; and, as unfortunately often happened, she succeeded in getting her own way.
However, for the moment there was no talk about future plans; it would not have been possible in the public dining-room, and almost immediately after early dinner the four went off to the Tate Gallery, and the talk turned upon pictures, and Eva noticed with satisfaction that the elders were getting on famously.
'Do you know what I have been thinking?' inquired Eva of Vava.
They were standing before a picture by Burne-Jones as she said this. Vava replied promptly, 'I don't know, unless it is that the ladies in this picture have all got the same mouths.'
'Oh the picture! I wasn't thinking about it at all; I don't care very much for art. Amy does, and she is always dragging me here with her, so that I know them all by heart, and am quite sick of them. No, what I was thinking was that those two are getting on A1, and that it's all providential!' announced Eva.
Vava looked puzzled for a minute, and then laughed as she said, 'You mean that it is providential that they like one another? Then, I suppose, it's providential that we get on together, or that any one ever likes any one else?'
'I mean that, as we want to live together, it's a good thing we suit each other,' replied Eva.
'Oh but that may not be for a long time; still, we can be friends, can't we?' asked Vava.
'Yes, but why need it be a long time? Your sister is quite ready; so is Amy'----she began.
But Vava interrupted her in surprise. 'Stella quite ready! To take a house with you, do you mean? Oh is she really?'
'Why, of course she is! Didn't you tell me so?' cried Eva.
'I?' replied Vava, in such tones of astonishment that Eva coloured up.
'You certainly said that if Amy would agree your sister would, and that she thought it a good idea. And as Amy does agree--why, your sister will too,' she affirmed.
Eva had quite persuaded herself that the two elder girls were ready, and that it only needed some keeping up to the mark on her part to bring the new plan about.
Vava was quite silent for a time; she was very impulsive and outspoken, but she was also very straightforward, and somehow it struck her that Eva's speech was not so. In spite of her impulsiveness, she could on occasion hold her peace, and she did so now.
'Of course, if you've changed your mind, and don't care so much for me, now that you know me better, that ends the matter; we must go on living in our barracks, and you in your dirty lodgings!' Eva cried, vexed at Vava's silence.
Vava was half-inclined to be angry at Eva's plain speaking; but, after all, the lodgings were dirty, and it was she herself who had told Eva so, and, besides, it was rather flattering to be wanted as a house-mate. So she forgot her suspicion as to Eva's truthfulness, and answered heartily enough, 'I do want to live with you, and I am just as tired of our dirty lodgings as you can be of your hostel, which is ever so much nicer than where we live, if only there wasn't such a noise all the time with people talking all at the one time. And as for Stella, I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. She is not one to make up her mind in a hurry--we Scotch never are, I think; but I will try and persuade her.'
Eva said no more; privately she thought her own persuasion would be more powerful. They were now called by the other two to come with them, as the gallery was just closing.
'And I haven't seen half the pictures!' exclaimed Vava.
'Never mind; I will bring you again another day,' said Stella, smiling; and Vava thought she had not seen her look so bright and happy since they had left Lomore.
'We might make it our next Saturday treat,' agreed Vava.
'We had another plan for Saturday,' replied Stella, smiling again in a half-ashamed manner.
'Another treat? Are we going anywhere all together?' Vava inquired, looking from Stella to Amy.
'We are going house-hunting,' announced Amy, who looked pleased at the demonstration of delight the announcement called forth.
'House-hunting?' echoed Vava, while Eva gave a little cry of delight; then, having got over their surprise, the two younger girls began asking eager questions.
'We have not made our calculations yet; but we are going to have a council of war, or rather of peace, at the Enterprise Club next week to talk things over. At any rate, we can just go and look at some little houses in a suburb which Miss Overall thinks possible,' Stella observed.
There was little else talked of till they parted; and Amy said after they were gone, 'I hope I have done right. Miss Wharton did not seem quite so ready when I spoke to her. I suppose upon reflection her Scotch caution came to the fore, and indeed I am half-frightened myself; but their gratitude at our being so friendly was reward enough for running a little risk, and we are not pledged to anything even now,' she wound up.
'Oh but you mustn't draw back; you are really doing a kind deed, and it will turn out splendidly, you will see!' cried Eva quickly.
Vava meanwhile walked home with her sister in the gayest of spirits, and yet a doubt would keep coming into her mind. Hadn't Eva rather managed them all, and hadn't she rather twisted what she (Vava) had said? Then the remembrance of Eva's affectionate parting made her ashamed of her doubts, and she banished them from her mind.
'Anyway, we sha'n't get tired of them, for we have spent a whole day doing nothing but talk to each other, and if you can do that you can spend your whole life with any one nearly; at any rate, you can live in the same house, especially when you are all out in separate parts all the day,' opined Vava.
'We can but try; and, at any rate, it is not settled, and I shall do nothing without consulting Mr. Stacey,' declared Stella as they said good-night to each other.
CHAPTER XI.
'THE RANK IS BUT THE GUINEA'S STAMP.'
'Hallo, Vava!' said a voice behind her, as Vava Wharton was on her way to school a few days after the Sunday she and her sister had spent at the ladies' hostel.
There was no doubt as to the speaker, for this was Doreen Hackney's invariable greeting, and, as usual, Vava turned and said pleasantly, 'Good-morning, Doreen.'
'What's the row--matter, I mean? You look down in the dumps. I say, are you moping for the country? You don't seem to be half the girl you were when you first came; you don't make any jokes, and when I meet you in the morning you have a face as long as a fiddle,' remarked Doreen in her loud, cheerful tones.
'I was only thinking. I didn't know my face was long. We are thinking of moving--into a house, my sister and I--and I was thinking about that, and I suppose it made me look grave,' explained Vava.
'What on earth is there to be grave about in that? You haven't got anything to do with the moving, have you? We moved last year, and it didn't make me grave till mother said I'd got to burn some of what she called my "rubbish." I think it's rather fun moving; you have all new wall-papers and a new garden, and it makes a change. Where are you going to move to?' inquired Doreen.
'Oh I don't know; we haven't got a house yet. I believe we are going to look at one in Blackstead,' said Vava.
'Blackstead! That's where we live. There are some nice houses there; cheap too, because it is not a fashionable suburb. I hope you will come there, because then you and I can come to school together--that is, if your sister would not mind. Mother says I am not to push myself into your society, because you are a lady; and I'm very rough, I know. Mother's always telling me about my manners; she says I talk so loud and laugh so loud. I wish you would tell me about it when I do; you talk so soft and ladylike,' observed Doreen.
Vava laughed. 'I! Why, the girls couldn't understand me when I first came,' she protested.
'Oh well, there w |
30837-8 | ere some words you used that we'd never heard before, but I like it now. I say, if you do move our way I wish you'd let me help,' Doreen said very earnestly, for she concluded that it was the moving which was causing Vava to look so worried.
'Thank you,' said Vava, and laughed.
'It won't be so bad, you know; the men move so cleverly now, mother says; you start in the morning, and in the evening you are all to rights. I dare say when you get back from school you'll find it quite shipshape, and even if you're not you can sleep the night at our place; so don't you worry about that,' said Doreen.
'It's not that at all; I don't care if we are not shipshape for a week; it's the girls we are going to take a house with that are worrying me--if I am worrying, as you say,' replied Vava.
Then Vava told her the story of their plan, and finished up by saying, 'I don't quite like Eva--at least I can't help liking her, because she is so lively and such fun to talk to, and she has been awfully nice to us; but I feel as if I can't quite believe in her somehow. And if we are going to live together we shall have to be friends.'
Doreen whistled, and then seeing that Vava looked a little put out at her schoolfellow's manners, and the attention they attracted in the street, she apologised, saying in a lower tone, 'Beg your pardon, but I'm sorry for what you tell me, because there's nothing so horrid as to have to do with any one that is not quite straight. Why don't you believe in her? Doesn't she tell the truth?'
'I--I don't know; I don't like to say anything against her, because she is very nice to me, and seems to like me, and she has never told me a real story. But it's the things she says, they make me feel uncomfortable. And yet I do so want to live in a house again, and we can only do it if we chum with them!'
'Well, you needn't see much of her even if you live in the same house; you'll be out all day, and so will she, and you will have your lessons and practising in the evenings. After all, they're only new friends; they can't expect you to live as if you were one family, and--and you know I'm straight--if you do come to Blackstead we might do our lessons together?' suggested Doreen, by way of comforting Vava.
But, as it happened, it had not quite the desired effect; for, much though Vava liked Doreen, she remembered her sister's resolution that if they could not have friends of their own class they would have none; and as she declined to know the Montague Joneses she would certainly not have anything to do with the Hackneys. However, that was not a thing she could say to Doreen; and, as she did not want to throw cold water on her kindness, she said, 'Thank you, you are kind, and of course you are straight, and I am very glad you are my chum, especially in school; out of school Stella is my chum.'
'Yes, of course, and a jolly good one too,' said Doreen heartily; and if she guessed that Vava meant that they would _not_ see much of each other out of school, she did not show it, but observed, 'And you know, even if that Eva is not always quite square in her way of looking at things, you can do her good.'
'Miss Briggs said the other day that "evil communications corrupt good manners," and that if a girl's conversation made us feel uncomfortable, or feel that we should not like our parents to hear it, we were to shun her as we should the plague,' observed Vava.
'I know she did, but I don't agree with her,' remarked Doreen calmly.
Vava looked at Doreen in astonishment. She often questioned her sister's authority, but not Miss Briggs's, who was a very clever young mistress. 'Do you mean that if a girl isn't nice you don't care?' she asked.
'No, I mean that you ought to make her shut up. Sometimes a girl talks rot because she is silly; but you can soon stop her, and if one were to avoid every one who did or said anything wrong, why one might as well live in a desert island. Look at Belle Reed! You couldn't believe a word that girl said when she first came to our school; but she soon dropped it when she found we couldn't stand liars.'
Doreen had got interested in what she was saying, and unconsciously raised her voice, and one of the mistresses who happened to pass at the moment turned and looked with disapproval at her. She then glanced at her companion, and looked still more displeased.
'That is not very nice language for the street, Doreen,' she said severely.
'Bother! That was Miss Briggs! Why need she have passed at that particular minute?' observed the girl.
'Why need you talk so loudly?' remarked Vava. Then they both passed into school, and thought no more about it.
But next morning at breakfast Stella received a letter which seemed to annoy her a good deal, and she said to Vava, 'I hear you have made friends with an undesirable girl at school.'
'I suppose you mean Doreen; but why should you say you "hear" it? There's no need for you to go to other people to hear what I do, or what friends I have; I always tell you what happens at school, and I thought you liked Doreen Hackney. Of course I know she is not very ladylike outwardly, but she is agreeable,' said Vava, championing her friend rather hotly.
'Doreen Hackney? Is that the girl I spoke to the other day?' asked Stella, referring to the letter and looking puzzled.
'Yes, that is her name. Who has been writing against her to you? Why can't people mind their own business?' cried Vava.
'Vava, do not speak so rudely, or I shall think what I am told is true. It is Miss Briggs, who says she is not an improving companion for you, and that her language is very vulgar. But I can't believe you could learn harm from that girl; she has such a nice, open face,' said Stella.
'So she has. All she said was that she couldn't stand liars, and I suppose that shocked Miss Briggs; but I believe in calling a spade a spade,' announced Vava.
'You are not to call people liars, and you had better tell Doreen that I object to such strong language; there is no need for it. It is quite enough to say "an untruth." I hope Doreen was not calling any one names?' inquired Stella.
'No, only people in general,' said Vava.
Stella laughed. 'Well, tell her not to do so in future.' But she did not say anything about her being an undesirable friend for Vava, to the latter's relief. Stella opened her next letter, which happened to be from the house-agent at Blackstead, and this interested her so much that she forgot about Doreen and her strong language.
'There is a house at Blackstead which sounds ideal, Vava. Listen: "Four bedrooms, three reception-rooms, kitchen, bath (h. and c.), and garden with fruit-trees--forty pounds, but perhaps less to a good tenant, as the landlord lives next door and is very particular about his neighbours, and has refused good 'lets' already,"' Stella read out.
She was the least busy of the four, and the only one with capital, so it had been decided that she should do the correspondence, and by Mr. Stacey's advice she was to take the house in her own name, as 'you can then get rid of your new acquaintances if you wish, and you will be responsible for the rent, or rather I will, which your landlord will prefer, as I hold your securities.'
'Do you know, Stella, I have come to the conclusion that people never do what you expect them to do; anyway, you and Mr. Stacey don't,' announced Vava when she heard Mr. Stacey's advice.
'I don't? What have I done or not done that you expected?' said Stella, amused at Vava's moralising, though she understood and agreed with her surprise at Mr. Stacey's ready approval of their taking a small house, instead of remaining in lodgings; it did not seem like his usual caution nor the advice he gave them before they left Lomore.
'You don't disapprove of Doreen, though she is not a lady and a little rough sometimes and loud in her way of speaking in the street, so that I feel ashamed at the attention she attracts, though I like her most awfully; and yet you don't like the Montague Joneses, who behave quite like a lady and gentleman; and now Mr. Stacey, who was so horrid, telling us we must go into poky lodgings and be saving, quite approves of our taking a house with some people we don't know very well! It's rather funny of him, but I believe I know the reason,' announced Vava, nodding her head.
Stella thought she knew too, but her guess was a different one to Vava's. She imagined that her remarks about her younger sister's flagging health and spirits influenced the old lawyer, as well as the fact at which he hinted that their income would be a little larger than he anticipated, thanks to the sum paid for the hire of their furniture and a rise in some shares. Whereas Vava had an idea that the Montague Joneses were somehow at the bottom of his change of front; but neither imparted her opinion to the other, and Stella did not ask Vava for hers, because she was occupied with thoughts of the new scheme.
The Montague Joneses had called on a wet Saturday afternoon, having chosen that time as very likely to find them at home; but the Misses Wharton were at the Enterprise Club, and came home to find their visitors' cards.
'Such a nice lady and gentleman and such a splendid car; they are grand friends for you to have,' the landlady said.
Stella made no reply, but passed on to her own little sitting-room.
Vava looked wistfully at Stella, but the latter did not catch the look, or she might have spoken otherwise. 'We must leave cards in return; but I shall not go on their "At Home" day,' she said.
Vava did not argue. She had known they were going to call; but if Stella had made up her mind it was no use arguing, and the thought of the ideal house, with a garden and fruit-trees, was consoling her for many things. Besides, old Mr. Montague Jones had told her on one of their expeditions while coming south that he meant to be their friend by hook or by crook, sooner or later. 'And what Monty Jones means comes to pass, as most people have found, and as you will find,' he had said as he patted Vava's arm kindly; and Vava had faith in the old man's word.
However, there was no chance of their being friends at present, as she saw, for she and Stella duly called on the wrong day, and Mrs. Jones was, according to the gorgeous footman who opened the door, 'not at home,' at which news Stella smiled in a satisfied way, and remarked, 'We have done our duty, and that ends the matter!'
It did not end the matter, as will be seen; but it was some time, and after other events had taken place, before the Whartons met their kind friends again.
CHAPTER XII.
'SAVE.'
'I have made such a wonderful discovery,' observed Eva to Stella Wharton, as she sat with the Wharton sisters and Amy Overall at the little table which was now left by common consent for these four friends at the Enterprise Club.
Miss Wharton rather liked Eva, who was bright and amusing, and her frank liking for the sisters flattered the lonely Scotch girl. Moreover, Stella was not so good a judge of character as her younger sister, and did not notice a want of candour in the girl. So she smiled and said pleasantly, 'Well, what is this wonderful discovery?'
'It is a motto. Vava says they have a special motto each term at her school, and I found a motto for our new house, and it is formed by our four names,' explained Eva.
The other three all looked interested, and Vava asked, 'How do you mean? By jumbling all the letters up? Because "Wharton, Overall, Barnes" does not make much sense.'
'No, but we might get something out of those names, such as "Union over all ills," or something of that kind. Let's try and work it out!' exclaimed Eva, whose mind turned easily from one subject to another. In a moment she had her note-book open, and was setting down all the letters of Wharton and Barnes to try and make suitable words out of them.
But the other stopped her, and Amy said, 'Let us hear your motto first, Eva; we have not too much time to waste, and, after all, a motto is not a very important thing.'
'Oh my motto--I forgot; _it_ is a very important thing--it is "Save,"' she answered.
This remark was received with silence, and then the elder Miss Wharton said, with hesitation, 'I don't quite understand. Save whom or what?'
'Save money,' replied Eva.
'That's all very well as a precept; but what has that to do with our names, and how did you make that out of them?' demanded Amy.
'It's a very good motto; but never mind about it. I have got a better one; it is "Live and let live,"' put in Vava hastily.
Stella looked reprovingly at her sister, and said with grave politeness, 'I don't know that it is better; but Miss Barnes was going to explain to us how she got our names down to make "Save." That is a result of a mathematical mind; perhaps she can reduce even names to their lowest common denominator.' Stella's strong point was not mathematics, nor indeed was she very quick at any subject; though her knowledge was solid and reliable on the subjects she had studied.
'It's easy enough--S A V E, the initials of Stella, Amy, Vava, Eva,' said Eva airily.
Stella coloured, but said nothing. Amy, after looking at her, said, 'How absurd you are, Eva! Besides, you should not take liberties with other people's names.'
Then, seeing that Eva looked very crestfallen, Stella repented her of the proud reserve which had made her resent this same liberty, and said, 'It may be a good omen; and, after all, it is my motto for the present.'
Vava looked relieved, and remarked, 'It's funny that you are the first to "save" or in "Save."'
'I wish you would all begin to save time,' remonstrated Amy. 'We have so much to talk over and arrange, and we have only these meetings at the club for the purpose.'
So the four young heads drew closer together as they talked over ways and means, and argued and calculated, till a hasty movement by Eva, who was the most enthusiastic of the four, was followed by a loud clatter on the floor, which made them all start.
'I'm sorry; it's only my frying-pan,' she said, as she dived under the table and brought out a parcel, off which the brown paper had fallen, disclosing to view a large iron frying-pan.
Stella opened her beautiful eyes wide as she looked at it in wonder. Amy only smiled; but Vava, impulsive as usual, exclaimed, 'What are you doing with that old frying-pan? Do you have to cook your own dinner in your office?'
'I should think not, indeed! I should like to see our boss's face if we started making smells like that; besides, we don't need to; we get very good lunches at this club,' cried Eva, trying to pack the despised frying-pan up again in the paper; a futile attempt, as the wrapping was all torn.
'Then what on earth are you carrying such a thing about with you for?' demanded Amy, looking half-annoyed and half-amused.
'I brought it to show you all; it is for the new house!' she exclaimed triumphantly.
'Which we have not got yet,' put in Amy.
'But it's old--old and dirty,' objected Vava, who had been looking at it with disgust.
'That's only rust; it will clean off. I got it for threepence at an East-End market; it is a tremendous bargain, and is the beginning of our "save"--pots and pans are a most expensive item in house-furnishing; and I am going to undertake that part of it myself, and get one article each day. There was a splendid big iron kettle, with a hole in it, for sixpence'----she said.
But a chorus of laughter stopped her in her list of bargains.
'I don't think I care about eating things fried in a pan coming from an East-End market,' remarked Vava.
'And I don't see much good in a kettle with a hole in it,' said Stella; but instead of being shocked, as Vava evidently was, she seemed rather amused.
'It can easily be mended with solder, and sixpence is dirt-cheap for a large iron kettle,' observed Eva.
'I should call it "cheap dirt," if you will excuse the bad joke; and, seriously, Eva, it is very foolish spending your money on such rubbish; shillings soon run away in that manner, and we want all our spare shillings just now,' protested Amy Overall.
'You are an ungrateful set,' said Eva; but she put the frying-pan out of sight, and listened seriously while the two elder girls talked over the different houses proposed, and Miss Wharton said finally, 'The only one that really suits is this one at Heather Road, Blackstead.'
'Then let us go there first,' agreed Amy.
'I expect the name attracted you, Miss Wharton,' said Eva, with a twinkle in her eye.
Stella laughed. 'It is an attractive name to us; but I am not so foolish as that, I hope; and it has fruit-trees in the garden, which do attract me, and I thought would attract you,' she replied.
'So they do, and it sounds too good to be true. Forty pounds, and the man would come down to thirty-eight. Let's go there on Saturday,' agreed Eva.
'There is one thing that I wanted to say,' observed Stella, looking a little uncomfortable, 'and that is, that I--I mean we--would rather have a very little furniture at first, and get it by degrees. We only need a bed and a washstand in our bedroom, and we have only enough money to furnish a sitting-room and half what is necessary for the kitchen and hall.'
'Oh but you need not worry about that. We can furnish on the hire-system; they will let you have any amount!' cried Eva.
'I would rather not,' persisted Stella.
Amy looked grave. 'I don't see how we are to manage without hiring, and I don't think our landlord would feel satisfied if we had no furniture to speak of, and I have only ten pounds to spend, and Eva has less, I believe.'
'I should think that the landlord would be better satisfied if we did not run into debt,' said Stella.
'I'd sooner go to a workhouse than live in a room with only a bed and a washstand! Where would you hang your clothes or keep your linen? Why, it would not be a home at all,' protested Eva.
'Of course I did not mean to dictate to you,' said Stella hastily; 'but Vava and I will be quite satisfied with a comfortable sitting-room, and we shall receive the landlord there, not in our bedroom,' she added with a smile.
'That is true, and as long as we have pretty curtains and blinds there is no need to furnish completely at once; besides, we have nearly two months to quarter-day, and we can save a few pounds if we are very economical,' agreed Amy.
'We will save in advance,' agreed Eva; but on the way home she observed to her friend Amy, 'Those two Wharton girls are as narrow-minded as possible, and I am going to have a proper suite in my room, whatever they say; I should never feel comfortable unless I had looked at myself in a long glass before I went out.'
'I think they are right, and I shall not get anything I cannot pay for,' announced Amy.
'Well! you are easily led; but you won't lead me, for I am not going to be the talk of the neighbours because we have no decent furniture. I shall get a handsome satinwood bedroom suite, and that will give a tone to the place at any rate,' said Eva.
Amy laughed, but did not try to turn the girl, who, in spite of being only sixteen years old, was very determined in her opinions; and as unfortunately she was an orphan and independent of every one, it was not easy to control her, and her friend had always found it better to leave her alone until she had cooled down a little in her enthusiasm for anything, and then reason with her, and this she hoped to do now. So no more was said about buying furniture, about which it would be folly to think until the house had been taken and they knew the size of the rooms and other details.
The next day, when Vava left her sister at the usual point in the City, she saw Doreen Hackney coming up out of the Metropolitan Station. She came up by the train arriving at 9.20, and as the Whartons were very punctual, and arrived at this time, they almost invariably met her; but this morning, although she was almost certain Doreen had seen her, the latter walked on without turning her head.
But Vava knew Doreen too well to believe she did not wish to see her, and ran after her. 'Doreen! Doreen! wait a minute!' she panted. At the sound of her voice, Doreen stopped and apologised for having made her run. 'Are you blind? Didn't you see me when you came out of the station?' cried Vava.
Doreen gave her a very funny look. 'Yes-s,' she said hesitatingly; and then, seeing Vava's look of astonishment, she added lamely, 'I was in a hurry to get to school.'
'How absurd; we have plenty of time, and I want to tell you something. We are perhaps going to live at Blackstead, for we have heard of a lovely little house there with a garden and fruit-trees--at least, so the agent says, though Stella says it may only be a tiny apple-tree, with no apples on it, because they always exaggerate in advertisements,' observed Vava.
'Oh but there are fruit-trees--apples and pears and plums!' exclaimed Doreen, and then stopped abruptly.
'Are there such gardens in London suburbs? But there may not be in this one. Do you know the part--it is Heather Road, Blackstead?'
'Oh yes, I know it,' said Doreen in rather a reserved tone.
Vava had been so full of her news that she had not noticed Doreen's manner, or rather had put it down to discomfort at having been rude in not stopping for her; but it struck her at last that her friend was not like herself, and she asked suddenly, 'What is the matter, Doreen?'
'Nothing--nothing,' said Doreen hastily.
'Then what do you know about the house? Isn't it in a nice part?' inquired Vava, as a thought struck her.
'Oh yes, the part is all right; it's very open; you will like it very much if you come, and I do hope you will,' said Doreen so cordially that Vava was relieved.
'I hope we shall, then. Is it very far from you?' inquired Vava.
No; it's--it's quite near. But, you know, in London one need not know one's next-door neighbour unless one likes. We never said anything more than "Good-morning!" to the people we lived next door to for three years. Mother is not one of those who is always talking over the wall to her neighbour; so you need not be afraid of that,' observed Doreen.
'But we don't mind knowing our next-door neighbour; in fact, we shall know him, because he is our landlord, and a very honest, nice man, the agent says; not educated'----
'Vava, was that the bell?' interrupted Doreen abruptly.
Doreen's manners were certainly very bad, and Vava said severely, 'You are rude, Doreen, and if I did not know you I should think you took no interest in our new house.'
'I do, and I hope very much you will come to Heather Road; I know you will like it and be happy there.'
'Where do you live? We may pass your house to-morrow, because we are going to Heather Road to look at this house, and I will look out for you in case you are at the window,' said Vava.
To Vava's astonishment, Doreen did not answer her, but appeared not to have heard, and called out in her loud way to two girls who were on the other side of the road. It took a good deal to offend Vava, but this morning she felt decidedly ruffled; and as she did not particularly care for the new-comers, she walked on alone in a slightly aggrieved mood.
But Doreen seemed quite unconscious of having given offence in the morning, and was more attentive and friendly than usual to Vava as they walked down the road after school. When she said good-bye to her at the Metropolitan Station she called after her, 'I say, I do hope you'll come to Heather Road; you'll like it awfully, I know.'
But when Vava turned round to reply, no Doreen was to be seen; she had disappeared into the station. Vava, recounting the tale to her sister, observed, 'She has such bad manners, but she doesn't mean it.'
'Perhaps she had to run to catch her train?' suggested Stella.
'Oh no, she hadn't; she always has ten minutes to wait. She generally waits and tries to make me loiter and talk to her; but to-day she didn't, and she never told me where she lives, though she knew that I wanted to look out for her house to-morrow. I was just going to ask her how far it was from Heather Road when off she went. I almost think she must be ashamed of her home, and doesn't want me to know where it is,' declared Vava.
'Then you had better not ask her again,' said Stella.
Whether this was true or not will be seen in the next chapter, when the four young house-hunters went to look at No. 2 Heather Road.
CHAPTER XIII.
YOUNG HOUSE-HUNTERS.
It had become a custom that Vava should accompany her sister to the City on Saturdays and sit in the housekeeper's room, and on these occasions Mr. James would drop into Mrs. Ryan's room on some pretext or another, and ask how she was getting on at school or how she liked London.
This morning she had her algebra to do, and was puzzling over a difficult problem, for mathematics was not her strong point, when the junior partner appeared, and seeing her occupation, exclaimed, 'Well, Miss Vava, how are you? And how's the algebra getting on?'
'I'm quite well, thank you, Mr. Jones; but my algebra isn't. Miss Courteney says I have not a mathematical brain, and I don't know how I am to get one,' replied Vava.
'I shouldn't bother about a mathematical brain. I don't see what women want with mathematics myself; but as for that problem, I'll show you how to do it,' said the good-natured young man, sitting down beside her and patiently explaining the difficulty.
'Thank you ever so much. I wish you taught me mathematics--by myself, I mean. Miss Courteney is a very good teacher; but, you see, she has thirty of us, so she can't explain each sum to each girl as you have explained this to me. Besides, the others don't seem to want so much explanation as I do,' cried Vava, delighted at understanding at last a difficult rule.
'Is that so? I will teach you, if you like to bring your work to me, for half-an-hour on Saturdays; I'm generally slack the first half-hour after I have given your sister her letters,' he said.
'Oh I wish I could; but I don't know if Stella will let me, she's so'----Vava stopped suddenly.
'So what?' demanded Mr. Jones, laughing.
'So afraid of my troubling you, and she does not like my making friends with people,' explained the girl; and then, to change the conversation, she told about the new house they were going to see.'
'I should think it would be a very good plan, and a great deal more comfortable than your present lodgings,' said Mr. Jones promptly.
'How do you know?' asked Vava, opening her eyes, for Mr. Jones had never been to their lodgings, and she had never mentioned them to him, for Stella had forbidden her to speak about them or complain of discomforts.
'Lodgings are mostly uncomfortable,' said Mr. Jones, 'and Blackstead is a very healthy suburb.'
Here Vava looked more astonished still.
'How did you know it was Blackstead?' she cried, for she had not mentioned that either.
'Didn't you tell me? Oh well, some one did, and I suppose it is no secret, is it?' he replied, looking a little annoyed.
'Oh no; only I wondered how you knew the name,' said Vava, and she took no more notice of his knowledge, and chattered on gaily about the new house, adding, 'Stella and I are not going to get anything on the hire-system; she says she could not enjoy sitting in an arm-chair that had not been paid for.'
Mr. Jones nodded approval. 'That's quite right, and just what I should expect from your sister. It's not a good way of setting up house; save first and furnish afterwards is my motto. I have known many cases of young householders starting in this way and getting deeper and deeper into debt as expenses increased. But I think it is a good move, and will not be much more expensive; only you must have some elderly person to look after you. If I may give a piece of advice, it is to get _no furniture_ yet.'
'Stella says she will only get simple, light furniture, because we have our own furniture at home, only it is too big to bring down, and some horrid people have it now.'
Mr. James looked very grave. 'Why do you call them horrid? Have they _spoilt_ the furniture, or are they horrid themselves?' he demanded.
'Oh no; they are not really horrid, and they have not used the furniture yet. They are only horrid because they have taken our house from us, and Stella says that's not their fault. But I don't agree with her; I call it mean to take advantage of another person's not being business-like to win his property from him, and that's how my father lost his.'
Mr. Jones did not reply to these remarks, and Vava, who liked to be agreed with, persisted, 'Don't you think it was rather a mean thing to do?'
'I don't know all the facts of the case; but I hope it was a fair and square deal, and I should think it was,' he replied at last; but he did not seem to want to talk about it, and after finishing the lesson he got up and went away.
But Stella was horrified when Vava repeated this conversation to her. 'How many times am I to tell you not to talk of our private concerns to strangers?' she exclaimed.
'Well, you must have been talking about them yourself, or how did Mr. Jones know we were going to take a house at Blackstead?' retorted Vava.
'You must have mentioned the name yourself, and you ought not to have done so. I certainly never did; besides, we are going to view a house, not take it,' corrected her sister.
'As it happens, I could not remember the name, and that's why I was so surprised when Mr. Jones said it,' observed Vava.
Stella was thoughtful for a moment, and then she said, 'I don't know who can have told him, for only Mr. Stacey knows, unless he heard it from some one at your school. He is a governor, and sometimes goes there, and I suppose asked about you, and heard so.'
'I never thought of that; of course that's it!' cried Vava; and then they met the other two and lunched together.
'Have some pepper?' said Eva suddenly, and produced a quaint little pepper-pot from her bag.
'Is this another piece of furniture?' demanded Stella, smiling.
'Yes, it cost a halfpenny,' said Eva.
'It looks it,' said Amy severely.
'It will have to go into the kitchen; I won't eat out of it,' declared Vava, pushing it away with pretended scorn.
'People don't eat out of pepper-pots,' remarked Eva, shaking some on to her plate.
'It's full! Did you get the pepper and all for a halfpenny?' they cried.
But Eva shook the pepper steadily out till her plate was covered and the other three were sneezing. 'You seem to have colds,' she observed at last.
'Eva, you are a perfect plague with your purchases,' said Amy, laughing.
'I got it at a penny bazaar--two for a penny; here is the other,' said Eva, producing a second, and preparing to empty it.
But Vava made a dart at it, and after a struggle secured it. 'No more of that, thank you,' she declared.
'You need not have excited yourself; it's empty,' said Eva.
Amy pushed her chair back. 'If you have finished, Miss Wharton, I think we had better start. I know what Eva is like when she gets into one of these moods, and she is better when she is moving and her mind occupied.'
As Stella had finished, she willingly agreed to set off, and they were soon in the train for Blackstead and on their way to No. 2 Heather Road.
'Oh Stella, do let's live here! It feels so fresh, and the trees are beginning to bud, and these are quite nice gardens!' cried Vava.
'We will see. The house may be damp or very small and dark, or quite unsuitable,' said Stella cautiously.
But when they came to the semi-detached villa it was none of these things, but a pretty bow-windowed house, with a nice little garden in front, and there was a very pretty garden next door, where they knocked and asked for the key, which was handed to them by a maid, who said, 'The master will be round in ten minutes to see if you like the place.'
'By the way, I don't know the name of the landlord,' said Stella, as she took the key and walked off with the others.
'That's awkward. Wasn't it on the order to view?' inquired Amy.
Stella laughed guiltily. 'I believe it was; but, to tell the truth, I did not look. It was very unbusiness-like of me. However, we shall know if it comes to anything.'
'But we sha'n't know what to call him,' said Eva.
'It doesn't matter. Let's go over the house--it looks lovely to me.--Oh Stella, there is a tiny lawn, and a tree in the middle, and fruit-trees round the sides, and an arbour with a little table in it. Oh we must take this house; I should love to live here!' cried Vava with enthusiasm.
'You can't live in the arbour; let us go and look at the house,' said Stella; but Vava and Eva had opened the back-door, which led into the garden, and their voices were heard exclaiming in delight as they found primrose and violet plants and an early snowdrop, and fruit-trees which might be apples or pears or plums.
From the next-door drawing-room window a girl watched them, but kept well behind the curtain. 'They like it, mother; I believe they will take it,' she said to some one within the room.
'I hope they will; they will be very nice, quiet neighbours; but, mind, I will not have you running in and out and intruding upon them.'
Meanwhile Stella and Amy were looking over the house, and they found a large bedroom, three smaller ones, a nice bathroom, and two sitting-rooms, one looking on the garden and one on the road, and a kitchen, 'which is almost the pleasantest room in the house,' said Stella.
'Yes, and it is all on two floors. I do hope the landlord will agree to our taking it together,' said Amy.
At that moment the landlord rang the front-door bell, and the two girls who went to meet him were agreeably surprised to see such a fine, dignified man.
After some talk, the man said, 'I fancy you do not know who I am?'
'No-o, I forgot to read your name,' Stella admitted.
'And my daughter did not tell you either, for some foolish reason. My name is Hackney,' said the man.
But Stella looked puzzled. 'Your daughter? Do I know her?' Then a light dawned upon her. 'Is Doreen Hackney your daughter? I had forgotten her name. That is very nice for Vava, as they are great friends at school.'
Amy was surprised to see the pleased and relieved look on Mr. Hackney's face. 'So Doreen says, and I hope we may come to terms. Your lawyer seemed satisfied. I suppose you know he wrote to me? I can only say I will do all I can; and now, if you will accept a cup of tea my wife will be honoured.'
Stella did not know Mr. Stacey had written, but accepted the invitation very simply. She liked this simple, straightforward man, and called the two girls in from the garden to come to tea at the landlord's.
'Mrs. Hackney has kindly asked us to have tea with her,' she said; but she had no time to say more, for they were at the house, and Mr. Hackney took them into the drawing-room, where they found Mrs. Hackney and Doreen.
'Doreen!' cried Vava, and stood still in astonishment, and then, as Doreen came forward, she added mischievously, 'Please, Stella, I don't think we had better stay, as Doreen does not approve of knowing her next-door neighbour.'
Mrs. Hackney laughed; and though Stella was a little shocked at Vava's want of manners, she smiled at sight of the two girls' pleasure and the amount they had to say to each other.
'Doreen is an only child, and was very delicate, though she looks strong now, and we sent her to a farm for a couple of years, where she has learnt rough ways. It has been a great thing for her your sister making friends with her; but it must just go as far as you wish out of school,' said Doreen's mother.
'It may go as far as you like; I could not wish for a nicer companion for Vava,' said Stella.
And Vava heard her with surprise. 'You are a naughty girl, Doreen, and you annoyed me very much yesterday; and now I should think you have learnt that honesty is the best policy,' she said to her friend.
'I was so dreadfully afraid your sister would not come if she knew,' said Doreen.
'Then what would have been the use of her coming, only to refuse when she did know?' inquired Vava with some reason.
'Oh I was sure if she once saw the house and garden she would take it, because it is such a nice one!' cried Doreen.
Stella only smiled, but Vava whispered, 'I'm sure we shall come here. Stella never speaks until she is quite certain of a thing, and our landlord approves.'
And then, after a very dainty tea out of a silver teapot and fine porcelain, the four turned homeward, talking eagerly about 'our new home,' as they called it.
Stella Wharton and Amy Overall sat leaning back in opposite corners of the carriage, smiling at the grand plans of the two younger girls, who were arranging the rooms and furnishing them with ideal furniture, which changed every few minutes, as did the wall-papers, except Eva's bedroom, which always had a paper covered with roses. 'I have always dreamt of living in a cottage covered with roses; but, till I do, I am going to make shift with a bedroom covered with rose-pink roses climbing about everywhere in large bunches tied up with blue ribbons,' she affirmed.
'Roses don't climb about tied up with ribbons,' remonstrated Vava, and then they all laughed at Eva's mistake.
'Oh well, I meant hanging about; I have seen papers like that, all pink roses and blue ribbons, and longed to have one; and now that I can choose my own paper that's what I'm going to have.--And oh, Miss Wharton, do have a crimson hall; it makes you feel warm the minute you get into a house!' cried Eva.
'And what about summer--you want to feel cool then? I think a green paper would be best,' argued Vava, and in discussing the merits of the different colours the journey was soon at an end, and the four, as they often did, wound up the evening together at Bleak House, where the matron generally arranged a musical or card evening for the girls who boarded with her.
CHAPTER XIV.
OFF TO A HOME AGAIN.
The mystery of Doreen's behaviour being cleared up, the two Whartons thought no more of Mr. James and his acquaintance with their movements. But a week later, when the little house was practically taken, Miss Wharton had a letter from Mr. Stacey which made her think that 'people' did interest themselves in her private affairs, and mingled with her gratitude was a feeling of resentment.
However, she read the letter to Vava, who by no means shared this resentment. 'Sending us some surplus furniture which is not wanted up there, and will nearly furnish our little house, is he? That's the Montague Joneses, you may be sure, Stella. How nice and thoughtful of them! I wonder if Mr. James Jones is any relation of theirs?'
Now this thought had come into Stella's mind too; but she replied, 'I don't think so. He would probably have mentioned it, and been rather proud of the fact that some of his family owned Lomore.'
'I don't believe he would mention it; he is too much of a gentleman,' maintained Vava stoutly.
'Mr. James Jones?' questioned Stella, lifting her eyebrows at this championship.
'Yes, and I want to know if he may teach me algebra?' continued Vava.
Stella, as has been said, was a slow thinker, and the junior partner as a mathematical master was a novel and strange idea which she did not take in at once. 'I don't understand. How can Mr. Jones teach you algebra?' she inquired at length.
'Quite well; he explained a difficult rule to me in about ten minutes last Saturday,' said Vava.
'You surely don't imagine that Mr. Jones has time to teach you mathematics in office hours? And he certainly can't teach you out of them,' objected Stella.
'He has plenty of time; he says he's always slack on Saturday mornings after he has given you the letters, and he will teach me for half-an-hour if you will let him,' explained Vava.
Miss Wharton did not like the idea somehow. She did not want to be under an obligation to her employer; nor did she like to own to herself, far less to Vava, that the reason of her objection was a feeling that it was 'because he thought she was pretty.' However, as she could not give this reason, and had no other, she said reluctantly, 'It is very kind of Mr. Jones, but you must not take advantage of his good-nature; you must only come occasionally, not every Saturday.' Stella consoled herself with the thought that when they were in their new house Vava would no longer want to come to the City with her, but would prefer to stay with Doreen Hackney. Again it occurred to her to wonder how Mr. Jones knew they were going to Blackstead, and she felt rather annoyed at his impertinent curiosity, in consequence of which her manner was so reserved, not to say forbidding, that Mr. Jones in his turn wondered what was the matter with his secretary, and whether she would never be more friendly with him.
'I don't want to be familiar, goodness knows; but really to work for hours every day with a person who treats you as if you were her deadly enemy, and won't allow you even to ask if she is cold, and would like the window shut or sit nearer the fire, is annoying, you must own?' he complained to his mother.
The latter l |
30837-8 | aughed at his aggrieved expression. 'Girls don't generally treat you so badly, do they? Well, it won't do you any harm to be snubbed for once in your life, though it's only by a City clerk,' she replied.
'Only a City clerk? A disguised duchess would be nearer the mark! I 'm helping Vava with her sums--Miss Vava, I beg her pardon--one has to be careful with any one belonging to Miss Wharton. I am surprised that she allows me to give her sister algebra lessons, as Vava calls it. What a stupid thing pride is, and, above all things, pride of birth. Think how much more she would enjoy life if she would be friends with us, instead of keeping us at a distance as if we were dirt under her feet!' cried the young man with irritation.
'You would not take so much trouble if she were plain, and perhaps she feels that,' observed his mother.
'I should be civil to her, and she would be civil to me, which is more than Miss Wharton is,' observed Mr. James Jones, taking up his hat to go to his office.
His mother looked after him with troubled eyes. 'I am dreadfully afraid he is getting to like that girl,' she remarked to her husband.
'Then he'd better give it up, for she evidently doesn't care for him?' replied Mr. Jones.
'He's good-looking enough to please most girls,' said his wife.
'Yes, but Miss Wharton did not go to the City to flirt or fall in love, and I respect her all the more for it. I should like to ask her and that little sister of hers here; but I suppose it's no use, eh?' he inquired.
'Not a bit, especially as they are moving out of town; not but what I shall call upon them when they are settled at Blackstead, and I'll see if I can persuade them to come and dine here then,' she said.
Stella Wharton ought to have been much flattered at the desire for her society and the trouble these rich people were putting themselves to in order to make the acquaintance of their son's clerk; but it is to be feared that if she had known it would neither have flattered nor pleased her--poor proud Stella! But the kindness of the Hackneys pleased her, and she did not seem to mind accepting civilities from them.
It was Stella's house, taken in her name, and the other two were to share it for a year, furnishing their own rooms and a sitting-room; the rest was being furnished by Stella, chiefly from Lomore, where old 'nursie' was finding unexpected treasures.
'If only she could come herself, Stella!' said Vava wistfully.
But Stella replied decidedly, 'That is impossible; she could not possibly do the work of that house alone, and we cannot afford two servants.'
So Vava gave up all hope of seeing her old nurse until fate should take them north again.
The next time the youthful housekeepers went to Heather Road to measure rooms and windows, the exact sizes of which Mrs. Morrison wrote from Scotland that she wished to know, Mrs. Hackney as usual asked them to go in to tea with her, and, in the course of conversation with Stella, observed, 'If I may be allowed to make a suggestion, I should not get a servant at once; it will be amusing for a short time to do a little housework, and while everything is new and clean there will be no hard work to do. Besides, the Easter holidays are soon coming, and you want to go to the sea for a few days to bring the roses back to this young lady's cheeks.'
'Oh I think it will be change enough to come out here,' said Stella quickly.
'Then you will have plenty of time to do your own work,' agreed Mrs. Hackney, guessing that motives of economy prevented the girls from going away at Easter, and respecting Stella's sturdy independence and thrifty ways.
Stella, for her part liked and respected Mrs. Hackney, and she and Amy decided to take her advice, and do without a servant, for the present at least.
In spite of Vava's disappointment at not having 'nursie' at No. 2 Heather Road, she found herself counting the days until they moved.
Nor was Eva less enthusiastic. Indeed, her enthusiasm went rather too far; she was always buying something or other 'for her bedroom.'
'There won't be an inch of wall-paper to be seen, Eva,' Vava warned her, as she showed her the tenth picture she had bought for it.
'Oh yes, there will; it's wonderful what a lot you can get into a room, and pictures brighten up a place,' she argued.
But one day Eva came to the club in a state of great excitement. 'Girls!' she cried, including Stella in this familiar address, 'I have just bought myself the sweetest suite of furniture you ever saw!'
Every one was surprised at this, for only the day before Eva had announced in melancholy tones that she had spent her last penny, and could buy no more pictures, for which she had developed a mania.
'I thought you had no money?' said Vava, with her usual impulsive candour.
'Oh that's all right; the man does not want to be paid yet. I know you don't approve of that; but it is a case of Hobson's choice with me, and heaps of people do it,' she said, turning to Stella.
'I only disapprove of it for myself. What is your suite like?' inquired Stella with extra geniality, because she wished to put Eva at her ease.
This was very easily done, for things, as a rule, did not go deep with that young lady, and she replied, 'It is inlaid walnut, and the wardrobe has three cheval-glasses, so that you can see all sides of you at once and how your dress hangs, and that's a thing one never can see, and I do hate a skirt that dips at one side or is short in the front and draggles behind, so you can all come and look at yourselves in my glass before you go out; and the washing-stand is a dream too, with tiles hand-painted; so is the chest of drawers. You will all fall in love with it when you see it, as I did.'
'Was it very expensive?' asked Vava.
'No, not very, considering how beautiful it is,' replied Eva airily.
All this time Amy had said nothing, but looked rather grave, and now she inquired, 'Did you say you had bought it, Eva?'
'Yes--that's to say, I have ordered it, and it is to be sent down to 2 Heather Road on the 19th of March.'
This was the day before the girls were to move in; it was a Friday, and the Hackneys had offered to take in anything that was sent down beforehand, and suggested their coming in on the Saturday before quarter-day.
'It will prevent their breaking into another week's rent at their lodgings,' Mrs. Hackney had suggested to her husband. And as it was the most convenient day for them to move, it was decided to ask for a holiday from their various chiefs in the City, and start the new experiment on the 20th of March, and most of the furniture was being sent the day before.
But Amy looked hurt. 'Have you chosen it without me?' she asked.
Eva coloured up as she answered in rather a hurried way, 'I couldn't help it. I did it rather suddenly, and the man said he could not promise to keep it for me. Besides, I knew you would only object, now you've become so strait-laced and are furnishing your room out of packing-cases.'
Amy took no notice of this scornful accusation. 'But you can't have bought it alone? The man would never sell furniture on credit to a girl like you,' she protested.
Eva got very indignant. 'Why not? I suppose he knows he can trust me?' she said.
'But that is just what he cannot; you are only sixteen, and he could not recover from you if you did not pay. I can't understand it,' observed Amy.
'You are not wanted to; it's all arranged, and the suite will arrive on the 19th of March, and I shall pay so much a week honestly until I have paid up,' said Eva.
But Amy would not let the matter rest; and, failing to get any satisfaction out of Eva, she took counsel with Stella, rather to the latter's embarrassment. However, as Amy seemed to be really worried, Stella tried to comfort her without being false to her principles. 'It cannot be more than a few pounds. They get up these suites to look very pretty for a low sum, and if none of the drawers shut, as often happens, it will be a lesson to her; and as for the payments, fortunately she gets her money weekly, so she can pay regularly.'
'But she can only pay a few shillings a week, and that only by being very economical and self-denying, and Eva is neither by nature. Besides, I cannot get her to tell me where she bought it, nor what agreement she has signed,' said Amy.
'I think that may be because she knows we all disapprove of getting goods on credit,' suggested Stella.
'Still, there is something I do not understand about it; no reputable tradesman would enter into an agreement with a young girl like Eva. I hope--I do hope--she has not done anything foolish,' Amy said with a sigh.
Stella thought there was no doubt about that, though she did not say so, for she expected to see some showy, sham walnut suite which Eva had been inveigled into buying by some unscrupulous tradesman; but she only said, 'One learns by experience. I should not say any more about it; it is too late to stop her, and perhaps when we all live together she will be more open.'
But Amy had not told Stella her real fear, lest she should be shocked; but the truth was she was haunted by a horrid suspicion that Eva had bought the furniture in their names, or done something she was ashamed of; else why did she so obstinately refuse to say where she had bought it? But it was not much good asking herself these questions, for there was no answer to them for the present, and the answer when it did come was not pleasant.
In the meantime there was plenty to do, for they were to take possession of their new abode in a fortnight, and every minute was spent in running up casement cloth for curtains, hemming dusters, and shopping. Stella had not thought she could be so happy in this wilderness of bricks.
Mrs. Hackney was kindness itself, and yet she kept at a distance and never once came into the new house, which looked very pretty, with its papers, self-coloured in most of the rooms, though Eva had chosen a bright floral paper covered with pink roses.
Mr. Jones noticed the brighter looks of his secretary, though he made no remark, not even when she asked to be excused from coming to the office on the 20th of March, a request which he immediately granted.
And at last the eventful day came, and at the very early hour of six the four girls started from their respective houses. They travelled out by the same train, alighted at Blackstead, and set off for No. 2 Heather Road, where they arrived not long after seven o'clock to a series of surprises.
CHAPTER XV.
EVA'S PRESENTIMENT.
'I am tired already,' said Eva with a yawn, as they started from Blackstead Station to walk to Heather Road. It was not far, and it was too early for any cabs to be at the station.
'Take my arm,' said Vava with pretended sympathy.
But as Eva took it she sighed, instead of laughing, as she said, 'I feel dreadfully depressed, just as if something were going to happen.'
'So something is going to happen; we are going to have a home of our own again,' said Vava. 'But I don't see why that should make you so melancholy; it is not very flattering to us.'
'It's not that! You know I am just as keen about this house business as ever I was, and I consider I worked it very cleverly, for you would never have come here but for me. Confess now, would you?' said Eva.
'No, I don't suppose we should; but I don't know that you "worked it," as you call it, quite honestly,' replied Vava.
'If every one were as honest as you are, which means saying out just what you think, the world would be a very disagreeable place to live in,' retorted Eva.
Vava did not make any reply; she was beginning to feel a little of Eva's depression, for it did not seem promising to begin their new life together by quarrelling.
Presently Eva, who forgot what she had said five minutes after she had said it, remarked, 'You may laugh as much as you like.'
Vava was not laughing, but Eva did not notice that.
'But I have a presentiment that something will happen in this house. I woke up this morning with a dreadful weight on my mind, just as if some one were dead, and it's a dreadful feeling. Have you ever had it?'
'The feeling that some one were dead? Not unless it was true,' replied Vava.
'But it's not true now--at least as far as I know--so it must be a presentiment; or else why should I feel like this to-day of all days, when I was in such good spirits yesterday?' she demanded.
'Do you mean that you think that one of us is going to die?' inquired Vava in low tones. She was not superstitious, though like most Celts she had a vivid imagination.
But Eva was sorry when she saw how she had frightened Vava, and she said hastily, 'Of course not; I only felt as if things would go wrong. I dare say we shall find that some of the furniture has not arrived, or that your china has been broken on the way, or that the chimney smokes and we sha'n't be able to have any fire in the dining-room, or something horrid like that.'
'Well, you are a cheerful companion!' said Amy's voice from behind.
The two girls turned, and found that Stella and Amy had caught up to them and overheard Eva's prophecies about the state of things that awaited them.
'Eva has been having bad dreams or something, I think,' laughed Vava, who had recovered her spirits.
'I haven't. I only had a presentiment, and, mark my words, it will come true,' declared that young person.
'So have I a presentiment, and that is we shall find the fire lighted and a nice warm room to go into, thanks to Mrs. Hackney's kindness,' remarked Stella, as they turned the corner of the road.
The others looked at No. 2 Heather Road, which had come in sight; and, spying smoke come out of the chimney, laughed heartily at Stella's presentiment. So that it was a merry quartette, after all, which arrived at the new little house, and the sound of their young and joyous voices made Mrs. Hackney smile happily to herself.
'Oh mother, can't I just go in and bid them welcome? I do so want to see their faces and hear what they say when they see everything,' pleaded Doreen.
'No, Doreen; I will have no running in and out, and you are not to go near them to-day. I have left a message to say that if they want anything they are to come and ask for it; but they will have plenty to do and talk about without you?' declared her mother.
So Doreen, who had already been into No. 2 with flowers for the vases, gave a sigh, and had to content herself with looking out of the back window, in the hope that Vava would go into the garden, and she would see her from there.
Stella put the key into the door and turned the handle, but found that it was already unlocked; and, making their way to the sitting-room which was to be furnished for the Whartons for their own use, they found to their delight that not only was the fire lit, but the breakfast was laid, and the room quite tidy and furnished.
Amy and Eva were loud in their exclamations of delight; but Stella and Vava stood quite still, with lumps in their throats, for the room was furnished exactly like Stella's little boudoir at Lomore, with the same carpet, curtains, and all, and even the same pictures on the wall, with a single oil-painting of her mother over the mantelpiece.
Vava was the first one to recover herself. 'Stella, it's just like Lomore!' and as Stella had chosen a paper like her former one, it really was like the old room.
'It's very kind of them,' she said, rather doubtfully.
'Kind of them! I should think it is! And fancy Mrs. Hackney guessing where all the furniture used to go! Do you remember that bureau always stood on the left of the window, just like that, and the little table in the bow? I expect nursie or David wrote and told them!' exclaimed Vava.
'It is very kind,' repeated Stella in the same constrained voice.
Seeing that the two sisters were agitated at sight of the familiar objects, Amy and Eva, with tact, went upstairs to look at the latter's suite, and give them time to recover themselves.
'Kind! of course it is. What is the matter, Stella? You never seem to like people doing kind things. Aren't you pleased that David took the trouble to pack all these things so carefully that they are not a bit scratched or spoilt, and aren't you obliged to Mrs. Hackney for making the room like our old sitting-room at home?' demanded Vava half-impatiently.
'It was very good of David, and of course I am grateful to him; and Mrs. Hackney meant to be kind too, but I think she ought to have asked me before she unpacked my private things,' said Stella.
Vava looked thoughtful. She felt that Stella was in the right about this. 'But they are not private, Stella; they are only furniture, and she meant to be kind, and she has got all this nice breakfast ready. I think she is in the kitchen, for I can hear some one poking the fire. Do let's go and thank her, and please be nice and smile at her, Stella,' Vava begged her.
Stella smiled at this, and it was with smiles on their faces that they picked their way along the passage through packing-cases into the kitchen. But when they opened the door the smiles changed into wild cries of delight, and her English friends would have been surprised if they had seen the way in which the reserved and cold Miss Wharton threw her arms round the neck of the respectable middle-aged servant, who turned and held out her arms to her 'bairns.'
'You thought your old nursie was going to let you keep house all by yourselves, with no one to look after you, did you?' she said, as she smoothed their hair and petted them both as if they were little children.
'Then it was you who unpacked our things? Stella thought some one had been taking a liberty. Stella's dreadfully afraid of people taking liberties with her, nursie,' said Vava.
'And quite right too! Dearie me! if you knew how I've worried at the thought of you two lambs alone in this great city! But it's all right now; I'm here to look after you. And you've very decent neighbours, who know their place, and are very obliging without being forward at all,' said Mrs. Morrison, for she it was.
'Oh I forgot Doreen; I must just go and tell her how glad we are to see nursie. Fancy her never letting it out, for she must have known it, and Mrs. Hackney too!' cried Vava, preparing to rush off as she spoke.
'Hoots, Miss Vava, what can you be thinking of, running off without ever asking your elder sister's leave, and she your guardian and all?' said Mrs. Morrison reprovingly.
'I didn't think.--May I go, Stella?' she said.
'Yes, but don't stay, and thank Mrs. Hackney for ordering the coals and the gasman,' said Stella.
'You'd better say for all she has done, for she met me at the station, and brought me across London herself, or I doubt if I'd ever have got here; it fairly bewildered me,' said their old nurse.
'When did you come, nursie?' inquired Vava.
'On Wednesday. I wanted to get over the journey and the strangeness of things before you came, and to get things a bit straight; but I've only been able to settle the kitchen and your own sitting-room and one bedroom. I could not take it upon me to interfere with the two young leddies' rooms, and indeed I did not know where to put their furniture. There's only furniture for one bedroom between the two of them, though that's fine. They would have done better to have got two smaller sets, or a few pieces at a time, I'm thinking, instead of spending all that money on one suite, as the man called it,' remarked Mrs. Morrison.
'It belongs to one of them; the other is getting hers, a piece at a time, as you suggest,' said Stella.
'She'll be a sensible young lady. What are they like?' continued Mrs. Morrison.
Vava left Stella to describe their new house-mates, and also to talk things over with Mrs. Morrison, who had a great deal to tell her and ask her, and ran off to see Doreen, who was rewarded for her patience by Vava's delight.
'I'm just so happy I don't know what to do!' she cried, her eyes shining and her cheeks so rosy that Mrs. Hackney felt as if the sea-breezes could very well be done without.
'She is a nice old woman, your old nurse,' said Doreen.
'She's not old; she's only middle-aged.--And she says--at least Stella says--I am to thank you for all your kindness, and nursie is very grateful to you too,' said Vava to Mrs. Hackney.
'She is a treasure, and I am very glad you have her. Thank you for coming in Vava; and now run and have your breakfast; you ought to have a fine appetite for it after all this excitement, especially as you did not have much breakfast before you started, I expect,' said Mrs. Hackney.
'We did not have any. Our landlady said she could not get breakfasts at that unearthly hour, as she should not be up herself, so we just had some biscuits, and I am hungry. But, oh I am glad to have said good-bye to those horrid lodgings!' cried Vava with feeling.
'You have much to be thankful for,' observed Mrs. Hackney.
'Yes, and I am thankful,' said Vava simply. Then she went back to her new home, and found Stella, Amy, and Eva in the kitchen, talking happily to Mrs. Morrison, who quite approved of the two strangers, and was inclined to take them to her motherly heart when she found that they were orphans like her own bairns, and had been well brought up, and were well-mannered young ladies. Then the four went in to breakfast.
'What about your presentiment now?' cried Vava, turning to Eva, who had quite recovered her good spirits.
'It has come to pass. I said something was going to happen, and you see it has. Fancy your old nurse being here without your knowing anything about it!' cried Eva.
'You said you had a bad presentiment about something having gone wrong, and nursie's coming is not wrong at all; it has put things right,' persisted Vava.
'Oh well, I haven't got any presentiment now, so it's all right,' declared Eva.
'And presentiments are very foolish things,' said Stella rather primly.
The breakfast was a very good one. Mrs. Morrison had made porridge and hot scones, and had brought honey with her from the north, and the girls sat over their meal a long time, forgetting the work they had before them, until Amy started up, saying, 'We had better begin putting up the curtains and getting the rooms ready. My bedroom is chaos, and Eva's is not much better.'
Stella had noticed that Amy was very quiet during breakfast, and it occurred to her that perhaps the girl was disturbed at the arrival of Mrs. Morrison. It made it look as if the house and the ordering of it were to be entirely Stella's, whereas it had been arranged that she and Amy should share in the management. So, leaving Vava with Eva to clear away, she followed Amy to her room, which did indeed look chaotic.
Amy had bought a nice bed and a chest of drawers and washstand of light oak, very simple but quite pretty, and these, with one chair and some boxes and pictures, were all her furniture.
'We shall soon make this look pretty; and, if you will use it, there is an extra arm-chair which they have sent down from Lomore that I should like you to have,' said the Scotch girl.
'Thank you, I should like it very much, if you can spare it; but you must value anything that comes from your old home,' replied Amy, who seemed a little depressed.
'Yes, that is why it is such a pleasure to have Mrs. Morrison with us; she is almost like a mother to us. She was with my mother before she was married. I hope you don't mind her coming?' asked Stella.
'Mind? I am delighted; I like her already, and I don't mind saying that I was rather dreading the housekeeping and managing. It is all very well when you have nothing else to do, but it is difficult to do two things well. My City work gets rather heavy in spring, and I am often not home till late, and then I am too tired to do anything but sit quietly by the fire and read a book.'
'You will like her the more the more you know her,' said Stella, much relieved; and then added, 'I thought something had vexed you.'
'Oh it had nothing at all to do with Mrs. Morrison; it was only Eva's suite; but it's no use talking about it, or to her. The thing is done, and something has come over Eva lately; she is not a bit like what she used to be. I have been hoping that Vava would do her good; but they don't seem to get on quite as well as I hoped,' replied Amy.
'Vava is a little too outspoken, but I hope they will be friends; I think she will have a good influence over Eva, because she is so very frank. I am sorry you don't like the furniture Eva has bought. Is it very gimcrack?' inquired Stella.
'Gimcrack! I only wish it were; it's far too handsome. I don't know how much she paid for it, but it can't have cost less than twenty pounds at the least!' exclaimed Amy.
'Shall we go and look at it?' suggested Stella, who was curious to see this much-talked-of furniture, and the two went into Eva's room, where they found Vava admiring herself in the three cheval glasses of the wardrobe.
'Look, Stella, isn't this a lovely idea, and isn't it a lovely suite?' cried Vava, twisting and turning herself.
'Yes, it is very handsome,' said Stella, and said no more, and then, after a few polite remarks about the pictures, which Eva was just hanging, she left the room, and was followed by Amy.
'How on earth did the man give it her, and where do you think she has got it?' demanded Amy when they were back in her bedroom.
'I don't know. I am afraid it is a very expensive suite; but it is no good worrying about it. It seems so dreadful that a girl of sixteen should have no one to look after her, no near relation, and no guardian, except yourself, and you are only a friend, after all, and have no authority over her. We must just be as friendly as we can to her, and try and win her confidence, and if she won't give it, wait until the man turns up for his money, which he will soon do if she does not pay up.'
'Then he will remove it, and that will disgrace us all!' cried Amy.
'No, indeed, he will not; I shall not allow anything of that kind,' declared Stella with decision.
And then, though 'Eva's suite' was often in their minds, they dismissed the subject from their conversation, and started upon the putting in order of the new house.
CHAPTER XVI.
VAVA'S BUSINESS LETTER.
Eva's presentiment was already a thing of the past, for she was the merriest of the four, and the day would not have been half such fun nor have passed so pleasantly and easily if she had not made a joke of all difficulties, and helped by her suggestions, which were very shrewd, in spite of their being mixed up with a great deal of nonsense.
Mrs. Morrison had made the Misses Whartons' large bedroom habitable, and in a very short time it was pronounced quite comfortable for the present; so there really were only the hall and staircase to arrange, about which Eva had numerous theories, which she propounded sitting on the top stair in an apron made of newspapers.
'Leave half a yard at each end for moving the stair-carpet up and down every week,' she observed.
'That is a very good idea, if we have enough,' replied Amy.
'If not, you must put mats at the turnings of the stair; it's most important; also, you must put a pad on each step, then you feel as if you were sinking into velvet,' came from Eva, still sitting at her ease and surveying the workers.
'What kind of pad?' asked Stella, who with Amy was laying the stair-carpet.
'Velvet,' said Eva, absent-mindedly.
'What nonsense, Eva! What do you mean?' demanded Amy.
Eva, who had been looking out of the staircase window, turned her head. 'I wasn't thinking of what I was saying--felt, I mean--or, failing that, folds of newspapers, and by so doing you double the life of your carpet,' she explained.
'Then, suppose you go and get that pile of newspapers that came from Scotland, and fold them into pads, instead of sitting there coolly and watching us work?' suggested her friend.
'I might, for a consideration,' agreed Eva, and help she did with such good-will that the house was quite comfortable by night.
Mrs. Morrison kept to her kitchen, and sent in a nice dinner, for which Vava laid the table, having spent her morning flitting in and out of the kitchen, helping 'nursie,' as she imagined, and it is doubtful which of them was the happier--the old Scotchwoman, who had her bairns with her again, or the child, who obeyed her old nurse more willingly than her elder sister.
'Vava, the post has just brought this. I wish you would sit down and answer it politely, and say that I am obliged by his kind offer, but that I shall be at the office on Monday morning at the usual time,' said Stella, coming into the kitchen with an open letter in her hand, which she handed to her younger sister.
Vava took it, and found that it was a very polite letter from the junior partner, saying, that as he understood they were moving and would be busy for a few days, he would be glad for her to take a holiday, and thought they would manage without her till Wednesday. 'He _is_ kind, and I'm sure I don't know why, for you never smile at him, and till you do smile you really look disagreeable,' commented Vava.
'I am sorry, but I shall continue to look disagreeable then, for I have no intention of smiling at Mr. James Jones, or any other stranger with whom I have business,' observed Stella.
'Why don't you answer it yourself? It's got nothing to do with me,' grumbled Vava.
'Because I am busy; you can tell him that,' said Stella; who might have added, 'Because I do not choose to,' but she refrained.
'My lamb, you should not answer your sister as you do,' said Mrs. Morrison, when Stella had left the kitchen, her head very much in the air.
'She aggravates me with her airs and unfriendliness,' said Vava in an apologetic tone.
'And who are you to criticise your elders in that unbecoming way? What do you know of the world? Miss Stella is quite right not to be too friendly with strangers and to keep her bonny smiles for friends; and even if she were not right, it is not for you to question her doings or sayings, and she your guardian,' protested her old nurse with decision.
'She is not so very old after all--only seven years older than I am; last year she was an infant in the eye of the law,' announced the girl, who had read this piece of information somewhere.
'She is of age this year, at any rate, Miss Vava, and you had better do as she bids you; she knows what she is about, and you will understand it better in seven years' time--seven years make a great difference in a young girl; so write that letter like a good child, and don't worry Miss Stella, who has plenty to do without fashing herself about letter-writing,' admonished Mrs. Morrison.
'But you know, nursie, this is a business letter, and he is the man she gets her living by; she really might be civil to him. Suppose he gets offended and tells her to go? That would be a nice thing, just after we have got into a new house!' exclaimed Vava.
'If he is a business man he'll not be so silly as to be offended because a young lady isn't too friendly; and if he is so foolish, the sooner she leaves his office and gets with sensible people the better. That will do for those currants, Miss Vava, they are quite clean now, and I'll make the pudding while you write that letter. You'll find paper and stamps and all in the bureau in the sitting-room,' said nurse.
Vava went off as she was told, and found that nurse had 'found up' a quantity of writing-paper and envelopes at Lomore, as well as stamps, all of which she had packed into the bureau and brought south with her, besides other treasures, the looking over which took Vava some time. But at last she set to work to write the letter; and, being very much excited by all the events of the day, she took a large sheet of paper, and wrote a long letter to the junior partner, which was likely to amuse him very much. It ran as follows:
'DEAR MR. JONES,--Thank you very much for offering to give my sister a holiday. She says to tell you she is very busy putting down the stair-carpet, so can't answer herself; but she will be quite able to come to the office on Monday morning at the usual time. She did not say she was putting down the stair-carpet, but she is; it's a horrid work, as you have to pad it. When I 'm rich I'll have workmen to do all that when I move house, and never go near it till it's quite tidy. I can't find a single thing.
'The other Joneses who have bought Lomore (I hope they are no relation of yours) have been very kind; they have sent down all the furniture of Stella's sitting-room, and lots and lots of things that they must want themselves, and I'm sorry I called them "horrid;" they have been very friendly to us, and even brought us to town in their motor. I only said that because I felt horrid at that moment to think of an English Jones being Laird of Lomore. Oh dear! I forgot your name was Jones; but I would not mind your being laird so much, you look a great deal more like one than old Mr. Montague Jones. But our old nurse, whom we found here this morning, says he has been very good to all the old servants, and is not turning out one, or changing anything; so things might have been worse. I must stop and help to put the house in order.--I remain, your sincere friend, VAVA WHARTON.
'_P.S._--Please be sensible, and don't mind Stella being so stiff and stuck-up; it's being poor that makes her like that, and I'm sure she's grateful to you, really. V. W.'
Now, Vava was a very open child; but it never entered her head that she ought not to have written a letter like that to Mr. James Jones, nor that her sister would expect to see it. 'Nursie' had said that there were stamps there, and evidently meant her to write, close, and post the letter, so as to save Stella trouble, and this she accordingly did, as there happened to be a pillar-box just outside the front-gate.
Stella, who was still putting down the stair-carpet, heard the gate click, and observed, 'Oh dear, I hope that nobody is coming; they can't come through the hall.'
'No, it is only Vava; she is posting a letter,' replied Eva, who from the top stair, where she was folding newspapers to form pads, could see the front-gate and road.
Stella stopped abruptly in her work. 'I wouldn't'----she began; and then, dropping the hammer, she continued, 'I will be back in a minute, Miss Overall; I just want to speak to Vava,' and went into the sitting-room to await her sister.
Vava saw her through the bay-window, and went in to her, saying cheerfully, 'I've written the letter and posted it and everything.'
'Why did you not show it to me first?' demanded Stella.
'Why should I? I never thought of it. Besides, you never read my letters; you always say you trust me,' said Vava.
'So I do; but you do sometimes say things you had better not have said, and as this is my business I think you should have brought the letter to me. What did you say in it?'
Upon reflection, Vava was not sure that she wanted to tell Stella what she had written, and upon further reflection she began to doubt whether she ought to have written it. 'I told him you thanked him for his offer of holiday, and that you were busy putting down the stair-carpet, so had told me to write, and that you would be there on Monday at the usual time. That's all I said about you--I mean about your business. The rest of the letter was just a friendly one from myself,' she said.
This was just what Stella was afraid of, and she exclaimed, 'I never told you to say what I was doing.'
'I told him that,' interrupted Vava.
Stella was speechless for a moment; then she continued, in a tone of exasperation, 'Will you please tell me what you did say, Vava?'
'It's got nothing to do with you. Mr. Jones has been very kind to me, and I just wrote him a friendly letter; but it sounds silly repeated. Don't bother about it, Stella; if you were so particular about the letter you should have written it yourself,' retorted Vava.
'I wish I had--I wish to goodness I had!' she exclaimed, and went out of the room.
Vava felt rather uncomfortable for a time; and then, saying to herself that Stella made a great fuss about nothing, she went off to the kitchen to help Mrs. Morrison to prepare tea for them.
Stella seemed to have forgotten her annoyance when she came in to tea, for she was laughing heartily; but when Vava asked her if she were tired, she said, 'No,' very coldly, and addressed no more conversation to her.
Vava consequently talked to Eva; but this kind of thing could not go on, and after tea, when she found herself with Mrs. Morrison, she unburdened herself to her old nurse. 'And you see, nursie, I don't know what to do. If I don't tell Stella she will be horrid and cold with me; and if I do tell her she will be frightfully annoyed,' she explained.
But Mrs. Morrison would not sympathise with her. 'You ought not to write letters you do not wish your sister to see; you have done very wrong, and must go and tell Miss Stella so at once, and if she is angry and scolds you you must bear it,' she said decidedly.
'There was no harm in what I said, and--and, nursie, I simply can't tell Stella!' cried Vava, as her postscript came into her mind.
Mrs. Morrison looked at her gravely. 'What did you say, my lamb? Tell me,' she inquired.
Vava told her, as well as she could remember, all that she had said in the letter.
A grim look of amusement came over the good woman's face; but she turned away and poked the fire to prevent Vava seeing it, and when she turned round again she was quite grave as she replied, with a shake of her head, 'You should not have said that about Mr. Montague Jones being "horrid," you let your pen run on too fast, and you should not have written that bit about Miss Stella, and you may well say that she will be annoyed. But for all that, you must tell her what was in the letter, and it will be a lesson to you to mind what you write in future.'
Vava groaned, but went off obediently and told Stella, who listened in silence till she came to the postscript, whereat she gave an exclamation; but all she said when Vava had finished was, 'I am glad you told me, for I think I can prevent Mr. Jones getting that letter. I was so busy this morning that I forgot that to-day was Saturday, and that consequently the letter would not arrive any sooner than myself on Monday morning; so that you need not have written at all.'
'But, Stella, what will you do? You can't take away a letter addressed to Mr. Jones. The clerks may tell him how many there were, and he would miss it,' protested Vava.
'I have no intention of touching Mr. Jones's correspondence without his knowledge; but, as I get there before him, I shall ask him not to open that particular letter, and I shall tell him why,' replied Stella.
'Then he might as well read it!' cried Vava.
'I shall not tell him what you said,' replied Stella; and as she had evidently made up her mind on the subject, Vava said no more, but she wished with all her heart that she had never written the unfortunate letter.
However, Stella was friends with her again, and the first day at Heather Road ended happily enough; for, tired though they were, the four girls were able to go to bed in a tidy house, with carpets, curtains, and furniture in their proper places, which was really a comfortable home again.
CHAPTER XVII.
A SUNDAY AT HEATHER ROAD.
'Stella! Stella! wake up! the sun is shining, and I can see a tree, and hear birds singing, and I feel so happy that I really must get up, although it is Sunday morning and we have not to go off to the City!' cried Vava the next morning.
Stella opened her eyes and looked at her sister, smiling. 'One might almost be in the country--everything looks so fresh and clean; we must try and keep it so, and help nursie as much as we can, for she is not used to much housework,' she replied.
'I don't mind how much I do to save her as long as we can have her with us. I think I had better get up and light the fire for her; I dare say she will be tired this morning,' observed Vava, sitting up in bed.
There was a knock at the door, and Mrs. Morrison, bearing a tray, came into the room with a cheery, 'Good-morning, young leddies!'
'Oh nursie, I meant to light the fire and get breakfast ready for you!' cried Vava.
'What would you do that for? I am not tired; it's you that must be worn-out, so here's your breakfasts for you, and you can just stay where you are for a while, and get up in time for the kirk, which is not far off, I hear,' replied Mrs. Morrison, unfolding their table-napkins, and waiting on them as she used to do when they were children.
Suddenly Vava exclaimed, 'Nursie, I must get up; the others will be hungry too!'
'And why will they be hungry, when they are eating their breakfasts quite comfortably?' inquired the good woman quietly.
'That is good of you, nursie; but you must not wait upon us strong people!' protested Stella.
'That's only for to-day, because you are all just worn-out, and I knew you would oversleep yourselves. Next week I'll be obliged if you will just make your own beds and tidy your own rooms a bit,' nurse answered.
'Have we overslept ourselves?' inquired Stella; and, taking out her watch, she exclaimed with surprise, 'A quarter to nine! How could we have slept so late?'
'I expect it's the quiet after the noise of Westminster and the exciting day we had yesterday,' said Vava, who was enjoying her breakfast in bed.
It was a very happy day. Stella, Vava, and Mrs. Morrison went to their own church, and Amy went to hers alone, for Eva was not up.
When Eva came down to dinner she said with a yawn, 'You are energetic, you good people; I hope you feel better for having been to church; you looked most frightfully righteous coming in with large prayer-books in your hands. For my part, I think one can be just as religious without ever going to church at all.'
'Perhaps, but I think if one can go to church one should, and I do feel better for having been this morning,' said Stella quietly.
When she found herself alone with Amy she asked her whether Eva really never went to church.
Amy looked worried as she replied, 'I am afraid she has got into bad habits lately. She says she is tired on Sunday mornings, and that it is the only day she can rest, and that she does not notice that people are any the better for going; in fact, she says, they generally come back cross and complaining of the heat or cold of the church or the length of the sermon.'
'That's the kind of things people always say when they want to defend themselves for not going to church. But if she is tired in the morning, surely she can go in the evening?' suggested Stella.
'Perhaps you will be able to persuade her; I cannot,' responded Amy.
But Stella shook her head. 'I shall not try; I do not believe in arguing about such things. We must try by our own example to make her see that churchgoing does make us feel better. I know it made me feel ashamed of my discontent these last three months. I have hated my life here and every one around me; and I certainly don't deserve things to have turned out so well,' she said humbly.
'And the funny part of it is that Eva has really been the person to bring it about, and--I don't like saying so--she managed to twist what I said, and what you said, so as to make us each believe that the one was quite willing for the move and was only kept back by the other,' observed Amy, who had resented this management when she found it out.
'It has happened to answer in this case, but it does not generally answer, and I am sorry for her sake that she has succeeded in getting her way by rather crooked means,' said Stella.
The girls had yet to learn that 'the mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small,' and that the experiment which had started in so promising a manner might turn out a failure, and that Eva had time yet to repent of her 'clever management.' At present, however, everything was _couleur de rose_, and after tea they all sat round the fire in the Whartons' sitting-room, while Stella played hymns on her piano, and Eva, who had a very pretty voice, joined in very heartily, to Mrs. Morrison's delight.
'Let's go for a walk; I've got my presentiment again,' announced Eva, shutting up her hymn-book and jumping up from her chair.
Mrs. Morrison looked at her over the top of her spectacles. 'What might you have?' she inquired, thinking that Eva was complaining of not feeling well.
'The hump, Mrs. Morrison, and I want a walk to shake it off,' she replied.
Mrs. Morrison did not understand this slang; but she understood that Eva felt depressed, and said, 'A walk will do you all good, and you will just have time to go over the hill yonder before church.'
Eva did not like to say that she was not going to church, but she privately decided to return home and amuse herself by trying over some waltzes while the rest were all at church.
The four accordingly set out for their walk; and, as Eva was a very entertaining companion, Vava enjoyed the walk with her. Amy and Stella were becoming such fast friends that they had dropped the formal 'Miss' in speaking to each other, and they enjoyed the walk. Mrs. Morrison had told them she should go straight to church. On the way back they passed the Presbyterian Church; and the two Whartons, remarking that they were only five minutes too early, turned in there.
'Won't you come to church with me, Eva?' asked Amy as the two walked on together.
'No, thank you; I have something to do at home. It's so jolly having a home that I prefer to stay in it. I sha'n't plague you to come to the pictures every night now,' replied Eva, going off.
But Eva had counted without her host, as Mrs. Morrison, having supposed that they would all go to church, had locked up and gone out, taking the key with her. As they were not on a main road, the door was not kept latched, and so they had no latchkeys. There was a light in the hall, and Eva turned the handle of the door, expecting it to open; but in vain. Then it flashed upon her that she was locked out, and must either wait there for an hour and a half or else go to church; neither of which things did she wish to do. A thought then struck her, and she knocked at the Hackneys' door; but they were all out, it appeared, for she knocked in vain. So turning away in annoyance, Eva sauntered back to the main street where Amy had gone to church.
'I believe that Scotchwoman did it on purpose; she thought I ought to go to church, and so she locked me out of my own home. But if she thinks she's going to manage me she's very much mistaken, as she will find, and I'll just show her that,' she said to herself; for she had just come to a brilliantly lighted kinematograph show, and made up her mind to go in there.
It was the first time she had gone there on Sunday, and to make herself feel more comfortable she had to remind herself that she must put her foot down and not be dictated to by strangers; and soon the music and the scenes before her distracted her thoughts, and this was what Eva really wanted. For some of her thoughts were troubling her, and she wanted to banish them.
But unfortunately the pictures could not last for ever, and when they were over there was Mrs. Morrison to face; and though Mrs. Morrison had a very kindly face, and had been very friendly and nice to Eva, whom she liked, the latter had a feeling that she could be very stern, and that she would disapprove of going to an entertainment on Sunday evening. To her surprise, when she came out there were no churchgoers to be seen in the streets, and when she passed Amy's church it was in darkness, and she guessed that it must be past nine o'clock, and that the others would be home.
'That comes of leaving my watch at home and trusting that man, who said we should be out before nine,' she muttered to herself, and hurried to Heather Road.
'Here she is!' cried a voice as Eva opened the gate; and Vava, who was standing looking out of the bow-window, came running to the door to greet her.
'We are so very sorry you were locked out! Mrs. Morrison understood you were both going to church, and she hurried home so as to be back before you. But it will not happen again; we will have a latch put on, and have our own keys,' said Stella, apologising.
'It doesn't matter. I had a headache, so did not go to church,' said Eva.
'And have you been walking about all this time in the dark by yourself? How horrid; nursie will be vexed!' cried Vava.
'I enjoyed myself very much, thank you,' said Eva, escaping upstairs to take off her hat and coat.
She had not said where she had been; and though Amy, who knew her, did not believe she had walked for more than two hours after their long walk, and guessed what she had done, no one asked any questions. For that Eva was thankful, and in spite of a bad conscience, which should have pricked her, she enjoyed the pie which Mrs. Morrison had made the day before and left in the oven to heat up along with baked potatoes.
'Sunday's dinner and supper always cook themselves,' she explained.
As a kind of amends for her un-Sunday-like day, Eva went into the kitchen and asked Mrs. Morrison if she might help her to wash-up.
It was on the tip of the good woman's tongue to refuse, and tell her that she must be too tired to stand about any more; but a glance at Eva's face showed that the girl was not tired, and some intuition told her that she had better accept the offer and try and make friends with this girl, who, after all, was only sixteen, and had no one to keep her in order. So she said, 'Thank you kindly, Miss Barnes, my dear; if you take this mop you will not put your hands in the water so much, and as I never use soda they will not get spoilt, and here 's a nice apron for you.'
Eva accordingly, enveloped in a large apron, stood at the tub and conversed with the Scotchwoman, who watched her quick movements with interest and admiration, for she was very graceful, and she did her work in a very business-like manner, which pleased the methodical housekeeper.
'There's a right way and a wrong way of doing everything, but you've got the right way of washing-up, and it makes a deal of difference, though folk won't believe it. I can't bear to see a young girl doing a few things at a time, and then going to find some more, and putting in the greasy things first, and the glasses and silver last,' she observed.
'My mother taught me that; once a week we went into the kitchen to learn how to do cooking and kitchen-work,' said Eva, and she gave a sigh.
'She must have been a wise woman and a good mother. Have you lost her long, my poor bairn?' inquired the housekeeper.
'A year and a half, but it feels like ten,' said Eva; and then she began to tell Mrs. Morrison about her past life at the pretty home in Cambridge, of which she had never spoken to Vava. 'Things were very different then,' she wound up.
'But they are not so bad now, and you have your old friends. Do you never see them or hear from them?' inquired the housekeeper.
'They have written, but I don't care to answer them. They have asked me to go and stay with them, and wanted to come and see me; but I had not a nice place to ask them to come to, and I won't stay with people I can't ask back.'
'I think you are wrong there; anybody would like to have a bright young leddie like you as a visitor, and you would like to see your old friends again, I'm sure. At any rate, now you have a nice home, and we'll soon have your sitting-room fit to receive a queen,' said Mrs. Morrison.
'I'll write to Mrs. Croker. She often comes to town, and she has a daughter just my age, only she is still at school and going on to college, and I am working for my living and not learning anything,' said Eva, a little bitterly.
'But you should be learning; you can get books anywhere, and can always improve yourself in the evenings. You shouldn't let Miss Croker get before you,' said Mrs. Morrison.
The good woman's interest touched Eva, and had its effect; for she delighted Mrs. Croker by writing to her and telling her where she was, and what she was doing; and Mrs. Croker said to her husband, 'I am so glad she has written. I was so vexed at losing sight of her, but she seemed to want to drop us all.'
'People do when they are poor, and she felt having her education stopped. You must ask her down for Easter. She has a few days then, I suppose?' replied the professor.
So the first Sunday at Heather Road did them all good in different ways.
CHAPTER XVIII.
STELLA'S SURPRISING REQUEST.
'I shall breakfast a little earlier than usual to-morrow morning, Vava,' said Stella when they were going to bed that night.
'Doreen says she catches the 8.40, so we shall be in plenty of time if we have breakfast at eight o'clock,' objected Vava.
'You can go with Doreen by that train, but I shall take the 8.20,' replied her sister.
Vava coloured up, for she remembered in a flash that it was to secure that unlucky letter of hers that her sister was going up to town so early. 'Oh that letter!' she said, in such dejected tones that Stella was sorry for her.
'Never mind, Vava; I will not let Mr. Jones have that letter, so you need not worry,' she said.
'Don't you think I had better come with you?' suggested Vava.
'No! What for? I shall know your handwriting; there is no need for you to be there, and I should think it would be rather uncomfortable for you,' said Stella, lifting her eyebrows.
'I sha'n't feel uncomfortable. I feel quite at home with Mr. Jones, and I think I could ask for the letter back much better than you,' persisted Vava.
'Why?' inquired Stella, getting annoyed at her sister's persistence.
'Because it is my letter, and one has more right to ask for one's own letter than for other people's. Perhaps he'll refuse to give it to you; he'll think it will get me into a row,' suggested Vava.
'In that case I shall walk straight out of his office,' declared Stella, very angry at this last suggestion of Vava's.
'For goodness' sake don't do that, Stella! Leave the letter alone. Mr. Jones is much too gentlemanly to take any notice of what I said; besides, he knew it all before,' said Vava.
But Stella, who had calmed down, ignored this advice. 'You did not mean any harm, Vava, and it must be very difficult for an impulsive girl like you to think before you say or do things; you will know better when you are older,' was all she said.
But Vava saw her sister start off with many misgivings, which she imparted to the housekeeper. 'Mr. Jones won't like Stella going and looking over his private correspondence. You know City men don't like their lady-clerks taking liberties of that kind,' she declared.
'Miss Stella is not one to take a liberty,' affirmed the housekeeper.
'She may not think it a liberty, but it is one, and I should not be surprised if they quarrelled over it, because she really is rather disagreeable to him; and I don't see why she need have made all that fuss, nor why she would not let me go myself,' argued Vava.
'Miss Vava, my bairn, you think too much of yourself and your wits. I know you are quicker than your elder sister, but that's not to say you have more brains; and, even if you had, you have not as much knowledge as she has,' Mrs. Morrison admonished her.
Vava was just going to say that she had more sense about some things, but happily she abstained; and having finished her breakfast she went to the window to look out for Doreen, who had promised to call for her.
The other two girls went to town by a later train; so Vava, seeing Doreen coming out of her gate, called out good-bye to Amy and Eva, and went to meet her friend.
'Isn't Miss Wharton coming with us?' Doreen inquired, rather disappointed, for she admired Stella greatly.
'She has gone; she had some business to do at the office, so she went early,' explained Vava.
'She does work hard, and so do you. Miss Courteney said the other day that we might take an example from you in that; you do what you have to do with all your might, and so quickly too, and yet you are not a bit serious by nature,' commented Doreen.
Vava was very pleased at this praise; but, remembering nursie's lecture on not thinking too much of herself, she replied, 'I can't do things by halves, I suppose because I have too much energy. I wish sometimes I did not go at things so hard. I don't take time to think, and so I make a lot of mistakes.'
'We all make mistakes; I've made some mistake in this problem, and I can't get it right,' said Doreen, taking out her algebra.
'I can tell you how to do that,' said Vava, for it was one Mr. Jones had helped her with; and the two were soon deep in algebra, which lasted them until they got to the City.
'What a short journey!' said Vava as they alighted at the City station.
And yet that morning Stella had said to herself what a long journey it was. All the same, when she got out at that City station she wished she were just leaving home. To the proud, sensitive girl the business before her was very unpleasant, and she had magnified its importance till she felt as if she must get that letter or leave the office.
Mrs. Ryan was dusting the office when she arrived, and was surprised to see her. 'Mr. Jones did not expect you to-day, miss. He stopped late on Saturday answering a lot of letters himself, and said he should not be here till late this morning, as you would not be coming,' she told Stella.
'There was no need for me to stay at home, as we got the house nearly straight on Saturday. We had a delightful surprise; our old nurse and housekeeper was there. She is going to keep house for us, so we shall be very comfortable,' said Stella, smiling.
'I am glad to hear that; she will look after you, and it's much better to have some older person with you, for you are all very young to be householders,' said the old woman, going on with her dusting.
'Have the letters come, Mrs. Ryan?' inquired Stella anxiously.
'Yes, they get here by eight o'clock; they are in the letter-box,' replied the housekeeper.
'Where is the letter-box?' asked Stella.
Mrs. Ryan looked a little surprised at the question as she replied, 'On the door.'
Stella looked at the door, but saw none.
'Not that door; the door of the outside office,' explained Mrs. Ryan.
Stella was a little uncomfortable, but she felt she must get Vava's letter before any one came in, and she went to the letter-box, which, of course, was locked, as she might have expected if she had but thought a little. But Stella Wharton was not easily turned from a purpose she had formed; and, coming back to the housekeeper, she asked the woman if she had the key or knew where it was kept.
If Mrs. Ryan had been surprised before she was doubly surprised now, and said in rather shocked accents, 'No, I have not the key, nor do I know where Mr. Jones keeps his; and, if you'll excuse my saying so, Miss Wharton, I should not tell you if I did know, for City gentlemen don't care to have their correspondence meddled with. I know you only want to get to your work; but I know more about City ways than you, and I advise you not to do more than is your work. The head-clerk always unlocks the letter-box, and brings the letters into Mr. Jones when he arrives.'
Stella listened to this speech in silence. She did think of taking the good woman into her confidence; but a dislike of talking about her private concerns prevented her, so she said nothing. Going to her room, she took off her hat and coat, and sat down to wait until the head-clerk should appear and she should hear him unlocking the letter-box, a noise she remembered hearing about ten o'clock every morning. The half-hour seemed very long, and she grew so nervous that she gave a great start when she heard a step, and presently two or three more, and then the sound of the letter-box being opened.
She waited a moment, and then, summoning up her courage, she went up to the head-clerk, to whom, as it happened, she had never spoken, and asked him politely if she might have Mr. James Jones's letters.
The man, who had been in the employment of the firm for twenty-five years, stood, his hands full of letters, and stared at her. In all his years of service such a request had never been made to him. He had been rather flattered by Stella speaking to him at all, for she appeared, as a rule, not to be aware of the existence of any of them; but this request was so unusual that the man did not answer at once.
'Did Mr. James give you orders to open his correspondence?' he then asked; for every one in the office had such a high opinion of Stella that they would not have been surprised at any token of trust, and this occurred to the head-clerk as the possible explanation.
'Oh no, I do not want to open them,' said Stella, colouring and looking embarrassed.
They were standing just within the door of the large general office; but the head-clerk, after glancing at the other clerks, several of whom had arrived and were listening with curiosity, stepped outside the door, and, leading the way to Stella's office, said, 'May I speak to you for a moment, Miss Wharton?'
Stella, with her proudest and coldest manner, said, 'Yes.'
The man entered and shut the door. He still had the packet of letters in his hand as he said, 'Excuse me, Miss Wharton, but I do not quite understand what you want.'
'I wanted Mr. Jones's letters; the letters addressed to Mr. James Jones, the junior partner,' replied Stella.
'By whose authority do you ask? I am sorry to appear rude; but, you see, this is a serious matter. I should not like to refuse a request of yours, as the firm have a very high opinion of you, and, I know, trust you implicitly; but it is against all rules and regulations to give the letters of the partners into any hands but their own. Trade secrets, you know, Miss Wharton,' he wound up, with a smile.
Stella wished she had never asked for the letters, and replied in her coldest voice, 'I did not know it was against the rules. I have not Mr. James Jones's authority to ask for his correspondence, and of course I do not wish you to give it to me. I will wait till he comes, thank you;' and, so saying, she uncovered her typewriter as a sign that the conversation was at an end.
But the head-clerk stood there perplexed. Why had she asked for the letters? Ought he to give them? Would Mr. James be annoyed if he refused them? 'If you think Mr. James would wish you to have them'----he began doubtfully.
But Stella cut him short. 'It is of no consequence, thank you,' she said.
The head-clerk still lingered. 'Is it some special letter'----he began.
Stella interrupted him. 'That is my business,' she said curtly.
'I only thought you might have some letter that you were expecting which wanted answering,' he said, half-offended, for Stella's manner was not conciliatory.
'No, thank you; I will wait until Mr. James comes,' she repeated.
It was evidently no good talking to Stella, whom the head-clerk designated to himself a haughty young woman. And, vexed that this first encounter with her should have been such an unfortunate one, he went away, but decided to take counsel with one of the other heads of the firm if he should arrive first; or, if not, to see Mr. James and make his peace with him, if necessary, before Stella made any complaint.
As fortune would have it, the senior partner, Mr. Baines, arrived soon after, and to him the head-clerk took his tale.
Mr. Baines heard him in silence. 'Mr. James says she's a very good clerk, and I should imagine she is trustworthy; but one never knows. I've never seen the young lady myself. They say she is good-looking and very proud,' he remarked at last.
'She is both, sir; in fact, she's the prettiest young lady I've ever seen in my life. But proud!--proud isn't the word for it; she positively freezes you up. She looked so odd when I asked her why she wanted the letters that, upon my word, I didn't half like it; one never knows with women, not the best of them, sir,' said the head-clerk.
Mr. Baines laughed. 'Anyway, I should not worry about it; you did quite right not to give the letters to her, and if Mr. James says anything to me about it I shall take your part. If he had wished her to open his correspondence he should have given her his written authority; it would never do if any clerk who liked could ask for our letters, and so I shall tell him,' he declared.
The head-clerk went away, and hoped that he had done right. And Stella waited, with what patience she could, for Mr. James Jones's arrival, which was not until half-past ten, when she heard his step along the passage--there was no mistaking it, because it was so light and springy, the step of a man who loved and lived as much as was possible in the country. In fact, Stella had owned to herself that if she had met him in society she should have taken him for a country gentleman or a sailor, certainly not for a business man, which he clearly was from choice, since Mrs. Ryan said that he was very rich, and that he could retire from business to-morrow.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE JUNIOR PARTNER.
Some months later it would have seemed impossible to Stella that she had worked herself into a state about such a trifle as a foolish letter from Vava to the junior partner, which, as she owned to herself, said nothing but the truth, for she knew she was stiff and proud, and that poverty made her stiffer and prouder, and that Mr. Jones knew it, and was far too friendly with Vava to resent her familiarity. But this morning the one thought that possessed her was that she must get that letter whatever happened. She could never face Mr. Jones after he had been asked by her younger sister to put up with her stiffness because she was poor and could not help it. So when his step was heard she just waited until he was in his office and had time to take off his hat and coat, and then she knocked at the door.
There was a murmur of voices within, and then the head-clerk opened the door, and said to Mr. Jones, 'Miss Wharton, sir.'
'Oh come in, Miss Wharton. I am late this morning, and your letters are not ready for you yet,' he replied.
'I should like to speak to you before you open them, if you please,' she said.
'Certainly, come in and sit down.--I'll see you in a few minutes, Leighton,' he added to the head-clerk.
'Excuse me, sir, but I want to speak to you too, and perhaps my twenty-five years' service may give me the right of precedence,' said Mr. Leighton, who was not very tactful.
'Not of a lady, Leighton. I expect your business can wait,' said Mr. Jones, turning civilly to Stella.
'I'm afraid it can't, sir; it has to do with Miss Wharton'----he began.
Stella had always thought the junior partner one of the easiest-going and most good-tempered of men, and she was startled by the look of anger that came into his face and his stern voice as he replied, 'You can have nothing to do with this lady. I thought I made that understood.--I hope you have not been annoyed in any way?' he continued to Stella.
But Stella, though she was annoyed with the senior clerk for his persistence, and rather angry that he should be there to complain of her, was too just not to know that it was her own fault, and she said in her proud way, 'Not in the least, thank you. On the contrary, I am afraid I annoyed your clerk by asking for your letters. I did not know it was against the rules.'
'So it is, Mr. Jones, without your authority,' began Mr. Leighton, anxious to defend himself.
But Mr. Jones cut him short. 'It's all right, Leighton; I quite understand how the mistake arose. Miss Wharton wished to get on with her letters; and, knowing she has our complete confidence, she thought she could ask for such a simple thing. If she ever makes any request in future, remember she has my authority,' he said.
Mr. Leighton left the room with a 'Very good, sir.' But he was far from thinking that it was very good, and might have been heard muttering in his own room about a 'pretty face' being the very mischief in a City office, and a nice thing for them all if she was to be allowed to ask for what she liked, and have it too. 'A proud minx!' he wound up viciously.
Meanwhile, Stella, being left with the junior partner, began to explain. 'It was not your business correspondence I wished to see, Mr. Jones, but a private letter.' She stopped, for really it sounded very odd; and then she continued, 'May I just look at the addresses of the letters, please?'
'Certainly,' said Mr. Jones, handing her his letters, with a perfectly grave and business-like face. Not a sign of surprise nor annoyance at this truly extraordinary request was to be seen on his face, nor even a gleam of amusement in his eyes.
Stella took the letters and looked them through; but in vain! Vava's letter was not amongst them! She looked a second time, and then handed them back, with a worried air, to Mr. Jones, who apparently waited for an explanation, which Stella did not find easy to give. She could not understand the non-arrival of the letter, unless, indeed, Vava had addressed it wrongly. Then it occurred to her that it might have been delayed and come by the next post; and even as the thought passed through her mind a clerk brought in some more letters.
'You might open those to save time, as we are late to-day, while I go through these,' said the junior partner, seeing that Stella was not ready with an explanation.
But neither among this pile was there one with Vava's childish handwriting. If Stella had not herself seen the letters delivered she would have thought that Mr. Jones might have received the letter and hidden it from her; but she saw them in the head-clerk's hands when she came in, and watched him lay them on the desk before the junior partner. Still, there was just a chance that it had been taken before she came in, being a very unbusiness-like letter, and likely to have been noticed and put on the top, and she felt she must put her mind to rest; so she asked, 'Excuse me, Mr. Jones, but are these all the letters that have arrived this morning?'
'To the best of my knowledge, yes; at least, they are all that I have received,' he replied; but still he did not ask why.
And, for the life of her, Stella could not get herself to tell him why, but began mechanically opening the letters and reading them without taking in what they were about, until, with a start, it dawned upon her that she was reading a private letter of invitation from some people she knew. She gave an exclamation of surprise and annoyance at her carelessness, which made Mr. Jones look up.
'I beg your pardon, I did not think of what I was doing,' she said, handing him the letter.
'Oh that's all right; there's nothing private in that. Rothery often writes to me here; he says he has a better chance of being answered,' he observed.
Lord Rothery was a neighbour, and had been a great admirer of Stella, and he was a friend of the junior partner. Wonders would never cease! Stella was perturbed at the information, for the letter said that he should be up in town that day, and was coming to see Mr. Jones in his office to fix up dates for their yachting.
'I know--I knew Lord Rothery,' she said at last in desperation, for she felt that she could not meet him in Mr. Jones's office.
'Ah, yes, of course, he was a neighbour of yours. I am sure he will be delighted to meet you again, Miss Wharton,' said the junior partner politely.
'But I don't want to meet him!' Stella exclaimed impulsively, and then stopped. This morning was going all wrong; she had meant to be very polite, but more reserved than ever, and here she was, on the contrary, having more conversation with her employer than she had had all the time she had been with him.
Mr. Jones seemed to understand at once; and, in spite of herself, Stella could not help being grateful to him. 'In that case I had better come and dictate my letters to you in your room, for Rothery has a light-hearted way of bursting in upon me without waiting to be announced; he won't take my business seriously, and persists that I come here for amusement, as I can't want to make more money,' he says.
But when they were in her room, and she had taken down all her notes, and Mr. Jones got up to go, she summoned up all her courage and said, 'I wish to explain to you that my little sister wrote you a foolish letter on Saturday, and that I would rather you did not read it.'
'So you meant to abstract it from my letters?' he said, looking at her very straight.
But Stella lifted her head, and looked back just as straight as she replied, 'I meant to do no such thing. I simply meant to give you the letter, which I should know by the handwriting, and ask you as a gentleman not to read it.'
A gleam came into James Jones's eyes as she said this; but he replied quietly, 'I think you might trust me, Miss Wharton, as a gentleman, not to take any notice of what a child like Vava said. You know, or rather you don't know, that business men can behave honourably and be gentlemen as well as the bluest-blooded among you.'
'I hope I have not implied the contrary, and I do not suppose you would pay any attention to what Vava said; but I should be very much obliged, all the same, if you would give me the letter unopened,' remarked Stella.
'I am afraid that is impossible,' he said gravely.
'Impossible!' said Stella, and then her pride and anger got the better of her. 'I fail to see why it is impossible, nor why you should persist in wishing to read a letter which I tell you I did not wish my sister to write to you. If it is some mistaken sense of loyalty to Vava, I may as well tell you that she has told me what was in it, and knows that I am asking for it back unread,' she said.
Mr. Jones looked undecided for a moment, and then he observed, 'I am sorry that she told you the nonsense she wrote, and I am very sorry that you have taken it so seriously. I would not refuse a request of yours for the world, Miss Wharton, and I only wish I could make your life here less distasteful to you'----he began.
Stella interrupted him. 'Then why not promise to give me the letter when it comes, without reading it?' she said eagerly.
Mr. Jones thought if Stella had been pretty before she had never looked so beautiful as she did at this moment, as she laid aside her pride for a moment, to plead for the unlucky letter. He would have given a good deal to have been able to gratify her. 'Miss Wharton,' he said, 'you really are exaggerating this matter, and, if you will excuse my speaking plainly, you are not very just or polite to myself in objecting to my receiving a friendly letter from your little sister. After all, I am not a cad or such an objectionable person that you need mind her writing foolish confidences to me. I hope you will believe that I shall in no way take advantage of them?'
'That is not the point; but as you refuse to return me the letter I have only one course open to me, and that is to resign my post in your office,' said Stella, looking very white and angry.
'I have no wish to keep you here against your will, and as I am so obnoxious to you perhaps you will be happier in another office; and, as it happens, I know of a post that is vacant, and that you can have on my recommendation. You will allow me to say that we shall regret your departure very much, for it will be difficult to replace you,' he observed, and left the room.
Stella sat for a moment doing nothing; then she took up her letters and began transcribing them, and so the morning passed away, and she thought she had never passed such a miserable one. On her way to lunch she took her letters to the junior partner's room and knocked at his door; but instead of his usual cheery, 'Come in!' he came hastily to the door, and, only opening it a few inches, took the letters with a polite 'Thank you.'
And as she turned away, Stella heard Lord Rothery's hearty laugh, and she understood Mr. Jones's thought for her, and felt a little ashamed of herself; but stay there after his refusal of her request she could not, and she thought sadly of having to face strangers again in a new office, and wondered whether she would receive as much consideration there as she had done at Baines, Jones & Co.'s, and she could not help thinking that it had been very kind of the junior partner to assure her of another berth immediately on leaving him. 'He knows I should miss the money,' she said bitterly to herself.
However, that afternoon when she went to his room he was as civil as ever, though very grave. He said nothing about Lord Rothery, nor about her leaving until she was going out of the room, and then he observed, 'I would rather you had not known this, Miss Wharton, and I am sorry your sister told you what she had written. Of course I should have returned the letter if it had been possible; I certainly wouldn't have read it if I had known what you feel about it.'
'I really don't understand. I made it clear this morning; but since you have read it there is no more to be said,' she replied in tones of scorn.
'It is very easy to understand; the letter arrived on Saturday afternoon, and I happened to be here and opened it. I only laughed, and liked the child better for her openness. I have it here; you can take it and read it if you like, unless you will do me the honour to believe that there is nothing in it which makes me respect either of you less, and to let me keep the letter.'
Stella struggled with many emotions during this speech, and then she said in a subdued voice, 'Pray, keep it,' and turned to leave the room.
'And may we consider your resignation withdrawn?' he asked.
'Certainly,' said Stella, and she could not help feeling somehow that she had made herself very ridiculous, and it gave her an unwonted feeling of humility as she went home, which Vava's conversation did not help to allay.
'Well,' was her greeting, 'what did Mr. Jones say?'
'He got the letter on Saturday afternoon, so I was too late to prevent his opening it,' Stella replied.
'O-oh! But you needn't really mind, Stella; he would not think any the less of you for it,' she observed.
'He was very polite about it,' said Stella in a reserved tone.
Vava looked inquiringly at her sister. 'I hope you were polite, because he's a most awfully nice man to be with, and you don't half-appreciate it,' she said with her usual candour.
And then Doreen, who was buying a book at the bookstall, joined them, and the subject was dropped, to Stella's relief; and Vava, who would have liked to know what Mr. Jones said, finding her curiosity was not to be gratified by Stella, privately made up her mind to ask Mr. Jones on Saturday when he helped her with her algebra.
What satisfaction she got out of him will be told later on; but, though the storm had blown over this time, it was not the last quarrel between Stella and her employer, and Vava declared to Mrs. Morrison that it was 'no good, for Stella would never get on with Mr. James Jones, who really was the nicest man she had ever met, and quite a gentleman.' Whether this was a true prophecy time will show.
CHAPTER XX.
VAVA ON FRIENDS.
Both the sitting-rooms at 2 Heather Road were rarely used at the same time, for Vava learnt her lessons either with Doreen or with Mrs. Morrison in the kitchen, which, the girl declared, was 'the most comfortable room in the house,' and which, at any rate, was always spotlessly clean, and had a bright fire burning, and certainly looked inviting enough with the kindly, gray-haired woman sitting in the wooden arm-chair at the table knitting stockings for her 'young leddies' or mending their clothes. So that Stella would have been alone if she had not sat with the two others, who were only too glad to have her, not only because they both liked her, but because they did not care to be left alone either.
It was a sad fact which Amy had come to realise, that Eva no longer made a friend of her, but shut herself up within herself, and only opened out to Mrs. Morrison, and even to her she only spoke about her life before she came to London, since which, she explained, she had only existed. She never spoke of the present time.
As for Vava, she avoided Eva's society rather than sought it. Stella allowed her to be as much with Doreen as she liked, and she took advantage of the permission not only to do her lessons with her, but to invite her to learn knitting or hear tales of the Highlands from Mrs. Morrison, when, if she liked, Eva was free to join them, and was welcomed.
This seemed quite natural; but when Vava had spent two or three whole Saturdays with Doreen, for she did not often go to the City on that day now, Stella woke up to the fact that Eva was rather out of it. She and Amy were great friends, and though they always invited Eva to come with them on their outings, they knew that she felt it dull, for their conversation was all of books which Eva had never read. So Stella took Vava to task.
'How is it you never go out with Eva, Vava? She has two or three times had to go for a walk by herself, because you were busy, so she said, and then you go off a little later with Doreen!' she protested.
'Of course I go with Doreen; she is in my class, and we do everything together, and I have more to say to her,' said Vava.
'But that is rather selfish; Eva is living in the same house with you, and yet you take no notice of her except at meal-times, and the poor girl is lonely,' expostulated Stella.
'She can go out with you and Amy. Amy was her friend before she came to live with us, why shouldn't she be friends with her still?' argued Vava.
'I am afraid I have rather taken possession of Amy; but I thought as you two were much of an age you would fraternise, and I find Amy's society very congenial,' said Stella.
'And so do I find Doreen's society very congenial, and you can't be friends with people just because it is convenient; but I don't mind asking her to come with Doreen and me next Saturday,' replied Vava.
Fortunately Eva did not hear this condescending remark, and accepted the invitation, and the three went botanising some miles out of town.
Stella elected to stay at home, as Amy had letters to write, and she was sitting alone in their pretty sitting-room when a motor drove up to the door, and looking out of the bow-window in which she was sitting she saw Mrs. Montague Jones alight. As she had been seen, there was nothing for it but to receive her visitor civilly when Mrs. Morrison ushered her in. But before the old Scotchwoman did this, she stopped to have quite an animated conversation in the hall with the visitor. Stella had never been annoyed with her old nurse before, but she felt quite cross at this odd behaviour. The motor was throbbing so noisily outside that she could not hear what they were saying, but they were evidently on very good terms with each other.
This may have helped to make her manner colder than usual; for Mrs. Montague Jones almost made up her mind to give up any further attempts to be friendly with this unfriendly girl. However, she had strong reasons besides kind-heartedness for persevering, and persevere she did. Fortunately Stella, who, to do her justice, was quite unaware of her cold manner, remembered that it was to Mrs. Jones's kind thoughtfulness that she had that pretty sitting-room, and she hastened to thank her.
'Indeed we were only too glad for you to have it, as we have plenty of sitting-rooms besides that, and we had settled, my husband and son and I, that we would not use your rooms at Lomore--yours and Vava's,' said Mrs. Jones.
The Joneses were showing very kindly feeling, which surprised Stella, who answered lamely, 'You are very kind; but it does not matter, as they are not our rooms now.'
'But we hope to see you there some day; in fact, you will always be most welcome to occupy them. At any rate, my son would not have them used, and insisted on the furniture being sent down here,' said Mrs. Jones.
'It is very kind of your son; but please explain to him that the place is no longer ours, nor have we any connection with it now, and that we are never likely to see it again. I hope you will not think me rude, Mrs. Jones, but I could never go to Lomore again,' Stella said; and she could not help the tears rising to her eyes, much to her annoyance.
'Indeed I understand that, and I feel that you must hate us, and if it were not that my husband is so taken with Vava and with you, if you will forgive my saying so, I would not intrude my acquaintance upon you; but I must give you his message. He wants me to ask if you and your sister will not come home with us and dine after the breaking-up at the City school on Friday week, and let us go and see _Henry VIII._ acted afterwards; Vava is studying it at school. My husband has to take the chair and make a speech at the breaking-up, and I shall have to go with him. You are going of course?'
'I do not know, but I dare say I shall be able to get away from the office. I am not a free agent, you know; but I will ask my employer's leave to have the afternoon off,' said Stella.
'Of course you can have the afternoon, and you will come back and dine with us, won't you--you and your sister? I should like you to know my son better,' Mrs. Jones begged her.
Stella thought this rather an odd way of speaking, as she did not know the aforesaid son, 'better or worse,' nor had she any desire to know him, and was sure that she could picture him as a young edition of his bullet-headed, commonplace-looking father; but she felt that she could not refuse the invitation to dinner, and accepted it with her pretty smile, which made Mrs. Jones forgive a good deal.
'My son will be very pleased,' was her reply, which made Stella almost repent of her acceptance, and she was surprised at Mrs. Jones's continual and tactless references to her son and heir, as Stella bitterly felt. She understood, or thought she understood, that in a way Mrs. Jones and this son felt that they had ousted her from her inheritance, and wanted to make amends to her. 'As if they could!' she said with some scorn.
However, it was impossible to remain untouched by such kindness, and when Mrs. Morrison brought in hot scones she said quite friendlily, 'This is in your honour, Mrs. Jones; nursie does not make scones for every one, and I don't think I should have been favoured this afternoon, as Vava is out.'
So Mrs. Jones went away quite satisfied with her visit, and told her husband, with a sigh of relief, 'She's actually coming; but upon my word, Monty, I doubt if the game's worth the candle. It's more exhausting to try and get on with that young woman than any number of haughty dowagers, and really I should be sorry for our boy to fall in love with her; it would be slow work having a statue for a wife.'
'She would not be a statue if she were a happy wife; the City has petrified her,' said Mr. Jones.
'I don't remember that she was particularly unbending at Lomore before the City had time to chill her,' said Mrs. Montague Jones dryly.
'No, but adversity had done that,' her husband reminded her; and he was as pleased as his wife at Stella's acceptance of their invitation.
But this was nothing to Vava's delight. 'And you actually are going? I am so glad, and you are going to see _Henry VIII._ also! Nursie must make haste and finish my black embroidered silk, and I must finish reading the play. Mr. Jones says it's splendidly staged!' she exclaimed.
'When did you see Mr. Jones?' inquired Stella.
'In the office yesterday, when I came to fetch you. He told me where to go botanising this afternoon,' explained Vava.
'Oh,' said Stella, 'that Mr. Jones!' and it flashed across her mind that the two Joneses certainly knew each other, and very probably were related, and that, also very probably, at the office Mr. Jones had mentioned the fact of Vava's interest in _Henry VIII._ and that she was going botanising without her (Stella), who would consequently be at home alone. Well, after all, it did not matter; they meant to be kind, and she would accept their kindness in the spirit it was given.
'Do you know life's very funny? I mean, the way things happen are funny,' observed Vava, breaking in upon her sister's thoughts.
'What is that apropos of?' inquired her elder sister, smiling.
'Why, this afternoon. I thought it was going to be spoilt for me because Eva was coming with us for our walk, and then I come home and find a delightful invitation waiting for me--a motor drive, a dinner-party, and the theatre; and I dare say we shall go and have ices at some nice restaurant afterwards. Mr. Jones knows I love ices,' observed Vava.
'Don't be greedy, Vava; I think you are getting spoilt. Why should Eva's going with you spoil your walk? I hope Doreen is not making mischief between you? You liked Eva at first, I thought?' said Stella in a tone of reproof.
'Doreen is above such a thing; it's Eva's own fault; besides, I do like her, only I don't always like the way she talks,' said Vava rather hotly.
'She talks a great deal better than Doreen, as a matter of fact. What has she done to offend you? You had better tell me, for I think she feels that you avoid her, and it is very unkind unless you have some good reason,' persisted Stella.
'I haven't anything against her; it is just that Doreen and I don't approve of her,' announced Vava.
'Pray, what business have you and Doreen to judge other people?' exclaimed Stella. 'What do you disapprove of? I insist upon knowing.'
'You don't approve of her yourself, Stella,' said Vava.
'I don't remember ever having said so.'
'You said you did not approve of her buying that suite of furniture,' Vava reminded her.
'I beg your pardon, I said I did not approve of getting furniture on the hire-system for myself; but I never criticised Eva. I know nothing of her private affairs, nor do I wish to pry into them, and you and Doreen have nothing to do with them either; so if that is all you have against her you had better put it out of your mind.'
'It isn't only that. She never goes to church'----began Vava.
'Vava, I am ashamed of you! Eva may well say that churchgoing does not seem to make people better. What right have you to set yourself up to judge other people in that pharisaical manner? It is a most unchristian spirit. I know I am not a very good example, for I am not at all humble; but I think if we want Eva to go to church and be better we shall only do it by being very nice to her, and not by treating her unkindly and making her feel that we think ourselves superior,' said Stella very gravely.
Vava listened with equal gravity, but made no reply. If she had spoken what was in her mind she would have said that those were not the only two reasons for disapproving of Eva; but she abstained, and when she saw Doreen that evening she informed her that she was going to be nice to Eva.
'I think we are nice to her; we took her for a walk with us on Saturday, though she doesn't care a bit about botany, and wanted to be at the skating-rink or the pictures, and talked bosh.' She paused, and then added, 'By the way, does your sister know what silly stuff she talks?' she asked.
'No, I did not tell her. Stella is particular, and if she knew some of the things Eva says she would be very angry; in fact, she would probably not let me speak to her at all; and then I don't know what would happen, for we could not go on living in the same house like that,' remarked Vava.
'Anyway, I don't believe my mother would let me be friendly with her if she knew. I don't know what to do,' said Doreen.
'We must reform her,' announced Vava.
Doreen laughed. 'I don't think we should have much influence upon her. She thinks she's very clever because she has read some silly books which say that one should get all the enjoyment one can out of this life because it's all that's certain, and you can't argue with a person like that, who says you have a right to be happy, and that things are right that you know quite well are wrong, only you can't prove it. Father would be horrified if he heard her; he'd say she was dangerous.'
'She's only silly,' said Vava in a superior tone. Then they were both silent, until she exclaimed suddenly, 'Doreen, I have it. I'll tell nursie all about it!'
'She'll be worse than father; she's awfully strait-laced,' protested Doreen.
'Yes, but she's very charitable too, and she likes Eva. If any one can do anything with Eva, nursie can,' declared Vava.
'Well, tell Mrs. Morrison, then, because I think some one ought to know, and to tell her that she ought not to talk to us like that; we don't like it, and it muddles one up,' said Doreen with a laugh.
'It does not muddle me; it's against the Bible, and I'd rather go by that than by Eva,' said Vava; and that ended the conversation.
CHAPTER XXI.
EVA'S CONDUCT AND ITS SAD EFFECTS.
But when Vava told the old housekeeper of Eva's unorthodox views and sayings she did not seem at all shocked, or even impressed, by the information.
'Says we are put into this world to enjoy ourselves, does she? Well, so we are, and so we shall if we do what is right,' she observed cheerfully.
'But, nursie, you don't think Eva is doing what is right, do you?' inquired Vava, who was quite put out at this way of taking what the girl had been half-afraid to tell her, for fear the old woman should refuse to have anything more to do with Eva.
She was to be yet further surprised, for the housekeeper turned on her severely. 'And who am I, to say whether the poor young lady is doing right or wrong? As for what she says about religion, we know she is mistaken; but all you have to do is to refuse to talk about it. I never knew any good come of arguing on such matters, especially amongst young people. You can say a prayer for Miss Eva, and that's all you have to say,' she said, and turned to poke the fire.
Vava was silenced for the moment, and then her irrepressible spirits, which had returned at sight of her old nurse and the new home, burst forth, 'What will you do in summer, nursie? You'll have no fire to poke then, and you won't be able to change the conversation when you want!'
Nurse gave a smile of grim amusement (she rarely laughed) at Vava's shrewdness. 'I think I'll manage it without the poker, Miss Vava,' she declared.
At any rate, though she had not been very sympathetic, and did not seem to think it mattered, or that Eva was worse than any one else (or so Vava imagined), she had set the girl's mind at rest; and as neither nursie nor Stella seemed to think her an undesirable companion, she and Doreen must just invite her to go with them on their expeditions, when, if she chose, Eva could be very amusing, only that lately she had not chosen, or else had been too unhappy; for, in spite of all her talk about enjoying life, she did not look happy.
'All right,' said Doreen, with a shrug of her shoulders when Vava told her. 'I'm sure I don't want to be a Pharisee, and if we've got no poker to turn the conversation, as Mrs. Morrison has, we can use our tongues, and perhaps she's right, and that it would be no good even for her to talk to Eva; she's frightfully obstinate.'
The two Wharton sisters, it will be remembered, shared a large bedroom, which was in the front of the house, and the other two girls had smaller bedrooms at the back; while Mrs. Morrison's was half-way up the stairs, and here Vava always went to say good-night and get her 'evening text' from her old nurse, with whom it had been a practice ever since she had been a little girl to say a text to her, generally one which she had read that evening, to take to bed with her, as the old woman put it.
She had said good-night to the housekeeper, and was going to her own room, when she heard what sounded like a moan from Eva's room as she passed the door. 'Eva!' she cried, 'are you ill?'
There was no answer; but, as it seemed to the listener, a scuffle and a kind of gasp. Vava had a vivid imagination, and her mind jumped to the conclusion that this meant a burglar with whom Eva was struggling. Vava was no coward, and she was a strong athletic girl as well, so she did not hesitate a moment, but opened the door and burst into Eva's room. She stopped in amazement, for there was no burglar; but Eva, her face swollen with crying, was apparently making a survey of all her wardrobe and other possessions, for the bed, chairs, and floor were strewn with clothes, books, and all sorts of things.
'What do you want? Why didn't you knock at the door?' she inquired, looking annoyed and trying to dry her eyes.
'I am very sorry; I thought you were ill, or that there was something the matter,' stammered Vava, who wanted badly to comfort Eva, but did not know how to set about it.
'There's nothing the matter; I'm simply tidying up, and had a fit of the blues. Go to bed and don't say anything about it, there's a good girl,' replied Eva.
'Good-night, Eva. I 'm sorry you've got the blues. Are you sure there is nothing I can do for you?' asked Vava.
'No, nothing. Good-night,' said Eva, shutting and locking the door after her visitor.
Vava went slowly upstairs. The voice in which Eva had said 'nothing' made her feel miserable; but she did not see what she could do, and, even if the latter had not asked her not to say anything about it, she had not met with so much encouragement the last time she had talked about Eva and her concerns as to make her do so again.
After she was gone, Eva threw herself upon the bed, regardless of the piles of clothing already covering it, and gave way to a fit of weeping which seemed to do her good, for she sat up, and with a long sigh began to tidy up, which she had told Vava she was doing, though it certainly had not looked like it. And having put nearly everything away in the wardrobe or chest of drawers, she made up two parcels--one quite small, containing a gold bracelet and watch; and the other a large one, in which she put a very pretty silk frock. Then, with another huge sigh, she went to bed.
The next morning at breakfast Eva's place was vacant.
'Where is Eva? Is she not down?' asked Amy, who was generally the last, and now sat down to take a hurried breakfast.
'No, she has not appeared yet.--You might run and see if she has overslept herself, Vava,' suggested Stella.
'I wish you'd go, Stella,' replied Vava.
Stella did not look at all pleased at Vava's disobligingness; but she was too dignified to argue, and getting up she went herself to Eva's room.
Amy looked with disapproval at Vava, who said, 'Eva did not like it when I went to her room last night.'
'I think she had a headache; she said so when I knocked at her door,' observed Amy.
'She is not in her room!' exclaimed Stella on her return.
Amy got up, looking disturbed. 'I wonder if Mrs. Morrison has seen her?' she remarked, and went to inquire.
'Yes, she's had her breakfast and has gone off to town,' said the old lady.
'Gone to town? It's only a quarter-past eight! Why has she gone so early?' she inquired.
'That I can't tell you,' said Mrs. Morrison.
'I shall come up with you; I do dislike travelling by myself in these morning trains. I can't understand Eva,' Amy said with a sigh.
It did not occur to Amy to ask the housekeeper if Eva had left any message or explanation for her, and so she got none. As a matter of fact, Eva had said as she went out, 'If they ask where I've gone just say I have business in town.'
Mrs. Morrison made no reply, nor did she appear to see the two parcels which Eva tried to hide as she left the house; but when the gate shut behind her Mrs. Morrison looked after her with kindly pity. 'Poor bairn, she'll learn by this bitter lesson,' she said to herself; and yet Eva had made no confidences to her, nor had Mrs. Morrison said anything to the girl about her private affairs. In fact, Vava was inclined to think that the old woman was blind to Eva's faults, for she seemed to pet her even more than the rest.
She would have been confirmed in this opinion if she had been down earlier; for when Eva came into the kitchen and asked in a hurried way if she could have a cup of tea, as she wanted to go earlier to town, instead of saying she ought to have told her the evening before, Mrs. Morrison said pleasantly, 'You can have your breakfast as soon as you like. What train must you catch?'
'The 8.5,' replied Eva.
'Then you have twenty-five minutes to eat a good breakfast, and if you will be so good as to sit by the fire and toast this bread I will have it ready for you in five minutes,' declared the housekeeper.
It was a cold March morning, and Eva looked very chilly, and perhaps it was that which made the kindly Scotchwoman suggest the toast and draw up a chair for her before the bright kitchen fire, for as a matter of fact she generally made it on the toaster.
Eva was only too glad to sit close to the fire and watch the good woman moving so quietly about and yet getting everything so quickly. 'Let me have it here, may I?' she cried impulsively, for the old woman's presence and her motherly attentions soothed the girl.
'If you wish. I doubt if the sitting-room is very warm yet, so I'll put your tray on this table near the fire, and you'll get well-warmed before you go out, and that's the secret of not taking chills,' remarked the old woman as she put a plate of crisp bacon on the tray and a hot roll beside it.
'You are a lovely cook, Mrs. Morrison,' said Eva. 'When I'm rich I'd like you to live with me.'
'If you want to be rich when you are old you must save when you are young. I'm thinking of buying you all money-boxes and putting into them all the money I save for you every week,' she observed, for she was given the housekeeping money every week, on Saturday, and after putting aside for the rent, the rest was left with her to do as she thought best; and on the next Saturday she accounted for it to Stella and Amy, who, she insisted, must go into the accounts and see how it all went, and to their astonishment and delight there was always a small balance, which they left with the housekeeper for emergencies.
'I don't know how you manage to save anything. I couldn't. In fact, I can't live on what I earn. If I don't get a rise I don't know what I am to do,' said Eva.
'But you have more than my young lady, so you told me; if she can live on it, why can't you?' objected the housekeeper.
'Because I am extravagant, I suppose; but I can't, and there's the end of it,' said Eva.
'Nay, my bairn, that's not the end of it; the end of it is a very bad one--debt and dishonesty, for they are the same thing to me--if one does not try to put a better end to it; and, I'm sure, you would not keep in debt, would you? But there, it's no time for such conversation at this hour, when you ought to be eating a good breakfast before going out to earn an honest livelihood. Have a piece more bacon, Miss Eva; it's hot and will keep you going till dinner-time--you've a long morning before you, remember,' urged the housekeeper.
Then she made up a little parcel with Eva's lunch, for she declared it was extravagant to pay sixpence a day for dinner when she could always give them pies or sandwiches to eat at midday, and cook them a nice hot dinner in the evening.
Eva did not say anything, but though she was quiet she looked less miserable than she had done when she came down. That day she did not go to the Enterprise Club, where they ate their cold lunch or had the pies heated if they liked; and when Amy rang her up on the telephone she said she was lunching with a friend. Nor did she come home by the same train as Amy, who even waited for the next, and then gave her up in despair.
'What happened to you, Eva?' asked Stella. Neither Amy nor Vava cared or dared to question her when she did come in, looking very tired and with dark rims round her eyes.
'I missed my train,' she replied, throwing herself into a chair in an attitude of utter exhaustion.
'You must have missed two trains,' said Amy.
'Yes, I did; I saw the second one go out of the station as I came in; the office clock must have been slow,' observed Eva.
'I should not trust to the office clock,' said Stella.
'I thought you said your watch had never lost a minute since you had had it,' remarked Vava.
It seemed an innocent enough remark; but Eva flushed crimson, and said, 'I wish you would not worry me like this. I suppose I can miss my train without all this fuss?' Then she got up and left the room, and they noticed that she had not her wrist-watch on.
No one made any remark upon her conduct, and at dinner they tried to cheer her up by being very cheerful themselves; but the effort proved a vain one. After a rather depressing meal, Eva got up and went to bed, as she said; at all events, she retired to her room. Vava went off to do her lessons with Doreen, and Amy and Stella were left together.
'Stella, what are we to do? We can't let her go on like this!' cried Amy.
'I don't see what we are to do. Of course it is easy to see that something is upsetting her, and I suppose it is the payment for that furniture; but I do not think she is in the mood to be spoken to about it. We must just wait until she says something herself, and be as nice to her as we can meanwhile,' was Stella's advice.
'I am so afraid she will get into more and more trouble; this friend, whoever she is, with whom she lunched to-day has not a good influence upon her. I always notice that she propounds some of her reckless ideas after she has been with her, and I have no doubt it was she who persuaded her to buy that wretched furniture, which is far too large for her room,' said Amy.
'She must buy her own experience, as nursie says; and, by the way, she told me the other day not to worry about Eva, as she would come all right, for her heart was in the right place,' said Stella.
'One consolation is that she is going to her old home for Easter, and I am hoping that seeing her old friends will bring her back to what she was when she came up to town. I am going there too. I know most of her friends, and I am sure they will do her good,' said Amy.
The object of all this solicitude had gone to bed, and was lying there reading a book she did not wish them to see downstairs, which engrossed her so much that she fell asleep over it and left her gas burning all night!
CHAPTER XXII.
DANTE'S IDYLL.
'We shall just have a quiet Easter here with nursie, Vava; you won't mind not having sea-breezes now that you have her, will you?' Stella inquired of her sister a week before the Easter holidays began.
They were sitting in the Enterprise Club waiting for Amy, who now had frequently to go home alone, as Eva was often very late, and had told her friend not to wait for her. So, as it only meant getting home half-an-hour later, the sisters had promised to wait for Amy to-day.
All round them were girls talking of their Easter holidays, and every one was going away somewhere, either to the sea or to the country, or to their respective homes, wherever they were.
Stella knew very few of them, and those only to say good-morning to; but they all turned to ask her where she was spending her holidays and how long she had; and when she had told them she had ten days, and meant to spend them at home, they were loud in their expression of surprise.
And Vava too seemed to be depressed at hearing of all these plans for pleasure; though when they asked her if she did not want to go away she immediately answered by saying of course she did not.
One of the girls, with less tact than the others, guessing that it was a matter of expense, remarked, 'I should go away if I were you if only for the day, if you can't afford more. But it really wouldn't cost much; there are lots of places where they take in business girls for as little as ten shillings a week, and it will cost you nearly that at home. I can give you some addresses if you like.'
'No, thank you,' said Stella with stiff politeness, and she was glad that Amy appeared just then, so that she could get out of the club-room, which had never been so distasteful to her before.
'All the same, Stella,' observed Vava, when the three of them were in the train, and although Stella had made no remark upon the subject, 'I should like to go away for the day on Easter Monday. They say Bank Holiday is a horrid day in London, and you can get very cheap tickets to the sea on that day.'
'Go in an excursion train!' cried Stella in accents of dismay.
'You would not like it at all, Vava; it would be ten times worse than stopping in town. Besides, Blackstead is not town, and you will not see many holiday-makers down Heather Road; it will be quieter than an excursion train, with twenty people crowded into one carriage, and then spending the day at a crowded seaside resort,' said Amy.
'Oh well, I think it was only to say I had been somewhere; all the girls at school are going away, even Doreen will be away; but I don't really mind,' said Vava.
And so it was arranged, and the next week was spent in rehearsing a play for Founder's Day.
'Fancy, Stella, I am to be Beatrice in our play; only it is not called Beatrice, but "Beatreechee,"' explained Vava, pronouncing it, as she hoped, in correct Italian fashion.
'What play are you acting--Shakespeare's?' inquired Stella.
'No, Dante's, and the proper Beatrice has got ill, and they have chosen me, partly because I am the same height, and so her clothes will fit me, and partly because they say my face suits, though I don't think I am a bit Italian-looking. Do you think so, Stella?' Vava demanded.
Stella looked at her sister, and then remarked with a smile, 'No, I don't think you are; at least, not the type we call Italian.' But she privately thought the stage-manager had made a very good choice, for Vava had improved in looks since her arrival in London, and would make a handsome Beatrice.
'Miss Briggs says it does not matter, as none of us are Italian, nor look it; but that, as I have a good memory and can learn quickly, I shall be able to learn up her part. It's a lovely part, Stella, though Miss Briggs says it's not historical at all, and that Dante never said anything about talking to Beatrice, and she doesn't believe he ever spoke to her; but that's nonsense. How could any man write pages and pages of poetry about a person he had never spoken to?' demanded Vava.
'Quite well. Imagination goes a long way with poets, and I was just wondering how you were going to act Beatrice. She does not say much in the poem, and then only as a spirit; so you don't want clothes to fit.'
'Ah, but it is all her life before she dies; the play begins at the party where Dante first meets Beatrice,' said Vava, who had the book of words in her hand and was studying it.
'But you, or rather Beatrice, are only nine years old at that party. How are you going to manage that?' demanded Stella, for Vava was a tall girl, and had grown taller and slimmer since she had been in London.
'We can't take any notice of that; you have no imagination, Stella. How can I make myself into a little child in the first act, and then be grown-up in the second?' she asked impatiently.
'Then I think I should not attempt such a play; it is making a parody of Dante's glorious poem,' protested Stella, who had studied Dante with her father, and thought this play presumptuous.
'It's not a parody, and my opinion is that it's better than Dante's,' declared Vava.
Stella laughed outright at this assertion.
But Vava was not crushed. 'You wait and see; it's got some lovely scenes in it, and the stage scenery is beautifully painted by ourselves--at least, in the school by the painting-mistress and the girls. There's the Bridge of the Trinità at Florence, where Dante meets me and makes a beautiful speech, and I have quite a lot to say to him there,' said Vava.
'You ought not to have,' interposed Stella, meaning from a historical point of view.
But Vava--who was 'rehearsing her play' to Stella more for her own benefit than to entertain her sister--was not at all pleased at this criticism, and replied irately, 'If you want to see your old Dante you'd better not come, for we are not going by it at all.'
'So it appears,' observed Stella dryly.
'How could we--horrid, gruesome stuff? Pray, how would you expect us to put on the stage a lake of boiling pitch, with a lot of people in it heads downwards and their legs struggling in the air? And who would come to see it if we did? I wouldn't take part in such a horrid piece! Why, even the reading of it made me feel quite ill,' argued Vava.
'You need not pick out that particular scene; there are beautiful passages in Dante; but I do not think it is suitable for staging, and I can't understand why it has been chosen,' remarked her sister.
'It is called _Dante: an Idyll_; and, as I said before, you wait and see whether it is not splendid. I must go and rehearse this with Doreen now,' replied Vava.
'Is Doreen to be in the play too?' asked Stella.
'Yes, she's a Florentine painter named Giotto. It's very funny, but her features are just like his in his picture; and there's a Jewish girl in the school with a long face who makes up very well as Dante. Oh you will be astonished when you see our play; we do things in style at our school, I can tell you!'
'Don't boast, Vava; it's very vulgar,' said Stella.
Vava did not answer back as she used to do, but went off to Doreen, whom she found studying her part diligently. 'I'm so glad you've come; it's no use saying this play to one's self. I know the words all right, but it's the coming in at the right place and the pronunciation. I wish, if you didn't mind, you would just say these speeches over first, and let me say them after you, and see if I can pronounce them like you. I would like to speak well, but I can't twist my mouth into shape as you do!' she exclaimed.
'But we don't twist our mouths; that is just what you do that you should not. See, talk like this, Doreen,' explained Vava; and for more than an hour she sat patiently repeating the words and correcting Doreen, who had a quick ear and copied her way of speaking fairly well, until at last Vava said, with a sigh of satisfaction, 'That's all right now, Doreen; you pronounce those words quite nicely, and you say your speeches ever so much better than the other girls; one would think you were a painter yourself, you speak with such feeling of the beautiful pictures you are supposed to be painting.'
'I don't know much about painting, though I like looking at pictures; but I do feel what I am saying, and I think it must have been splendid to have been Dante's friend as Giotto was, and have been inspired by him. No wonder he painted beautiful pictures, and one day I will go and see them all,' announced Doreen.
'I never thought of all that; then I ought to feel more still, because it is I that inspired Dante; but the worst of it is, Doreen, that I don't feel Beatrice at all,' Vava confided to her.
'How do you mean?' demanded Doreen.
'I don't feel as if I could possibly inspire a person like Dante; and, what's more, I don't want to,' she announced in a burst of confidence.
'You wouldn't like to have inspired the most beautiful poem that was ever written?' cried Doreen incredulously.
'No, I wouldn't like to have inspired a vision of such horrors,' maintained Vava stoutly.
Doreen could not help laughing at her tone. 'Then you can't admire some of my pictures,' she suggested.
'I like your little dog,' Vava replied, laughing too. This was an allusion to Giotto's famous sculpture of shepherds with a dog, on his beautiful tower at Florence.
And with this Doreen had to be satisfied.
'And you know, Doreen, they say I inspired him; but in this play I don't say anything very inspiring; it's Dante who has all the say, and utters all the beautiful speeches; I only have to try and look noble, and that's fearfully difficult and frightfully dull,' complained Vava.
'It's not difficult for you to look noble, because you are noble--in character, I mean--and you have a noble face,' declared Doreen.
'Oh Doreen! you horrid flatterer; that is just because you like me. I don't feel at all noble; but don't let's talk about that. Tell me if this is the proper way to move my hands when I am talking; the Italians gesticulate all the time they are talking, it appears. I don't know how they do it, for I have never been in Italy,' said Vava, talking rapidly, to prevent Doreen making any more such embarrassing remarks.
'You must wave them gracefully in the air, one at a time,' said Doreen, suiting the action to the word.
Doreen's action was anything but graceful, and Vava gave a peal of laughter.
'What is the matter?' demanded the former, stopping her windmill movements.
'I beg your pardon, but you did look so funny. I think I had better not pretend to be Italian; I can't move my hands gracefully, and I feel awkward all the time,' she said.
'Luckily I have not to be graceful, and I have a palette and paint-brush in my hands all the time; that gives me some occupation for my hands,' observed Doreen.
'Yes, but I don't believe you ought to point at people with your paint-brush; the Italians are a very polite nation, and I do not think they would do such a thing as that,' commented Vava.
Doreen looked grave. 'But I've got to point, and how am I to point except with my paint-brush, or the palette, which would be worse? I have one in each hand, and I haven't a third hand,' she said, after consideration.
Vava laughed. 'I suppose you can put one of them down for a minute. Giotto did not paint all day long,' she suggested.
'No, but I am going to. I would not be without them for the world, and I should feel as if I had six pairs of hands. I shall do like you, and not attempt to be an Italian,' she announced.
However, the two of them were very enthusiastic players, and at the dress-rehearsal it was doubtful which was the better. Vava, of course was prettier, and acted well, but hers was a difficult part; and Doreen seemed to have become an Italian artist for the time being, and entered into the life and feelings of a Florentine painter of the Middle Ages, and her dress was an exact copy of Giotto's. It was as well that the girls had become word-perfect in their play before the last week of the term; for that week, at least, Vava would have found it difficult to fix her mind on it. However, it was arranged that the dress-rehearsal should come off before the examination began, so as to leave the girls' minds free for them, and the girls all knew their parts a week beforehand.
Vava gave herself up to preparing for her examination, and took up nearly two hours of Mr. Jones's time one Saturday morning in having her algebra explained to her; and Stella, finding she could not stop this, decided that it would be best to take no notice of Mr. James Jones's goodness, and treat it as a personal matter between him and Vava, and have nothing to do with the matter, which was also Vava's opinion; for, as she said candidly to Stella, 'You are not so civil to him that he would care to do you a favour.'
Afterwards she felt that her candour both to Stella and the junior partner had been rather a mistake.
CHAPTER XXIII.
STELLA'S PRIDE.
As a rule, an employer feels no diffidence in offering one of his employés a rise in salary; but Mr. James Jones found himself wondering how he was to tell Miss Wharton that the three months being up, her salary would be raised to two pounds. He always enclosed her cheque in an envelope, and sent it by the housekeeper with some other letters every Saturday morning. But this Saturday he wrote out the cheque for the increased amount, and tried to compose a civil note to inform her that the time for the usual rise had arrived. To begin with, he did not know how to address her. 'Dear Madam' sounded too formal, and he did not dare to say 'Dear Miss Wharton.' So he pushed the cheque on one side, and began opening his letters and giving them to Stella.
When she had gone, a knock came to the door, and Vava's bright face appeared.
'What a surprise; I thought you had given me up and got another mathematical master!' cried Mr. Jones, looking very pleased to see his young pupil again.
'Indeed I haven't; only I got lazy about coming up to the City on Saturday when there was a nice cosy fire to sit by and old nursie to talk to; but the examinations are next week, and I wanted to ask you to explain one or two rules to me,' said Vava, bringing her book up to the junior partner's desk.
'I shall be delighted; but I want you to explain to me first how to do something,' replied Mr. Jones.
'Me? But I can't explain anything you can't understand!' she exclaimed incredulously.
'Yes you can; you understand your sister,' he observed.
'Oh Stella'----began Vava, rather embarrassed; for Stella had requested her since the episode of the letter not to discuss her or her private affairs with Mr. James Jones or any one else.
'And I don't--I don't want to hurt her feelings,' continued Mr. James Jones.
'Oh well, I don't suppose you would; she says you are very civil and gentlemanly, and'----Here Vava stopped.
'Did she say that? I am very glad to hear it. What were you going to say?' he inquired.
'I think I had better not say any more. You know I got into an awful row about that letter, and nursie was cross with me too; so I really have begun to be very careful what I say now,' announced Vava.
'You need not be careful with me; still, I don't want you to say what you think you ought not. Now will you explain my difficulty to me? I want to write to your sister, and I don't know how to begin the letter,' he told her.
Vava opened her eyes wide. 'But she is in the next room!'
'I know; but I really could not say it to her,' said the junior partner, looking uncomfortable.
Vava looked at him keenly. 'I can't imagine why not; she's not so frightening as all that, unless you want to propose to her,' she added with a laugh.
Mr. Jones laughed too, although he coloured and looked fearfully at the door, as if Stella might by some evil chance be there. 'Would she be frightening if one proposed?' he asked in joke.
'I hope you won't, because she would not marry you, you know,' responded Vava.
'Thank you,' said Mr. Jones. And then he added, in a dry tone, 'As a matter of fact, I was not going to take any such liberty; I was going to tell her'----Here he stopped.
'That you didn't want her any more?' suggested Vava.
'On the contrary, that her services were worth more to the firm than she was being paid for them, and that her salary would be raised,' he observed.
'How jolly! Why can't you tell Stella that straight out? She isn't ashamed of earning money,' declared Vava.
Mr. Jones was not so sure of that. However, he so far took Vava's advice as not to write, but simply to send the cheque of the increased amount, and leave Stella to speak of it.
Meanwhile Mr. Jones set to work to explain not only one or two rules, but to go through all the term's work, and spent, not half-an-hour, but two hours at it; and Stella, who came in with her letters, could not help feeling grateful, and admiring the young man for his good-nature and the interest he was evidently taking in his pupil.
'Now if that does not bring you out first in the examination I shall be surprised, that's all!' he exclaimed, when, having come to the last rule, Vava declared that she understood them all.
'Then I shall have to give the prize to you,' she replied, laughing, and went off.
Now it happened that Stella did not open her cheque at all that morning, being very busy translating a long communication from a French firm, and on the way home she took it out of its large business envelope to put into her pocket-book, when her eye fell on the amount. 'Dear me! how stupid of Mr. Jones; he has made this cheque out wrong. If I wanted to cash this money it would be very inconvenient,' said Stella, who was very particular about paying all bills and accounts regularly every week.
'It's all right; he's raised your salary,' put in Vava.
Stella grew crimson with anger. 'How do you know? And what have you been telling him to make him do it? If it is because I couldn't afford to take you to the seaside, I may as well tell you it won't make any difference, and I am surprised at your complaining of not having enough money; it's just asking for it, that's what it is, and I never thought a sister of mine would beg!' she cried scornfully.
Vava's anger was roused by this injustice, and a wicked desire to tease her sister made her say, instead of denying the accusation, 'There was no need to beg; he says you are worth it to the firm.'
'I shall return it on Monday,' said Stella.
'Then you will be very silly. To tell you the truth, I wonder Mr. Jones puts up with you, and I should not be surprised if he gets tired of your nasty pride, and tells you to go,' remarked Vava.
Stella said nothing in answer to this impertinence. She was very angry with Vava; but now that she had time to think she felt that she had been too hasty, and should have asked an explanation from her sister, whom she could hardly believe had really asked for a rise; still it looked like it, its coming that morning. In a different tone she asked, 'What made Mr. Jones tell you about this cheque? I thought I told you not to discuss me?'
'I didn't--at least, how could I help it; he began it, and I had to answer him,' protested Vava.
'You ought to have declined to talk about me. One thing is certain, you will not have the chance again, for you shall not go to him with your sums or anything else. Our relations with Mr. Jones are simply business ones, and I don't want him to think we wish them to be anything else,' said Stella.
'That's just what I told him, and I said you would not marry him if he asked you!' cried Vava impulsively.
Many a time during the following week did Vava ask herself why she did such a silly thing as to repeat that foolish remark; but at the time she had no idea of the trouble it would cause.
Stella stared at her sister as if she could hardly believe her ears. 'You discussed my marrying Mr. Jones with him?' she asked, red and white in turns.
'I said you wouldn't marry him, so it's all right; you need not go upsetting yourself,' she replied, half-frightened at the effect her remark had had upon her elder sister.
'I do not want to hear anything more that you said. I have begged you to be more careful of what you say, but it seems to be hopeless; other arrangements will have to be made.' And she relapsed into cold silence; but Vava saw that tears of mortification were in her eyes.
The girl made one or two attempts to speak to Stella, but without success, and they walked home in silence from the station. Oh how glad Vava was to have 'nursie' there, into whose ears she poured the whole story.
'You should not have said it, Miss Vava; of course Miss Stella is vexed at your suggesting such a thing,' said the old woman.
'But she does not know that I suggested it; she only knows half the story, and I can't make her listen,' objected Vava.
'You must leave her alone till she comes round; her pride is hurt, and no wonder. What I do wonder at is your talking about such things as marriage to a strange gentleman; it's very unbecoming in a young lady of your age,' said the housekeeper.
But 'nursie' could say what she liked to her 'bairn,' who took it quite meekly, and did as she was told, and left Stella alone.
After dinner, at which they were all rather silent, Stella wrote a letter, which she took out and posted, not at the pillar but at the post-office.
'There now, she's written Mr. Jones a horrid letter, I'm quite sure!' exclaimed Vava to the housekeeper.
'It's none of your business if she has,' replied the latter.
'I don't know so much about that. Mr. Jones will think I repeated the conversation all wrong, and I'm certain she is sending back the extra money,' retorted Vava.
'You can't help that; your elder sister must do what she thinks right,' insisted the housekeeper.
'I can help it; I can write to Mr. Jones and tell him the truth,' declared Vava.
But Mrs. Morrison would not hear of this. 'You wrote once, and it vexed her; and now that she has forbidden you to go to see Mr. Jones any more you have nothing to do but obey, even if it is hard.'
'But he will think horrid things of me,' protested Vava.
'I do not think he will; but even so, you must abide by it. Dearie me, what bairns you all are! You are nothing but children, all of you, and making trouble for yourselves, as if there were not enough in the world without your adding to it,' said the good woman with a sigh, for she had taken Amy and Eva to her warm heart, and their troubles as well, and just now her keen eyes saw that there was trouble with them as well as with her own two 'bairns.'
Stella's walk had done her good, for she seemed more cheerful at tea, and spoke a few words to Vava, whose buoyant spirits revived at once. As Mrs. Morrison had said, they were all young; and when after tea Stella suggested a round game, they all joined in, and one would have thought to hear their merry laughter that they had not a care among them.
However, when Monday morning came, Stella came down to breakfast in her indoor clothes, and seemed to be taking things very easily.
'Stella, make haste, you will be late for the train, and I must be in time this morning, because it is the examination!' cried Vava impatiently.
'I am not coming with you to-day,' said Stella quietly.
'Then why did you not tell me? I let Doreen go past, and I must run now to catch the train!' cried Vava, rushing off in a great hurry.
Stella certainly thought she had made Vava understand that she was not going to town that day; but Vava very certainly did not understand it, and remarked to Doreen, 'Stella is coming by a later train; she is rather vexed with me for something stupid I said, so I dare say that's why she did not come with us.'
'I'm sorry; she's so pretty, and I like to look at her,' said Doreen; and then, Stella not being there to look at, she opened her books and began looking over work for the examination.
The day went very well. Vava answered every question in the algebra paper, and was only uncertain about two problems, and she decided when she went to call for her sister to show her the paper and ask her if she might not give it to Mr. Jones and just tell him how much he had helped her. The last event was always uppermost with Vava, and her examination seemed to be of much more importance than her sister's annoyance of Saturday, and it was with a very bright face that she went to her sister's little office at Baines, Jones and Co.'s to tell her how well she had got on. She walked in as usual without knocking, and to her surprise found Mr. Jones sitting at her sister's typewriter, or rather the typewriter her sister had used.
'What! you, Vava? Haven't you washed your hands of me too?' he said rather bitterly.
'I haven't washed my hands of you. Where is Stella?' she inquired in surprise, looking round, and determined to be very careful what she said to-day.
'Don't you know then?' he demanded.
'Know what? Have you quarrelled?' she inquired.
'I have not quarrelled, and as it takes two to make a quarrel I suppose we have not; but your sister has left, and I cannot imagine why, except that I raised her salary without explaining the reason,' he said.
'Left you! What reason did she give? When did she leave--just before I came?' asked Vava.
'She never came to-day. I had a letter instead, simply saying as there were only a few days to the holidays she begged to be excused from returning, as she wished to leave my employ.'
'Oh dear! it's all my fault,' sighed Vava, and she told the story of her conversation with Stella.
'Well, I am glad about one thing, and that is that I have seen you and had this explanation,' said Mr. Jones.
'But I ought not to be here; Stella said I wasn't to come and see you any more!' cried Vava, just remembering this fact.
'You did not come to see me--fate brought me to this room at this minute; but I won't keep you. I have written to your sister; but since you have explained matters I will write a different letter,' he observed.
'I do hope she'll come back to you,' sighed Vava.
'I doubt it; pride is very strong with your sister; but I hope we shall be friends in spite of it. Now, good-bye, don't miss your train,' he said, holding out his hand before Vava had time to ask how they could be friends without ever seeing each other.
As it was, she missed Doreen, who had gone by the earlier train, so she had to go home alone, a thing she had never done before; and she felt a little surprised and hurt at the indifferent way Mr. Jones had said good-bye to her for ever, as she believed.
CHAPTER XXIV.
BADLY BEGUN AND MADLY ENDED.
Looking back on that examination week, Vava declared afterwards that it was the longest week and the most eventful of her whole life--it 'began badly and ended madly,' was how she put it, talking about it to nursie, her confidante and comforter during this trying time.
She went home, feeling rather depressed, with an inward conviction that her sister's leaving Messrs Baines, Jones & Co. was her fault in the first instance, and she made a mental resolution to be more careful in the future what she said. However, Stella met her with no reproachful looks, but was calmly darning a tablecloth as if she had not just thrown up thirty-five shillings, or rather two pounds, a week, which meant a good deal to them at the present moment.
'You never told me you were not going to town at all,' was Vava's greeting.
'It is none of your business,' said Stella, who, though she imagined she had told Vava, did not wish to be questioned on the subject.
'All the same, you might have told me, for I went to your little room as usual to fetch you, and there was Mr. Jones typing his own letters,' retorted Vava with an injured air.
As it happened, she was getting the best of it, for Stella, who was not at all pleased at this news, could not scold her for going there; besides, it made the elder sister rather uncomfortable to know how her sudden departure had inconvenienced her late employer. But not yet would she own herself to be in the wrong. 'I hope you did not stop and talk,' she remarked.
'I asked where you were, and Mr. Jones told me you had left; but he would not keep me, he said, as he knew you disliked him'----replied Vava.
'Vava, what do you mean?' interrupted her sister.
'If you had let me finish I was going to say, "being friends with me,"' said Vava.
'Then you should talk grammatically; it is not "him being friends" but "his being friends."'
'Well, he isn't either, so it does not matter,' replied Vava testily, for she was very sorry about it all, and this made her cross.
The next morning's post brought Stella three letters. One was from the junior partner, which she opened first, though why it should have interested her does not seem clear, as she had finished with him and would not return to him on any account; perhaps she wished to be asked at least.
If so, she was disappointed. Mr. Jones's note was short and formal. Stella had begun her letter of resignation 'Dear Sir;' but Mr. Jones replied:
'DEAR MISS WHARTON,--I beg to acknowledge your letter tendering your resignation as secretary, which I accept in the name of the firm; also the five shillings, which you return under some misapprehension. I regret your departure, and shall find it difficult to supply the place you have so admirably filled. I also regret that you should hold the opinion of me that you do, and trust you will some day modify your views. I shall be glad to answer any one you refer to me.--Yours faithfully,
'JAMES JONES.'
Stella felt a distinct sensation of disappointment as she laid this letter down. The next pleased her no better. 'What have my movements in the City got to do with them?' she exclaimed involuntarily.
'With whom?' asked Vava.
'The Montague Joneses,' replied Stella, handing over to her sister the note, in which Mrs. Jones hoped that her change of employment would not interfere with her promise to dine with them next Friday, as it made no difference to them. 'Of course it does not,' was Stella's comment.
The third letter was a still greater surprise, and she gave an exclamation of pleasure as she said, 'I will come up with you this morning, Vava. I have been offered an appointment in the City not far from--my late office.'
'How quick! How did they know you wanted one, or your address? I suppose that is Mr. Jones, and I call it rather decent of him,' observed Vava, in a significant tone.
'As it happens, it was not Mr. Jones; it was that good Mrs. Ryan,' said Stella with satisfaction.
|
30837-8 | 'How on earth did she manage it?' inquired Vava, who thought privately that if the housekeeper had got Stella this post she had done so by Mr. Jones's orders, and as it happens (to quote Stella) Vava was quite right; but fortunately Stella did not suspect this, or, as Vava well knew, she was capable of throwing it over, and the younger sister wisely kept her thoughts to herself.
The two sisters accordingly went up to the City together as usual, and it was only when they were nearing their destination that Stella began to look a little nervous at the thought of again facing strangers, and to think with regret of the comfortable little room she had had all to herself. For one short moment she had half a mind to return to Messrs Baines, Jones & Co., the junior partner of which firm she knew would welcome her back; but pride forbade such a step.
Vava, who knew her sister's face well, guessed at her nervousness, and said in a pleading voice, 'Stella, please let me come with you; I shall feel much happier, and as if you had forgiven me for causing all this bother.'
Partly to please Vava, and partly because she dreaded facing a room full of young men who stared at her in too open admiration, she accepted Vava's offer, and went up the steps of Murchison Limited protected by her sister.
Mr. Murchison had not arrived, and Stella was requested to take a seat on a bench in the passage by a young clerk to whom she told her business. Up and down the passage passed a countless number of men, as it seemed to the two girls.
'Vava, you must go; you will be late for school,' said Stella, as the minutes passed and no Mr. Murchison arrived.
'I simply couldn't go away and leave you alone in this horrid place!' cried Vava.
Stella smiled at her younger sister's protective tone, as she said, 'But your examinations?'
'I don't care if I miss fifty exams; you are more important than they are!' exclaimed Vava.
An elderly gentleman coming in at the moment noticed the two girls in mourning, the elder smiling as the younger looked eagerly up into her face, and thought he had never seen a prettier picture. He came hastily forward, and holding out his hand said, 'Miss Wharton, I am sure, and this is the City schoolgirl? I am so sorry to have been late, but my car broke down, as usual with these machines when one has an appointment; but you should not have waited here. Come into my office.' He had such a kind, fatherly way, and spoke in such refined accents, that Stella was reassured; and the boy who had asked her to go outside wished he had been more polite when he saw the courtesy his master was showing to the two young clerks, as he had imagined them to be.
'You had better go now, Vava,' said Stella, as they entered Mr. Murchison's private office.
'Are you sure you are all right?--You will see that she is comfortable, won't you?' said Vava, turning to the old man.
A twinkle came into his eye, but he answered gravely and courteously, 'You may safely leave your sister with us; we will see that she is quite comfortable and happy.'
'Thank you,' said Vava, and ran off happy too.
A short interview sufficed to tell Stella what was required of her, and then she was shown into a small room by Mr. Murchison himself, who said apologetically, 'I am afraid it is rather dark and dingy, but we have not required it hitherto, and I am sure you will prefer this to being in a room with the other clerks?'
'Oh yes, and it will do very nicely, thank you,' said Stella with relief. Little did she or Vava dream that there was anything surprising in her falling into a second berth so easily, or in the treatment and consideration she received. Not that she would not have been kindly and civilly treated; but, as a rule, Mr. Murchison did not interview his clerks himself, nor did he hurry to the City to keep appointments with them.
If Stella had been in the chief's office later on she would have been enlightened about many things. As it was, she only wondered that she was needed at all; it seemed to her that the small amount of work she did might very easily have been distributed among the young men-clerks.
Mr. Murchison had just sent her in some papers to typewrite, and was leaning back in his chair deep in thought when Lord Rothery was announced.
'I hope I am not intruding, Mr. Murchison?' he began.
But the City magnate greeted him with a laugh. 'I believe you always say that on entering a City office,' he answered.
'Well, I feel I'm the idle butterfly among the bees, don't you know; but I was sent here this morning,' explained the young man.
'Not for a clerk's place, I sincerely hope, for I really can't find work for another superfluous person!' protested Mr. Murchison with a look of amusement.
'No, no; it's the last one I've come about,' observed his visitor.
'What! are you an admirer too? This promises to become complicated, not to say a nuisance,' said the old man; but he still looked amused, for he was a very kindly man, and Stella's quiet, ladylike manners, as well as her beauty, had won him.
'I admire her all right--I don't see how one could help it. But it's no go; she didn't admire me, and it seems Jones has no better luck. But he's a dogged beggar, and won't give up hope, and he has sent me to see that she is comfortable and all that,' he said.
'Oh yes, she's comfortable--at least, as comfortable as I could make her at a day's notice. And if you are going back to that happy young man you may tell him that it is more than I am, for I can't find anything for her to do, and I think he'd better send her work along too to keep her occupied,' replied Mr. Murchison.
'Oh that would never do; she'd spot something, and he says she must on no account guess that he has got her this place,' said Lord Rothery hastily.
Mr. Murchison put back his head and laughed. 'A City conspiracy to save the pride of a most wrong-headed young woman, who, as a matter of fact, does not deserve such consideration, after treating Jones so badly, leaving him at a moment's notice. It's really great nonsense, if you come to think of it. He wants her services, and I do not; but because she gets into a rage about nothing he must find her a comfortable sinecure. What am I to do with a lady-clerk? I don't want one at all,' he wound up.
'Jamie knows that, and told me to tell you he's sure it won't be for long. He's awfully sorry to ask such a favour, but it's a matter of life and death to him.'
'Life and death fiddlesticks!' ejaculated Mr. Murchison.
'I'm only quoting his words. He really looks very bad this morning; I feel quite sorry for him, and I'm awfully sorry for her too. Poor Stella! it's an awful come down for her,' said his lordship.
'I don't think it is any hardship to earn your own living, though perhaps she is too pretty; anyway, it's being made easier for her than for many a girl who is just as good,' objected Mr. Murchison.
'It's worse for her, because she's so beastly proud--always was as a child; but she's a good sort, and I only hope Jones will get his way, though I "ha'e ma douts," as we say up north. He daren't come and see you, he says,' said Lord Rothery.
But Stella knew nothing of all this, and only found the day drag, as she had so little to do.
Vava too found the day long. She was half-an-hour late for school, and as she brought no written excuse, and her own was not considered satisfactory, she was not allowed to go in to the examination at all; and although she had said Stella was more important than fifty examinations, she was very disappointed to miss this one, which was history, in which she hoped to do well, as it was her strong point. However, she said nothing about this to Stella, who seemed depressed, on the way home. Although they had only been in the new house a month, things did not seem to be going very smoothly. Eva was like a thundercloud all dinner-time, and snapped at any one who spoke to her, until in desperation they left her severely alone.
'Everything's downright horrid, nursie,' said Vava, going into the kitchen after dinner to pour out her woes into the housekeeper's sympathetic ear.
'When night's blackest, dawn's nearest--not that I think it's a very black night; we must all pay for our experience, and you are paying at this minute,' replied the old woman.
'But I don't see why I should pay to-day! I had not done anything wrong. I couldn't have left Stella sitting on that horrid bench all alone, could I?' protested Vava.
'You are too fond of that word "horrid." I don't expect there was anything the matter with the bench; it's no good being too high and mighty in this world, and there's no disgrace or degradation in honest labour,' said the old housekeeper; for however much she might regret the necessity of her 'young leddies' earning their living, she was not going to tell them so, or put foolish notions into their heads; moreover, she thought they both needed a lesson in humility.
'It was not a pleasant place for a girl to sit alone, anyway, and you would have said the same yourself, and it was horrid, for sitting there made me miss my best exam, which was a horrid bore--well, a shame,' said Vava.
'It was no shame if it was the rules of the school, and it was that tongue of yours that took you both there to the new office, in the first place; but I hope it will be a lesson to you. And now, my bairn, just try on these stockings; they will be cooler for spring, and I don't know if they are long enough or not,' she wound up.
Vava tried on the stockings, which she declared fitted, as nursie's knitted stockings always did. But next another unpleasant event took place, making this week the 'baddest and maddest' Vava had ever known; and to understand it the events of the day before at the City school must be related.
CHAPTER XXV.
UNDER A CLOUD.
When Vava had arrived at school, Miss Briggs, who really had nothing to do with her, although she had taken it upon her to write to Stella about her friendship with Doreen Hackney, told her to report herself to the head-mistress for being late.
The girls rather resented Miss Briggs's interference. She was not one of the form-mistresses, but taught certain subjects throughout the school, and had passed very high examinations; and, in her zeal for the well-being of the school and its pupils, she was apt to be meddlesome, as she was this morning, when, having nothing to do, she was walking about the corridors, and met Vava hurrying in late. Vava went by her orders to the head-mistress's room, but found it empty. As she was coming away she met Miss Briggs, and thought it her duty to tell her that the head-mistress was not there, and was then going to pass on to her classroom.
But Miss Briggs stopped her. 'Then you had better wait here for her,' she observed.
'I shall miss my exam.!' protested Vava.
'Where is your written excuse for being late?' demanded Miss Briggs.
'I have none. I went with my sister to her City office, as she did not like going alone,' explained Vava.
This explanation sounded very lame and unsatisfactory, Miss Briggs thought. Moreover, this same sister had written her a very stiff letter in answer to her warning against Doreen as a friend for Vava; and it is to be feared there was a certain amount of spite mingled with a desire for discipline when she replied, 'That is no excuse. You are too late to go into the examination, and you will disturb all the others. Your sister should have consideration for them, and you will stay here until the bell rings for recreation.' And Miss Briggs marched away.
'Here' was a corridor without any seats; but Vava took this command as meaning to stay out of the classroom, and she wandered off to the playground, where she sat down on a garden-seat, and looked over the subject for the next examination, feeling very irritated at Miss Briggs's dictatorial manner.
Everything 'happened' wrong that morning. Miss Briggs, as she went back to her room, chanced to pass Miss Courteney, who had come to the door of the classroom to speak to some one, and Miss Briggs detained her, rather against her will, saying, 'Oh Miss Courteney, I met Vava Wharton strolling in just now. She had been to her sister's office instead of coming to school, so I told her it was not worth while coming in now and disturbing the others, and that she must wait till the bell rings.'
Miss Courteney looked vexed. 'It is her best subject. I am very sorry. Where is she?' she asked.
'In the corridor. Shall I say you will excuse her this time, and send her to you?' inquired Miss Briggs, who saw that, though Miss Courteney was too polite to say so, she had done wrong.
'I shall be much obliged if you will. I will speak to her about being late,' replied Miss Courteney, much relieved. She did not want to contradict Miss Briggs's orders; but she did not want Vava to miss her examination.
Miss Briggs hurried down to the corridor; but of course saw no Vava. She searched in all the empty rooms and in the large assembly room, and in her eagerness to find Vava she actually toiled up to the studio at the top of the building, but in vain. Then, feeling rather annoyed with Vava for her disobedience, Miss Briggs searched the cloak-rooms; and, not seeing the girl there, looked for her hat and coat under the name of Wharton. They were not there, and Miss Briggs came to the conclusion that Vava had gone off to tell her sister, her ideas of school discipline being elementary, in Miss Briggs's opinion. There was no opportunity of telling Miss Courteney, who was in charge of the examination, so she waited until the bell rung; for it never occurred to her that on this cold March morning Vava would be sitting in the playground.
But so it was. When the bell rung Vava joined the other girls at recreation.
'Where have you been, Vava Wharton?' demanded Miss Briggs, who was in charge of the playground.
'Here, Miss Briggs,' replied Vava.
Miss Briggs unfortunately took her to mean on the premises. 'Do I understand you to say that you never left the school premises?' she demanded.
'Yes, I stayed here all the time till the bell rung,' said Vava.
'Strange. I searched everywhere, but could not find you,' commented Miss Briggs.
'I was here all the time,' repeated Vava, rather nettled at the young teacher's tone.
Miss Briggs went to report the matter to Miss Upjohn, who listened with a rather abstracted air.
'I will see the girl afterwards; at present I am worried about some examination papers which I put on the top of my desk and cannot find,' she replied.
'What papers are they?' inquired Miss Briggs.
'The Scripture papers for the Fourth Form; it is the next examination after recreation,' explained the head-mistress, who took this subject herself throughout the school.
'The Fourth Form! That is Vava Wharton's form,' observed Miss Briggs.
'Yes, she is in the Fourth Form,' agreed Miss Upjohn absent-mindedly. And then she exclaimed, 'Why, what are those papers on that shelf near the door?'
Miss Briggs went to look. 'They are the Fourth Form Scripture papers,' she informed her.
'I am glad. But how on earth did they get on to that shelf? I am sure I put them on this table; I never put them anywhere else, and that shelf would be the last place I should put them. Any one passing the door could easily see and read them without even meaning to do so,' remarked Miss Upjohn, looking puzzled.
'It looks as if some one had looked at them,' observed Miss Briggs with meaning.
'How? What do you mean?' inquired Miss Upjohn in surprise.
'I mean, if you did not put them there yourself some one must have meddled with them, and it looks to me as if that some one had taken them away to look at, and then hurriedly put them back as near the door as she could get,' explained Miss Briggs.
'Oh I don't think it at all likely! I hope not; I should be sorry to think there was a girl in my school who would do such a thing!' she cried.
'Then how do you account for them being removed?' demanded Miss Briggs.
'I can't account for it; but I would rather think that I put them there myself in an absent-minded moment than that they had been tampered with.'
'But you are never absent-minded, and you do not forget things,' objected Miss Briggs.
'I may have forgotten this; let us hope so,' said the head-mistress in a tone which showed Miss Briggs she wished to change the conversation.
Miss Briggs took the hint and said no more, and it is just possible that the matter might have dropped, and that a suspicion which had arisen in her mind might have died out, but for another unfortunate coincidence, which was as follows.
Vava, as has been said, had not learned to be subject to discipline, and constantly talked when going to and from class; and now, after the bell was rung, she observed to Doreen, 'I don't care if I have missed the history. I shall be first in the Scripture examination--you see if I am not. I can answer any of the questions they put.'
Vava took no heed of where she was when she spoke, and never noticed that she was passing Miss Upjohn's room, until Doreen said, 'Hush!'
Miss Briggs, who was at the door with the head-mistress, overheard the remark, and she looked to see what Miss Upjohn thought of it; but the latter only looked grave at the breach of discipline.
'You heard that?' questioned Miss Briggs.
'Yes. I will have to speak to her,' replied Miss Upjohn.
But Miss Briggs did not let the matter rest there. She said nothing more at the time; but after school was over she went to the head-mistress's room, meaning to talk the matter over.
As it happened ('all wrong,' as Vava declared about all the happenings of this day), Miss Upjohn had the Scripture papers of the Fourth Form before her, and was correcting them.
'Miss Upjohn, excuse me,' began Miss Briggs.
Miss Upjohn patiently put her pen down. She occasionally found Miss Briggs and her zeal trying; but there was a spirit of comradeship among the members of the staff which is not often to be seen as strongly as at the City School for Girls. 'You wish to speak to me?' she questioned.
'Yes. Have you corrected Vava Wharton's Scripture paper?' she inquired.
Miss Upjohn was surprised at the question, but replied, 'As it happens, I have, and a very excellent paper it is; she has answered every question.'
'She said she should, on her way into the classroom, if you remember,' Miss Briggs remarked.
Miss Upjohn looked at the young teacher inquiringly, and then the meaning of Miss Briggs's words dawned upon her, and she said hastily, 'She is very well up in Scripture.'
'I would not have spoken of it but for this, Miss Upjohn, and it leaves no doubt in my mind as to the person who moved your papers,' said Miss Briggs; and she told the story of Vava's morning as far as she knew it, adding, 'She says she stayed in the building the whole time; but I know that to be false, for I searched it from top to bottom.'
Miss Upjohn looked very grave, 'I believe her to be the soul of honour. Surely you would not suspect a girl with such an open countenance as she has of such a dishonest act, and in a Scripture examination too?' objected the head-mistress.
'I am very sorry to do so, but appearances are often deceptive, or how should we be so often taken in? I must say it looks to me very like it, taking into consideration her speech before the examination, her excellent paper, the fact that she was alone hiding somewhere for part of the morning, and that your papers had undoubtedly been moved,' argued Miss Briggs.
Miss Upjohn could not help thinking what an excellent detective the young teacher would have made; but she was not convinced by her arguments, all the same. 'I think you are mistaken; I sincerely hope so, and I shall be obliged if you will not mention the matter to any one,' was all she said, and she did not thank Miss Briggs for reporting the matter to her; but long after the young mistress had gone she sat looking thoughtfully before her, while the ink dried on her pen and the papers remained uncorrected. Then, as if she dismissed an unpleasant thought, she continued her corrections.
And that probably would have been the end of that matter if Miss Briggs had not met Vava outside the school, talking eagerly to Doreen. 'I know I have done well in this exam, and the algebra. Mr. Jones helped me with the algebra, and in this exam. I knew quite well what questions were going to be asked, and looked them up while you were doing your history exam.; so it's all for the best, after all.'
'Vava Wharton,' said Miss Briggs sharply, 'how did you know what questions were to be asked?'
Vava was by no means a nervous girl, nor given to starting when spoken to; but perhaps the events of the past few days, or more likely the examinations, had excited her. At all events, she started at Miss Briggs's sharp voice, and stammering slightly, said, 'I guessed it, Miss Briggs.'
'That is nonsense. How could you guess such a thing?' said Miss Briggs, unbelieving.
'Indeed she did, Miss Briggs, for she told me one question she knew would be asked as we were going up the stairs, before we saw the papers at all; and it was great luck, for she reminded me of the answer, and it was the first question on the paper!' cried Doreen, whose idea was to prove to the mistress that Vava was not boasting, which was what she imagined her friend was being suspected of doing.
But it was, as it happened, a most unfortunate remark. Little though Miss Upjohn had encouraged her, Miss Briggs felt that she must go back and tell the head-mistress this latest information. So she did, though she was received very coldly.
Miss Upjohn heard her to the end without making any comment, and then she said, 'I am sure you only wished to perform an unpleasant duty in repeating this conversation, and I am obliged to you for telling me, as I will speak to Vava Wharton to-morrow and hear her explanation, which I am sure will be satisfactory. Good-evening, Miss Briggs.' And Miss Upjohn held out her hand with a kind smile.
Miss Briggs went away far from satisfied. She thought Miss Upjohn very credulous and prejudiced in Vava's favour, and the unworthy thought came into her head that it was because she was a protégée of the chairman of their board of governors. 'And because of that she won't believe a word against her,' said the young mistress to herself. Then, being, as has already been seen, a most meddlesome person, she had no sooner arrived at her lodgings than she sat down and wrote a letter to no less a person than Mr. Montague Jones, who read it aloud at breakfast to his wife.
'I'm going right to the City school to get to the bottom of this, and give that "meddlesome Mattie" a piece of my mind,' he said in an annoyed tone.
'But the letter is marked "Private and confidential," Monty,' protested his wife.
'I'll "private and confidential" her. You haven't any right to libel any one confidentially, and I'll make her eat her words, daring to accuse my little Vava of looking at examination papers, and Scripture examination papers too! The woman must be an idiot!' cried the irate man.
'Pray be moderate in your expressions, Monty, and don't go up there storming at every one because they don't believe in Vava as much as you do,' remonstrated his wife.
Mr. Jones turned on her indignantly. 'You don't believe this humbug, I should hope?' he inquired.
'No, of course not, because I know the child; but I must own it looks suspicious, and if you take my advice you'll have a talk with Vava, and, without betraying Miss Briggs, get her to explain it all to you; there's some explanation, I have no doubt,' suggested Mrs. Montague Jones.
This was very sensible advice, and Mr. Jones was in the habit of blustering first, and then calming down and listening to his wife's shrewd suggestions; and this was what he did in the present case, though he went off in the car, which he had ordered round at once, muttering all sorts of threats against Miss Briggs for daring to malign his favourite.
CHAPTER XXVI.
MORE CLOUDS.
Vava meanwhile went to Stella's new office, and found her sister, with hat and jacket on, waiting for her. 'You have got done? I suppose they don't bring you tea here?' said Vava.
'No, we must wait until we get home. We shall enjoy a cup of tea with dinner all the more,' said Stella.
However, when they arrived at No. 2 Heather Road, the housekeeper, who had evidently been on the watch for them, came into the hall to welcome them, and, taking their umbrellas, said, 'It's cold, this nasty wet day, my bairns; come into the sitting-room and warm yourselves by the fire. I've the kettle boiling and some hot scones, if you'd care to have some tea.'
'Oh nursie, you just are the dearest darling in the world; we haven't had any afternoon tea. These new people are not as thoughtful as Mr. James Jones was!' exclaimed Vava.
'It is not really a necessity; we could very well wait till dinner-time,' observed Stella. 'But I must say I shall be very glad of a cup to-day; it has been such a long day.'
Mrs. Morrison looked at the weary young face from under her glasses with her shrewd eyes, but said nothing, and only drew the little table near the fire, took away the wet shoes, and went off to get tea.
'Nursie is a very comforting person, Stella, isn't she?' said Vava, as she held out her cold hands to the cheerful blaze.
'She spoils us all. By the way, I wonder where Amy and Eva are; it is time for them to be home, and nursie has only brought in two cups,' replied her sister.
The housekeeper coming in with the teapot at that instant overheard the last few words. 'The other two young leddies will be having their tea upstairs,' she remarked in answer to Stella.
'Are they in?' asked Vava, helping herself to a hot buttered scone.
'Yes, they are in,' replied Mrs. Morrison.
'What's the matter? Did they get drenched? Why are they having tea upstairs?' the girl continued.
'They wished to have it there, so I took it up,' observed the housekeeper.
'But I don't think you ought to spoil them like that. Why could they not come down and have tea with us here, instead of giving you the trouble of carrying it up to them?' remonstrated Stella, who resented the two English girls making the housekeeper run up and down stairs for them.
'I'm none so old as all that, and I have not much to do while you are out all day,' declared Mrs. Morrison, putting down the scones on the tripod in front of the fire and going out of the room.
'All the same, I call it rather cool of them making nursie run up and down stairs for them,' objected Vava.
'I expect they were wet through and had to change, and that nursie took the tea up without being asked,' suggested Stella.
'They'd be much more comfortable down here by the fire, I should think, than in their cold rooms,' observed Vava.
'Perhaps they have gone to bed,' said Stella.
Vava listened for a moment. 'No, they haven't; I can hear them moving above us, and--they have a fire in Amy's room; I can hear them poking it! What extravagance!' she continued.
Stella was privately of the same opinion, and she wondered at the housekeeper encouraging it. Moreover, it meant more work; but she would not criticise their house-mates any more, and changed the conversation. Soon after, Vava set to work at her books, reading over the term's work for the examination on the following day, and Stella decided to go up and see if Amy had caught a chill, or had any such reason for staying upstairs, or whether it was only laziness.
There was dead silence when she knocked at the door, and then a murmured conversation before Amy unlocked the door, and said, 'Come in, Stella. Eva has a headache, so Mrs. Morrison very kindly insisted on her lying down on my bed and having a fire.'
It did occur to Stella as strange that Eva should lie upon Amy's bed and have the fire in her room; but as Eva had her back turned to her she thought the kindest thing she could do would be to leave her alone, so she said, 'I am so sorry Eva is ill. Mrs. Morrison did not tell me that, or I would not have come and disturbed you.'
'I'm not ill.--You'd better tell her about it, Amy; she'll have to know sooner or later,' said Eva from the bed in a muffled voice.
Stella looked with concern from one to the other. 'I hope there is nothing wrong?' she asked.
Amy made a sign to her to come out of the room, and they went downstairs to the little sitting-room before the former said anything, and even when they were sitting down in the two easy-chairs, which the good old housekeeper had drawn up to the fire, she did not seem inclined to begin.
At last Stella said, 'Tell me what is wrong, Amy--a trouble shared is a trouble halved. I suppose it has something to do with that wretched furniture?'
Amy gave a great sigh, and said, 'Yes. Oh if only she had consulted us! But it was only--thanks to Mrs. Morrison, who got the truth out of her--that she told me to-night; though, I am afraid, it is too late for us to do anything to help her.'
'I suppose the man is worrying her for the payments? Has she let them fall into arrears?' inquired Stella, to help her friend, who seemed to find a difficulty in continuing.
'It's worse than that; it's a dreadful business, and not a nice story; but it is that friend of hers who is at the bottom of it. The furniture has been bought in a false name, and Eva represented herself as over twenty-one, and signed a paper making herself liable for the whole amount if the payments fell into arrears, and of course they have, and it appears the man came down and interviewed Mrs. Morrison, and would have made himself very unpleasant if she had not overawed him. Of course she denied there being any one here of the name Eva gave.'
Stella was, as Amy had expected, very much shocked at this tale, but all she said was, 'I cannot understand the man's believing that Eva was twenty-one; she does not look more than eighteen at the most.'
'That was just what we said, Mrs. Morrison and I; but--and this is the worst part of it--she took the name of her friend and used her birth certificate, which this girl happened to have for some examination, and the girl actually went with Eva and identified her as being the person in the certificate.'
'Disgraceful!' burst out involuntarily from Stella.
'It is disgraceful, and now the man threatens her with exposure if she does not pay down the whole amount.'
'How much is it?' inquired Stella.
'Thirty-five pounds,' said Amy.
'That seems to me a good deal, even for that suite,' observed Stella.
'So it is; but he said it was credit price.'
'And how much has she paid?' asked Stella.
'Only five pounds, and she had to sell her watch and a gold bracelet and a silk dress to pay that, she says. She never could save out of her weekly salary,' explained Amy.
Stella remembered poor Eva's motto made out of their four names, and thought how very inappropriate a one it had proved in her case. 'Poor Eva!' she exclaimed.
'Yes, indeed it is "poor Eva!" and I don't see how we are to help her; we cannot give her the thirty pounds, and the man demands it within eight days.'
'I don't believe he can; besides, if she has not got it, it is not any good his demanding it; he must take his furniture back,' declared Stella, who, though she did not know much of such business, had a good business head.
'He declares the furniture is not worth the half now, and threatens to take the matter into court, and put Eva in prison for getting goods under false pretences.'
'Has she no relations to whom she could go for advice? Surely she cannot be alone in the world?' Stella asked anxiously.
'I don't think she has any near relations; her father was a very peculiar man, and, I fancy, had quarrelled with all his relations, and his wife's as well. I know none ever came to visit them,' said Amy.
'She must have friends,' said Stella.
'She says she would rather be put in prison than tell any of them,' declared Amy.
'Then we must consult a lawyer. I wish Mr. Stacey were nearer; but he may know some one in London who would advise us, though I don't know what is to be done about the money. I have not thirty pounds at this minute,' said Stella.
'Nor have I, or I would give it willingly; it is dreadful to see her. She may say she is not ill, but she looks ill, and she will be if this goes on,' said Amy.
Stella was very sorry for Eva; but she felt rather angry with her too, though her hard-heartedness would have melted if she could have seen Eva, who lay upon her bed looking the picture of woe.
When Vava came back, the three of them sat down to dinner, an especially nice and tempting dinner made by the old housekeeper, who managed to make tasty dishes, in spite of being economical; and her young charges, for such they may truly be called, made a very good meal.
'I'll take some up to Eva; I 'm sure this will tempt her!' cried Vava when she had finished her dinner.
Amy had already taken her tray up, and brought it back untouched; but Vava would not be gainsaid, and carried up some soup, which she declared Eva was very fond of.
'Perhaps she will take it from Vava, as she does not know anything about it,' suggested Stella, who thought that Eva might be ashamed, under the circumstances, of having any appetite.
Vava did not come down for more than half-an-hour, and when she did they saw that she had been crying.
Stella gave an exclamation of vexation. 'I did not want you to be told all this; you are too young to be mixed up with such disreputable doings. Don't bother your head about it any more,' said Stella.
'But I must, because I feel that it was partly my fault,' declared Vava.
'Your fault!' cried Stella, horrified.
'Yes, because Eva would not have been such friends with this horrid girl if I had not been so unfriendly with her. She says she was so disappointed when she saw I did not care for her, and it made her take to this other girl,' said Vava.
'Eva ought not to put the blame on to you; no one need do wrong unless they choose, and it is very weak to be led away so easily. And what we are going to do about it I don't know; she has got herself into a terrible mess.'
'Poor Eva, she can't bear the sight of the furniture, so she is going to sleep in Amy's room,' announced Vava.
'I should not think Amy would care to see it either,' observed Stella dryly.
Vava saw that her sister had not much sympathy with Eva, and she had certainly brought trouble upon the whole household at No. 2 Heather Road, where they might all have been so happy if they had all done what was right.
As it was, Stella and Amy sat up till midnight, talking the matter over and wondering what could be done for Eva, and ending up after each suggestion by deciding that they could do nothing.
Amy crept up to her room to get out some things she wanted, and Stella stood upon the stairs to wait for her and hear how Eva was. Amy was some little time, and presently she came on tiptoe to the door, a smile upon her face. 'Just come and look at her, she is sleeping so peacefully,' she said in a whisper.
There was a bright fire burning, and it passed through Stella's mind that Eva's sorrow did not prevent her from making herself comfortable. As the firelight fell upon the sleeping girl's face she could not help thinking to herself that the miserable business did not seem to have made a very deep impression upon the culprit, for she was, as Amy had said, sleeping quite peacefully, as if she had not a care in the world, with a smile upon her lips; and that smile hardened Stella's heart against Eva.
'It's all very well, Amy, but she has upset us all dreadfully; and while we have been cudgelling our brains downstairs to try and find a way to help her, she goes happily to sleep and does not worry at all,' said Stella, as she accompanied her friend to her bedroom.
'I suppose she had worn herself out,' said Amy, trying to be loyal to her friend, though in her heart she had been rather surprised herself to find Eva asleep.
Stella did not say any more; but any idea she had had of asking Mr. Stacey to let her have a little money to help Eva was given up, and she went to bed, pondering upon the easy conscience that some people had.
Vava had learnt her lesson from Eva's trouble, but Stella was too shocked with Eva to be as sympathetic with the poor girl as she might have been; and Vava, who thought her hard, remarked with her usual candour, 'The fact is, Stella, you are a regular Pharisee, and you'll have a nice tumble one of these days if you walk like that, with your head in the air, looking over the heads of everybody.' And then Vava turned over and went to sleep.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE VALUE OF A GOOD CHARACTER.
Vava tossed and turned and went to sleep, only to dream of prison cells, in which Eva was secured by heavy chains, which she (Vava) tried in vain to break, and it was from one of these nightmares that she awoke in the morning to the sound of a laugh. Sitting up in bed, Vava listened, hardly able to believe her ears, for it was Eva's laugh.
'Stella,' she said in solemn tones to her sister, 'do you hear Eva laughing?'
'Yes,' said Stella shortly; but the little word said a good deal.
'Do you think she's in hysterics?' asked Vava.
'No, I do not; she seems very cheerful,' replied Stella.
Vava was very thoughtful; and when she went to the bathroom, Stella noticed that she did not stop as usual to say good-morning to Eva as she passed her door, at which her sister was rather pleased, for she did not approve of Eva's light-heartedness under the circumstances.
However, she greeted the girl kindly enough when they met at breakfast, and indeed it would have been difficult not to smile back at Eva's happy face, with a look on it that they had not seen since they had been at Heather Road. It scarcely needed Eva's announcement that she did 'feel so happy' to assure them of the fact, for she looked a different girl; 'and I don't deserve it,' she added.
There was silence when she said this, for if her three listeners had spoken their minds they would have cried in chorus, 'Indeed you do not!' As it happened, however, it was Vava, with her usual candour, who demanded, 'Then why do you feel happy?'
'Don't you know?' demanded Eva, looking from one to the other; and then, seeing from their faces that they certainly did not know the reason for her change of mood, she continued, 'I thought Mrs. Morrison would have told you.'
'What has nursie got to do with it?' asked Vava.
'Everything, she has been so good. She came up to me last night, and straightened things out in the most wonderful way, as far as they can be straightened, and I am going to keep them straight for the future,' said Eva.
'I am very glad,' said Stella; but though she wondered how the old housekeeper had straightened out this tangled web, she was too polite to ask any questions; nor, though they were burning with curiosity, did the other two do so either; Vava because she thought she should hear it from 'nursie,' and Amy because she decided that Eva would prefer to tell her when the two of them were alone.
Vava was disappointed in her hope of getting an explanation out of the old housekeeper, who, in answer to her questions, said, 'And what will it have to do with you, Miss Vava? I'm ashamed at your curiosity.'
'I don't call it curiosity to take an interest in your friends, and I want to know that Eva is safe,' said Vava.
'Oh if that is all you are asking, then I can answer you; she is safe from being punished for her wrong-doing except by her own conscience,' replied Mrs. Morrison; and with this Vava had to be content, though it was not all she wanted to be told, as the old woman very well knew.
Amy, however, fared better, and came out of Eva's room looking radiant. 'Stella, it is too good of Mrs. Morrison! Fancy, she is lending Eva the thirty pounds, and she is seeing the man herself; so we need not bother about a lawyer or anything!' she cried.
But Stella did not look at all pleased, and saying, 'Indeed!' she walked straight into the kitchen to have it out with nursie, who received her remonstrances very calmly.
'Don't you fash yourself, Miss Stella, dearie; I'm not throwing away my money, and I am not spoiling Miss Eva, nor encouraging her either. She will pay back every penny, and a hard time she will have doing it too.'
And with this Stella had to be satisfied. Mrs. Morrison was a woman of great character, and what she thought it right to do she did, without paying any attention to what people said or thought.
'I shall not be back to dinner,' said Eva as she said good-bye to the other three.
'Why? What are you going to do?' asked Amy anxiously.
Eva coloured slightly as she answered in a would-be light manner, 'I have some work to do at the office; we are working overtime, so I shall be late for the next few weeks,' and then she nodded and went off before she could be questioned further.
Amy turned to the sisters and said, 'I did her an injustice. I thought she was taking things too easy, although I was thankful to hear that she had been got out of her trouble; but this work that she speaks of is dreadfully tiresome, and all the lady-clerks refused it. She is getting very good pay for it, but it will tire her on these spring evenings.'
'I did her wrong too. I am very glad she has taken this work and is trying to earn extra money; she will feel much happier,' said Stella.
'Yes, and Mrs. Morrison has made her promise to bring her salary straight to her every Saturday, and just ask her for what she needs; and Eva says she means to live on two shillings and sixpence a week till she is out of debt,' explained Amy.
Stella gave a sigh of relief. 'Perhaps it has taught her a lesson,' she agreed; 'and it is a blessing that it has ended better than we expected.'
Then the three started for the City with Doreen, who, of course, knew nothing of what had happened.
'There's the chairman's motor at the school-gate,' exclaimed the latter, as she and Vava approached the City school.
'Mr. Montague Jones's, you mean? So it is! I wonder what he has come for? Something to do with the prizes, I expect,' said Vava, and she stopped to speak to the chauffeur, with whom she was a great favourite.
'The master's in there; I believe he's looking for you,' the man observed.
'That isn't the proper place to look for me; I go in at the pupils' entrance, tell him,' said Vava.
But Mr. Jones was not at that moment looking for Vava. He had been met by Miss Upjohn, who was very glad to see him, as she wished to speak about some school matter, which being soon settled, Mr. Jones began at once, 'And how is my little friend Vava Wharton getting on?'
There was nothing unusual in his asking this, for it was his usual question, and the head-mistress replied with a smile, 'She is not very little, but she is getting on very well. I think you will have to give her two prizes, which is rather unusual for a girl in her first term. She has done two excellent examination papers.'
'Indeed! Which are they?' inquired Mr. Jones, who was wondering how he was to broach the subject of the Scripture papers, and get at the bottom of Miss Briggs's tale without betraying her.
'Scripture and algebra; the first did not surprise me so much, for she is exceptionally well up in Scripture, and we cannot take any credit to ourselves for the knowledge she has displayed in that subject; but she has made wonderful progress in algebra; she is a very clever girl. One has the beauty, and the other the brains--not that Vava is not good-looking, by the way,' said the head-mistress, correcting herself.
'Nor is the beauty stupid, by any means, though she is so reserved that it is difficult to get to know her or her abilities,' said Mr. Jones, who began to think that he had come on a fool's errand, and had better have trusted the head-mistress to manage her school without his interference. He was just getting up to say good-bye when there came a knock at the door, and Miss Briggs entered, looking very perturbed at sight of Montague Jones.
'My letter was strictly private, Mr. Jones,' she said.
'And so it has been treated, Miss Briggs,' replied Mr. Jones.
'Miss Briggs, excuse me, but did you write to Mr. Jones upon the matter we discussed yesterday?' inquired the head-mistress, looking very much annoyed.
Poor Miss Briggs looked very much ashamed of herself as she answered, 'Yes.' She saw that she had betrayed herself, whereas Mr. Jones had not done so.
'Since you have told Miss Upjohn so much, I think you may allow me to suggest that you should give us your grounds for suspecting my young friend Miss Wharton of dishonest practices, and let us try and convince you that you are mistaken,' observed Mr. Jones.
'Oh I did not say they were dishonest,' she protested.
'But I do,' he replied.
Thus put into a corner, Miss Briggs had to go through the whole thing again, and a very bad time she had of it. Mr. Jones had not been a magistrate for nothing. He questioned and cross-questioned and argued till he had proved even to Miss Briggs's satisfaction that the very remarks she had overheard only proved Vava's innocence, as no girl in her senses would boast openly of knowing the questions beforehand if she had looked at them secretly, far less impart one to a friend, and that one a girl whom the girls had nicknamed 'Old Honesty.' At last Miss Upjohn and her visitor had the satisfaction of having brought Miss Briggs round to their opinion.
'I see now that I was mistaken, and I am very sorry about it, and I ought not to have written to you,' she said frankly to Mr. Jones.
'No, you ought not. Miss Upjohn is quite able to manage her own affairs; but I hope she will overlook your fault this time,' he replied with equal frankness; and then he got up and left the two ladies alone.
Miss Briggs looked so ashamed of herself that Miss Upjohn was sorry for her; but what she said to her young assistant no one knew, for the story never went any further.
Vava never thought of her unpleasant experience with Miss Briggs after that day, except to feel that it had done good instead of harm, for the young mistress went out of her way to be pleasant to the girl she had wrongfully accused, which Vava thought very nice of her, as it had never been proved that she had not moved those papers. Perhaps she would not have been so grateful to Miss Briggs if she had known that it had been proved to have been some one else.
The facts of the case were that another mistress had taken them by mistake, and in her hurry just put them back inside the door. Miss Upjohn was very glad to have this explanation, not that she doubted Vava, but because she thought it would show Miss Briggs how easily one may be suspicious without cause. And, if the truth be told, it was not till she heard this that Miss Briggs did quite believe in Vava's innocence. So that it did teach her a lesson.
Vava was called into the head-mistress's study that morning, and went in looking very hot and indignant, but came out smiling, and said to Doreen, 'It's all right.'
'What's all right?' demanded Doreen, staring.
'Oh I forgot you know nothing about it. Well, it does not matter; it was only something that was bothering me, and it's all right now. Miss Upjohn is a brick,' explained Vava.
'I knew _that_ before, and I'm glad whatever was bothering you is all right; you all seem to have had the blues lately at your place. Mother said she supposed you found a house rather a bother as well as a pleasure,' remarked Doreen.
'Oh no, we don't! Mrs. Morrison takes all the worry off us; she's a brick too, a gold brick!' declared Vava with enthusiasm.
'I never heard of a "gold brick,"' observed Doreen.
'Well, she's one,' said Vava obstinately, and they both laughed.
But Vava never told any one except her 'gold brick,' as she called 'old nursie,' of the bad quarter of an hour which she had had with Miss Briggs before school, when the latter had accused her of having seen the papers, and told her to go and confess it to Miss Upjohn. 'But that wasn't the worst, nursie; the worst was in Miss Upjohn's room,' declared the girl.
'But I thought she had the sense to believe in you?' asked the old woman.
'Oh yes, she was most awfully nice, and told me she had never doubted me for a moment; it was Miss Briggs that made me feel so horrid and uncomfortable. Miss Upjohn told her she owed me an apology, and she looked so miserable I felt as if I ought to apologise to her,' said Vava.
'And why would you do that? No one has a right to take away your character, and if they try to do it, and find they are wrong, it is they who should apologise. There's nothing so much worth in this world as one's character--never forget that, my bairn,' said the old nurse. 'You see how Mr. Jones and Miss Upjohn both believed in you, though I must say things did look black to a suspicious person; that was because they knew your character, and that it was an honest character. If that same tale had been told about a girl who was not straightforward it might have been a different thing. Be thankful for your head-mistress's trust in you, and always act up to the principles you have been taught; it will save you from many a pitfall or from the trouble a weak young lady like Miss Eva brings upon herself.'
'It doesn't seem to matter so much as long as I have you to get me out of it,' said Vava mischievously.
'Indeed it does, for though I might get you off punishment I could never undo what you had done,' said the old housekeeper.
'But if I was sorry?' suggested Vava.
'You would be forgiven, but it would never undo it, remember that,' repeated Mrs. Morrison.
And Vava did remember it. At the moment she was thinking that Eva seemed to have got over her trouble, and to feel as if it were undone the moment the money was paid; but, as it happened, she was mistaken, and when she saw her come in night after night, looking tired out and black under the eyes, she began to understand that 'old nursie' was right, and that one cannot undo a wrong deed. Moreover, though she never spoke of it, Eva felt that she had lost her character for uprightness with her friends, and she bitterly regretted her weakness. But if the girl had but known it, they respected her more now that she was working so hard to repay Mrs. Morrison than they had ever done before, and Vava was only too glad to be with her in the short time she had free.
As for the furniture man, the shrewd Scotchwoman managed him better perhaps than a lawyer would have done, and she got back Eva's jewellery, which he had accepted in part payment at much less than their value; and her still final triumph was that she only paid the thirty pounds.
'So I made him take five pounds off the bill, and then overpaid him to be quit of him altogether, though it's a fine suite, after all,' said Mrs. Morrison when recounting her transaction with the not too reputable tradesman, who, for his part, was not sorry to have done with Mrs. Morrison, whose shrewd questions and business knowledge made him feel very uncomfortable, as did some of her plain comments on his behaviour.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
VAVA GETS A SHOCK.
The days flew by until the eventful Friday when there was the prize-giving, the play of Dante, in which Vava had the rôle of heroine, and, to wind up, the dinner-party and theatre afterwards.
'I'm glad we have had all this to look forward to,' said Vava on Friday morning as they both, in very pretty black embroidered frocks, were going up to the City.
'Yes,' agreed Stella, not too cordially, for though she was glad to go to the prize-giving and see the play, since Vava was in it, still neither of these things gave her unalloyed pleasure. At the prize-giving she would be surrounded by the parents of these girls, whom she did not expect to be very refined. As to the play, she, as a student and lover of Dante, objected to its being acted, though she did not say so to Vava. And as for the two other pleasures to which Vava was looking forward so eagerly, Stella did not care for them at all, and was only going to please Vava, whose great day it was.
'It has taken our mind off other worries,' announced Vava; and Stella, looking at her sister, noticed with a pang that the bright young face was paler and graver than it usually was, and realised that this week had been a trying one for her, though quite how trying she did not know, for Vava had not told her of her own private worry with Miss Briggs at school.
'We are going to have a very nice day, quite a long day of pleasure,' said Stella, smiling kindly at her sister.
'Yes,' agreed Vava, and she brightened up, for she had half-feared that Stella would either back out of the dinner on some excuse or another, or else go against her will and be stiff.
'I am afraid I shall be late for the prize-giving, for I cannot very well ask to be let off an afternoon the very first week I am with these people,' observed Stella.
'What a pity! But never mind, I will keep a seat for you,' replied Vava as she said good-bye.
However, the first thing her new employer said to her was, 'I shall not be here after lunch, Miss Wharton, so shall be glad if you will do this work for me before I go, and the rest of the day will be at your disposal, and next week I am taking a holiday, so I shall not require your services until Tuesday week.'
There had not been any arrangement made about Easter holidays, and Stella had quite made up her mind that she would only have the Bank Holidays, and was rather surprised. However, she did not imagine it was anything but a coincidence, or that her afternoon, like the Easter holidays, had been arranged by Mr. James Jones; which perhaps was just as well, or the perverse girl might not have enjoyed it as much.
As it was, she went off at one o'clock, having got through her work, shaking hands cordially with old Mr. Murchison, whom she liked very much; and, having had lunch, arrived at the City school just in time. The porter in his gorgeous City livery was so impressed by Stella's beauty and dignified carriage that he took her for some important person, and showed her up to one of the front seats, which were reserved for patrons and patronesses, and she found herself sitting next a very pleasant woman, who took a great interest in education, and told Stella what a high opinion she had of this school and its staff; and a little farther up was Mrs. Montague Jones, talking in a friendly way to a lady whom Stella had met once and knew to be a society woman, but had not expected to meet here.
The proceedings were rather lengthy. There was the usual school concert, which it is difficult to say who dislike most, performers or audience; then came the play, and Stella was converted on the spot.
'What a delightful Beatrice!' cried her neighbour; 'she has a noble face.'
Stella smiled as she replied, 'I am glad you approve of her, for she is my sister.'
This broke the ice still more, and the two had become quite friendly by the time Vava came up for her two prizes, which Mr. Montague Jones presented to her with a specially friendly hand-shake.
Then there were speeches, congratulations, and refreshments, and after that Mr. Jones said, 'These are very delightful functions, no doubt; but they are a little long, and somehow they always make me very hot and tired and headachy. What do you ladies say to taking a run out into the country for a couple of hours, and getting home just in time for dinner? You can't dress to-night, thank goodness, and so you can't expect me to either.'
As all three were willing, he gave the order to the chauffeur, and they went off, Stella in front with Mr. Jones, and Vava behind with his wife.
'Miss Wharton,' said the old man, when they had got some way out, 'I don't want to bother you with business out of business hours; but I must tell you how sorry I am you have left our firm.'
'Your firm, Mr. Jones?' exclaimed Stella in surprise.
'Yes! Surely James told you?' he replied.
'No, but it would have made no difference; I prefer to be where I am. I do not wish to be rude, Mr. Jones; but I think we had better not discuss the subject,' said Stella.
So Mr. Jones, finding he could do no good, changed the conversation, and talked so well on all sorts of topics that Stella, who had been excellently educated, and had been used to the society of a literary father, found her companion very entertaining.
Mrs. Montague Jones and Vava noted this with satisfaction. 'They are getting on very well,' said the former with a nod of her head.
'That's a blessing. Stella really is a very great trial to me,' announced Vava quite gravely.
Mrs. Montague Jones laughed heartily. 'I wonder what she would say if she heard you?' she replied.
'She would ask me quite solemnly what I meant, and I should not be able to tell her,' observed Vava.
'You ought to be proud to have such a beautiful sister; every one was asking me to-day who she was,' said Mrs. Jones.
'Beauty is a snare and a delusion for a City clerk, didn't they all say when you told them who she was?' asked Vava.
'I did not say what she did. I told them she was the daughter of a Scotch laird, and that you were her sister. They did not ask me her occupation; we are not so rude in the City,' answered Mrs. Jones.
Vava sighed. 'It was much nicer before,' she remarked.
Mrs. Jones looked sympathetically at Vava; she had no daughters, only the one son, and she would have liked nothing better than to adopt this girl if it had been possible; but as she knew it to be impossible she did not even speak of a plan she had in her head of taking them away for Easter, which silence cost her some self-denial.
When they arrived at Belgrave Square, Vava, who as usual had made herself quite at home, went off with Mrs. Jones to get some flowers from the conservatory, and Stella was left in the drawing-room; but she had not been there two minutes when the door opened, and a tall, gentlemanly young man in evening-dress came in, saying to the footman who opened the door, 'Has Lord Rothery not come, then?'
Stella, shaken out of her reserve, started up as the junior partner of Baines, Jones & Co. came forward and shook hands gravely with her.
'Miss Wharton, you look surprised; surely you expected to see me here?' he asked.
'No, I did not; it was only this afternoon that I knew that Mr. Montague Jones had any connection with your firm. I did not know you were to be invited to meet me,' said Stella.
'Invited! I need no invitation to my father's house; but if you object to my presence I can easily dine at my club. I particularly told my mother to ask you if it made any difference, and I understood her to say it did not;' and then he wound up hotly, 'I do not know what I have done to make you think me such a cad as to intrude my presence upon you when I see it is so distasteful.'
Ten minutes later, when Mrs. Montague Jones and Vava came in laden with flowers, Stella was sitting on the sofa, and at their entrance Mr. James Jones, who was sitting beside her (as Vava noted with surprise), rose, and taking Stella's hand brought her to his mother, saying, 'Mother, this is my future wife.'
'It isn't! How dare you? Leave her hand alone!' cried Vava, starting forward, and then, as it dawned upon her that _it was_, she stood still and stared at them all; for Mrs. Jones, with a cry of delight, went forward to Stella, and Mr. Jones, who came in then, seemed to be just as delighted and not a bit surprised, though he said it was a pleasant surprise; and, oddest of all, Lord Rothery--who had cared for Stella himself once--now arrived on the scene, congratulated them both most heartily, and said, 'I was a true prophet. I guessed this would be the next news.'
This caused Vava to exclaim with indignation, 'How could you possibly, when _I_ knew nothing about it, nor how they met--or anything? They'd quarrelled for ever a week ago!'
'Ah! that's a sure sign,' said Lord Rothery, teasing her. He had left the Jones family to make much of Stella, and took Vava to a window to console her, for he saw that she was more angry than pleased.
'I believe it's an awful mistake,' she confided to him.
'Not a bit of it; they are frightfully in love with each other. He's a splendid fellow, and quite a gentleman,' declared the young lord.
'Then they've been horridly deceitful about it, for Stella never would be decently civil to him while I was there, and left him last week; and now I suppose they have been meeting all this week and falling in love,' said Vava in tones of disgust.
'Not they, that was done before; it's what they call a Scotch wooing, and you ought to be glad about it, instead of being so disagreeable,' he protested.
A tear stole down Vava's face, but she would not give way, and only said, 'I don't see what is the use of her having taken a house when she meant to go and do this.'
'These are things one cannot foresee; one does not mean to do them; they do themselves. You'll do just the same when your time comes.'
'I shall not. If I were in love with you I should be civil to you, and let you see that I liked you,' declared Vava.
'All right; I'll remember that, and in the meantime I think you might be civil to your sister and Jamie.'
Vava made a little grimace. 'It's a hideous name, Jamie Jones!' she declared.
But that gentleman, thinking he had given his former friend time to get over her shock, came forward, and very soon managed to win her back to her old friendliness, as he gave her his arm to take her in to dinner. Poor Vava! she had so looked forward to this dinner; it had turned out so very different to what she had expected, and no one said anything about the play; so she made up her mind that they were going to 'fuss' over Stella all the evening and give up the play.
But Lord Rothery came to the rescue. 'I propose an amendment to the evening's programme. I suppose Jamie is going to cry off his engagement with me, so I vote you take me to the theatre in Stella's place, and leave her to rest here.'
This seemed a very good plan, and evidently suited the two most concerned; and to Vava's relief they started in good time for _Henry VIII._, and in spite of a little sore feeling at heart, she managed to enjoy it very much.
The Joneses drove Vava home after the theatre, and there she found 'nursie' and Stella sitting by the kitchen fire; and even Vava, much though she had admired her sister, thought she had never seen her look so beautiful as she did to-night.
'All's well that ends well, my bairns, and he's a braw young laddie,' said old nursie, lapsing into Scotch.
'Has he been to see you?' asked Vava.
'Yes, and wanted to know if I would trust him with my bairn. Eh, that I would!' she said.
'And what am I to do?' cried Vava, and burst into tears.
Stella had her arms round her sister in a moment. 'It won't make any difference, and we are going to stay where we are till the end of the year, and then you and nursie shall come and live with us,' she explained.
'We shall see,' put in nursie, who had her own ideas upon the subject, and proved to be right.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THINGS STRAIGHTEN OUT.
It is three months later, a lovely evening in June, and the back garden of No. 2 Heather Road was a blaze of fine flowers, and under the apple-tree in the centre of the lawn sat four girls in dresses which looked a little too elaborate and costly for a quiet tea in a little suburban villa.
So apparently thought the thrifty old housekeeper, who came out in a plain alpaca gown, and said, 'Ah, my bairns, but you'll soil your beautiful frocks sitting on those garden-seats!'
'We can't possibly wear our ordinary frocks to-day, nursie; it would be a dreadful come down. Why! you have taken off your "silken gown," and it's Stella's wedding-day!' cried Vava merrily.
Evidently she had forgiven her sister the surprise she had given her on that eventful breaking-up day, for she looked the picture of happiness.
'And do you think I'm going to cook in a silk gown, whatever the day? No, indeed! it's safely packed away, as yours ought to be, young leddies!'
'We are going back to the workaday world to-morrow, nursie; let us stop in fairyland for to-day,' said Eva.
Mrs. Morrison smiled at her; they all called her nursie now, even Doreen had been allowed this privilege, and that was not the only privilege she had been allowed, for, to her amazement, she had been invited to be a bridesmaid to her goddess of beauty at the quiet wedding at a West-End church. Perhaps Vava was as surprised as Doreen; Amy and Eva she understood, but Doreen she had not expected to be asked, although the Stella of the last three months had been a Stella she had not known before.
Stella had explained it very simply. 'I should like to have those who have been good to me in my days of adversity,' she said, 'and among these were the Hackneys.'
And the four fashionably dressed girls were Stella's four bridesmaids, for Mr. James had begged for an early wedding; and when Stella demurred because of the new responsibilities she had taken upon her with the new house, Mrs. Morrison had come to the rescue, and offered to keep house for Amy and Eva.
'But, nursie,' Stella had said, 'we want you at Lomore; your rooms are there waiting for you, and why should you stay down here away from your home when there is no need?'
'There is need, Miss Stella; they need me, and I could not leave them just now. Your first duty is to your husband; mine is dead, and I am of use here; but I'll come up home for a holiday in the summer when my young leddies take theirs.'
Then Vava stoutly announced that if nursie stayed at No. 2 Heather Road so should she; and if she had not quite meant it, for Lomore was home to her too, the gleam of joy in Mrs. Morrison's eye at the suggestion decided her.
At this Stella protested still more strongly; but it was really a way out of a difficulty, for Vava was very happy at school and with Mrs. Morrison, and she would spend the long summer holidays at Lomore, and in the autumn Stella would be at her town house, and Vava could be constantly with her.
And so the tangled skein straightened itself out, and the little household at No. 2 Heather Road went on very happily.
Eva was acting up to her suggested motto of 'Save' to such good purpose that, thanks to overtime and rigid self-denial, encouraged by Mrs. Morrison, she had paid off half her debt.
'Fancy, fifteen pounds in three months! At that rate I shall soon be able to look the whole world in the face!' she cried as she handed the last instalment of the fifteen pounds to the kindly creditor.
Mrs. Morrison was as pleased as the girl; not that she was anxious to have the money back, but that she wanted Eva to be out of debt.
Stella, whom her short spell of poverty had made thoughtful on such matters, gave the bridesmaids their dresses, which meant best summer-frocks and hats for them all, and saved Eva that expense; and of pleasures they had no lack, for Mr. Montague Jones's car was always running down to Blackstead.
Mrs. Montague Jones could not adopt Vava, but she insisted on considering her a relation, and Vava never felt lonely, even while Stella was away on her honeymoon. And when she returned, on her way up north, she fetched Vava and Mrs. Morrison, and took them to Lomore with her that they might be with her when she went to the home of her fathers, and see the welcome she received.
And it was a warm welcome, a welcome to the late Laird's daughter and to the new young Laird, who had won for himself golden opinions during the short time he had reigned there, for his father had made over the property to his son when, unknown to Stella, and before he had been engaged to her, he had sought out her special protégées and assured them of his friendship.
'All that time ago!' commented Vava; but she thought it best to refrain from alluding to the time when Stella behaved so badly to her present husband that she (Vava) had pitied him. 'Grown-up people are odd. I prefer schoolgirls myself; you can understand them,' she said with emphasis.
THE END.
BOOKS FOR GIRLS
BY MAY BALDWIN.
HOLLY HOUSE AND RIDGE'S ROW A CITY SCHOOLGIRL A SCHOOLGIRL OF MOSCOW TWO SCHOOLGIRLS OF FLORENCE PEG'S ADVENTURES IN PARIS THE SUNSET ROCK MURIEL AND HER AUNT LU MYSIE: A Highland Lassie
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A City Schoolgirl, by May Baldwin |
14456-8 | E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects, Jon King, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations by Charles M. Russell. See 14456-h.htm or 14456-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/4/5/14456/14456-h/14456-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/4/5/14456/14456-h.zip)
THE UPHILL CLIMB
by
B. M. BOWER
Author of _Good Indian_, _Chip, of the Flying U_, etc.
With Illustrations by CHARLES M. RUSSELL
New York Grosset & Dunlap Publishers
1913
[Illustration: "Hell-o, Ford, where the blazes did you drop down from?" a welcoming voice yelled. Frontispiece.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I "Married! And I Don't Know Her Name!" II Wanted: Information III One Way to Drown Sorrow IV Reaction V "I Can Spare this Particular Girl" VI The Problem of Getting Somewhere VII The Foreman of the Double Cross VIII "I Wish You'd Quit Believing in Me!" IX Impressions X In Which the Demon Opens an Eye and Yawns XI "It's Going to Be an Uphill Climb!" XII At Hand-Grips with the Demon XIII A Plan Gone Wrong XIV The Feminine Point of View XV The Climb XVI To Find and Free a Wife XVII What Ford Found at the Top
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Hell-o, Ford, where the blazes did you drop down from?" a welcoming voice yelled. (Frontispiece)
She lifted her head and looked at him, and drew away.
Dick tottered upon the step and went off backward.
"Ford, I'm no coquette," she said straightforwardly.
CHAPTER I
"Married! And I Don't Know Her Name!"
Ford lifted his arms above his head to yawn as does a man who has slept too heavily, found his biceps stiffened and sore, and massaged them gingerly with his finger-tips. His eyes took on the vacancy of memory straining at the leash of forgetfulness. He sighed largely, swung his head slowly from left to right in mute admission of failure to grasp what lay just behind his slumber, and thereby discovered other muscles that protested against sudden movement. He felt his neck with a careful, rubbing gesture. One hand strayed to his left cheekbone, hovered there tentatively, wandered to the bridge of his nose, and from there dropped inertly to the bed.
"Lordy me! I must have been drunk last night," he said aloud, mechanically taking the straight line of logic from effect to cause, as much experience had taught him to do.
"You was--and then some," replied an unemotional voice from somewhere behind him.
"Oh! That you, Sandy?" Ford lay quiet, trying to remember. His finger-tips explored the right side of his face; now and then he winced under their touch, light as it was.
"I must have carried an awful load," he decided, again unerringly taking the backward trail from effect to cause. Later, logic carried him farther. "Who'd I lick, Sandy?"
"Several." The unseen Sandy gave one the impression of a man smoking and speaking between puffs. "Can't say just who--you did start in on. You wound up on--the preacher."
"Preacher?" Ford's tone matched the flicker of interest in his eyes.
"Uhn-hunh."
Ford meditated a moment. "I don't recollect ever licking a preacher before," he observed curiously.
Life, stale and drab since his eyes opened, gathered to itself the pale glow of awakening interest. Ford rose painfully, inch by inch, until he was sitting upon the side of the bed, got from there to his feet, looked down and saw that he was clothed to his boots, and crossed slowly to where a cheap, flyspecked looking-glass hung awry upon the wall. His self-inspection was grave and minute. His eyes held the philosophic calm of accustomedness.
"Who put this head on me, Sandy?" he inquired apathetically. "The preacher?"
"I d' know. You had it when you come up outa the heap. You licked the preacher afterwards, I think."
Sandy was reading a ragged-backed novel while he smoked; his interest in Ford and Ford's battered countenance was plainly perfunctory.
Outside, the rain fell aslant in the wind and drummed dismally upon the little window beside Sandy. It beat upon the door and trickled underneath in a thin rivulet to a shallow puddle, formed where the floor was sunken. A dank warmth and the smell of wet wood heating to the blazing point pervaded the room and mingled with the coarse aroma of cheap, warmed-over coffee.
"Sandy!"
"Hunh?"
"Did anybody get married last night?" The leash of forgetfulness was snapping, strand by strand. Troubled remembrance peered out from behind the philosophic calm in Ford's eyes.
"Unh-hunh." Sandy turned a leaf and at the same time flicked the ashes from his cigarette with a mechanical finger movement. "You did." He looked briefly up from the page. "That's why you licked the preacher," he assisted, and went back to his reading.
A subdued rumble of mid-autumn thunder jarred sullenly overhead. Ford ceased caressing the purple half-moon which inclosed his left eye and began moodily straightening his tie.
"Now what'n hell did I do that for?" he inquired complainingly.
"Search _me_," mumbled Sandy over his book. He read half a page farther. "Do what for?" he asked, with belated attention.
Ford swore and went over and lifted the coffeepot from the stove, shook it, looked in, and made a grimace of disgust as the steam smote him in the face. "Paugh!" He set down the pot and turned upon Sandy.
"Get your nose out of that book a minute and talk!" he commanded in a tone beseeching for all its surly growl. "You say I got married. I kinda recollect something of the kind. What I want to know is who's the lady? And what did I do it for?" He sat down, leaned his bruised head upon his palms, and spat morosely into the stove-hearth. "Lordy me," he grumbled. "I don't know any lady well enough to marry her--and I sure can't think of any female lady that would marry me--not even by proxy!"
Sandy closed the book upon a forefinger and regarded Ford with that blend of pity, amusement, and tolerance which is so absolutely unbearable to one who has behaved foolishly and knows it. Ford would not have borne the look if he had seen it; but he was caressing a bruise on the point of his jaw and staring dejectedly into the meager blaze which rimmed the lower edge of the stove's front door, and so remained unconscious of his companion's impertinence.
"Who was the lady, Sandy?" he begged dispiritedly, after a silence.
"Search _me_" Sandy replied again succinctly. "Some stranger that blew in here with a license and the preacher and said you was her fee-ancy." (Sandy read romances, mostly, and permitted his vocabulary to profit thereby.) "You never denied it, even when she said your name was a nomdy gair; and you let her marry you, all right."
"Are you sure of that?" Ford looked up from under lowering eyebrows.
"Unh-hunh--that's what you done, all right." Sandy's voice was dishearteningly positive.
"Lordy me!" gasped Ford under his breath.
There was a silence which slid Sandy's interest back into his book. He turned a leaf and was half-way down the page before he was interrupted by more questions.
"Say! Where's she at now?" Ford spoke with a certain furtive lowering of his voice.
"I d' know." Sandy read a line with greedy interest. "She took the 'leven-twenty," he added then. Another mental lapse. "You seen her to the train yourself."
"The hell I did!" Ford's good eye glared incredulity, but Sandy was again following hungrily the love-tangle of an unpronounceable count in the depths of the Black Forest, and he remained perfectly unconscious of the look and the mental distress which caused it. Ford went back to studying the meager blaze and trying to remember. He might be able to extract the whole truth from Sandy, but that would involve taking his novel away from him--by force, probably; and the loss of the book would be very likely to turn Sandy so sullen that he would refuse to answer, or to tell the truth, at any rate; and Ford's muscles were very, very sore. He did not feel equal to a scuffle with Sandy, just then. He repeated something which sounded like an impromptu litany and had to do with the ultimate disposal of his own soul.
"Hunh?" asked Sandy.
Whereupon Ford, being harassed mentally and in great physical discomfort as well, specifically disposed of Sandy's immortal soul also.
Sandy merely grinned at him. "You don't want to take it to heart like that," he remonstrated cheerfully.
Ford, by way of reply, painstakingly analyzed the chief deficiencies of Sandy's immediate relatives, and was beginning upon his grandparents when Sandy reached barren ground in the shape of three long paragraphs of snow, cold, and sunrise artistically blended with prismatic adjectives. He waded through the first paragraph and well into the second before he mired in a hopeless jumble of unfamiliar polysyllables. Sandy was not the skipping kind; he threw the book upon a bench and gave his attention wholly to his companion in time to save his great-grandfather from utter condemnation.
"What's eating you, Ford?" he began pacifically--for Sandy was a weakling. "You might be a lot worse off. You're married, all right enough, from all I c'n hear--but she's left town. It ain't as if you had to live with her."
Ford looked at him a minute and groaned dismally.
"Oh, I ain't meaning anything against the lady herself," Sandy hastened to assure him. "Far as I know, she's all right--"
"What I want to know," Ford broke in, impatient of condolence when he needed facts, "is, who _is_ she? And what did I go and marry her for?"
"Well, you'll have to ask somebody that knows. I never seen her, myself, except when you was leadin' her down to the depot, and you and her talked it over private like--the way I heard it. I was gitting a hair-cut and shampoo at the time. First I heard, you was married. I should think you'd remember it yourself." Sandy looked at Ford curiously.
"I kinda remember standing up and holding hands with some woman and somebody saying: 'I now pronounce you man and wife,'" Ford confessed miserably, his face in his hands again. "I guess I must have done it, all right."
Sandy was kind enough when not otherwise engaged. He got up and put a basin of water on the stove to warm, that Ford might bathe his hurts, and he made him a very creditable drink with lemon and whisky and not too much water.
"The way I heard it," he explained further, "this lady come to town looking for Frank Ford Cameron, and seen you, and said you was him. So--"
"I ain't," Ford interrupted indignantly. "My name's Ford Campbell and I'll lick any darned son-of-a-gun--"
"Likely she made a mistake," Sandy soothed. "Frank Ford Cameron, she had you down for, and you went ahead and married her willing enough. Seems like there was some hurry-up reason that she explained to you private. She had the license all made out and brought a preacher down from Garbin. Bill Wright said he overheard you tellin' her you'd do anything to oblige a lady--"
"That's the worst of it; I'm always too damned polite when I'm drunk!" grumbled Ford.
Sandy, looking upon his bruised and distorted countenance and recalling, perhaps, the process by which Ford reached that lamentable condition, made a sound like a diplomatically disguised laugh. "Not always," he qualified mildly.
"Anyway," he went on, "you sure married her. That's straight goods. Bill Wright and Rock was the witnesses. And if you don't know why you done it--" Sandy waved his hands to indicate his inability to enlighten Ford. "Right afterwards you went out to the bar and had another drink--all this takin' place in the hotel dining-room, and Mother McGrew down with neuralagy and not bein' present--and one drink leads to another, you know. I come in then, and the bunch was drinkin' luck to you fast as Sam could push the bottles along. Then you went back to the lady--and if you don't know what took place you can search me--and pretty soon Bill said you'd took her and her grip to the depot. Anyway, when you come back, you wasn't troubled with no attack of politeness!
"You went in the air with Bill, first," continued Sandy, testing with his finger the temperature of the water in the basin, "and bawled him out something fierce for standing by and seeing you make a break like that without doing something. You licked him--and then Rock bought in because some of your remarks kinda included him too. I d' know," said Sandy, scratching his unshaven jaw reflectively, "just how the fight did go between you 'n' Rock. You was both using the whole room, I know. Near as I could make out, you--or maybe it was Rock--tromped on Big Jim's bunion. This cold spell's hard on bunions--and Big Jim went after you both with blood in his eye.
"After that"--Sandy spread his arms largely--"it was go-as-you-please. Sam and me was the only ones that kept out, near as I can recollect, and when it thinned up a bit, you had Aleck down and was pounding the liver outa him, and Big Jim was whanging away at you, and Rock was clawin' Jim in the back of the neck, and you was all kickin' like bay steers in brandin' time. I reached in under the pile and dragged you out by one leg and left the rest of 'em fighting. They never seemed to miss you none." He grinned. "Jim commenced to bump Aleck's head up and down on the floor instead of you--and I knew he didn't have nothing against Aleck."
"Bill--"
"Bill, he'd quit right in the start." Sandy's grin became a laugh. "Seems like pore old Bill always gits in bad when you commence on your third pint. You wasn't through, though, seems like. You was going to start in at the beginning and en-core the whole performance, and you started out after Bill. Bill, he was lookin' for a hole big enough to crawl into by that time. But you run into the preacher. And you licked him to a fare-you-well and had him crying real tears before I or anybody else could stop you."
"What'd I lick him for?" Ford inquired in a tone of deep discouragement.
Sandy's indeterminate, blue-gray eyes rounded with puzzlement.
"Search me," he repeated automatically. But later he inadvertently shed enlightenment. He laughed, bending double, and slapping his thigh at the irresistible urge of a mental picture.
"Thought I'd die," he gasped. "Me and Sam was watching from the door. You had the preacher by the collar, shakin' him, and once in awhile liftin' him clean off the ground on the toe of your boot; and you kept saying: 'A sober man, and a preacher--and you'd marry that girl to a fellow like me!' And then biff! And he'd let out a squawk. 'A drinkin', fightin', gamblin' son-of-a-gun like me, you swine!' you'd tell him. And when we finally pulled you loose, he picked up his hat and made a run for it."
Ford meditated gloomily. "I'll lick him again, and lick him when I'm sober, by thunder!" he promised grimly. "Who was he, do you know?"
"No, I don't. Little, dried-up geezer with a nose like a kit-fox's and a whine to his voice. He won't come around here no more."
The door opened gustily and a big fellow with a skinned nose and a whimsical pair of eyes looked in, hesitated while he stared hard at Ford, and then entered and shut the door by the simple method of throwing his shoulders back against it.
"Hello, old sport--how you comin'?" he cried cheerfully. "Kinda wet for makin' calls, but when a man's loaded down with a guilty conscience--" He sighed somewhat ostentatiously and pulled forward a chair rejuvenated with baling-wire braces between the legs, and a cowhide seat. "What's that cookin'--coffee, or sheep-dip?" he inquired facetiously of Sandy, though his eyes dwelt solicitously upon Ford's bowed head. He leaned forward and slapped Ford in friendly fashion upon the shoulder.
"Buck up--'the worst is yet to come,'" he shouted, and laughed with an exaggeration of cheerfulness. "You can't ever tell when death or matrimony's goin' to get a man. By hokey, seems like there's no dodgin' either one."
Ford lifted a bloodshot eye to the other. "And I always counted you for a friend, Bill," he reproached heavily. "Sandy says I licked you good and plenty. Well, looks to me like you had it coming, all right."
"Well--I got it, didn't I?" snorted Bill, his hand lifting involuntarily to his nose. "And I ain't bellering, am I?" His mouth took an abused, downward droop. "I ain't holdin' any grudge, am I? Why, Sandy here can tell you that I held one side of you up whilst he was leadin' the other side of you home! And I am sorry I stood there and seen you get married off and never lifted a finger; I'm darned sorry. I shoulda hollered misdeal, all right. I know it now." He pulled remorsefully at his wet mustache, which very much resembled a worn-out sharing brush.
Ford straightened up, dropped a hand upon his thigh, and thereby discovered another sore spot, which he caressed gently with his palm.
"Say, Bill, you were there, and you saw her. On the square now--what's she like? And what made me marry her?"
Bill pulled so hard upon his mustache that his teeth showed; his breath became unpleasantly audible with the stress of emotion. "So help me, I can't tell you what she's like, Ford," he confessed. "I don't remember nothing about her looks, except she looked good to me, and I never seen her before, and her hair wasn't red--I always remember red hair when I see it, drunk or sober. You see," he added as an extenuation, "I was pretty well jagged myself. I musta been. I recollect I was real put out because my name wasn't Frank Ford--By hokey!" He laid an impressive forefinger upon Ford's knee and tapped several times. "I never knew your name was rightly Frank Ford Cameron. I always--"
"It ain't." Ford winced and drew away from the tapping process, as if his knee also was sensitive that morning.
"You told her it was. I mind that perfectly, because I was so su'prised I swore right out loud and was so damned ashamed I couldn't apologize. And say! She musta been a real lady or I wouldn't uh felt that way about it!" Bill glanced triumphantly from one to the other. "Take it from me, you married a lady, Ford. Drunk or sober, I always make it a point to speak proper before the ladies--t'other kind don't count--and when I make a break, you betcher life I remember it. She's a real lady--I'd swear to that on a stack uh bibles ten feet high!" He settled back and unbuttoned his steaming coat with the air of a man who has established beyond question the vital point of an argument.
"Did I tell her so myself, or did I just let it go that way?" Ford, as his brain cleared, stuck close to his groping for the essential facts.
"Well, now--I ain't dead sure as to that. Maybe Rock'll remember. Kinda seems to me now, that she asked you if you was really Frank Ford Cameron, and you said: 'I sure am,' or something like that. The preacher'd know, maybe. He musta been the only sober one in the bunch--except the girl. But you done chased him off, so--"
"Sandy, I wish you'd go hunt Rock up and tell him I want to see him." Ford spoke with more of his natural spirit than he had shown since waking.
"Rock's gone on out to Riley's camp," volunteered Bill. "Left this morning, before the rain started in."
"What was her name--do you know?" Ford went back to the mystery.
"Ida--or was it Jenny? Some darned name--I heard it, when the preacher was marrying you." Bill was floundering hopelessly in mental fog, but he persisted. "And I seen it wrote in the paper I signed my name to. I mind she rolled up the paper afterwards and put it--well, I dunno where, but she took it away with her, and says to you: 'That's safe, now'--or 'You're safe,' or 'I'm safe,'--anyway, some darned thing was safe. And I was goin' to kiss the bride--mebbe I did kiss her--only I'd likely remember it if I had, drunk or sober! And--oh, now I got it!" Bill's voice was full of elation. "You was goin' to kiss the bride--that was it, it was you goin' to kiss her, and she slap--no, by hokey, she didn't slap you, she just--or was it Rock, now?" Doubt filled his eyes distressfully. "Darn my everlastin' hide," he finished lamely, "there was some kissin' somew'ere in the deal, and I mind her cryin' afterwards, but whether it was about that, or--Say, Sandy, what was it Ford was lickin' the preacher for? Wasn't it for kissin' the bride?"
"It was for marrying him to her," Sandy informed him sententiously.
Ford got up and went to the little window and looked out. Presently he came back to the stove and stood staring disgustedly down upon the effusively friendly Bill, leering up at him pacifically.
"If I didn't feel so rotten," he said glumly, "I'd give you another licking right now, Bill--you boozing old devil. I'd like to lick every darned galoot that stood back and let me in for this. You'd ought to have stopped me. You'd oughta pounded the face off me before you let me do such a fool thing. That," he said bitterly, "shows how much a man can bank on his friends!"
"It shows," snorted Bill indignantly, "how much he can bank on himself!"
"On whisky, to let him in for all kinds uh trouble," revised Sandy virtuously. Sandy had a stomach which invariably rebelled at the second glass and therefore, remaining always sober perforce, he took to himself great credit for his morality.
"Married!--and I don't so much as know her name!" gritted Ford, and went over and laid himself down upon the bed, and sulked for the rest of that day of rain and gloom.
CHAPTER II
Wanted: Information
Sulking never yet solved a mystery nor will it accomplish much toward bettering an unpleasant situation. After a day of unmitigated gloom and a night of uneasy dreams, Ford awoke to a white, shifting world of the season's first blizzard, and to something like his normal outlook upon life.
That outlook had ever been cheerful, with the cheerfulness which comes of taking life in twenty-four-hour doses only, and of looking not too far ahead and backward not at all. Plenty of persons live after that fashion and thereby attain middle life with smooth foreheads and cheeks unlined by thought; and Ford was therefore not much different from his fellows. Never before had he found himself with anything worse than bodily bruises to sour life for him after a tumultuous night or two in town, and the sensation of a discomfort which had not sprung from some well-defined physical sense was therefore sufficiently novel to claim all his attention.
It was not the first time he had fought and forgotten it afterwards. Nor was it a new experience for him to seek information from his friends after a night full of incident. Sandy he had always found tolerably reliable, because Sandy, being of that inquisitive nature so common to small persons, made it a point to see everything there was to be seen; and his peculiar digestive organs might be counted upon to keep him sober. It was a real grievance to Ford that Sandy should have chosen the hour he did for indulging in such trivialities as hair-cuts and shampoos, while events of real importance were permitted to transpire unseen and unrecorded. Ford, when the grievance thrust itself keenly upon him, roused the recreant Sandy by pitilessly thrusting an elbow against his diaphragm.
Sandy grunted at the impact and sat bolt upright in bed before he was fairly awake. He glanced reproachfully down at Ford, who stared back at him from a badly crumpled pillow.
"Get up," growled Ford, "and start a fire going, darn you. You kept me awake half the night, snoring. I want a beefsteak with mushrooms, devilled kidneys, waffles with honey, and four banana fritters for breakfast. I'll take it in bed; and while I'm waiting, you can bring me the morning paper and a package of Egyptian Houris."
Sandy grunted again, slid reluctantly out into the bitterly cold room, and crept shivering into his clothes. He never quite understood Ford's sense of humor, at such times, but he had learned that it is more comfortable to crawl out of bed than to be kicked out, and that vituperation is a mere waste of time when matched against sheer heartlessness and a superior muscular development.
"Y' ought to make your wife build the fires," he taunted, when he was clothed and at a safe distance from the bed. He ducked instinctively afterwards, but Ford was merely placing a match by itself on the bench close by.
"That's one," Ford remarked calmly. "I'm going to thrash every misguided humorist who mentions that subject to me in anything but a helpful spirit of pure friendship. I'm going to give him a separate licking for every alleged joke. I'll want two steaks, Sandy. I'll likely have to give you about seven distinct wallopings. Hand me some more matches to keep tally with. I don't want to cheat you out of your just dues."
Sandy eyed him doubtfully while he scraped the ashes from the grate.
"You may want a dozen steaks, but that ain't saying you're going to git 'em," he retorted, with a feeble show of aggression. "And 's far as licking me goes--" He stopped to blow warmth upon his fingers, which were numbed with their grasp of the poker. "As for licking me, I guess you'll have to do that on the strength uh bacon and sour-dough biscuits; if you do it at all, which I claim the privilege uh doubting a whole lot."
Ford laughed a little at the covert challenge, made ridiculous by Sandy's diminutive stature, pulled the blankets up to his eyes, and dozed off luxuriously; and although it is extremely tiresome to be told in detail just what a man dreams upon certain occasions, he did dream, and it was something about being married. At any rate, when the sizzling of bacon frying invaded even his slumber and woke him, he felt a distinct pang of disappointment that it was Sandy's carroty head bent over the frying-pan, instead of a wife with blond hair which waved becomingly upon her temples.
"Wonder what color her hair is, anyway," he observed inadvertently, before he was wide enough awake to put the seal of silence on his musings.
"Hunh?"
"I asked when those banana fritters are coming up," lied Ford, getting out of bed and yawning so that his swollen jaw hurt him, and relapsed into his usual taciturnity, which was his wall of defense against Sandy's inquisitiveness.
He ate his breakfast almost in silence, astonishing Sandy somewhat by not complaining of the excess of soda in the biscuits. Ford was inclined toward fastidiousness when he was sober--a trait which caused men to suspect him of descending from an upper stratum of society; though just when, or just where, or how great that descent had been, they had no means of finding out. Ford, so far as his speech upon the subject was concerned, had no existence previous to his appearance in Montana, five or six years before; but he bore certain earmarks of a higher civilization which, in Sandy's mind, rather concentrated upon a pronounced distaste for soda-yellowed bread, warmed-over coffee, and scorched bacon. That he swallowed all these things and seemed not to notice them, struck Sandy as being almost as remarkable as his matrimonial adventure.
When he had eaten, Ford buttoned himself into his overcoat, pulled his moleskin cap well down, and went out into the storm without a word to Sandy, which was also unusual; it was Ford's custom to wash the dishes, because he objected to Sandy's economy of clean, hot water. Sandy flattened his nose against the window, saw that Ford, leaning well forward against the drive of the wind, was battling his way toward the hotel, and guessed shrewdly that he would see him no more that day.
"He better keep sober till his knuckles git well, anyway," he mumbled disapprovingly. "If he goes to fighting, the shape he's in now--"
Ford had no intention of fighting. He went straight up to the bar, it is true, but that was because he saw that Sam was at that moment unoccupied, save with a large lump of gum. Being at the bar, he drank a glass of whisky; not of deliberate intent, but merely from force of habit. Once down, however, the familiar glow of it through his being was exceedingly grateful, and he took another for good measure.
"H'lo, Ford," Sam bethought him to say, after he had gravely taken mental note of each separate scar of battle, and had shifted his cud to the other side of his mouth, and had squeezed it meditatively between his teeth. "Feel as rocky as you look?"
"Possibly." Ford's eyes forbade further personalities. "I'm out after information, Sam, and if you've got any you aren't using, I'd advise you to pass it over; I can use a lot, this morning. Were you sober, night before last?"
Sam chewed solemnly while he considered. "Tolerable sober, yes," he decided at last. "Sober enough to tend to business; why?"
With his empty glass Ford wrote invisible scrolls upon the bar. "I--did you happen to see--my--the lady I married?" He had been embarrassed at first, but when he finished he was glaring a challenge which shifted the disquiet to Sam's manner.
"No. I was tendin' bar all evenin'--and she didn't come in here."
Ford glanced behind him at the sound of the door opening, saw that it was only Bill, and leaned over the bar for greater secrecy, lowering his voice as well.
"Did you happen to hear who she was?"
Sam stared and shook his head.
"Don't you know anything about her at all--where she came from--and why, and where she went?"
Sam backed involuntarily. Ford's tone made it a crime either to know these things or to be guilty of ignorance; which, Sam could not determine. Sam was of the sleek, oily-haired type of young men, with pimples and pale eyes and a predilection for gum and gossip. He was afraid of Ford and he showed it.
"That's just what (no offense, Ford--I ain't responsible) that's what everybody's wondering. Nobody seems to know. They kinda hoped you'd explain--"
"Sure!" Ford's tone was growing extremely ominous. "I'll explain a lot of things--if I hear any gabbling going on about my affairs." He was seized then with an uncomfortable feeling that the words were mere puerile blustering and turned away from the bar in disgust.
In disgust he pulled open the door, flinched before the blast of wind and snow which smote him full in the face and blinded him, and went out again into the storm. The hotel porch was a bleak place, with snow six inches deep and icy boards upon which a man might easily slip and break a bone or two, and with a whine overhead as the wind sucked under the roof. Ford stood there so long that his feet began to tingle. He was not thinking; he was merely feeling the feeble struggles of a newborn desire to be something and do something worth while--a desire which manifested itself chiefly in bitterness against himself as he was, and in a mental nausea against the life he had been content to live.
The mystery of his marriage was growing from a mere untoward incident of a night's carouse into a baffling thing which hung over him like an impending doom. He was not the sort of man who marries easily. It seemed incredible that he could really have done it; more incredible that he could have done it and then have wiped the slate of his memory clean; with the crowning impossibility that a strange young woman could come into town, marry him, and afterward depart and no man know who she was, whence she had come, or where she had gone. Ford stepped suddenly off the porch and bored his way through the blizzard toward the depot. The station agent would be able to answer the last question, at any rate.
The agent, however, proved disappointingly ignorant of the matter. He reminded Ford that there had not been time to buy a ticket, and that the girl had been compelled to run down the platform to reach the train before it started, and that the wheels began to turn before she was up the steps of the day coach.
"And don't you remember turning around and saying to me: 'I'm a poor married man, but you can't notice the scar,' or something like that?" The agent was plainly interested and desirous of rendering any assistance possible, and also rather diffident about discussing so delicate a matter with a man like Ford.
Ford drummed his fingers impatiently upon the shelf outside the ticket window. "I don't remember a darned thing about it," he confessed glumly. "I can't say I enjoy running all around town trying to find out who it was I married, and why I married her, and where she went afterwards, but that's just the kinda fix I'm in, Lew. I don't suppose she came here and did it just for fun--and I can't figure out any other reason, unless she was plumb loco. From all I can gather, she was a nice girl, and it seems she thought I was Frank Ford Cameron--which I am not!" He laughed, as a man will laugh sometimes when he is neither pleased nor amused.
"I might ask McCreery--he's conductor on Fourteen. He might remember where she wanted to go," the agent suggested hesitatingly. "And say! What's the matter with going up to Garbin and looking up the record? She had to get the license there, and they'd have her name, age, place of residence, and--and whether she's white or black." The agent smiled uncertainly over his feeble attempt at a joke. "I got a license for a friend once," he explained hastily, when he saw that Ford's face did not relax a muscle. "There's a train up in forty minutes--"
"Sure, I'll do that." Ford brightened. "That must be what I've been trying to think of and couldn't. I knew there was some way of finding out. Throw me a round-trip ticket, Lew. Lordy me! I can't afford to let a real, live wife slip the halter like this and leave me stranded and not knowing a thing about her. How much is it?"
The agent slid a dark red card into the mouth of his office stamp, jerked down the lever, and swung his head quickly toward the sounder chattering hysterically behind him. His jaw slackened as he listened, and he turned his eyes vacantly upon Ford for a moment before he looked back at the instrument.
"Well, what do you know about that?" he queried, under his breath, released the ticket from the grip of the stamp, and flipped it into the drawer beneath the shelf as if it were so much waste paper.
"That's my ticket," Ford reminded him levelly.
"You don't want it now, do you?" The agent grinned at him. "Oh, I forgot you couldn't read that." He tilted his head back toward the instrument. "A wire just went through--the court-house at Garbin caught fire in the basement--something about the furnace, they think--and she's going up in smoke. Hydrants are froze up so they can't get water on it. That fixes your looking up the record, Ford."
Ford stared hard at him. "Well, I might hunt up the preacher and ask him," he said, his tone dropping again to dull discouragement.
The agent chuckled. "From all I hear," he observed rashly, "you've made that same preacher mighty hard to catch!"
Ford drummed upon the shelf and scowled at the smoke-blackened window, beyond which the snow was sweeping aslant. Upon his own side of the ticket window, the agent pared his nails with his pocket-knife and watched him furtively.
"Oh, hell! What do I care, anyway?" Revulsion seized Ford harshly. "I guess I can stand it if she can. She came here and married me--it isn't my funeral any more than it is hers. If she wants to be so darned mysterious about it, she can go plumb--to--New York!" There were a few decent traits in Ford Campbell; one was his respect for women, a respect which would not permit him to swear about this wife of his, however exasperating her behavior.
"That's the sensible way to look at it, of course," assented the agent, who made it a point to agree always with a man of Ford's size and caliber, on the theory that amiability means popularity, and that placation is better than plasters. "You sure ought to let her do the hunting--and the worrying, too. You aren't to blame if she married you unawares. She did it all on her own hook--and she must have known what she was up against."
"No, she didn't," flared Ford unexpectedly. "She made a mistake, and I wanted to point it out to her and help her out of it if I could. She took me for some one else, and I was just drunk enough to think it was a joke, I suppose, and let it go that way. I don't believe she found out she tied up to the wrong man. It's entirely my fault, for being drunk."
"Well, putting it that way, you're right about it," agreed the adaptable Lew. "Of course, if you hadn't been--"
"If whisky's going to let a fellow in for things like this, it's time to cut it out altogether." Ford was looking at the agent attentively.
"That's right," assented the other unsuspectingly. "Whisky is sure giving you the worst of it all around. You ought to climb on the water-wagon, Ford, and that's a fact. Whisky's the worst enemy you've got."
"Sure. And I'm going to punish all of it I can get my hands on!" He turned toward the door. "And when I'm good and full of it," he added as an afterthought, "I'm liable to come over here and lick you, Lew, just for being such an agreeable cuss. You better leave your mother's address handy." He laughed a little to himself as he pulled the door shut behind him. "I bet he'll keep the frost thawed off the window to-day, just to see who comes up the platform," he chuckled.
He would have been more amused if he had seen how the agent ducked anxiously forward to peer through the ticket window whenever the door of the waiting room opened, and how he started whenever the snow outside creaked under the tread of a heavy step; and he would have been convulsed with mirth if he had caught sight of the formidable billet of wood which Lew kept beside his chair all that day, and had guessed its purpose, and that it was a mute witness to the reputation which one Ford Campbell bore among his fellows. Lew was too wise to consider for a moment the revolver meant to protect the contents of the safe. Even the unintelligent know better than to throw a lighted match into a keg of gunpowder.
Ford leaned backward against the push of the storm and was swept up to the hotel. He could not remember when he had felt so completely baffled; the incident of the girl and the ceremony was growing to something very like a calamity, and the mystery which surrounded it began to fret him intolerably; and the very unusualness of a trouble he could not settle with his fists whipped his temper to the point of explosion. He caught himself wavering, nevertheless, before the wind-swept porch of the hotel "office." That, too, was strange. Ford was not wont to hesitate before entering a saloon; more often he hesitated about leaving.
"What's the matter with me, anyway?" he questioned himself impatiently. "I'm acting like I hadn't a right to go in and take a drink when I feel like it! If just a slight touch of matrimony acts like that with a man, what can the real thing be like? I always heard it made a fool of a fellow." To prove to himself that he was still untrammeled and at liberty to follow his own desire, he stamped across the porch, threw open the door, and entered with a certain defiance of manner.
Behind the bar, Sam was laughing with his mouth wide open so that his gum showed shamelessly. Bill and Aleck and Big Jim were leaning heavily upon the bar, laughing also.
"I'll bet she's a Heart-and-Hander, tryin' a new scheme to git a man. Think uh nabbing a man when he's drunk. That's a new one," Sam brought his lips close enough together to declare, and chewed vigorously upon the idea,--until he glanced up and saw Ford standing by the door. He turned abruptly, caught up a towel, and began polishing the bar with the frenzy of industry which never imposes upon one in the slightest degree.
Bill glanced behind him and nudged Aleck into caution, and in the silence which followed, the popping of a piece of slate-veined coal in the stove sounded like a volley of small-caliber pistol shots.
CHAPTER III
One Way to Drown Sorrow
Ford walked up to the bar, with a smile upon his face which Sam misunderstood and so met with a conciliatory grin and a hand extended toward a certain round, ribbed bottle with a blue-and-silver label. Ford waved away the bottle and leaned, not on the bar but across it, and clutching Sam by the necktie, slapped him first upon one ear and next upon the other, until he was forced by the tingling of his own fingers to desist. By that time Sam's green necktie was pulled tight just under his nose, and he had swallowed his gum--which, considering the size of the lump, was likely to be the death of him.
Ford did not say a word. He permitted Sam to jerk loose and back into a corner, and he watched the swift crimsoning of his ears with a keen interest. Since Sam's face had the pasty pallor of the badly scared, the ears appeared much redder by contrast than they really were. Next, Ford turned his attention to the man beside him, who happened to be Bill. For one long minute the grim spirit of war hovered just over the two.
"Aw, forget it, Ford," Bill urged ingratiatingly at last. "You don't want to lick anybody--least of all old Bill! Look at them knuckles! You couldn't thump a feather bed. Anyway, you got the guilty party when you done slapped Sam up to a peak and then knocked the peak off. Made him swaller his cud, too, by hokey! Say, Sam, my old dad used to feed a cow on bacon-rinds when she done lost her cud. You try it, Sam. Mebby it might help them ears! Shove that there trouble-killer over this way, Sammy, and don't look so fierce at your uncle Bill; he's liable to turn you across his knee and dust your pants proper." He turned again to Ford, scowling at the group and at life in general, while the snow melted upon his broad shoulders and trickled in little, hurrying drops down to the nearest jumping-off place. "Come, drownd your sorrer," Bill advised amiably. "Nobody said nothing but Sammy, and I'll gamble he wishes he hadn't, now." If his counsel was vicious, his smile was engaging--which does not, in this instance, mean that it was beautiful.
Ford's fingers closed upon the bottle, and with reprehensible thoroughness he proceeded to drown what sorrows he then possessed. Unfortunately he straightway produced a fresh supply, after his usual method. In two hours he was flushed and argumentative. In t |
14456-8 | hree he had whipped Bill--cause unknown to the chronicler, and somewhat hazy to Ford also after it was all over. By mid-afternoon he had Sammy entrenched in the tiny stronghold where barreled liquors were kept, and scared to the babbling stage. Aleck had been put to bed with a gash over his right eye where Ford had pointed his argument with a beer glass, and Big Jim had succumbed to a billiard cue directed first at his most sensitive bunion and later at his head. Ford was not using his fists, that day, because even in his whisky-brewed rage he remembered, oddly enough, his skinned knuckles.
Others had come--in fact, the entire male population of Sunset was hovering in the immediate vicinity of the hotel--but none had conquered. There had been considerable ducking to avoid painful contact with flying glasses from the bar, and a few had retreated in search of bandages and liniment; the luckier ones remained as near the storm-center as was safe and expostulated. To those Ford had but one reply, which developed into a sort of war-chant, discouraging to the peace-loving listeners.
"I'm a rooting, tooting, shooting, fighting son-of-a-gun--_and a good one!_" Ford would declaim, and with deadly intent aim a lump of coal, billiard ball, or glass at some unfortunate individual in his audience. "Hit the nigger and get a cigar! You're just hanging around out there till I drink myself to sleep--but I'm fooling you a few! I'm watching the clock with one eye, and I take my dose regular and not too frequent. I'm going to kill off a few of these smart boys that have been talking about me and my wife. She's a lady, my wife is, and I'll kill the first man that says she isn't." (One cannot, you will understand, be too explicit in a case like this; not one thousandth part as explicit as Ford was.)
"I'm going to begin on Sam, pretty quick," he called through the open door. "I've got him right where I want him." And he stated, with terrible exactness, his immediate intentions towards the bartender.
Behind his barricade of barrels, Sam heard and shivered like a gun-shy collie at a turkey shoot; shivered until human nerves could bear no more, and like the collie he left the storeroom and fled with a yelp of sheer terror. Ford turned just as Sam shot through the doorway into the dining-room, and splintered a beer bottle against the casing; glanced solemnly up at the barroom clock and, retreating to the nearly denuded bar, gravely poured himself another drink; held up the glass to the dusk-filmed window, squinted through it, decided that he needed a little more than that, and added another teaspoonful. Then he poured the contents of the glass down his throat as if it were so much water, wiped his lips upon a bar towel, picked a handful of coal from the depleted coal-hod, went to the door, and shouted to those outside to produce Sam, that he might be killed in an extremely unpleasant manner.
The group outside withdrew across the street to grapple with the problem before them. It was obviously impossible for civilized men to sacrifice Sam, even if they could catch him--which they could not. Sam had bolted through the dining-room, upset the Chinaman in the kitchen, and fallen over a bucket of ashes in the coal-shed in his flight for freedom. He had not stopped at that, but had scurried off up the railroad track. The general opinion among the spectators was that he had, by this time, reached the next station and was hiding in a cellar there.
Bill Wright hysterically insisted that it was up to Tom Aldershot, who was a deputy town marshal. Tom, however, was working on the house he hoped to have ready for his prospective bride by Thanksgiving, and hated to be interrupted for the sake of a few broken heads only.
"He ain't shooting up nobody," he argued from the platform, where he was doing "inside work" on his dining-room while the storm lasted. "He never does cut loose with his gun when he's drunk. If I arrested him, I'd have to take him clear up to Garbin--and I ain't got time. And it wouldn't be nothin' but a charge uh disturbin' the peace, when I got him there. Y'oughta have a jail in Sunset, like I've been telling yuh right along. Can't expect a man to stop his work just to take a man to jail--not for anything less than murder, anyhow."
Some member of the deputation hinted a doubt of his courage, and Tom flushed.
"I ain't scared of him," he snorted indignantly. "I should say not! I'll go over and make him behave--as a man and a citizen. But I ain't going to arrest him as an officer, when there ain't no place to put him." Tom reluctantly threw down his hammer, grumbling because they would not wait till it was too dark to drive nails, but must cut short his working day, and went over to the hotel to quell Ford.
Ingress by way of the front door was obviously impracticable; the marshal ducked around the corner just in time to avoid a painful meeting with a billiard ball. Mother McGrew had piled two tables against the dining-room door and braced them with the mop, and stubbornly refused to let Tom touch the barricade either as man or officer of the law.
"Well, if I can't get in, I can't do nothing," stated Tom, with philosophic calm.
"He's tearing up the whole place, and he musta found all them extra billiard balls Mike had under the bar, and is throwin' 'em away," wailed Mrs. McGrew, "and he's drinkin' and not payin'. The damage that man is doin' it would take a year's profits to make up. You gotta do something, Tom Aldershot--you that calls yourself a marshal, swore to pertect the citizens uh Sunset! No, sir--I ain't a-goin' to open this door, neither. I'm tryin' to save the dishes, if you want to know. I ain't goin' to let my cups and plates foller the glasses in there. A town full uh men--and you stand back and let one crazy--"
Tom had heard Mrs. McGrew voice her opinion of the male population of Sunset on certain previous occasions. He left her at that point, and went back to the group across the street.
At length Sandy, whose imagination had been developed somewhat beyond the elementary stage by his reading of romantic fiction, suggested luring Ford into the liquor room by the simple method of pretending an assault upon him by way of the storeroom window, which could be barred from without by heavy planks. Secure in his belief in Ford's friendship for him, Sandy even volunteered to slam the door shut upon Ford and lock it with the padlock which guarded the room from robbery. Tom took a chew of tobacco, decided that the ruse might work, and donated the planks for the window.
It did work, up to a certain point. Ford heard a noise in the storeroom and went to investigate, caught a glimpse of Tom Aldershot apparently about to climb through the little window, and hurled a hammer and considerable vituperation at the opening. Whereupon Sandy scuttled in and slammed the door, according to his own plan, and locked it. There was a season of frenzied hammering outside, and after that Sunset breathed freer, and discussed the evils of strong drink, and washed down their arguments by copious draughts of the stuff they maligned.
Later, they had to take him out of the storeroom, because he insisted upon knocking the bungs out of all the barrels and letting the liquor flood the floor, and Mike McGrew's wife objected to the waste, on the ground that whisky costs money. They fell upon him in a body, bundled him up, hustled him over to the ice-house, and shut him in; and within ten minutes he kicked three boards off one side and emerged breathing fire and brimstone like the dragons of old. He had forgotten about wanting to kill Sam; he was willing--nay, anxious--to murder every male human in Sunset.
They did not know what to do with him after that. They liked Ford when he was sober, and so they hated to shoot him, though that seemed the only way in which they might dampen his enthusiasm for blood. Tom said that, if he failed to improve in temper by the next day, he would try and land him in jail, though it did seem rigorous treatment for so common a fault as getting drunk. Meanwhile they kept out of his way as well as they could, and dodged missiles and swore. Even that was becoming more and more difficult--except the swearing--because Ford developed a perfectly diabolic tendency to empty every store that contained a man, so that it became no uncommon sight to see a back door belching forth hurrying figures at the most unseasonable times. No man could lift a full glass, that night, and feel sure of drinking the contents undisturbed; whereat Sunset grumbled while it dodged.
It may have been nine o'clock before the sporadic talk of a jail crystallized into a definite project which, it was unanimously agreed, could not too soon be made a reality.
They built the jail that night, by the light of bonfires which the slightly wounded kept blazing in the intervals of standing guard over the workers; ready to give warning in case Ford appeared as a war-cloud on their horizon. There were fifteen able-bodied men, and they worked fast, with Ford's war-chant in the saloon down the street as an incentive to speed. They erected it close to Tom Aldershot's house, because the town borrowed lumber from him and they wanted to save carrying, and because it was Tom's duty to look after the prisoner, and he wanted the jail handy, so that he need not lose any time from his house-building.
They built it strong, and they built it tight, without any window save a narrow slit near the ceiling; they heated it by setting a stove outside under a shelter, where Tom could keep up the fire without the risk of going inside, and ran pipe and a borrowed "drum" through the jail high enough so that Ford could not kick it. And to discourage any thought of suicide by hanging, they ceiled the place tightly with Tom's matched flooring of Oregon pine. Tom did not like that, and said so; but the citizens of Sunset nailed it on and turned a deaf ear to his complaints.
Chill dawn spread over the town, dulling the light of the fires and bringing into relief the sodden tramplings in the snow around the jail, with the sharply defined paths leading to Tom Aldershot's lumber-pile. The watchers had long before sneaked off to their beds, for not a sign of Ford had they seen since midnight. The storm had ceased early in the evening and all the sky was glowing crimson with the coming glory of the sun. The jail was almost finished. Up on the roof three crouching figures were nailing down strips of brick-red building paper as a fair substitute for shingles, and on the side nearest town the marshal and another were holding a yard-wide piece flat against the wall with fingers that tingled in the cold, while Bill Wright fastened it into place with shingle nails driven through tin disks the size of a half-dollar.
Ford, partly sober after a sleep on the billiard table in the hotel barroom, heard the hammering, wondered what industrious soul was up and doing carpenter work at that unseemly hour, and after helping himself to a generous "eye-opener" at the deserted bar, found his cap and went over to investigate. He was much surprised to see Bill Wright working, and smiled to himself as he walked quietly up to him through the soft, step-muffling snow.
"What you doing, Bill--building a chicken house?" he asked, a quirk of amusement at the corner of his lips.
Bill jumped and came near swallowing a nail; so near that his eyes bulged at the feel of it next his palate. Tom Aldershot dropped his end of the strip of paper, which tore with a dull sound of ripping, and remarked that he would be damned. Necks craned, up on the roof, and startled eyes peered down like chipmunks from a tree. Some one up there dropped a hammer which hit Bill on the head, but no one said a word.
"You act like you were nervous, this morning," Ford observed, in the tone which indicates a conscious effort at good-humored ignorance. "Working on a bet, or what?"
"What!" snarled Bill sarcastically. "I wisht, Ford, next time you bowl up, you'd pick on somebody that ain't too good a friend to fight back! I'm gittin' tired, by hokey--"
"What--did I lick you again, Bill?" Ford's smile was sympathetic to a degree. "That's too bad, now. Next time you want to hunt a hole and crawl into it, Bill. I don't want to hurt you--but seems like I've kinda got the habit. You'll have to excuse me." He hunched his shoulders at the chill of the morning and walked around the jail, inspecting it with half-hearted interest.
"What is this, anyway?" he inquired of Tom. "Smoke-house?"
"It's a jail," snapped Tom. "To put you into if you don't watch your dodgers. What 'n thunder you want to carry on like you did last night, for? And then go and sober up just when we've got a jail built to put you into! That ain't no way for a man to do--I'll leave it to Bill if it is! I've a darned good mind to swear out a warrant, anyway, Ford, and pinch you for disturbin' the peace! That's what I ought to do, all right." Tom beat his hands about his body and glared at Ford with his ultra-official scowl.
"All right, if you want to do it." Ford's tone embellished the reply with a you-take-the-consequences sort of indifference. "Only, I'd advise you never to turn me loose again if you do lock me up in this coop once."
"I know I wouldn't uh worked all night on the thing if I'd knowed you was goin' to sleep it off," Bill complained, with deep reproach in his watery eyes. "I made sure you was due to keep things agitated around here for a couple uh days, at the very least, or I never woulda drove a nail, by hokey!"
"It is a darned shame, to have a nice, new jail and nobody to use it on," sympathized Ford, his eyes half-closed and steely. "I'd like to help you out, all right. Maybe I'd better kill you, Bill; they _might_ stretch a point and call it manslaughter--and I could use the bounty to help pay a lawyer, if it ever come to a head as a trial."
Whereat Bill almost wept.
Ford pushed his hands deep into his pockets and walked away, sneering openly at Bill, the marshal, the jail, and the town which owned it, and at wives and matrimony and the world which held all these vexations.
He went straight to the shack, drank a cup of coffee, and packed everything he could find that belonged to him and was not too large for easy carrying on horseback; and when Sandy, hovering uneasily around him, asked questions, he told him briefly to go off in a corner and lie down; which advice Sandy understood as an invitation to mind his own affairs.
Like Bill, Sandy could have wept at the ingratitude of this man. But he asked no more questions and he made no more objections. He picked up the story of the unpronounceable count who owned the castle in the Black Forest and had much tribulation and no joy until the last chapter, and when Ford went out, with his battered, sole-leather suitcase and his rifle in its pigskin case, he kept his pale eyes upon his book and refused even a grunt in response to Ford's grudging: "So long, Sandy."
CHAPTER IV
Reaction
Even when a man consistently takes Life in twenty-four-hour doses and likes those doses full-flavored with the joys of this earth, there are intervals when the soul of him is sick, and Life becomes a nauseous progression of bleak futility. He may, in his revulsion against it, attempt to end it all; he may, in sheer disgust of it, take his doses stronger than ever before, as if he would once for all choke to death that part of him which is fine enough to rebel against it; he may even forswear, in melancholy penitence, that which has served to give it flavor, and vow him vows of abstemiousness at which the grosser part of him chuckles ironically; or, he may blindly follow the first errant impulse for change of environment, in the half-formed hope that new scenes may, without further effort on his part, serve to make of him a new man--a man for whom he can feel some respect.
Ford did none of these things, however. The soul-sick incentive was there, and if he had been a little less of a reasoning animal and a little less sophisticated, he would probably have forsworn strong drink just as he forswore all responsibility for his inadvertent marriage. His reason and his experience saved him from cluttering his conscience with broken vows, although he did yield to the impulse of change to the extent of leaving Sunset while yet the inhabitants were fortifying themselves for the ardors of the day with breakfast and some wild prophecies concerning Ford's next outbreak.
Apprehension over Bill's immediate future was popular amongst his friends, Ford's sardonic reference to manslaughter and bounty being repeated often enough in Bill's presence to keep that peace-loving gentleman in a state of trepidation which he sought to hide behind vague warnings.
"He better think twicet before he comes bothering around me, by hokey!" Bill would mutter darkly. "I've stood a hull lot from Ford; I like 'im, when he's himself. But I've stood about as much as a man can be expected to stand. And he better look out! That's all I got to say--he better look out!" Bill himself, it may be observed incidentally, spent the greater portion of that day in "looking out." He was careful not to sit down with his back to a door, for instance, and was keenly interested when a knob turned beneath unseen fingers, and plainly relieved when another than Ford entered his presence. Bill's mustache was nearly pulled from its roots, that day--but that is not important to the story, which has to do with Ford Campbell, sometime the possessor of a neat legacy in coin, later a rider of the cattle ranges, last presiding genius over the poker table in Scotty's back room in Sunset, always an important factor--and too often a disturbing element--in any community upon which he chose to bestow his dynamic presence.
Scotty hoped that Ford would show up for business when the lamps were lighted, that night. There had been some delicacy on the part of Ford's acquaintances that day in the matter of calling upon him at the shack. They believed--and hoped--that Ford was "sleeping it off," and there was a unanimous reluctance to disturb his slumbers. Sandy, indulging himself in the matter of undisturbed spinal tremors over "The Haunted Chamber," had not left shelter, save when the more insistent shiverings of chilled flesh recalled him from his pleasurable nerve-crimplings and drove him forth to the woodpile. So that it was not until evening was well advanced that Sunset learned that Ford was no longer a potential menace within its meager boundaries. Bill took a long breath, observed meaningly that "He'd _better_ go--whilst his credit's good, by hokey!" and for the first time that day sat down with his back toward an outer door.
Ford was not worrying about Sunset half as much as Sunset was worrying about him. He was at that moment playing pinochle half-heartedly with a hospitable sheep-herder, under the impression that, since his host had frankly and profanely professed a revulsion against solitaire and a corresponding hunger for pinochle, his duty as a guest lay in satisfying that hunger. He played apathetically, overlooked several melts he might have made, and so lost three games in succession to the gleeful herder, who had needed the diversion almost as much as he needed a hair-cut.
His sense of social responsibility being eased thereby, Ford took his headache and his dull disgust with life to the wall side of the herder's frowsy bunk, and straightway forgot both in heavy slumber, leaving to the morrow any definite plan for the near future--the far future being as little considered as death and what is said to lie beyond.
That day had done for him all he asked of it. It had put him thirty miles and more from Sunset, against which he felt a resentment which it little deserved; of a truth it was as inoffensive a hamlet as any in that region, and its sudden, overweening desire for a jail was but a legitimate impulse toward self-preservation. The fault was Ford's, in harassing the men of Sunset into action. But several times that day, and again while he was pulling the stale-odored blankets snugly about his ears, Ford anathematized the place as "a damned, rotten hole," and was as nearly thankful as his mood would permit, when he remembered that it lay far behind him and was likely to be farther before his journeyings were done.
Sleep held him until daylight seeped in through the one dingy window. Ford awoke to the acrid smell of scorched bacon, thought at first that Sandy was once more demonstrating his inefficiency as a cook, and when he remembered that Sandy's name was printed smudgily upon that page of his life which he had lately turned down as a blotted, unlearned lesson is pushed behind an unwilling schoolboy, he began to consider seriously his next step.
Outside, the sheep were blatting stridently their demand for breakfast. The herder bolted coffee and coarse food until he was filled, and went away to his dreary day's work, telling Ford to make himself at home, and flinging back a hope of further triumphs in pinochle, that night.
Ford washed the dishes, straightened the blankets in the bunk, swept the grimy floor as well as he could with the stub of broom he found, filled the wood-box and then, being face to face with his day and the problem it held, rolled a cigarette, and smoked it in deep meditation.
He wanted to get away from town, and poker games, and whisky, and the tumult it brewed. Something within him hungered for clean, wind-swept reaches and the sane laughter of men, and Ford was accustomed to doing, or at least trying to do, the thing he wanted to do. He was not getting into the wilderness because of any inward struggle toward right living, but because he was sick of town and the sordid life he had lived there.
Somewhere, back toward the rim of mountains which showed a faint violet against the sky to the east, he owned a friend; and that friend owned a stock ranch which, Ford judged, must be of goodly extent; two weeks before, hearing somehow that Ford Campbell was running a poker game in Sunset, the friend had written and asked him to come and take charge of his "outfit," on the plea that, his foreman having died, he was burdened with many cares and in urgent need of help.
Ford, giving the herder's frying-pan a last wipe with the dish-cloth, laughed at the thought of taking the responsibility offered him in that letter. It occurred to him, however, that the Double Cross (which was the brand-name of Mason's ranch) might be a pleasant place to visit. It was long since he had seen Ches--and there had been a time when one bed held the two of them through many a long, weary night; when one frying-pan cooked the scanty food they shared between them. And there had been a season of grinding days and anxious, black nights between, when the one problem, to Ford, consisted of getting Ches Mason out of the wild land where they wandered, and getting him out alive. The problem Ford solved and at the solution men wondered. Afterward they had drifted apart, but the memory of those months would hold them together with a bond which not even time could break--a bond which would pull taut whenever they met.
Ford set down the frying-pan and went to the door and looked out. A chinook had blown up in the night, and although the wind was chill, the snow had disappeared, save where drifts clung to the hollows, shrinking and turning black beneath the sweeping gusts; sodden masses which gave to the prairie a dreary aspect of bleak discomfort. But Ford was well pleased at the sight of the brown, beaten grasses. Impulse was hardening to decision while he stared across the empty land toward the violet rim of hills; a decision to ride over to the Double Cross, and tell Ches Mason to his face that he was a chump, and have a smoke with the old Turk, anyway. Ches had married, since that vividly remembered time when adventure changed to hardship and hazard and walked hand in hand with them through the wild places. Ford wondered fleetingly if matrimony had changed old Ches; probably not--at least, not in those essential man-traits which appeal to men. Ford suddenly hungered for the man's hearty voice, where kindly humor lurked always, and for a grip of his hand.
It was like him to forget all about the herder and the promise of pinochle that night. He went eagerly to the decrepit little shed which housed Rambler, his long-legged, flea-bitten gray; saddled him purposefully and rode away toward the violet hills at the trail-trot which eats up the miles with the least effort.
That night, although he slept in a hamlet which called itself a town, his purpose kept firm hold of him, and he rode away at a decent hour the next morning,--and he rode sober. He kept his face toward the hills, and he did not trouble himself with any useless analysis of his unusual temperateness. He was going to blow in to the Double Cross some time before he slept that night, and have a talk with Ches. He had a pint of fairly good whisky in his pocket, in case he felt the need of a little on the way, and beyond those two satisfactory certainties he did not attempt to reason. They were significant, in a way, to a man with a tendency toward introspection; but Ford was interested in actualities and never stopped to wonder why he bought a pint, rather than a quart, or why, with Ches Mason in his mind, he declined to "set in" to the poker game which was running to tempting jackpots, the night before; or why he took one glass of wine before he mounted Rambler and let it go at that. He never once dreamed that the memory of cheerful, steady-going Ches influenced him toward starting on his friendly pilgrimage the Ford Campbell whom Mason had known eight years before; a very different Ford Campbell, be it said, from the one who had caused a whole town to breathe freer for his absence.
Of his wife Ford had thought less often and less uncomfortably since he left the town wherein had occurred the untoward incident of his marriage. He was not unaccustomed to doing foolish things when he was drunk, and as a rule he made it a point to ignore them afterwards. His mysterious, matrimonial accident was beginning to seem less of a real catastrophe than before, and the anticipation of meeting Ches Mason was rapidly taking precedence of all else in his mind.
So, with almost his normal degree of careless equanimity, he faced again the rim of hills--nearer they were now, with a deeper tinge that was almost purple where the shadows lined them here and there. Somewhere out that way lay the Double Cross ranch. Forty miles, one man told him it was; another, forty-three. At best it was far enough for the shortened daylight of one fall day to cover the journey. Ford threw away the stub of his after-breakfast cigarette and swung into the trail at a lope.
CHAPTER V
"I Can Spare this Particular Girl"
Ford's range-trained vision told him, while yet afar off, that the lone horse feeding upon a side hill was saddled and bridled, with reins dragging; the telltale, upward toss of its head when it started on to find a sweeter morsel was evidence enough of the impeding bridle, even before he was near enough to distinguish the saddle.
Your true range man owns blood-relationship with the original Good Samaritan; Ford swung out of the trail and untied his rope as a matter of course. The master of the animal might have turned him loose to feed, but if that were the case, he had strayed farther than was ever intended; the chances, since no human being was in sight, were all against design and in favor of accident. At any rate Ford did not hesitate. It is not good to let a horse run loose upon the range with a saddle cinched upon its back, as every one knows.
Ford was riding along the sheer edge of a water-worn gully, seeking a place where he might safely jump it--or better, a spot where the banks sloped so that he might ride down into it and climb the bank beyond--when he saw a head and pair of shoulders moving slowly along, just over the brow of the hill where fed the stray. He watched, and when the figure topped the ridge and started down the slope which faced him, his eyes widened a trifle in surprise.
Skirts to the tops of her shoes betrayed her a woman. She limped painfully, so that Ford immediately pictured to himself puckered eyebrows and lips pressed tightly together. "And I'll bet she's crying, too," he summed up aloud. While he was speaking, she stumbled and fell headlong.
When he saw that she made no attempt to rise, but lay still just as she had fallen, Ford looked no longer for an easy crossing. He glanced up and down the washout, saw no more promising point than where he was, wheeled and rode back twenty yards or so, turned and drove deep his spurs.
It was a nasty jump, and he knew it all along. When Rambler rose gamely to it, with tensed muscles and forefeet flung forward to catch the bank beyond, he knew it better. And when, after a sickening minute of frenzied scrambling at the crumbling edge, they slid helplessly to the bottom, he cursed his idiocy for ever attempting it.
Rambler got up with a pronounced limp, but Ford had thrown himself from the saddle and escaped with nothing worse than a skinned elbow. They were penned, however, in a box-like gully ten feet deep, and there was nothing to do but follow it to where they might climb out. Ford was worried about the girl, and made a futile attempt to stand in the saddle and from there climb up to the level. But Rambler, lame as he was, plunged so that Ford finally gave it up and started down the gulch, leading Rambler by the reins.
There were many sharp turns and temper-trying windings, and though it narrowed in many places so that there was barely room for them to pass, it never grew shallower; indeed, it grew always deeper; and then, without any warning, it stopped abruptly upon a coulée's rim, with jumbled rocks and between them a sheer descent to the slope below. Ford guessed then that he was boxed up in one of the main waterways of the foot-hills he had been skirting for the past hour or so, and that he should have ridden up the gulch instead of down it.
He turned, though the place was so narrow that Rambler's four feet almost touched one another and his rump scraped the bank, as Ford pulled him round, and retraced his steps. It was too rough for riding, even if he had not wanted to save the horse, and he had no idea how far he must go before he could get out. Ford, at that time, was not particularly cheerful.
He must have gone a mile and more before he reached the point where, by hard scrambling, he attained level ground upon the same side as the girl. Ten minutes he spent in urging Rambler up the bank, and when the horse stood breathing heavily beside him, Ford knew that, for all the good there was in him at present, he might as well have left him at the bottom. He walked around him, rubbing leg and shoulder muscles until he located the hurt, and shook his head when all was done. Then he started on slowly, with Rambler hobbling painfully after him. Ford knew that every rod would aggravate that strained shoulder and that a stop would probably make it impossible for the horse to go on at all.
He was not quite sure, after all those windings where he could not see, just where it was he had seen the girl, but he recognized at last the undulating outline of the ridge over which she had appeared, and made what haste he could up the slope. The grazing horse was no longer in sight, though he knew it might be feeding in a hollow near by.
He had almost given up hope of finding her, when he turned his head and saw her off to one side, lying half concealed by a clump of low rose bushes. She was not unconscious, as he had thought, but was crying silently, with her face upon her folded arms and her hat askew over one ear. He stooped and touched her upon the shoulder.
She lifted her head and looked at him, and drew away with a faint, withdrawing gesture, which was very slight in itself but none the less eloquent and unmistakable. Ford backed a step when he saw it and closed his lips without speaking the words he had meant to say.
[Illustration: She lifted her head and looked at him, and drew away.]
"Well, what do you want?" the girl asked ungraciously, after a minute spent in fumbling unseen hairpins and in straightening her hat. "I don't know why you're standing there like that, staring at me. I don't need any help."
"Appearances are deceitful, then," Ford retorted. "I saw you limping over the hill, after your horse, and I saw you fall down and stay down. I had an idea that a little help would be acceptable, but of course--"
"That was an hour ago," she interrupted accusingly, with a measuring glance at the sun, which was settling toward the sky-line.
"I had trouble getting across that washout down there. I don't know this part of the country, and I went down it instead of up. What are you crying about--if you don't need any help?"
She eyed him askance, and chewed upon a corner of her lip, and flipped the upturned hem of her riding skirt down over one spurred foot with a truly feminine instinct, before she answered him. She seemed to be thinking hard and fast, and she hesitated even while she spoke. Ford wondered at the latent antagonism in her manner.
"I was crying because my foot hurts so and because I don't see how I'm going to get back to the ranch. I suppose they'll hunt me up if I stay away long enough--but it's getting toward night, and--I'm scared to death of coyotes, if you must know!"
Ford laughed--at her defiance, in the face of her absolute helplessness, more than at what she said. "And you tell me you don't need any help?" he bantered.
"I might borrow your horse," she suggested coldly, as if she grudged yielding even that much to circumstance. "Or you might catch mine for me, I suppose."
"Sure. But you needn't hate me because you're in trouble," he hinted irrelevantly. "I'm not to blame, you know."
"I--I hate to ask help from--a stranger," she said, watching him from under her lashes. "And I can't help showing what I feel. I hate to feel under an obligation--"
"If that's all, forget it," he assured her calmly. "It's a law of the open--to help a fellow out in a pinch. When I headed for here, I thought it was a man had been set afoot."
She eyed him curiously. "Then you didn't know--"
"I thought you were a man," he repeated. "I didn't come just because I saw it was a girl. You needn't feel under any obligation whatever. I'm a stranger in the country and a stranger to you. I'm perfectly willing to stay that way, if you prefer. I'm not trying to scrape acquaintance on the strength of your being in trouble; but you surely don't expect a man to ride on and leave a woman out here on the bald prairie--do you? Especially when she's confessed she's afraid of the dark--and coyotes!"
She was staring at him while he spoke, and she continued to stare after he had finished; the introspective look which sees without seeing, it became at last, and Ford gave a shrug at her apparent obstinacy and turned away to where Rambler stood with his head drooped and his eyes half closed. He picked up the reins and chirped to him, and the horse hesitated, swung his left foot painfully forward, hobbled a step, and looked at Ford reproachfully.
"Your horse is crippled as badly as I am, it would seem," the girl observed, from where she sat watching them.
"I strained his shoulder, trying to make him jump that washout. That was when I first got sight of you over here. We went to the bottom and it took me quite a while to find a way out. That's why I was so long getting here." Ford explained indifferently, with his back to her, while he rubbed commiseratingly the swelling shoulder.
"Oh." The girl waited. "It seems to me you need help yourself. I don't see how you expect to help any one else, with your horse in that condition," she added. And when he still did not speak, she asked: "Do you know how far it is to the nearest ranch?"
"No. I told you I'm a stranger in this country. I was heading for the Double Cross, but I don't know just--"
"We're eight miles, straight across, from there; ten, the way we would have to go to get there. There are other washouts in this country--which it is unwise to attempt jumping, Mr.--"
"Campbell," Ford supplied shortly.
"I beg your pardon? You mumbled--"
"Campbell!" Ford was tempted to shout it but contented himself with a tart distinctness. A late, untoward incident had made him somewhat touchy over his name, and he had not mumbled.
"Oh. Did you skin your face and blacken your eye, Mr. Campbell, when you tried to jump that washout?"
"No." Ford did not offer any explanation. He remembered the scars of battle which were still plainly visible upon his countenance, and he turned red while he bent over the fore ankles of Rambler, trying to discover other sprains. He felt that he was going to dislike this girl very much before he succeeded in getting her to shelter. He could not remember ever meeting before a woman under forty with so unpleasant a manner and with such a talent for disagreeable utterances.
"Then you must have been fighting a wildcat," she hazarded.
"Pardon me; is this a Methodist experience meeting?" he retorted, looking full at her with lowering brows. "It seems to me the only subject which concerns us mutually is the problem of getting to a ranch before dark."
"You'll have to solve it yourself. I never attempt puzzles." The girl, somewhat to his surprise, showed no resentment at his rebuff. Indeed, he began to suspect her of being secretly amused. He began also mentally to accuse her of not being too badly hurt to walk, if she wanted to; indeed, his skepticism went so far as to accuse her of deliberately baiting him--though why, he did not try to conjecture. Women were queer. Witness his own late experience with one.
Being thus in a finely soured mood, Ford suggested that, as she no doubt knew the shortest way to the nearest ranch, they at least make a start in that direction.
"How?" asked the girl, staring up at him from where she sat beside the rose bushes.
"By walking, I suppose--unless you expect me to carry you." Ford's tone was not in any degree affable.
"I fancy it would be asking too great a favor to suggest that you catch my horse for me?"
Ford dropped Rambler's reins and turned to her, irritated to the point where he felt a distinct desire to shake her.
"I'd far rather catch your horse, even if I had to haze him all over the country, than carry you," he stated bluntly.
"Yes. I suspected that much." She had plucked a red seed-ball off the bush nearest her and was nibbling daintily the sweet pulp off the outside.
"Where is the horse?" Ford was holding himself rigidly hack from an outburst of temper.
"Oh, I don't know, I'm sure." She picked another seed-ball and began upon it. "He should be somewhere around, unless he has taken a notion to go home."
Ford said something under his breath and untied his rope from the saddle. He knew about where the horse had been feeding when he saw him, and he judged that it would naturally graze in the direction of home--which would probably be somewhere off to the southeast, since the trail ran more or less in that direction. Without a word to the girl, or a glance toward her, he started up the hill, hoping to get his bearings and a sight of the horse from the top. He could not remember when he had been so angry with a woman. "If she was a man," he gritted as he climbed, "I'd give her a thrashing or leave her out there, just as she deserves. That's the worst of dealing with a woman--she can always hand it to you, and you've got to give her a grin and thank-you, because she ain't a man."
He glanced back, then, and saw her sitting with her head dropped forward upon her hands. There was something infinitely pitiful and lonely in her attitude, and he knitted his brows over the contrast between it and her manner when he left her. "I don't suppose a woman knows, herself, what she means, half the time," he hazarded impatiently. "She certainly didn't have any excuse for throwing it into me the way she did; maybe she's sorry for it now."
After that his anger cooled imperceptibly, and he hurried a little faster because the day was waning with the chill haste of mid-autumn, and he recalled what she had said at first about being afraid of coyotes. And, although the storm of three days ago had been swept into mere memory by that sudden chinook wind, and the days were once more invitingly warm and hazily tranquil, night came shiveringly upon the land and the unhoused thought longingly of hot suppers and the glow of a fire.
The girl's horse was, he believed, just disappearing into a deep depression half a mile farther on; but when he reached the place where he had seen it, there was nothing in sight save a few head of cattle and a coyote trotting leisurely up the farther slope. He went farther down the shallow coulée, then up to the high level beyond, his rope coiled loosely over one arm with the end dragging a foot behind him. But there was nothing to be seen from up there, except that the sun was just a red disk upon the far-off hills, and that the night was going to be uncomfortably cool if that wind kept blowing from the northwest.
He began to feel slightly uneasy about the girl, and to regret wasting any time over her horse, and to fear that he might not be able to get close enough to rope the beast, even if he did see him.
He turned back then and walked swiftly through the dusk toward the ridge, beyond which she and Rambler were waiting. But it was a long way--much farther than he had realized until he came to retrace his steps--and the wind blew up a thin rift of clouds which made the darkness come quickly. He found it difficult to tell exactly at which point he had crossed the ridge, coming over; and although experience in the open develops in a man a certain animal instinct for directions handed down by our primitive ancestry, Ford went wide in his anxiety to take the shortest way back to his unwilling protégée. The westering slope was lighter, however, and five minutes of wandering along the ridge showed him a dim bulk which he knew was Rambler. He hurried to the place, and the horse whinnied shrilly as he approached.
"I looked as long as I could see, almost, but I couldn't locate your horse," Ford remarked to the dark shadow of the rose bushes. "I'll put you on mine. It will be slow going, of course--lame as he is--but I guess we can manage to get somewhere."
He waited for the chill, impersonal reply. When she did not speak, he leaned and peered at the spot where he knew she must be. "If you want to try it, we'd better be starting," he urged sharply. "It's going to be pretty cold here on this side-hill."
When there was silence still--and he gave her plenty of time for reply--Ford stooped and felt gropingly for her, thinking she must be asleep. He glanced back at Rambler; unless the horse had moved, she should have been just there, under his hands; or, he thought, she may have moved to some other spot, and be waiting in the dark to see what he would do. His palms touched the pressed grasses where she had been, but he did not say a word. He would not give her that satisfaction; and he told himself grimly that he had his opinion of a girl who would waste time in foolery, out here in the cold--with a sprained ankle, to boot.
He pulled a handful of the long grass which grows best among bushes. It was dead now, and dry. He twisted it into a makeshift torch, lighted and held it high, so that its blaze made a great disk of brightness all around him. While it burned he looked for her, and when it grew to black cinders and was near to scorching his hand, he made another and looked farther. He laid aside his dignity and called, and while his voice went booming full-lunged through the whispering silence of that empty land, he twisted the third torch, and stamped the embers of the second into the earth that it might not fire the prairie.
There was no dodging the fact; the girl was gone. When Ford was perfectly sure of it, he stamped the third torch to death with vicious heels, went back to the horse, and urged him to limp up the hill. He did not say anything then or think anything much; at least, he did not think coherently. He was so full of a wordless rage against the girl, that he did not at first feel the need of expression. She had made a fool of him.
He remembered once shooting a big, beautiful, blacktail doe. She had dropped limply in her tracks and lain there, and he had sauntered up and stood looking at her stretched before him. He was out of meat, and the doe meant all that hot venison steaks and rich, brown gravy can mean to a man meat-hungry. While he unsheathed his hunting knife, he gloated over the feast he would have, that night. And just when he had laid his rifle against a rock and knelt to bleed her, the deer leaped from under his hand and bounded away over the hill. He had not said a word on that occasion, either.
This night, although the case was altogether different and the disappearance of the girl was in no sense a disaster--rather a relief, if anything--he felt that same wordless rage, the same sense of utter chagrin. She had made a fool of him. After awhile he felt his jaws aching with the vicelike pressure of his teeth together.
They topped the ridge, Rambler hobbling stiffly. Ford had in mind a sheltering rim of sandstone at the nearest point of the coulée he had crossed in searching for the girl's horse, and made for it. He had noticed a spring there, and while the water might not be good, the shelter would be welcome, at any rate.
He had the saddle off Rambler, the shoulder bathed with cold water from the spring, and was warming his wet hands over a little fire when the first gleam of humor struck through his anger and lighted for a moment the situation.
"Lordy me! I must be a hoodoo, where women are concerned," he said, kicking the smoking stub of a bush into the blaze. "Soon as one crosses my trail, she goes and disappears off the face of the earth!" He fumbled for his tobacco and papers. It was a "dry camp" he was making that night, and a smoke would have to serve for a supper. He held his book of papers absently while he stared hard at the fire.
"It ain't such a bad hoodoo," he mused. "I can spare this particular girl just as easy as not; and the other one, too, for that matter."
After a minute spent in blowing apart the thin leaves and selecting a paper:
"Queer where she got to--and it's a darned mean trick to play on a man that was just trying to help her out of a fix. Why, I wouldn't treat a stray dog that way! Darn these women!"
CHAPTER VI
The Problem of Getting Somewhere
Dawn came tardily after a long, cheerless night, during which the wind whined over the prairie and the stars showed dimly through a shifting veil of low-sweeping clouds. Ford had not slept much, for hunger and cold make poor bedfellows, and all the brush he could glean on that barren hillside, with the added warmth of his saddle-blanket wrapped about him, could no more make him comfortable than could cigarettes still the gnawing of his hunger.
When he could see across the coulée, he rose from where he had been sitting with his back to the ledge and his feet to the meager fire, brooding over all the unpleasant elements in his life thus far, particularly the feminine element. He folded the saddle-blanket along its original creases and went over to where Rambler stood dispiritedly with his back humped to the cold, creeping wind and his tail whipping between his legs when a sudden gust played with it. Ford shivered, and beat his gloved hands about his body, and looked up at the sky to see whether the sun would presently shine and send a little warmth to this bleak land where he wandered. He blamed the girl for all of this discomfort, and he told himself that the next time a woman appeared within his range of vision he would ride way around her. They invariably brought trouble; of various sorts and degrees, it is true, but trouble always. It was perfectly safe, he decided, to bank on that. And he wished, more than ever, that he had not improvidently given that pint of whisky to a disconsolate-looking sheep-herder he had met the day before on his way out from town; or that he had put two flasks in his pocket instead of one. In his opinion a good, big jolt right now would make a new man of him.
Rambler, as he had half expected, was obliged to do his walking with three legs only; which is awkward for a horse accustomed to four exceedingly limber ones, and does not make for speed, however great one's hurry. Ford walked around him twice, scooped water in his hands, and once more bathed the shoulder--not that he had any great faith in cold water as a liniment, but because there was nothing else that he could do, and his anxiety and his pity impelled service of some sort. He rubbed until his fingers were numb and his arm aching, tried him again, and gave up all hope of leading the horse to a ranch. A mile he might manage, if he had to but ten! He rubbed Rambler's nose commiseratingly, straightened his forelock, told him over and over that it was a darned shame, anyway, and finally turned to pick up his saddle. He could not leave that lying on the prairie for inquisitive kit-foxes to chew into shoestrings, however much he might dread the forty-pound burden of it on his shoulders. He was stooping to pick it up when he saw a bit of paper twisted and tied to the saddle-horn with a red ribbon.
"Lordy me!" he ejaculated ironically. "The lady left a note on my pillow--and I never received it in time! Now, ain't that a darned shame?" He plucked the knot loose, and held up the ribbon and the note, and laughed.
"'When this reaches you, I shall be far away, though it breaks my heart to go and this missive is mussed up scandalous with my bitter tears. Forgive me if you can, and forget me if you have to. It is better thus, for it couldn't otherwise was,'" he improvised mockingly, while his chilled fingers fumbled to release the paper, which was evidently a leaf torn from a man's memorandum book. "Lordy me, a letter from a lady! Ain't that sweet!"
When he read it, however, the smile vanished with a click of the teeth which betrayed his returning anger. One cold, curt sentence bidding him wait until help came--that was all. His eye measured accusingly the wide margin left blank under the words; she had not omitted apology or explanation for lack of space, at any rate. His face grew cynically amused again.
"Oh, certainly! I'd roost on this side-hill for a month, if a lady told me to," he sneered, speaking aloud as he frequently did in the solitude of the range land. He glanced from ribbon to note, ended his indecision by stuffing the note carelessly into his coat pocket and letting the ribbon drop to the ground, and with a curl of the lips which betrayed his mental attitude toward all women and particularly toward that woman, picked up his saddle.
"I can't seem to recollect asking that lady for help, anyway," he summed up before he dismissed the subject from his mind altogether. "I was trying to help her; it sure takes a woman to twist things around so they point backwards!"
He turned and glanced pityingly at Rambler, watching him with ears perked forward inquiringly. "And I crippled a damned good horse trying to help a blamed poor specimen of a woman!" he gritted. "And didn't get so much as a pleasant word for it. I'll sure remember that!"
Rambler whinnied after him wistfully, and Ford set his teeth hard together and walked the faster, his shoulders slightly bent under the weight of the saddle. His own physical discomfort was nothing, beside the hurt of leaving his horse out there practically helpless; for a moment his fingers rested upon the butt of his six-shooter, while he considered going back and putting an end to life and misery for Rambler. But for all the hardness men had found in Ford Campbell, he was woman-weak where his horse was concerned. With cold reason urging him, he laid the saddle on the ground and went back, his hand clutching grimly the gun at his hip. Rambler's nicker of welcome stopped him half-way and held him there, hot with guilt.
"Oh, damn it, I can't!" he muttered savagely, and retraced his steps to where the saddle lay. After that he almost trotted down the coulée, and he would not look back again until it struck him as odd that the nickerings of the horse did not grow perceptibly fainter. With a queer gripping of the muscles in his throat he did turn, then, and saw Rambler's head over the little ridge he had just crossed. The horse was making shift to follow him rather than be left alone in that strange country. Ford waited, his lashes glistening in the first rays of the new-risen sun, until the horse came hobbling stiffly up to him.
"You old devil!" he murmured then, his contrite tone contrasting oddly with the words he used. "You contrary, ornery, old devil, you!" he repeated softly, rubbing the speckled nose with more affection than he had ever shown a woman. "You'd tag along, if--if you didn't have but one leg to carry you! And I was going to--" He could not bring himself to confess his meditated deed of mercy; it seemed black-hearted treachery, now, and he stood ashamed and humbled before the dumb brute that nuzzled him with such implicit faith.
It was slow journeying, after that. Ford carried the saddle on his own back rather than burden the horse with it, and hungry as he was, he stopped often and long, and massaged the sprained shoulder faithfully while Rambler rested it, with all his weight on his other legs and his nose rooting gently at Ford's bowed head.
A stray rider assured him that he was on the right trail, but it was past noon when he thankfully reached the Double Cross, threw his saddle down beside the stable door, and gave Rambler a chance at the hay in the corral.
CHAPTER VII
The Foreman of the Double Cross
"Hell-o, Ford, where the blazes did you drop down from?" a welcoming voice yelled, when he was closing the gate of the corral behind him and thinking that it was like Ches Mason to have a fine, strong corral and gate, and then slur the details by using a piece of baling wire to fasten it. The last ounce of disgust with life slid from his mind when he heard the greeting, and he turned and gripped hard the gloved hand thrust toward him. Ches Mason it was--the same old Ches, with the same humorous wrinkles around his eyes and mouth, the same kindliness, the same hearty faith in the world as he knew it and in his fellowmen as he found them--the unquestioning faith that takes it for granted that the other fellow is as square as himself. Ford held his hand while he permitted himself a swift, reckoning glance which took in these familiar landmarks of the other's personality.
"Don't seem to have hurt you much--matrimony," he observed whimsically, as he dropped the hand. "You look just like you always did--with your hat on." In the West, not to say in every other locality, there is a time-honored joke about matrimony, for certain strenuous reasons, producing premature baldness.
Ches grinned and removed his hat. Eight years had heightened his forehead perceptibly and thinned the hair on his temples. "You see what it's done to me," he pointed out lugubriously. "You ain't married yourself, I suppose? You look like you'd met up with some kinda misfortune." Mason was regarding Ford's scarred face with some solicitude.
"Just got tangled up a little with my fellow-citizens, in Sunset," Ford explained drily. "I tried to see how much of the real stuff I could get outside of, and then how many I could lick." He shrugged his shoulders a little. "I did quite a lot of both," he added, as an afterthought.
Mason was rubbing his jaw reflectively and staring hard at Ford. "The wife's strong on the temperance dope," he said hesitatingly. "I reckon you'll want to bunk down with the boys till you grow some hide on your face--there's lady company up at the house, and--"
"The bunk-house for mine, then," Ford cut in hastily. "No lady can get within gunshot of me; not if I see her coming in time!" Though he smiled when he said it, there was meaning behind the mirth.
Mason pulled a splinter from a corral rail and began to snap off little bits with his fingers. "Kate will go straight up in the air with me if she knows you're here and won't come to the house, though," he considered uneasily. "She's kept a big package of gratitude tucked away with your name on it, ever since that Alaska deal. And lemme tell you, Ford, when a woman as good as Kate goes and gets grateful to a man--gosh! Had your dinner?"
"Not lately, I haven't," Ford declared. "I kinda remember eating, some time in the past; it was a long time ago, though."
Mason laughed and tagged the answer as being the natural exaggeration of a hungry man. "Well, come along and eat, then--if you haven't forgotten how to make your jaws go. I've got Mose Freeman cooking for me; you know Mose, don't you? Hired him the day after the Fourth; the Mitten outfit fired him for getting soused and trying to clean out the camp, and I nabbed him before they had time to forgive him. Way they had of disciplining him--when he'd go on a big tear they'd fire him for a few days and then take him back. But they can't git him now--not if I can help it. A better cook never throwed dishwater over a guy-rope than that same old Mose, but--" He stopped and looked at Ford hesitantly. "Say! I hate like the deuce to tie a string on you as soon as you hit the ranch, Ford, but--if you've got anything along, you won't spring it on Mose, will you? A fellow's got to watch him pretty close, or--"
"I haven't got a drop." Ford's tone was reprehensibly regretful.
"You do look as if you'd put it all under your belt," Mason retorted dryly. "Left anything behind?"
"Some spoiled beauties, and a nice new jail that was built by my admiring townspeople, with my name carved over the door. I didn't stay for the dedication services. Sunset was getting all fussed up over me and I thought I'd give them a chance to settle their nerves; loss of sleep sure plays hell with folks when their nerves are getting frazzly." He smiled disarmingly at Mason.
"I'd kinda lost track of you, Ches, till I got your letter. I've been traveling pretty swift, and that's no lie. I meant to write, but--you know how a man gets to putting things off. And then I took a notion to ride over this way, and sample your grub for a day or so, and abuse you a little to your face, you old highbinder!"
"Sure. I've been kinda looking for you, too. But--I wish you hadn't quite so big an assortment of battle-signs, Ford. Kate's got ideals and prejudices--and she don't know all your little personal traits. She's heard a lot about you, of course. We was married right after we came outa the North, you know, and of course--Well, you know how a woman sops up adventure stories; and seeing you was the star performer--"
"And that's a lie," Ford put in modestly, albeit a trifle bluntly.
"No, it ain't. She got the truth. And she's so darned grateful," he added lugubriously, "that I don't know how to square your record with that face! Unless we can rig up some yarn about a holdup--" He paused just outside the mess-house door and eyed Ford questioningly. "We might--"
"No, you don't. If you've gone and lied to her, and made me out a little tin angel, you deserve what's coming. Anyway, I won't stay long, and I'll stop down here with the boys. Call me Jack Jones and let it go at that. Honest, Ches, I don't want to get mixed up with no more females. I'm plumb scared of 'em. Lordy me, that coffee sure does smell good to me!"
Mason looked at him doubtfully, saw that Ford was, for the time being, absolutely devoid of anything remotely approaching penitence for his sins, or compunction over his appearance, or uneasiness over "Kate's" opinion of him. He was hungry. And since it is next to impossible to whip up the conscience of a man whose thoughts are concentrated upon his physical needs, Mason was wise enough to wait, though the one point which he considered of vital importance to them both--the question of Ford's acceptance or refusal of the foremanship of the Double Cross--had not yet been touched upon.
While Ford ate with a controlled voraciousness which spoke eloquently of his twenty-four hours of fasting and exposure, Mason gossiped inattentively and studied the man.
Eight years leave their impress of mental growth or deterioration upon a man. Outwardly Ford was not much changed since Mason had come with him out of Alaska and lost sight of him afterwards. There was the maturity which the man of thirty possessed and which the virile young fellow of twenty-one had lacked. There was the same straight glance, the same atmosphere of squareness and mental poise. Those were qualities which Mason set down as valuable factors in his estimate of the man. Besides, there were other signs which did not make so pleasant a reading.
Eight years--and a few of them, at least, had been spent wastefully in tearing down what the other years had built; Mason had heard that Ford was "going to the dogs," and that by the short trail men blazed for themselves centuries ago and which those who came after have made a highway--the whisky trail. Mason had heard, now and then, of ten thousand dollars coming to Ford upon the death of his father and going almost as suddenly as it had come. That, at least, had been the rumor. Also he had heard, just lately, that Ford had taken to gambling as a profession and to terrorizing Sunset periodically as a pastime. And Mason remembered the Ford Campbell who had carried him on his back out of a wild place in Alaska, and had nearly starved himself that the sick man's strength might not fail him utterly. He had remembered--had Ches Mason; and, being one of those tenacious souls who cling to friendship and to a resilient faith in the good that is in the worst of us, he had thrown out a tentative life-line, as it were, and hoped that Ford might clutch it before he became quite submerged in the sodden morass of inebriety.
Ford may or may not have grasped eagerly at the line. At any rate he was there in the mess-house of the Double Cross, and he was not quite so sodden as Mason had feared to find him--provided he found him at all. So much, at least, was encouraging, and for the rest, Mason was content to wait.
Mose, recognizing Ford at once, had asked him, with a comical attempt at secrecy, if he had anything to drink. When Ford shook his head, Mose stifled a sigh and went back to his dishwashing, not more than half convinced and inclined toward resentfulness. That a "booze-fighter" like Ford Campbell should come only a day's ride from town and not be fairly well supplied with whisky was too remarkable to be altogether plausible. He eyed the two sourly while they talked, and he did not bring forth one of the fresh pies he had baked, as he had m |
14456-8 | eant to do.
It was not until Ford was ready to light his after-dinner cigarette that Mason led the way into the next room, which held the bunks and general belongings of the men, and closed the door so that they might talk in confidence without fear of Mose's loose tongue. Ford immediately pulled off his boots, laid himself down upon one of the bunks, doubled a pillow under his head, and began to eye Mason quizzically. Then he said:
"Say, you kinda played your hand face down, didn't you, Ches, when you wrote and asked me to come out here and take charge? Eight years is a long time to expect a man to stay right where he was when you saw him last. You've lost a whole lot of horse sense since I knew you."
"Well, what about it? You came, I notice." Mason grinned and would not help Ford otherwise to an understanding.
"I didn't come to hog-tie that foreman job, you chump. I just merely want to tell you that you'll get into all kinds of trouble, some day, if you go laying yourself wide open like that. Why, it's plumb crazy to offer a job like that to a fellow you haven't seen for as long as you have me. And if you heard anything about me, it's a cinch it wasn't what would recommend me to any Sunday-school as a teacher of their Bible class! How did you know I wouldn't take it? And let you in for--"
"Well, you're here, and I've seen you. The job's still waiting for you. You can start right in, to-morrow morning." Ches got out his pipe and began to fill it as calmly and with as much attention to the small details as if he were not mentally tensed for the struggle he knew was coming; a struggle which struck much deeper than the position he was offering Ford.
Ford almost dropped his cigarette in his astonishment. "Well, you damn' fool!" he ejaculated pityingly.
"Why? I thought you knew enough--you punched cows for the Circle for four or five years, didn't you? Nelson told me you were his top hand while you stayed with him, and that you ran the outfit one whole summer, when--"
"That ain't the point." A hot look had crept into Ford's face--a tinge which was not a flush--and a glow into his eyes. "I know the cow-business, far as that goes. It's me; you can't--why, Lordy me! You ought to be sent to Sulphur Springs and get your think-tank hoed out. Any man that will offer a foreman's job to a--a--"
"'A rooting, tooting, shooting, fighting son-of-a-gun, and a good one!'" assisted Mason equably. "'The only original go-getter--' Sure. That's all right."
The flush came slowly and darkened Ford's cheeks and brow and throat. He threw his half-smoked cigarette savagely at the hearth of the rusty box-stove, and scowled at the place where it fell. "Well, ain't that reason enough?" he demanded harshly, after a minute.
Mason had been studying that flush. He nodded assent to some question he had put to himself, and crowded tobacco into his pipe. "No reason at all, one way or the other. I need a foreman--one I can depend on. I've got to make a trip out to the Coast, this fall, and I've got to leave somebody here I can trust."
Ford shot him a quick, questioning glance, and bit his lip. "That," he said more calmly, "is just what I'm driving at. You can't trust me. You can't depend on me, Ches."
"Oh, yes I can," Mason contradicted blandly. "It's just because I can that I want you."
"You can't. You know damn' well you can't! Why, you--don't you know I've got the name of being a drunkard, and a--a bad actor all around? I'm not like I was eight years ago, remember. I've traveled a hard old trail since we bucked the snow together, Ches--and it's been mostly down grade. I was all right for awhile, and then I got ten thousand dollars, and it seemed a lot of money. I bought a fellow out--he had a ranch and a few head of horses--so he could take his wife back East to her mother. She was sick. I didn't want the darned ranch. And so help me, Ches, that's the only thing I've done in the last four years that I hadn't ought to be ashamed of. The rest of the money I just simply blew. I--well, you see me; you didn't want to take me up to the house to meet your wife, and I don't blame you. You'd be a chump if you did. And this is nothing out of the ordinary. I've got my face bunged up half the time, seems like." He thumped the pillow into a different position, settled his head against it, and looked at Mason with his old, whimsical smile. "So when you talk about that foreman job, and depending on me, you're--plumb delirious. I was going to write and tell you so, but I kept putting it off. And then I took a notion I'd hunt you up and give you some good advice. You're a good fellow, Ches, but the court ought to appoint a guardian for you."
"I'll stick around for three or four weeks," Mason observed, in the casual tone of one who is merely discussing the details of an everyday affair, "till the calves are all gathered. We're a little late this year, on account of old Slow dying right in round-up time. We got most of the beef shipped--all I care about gathering, this fall. I've got most all young stock, and it won't hurt to let 'em run another season; there ain't many. I'll let you take the wagons out, and I'll go with you till you get kinda harness-broke. And--"
"I told you I don't want the job." Ford's mouth was set grimly.
"You tried to tell me what I want and what I don't want," Mason corrected amiably. "Now I've got my own ideas on that subject. This here outfit belongs to me. I like to pick my men to suit myself; and if I want a certain man for foreman, I guess I've got a right to hire him--if he'll let himself be hired. I've picked my man. It don't make any difference to me how many times he played hookey when he was a kid, or how many men he's licked since he growed up. I've hired him to help run the Double Cross, and run it right; and I ain't a bit afraid but what he'll make good." He smiled and knocked the ashes gently from his pipe into the palm of his hand, because the pipe was a meerschaum just getting a fine, fawn coloring around the base of the bowl, and was dear to the heart of him. "Down to the last, white chip," he added slowly, "he'll make good. He ain't the kind of a man that will lay down on his job." He got up and yawned, elaborately casual in his manner.
"You lay around and take it easy this afternoon," he said. "I've got to jog over to the river field; the boys are over there, working a little bunch we threw in yesterday. To-morrow we can ride around a little, and kinda get the lay of the land. You better go by-low, right now--you look as if it wouldn't do you any harm!" Whereupon he wisely took himself off and left Ford alone.
The door he pulled shut after him closed upon a mental battle-ground. Ford did not go "by-low." Instead, he rolled over and lay with his face upon his folded arms, alive to the finger-tips; alive and fighting. For there are times when the soul of a man awakes and demands a reckoning, and reviews pitilessly the past and faces the future with the veil of illusion torn quite away--and does it whether the man will or no.
CHAPTER VIII
"I Wish You'd Quit Believing in Me!"
A distant screaming roused Ford from his bitter mood of introspection. He raised his head and listened, his heavy-lidded eyes staring blankly at the wall opposite, before he sprang off the bunk, pulled on his boots, and rushed from the room. Outside, he hesitated long enough to discover which direction he must take to reach the woman who was screaming inarticulately, her voice vibrant with sheer terror. The sound came from the little, brown cottage that seemed trying modestly to hide behind a dispirited row of young cottonwoods across a deep, narrow gully, and he ran headlong toward it. He crossed the plank footbridge in a couple of long leaps, vaulted over the gate which barred his way, and so reached the house just as a woman whom he knew must be Mason's "Kate," jerked open the door and screamed "Chester!" almost in his face. Behind her rolled a puff of slaty blue smoke.
Ford pushed past her in the doorway without speaking; the smoke told its own urgent tale and made words superfluous. She turned and followed him, choking over the pungent smoke.
"Oh, where's Chester?" she wailed. "The whole garret's on fire--and I can't carry Phenie--and she's asleep and can't walk anyway!" She rushed half across the room and stopped, pointing toward a closed door, with Ford at her heels.
"She's in there!" she cried tragically. "Save her, quick--and I'll find Chester. You'd think, with all the men there are on this ranch, there'd be some one around--oh, and my new piano!"
She ran out of the house, scolding hysterically because the men were gone, and Ford laughed a little as he went to the door she had indicated. When his fingers touched the knob, it turned fumblingly under another hand than his own; the door opened, and he confronted the girl whom he had tried to befriend the day before. She had evidently just gotten out of bed, and into a flimsy blue kimono, which she was holding together at the throat with one hand, while with the other she steadied herself against the wall. She stared blankly into his eyes, and her face was very white indeed, with her hair falling thickly upon either side in two braids which reached to her hips.
Ford gave her one quick, startled glance, said "Come on," quite brusquely, and gathered her into his arms with as little sentiment as he would have bestowed upon the piano. His eyes smarted with the smoke, which blinded him so that he bumped into chairs on his way to the door. Outside he stopped, and looked down at the girl, wondering what he should do with her. Since Kate had stated emphatically that she could not walk, it seemed scarcely merciful to deposit her on the ground and leave her to her own devices. She had closed her eyes, and she looked unpleasantly like a corpse; and there was an insistent crackling up in the roof, which warned Ford that there was little time for the weighing of fine points. He was about to lay her on the bare ground, for want of a better place, when he glimpsed Mose running heavily across the bridge, and went hurriedly to meet him.
"Here! You take her down and put her in one of the bunks, Mose," he commanded, when Mose confronted him, panting a good deal because of his two hundred and fifty pounds of excess fat and a pair of down-at-the-heel slippers which hampered his movements appreciably. Mose looked at the girl and then at his two hands.
"I can't take her," he lamented. "I got m'hands full of aigs!"
Ford's reply was a sweep of the girl's inert figure against Mose's outstretched hands, which freed them effectually of their burden of eggs. "You darned chump, what's eggs in a case like this?" he cried sharply, and forced the girl into his arms. "You take her and put her on a bunk. I've got to put out that fire!"
So Mose, a reluctant knight and an awkward one, carried the girl to the bunk-house, and left Ford free to save the house if he could. Fortunately the fire had started in a barrel of old clothing which had stood too close to the stovepipe, and while the smoke was stifling, the flames were as yet purely local. And, more fortunately still, that day happened to be Mrs. Mason's wash-day and two tubs of water stood in the kitchen, close to the narrow stairway which led into the loft. Three or four pails of water and some quick work in running up and down the stairs was all that was needed. Ford, standing in the low, unfinished loft, looked at the rafter which was burnt half through, and wiped his perspiring face with his coat sleeve.
"Lordy me!" he observed aloud, "I sure didn't come any too soon!"
"Oh, it's all out! I don't know how I ever shall thank you in this world! With Phenie in bed with a sprained ankle so she couldn't walk, and the men all gone, I was just wild! I--why--" Kate, standing upon the stairs so that she could look into the loft, stopped suddenly and stared at Ford with some astonishment. Plainly, she had but then discovered that he was a stranger--and it was quite as plain that she was taking stock of his blackened eyes and other bruises, and that with the sheltered woman's usual tendency to exaggerate the disfigurements.
"That's all right; I don't need any thanks." Ford, seeing no other way of escape, approached her steadily, the empty bucket swinging in his hand. "The fire's all out, so there's nothing more I can do here, I guess."
"Oh, but you'll have to bring Josephine back!" Kate's eyes met his straightforward glance reluctantly, and not without reason; for Ford had dark, greenish purple areas in the region of his eyes, a skinned cheek, and a swollen lip; his chin was scratched and there was a bruise on his forehead where, on the night of his marriage, he had hit the floor violently under the impact of two or three struggling male humans. Although they were five days old--six, some of them--these divers battle-signs were perfectly visible, not to say conspicuous; so that Kate Mason was perhaps justified in her perfectly apparent diffidence in looking at him. So do we turn our eyes self-consciously away from a cripple, lest we give offense by gazing upon his misfortune.
"_I_ can't carry her, and she can't walk--her ankle is sprained dreadfully. So if you'll bring her back to the house, I'll be ever so much--"
"Certainly; I'll bring her back right away." Ford came down the stairs so swiftly that she retreated in haste before him, and once down he did not linger; indeed, he almost ran from the house and from her embarrassed gratitude. On the way to the bunk-house it occurred to him that it might be no easy matter, now, for Mason to conceal Ford's identity and his sins. From the way in which she had stared wincingly at his battered countenance, he realized that she did, indeed, have ideals. Ford grinned to himself, wondering if Ches didn't have to do his smoking altogether in the bunk-house; he judged her to be just the woman to wage a war on tobacco, and swearing, and muddy boots, and drinking out of one's saucer, and all other weaknesses peculiar to the male of our species. He was inclined to pity Ches, in spite of his mental acknowledgment that she was a very nice woman indeed; and he was half inclined to tell Mason when he saw him that he'd have to look further for a foreman.
He found the girl lying upon a bunk just inside the door, still with closed eyes and that corpse-like look in her face. He was guilty of hoping that she would remain in that oblivious state for at least five minutes longer, but the hope was short-lived; for when he lifted her carefully in his arms, her eyes flew open and stared up at him intently.
Ford shut his lips grimly and tried not to mind that unwinking gaze while he carried her out and up the path, across the little bridge and on to the house, and deposited her gently upon her own bed. He had not spoken a word, nor had she. So he left her thankfully to Kate's tearful ministrations and hurried from the room.
"Lordy me!" he sighed, as he closed the door upon them and went back to the bunk-house, which he entered with a sigh of relief. One tribute he paid her, and one only: the tribute of feeling perturbed over her presence, and of going hot all over at the memory of her steady stare into his face. She was a queer girl, he told himself; but then, so far as he had discovered, all women were queer; the only difference being that some women were more so than others.
He sat down on the bunk where she had lain, and speedily forgot the girl and the incident in facing the problem of that foremanship. He could not get away from the conviction that he was not to be trusted. He did not trust himself, and there was no reason why any man who knew him at all should trust him. Ches Mason was a good fellow; he meant well, Ford decided, but he simply did not realize what he was up against. He meant, therefore, to enlighten him further, and go his way. He was almost sorry that he had come.
Mason, when Ford confronted him later at the corral and bluntly stated his view of the matter, heard him through without a word, and did not laugh the issue out of the way, as he had been inclined to do before.
"I'll be all right for a month, maybe," Ford finished, "and that's as long as I can bank on myself. I tell you straight, Ches, it won't work. You may think you're hiring the same fellow that came out of the North with you--but you aren't. Why, damn it, there ain't a man I know that wouldn't give you the laugh if they knew the offer you've made me! They would, that's a fact. They'd laugh at you. You're all right, Ches, but I won't stand for a deal like that. I can't make good."
Mason waited until he was through. Then he came closer and put both hands on Ford's shoulders, so that they stood face to face, and he looked straight into Ford's discolored eyes with his own shining a little behind their encircling wrinkles.
"You can make good!" he said calmly. "I know it. All you need is a chance to pull up. Seeing you won't give yourself one, I'm giving it to you. You'll do for me what you won't do for yourself, Ford--and if there's a yellow streak in you, I never got a glimpse of it; and the yellow will sure come to the surface of a man when he's bucking a proposition like you and me bucked for two months. You didn't lay down on that job, and you were just a kid, you might say. Gosh, Ford, I'd bank on you any old time--put you on your mettle, and I would! You can make good here--and damn it, you will!"
"I wish I was as sure of that as you seem to be," Ford muttered uneasily, and turned away. Mason's easy chuckle followed him, and Ford swung about and faced him again.
"I haven't made any cast-iron promise--"
"Did I ask you to make any?" Mason's voice sharpened.
"But--Lordy me, Ches! How do you know I--"
"I know. That's enough."
"But--maybe I don't want the darned job. I never said--"
Mason was studying him, as a man studies the moods of an untamed horse. "I didn't think you'd dodge," he drawled, and the blood surged answeringly to Ford's cheeks. "You do want it."
"If I should happen to get jagged up in good shape, about the first thing I'd do would be to lick the stuffing out of you for being such a simple-minded cuss," Ford prophesied grimly, as one who knows well whereof he speaks.
"Ye-es--but you won't get jagged."
"Oh, Lord! I wish you'd quit believing in me! You used to have some sense," Ford grumbled. But he reached out and clenched his fingers upon Mason's arm so tight that Mason set his teeth, and he looked at him long, as if there was much that he would like to put into words and could not. "Say! You're white clear down to your toes, Ches," he said finally, and walked away hurriedly with his hat jerked low over his eyes.
Mason looked after him as long as he was in sight, and afterwards took off his hat, and wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead. "Gosh!" he whispered fervently. "That was nip and tuck--but I got him, thank the Lord!" Whereupon he blew his nose violently, and went up to his supper with his hands in his pockets and his humorous lips pursed into a whistle.
Before long he was back, chuckling to himself as he bore down upon Ford in the corral, where he was industriously rubbing Rambler's sprained shoulder with liniment.
"The wife says you've got to come up to the house," he announced gleefully. "You've gone and done the heroic again, and she wants to do something to show her gratitude."
"You go back and tell your wife that I'm a bold, bad man and I won't come." Ford, to prove his sincerity, sat down upon the stout manger there, and crossed his legs with an air of finality.
"I did tell her," Mason confessed sheepishly. "She wanted to know who you was, and I told her before I thought. And she wanted to know what was the matter with your face, 'poor fellow,' and I told her that, too--as near as I knew it. I told her," he stated sweepingly, "that you'd been on a big jamboree and had licked fourteen men hand-running. There ain't," he confided with a twinkle, "any use at all in trying to keep a secret from your wife; not," he qualified, "from a wife like Kate! So she knows the whole darned thing, and she's sore as the deuce because I didn't bring you up to the house right away when you came. She thinks you're sufferin' from them wounds and she's going to doctor 'em. That's the way with a woman--you never can tell what angle she's going to look at a thing from. You're the man that packed me down out of the Wrangel mountains on your back, and that's enough for her--dang it, Kate thinks a lot of me! Besides, you done the heroic this afternoon. You've got to come."
"There ain't anything heroic in sloshing a few buckets of water on a barrel of burning rags," Ford belittled, seeking in his pockets for his cigarette papers.
"How about rescuing a lady?" Mason twitted. "You come along. I want you up there myself. Gosh! I want somebody I can talk to about something besides dresses and the proper way to cure sprained ankles, and whether the grocer sent out the right brand of canned peaches. Women are all right--but a man wants some one around to talk to. You ain't married!"
"Oh. Ain't I?" Ford snorted. "And what if I ain't?"
"Say, there's a mighty nice girl staying with us; the one you rescued. She's laid up now--got bucked off, or fell off, or something yesterday, and hurt her foot--but she's a peach, all right. You'll--"
"I know the lady," Ford cut in dryly. "I met her yesterday, and we commenced hating each other as soon as we got in talking distance. She sent me to catch her horse, and then she pulled out before I got back. She's a peach, all right!"
"Oh. You're the fellow!" Mason regarded him attentively. "Now, I don't believe she said a word to Kate about that, and she must have known who it was packed her out of the house. I wonder why she didn't say anything about it to Kate! But she wasn't to blame for leaving you out there, honest she wasn't. I went out to hunt her up--Kate got kinda worried about her--and she told me about you, and we did wait a little while. But it was getting cold, and she was hurt pretty bad and getting kinda wobbly, so I put her on my horse and brought her home. But she left a note for you, and I sent a man back after you with a horse. He come back and said he couldn't locate you. So we thought you'd gone to some other ranch." He stopped and looked quizzically at Ford. "So you're the man! And you're both here for the winter--at least, Kate says she's going to keep her all winter. Gosh! This is getting romantic!"
"Don't you believe it!" Ford urged emphatically. "I don't want to bump into her again; a little of her company will last me a long while!"
"Oh, you won't meet Jo to-night; Josephine, her name is. She's in bed, and will be for a week or so, most likely. You've just got to come, Ford. Kate'll be down here after you herself, if I go back without you--and she'll give me the dickens into the bargain. I want you to get acquainted with my kid--Buddy. He's down in the river field with the boys, but he'll be back directly. Greatest kid you ever saw, Ford! Only seven, and he can ride like a son-of-a-gun, and wears chaps and spurs, and can sling a loop pretty good, for a little kid! Come on!"
"Wel-ll, all right--but Lordy me! I do hate to, Ches, and that's a fact. Women I'm plumb scared of. I never met one in my life that didn't hand me a package of trouble so big I couldn't see around it. Why--" He shut his teeth upon the impulse to confide to Mason his matrimonial mischance.
"These two won't. My wife's the real goods, once you get to know her; a little fussy, maybe, over some things--most all women are. But she's all right, you bet. And Josephine's the proper stuff too. A little abrupt, maybe--"
"Abrupt!" Ford echoed, and laughed over the word. "Yes, she is what you might call a little--abrupt!"
CHAPTER IX
Impressions
Josephine waited languidly while Kate chose a second-best cushion from the couch and, lifting the bandaged foot as gently as might be, placed it, with many little pats and pulls, under the afflicted member. Josephine screwed her lips into a soundless expression of pain, smiled afterwards when Kate glanced at her commiseratingly, and pulled a long, dark-brown braid forward over her chest.
"Do you want tea, Phenie?--or would you rather have chocolate to-day? I can make chocolate just as easy as not; I think I shall, anyway. Buddy is so fond of it and--"
"Is that man here yet?" Josephine's tone carried the full weight of her dislike of him.
"I don't know why you call him 'that man,' the way you do," Kate complained, turning her mind from the momentous decision between tea and chocolate. "Ford's simply fine! Chester thinks there's no one like him; and Buddy just tags him around everywhere. You can always," asserted Kate, with the positiveness of the person who accepts unquestioningly the beliefs of others, living by faith rather than reason, "depend upon the likes and dislikes of children and dogs, you know."
"Has the swelling gone out of his eyes?" Josephine inquired pointedly, with the irrelevance which seemed habitual to her and Kate when they conversed.
"Phenie, I don't think it's kind of you to harp on that. Yes, it has, if you want to know. He's positively handsome--or will be when the--when his nose heals perfectly. And I don't think that's anything one should hold against Ford; it seems narrow, dear."
"The skinned place?" Josephine's tone was perfectly innocent, and her fingers were busy with the wide, black bow which becomingly tied the end of the braid.
"Phenie! If you hadn't a sprained ankle, and weren't such a dear in every other respect, I'd shake you! It isn't fair. Because Ford was pounced upon by a lot of men--sixteen, Chester told me--"
"I suppose he counted the dead after the battle, and told Ches truthfully--"
"Phenie, that sounds catty! When you get down on a man, you're perfectly unmerciful, and Ford doesn't deserve it. You shouldn't judge men by the narrow, Eastern standards. I know it's awful for a man to drink and fight. But Ford wasn't altogether to blame. They got him to drinking and," she went on with her voice lowered to the pitch at which women are wont to relate horrid, immoral things, "--I wouldn't be surprised if they put something in it! Such things are done; I've heard of men being drugged and robbed and all sorts of things. And I'm just as much of an advocate for temperance as you are, Phenie--and I think Ford was just right to fight those men. There are," she declared wisely, "circumstances where it's perfectly just and right for a man to fight. I can imagine circumstances under which Chester would be justified in fighting--"
"In case sixteen men should hold his nose and pour drugged whisky down his throat?" Phenie inquired mildly, curling the end of her braid over a slim forefinger.
Mrs. Kate made an inarticulate sound which might almost be termed a snort, and walked from the room with her head well up and a manner which silently made plain to the onlooker that she might say many things which would effectually crush her opponent, but was magnanimously refraining from doing so.
Josephine did not even pay her the tribute of looking at her; she had at that moment heard a step upon the porch, and she was leaning to one side so that she might see who was coming into the dining-room. As it happened, it was Mason himself. Miss Josephine immediately lost interest in the arrival and took to tracing with her finger the outline of a Japanese lady with a startling coiffure and an immense bow upon her spine, who was simpering at a lotus bed on Josephine's kimono. She did not look up until some one stepped upon the porch again.
This time it was Ford, and he stopped and painstakingly removed the last bit of soil from his boot-soles upon the iron scraper which was attached to one end of the top step; when that duty had been performed, he paid further tribute to the immaculate house he was about to enter, by wiping his feet upon a mat placed with mathematical precision upon the porch, at the head of the steps. Josephine watched the ceremonial, and studied Ford's profile, and did not lay her head back upon the cushion behind her until he disappeared into the dining-room. Then she stared at a colored-crayon portrait of Buddy which hung on the wall opposite, and her eyes were the eyes of one who sees into the past.
Buddy, when he opened the door and projected himself into the room, startled her into a little exclamation.
"Dad says he'll carry you out to the table and you can have a whole side to yourself," he announced without preface. "They'll just pick up your chair, and pack chair and all in, and set you down as ee-asy--do you want to eat out there with us?"
Josephine hesitated for two seconds. "All right," she consented then, in a supremely indifferent tone which was of course quite wasted on Buddy, who immediately disappeared with a whoop.
"Come on, dad--she says yes, all right, she'll come," he announced gleefully. Buddy was Josephine's devoted admirer, at this point in their rather brief acquaintance; which, according to his mother's well-known theory, was convincing proof of her intrinsic worth--Mrs. Kate having frequently strengthened her championship of Ford to his detractor, Miss Josephine, by pointing out that Buddy was fond of him.
Josephine spent the brief interval in tucking back locks of hair and in rearranging the folds of her long, Japanese kimono, and managed to fall into a languidly indifferent attitude by the time Chester opened the door. Behind him came Ford; Miss Josephine moved her lips and tilted her head in a perfunctory greeting, and afterward gave him no more attention than if he had been a Pullman porter assisting with her suitcases. For the matter of that, she gave quite as much attention as she received from him--and Mason's lips twitched betrayingly at the spectacle.
Through dinner they seemed mutually agreed upon ignoring each other as much as was politely possible, which caused Mason to watch them with amusement, and afterwards relieve his feelings by talking about them to Kate in the kitchen.
"Gosh! Jo and Ford are sure putting up a good bluff," he chuckled, while he selected the freshest dish towel from the rack behind the pantry door. "They'd be sticking out their tongues at each other if they was twenty years younger; pity they ain't, too; it would be a relief to 'em both!"
"Phenie provokes me almost past endurance!" Mrs. Kate complained, burying two plump forearms in a dishpan of sudsy hot water, and bringing up a handful of silver. "It's because Ford had been fighting when he came here, and she knows he has been slightly addicted to liquor. She looks down on him, and I don't think it's fair. If a man wants to reform, I believe in helping him instead of pushing him father down." (Mrs. Kate had certain little peculiarities of speech; one was an italicized delivery, and another was the omission of an r now and then. She always said "father" when she really meant "farther.") "There's a lot that one can do to help. I believe in showing trust and confidence in a man, when he's trying to live down past mistakes. I think it was just fine of you to make him foreman here! If Phenie would only be nice to him, instead of turning up her nose the way she does! You see yourself how she treats Ford, and I just think it's a shame! I think he's just splendid!"
"She don't treat him any worse than he does her," observed Mason, just to the core. "Seems to me, if I was single, and a girl as pretty as Jo--"
"We |
14456-8 | ll, I'm glad Ford has got spunk enough not to care," Mrs. Kate interposed hastily. "Phenie's pretty, of course--but it takes more than that to attract a man like Ford. You can't expect him to like her when she won't look at him, hardly; it makes me feel terribly, because he's sure to think it's because he--I've tried to make her see that it isn't right to condemn a man because he has made one mistake. He ought to be encouraged, instead of being made to feel that he is a--an outcast, practically. And--"
"Jo don't like Ford, because she's stuck on Dick," stated a shrill, positive young voice behind them, and Mrs. Kate turned sharply upon her offspring. "They was waving hands to each other just now, through the window. I seen 'em," Buddy finished complacently. "Dick was down fixing the bridge, and--"
"Buddy, you run right out and play! You must not listen to older people and try to talk about some-thing you don't understand."
"Aw, I understand them two being stuck on each other," Buddy maintained loftily. "And I seen Dick--"
"Chase yourself outdoors, like your mother said; and don't butt in on--"
"Chester!" reproved Mrs. Kate, waving Buddy out of the kitchen. "How can you expect the child to learn good English, when you talk to him like that? Run along, Buddy, and play like a good boy." She gave him a little cake to accelerate his departure and to turn his mind from further argument, and after he was gone she swung the discussion to Buddy and his growing tendency toward grappling with problems beyond his seven years. Also, she pointed out the necessity for choosing one's language carefully in his presence.
Mason, therefore, finished wiping the dishes almost in silence, and left the house as soon as he was through, with the feeling that women were not by nature intended to be really companionable. He had, for instance, been struck with the humorous side of Ford and Josephine's perfectly ridiculous antipathy, and had lingered in the kitchen because of a half-conscious impulse to enjoy the joke with some one. And Mrs. Kate had not taken the view-point which appealed to him, but had been self-consciously virtuous in her determination to lend Ford a helping hand, and resentful because Josephine failed to feel also the urge of uplifting mankind.
Mason, poor man, was vaguely nettled; he did not see that Ford needed any settlement-worker encouragement. If he was let alone, and his moral regeneration forgotten, and he himself treated just like any other man, Mason felt that Ford would thereby have all the encouragement he needed. Ford was once more plainly content with life, and was taking it in twenty-four-hour doses again; healthful doses, these, and different in every respect from those days spent in the sordid round of ill-living in town; nor did he flay his soul with doubts lest he should disappoint this man who trusted him so rashly and so implicitly. Ford was busy at work which appealed to the best of him. He was thrown into companionship with men who perforce lived cleanly and naturally, and with Ches Mason, who was his friend. At meals he sometimes gave thought to Mrs. Kate, and frequently to Josephine. The first he admired impersonally for her housewifely skill, and smiled at secretly for her purely feminine outlook upon life and her positive views upon subjects of which she knew not half the alphabet. He had discovered that Mason did indeed refrain from smoking in the house because she discountenanced tobacco; and since she had a talent for making a man uncomfortably aware of her disapproval by certain wordless manifestations of scorn for his weaknesses, Ford also took to throwing away his cigarette before he crossed the bridge on his way to her domain. He did not, however, go so far as Ches, who kept his tobacco, pipe, and cigarette papers in the stable, and was always borrowing "the makings" from his men.
Ford also followed Mason's example in sterilizing his vocabulary whenever he crossed that boundary between the masculine and feminine element on the ranch, the bridge. Mrs. Kate did not approve of slang. Ford found himself carefully eliminating from his speech certain grammatical inaccuracies in her presence, and would not so much as split an infinitive if he remembered in time. It was trying, to be sure. Ford thanked God that he still retained a smattering of the rules he had reluctantly memorized in school, and that he was not married (at least, not uncomfortably so), and that he was not compelled to do more than eat his meals in the house. Mrs. Kate was a nice woman; Ford would tell any man so in perfect sincerity. He even considered her nice looking, with her smooth, brown hair which was never disordered, her fine, clear skin, her white teeth, her clear blue eyes, and her immaculate shirt-waists. But she was not a comfortable woman to be with; an ordinary human wearied of adjusting his speech, his manners, and his morals to her standard of propriety. Ford, quietly studying matrimony from the well-ordered example before him, began to congratulate himself upon not being able to locate his own wife--since accident had afflicted him with one. When he stopped, during these first busy days at the Double Cross, to think deeply or seriously upon the mysterious entanglement he had fallen into, he was inclined to the opinion that he had had a narrow escape. The woman might have remained in Sunset--and Ford flinched at the thought.
As to Josephine, Ford's thoughts dwelt with her oftener than they did with Mrs. Kate. The thought of her roused a certain resentment which bordered closely upon dislike. Still, she piqued his interest; for a week she was invisible to him, yet her presence in the house created a tangible atmosphere which he felt but could not explain. His first sight of her--beyond a fleeting glimpse once or twice through the window--had been that day when he had helped Mason carry her and her big chair into the dining-room. The brief contact had left with him a vision of the delicate parting in her soft, brown hair, and of long, thick lashes which curled daintily up from the shadow they made on her cheeks. He did not remember ever having seen a woman with such eyelashes. They impelled him to glance at her oftener than he would otherwise have done, and to wonder, now and then, if they did not make her eyes seem darker than they really were. He thought it strange that he had not noticed her lashes that day when he carried her from the house and back again--until he remembered that at first his haste had been extreme, and that when he took her from the bunk-house she had stared at him so that he would not look at her.
He did not know that Ches Mason was observant of his rather frequent glances at her during the meal, and he would have resented Mason's diagnosis of that particular symptom of interest. Ford would, if put to the question, have maintained quite sincerely that he was perfectly indifferent to Josephine, but that she did have remarkable eyelashes, and a man couldn't help looking at them.
After all, Ford's interest was centered chiefly upon his work. They were going to start the wagons out again to gather the calves for weaning, and he was absorbed in the endless details which fall upon the shoulders of the foreman. Even the fascination of a woman's beauty did not follow him much beyond the bridge.
Mason, hurrying from the feminine atmosphere at the house, found him seriously discussing with Buddy the diet and general care of Rambler, who had been moved into a roomy box stall for shelter. Buddy was to have the privilege of filling the manger with hay every morning after breakfast, and every evening just before supper. Upon Buddy also devolved the duty of keeping his drinking tub filled with clean water; and Buddy was making himself as tall as possible during the conference, and was crossing his heart solemnly while he promised, wide-eyed, to keep away from Rambler's heels.
"I never knew him to kick, or offer to; but you stay out of the stall, anyway. You can fill his tub through that hole in the wall. And you let Walt rub him down good every day--you see that he does it, Bud! And when he gets well, I'll let you ride him, maybe. Anyway, I leave him in your care, old-timer. And it's a privilege I wouldn't give every man. I think a heap of this horse." He turned at the sound of footsteps, and lowered an eyelid slowly for Mason's benefit. "Bud's going to have charge of Rambler while we're gone," he explained seriously. "I want to be sure he's in good hands."
The two men watched Buddy's departure for the house, and grinned over the manifest struggle between his haste to tell his mother and Jo, and his sense of importance over the trust.
"A kid of your own makes up for a whole lot," Mason observed abstractedly, reaching up to the narrow shelf where he kept his tobacco. "I wish I had two or three more; they give a man something to work for, and look ahead and plan for."
Ford, studying his face with narrowed eyelids, was more than ever thankful that he was not hampered by matrimony.
CHAPTER X
In Which the Demon Opens an Eye and Yawns
A storm held the Double Cross wagons in a sheltered place in the hills, ten miles from the little town where Ford had spent a night on his way to the ranch a month before. Mason, taking the inaction as an excuse, rode home to his family and left Ford to his own devices with no compunctions whatever. He should, perhaps, have known better; but he was acting upon his belief that nothing so braces a man as the absolute confidence of his friends, and to have stayed in camp on Ford's account would, according to Mason's code, have been an affront to Ford's manifest determination to "make good."
It is true that neither had mentioned the matter since the day of Ford's arrival at the ranch; men do not, as a rule, harp upon the deeper issues within their lives. For that month, it had been as though the subject of intemperance concerned them as little as the political unrest of a hot-tempered people beyond the equator. They had argued the matter to a more or less satisfactory conclusion, and had let it rest there.
Ford had ridden with him a part of the way, and when they came to a certain fork in the trail, he had sent a whimsically solemn message to Buddy, had pulled the collar of his coat closer together under his chin, and had faced the wind with a clean conscience, and with bowed head and hat pulled low over his brows. There were at least three perfectly valid reasons why Ford should ride into town that day. He wanted heavier socks and a new pair of gloves; he was almost out of tobacco, and wanted to see if he could "pick up" another man so that the hours of night-guarding might not fall so heavily upon the crew. Ford had been standing the last guard himself, for the last week, to relieve the burden a little, and Mason had been urgent on the subject of another man--or two, he suggested, would be better. Ford did his simple shopping, therefore, and then rode up to the first saloon on the one little street, and dismounted with a mind at ease. If idle men were to be found in that town, he would have to look for them in a saloon; a fact which every one took for granted, like the shortening of the days as winter approached.
Perhaps he over-estimated his powers of endurance, or under-estimated the strength of his enemy. Certain it is that he had no intention of drinking whisky when he closed the door upon the chill wind; and yet, he involuntarily walked straight up to the bar. There he stuck. The bartender waited expectantly. When Ford, with a sudden lift of his head, turned away to the stove, the man looked after him curiously.
At the stove Ford debated with himself while he drew off his gloves and held his fingers to the welcome heat which emanated from a red glow where the fire burned hottest within. He had not made any promise to himself or any one else, he remembered. He had simply resolved that he would make good, if it were humanly possible to do so. That, he told himself, did not necessarily mean that he should turn a teetotaler out and out. Taking a drink, when a man was cold and felt the need of it, was not--
At that point in the argument two of his own men entered, stamping noisily upon the threshold. They were laughing, from pure animal satisfaction over the comforts within, rather than at any tangible cause for mirth, and they called to Ford with easy comradeship. Dick Thomas--the Dick whom Buddy had mentioned in connection with Josephine--waved his hand hospitably toward the bar.
"Come on, Campbell," he invited. He may have seen the hesitancy in Ford's face, for he laughed. "I believe in starting on the inside and driving the frost out," he said.
The two poured generously from the bottle which the bartender pushed within easy reach, and Ford watched them. There was a peculiar lift to Dick's upper lip--the lift which comes when scorn is the lever. Ford's eyes hardened a little; he walked over and stood beside Dick, and he took a drink as unemotionally as if it had been water. He ordered another round, threw a coin upon the bar, and walked out. He had rather liked Dick, in an impersonal sort of way, but that half-sneer clung disagreeably to his memory. A man likes to be held the master--be the slave circumstance, danger, an opposing human, or his own appetite; and although Ford was not the type of man who troubles himself much about the opinions of his fellows, it irked him much that Dick or any other man should sneer at him for a weakling.
He went to another saloon, found and hired a cow-puncher strayed up from Valley County, and when Dick came in, a half-hour later, Ford went to the bar and deliberately "called up the house." He had been minded to choose a mineral water then, but he caught Dick's mocking eye upon him, and instead took whisky straight, and stared challengingly at the other over the glass tilted against his lips.
After that, the liquor itself waged relentless war against his good resolutions, so that it did not need the urge of Dick's fancied derision to send him down the trail which the past had made familiar. He sat in to a poker game that was creating a small zone of subdued excitement at the far end of the room, and while he was arranging his stacks of red, white, and blue chips neatly before him, he was unpleasantly conscious of Dick's supercilious smile. Never mind--he was not the first foreman who ever played poker; they all did, when the mood seized them. Ford straightened his shoulders instinctively, in defiance of certain inner misgivings, and pushed forward his ante of two white chips.
Jim Felton came up and stood at his shoulder, watching the game in silence; and although he did not once open his lips except to let an occasional thin ribbon of cigarette smoke drift out and away to mingle with the blue cloud which hung under the ceiling, Ford sensed a certain good-will in his nearness, just as intangibly and yet as surely as he sensed Dick's sardonic amusement at his apparent lapse.
With every bet he made and won he felt that silent approbation behind him; insensibly it steadied Ford and sharpened his instinct for reading the faces of the other players, so that the miniature towers of red chips and blue grew higher until they threatened to topple--whereupon other little towers began to grow up around them. And the men in the saloon began to feel the fascination of his success, so that they grouped themselves about his chair and peered down over his shoulder at the game.
Ford gave them no thought, except a vague satisfaction, now and then, that Jim Felton stuck to his post. Later, when he caught the dealer, a slit-eyed, sallow-skinned fellow with fingers all too nimble, slipping a card from the bottom of the deck, and gave him a resounding slap which sent him and his cards sprawling all over that locality, he should have been more than ever glad that Jim was present.
Jim kept back the gambler's partner and the crowd and gave Ford elbow-room and some moral support, which did its part, in that it prevented any interference with the chastisement Ford was administering.
It was not a fight, properly speaking. The gambler, once Ford had finished cuffing him and stating his opinion of cheating the while, backed away and muttered vague threats and maledictions. Ford gathered together what chips he felt certain were his, and cashed them in with a certain grim insistence of manner which brooked no argument. After that he left the saloon, with Jim close behind him.
"If you're going back to camp now, I reckon I'll ride along," said Jim, at his elbow. "There's just nice time to get there for supper--and I sure don't want to miss flopping my lip over Mose's beefsteak; that yearling we beefed this morning is going to make some fine eating, if you ask me." His tone was absolutely devoid of anything approaching persuasion; it simply took a certain improbable thing as a commonplace fact, and it tilted the balance of Ford's intentions.
He did not go on to the next saloon, as he had started to do, but instead he followed Jim to the livery stable and got his horse, without realizing that Jim had anything to do with the change of impulse. So Ford went to camp, instead of spending the night riotously in town as he would otherwise have done, and contented himself with cursing the game, the gambler who would have given a "crooked deal," the town, and all it contained. A mile out, he would have returned for a bottle of whisky; but Jim said he had enough for two, and put his horse into a lope. Ford, swayed by a blind instinct to stay with the man who seemed friendly, followed the pace he set and so was unconsciously led out of the way of further temptation. And so artfully was he led, that he never once suspected that he did not go of his own accord.
Neither did he suspect that Jim's stumbling and immediate spasm of regretful profanity at the bed-wagon where they unsaddled, was the result of two miles of deep cogitation, and calculated to account plausibly for not being able to produce a full flask upon demand. Jim swore volubly and said he had "busted the bottle" by falling against the wagon wheel; and Ford, for a wonder, believed and did not ask for proof. He muddled around camp for a few indecisive minutes, then rolled himself up like a giant cocoon in his blankets, and slept heavily through the night.
He awoke at daylight, found himself fully clothed and with a craving for whisky which he knew of old, and tried to remember just what had occurred the night before; when he could not recall anything very distinctly, he felt the first twinge of fear that he had known for years.
"Lordy me! I wonder what kinda fool I made of myself, anyway!" he thought distressfully. Later, when he discovered more money in his pockets than his salary would account for, and remembered playing poker, and having an argument of some sort with some one, his distress grew upon him. In reality he had not done anything disgraceful, according to the easy judgment of his fellows; but Ford did not know that, and he flayed himself unmercifully for a spineless, drunken idiot whom no man could respect or trust. It seemed to him that the men eyed him askance; though they were merely envious over his winnings and inclined to admire the manner in which he had shown his disapproval of the dealer's attempt at cheating.
He dreaded Mason's return, and yet he was anxious to see him and tell him, once for all, that he was not to be trusted. He held aloof from Jim and he was scantily civil to Dick Thomas, whose friendship rang false. He pushed the work ahead while the air was still alive with swirls of mote-like snowflakes, and himself bore the brunt of it just to dull that gnawing self-disgust which made his waking hours a mental torment.
Before, when disgust had seized upon him in Sunset, it had been an abstract rebellion against the futility of life as he was living it. This was different: This was a definite, concrete sense of failure to keep faith with himself and with Mason; the sickening consciousness of a swinish return to the wallow; a distrust of himself that was beyond any emotion he had ever felt in his life.
So, for a week of hard work and harder thinking. Mason sent word by a migratory cowboy, who had stopped all night at the ranch and whom he had hired and sent on to camp, that he would not return to the round-up, and that Ford was to go ahead as they had planned. That balked Ford's determination to turn the work over to Mason and leave the country, and, after the first day of inner rebellion, he settled down insensibly to the task before him and let his own peculiar moral problem wait upon his leisure. He did not dream that the cowboy had witnessed his chastisement of the gambler and had gleefully, and in perfect innocence, recounted the incident at the Double Cross ranch, and that Mason had deliberately thrown Ford upon his own resources in obedience to his theory that nothing so braces a man as responsibility.
Ford went about his business with grim industry and a sureness of judgment born of his thorough knowledge of range work. There was the winnowing process which left the bigger, stronger calves in charge of two men, at a line camp known locally as Ten Mile, and took the younger ones on to the home ranch, where hay and shelter were more plentiful and the loss would be correspondingly less.
Not until the last cow of the herd was safe inside the big corral beyond the stables, did Ford relax his vigilance and ride over to where Ches Mason and Buddy were standing in the shelter of the stable, waiting to greet him.
"Good boy!" cried Mason, when Ford dismounted and flung the stirrup up over the saddle, that he might loosen the latigo and free his steaming horse of its burden. "I didn't look for you before to-morrow night, at the earliest. But I'm mighty glad you're here, let me tell you. That leaves me free to hit the trail to-morrow. I've got to make a trip home; the old man's down with inflammatory rheumatism, and they want me to go--haven't been home for six years, so I guess they've got a license to put in a bid for a month or two of my time, huh? I didn't want to pull out, though, till you showed up. I'm kinda leery about leaving the women alone, with just a couple of sow-egians on the ranch. Bud, you go get a pan of oats for old Schley. Supper's about ready, Ford. Have the boys shovel some hay into the corral, and we'll leave the bunch there till morning. Say, the wagons didn't beat you much; they never pulled in till after three. Mose says the going's bad, on them dobe patches."
Not much of an opening, that, for saying what Ford felt he was in duty bound to say. He was constrained to wait until a better opportunity presented itself--and, as is the way with opportunity, it did not seem as if it would ever come of its own accord. There was Buddy, full of exciting anecdotes about Rambler, and how he had rubbed the liniment on, all alone, and Rambler never kicked or did a thing; and how he and Josephine rode clear over to Jenson's and got caught in the storm and almost got lost--only Buddy's horse knew the way home. And, later, there was Mrs. Kate's excellent supper and gracious welcome, and an evening devoted to four-handed cribbage--with Josephine and Mason as implacable adversaries--and a steady undercurrent of latent hostility between him and the girl, which prevented his thinking much about himself and his duty to Mason. There was everything, in fact, to thwart a man's resolution to discharge honorably a disagreeable duty, and to distract his attention.
Ford went to bed with the baffled sense of being placed in a false position against his will; and, man-like, he speedily gave over thinking of that, and permitted his thoughts to dwell upon a certain face which owned a perfectly amazing pair of lashes, and upon a manner tantalizingly aloof, with glimpses now and then of fascinating possibilities in the way of comradeship, when the girl inadvertently lowered her guard in the excitement of close playing.
CHAPTER XI
"It's Going to Be an Uphill Climb!"
Ford was no moral weakling except, perhaps, when whisky and he came to hand-grips. He had made up his mind that Mason must be told of his backsliding, and protected from the risk of leaving a drunkard in charge of his ranch. And when he saw that the opportunity for opening the subject easily did not show any sign of presenting itself, he grimly interrupted Mason in the middle of a funny story about Josephine and Buddy and Kate, involving themselves in a three-cornered argument to the complete discomfiture of the women.
"I tell you, Ford, that kid's a corker! Kate's got all kinds of book theories about raising children, but they don't none of 'em work, with Bud. He gets the best of her right along when she starts to reason with him. Gosh! You can't reason with a kid like Bud; you've got to take him on an equal footing, and when he goes too far, just set down on him and no argument about it. Kate's going to have her hands full while I'm gone, if--"
"She sure will, Ches, unless you get somebody here you can depend on," was the way in which Ford made his opportunity. "You've got the idea, somehow, that cutting out whisky is like getting rid of a mean horse. It's something you don't--"
"Oh, don't go worrying over that, no more," Mason expostulated hastily. "Forget it. That's the quickest cure; try Christian Science dope on it. The more you worry about it, the more--"
"But wait till I tell you! That day I went to town, and you came on home, I got drunk as a fool, Ches. I don't know what all I did, but I know--"
"Well, I know--more about it than you do, I reckon," Mason cut in dryly. "I was told five different times, by one stranger and four of these here trouble-peddlin' friends that clutter the country. That's all right, Ford. A little slip like that--" He held out his hand for Ford's sack of tobacco.
"I ain't the least bit uneasy over that, old man. I'm just as sure as I stand here that you're going to pull up, all right."
"I know you are, Ches." Ford's voice was humble. "That's the hell of it. You're more sure than sensible--but--But look at it like I was a stranger, Ches. Just forget you ever knew me when I was kinda half-way decent. You ain't a fool, even if you do act like one. You know what I'm up against. I'm going to put up the damnedest fight I've got in me, but I don't want you to take any gamble on it. Maybe I'll win, and then again maybe I won't. Maybe I'll go down and out. I don't know--I don't feel half as sure of myself as I did before I made that bobble in town. Before that, I did kinda have an idea that all there was to it was to quit. I thought, once I made up my mind, that would settle it. But that's just the commencement; you've got to fight something inside of you that's as husky a fighter as you are. You've got to--"
"There!" Mason reached out and tapped him impressively on the arm with a match he was about to light. "Now you've got the bull right by the horns! You ain't so darned sure of yourself now--and so I'm dead willing to gamble on you. I ain't a bit afraid to go off and let you have full swing."
"Well, I hope you won't feel like kicking me all over the ranch when you get back," Ford said, after a long pause, during which Mason's whole attention seemed centered upon his cigarette. "It's going to be an uphill climb, old-timer--and a blamed long hill at that. And it's going to be pretty darned slippery, in places."
"I sabe that, all right," grinned Mason. "But I sabe you pretty well, too. You'll dig in your toes and hang on by your eye-winkers if you have to. But you'll get up, all right; I'll bank on that.
"Speaking of booze-fighters," he went on, without giving Ford a chance to contradict him, "I wish you'd keep an eye on old Mose. Now, there's a man that'll drink whisky as long as it's made, if he can get it. I wouldn't trust that old devil as far as I can throw him, and that's a fact. I have to watch pretty close, to keep it off the ranch, and him on. It's the only way to get along with him--he's apt to run amuck, if he gets full enough; and good cooks are as scarce as good foremen." A heartening smile went with the last sentence.
"If he does make connections with the booze, don't can him, Ford, if you can help it. Just shut him up somewhere till he gets over it. There's nothing holds good men with an outfit like the right kind of grub--and Mose sure can cook. The rest of the men you can handle to suit yourself. Slim and Johnnie are all right over at Ten Mile--you made a good stab when you picked them two out--and you will want a couple of fellows here besides Walt, to feed them calves. When the cows are throwed back on the range and the fences gone over careful--I ought to have tended to that before, but I got to putting it off--you can pay off what men you don't need or want."
There was no combating the friendship of a man like that. Ford mentally squared his shoulders and set his feet upon the uphill trail.
He realized to the full the tribute Mason paid to his innate trustworthiness by leaving him there, master of the ranch and guardian of his household god--and goddess, to say nothing of Josephine, whom Mason openly admired and looked upon as one of the family.
Of a truth, it would seem that she had really become so. Ford had gathered, bit by bit, the information that she was quite alone in the world, so far as immediate relatives were concerned, and that she was Kate's cousin, and that Kate insisted that this was to be her home, from now on. Josephine's ankle was well enough now so that she was often to be met in unexpected places about the ranch, he discovered. And though she was not friendly, she was less openly antagonistic than she had been--and when all was said and done, eminently able to take care of herself.
So also was Kate, for that matter. No sooner was her beloved Chester out of sight over the hill a mile away, than Mrs. Kate dried her wifely tears and laid hold of her scepter with a firmness that amused Ford exceedingly. She ordered Dick up to work in the depressed-looking area before the house, which she called her flower garden, a task which Dick seemed perfectly willing to perform, by the way--although his assistance would have been more than welcome at other work than tying scraggly rose bushes and protecting them from the winter already at hand.
As to Buddy, he surely would have resented, more keenly than the women, the implication that he needed any one to take care of him. Buddy's allegiance to Ford was wavering, at that time. Dick had gone to some trouble to alter an old pair of chaps so that Buddy could wear them, and his star was in the ascendant; a pair of chaps with fringes were, in Buddy's estimation, a surer pledge of friendship and favor than the privilege of feeding a lame horse.
Buddy was rather terrible, sometimes. He had a way of standing back unnoticed, and of listening when he was believed to be engrossed in his play. Afterward he was apt to say the things which should not be said; in other words, he was the average child of seven, living without playmates, and so forced by his environment to interest himself in the endless drama played by the grown-ups around him. Buddy, therefore, was not unusually startling, one day at dinner, when he looked up from spatting his potato into a flat cake on his plate.
"What hill you going to climb, Ford?" was his manner of exploding his bomb. "Bald pinnacle? I can climb that hill myself."
"I don't know as I'm going to climb any hills at all," Ford said indulgently, accepting another helping of potato salad from Mrs. Kate.
"You told dad before he went to gran'ma's house you was going to climb a big, long hill, and he was more sure than sensible." He giggled and showed where two front teeth were missing from among their fellows. "Dad told him he'd make it, but he'd have to dig in his toes and hang on by his eye-winkers," he added to the two women. "Gee! I'd like to see Ford hang onto a hill by his eye-winkers. Jo could do it--she's got winkers six feet long."
Miss Josephine had been looking at Ford's face going red, as enlightenment came to him, but when she caught a quick glance leveled at her lashes, she drooped them immediately so that they almost touched her cheeks. Bud gave a squeal and pointed to her with his fork.
"Jo's blushing! I guess she's ashamed because she's got such long winkers, and Ford keeps looking at 'em all the time. Why don't you shave 'em off with dad's razor? Then Ford would like you, maybe. He don't now. He told dad--"
"Robert Chester Mason, do you want me to get the hairbrush?" This, it need not be explained, from Mrs. Kate, in a voice that portended grave disaster.
"I guess we can get along without it, mamma," Buddy answered her, with an ingratiating smile. Even in the first seven years of one's life, one learns the elementary principles of diplomacy. He did not retire from the conversation, but he prudently changed the subject to what he considered a more pleasant channel.
"Dick likes you anyway, Jo," he informed her soothingly. "He likes you, winkers and all. I can tell, all right. When you go out for a ride he gives me nickels if I tell him where--"
"Robert Ches--"
"Oh, all right." Buddy's tone was wearily tolerant. "A man never knows what to talk about to women, anyway. I'd hate to be married to 'em--wouldn't you, Ford?"
"A little boy like you--" began his mother, somewhat pinker of cheeks than usual.
"I guess I'm pretty near a man, now." He turned his eyes to Ford, consciously ignoring the feminine members of his family. "If I had a wife," he stated calmly, "I'd snub her up to a post and then I'd talk to her about anything I damn pleased!"
Mrs. Kate rose up then in all the terrifying dignity of outraged motherhood, grasped Buddy by the wrist, and led him away, in the direction of the hairbrush, if one would judge by Buddy's reluctance to go.
"So you are going to climb the--Big Hill, are you?" Miss Josephine observed, when the two were quite alone. "It is to be hoped, Mr. Campbell, that you won't find it as steep as it looks--from the bottom."
Ford was not an adept at reading what lies underneath the speech of a woman. To himself he accented the last three words, so that they overshadowed all the rest and made her appear to remind him where he stood--at the bottom.
"I suppose a hollow does look pretty high, to a man down a well," he retorted, glancing into his teacup because he felt and was resisting an impulse to look at her.
"One can always keep climbing," she murmured, "and never give up--" Miss Josephine, also, was tilting her teacup and looking studiously into it as if she would read her fortune in the specks of tea leaves there.
"Like the frog in the well--that climbed one jump and fell back two!" he interrupted, but she paid no attention, and went on.
"And the reward for reaching the top--"
"Is there supposed to be a reward?" Ford could not tell why he asked her that, nor why he glanced stealthily at her from under his eyebrows as he awaited her reply.
"There--might--there usually is a reward for any great achievement--and--" Miss Josephine was plainly floundering where she had hoped to float airily upon the surface.
"What's the reward for--climbing hills, for instance?" He looked at her full, now, and his lips were ready to smile.
Miss Josephine looked uneasily at the door. "I--really, I never--investigated the matter at all." She gave a twitch of shoulders and met his eyes steadily. "The inner satisfaction of having climbed the hill, I suppose," she said, in the tone of one who has at last reached firm ground. "Will you have more tea, Mr. Campbell?"
Her final words were chilly and impersonal, but Ford left the table, smiling to himself. At the door he met Dick, whom Buddy had mentioned with disaster to himself. Dick saw the smile, and within the room he saw Miss Josephine sitting alone, her chin resting in her two palms and her eyes fixed upon vacancy.
"Hello," Ford greeted somewhat inattentively. "Do you want me for anything, Dick?"
"Can't say I do," drawled Dick, brushing past Ford in the doorway.
Ford hesitated long enough to give him a second glance--an attentive enough glance this time--and went his way; without the smile, however.
"Lordy me!" he said to himself, when his foot touched the bridge, but he did not add anything to the exclamation. He was wondering when it was that he had begun to dislike Dick Thomas; a long while, it seemed to him, though he had never till just now quite realized it, beyond resenting his covert sneer that day in town. He had once or twice since suspected Dick of a certain disappointment that he himself was not foreman of the Double Cross, and once he had asked Mason why he hadn't given the place to Dick.
"Didn't want to," Mason had replied succinctly, and let it go at that.
If Dick cherished any animosity, however, he had not made it manifest in actual hostility. On the contrary, he had shown a distinct inclination to be friendly; a friendliness which led the two to pair off frequently when they were riding, and to talk over past range experiences more or less intimately. Looking back over the six weeks just behind him, Ford could not remember a single incident--a sentence, even--that had been unpleasant, unless he clung to his belief in Dick's contempt, and that he had since set down to his own super-sensitiveness. And yet--
"He's got bad eyes," he concluded. "That's what it is; I never did like eyes the color of polished steel; nickel-plated eyes, I call 'em; all shine and no color. Still, a man ain't to blame for his eyes."
Then Dick overtook him with Buddy trailing, red-eyed, at his heels, and Ford forgot, in the work to be done that day, all about his speculations. He involved himself in a fruitless argument with Buddy, upon the subject of what a seven-year-old can stand in the way of riding, and yielded finally before the quiver of Buddy's lips. They were only going over on Long Ridge, anyway, and the day was fine, and Buddy had frequently ridden as far, according to Dick. Indeed, it was Dick's easy-natured, "Ah, let the kid go, why don't you?" which gave Ford an excuse for reconsidering.
And Buddy repaid him after his usual fashion. At the supper table he looked up, round-eyed, from his plate.
"Gee, but I'm hungry!" he sighed. "I eat and eat, just like a horse eating hay, and I just can't fill up the hole in me."
"There, never mind, honey," Mrs. Kate interposed hastily, fearing worse. "Do you want more bread and butter?"
"Yes--you always use bread for stuffing, don't you? I want to be stuffed. All the way home my b--my stomerch was a-flopping against my backbone, just like Dick's. Only Dick said--"
"Never mind what Dick said." Mrs. Kate thrust the bread toward him, half buttered.
"Dick's mad, I guess. He's mad at Ford, too."
Buddy regarded his mother gravely over the slice of bread.
"First I've heard of it," Ford remarked lightly. "I think you must be mistaken, old-timer."
But Buddy never considered himself mistaken about anything, and he did not like being told that he was, even when the pill was sweetened with the term "old-timer." He rolled his eyes at Ford resentfully.
"Dick is mad! He got mad when you galloped over where Jo's red ribbon was hanging onto a bush. I saw him a-scowling when you rolled it up and put it in your shirt pocket. Dick wanted that ribbon for his bridle; and you better give it to him. Jo ain't your girl. She's Dick's girl. And you have to tie the ribbon of your bestest girl on your bridle. That's why," he added, with belated gallantry, "I tie my own mamma's ribbons on mine. And," he returned with terrible directness to the real issue, "Jo's Dick's girl, 'cause he said so. I heard him tell Jim Felton she's his steady, all right--and you are his girl, ain't you, Jo?"
His mother had tried at first to stop him, had given up in despair, and was now sitting in a rather tragic calm, waiting for what might come of his speech.
Josephine might have saved herself some anxious moments, if she had been so minded; perhaps she would have been minded, if she had not caught Ford's eyes fixed rather intently upon her, and sensed the expectancy in them. She bit her lip, and then she laughed.
"A man shouldn't make an assertion of that sort," she said quizzically, in the direction of Buddy--though her meaning went straight across the table to another--"unless he has some reason for feeling very sure."
Buddy tried to appear quite clear as to her meaning. "Well, if you are Dick's girl, then you better make Ford give that ribbon--"
"I have plenty of ribbons, Buddy," Josephine interrupted, smiling at him still. "Don't you want one?"
"I tie my own mamma's ribbons on my bridle," Buddy rebuffed. "My mamma is my girl--you ain't. You can give your ribbons to Dick."
"Mamma won't be your girl if you don't stop talking so much at the table--and elsewhere," Mrs. Kate informed him sternly, with a glance of trepidation at the others. "A little boy mustn't talk about grown-ups, and what they do or say."
"What can I talk about, then? The boys talk about their girls all the time--"
"I wish to goodness I had let you go with your dad. I shall not let you eat with us, anyway, if you don't keep quiet. You're getting perfectly impossible." Which even Buddy understood as a protest which was not to be taken seriously.
Ford stayed long enough to finish drinking his tea, and then he left the house with what he privately considered a perfectly casual manner. As a matter of fact, he was extremely self-conscious about it, so that Mrs. Kate felt justified in mentioning it, and in asking Josephine a question or two--when she had prudently made an errand elsewhere for Buddy.
Josephine, having promptly disclaimed all knowledge or interest pertaining to the affair, Mrs. Kate spoke her mind plainly.
"If Ford's going to fall in love with you, Phenie," she said, "I think you're foolish to encourage Dick. I believe Ford is falling in love with you. I never thought he even liked you till to-night, but what Buddy said about that ribbon--"
"I don't suppose Bud knows what he's talking about--any more than you do," snapped Josephine. "If you're determined that I shall have a love affair on this ranch, I'm going home." She planted her chin in her two palms, just as she had done at dinner, and stared into vacancy.
"Where?" asked Mrs. Kate pointedly, and then atoned for it whole-heartedly. "There, I didn't mean that--only--this is your home. It's got to be; I won't let it be anywhere else. And you needn't have any love affair, Phene--you know that. Only you shan't hurt Ford. I think he's perfectly splendid! What he did for Chester--I--I can't think of that without getting a lump in my throat, Phene. Think of it! Going without food himself, because there wasn't enough for two, and--and--well, he just simply threw away his own chance of getting through, to give Chester a better one. It was the bravest thing I ever heard of! And the way he has conquered--?"
"How do you know he has conquered? Rumor says he hasn't. And lots of men save other men's lives; it's being done every day, and no one hears much about it. You think it was something extraordinary, just because it happened to be Chester that was saved. Anybody will do all he can for a sick partner, when they're away out in the wilds. I haven't a doubt Dick would have done the very same thing, when it comes to that." Josephine got up from the table then, and went haughtily into her own room.
Mrs. Kate retired quite as haughtily into the kitchen, and there was a distinct coolness between them for the rest of the day, and a part of the next. The chill of it affected Ford sufficiently to keep him away from the house as much as possible, and unusually silent and unlike himself when he was with the men.
But, unlike many another, he did not know that his recurrent dissatisfaction with life was directly traceable to the apparent intimacy between Josephine and Dick. Ford, if he had tried to put his gloomy unrest into words, would have transposed his trouble and would have mistaken effect for cause. In other words, he would have ignored Josephine and Dick entirely, and would have said that he wanted whisky--and wanted it as the damned are said to want water.
CHAPTER XII
At Hand-Grips with the Demon
Mose was mad. He was flinging tinware about the kitchen with a fine disregard of the din or the dents, and whenever the blue cat ventured out from under the stove, he kicked at it viciously. He was mad at Ford; and when a man gets mad at his foreman--without knowing that the foreman has been instructed to bear with his faults and keep him on the pay-roll at any price--he must, if he be the cook, have recourse to kicking cats and banging dishes about, since he dare not kick the foreman. For in late November "jobs" are not at all plentiful in the range land, and even an angry cook must keep his job or face the world-old economic problem of food, clothing, and shelter.
But if he dared not speak his mind plainly to Ford, he was not averse to pouring his woes into the first sympathetic ear that came his way. It happened that upon this occasion the ear arrived speedily upon the head of Dick Thomas.
"Matter, Mose?" he queried, sidestepping the cat, which gave a long leap straight for the door, when it opened. "Cat been licking the butter again?"
Mose grunted and slammed three pie tins into a cupboard with such force that two of them bounced out and rolled across the floor. One came within reach of his foot, and he kicked it into the wood-box, and swore at it while it was on the way. "And I wisht it was Ford Campbell himself, the snoopin', stingy, kitchen-grannying, booze-fightin', son-of-a-sour-dough bannock!" he finished prayerfully.
"He surely hasn't tried to mix in here, and meddle with you?" Dick asked, helping himself to a piece of pie. You know the tone; it had just that inflection of surprised sympathy which makes you tell your troubles without that reservation which a more neutral listener would unconsciously impel.
I am not going to give Mose's version, because he warped the story to make it fit his own indignation, and did not do Ford justice. This, then, is the exact truth:
Ford chanced to be walking up along the edge of the gully which ran past the bunk-house, and into which empty cans and other garbage were thrown. Sometimes a can fell short, so that all the gully edge was liberally decorated with a gay assortment of canners' labels. Just as he had come up, Mose had opened the kitchen door and thrown out a cream can, which had fallen in front of Ford and trickled a white stream upon the frozen ground. Ford had stooped and picked up the can, had shaken it, and heard the slosh which told of waste. He had investigated further, and decided that throwing out a cream can before it was quite empty was not an accident with Mose, but might be termed a habit. He had taken Exhibit A to the kitchen, but had laughed while he spoke of it. And these were his exact words:
"Lordy me, Mose! Somebody's liable to come here and get rich off us, if we don't look out. He'll gather up the cream cans you throw into the discard and start a dairy on the leavings." Then he had set the can down on the water bench beside the door and gone away.
"I've been cookin' for cow-camps ever since I got my knee stiffened up so's't I couldn't ride--and that's sixteen year ago last Fourth--and it's the first time I ever had any darned foreman go snoopin' around my back door to see if I scrape out the cans clean!" Mose seated himself upon a corner of the table with the stiff leg for a brace and the good one swinging free, and folded his bare arms upon his heaving chest.
"And that ain't all, Dick," he went on aggrievedly. "He went and cut down the order I give him for grub. That's something Ches never done--not with me, anyway. Asked me--asked me, what I wanted with so much choc'late. And I wanted boiled cider for m' mince-meat, and never got it. And brandy, too--only I didn't put that down on the list; I knowed better than to write it out. But I give Jim money--out uh my own pocket!--to git some with, and he never done it. Said Ford told him p'tic'ler not to bring out nothin' any nearer drinkable than lemon extract! I've got a darned good mind," he added somberly, "to fire the hull works into the gully. He don't belong on no cow ranch. Where he'd oughta be is runnin' the W.C.T.U. So darned afraid of a pint uh brandy--"
"If I was dead sure your brains wouldn't get to leaking out your mouth," Dick began guardedly, "I might put you wise to something." He took a drink of water, opened the door that he might throw out what remained in the dipper, and made sure that no one was near the bunk-house before he closed the door again. Mose watched him interestedly.
"You know me, Dick--I never do tell all I know," he hinted heavily.
"Well," Dick stood with his hand upon the door-knob and a sly grin upon his face, "I ain't saying a word about anything. Only--if you might happen to want some--eggs--for your mince pies, you might look good under the southeast corner of the third haystack, counting from the big corral. I believe there's a--nest--there."
"The deuce!" Mose brightened understandingly and drummed with his fingers upon his bare, dough-caked forearm. "Do yuh know who--er--what hen laid 'em there?"
"I do," said Dick with a rising inflection. "The head he-hen uh the flock. But if I was going to hunt eggs, I'd take down a chiny egg and leave it in the nest, Mose."
"But I ain't got--" Mose caught Dick's pale glance resting with what might be considered some significance upon the vinegar jug, and he stopped short. "That wouldn't work," he commented vaguely.
"Well, I've got to be going. Boss might can me if he caught me loafing around here, eating pie when I ought to be working. Ford's a fine fellow, don't you think?" He grinned and went out, and immediately returned, complaining that he never could stand socks with a hole in the toe, and he guessed he'd have to hunt through his war-bag for a good pair.
Mose, as need scarcely be explained, went immediately to the stable to hunt eggs; and Dick, in the next room, smiled to himself when he heard the door slam behind him. Dick did not change his socks just then; he went first into the kitchen and busied himself there, and he continued to smile to himself. Later he went out and met Ford, who was riding moodily up from the river field.
"Say, I'm going to be an interfering kind of a cuss, and put you next to something," he began, with just the right degree of hesitation in his manner. "It ain't any of my business, but--" He stopped and lighted a cigarette. "If you'll come up to the bunk-house, I'll show you something funny!"
Ford dismounted in silence, led his horse into the stable, and without waiting to unsaddle, followed Dick.
"We've got to hurry, before Mose gets back from hunting eggs," Dick remarked, by way of explaining the long strides he took. "And of course I'm taking it for granted, Ford, that you won't say anything. I kinda thought you ought to know, maybe--but I'd never say a word if I didn't feel pretty sure you'd keep it behind your teeth."
"Well--I'm waiting to see what it is," Ford replied non-committally.
Dick opened the kitchen door, and led Ford through that into the bunk-room. "You wait here--I'm afraid Mose might come back," he said, and went into the kitchen. When he returned he had a gallon jug in his hand. He was still smiling.
"I went to mix me up some soda-water for heartburn," he said, "and when I picked up this jug, Mose took it out of my hand and said it was boiled cider, that he'd got for mince-meat. So when he went out, I took a taste. Here: You sample it yourself, Ford. If that's boiled cider, I wouldn't mind having a barrel!"
Ford took the jug, pulled the cork, and sniffed at the opening. He did not say anything, but he looked up at Dick significantly.
"Taste it once!" urged Dick innocently. "I'd just like to have you see the brand of slow poison a fool like Mose will pour down him."
Ford hesitated, sniffed, started to set down the jug, then lifted it and took a swallow.
"That isn't as bad as some I've seen," he pronounced evenly, shoving in the cork. "Nor as good," he added conservatively. "I wonder where he got it."
"Search me--oh, by jiminy, here he comes! I'm going to take a scoot, Ford. Don't give me away, will you? And if I was you, I wouldn't say anything to Mose--I know that old devil pretty well. He'll keep mighty quiet about it himself--unless you jump him about it. Then he'll roar around to everybody he sees, and claim it was a plant."
He slid stealthily through the outer door, and Ford saw him run down into the gully and disappear, while Mose was yet half-way from the stable.
Ford sat on the edge of a bunk and looked at the jug beside him. If Dick had deliberately planned to tempt him, he had chosen the time well; and if he had not done it deliberately, there must have been a malignant spirit abroad that day.
For twenty-four hours Ford had been more than usually restless and moody. Even Buddy had noticed that, and complained that Ford was cross and wouldn't talk to him; whereupon Mrs. Kate had scolded Josephine and accused her of being responsible for his gloom and silence. Since Josephine's conscience sustained the charge, she resented the accusation and proceeded deliberately to add to its justice; which did not make Ford any the happier, you may be sure. For when a man reaches that mental state which causes him to carry a girl's ribbon folded carefully into the most secret compartment of his pocketbook, and to avoid the girl herself and yet feel like committing assault and battery with intent to kill, because some other man occasionally rides with her for an hour or two, he is extremely sensitive to averted glances and chilly tones and monosyllabic conversation.
Since the day before, when she had ridden as far as the stage road with Dick, when he went to the line-camp, Ford had been fighting the desire to saddle a horse and ride to town; and the thing that lured him townward confronted him now in that gray stone jug with the brown neck and handle.
He lifted the jug, shook it tentatively, pulled out the cork with a jerk that was savage, and looked around the room for some place where he might empty the contents and have done with temptation; but there was no receptacle but the stove, so he started to the door with it, meaning to pour it on the ground. Mose just then shambled past the window, and Ford sat down to wait until the cook was safe in the kitchen. And all the while the cork was out of that jug, so that the fumes of the whisky rose maddeningly to his nostrils, and the little that he had swallowed whipped the thirst-devil to a fury of desire.
In the kitchen, Mose rattled pans and hummed a raucous tune under his breath, and presently he started again for the stable. Dick, desultorily bracing a leaning post of one of the corrals, saw him coming and grinned. He glanced toward the bunk-house, where Ford still lingered, and the grin grew broader. After that he went all around the corral with his hammer and bucket of nails, tightening poles and braces and, incidentally, keeping an eye upon the bunk-house; and while he worked, he whistled and smiled by turns. Dick was in an unusually cheerful mood that day.
Mose came shuffling up behind him and stood with his stiff leg thrust forward and his hands rolled up in his apron. Dick could see that he had something clasped tightly under the wrappings.
"Say, that he-hen--she laid twice in the same place!" Mose announced confidentially. "Got 'em both--for m'mince pies!" He waggled his head, winked twice with his left eye, and went back to the bunk-house.
Still Ford did not appear. Josephine came, however, in riding skirt and gray hat and gauntlets, treading lightly down the path that lay all in a yellow glow which was not so much sunlight as that mellow haze which we call Indian Summer. She looked in at the stable, and then came straight over to Dick. There was, when Josephine was her natural self, something very direct and honest about all her movements, as if she disdained all feminine subterfuges and took always the straight, open trail to her object.
"Do you know where Mr. Campbell is, Dick?" she asked him, and added no explanation of her desire to know.
"I do," said Dick, with the rising inflection which was his habit, when the words were used for a bait to catch another question.
"Well, where is he, then?"
Dick straightened up and smiled down upon her queerly. "Count ten before you ask me that again," he parried, "because maybe you'd rather not know."
Josephine lifted her chin and gave him that straight, measuring stare which had so annoyed Ford the first time he had seen her. "I have counted," she said calmly after a pause. "Where is Mr. Campbell, please?"--and the "please" pushed Dick to the very edge of her favor, it was so coldly formal.
"Well, if you're sure you counted straight, the last time I saw him he was in the bunk-house."
"Well?" The tone of her demanded more.
"He was in the bunk-house--sitting close up to a gallon jug of whisky." His eyelids flickered. "He's there yet--but I wouldn't swear to the gallon--"
"Thank you very much." This time her tone pushed him over the edge and into the depths of her disapproval. "I was sure I could depend upon you--to tell!"
"What else could I do, when you asked?"
But she had her back to him, and was walking away up the path, and if she heard, she did not trouble to answer. But in spite of her manner, Dick smiled, and brought the hammer down against a post with such force that he splintered the handle.
"Something's going to drop on this ranch, pretty quick," he prophesied, looking down at the useless tool in his hand. "And if I wanted to name it, I'd call it Ford." He glanced up the path to where Josephine was walking straight to the west door of the bunk-house, and laughed sourly. "Well, she needn't take my word for it if she don't want to, I guess," he muttered. "Nothing like heading off a critter--or a woman--in time!"
Josephine did not hesitate upon the doorstep. She opened the door and went in, and shut the door behind her before the echo of her step had died. Ford was lying as he had lain once before, upon a bunk, with his face hidden in his folded arms. He did not hear her--at any rate he did not know who it was, for he did not lift his head or stir.
Josephine looked at the jug upon the floor beside him, bent and lifted it very gently from the floor; tilted it to the window so that she could look into it, tilted her nose at the odor, and very, very gently put it back where she had found it. Then she stood and looked down at Ford with her eyebrows pinched together.
She did not move, after that, and she certainly did not speak, but her presence for all that became manifest to him. He lifted his head and stared at her over an elbow; and his eyes were heavy with trouble, and his mouth was set in lines of bitterness.
"Did you want me for something?" he asked, when he saw that she was not going to speak first.
She shook her head. "Is it--pretty steep?" she ventured after a moment, and glanced down at the jug.
He looked puzzled at first, but when his own glance followed hers, he understood. He stared up at her somberly before he let his head drop back upon his arms, so that his face was once more hidden.
"You've never been in bell, I suppose," he told her, and his voice was dull and tired. After a minute he looked up at her impatiently. "Is it fun to stand and watch a man--What do you want, anyway? It doesn't matter--to you."
"Are you sure?" she retorted sharply. "And--suppose it doesn't. I have Kate to think of, at least."
He gave a little laugh that came nearer being a snort. "Oh, if that's all, you needn't worry. I'm not quite that far gone, thank you!"
"I was thinking of the ranch, and of her ideals, and her blind trust in you, and of the effect on the men," she explained impatiently.
He was silent a moment. "I'm thinking of myself!" he told her grimly then.
"And--don't you ever--think of me?" She set her teeth sharply together after the words were out, and watched him, breathing quickly.
Ford sprang up from the bunk and faced her with stern questioning in his eyes, but she only flushed a little under his scrutiny. Her eyes, he noticed, were clear and steady, and they had in them something of that courage which fears but will not flinch.
"I don't want to think of you!" he said, lowering his voice unconsciously. "For the last month I've tried mighty hard not to think of you. And if you want to know why--I'm married!"
She leaned back against the door and stared up at him with widening pupils. Ford looked down and struck the jug with his toe. "That thing," he said slowly, "I've got to fight alone. I don't know which is going to come out winner, me or the booze. I--don't--know." He lifted his head and looked at her. "What did you come in here for?" he asked bluntly.
She caught her breath, but she would not dodge. Ford loved her for that. "Dick told me--and I was--I wanted to--well, help. I thought I might--sometimes when the climb is too steep, a hand will keep one from--slipping."
"What made you want to help? You don't even like me." His tone was flat and unemotional, but she did not seem able to meet his eyes. So she looked down at the jug.
"Dick said--but the jug is full practically. I don't understand how--"
"It isn't as full as it ought to be; it lacks one swallow." He eyed it queerly. "I wish I knew how much it would lack by dark," he said.
She threw out an impulsive hand. "Oh, but you must make up your mind! You mustn't temporize like that, or wonder--or--"
"This," he interrupted rather flippantly, "is something little girls can't understand. They'd better not try. This isn't a woman's problem, to be solved by argument. It's a man's fight!"
"But if you would just make up your mind, you could win."
"Could I?" His tone was amusedly skeptical, but his eyes were still somber.
"Even a woman," she said impatiently, "knows that is not the way to win a fight--to send for the enemy and give him all your weapons, and a plan of the fortifications, and the password; when you know there's no mercy to be hoped for!"
He smiled at her simile, and at her earnestness also, perhaps; but that black gloom remained, looking out of his eyes.
"What made you send for it? A whole gallon!"
"I didn't send for it. That jug belongs to Mose," he told her simply. "Dick told me Mose had it; rather, Dick went into the kitchen and got it, and turned it over to me." In spite of the words, he did not give one the impression that he was defending himself; he was merely offering an explanation because she seemed to demand one.
"Dick got it and turned it over to you!" Her forehead wrinkled again into vertical lines. She studied him frowningly. "Will you give it to me?" she asked directly.
Ford folded his arms and scowled down at the jug. "No," he refused at last, "I won't. If booze is going to be the boss of me I want to know it. And I can't know it too quick."
"But--you're only human, Ford!"
"Sure. But I'm kinda hoping I'm a man, too." His eyes lightened a little while they rested upon her.
"But you've got the poison of it--it's like a traitor in your fort, ready to open the door. You can't do it! I--oh, you'll never understand why, but I can't let you risk it. You've got to let me help; give it to me, Ford!"
"No, You go on to the house, and don't bother about me. You can't help--nobody can. It's up to me."
She struck her hands together in a nervous rage. "You want to keep it because you want to drink it! If you didn't want it, you'd hate to be near it. You'd want some one to take it away. You just want to get drunk, and be a beast. You--you--oh--you don't know what you're doing, or how much it means! You don't know!" Her hands went up suddenly and covered her face.
Ford walked the length of the room away from her, turned and came back until he faced her where she stood leaning against the door, with her face still hidden behind her palms. He reached out his arms to her, hesitated, and drew them back.
"I wish you'd go," he said. "There are some things harder to fight than whisky. You only make it worse."
"I'll go when you give me that." She flung a hand out toward the jug.
"You'll go anyway!" He took her by the arm, quietly pulled her away from the door, opened it, and then closed it while, for just a breath or two, he held her tightly clasped in his arms. Very gently, after that, he pushed her out upon the doorstep and shut the door behind her. The lock clicked a hint which she could not fail to hear and understand. He waited until he heard her walk away, sat down with the air of a man who is very, very weary, rested his elbows upon his knees, and with his hands clasped loosely together, he glowered at the jug on the floor. Then the soul of Ford Campbell went deep down into the pit where all the devils dwell.
CHAPTER XIII
A Plan Gone Wrong
It was Mose crashing headlong into the old messbox where he kept rattly basins, empty lard pails, and such, that roused Ford. He got up and went into the kitchen, and when he saw what was, the matter, extricated Mose by the simple method of grabbing his shoulders and pulling hard; then he set the cook upon his feet, and got full in his face the unmistakable fumes of whisky.
"What? You got another jug?" he asked, with some disgust, steadying Mose against the wall.
"Ah--I ain't got any jug uh nothin'," Mose protested, rather thickly. "And I never took them bottles outa the stack; that musta been Dick done that. Get after him about it; he's the one told me where yuh hid 'em--but I never touched 'em, honest I never. If they're gone, you get after Dick. Don't yuh go 'n' lay it on me, now!" He was whimpering with maudlin pathos before he finished. Ford scowled at him thoughtfully.
"Dick told you about the bottles in the haystack, did he?" he asked. "Which stack was it? And how many bottles?"
Mose gave him a bleary stare. "Aw, you know. You hid 'em there yourself! Dick said so. I ain't goin' to say which stack, or how many bottles--or--any other--darn thing about it." He punctuated his phrases by prodding a finger against Ford's chest, and he wagged his head with all the self-consciousness of spurious virtue. "Promised Dick I wouldn't, and I won't. Not a--darn--word about it. Wanted some--for m' mince-meat, but I never took any outa the haystack." Whereupon he began to show a pronounced limpness in his good leg, and a tendency to slide down upon the floor.
Ford piloted him to a chair, eased him into it, and stood over him in frowning meditation. Mose was drunk; absolutely, undeniably drunk. It could not have been the jug, for the jug was full. Till then the oddity of a full jug of whisky in Mose's kitchen after at least twenty-four hours must have elapsed since its arrival, had not occurred to him. He had been too preoccupied with his own fight to think much about Mose.
"Shay, I never took them bottles outa the stack," Mose looked up to protest solemnly. "Dick never told me about 'em, neither. Dick tol' me--" tapping Ford's arm with his finger for every word, "--'at there was aigs down there, for m' mince-meat." He stopped suddenly and goggled up at Ford. "Shay, yuh don't put aigs in--mince-meat," he informed him earnestly. "Not a darn aig! That's what Dick tol' me--aigs for m' mince-meat. Oh, I knowed right off what he meant, all right," he explained proudly. "He didn't wanta come right out 'n' shay what it was--an' I--got--the--aigs!"
"Yes--how many--eggs?" Ford held himself rigidly quiet.
"Two quart--aigs!" Mose laughed at the joke. "I wisht," he added pensively, "the hens'd all lay them kinda aigs. I'd buy up all the shickens in--the whole worl'." He gazed raptly upon the vision the words conjured. "Gee! Quart aigs--'n' all the shickens in the worl' layin' reg'lar!"
"Have you got any left?"
"No--honest. Used 'em all up--for m' mince-meat!"
Ford knew he was lying. His eyes searched the untidy tables and the corners filled with bags and boxes. Mose was a good cook, but his ideas of order were vague, and his system of housekeeping was the simple one of leaving everything where he had last been using it, so that it might be handy when he wanted it again. A dozen bottles might be concealed there, like the faces in a picture-puzzle, and it would take a housecleaning to disclose them all. But Ford, when he knew that no bottle had been left in sight, began turning over the bags and looking behind the boxes.
He must have been "growing warm" when he stood wondering whether it was worth while to look into the flour-bin, for Mose gave an inarticulate snarl and pounced on him from behind. The weight of him sent Ford down on all fours and kept him there for a space, and even after he was up he found himself quite busy. Mose was a husky individual, with no infirmity of the arms and fists, even if he did have a stiff leg, and drunkenness frequently flares and fades in a man like a candle guttering in the wind. Besides, Mose was fighting to save his whisky.
Still, Ford had not sent all of Sunset into its cellars, figuratively speaking, for nothing; and while a man may feel more enthusiasm for fighting when under the influence of the stuff that cheers sometimes and never fails to inebriate, the added incentive does not necessarily mean also added muscular development or more weight behind the punch. Ford, fighting as he had always fought, be he drunk or sober, came speedily to the point where he could inspect a skinned knuckle and afterwards gaze in peace upon his antagonist.
He was occupied with both diversions when the door was pushed open as by a man in great haste. He looked up from the knuckle into the expectant eyes of Jim Felton, and over the shoulder of Jim he saw a gloating certainty writ large upon the face of Dick Thomas. They had been running; he could tell that by their uneven breathing, and it occurred to him that they must have heard the clamor when he pitched Mose head first into the dish cupboard. There had been considerable noise about that time, he remembered; they must also have heard the howl Mose gave at the instant of contact. Ford glanced involuntarily at that side of the room where stood the cupboard, and mentally admitted that it looked like there had been a slight disagreement, or else a severe seismic disturbance; and Montana is not what one calls an earthquake country. His eyes left the generous sprinkle of broken dishes on the floor, with Mose sprawled inertly in their midst, looking not unlike a broken platter himself--or one badly nicked--and rested again upon the grinning face behind the shoulder of Jim Felton.
Ford was ever a man of not many words, even when he had a grievance. He made straight for Dick, and when he had pushed Jim out of the way, he reached him violently. Dick tottered upon the step and went off backward, and Ford landed upon him fairly and with full knowledge and intent.
[Illustration: Dick tottered upon the step and went off backward.]
Jim Felton was a wise young man. He stood back and let them fight it out, and when it was over he said never a word until Dick had picked himself up and walked off, holding to his nose a handkerchief that reddened rapidly.
"Say, you are a son-of-a-gun to fight," he observed admiringly then to Ford. "Don't you know Dick's supposed to be abso-lute-ly unlickable?"
"May be so--but he sure shows all the symptoms of being licked right at present." Ford moved a thumb joint gently to see whether it was really dislocated or merely felt that way.
"He's going up to the house now, to tell the missus," remarked Jim, craning his neck from the doorway.
"If he does that," Ford replied calmly, "I'll half kill him next time. What I gave him just now is only a sample package left on the doorstep to try." He sat down upon a corner of the table and began to make himself a smoke. "Is he going up to the house--honest?" He would not yield to the impulse to look and see for himself.
"We-el, the trail he's taking has no other logical destination," drawled Jim. "He's across the bridge." When Ford showed no disposition to say anything to that, Jim came in and closed the door. "Say, what laid old Mose out so nice?" he asked, with an indolent sort of curiosity. "Booze? Or just bumps?"
"A little of both," said Ford indifferently, between puffs. He was thinking of the tale Dick would tell at the house, and he was thinking of the probable effect upon one listener; the other didn't worry him, though he liked Mrs. Kate very much.
Jim went over and investigated; discovering that Mose was close to snoring, he sat upon a corner of the other table, swung a spurred boot, and regarded Ford interestedly over his own cigarette building. "Say, for a man that's supposed to be soused," he began, after a silence, "you act and talk remarkably lucid. I wish I could carry booze like that," he added regretfully. "But I can't; my tongue and my legs always betray the guilty secret. Have you got any particular system, or is it just a gift?"
"No"--Ford shook his head--"nothing like that. I just don't happen to be drunk." He eyed Jim sharply while he considered within himself. "It looks to me," he began, after a moment, "as if our friend Dick had framed up a nice little plant. One way and another I got wise to the whole thing; but for the life of me, I can't see what made him do it. Lordy me! I never kicked him on any bunion!" He grinned, as memory flashed a brief, mental picture of Sunset and certain incidents which occurred there. But memory never lets well enough alone, and one is lucky to escape without seeing a picture that leaves a sting; Ford's smile ended in a scowl.
"Jealousy, old man," Jim pronounced without hesitation. "Of course, I don't know the details, but--details be darned. If he has tried to hand you a package, take it from me, jealousy's the string he tied it with. I don't mind saying that Dick told me when I first rode up to the corral that you and Mose were both boozing up to beat the band; and right after that we heard a deuce of a racket up here, and it did look--" He waved an apologetic hand at Mose and the fragments of pottery which framed like a "still life" picture on the floor, and let it go at that. "I'm strong for you, Ford," he added, and his smile was frank and friendly. "Double Cross is the name of this outfit, but I'm all in favor of running that brand on the cow-critters and keeping it out of the bunk-house. If you should happen to feel like elucidating--" he hinted delicately.
Ford had always liked Jim Felton; now he warmed to him as a real friend, and certain things he told him. As much about the jug with the brown neck and handle as concerned Dick, and all he knew of the bottles in the haystack, while Jim smoked, and swung the foot which did not rest upon the floor, and listened.
"Sounds like Dick, all right," he passed judgment, when Ford had finished. "He counted on your falling for the jug--and oh, my! It was a beautiful plant. I'd sure hate to have anybody sing 'Yield not to temptation' at me, if a gallon jug of the real stuff fell into my arms and nobody was looking." He eyed Ford queerly. "You've got quite a reputation--" he ventured.
"Well, I earned it," Ford observed laconically.
"Dick banked on it--I'd stake my whole stack of blues on that. And after you'd torn up the ranch, and pitched the fragments into the gulch, he'd hold the last trump, with all high cards to keep the lead. Whee!" He meditated admiringly upon the strategy. "But what I can't seem to understand," he said frankly, "is why the deuce it didn't work! Is your swallower out of kilter? If you don't mind my asking!"
"I never noticed that it was paralyzed," Ford answered grimly. He got up, lifted a lid of the stove, and threw in the cigarette stub mechanically. Then he bethought him of his interrupted search, and prodded a long-handled spoon into the flour bin, struck something smooth and hard, and drew out a befloured, quart bottle half full of whisky. He wiped the bottle carefully, inspected it briefly, and pitched it into the gully, where it smashed odorously upon a rock. Jim, watching him, knew that he was thinking all the while of something else. When Ford spoke, he proved it.
"Are you any good at all in the kitchen, Jim?" he asked, turning to him as if he had decided just how he would meet the situation.
"Well, I hate to brag, but I've known of men eating my grub and going right on living as if nothing had happened," Jim admitted modestly.
"Well, you turn yourself loose in here, will you? The boys will be good and empty when they come--it's dinner time right now. I'll help you carry Mose out of the way before I go."
Jim looked as if he would like to ask what Ford meant to do, but he refrained. There was something besides preoccupation in Ford's face, and it did not make for easy questioning. Jim did yield to his curiosity to the extent of watching through a window, when Ford went out, to see where he was going; and when he saw Ford had the jug, and that he took the path which led across the little bridge and so to the house, he drew back and said "Whee-e-e!" under his breath. Then he remarked to the recumbent Mose, who was not in a condition either to hear or understand: "I'll bet you Dick's got all he wants, right now, without any postscript." After which Jim hunted up a clean apron and proceeded, with his spurs on his heels, his hat on the back of his head, and a smile upon his lips, to sweep out the broken dishes so that he might walk without hearing them crunch unpleasantly under his boots. "I'll take wildcats in mine, please," he remarked once irrelevantly aloud, and smiled again.
CHAPTER XIV
The Feminine Point of View
When Ford stepped upon the porch with the jug in his hand, he gave every indication of having definitely made up his mind. When he glimpsed Josephine's worried face behind the lace curtain in the window, he dropped the jug lower and held it against his leg in such a way as to indicate that he hoped she could not see it, but otherwise he gave no sign of perturbation. He walked along the porch to the door of his own room, went in, locked the door after him, and put the jug down on a chair. He could hear faint sounds of dishes being placed upon the table in the dining-room, which was next to his own, and he knew that dinner was half an hour late; which was unusual in Mrs. Kate's orderly domain. Mrs. Kate was one of those excellent women whose house is always immaculate, whose meals are ever placed before one when the clock points to a certain hour, and whose table never lacks a salad and a dessert--though how those feats are accomplished upon a cattle ranch must ever remain a mystery. Ford was therefore justified in taking the second look at his watch and in holding it up to his ear, and also in lifting his eyebrows when all was done. Fifteen minutes by the watch it was before he heard the silvery tinkle of the tea bell, which was one of the ties which bound Mrs. Kate to civilization, and which announced that he might enter the dining-room.
He went in as clean and fresh and straight-backed and quiet as ever he had done, and when he saw that the room was empty save for Buddy, perched upon his long-legged chair with his heels hooked over the top round and a napkin tucked expectantly inside the collar of his blue blouse, he took in the situation and sat down without waiting for the women. The very first glance told him that Mrs. Kate had never prepared that meal. It was, putting it bluntly, a scrappy affair hastily gathered from various shelves in the pantry and hurriedly arranged haphazard upon the table.
Buddy gazed upon the sprinkle of dishes with undisguised dissatisfaction. "There ain't any potatoes," he announced gloomily. "My own mamma always cooks potatoes. Josephine's the limit! I been working to-day. I almost dug out a badger, over by the bluff. I got where I could hear him scratching to get away, and then it was all rocks, so I couldn't dig any more. Gee, it was hard digging! And I'm just about starved, if you want to know. And there ain't any potatoes."
"Bread and butter is fine when you're hungry," Ford suggested, and spread a slice for Buddy, somewhat inattentively, because he was also keeping an eye upon the kitchen door, where he had caught a fleeting glimpse of Josephine looking in at him.
"You're putting the butter all in one place," Buddy criticised, with his usual frankness. "I guess you're drunk, all right. If you're too drunk to spread butter, let me do it."
"What makes you think I'm drunk?" Ford questioned, lowering his voice because of the person he suspected was in the kitchen.
"Mamma and Jo was quarreling about it; that's why. And my own mamma cried, and shut the door, and wouldn't let me go in. And Jo pretty near cried too, all right. I guess she did, only not when any one was looking. Her eyes are awful red, anyway." Buddy took great, ravenous bites of the bread and butter and eyed Ford unwinkingly.
"What's disslepointed?" he demanded abruptly, after he had given himself a white mustache with his glass of milk.
"Why do you want to know?"
"That's what my own mamma is, and that's what Jo is. Only my own mamma is it about you, and Jo's it about mamma. Say, did you lick Dick? Jo told my own mamma she wisht you'd killed him. Jo's awful mad to-day. I guess she's mad at Dick, because he ain't very much of a fighter. Did you lick him easy? Did you paste him one in the jaw?"
Josephine entered then with Ford's belated tea. Her eyelids were pink, as Buddy had told him, and she did not look at him while she filled his cup.
"Kate has a sick headache," she explained primly, "and I did the best I could with lunch. I hope it's--"
"It is," Ford interrupted reassuringly. "Everything is fine and dandy."
"You didn't cook any potatoes!" Buddy charged mercilessly. "And Ford's too drunk to put the butter on right. I'm going to tell my dad that next time he goes to Oregon I'm going along. This outfit will sure go to the devil if he stays much longer!"
"Where did you hear that, Bud?" Josephine asked, still carefully avoiding a glance at Ford.
"Well, Dick said it would go to the devil. I guess," he added on his own account, with an eloquent look at the table, "it's on the trail right now."
Ford looked at Josephine, opened his lips to say that it might still be headed off, and decided not to speak. There was a stubborn streak in Ford Campbell. She had said some bitter things, in her anger. Perhaps she had not entirely believed them herself, and perhaps Mrs. Kate had not been accurately quoted by her precocious young son; she may not have said that she was disappointed in Ford. They might not have believed whatever it was Dick told them, and they might still have full confidence in him, Ford Campbell. Still, there was the stubborn streak which would not explain or defend. So he left the table, and went into his own room without any word save a muttered excuse; and that in spite of the fact that Josephine looked full at him, at last, and with a wistfulness that moved him almost to the point of taking her in his arms and kissing away the worry--if he could.
He went up to the table where stood the jug, looked at it, lifted it, and set it down again. Then he lifted it again and pulled the cork out with a jerk, wondering if the sound of it had reached through the thin partition to the ears of Josephine; he was guilty of hoping so. He put back the cork--this time carefully--walked to the outer door, turned the key, opened the door, and closed it again with a slam. Then, with a grim set of the lips, he walked softly into the closet and pulled the door nearly shut.
He knew there was a chance that Josephine, if she were interested in his movements, would go immediately into the sitting-room, where she could see the path, and would know that he had not really left the house. But she did not, evidently. She sat long enough in the dining-room for Ford to call himself a name or two and to feel exceedingly foolish over the trick, and to decide that it was a very childish one for a grown man to play upon a woman. Then she pushed back her chair, came straight toward his room, opened the door, and looked in; Ford knew, for he saw her through the crack he had left in the closet doorway. She stood there looking at the jug on the table, then went up and lifted it, much as Ford had done, and pulled the cork with a certain angry defiance. Perhaps, he guessed shrewdly, Josephine also felt rather foolish at what she was doing--and he smiled over the thought.
Josephine turned the jug to the light, shut one eye into an adorable squint, and peered in. Then she set the jug down and pushed the cork slowly into place; and her face was puzzled. Ford could have laughed aloud when he saw it, but instead he held his breath for fear she should discover him. She stood very still for a minute or two, staring at nothing at all; moved the jug into the exact place where it had stood before, and went out of the room on her toes.
So did Ford, for that matter, and he was in a cold terror lest she should look out and see him walking down the path where he should logically have walked more than five minutes before. He did not dare to turn and look--until he was outside the gate; then inspiration came to aid him and he went back boldly, stepped upon the porch with no effort at silence, opened his door, and went in as one who has a right there.
He heard the click of dishes which told that she was clearing the table, and he breathed freer. He walked across the room, waited a space, and walked back again, and then went out with his heart in its proper position in his chest; Ford was unused to feeling his heart rise to his palate, and the sensation was more novel than agreeable. When he went again down the path, there was a certain exhilaration in his step. His thoughts arranged themselves in clear-cut sentences, as if he were speaking, instead of those vague, almost wordless impressions which fill the brain ordinarily.
"She's keeping cases on that jug. She must care, or she wouldn't do that. She's worried a whole lot; I could see that, all along. Down at the bunk-house she called me Ford twice--and she said it meant a lot to her, whether I make good or not. I wonder--Lordy me! A man could make good, all right, and do it easy, if she cared! She doesn't know what to think--that jug staying right up to high-water mark, like that!" He laughed then, silently, and dwelt upon the picture she had made while she had stood there before the table.
"Lord! she'd want to kill me if she knew I hid in that closet, but I just had a hunch--that is, if she cared anything about it. I wonder if she did really say she wished I'd killed Dick?
"Anyway, I can fight it now, with her keeping cases on the quiet. I know I can fight it. Lordy me, I've got to fight it! I've got to make good; that's all there is about it. Wonder what she'll think when she sees that jug don't go down any? Wonder--oh, hell! She'd never care anything about me. If she did--" His thoughts went hazy with vague speculation, then clarified suddenly into one hard fact, like a rock thrusting up through the lazy sweep of a windless tide. "If she did care, I couldn't do anything. I'm married!"
His step lost a little of its spring, then, and he went into the bunk-house with much the same expression on his face as when he had left it an hour or so before.
He did not see Dick that day. The other boys watched him covertly, it seemed to him, and showed a disposition to talk among themselves. Jim was whistling cheerfully in the kitchen. He turned his head and laughed when Ford went in.
"I found a dead soldier behind the sack of spuds," Jim announced, and produced an empty bottle, mate to the one Ford had thrown into the gully. "And Dick didn't seem to have any appetite at all, and Mose is still in Sleepytown. I guess that's all the news at this end of the line. Er--hope everything is all right at the house?"
"Far as I could see, it was," Ford replied, with an inner sense of evasion. "I guess we'll just let her go as she looks, Jim. Did you say anything to the boys?"
Jim reddened under his tan, but he laughed disarmingly. "I cannot tell a lie," he confessed honestly, "and it was too good to keep to myself. I'm the most generous fellow you ever saw, when it comes to passing along a good story that won't hurt anybody's digestion. You don't care, do you? The joke ain't on you."
"If you'd asked me about it, I'd have said keep it under your hat. But--"
"And that would have been a sin and a shame," argued Jim, licking a finger he had just scorched on a hot kettle-handle. "The fellows all like a good story--and it don't sound any worse because it's on Dick. And say! I kinda got a clue to where he connected with that whisky. Walt says he come back from the line-camp with his overcoat rolled up and tied behind the saddle--and it wasn't what you could call a hot night, either. He musta had that jug wrapped up in it. I'll bet he sent in by Peterson, the other day, for it. He was over there, I know. He's sure a deliberate kind of a cuss, isn't he? Must have had this thing all figured out a week ago. The boys are all tickled to death at the way he got it in the neck; they know Dick pretty well. But if you'd told me not to say anything, I'd have said he stubbed his toe on his shadow and fell all over himself, and let it go at that."
"Lordy me! Jim, you needn't worry about it; you ought to know you can't keep a thing like this quiet, on a ranch. It doesn't matter much how he got that whisky here, either; I know well enough you didn't haul it out. I'd figured it out about as Walt says.
"Say, it looks as if you'll have to wrastle with the pots and pans till to-morrow. The lower fence I'll ride, this afternoon; did you get clear around the Pinnacle field?"
"I sure did--and she's tight as a drum. Say, Mose is a good cook, but he's a mighty punk housekeeper, if you ask me. I'm thinking of getting to work here with a hoe!"
So life, which had of late loomed big and bitter before the soul of Ford, slipped back into the groove of daily routine.
CHAPTER XV
The Climb
Into its groove of routine slipped life at the Double Cross, but it did not move quite as smoothly as before. It was as if the "hill" which Ford was climbing suffered small landslides here and there, which threatened to block the trail below. Sometimes--still keeping to the simile--it was but a pebble or two kicked loose by Ford's heel; sometimes a bowlder which one must dodge.
Dick, for instance, must have likened Mose to a real landslide when he came at him the next day, with a roar of rage and the rolling-pin. Mose had sobered to the point where he wondered how it had all happened, and wanted to get his hands in the wool of the "nigger" said to lurk in woodpiles. He asked Jim, with various embellishments of speech, what it was all about, and Jim told him and told him truly.
"He was trying to queer you with the outfit, Mose, and that's a fact," he finished; which was the only exaggeration Jim was guilty of, for Dick had probably thought very little of Mose and his ultimate standing with the Double Cross. "And he was trying to queer Ford--but you can search me for the reason why he didn't make good, there."
Mose, like many of us, was a self-centered individual. He wasted a minute, perhaps, thinking of the trick upon Ford; but he spent all of that forenoon and well into the afternoon in deep meditation upon the affair as it concerned himself. And the first time Dick entered the presence of the cook, he got the result of Mose's reasoning.
"Tried to git me in bad, did yuh? Thought you'd git me fired, hey?" he shouted, as a sort of punctuation to the belaboring.
A rolling pin is considered a more or less fearsome weapon in the hands of a woman, I believe; when wielded by an incensed man who stands close to six feet and weighs a solid two hundred pounds, and who has the headache which follows inevitably in the wake of three pints of whisky administered internally in the short space of three hours or so, a rolling-pin should justly be classed with deadly weapons.
Jim said afterward that he never had believed it possible to act out the rough stuff of the silly supplements in the Sunday papers, but after seeing Mose perform with that rolling-pin, he was willing to call every edition of the "funny papers" realistic to a degree. Since it was Jim who helped pull Mose off, naturally he felt qualified to judge. Jim told Ford about the affair with sober face and eyes that laughed.
"And where's Dick?" Ford asked him, without committing himself upon the justice of the chastisement.
"Gone to bed, I believe. He didn't come out with anything worse than bumps, I guess--but what I saw of them are sure peaches; or maybe Italian prunes would hit them off closer; they're a fine purple shade. I ladled Three H all over him."
"I thought Dick was a fighter from Fighterville," grinned Ford, trying hard to remain non-committal and making a poor job of it.
"Well, he is, when he can stand up and box according to rule, or hit a man when he isn't looking. But my, oh! This wasn't a fight, Ford; this was like the pictures you see of an old woman lambasting her son-in-law with an umbrella. Dick never got a chance to begin. Whee-ee! Mose sure can handle a rolling-pin some!"
Ford laughed and went up to the house to his supper, and to the constrained atmosphere which was telling on his nerves more severely than did the gallon jug in his closet, and the moral effort it cost to keep that jug full to the neck.
He went in quietly, threw his hat on the bed, and sat down with an air of discouragement. It was not yet six o'clock, and he knew that Mrs. Kate would not have supper ready; but he wanted a quiet place in which to think, and he was closer to Josephine; though he would never have admitted to himself that her nearness was any comfort to him. He did admit, however, that the jug with the brown neck and handle pulled him to the room many times in spite of himself. He would take it from the corner of the closet and let his fingers close over the cork, but so far he had never yielded beyond that point. Always he had been able to set the jug back unopened.
He was getting circles under his eyes, two new creases had appeared on each side of his whimsical lips, and a permanent line was forming between his eyebrows; but he had not opened the jug, and it had been in his possession thirty-six hours. Thirty-six hours is not long, to be sure, when life runs smoothly with slight incidents to emphasize the figures on the dial, but it may seem long to the poor devil on the rack.
Just now Ford was trying to forget that a gallon of whisky stood in the right-hand corner of his closet, behind a pair of half-worn riding-boots that pinched his instep so that he seldom wore them, and that he had only to take the jug out from behind the boots, pull the cork, and lift the jug to his lips--
He caught himself leaning forward and staring at the closet door until his eyes ached with the strain. He drew back and passed his hand over his forehead; it ached, and he wanted to think about what he ought to do with Dick. He did not like to discharge him without first consulting Mrs. Kate, for he knew that Ches Mason was in the habit of talking things over with her, and since Mason was gone, she had assumed an air of latent authority. But Mrs. Kate had looked at him with such reproachful eyes, that day at dinner, and her voice had sounded so squeezed and unnatural, that he had felt too far removed from her for any discussion whatever to take place between them.
Besides, he knew he could prove absolutely nothing against Dick, if Dick were disposed toward flat denial. He might suspect--but the facts showed Ford the aggressor, and Mose also. What if Mrs. Kate declined to believe that Dick had put that jug of whisky in the kitchen, and had afterward given it to Ford? Ford had no means of knowing just what tale Dick had told her, but he did know that Mrs. Kate eyed him doubtfully, and that her conversation was forced and her manner constrained.
And Josephine was worse. Josephine had not spoken to him all that day. At breakfast she had not been present, and at dinner she had kept her eyes upon her plate and had nothing to say to any one.
He wished Mason was home, so that he could leave. It wouldn't matter then, he tried to believe, what he did. He even dwelt upon the desire of Mason's return to the extent of calculating, with his eyes upon the fancy calendar on the wall opposite, the exact time of his absence. Ten days--there was no hope of release for another month, at least, and Ford sighed unconsciously when he thought of it; for although a month is not long, there was Josephine refusing to look at him, and there was Dick--and there was the jug in the closet.
As to Josephine, there was no help for it; he could not avoid her without making the avoidance plain to all observers, and Ford was proud. As to Dick, he would not send him off without some proof that he had broken an unwritten law of the Double Cross and brought whisky to the ranch; and of that he had no proof. As to his suspicions--well, he considered that Dick had almost paid the penalty for having roused them, and the matter would have to rest where it was; for Ford was just. As to the jug, he could empty it upon the ground and be done with that particular form of torture. But he felt sure that Josephine was secretly "keeping cases" on the jug; and Ford was stubborn.
That night Ford did not respond to the tinkle of the tea bell. His head ached abominably, and he did not want to see Josephine's averted face opposite him at the table. He lay still upon the bed where he had finally thrown himself, and let the bell tinkle until it was tired.
They sent Buddy in to see why he did not come. Buddy looked at him with the round, curious eyes of precocious childhood and went back and reported that Ford wasn't asleep, but was just lying there mad. Ford heard the shrill little voice innocently maligning him, and swore to himself; but, he did not move for all that. He lay thinking and fighting discouragement and thirst, while little table sounds came through the partition and made a clicking accompaniment to his thoughts.
If he were free, he was wondering between spells of temptation, would it do any good? Would Josephine care? There was no answer to that, or if there was he did not know what it was.
After awhile the two women began talking; he judged that Buddy had left them, because it was sheer madness to speak so freely before him. At first he paid no attention to what they were saying, beyond a grudging joy in the sound of Josephine's voice. It had come to that, with Ford! But when he heard his name spoken, and by her, he lifted shamelessly to an elbow and listened, glad that the walls were so thin, and that those who dwell in thin-partitioned houses are prone to forget that the other rooms may not be quite empty. They two spent most of their waking hours alone together, and habit breeds carelessness always.
"Do you suppose he's drunk?" Mrs. Kate asked, and her voice was full of uneasiness. "Chester says he's terrible when he gets started. I was sure he was perfectly safe! I just can't stand it to have him like this. Dick told me he's drinking a little all the time, and there's no telling when he'll break out, and--Oh, I think it's perfectly terrible!"
"Hsh-sh," warned Josephine.
"He went out, quite a while ago. I heard him," said Mrs. Kate, with rash certainty. "He hasn't been like himself since that day he fought Dick. He must be--"
"But how could he?" Josephine's voice interrupted sharply. "That jug he's got is full yet."
Ford could imagine Mrs. Kate shaking her head with the wisdom born of matrimony.
"Don't you suppose he could keep putting in water?" she asked pityingly. Ford almost choked when he heard that!
"I don't believe he would." Josephine's tone was dubious. "It doesn't seem to me that a man would do that; he'd think he was just spoiling what was left. That," she declared with a flash of inspiration, "is what a woman would do. And a man always does something different!" There was a pathetic note in the last sentence, which struck Ford oddly.
"Don't think you know men, my dear, until you've been married to one for eight years or so," said Mrs. Kate patronizingly. "When you've been--"
"Oh, for mercy's sake, do you think they're all alike?" Josephine's voice was tart and impatient. "I know enough about men to know they're all different. You can't judge one by another. And I don't believe that Ford is drinking at all. He's just--"
"Just what?--since you know so well!" Mrs. Kate was growing ironical.
"He's trying not to--and worrying." Her voice lowered until it took love to hear it. Ford did hear, and his breath came fast. He did not catch Mrs. Kate's reply; he was not in love with Mrs. Kate, and he was engaged in letting the words of Josephine sink into his very soul, and in telling himself over and over that she understood. It seemed to him a miracle of intuition, that she should sense the fight he was making; and since he felt that way about it, it was just as well he did not know that Jim Felton sensed it quite as keenly as Josephine--and with a far greater understanding of how bitter a fight it was, and for that reason a deeper sympathy.
"I wish Chester was here!" wailed Mrs. Kate, across the glow of his exultant thoughts. "I'm afraid to say anything to him myself, he's so morose. It's a shame, because he's so splendid when he's--himself."
"He's as much himself now as ever he was," Josephine defended hotly. "When he's drinking he's altogether--"
"You never saw him drunk," Mrs. Kate pointed to the weak spot in Josephine's defense of him. "Dick says--"
"Oh, do you believe everything Dick says? A week ago you were bitter against Dick and all enthusiasm for Ford."
"You were flirting with Dick then, and you'd hardly treat Ford decently. And Ford hadn't gone to drink--"
"Will you hush?" There were tears of anger in Josephine's voice. "He isn't, I tell you!"
"What does he keep that jug in the closet for? And every few hours he comes up to the house and goes into his room--and he never did that before. And have you noticed his eyes? He'll scarcely talk any more, and he just pretends to eat. At dinner to-day he scarcely touched a thing! It's a sure sign, Phenie."
Ford was growing tired of that sort of thing. It dimmed the radiance of Josephine's belief in him, to have Mrs. Kate so sure of his weakness. He got up from the bed as quietly as he could and left the house. He was even more thoughtful, after that, but not quite so gloomy--if one cared enough for his moods to make a fine distinction.
Have you ever observed the fact that many of life's grimmest battles and deepest tragedies scarce ripple the surface of trivial things? We are always rubbing elbows with the big issues and never knowing anything about it. Certainly no one at the Double Cross guessed what was always in the mind of the foreman. Jim thought he was "sore" because of Dick. Dick thought Ford was jealous of him, and trying to think of some scheme to "play even," without coming to open war. Mrs. Kate was positive, in her purely feminine mind--which was a very good mind, understand, but somewhat inadequate when brought to bear upon the big problems of life--that Ford was tippling in secret. Josephine thought--just what she said, probably, upon the chill day when she calmly asked Ford at the breakfast table if he would let her go with him.
Ford had casually remarked, in answer to a diffident question from Mrs. Kate, that he was going to ride out on Long Ridge and see if any stock was drifting back toward the ranch. He hadn't sent any one over that way for several days. Ford, be it said, had announced his intention deliberately, moved by a vague, unreasoning impulse.
"Can I go?" teased Buddy, from sheer force of habit; no one ever mentioned going anywhere, but Buddy shot that question into the conversation.
"No, you can't. You can't, with that cold," his mother vetoed promptly, and Buddy, whimpering over his hot cakes, knew well the futility of argument, when Mrs. Kate used that tone of finality.
"Will you let me go?" Josephine asked unexpectedly, and looked straight at Ford. But though her glance was direct, it was unreadable, and Ford mentally threw up his hands after one good look at her, and tried not to betray the fact that this was what he had wanted, but had not hoped for.
"Sure, you can go," he said, with deceitful brevity. Josephine had not spoken to him all the day before, except to say good-morning when he came in to his breakfast. Ford made no attempt to understand her, any more. He was carefully giving her the lead, as he would have explained it, and w |
14456-8 | as merely following suit until he got a chance to trump; but he was beginning to have a discouraged feeling that the game was hers, and that he might as well lay down his hand and be done with it. Which, when he brought the simile back to practical affairs, meant that he was thinking seriously of leaving the ranch and the country just as soon as Mason returned.
He was thinking of trying the Argentine Republic for awhile, if he could sell the land which he had rashly bought while he was getting rid of his inheritance.
She did not offer any excuse for the request, as most women would have done. Neither did she thank him, with lips or with eyes, for his ready consent. She seemed distrait--preoccupied, as if she, also, were considering some weighty question.
Ford pushed back his chair, watching her furtively. She rose with Kate, and glanced toward the window.
"I suppose I shall need my heaviest sweater," she remarked practically, and as if the whole affair were too commonplace for discussion. "It does look threatening. How soon will you want to start?" This without looking toward Ford at all.
"Right away, if that suits you." Ford was still watchful, as if he had not quite given up hope of reading her meaning.
She told him she would be ready by the time he had saddled, and she appeared in the stable door while he was cinching the saddle on the horse he meant to ride.
"I hope you haven't given me Dude," she said unemotionally. "He's supposed to be gentle--but he bucked me off that day I sprained my ankle, and all the excuse he had was that a rabbit jumped out from a bush almost under his nose. I've lost faith in him since. Oh--it's Hooligan, is it? I'm glad of that; Hooligan's a dear--and he has the easiest gallop of any horse on the ranch. Have you tried him yet, Ford?"
The heart of Ford lifted in his chest at her tone and her words, along toward the last. He forgot the chill of her voice in the beginning, and he dwelt greedily upon the fact that once more she had called him Ford. But his joy died suddenly when he led his horse out and discovered that Dick and Jim Felton were coming down the path, within easy hearing of her. Ford did not know women very well, but most men are born with a rudimentary understanding of them. He suspected that her intimacy of tone was meant for Dick's benefit; and when they had ridden three or four miles and her share of the conversation during that time had consisted of "yes" twice, "no" three times, and one "indeed," he was sure of it.
So Ford began to wonder why she came at all--unless that, also, was meant to discipline Dick--and his own mood became a silent one. He did not, he told himself indignantly, much relish being used as a club to beat some other man into good behavior.
They rode almost to Long Ridge before Ford discovered that Josephine was stealing glances at his face whenever she thought he was not looking, and that the glances were questioning, and might almost be called timid. He waited until he was sure he was not mistaken, and then turned his head unexpectedly, and smiled into her startled eyes.
"What is it?" he asked, still smiling at her. "I won't bite. Say it, why don't you?"
She bit her lips and looked away.
"I wanted to ask something--ask you to do something," she said, after a minute. And then hurriedly, as if she feared her courage might ebb and leave her stranded, "I wish you'd give me that--jug!"
Sheer surprise held Ford silent, staring at her.
"I don't ask many favors--I wish you'd grant just that one. I wouldn't ask another."
"What do you want of it?"
"Oh--" she stopped, then plunged on recklessly. "It's getting on my nerves so! And if you gave it to me, you wouldn't have to fight the temptation--"
"Why wouldn't I? There's plenty more where that came from," he reminded her.
"But it wouldn't be right where you could get it any time the craving came. Won't you let me take it?" He had never before heard that tone from her; but he fought down the thrill of it and held himself rigidly calm.
"Oh, I don't know--the jug's doing all right, where it is," he evaded; what he wanted most was to get at her real object, and, man-like, to know beyond doubt whether she really cared.
"But you don't--you never touch it," she urged. "I know, because--well, because every day I look into it! I suppose you'll say I have no right, that it's spying, or something. But I don't care for that. And I can see that it's worrying you dreadfully. And if you don't drink any of it, why won't you let me have it?"
"If I don't drink it; what difference does it make who has it?" he countered.
"I'm afraid there'll be a time when you'll yield, just because you are blue and discouraged--or something; whatever mood it is that makes the temptation hardest to resist. I know myself that things are harder to endure some days than they are others." She stopped and looked at him in that enigmatical way she had. "You may not know it--but I've been staying here just to see whether you fail or succeed. I thought I understood a little of why you came, and I--I stayed." She leaned and twisted a wisp of Hooligan's mane nervously, and Ford noticed how the color came and went in the cheek nearest him.
"I--oh, it's awfully hard to say what I want to say, and not have it sound different," she began again, without looking at him. "But if you don't understand what I mean--" Her teeth clicked suggestively.
Ford leaned to her. "Say it anyway and take a chance," he urged, and his voice was like a kiss, whether he knew it or not. He did know that she caught her breath at the words or the tone, and that the color flamed a deeper tint in her cheek and then faded to a faint glow.
"What I mean is that I appreciate the way you have acted all along. I--it wasn't an easy situation to meet, and you have met it like a man--and a gentleman. I was afraid of you at first, and I misunderstood you completely. I'm ashamed to confess it, but it's true. And I want to see you make good in this thing you have attempted; and if there's anything on earth that I can do to help you, I want you to let me do it. You will, won't you?" She looked at him then with clear, honest eyes. "It's my way of wanting to thank you for--for not taking any advantage, or trying to, of--your--position that night."
Ford's own cheeks went hot. "I thought you knew all along that I wasn't a cur, at least," he said harshly. "I never knew before that you had any reason to be afraid of me, that night. If I'd known that--but I thought you just didn't like me, and let it go at that. And what I said I meant. You needn't feel that you have anything to thank me for; I haven't done a thing that deserves thanks--or fear either, for that matter."
"I thought you understood, when I left--"
"I didn't worry much about it, one way or the other," he cut in. "I hunted around for you, of course, and when I saw you'd pulled out for good, I went over the hill and camped. I didn't get the note till next morning; and I don't know," he added, with a brief smile, "as that did much toward making me understand. You just said to wait till some one came after me. Well, I didn't wait." He laughed and leaned toward her again. "Now there seems a chance of our being--pretty good friends," he said, in the caressing tone he had used before, and of which he was utterly unconscious, "we won't quarrel about that night, will we? You got home all right, and so did I. We'll forget all about it. Won't we?" He laid a hand on the horn of her saddle so that they rode close together, and tried futilely to read what was in her face, since she did not speak.
Josephine stared blankly at the brown slope before them. Her lips were set firmly together, and her brows were contracted also, and her gloved fingers gripped the reins tightly. She paid not the slightest attention to Ford's hand upon her saddle horn, nor at the steady gaze of his eyes. Later, when Ford observed the rigidity of her whole pose and sensed that mental withdrawing which needs no speech to push one off from the more intimate ground of companionship, he wondered a little. Without in the least knowing why he felt rebuffed, he took away his hand, and swung his horse slightly away from her; his own back stiffened a little in response to the chilled atmosphere.
"Yes," she said at last, "we'll forget all about it, Mr. Campbell."
"You called me Ford, a while ago," he hinted.
"Did I? One forms the habit of picking up a man's given name, out here in the West, I find. I'm sorry--"
"I don't want you to be sorry. I want you to do it again. All the time," he added boldly.
He caught the gleam of her eyes under her heavy lashes, as she glanced at him sidelong.
"If you go looking at me out of the corner of your eyes," he threatened recklessly, kicking his horse closer, "I'm liable to kiss you!"
And he did, before she could draw away.
"I've been kinda thinking maybe I'm in love with you, Josephine," he murmured, holding her close. "And now I'm dead sure of it. And if you won't love me back why--there'll be something doing, that's all!"
"Yes? And what would you do, please?" Her tone was icy, but he somehow felt that the ice was very, very thin, and that her heart beat warm beneath. She drew herself free, and he let her go.
"I dunno," he confessed whimsically. "But Lordy me! I'd sure do something!"
"Look for comfort in that jug, I suppose you mean?"
"No, I don't mean that." He stopped and considered, his forehead creased as if he were half angry at the imputation. "I'm pretty sure of where I stand, on that subject. I've done a lot of thinking, since I hit the Double Cross--and I've cut out whisky for good.
"I know what you thought, and what Mrs. Kate thinks yet; and I'll admit it was mighty tough scratching for a couple of days after I got hold of that jug. But I found out which was master--and it wasn't the booze!" He looked at her with eyes that shone. "Josie, girl, I took a long chance--but I put it up to myself this way, when the jug seemed to be on top. I told myself it was whisky or you; not that exactly, either. It's hard to say just what I do mean. Not you, maybe--but what you stand for. What I could get out of life, if I was straight and lived clean, and had a little woman like you. It may not be you at all; that's as you--"
He stopped as if some one had laid a hand over his mouth. It was not as she said. It might have been, only for that drunken marriage of his. Never before had he hated whisky as bitterly as he did then, when he remembered what it had done for him that night in Sunset, and what it was doing now. It closed his lips upon what he would have given much to be able to say; for he was a man with all the instincts of chivalry and honor--and he loved the girl. It was, he realized bitterly, just because he did love her so well, that he could not say more. He had said too much already; but her nearness had gone to his head, and he had forgotten that he was not free to say what he felt.
Perhaps Josephine mistook his sudden silence for trepidation, or humility. At any rate she reined impulsively close, and reached out and caught the hand hanging idly at his side.
"Ford, I'm no coquette," she said straightforwardly, with a blush for maiden-modesty's sake. "I believe you; absolutely and utterly I believe you. If you had been different at first--if you had made any overtures whatever toward--toward lovemaking, I should have despised you. I never would have loved you in this world! But you didn't. You kept at such a distance that I--I couldn't help thinking about you and studying you. And lately--when I knew you were fighting the--the habit--I loved you for the way you did fight. I was afraid, too. I used to slip into your room every time you left it, and look--and I just ached to help you! But I knew I couldn't do a thing; and that was the hardest part. All I could do was stand back--clear back out of sight, and hope. And--and love you, too, Ford. I'm proud of you! I'm proud to think that I--I love a man that is a man; that doesn't sit down and whine because a fight is hard, or give up and say it's no use. I do despise a moral weakling, Ford. I don't mind what you have been; it's what you are, that counts with me. And you're a man, every inch of you. I'm not a bit afraid you'll weaken. Only," she added half apologetically, "I did want you to give me the--the jug, because I couldn't bear to see you look so worried." She gave his fingers an adorable little squeeze, and flung his hand away from her, and laughed in a way to set his heart pounding heavily in his chest. "Now you know where I stand, Mr. Man," she cried lightly, "so let's say no more about it. I bet I can beat you across this flat!" She laughed again, wrinkled her nose at him impertinently, and was off in a run.
[Illustration: "Ford, I'm no coquette," she said straightforwardly.]
If she had waited, Ford would have told her. If she had given him a chance, he would have told her afterward; but she did not. She was extremely careful not to let their talk become intimate, after that. She laughed, she raced Hooligan almost to the point of abuse, she chattered about everything under the sun that came into her mind, except their own personal affairs or anything that could possibly lead up to the subject.
Ford, for a time, watched for an opening honestly; saw at last the impossibility of telling her--unless indeed he shouted, "Say, I'm a married man!" to her without preface or extenuating explanation--and yielded finally to the reprieve the fates sent him.
CHAPTER XVI
To Find and Free a Wife
Ford spent the rest of that day and all of the night that followed, in thinking what would be the best and the easiest method of gaining the point he wished to reach. All along he had been uncomfortably aware of his matrimonial entanglement and had meant, as soon as he conveniently could, to try and discover who was his wife, and how best to free himself and her. He had half expected that she herself would do something to clear the mystery. She had precipitated the marriage, he constantly reminded himself, and it was reasonable to expect that she would do something; though what, Ford could only conjecture.
When he faced Josephine across the breakfast table the next morning, and caught the shy glance she gave him when Mrs. Kate was not looking, a plan he had half formed crystallized into a determination. He would not tell her anything about it until he knew just what he was up against, and how long it was going to take him to free himself. And since he could not do anything about it while he rode and planned and gave orders at the Double Cross, he swallowed his breakfast rather hurriedly and went out to find Jim Felton.
"Say, Jim," he began, when he ran that individual to earth in the stable, where, with a pair of sheep shears, he was roaching the mane of a shaggy old cow pony to please Buddy, who wanted to make him look like a circus horse, even if there was no hope of his ever acting like one. "I'm going to hand you the lines and let you drive, for a few days. I've got to scout around on business of my own, and I don't know just how long it's going to take me. I'm going right away--to-day."
"Yeah?" Jim poised the shears in air and regarded him quizzically over the pony's neck. "Going to pass me foreman's privilege--to hire and fire?" he grinned. "Because I may as well tell you that if you do, Dick won't be far behind you on the trail."
"Oh, darn Dick. I'll fire him myself, maybe, before I leave. Yes," he added, thinking swiftly of Josephine as the object of Dick's desires, "that's what I'll do. Maybe it'll save a lot of trouble while I'm gone. He's a tricky son-of-a-gun."
"You're dead right; he is," Jim agreed. And then, dryly: "Grandmother just died?"
"Oh, shut up. This ain't an excuse--it's business. I've just got to go, and that's all there is to it. I'll fix things with the missus, and tell her you're in charge. Anyway, I won't be gone any longer than I can help."
"I believe that, too," said Jim softly, and busied himself with the shears.
Ford looked at him sharply, in doubt as to just how much or how little Jim meant by that. He finally shrugged his shoulders and went away to tell Mrs. Kate, and found that a matter which required more diplomacy than he ever suspected he possessed. But he did tell her, and he hoped that she believed the reason he gave for going, and also had some faith in his assurance that he would be back, probably, in a couple of days--or as soon afterwards as might be.
"There's nothing but chores to do now around the ranch, and Jack will ride fence," he explained unnecessarily, to cover his discomfort at her coldness. "Jim can look after things just as well as I can. There won't be any need to start feeding the calves, unless it storms; and if it does, Jim and Jack will go ahead, all right. I'm going to let Dick and Curly go. We don't need more than two men besides Walt, from now on."
"I wish Chester was here," said Mrs. Kate ambiguously.
Ford did not ask her why she wished that. He told her good-by as hastily as if he had to run to catch a train, and left her. He hoped he would be lucky enough to see Josephine--and then he hoped quite as sincerely that he would not see her, after all. It would be easier to go without her clear eyes asking him why.
What he meant to do first was to find Rock, and see if he had been sober enough that night in Sunset to remember what happened at the marriage ceremony, and could give him some clue as to the woman's identity and whereabouts. If he failed there, he intended to hunt up the preacher. That, also, presented certain difficulties, but Ford was in the mood to overcome obstacles. Once he discovered who the woman was, it seemed to him that there should be no great amount of trouble in getting free. As he understood it, he was not the man she had intended to marry; and not being the man she wanted, she certainly could not be over-anxious to cling to him.
While he galloped down the trail to town, he went over the whole thing again in his mind, to see if there might be some simpler plan than the one he had formed in the night.
"No, sir--it's Rock I've got to see first," he concluded. "But Lord only knows where I'll find him; Rock never does camp twice in the same place. Never knew him to stay more than a month with one outfit. But I'll find him, all right!"
And by one of those odd twists of circumstances which sets men to wondering if there is such a thing as telepathy and a specifically guiding hand and the like, it was Rock and none other whom he met fairly in the trail before he had gone another mile.
"Well, I'll be gol darned!" Ford whispered incredulously to himself, and pulled up short in the trail to wait for him.
Rock came loping up with elbows flapping loosely, as was his ungainly habit. His grin was wide and golden as of yore, his hat at the same angle over his right eyebrow.
"Gawd bless you, brother! May peace ride behind your cantle!" he declaimed unctuously, for Rock was a character, in his way, and in his speech was not in the least like other men. "Whither wendest thou?"
"My wending is all over for the present," said Ford, wheeling his horse short around, that he might ride alongside the other. "I started out to hunt you up, you old devil. How are you, anyway?"
"It is well with me, and well with my soul--what little I've got--but it ain't so well with my winter grub-stake. I'm just as tickled to see you as you ever dare be to meet up with me, and that's no lie. I heard you've got a stand-in with the Double Cross, and seeing they ain't on to my little peculiarities, I thought I'd ride out and see if I couldn't work you for a soft snap. Got any ducks out there you want led to water?"
"Maybe--I dunno. I just canned two men this morning, before I left." Ford was debating with himself how best to approach the subject to him most important.
"Good ee-nough! I can take the place of those two men; eat their share of grub, do their share of snoring, and shirk their share of work, and drink their share of booze--oh, lovely! But, in the words of the dead, immortal Shakespeare, 'What's eating you?' You look to me as if you hadn't enjoyed the delights of a good, stiff jag since--" He waved a hand vaguely. "Ain't a scar on you, so help me!" He regarded Ford with frank curiosity.
"Oh, yes there is. I've got the hide peeled off two knuckles, and one of my thumbs is just getting so it will move without being greased," Ford assured him, and then went straight at what was on his mind.
"Say, Rock, I was told that you had a hand in my getting married, back in Sunset that night."
Rock made his horse back until it nearly fell over a rock; his face showed exaggerated symptoms of terror.
"I couldn't help it," he wailed. "Spare muh--for muh poor mother's sake, oh spare muh life!" Whereat Ford laughed, just as Rock meant that he should do. "You licked Bill twice for that, they tell me," Rock went on, quitting his foolery and coming up close again. "And you licked the preacher that night, and--so the tale runneth--like to have put the whole town on the jinks. Is there anything in particular you'd like to do to me?"
"I just want you to tell me who I married--if you can." Ford reddened as the other stared, but he did not stop. "I was so darned full that night I let the whole business ooze out of my memory, and I haven't been able to--"
Rock was leaning over the saddle horn, howling and watery-eyed. Ford looked at him with a dawning suspicion.
"It did strike me, once or twice," he said grimly, "that the whole thing was a put-up job. If you fellows rigged up a josh like that, and let it go as far as this, may the Lord have mercy on your souls, for I won't!"
But Rock could only wave him off weakly; so Ford waited until he had recovered. Even then, it took some talking to convince Rock that the affair was truly serious and not to be treated any longer as a joke.
"Why, damn it, man, I'm in love with a girl and I want to marry her if I can get rid of this other darned, mysterious, Tom-fool of a woman," Ford gritted at last, in sheer desperation. "Or if it's just a josh, by this and by that I mean to find it out."
Rock sobered then. "It ain't any josh," he said, with convincing earnestness. "You got married, all right enough. And if it's as you say, Ford, I sure am sorry for it. I don't know the girl's name. I'd know her quick enough if I should see her, but I can't tell you who she was."
Ford swore, of course. And Rock listened sympathetically until he was done.
"That's the stuff; get it out of your system, Ford, and then you'll feel better. Then we can put our heads together and see if there isn't some way to beat this combination."
"Could you spot the preacher, do you reckon?" asked Ford more calmly.
"I could--if he didn't see us coming," Rock admitted guardedly. "Name of Sanderson, I believe. I've seen him around Garbin. He could tell--he must have some record of it; but would he?"
"Don't you know, even, why she came and glommed onto me like that?" Ford's face was as anxious as his tone.
"Only what you told me, confidentially, in a corner afterwards," said Rock regretfully. "Maybe you told it straight, and maybe you didn't; there's no banking on a man's imagination when he's soused. But the way you told it to me was this:
"You said the girl told you that she was working for some queer old party--an old lady with lots of dough; and she made her will and give her money all to some institution--hospital or some darned thing, I forget just what, or else you didn't say. Only, if this girl would marry her son within a certain time, he could have the wad. Seems the son was something of a high-roller, and the old lady knew he'd blow it in, if it was turned over to him without any ballast, like; and the girl was supposed to be the ballast, to hold him steady. So the old lady, or else it was the girl, writes to this fellow, and he agrees to hook up with the lady and take the money and behave himself. Near as I could make it out, the time was just about up before the girl took matters into her own hand, and come out on a hunt for this Frank Cameron. How she happened to sink her rope on you instead, and take her turns before she found out her mistake, you'll have to ask her--if you ever see her again.
"But this much you told me--and I think you got it straight. The girl was willing to marry you--or Frank Cameron--so he could get what belonged to him. She wasn't going to do any more, though, and you told me"--Rock's manner became very impressive here--"that you promised her, as a man and a gentleman, that you wouldn't ever bother her, and that she was to travel her own trail, and she didn't want the money. She just wanted to dodge that fool will, seems like. Strikes me I'd a let the fellow go plumb to Guinea, if I was in her place, but women get queer notions of duty, and the like of that, sometimes. Looks to me like a fool thing for a woman to do, anyway."
Though they talked a good while about it, that was all the real information which Ford could gain. He would have to find the minister and persuade him to show the record of the marriage, and after that he would have to find the girl.
Before they reached that definite conclusion, the storm which had been brewing for several days swooped down upon them, and drove Ford to the alternative of riding in the teeth of it to town, which was not only unpleasant but dangerous, if it grew any worse, or retracing his steps to the Double Cross and waiting there until it was over. So that is what he did, with Rock to bear him willing company.
They met Dick and Curly on the way, and though Ford stopped them and suggested that they turn back also, neither would do so. Curly intimated plainly that the joys of town were calling to him from afar, and that facing a storm was merely calculated to make his destination more alluring by contrast. "Turn back with two months' wages burning up my inside pocket? Oh, no!" he laughed, and rode on. Dick did not say why, but he rode on also. Ford turned in the saddle and looked after them, as they disappeared in a swirl of fine snow.
"That's what I ought to do," he said, "but I'm not going to do it, all the same."
"Which only goes to prove," bantered Rock, "that the Double Cross pulls harder than all the preacher could tell you. I wonder if there isn't a girl at the Double Cross, now!"
"There is," Ford confessed, with a grin of embarrassment. "And you shut up."
"I just had a hunch there was," Rock permitted himself to say meekly, before he dropped the subject.
It was ten minutes before Ford spoke again.
"I'll take you up to the house and introduce you to her, Rock, if you'll behave yourself," he offered then, with a shyness in his manner that nearly set Rock off in one of his convulsions of mirth. "But the missus isn't wise--so watch out. And if you don't behave yourself," he added darkly, "I'll knock your block off."
"Sure. But my block is going to remain right where it's at," Rock assured him, which was a tacit promise of as perfect behavior as he could attain.
They looked like snow men when they unsaddled, with the powdery snow beaten into the very fabric of their clothing, and Ford suggested that they go first to the bunk-house to thaw out. "I'd sure hate to pack all this snow into Mrs. Kate's parlor," he added whimsically. "She's the kind of housekeeper that grabs the broom the minute you're gone, to sweep your tracks off the carpet. Awful nice little woman, but--"
"But not The One," chuckled Rock, treading close upon Ford's heels. "And I'll bet fifteen cents," he offered rashly, looking up, "that the person hitting the high places for the bunk-house is The One."
"How do you know?" Ford demanded, while his eyes gladdened at sight of Josephine, with a Navajo blanket flung over her head, running down the path through the blizzard to the bunk-house kitchen.
"'Cause she shied when she saw you coming. Came pretty near breaking back on you, too," Rock explained shrewdly.
They reached the kitchen together, and Ford threw open the door, and held it for her to pass.
"I came after some of Mose's mince-meat," she explained hastily. "It's a terrible storm, isn't it? I'm glad it didn't strike yesterday. I thought you were going to be gone for several days."
Ford, with embarrassed haste to match her own, presented Rock in the same breath with wishing that Rock was elsewhere; for Mose was not in the kitchen, and he had not had more than a few words with her for twenty-four hours. He was perilously close to forgetting his legal halter when he looked at her.
She was, he thought, about as sweet a picture of a woman as a man need ever look upon, as she stood there with the red Navajo blanket falling back from her dark hair, and with her wide, honest eyes fixed upon Rock. She was blushing, as if she, too, wished Rock elsewhere. She turned impulsively, set down the basin she had been holding in her arm, and pulled the blanket up so that it framed her face bewitchingly.
"Mose can bring up the mince-meat when he comes--since he isn't here," she said hurriedly. "We weren't looking for you back, but dinner will be ready in half an hour or so, I think." She pulled open the door and went out into the storm.
Rock stared at the door, still quivering with the slam she had given it. Then he looked at Ford, and afterward sat down weakly upon a stool, and began dazedly pulling the icicles from his mustache.
"Well--I'll--be--cremated!" he said in a whisper.
"And what's eating you, Rock?" Ford quizzed gayly. He had seen something in the eyes of Josephine, when he met her, that had set his blood jumping again. "Did Miss Melby--"
"Miss Melby my granny!" grunted Rock, in deep disgust. "That there is your wife!"
Ford backed up against the wall and stared at him blankly. Afterward he took a deep breath and went out as though the place was on fire.
CHAPTER XVII
What Ford Found at the Top
Ford Campbell was essentially a man of action; he did not waste ten seconds in trying to deduce the whys and hows of the amazing fact; he would have a whole lifetime in which to study them. He started for the house, and the tracks he made in the loose, shifting snow were considerably more than a yard apart. He even forgot to stamp off the clinging snow and scour his boot-soles upon the porch rug, and when he went striding in, he pushed the door only half shut behind him, so that it swung in the wind and let a small drift collect upon the parlor carpet, until Mrs. Kate, feeling a draught, discovered it, and was shocked beyond words at the sacrilege.
Ford went into the dining-room, crossed it in just three strides, and ran his quarry to earth in the kitchen, where she was distraitly setting out biscuit materials. He started toward her, realized suddenly that the all-observing Buddy was at his very heels, and delayed the reckoning while he led that terrible man-child to his mother.
"I wish you'd close-herd this kid for about four hours," he told Mrs. Kate bluntly, and left her looking scared and unconsciously posing as protective motherhood, her arm around the outraged Robert Chester Mason. Mrs. Kate was absolutely convinced that Ford was at last really drunk and "on the rampage," and she had a terrible vision of slain girlhood in the kitchen, so that she was torn between mother-love and her desire to protect Phenie. But Ford had looked so threateningly at her and Buddy that she could not bring herself to attract his attention to the child or herself. Phenie had plenty of spirit; she could run down to the bunk-house--Mrs. Kate heard a door slam then, and shuddered. Phenie, she judged swiftly, had locked herself into the pantry.
Phenie had. Or, to be exact, she had run in and slammed the door shut in Ford's very face, and she was leaning her weight against it. Mrs. Kate, pressing the struggling Buddy closer to her, heard voices, a slight commotion, and then silence. She could bear no more. She threw a shawl over her head, grasped Buddy firmly by the arm, and fled in terror to the bunk-house.
The voices were a brief altercation between Ford and Josephine, on the subject of opening the door, before it was removed violently from its hinges. The commotion was when Josephine, between tears and laughter, failed to hold the door against the pressure of a strong man upon the other side, and, suddenly giving over the attempt, was launched against a shelf and dislodged three tin pans, which she barely saved from falling with a great clatter to the floor. The silence--the silence should explain itself; but since humanity is afflicted with curiosity, and demands details, this is what occurred immediately after Josephine had been kissed four times for her stubbornness, and the pans had been restored to their proper place.
"Say! Are you my wife?" was the abrupt question which Ford asked, and kissed her again while he waited for an answer.
"Why, yes--what makes you ask that? Of course I am; that is--" Josephine twisted in his arms, so that she could look into his face. She did not laugh at him, however. She was staring at him with that keen, measuring look which had so incensed him, when he had first met her. "I don't understand you at all, Ford," she said at last, with a frown of puzzlement. "I never have, for that matter. I'd think I was beginning to, and then you would say or do something that would put me all at sea. What do you mean, anyway?"
Ford told her what he meant; told her humbly, truthfully, with never an excuse for himself. And it speaks well for the good sense of Josephine that she heard him through with neither tears, laughter, nor anger to mar his trust in her.
"Of course, I knew you had been drinking, that night," she said, when his story was done, and his face was pressed lightly against the white parting in her soft, brown hair. "I saw it, after--after the ceremony. You--you were going to kiss me, and I caught the odor of liquor, and I felt that you wouldn't have done that if you had been yourself; it frightened me, a little. But you talked perfectly straight, and I never knew you weren't the man--Frank Cameron--until you came here. Then I saw you couldn't be he. Chester had known you when Frank was at home with his mother--I compared dates and was sure of that--and he called you Ford Campbell. So then I saw what a horrible blunder I'd made, and I was worried nearly to death! But I couldn't see what I could do about it, and you didn't--"
"Say, what about this Frank Cameron, anyway?" Ford demanded, with true male jealousy. "What did you want to marry him for? You couldn't have known him, or--"
"Oh, you wouldn't understand--" Josephine gave a little, impatient turn of the head, "unless you knew his mother. I did know Frank, a long time ago, when I was twelve or thirteen, and when I saw you, I thought he'd changed a lot. But it was his mother; she was the dearest thing, but--queer. Sort of childish, you know. And she just worshiped Frank, and used to watch for the postman--oh, it was too pitiful! Sometimes I'd write a letter myself, and pretend it was from him, and read it to her; her eyes were bad, so it was easy--"
"Where was this Frank?" Ford interrupted.
"Oh, I don't know! I never did know. Somewhere out West, we thought. I used to make believe the letters came from Helena, or Butte, because that was where she heard from him last. He was always promising to come home--in the letters. That used to make her so much better," she explained naïvely. "And sometimes she'd be able to go out in the yard and fuss with her flowers, after one like that. But he never came, and so she got the notion that he was wild and a spendthrift. I suppose he was, or he'd have written, or something. She had lots and lots of money and property, you know.
"Well," Josephine took one of Ford's hand and patted it reassuringly, "she got the notion that I must marry Frank, when he came home. I tried to reason her out of that, and it only made her worse. It grew on her, and I got so I couldn't bear to write any more letters, and that made it worse still. She made a will that I must marry Frank within a year after she died, or he wouldn't get anything but a hundred dollars--and she was worth thousands and thousands." Josephine snuggled closer. "She was shrewd, too. I was not to get anything except a few trinkets. And if we didn't marry, the money would all go to an old ladies' home.
"So, when she died, I felt as if I ought to do something, you see. It didn't seem right to let him lose the property, even if he wouldn't write to his mother. So I had the lawyers try to find him. I thought I could marry him, and let him get the property, and then--well, I counted on getting a divorce." She looked up quickly into Ford's face.
"And you know you did promise not to bother me--just to desert me, you see, so I could get a divorce in a year. I thought I'd come and live with Kate till the year was up, and then get a divorce, and go back home to work. My father left me enough to squeak along on, you see, if I lived in the country. Aunt Ida--that's Frank's mother--paid me a salary for staying with her and looking after her house and her rents and things. And then, when you followed me out here, I was furious! Just simply furious!" She bent her head and set her teeth gently into the fleshy part of Ford's thumb, and Ford flinched. It happened to be the sore one.
"Well, but that doesn't explain how you got your loop on me, girlie--though I sure am glad that you did!"
"Why, don't you see, the time was almost up, just for all the world like a play. 'Only one day more--and I must save the pa-apers!' So the lawyer Aunt Ida had for years, heard that Frank was--or had been--at Garbin. I rushed out here, and heard that there was a Cameron (only they must have meant Campbell) at Sunset. So I got a license, and the Reverend Sanderson, and took the evening train down there. At the hotel I asked for Mr. Cameron, and they sent you in. And you know the rest, you--you old fraud! How you palmed yourself off on me--"
"I never did! I must have just been in one of my obliging moods; and a man would have to be mighty rude and unkind not to say yes to a pretty girl when--"
That is as far as the discussion went, with anything like continuity or coherence even. Later, however, Josephine did protest somewhat muffledly: "But, Ford, I married you under the name of Frank Cameron, so I don't believe--and anyway--I'd like a real wedding--and a ring!"
Mrs. Kate, having been solemnly assured by Rock that Ford was sober and as nearly in his right mind as a man violently in love can be (Rock made it plain, by implication at least, that he did not consider that very near), ventured into the kitchen just then. She still looked scared and uncertain, until, through the half-open door of the pantry, she heard soft, whispery sounds like kissing--when the kissing is a rapture rather than a ceremony. Mrs. Kate had only been married eight years or so, and she had a good memory. She backed from the kitchen on her toes, and pulled the door shut with the caution of a thief. She did more; she permitted dinner to be an hour late, rather than disturb those two in the pantry.
* * * * *
The uphill climb was no climb at all, after that. For when a man has found the one woman in the world, and with her that elusive thing we call happiness, even the demon must perforce sheathe his claws and retire, discomfited, to the pit whence he came.
There was a period of impatient waiting, because Josephine and Mrs. Kate both stoutly maintained that the "real wedding" could not take place until Chester came back. After that, there was a Mrs. foreman at the Double Cross until spring. And after that, there was a new ranch and a new house and a new home where happiness came and dwelt unhindered.
THE END
STORIES OF RARE CHARM BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER
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_THE HARVESTER_ Illustrated by W. L. Jacobs
"The Harvester," David Langston, is a man of the woods and fields, who draws his living from the prodigal hand of Mother Nature herself. If the book had nothing in it but the splendid figure of this man, with his sure grip on life, his superb optimism, and his almost miraculous knowledge of nature secrets, it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his "Medicine Woods," and the Harvester's whole sound, healthy, large outdoor being realizes that this is the highest point of life which has come to him--there begins a romance, troubled and interrupted, yet of the rarest idyllic quality.
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_LAVENDER AND OLD LACE._
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_THE MASTER'S VIOLIN,_
A love story in a musical atmosphere. A picturesque, old German virtuoso is the reverent possessor of a genuine "Cremona." He consents to take for his pupil a handsome youth who proves to have an aptitude for technique, but not the soul of an artist. The youth, has led the happy, careless life of a modern, well-to-do young American and he cannot, with his meagre past, express the love, the passion and the tragedies of life and all its happy phases as can the master who has lived life in all its fulness. But a girl comes into his life--a beautiful bit of human driftwood that his aunt had taken into her heart and home, and through his passionate love for her, he learns the lessons that life has to give--and his soul awakes.
Founded on a fact that all artists realize.
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_BOUGHT AND PAID FOR._ By George Broadhurst and Arthur Hornblow. Illustrated with scenes from the play.
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_TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY._ By Grace Miller White. Illust. by Howard Chandler Christy.
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_THE LONESOME TRAIL_
"Weary" Davidson leaves the ranch for Portland, where conventional city life palls on him. A little branch of sage brush, pungent with the atmosphere of the prairie, and the recollection of a pair of large brown eyes soon compel his return. A wholesome love story.
_THE LONG SHADOW_
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18449-8 | Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Illustration: Copyright 1906 By Marie Corelli Signature: Marie Corelli FROM A PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN THIS YEAR BY GABELL, LONDON
The Treasure Of Heaven
A Romance Of Riches By Marie Corelli
AUTHOR OF "GOD'S GOOD MAN," "THELMA," "THE SORROWS OF SATAN," "ARDATH," "THE STORY OF A DEAD SELF," "FREE OPINIONS," "TEMPORAL POWER," ETC.
NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 1906
Copyright, 1906, by DODD, MEAD & COMPANY Published, August, 1906
To Bertha 'A faithful friend is better than gold.'
Author's Note
By the special request of the Publishers, a portrait of myself, taken in the spring of this year, 1906, forms the Frontispiece to the present volume. I am somewhat reluctant to see it so placed, because it has nothing whatever to do with the story which is told in the following pages, beyond being a faithful likeness of the author who is responsible for this, and many other previous books which have had the good fortune to meet with a friendly reception from the reading public. Moreover, I am not quite able to convince myself that my pictured personality can have any interest for my readers, as it has always seemed to me that an author's real being is more disclosed in his or her work than in any portrayed presentment of mere physiognomy.
But--owing to the fact that various gross, and I think I may say libellous and fictitious misrepresentations of me have been freely and unwarrantably circulated throughout Great Britain, the Colonies, and America, by certain "lower" sections of the pictorial press, which, with a zeal worthy of a better and kinder cause, have striven by this means to alienate my readers from me,--it appears to my Publishers advisable that an authentic likeness of myself, as I truly am to-day, should now be issued in order to prevent any further misleading of the public by fraudulent inventions. The original photograph from which Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co. have reproduced the present photogravure, was taken by Mr. G. Gabell of Eccleston Street, London, who, at the time of my submitting myself to his camera, was not aware of my identity. I used, for the nonce, the name of a lady friend, who arranged that the proofs of the portrait should be sent to her at various different addresses,--and it was not till this "Romance of Riches" was on the verge of publication that I disclosed the real position to the courteous artist himself. That I thus elected to be photographed as an unknown rather than a known person was in order that no extra pains should be taken on my behalf, but that I should be treated just as an ordinary stranger would be treated, with no less, but at the same time certainly no more, care.
I may add, in conclusion, for the benefit of those few who may feel any further curiosity on the subject, that no portraits resembling me in any way are published anywhere, and that invented sketches purporting to pass as true likenesses of me, are merely attempts to obtain money from the public on false pretences. One picture of me, taken in my own house by a friend who is an amateur photographer, was reproduced some time ago in the _Strand Magazine_, _The Boudoir_, _Cassell's Magazine_, and _The Rapid Review_; but beyond that, and the present one in this volume, no photographs of me are on sale in any country, either in shops or on postcards. My objection to this sort of "picture popularity" has already been publicly stated, and I here repeat and emphasise it. And I venture to ask my readers who have so generously encouraged me by their warm and constant appreciation of my literary efforts, to try and understand the spirit in which the objection is made. It is simply that to myself the personal "Self" of me is nothing, and should be, rightly speaking, nothing to any one outside the circle of my home and my intimate friends; while my work and the keen desire to improve in that work, so that by my work alone I may become united in sympathy and love to my readers, whoever and wherever they may be, constitutes for me the Everything of life.
MARIE CORELLI Stratford-on-Avon July, 1906
THE TREASURE OF HEAVEN
CHAPTER I
London,--and a night in June. London, swart and grim, semi-shrouded in a warm close mist of mingled human breath and acrid vapour steaming up from the clammy crowded streets,--London, with a million twinkling lights gleaming sharp upon its native blackness, and looking, to a dreamer's eye, like some gigantic Fortress, built line upon line and tower upon tower,--with huge ramparts raised about it frowningly as though in self-defence against Heaven. Around and above it the deep sky swept in a ring of sable blue, wherein thousands of stars were visible, encamped after the fashion of a mighty army, with sentinel planets taking their turns of duty in the watching of a rebellious world. A sulphureous wave of heat half asphyxiated the swarms of people who were hurrying to and fro in that restless undetermined way which is such a predominating feature of what is called a London "season," and the general impression of the weather was, to one and all, conveyed in a sense of discomfort and oppression, with a vague struggling expectancy of approaching thunder. Few raised their eyes beyond the thick warm haze which hung low on the sooty chimney-pots, and trailed sleepily along in the arid, dusty parks. Those who by chance looked higher, saw that the skies above the city were divinely calm and clear, and that not a cloud betokened so much as the shadow of a storm.
The deep bell of Westminster chimed midnight, that hour of picturesque ghostly tradition, when simple village maids shudder at the thought of traversing a dark lane or passing a churchyard, and when country folks of old-fashioned habits and principles are respectably in bed and for the most part sleeping. But so far as the fashionable "West End" was concerned, it might have been midday. Everybody assuming to be Anybody, was in town. The rumble of carriages passing to and fro was incessant,--the swift whirr and warning hoot of coming and going motor vehicles, the hoarse cries of the newsboys, and the general insect-like drone and murmur of feverish human activity were as loud as at any busy time of the morning or the afternoon. There had been a Court at Buckingham Palace,--and a "special" performance at the Opera,--and on account of these two functions, entertainments were going on at almost every fashionable house in every fashionable quarter. The public restaurants were crammed with luxury-loving men and women,--men and women to whom the mere suggestion of a quiet dinner in their own homes would have acted as a menace of infinite boredom,--and these gilded and refined eating-houses were now beginning to shoot forth their bundles of well-dressed, well-fed folk into the many and various conveyances waiting to receive them. There was a good deal of needless shouting, and much banter between drivers and policemen. Now and again the melancholy whine of a beggar's plea struck a discordant note through the smooth-toned compliments and farewells of hosts and their departing guests. No hint of pause or repose was offered in the ever-changing scene of uneasy and impetuous excitation of movement, save where, far up in the clear depths of space, the glittering star-battalions of a wronged and forgotten God held their steadfast watch and kept their hourly chronicle. London with its brilliant "season" seemed the only living fact worth recognising; London, with its flaring noisy streets, and its hot summer haze interposed like a grey veil between itself and the higher vision. Enough for most people it was to see the veil,--beyond it the view is always too vast and illimitable for the little vanities of ordinary mortal minds.
Amid all the din and turmoil of fashion and folly seeking its own in the great English capital at the midnight hour, a certain corner of an exclusively fashionable quarter seemed strangely quiet and sequestered, and this was the back of one of the row of palace-like dwellings known as Carlton House Terrace. Occasionally a silent-wheeled hansom, brougham, or flashing motor-car sped swiftly along the Mall, towards which the wide stone balcony of the house projected,--or the heavy footsteps of a policeman walking on his beat crunched the gravel of the path beneath, but the general atmosphere of the place was expressive of solitude and even of gloom. The imposing evidences of great wealth, written in bold headlines on the massive square architecture of the whole block of huge mansions, only intensified the austere sombreness of their appearance, and the fringe of sad-looking trees edging the road below sent a faint waving shadow in the lamplight against the cold walls, as though some shuddering consciousness of happier woodland scenes had suddenly moved them to a vain regret. The haze of heat lay very thickly here, creeping along with slow stealth like a sluggish stream, and a suffocating odour suggestive of some subtle anæsthetic weighed the air with a sense of nausea and depression. It was difficult to realise that this condition of climate was actually summer in its prime--summer with all its glowing abundance of flower and foliage as seen in fresh green lanes and country dells,--rather did it seem a dull nightmare of what summer might be in a prison among criminals undergoing punishment. The house with the wide stone balcony looked particularly prison-like, even more so than some of its neighbours, perhaps because the greater number of its many windows were shuttered close, and showed no sign of life behind their impenetrable blackness. The only strong gleam of light radiating from the inner darkness to the outer, streamed across the balcony itself, which by means of two glass doors opened directly from the room behind it. Here two men sat, or rather half reclined in easy-cushioned lounge chairs, their faces turned towards the Mall, so that the illumination from the apartment in the background created a Rembrandt-like effect in partially concealing the expression of the one from the other's observation. Outwardly, and at a first causal glance, there was nothing very remarkable about either of them. One was old; the other more than middle-aged. Both were in evening-dress,--both smoked idly, and apparently not so much for the pleasure of smoking as for lack of something better to do, and both seemed self-centred and absorbed in thought. They had been conversing for some time, but now silence had fallen between them, and neither seemed disposed to break the heavy spell. The distant roar of constant traffic in the busy thoroughfares of the metropolis sounded in their ears like muffled thunder, while every now and again the soft sudden echo of dance music, played by a string band in evident attendance at some festive function in a house not far away, shivered delicately through the mist like a sigh of pleasure. The melancholy tree-tops trembled,--a single star struggled above the sultry vapours and shone out large and bright as though it were a great signal lamp suddenly lit in heaven. The elder of the two men seated on the balcony raised his eyes and saw it shining. He moved uneasily,--then lifting himself a little in his chair, he spoke as though taking up a dropped thread of conversation, with the intention of deliberately continuing it to the end. His voice was gentle and mellow, with a touch of that singular pathos in its tone which is customary to the Celtic rather than to the Saxon vocal cords.
"I have given you my full confidence," he said, "and I have put before you the exact sum total of the matter as I see it. You think me irrational,--absurd. Good. Then I am content to be irrational and absurd. In any case you can scarcely deny that what I have stated is a simple fact,--a truth which cannot be denied?"
"It is a truth, certainly," replied his companion, pulling himself upright in his chair with a certain vexed vehemence of action and flinging away his half-smoked cigar, "but it is one of those unpleasant truths which need not be looked at too closely or too often remembered. We must all get old--unfortunately,--and we must all die, which in my opinion is more unfortunate still. But we need not anticipate such a disagreeable business before its time."
"Yet you are always drawing up Last Wills and Testaments," observed the other, with a touch of humour in his tone.
"Oh well! That, of course, has to be done. The youngest persons should make their wills if they have anything to leave, or else run the risk of having all their household goods and other belongings fought for with tooth and claw by their 'dearest' relations. Dearest relations are, according to my experience, very much like wild cats: give them the faintest hope of a legacy, and they scratch and squawl as though it were raw meat for which they have been starving. In all my long career as a solicitor I never knew one 'dearest relation' who honestly regretted the dead."
"There you meet me on the very ground of our previous discussions," said the elder man. "It is not the consciousness of old age that troubles me, or the inevitable approach of that end which is common to all,--it is merely the outlook into the void,--the teasing wonder as to who may step into my place when I am gone, and what will be done with the results of my life's labour."
He rose as he spoke, and moved towards the balcony's edge, resting one hand upon its smooth stone. The change of attitude allowed the light from the interior room to play more fully on his features, and showed him to be well advanced in age, with a worn, yet strong face and deep-set eyes, over which the shelving brows stooped benevolently as though to guard the sinking vital fire in the wells of vision below. The mouth was concealed by an ashen-grey moustache, while on the forehead and at the sides of the temples the hair was perfectly white, though still abundant. A certain military precision of manner was attached to the whole bearing of the man,--his thin figure was well-built and upright, showing no tendency to feebleness,--his shoulders were set square, and his head was poised in a manner that might have been called uncompromising, if not obstinate. Even the hand that rested on the balcony, attenuated and deeply wrinkled as it was, suggested strength in its shape and character, and a passing thought of this flitted across the mind of his companion who, after a pause, said slowly:--
"I really see no reason why you should brood on such things. What's the use? Your health is excellent for your time of life. Your end is not imminent. You are voluntarily undergoing a system of self-torture which is quite unnecessary. We've known each other for years, yet I hardly recognise you in your present humour. I thought you were perfectly happy. Surely you ought to be,--you, David Helmsley,--'King' David, as you are sometimes called--one of the richest men in the world!"
Helmsley smiled, but with a suspicion of sadness.
"Neither kings nor rich men hold special grants of happiness," he answered, quietly: "Your own experience of humanity must have taught you that. Personally speaking, I have never been happy since my boyhood. This surprises you? I daresay it does. But, my dear Vesey, old friend as you are, it sometimes happens that our closest intimates know us least! And even the famous firm of Vesey and Symonds, or Symonds and Vesey,--for your partner is one with you and you are one with your partner,--may, in spite of all their legal wisdom, fail to pierce the thick disguises worn by the souls of their clients. The Man in the Iron Mask is a familiar figure in the office of his confidential solicitor. I repeat, I have never been happy since my boyhood----"
"Your happiness then was a mere matter of youth and animal spirits," interposed Vesey.
"I thought you would say that!"--and again a faint smile illumined Helmsley's features. "It is just what every one would say. Yet the young are often much more miserable than the old; and while I grant that youth may have had something to do with my past joy in life, it was not all. No, it certainly was not all. It was simply that I had then what I have never had since."
He broke off abruptly. Then stepping back to his chair he resumed his former reclining position, leaning his head against the cushions and fixing his eyes on the solitary bright star that shone above the mist and the trembling trees.
"May I talk out to you?" he inquired suddenly, with a touch of whimsicality. "Or are you resolved to preach copybook moralities at me, such as 'Be good and you will be happy?'"
Vesey, more ceremoniously known as Sir Francis Vesey, one of the most renowned of London's great leading solicitors, looked at him and laughed.
"Talk out, my dear fellow, by all means!" he replied. "Especially if it will do you any good. But don't ask me to sympathise very deeply with the imaginary sorrows of so enormously wealthy a man as you are!"
"I don't expect any sympathy," said Helmsley. "Sympathy is the one thing I have never sought, because I know it is not to be obtained, even from one's nearest and dearest. Sympathy! Why, no man in the world ever really gets it, even from his wife. And no man possessing a spark of manliness ever wants it, except--sometimes----"
He hesitated, looking steadily at the star above him,--then went on.
"Except sometimes,--when the power of resistance is weakened--when the consciousness is strongly borne in upon us of the unanswerable wisdom of Solomon, who wrote--'I hated all my labour which I had taken under the sun, because I should leave it to the man that should be after me. And who knows whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?'"
Sir Francis Vesey, dimly regretting the half-smoked cigar he had thrown away in a moment of impatience, took out a fresh one from his pocket-case and lit it.
"Solomon has expressed every disagreeable situation in life with remarkable accuracy," he murmured placidly, as he began to puff rings of pale smoke into the surrounding yellow haze, "but he was a bit of a misanthrope."
"When I was a boy," pursued Helmsley, not heeding his legal friend's comment, "I was happy chiefly because I believed. I never doubted any stated truth that seemed beautiful enough to be true. I had perfect confidence in the goodness of God and the ultimate happiness designed by Him for every living creature. Away out in Virginia where I was born, before the Southern States were subjected to Yankeedom, it was a glorious thing merely to be alive. The clear, pure air, fresh with the strong odour of pine and cedar,--the big plantations of cotton and corn,--the colours of the autumn woods when the maple trees turned scarlet, and the tall sumachs blazed like great fires on the sides of the mountains,--the exhilarating climate--the sweetness of the south-west wind,--all these influences of nature appealed to my soul and kindled a strange restlessness in it which has never been appeased. Never!--though I have lived my life almost to its end, and have done all those things which most men do who seek to get the utmost satisfaction they can out of existence. But I am not satisfied; I have never been satisfied."
"And you never will be," declared Sir Francis firmly. "There are some people to whom Heaven itself would prove disappointing."
"Well, if Heaven is the kind of place depicted by the clergy, the poorest beggar might resent its offered attractions," said Helmsley, with a slight, contemptuous shrug of his shoulders. "After a life of continuous pain and struggle, the pleasures of singing for ever and ever to one's own harp accompaniment are scarcely sufficient compensation."
Vesey laughed cheerfully.
"It's all symbolical," he murmured, puffing away at his cigar, "and really very well meant! Positively now, the clergy are capital fellows! They do their best,--they keep it up. Give them credit for that at least, Helmsley,--they do keep it up!"
Helmsley was silent for a minute or two.
"We are rather wandering from the point," he said at last. "What I know of the clergy generally has not taught me to rely upon them for any advice in a difficulty, or any help out of trouble. Once--in a moment of weakness and irresolution--I asked a celebrated preacher what suggestion he could make to a rich man, who, having no heirs, sought a means of disposing of his wealth to the best advantage for others after his death. His reply----"
"Was the usual thing, of course," interposed Sir Francis blandly. "He said, 'Let the rich man leave it all to me, and God will bless him abundantly!'"
"Well, yes, it came to that,"--and Helmsley gave a short impatient sigh. "He evidently guessed that the rich man implied was myself, for ever since I asked him the question, he has kept me regularly supplied with books and pamphlets relating to his Church and various missions. I daresay he's a very good fellow. But I've no fancy to assist him. He works on sectarian lines, and I am of no sect. Though I confess I should like to believe in God--- if I could."
Sir Francis, fanning a tiny wreath of cigar smoke away with one hand, looked at him curiously, but offered no remark.
"You said I might talk out to you," continued Helmsley--"and it is perhaps necessary that I should do so, since you have lately so persistently urged upon me the importance of making my will. You are perfectly right, of course, and I alone am to blame for the apparently stupid hesitation I show in following your advice. But, as I have already told you, I have no one in the world who has the least claim upon me,--no one to whom I can bequeath, to my own satisfaction, the wealth I have earned. I married,--as you know,--and my marriage was unhappy. It ended,--and you are aware of all the facts--in the proved infidelity of my wife, followed by our separation (effected quietly, thanks to you, without the vulgar publicity of the divorce court), and then--in her premature death. Notwithstanding all this, I did my best for my two sons,--you are a witness to this truth,--and you remember that during their lifetime I did make my will,--in their favour. They turned out badly; each one ran his own career of folly, vice, and riotous dissipation, and both are dead. Thus it happens that here I am,--alone at the age of seventy, without any soul to care for me, or any creature to whom I can trust my business, or leave my fortune. It is not my fault that it is so; it is sheer destiny. How, I ask you, can I make any 'Last Will and Testament' under such conditions?"
"If you make no will at all, your property goes to the Crown," said Vesey bluntly.
"Naturally. I know that. But one might have a worse heir than the Crown! The Crown may be trusted to take proper care of money, and this is more than can often be said of one's sons and daughters. I tell you it is all as Solomon said--'vanity and vexation of spirit.' The amassing of great wealth is not worth the time and trouble involved in the task. One could do so much better----"
Here he paused.
"How?" asked Vesey, with a half-smile. "What else is there to be done in this world except to get rich in order to live comfortably?"
"I know people who are not rich at all, and who never will be rich, yet who live more comfortably than I have ever done," replied Helmsley--"that is, if to 'live comfortably' implies to live peacefully, happily, and contentedly, taking each day as it comes with gladness as a real 'living' time. And by this, I mean 'living,' not with the rush and scramble, fret and jar inseparable from money-making, but living just for the joy of life. Especially when it is possible to believe that a God exists, who designed life, and even death, for the ultimate good of every creature. This is what I believed--once--'out in ole Virginny, a long time ago!'"
He hummed the last words softly under his breath,--then swept one hand across his eyes with a movement of impatience.
"Old men's brains grow addled," he continued. "They become clouded with a fog through which only the memories of the past and the days of their youth shine clear. Sometimes I talk of Virginia as if I were home-sick and wanted to go back to it,--yet I never do. I wouldn't go back to it for the world,--not now. I'm not an American, so I can say, without any loss of the patriotic sense, that I loathe America. It is a country to be used for the making of wealth, but it is not a country to be loved. It might have been the most lovable Father-and-Mother-Land on the globe if nobler men had lived long enough in it to rescue its people from the degrading Dollar-craze. But now, well!--those who make fortunes there leave it as soon as they can, shaking its dust off their feet and striving to forget that they ever experienced its incalculable greed, vice, cunning, and general rascality. There are plenty of decent folk in America, of course, just as there are decent folk everywhere, but they are in the minority. Even in the Southern States the 'old stock' of men is decaying and dying-out, and the taint of commercial vulgarity is creeping over the former simplicity of the Virginian homestead. No,--I would not go back to the scene of my boyhood, for though I had something there once which I have since lost, I am not such a fool as to think I should ever find it again."
Here he looked round at his listener with a smile so sudden and sweet as to render his sunken features almost youthful.
"I believe I am boring you, Vesey!" he said.
"Not the least in the world,--you never bore me," replied Sir Francis, with alacrity. "You are always interesting, even in your most illogical humour."
"You consider me illogical?"
"In a way, yes. For instance, you abuse America. Why? Your misguided wife was American, certainly, but setting that unfortunate fact aside, you made your money in the States. Commercial vulgarity helped you along. Therefore be just to commercial vulgarity."
"I hope I am just to it,--I think I am," answered Helmsley slowly; "but I never was one with it. I never expected to wring a dollar out of ten cents, and never tried. I can at least say that I have made my money honestly, and have trampled no man down on the road to fortune. But then--I am not a citizen of the 'Great Republic.'"
"You were born in America," said Vesey.
"By accident," replied Helmsley, with a laugh, "and kindly fate favoured me by allowing me to see my first daylight in the South rather than in the North. But I was never naturalised as an American. My father and mother were both English,--they both came from the same little sea-coast village in Cornwall. They married very young,--theirs was a romantic love-match, and they left England in the hope of bettering their fortunes. They settled in Virginia and grew to love it. My father became accountant to a large business firm out there, and did fairly well, though he never was a rich man in the present-day meaning of the term. He had only two children,--myself and my sister, who died at sixteen. I was barely twenty when I lost both father and mother and started alone to face the world."
"You have faced it very successfully," said Vesey; "and if you would only look at things in the right and reasonable way, you have really very little to complain of. Your marriage was certainly an unlucky one----"
"Do not speak of it!" interrupted Helmsley, hastily. "It is past and done with. Wife and children are swept out of my life as though they had never been! It is a curious thing, perhaps, but with me a betrayed affection does not remain in my memory as affection at all, but only as a spurious image of the real virtue, not worth considering or regretting. Standing as I do now, on the threshold of the grave, I look back,--and in looking back I see none of those who wronged and deceived me,--they have disappeared altogether, and their very faces and forms are blotted out of my remembrance. So much so, indeed, that I could, if I had the chance, begin a new life again and never give a thought to the old!"
His eyes flashed a sudden fire under their shelving brows, and his right hand clenched itself involuntarily.
"I suppose," he continued, "that a kind of harking back to the memories of one's youth is common to all aged persons. With me it has become almost morbid, for daily and hourly I see myself as a boy, dreaming away the time in the wild garden of our home in Virginia,--watching the fireflies light up the darkness of the summer evenings, and listening to my sister singing in her soft little voice her favourite melody--'Angels ever bright and fair.' As I said to you when we began this talk, I had something then which I have never had since. Do you know what it was?"
Sir Francis, here finishing his cigar, threw away its glowing end, and shook his head in the negative.
"You will think me as sentimental as I am garrulous," went on Helmsley, "when I tell you that it was merely--love!"
Vesey raised himself in his chair and sat upright, opening his eyes in astonishment.
"Love!" he echoed. "God bless my soul! I should have thought that you, of all men in the world, could have won that easily!"
Helmsley turned towards him with a questioning look.
"Why should I 'of all men in the world' have won it?" he asked. "Because I am rich? Rich men are seldom, if ever, loved for themselves--only for what they can give to their professing lovers."
His ordinarily soft tone had an accent of bitterness in it, and Sir Francis Vesey was silent.
"Had I remained poor,--poor as I was when I first started to make my fortune," he went on, "I might possibly have been loved by some woman, or some friend, for myself alone. For as a young fellow I was not bad-looking, nor had I, so I flatter myself, an unlikable disposition. But luck always turned the wheel in my favour, and at thirty-five I was a millionaire. Then I 'fell' in love,--and married on the faith of that emotion, which is always a mistake. 'Falling in love' is not loving. I was in the full flush of my strength and manhood, and was sufficiently proud of myself to believe that my wife really cared for me. There I was deceived. She cared for my millions. So it chances that the only real love I have ever known was the unselfish 'home' affection,--the love of my mother and father and sister 'out in ole Virginny,' 'a love so sweet it could not last,' as Shelley sings. Though I believe it can and does last,--for my soul (or whatever that strange part of me may be which thinks beyond the body) is always running back to that love with a full sense of certainty that it is still existent."
His voice sank and seemed to fail him for a moment. He looked up at the large, bright star shining steadily above him.
"You are silent, Vesey," he said, after a pause, speaking with an effort at lightness; "and wisely too, for I know you have nothing to say--that is, nothing that could affect the position. And you may well ask, if you choose, to what does all this reminiscent old man's prattle tend? Simply to this--that you have been urging me for the last six months to make my will in order to replace the one which was previously made in favour of my sons, and which is now destroyed, owing to their deaths before my own,--and I tell you plainly and frankly that I don't know how to make it, as there is no one in the world whom I care to name as my heir."
Sir Francis sat gravely ruminating for a moment;--then he said:--
"Why not do as I suggested to you once before--adopt a child? Find some promising boy, born of decent, healthy, self-respecting parents,--educate him according to your own ideas, and bring him up to understand his future responsibilities. How would that suit you?"
"Not at all," replied Helmsley drily. "I _have_ heard of parents willing to sell their children, but I should scarcely call them decent or self-respecting. I know of one case where a couple of peasants sold their son for five pounds in order to get rid of the trouble of rearing him. He turned out a famous man,--but though he was, in due course, told his history, he never acknowledged the unnatural vendors of his flesh and blood as his parents, and quite right too. No,--I have had too much experience of life to try such a doubtful business as that of adopting a child. The very fact of adoption by so miserably rich a man as myself would buy a child's duty and obedience rather than win it. I will have no heir at all, unless I can discover one whose love for me is sincerely unselfish and far above all considerations of wealth or worldly advantage."
"It is rather late in the day, perhaps," said Vesey after a pause, speaking hesitatingly, "but--but--you might marry?"
Helmsley laughed loudly and harshly.
"Marry! I! At seventy! My dear Vesey, you are a very old friend, and privileged to say what others dare not, or you would offend me. If I had ever thought of marrying again I should have done so two or three years after my wife's death, when I was in the fifties, and not waited till now, when my end, if not actually near, is certainly well in sight. Though I daresay there are plenty of women who would marry me--even me--at my age,--knowing the extent of my income. But do you think I would take one of them, knowing in my heart that it would be a mere question of sale and barter? Not I!--I could never consent to sink so low in my own estimation of myself. I can honestly say I have never wronged any woman. I shall not begin now."
"I don't see why you should take that view of it," murmured Sir Francis placidly. "Life is not lived nowadays as it was when you first entered upon your career. For one thing, men last longer and don't give up so soon. Few consider themselves old at seventy. Why should they? There's a learned professor at the Pasteur Institute who declares we ought all to live to a hundred and forty. If he's right, you are still quite a young man."
Helmsley rose from his chair with a slightly impatient gesture.
"We won't discuss any so-called 'new theories,'" he said. "They are only echoes of old fallacies. The professor's statement is merely a modern repetition of the ancient belief in the elixir of life. Shall we go in?"
Vesey got up from his lounging position more slowly and stiffly than Helmsley had done. Some ten years younger as he was, he was evidently less active.
"Well," he said, as he squared his shoulders and drew himself erect, "we are no nearer a settlement of what I consider a most urgent and important affair than when we began our conversation."
Helmsley shrugged his shoulders.
"When I come back to town, we will go into the question again," he said.
"You are off at the end of the week?"
"Yes."
"Going abroad?"
"I--I think so."
The answer was given with a slight touch of hesitation.
"Your last 'function' of the season is the dance you are giving to-morrow night, I suppose," continued Sir Francis, studying with a vague curiosity the spare, slight figure of his companion, who had turned from him and, with one foot on the sill of the open French window, was just about to enter the room beyond.
"Yes. It is Lucy's birthday."
"Ah! Miss Lucy Sorrel! How old is she?"
"Just twenty-one."
And, as he spoke, Helmsley stepped into the apartment from which the window opened out upon the balcony, and waited a moment for Vesey to follow.
"She has always been a great favourite of yours," said Vesey, as he entered. "Now, why----"
"Why don't I leave her my fortune, you would ask?" interrupted Helmsley, with a touch of sarcasm. "Well, first, because she is a woman, and she might possibly marry a fool or a wastrel. Secondly, because though I have known her ever since she was a child of ten, I have no liking for her parents or for any of her family connections. When I first took a fancy to her she was playing about on the shore at a little seaside place on the Sussex coast,--I thought her a pretty little creature, and have made rather a pet of her ever since. But beyond giving her trinkets and bon-bons, and offering her such gaieties and amusements as are suitable to her age and sex, I have no other intentions concerning her."
Sir Francis took a comprehensive glance round the magnificent drawing-room in which he now stood,--a drawing-room more like a royal reception-room of the First Empire than a modern apartment in the modern house of a merely modern millionaire. Then he chuckled softly to himself, and a broad smile spread itself among the furrows of his somewhat severely featured countenance.
"Mrs. Sorrel would be sorry if she knew that," he said. "I think--I really think, Helmsley, that Mrs. Sorrel believes you are still in the matrimonial market!"
Helmsley's deeply sunken eyes flashed out a sudden searchlight of keen and quick inquiry, then his brows grew dark with a shadow of scorn.
"Poor Lucy!" he murmured. "She is very unfortunate in her mother, and equally so in her father. Matt Sorrel never did anything in his life but bet on the Turf and gamble at Monte Carlo, and it's too late for him to try his hand at any other sort of business. His daughter is a nice girl and a pretty one,--but now that she has grown from a child into a woman I shall not be able to do much more for her. She will have to do something for herself in finding a good husband."
Sir Francis listened with his head very much on one side. An owl-like inscrutability of legal wisdom seemed to have suddenly enveloped him in a cloud. Pulling himself out of this misty reverie he said abruptly:--
"Well--good-night! or rather good-morning! It's past one o'clock. Shall I see you again before you leave town?"
"Probably. If not, you will hear from me."
"You won't reconsider the advisability of----"
"No, I won't!" And Helmsley smiled. "I'm quite obstinate on that point. If I die suddenly, my property goes to the Crown,--if not, why then you will in due course receive your instructions."
Vesey studied him with thoughtful attention.
"You're a queer fellow, David!" he said, at last. "But I can't help liking you. I only wish you were not quite so--so romantic!"
"Romantic!" Helmsley looked amused. "Romance and I said good-bye to each other years ago. I admit that I used to be romantic--but I'm not now."
"You are!" And Sir Francis frowned a legal frown which soon brightened into a smile. "A man of your age doesn't want to be loved for himself alone unless he's very romantic indeed! And that's what you do want!--and that's what I'm afraid you won't get, in your position--not as this world goes! Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
They walked out of the drawing-room to the head of the grand staircase, and there shook hands and parted, a manservant being in waiting to show Sir Francis to the door. But late as the hour was, Helmsley did not immediately retire to rest. Long after all his household were in bed and sleeping, he sat in the hushed solitude of his library, writing many letters. The library was on a line with the drawing-room, and its one window, facing the Mall, was thrown open to admit such air as could ooze through the stifling heat of the sultry night. Pausing once in the busy work of his hand and pen, Helmsley looked up and saw the bright star he had watched from the upper balcony, peering in upon him steadily like an eye. A weary smile, sadder than scorn, wavered across his features.
"That's Venus," he murmured half aloud. "The Eden star of all very young people,--the star of Love!"
CHAPTER II
On the following evening the cold and frowning aspect of the mansion in Carlton House Terrace underwent a sudden transformation. Lights gleamed from every window; the strip of garden which extended from the rear of the building to the Mall, was covered in by red and white awning, and the balcony where the millionaire master of the dwelling had, some few hours previously, sat talking with his distinguished legal friend, Sir Francis Vesey, was turned into a kind of lady's bower, softly carpeted, adorned with palms and hothouse roses, and supplied with cushioned chairs for the voluptuous ease of such persons of opposite sexes as might find their way to this suggestive "flirtation" corner. The music of a renowned orchestra of Hungarian performers flowed out of the open doors of the sumptuous ballroom which was one of the many attractions of the house, and ran in rhythmic vibrations up the stairs, echoing through all the corridors like the sweet calling voices of fabled nymphs and sirens, till, floating still higher, it breathed itself out to the night,--a night curiously heavy and sombre, with a blackness of sky too dense for any glimmer of stars to shine through. The hum of talk, the constant ripple of laughter, the rustle of women's silken garments, the clatter of plates and glasses in the dining-room, where a costly ball-supper awaited its devouring destiny,--the silvery tripping and slipping of light dancing feet on a polished floor--all these sounds, intermingling with the gliding seductive measure of the various waltzes played in quick succession by the band, created a vague impression of confusion and restlessness in the brain, and David Helmsley himself, the host and entertainer of the assembled guests, watched the brilliant scene from the ballroom door with a weary sense of melancholy which he knew was unfounded and absurd, yet which he could not resist,--a touch of intense and utter loneliness, as though he were a stranger in his own home.
"I feel," he mused, "like some very poor old fellow asked in by chance for a few minutes, just to see the fun!"
He smiled,--yet was unable to banish his depression. The bare fact of the worthlessness of wealth was all at once borne in upon him with overpowering weight. This magnificent house which his hard earnings had purchased,--this ballroom with its painted panels and sculptured friezes, crowded just now with kaleidoscope pictures of men and women whirling round and round in a maze of music and movement,--the thousand precious and costly things he had gathered about him in his journey through life,--must all pass out of his possession in a few brief years, and there was not a soul who loved him or whom he loved, to inherit them or value them for his sake. A few brief years! And then--darkness. The lights gone out,--the music silenced--the dancing done! And the love that he had dreamed of when he was a boy--love, strong and great and divine enough to outlive death--where was it? A sudden sigh escaped him----
"_Dear_ Mr. Helmsley, you look so _very_ tired!" said a woman's purring voice at his ear. "_Do_ go and rest in your own room for a few minutes before supper! You have been so kind!--Lucy is quite touched and overwhelmed by _all_ your goodness to her,--no _lover_ could do more for a girl, I'm _sure_! But really you _must_ spare yourself! What _should_ we do without you!"
"What indeed!" he replied, somewhat drily, as he looked down at the speaker, a cumbrous matron attired in an over-frilled and over-flounced costume of pale grey, which delicate Quakerish colour rather painfully intensified the mottled purplish-red of her face. "But I am not at all tired, Mrs. Sorrel, I assure you! Don't trouble yourself about me--I'm very well."
"_Are_ you?" And Mrs. Sorrel looked volumes of tenderest insincerity. "Ah! But you know we _old_ people _must_ be careful! Young folks can do anything and everything--but _we_, at _our_ age, need to be _over_-particular!"
"_You_ shouldn't call yourself old, Mrs. Sorrel," said Helmsley, seeing that she expected this from him, "you're quite a young woman."
Mrs. Sorrel gave a little deprecatory laugh.
"Oh dear no!" she said, in a tone which meant "Oh dear yes!" "I wasn't married at sixteen, you know!"
"No? You surprise me!"
Mrs. Sorrel peered at him from under her fat eyelids with a slightly dubious air. She was never quite sure in her own mind as to the way in which "old Gold-Dust," as she privately called him, regarded her. An aged man, burdened with an excess of wealth, was privileged to have what are called "humours," and certainly he sometimes had them. It was necessary--or so Mrs. Sorrel thought--to deal with him delicately and cautiously--neither with too much levity, nor with an overweighted seriousness. One's plan of conduct with a multi-millionaire required to be thought out with sedulous care, and entered upon with circumspection. And Mrs Sorrel did not attempt even as much as a youthful giggle at Helmsley's half-sarcastically implied compliment with its sarcastic implication as to the ease with which she supported her years and superabundance of flesh tissue. She merely heaved a short sigh.
"I was just one year younger than Lucy is to-day," she said, "and I really thought myself quite an _old_ bride! I was a mother at twenty-one."
Helmsley found nothing to say in response to this interesting statement, particularly as he had often heard it before.
"Who is Lucy dancing with?" he asked irrelevantly, by way of diversion.
"Oh, my _dear_ Mr. Helmsley, who is she _not_ dancing with!" and Mrs. Sorrel visibly swelled with maternal pride. "Every young man in the room has rushed at her--positively rushed!--and her programme was full five minutes after she arrived! Isn't she looking lovely to-night?--a perfect sylph! _Do_ tell me you think she is a sylph!"
David's old eyes twinkled.
"I have never seen a sylph, Mrs. Sorrel, so I cannot make the comparison," he said; "but Lucy is a very beautiful girl, and I think she is looking her best this evening. Her dress becomes her. She ought to find a good husband easily."
"She ought,--indeed she ought! But it is very difficult--very, very difficult! All the men marry for money nowadays, not for love--ah!--how different it was when you and I were young, Mr. Helmsley! Love was everything then,--and there was so much romance and poetical sentiment!"
"Romance is a snare, and poetical sentiment a delusion," said Helmsley, with sudden harshness. "I proved that in my marriage. I should think you had equally proved it in yours!"
Mrs. Sorrel recoiled a little timorously. "Old Gold-Dust" often said unpleasant things--truthful, but eminently tactless,--and she felt that he was likely to say some of those unpleasant things now. Therefore she gave a fluttering gesture of relief and satisfaction as the waltz-music just then ceased, and her daughter's figure, tall, slight, and marvellously graceful, detached itself from the swaying crowd in the ballroom and came towards her.
"Dearest child!" she exclaimed effusively, "are you not _quite_ tired out?"
The "dearest child" shrugged her white shoulders and laughed.
"Nothing tires me, mother--you know that!" she answered--then with a sudden change from her air of careless indifference to one of coaxing softness, she turned to Helmsley.
"_You_ must be tired!" she said. "Why have you been standing so long at the ballroom door?"
"I have been watching you, Lucy," he replied gently. "It has been a pleasure for me to see you dance. I am too old to dance with you myself, otherwise I should grudge all the young men the privilege."
"I will dance with you, if you like," she said, smiling. "There is one more set of Lancers before supper. Will you be my partner?"
He shook his head.
"Not even to please you, my child!" and taking her hand he patted it kindly. "There is no fool like an old, fool, I know, but I am not quite so foolish as that."
"I see nothing at all foolish in it," pouted Lucy. "You are my host, and it's my coming-of-age party."
Helmsley laughed.
"So it is! And the festival must not be spoilt by any incongruities. It will be quite sufficient honour for me to take you in to supper."
She looked down at the flowers she wore in her bodice, and played with their perfumed petals.
"I like you better than any man here," she said suddenly.
A swift shadow crossed his face. Glancing over his shoulder he saw that Mrs. Sorrel had moved away. Then the cloud passed from his brow, and the thought that for a moment had darkened his mind, yielded to a kinder impulse.
"You flatter me, my dear," he said quietly. "But I am such an old friend of yours that I can take your compliment in the right spirit without having my head turned by it. Indeed, I can hardly believe that it is eleven years ago since I saw you playing about on the seashore as a child. You seem to have grown up like a magic rose, all at once from a tiny bud into a full blossom. Do you remember how I first made your acquaintance?"
"As if I should ever forget!" and she raised her lovely, large dark eyes to his. "I had been paddling about in the sea, and I had lost my shoes and stockings. You found them for me, and you put them on!"
"True!" and he smiled. "You had very wet little feet, all rosy with the salt of the sea--and your long hair was blown about in thick curls round the brightest, sweetest little face in the world. I thought you were the prettiest little girl I had ever seen in my life, and I think just the same of you now."
A pale blush flitted over her cheeks, and she dropped him a demure curtsy.
"Thank you!" she said. "And if you won't dance the Lancers, which are just beginning, will you sit them out with me?"
"Gladly!" and he offered her his arm. "Shall we go up to the drawing-room? It is cooler there than here."
She assented, and they slowly mounted the staircase together. Some of the evening's guests lounging about in the hall and loitering near the ballroom door, watched them go, and exchanged significant glances. One tall woman with black eyes and a viperish mouth, who commanded a certain exclusive "set" by virtue of being the wife of a dissolute Earl whose house was used as a common gambling resort, found out Mrs. Sorrel sitting among a group of female gossips in a corner, and laid a patronising hand upon her shoulder.
"_Do_ tell me!" she softly breathed. "_Is_ it a case?"
Mrs. Sorrel began to flutter immediately.
"_Dearest_ Lady Larford! What _do_ you mean!"
"Surely you know!" And the wide mouth of her ladyship grew still wider, and the black eyes more steely. "Will Lucy get him, do you think?"
Mrs. Sorrel fidgeted uneasily in her chair. Other people were listening.
"Really," she mumbled nervously--"really, _dear_ Lady Larford!--you put things so _very_ plainly!--I--I cannot say!--you see--he is more like her father----"
Lady Larford showed all her white teeth in an expansive grin.
"Oh, that's very safe!" she said. "The 'father' business works very well when sufficient cash is put in with it. I know several examples of perfect matrimonial bliss between old men and young girls--absolutely _perfect_! One is bound to be happy with heaps of money!"
And keeping her teeth still well exposed, Lady Larford glided away, her skirts exhaling an odour of civet-cat as she moved. Mrs. Sorrel gazed after her helplessly, in a state of worry and confusion, for she instinctively felt that her ladyship's pleasure would now be to tell everybody whom she knew, that Lucy Sorrel, "the new girl who was presented at Court last night," was having a "try" for the Helmsley millions; and that if the "try" was not successful, no one living would launch more merciless and bitter jests at the failure and defeat of the Sorrels than this same titled "leader" of a section of the aristocratic gambling set. For there has never been anything born under the sun crueller than a twentieth-century woman of fashion to her own sex--except perhaps a starving hyæna tearing asunder its living prey.
Meanwhile, David Helmsley and his young companion had reached the drawing-room, which they found quite unoccupied. The window-balcony, festooned with rose-silk draperies and flowers, and sparkling with tiny electric lamps, offered itself as an inviting retreat for a quiet chat, and within it they seated themselves, Helmsley rather wearily, and Lucy Sorrel with the queenly air and dainty rustle of soft garments habitual to the movements of a well-dressed woman.
"I have not thanked you half enough," she began, "for all the delightful things you have done for my birthday----"
"Pray spare me!" he interrupted, with a deprecatory gesture--"I would rather you said nothing."
"Oh, but I must say something!" she went on. "You are so generous and good in yourself that of course you cannot bear to be thanked--I know that--but if you will persist in giving so much pleasure to a girl who, but for you, would have no pleasure at all in her life, you must expect that girl to express her feelings somehow. Now, mustn't you?"
She leaned forward, smiling at him with an arch expression of sweetness and confidence. He looked at her attentively, but said nothing.
"When I got your lovely present the first thing this morning," she continued, "I could hardly believe my eyes. Such an exquisite necklace!--such perfect pearls! Dear Mr. Helmsley, you quite spoil me! I'm not worth all the kind thought and trouble you take on my behalf."
Tears started to her eyes, and her lips quivered. Helmsley saw her emotion with only a very slight touch of concern. Her tears were merely sensitive, he thought, welling up from a young and grateful heart, and as the prime cause of that young heart's gratitude he delicately forbore to notice them. This chivalrous consideration on his part caused some little disappointment to the shedder of the tears, but he could not be expected to know that.
"I'm glad you are pleased with my little gift," he said simply, "though I'm afraid it is quite a conventional and ordinary one. Pearls and girls always go together, in fact as in rhyme. After all, they are the most suitable jewels for the young--for they are emblems of everything that youth should be--white and pure and innocent."
Her breath came and went quickly.
"Do you think youth is always like that?" she asked.
"Not always,--but surely most often," he answered. "At any rate, I wish to believe in the simplicity and goodness of all young things."
She was silent. Helmsley studied her thoughtfully,--even critically. And presently he came to the conclusion that as a child she had been much prettier than she now was as a woman. Yet her present phase of loveliness was of the loveliest type. No fault could be found with the perfect oval of her face, her delicate white-rose skin, her small seductive mouth, curved in the approved line of the "Cupid's bow," her deep, soft, bright eyes, fringed with long-lashes a shade darker than the curling waves of her abundant brown hair. But her features in childhood had expressed something more than the beauty which had developed with the passing of years. A sweet affection, a tender earnestness, and an almost heavenly candour had made the attractiveness of her earlier age quite irresistible, but now--or so Helmsley fancied--that fine and subtle charm had gone. He was half ashamed of himself for allowing this thought to enter his mind, and quickly dismissing it, he said--
"How did your presentation go off last night? Was it a full Court?"
"I believe so," she replied listlessly, unfurling a painted fan and waving it idly to and fro--"I cannot say that I found it very interesting. The whole thing bored me dreadfully."
He smiled.
"Bored you! Is it possible to be bored at twenty-one?"
"I think every one, young or old, is bored more or less nowadays," she said. "Boredom is a kind of microbe in the air. Most society functions are deadly dull. And where's the fun of being presented at Court? If a woman wears a pretty gown, all the other women try to tread on it and tear it off her back if they can. And the Royal people only speak to their own special 'set,' and not always the best-looking or best-mannered set either."
Helmsley looked amused.
"Well, it's what is called an _entrée_ into the world,"--he replied. "For my own part, I have never been 'presented,' and never intend to be. I see too much of Royalty privately, in the dens of finance."
"Yes--all the kings and princes wanting to borrow money," she said quickly and flippantly. "And you must despise the lot. _You_ are a real 'King,' bigger than any crowned head, because you can do just as you like, and you are not the servant of Governments or peoples. I am sure you must be the happiest man in the world!"
She plucked off a rose from a flowering rose-tree near her, and began to wrench out its petals with a quick, nervous movement. Helmsley watched her with a vague sense of annoyance.
"I am no more happy," he said suddenly, "than that rose you are picking to pieces, though it has never done you any harm."
She started, and flushed,--then laughed.
"Oh, the poor little rose!" she exclaimed--"I'm sorry! I've had so many roses to-day, that I don't think about them. I suppose it's wrong."
"It's not wrong," he answered quietly; "it's merely the fault of those who give you more roses than you know how to appreciate."
She looked at him inquiringly, but could not fathom his expression.
"Still," he went on, "I would not have your life deprived of so much as one rose. And there is a very special rose that does not grow in earthly gardens, which I should like you to find and wear on your heart, Lucy,--I hope I shall see you in the happy possession of it before I die,--I mean the rose of love."
She lifted her head, and her eyes shone coldly.
"Dear Mr. Helmsley," she said, "I don't believe in love!"
A flash of amazement, almost of anger, illumined his worn features.
"You don't believe in love!" he echoed. "O child, what _do_ you believe in, then?"
The passion of his tone moved her to a surprised smile.
"Well, I believe in being happy while you can," she replied tranquilly. "And love isn't happiness. All my girl and men friends who are what they call 'in love' seem to be thoroughly miserable. Many of them get perfectly ill with jealousy, and they never seem to know whether what they call their 'love' will last from one day to another. I shouldn't care to live at such a high tension of nerves. My own mother and father married 'for love,' so I am always told,--and I'm sure a more quarrelsome couple never existed. I believe in friendship more than love."
As she spoke, Helmsley looked at her steadily, his face darkening with a shadow of weary scorn.
"I see!" he murmured coldly. "You do not care to over-fatigue the heart's action by unnecessary emotion. Quite right! If we were all as wise as you are at your age, we might live much longer than we do. You are very sensible, Lucy!--more sensible than I should have thought possible for so young a woman."
She gave him a swift, uneasy glance. She was not quite sure of his mood.
"Friendship," he continued, speaking in a slow, meditative tone, "is a good thing,--it may be, as you suggest, safer and sweeter than love. But even friendship, to be worthy of its name, must be quite unselfish,--and unselfishness, in both love and friendship, is rare."
"Very, very rare!" she sighed.
"You will be thinking of marriage _some_ day, if you are not thinking of it now," he went on. "Would a husband's friendship--friendship and no more--satisfy you?"
She gazed at him candidly.
"I am sure it would!" she said; "I'm not the least bit sentimental."
He regarded her with a grave and musing steadfastness. A very close observer might have seen a line of grim satire near the corners of his mouth, and a gleam of irritable impatience in his sunken eyes; but these signs of inward feeling were not apparent to the girl, who, more than usually satisfied with herself and over-conscious of her own beauty, considered that she was saying just the very thing that he would expect and like her to say.
"You do not crave for love, then?" he queried. "You do not wish to know anything of the 'divine rapture falling out of heaven,'--the rapture that has inspired all the artists and poets in the world, and that has probably had the largest share in making the world's history?"
She gave a little shrug of amused disdain.
"Raptures never last!" and she laughed. "And artists and poets are dreadful people! I've seen a few of them, and don't want to see them any more. They are always very untidy, and they have the most absurd ideas of their own abilities. You can't have them in society, you know!--you simply can't! If I had a house of my own I would never have a poet inside it."
The grim lines round Helmsley's mouth hardened, and made him look almost cruelly saturnine. Yet he murmured under his breath:--
"'All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame; Are but the ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame!'"
"What's that?" she asked quickly.
"Poetry!" he answered, "by a man named Coleridge. He is dead now. He used to take opium, and he did not understand business matters. He was never rich in anything but thoughts."
She smiled brilliantly.
"How silly!" she said.
"Yes, he was very silly," agreed Helmsley, watching her narrowly from under his half-closed eyelids. "But most thinkers are silly, even when they don't take opium. They believe in Love."
She coloured. She caught the sarcastic inflection in his tone. But she was silent.
"Most men who have lived and worked and suffered," he went on, "come to know before they die that without a great and true love in their lives, their work is wasted, and their sufferings are in vain. But there are exceptions, of course. Some get on very well without love at all, and perhaps these are the most fortunate."
"I am sure they are!" she said decisively.
He picked up two or three of the rose-petals her restless fingers had scattered, and laying them in his palm looked at the curved, pink, shell-like shapes abstractedly.
"Well, they are saved a good deal of trouble," he answered quietly. "They spare themselves many a healing heart-ache and many purifying tears. But when they grow old, and when they find that, after all, the happiest folks in the world are still those who love, or who have loved and have been loved, even though the loved ones are perhaps no longer here, they may--I do not say they will--possibly regret that they never experienced that marvellous sense of absorption into another's life of which Mrs. Browning writes in her letters to her husband. Do you know what she says?"
"I'm afraid I don't!" and she smothered a slight yawn as she spoke. He fixed his eyes intently upon her.
"She tells her lover her feeling in these words: '_There is nothing in you that does not draw all out of me._' That is the true emotion of love,--the one soul must draw all out of the other, and the best of all in each."
"But the Brownings were a very funny couple," and the fair Lucy arched her graceful throat and settled more becomingly in its place a straying curl of her glossy brown hair. "I know an old gentleman who used to see them together when they lived in Florence, and _he_ says they were so queer-looking that people used to laugh at them. It's all very well to love and to be in love, but if you look odd and people laugh at you, what's the good of it?"
Helmsley rose from his seat abruptly.
"True!" he exclaimed. "You're right, Lucy! Little girl, you're quite right! What's the good of it! Upon my word, you're a most practical woman!--you'll make a capital wife for a business man!" Then as the gay music of the band below-stairs suddenly ceased, to give place to the noise of chattering voices and murmurs of laughter, he glanced at his watch.
"Supper-time!" he said. "Let me take you down. And after supper, will you give me ten minutes' chat with you alone in the library!"
She looked up eagerly, with a flush of pink in her cheeks.
"Of course I will! With pleasure!"
"Thank you!" And he drew her white-gloved hand through his arm. "I am leaving town next week, and I have something important to say to you before I go. You will allow me to say it privately?"
She smiled assent, and leaned on his arm with a light, confiding pressure, to which he no more responded than if his muscles had been rigid iron. Her heart beat quickly with a sense of gratified vanity and exultant expectancy,--but his throbbed slowly and heavily, chilled by the double frost of age and solitude.
CHAPTER III
To see people eating is understood to be a very interesting and "brilliant" spectacle, and however insignificant you may be in the social world, you get a reflex of its "brilliancy" when you allow people in their turn to see you eating likewise. A well-cooked, well-served supper is a "function," in which every man and woman who can move a jaw takes part, and though in plain parlance there is nothing uglier than the act of putting food into one's mouth, we have persuaded ourselves that it is a pretty and pleasant performance enough for us to ask our friends to see us do it. Byron's idea that human beings should eat privately and apart, was not altogether without æsthetic justification, though according to medical authority such a procedure would be very injurious to health. The slow mastication of a meal in the presence of cheerful company is said to promote healthy digestion--moreover, custom and habit make even the most incongruous things acceptable, therefore the display of tables, crowded with food-stuffs and surrounded by eating, drinking, chattering and perspiring men and women, does not affect us to any sense of the ridiculous or the unseemly. On the contrary, when some of us see such tables, we exclaim "How lovely!" or "How delightful!" according to our own pet vocabulary, or to our knowledge of the humour of our host or hostess,--or perhaps, if we are young cynics, tired of life before we have confronted one of its problems, we murmur, "Not so bad!" or "Fairly decent!" when we are introduced to the costly and appetising delicacies heaped up round masses of flowers and silver for our consideration and entertainment. At the supper given by David Helmsley for Lucy Sorrel's twenty-first birthday, there was, however, no note of dissatisfaction--the _blasé_ breath of the callow critic emitted no withering blight, and even latter-day satirists in their teens, frosted like tender pease-blossom before their prime, condescended to approve the lavish generosity, combined with the perfect taste, which made the festive scene a glowing picture of luxury and elegance. But Helmsley himself, as he led his beautiful partner, "the" guest of the evening, to the head of the principal table, and took his place beside her, was conscious of no personal pleasure, but only of a dreary feeling which seemed lonelier than loneliness and more sorrowful than sorrow. The wearied scorn that he had lately begun to entertain for himself, his wealth, his business, his influence, and all his surroundings, was embittered by a disappointment none the less keen because he had dimly foreseen it. The child he had petted, the girl he had indulged after the fashion of a father who seeks to make the world pleasant to a young life just entering it, she, even she, was, or seemed to be, practically as selfish as any experienced member of the particular set of schemers and intriguers who compose what is sometimes called "society" in the present day. He had no wish to judge her harshly, but he was too old and knew too much of life to be easily deceived in his estimation of character. A very slight hint was sufficient for him. He had seen a great deal of Lucy Sorrel as a child--she had always been known as his "little favourite"--but since she had attended a fashionable school at Brighton, his visits to her home had been less frequent, and he had had very few opportunities of becoming acquainted with the gradual development of her mental and moral self. During her holidays he had given her as many little social pleasures and gaieties as he had considered might be acceptable to her taste and age, but on these occasions other persons had always been present, and Lucy herself had worn what are called "company" manners, which in her case were singularly charming and attractive, so much so, indeed, that it would have seemed like heresy to question their sincerity. But now--whether it was the slight hint dropped by Sir Francis Vesey on the previous night as to Mrs. Sorrel's match-making proclivities, or whether it was a scarcely perceptible suggestion of something more flippant and assertive than usual in the air and bearing of Lucy herself that had awakened his suspicions,--he was certainly disposed to doubt, for the first time in all his knowledge of her, the candid nature of the girl for whom he had hitherto entertained, half-unconsciously, an almost parental affection. He sat by her side at supper, seldom speaking, but always closely observant. He saw everything; he watched the bright, exulting flash of her eyes as she glanced at her various friends, both near her and at a distance, and he fancied he detected in their responsive looks a subtle inquiry and meaning which he would not allow himself to investigate. And while the bubbling talk and laughter eddied round him, he made up his mind to combat the lurking distrust that teased his brain, and either to disperse it altogether or else confirm it beyond all mere shadowy misgiving. Some such thought as this had occurred to him, albeit vaguely, when he had, on a sudden unpremeditated impulse, asked Lucy to give him a few minutes' private conversation with her after supper, but now, what had previously been a mere idea formulated itself into a fixed resolve.
"For what, after all, does it matter to me?" he mused. "Why should I hesitate to destroy a dream? Why should I care if another rainbow bubble of life breaks and disappears? I am too old to have ideals--so most people would tell me. And yet--with the grave open and ready to receive me,--I still believe that love and truth and purity surely exist in women's hearts--if one could only know just where to find the women!"
"Dear King David!" murmured a cooing voice at his ear. "Won't you drink my health?"
He started as from a reverie. Lucy Sorrel was bending towards him, her face glowing with gratified vanity and self-elation.
"Of course!" he answered, and rising to his feet, he lifted his glass full of as yet untasted champagne, at which action on his part the murmur of voices suddenly ceased sand all eyes were turned upon him. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, in his soft, tired voice,--"I beg to propose the health of Miss Lucy Sorrel! She has lived twenty-one years on this interesting old planet of ours, and has found it, so far, not altogether without charm. I have had seventy years of it, and strange as it may seem to you all, I am able to keep a few of the illusions and delusions I had when I was even younger than our charming guest of the evening. I still believe in good women! I think I have one sitting at my right hand to-night. I take for granted that her nature is as fair as her face; and I hope that every recurring anniversary of this day may bring her just as much happiness as she deserves. I ask you to drink to her health, wealth, and prosperity; and--may she soon find a good husband!"
Applause and laughter followed this conventional little speech, and the toast was honoured in the usual way, Lucy bowing and smiling her thanks to all present. And then there ensued one of those strange impressions--one might almost call them telepathic instead of atmospheric effects--which, subtly penetrating the air, exerted an inexplicable influence on the mind;--the expectancy of some word never to be uttered,--the waiting for some incident never to take place. People murmured and smiled, and looked and laughed, but there was an evident embarrassment among them,--an under-sense of something like disappointment. The fortunately commonplace and methodical habits of waiters, whose one idea is to keep their patrons busy eating and drinking, gradually overcame this insidious restraint, and the supper went on gaily till at one o'clock the Hungarian band again began to play, and all the young people, eager for their "extras" in the way of dances, quickly rose from the various tables and began to crowd out towards the ballroom. In the general dispersal, Lucy having left him for a partner to whom she had promised the first "extra," Helmsley stopped to speak to one or two men well known to him in the business world. He was still conversing with these when Mrs. Sorrel, not perceiving him in the corner where he stood apart with his friend, trotted past him with an agitated step and flushed countenance, and catching her daughter by the skirt of her dress as that young lady moved on with the pushing throng in front of her, held her back for a second.
"What have you done?" she demanded querulously, in not too soft a tone. "Were you careful? Did you manage him properly? What did he say to you?"
Lucy's beautiful face hardened, and her lips met in a thin, decidedly bad-tempered line.
"He said nothing to the purpose," she replied coldly. "There was no time. But"--and she lowered her voice--"he wants to speak to me alone presently. I'm going to him in the library after this dance."
She passed on, and Mrs. Sorrel, heaving a deep sigh, drew out a black pocket-fan and fanned herself vigorously. Wreathing her face with social smiles, she made her way slowly out of the supper-room, happily unaware that Helmsley had been near enough to hear every word that had passed. And hearing, he had understood; but he went on talking to his friends in the quiet, rather slow way which was habitual to him, and when he left them there was nothing about him to indicate that he was in a suppressed state of nervous excitement which made him for the moment quite forget that he was an old man. Impetuous youth itself never felt a keener blaze of vitality in the veins than he did at that moment, but it was the withering heat of indignation that warmed him--not the tender glow of love. The clarion sweetness of the dance-music, now pealing loudly on the air, irritated his nerves,--the lights, the flowers, the brilliancy of the whole scene jarred upon his soul,--what was it all but sham, he thought!--a show in the mere name of friendship!--an ephemeral rose of pleasure with a worm at its core! Impatiently he shook himself free of those who sought to detain him and went at once to his library,--a sombre, darkly-furnished apartment, large enough to seem gloomy by contrast with the gaiety and cheerfulness which were dominant throughout the rest of the house that evening. Only two or three shaded lamps were lit, and these cast a ghostly flicker on the row of books that lined the walls. A few names in raised letters of gold relief upon the backs of some of the volumes, asserted themselves, or so he fancied, with unaccustomed prominence. "Montaigne," "Seneca," "Rochefoucauld," "Goethe," "Byron," and "The Sonnets of William Shakespeare," stood forth from the surrounding darkness as though demanding special notice.
"Voices of the dead!" he murmured half aloud. "I should have learned wisdom from you all long ago! What have the great geniuses of the world lived for? For what purpose did they use their brains and pens? Simply to teach mankind the folly of too much faith! Yet we continue to delude ourselves--and the worst of it is that we do it wilfully and knowingly. We are perfectly aware that when we trust, we shall be deceived--yet we trust on! Even I--old and frail and about to die--cannot rid myself of a belief in God, and in the ultimate happiness of each man's destiny. And yet, so far as my own experience serves me, I have nothing to go upon--absolutely nothing!"
He gave an unconscious gesture--half of scorn, half of despair--and paced the room slowly up and down. A life of toil--a life rounding into worldly success, but blank of all love and heart's comfort--was this to be the only conclusion to his career? Of what use, then, was it to have lived at all?
"People talk foolishly of a 'declining birth-rate,'" he went on; "yet if, according to the modern scientist, all civilisations are only so much output of wasted human energy, doomed to pass into utter oblivion, and human beings only live but to die and there an end, of what avail is it to be born at all? Surely it is but wanton cruelty to take upon ourselves the responsibility of continuing a race whose only consummation is rottenness in unremembered graves!"
At that moment the door opened and Lucy Sorrel entered softly, with a pretty air of hesitating timidity which became her style of beauty excellently well. As he looked up and saw her standing half shyly on the threshold, a white, light, radiant figure expressing exquisitely fresh youth, grace and--innocence?--yes! surely that wondrous charm which hung about her like a delicate atmosphere redolent with the perfume of spring, could only be the mystic exhalation of a pure mind adding spiritual lustre to the material attraction of a perfect body,--his heart misgave him. Already he was full of remorse lest so much as a passing thought in his brain might have done her unmerited wrong. He advanced to meet her, and his voice was full of kindness as he said:--
"Is your dance quite over, Lucy? Are you sure I am not selfishly depriving you of pleasure by asking you to come away from all your young friends just to talk to me for a few minutes in this dull room?"
She raised her beautiful eyes confidingly.
"Dear Mr. Helmsley, there can be no greater pleasure for me than to talk to you!" she answered sweetly.
His expression changed and hardened. "That's not true," he thought; "and _she_ knows it, and _I_ know it." Aloud he said: "Very prettily spoken, Lucy! But I am aware of my own tediousness and I won't detain you long. Will you sit down?" and he offered her an easy-chair, into which she sank with the soft slow grace of a nestling bird. "I only want to say just a few words,--such as your father might say to you if he were so inclined--about your future."
She gave him a swift glance of keen inquiry.
"My future?" she echoed.
"Yes. Have you thought of it at all yourself?"
She heaved a little sigh, smiled, and shook her head in the negative.
"I'm afraid I'm very silly," she confessed plaintively. "I never think!"
He drew up another armchair and sat down opposite to her.
"Well, try to do so now for five minutes at least," he said, gently. "I am going away to-morrow or next day for a considerable time----"
A quick flush flew over her face.
"Going away!" she exclaimed. "But--not far?"
"That depends on my own whim," he replied, watching her attentively. "I shall certainly be absent from England for a year, perhaps longer. But, Lucy,--you were such a little pet of mine in your childhood that I cannot help taking an interest in you now you are grown up. That is, I think, quite natural. And I should like to feel that you have some good and safe idea of your own happiness in life before I leave you."
She stared,--her face fell.
"I have no ideas at all," she answered after a pause, the corners of her red mouth drooping in petulant, spoilt-child fashion, "and if you go away I shall have no pleasures either!"
He smiled.
"I'm sorry you take it that way," he said. "But I'm nearing the end of my tether, Lucy, and increasing age makes me restless. I want change of scene--and change of surroundings. I am thoroughly tired of my present condition."
"Tired?" and her eyes expressed whole volumes of amazement. "Not really? _You_--tired of your present condition? With all your money?"
"With all my money!" he answered drily, "Money is not the elixir of happiness, Lucy, though many people seem to think it is. But I prefer not to talk about myself. Let me speak of you. What do you propose to do with your life? You will marry, of course?"
"I--I suppose so," she faltered.
"Is there any one you specially favour?--any young fellow who loves you, or whom you are inclined to love--and who wants a start in the world? If there is, send him to me, and, if he has anything in him, I'll make myself answerable for his prosperity."
She looked up with a cold, bright steadfastness.
"There is no one," she said. "Dear Mr. Helmsley, you are very good, but I assure you I have never fallen in love in my life. As I told you before supper, I don't believe in that kind of nonsense. And I--I want nothing. Of course I know my father and mother are poor, and that they have kept up a sort of position which ranks them among the 'shabby genteel,'--and I suppose if I don't marry quickly I shall have to do something for a living----"
She broke off, embarrassed by the keenness of the gaze he fixed upon her.
"Many good, many beautiful, many delicate women 'do something,' as you put it, for a living," he said slowly. "But the fight is always fierce, and the end is sometimes bitter. It is better for a woman that she should be safeguarded by a husband's care and tenderness than that she should attempt to face the world alone."
A flashing smile dimpled the corners of her mouth.
"Why, yes, I quite agree with you," she retorted playfully. "But if no husband come forward, then it cannot be helped!"
He rose, and, pushing away his chair, walked up and down in silence.
She watched him with a sense of growing irritability, and her heart beat with uncomfortable quickness. Why did he seem to hesitate so long? Presently he stopped in his slow movement to and fro, and stood looking down upon her with a fixed intensity which vaguely troubled her.
"It is difficult to advise," he said, "and it is still more difficult to control. In your case I have no right to do either. I am an old man, and you are a very young woman. You are beginning your life,--I am ending mine. Yet, young as you are, you say with apparent sincerity that you do not believe in love. Now I, though I have loved and lost, though I have loved and have been cruelly deceived in love, still believe that if the true, heavenly passion be fully and faithfully experienced, it must prove the chief joy, if not the only one, of life. You think otherwise, and perhaps you correctly express the opinion of the younger generation of men and women. These appear to crowd more emotion and excitement into their lives than ever was attained or attainable in the lives of their forefathers, but they do not, or so it seems to me, secure for themselves as much peace of mind and satisfaction of soul as were the inheritance of bygone folk whom we now call 'old-fashioned.' Still, you may be right in depreciating the power of love--from your point of view. All the same, I should be sorry to see you entering into a loveless marriage."
For a moment she was silent, then she suddenly plunged into speech.
"Dear Mr. Helmsley, do you really think all the silly sentiment talked and written about love is any good in marriage? We know so much nowadays,--and the disillusion of matrimony is so _very_ complete! One has only to read the divorce cases in the newspapers to see what mistakes people make----"
He winced as though he had been stung.
"Do you read the divorce cases, Lucy?" he asked. "You--a mere girl like you?"
She looked surprised at the regret and pain in his tone.
"Why, of course! One _must_ read the papers to keep up with all the things that are going on. And the divorce cases have always such startling headings,--in such big print!--one is obliged to read them--positively obliged!"
She laughed carelessly, and settled herself more cosily in her chair.
"You nearly always find that it is the people who were desperately in love with each other before marriage who behave disgracefully and are perfectly sick of each other afterwards," she went on. "They wanted perpetual poetry and moonlight, and of course they find they can't have it. Now, I don't want poetry or moonlight,--I hate both! Poetry makes me sleepy, and moonlight gives me neuralgia. I should like a husband who would be a _friend_ to me--a real kind friend!--some one who would be able to take care of me, and be nice to me always--some one much older than myself, who was wise and strong and clever----"
"And rich," said Helmsley quietly. "Don't forget that! Very rich!"
She glanced at him furtively, conscious of a slight nervous qualm. Then, rapidly reviewing the situation in her shallow brain, she accepted his remark smilingly.
"Oh, well, of course!" she said. "It's not pleasant to live without plenty of money."
He turned from her abruptly, and resumed his leisurely walk to and fro, much to her inward vexation. He was becoming fidgety, she decided,--old people were really very trying! Suddenly, with the air of a man arriving at an important decision, he sat down again in the armchair opposite her own, and leaning indolently back against the cushion, surveyed her with a calm, critical, entirely businesslike manner, much as he would have looked at a Jew company-promoter, who sought his aid to float a "bogus" scheme.
"It's not pleasant to live without plenty of money, you think," he said, repeating her last words slowly. "Well! The pleasantest time of my life was when I did not own a penny in the bank, and when I had to be very sharp in order to earn enough for my day's dinner. There was a zest, a delight, a fine glory in the mere effort to live that brought out the strength of every quality I possessed. I learned to know myself, which is a farther reaching wisdom than is found in knowing others. I had ideals then,--and--old as I am, I have them still."
He paused. She was silent. Her eyes were lowered, and she played idly with her painted fan.
"I wonder if it would surprise you," he went on, "to know that I have made an ideal of _you_?"
She looked up with a smile.
"Really? Have you? I'm afraid I shall prove a disappointment!"
He did not answer by the obvious compliment which she felt she had a right to expect. He kept his gaze fixed steadily on her face, and his shaggy eyebrows almost met in the deep hollow which painful thought had ploughed along his forehead.
"I have made," he said, "an ideal in my mind of the little child who sat on my knee, played with my watch-chain and laughed at me when I called her my little sweetheart. She was perfectly candid in her laughter,--she knew it was absurd for an old man to have a child as his sweetheart. I loved to hear her laugh so,--because she was true to herself, and to her right and natural instincts. She was the prettiest and sweetest child I ever saw,--full of innocent dreams and harmless gaiety. She began to grow up, and I saw less and less of her, till gradually I lost the child and found the woman. But I believe in the child's heart still--I think that the truth and simplicity of the child's soul are still in the womanly nature,--and in that way, Lucy, I yet hold you as an ideal."
Her breath quickened a little.
"You think too kindly of me," she murmured, furling and unfurling her fan slowly; "I'm not at all clever."
He gave a slight deprecatory gesture.
"Cleverness is not what I expect or have ever expected of you," he said. "You have not as yet had to endure the misrepresentation and wrong which frequently make women clever,--the life of solitude and despised dreams which moves a woman to put on man's armour and sally forth to fight the world and conquer it, or else die in the attempt. How few conquer, and how many die, are matters of history. Be glad you are not a clever woman, Lucy!--for genius in a woman is the mystic laurel of Apollo springing from the soft breast of Daphne. It hurts in the growing, and sometimes breaks the heart from which it grows."
She answered nothing. He was talking in a way she did not understand,--his allusion to Apollo and Daphne was completely beyond her. She smothered a tiny yawn and wondered why he was so tedious. Moreover, she was conscious of some slight chagrin, for though she said, out of mere social hypocrisy, that she was not clever, she thought herself exceptionally so. Why could he not admit her abilities as readily as she herself admitted them?
"No, you are not clever," he resumed quietly. "And I am glad you are not. You are good and pure and true,--these graces outweigh all cleverness."
Her cheeks flushed prettily,--she thought of a girl who had been her schoolmate at Brighton, one of the boldest little hussies that ever flashed eyes to the light of day, yet who could assume the dainty simpering air of maiden--modest perfection at the moment's notice. She wished she could do the same, but she had not studied the trick carefully enough, and she was afraid to try more of it than just a little tremulous smile and a quick downward glance at her fan. Helmsley watched her attentively--almost craftily. It did not strain his sense of perspicuity over much to see exactly what was going on in her mind. He settled himself a little more comfortably in his chair, and pressing the tips of his fingers together, looked at her over this pointed rampart of polished nails as though she were something altogether curious and remarkable.
"The virtues of a woman are her wealth and worth," he said sententiously, as though he were quoting a maxim out of a child's copybook. "A jewel's price is not so much for its size and weight as for its particular lustre. But common commercial people--like myself--even if they have the good fortune to find a diamond likely to surpass all others in the market, are never content till they have tested it. Every Jew bites his coin. And I am something of a Jew. I like to know the exact value of what I esteem as precious. And so I test it."
"Yes?" She threw in this interjected query simply because she did not know what to say. She thought he was talking very oddly, and wondered whether he was quite sane.
"Yes," he echoed; "I test it. And, Lucy, I think so highly of you, and esteem you as so very fair a pearl of womanhood, that I am inclined to test you just as I would a priceless gem. Do you object?"
She glanced up at him flutteringly, vaguely surprised. The corners of his mouth relaxed into the shadow of a smile, and she was reassured.
"Object? Of course not! As if I should object to anything you wish!" she said amiably. "But--I don't quite understand----"
"No, possibly not," he interrupted; "I know I have not the art of making myself very clear in matters which deeply and personally affect myself. I have nerves still, and some remnant of a heart,--these occasionally trouble me----"
She leaned forward and put her delicately gloved hand on his.
"Dear King David!" she murmured. "You are always so good!"
He took the little fingers in his own clasp and held them gently.
"I want to ask you a question, Lucy," he said; "and it is a very difficult question, because I feel that your answer to it may mean a great sorrow for me,--a great disappointment. The question is the 'test' I speak of. Shall I put it to you?"
"Please do!" she answered, her heart beginning to beat violently. He was coming to the point at last, she thought, and a few words more would surely make her the future mistress of the Helmsley millions! "If I can answer it I will!"
"Shall I ask you my question, or shall I not?" he went on, gripping her hand hard, and half raising himself in his chair as he looked intently at her telltale face. "For it means more than you can realise. It is an audacious, impudent question, Lucy,--one that no man of my age ought to ask any woman,--one that is likely to offend you very much!"
She withdrew her hand from his.
"Offend me?" and her eyes widened with a blank wonder. "What can it be?"
"Ah! What can it be! Think of all the most audacious and impudent things a man--an old man--could say to a young woman! Suppose,--it is only supposition, remember,--suppose, for instance, I were to ask you to marry me?"
A smile, brilliant and exultant, flashed over her features,--she almost laughed out her inward joy.
"I should accept you at once!" she said.
With sudden impetuosity he rose, and pushing away his chair, drew himself up to his full height, looking down upon her.
"You would!" and his voice was low and tense. "_You!_--you would actually marry me?"
She, rising likewise, confronted him in all her fresh and youthful beauty, fair and smiling, her bosom heaving and her eyes dilating with eagerness.
"I would,--indeed I would!" she averred delightedly. "I would rather marry you than any man in the world!"
There was a moment's silence. Then--
"Why?" he asked.
The simple monosyllabic query completely confused her. It was unexpected, and she was at her wit's end how to reply to it. Moreover, he kept his eyes so pertinaciously fixed upon her that she felt her blood rising to her cheeks and brow in a hot flush of--shame? Oh no!--not shame, but merely petulant vexation. The proper way for him to behave at this juncture, so she reflected, would be that he should take her tenderly in his arms and murmur, after the penny-dreadful style of elderly hero, "My darling, my darling! Can you, so young and beautiful, really care for an old fogey like me?'" to which she would, of course, have replied in the same fashion, and with the most charming insincerity--"Dearest! Do not talk of age! You will never be old to my fond heart!" But to stand, as he was standing, like a rigid figure of bronze, with a hard pale face in which only the eyes seemed living, and to merely ask "Why" she would rather marry him than any other man in the world, was absurd, to say the least of it, and indeed quite lacking in all delicacy of sentiment. She sought about in her mind for some way out of the difficulty and could find none. She grew more and more painfully crimson, and wished she could cry. A well worked-up passion of tears would have come in very usefully just then, but somehow she could not turn the passion on. And a horrid sense of incompetency and failure began to steal over her--an awful foreboding of defeat. What could she do to seize the slippery opportunity and grasp the doubtful prize? How could she land the big golden fish which she foolishly fancied she had at the end of her line? Never had she felt so helpless or so angry.
"Why?" he repeated--"Why would you marry me? Not for love certainly. Even if you believed in love--which you say you do not,--you could not at your age love a man at mine. That would be impossible and unnatural. I am old enough to be your grandfather. Think again, Lucy! Perhaps you spoke hastily--- out of girlish thoughtlessness--or out of kindness and a wish to please me,--but do not, in so serious a matter, consider me at all. Consider yourself. Consider your own nature and temperament--your own life--your own future--your own happiness. Would you, young as you are, with all the world before you--would you, if I asked you, deliberately and of your own free will, marry me?"
She drew a sharp breath, and hurriedly wondered what was best to do. He spoke so strangely!--he looked so oddly! But that might be because he was in love with her! Her lips parted,--she faced him straightly, lifting her head with a little air of something like defiance.
"I would!--of course I would!" she replied. "Nothing could make me happier!"
He gave a kind of gesture with his hands as though he threw aside some cherished object.
"So vanishes my last illusion!" he said. "Well! Let it go!"
She gazed at him stupidly. What did he mean? Why did he not now emulate the penny-dreadful heroes and say "My darling!" Nothing seemed further from his thoughts. His eyes rested upon her with a coldness such as she had never seen in them before, and his features hardened.
"I should have known the modern world and modern education better," he went on, speaking more to himself than to her. "I have had experience enough. I should never have allowed myself to keep even the shred of a belief in woman's honesty!"
She started, and flamed into a heat of protest.
"Mr. Helmsley!"
He raised a deprecatory hand.
"Pardon me!" he said wearily--"I am an old man, accustomed to express myself bluntly. Even if I vex you, I fear I shall not know how to apologise. I had thought----"
He broke off, then with an effort resumed--
"I had thought, Lucy, that you were above all bribery and corruption."
"Bribery?--Corruption?" she stammered, and in a tremor of excitement and perturbation her fan dropped from her hands to the floor. He stooped for it with the ease and grace of a far younger man, and returned it to her.
"Yes, bribery and corruption," he continued quietly. "The bribery of wealth--the corruption of position. These are the sole objects for which (if I asked you, which I have not done) you would marry me. For there is nothing else I have to offer you. I could not give you the sentiment or passion of a husband (if husbands ever have sentiment or passion nowadays), because all such feeling is dead in me. I could not be your 'friend' in marriage--because I should always remember that our matrimonial 'friendship' was merely one of cash supply and demand. You see I speak very plainly. I am not a polite person--not even a Conventional one. I am too old to tell lies. Lying is never a profitable business in youth--but in age it is pure waste of time and energy. With one foot in the grave it is as well to keep the other from slipping."
He paused. She tried to say something, but could find no suitable words with which to answer him. He looked at her steadily, half expecting her to speak, and there was both pain and sorrow in the depths of his tired eyes.
"I need not prolong this conversation," he said, after a minute's silence. "For it must be as embarrassing to you as it is to me. It is quite my own fault that I built too many hopes upon you, Lucy! I set you up on a pedestal and you have yourself stepped down from it--I have put you to the test, and you have failed. I daresay the failure is as much the concern of your parents and the way in which they have brought you up, as it is of any latent weakness in your own mind and character. But,--if, when I suggested such an absurd and unnatural proposition as marriage between myself arid you, you had at once, like a true woman, gently and firmly repudiated the idea, then----"
"Then--what?" she faltered.
"Why, then I should have made you my sole heiress," he said quietly.
Her eyes opened in blank wonderment and despair. Was it possible! Had she been so near her golden El Dorado only to see the shining shores receding, and the glittering harbour closed! Oh, it was cruel! Horrible! There was a convulsive catch in her throat which she managed to turn into the laugh hysterical.
"Really!" she ejaculated, with a poor attempt at flippancy; and, in her turn, she asked the question, "Why?"
"Because I should have known you were honest," answered Helmsley, with emphasis. "Honest to your womanly instincts, and to the simplest and purest part of your nature. I should have proved for myself the fact that you refused to sell your beautiful person for gold--that you were no slave in the world's auction-mart, but a free, proud, noble-hearted English girl who meant to be faithful to all that was highest and best in her soul. Ah, Lucy! You are not this little dream-girl of mine! You are a very realistic modern woman with whom a man's 'ideal' has nothing in common!"
She was silent, half-stifled with rage. He stepped up to her and took her hand.
"Good-night, Lucy! Good-bye!"
She wrenched her fingers from his clasp, and a sudden, uncontrollable fury possessed her.
"I hate you!" she said between her set teeth. "You are mean! Mean! I hate you!"
He stood quite still, gravely irresponsive.
"You have deceived me--cheated me!" she went on, angrily and recklessly. "You made me think you wanted to marry me."
The corners of his mouth went up under his ashen-grey moustache in a chill smile.
"Pardon me!" he interrupted. "But did I make you think? or did you think it of your own accord?"
She plucked at her fan nervously.
"Any girl--I don't care who she is--would accept you if you asked her to marry you!" she said hotly. "It would be perfectly idiotic to refuse such a rich man, even if he were Methusaleh himself. There's nothing wrong or dishonest in taking the chance of having plenty of money, if it is offered."
He looked at her, vaguely compassionating her loss of self-control.
"No, there is nothing wrong or dishonest in taking the chance of having plenty of money, if such a chance can be had without shame and dishonour," he said. "But I, personally, should consider a woman hopelessly lost to every sense of self-respect, if at the age of twenty-one she consented to marry a man of seventy for the sake of his wealth. And I should equally consider the man of seventy a disgrace to the name of manhood if he condoned the voluntary sale of such a woman by becoming her purchaser."
She lifted her head with a haughty air.
"Then, if you thought these things, you had no right to propose to me!" she said passionately.
He was faintly amused.
"I did not propose to you, Lucy," he answered, "and I never intended to do so! I merely asked what your answer would be if I did."
"It comes to the same thing!" she muttered.
"Pardon me, not quite! I told you I was putting you to a test. That you failed to stand my test is the conclusion of the whole affair. We really need say no more about it. The matter is finished."
She bit her lips vexedly, then forced a hard smile.
"It's about time it was finished, I'm sure!" she said carelessly. "I'm perfectly tired out!"
"No doubt you are--you must be--I was forgetting how late it is," and with ceremonious politeness he opened the door for her to pass. "You have had an exhausting evening! Forgive me for any pain or vexation--or--or anger I may have caused you--and, good-night, Lucy! God bless you!"
He held out his hand. He looked worn and wan, and his face showed pitiful marks of fatigue, loneliness, and sorrow, but the girl was too much incensed by her own disappointment to forgive him for the unexpected trial to which he had submitted her disposition and character.
"Good-night!" she said curtly, avoiding his glance. "I suppose everybody's gone by this time; mother will be waiting for me."
"Won't you shake hands?" he pleaded gently. "I'm sorry that I expected more of you than you could give, Lucy! but I want you to be happy, and I think and hope you will be, if you let the best part of you have its way. Still, it may happen that I shall never see you again--so let us part friends!"
She raised her eyes, hardened now in their expression by intense malignity and spite, and fixed them fully upon him.
"I don't want to be friends with you any more!" she said. "You are cruel and selfish, and you have treated me abominably! I am sure you will die miserably, without a soul to care for you! And I hope--yes, I hope I shall never hear of you, never see you any more as long as you live! You could never have really had the least bit of affection for me when I was a child."
He interrupted her by a quick, stern gesture.
"That child is dead! Do not speak of her!"
Something in his aspect awed her--something of the mute despair and solitude of a man who has lost his last hope on earth, shadowed his pallid features as with a forecast of approaching dissolution. Involuntarily she trembled, and felt cold; her head drooped;--for a moment her conscience pricked her, reminding her how she had schemed and plotted and planned to become the wife of this sad, frail old man ever since she had reached the mature age of sixteen,--for a moment she was impelled to make a clean confession of her own egotism, and to ask his pardon for having, under the tuition of her mother, made him the unconscious pivot of all her worldly ambitions,--then, with a sudden impetuous movement, she swept past him without a word, and ran downstairs.
There she found half the evening's guests gone, and the other half well on the move. Some of these glanced at her inquiringly, with "nods and becks and wreathed smiles," but she paid no heed to any of them. Her mother came eagerly up to her, anxiety purpling every vein of her mottled countenance, but no word did she utter, till, having put on their cloaks, the two waited together on the steps of the mansion, with flunkeys on either side, for the hired brougham to bowl up in as _un_-hired a style as was possible at the price of one guinea for the night's outing.
"Where is Mr. Helmsley?" then asked Mrs. Sorrel.
"In his own room, I believe," replied Lucy, frigidly.
"Isn't he coming to see you into the carriage and say good-night?"
"Why should he?" demanded the girl, peremptorily.
Mrs. Sorrel became visibly agitated. She glanced at the impassive flunkeys nervously.
"O my dear!" she whimpered softly, "what's the matter? Has anything happened?"
At that moment the expected vehicle lumbered up with a very creditable clatter of well-assumed importance. The flunkeys relaxed their formal attitudes and hastened to assist both mother and daughter into its somewhat stuffy recess. Another moment and they were driven off, Lucy looking out of the window at the numerous lights which twinkled from every story of the stately building they had just left, till the last bright point of luminance had vanished. Then the strain on her mind gave way--and to Mrs. Sorrel's alarm and amazement, she suddenly burst into a stormy passion of tears.
"It's all over!" she sobbed angrily, "all over! I've lost him! I've lost everything!"
Mrs. Sorrel gave a kind of weasel cry and clasped her fat hands convulsively.
"Oh, you little fool!" she burst out, "what have you done?"
Thus violently adjured, Lucy, with angry gasps of spite and disappointment, related in full the maddening, the eccentric, the altogether incomprehensible and inexcusable conduct of the famous millionaire, "old Gold-dust," towards her beautiful, outraged, and injured self. Her mother sat listening in a kind of frozen horror which might possibly have become rigid, had it not been for the occasional bumping of the hired brougham over ruts and loose stones, which bumping shook her superfluous flesh into agitated bosom-waves.
"I ought to have guessed it! I ought to have followed my own instinct!" she said, in sepulchral tones. "It came to me like a flash, when I was talking to him this evening! I said to myself, 'he is in a moral mood.' And he was. Nothing is so hopeless, so dreadful! If I had only thought he would carry on that mood with you, I would have warned you! You could have held off a little--it would perhaps have been the wiser course."
"I should think it would indeed!" cried Lucy, dabbing her eyes with her scented handkerchief; "He would have left me every penny he has in the world if I had refused him! He told me so as coolly as possible!"
Mrs. Sorrel sank back with a groan.
"Oh dear, oh dear!" she wailed feebly. "Can nothing be done?"
"Nothing!" And Lucy, now worked up to hysterical pitch, felt as if she could break the windows, beat her mother, or do anything else equally reckless and irresponsible. "I shall be left to myself now,--he will never ask me to his house again, never give me any parties or drives or opera-boxes or jewels,--he will never come to see me, and I shall have no pleasure at all! I shall sink into a dowdy, frowsy, shabby-genteel old maid for the rest of my life! It is _detestable_!" and she uttered a suppressed small shriek on the word, "It has been a hateful, abominable birthday! Everybody will be laughing at me up their sleeves! Think of Lady Larford!"
This suggestion was too dreadful for comment, and Mrs. Sorrel closed her eyes, visibly shuddering.
"Who would have thought it possible!" she moaned drearily, "a millionaire, with such mad ideas! I _had_ thought him always such a sensible man! And he seemed to admire you so much! What will he do with all his money?"
The fair Lucy sighed, sobbed, and swallowed her tears into silence. And again, like the doubtful refrain of a song in a bad dream, her mother moaned and murmured--
"What will he do with all his money!"
CHAPTER IV
Two or three days later, Sir Francis Vesey was sitting in his private office, a musty den encased within the heart of the city, listening, or trying to listen, to the dull clerical monotone of a clerk's dry voice detailing the wearisome items of certain legal formulæ preliminary to an impending case. Sir Francis had yawned capaciously once or twice, and had played absently with a large ink-stained paperknife,--signs that his mind was wandering somewhat from the point at issue. He was a conscientious man, but he was getting old, and the disputations of obstinate or foolish clients were becoming troublesome to him. Moreover, the case concerning which his clerk was prosing along in the style of a chapel demagogue engaged in extemporary prayer, was an extremely uninteresting one, and he thought hazily of his lunch. The hour for that meal was approaching,--a fact for which he was devoutly thankful. For after lunch, he gave himself his own release from work for the rest of the day. He left it all to his subordinates, and to his partner Symonds, who was some eight or ten years his junior. He glanced at the clock, and beat a tattoo with his foot on the floor, conscious of his inward impatience with the reiterated "Whereas the said" and "Witnesseth the so-and-so," which echoed dully on the otherwise unbroken silence. It was a warm, sunshiny morning, but the brightness of the outer air was poorly reflected in the stuffy room, which though comfortably and even luxuriously furnished, conveyed the usual sense of dismal depression common to London precincts of the law. Two or three flies buzzed irritably now and then against the smoke-begrimed windowpanes, and the clerk's dreary preamble went on and on till Sir Francis closed his eyes and wondered whether a small "catnap" would be possible between the sections of the seeming interminable document. Suddenly, to his relief, there came a sharp tap at the door, and an office boy looked in.
"Mr. Helmsley's man, sir," he announced. "Wants to see you personally."
Sir Francis got up from his chair with alacrity.
"All right! Show him in."
The boy retired, and presently reappearing, ushered in a staid-looking personage in black who, saluting Sir Francis respectfully, handed him a letter marked "Confidential."
"Nice day, Benson," remarked the lawyer cheerfully, as he took the missive. "Is your master quite well?"
"Perfectly well, Sir Francis, thank you," replied Benson. "Leastways he was when I saw him off just now."
"Oh! He's gone then?"
"Yes, Sir Francis. He's gone."
Sir Francis broke the seal of the letter,--then bethinking himself of "Whereas the said" and "Witnesseth the so-and-so," turned to his worn and jaded clerk.
"That will do for the present," he said. "You can go."
With pleasing haste the clerk put together the voluminous folios of blue paper from which he had been reading, and quickly made his exit, while Sir Francis, still standing, put on his glasses and unfolded the one sheet of note-paper on which Helmsley's communication was written. Glancing it up and down, he turned it over and over--then addressed himself to the attentively waiting Benson.
"So Mr. Helmsley has started on his trip alone?"
"Yes, Sir Francis. Quite alone."
"Did he say where he was going?"
"He booked for Southhampton, sir."
"Oh!"
"And," proceeded Benson, "he only took one portmanteau."
"Oh!" again ejaculated the lawyer. And, stroking his bearded chin, he thought awhile.
"Are you going to stay at Carlton House Terrace till he comes back?"
"I have a month's holiday, sir. Then I return to my place. The same order applies to all the servants, sir."
"I see! Well!"
And then there came a pause.
"I suppose," said Sir Francis, after some minutes' reflection, "I suppose you know that during Mr. Helmsley's absence you are to apply to me for wages and household expenses--that, in fact, your master has placed me in charge of all his affairs?"
"So I have understood, sir," replied Benson, deferentially. "Mr. Helmsley called us all into his room last night and told us so."
"Oh, he did, did he? But, of course, as a man of business, he would leave nothing incomplete. Now, supposing Mr. Helmsley is away more than a month, I will call or send to the house at stated intervals to see how things are getting on, and arrange any matters that may need arranging"--here he glanced at the letter in his hand--"as your master requests. And--if you want anything--or wish to know any news,--you can always call here and inquire."
"Thank you, Sir Francis."
"I'm sorry,"--and the lawyer's shrewd yet kindly eyes looked somewhat troubled--"I'm very sorry that my old friend hasn't taken you with him, Benson."
Benson caught the ring of sympathetic interest in his voice and at once responded to it.
"Well, sir, so am I!" he said heartily. "For Mr. Helmsley's over seventy, and he isn't as strong as he thinks himself to be by a long way. He ought to have some one with him. But he wouldn't hear of my going. He can be right down obstinate if he likes, you know, sir, though he is one of the best gentlemen to work for that ever lived. But he will have his own way, and, bad or good, he takes it."
"Quite true!" murmured Sir Francis meditatively. "Very true!"
A silence fell between them.
"You say he isn't as strong as he thinks himself to be," began Vesey again, presently. "Surely he's wonderfully alert and active for his time of life?"
"Why, yes, sir, he's active enough, but it's all effort and nerve with him now. He makes up his mind like, and determines to be strong, in spite of being weak. Only six months ago the doctor told him to be careful, as his heart wasn't quite up to the mark."
"Ah!" ejaculated Sir Francis ruefully. "And did the doctor recommend any special treatment?"
"Yes, sir. Change of air and complete rest."
The lawyer's countenance cleared.
"Then you may depend upon it that's why he has gone away by himself, Benson," he said. "He wants change of air, rest, and different surroundings. And as he won't have letters forwarded, and doesn't give any future address, I shouldn't wonder if he starts off yachting somewhere----"
"Oh, no, sir, I don't think so," interposed Benson, "The yacht's in the dry dock, and I know he hasn't given any orders to have her got ready."
"Well, well, if he wants change and rest, he's wise to put a distance between himself and his business affairs"--and Sir Francis here looked round for his hat and walking-stick. "Take me, for example! Why, I'm a different man when I leave this office and go home to lunch! I'm going now. I don't think--I really don't think there is any cause for uneasiness, Benson. Your master will let us know if there's anything wrong with him."
"Oh, yes, sir, he'll be sure to do that. He said he would telegraph for me if he wanted me."
"Good! Now, if you get any news of him before I do, or if you are anxious that I should attend to any special matter, you'll always find me here till one o'clock. You know my private address?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's all right. And when I go down to my country place for the summer, you can come there whenever your business is urgent. I'll settle all expenses with you."
"Thank you, Sir Francis. Good-day!"
"Good-day! A pleasant holiday to you!"
Benson bowed his respectful thanks again, and retired.
Sir Francis Vesey, left alone, took his hat and gazed abstractedly into its silk-lined crown before putting it on his head. Then setting it aside, he drew Helmsley's letter from his pocket and read it through again. It ran as follows:--
"MY DEAR VESEY,--I had some rather bad news on the night of Miss Lucy Sorrel's birthday party. A certain speculation in which I had an interest has failed, and I have lost on the whole 'gamble.' The matter will not, however, affect my financial position. You have all your instructions in order as given to you when we last met, so I shall leave town with an easy mind. I am likely to be away for some time, and am not yet certain of my destination. Consider me, therefore, for the present as lost. Should I die suddenly, or at sickly leisure, I carry a letter on my person which will be conveyed to you, making you acquainted with the sad (?) event as soon as it occurs. And for all your kindly services in the way of both business and friendship, I owe you a vast debt of thanks, which debt shall be fully and gratefully acknowledged,--_when I make my Will_. I may possibly employ another lawyer than yourself for this purpose. But, for the immediate time, all my affairs are in your hands, as they have been for these twenty years or more. My business goes on as usual, of course; it is a wheel so well accustomed to regular motion that it can very well grind for a while without my personal supervision. And so far as my individual self is concerned, I feel the imperative necessity of rest and freedom. I go to find these, even if I lose myself in the endeavour. So farewell! And as old-fashioned folks used to say--'God be with you!' If there be any meaning in the phrase, it is conveyed to you in all sincerity by your old friend, "DAVID HELMSLEY."
"Cryptic, positively cryptic!" murmured Sir Francis, as he folded up the letter and put it by. "There's no clue to anything anywhere. What does he mean by a bad speculation?--a loss 'on the whole gamble'? I know--or at least I thought I knew--every number on which he had put his money. It won't affect his financial position, he says. I should think not! It would take a bigger Colossus than that of Rhodes to overshadow Helmsley in the market! But he's got some queer notion in his mind,--some scheme for finding an heir to his millions,--I'm sure he has! A fit of romance has seized him late in life,--he wants to be loved for himself alone,--which, of course, at his age, is absurd! No one loves old people, except, perhaps (in very rare cases), their children,--if the children are not hopelessly given over to self and the hour, which they generally are." He sighed, and his brows contracted. He had a spendthrift son and a "rapid" daughter, and he knew well enough how little he could depend upon them for either affection or respect.
"Old age is regarded as a sort of crime nowadays," he continued, apostrophising the dingy walls of his office, as he took his walking-stick and prepared to leave the premises--"thanks to the donkey-journalism of the period which brays down everything that is not like itself--mere froth and scum. And unlike our great classic teachers who held that old age was honourable and deserved the highest place in the senate, the present generation affects to consider a man well on the way to dotage after forty. God bless me!--what fools there are in this twentieth century!--what blatant idiots! Imagine national affairs carried on in the country by its young men! The Empire would soon became a mere football for general kicking! However, there's one thing in this Helmsley business that I'm glad of"--and his eyes twinkled--"I believe the Sorrels have lost their game! Positively, I think Miss Lucy has broken her line, and that the fish has gone _without_ her hook in its mouth! Old as he is, David is not too old to outwit a woman! I gave him a hint, just the slightest hint in the world,--and I think he's taken it. Anyhow, he's gone,--booked for Southampton. And from Southampton a man can 'ship himself all aboard of a ship,' like Lord Bateman in the ballad, and go anywhere. Anywhere, yes!--but in this case I wonder where he will go? Possibly to America--yet no!--I think not!" And Sir Francis, descending his office stairs, went out into the broad sunshine which flooded the city streets, continuing his inward reverie as he walked,--"I think not. From what he said the other night, I fancy not even the haunting memory of 'ole Virginny' will draw him back _there_. 'Consider me as lost,' he says. An odd notion! David Helmsley, one of the richest men in the whole of two continents, wishes to lose himself! Impossible! He's a marked multi-millionaire,--branded with the golden sign of unlimited wealth, and as well known as a London terminus! If he were 'lost' to-day, he'd be found to-morrow. As matters stand I daresay he'll turn up all fight in a month's time and I need not worry my head any more about him!"
With this determination Sir Francis went home to luncheon, and after luncheon duly appeared driving in the Park with Lady Vesey, like the attentive and obliging husband he ever was, despite the boredom which the "Row" and the "Ladies' Mile" invariably inflicted upon him,--yet every now and then before him there rose a mental image of his old friend "King David,"--grey, sad-eyed, and lonely--flitting past like some phantom in a dream, and wandering far away from the crowded vortex of London life, where his name was as honey to a swarm of bees, into some dim unreachable region of shadow and silence, with the brief farewell:
"Consider me as lost!"
CHAPTER V
Among the many wild and lovely tangles of foliage and flower which Nature and her subject man succeed in working out together after considerable conflict and argument, one of the most beautiful and luxuriant is a Somersetshire lane. Narrow and tortuous, fortified on either side with high banks of rough turf, topped by garlands of climbing wild-rose, bunches of corn-cockles and tufts of meadow-sweet, such a lane in midsummer is one of beauty's ways through the world,--a path, which if it lead to no more important goal than a tiny village or solitary farm, is, to the dreamer and poet, sufficiently entrancing in itself to seem a fairy road to fairyland. Here and there some grand elm or beech tree, whose roots have hugged the soil for more than a century, spreads out broad protecting branches all a-shimmer with green leaves,--between the uneven tufts of grass, the dainty "ragged robin" sprays its rose-pink blossoms contrastingly against masses of snowy star-wort and wild strawberry,--the hedges lean close together, as though accustomed to conceal the shy confidences of young lovers,--and from the fields beyond, the glad singing of countless skylarks, soaring one after the other into the clear pure air, strikes a wave of repeated melody from point to point of the visible sky. All among the delicate or deep indentures of the coast, where the ocean creeps softly inland with a caressing murmur, or scoops out caverns for itself among the rocks with perpetual roar and dash of foam, the glamour of the green extends,--the "lane runs down to meet the sea, carrying with it its garlands of blossoms, its branches of verdure, and all the odour and freshness of the woodlands and meadows, and when at last it drops to a conclusion in some little sandy bay or sparkling weir, it leaves an impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;--low down on the shoreline they come to an end,--and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he walks,--the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the day is fair,--the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the Somersetshire coast, are often very lonely,--they are dangerous to traffic, as no two ordinary sized vehicles can pass each other conveniently within so narrow a compass,--and in summer especially they are haunted by gypsies, "pea-pickers," and ill-favoured men and women of the "tramp" species, slouching along across country from Bristol to Minehead, and so over Countisbury Hill into Devon. One such questionable-looking individual there was, who,--in a golden afternoon of July, when the sun was beginning to decline towards the west,--paused in his slow march through the dust, which even in the greenest of hill and woodland ways is bound to accumulate thickly after a fortnight's lack of rain,--and with a sigh of fatigue, sat down at the foot of a tree to rest. He was an old man, with a thin weary face which was rendered more gaunt and haggard-looking by a ragged grey moustache and ugly stubble beard of some ten days' growth, and his attire suggested that he might possibly be a labourer dismissed from farm work for the heinous crime of old age, and therefore "on the tramp" looking out for a job. He wore a soft slouched felt hat, very much out of shape and weather-stained,--and when he had been seated for a few minutes in a kind of apathy of lassitude, he lifted the hat off, passing his hand through his abundant rough white hair in a slow tired way, as though by this movement he sought to soothe some teasing pain.
"I think," he murmured, addressing himself to a tiny brown bird which had alighted on a branch of briar-rose hard by, and was looking at him with bold and lively inquisitiveness,--"I think I have managed the whole thing very well! I have left no clue anywhere. My portmanteau will tell no tales, locked up in the cloak-room at Bristol. If it is ever sold with its contents 'to defray expenses,' nothing will be found in it but some unmarked clothes. And so far as all those who know me are concerned, every trace of me ends at Southampton. Beyond Southampton there is a blank, into which David Helmsley, the millionaire, has vanished. And David Helmsley, the tramp, sits here in his place!"
The little brown bird preened its wing, and glanced at him sideways intelligently, as much as to say: "I quite understand! You have become one of us,--a wanderer, taking no thought for the morrow, but letting to-morrow take thought for the things of itself. There is a bond of sympathy between me, the bird, and you, the man--we are brothers!"
A sudden smile illumined his face. The situation was novel, and to him enjoyable. He was greatly fatigued,--he had over-exerted himself during the past three or four days, walking much further than he had ever been accustomed to, and his limbs ached sorely--nevertheless, with the sense of rest and relief from strain, came a certain exhilaration of spirit, like the vivacious delight of a boy who has run away from school, and is defiantly ready to take all the consequences of his disobedience to the rules of discipline and order. For years he had wanted a "new" experience of life. No one would give him what he sought. To him the "social" round was ever the same dreary, heartless and witless thing, as empty under the sway of one king or queen as another, and as utterly profitless to peace or happiness as it has always been. The world of finance was equally uninteresting so far as he was concerned; he had exhausted it, and found it no more than a monotonous grind of gain which ended in a loathing of the thing gained. Others might and would consume themselves in fevers of avarice, and surfeits of luxury,--but for him such temporary pleasures were past. He desired a complete change,--a change of surroundings, a change of associations--and for this, what could be more excellent or more wholesome than a taste of poverty? In his time he had met men who, worn out with the constant fight of the body's materialism against the soul's idealism, had turned their backs for ever on the world and its glittering shows, and had shut themselves up as monks of "enclosed" or "silent" orders,--others he had known, who, rushing away from what we call civilisation, had encamped in the backwoods of America, or high up among the Rocky Mountains, and had lived the lives of primeval savages in their strong craving to assert a greater manliness than the streets of cities would allow them to enjoy,--and all were moved by the same mainspring of action,--the overpowering spiritual demand within themselves which urged them to break loose from cowardly conventions and escape from Sham. He could not compete with younger men in taking up wild sport and "big game" hunting in far lands, in order to give free play to the natural savage temperament which lies untamed at the root of every man's individual being,--and he had no liking for "monastic" immurements. But he longed for liberty,--liberty to go where he liked without his movements being watched and commented upon by a degraded "personal" press,--liberty to speak as he felt and do as he wished, without being compelled to weigh his words, or to consider his actions. Hence--he had decided on his present course, though how that course was likely to shape itself in its progress he had no very distinct idea. His actual plan was to walk to Cornwall, and there find out the native home of his parents, not so much for sentiment's sake as for the necessity of having a definite object or goal in view. And the reason of his determination to go "on the road," as it were, was simply that he wished to test for himself the actual happiness or misery experienced by the very poor as contrasted with the supposed joys of the very wealthy. This scheme had been working in his brain for the past year or more,--all his business arrangements had been made in such a way as to enable him to carry it out satisfactorily to himself without taking any one else into his confidence. The only thing that might possibly have deterred him from his quixotic undertaking would have been the moral triumph of Lucy Sorrel over the temptation he had held out to her. Had she been honest to her better womanhood,--had she still possessed the "child's heart," with which his remembrance and imagination had endowed her, he would have resigned every other thought save that of so smoothing the path of life for her that she might tread it easily to the end. But now that she had disappointed him, he had, so he told himself, done with fine illusions and fair beliefs for ever. And he had started on a lonely quest,--a search for something vague and intangible, the very nature of which he himself could not tell. Some glimmering ghost of a notion lurked in his mind that perhaps, during his self-imposed solitary ramblings, he might find some new and unexplored channel wherein his vast wealth might flow to good purpose after his death, without the trammels of Committee-ism and Red-Tape-ism. But he expected and formulated nothing,--he was more or less in a state of quiescence, awaiting adventures without either hope or fear. In the meantime, here he sat in the shady Somersetshire lane, resting,--the multi-millionaire whose very name shook the money-markets of the world, but who to all present appearances seemed no more than a tramp, footing it wearily along one of the many winding "short cuts" through the country between Somerset and Devon, and as unlike the actual self of him as known to Lombard Street and the Stock Exchange as a beggar is unlike a king.
"After all, it's quite as interesting as 'big game' shooting!" he said, the smile still lingering in his eyes. "I am after 'sport,'--in a novel fashion! I am on the lookout for new specimens of men and women,--real honest ones! I may find them,--I may not,--but the search will surely prove at least as instructive and profitable as if one went out to the Arctic regions for the purpose of killing innocent polar bears! Change and excitement are what every one craves for nowadays--I'm getting as much as I want--in my own way!"
He thought over the whole situation, and reviewed with a certain sense of interest and amusement his method of action since he left London. Benson, his valet, had packed his portmanteau, according to orders, with everything that was necessary for a short sea trip, and then had seen him off at the station for Southampton,--and to Southampton he had gone. Arrived there, he had proceeded to a hotel, where, under an assumed name, he had stayed the night. The next day he had left Southampton for Salisbury by train, and there staying another night, had left again for Bath and Bristol. On the latter journey he had "tipped" the guard heavily to keep his first-class compartment reserved to himself. This had been done; and the train being an express, stopping at very few stations, he had found leisure and opportunity to unpack his portmanteau and cut away every mark on his linen and other garments which could give the slightest clue to their possessor. When he had removed all possible trace of his identity on or in this one piece of luggage, he packed it up again, and on reaching Bristol, took it to the station's cloak-room, and there deposit |
18449-8 | ed it with the stated intention of calling back for it at the hour of the next train to London. This done, he stepped forth untrammelled, a free man. He had with him five hundred pounds in banknotes, and for a day or so was content to remain in Bristol at one of the best hotels, under an assumed name as before, while privately making such other preparations for his intended long "tramp" as he thought necessary. In one of the poorest quarters of the town he purchased a few second-hand garments such as might be worn by an ordinary day-labourer, saying to the dealer that he wanted to "rig out" a man who had just left hospital and who was going in for "field" work. The dealer saw nothing either remarkable or suspicious in this seemingly benevolent act of a kindly-looking well-dressed old gentleman, and sent him the articles he had purchased done up in a neat package and addressed to him at his hotel, by the name he had for the time assumed. When he left the hotel for good, he did so with nothing more than this neat package, which he carried easily in one hand by a loop of string. And so he began his journey, walking steadily for two or three hours,--then pausing to rest awhile,--and after rest, going on again. Once out of Bristol he was glad, and at certain lonely places, when the shadows of night fell, he changed all his garments one by one till he stood transformed as now he was. The clothes he was compelled to discard he got rid of by leaving them in unlikely holes and corners on the road,--as for example, at one place he filled the pockets of his good broadcloth coat with stones and dropped it into the bottom of an old disused well. The curious sense of guilt he felt when he performed this innocent act surprised as well as amused him.
"It is exactly as if I had murdered somebody and had sunk a body into the well instead of a coat!" he said--"and--perhaps I have! Perhaps I am killing my Self,--getting rid of my Self,--which would be a good thing, if I could only find Some one or Some thing better than my Self in my Self's place!"
When he had finally disposed of every article that could suggest any possibility of his ever having been clothed as a gentleman, he unripped the lining of his rough "workman's" vest, and made a layer of the banknotes he had with him between it and the cloth, stitching it securely over and over with coarse needle and thread, being satisfied by this arrangement to carry all his immediate cash hidden upon his person, while for the daily needs of hunger and thirst he had a few loose shillings and coppers in his pocket. He had made up his mind not to touch a single one of the banknotes, unless suddenly overtaken by accident or illness. When his bit of silver and copper came to an end, he meant to beg alms along the road and prove for himself how far it was true that human beings were in the main kind and compassionate, and ready to assist one another in the battle of life. With these ideas and many others in his mind, he started on his "tramp"--and during the first two or three days of it suffered acutely. Many years had passed since he had been accustomed to long sustained bodily exercise, and he was therefore easily fatigued. But by the time he reached the open country between the Quantocks and the Brendon Hills, he had got somewhat into training, and had begun to feel a greater lightness and ease as well as pleasure in walking. He had found it quite easy to live on very simple food,--in fact one of the principal charms of the strange "holiday" he had planned for his own entertainment was to prove for himself beyond all dispute that no very large amount of money is required to sustain a man's life and health. New milk and brown bread had kept him going bravely every day,--fruit was cheap and so was cheese, and all these articles of diet are highly nourishing, so that he had wanted for nothing. At night, the weather keeping steadily fine and warm, he had slept in the open, choosing some quiet nook in the woodland under a tree, or else near a haystack in the fields, and he had benefited greatly by thus breathing the pure air during slumber, and getting for nothing the "cure" prescribed by certain Artful Dodgers of the medical profession who take handfuls of guineas from credulous patients for what Mother Nature willingly gives gratis. And he was beginning to understand the joys of "loafing,"--so much so indeed that he felt a certain sympathy with the lazy varlet who prefers to stroll aimlessly about the country begging his bread rather than do a stroke of honest work. The freedom of such a life is self-evident,--and freedom is the broadest and best way of breathing on earth. To "tramp the road" seems to the well-dressed, conventional human being a sorry life; but it may be questioned whether, after all, he with his social trammels and household cares, is not leading a sorrier one. Never in all his brilliant, successful career till now had David Helmsley, that king of modern finance, realised so intensely the beauty and peace of being alone with Nature,--the joy of feeling the steady pulse of the Spirit of the Universe throbbing through one's own veins and arteries,--the quiet yet exultant sense of knowing instinctively beyond all formulated theory or dogma, that one is a vital part of the immortal Entity, as indestructible as Itself. And a great calm was gradually taking possession of his soul,--a smoothing of all the waves of his emotional and nervous temperament. Under this mystic touch of unseen and uncomprehended heavenly tenderness, all sorrows, all disappointments, all disillusions sank out of sight as though they had never been. It seemed to him that he had put away his former life for ever, and that another life had just begun,--and his brain was ready and eager to rid itself of old impressions in order to prepare for new. Nothing of much moment had occurred to him as yet. A few persons had said "good-day " or "good-night" to him in passing,--a farmer had asked him to hold his horse for a quarter of an hour, which he had done, and had thereby earned threepence,--but he had met with no interesting or exciting incidents which could come under the head of "adventures." Nevertheless he was gathering fresh experiences,--experiences which all tended to show him how the best and brightest part of life is foolishly wasted and squandered by the modern world in a mad rush for gain.
"So very little money really suffices for health, contentment, and harmless pleasure!" he thought. "The secret of our growing social mischief does not lie with the natural order of created things, but solely with ourselves. We will not set any reasonable limit to our desires. If we would, we might live longer and be far happier!"
He stretched out his limbs easefully, and dropped into a reclining posture. The tree he had chosen to rest under was a mighty elm, whose broad branches, thick with leaves, formed a deep green canopy through which the sunbeams filtered in flecks and darts of gold. A constant twittering of birds resounded within this dome of foliage, and a thrush whistled melodious phrases from one of the highest boughs. At his feet was spread a carpet of long soft moss, interspersed with wild thyme and groups of delicate harebells, and the rippling of a tiny stream into a hollow cavity of stones made pleasant and soothing music. Charmed with the tranquillity and loveliness of his surroundings, he determined to stay here for a couple of hours, reading, and perhaps sleeping, before resuming his journey. He had in his pocket a shilling edition of Keats's poems which he had bought in Bristol by way of a silent companion to his thoughts, and he took it out and opened it now, reading and re-reading some of the lines most dear and familiar to him, when, as a boy, he had elected this poet, so wickedly done to death ere his prime by commonplace critics, as one of his chief favourites among the highest Singers. And his lips, half-murmuring, followed the verse which tells of that
"untrodden region of the mind, Where branchëd thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain, Instead of pines, shall murmur in the wind; Far, far around shall these dark clustered trees, Fledge the wild ridgëd mountains steep by steep, And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds and bees, The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep; And in the midst of this wide quietness, A rosy sanctuary will I dress With the wreathed trellis of a working brain, With buds and bells and stars without a name, With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign, Who, breeding flowers, will never breed the same; And there shall be for thee all soft delight, That shadowy thought can win, A bright torch and a casement ope at night, To let the warm Love in!"
A slight sigh escaped him.
"How perfect is that stanza!" he said. "How I used to believe in all it suggested! And how, when I was a young man, my heart was like that 'casement ope at night, to let the warm Love in!' But Love never came,--only a spurious will-o'-the-wisp imitation of Love. I wonder if many people in this world are not equally deceived with myself in their conceptions of this divine passion? All the poets and romancists may be wrong,--and Lucy Sorrel, with her hard materialism encasing her youth like a suit of steel armour, may be right. Boys and girls 'love,' so they say,--men and women 'love' and marry--and with marriage, the wondrous light that led them on and dazzled them, seems, in nine cases out of ten, to suddenly expire! Taking myself as an example, I cannot say that actual marriage made me happy. It was a great disillusion; a keen disappointment. The birth of my sons certainly gave me some pleasure as well as latent hope, for as little children they were lovable and lovely; but as boys--as men--what bitterness they brought me! Were they the heirs of Love? Nay!--surely Love never generated such callous hearts! They were the double reflex of their mother's nature, grasping all and giving nothing. Is there no such virtue on earth as pure unselfish Love?--love that gives itself freely, unasked, without hope of advantage or reward--and without any personal motive lurking behind its offered tenderness?"
He turned over the pages of the book he held, with a vague idea that some consoling answer to his thoughts would flash out in a stray line or stanza, like a beacon lighting up the darkness of a troubled sea. But no such cheering word met his eyes. Keats is essentially the poet of the young, and for the old he has no comfort. Sensuous, passionate, and almost cloying in the excessive sweetness of his amorous muse, he offers no support to the wearied spirit,--no sense of strength or renewal to the fagged brain. He does not grapple with the hard problems of life; and his mellifluous murmurings of delicious fantasies have no place in the poignant griefs and keen regrets of those who have passed the meridian of earthly hopes, and who see the shadows of the long night closing in. And David Helmsley realised this all suddenly, with something of a pang.
"I am too old for Keats," he said in a half-whisper to the leafy branches that bowed their weight of soft green shelteringly over him. "Too old! Too old for a poet in whose imaginative work I vised to take such deep delight. There is something strange in this, for I cherished a belief that fine poetry would fit every time and every age, and that no matter how heavy the burden of years might be, I should always be able to forget myself and my sorrows in a poet's immortal creations. But I have left Keats behind me. He was with me in the sunshine,--he does not follow me into the shade."
A cloud of melancholy darkened his worn features, and he slowly closed the book. He felt that it was from henceforth a sealed letter. For him the half-sad, half-scornful musings of Omar Khayyám were more fitting, such as the lines that run thus:--
"Fair wheel of heaven, silvered with many a star, Whose sickly arrows strike us from afar, Never a purpose to my soul was dear, But heaven crashed down my little dream to mar.
Never a bird within my sad heart sings But heaven a flaming stone of thunder flings; O valiant wheel! O most courageous heaven, To leave me lonely with the broken wings!"
tinging pain, as of tears that rose but would not fall, troubled his eyes. He passed his hand across them, and leaned back against the sturdy trunk of the elm which served him for the moment as a protecting haven of rest. The gentle murmur of the bees among the clover, the soft subdued twittering of the birds, and the laughing ripple of the little stream hard by, all combined to make one sweet monotone of sound which lulled his senses to a drowsiness that gradually deepened into slumber. He made a pathetic figure enough, lying fast asleep there among the wilderness of green,--a frail and apparently very poor old man, adrift and homeless, without a friend in the world. The sun sank, and a crimson after-glow spread across the horizon from west to east, the rich colours flung up from the centre of the golden orb merging by slow degrees into that pure pearl-grey which marks the long and lovely summer twilight of English skies. The air was very still, not so much as the rumble of a distant cart wheel disturbing the silence. Presently, however, the slow shuffle of hesitating footsteps sounded through the muffling thickness of the dust, and a man made his appearance on the top of the little rising where the lane climbed up into a curve of wild-rose hedge and honeysuckle which almost hid the actual road from view. He was not a prepossessing object in the landscape; short and squat, unkempt and dirty, and clad in rough garments which were almost past hanging together, he looked about as uncouth and ugly a customer as one might expect to meet anywhere on a lonely road at nightfall. He carried a large basket on his back, seemingly full of weeds,--the rope which supported it was tied across his chest, and he clasped this rope with both hands crossed in the middle, after the fashion of a praying monk. Smoking a short black pipe, he trudged along, keeping his eyes fixed on the ground with steady and almost surly persistence, till arriving at the tree where Helmsley lay, he paused, and lifting his head stared long and curiously at the sleeping man. Then, unclasping his hands, he lowered his basket to the ground and set it down. Stealthily creeping close up to Helmsley's side, he examined the prone figure from head to foot with quick and eager scrutiny. Spying the little volume of Keats on the grass where it had dropped from the slumberer's relaxed hand, he took it up gingerly, turning over its pages with grimy thumb and finger.
"Portry!" he ejaculated. "Glory be good to me! 'E's a reg'ler noddy none-such! An' measly old enuff to know better!"
He threw the book on the grass again with a sniff of contempt. At that moment Helmsley stirred, and opening his eyes fixed them full and inquiringly on the lowering face above him.
"'Ullo, gaffer! Woke up, 'ave yer?" said the man gruffly. "Off yer lay?"
Helmsley raised himself on one elbow, looking a trifle dazed.
"Off my what?" he murmured. "I didn't quite hear you----?"
"Oh come, stow that!" said the man. "You dunno what I'm talkin' about; that's plain as a pike. _You_ aint used to the road! Where d'ye come from?"
"I've walked from Bristol," he answered--"And you're quite right,--I'm not used to the road."
The man looked at him and his hard face softened. Pushing back his tattered cap from his brows he showed his features more openly, and a smile, half shrewd, half kindly, made them suddenly pleasant.
"Av coorse you're not!" he declared. "Glory be good to me! I've tramped this bit o' road for years, an' never come across such a poor old chuckle-headed gammer as you sleepin' under a tree afore! Readin' portry an' droppin' to by-by over it! The larst man as iver I saw a' readin' portry was what they called a 'Serious Sunday' man, an' 'e's doin' time now in Portland."
Helmsley smiled. He was amused;--his "adventures," he thought, were beginning. To be called "a poor old chuckle-headed gammer" was a new and almost delightful experience.
"Portland's an oncommon friendly place," went on his uninvited companion. "Once they gits ye, they likes ye to stop. 'Taint like the fash'nable quality what says to their friends: 'Do-ee come an' stay wi' me, loveys!' wishin' all the while as they wouldn't. Portland takes ye willin', whether ye likes it or not, an' keeps ye so fond that ye can't git away nohow. Oncommon 'ospitable Portland be!"
And he broke into a harsh laugh. Then he glanced at Helmsley again with a more confiding and favourable eye.
"Ye seems a 'spectable sort," he said. "What's wrong wi' ye? Out o' work?"
Helmsley nodded.
"Turned off, eh? Too old?"
"That's about it!" he answered.
"Well, ye do look a bit of a shivery-shake,--a kind o' not-long-for-this-world," said the man. "Howsomiver, we'se be all 'elpless an' 'omeless soon, for the Lord hisself don't stop a man growin' old, an' under the new ways o' the world, it's a reg'lar crime to run past forty. I'm sixty, an' I gits my livin' my own way, axin' nobody for the kind permission. _That's_ my fortin!"
And he pointed to the basket of weedy stuff which he had just set down. Helmsley looked at it with some curiosity.
"What's in it?" he asked.
"What's in it? What's _not_ in it!" And the man gave a gesture of mingled pride and defiance. "There's all what the doctors makes their guineas out of with their purr-escriptions, for they can't purr-escribe no more than is in that there basket without they goes to minerals. An' minerals is rank poison to ivery 'uman body. But so far as 'erbs an' seeds, an' precious stalks an' flowers is savin' grace for man an' beast, Matthew Peke's got 'em all in there. An' Matthew Peke wouldn't be the man he is, if he didn't know where to find 'em better'n any livin' soul iver born! Ah!--an' there aint a toad in a hole hoppin' out between Quantocks an' Cornwall as hasn't seen Matthew Peke gatherin' the blessin' an' health o' the fields at rise o' sun an' set o' moon, spring, summer, autumn, ay, an' even winter, all the year through!"
Helmsley became interested.
"And you are the man!" he said questioningly--"You are Matthew Peke?"
"I am! An' proud so ter be! An' you--'ave yer got a name for the arskin'?"
"Why, certainly!" And Helmsley's pale face flushed. "My name is David."
"Chrisen name? Surname?"
"Both."
Matthew Peke shook his head.
"'Twon't fadge!" he declared. "It don't sound right. It's like th' owld Bible an' the Book o' Kings where there's nowt but Jews; an' Jews is the devil to pay wheriver you finds 'em!"
"I'm not a Jew," said Helmsley, smiling.
"Mebbe not--mebbe not--but yer name's awsome like it. An' if ye put it short, like D. David, that's just Damn David an' nothin' plainer. Aint it?"
Helmsley laughed.
"Exactly!" he said--"You're right! Damn David suits me down to the ground!"
Peke looked at him dubiously, as one who is not quite sure of his man.
"You're a rum old sort!" he said; "an' I tell ye what it is--you're as tired as a dog limpin' on three legs as has nipped his fourth in a weasel-trap. Wheer are ye goin' on to?"
"I don't know," answered Helmsley--"I'm a stranger to this part of the country. But I mean to tramp it to the nearest village. I slept out in the open yesterday,--I think I'd like a shelter over me to-night."
"Got any o' the King's pictures about ye?" asked Peke.
Helmsley looked, as he felt, bewildered.
"The King's pictures?" he echoed--"You mean----?"
"This!" and Peke drew out of his tattered trouser pocket a dim and blackened sixpence--"'Ere 'e is, as large as life, a bit bald about the top o' 'is blessed old 'ead, Glory be good to 'im, but as useful as if all 'is 'air was still a blowin' an' a growin'! Aint that the King's picture, D. David? Don't it say 'Edwardus VII. D. G. Britt.,' which means Edward the Seventh, thanks be to God Britain? Don't it?"
"It _do_!" replied Helmsley emphatically, taking a fantastic pleasure in the bad grammar of his reply. "I've got a few more pictures of the same kind," and he took out two or three loose shillings and pennies--"Can we get a night's lodging about here for that?"
"Av coorse we can! I'll take ye to a place where ye'll be as welcome as the flowers in May with Matt Peke interroducin' of ye. Two o' them thank-God Britts in silver will set ye up wi' a plate o' wholesome food an' a clean bed at the 'Trusty Man.' It's a pub, but Miss Tranter what keeps it is an old maid, an' she's that proud o' the only 'Trusty Man' she ever 'ad that she calls it an '_O_tel!"
He grinned good-humouredly at what he considered his own witticism concerning the little weakness of Miss Tranter, and proceeded to shoulder his basket.
"_You_ aint proud, are ye?" he said, as he turned his ferret-brown eyes on Helmsley inquisitively.
Helmsley, who had, quite unconsciously to himself, drawn up his spare figure in his old habitual way of standing very erect, with that composed air of dignity and resolution which those who knew him personally in business were well accustomed to, started at the question.
"Proud!" he exclaimed--"I? What have I to be proud of? I'm the most miserable old fellow in the world, my friend! You may take my word for that! There's not a soul that cares a button whether I live or die! I'm seventy years of age--out of work, and utterly wretched and friendless! Why the devil should _I_ be proud?"
"Well, if ye never was proud in yer life, ye can be now," said Peke condescendingly, "for I tell ye plain an' true that if Matt Peke walks with a tramp on this road, every one round the Quantocks knows as how that tramp aint altogether a raskill! I've took ye up on trust as 'twere, likin' yer face for all that it's thin an' mopish,--an' steppin' in wi' me to the 'Trusty Man' will mebbe give ye a character. Anyways, I'll do my best for ye!"
"Thank you," said Helmsley simply.
Again Peke looked at him, and again seemed troubled. Then, stuffing his pipe full of tobacco, he lit it and stuck it sideways between his teeth.
"Now come along!" he said. "You're main old, but ye must put yer best foot foremost all the same. We've more'n an hour's trampin' up hill an' down dale, an' the dew's beginnin' to fall. Keep goin' slow an' steady--I'll give ye a hand."
For a moment Helmsley hesitated. This shaggy, rough, uncouth herb-gatherer evidently regarded him as very feeble and helpless, and, out of a latent kindliness of nature, wished to protect him and see him to some safe shelter for the night. Nevertheless, he hated the position. Old as he knew himself to be, he resented being pitied for his age, while his mind was yet so vigorous and his heart felt still so warm and young. Yet the commonplace fact remained that he was very tired,--very worn out, and conscious that only a good rest would enable him to continue his journey with comfort. Moreover, his experiences at the "Trusty Man" might prove interesting. It was best to take what came in his way, even though some episodes should possibly turn out less pleasing than instructive. So putting aside all scruples, he started to walk beside his ragged comrade of the road, finding, with some secret satisfaction, that after a few paces his own step was light and easy compared to the heavy shuffling movement with which Peke steadily trudged along. Sweet and pungent odours of the field and woodland floated from the basket of herbs as it swung slightly to and fro on its bearer's shoulders, and amid the slowly darkening shadows of evening, a star of sudden silver brilliance sparkled out in the sky.
"Yon's the first twinkler," said Peke, seeing it at once, though his gaze was apparently fixed on the ground. "The love-star's allus up early o' nights to give the men an' maids a chance!"
"Yes,--Venus is the evening star just now," rejoined Helmsley, half-absently.
"Stow Venus! That's a reg'lar fool's name," said Peke surlily. "Where did ye git it from? That aint no Venus,--that's just the love-star, an' it'll be nowt else in these parts till the world-without-end-amen!"
Helmsley made no answer. He walked on patiently, his limbs trembling a little with fatigue and nervous exhaustion. But Peke's words had started the old dream of his life again into being,--the latent hope within him, which though often half-killed, was not yet dead, flamed up like newly kindled vital fire in his mind,--and he moved as in a dream, his eyes fixed on the darkening heavens and the brightening star.
CHAPTER VI
They plodded on together side by side for some time in unbroken silence. At last, after a short but stiff climb up a rough piece of road which terminated in an eminence commanding a wide and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, they paused. The sea lay far below them, dimly covered by the gathering darkness, and the long swish and roll of the tide could be heard sweeping to and from the shore like the grave and graduated rhythm of organ music.
"We'd best 'ave a bit of a jabber to keep us goin'," said Peke, then--"Jabberin' do pass time, as the wimin can prove t' ye; an' arter such a jumblegut lane as this, it'll seem less lonesome. We're off the main road to towns an' sich like--this is a bye, an' 'ere it stops. We'll 'ave to git over yon stile an' cross the fields--'taint an easy nor clean way, but it's the best goin'. We'll see the lights o' the 'Trusty Man' just over the brow o' the next hill."
Helmsley drew a long breath, and sat down on a stone by the roadside. Peke surveyed him critically.
"Poor old gaffer! Knocked all to pieces, aint ye! Not used to the road? Glory be good to me! I should think ye wornt! Short in yer wind an' weak on yer pins! I'd as soon see my old grandad trampin' it as you. Look 'ere! Will ye take a dram out o' this 'ere bottle?"
He held up the bottle he spoke of,--it was black, and untemptingly dirty. Yet there was such a good-natured expression in the man's eyes, and so much honest solicitude written on his rough bearded face, that Helmsley felt it would be almost like insulting him to refuse his invitation.
"Tell me what's in it first!" he said, smiling.
"'Taint whisky," said Peke. "And 'taint brandy neither. _Nor_ rum. _Nor_ gin. Nor none o' them vile stuffs which brewers makes as arterwards goes to Parl'ment on the profits of 'avin' poisoned their consti_too_ants. 'Tis nowt but just yerb wine."
"Yerb wine? Wine made of herbs?"
"That's it! 'Erbs or yerbs--I aint pertikler which--I sez both. This,"--and he shook the bottle he held vigorously--"is genuine yerb wine--an' made as I makes it, what do the Wise One say of it? 'E sez:--'It doth strengthen the heart of a man mightily, and refresheth the brain; drunk fasting, it braceth up the sinews and maketh the old feel young; it is of rare virtue to expel all evil humours, and if princes should drink of it oft it would be but an ill service to the world, as they might never die!'"
Peke recited these words slowly and laboriously; it was evident that he had learned them by heart, and that the effort of remembering them correctly was more or less painful to him.
Helmsley laughed, and stretched out his hand.
"Give it over here!" he said. "It's evidently just the stuff for me. How much shall I take at one go?"
Peke uncorked the precious fluid with care, smelt it, and nodded appreciatively.
"Swill it all if ye like," he remarked graciously. "'Twont hurt ye, an' there's more where that came from. It's cheap enuff, too--nature don't keep it back from no man. On'y there aint a many got sense enuff to thank the Lord when it's offered."
As he thus talked, Helmsley took the bottle from him and tasted its contents. The "yerb wine" was delicious. More grateful to his palate than Chambertin or Clos Vougeot, it warmed and invigorated him, and he took a long draught, Matthew Peke watching him drink it with great satisfaction.
"Let the yerbs run through yer veins for two or three minits, an' ye'll step across yon fields as light as a bird 'oppin' to its nest," he declared. "Talk o' tonics,--there's more tonic in a handful o' green stuff growin' as the Lord makes it to grow, than all the purr-escriptions what's sent out o' them big 'ouses in 'Arley Street, London, where the doctors sits from ten to two like spiders waitin' for flies, an' gatherin' in the guineas for lookin' at fools' tongues. Glory be good to me! If all the world were as sick as it's silly, there'd be nowt wantin' to 't but a grave an' a shovel!"
Helmsley smiled, and taking another pull at the black bottle, declared himself much better and ready to go on. He was certainly refreshed, and the weary aching of his limbs which had made every step of the road painful and difficult to him, was gradually passing off.
"You are very good to me," he said, as he returned the remainder of the "yerb wine" to its owner. "I wonder why?"
Peke took a draught of his mixture before replying. Then corking the bottle, he thrust it in his pocket.
"Ye wonders why?" And he uttered a sound between a grunt and a chuckle--"Ye may do that! I wonders myself!"
And, giving his basket a hitch, he resumed his slow trudging movement onward.
"You see," pursued Helmsley, keeping up the pace beside him, and beginning to take pleasure in the conversation--"I may be anything or anybody----"
"Ye may that," agreed Peke, his eyes fixed as usual on the ground. "Ye may be a jail-bird or a missioner,--they'se much of a muchity, an' goes on the road lookin' quite simple like, an' the simpler they seems the deeper they is. White 'airs an' feeble legs 'elps 'em along considerable,--nowt's better stock-in-trade than tremblin' shins. Or ye might be a War-office neglect,--ye looks a bit set that way."
"What's a War-office neglect?" asked Helmsley, laughing.
"One o' them totterin' old chaps as was in the Light Brigade," answered Peke. "There's no end to 'em. They'se all over every road in the country. All of 'em fought wi' Lord Cardigan, an' all o' 'em's driven to starve by an ungrateful Gov'ment. They won't be all dead an' gone till a hundred years 'as rolled away, an' even then I shouldn't wonder if one or two was still left on the tramp a-pipin' his little 'arf-a-league onard tale o' woe to the first softy as forgits the date o' the battle." Here he gave an inquisitive side-glance at his companion. "But you aint quite o' the Balaclava make an' colour. Yer shoulders is millingterry, but yer 'ead is business. Ye might be a gentleman if 'twornt for yer clothes."
Helmsley heard this definition of himself without flinching.
"I might be a thief," he said--"or an escaped convict. You've been kind to me without knowing whether I am one or the other, or both. And I want to know why?"
Peke stopped in his walk. They had come to the stile over which the way lay across the fields, and he rested himself and his basket for a moment against it.
"Why?" he repeated,--then suddenly raising one hand, he whispered, "Listen! Listen to the sea!"
The evening had now almost closed in, and all around them the country lay dark and solitary, broken here and there by tall groups of trees which at night looked like sable plumes, standing stiff and motionless in the stirless summer air. Thousands of stars flashed out across this blackness, throbbing in their orbits with a quick pulsation as of uneasy hearts beating with nameless and ungratified longing. And through the tense silence came floating a long, sweet, passionate cry,--a shivering moan of pain that touched the edge of joy,--a song without words, of pleading and of prayer, as of a lover, who, debarred from the possession of the beloved, murmurs his mingled despair and hope to the unsubstantial dream of his own tortured soul. The sea was calling to the earth,--calling to her in phrases of eloquent and urgent music,--caressing her pebbly shores with winding arms of foam, and showering kisses of wild spray against her rocky bosom. "If I could come to thee! If thou couldst come to me!" was the burden of the waves,--the ceaseless craving of the finite for the infinite, which is, and ever shall be, the great chorale of life. The shuddering sorrow of that low rhythmic boom of the waters rising and falling fathoms deep under cliffs which the darkness veiled from view, awoke echoes from the higher hills around, and David Helmsley, lifting his eyes to the countless planet-worlds sprinkled thick as flowers in the patch of sky immediately above him, suddenly realised with a pang how near he was to death,--how very near to that final drop into the unknown where the soul of man is destined to find All or Nothing! He trembled,--not with fear,--but with a kind of anger at himself for having wasted so much of his life. What had he done, with all his toil and pains? He had gathered a multitude of riches. Well, and then? Then,--why then, and now, he had found riches but vain getting. Life and Death were still, as they have always been, the two supreme Facts of the universe. Life, as ever, asserted itself with an insistence demanding something far more enduring than the mere possession of gold, and the power which gold brings. And Death presented its unwelcome aspect in the same perpetual way as the Last Recorder who, at the end of the day, closes up accounts with a sum-total paid exactly in proportion to the work done. No more, and no less. And with Helmsley these accounts were reaching a figure against which his whole nature fiercely rebelled,--the figure of Nought, showing no value in his life's efforts or its results. And the sound of the sea to-night in his ears was more full of reproach than peace.
"When the water moans like that," said Peke softly, under his breath, "it seems to me as if all the tongues of drowned sailors 'ad got into it an' was beggin' of us not to forget 'em lyin' cold among the shells an' weed. An' not only the tongues o' them seems a-speakin' an' a-cryin', but all the stray bones o' them seems to rattle in the rattle o' the foam. It goes through ye sharp, like a knife cuttin' a sour apple; an' it's made me wonder many a time why we was all put 'ere to git drowned or smashed or choked off or beat down somehows just when we don't expect it. Howsomiver, the Wise One sez it's all right!"
"And who is the Wise One?" asked Helmsley, trying to rouse himself from the heavy thoughts engendered in his mind by the wail of the sea.
"The Wise One was a man what wrote a book a 'underd years ago about 'erbs," said Peke. "'_The Way o' Long Life_,' it's called, an' my father an' grandfather and great-grandfather afore 'em 'ad the book, an' I've got it still, though I shows it to nobody, for nobody but me wouldn't unnerstand it. My father taught me my letters from it, an' I could spell it out when I was a kid--I've growed up on it, an' it's all I ever reads. It's 'ere"--and he touched his ragged vest. "I trusts it to keep me goin' 'ale an' 'arty till I'm ninety,--an' that's drawin' it mild, for my father lived till a 'underd, an' then on'y went through slippin' on a wet stone an' breakin' a bone in 'is back; an' my grandfather saw 'is larst Christmas at a 'underd an' ten, an' was up to kissin' a wench under the mistletoe, 'e was sich a chirpin' old gamecock. 'E didn't look no older'n you do now, an' you're a chicken compared to 'im. You've wore badly like, not knowin' the use o' yerbs."
"That's it!" said Helmsley, now following his companion over the stile and into the dark dewy fields beyond--"I need the advice of the Wise One! Has he any remedy for old age, I wonder?"
"Ay, now there ye treads on my fav'rite corn!" and Peke shook his head with a curious air of petulance. "That's what I'm a-lookin' for day an' night, for the Wise One 'as got a bit in 'is book which 'e's cropped out o' another Wise One's savin's,--a chap called Para-Cel-Sus"--and Peke pronounced this name in three distinct and well-divided syllables. "An this is what it is: 'Take the leaves of the Daura, which prevent those who use it from dying for a hundred and twenty years. In the same way the flower of the _secta croa_ brings a hundred years to those who use it, whether they be of lesser or of longer age.' I've been on the 'unt for the 'Daura' iver since I was twenty, an' I've arskt ivery 'yerber I've ivir met for the 'Secta Croa,' an' all I've 'ad sed to me is 'Go 'long wi' ye for a loony jackass! There aint no sich thing.' But jackass or no, I'm of a mind to think there _is_ such things as both the 'Daura' an' the 'Secta Croa,' if I on'y knew the English of 'em. An' s'posin' I ivir found 'em----"
"You would become that most envied creature of the present age,--a millionaire," said Helmsley; "you could command your own terms for the wonderful leaves,--you would cease to tramp the road or to gather herbs, and you would live in luxury like a king!"
"Not I!"--and Peke gave a grunt of contempt. "Kings aint my notion of 'appiness nor 'onesty neither. They does things often for which some o' the poor 'ud be put in quod, an' no mercy showed 'em, an' yet 'cos they're kings they gits off. An' I aint great on millionaires neither. They'se mis'able ricketty coves, all gone to pot in their in'ards through grubbin' money an' eatin' of it like, till ivery other kind o' food chokes 'em. There's a chymist in London what pays me five shillings an ounce for a little green yerb I knows on, cos' it's the on'y med'cine as keeps a millionaire customer of 'is a-goin'. I finds the yerb, an' the chymist gits the credit. I gits five shillin', an' the chymist gits a guinea. _That's_ all right! _I_ don't mind! I on'y gathers,--the chymist, 'e's got to infuse the yerb, distil an' bottle it. I'm paid my price, an 'e's paid 'is. All's fair in love an' war!"
He trudged on, his footsteps now rendered almost noiseless by the thick grass on which he trod. The heavy dew sparkled on every blade, and here and there the pale green twinkle of a glow-worm shone like a jewel dropped from a lady's gown. Helmsley walked beside his companion at an even pace,--the "yerb wine" had undoubtedly put strength in him and he was almost unconscious of his former excessive fatigue. He was interested in Peke's "jabber," and wondered, somewhat enviously, why such a man as this, rough, ragged, and uneducated, should seem to possess a contentment such as he had never known.
"Millionaires is gin'rally fools," continued Peke; "they buys all they wants, an' then they aint got nothin' more to live for. They gits into motor-cars an' scours the country, but they never sees it. They never 'ears the birds singin', an' they misses all the flowers. They never smells the vi'lets nor the mayblossom--they on'y gits their own petrol stench wi' the flavour o' the dust mixed in. Larst May I was a-walkin' in the lanes o' Devon, an' down the 'ill comes a motor-car tearin' an' scorchin' for all it was worth, an' bang went somethin' at the bottom o' the thing, an' it stops suddint. Out jumps a French chauffy, parlyvooin' to hisself, an' out jumps the man what owns it an' takes off his goggles. 'This is Devonshire, my man?' sez 'e to me. 'It is,' I sez to 'im. An' then the cuckoo started callin' away over the trees. 'What's that?' sez 'e lookin' startled like. 'That's the cuckoo,' sez I. An' he takes off 'is 'at an' rubs 'is 'ead, which was a' fast goin' bald. 'Dear, dear me!' sez 'e--'I 'aven't 'eard the cuckoo since I was a boy!' An' he rubs 'is 'ead again, an' laughs to hisself--'Not since I was a boy!' 'e sez. 'An' that's the cuckoo, is it? Dear, dear me!' 'You 'aven't bin much in the country p'r'aps?' sez I. 'I'm always in the country,' 'e sez--'I motor everywhere, but I've missed the cuckoo somehow!' An' then the chauffy puts the machine right, an' he jumps in an' gives me a shillin'. 'Thank-ye, my man!' sez 'e--'I'm glad you told me 'twas a _real_ cuckoo!' Hor--er--hor--er--hor--er!" And Peke gave vent to a laugh peculiarly his own. "Mebbe 'e thought I'd got a Swiss clock with a sham cuckoo workin' it in my basket! 'I'm glad,' sez 'e, 'you told me 'twas a _real_ cuckoo!' Hor--er--hor--er--hor--er!"
The odd chuckling sounds of merriment which were slowly jerked forth as it were from Peke's husky windpipe, were droll enough in themselves to be somewhat infectious, and Helmsley laughed as he had not done for many days.
"Ay, there's a mighty sight of tringum-trangums an' nonsense i' the world," went on Peke, still occasionally giving vent to a suppressed "Hor--er--hor"--"an' any amount o' Tom Conys what don't know a real cuckoo from a sham un'. Glory be good to me! Think o' the numskulls as goes in for pendlecitis! There's a fine name for ye! Pendlecitis! Hor--er--hor! All the fash'nables 'as got it, an' all the doctors 'as their knives sharpened an' ready to cut off the remains o' the tail we 'ad when we was all 'appy apes together! Hor--er--hor! An' the bit o' tail 's curled up in our in'ards now where it ain't got no business to be. Which shows as 'ow Natur' don't know 'ow to do it, seein' as if we 'adn't wanted a tail, she'd a' took it sheer off an' not left any behind. But the doctors thinks they knows a darn sight better'n Natur', an' they'll soon be givin' lessons in the makin' o' man to the Lord A'mighty hisself! Hor--er--hor! Pendlecitis! That's a precious monkey's tail, that there! In my grandfather's day we didn't 'ear 'bout no monkey's tails,--'twas just a chill an' inflammation o' the in'ards, an' a few yerbs made into a tea an' drunk 'ot fastin', cured it in twenty-four hours. But they've so many new-fangled notions nowadays, they've forgot all the old 'uns. There's the cancer illness,--people goes off all over the country now from cancer as never used to in my father's day, an' why? 'Cos they'se gittin' too wise for Nature's own cure. Nobody thinks o' tryin' agrimony,--water agrimony--some calls it water hemp an' bastard agrimony--'tis a thing that flowers in this month an' the next,--a brown-yellow blossom on a purple stalk, an' ye find it in cold places, in ponds an' ditches an' by runnin' waters. Make a drink of it, an' it'll mend any cancer, if 'taint too far gone. An' a cancer that's outside an' not in, 'ull clean away beautiful wi' the 'elp o' red clover. Even the juice o' nettles, which is common enough, drunk three times a day will kill any germ o' cancer, while it'll set up the blood as fresh an' bright as iver. But who's a-goin' to try common stuff like nettles an' clover an' water hemp, when there's doctors sittin' waitin' wi' knives an' wantin' money for cuttin' up their patients an' 'urryin' 'em into kingdom-come afore their time! Glory be good to me! What wi' doctors an' 'omes an' nusses, an' all the fuss as a sick man makes about hisself in these days, I'd rather be as I am, Matt Peke, a-wanderin' by hill an' dale, an' lyin' down peaceful to die under a tree when my times comes, than take any part wi' the pulin' cowards as is afraid o' cold an' fever an' wet feet an' the like, just as if they was poor little shiverin' mice instead o' men. Take 'em all round, the wimin's the bravest at bearin' pain,--they'll smile while they'se burnin' so as it sha'n't ill-convenience anybody. Wonderful sufferers, is wimin!"
"Yet they are selfish enough sometimes," said Helmsley, quickly.
"Selfish? Wheer was ye born, D. David?" queried Peke--"An' what wimin 'ave ye know'd? Town or country?"
Helmsley was silent.
"Arsk no questions an' ye'll be told no lies!" commented Peke, with a chuckle. "I sees! Ye've bin a gay old chunk in yer time, mebbe! An' it's the wimin as goes in for gay old chunks as ye've made all yer larnin of. But they ain't wimin--not as the country knows 'em. Country wimin works all day an' as often as not dandles a babby all night,--they've not got a minnit but what they aint a-troublin' an' a-worryin' 'bout 'usband or childer, an' their faces is all writ over wi' the curse o' the garden of Eden. Selfish? They aint got the time! Up at cock-crow, scrubbin' the floors, washin' the babies, feedin' the fowls or the pigs, peelin' the taters, makin' the pot boil, an' tryin' to make out 'ow twelve shillin's an' sixpence a week can be made to buy a pound's worth o' food, trapsin' to market, an' wonderin' whether the larst born in the cradle aint somehow got into the fire while mother's away,--'opin' an' prayin' for the Lord's sake as 'usband don't come 'ome blind drunk,--where's the room for any selfishness in sich a life as that?--the life lived by 'undreds o' wimin all over this 'ere blessed free country? Get 'long wi' ye, D. David! Old as y' are, ye 'ad a mother in yer time,--an' I'll take my Gospel oath there was a bit o' good in 'er!"
Helmsley stopped abruptly in his walk.
"You are right, man!" he said, "And I am wrong! You know women better than I do, and--you give me a lesson! One is never too old to learn,"--and he smiled a rather pained smile. "But--I have had a bad experience!"
"Well, if y'ave 'ad it ivir so bad, yer 'xperience aint every one's," retorted Peke. "If one fly gits into the soup, that don't argify that the hull pot 's full of 'em. An' there's more good wimin than bad--takin' 'em all round an' includin' 'op pickers, gypsies an' the like. Even Miss Tranter aint wantin' in feelin', though she's a bit sour like, owin' to 'avin missed a 'usband an' all the savin' worrity wear-an-tear a 'usband brings, but she aint arf bad. Yon's the lamp of 'er 'Trusty Man' now."
A gleam of light, not much larger than the glitter of one of the glow-worms in the grass, was just then visible at the end of the long field they were traversing.
"That's an old cart-road down there wheer it stands," continued Peke. "As bad a road as ivir was made, but it runs straight into Devonshire, an' it's a good place for a pub. For many a year 'twornt used, bein' so rough an' ready, but now there's such a crowd o' motors tearin, over Countisbury 'Ill, the carts takes it, keepin' more to theirselves like, an' savin' smashin'. Miss Tranter she knew what she was a-doin' of when she got a licence an' opened 'er bizniss. 'Twas a ramshackle old farm-'ouse, goin' all to pieces when she bought it an' put up 'er sign o' the 'Trusty Man,' an' silly wenches round 'ere do say as 'ow it's 'aunted, owin' to the man as 'ad it afore Miss Tranter, bein' found dead in 'is bed with 'is 'ands a-clutchin' a pack o' cards. An' the ace o' spades--that's death--was turned uppermost. So they goes chatterin' an' chitterin' as 'ow the old chap 'ad been playin' cards wi' the devil, an' got a bad end. But Miss Tranter, she don't listen to maids' gabble,--she's doin' well, devil or no devil--an' if any one was to talk to 'er 'bout ghosteses an' sich-like, she'd wallop 'em out of 'er bar with a broom! Ay, that she would! She's a powerful strong woman Miss Tranter, an' many's the larker what's felt 'er 'and on 'is collar a-chuckin' 'im out o' the 'Trusty Man' neck an' crop for sayin' somethin' what aint ezackly agreeable to 'er feelin's. She don't stand no nonsense, an' though she's lib'ral with 'er pennorths an' pints she don't wait till a man's full boozed 'fore lockin' up the tap-room. 'Git to bed, yer hulkin' fools!' sez she, 'or ye may change my '_O_tel for the Sheriff's.' An' they all knuckles down afore 'er as if they was childer gettin' spanked by their mother. Ah, she'd 'a made a grand wife for a man! 'E wouldn't 'ave 'ad no chance to make a pig of hisself if she'd been anywheres round!"
"Perhaps she won't take me in!" suggested Helmsley.
"She will, an' that sartinly!" said Peke. "She'll not refuse bed an' board to any friend o' mine."
"Friend!" Helmsley echoed the word wonderingly.
"Ay, friend! Any one's a friend what trusts to ye on the road, aint 'e? Leastways that's 'ow I take it."
"As I said before, you are very kind to me," murmured Helmsley; "and I have already asked you--Why?"
"There aint no rhyme nor reason in it," answered Peke. "You 'elps a man along if ye sees 'e wants 'elpin', sure-_ly_,--that's nat'ral. 'Tis on'y them as is born bad as don't 'elp nothin' nor nobody. Ye're old an' fagged out, an' yer face speaks a bit o' trouble--that's enuff for me. Hi' y' are!--hi' y' are, old 'Trusty Man!'"
And striding across a dry ditch which formed a kind of entrenchment between the field and the road, Peke guided his companion round a dark corner and brought him in front of a long low building, heavily timbered, with queer little lop-sided gable windows set in the slanting, red-tiled roof. A sign-board swung over the door and a small lamp fixed beneath it showed that it bore the crudely painted portrait of a gentleman in an apron, spreading out both hands palms upwards as one who has nothing to conceal,--the ideal likeness of the "Trusty Man" himself. The door itself stood open, and the sound of male voices evinced the presence of customers within. Peke entered without ceremony, beckoning Helmsley to follow him, and made straight for the bar, where a tall woman with remarkably square shoulders stood severely upright, knitting.
"'Evenin', Miss Tranter!" said Peke, pulling off his tattered cap. "Any room for poor lodgers?"
Miss Tranter glanced at him, and then at his companion.
"That depends on the lodgers," she answered curtly.
"That's right! That's quite right, Miss!" said Peke with propitiatory deference. "You 'se allus right whatsoever ye does an' sez! But yer knows _me_,--yer knows Matt Peke, don't yer?"
Miss Tranter smiled sourly, and her knitting needles glittered like crossed knives as she finished a particular row of stitches on which she was engaged before condescending to reply. Then she said:--
"Yes, I know _you_ right enough, but I don't know your company. I'm not taking up strangers."
"Lord love ye! This aint a stranger!" exclaimed Peke. "This 'ere's old David, a friend o' mine as is out o' work through gittin' more years on 'is back than the British Gov'ment allows, an' 'e's trampin' it to see 'is relations afore 'e gits put to bed wi' a shovel. 'E's as 'armless as they makes 'em, an' I've told 'im as 'ow ye' don't take in nowt but 'spectable folk. Doant 'ee turn out an old gaffer like 'e be, fagged an' footsore, to sleep in open--doant 'ee now, there's a good soul!"
Miss Tranter went on knitting rapidly. Presently she turned her piercing gimlet grey eyes on Helmsley.
"Where do you come from, man?" she demanded.
Helmsley lifted his hat with the gentle courtesy habitual to him.
"From Bristol, ma'am."
"Tramping it?"
"Yes."
"Where are you going?"
"To Cornwall."
"That's a long way and a hard road," commented Miss Tranter; "You'll never get there!"
Helmsley gave a slight deprecatory gesture, but said nothing.
Miss Tranter eyed him more keenly.
"Are you hungry?"
He smiled.
"Not very!"
"That means you're half-starved without knowing it," she said decisively. "Go in yonder," and she pointed with one of her knitting needles to the room beyond the bar whence the hum of male voices proceeded. "I'll send you some hot soup with plenty of stewed meat and bread in it. An old man like you wants more than the road food. Take him in, Peke!"
"Didn't I tell ye!" ejaculated Peke, triumphantly looking round at Helmsley. "She's one that's got 'er 'art in the right place! I say, Miss Tranter, beggin' yer parding, my friend aint a sponger, ye know! 'E can pay ye a shillin' or two for yer trouble!"
Miss Tranter nodded her head carelessly.
"The food's threepence and the bed fourpence," she said. "Breakfast in the morning, threepence,--and twopence for the washing towel. That makes a shilling all told. Ale and liquors extra."
With that she turned her back on them, and Peke, pulling Helmsley by the arm, took him into the common room of the inn, where there were several men seated round a long oak table with "gate-legs" which must have been turned by the handicraftsmen of the time of Henry the Seventh. Here Peke set down his basket of herbs in a corner, and addressed the company generally.
"'Evenin', mates! All well an' 'arty?"
Three or four of the party gave gruff response. The others sat smoking silently. One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a couple of rush-bottomed chairs with sturdy oak backs, and bade Helmsley sit down beside him.
"It be powerful warm to-night!" he said, taking off his cap, and showing a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey. "Powerful warm it be trampin' the road, from sunrise to sunset, when the dust lies thick and 'eavy, an' all the country's dry for a drop o' rain."
"Wal, _you_ aint got no cause to grumble at it," said a fat-faced man in very dirty corduroys. "It's _your_ chice, an' _your_ livin'! _You_ likes the road, an' _you_ makes your grub on it! 'Taint no use _you_ findin' fault with the gettin' o' _your_ victuals!"
"Who's findin' fault, Mister Dubble?" asked Peke soothingly. "I on'y said 'twas powerful warm."
"An' no one but a sawny 'xpects it to be powerful cold in July," growled Dubble--"though some there is an' some there be what cries fur snow in August, but I aint one on 'em."
"No, 'e aint one on 'em," commented a burly farmer, blowing away the foam from the brim of a tankard of ale which was set on the table in front of him. "'E alluz takes just what cooms along easy loike, do Mizter Dubble!"
There followed a silence. It was instinctively felt that the discussion was hardly important enough to be continued. Moreover, every man in the room was conscious of a stranger's presence, and each one cast a furtive glance at Helmsley, who, imitating Peke's example, had taken off his hat, and now sat quietly under the flickering light of the oil lamp which was suspended from the middle of the ceiling. He himself was intensely interested in the turn his wanderings had taken. There was a certain excitement in his present position,--he was experiencing the "new sensation" he had longed for,--and he realised it with the fullest sense of enjoyment. To be one of the richest men in the world, and yet to seem so miserably poor and helpless as to be regarded with suspicion by such a class of fellows as those among whom he was now seated, was decidedly a novel way of acquiring an additional relish for the varying chances and changes of life.
"Brought yer father along wi' ye, Matt?" suddenly asked a wizened little man of about sixty, with a questioning grin on his hard weather-beaten features.
"I aint up to 'awkin' dead bodies out o' their graves yet, Bill Bush," answered Peke. "Unless my old dad's corpsy's turned to yerbs, which is more'n likely, I aint got 'im. This 'ere's a friend o' mine,--Mister David--e's out o' work through the Lord's speshul dispensation an' rule o' natur--gettin' old!"
A laugh went round, but a more favourable impression towards Peke's companion was at once created by this introduction.
"Sorry for ye!" said the individual called Bill Bush, nodding encouragingly to Helmsley. "I'm a bit that way myself."
He winked, and again the company laughed. Bill was known as one of the most daring and desperate poachers in all the countryside, but as yet he had never been caught in the act, and he was one of Miss Tranter's "respectable" customers. But, truth to tell, Miss Tranter had some very odd ideas of her own. One was that rabbits were vermin, and that it was of no consequence how or by whom they were killed. Another was that "wild game" belonged to everybody, poor and rich. Vainly was it explained to her that rich landowners spent no end of money on breeding and preserving pheasants, grouse, and the like,--she would hear none of it.
"Stuff and nonsense," she said sharply. "The birds breed by themselves quite fast enough if let alone,--and the Lord intended them so to do for every one's use and eating, not for a few mean and selfish money-grubs who'd shoot and sell their own babies if they could get game prices for them!"
And she had a certain sympathy with Bill Bush and his nefarious proceedings. As long as he succeeded in evading the police, so long would he be welcome at the "Trusty Man," but if once he were to be clapped into jail the door of his favourite "public" would be closed to him. Not that Miss Tranter was a woman who "went back," as the saying is, on her friends, but she had to think of her licence, and could not afford to run counter to those authorities who had the power to take it away from her.
"I'm a-shrivellin' away for want o' suthin' to do," proceeded Bill. "My legs aint no show at all to what they once was."
And he looked down at those members complacently. They were encased in brown velveteens much the worse for wear, and in shape resembled a couple of sticks with a crook at the knees.
"I lost my sitiwation as gamekeeper to 'is Royal 'Ighness the Dook o' Duncy through bein' too 'onest," he went on with another wink. "'Orful pertikler, the Dook was,--nobuddy was 'llowed to be 'onest wheer '_e_ was but 'imself! Lord love ye! It don't do to be straight an' square in this world!"
Helmsley listened to this bantering talk, saying nothing. He was pale, and sat very still, thus giving the impression of being too tired to notice what was going on around him. Peke took up the conversation.
"Stow yer gab, Bill!" he said. "When _you_ gits straight an' square, it'll be a round 'ole ye'll 'ave to drop into, mark my wurrd! An' no Dook o' Duncy 'ull pull ye out! This 'ere old friend o' mine don't unnerstand ye wi' yer fustian an' yer galligaskins. 'E's kinder eddicated--got a bit o' larnin' as I 'aves myself."
"Eddicated!" echoed Bill. "Eddication's a fine thing, aint it, if it brings an old gaffer like 'im to trampin' the road! Seems to me the more people's eddicated the less they's able to make a livin'."
"That's true! that's _dorned_ true!" said the man named Dubble, bringing his great fist down on the table with a force that made the tankards jump. "My darter, she's larned to play the pianner, an' I'm _dorned_ if she kin do anythin' else! Just a gillflurt she is, an' as sassy as a magpie. That's what eddication 'as made of 'er an' be _dorned_ to 't!"
"'Scuse me," and Bill Bush now addressed himself immediately to Helmsley, "_ef_ I may be so bold as to arsk you wheer ye comes from, meanin' no 'arm, an' what's yer purfession?"
Helmsley looked up with a friendly smile.
"I've no profession now," he answered at once. "But in my time--before I got too old--I did a good deal of office work."
"Office work! In a 'ouse of business, ye means? Readin', 'ritin', 'rithmetic, an' mebbe sweepin' the floor at odd times an' runnin' errands?"
"That's it!" answered Helmsley, still smiling.
"An' they won't 'ave ye no more?"
"I am too old," he answered quietly.
Here Dubble turned slowly round and surveyed him.
"How old be ye?"
"Seventy."
Silence ensued. The men glanced at one another. It was plain that the "one touch of nature which makes the whole world kin" was moving them all to kindly and compassionate feeling for the age and frail appearance of their new companion. What are called "rough" and "coarse" types of humanity are seldom without a sense of reverence and even affection for old persons. It is only among ultra-selfish and callous communities where over-luxurious living has blunted all the finer emotions, that age is considered a crime, or what by some individuals is declared worse than a crime, a "bore."
At that moment a short girl, with a very red face and round beady eyes, came into the room carrying on a tray two quaint old pewter tureens full of steaming soup, which emitted very savoury and appetising odours. Setting these down before Matt Peke and Helmsley, with two goodly slices of bread beside them, she held out her podgy hand.
"Threepence each, please!"
They paid her, Peke adding a halfpenny to his threepence for the girl herself, and Helmsley, who judged it safest to imitate Peke's behaviour, doing the same. She giggled.
"'Ope you aint deprivin' yourselves!" she said pertly.
"No, my dear, we aint!" retorted Peke. "We can afford to treat ye like the gentlemen doos! Buy yerself a ribbin to tie up yer bonnie brown 'air!"
She giggled again, and waited to see them begin their meal, then, with a comprehensive roll of her round eyes upon all the company assembled, she retired. The soup she had brought was certainly excellent,--strong, invigorating, and tasty enough to have done credit to a rich man's table, and Peke nodded over it with mingled surprise and appreciation.
"Miss Tranter knows what's good, she do!" he remarked to Helmsley in a low tone. "She's cooked this up speshul! This 'ere broth aint flavoured for _me_,--it's for _you_! Glory be good to me if she aint taken a fancy ter yer!--shouldn't wonder if ye 'ad the best in the 'ouse!"
Helmsley shook his head demurringly, but said nothing. He knew that in the particular position in which he had placed himself, silence was safer than speech.
Meanwhile, the short beady-eyed handmaiden returned to her mistress in the kitchen, and found that lady gazing abstractedly into the fire.
"They've got their soup," she announced, "an' they're eatin' of it up!"
"Is the old man taking it?" asked Miss Tranter.
"Yes'm. An' 'e seems to want it 'orful bad, 'orful bad 'e do, on'y 'e swallers it slower an' more soft like than Matt Peke swallers."
Miss Tranter ceased to stare at the fire, and stared at her domestic instead.
"Prue," she said solemnly, "that old man is a gentleman!"
Prue's round eyes opened a little more roundly.
"Lor', Mis' Tranter!"
"He's a gentleman," repeated the hostess of the "Trusty Man" with emphasis and decision; "and he's fallen on bad times. He may have to beg his bread along the road or earn a shilling here and there as best he can, but nothing"--and here Miss Tranter shook her forefinger defiantly in the air--"nothing will alter the fact that he's a gentleman!"
Prue squeezed her fat red hands together, breathed hard, and not knowing exactly what else to do, grinned. Her mistress looked at her severely.
"You grin like a Cheshire cat," she remarked. "I wish you wouldn't."
Prue at once pursed in her wide mouth to a more serious double line.
"How much did they give you?" pursued Miss Tranter.
"'Apenny each," answered Prue.
"How much have you made for yourself to-day all round!"
"Sevenpence three fardin's," confessed Prue, with an appealing look.
"You know I don't allow you to take tips from my customers," went on Miss Tranter. "You must put those three farthings in my poor-box."
"Yes'm!" sighed Prue meekly.
"And then you may keep the sevenpence."
"Oh thank y' 'm! Thank y', Mis' Tranter!" And Prue hugged herself ecstatically. "You'se 'orful good to me, you is, Mis' Tranter!"
Miss Tranter stood a moment, an upright inflexible figure, surveying her.
"Do you say your prayers every night and morning as I told you to do?"
Prue became abnormally solemn.
"Yes, I allus do, Mis' Tranter, wish I may die right 'ere if I don't!"
"What did I teach you to say to God for the poor travellers who stop at the 'Trusty Man'?"
"'That it may please Thee to succour, help and comfort all that are in danger, necessity and tribulation, we beseech Thee to hear us Good Lord!'" gabbled Prue, shutting her eyes and opening them again with great rapidity.
"That's right!" And Miss Tranter bent her head graciously. "I'm glad you remember it so well! Be sure you say it to-night. And now you may go, Prue."
Prue went accordingly, and Miss Tranter, resuming her knitting, returned to the bar, and took up her watchful position opposite the clock, there to remain patiently till closing time.
CHAPTER VII
The minutes wore on, and though some of the company at the "Trusty Man" went away in due course, others came in to replace them, so that even when it was nearing ten o'clock the common room was still fairly full. Matt Peke was evidently hail-fellow-well-met with many of the loafers of the district, and his desultory talk, with its quaint leaning towards a kind of rustic philosophy intermingled with an assumption of profound scientific wisdom, appeared to exercise considerable fascination over those who had the patience and inclination to listen to it. Helmsley accepted a pipe of tobacco offered to him by the surly-looking Dubble and smoked peacefully, leaning back in his chair and half closing his eyes with a drowsy air, though in truth his senses had never been more alert, or his interest more keenly awakened. He gathered from the general conversation that Bill Bush was an accustomed night lodger at the "Trusty Man," that Dubble had a cottage not far distant, with a scolding wife and an uppish daughter, and that it was because she knew of his home discomforts that Miss Tranter allowed him to pass many of his evenings at her inn, smoking and sipping a mild ale, which without fuddling his brains, assisted him in part to forget for a time his domestic worries. And he also found out that the sturdy farmer sedately sucking his pipe in a corner, and now and then throwing in an unexpected and random comment on whatever happened to be the topic of conversation, was known as "Feathery" Joltram, though why "Feathery" did not seem very clear, unless the term was, as it appeared to be, an adaptation of "father" or "feyther" Joltram. Matt Peke explained that old "Feathery" was a highly respected character in the "Quantocks," and not only rented a large farm, but thoroughly understood the farming business. Moreover, that he had succeeded in making himself somewhat of a terror to certain timorous time-servers, on account of his heterodox and obstinate principles. For example, he had sent his children to school because Government compelled him to do so, but when their schooldays were over, he had informed them that the sooner they forgot all they had ever learned during that period and took to "clean an' 'olesome livin'," the better he should be pleased.
"For it's all rort an' rubbish," he declared, in his broad, soft dialect. "I dozn't keer a tinker's baad 'apenny whether tha knaw 'ow to 'rite tha mizchief or to read it, or whether king o' England is eatin' 'umble pie to the U-nited States top man, or noa,--I keerz nawt aboot it, noben way or t'other. My boys 'as got to laarn draawin' crops out o' fields,--an' my gels must put 'and to milkin' and skimmin' cream an' makin' foinest butter as iver went to market. An' time comin' to wed, the boys 'ull take strong dairy wives, an' the gels 'ull pick men as can thraw through men's wurrk, or they'ze nay gels nor boys o' mine. Tarlk o' Great Britain! Heart alive! Wheer would th' owd country be if 'twere left to pulin' booky clerks what thinks they're gemmen, an' what weds niminy-piminy shop gels, an' breeds nowt but ricketty babes fit for workus' burial! Noa, by the Lord! No school larnin' for me nor mine, thank-ee! Why, the marster of the Board School 'ere doant know more practical business o' life than a suckin' calf! With a bit o' garden ground to 'is cot, e' doant reckon 'ow io till it, an' that's the rakelness o' book larnin'. Noa, noa! Th' owd way o' wurrk's the best way,--brain, 'ands, feet an' good ztrong body all zet on't, an' no meanderin' aff it! Take my wurrd the Lord A'mighty doant 'elp corn to grow if there's a whinin' zany ahint the plough!"
With these distinctly "out-of-date" notions, "Feathery" Joltram had also set himself doggedly against church-going and church people generally. Few dared mention a clergyman in his presence, for his open and successful warfare with the minister of his own parish had been going on for years and had become well-nigh traditional. Looking at him, however, as he sat in his favourite corner of the "Trusty Man's" common room, no one would have given him credit for any particular individuality. His round red face expressed nothing,--his dull fish-like eyes betrayed no intelligence,--he appeared to be nothing more than a particularly large, heavy man, wedged in his chair rather than seated in it, and absorbed in smoking a long pipe after the fashion of an infant sucking a feeding-bottle, with infinite relish that almost suggested gluttony.
The hum of voices grew louder as the hour grew later, and one or two rather noisy disputations brought Miss Tranter to the door. A look of hers was sufficient to silence all contention, and having bent the warning flash of her eyes impressively upon her customers, she retired as promptly and silently as she had appeared. Helmsley was just thinking that he would slip away and get to bed, when, a firm tread sounded in the outer passage, and a tall man, black-haired, black-eyed, and of herculean build, suddenly looked in upon the tavern company with a familiar nod and smile.
"Hullo, my hearties!" he exclaimed. "Is all tankards drained, or is a drop to spare?"
A shout of welcome greeted him:--"Tom!" "Tom o' the Gleam!" "Come in, Tom!" "Drinks all round!"--and there followed a general hustle and scraping of chairs on the floor,--every one seemed eager to make room for the newcomer. Helmsley, startled in a manner by his appearance, looked at him with involuntary and undisguised admiration. Such a picturesque figure of a man he had seldom or never seen, yet the fellow was clad in the roughest, raggedest homespun, the only striking and curious note of colour about him being a knitted crimson waistcoat, which instead of being buttoned was tied together with two or three tags of green ribbon. He stood for a moment watching the men pushing up against one another in order to give him a seat at the table, and a smile, half-amused, half-ironical, lighted up his sun-browned, handsome face.
"Don't put yourselves out, mates!" he said carelessly. "Mind Feathery's toes!--if you tread on his corns there'll be the devil to pay! Hullo, Matt Peke! How are you?"
Matt rose and shook hands.
"All the better for seein' ye again, Tom," he answered, "Wheer d'ye hail from this very present minit?"
"From the caves of Cornwall!" laughed the man. "From picking up drift on the shore and tracking seals to their lair in the hollows of the rocks!" He laughed again, and his great eyes flashed wildly. "All sport, Matt! I live like a gentleman born, keeping or killing at my pleasure!"
Here "Feathery" Joltram looked up and dumbly pointed with the stem of his pipe to a chair left vacant near the middle of the table. Tom o' the Gleam, by which name he seemed to be known to every one present, sat down, and in response to the calls of the company, a wiry pot-boy in shirt-sleeves made his appearance with several fresh tankards of ale, it now being past the hour for the attendance of that coy handmaiden of the "Trusty Man," Miss Prue.
"Any fresh tales to tell, Tom?" inquired Matt Peke then--"Any more harum-scarum pranks o' yours on the road?"
Tom drank off a mug of ale before replying, and took a comprehensive glance around the room.
"You have a stranger here," he said suddenly, in his deep, thrilling voice, "One who is not of our breed,--one who is unfamiliar with our ways. Friend or foe?"
"Friend!" declared Peke emphatically, while Bill Bush and one or two of the men exchanged significant looks and nudged each other. "Now, Tom, none of yer gypsy tantrums! I knows all yer Romany gibberish, an' I ain't takin' any. Ye've got a good 'art enough, so don't work yer dander up with this 'ere old chap what's a-trampin' it to try and find out all that's left o's fam'ly an' friends 'fore turnin' up 'is toes to the daisies. 'Is name is David, an' 'e's been kickt out o' office work through bein' too old. That's _'is_ ticket!"
Tom o' the Gleam listened to this explanation in silence, playing absently with the green tags of ribbon at his waistcoat. Then slowly lifting his eyes he fixed them full on Helmsley, who, despite himself, felt an instant's confusion at the searching intensity of the man's bold bright gaze.
"Old and poor!" he ejaculated. "That's a bad lookout in this world! Aren't you tired of living!"
"Nearly," answered Helmsley quietly--"but not quite."
Their looks met, and Tom's dark features relaxed into a smile.
"You're fairly patient!" he said, "for it's hard enough to be poor, but it's harder still to be old. If I thought I should live to be as old as you are, I'd drown myself in the sea! There's no use in life without body's strength and heart's love."
"Ah, tha be graat on the love business, Tom!" chuckled "Feathery" Joltram, lifting his massive body with a shake out of the depths of his comfortable chair. "Zeems to me tha's zummat like the burd what cozies a new mate ivery zummer!"
Tom o' the Gleam laughed, his strong even white teeth shining like a row of pearls between his black moustaches and short-cropped beard.
"You're a steady-going man, Feathery," he said, "and I'm a wastrel. But I'm ne'er as fickle as you think. I've but one love in the world that's left me--my kiddie."
"Ay, an' 'ow's the kiddie?" asked Matt Peke--"Thrivin' as iver?"
"Fine! As strong a little chap as you'll see between Quantocks and Land's End. He'll be four come Martinmas."
"Zo agein' quick as that!" commented Joltram with a broad grin. "For zure 'e be a man grow'd! Tha'll be puttin' the breechez on 'im an' zendin' 'im to the school----"
"Never!" interrupted Tom defiantly. "They'll never catch my kiddie if I know it! I want him for myself,--others shall have no part in him. He shall grow up wild like a flower of the fields--wild as his mother was--wild as the wild roses growing over her grave----"
He broke off suddenly with an impatient gesture.
"Psha! Why do you drag me over the old rough ground talking of Kiddie!" he exclaimed, almost angrily. "The child's all right. He's safe in camp with the women."
"Anywheres nigh?" asked Bill Bush.
Tom o' the Gleam made no answer, but the fierce look in his eyes showed that he was not disposed to be communicative on this point. Just then the sound of voices raised in some dispute on the threshold of the "Trusty Man," caused all the customers in the common room to pause in their talking and drinking, and to glance expressively at one another. Miss Tranter's emphatic accents rang out sharply on the silence.
"It wants ten minutes to ten, and I never close till half-past ten," she said decisively. "The law does not compel me to do so till eleven, and I resent private interference."
"I am aware that you resent any advice offered for your good," was the reply, delivered in harsh masculine tones. "You are a singularly obstinate woman. But I have my duty to perform, and as minister of this parish I shall perform it."
"Mind your own business first!" said Miss Tranter, with evident vehemence.
"My business is my duty, and my duty is my business,"--and here the male voice grew more rasping and raucous. "I have as much right to use this tavern as any one of the misled men who spend their hard earnings here and neglect their homes and families for the sake of drink. And as you do not close till half-past ten, it is not too late for me to enter."
During this little altercation, the party round the table in the common room sat listening intently. Then Dubble, rousing himself from a pleasant ale-warm lethargy, broke the spell.
"Dorned if it aint old Arbroath!" he said.
"Ay, ay, 'tis old Arbroath zartin zure!" responded "Feathery" Joltram placidly. "Let 'un coom in! Let 'un coom in!"
Tom o' the Gleam gave vent to a loud laugh, and throwing himself back in his chair, crossed his long legs and administered a ferocious twirl to his moustache, humming carelessly under his breath:--
"'And they called the parson to marry them, But devil a bit would he-- For they were but a pair of dandy prats As couldn't pay devil's fee!'"
Helmsley's curiosity was excited. There was a marked stir of expectation among the guests of the "Trusty Man"; they all appeared to be waiting for something about to happen of exceptional interest. He glanced inquiringly at Peke, who returned the glance by one of warning.
"Best sit quiet a while longer," he said. "They won't break up till closin' hour, an' m'appen there'll be a bit o' fun."
"Ay, sit quiet!" said Tom o' the Gleam, catching these words, and turning towards Helmsley with a smile--"There's more than enough time for tramping. Come! Show me if you can smoke _that_!" "That" was a choice Havana cigar which he took out of the pocket of his crimson wool waistcoat. "You've smoked one before now, I'll warrant!"
Helmsley met his flashing eyes without wavering.
"I will not say I have not," he answered quietly, accepting and lighting the fragrant weed, "but it was long ago!"
"Ay, away in the Long, long ago!" said Tom, still regarding him fixedly, but kindly--"where we have all buried such a number of beautiful things,--loves and hopes and beliefs, and dreams and fortunes!--all, all tucked away under the graveyard grass of the Long Ago!"
Here Miss Tranter's voice was heard again outside, saying acidly:--
"It's clear out and lock up at half-past ten, business or no business, duty or no duty. Please remember that!"
"'Ware, mates!" exclaimed Tom,--"Here comes our reverend!"
The door was pushed open as he spoke, and a short, dark man in clerical costume walked in with a would-be imposing air of dignity.
"Good-evening, my friends!" he said, without lifting his hat.
There was no response.
He smiled sourly, and surveyed the assembled company with a curious air of mingled authority and contempt. He looked more like a petty officer of dragoons than a minister of the Christian religion,--one of those exacting small military martinets accustomed to brow-beating and bullying every subordinate without reason or justice.
"So you're there, are you, Bush!" he continued, with a frowning glance levied in the direction of the always suspected but never proved poacher,--"I wonder you're not in jail by this time!"
Bill Bush took up his pewter tankard, and affected to drain it to the last dregs, but made no reply.
"Is that Mr. Dubble!" pursued the clergyman, shading his eyes with one hand from the flickering light of the lamp, and feigning to be doubtful of the actual personality of the individual he questioned. "Surely not! I should be very much surprised and very sorry to see Mr. Dubble here at such a late hour!"
"Would ye now!" said Dubble. "Wal, I'm allus glad to give ye both a sorrer an' a surprise together, Mr. Arbroath--darned if I aint!"
"You must be keeping your good wife and daughter up waiting for you," proceeded Arbroath, his iron-grey eyebrows drawing together in an ugly line over the bridge of his nose. "Late hours are a mistake, Dubble!"
"So they be, so they be, Mr. Arbroath!" agreed Dubble. "Ef I was oop till midnight naggin' away at my good wife an' darter as they nags away at me, I'd say my keepin' o' late 'ours was a dorned whoppin' mistake an' no doubt o't. But seein' as 'taint arf-past ten yet, an' I aint naggin' nobody nor interferin' with my neighbours nohow, I reckon I'm on the right side o' the night so fur."
A murmur of approving laughter from all the men about him ratified this speech. The Reverend Mr. Arbroath gave a gesture of disdain, and bent his lowering looks on Tom o' the Gleam.
"Aren't you wanted by the police?" he suggested sarcastically.
The handsome gypsy glanced him over indifferently.
"I shouldn't wonder!" he retorted. "Perhaps the police want me as much as the devil wants _you_!"
Arbroath flushed a dark red, and his lips tightened over his teeth vindictively.
"There's a zummat for tha thinkin' on, Pazon Arbroath!" said "Feathery" Joltram, suddenly rising from his chair and showing himself in all his great height and burly build. "Zummat for a zermon on owd Nick, when tha're wantin' to scare the zhoolboys o' Zundays!"
Mr. Arbroath's countenance changed from red to pale.
"I was not aware of your presence, Mr. Joltram," he said stiffly.
"Noa, noa, Pazon, m'appen not, but tha's aweer on it now. Nowt o' me's zo zmall as can thraw to heaven through tha straight and narrer way. I'd 'ave to squeeze for 't!"
He laughed,--a big, slow laugh, husky with good living and good humour. Arbroath shrugged his shoulders.
"I prefer not to speak to you at all, Mr. Joltram," he said. "When people are bound to disagree, as we have disagreed for years, it is best to avoid conversation."
"Zed like the Church all over, Pazon!" chuckled the imperturbable Joltram. "Zeems as if I 'erd the 'Glory be'! But if tha don't want any talk, why does tha coom in 'ere wheer we'se all a-drinkin' steady and talkin' 'arty, an' no quarrellin' nor backbitin' of our neighbours? Tha wants us to go 'ome,--why doezn't tha go 'ome thysen? Tha's a wife a zettin' oop there, an' m'appen she's waitin' with as fine a zermon as iver was preached from a temperance cart in a wasterne field!"
He laughed again; Arbroath turned his back upon him in disgust, and strode up to the shadowed corner where Helmsley sat watching the little scene.
"Now, my man, who are _you_?" demanded the clergyman imperiously. "Where do you come from?"
Matt Peke would have spoken, but Helmsley silenced him by a look and rose to his feet, standing humbly with bent head before his arrogant interlocutor. There were the elements of comedy in the situation, and he was inclined to play his part thoroughly.
"From Bristol," he replied.
"What are you doing here?"
"Getting rest, food, and a night's lodging."
"Why do you leave out drink in the list?" sneered Arbroath. "For, of course, it's your special craving! Where are you going?"
"To Cornwall."
"Tramping it?"
"Yes."
"Begging, I suppose?"
"Sometimes."
"Disgraceful!" And the reverend gentleman snorted offence like a walrus rising from deep waters. "Why don't you work?"
"I'm too old."
"Too old! Too lazy you mean! How old are you?"
"Seventy."
Mr. Arbroath paused, slightly disconcerted. He had entered the "Trusty Man" in the hope of discovering some or even all of its customers in a state of drunkenness. To his disappointment he had found them perfectly sober. He had pounced on the stray man whom he saw was a stranger, in the expectation of proving him, at least, to be intoxicated. Here again he was mistaken. Helmsley's simple straight answers left him no opening for attack.
"You'd better make for the nearest workhouse," he said, at last. "Tramps are not encouraged on these roads."
"Evidently not!" And Helmsley raised his calm eyes and fixed them on the clergyman's lowering countenance with a faintly satiric smile.
"You're not too old to be impudent, I see!" retorted Arbroath, with an unpleasant contortion of his features. "I warn you not to come cadging about anywhere in this neighbourhood, for if you do I shall give you in charge. I have four parishes under my control, and I make it a rule to hand all beggars over to the police."
"That's not very good Christianity, is it?" asked Helmsley quietly.
Matt Peke chuckled. The Reverend Mr. Arbroath started indignantly, and stared so hard that his rat-brown eyes visibly projected from his head.
"Not very good Christianity!" he echoed. "What--what do you mean? How dare you speak to me about Christianity!"
"Ay, 'tis a bit aff!" drawled "Feathery" Joltram, thrusting his great hands deep into his capacious trouser-pockets. "'Tis a bit aff to taalk to Christian parzon 'bout Christianity, zeein' 'tis the one thing i' this warld 'e knaws nawt on!"
Arbroath grew livid, but his inward rage held him speechless.
"That's true!" cried Tom o' the Gleam excitedly--"That's as true as there's a God in heaven! I've read all about the Man that was born a carpenter in Galilee, and so far as I can understand it, He never had a rough word for the worst creatures that crawled, and the worse they were, and the more despised and down-trodden, the gentler He was with them. That's not the way of the men that call themselves His ministers!"
"I 'eerd once," said Mr. Dubble, rising slowly and laying down his pipe, "of a little chap what was makin' a posy for 'is mother's birthday, an' passin' the garden o' the rector o' the parish, 'e spied a bunch o' pink chestnut bloom 'angin' careless over the 'edge, ready to blow to bits wi' the next puff o' wind. The little raskill pulled it down an' put it wi' the rest o' the flowers 'e'd got for 'is mother, but the good an' lovin' rector seed 'im at it, an' 'ad 'im nabbed as a common thief an' sent to prison. 'E wornt but a ten-year-old lad, an' that prison spoilt 'im for life. 'E wor a fust-class Lord's man as did that for a babby boy, an' the hull neighbourhood's powerful obleeged to 'im. So don't ye,"--and here he turned his stolid gaze on Helmsley,--"don't ye, for all that ye're old, an' poor, an' 'elpless, go cadgin' round this 'ere reverend gemmen's property, cos 'e's got a real pityin' Christian 'art o's own, an' ye'd be sent to bed wi' the turnkey." Here he paused with a comprehensive smile round at the company,--then taking up his hat, he put it on. "There's one too many 'ere for pleasantness, an' I'm goin'. Good-den, Tom! Good-den, all!"
And out he strode, whistling as he went. With his departure every one began to move,--the more quickly as the clock in the bar had struck ten a minute or two since. The Reverend Mr. Arbroath stood irresolute for a moment, wishing his chief enemy, "Feathery" Joltram, would go. But Joltram remained where he was, standing erect, and surveying the scene like a heavily caparisoned charger scenting battle.
"Tha's heerd Mizter Dubble's tale afore now, Pazon, hazn't tha?" he inquired. "M'appen tha knaw'd the little chap as Christ's man zent to prizon thysen?"
Arbroath lifted his head haughtily.
"A theft is a theft," he said, "whether it is committed by a young person or an old one, and whether it is for a penny or a hundred pounds makes no difference. Thieves of all classes and all ages should be punished as such. Those are my opinions."
"They were nowt o' the Lord's opinions," said Joltram, "for He told the thief as 'ung beside Him, 'This day shalt thou be with Me in Paradise,' but He didn't say nowt o' the man as got the thief punished!"
"You twist the Bible to suit your own ends, Mr. Joltram," retorted Arbroath contemptuously. "It is the common habit of atheists and blasphemers generally."
"Then, by the Lord!" exclaimed the irrepressible "Feathery," "All th' atheists an' blasphemers must be a-gathered in the fold o' the Church, for if the pazons doan't twist the Bible to suit their own ends, I'm blest if I knaw whaat else they does for a decent livin'!"
Just then a puff of fine odour from the Havana cigar which Helmsley was enjoying floated under the nostrils of Mr. Arbroath, and added a fresh touch of irritation to his temper. He turned at once upon the offending smoker.
"So! You pretend to be poor!" he snarled, "And yet you can smoke a cigar that must have cost a shilling!"
"It was given to me," replied Helmsley gently.
"Given to you! Bah! Who would give an old tramp a cigar like that?"
"I would!" And Tom o' the Gleam sprang lightly up from his chair, his black eyes sparkling with mingled defiance and laughter--"And I did! Here!--will you take another?" And he drew out and opened a handsome case full of the cigars in question.
"Thank you!" and Arbroath's pallid lips trembled with rage. "I decline to share in stolen plunder!"
"Ha--ha--ha! Ha--ha!" laughed Tom hilariously. "Stolen plunder! That's good! D'ye think I'd steal when I can buy! Reverend sir, Tom o' the Gleam is particular as to what he smokes, and he hasn't travelled all over the world for nothing:
'Qu'en dictes-vous? Faut-il à ce musier, _Il n'est trésor que de vivre à son aise_!'"
Helmsley listened in wonderment. Here was a vagrant of the highroads and woods, quoting the refrain of Villon's _Contreditz de Franc-Gontier_, and pronouncing the French language with as soft and pure an accent as ever came out of Provence. Meanwhile, Mr. Arbroath, paying no attention whatever to Tom's outburst, looked at his watch.
"It is now a quarter-past ten," he announced dictatorially; "I should advise you all to be going."
"By the law we needn't go till eleven, though Miss Tranter _does_ halve it," said Bill Bush sulkily--"and perhaps we won't!"
Mr. Arbroath fixed him with a stern glance.
"Do you know that I am here in the cause of Temperance?" he said.
"Oh, are ye? Then why don't ye call on Squire Evans, as is the brewer wi' the big 'ouse yonder?" queried Bill defiantly. "'E's the man to go to! Arsk 'im to shut up 'is brewery an' sell no more ale wi' pizon in't to the poor! That'll do more for Temp'rance than the early closin' o' the 'Trusty Man.'"
"Ye're right enough," said Matt Peke, who had refrained from taking any part in the conversation, save by now and then whispering a side comment to Helmsley. "There's stuff put i' the beer what the brewers brew, as is enough to knock the strongest man silly. I'm just fair tired o' hearin' o' Temp'rance this an' Temp'rance that, while 'arf the men as goes to Parl'ment takes their livin' out o' the brewin' o' beer an' spiritus liquors. An' they bribes their poor silly voters wi' their drink till they'se like a flock o' sheep runnin' into wotever field o' politics their shepherds drives 'em. The best way to make the temp'rance cause pop'lar is to stop big brewin'. Let every ale'ouse 'ave its own pertikler brew, an' m'appen we'll git some o' the old-fashioned malt an' 'ops agin. That'll be good for the small trader, an' the big brewin' companies can take to somethin' 'onester than the pizonin' bizness."
"You are a would-be wise man, and you talk too much, Matthew Peke!" observed the Reverend Mr. Arbroath, smiling darkly, and still glancing askew at his watch. "I know you of old!"
"Ye knows me an' I knows you," responded Peke placidly. "Yer can't interfere wi' me nohow, an' I dessay it riles ye a bit, for ye loves interferin' with ivery sort o' folk, as all the parsons do. I b'longs to no parish, an' aint under you no more than Tom o' the Gleam be, an' we both thanks the Lord for't! An' I'm earnin' a livin' my own way an' bein' a benefit to the sick an' sorry, which aint so far from proper Christianity. Lor', Parson Arbroath! I wonder ye aint more 'uman like, seein' as yer fav'rite gel in the village was arskin' me t'other day if I 'adn't any yerb for to make a love-charm. 'Love-charm!' sez I--'what does ye want that for, my gel?' An' she up an' she sez--'I'd like to make Parson Arbroath eat it!' Hor--er--hor--er--hor--er! 'I'd like to make Parson Arbroath eat it!' sez she. An' she's a foine strappin' wench, too!--'Ullo, Parson! Goin'?"
The door slammed furiously,--Arbroath had suddenly lost his dignity and temper together. Peke's raillery proved too much for him, and amid the loud guffaws of "Feathery" Joltram, Bill Bush and the rest, he beat a hasty retreat, and they heard his heavy footsteps go hurriedly across the passage of the "Trusty Man," and pass out into the road beyond. Roars of laughter accompanied his departure, and Peke looked round with a smile of triumph.
"It's just like a witch-spell!" he declared. "There's nowt to do but whisper, 'Parson's fav'rite!'--an' Parson hisself melts away like a mist o' the mornin' or a weasel runnin' into its 'ole! Hor--er, hor--er, hor--er!"
And again the laughter pealed out long and loud, "Feathery" Joltram bending himself double with merriment, and slapping the sides of his huge legs in ecstasy. Miss Tranter hearing the continuous uproar, looked in warningly, but there was a glimmering smile on her face.
"We'se goin', Miss Tranter!" announced Bill Bush, his wizened face all one broad grin. "We aint the sort to keep you up, never fear! Your worst customer's just cleared out!"
"So I see!" replied Miss Tranter calmly,--then, nodding towards Helmsley, she said--"Your room's ready."
Helmsley took the hint. He rose from his chair, and held out his hand to Peke.
"Good-night!" he said. "You've been very kind to me, and I shan't forget it!"
The herb-gatherer looked for a moment at the thin, refined white hand extended to him before grasping it in his own horny palm. Then--
"Good-night, old chap!" he responded heartily. "Ef I don't see ye i' the mornin' I'll leave ye a bottle o' yerb wine to take along wi' ye trampin', for the more ye drinks o't the soberer ye'll be an' the better ye'll like it. But ye should give up the idee o' footin' it to Cornwall; ye'll never git there without a liftin'."
"I'll have a good try, anyway," rejoined Helmsley. "Good-night!"
He turned towards Tom o' the Gleam.
"Good-night!"
"Good-night!" And Tom's dark eyes glowed upon him with a sombre intentness. "You know the old proverb which says, 'It's a long lane which has never a turning'?"
Helmsley nodded with a faint smile.
"Your turning's near at hand," said Tom. "Take my word for it!"
"Will it be a pleasant turning?" asked Helmsley, still smiling.
"Pleasant? Ay, and peaceful!" And Tom's mellow voice sank into a softer tone. "Peaceful as the strong love of a pure woman, and as sweet with contentment as is the summer when the harvest is full! Good-night!"
Helmsley looked at him thoughtfully; there was something poetic and fascinating about the man.
"I should like to meet you again," he said impulsively.
"Would you?" Tom o' the Gleam smiled. "So you will, as sure as God's in heaven! But how or when, who can tell!" His handsome face clouded suddenly,--some dark shadow of pain or perplexity contracted his brows,--then he seemed to throw the feeling, whatever it was, aside, and his features cleared. "You are bound to meet me," he continued. "I am as much a part of this country as the woods and hills,--the Quantocks and Brendons know me as well as Exmoor and the Valley of Rocks. But you are safe from me and mine! Not one of our tribe will harm you,--you can pursue your way in peace--and if any one of us can give you help at any time, we will."
"You speak of a community?"
"I speak of a Republic!" answered Tom proudly. "There are thousands of men and women in these islands whom no king governs and no law controls,--free as the air and independent as the birds! They ask nothing at any man's hands--they take and they keep!"
"Like the millionaires!" suggested Bill Bush, with a grin.
"Right you are, Bill!--like the millionaires! None take more than they do, and none keep their takings closer!"
"And very miserable they must surely be sometimes, on both their takings and their keepings," said Helmsley.
"No doubt of it! There'd be no justice in the mind of God if millionaires weren't miserable," declared Tom o' the Gleam. "They've more money than they ought to have,--it's only fair they should have less happiness. Compensation's a natural law that there's no getting away from,--that's why a gypsy's merrier than a king!"
Helmsley smiled assent, and with another friendly good-night all round, left the room. Miss Tranter awaited him, candle in hand, and preceding him up a short flight of ancient and crooked oaken stairs, showed him a small attic room with one narrow bed in it, scrupulously neat and clean.
"You'll be all right here," she said. "There's no lock to your door, but you're out of the truck of house work, and no one will come nigh you."
"Thank you, madam,"--and Helmsley bent his head gently, almost humbly,--"You are very good to me. I am most grateful!"
"Nonsense!" said Miss Tranter, affecting snappishness. "You pay for a bed, and here it is. The lodgers here generally share one room between them, but you are an old man and need rest. It's better you should get your sleep without any chance of disturbance. Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
She set down the candle by his bedside with a "Mind you put it out!" final warning, and descended the stairs to see the rest of her customers cleared off the premises, with the exception of Bill Bush, Matt Peke, and Tom o' the Gleam, who were her frequent night lodgers. She found Tom o' the Gleam standing up and delivering a kind of extemporary oration, while his rough cap, under the pilotage of Bill Bush, was being passed round the table in the fashion of a collecting plate.
"The smallest contribution thankfully received!" he laughed, as he looked and saw her. "Miss Tranter, we're doing a mission! We're Salvationists! Now's your chance! Give us a sixpence!"
"What for?" And setting her arms akimbo, the hostess of the "Trusty Man" surveyed all her lingering guests with a severe face. "What games are you up to now? It's time to clear!"
"So it is, and all the good little boys are going to bed," said Tom. "Don't be cross, Mammy! We want to close our subscription list--that's all! We've raised a few pennies for the old grandfather upstairs. He'll never get to Cornwall, poor chap! He's as white as paper. Office work doesn't fit a man of his age for tramping the road. We've collected two shillings for him among us,--you give sixpence, and there's half-a-crown all told. God bless the total!"
He seized his cap as it was handed back to him, and shook it, to show that it was lined with jingling halfpence, and his eyes sparkled like those of a child enjoying a bit of mischief.
"Come, Miss Tranter! Help the Gospel mission!"
Her features relaxed into a smile, and feeling in her apron pocket, she produced the requested coin.
"There you are!" she said.--"And now you've got it, how are you going to give him the money?"
"Never you mind!" and Tom swept all the coins together, and screwed them up in a piece of newspaper. "We'll surprise the old man as the angels surprise the children!"
Miss Tranter said nothing more, but withdrawing to the passage, stood and watched her customers go out of the door of the "Trusty Man," one by one. Each great hulking fellow doffed his cap to her and bade her a respectful "Good-night" as he passed, "Feathery" Joltram pausing a moment to utter an "aside" in her ear.
"'A fixed oop owd Arbroath for zartin zure!"--and here, with a sly wink, he gave a forcible nudge to her arm,--"An owd larrupin' fox 'e be!--an' Matt Peke giv' 'im the finish wi's fav'rite! Ha--ha--ha! 'A can't abide a wurrd o' that long-legged wench! Ha--ha--ha! An' look y'ere, Miss Tranter! I'd 'a given a shillin' in Tom's 'at when it went round, but I'm thinkin' as zummat in the face o' the owd gaffer up in bed ain't zet on beggin', an' m'appen a charity'd 'urt 'is feelin's like the poor-'ouse do. But if 'e's wantin' to 'arn a mossel o' victual, I'll find 'im a lightsome job on the farm if he'll reckon to walk oop to me afore noon to-morrer. Tell 'im' that from farmer Joltram, an' good-night t'ye!"
He strode out, and before eleven had struck, the old-fashioned iron bar clamped down across the portal, and the inn was closed. Then Miss Tranter turned into the bar, and before shutting it up paused, and surveyed her three lodgers critically.
"So you pretend to be all miserably poor, and yet you actually collect what you call a 'fund' for the old tramp upstairs who's a perfect stranger to you!" she said--"Rascals that you are!"
Bill Bush looked sheepish.
"Only halfpence, Miss," he explained. "Poor we be as church mice, an' ye knows that, doesn't ye? But we aint gone broken yet, an' Tom 'e started the idee o' doin' a good turn for th' old gaffer, for say what ye like 'e do look a bit feeble for trampin' it."
Miss Tranter sniffed the atmosphere of the bar with a very good assumption of lofty indifference.
"_You_ started the idea, did you?" she went on, looking at Tom o' the Gleam. "You're a nice sort of ruffian to start any idea at all, aren't you? I thought you always took, and never gave!"
He smiled, leaning his handsome head back against the white-washed wall of the little entry where he stood, but said nothing. Matt Peke then took up the parable.
"Th' old man be mortal weak an' faint for sure," he said. "I come upon 'im lyin' under a tree wi' a mossel book aside 'im, an' I takes an' looks at the book, an' 'twas all portry an' simpleton stuff like, an' 'e looked old enough to be my dad, an' tired enough to be fast goin' where my dad's gone, so I just took 'im along wi' me, an' giv' 'im my name an' purfession, an' 'e did the same, a-tellin' me as 'ow 'is name was D. David, an' 'ow 'e 'd lost 'is office work through bein' too old an' shaky. 'E's all right,--an office man aint much good on the road, weak on 'is pins an' failin' in 'is sight. M'appen the 'arf-crown we've got 'im 'ull 'elp 'im to a ride part o' the way 'e's goin'."
"Well, don't you men bother about him any more," said Miss Tranter decisively. "You get off early in the morning, as usual. _I'll_ look after him!"
"Will ye now?" and Peke's rugged features visibly brightened--"That's just like ye, Miss! Aint it, Tom? Aint it, Bill?"
Both individuals appealed to agreed that it was "Miss Tranter all over."
"Now off to bed with you!" proceeded that lady peremptorily. "And leave your collected 'fund' with me--I'll give it to him."
But Tom o' the Gleam would not hear of this.
"No, Miss Tranter!--with every respect for you, no!" he said gaily. "It's not every night we can play angels! I play angel to my kiddie sometimes, putting a fairing in his little hammock where he sleeps like a bird among the trees all night, but I've never had the chance to do it to an old grandad before! Let me have my way!"
And so it chanced that at about half-past eleven, Helmsley, having lain down with a deep sense of relief and repose on his clean comfortable little bed, was startled out of his first doze by hearing stealthy steps approaching his door. His heart began to beat quickly,--a certain vague misgiving troubled him,--after all, he thought, had he not been very rash to trust himself to the shelter of this strange and lonely inn among the wild moors and hills, among unknown men, who, at any rate by their rough and uncouth appearance, might be members of a gang of thieves? The steps came nearer, and a hand fumbled gently with the door handle. In that tense moment of strained listening he was glad to remember that when undressing, he had carefully placed his vest, lined with the banknotes he carried, under the sheet on which he lay, so that in the event of any one coming to search his clothes, nothing would be found but a few loose coins in his coat pocket. The fumbling at his door continued, and presently it slowly opened, letting in a pale stream of moonlight from a lattice window outside. He just saw the massive figure of Tom o' the Gleam standing on the threshold, clad in shirt and trousers only, and behind him there seemed to be the shadowy outline of Matt Peke's broad shoulders and Bill Bush's bullet head. Uncertain what to expect, he determined to show no sign of consciousness, and half closing his eyes, he breathed heavily and regularly, feigning to be in a sound slumber. But a cold chill ran through his veins as Tom o' the Gleam slowly and cautiously approached the bed, holding something in his right hand, while Matt Peke and Bill Bush tiptoed gently after him half-way into the room.
"Poor old gaffer!" he heard Tom whisper--"Looks all ready laid out and waiting for the winding!"
And the hand that held the something stole gently and ever gentlier towards the pillow. By a supreme effort Helmsley kept quite still. How he controlled his nerves he never knew, for to see through his almost shut eyelids the dark herculean form of the gypsy bending over him with the two other men behind, moved him to a horrible fear. Were they going to murder him? If so, what for? To them he was but an old tramp,--unless--unless somebody had tracked him from London!--unless somebody knew who he really was, and had pointed him out as likely to have money about him. These thoughts ran like lightning through his brain, making his blood burn and his pulses, tingle almost to the verge of a start and cry, when the creeping hand he dreaded quietly laid something on his pillow and withdrew itself with delicate precaution.
"He'll be pleased when he wakes," said Tom o' the Gleam, in the mildest of whispers, retreating softly from the bedside--"Won't he?"
"Ay, that he will!" responded Peke, under his breath;, "aint 'e sleepin' sound?"
"Sound as a babe!"
Slowly and noiselessly they stepped backward,--slowly and noiselessly they closed the door, and the faint echo of their stealthy footsteps creeping away along the outer passage to another part of the house, was hushed at last into silence. After a long pause of intense stillness, some clock below stairs struck midnight with a mellow clang, and Helmsley opening his eyes, lay waiting till the excited beating of his heart subsided, and his quickened breath grew calm. Blaming himself for his nervous terrors, he presently rose from his bed, and struck a match from the box which Miss Tranter had thoughtfully left beside him, and lit his candle. Something had been placed on his pillow, and curiosity moved him to examine it. He looked,--but saw nothing save a mere screw of soiled newspaper. He took it up wonderingly. It was heavy,--and opening it he found it full of pennies, halfpennies, and one odd sixpence. A scrap of writing accompanied this collection, roughly pencilled thus:--"To help you along the road. From friends at the Trusty Man. Good luck!"
For a moment he stood inert, fingering the humble coins,--for a moment he could hardly realise that these rough men of doubtful character and calling, with whom he had passed one evening, were actually humane enough to feel pity for his age, and sympathy for his seeming loneliness and poverty, and that they had sufficient heart and generosity to deprive themselves of money in order to help one whom they judged to be in greater need;--then the pure intention and honest kindness of the little "surprise" gift came upon him all at once, and he was not ashamed to feel his eyes full of tears.
"God forgive me!" he murmured--"God forgive me that I ever judged the poor by the rich!"
With an almost reverential tenderness, he folded the paper and coins together, and put the little packet carefully away, determining never to part with it.
"For its value outweighs every banknote I ever handled!" he said--"And I am prouder of it than of all my millions!"
CHAPTER VIII
The light of the next day's sun, beaming with all the heat and effulgence of full morning, bathed moor and upland in a wide shower of gold, when Miss Tranter, standing on the threshold of her dwelling, and shading her eyes with one hand from the dazzling radiance of the skies, watched a man's tall figure disappear down the rough and precipitous road which led from the higher hills to the seashore. All her night's lodgers had left her save one--and he was still soundly sleeping. Bill Bush had risen as early as five and stolen away,--Matt Peke had broken his fast with a cup of hot milk and a hunch of dry bread, and shouldering his basket, had started for Crowcombe, where he had several customers for his herbal wares.
"Take care o' the old gaffer I brought along wi' me," had been his parting recommendation to the hostess of the "Trusty Man." "Tell 'im I've left a bottle o' yerb wine in the bar for 'im. M'appen ye might find an odd job or two about th' 'ouse an' garden for 'im, just for lettin' 'im rest a while."
Miss Tranter had nodded curtly in response to this suggestion, but had promised nothing.
The last to depart from the inn was Tom o' the Gleam. Tom had risen in what he called his "dark mood." He had eaten no breakfast, and he scarcely spoke at all as he took up his stout ash stick and prepared to fare forth upon his way. Miss Tranter was not inquisitive, but she had rather a liking for Tom, and his melancholy surliness was not lost upon her.
"What's the matter with you?" she asked sharply. "You're like a bear with a sore head this morning!"
He looked at her with sombre eyes in which the flame of strongly restrained passions feverishly smouldered.
"I don't know what's the matter with me," he answered slowly. "Last night I was happy. This morning I am wretched!"
"For no cause?"
"For no cause that I know of,"--and he heaved a sudden sigh. "It is the dark spirit--the warning of an evil hour!"
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Miss Tranter.
He was silent. His mouth compressed itself into a petulant line, like that of a chidden child ready to cry.
"I shall be all right when I have kissed the kiddie," he said.
Miss Tranter sniffed and tossed her head.
"You're just a fool over that kiddie," she declared with emphasis,--"You make too much of him."
"How can I make too much of my all?" he asked.
Her face softened.
"Well, it's a pity you look at it in that way," she said. "You shouldn't set your heart on anything in this world."
"Why not?" he demanded. "Is God a friend that He should grudge us love?"
Her lips trembled a little, but she made no reply.
"What am I to set my heart on?" he continued--"If not on anything in this world, what have I got in the next?"
A faint tinge of colour warmed Miss Tranter's sallow cheeks.
"Your wife's in the next," she answered, quietly.
His face changed--his eyes lightened.
"My wife!" he echoed. "Good woman that you are, you know she was never my wife! No parson ever mocked us wild birds with his blessing! She was my love--my love!--so much more than wife! By Heaven! If prayer and fasting would bring me to the world where _she_ is, I'd fast and pray till I turned this body of mine to dust and ashes! But my kiddie is all I have that's left of her; and shall I not love him, nay, worship him for _her_ sake?"
Miss Tranter tried to look severe, but could not,--the strong vehemence of the man shook her self-possession.
"Love him, yes!--but don't worship him," she said. "It's a mistake, Tom! He's only a child, after all, and he might be taken from you."
"Don't say that!" and Tom suddenly gripped her by the arm. "For God's sake don't say that! Don't send me away this morning with those words buzzing in my ears!"
Great tears flashed into his eyes,--his face paled and contracted as with acutest agony.
"I'm sorry, Tom," faltered Miss Tranter, herself quite overcome by his fierce emotion--"I didn't mean----"
"Yes--yes!--that's right! Say you didn't mean it!" muttered Tom, with a pained smile--"You didn't----?"
"I didn't mean it!" declared Miss Tranter earnestly. "Upon my word I didn't, Tom!"
He loosened his hold of her arm.
"Thank you! God bless you!" and a shudder ran through his massive frame. "But it's all one with the dark hour!--all one with the wicked tongue of a dream that whispers to me of a coming storm!"
He pulled his rough cap over his brows, and strode forward a step or two. Then he suddenly wheeled round again, and doffed the cap to Miss Tranter.
"It's unlucky to turn back," he said, "yet I'm doing it, because--because--I wouldn't have you think me sullen or ill-tempered with _you_! Nor ungrateful. You're a good woman, for all that you're a bit rough sometimes. If you want to know where we are, we've camped down by Cleeve, and we're on the way to Dunster. I take the short cuts that no one else dare venture by--over the cliffs and through the cave-holes of the sea. When the old man comes down, tell him I'll have a care of him if he passes my way. I like his face! I think he's something more than he seems."
"So do I!" agreed Miss Tranter. "I'd almost swear that he's a gentleman, fallen on hard times."
"A gentleman!" Tom o' the Gleam laughed disdainfully--"What's that? Only a robber grown richer than his neighbours! Better be a plain Man any day than your up-to-date 'gentleman'!"
With another laugh he swung away, and Miss Tranter remained, as already stated, at the door of the inn for many minutes, watching his easy stride over the rough stones and clods of the "by-road" winding down to the sea. His figure, though so powerfully built, was singularly graceful in movement, and commanded the landscape much as that of some chieftain of old might have commanded it in that far back period of time when mountain thieves and marauders were the progenitors of all the British kings and their attendant nobility.
"I wish I knew that man's real history!" she mused, as he at last disappeared from her sight. "The folks about here, such as Mr. Joltram, for instance, say he was never born to the gypsy life,--he speaks too well, and knows too much. Yet he's wild enough--and--yes!--I'm afraid he's bad enough--sometimes--to be anything!"
Her meditations were here interrupted by a touch on her arm, and turning, she beheld her round-eyed handmaiden Prue.
"The old man you sez is a gentleman is down, Mis' Tranter!"
Miss Tranter at once stepped indoors and confronted Helmsley, who, amazed to find it nearly ten o'clock, now proffered humble excuses to his hostess for his late rising. She waived these aside with a good-humoured nod and smile.
"That's all right!" she said. "I wanted you to have a good long rest, and I'm glad you got it. Were you disturbed at all?"
"Only by kindness," answered Helmsley in a rather tremulous voice. "Some one came into my room while I was asleep--and--and--I found a 'surprise packet' on my pillow----"
"Yes, I know all about it," interrupted Miss Tranter, with a touch of embarrassment--"Tom o' the Gleam did that. He's just gone. He's a rough chap, but he's got a heart. He thinks you're not strong enough to tramp it to Cornwall. And all those great babies of men put their heads together last night after you'd gone upstairs, and clubbed up enough among them to give you a ride part of the way----"
"They're very good!" murmured Helmsley. "Why should they trouble about an old fellow like me?"
"Oh well!" said Miss Tranter cheerfully, "it's just because you _are_ an old fellow, I suppose! You see you might walk to a station to-day, and take the train as far as Minehead before starting on the road again. Anyhow you've time to think it over. If you'll step into the room yonder, I'll send Prue with your breakfast."
She turned her back upon him, and with a shrill call of "Prue! Prue!" affected to be too busy to continue the conversation. Helmsley, therefore, went as she bade him into the common room, which at this hour was quite empty. A neat white cloth was spread at one end of the table, and on this was set a brown loaf, a pat of butter, a jug of new milk, a basin of sugar, and a brightly polished china cup and saucer. The window was open, and the inflow of the pure fresh morning air had done much to disperse the odours of stale tobacco and beer that subtly clung to the walls as reminders of the drink and smoke of the previous evening.
Just outside, a tangle of climbing roses hung like a delicate pink curtain between Helmsley's eyes and the sunshine, while the busy humming of bees in and out the fragrant hearts of the flowers, made a musical monotony of soothing sound. He sat down and surveyed the simple scene with a quiet sense of pleasure. He contrasted it in his memory with the weary sameness of the breakfasts served to him in his own palatial London residence, when the velvet-footed butler creeping obsequiously round the table, uttered his perpetual "Tea or coffee, sir? 'Am or tongue? Fish or heggs?" in soft sepulchral tones, as though these comestibles had something to do with poison rather than nourishment. With disgust at the luxury which engendered such domestic appurtenances, he thought of the two tall footmen, whose chief duty towards the serving of breakfast appeared to be the taking of covers off dishes and the putting them on again, as if six-footed able-bodied manhood were not equipped for more muscular work than that!
"We do great wrong," he said to himself--"We who are richer than what are called the rich, do infinite wrong to our kind by tolerating so much needless waste and useless extravagance. We merely generate mischief for ourselves and others. The poor are happier, and far kindlier to each other than the moneyed classes, simply because they cannot demand so much self-indulgence. The lazy habits of wealthy men and women who insist on getting an unnecessary number of paid persons to do for them what they could very well do for themselves, are chiefly to blame for all our tiresome and ostentatious social conditions. Servants must, of course, be had in every well-ordered household--but too many of them constitute a veritable hive of discord and worry. Why have huge houses at all? Why have enormous domestic retinues? A small house is always cosiest, and often prettiest, and the fewer servants, the less trouble. Here again comes in the crucial question--Why do we spend all our best years of youth, life, and sentiment in making money, when, so far as the sweetest and highest things are concerned, money can give so little!"
At that moment, Prue entered with a brightly shining old brown "lustre" teapot, and a couple of boiled eggs.
"Mis' Tranter sez you're to eat the eggs cos' they'se new-laid an' incloodid in the bill," she announced glibly--"An' 'opes you've got all ye want."
Helmsley looked at her kindly.
"You're a smart little girl!" he said. "Beginning to earn your own living already, eh?"
"Lor', that aint much!" retorted Prue, putting a knife by the brown loaf, and setting the breakfast things even more straightly on the table than they originally were. "I lives on nothin' scarcely, though I'm turned fifteen an' likes a bit o' fresh pork now an' agen. But I've got a brother as is on'y ten, an' when 'e aint at school 'e's earnin' a bit by gatherin' mussels on the beach, an' 'e do collect a goodish bit too, though 'taint reg'lar biziness, an' 'e gets hisself into such a pickle o' salt water as never was. But he brings mother a shillin' or two."
"And who is your mother?" asked Helmsley, drawing up his chair to the table and sitting down.
"Misses Clodder, up at Blue-bell Cottage, two miles from 'ere across the moor," replied Prue. "She goes out a-charing, but it's 'ard for 'er to be doin' chars now--she's gettin' old an' fat--orful fat she be gettin'. Dunno what we'll do if she goes on fattenin'."
It was difficult not to laugh at this statement, Prue's eyes were so round, her cheeks were so red, and she breathed so spasmodically as she spoke. David Helmsley bit his lips to hide a broad smile, and poured out his tea.
"Have you no father?"
"No, never 'ad," declared Prue, quite jubilantly. "'E droonk 'isself to death an' tumbled over a cliff near 'ere one dark night an' was drowned!" This, with the most thrilling emphasis.
"That's very sad! But you can't say you never had a father," persisted Helmsley. "You had him before he was drowned?"
"No, I 'adn't," said Prue. "'E never comed 'ome at all. When 'e seed me 'e didn't know me, 'e was that blind droonk. When my little brother was born 'e was 'owlin' wild down Watchet way, an' screechin' to all the folks as 'ow the baby wasn't his'n!"
This was a doubtful subject,--a "delicate and burning question," as reviewers for the press say when they want to praise some personal friend's indecent novel and pass it into decent households,--and Helmsley let it drop. He devoted himself to the consideration of his breakfast, which was excellent, and found that he had an appetite to enjoy it thoroughly.
Prue watched him for a minute or two in silence.
"Ye likes yer food?" she demanded, presently.
"Very much!"
"Thought yer did! I'll tell Mis' Tranter."
With that she retired, and shutting the door behind her left Helmsley to himself.
Many and conflicting were the thoughts that chased one another through his brain during the quiet half-hour he gave to his morning meal,--a whole fund of new suggestions and ideas were being generated in him by the various episodes in which he was taking an active yet seemingly passive part. He had voluntarily entered into his present circumstances, and so far, he had nothing to complain of. He had met with friendliness and sympathy from persons who, judged by the world's conventions, were of no social account whatever, and he had seen for himself men in a condition of extreme poverty, who were nevertheless apparently contented with their lot. Of course, as a well-known millionaire, his secretaries had always had to deal with endless cases of real or assumed distress, more often the latter,--and shoals of begging letters from people representing themselves as starving and friendless, formed a large part of the daily correspondence with which his house and office were besieged,--but he had never come into personal contact with these shameless sort of correspondents, shrewdly judging them to be undeserving simply by the very fact that they wrote begging letters. He knew that no really honest or plucky-spirited man or woman would waste so much as a stamp in asking money from a stranger, even if such a stranger were twenty times a millionaire. He had given huge sums away to charitable institutions anonymously; and he remembered with a thrill of pain the "Christian kindness" of some good "Church" people, who, when the news accidentally slipped out that he was the donor of a particularly munificent gift to a certain hospital, remarked that "no doubt Mr. Helmsley had given it anonymously _at first_, in order that it might be made public more effectively _afterwards,_ by way of a personal _advertisement_!" Such spiteful comment often repeated, had effectually checked the outflow of his naturally warm and generous spirit, nevertheless he was always ready to relieve any pressing cases of want which were proved genuine, and many a wretched family in the East End of London had cause to bless him for his timely and ungrudging aid. But this present kind of life,--the life of the tramp, the poacher, the gypsy, who is content to be "on the road" rather than submit to the trammels of custom and ordinance, was new to him and full of charm. He took a peculiar pleasure in reflecting as to what he could do to make these men, with whom he had casually foregathered, happier? Did it lie in his power to give them any greater satisfaction than that which they already possessed? He doubted whether a present of money to Matt Peke, for instance, would not offend that rustic philosopher, more than it would gratify him;--while, as for Tom o' the Gleam, that handsome ruffian was more likely to rob a man of gold than accept it as a gift from him. Then involuntarily, his thoughts reverted to the "kiddie." He recalled the look in Tom's wild eyes, and the almost womanish tremble of tenderness in his rough voice, when he had spoken of this little child of his on whom he openly admitted he had set all his love.
"I should like," mused Helmsley, "to see that kiddie! Not that I believe in the apparent promise of a child's life,--for my own sons taught me the folly of indulging in any hopes on that score--and Lucy Sorrel has completed the painful lesson. Who would have ever thought that she,--the little angel creature who seemed too lovely and innocent for this world at ten,--could at twenty have become the extremely commonplace and practical woman she is,--practical enough to wish to marry an old man for his money! But that talk among the men last night about the 'kiddie' touched me somehow,--I fancy it must be a sturdy little lad, with a bright face and a will of its own. I might possibly do something for the child if,--if its father would let me! And that's very doubtful! Besides, should I not be interfering with the wiser and healthier dispensations of nature? The 'kiddie' is no doubt perfectly happy in its wild state of life,--free to roam the woods and fields, with every chance of building up a strong and vigorous constitution in the simple open-air existence to which it has been born and bred. All the riches in the world could not make health or freedom for it,--and thus again I confront myself with my own weary problem--Why have I toiled all my life to make money, merely to find money so useless and comfortless at the end?"
With a sigh he rose from the table. His simple breakfast was finished, and he went to the window to look at the roses that pushed their pretty pink faces up to the sun through a lattice-work of green leaves. There was a small yard outside, roughly paved with cobbles, but clean, and bordered here and there with bright clusters of flowers, and in one particularly sunny corner where the warmth from the skies had made the cobbles quite hot, a tiny white kitten rolled on its back, making the most absurd efforts to catch its own tail between its forepaws,--and a promising brood of fowls were clucking contentedly round some scattered grain lately flung out from the window of the "Trusty Man's" wash-house for their delectation. There was nothing in the scene at all of a character to excite envy in the most morbid and dissatisfied mind;--it was full of the tamest domesticity, and yet--it was a picture such as some thoughtful Dutch artist would have liked to paint as a suggestion of rural simplicity and peace.
"But if one only knew the ins and outs of the life here, it might not prove so inviting," he thought. "I daresay all the little towns and villages in this neighbourhood are full of petty discords, jealousies, envyings and spites,--even Prue's mother, Mrs. Clodder, may have, and probably has, a neighbour whom she hates, and wishes to get the better of, in some way or other, for there is really no such thing as actual peace anywhere except--in the grave! And who knows whether we shall even find it there! Nothing dies which does not immediately begin to live--in another fashion. And every community, whether of insects, birds, wild animals, or men and women, is bound to fight for existence,--therefore those who cry: 'Peace, peace!' only clamour for a vain thing. The very stones and rocks and mountains maintain a perpetual war with destroying elements,--they appear immutable things to our short lives, but they change in their turn even as we do--they die to live again in other forms, even as we do. And what is it all for? What is the sum and substance of so much striving--if merest Nothingness is the end?"
He was disturbed from his reverie by the entrance of Miss Tranter. He turned round and smiled at her.
"Well!" she said--"Enjoyed your breakfast?"
"Very much indeed, thanks to your kindness!" he replied. "I hardly thought I had such a good appetite left to me. I feel quite strong and hearty this morning."
"You look twice the man you were last night, certainly,"--and she eyed him thoughtfully--"Would you like a job here?"
A flush rose to his brows. He hesitated before replying.
"You'd rather not!" snapped out Miss Tranter--"I can see 'No' in your face. Well, please yourself!"
He looked at her. Her lips were compressed in a thin line, and she wore a decidedly vexed expression.
"Ah, you think I don't want to work!" he said--"There you're wrong! But I haven't many years of life in me,--there's not much time left to do what I have to do,--and I must get on."
"Get on, where?"
"To Cornwall."
"Whereabouts in Cornwall?"
"Down by Penzance way."
"You want to start off on the tramp again at once?"
"Yes."
"All right, you must do as you like, I suppose,"--and Miss Tranter sniffed whole volumes of meaning in one sniff--"But Farmer Joltram told me to say that if you wanted a light job up on his place,--that's about a mile from here,--- he wouldn't mind giving you a chance. You'd get good victuals there, for he feeds his men well. And I don't mind trusting you with a bit of gardening--you could make a shilling a day easy--so don't say you can't get work. That's the usual whine--but if you say it----"
"I shall be a liar!" said Helmsley, his sunken eyes lighting up with a twinkle of merriment--"And don't you fear, Miss Tranter,--I _won't_ say it! I'm grateful to Mr. Joltram--but I've only one object left to me in life, and that is--to get on, and find the person I'm looking for--if I can!"
"Oh, you're looking for a person, are you?" queried Miss Tranter, more amicably--"Some long-lost relative?"
"No,--not a relative, only--a friend."
"I see!" Miss Tranter smoothed down her neatly fitting plain cotton gown with both hands reflectively--"And you'll be all right if you find this friend?"
"I shall never want anything any more," he answered, with an unconsciously pathetic tremor in his voice--"My dearest wish will be granted, and I shall be quite content to die!"
"Well, content or no content, you've got to do it," commented Miss Tranter--"And so have I--and so have all of us. Which I think is a pity. I shouldn't mind living for ever and ever in this world. It's a very comfortable world, though some folks say it isn't. That's mostly liver with them though. People who don't over-eat or over-drink themselves, and who get plenty of fresh air, are generally fairly pleased with the world as they find it. I suppose the friend you're looking for will be glad to see you?"
"The friend I'm looking for will certainly be glad to see me," said Helmsley, gently--"Glad to see me--glad to help me--glad above all things to love me! If this were not so, I should not trouble to search for my friend at all."
Miss Tranter fixed her eyes full upon him while he thus spoke. They were sharp eyes, and just now they were visibly inquisitive.
"You've not been very long used to tramping," she observed.
"No."
"I expect you've seen better days?"
"Some few, perhaps,"--and he smiled gravely--"But it comes harder to a man who has once known comfort to find himself comfortless in his old age."
"That's very true! Well!"--and Miss Tranter gave a short sigh--"I'm sorry you won't stay on here a bit to pick up your strength--but a wilful man must have his way! I hope you'll find your friend!"
"I hope I shall!" said Helmsley earnestly. "And believe me I'm most grateful to you----"
"Tut!" and Miss Tranter tossed her head. "What do you want to be grateful to me for! You've had food and lodging, and you've paid me for it. I've offered you work and you won't take it. That's the long and short of it between us."
And thereupon she marched out of the room, her head very high, her shoulders very square, and her back very straight. Helmsley watched her dignified exit with a curious sense of half-amused contrition.
"What odd creatures some women are!" he thought. "Here's this sharp-tongued, warm-hearted hostess of a roadside inn quite angry because, apparently, an old tramp won't stay and do incompetent work for her! She knows that I should make a mere boggle of her garden,--she is equally aware that I could be no use in any way on 'Feathery' Joltram's farm--and yet she is thoroughly annoyed and disappointed because I won't try to do what she is perfectly confident I can't do, in order that I shall rest well and be fed well for one or two days! Really the kindness of the poor to one another outvalues all the gifts of the rich to the charities they help to support. It is so much more than ordinary 'charity,' for it goes hand in hand with a touch of personal feeling. And that is what few rich men ever get,--except when their pretended 'friends' think they can make something for themselves out of their assumed 'friendship'!"
He put on his hat, and plucked one of the roses clambering in at the window to take with him as a remembrance of the "Trusty Man,"--a place which he felt would henceforward be a kind of landmark for the rest of his life to save him from drowning in utter cynicism, because within its walls he had found unselfish compassion for his age and loneliness, and disinterested sympathy for his seeming need. Then he went to say good-bye to Miss Tranter. She was, as usual, in the bar, standing very erect. She had taken up her knitting, and her needles clicked and glittered busily.
"Matt Peke left a bottle of his herb wine for you," she said. "There it is."
She indicated by a jerk of her head a flat oblong quart flask, neatly corked and tied with string, which lay on the counter. It was of a conveniently portable shape, and Helmsley slipped it into one of his coat pockets with ease.
"Shall you be seeing Peke soon again, Miss Tranter?" he asked.
"I don't know. Maybe so, and maybe not. He's gone on to Crowcombe. I daresay he'll come back this way before the end of the month. He's a pretty regular customer."
"Then, will you thank him for me, and say that I shall never forget his kindness?"
"Never forget is a long time," said Miss Tranter. "Most folks forget their friends directly their backs are turned."
"That's true," said Helmsley, gently; "but I shall not. Good-bye!"
"Good-bye!" Miss Tranter paused in her knitting. "Which road are you going from here?"
Helmsley thought a moment.
"Perhaps," he said at last, "one of the main roads would be best. I'd rather not risk any chance of losing my way."
Miss Tranter stepped out of the bar and came to the open doorway of the inn.
"Take that path across the moor," and she pointed with one of her bright knitting needles to a narrow beaten track between the tufted grass, whitened here and there by clusters of tall daisies, "and follow it as straight as you can. It will bring you out on the highroad to Williton and Watchett. It's a goodish bit of tramping on a hot day like this, but if you keep to it steady you'll be sure to get a lift or so in waggons going along to Dunster. And there are plenty of publics about where I daresay you'd get a night's sixpenny shelter, though whether any of them are as comfortable as the 'Trusty Man,' is open to question."
"I should doubt it very much," said Helmsley, his rare kind smile lighting up his whole face. "The 'Trusty Man' thoroughly deserves trust; and, if I may say so, its kind hostess commands respect."
He raised his cap with the deferential easy grace which was habitual to him, and Miss Tranter's pale cheeks reddened suddenly and violently.
"Oh, I'm only a rough sort!" she said hastily. "But the men like me because I don't give them away. I hold that the poor must get a bit of attention as well as the rich."
"The poor deserve it more," rejoined Helmsley. "The rich get far too much of everything in these days,--they are too much pampered and too much flattered. Yet, with it all, I daresay they are often miserable."
"It must be pretty hard to be miserable on twenty or thirty thousand a year!" said Miss Tranter.
"You think so? Now, I should say it was very easy. For when one has everything, one wants nothing."
"Well, isn't it all right to want nothing?" she queried, looking at him inquisitively.
"All right? No!--rather all wrong! For want stimulates the mind and body to work, and work generates health and energy,--and energy is the pulse of life. Without that pulse, one is a mere husk of a man--as I am!" He doffed his cap again. "Thank you for all your friendliness. Good-bye!"
"Good-bye! Perhaps I shall see you again some time this way?"
"Perhaps--but----"
"With your friend?" she suggested.
"Ay--if I find my friend--then possibly I may return. Meanwhile, all good be with you!"
He turned away, and began to ascend the path indicated across the moor. Once he looked back and waved his hand. Miss Tranter, in response, waved her piece of knitting. Then she went on clicking her needles rapidly through a perfect labyrinth of stitches, her eyes fixed all the while on the tall, thin, frail figure which, with the assistance of a stout stick, moved slowly along between the nodding daisies.
"He's what they call a mystery," she said to herself. "He's as true-born a gentleman as ever lived--with a gentleman's ways, a gentleman's voice, and a gentleman's hands, and yet he's 'on the road' like a tramp! Well! there's many ups and downs in life, certainly, and those that's rich to-day may be poor to-morrow. It's a queer world--and God who made it only knows what it was made for!"
With that, having seen the last of Helmsley's retreating figure, she went indoors, and relieved her feelings by putting Prue through her domestic paces in a fashion that considerably flurried that small damsel and caused her to wonder, "what 'ad come over Miss Tranter suddint, she was that beside 'erself with work and temper!"
CHAPTER IX
It was pleasant walking across the moor. The July sun was powerful, but to ageing men the warmth and vital influences of the orb of day are welcome, precious, and salutary. An English summer is seldom or never too warm for those who are conscious that but few such summers are left to them, and David Helmsley was moved by a devout sense of gratitude that on this fair and tranquil morning he was yet able to enjoy the lovely and loving beneficence of all beautiful and natural things. The scent of the wild thyme growing in prolific patches at his feet,--the more pungent odour of the tall daisies which were of a hardy, free-flowering kind,--the "strong sea-daisies that feast on the sun,"--and the indescribable salty perfume that swept upwards on the faint wind from the unseen ocean, just now hidden by projecting shelves of broken ground fringed with trees,--all combined together to refresh the air and to make the mere act of breathing a delight. After about twenty minutes' walking Helmsley's step grew easier and more springy,--almost he felt young,--almost he pictured himself living for another ten years in health and active mental power. The lassitude and _ennui_ inseparable from a life spent for the most part in the business centres of London, had rolled away like a noxious mist from his mind, and he was well-nigh ready to "begin life again," as he told himself, with a smile at his own folly.
"No wonder that the old-world philosophers and scientists sought for the _elixir vitæ_!" he thought. "No wonder they felt that the usual tenure is too short for all that a man might accomplish, did he live well and wisely enough to do justice to all the powers with which nature has endowed him. I am myself inclined to think that the 'Tree of Life' exists,--perhaps its leaves are the 'leaves of the Daura,' for which that excellent fellow Matt Peke is looking. Or it may be the 'Secta Croa'!"
He smiled,--and having arrived at the end of the path which he had followed from the door of the "Trusty Man," he saw before him a descending bank, which sloped into the highroad, a wide track white with thick dust stretching straight away for about a mile and then dipping round a broad curve of land, overarched with trees. He sat down for a few minutes on the warm grass, giving himself up to the idle pleasure of watching the birds skimming through the clear blue sky,--the bees bouncing in and out of the buttercups,--the varicoloured butterflies floating like blown flower-petals on the breeze,--and he heard a distant bell striking the half-hour after eleven. He had noted the time when leaving the "Trusty Man," otherwise he would not have known it so exactly, having left his watch locked up at home in his private desk with other personal trinkets which would have been superfluous and troublesome to him on his self-imposed journey. When the echo of the bell's one stroke had died away it left a great stillness in the air. The heat was increasing as the day veered towards noon, and he decided that it would be as well to get on further down the road and under the shadow of the trees, which were not so very far off, and which looked invitingly cool in their spreading dark soft greenness. So, rising from his brief rest, he started again "on the tramp," and soon felt the full glare of the sun, and the hot sensation of the dust about his feet; but he went on steadily, determining to make light of all the inconveniences and difficulties, to which he was entirely unaccustomed, but to which he had voluntarily exposed himself. For a considerable time he met no living creature; the highroad seemed to be as much his own as though it were part of a private park or landed estate belonging to him only; and it was not till he had nearly accomplished the distance which lay between him and the shelter of the trees, that he met a horse and cart slowly jogging along towards the direction from whence he had come. The man who drove the vehicle was half-asleep, stupefied, no doubt, by the effect of the hot sun following on a possible "glass" at a public-house, but Helmsley called to him just for company's sake.
"Hi! Am I going right for Watchett?"
The man opened his drowsing eyes and yawned expansively.
"Watchett? Ay! Williton comes fust."
"Is it far?"
"Nowt's far to your kind!" said the man, flicking his whip. "An' ye'll meet a bobby or so on the road!"
On he went, and Helmsley without further parley resumed his tramp. Presently, reaching the clump of trees he had seen in the distance, he moved into their refreshing shade. They were broad-branched elms, luxuriantly full of foliage, and the avenue they formed extended for about a quarter of a mile. Cool dells and dingles of mossy green sloped down on one side of the road, breaking into what are sometimes called "coombs" running precipitously towards the sea-coast, and slackening his pace a little he paused, looking through a tangle of shrubs and bracken at the pale suggestion of a glimmer of blue which he realised was the shining of the sunlit ocean. While he thus stood, he fancied he heard a little plaintive whine as of an animal in pain. He listened attentively. The sound was repeated, and, descending the shelving bank a few steps he sought to discover the whereabouts of this piteous cry for help. All at once he spied two bright sparkling eyes and a small silvery grey head perking up at him through the leaves,--the head of a tiny Yorkshire "toy" terrier. It looked at him with eloquent anxiety, and as he approached it, it made an effort to move, but fell back again with a faint moan. Gently he picked it up,--it was a rare and beautiful little creature, but one of its silky forepaws had evidently been caught in some trap, for it was badly mangled and bleeding. Round its neck was a small golden collar, something like a lady's bracelet, bearing the inscription: "I am Charlie. Take care of me!" There was no owner's name or address, and the entreaty "Take care of me!" had certainly not been complied with, or so valuable a pet would not have been left wounded on the highroad. While Helmsley was examining it, it ceased whining, and gently licked his hand. Seeing a trickling stream of water making its way through the moss and ferns close by, he bathed the little dog's wounded paw carefully and tied it up with a strip of material torn from his own coat sleeve.
"So you want to be taken care of, do you, Charlie!" he said, patting the tiny head. "That's what a good many of us want, when we feel hurt and broken by the hard ways of the world!" Charlie blinked a dark eye, cocked a small soft ear, and ventured on another caress of the kind human hand with his warm little tongue. "Well, I won't leave you to starve in the woods, or trust you to the tender mercies of the police,--you shall come along with me! And if I see any advertisement of your loss I'll perhaps take you back to your owner. But in the meantime we'll stay together."
Charlie evidently agreed to this proposition, for when Helmsley tucked him cosily under his arm, he settled down comfortably as though well accustomed to the position. He was certainly nothing of a weight to carry, and his new owner was conscious of a certain pleasure in feeling the warm, silky little body nestling against his breast. He was not quite alone any more,--this little creature was a companion,--a something to talk to, to caress and to protect. He ascended the bank, and regaining the highroad resumed his vagrant way. Noon was now at the full, and the sun's heat seemed to create a silence that was both oppressive and stifling. He walked slowly, and began to feel that perhaps after all he had miscalculated his staying powers, and that the burden of old age would, in the end, take vengeance upon him for running risks of fatigue and exhaustion which, in his case, were wholly unnecessary.
"Yet if I were really poor," he argued with himself, "if I were in very truth a tramp, I should have to do exactly what I am doing now. If one man can stand 'life on the road,' so can another."
And he would not allow his mind to dwell on the fact that a temperament which has become accustomed to every kind of comfort and luxury is seldom fitted to endure privation. On he jogged steadily, and by and by began to be entertained by his own thoughts as pleasantly as a poet or romancist is entertained by the fancies which come and go in the brain with all the vividness of dramatic reality. Yet always he found himself harking back to what he sometimes called the "incurability" of life. Over and over again he asked himself the old eternal question: Why so much Product to end in Waste? Why are thousands of millions of worlds, swarming with life-organisms, created to revolve in space, if there is no other fate for them but final destruction?
"There _must_ be an Afterwards!" he said. "Otherwise Creation would not only be a senseless joke, but a wicked one! Nay, it would almost be a crime. To cause creatures to be born into existence without their own consent, merely to destroy them utterly in a few years and make the fact of their having lived purposeless, would be worse than the dreams of madmen. For what is the use of bringing human creatures into the world to suffer pain, sickness, and sorrow, if mere life-torture is all we can give them, and death is the only end?"
Here his meditations were broken in upon by the sound of a horse's hoofs trotting briskly behind him, and pausing, he saw a neat little cart and pony coming along, driven by a buxom-looking woman with a brown sun-hat tied on in the old-fashioned manner under her chin.
"Would ye like a lift?" she asked. "It's mighty warm walkin'."
Helmsley raised his eyes to the sun-bonnet, and smiled at the cheerful freckled face beneath its brim.
"You're very kind----" he began.
"Jump in!" said the woman. "I'm taking cream and cheeses into Watchett, but it's a light load, an' Jim an' me can do with ye that far. This is Jim."
She flicked the pony's ears with her whip by way of introducing the animal, and Helmsley clambered up into the cart beside her.
"That's a nice little dog you've got," she remarked, as Charlie perked his small black nose out from under his protector's arm to sniff the subtle atmosphere of what was going to happen next. "He's a real beauty!"
"Yes," replied Helmsley, without volunteering any information as to how he had found the tiny creature, whom he now had no inclination to part with. "He got his paw caught in a trap, so I'm obliged to carry him."
"Poor little soul! There's a-many traps all about 'ere, lots o' the land bein' private property. Go on, Jim!" And she shook the reins on her pony's neck, thereby causing that intelligent animal to start off at a pleasantly regular pace. "I allus sez that if the rich ladies and gentlemen as eats up every bit o' land in Great Britain could put traps in the air to catch the noses of everything but themselves as dares to breathe it, they'd do it, singin' glory all the time. For they goes to church reg'lar."
"Ah, it's a wise thing to be seen _looking_ good in public!" said Helmsley.
The woman laughed.
"That's right! You can do a lot o' humbuggin' if you're friends with the parson, what more often than not humbugs everybody hisself. I'm no church-goer, but I turn out the best cheese an' butter in these parts, an' I never tells no lies nor cheats any one of a penny, so I aint worryin' about my soul, seein' it's straight with my neighbours."
"Are there many rich people living about here?" inquired Helmsley.
"Not enough to do the place real good. The owners of the big houses are here to-day and gone to-morrow, and they don't trouble much over their tenantry. Still we rub on fairly well. None of us can ever put by for a rainy day,--and some folk as is as hard-working as ever they can be, are bound to come on the parish when they can't work no more--no doubt o' that. You're a stranger to these parts?"
"Yes, I've tramped from Bristol."
The woman opened her eyes widely.
"That's a long way! You must be fairly strong for your age. Where are ye wantin' to get to?"
"Cornwall."
"My word! You've got a goodish bit to go. All Devon lies before you."
"I know that. But I shall rest here and there, and perhaps get a lift or two if I meet any more such kind-hearted folk as yourself."
She looked at him sharply.
"That's what we may call a bit o' soft soap," she said, "and I'd advise ye to keep that kind o' thing to yourself, old man! It don't go down with Meg Ross, I can tell ye!"
"Are you Meg Ross?" he asked, amused at her manner.
"That's me! I'm known all over the countryside for the sharpest tongue as ever wagged in a woman's head. So you'd better look out!"
"I'm not afraid of you!" he said smiling.
"Well, you might be if you knew me!" and she whipped up her pony smartly. "Howsomever, you're old enough to be past hurtin' or bein' hurt."
"That's true!" he responded gently.
She was silent after this, and not till Watchett was reached did she again begin conversation. Rattling quickly through the little watering-place, which at this hour seemed altogether deserted or asleep, she pulled up at an inn in the middle of the principal street.
"I've got an order to deliver here," she said. "What are _you_ going to do with yourself?"
"Nothing in particular," he answered, with a smile. "I shall just take my little dog to a chemist's and get its paw dressed, and then I shall walk on."
"Don't you want any dinner?"
"Not yet. I had a good breakfast, I daresay I'll have a glass of milk presently."
"Well, if you come back here in half an hour I can drive you on a little further. How would you like that?"
"Very much! But I'm afraid of troubling you----"
"Oh, you won't do that!" said Meg with a defiant air. "No man, young or old, has ever troubled _me_! I'm not married, thank the Lord!"
And jumping from the cart, she began to pull out sundry cans, jars, and boxes, while Helmsley standing by with the small Charlie under his arm, wished he could help her, but felt sure she would resent assistance even if he offered it. Glancing at him, she gave him a kindly nod.
"Off you go with your little dog! You'll find me ready here in half an hour."
With that she turned from him into the open doorway of the inn, and Helmsley made his way slowly along the silent, sun-baked little street till he found a small chemist's shop, where he took his lately found canine companion to have its wounded paw examined and attended to. No bones were broken, and the chemist, a lean, pale, kindly man, assured him that in a few days the little animal would be quite well.
"It's a pretty creature," he said. "And valuable too."
"Yes. I found it on the highroad," said Helmsley; "and of course if I see any advertisement out for it, I'll return it to its owner. But if no one claims it I'll keep it."
"Perhaps it fell out of a motor-car," said the chemist. "It looks as if it might have belonged to some fine lady who was too wrapped up in herself to take proper care of it. There are many of that kind who come this way touring through Somerset and Devon."
"I daresay you're right," and Helmsley gently stroked the tiny dog's soft silky coat. "Rich women will pay any amount of money for such toy creatures out of mere caprice, and will then lose them out of sheer laziness, forgetting that they are living beings, with feelings and sentiments of trust and affection greater sometimes than our own. However, this little chap will be safe with me till he is rightfully claimed, if ever that happens. I don't want to steal him; I only want to take care of him."
"I should never part with him if I were you," said the chemist. "Those who were careless enough to lose him deserve their loss."
Helmsley agreed, and left the shop. Finding a confectioner's near by, he bought a few biscuits for his new pet, an attention which that small animal highly appreciated. "Charlie" was hungry, and cracked and munched the biscuits with exceeding relish, his absurd little nose becoming quite moist with excitement and appetite. Returning presently to the inn where he had left Meg Ross, Helmsley found that lady quite ready to start.
"Oh, here you are, are you?" she said, smiling pleasantly, "Well, I'm just on the move. Jump in!"
Helmsley hesitated a moment, standing beside the pony-cart.
"May I pay for my ride?" he said.
"Pay?" Meg stuck her stout arms akimbo, and glanced him all over. "Well, I never! How much 'ave ye got?"
"Two or three shillings," he answered.
Meg laughed, showing a very sound row of even white teeth.
"All right! You can keep 'em!" she said. "Mebbe you want 'em. _I_ don't! Now don't stand haverin' there,--get in the cart quick, or Jim'll be runnin' away."
Jim showed no sign of this desperate intention, but, on the contrary, stood very patiently waiting till his passengers were safely seated, when he trotted off at a great pace, with such a clatter of hoofs and rattle of wheels as rendered conversation impossible. But Helmsley was very content to sit in silence, holding the little dog "Charlie" warmly against his breast, and watching the beauties of the scenery expand before him like a fairy panorama, ever broadening into fresh glimpses of loveliness. It was a very quiet coastline which the windings of the road now followed,--a fair and placid sea shining at wide intervals between a lavish flow of equally fair and placid fields. The drive seemed all too short, when at the corner of a lane embowered in trees, Meg Ross pulled up short.
"The best of friends must part!" she said. "I'm right sorry I can't take ye any further. But down 'ere's a farm where I put up for the afternoon an' 'elps 'em through with their butter-makin', for there's a lot o' skeery gals in the fam'ly as thinks more o' doin' their 'air than churnin', an' doin' the 'air don't bring no money in, though mebbe it might catch a 'usband as wasn't worth 'avin'. An' Jim gets his food 'ere too. Howsomever, I'm real put about that I can't drive ye a bit towards Cleeve Abbey, for that's rare an' fine at this time o' year,--but mebbe ye're wantin' to push on quickly?"
"Yes, I must push on," rejoined Helmsley, as he got out of the cart; then, standing in the road, he raised his cap to her. "And I'm very grateful to you for helping me along so far, at the hottest time of the day too. It's most kind of you!"
"Oh, I don't want any thanks!" said Meg, smiling. "I'm rather sweet on old men, seein' old age aint their fault even if trampin' the road is. You'd best keep on the straight line now, till you come to Blue Anchor. That's a nice little village, and you'll find an inn there where you can get a night's lodging cheap. I wouldn't advise you to stay much round Cleeve after sundown, for there's a big camp of gypsies about there, an' they're a rough lot, pertikly a man they calls Tom o' the Gleam."
Helmsley smiled.
"I know Tom o' the Gleam," he said. "He's a friend of mine."
Meg Ross opened her round, bright brown eyes.
"Is he? Dear life, if I'd known that, I mightn't 'ave been so ready to give you a ride with me!" she said, and laughed. "Not that I'm afraid of Tom, though he's a queer customer. I've given a good many glasses of new milk to his 'kiddie,' as he calls that little lad of his, so I expect I'm fairly in his favour."
"I've never seen his 'kiddie,'" said Helmsley. "What is the boy like?"
"A real fine little chap!" said Meg, with heartiness and feeling. "I'm not a crank on children, seein' most o' them's muckers an' trouble from mornin' to night, but if it 'ad pleased the Lord as I should wed, I shouldn't 'a wished for a better specimen of a babe than Tom's kiddie. Pity the mother died!"
"When the child was born?" queried Helmsley gently.
"No--oh no!"--and Meg's eyes grew thoughtful. "She got through her trouble all right, but 'twas about a year or eighteen months arterwards that she took to pinin' like, an' droopin' down just like the poppies droops in the corn when the sun's too fierce upon 'em. She used to sit by the roadside o' Sundays, with a little red handkerchief tied across her shoulders, and all her dark 'air tumblin' about 'er face, an' she used to look up with her great big black eyes an' smile at the finicky fine church misses as come mincin' an' smirkin' along, an' say: 'Tell your fortune, lady?' She was the prettiest creature I ever saw--not a good lass--no!--nobody could say she was a good lass, for she went to Tom without church or priest, but she loved him an' was faithful. An' she just worshipped her baby." Here Meg paused a moment. "Tom was a real danger to the country when she died," she presently went on. "He used to run about the woods like a madman, calling her to come back to 'im, an' threatenin' to murder any one who came nigh 'im;--then, by and by, he took to the kiddie, an' he's steadier now."
There was something in the narration of this little history that touched Helmsley too deeply for comment, and he was silent.
"Well!"--and Meg gave her pony's reins a shake--"I must be off! Sorry to leave ye standin' in the middle o' the road like, but it can't be helped. Mind you keep the little dog safe!--and take a woman's advice--don't walk too far or too fast in one day. Good luck t' ye!"
Another shake of the reins, and "Jim" turned briskly down the lane. Once Meg looked back and waved her hand,--then the green trees closed in upon her disappearing vehicle, and Helmsley was again alone, save for "Charlie," who, instinctively aware that some friend had left them, licked his master's hand confidentially, as much as to say "I am still with you." The air was cooler now, and Helmsley walked on with comparative ease and pleasure. His thoughts were very busy. He was drawing comparisons between the conduct of the poor and the rich to one another, greatly to the disadvantage of the latter class.
"If a wealthy man has a carriage," he soliloquised, "how seldom will he offer it or think of offering its use to any one of his acquaintances who may be less fortunate! How rarely will he even say a kind word to any man who is 'down'! Do I not know this myself! I remember well on one occasion when I wished to send my carriage for the use of a poor fellow who had once been employed in my office, but who had been compelled to give up work, owing to illness, my secretary advised me not to show him this mark of sympathy and attention. 'He will only take it as his right,' I was assured,--'these sort of men are always ungrateful.' And I listened to my secretary's advice--more fool I! For it should have been nothing to me whether the man was ungrateful or not; the thing was to do the good, and let the result be what it might. Now this poor Meg Ross has no carriage, but such vehicle as she possesses she shares with one whom she imagines to be in need. No other motive has moved her save womanly pity for lonely age and infirmity. She has taught me a lesson by simply offering a kindness without caring how it might be received or rewarded. Is not that a lovely trait in human nature?--one which I have never as yet discovered in what is called 'swagger society'! When I was in the hey-dey of my career, and money was pouring in from all my business 'deals' like water from a never-ending main, I had a young Scotsman for a secretary, as close-fisted a fellow as ever was, who managed to lose me the chance of doing a great many kind actions. More than that, whenever I was likely to have any real friends whom I could confidently trust, and who wanted nothing from me but affection and sincerity, he succeeded in shaking off the hold they had upon me. Of course I know now why he did this,--it was in order that he himself might have his grip of me more securely, but at that time I was unsuspicious, and believed the best of every one. Yes! I honestly thought people were honest,--I trusted their good faith, with the result that I found out the utter falsity of their pretensions. And here I am,--old and nearing the end of my tether--more friendless than when I first began to make my fortune, with the certain knowledge that not a soul has ever cared or cares for me except for what can be got out of me in the way of hard cash! I have met with more real kindness from the rough fellows at the 'Trusty Man,' and from the 'Trusty Man's' hostess, Miss Tranter, and now from this good woman Meg Ross, than has ever been offered to me by those who know I am rich, and who have 'used' me accordingly."
Here, coming to a place where two cross-roads met, he paused, looking about him. The afternoon was declining, and the loveliness of the landscape was intensified by a mellow softness in the sunshine, which deepened the rich green of the trees and wakened an opaline iridescence in the sea. A sign-post on one hand bore the direction "To Cleeve Abbey," and the road thus indicated wound upward somewhat steeply, disappearing amid luxuriant verdure which everywhere crowned the higher summits of the hills. While he yet stood, looking at the exquisitely shaded masses of foliage which, like festal garlands, adorned and over-hung this ascent, the discordant "hoot" of a motor-horn sounded on the stillness, and sheer down the winding way came at a tearing pace the motor vehicle itself. It was a large, luxurious car, and pounded along with tremendous speed, swerving at the bottom of the declivity with so sharp a curve as to threaten an instant overturn, but, escaping this imminent peril by almost a hairsbreadth, it dashed onward straight ahead in a cloud of dust that for two or three minutes entirely blurred and darkened the air. Half-blinded and choked by the rush of its furious passage past him, Helmsley could only just barely discern that the car was occupied by two men, the one driving, the other sitting beside the driver,--and shading his eyes from the sun, he strove to track its way as it flew down the road, but in less than a minute it was out of sight.
"There's not much 'speed limit' in that concern!" he said, half-aloud, still gazing after it. "I call such driving recklessly wicked! If I could have seen the number of that car, I'd have given information to the police. But numbers on motors are no use when such a pace is kept up, and the thick dust of a dry summer is whirled up by the wheels. It's fortunate the road is clear. Yes, Charlie!"--this, as he saw his canine foundling's head perk out from under his arm, with a little black nose all a-quiver with anxiety,--"it's just as well for you that you've got a wounded paw and can't run too far for the present! If you had been in the way of that car just now, your little life would have been ended!"
Charlie pricked his pretty ears, and listened, or appeared to listen, but had evidently no forebodings about himself or his future. He was quite at home, and, after the fashion of dogs, who are often so much wiser than men, argued that being safe and comfortable now, there was no reason why he should not be safe and comfortable always. And Helmsley presently bent himself to steady walking, and got on well, only pausing to get some tea and bread and butter at a cottage by the roadside, where a placard on the gate intimated that such refreshments were to be had within. Nevertheless, he was a slow pedestrian, and what with lingering here and there for brief rests by the way, the sun had sunk fully an hour before he managed to reach Blue Anchor, the village of which Meg Ross had told him. It was a pretty, peaceful place, set among wide stretches of beach, extending for miles along the margin of the waters, and the mellow summer twilight showed little white wreaths of foam crawling lazily up on the sand in glittering curves that gleamed like snow for a moment and then melted softly away into the deepening darkness. He stopped at the first ale-house, a low-roofed, cottage-like structure embowered in clambering flowers. It had a side entrance which led into a big, rambling stableyard, and happening to glance that way he perceived a vehicle standing there, which he at once recognised as the large luxurious motor-car that had dashed past him at such a tearing pace near Cleeve. The inn door was open, and the bar faced the road, exhibiting a brave show of glittering brass taps, pewter tankards, polished glasses and many-coloured bottles, all these things being presided over by a buxom matron, who was not only an agreeable person to look at in herself, but who was assisted by two pretty daughters. These young women, wearing spotless white cuffs and aprons, dispensed the beer to the customers, now and then relieving the monotony of this occupation by carrying trays of bread and cheese and meat sandwiches round the wide room of which the bar was a part, evidently bent on making the general company stay as long as possible, if fascinating manners and smiling eyes could work any detaining influence. Helmsley asked for a glass of ale and a plate of bread and cheese, and on being supplied with these refreshments, sat down at a small table in a corner well removed from the light, where he could see without being seen. He did not intend to inquire for a night's lodging yet. He wished first to ascertain for himself the kind of people who frequented the place. The fear of discovery always haunted him, and the sight of that costly motor-car standing in the stableyard had caused him to feel a certain misgiving lest any one of marked wealth or position should turn out to be its owner. In such a case, the world being proverbially small, and rich men being in the minority, it was just possible that he, David Helmsley, even clad as he was in workman's clothes and partially disguised in features by the growth of a beard, might be recognised. With this idea, he kept himself well back in the shadow, listening attentively to the scraps of desultory talk among the dozen or so of men in the room, while carefully maintaining an air of such utter fatigue as to appear indifferent to all that passed around him. Nobody noticed him, for which he was thankful. And presently, when he became accustomed to the various contending voices, which in their changing tones of gruff or gentle, quick or slow, made a confused din upon his ears, he found out that the general conversation was chiefly centred on one subject, that of the very motor-car whose occupants he desired to shun.
"Serve 'em right!" growled one man. "Serve 'em right to 'ave broke down! 'Ope the darned thing's broke altogether!"
"You shouldn't say that,--'taint Christian," expostulated his neighbour at the same table. "Them cars cost a heap o' money, from eight 'undred to two thousand pounds, I've 'eerd tell."
"Who cares!" retorted the other. "Them as can pay a fortin on a car to swish 'emselves about in, should be made to keep on payin' till they're cleaned out o' money for good an' all. The road's a reg'lar hell since them engines started along cuttin' everything to pieces. There aint a man, woman, nor child what's safe from the moneyed murderers."
"Oh come, I say!" ejaculated a big, burly young fellow in corduroys. "Moneyed murderers is going a bit too strong!"
"No 'taint!" said the first man who had spoken. "That's what the motor-car folks are--no more nor less. Only t' other day in Taunton, a woman as was the life an' soul of 'er 'usband an' childern, was knocked down by a car as big as a railway truck. It just swept 'er off the curb like a bundle o' rags. She picked 'erself up again an' walked 'ome, tremblin' a little, an' not knowin' rightly what 'ad chanced to 'er, an' in less than an hour she was dead. An' what did they say at the inquest? Just 'death from shock'--an' no more. For them as owned the murderin' car was proprietors o' a big brewery, and the coroner hisself 'ad shares in it. That's 'ow justice is done nowadays!"
"Yes, we's an obligin' lot, we poor folks," observed a little man in the rough garb of a cattle-driver, drawing his pipe from his mouth as he spoke. "We lets the rich ride over us on rubber tyres an' never sez a word on our own parts, but trusts to the law for doin' the same to a millionaire as 'twould to a beggar,--but, Lord!--don't we see every day as 'ow the millionaire gets off easy while the beggar goes to prison? There used to be justice in old England, but the time for that's gone past."
"There's as much justice in England as you'll ever get anywheres else!" interrupted the hostess at the bar, nodding cheerfully at the men, and smiling,--"And as for the motor-cars, they bring custom to my house, and I don't grumble at anything which does me and mine a good turn. If it hadn't been for a break-down in that big motor standing outside in the stableyard, I shouldn't have had two gentlemen staying in my best rooms to-night. I never find fault with money!"
She laughed and nodded again in the pleasantest manner. A slow smile went round among the men,--it was impossible not to smile in response to the gay good-humour expressed on such a beaming countenance.
"One of them's a lord, too," she added. "Quite a young fellow, just come into his title, I suppose." And referring to her day-book, she ran her plump finger down the various entries. "I've got his name here--Wrotham,--Lord Reginald Wrotham."
"Wrotham? That aint a name known in these parts," said the man in corduroys. "Wheer does 'e come from?"
"I don't know," she replied. "And I don't very much care. It's enough for me that he's here and spending money!"
"Where's his chauffy?" inquired a lad, lounging near the bar.
"He hasn't got one. He drives his car himself. He's got a friend with him--a Mr. James Brookfield."
There was a moment's silence. Helmsley drew further back into the corner where he sat, and restrained the little dog Charlie from perking its inquisitive head out too far, lest its beauty should attract undesirable attention. His nervous misgivings concerning the owner of the motor-car had not been entirely without foundation, for both Reginald Wrotham and James Brookfield were well known to him. Wrotham's career had been a sufficiently disgraceful one ever since he had entered his teens,--he was a modern degenerate of the worst type, and though his coming-of-age and the assumption of his family title had caused certain time-servers to enrol themselves among his flatterers and friends, there were very few decent houses where so soiled a member of the aristocracy as he was could find even a semblance of toleration. James Brookfield was a proprietor of newspapers as well as a "something in the City," and if Helmsley had been asked to qualify that "something" by a name, he would have found a term by no means complimentary to the individual in question. Wrotham and Brookfield were always seen together,--they were brothers in every sort of social iniquity and licentiousness, and an attempt on Brookfield's part to borrow some thousands of pounds for his "lordly" patron from Helmsley, had resulted in the latter giving the would-be borrower's go-between such a strong piece of his mind as he was not likely to forget. And now Helmsley was naturally annoyed to find that these two abandoned rascals were staying at the very inn where he, in his character of a penniless wayfarer, had hoped to pass a peaceful night; however, he resolved to avoid all danger and embarrassment by leaving the place directly he had finished his supper, and going in search of some more suitable lodgment. Meanwhile, the hum of conversation grew louder around him, and opinion ran high on the subject of "the right of the road."
"The roads are made for the people, sure-_ly_!" said one of a group of men standing near the largest table in the room--"And the people 'as the right to 'xpect safety to life an' limb when they uses 'em."
"Well, the motors can put forward the same claim," retorted another. "Motor folks are people too, an' they can say, if they likes, that if roads is made for people, they're made for _them_ as well as t' others, and they expects to be safe on 'em with their motors at whatever pace they travels."
"Go 'long!" exclaimed the cattle-driver, who had before taken part in the discussion--"Aint we got to take cows an' sheep an' 'osses by the road? An' if a car comes along at the rate o' forty or fifty miles an hour, what's to be done wi' the animals? An' if they're not to be on the road, which way is they to be took?"
"Them motors ought to have roads o' their own like the railways," said a quiet-looking grey-haired man, who was the carrier of the district. "When the steam-engine was invented it wasn't allowed to go tearin' along the public highway. They 'ad to make roads for it, an' lay tracks, and they should do the same for motors which is gettin' just as fast an' as dangerous as steam-engines."
"Yes, an' with makin' new roads an' layin' tracks, spoil the country for good an' all!" said the man in corduroys--"An' alter it so that there aint a bit o' peace or comfort left in the land! Level the hills an' cut down the trees--pull up the hedges an' scare away all the singin' birds, till the hull place looks like a football field!--all to please a few selfish rich men who'd be better dead than livin'! A fine thing for England that would be!"
At that moment, there was the noise of an opening door, and the hostess, with an expressive glance at her customers, held up her finger warningly.
"Hush, please!" she said. "The gentlemen are coming out."
A sudden pause ensued. The men looked round upon one another, half sheepishly, half sullenly, and their growling voices subsided into a murmur. The hostess settled the bow at her collar more becomingly, and her two pretty daughters feigned to be deeply occupied with some drawn thread work. David Helmsley, noting everything that was going on from his coign of vantage, recognised at once the dissipated, effeminate-looking young man, who, stepping out of a private room which opened on a corridor apparently leading to the inner part of the house, sauntered lazily up to the bar and, resting his arm upon its oaken counter, smiled condescendingly, not to say insolently, upon the women who stood behind it. There was no mistaking him,--it was the same Reginald Wrotham whose scandals in society had broken his worthy father's heart, and who now, succeeding to a hitherto unblemished title, was doing his best to load it with dishonour. He was followed by his friend Brookfield,--a heavily-built, lurching sort of man, with a nose reddened by strong drink, and small lascivious eyes which glittered dully in his head like the eyes of poisonous tropical beetle. The hush among the "lower" class of company at the inn deepened into the usual stupid awe which at times so curiously affects untutored rustics who are made conscious of the presence of a "lord." Said a friend of the present writer's to a waiter in a country hotel where one of these "lords" was staying for a few days: "I want a letter to catch to-night's post, but I'm afraid the mail has gone from the hotel. Could you send some one to the post-office with it?" "Oh yes, sir!" replied the waiter grandiloquently. "The servant of the Lord will take it!" Pitiful beyond most piteous things is the grovelling tendency of that section of human nature which has not yet been educated sufficiently to lift itself up above temporary trappings and ornaments; pitiful it is to see men, gifted in intellect, or distinguished for bravery, flinch and cringe before one of their own flesh and blood, who, having neither cleverness nor courage, but only a Title, presumes upon that foolish appendage so far as to consider himself superior to both valour and ability. As well might a stuffed boar's head assume a superiority to other comestibles because decorated by the cook with a paper frill and bow of ribbon! The atmosphere which Lord Reginald Wrotham brought with him into the common-room of the bar was redolent of tobacco-smoke and whisky, yet, judging from the various propitiatory, timid, anxious, or servile looks cast upon him by all and sundry, it might have been fragrant and sacred incense wafted from the altars of the goddess Fortune to her waiting votaries. Helmsley's spirit rose up in contempt against the effete dandy as he watched him leaning carelessly against the counter, twirling his thin sandy moustache, and talking to his hostess merely for the sake of offensively ogling her two daughters.
"Charming old place you have here!--charming!" drawled his lordship. "Perfect dream! Love to pass all my days in such a delightful spot! 'Pon my life! Awful luck for us, the motor breaking down, or we never should have stopped at such a jolly place, don't-cher-know. Should we, Brookfield?"
Brookfield, gently scratching a pimple on his fat, clean-shaven face, smiled knowingly.
"_Couldn't_ have stopped!" he declared. "We were doing a record run. But we should have missed a great deal,--a great deal!" And he emitted a soft chuckle. "Not only the place,--but----!"
He waved his hand explanatorily, with a slight bow, which implied an unspoken compliment to the looks of the mistress of the inn and her family. One of the young women blushed and peeped slyly up at him. He returned the glance with interest.
"May I ask," pursued Lord Wrotham, with an amicable leer, "the names of your two daughters, Madam? They've been awfully kind to us broken-down-travellers--should just like to know the difference between them. Like two roses on one stalk, don't-cher-know! Can't tell which is which!"
The mother of the girls hesitated a moment. She was not quite sure that she liked the "tone" of his lordship's speech. Finally she replied somewhat stiffly:--
"My eldest daughter is named Elizabeth, my lord, and her sister is Grace."
"Elizabeth and Grace! Charming!" murmured Wrotham, leaning a little more confidentially over the counter--"Now which--which is Grace?"
At that moment a tall, shadowy form darkened the open doorway of the inn, and a man entered, carrying in his arms a small oblong bundle covered with a piece of rough horse-cloth. Placing his burden down on a vacant bench, he pushed his cap from his brows and stared wildly about him. Every one looked at him,--some with recognition, others in alarm,--and Helmsley, compelled as he was to keep himself out of the general notice in his corner, almost started to his feet with an involuntary cry of amazement. For it was Tom o' the Gleam.
CHAPTER X
Tom o' the Gleam,--Tom, with his clothes torn and covered with dust,--Tom, changed suddenly to a haggard and terrible unlikeness of himself, his face drawn and withered, its healthy bronze colour whitened to a sickly livid hue,--Tom, with such an expression of dazed and stupid horror in his eyes as to give the impression that he was heavily in drink, and dangerous.
"Well, mates!" he said thickly--"A fine night and a clear moon!"
No one answered him. He staggered up to the bar. The hostess looked at him severely.
"Now, Tom, what's the matter?" she said.
He straightened himself, and, throwing back his shoulders as though parrying a blow, forced a smile.
"Nothing! A touch of the sun!" A strong shudder ran through his limbs, and his teeth chattered,--then suddenly leaning forward on the counter, he whispered: "I'm not drunk, mother!--for God's sake don't think it!--I'm ill. Don't you see I'm ill?--I'll be all right in a minute,--give me a drop of brandy!"
She fixed her candid gaze full upon him. She had known him well for years, and not only did she know him, but, rough character as he was, she liked and respected him. Looking him squarely in the face she saw at once that he was speaking the truth. He was not drunk. He was ill,--very ill. The strained anguish on his features proved it.
"Hadn't you better come inside the bar and sit down?" she suggested, in a low tone.
"No, thanks--I'd rather not. I'll stand just here."
She gave him the brandy he had asked for. He sipped it slowly, and, pushing his cap further off his brows, turned his dark eyes, full of smouldering fire, upon Lord Wrotham and his friend, both of whom had succeeded in getting up a little conversation with the hostess's younger daughter, the girl named Grace. Her sister, Elizabeth, put down her needlework, and watched Tom with sudden solicitude. An instinctive dislike of Lord Wrotham and his companion caused her to avoid looking their way, though she heard every word they were saying,--and her interest became centred on the handsome gypsy, whose pallid features and terrible expression filled her with a vague alarm.
"It would be awfully jolly of you if you'd come for a spin in my motor," said his lordship, twirling his sandy moustache and conveying a would-be amorous twinkle into his small brown-green eyes for the benefit of the girl he was ogling. "Beastly bore having a break-down, but it's nothing serious--half a day's work will put it all right, and if you and your sister would like a turn before we go on from here, I shall be charmed. We can't do the record business now--not this time,--so it doesn't matter how long we linger in this delightful spot."
"Especially in such delightful company!" added his friend, Brookfield. "I'm going to take a photograph of this house to-morrow, and perhaps"--here he smiled complacently--"perhaps Miss Grace and Miss Elizabeth will consent to come into the picture?"
"Ya-as--ya-as!--oh do!" drawled Wrotham. "Of course they will! _You_ will, I'm sure, Miss Grace! This gentleman, Mr. Brookfield, has got nearly all the pictorials under his thumb, and he'll put your portrait in them as 'The Beauty of Somerset,' won't you, Brookfield?"
Brookfield laughed, a pleased laugh of conscious power.
"Of course I will," he said. "You have only to express the wish and the thing is done!"
Wrotham twirled his moustache again.
"Awful fun having a friend on the press, don't-cher-know!" he went on. "I get all my lady acquaintances into the papers,--makes 'em famous in a day! The women I like are made to look beautiful, and those I don't like are turned into frights--positive old horrors, give you my life! Easily done, you know!--touch up a negative whichever way you fancy, and there you are!"
The girl Grace lifted her eyes,--very pretty sparkling eyes they were,--and regarded him with a mutinous air of contempt.
"It must be 'awfully' amusing!" she said sarcastically.
"It is!--give you my life!" And his lordship played with a charm in the shape of an enamelled pig which dangled at his watch-chain. "It pleases all parties except those whom I want to rub up the wrong way. I've made many a woman's hair curl, I can tell you! You'll be my 'Somersetshire beauty,' won't you, Miss Grace?"
"I think not!" she replied, with a cool glance. "My hair curls quite enough already. I never use tongs!"
Brookfield burst into a laugh, and the laugh was echoed murmurously by the other men in the room. Wrotham flushed and bit his lip.
"That's a one--er for me," he said lazily. "Pretty kitten as you are, Miss Grace, you can scratch! That's always the worst of women,--they've got such infernally sharp tongues----"
"Grace!" interrupted her mother, at this juncture--"You are wanted in the kitchen."
Grace took the maternal hint and retired at once. At that instant Tom o' the Gleam stirred slightly from his hitherto rigid attitude. He had only taken half his glass of brandy, but that small amount had brought back a tinge of colour to his face and deepened the sparkle of fire in his eyes.
"Good roads for motoring about here!" he said.
Lord Wrotham looked up,--then measuring the great height, muscular build, and commanding appearance of the speaker, nodded affably.
"First-rate!" he replied. "We had a splendid run from Cleeve Abbey."
"Magnificent!" echoed Brookfield. "Not half a second's stop all the way. We should have been far beyond Minehead by this time, if it hadn't been for the break-down. We were racing from London to the Land's End,--but we took a wrong turning just before we came to Cleeve----"
"Oh! Took a wrong turning, did you?" And Tom leaned a little forward as though to hear more accurately. His face had grown deadly pale again, and he breathed quickly.
"Yes. We found ourselves quite close to Cleeve Abbey, but we didn't stop to see old ruins this time, you bet! We just tore down the first lane we saw running back into the highroad,--a pretty steep bit of ground too--and, by Jove!--didn't we whizz round the corner at the bottom! That was a near shave, I can tell you!"
"Ay, ay!" said Tom slowly, listening with an air of profound interest. "You've got a smart chauffeur, no doubt!"
"No chauffeur at all!" declared Brookfield, emphatically. "His lordship drives his car himself."
There followed an odd silence. All the customers in the room, drinking and eating as many of them were, seemed to be under a dumb spell. Tom o' the Gleam's presence was at all times more or less of a terror to the timorous, and that he, who as a rule avoided strangers, should on his own initiative enter into conversation with the two motorists, was of itself a circumstance that awakened considerable wonder and interest. David Helmsley, sitting apart in the shadow, could not take his eyes off the gypsy's face and figure,--a kind of fascination impelled him to watch with strained attention the dark shape, moulded with such herculean symmetry, which seemed to command and subdue the very air that gave it force and sustenance.
"His lordship drives his car himself!" echoed Tom, and a curious smile parted his lips, showing an almost sinister gleam of white teeth between his full black moustache and beard,--then, bringing his sombre glance to bear slowly down on Wrotham's insignificant form, he continued,--"Are you his lordship?"
Wrotham nodded with a careless condescension, and, lighting a cigar, began to smoke it.
"And you drive your car yourself!" proceeded Tom,--"you must have good nerve and a keen eye!"
"Oh well!" And Wrotham laughed airily--"Pretty much so!--but I won't boast!"
"How many miles an hour?" went on Tom, pursuing his inquiries with an almost morbid eagerness.
"Forty or fifty, I suppose--sometimes more. I always run at the highest speed. Of course that kind of thing knocks the motor to pieces rather soon, but one can always buy another."
"True!" said Tom. "Very true! One can always buy another!" He paused, and seemed to collect his thoughts with an effort,--then noticing the half-glass of brandy he had left on the counter, he took it up and drank it all off at a gulp. "Have you ever had any accidents on the road?"
"Accidents?" Lord Wrotham put up an eyeglass. "Accidents? What do you mean?"
"Why, what should I mean except what I say!" And Tom gave a sudden loud laugh,--a laugh which made the hostess at the bar start nervously, while many of the men seated round the various tables exchanged uneasy glances. "Accidents are accidents all the world over! Haven't you ever been thrown out, upset, shaken in body, broken in bone, or otherwise involved in mischief?"
Lord Wrotham smiled, and let his eyeglass fall with a click against his top waistcoat button.
"Never!" he said, taking his cigar from his mouth, looking at it, and then replacing it with a relish--"I'm too fond of my own life to run any risk of losing it. Other people's lives don't matter so much, but mine is precious! Eh, Brookfield?"
Brookfield chuckled himself purple in the face over this pleasantry, and declared that his lordship's wit grew sharper with every day of his existence. Meanwhile Tom o' the Gleam moved a step or two nearer to Wrotham.
"You're a lucky lord!" he said, and again he laughed discordantly. "Very lucky! But you don't mean to tell me that while you're pounding along at full speed, you've never upset anything in your way?--never knocked down an old man or woman,--never run over a dog,--or a child?"
"Oh, well, if you mean that kind of thing!" murmured Wrotham, puffing placidly at his cigar--"Of course! That's quite common! We're always running over something or other, aren't we, Brookie?"
"Always!" declared that gentleman pleasantly. "Really it's half the fun!"
"Positively it is, don't-cher-know!" and his lordship played again with his enamelled pig--"But it's not our fault. If things will get into our way, we can't wait till they get out. We're bound to ride over them. Do you remember that old hen, Brookie?"
Brookfield spluttered into a laugh, and nodded in the affirmative.
"There it was skipping over the road in front of us in as great a hurry as ever hen was," went on Wrotham. "Going back to its family of eggs per express waddle! Whiz! Pst--and all its eggs and waddles were over! By Jove, how we screamed! Ha--ha--ha!--he--he--he!"
Lord Wrotham's laugh resembled that laugh peculiar to "society" folk,--the laugh civil-sniggering, which is just a tone between the sheep's bleat and the peewit's cry. But no one laughed in response, and no one spoke. Some heavy spell was in the air like a cloud shadowing a landscape, and an imaginative onlooker would have been inclined to think that this imperceptible mystic darkness had come in with Tom o' the Gleam and was centralising itself round him alone. Brookfield, seeing that his lordly patron was inclined to talk, and that he was evidently anxious to narrate various "car" incidents, similar to the hen episode, took up the conversation and led it on.
"It is really quite absurd," he said, "for any one of common sense to argue that a motorist can, could, or should pull up every moment for the sake of a few stray animals, or even people, when they don't seem to know or care where they are going. Now think of that child to-day! What an absolute little idiot! Gathering wild thyme and holding it out to the car going full speed! No wonder we knocked it over!"
The hostess of the inn looked up quickly.
"I hope it was not hurt?" she said.
"Oh dear no!" answered Lord Wrotham lightly. "It just fell back and turned a somersault in the grass,--evidently enjoying itself. It had a narrow escape though!"
Tom o' the Gleam stared fixedly at him. Once or twice he essayed to speak, but no sound came from his twitching lips. Presently, with an effort, he found his voice.
"Did you--did you stop the car and go back to see--to see if--if it was all right?" he asked, in curiously harsh, monotonous accents.
"Stop the car? Go back? By Jove, I should think not indeed! I'd lost too much time already through taking a wrong turning. The child was all right enough."
"Are you sure?" muttered Tom thickly. "Are you--quite--sure?"
"Sure?" And Wrotham again had recourse to his eyeglass, which he stuck in one eye, while he fixed his interlocutor with a supercilious glance. "Of course I'm sure! What the devil d' ye take me for? It was a mere beggar's brat anyhow--there are too many of such little wretches running loose about the roads--regular nuisances--a few might be run over with advantage--Hullo! What now? What's the matter? Keep your distance, please!" For Tom suddenly threw up his clenched fists with an inarticulate cry of rage, and now leaped towards Wrotham in the attitude of a wild beast springing on its prey. "Hands off! Hands off, I say! Damn you, leave me alone! Brookfield! Here! Some one get a hold of this fellow! He's mad!"
But before Brookfield or any other man could move to his assistance, Tom had pounced upon him with all the fury of a famished tiger.
"God curse you!" he panted, between the gasps of his labouring breath--"God burn you for ever in Hell!"
Down on the ground he hurled him, clutching him round the neck, and choking every attempt at a cry. Then falling himself in all his huge height, breadth, and weight, upon Wrotham's prone body he crushed it under and held it beneath him, while, with appalling swiftness and vehemence, he plunged a drawn claspknife deep in his victim's throat, hacking the flesh from left to right, from right to left with reckless ferocity, till the blood spurted about him in horrid crimson jets, and gushed in a dark pool on the floor.
Piercing screams from the women, groans and cries from the men, filled the air, and the lately peaceful scene was changed to one of maddening confusion. Brookfield rushed wildly through the open door of the inn into the village street, yelling: "Help! Help! Murder! Help!" and in less than five minutes the place was filled with an excited crowd. "Tom!" "Tom o' the Gleam!" ran in frightened whispers from mouth to mouth. David Helmsley, giddy with the sudden shock of terror, rose shuddering from his place with a vague idea of instant flight in his mind, but remained standing inert, half paralysed by sheer panic, while several men surrounded Tom, and dragged him forcibly up from the ground where he lay, still grasping his murdered man. As they wrenched the gypsy's grappling arms away, Wrotham fell back on the floor, stone dead. Life had been thrust out of him with the first blow dealt him by Tom's claspknife, which had been aimed at his throat as a butcher aims at the throat of a swine. His bleeding corpse presented a frightful spectacle, the head being nearly severed from the body.
Brookfield, shaking all over, turned his back upon the awful sight, and kept on running to and fro and up and down the street, clamouring like a madman for the police. Two sturdy constables presently came, their appearance restoring something like order. To them Tom o' the Gleam advanced, extending his blood-stained hands.
"I am ready!" he said, in a quiet voice. "I am the murderer!"
They looked at him. Then, by way of precaution, one of them clasped a pair of manacles on his wrists. The other, turning his eyes to the corpse on the floor, recoiled in horror.
"Throw something over it!" he commanded.
He was obeyed, and the dreadful remains of what had once been human, were quickly shrouded from view.
"How did this happen?" was the next question put by the officer of the law who had already spoken, opening his notebook.
A chorus of eager tongues answered him, Brookfield's excited explanation echoing above them all. His dear friend, his great, noble, good friend had been brutally murdered! His friend was Lord Wrotham, of Wrotham Hall, Blankshire! A break-down had occurred within half a mile of Blue Anchor, and Lord Wrotham had taken rooms at the present inn for the night. His lordship had condescended to enter into a friendly conversation with the ruffian now under arrest, who, without the slightest cause or provocation whatsoever, had suddenly attacked and overthrown his lordship, and plunged a knife into his lordship's throat! He himself was James Brookfield, proprietor of the _Daily Post-Bag_, the _Pictorial Pie_, and the _Illustrated Invoice_, and he should make this outrageous, this awful crime a warning to motorists throughout the world----!"
"That will do, thank you," said the officer briefly--then he gave a sharp glance around him--"Where's the landlady?"
She had fled in terror from the scene, and some one went in search of her, returning with the poor woman and her two daughters, all of them deathly pale and shivering with dread.
"Don't be frightened, mother!" said one of the constables kindly--"No harm will come to you. Just tell us what you saw of this affair--that's all."
Whereat the poor hostess, her narrative interrupted by tears, explained that Tom o' the Gleam was a frequent customer of hers, and that she had never thought badly of him.
"He was a bit excited to-night, but he wasn't drunk," she said. "He told me he was ill, and asked for a glass of brandy. He looked as if he were in great pain, and I gave him the brandy at once and asked him to step inside the bar. But he wouldn't do that,--he just stood talking with the gentlemen about motoring, and then something was said about a child being knocked over by the motor,--and all of a sudden----"
Here her voice broke, and she sank on a seat half swooning, while Elizabeth, her eldest girl, finished the story in low, trembling tones. Tom o' the Gleam meanwhile stood rigidly upright and silent. To him the chief officer of the law finally turned.
"Will you come with us quietly?" he asked, "or do you mean to give us trouble?"
Tom lifted his dark eyes.
"I shall give no man any more trouble," he answered. "I shall go nowhere save where I am taken. You need fear nothing from me now. But I must speak."
The officer frowned warningly.
"You'd better not!" he said.
"I must!" repeated Tom. "You think,--all of you,--that I had no cause--no provocation--to kill the man who lies there"--and he turned a fierce glance upon the covered corpse, from which a dark stream of blood was trickling slowly along the floor--"I swear before God that I _had_ cause!--and that my cause was just! I _had_ provocation!--the bitterest and worst! That man was a murderer as surely as I am. Look yonder!" And lifting his manacled hands he extended them towards the bench where lay the bundle covered with horse-cloth, which he had carried in his arms and set down when he had first entered the inn. "Look, I say!--and then tell me I had no cause!"
With an uneasy glance one of the officers went up to the spot indicated, and hurriedly, yet fearfully, lifted the horse-cloth and looked under it. Then uttering an exclamation of horror and pity, he drew away the covering altogether, and disclosed to view the dead body of a child,--a little curly-headed lad,--lying as if it were asleep, a smile on its pretty mouth, and a bunch of wild thyme clasped in the clenched fingers of its small right hand.
"My God! It's Kiddie!"
The exclamation was uttered almost simultaneously by every one in the room, and the girl Elizabeth sprang forward.
"Oh, not Kiddie!" she cried--"Oh, surely not Kiddie! Oh, the poor little darling!--the pretty little man!"
And she fell on her knees beside the tiny corpse and gave way to a wild fit of weeping.
There was an awful silence, broken only by her sobbing. Men turned away and covered their eyes--Brookfield edged himself stealthily through the little crowd and sneaked out into the open air--and the officers of the law stood inactive. Helmsley felt the room whirling about him in a sickening blackness, and sat down to steady himself, the stinging tears rising involuntarily in his throat and almost choking him.
"Oh, Kiddie!" wailed Elizabeth again, looking up in plaintive appeal--"Oh, mother, mother, see! Grace come here! Kiddie's dead! The poor innocent little child!" They came at her call, and knelt with her, crying bitterly, and smoothing back with |
18449-8 | tender hands the thickly tangled dark curls of the smiling dead thing, with the fragrance of wild thyme clinging about it, as though it were a broken flower torn from the woods where it had blossomed. Tom o' the Gleam watched them, and his broad chest heaved with a sudden gasping sigh.
"You all know now," he said slowly, staring with strained piteous eyes at the little lifeless body--"you understand,--the motor killed my Kiddie! He was playing on the road--I was close by among the trees--I saw the cursed car coming full speed downhill--I rushed to take the boy, but was too late--he cried once--and then--silence! All the laughter gone out of him--all the life and love----" He paused with a shudder.--"I carried him all the way, and followed the car," he went on--"I would have followed it to the world's end! I ran by a short cut down near the sea,--and then--I saw the thing break down. I thanked God for that! I tracked the murderers here,--I meant to kill the man who killed my child!--and I have done it!" He paused again. Then he held out his hands and looked at the constable.
"May I--before I go--take him in my arms--and kiss him?" he asked.
The chief officer nodded. He could not speak, but he unfastened Tom's manacles and threw them on the floor. Then Tom himself moved feebly and unsteadily to where the women knelt beside his dead child. They rose as he approached, but did not turn away.
"You have hearts, you women!" he said faintly. "You know what it is to love a child! And Kiddie,--Kiddie was such a happy little fellow!--so strong and hearty!--so full of life! And now--now he's stiff and cold! Only this morning he was jumping and laughing in my arms----" He broke off, trembling violently, then with an effort he raised his head and turned his eyes with a wild stare upon all around him. "We are only poor folk!" he went on, in a firmer voice. "Only gypsies, tinkers, road-menders, labourers, and the like! We cannot fight against the rich who ride us down! There's no law for us, because we can't pay for it. We can't fee the counsel or dine the judge! The rich can pay. They can trample us down under their devilish motor-cars, and obliging juries will declare our wrongs and injuries and deaths to be mere 'accident' or 'misadventure'! But if _they_ can kill, by God!--so can _we_! And if the law lets them off for murdering our children, we must take the law into our own hands and murder _them_ in turn--ay! even if we swing for it!"
No one spoke. The women still sobbed convulsively, but otherwise there was a great silence. Tom o' the Gleam stretched forth his hands with an eloquent gesture of passion.
"Look at him lying there!" he cried--"Only a child--a little child! So pretty and playful!--all his joy was in the birds and flowers! The robins knew him and would perch on his shoulder,--he would call to the cuckoo,--he would race the swallow,--he would lie in the grass and sing with the skylark and talk to the daisies. He was happy with the simplest things--and when we put him to bed in his little hammock under the trees, he would smile up at the stars and say: 'Mother's up there! Good-night, mother!' Oh, the lonely trees, and the empty hammock! Oh, my lad!--my little pretty lad! Murdered! Murdered! Gone from me for ever! For ever! God! God!"
Reeling heavily forward, he sank in a crouching heap beside the child's dead body and snatched it into his embrace, kissing the little cold lips and cheeks and eyelids again and again, and pressing it with frantic fervour against his breast.
"The dark hour!" he muttered--"the dark hour! To-day when I came away over the moors I felt it creeping upon me! Last night it whispered to me, and I felt its cold breath hissing against my ears! When I climbed down the rocks to the seashore, I heard it wailing in the waves!--and through the hollows of the rocks it shrieked an unknown horror at me! Who was it that said to-day--'He is only a child after all, and he might be taken from you'? I remember!--it was Miss Tranter who spoke--and she was sorry afterwards--ah, yes!--she was sorry!--but it was the spirit of the hour that moved her to the utterance of a warning--she could not help herself,--and I--I should have been more careful!--I should not have left my little one for a moment,--but I never thought any harm could come to him--no, never to _him_! I was always sure God was too good for that!"
Moaning drearily, he rocked the dead boy to and fro.
"Kiddie--my Kiddie!" he murmured--"Little one with my love's eyes!--heart's darling with my love's face! Don't go to sleep, Kiddie!--not just yet!--wake up and kiss me once!--only once again, Kiddie!"
"Oh, Tom!" sobbed Elizabeth,--"Oh, poor, poor Tom!"
At the sound of her voice he raised his head and looked up at her. There was a strange expression on his face,--a fixed and terrible stare in his eyes. Suddenly he broke into a wild laugh.
"Ha-ha!" he cried. "Poor Tom! Tom o' the Gleam! That's me!--the me that was not always me! Not always me--no!--not always Tom o' the Gleam! It was a bold life I led in the woods long ago!--a life full of sunshine and laughter--a life for a man with man's blood in his veins! Away out in the land that once was old Provence, we jested and sang the hours away,--the women with their guitars and mandolines--the men with their wild dances and tambourines,--and love was the keynote of the music--love!--always love! Love in the sunshine!--love under the moonbeams!--bright eyes in which to drown one's soul,--red lips on which to crush one's heart!--Ah, God!--such days when we were young!
'Ah! Craignons de perdre un seul jour, De la belle saison de l'amour!'"
He sang these lines in a rich baritone, clear and thrilling with passion, and the men grouped about him, not understanding what he sang, glanced at one another with an uneasy sense of fear. All at once he struggled to his feet without assistance, and stood upright, still clasping the body of his child in his arms.
"Come, come!" he said thickly--"It's time we were off, Kiddie! We must get across the moor and into camp. It's time for all lambs to be in the fold;--time to go to bed, my little lad! Good-night, mates! Good-night! I know you all,--and you all know me--you like fair play! Fair play all round, eh? Not one law for the rich and another for the poor! Even justice, boys! Justice! Justice!"
Here his voice broke in a great and awful cry,--blood sprang from his lips--his face grew darkly purple,--and like a huge tree snapped asunder by a storm, he reeled heavily to the ground. One of the constables caught him as he fell.
"Hold up, Tom!" he said tremulously, the thick tears standing in his eyes. "Don't give way! Be a man! Hold up! Steady! Here, let me take the poor Kiddie!"
For a ghastly pallor was stealing over Tom's features, and his lips were widely parted in a gasping struggle for breath.
"No--no!--don't take my boy!" he muttered feebly. "Let me--keep him--with me! God is good--good after all!--we shall not--be parted!"
A strong convulsion shook his sinewy frame from head to foot, and he writhed in desperate agony. The officer put an arm under his head, and made an expressive sign to the awed witnesses of the scene. Helmsley, startled at this, came hurriedly forward, trembling and scarcely able to speak in the extremity of his fear and pity.
"What--what is it?" he stammered. "Not--not----?"
"Death! That's what it is!" said the officer, gently. "His heart's broken!"
One rough fellow here pushed his way to the side of the fallen man,--it was the cattle-driver who had taken part in the previous conversation among the customers at the inn before the occurrence of the tragedy. He knelt down, sobbing like a child.
"Tom!" he faltered, "Tom, old chap! Hearten up a bit! Don't leave us! There's not one of us us'll think ill of ye!--no, not if the law was to shut ye up for life! You was allus good to us poor folk--an' poor folk aint as forgittin' o' kindness as rich. Stay an' help us along, Tom!--you was allus brave an' strong an' hearty--an' there's many of us wantin' comfort an' cheer, eh Tom?"
Tom's splendid dark eyes opened, and a smile, very wan and wistful, gleamed across his lips.
"Is that you, Jim?" he muttered feebly. "It's all dark and cold!--I can't see!--there'll be a frost to-night, and the lambs must be watched a bit--I'm afraid I can't help you, Jim--not to-night! Wanting comfort, did you say? Ay!--plenty wanting that, but I'm past giving it, my boy! I'm done."
He drew a struggling breath with pain and difficulty.
"You see, Jim, I've killed a man!" he went on, gaspingly--"And--and--I've no money--we all share and share alike in camp--it won't be worth any one's while to find excuses for me. They'd shut me up in prison if I lived--but now--God's my judge! And He's merciful--He's giving me my liberty!"
His eyelids fell wearily, and a shadow, dark at first, and then lightening into an ivory pallor, began to cover his features like a fine mask, at sight of which the girls, Elizabeth and Grace, with their mother, knelt down and hid their faces. Every one in the room knelt too, and there was a profound stillness. Tom's breathing grew heavier and more laboured,--once they made an attempt to lift the weight of his child's dead body from his breast, but his hands were clenched upon it convulsively and they could not loosen his hold. All at once Elizabeth lifted her head and prayed aloud--
"O God, have mercy on our poor friend Tom, and help him through the Valley of the Shadow! Grant him Thy forgiveness for all his sins, and let him find----" here she broke down and sobbed pitifully,--then between her tears she finished her petition--"Let him find his little child with Thee!"
A low and solemn "Amen" was the response to her prayer from all present, and suddenly Tom opened his eyes with a surprised bright look.
"Is Kiddie all right?" he asked.
"Yes, Tom!" It was Elizabeth who answered, bending over him--"Kiddie's all right! He's fast asleep in your arms."
"So he is!" And the brilliancy in Tom's eyes grew still more radiant, while with one hand he caressed the thick dark curls that clustered on the head of his dead boy--"Poor little chap! Tired out, and so am I! It's very cold surely!"
"Yes, Tom, it is. Very cold!"
"I thought so! I--I must keep the child warm. They'll be worried in camp over all this--Kiddie never stays out so late. He's such a little fellow--only four!--and he goes to bed early always. And when--when he's asleep--why then--then--the day's over for me,--and night begins--night begins!"
The smile lingered on his lips, and settled there at last in coldest gravity,--the fine mask of death covered his features with an impenetrable waxen stillness--all was over! Tom o' the Gleam had gone with his slain child, and the victim he had sacrificed to his revenge, into the presence of that Supreme Recorder who chronicles all deeds both good and evil, and who, in the character of Divine Justice, may, perchance, find that the sheer brutal selfishness of the modern social world is more utterly to be condemned, and more criminal even than murder.
CHAPTER XI
Sick at heart, and utterly overcome by the sudden and awful tragedy to which he had been an enforced silent witness, David Helmsley had now but one idea, and that was at once to leave the scene of horror which, like a ghastly nightmare, scarred his vision and dizzied his brain. Stumbling feebly along, and seeming to those who by chance noticed him, no more than a poor old tramp terrified out of his wits by the grief and confusion which prevailed, he made his way gradually through the crowd now pressing closely round the dead, and went forth into the village street. He held the little dog Charlie nestled under his coat, where he had kept it hidden all the evening,--the tiny creature was shivering violently with that strange consciousness of the atmosphere of death which is instinctive to so many animals,--and a vague wish to soothe its fears helped him for the moment to forget his own feelings. He would not trust himself to look again at Tom o' the Gleam, stretched lifeless on the ground with his slaughtered child clasped in his arms; he could not speak to any one of the terrified people. He heard the constables giving hurried orders for the removal of the bodies, and he saw two more police officers arrive and go into the stableyard of the inn, there to take the number of the motor-car and write down the full deposition of that potentate of the pictorial press, James Brookfield. And he knew, without any explanation, that the whole affair would probably be served up the next day in the cheaper newspapers as a "sensational" crime, so worded as to lay all the blame on Tom o' the Gleam, and to exonerate the act, and deplore the violent death of the "lordly" brute who, out of his selfish and wicked recklessness, had snatched away the life of an only child from its father without care or compunction. But it was the fearful swiftness of the catastrophe that affected Helmsley most,--that, and what seemed to him, the needless cruelty of fate. Only last night he had seen Tom o' the Gleam for the first time--only last night he had admired the physical symmetry and grace of the man,--his handsome head, his rich voice, and the curious refinement, suggestive of some past culture and education, which gave such a charm to his manner,--only last night he had experienced that little proof of human sympathy and kindliness which had shown itself in the gift of the few coins which Tom had collected and placed on his pillow,--only last night he had been touched by the herculean fellow's tenderness for his little "Kiddie,"--and now,--within the space of twenty-four hours, both father and child had gone out of life at a rush as fierce and relentless as the speed of the motor-car which had crushed a world of happiness under its merciless wheels. Was it right--was it just that such things should be? Could one believe in the goodness of God, in such a world of wanton wickedness? Moving along in a blind haze of bewilderment, Helmsley's thoughts were all disordered and his mind in a whirl,--what consciousness he had left to him was centred in an effort to get away--away!--far away from the scene of murder and death,--away from the scent and trail of blood which seemed to infect and poison the very air!
It was a calm and lovely night. The moon rode high, and there was a soft wind blowing in from the sea. Out over the waste of heaving water, where the moonbeams turned the small rippling waves to the resemblance of netted links of silver or steel, the horizon stretched sharply clear and definite, like a line drawn under the finished chapter of vision. There was a gentle murmur of the inflowing tide among the loose stones and pebbles fringing the beach,--but to Helmsley's ears it sounded like the miserable moaning of a broken heart,--the wail of a sorrowful spirit in torture. He went on and on, with no very distinct idea of where he was going,--he simply continued to walk automatically like one in a dream. He did not know the time, but guessed it must be somewhere about midnight. The road was quite deserted, and its loneliness was to him, in his present over-wrought condition, appalling. Desolation seemed to involve the whole earth in gloom,--the trees stood out in the white shine of the moon like dark shrouded ghosts waving their cerements to and fro,--the fields and hills on either side of him were bare and solitary, and the gleam of the ocean was cold and cheerless as a "Dead Man's Pool." Slowly he plodded along, with a thousand disjointed fragments of thought and memory teasing his brain, all part and parcel of his recent experiences,--he seemed to have lived through a whole history of strange events since the herb-gatherer, Matt Peke, had befriended him on the road,--and the most curious impression of all was that he had somehow lost his own identity for ever. It was impossible and ridiculous to think of himself as David Helmsley, the millionaire,--there was, there could be no such person! David Helmsley,--the real David Helmsley,--was very old, very tired, very poor,--there was nothing left for him in this world save death. He had no children, no friends,--no one who cared for him or who wanted to know what had become of him. He was absolutely alone,--and in the hush of the summer night he fancied that the very moon looked down upon him with a chill stare as though wondering why he burdened the earth with his presence when it was surely time for him to die!
It was not till he found that he was leaving the shore line, and that one or two gas lamps twinkled faintly ahead of him, that he realized he was entering the outskirts of a small town. Pausing a moment, he looked about him. A high-walled castle, majestically enthroned on a steep wooded height, was the first object that met his view,--every line of its frowning battlements and turrets was seen clearly against the sky as though etched out on a dark background with a pencil of light. A sign-post at the corner of a winding road gave the direction "To Dunster Castle." Reading this by the glimmer of the moon, Helmsley stood irresolute for a minute or so, and then resumed his tramp, proceeding through the streets of what he knew must be Dunster itself. He had no intention of stopping in the town,--an inward nervousness pushed him on, on, in spite of fatigue, and Dunster was not far enough away from Blue Anchor to satisfy him. The scene of Tom o' the Gleam's revenge and death surrounded him with a horrible environment,--an atmosphere from which he sought to free himself by sheer distance, and he resolved to walk till morning rather than remain anywhere near the place which was now associated in his mind with one of the darkest episodes of human guilt and suffering that he had ever known. Passing by the old inn known as "The Luttrell Arms," now fast closed for the night, a policeman on his beat stopped in his marching to and fro, and spoke to him.
"Hillo! Which way do you come from?"
"From Watchett."
"Oh! We've just had news of a murder up at Blue Anchor. Have you heard anything of it?"
"Yes." And Helmsley looked his questioner squarely in the face. "It's a terrible business! But the murderer's caught!"
"Caught is he? Who's got him?"
"Death!" And Helmsley, lifting his cap, stood bareheaded in the moonlight. "He'll never escape again!"
The constable looked amazed and a little awed.
"Death? Why, I heard it was that wild gypsy, Tom o' the Gleam----"
"So it was,"--said Helmsley, gently,--"and Tom o' the Gleam is dead!"
"No! Don't say that!" ejaculated the constable with real concern. "There's a lot of good in Tom! I shouldn't like to think he's gone!"
"You'll find it's true," said Helmsley. "And perhaps, when you get all the details, you'll think it for the best. Good-night!"
"Are you staying in Dunster?" queried the officer with a keen glance.
"No. I'm moving on." And Helmsley smiled wearily as he again said--"Good-night!"
He walked steadily, though slowly, through the sleeping town, and passed out of it. Ascending a winding bit of road he found himself once more in the open country, and presently came to a field where part of the fence had been broken through by the cattle. Just behind the damaged palings there was a covered shed, open in front, with a few bundles of straw packed within it. This place suggested itself as a fairly comfortable shelter for an hour's rest, and becoming conscious of the intense aching of his limbs, he took possession of it, setting the small "Charlie" down to gambol on the grass at pleasure. He was far more tired than he knew, and remembering the "yerb wine" which Matt Peke had provided him with, he took a long draught of it, grateful for its reviving warmth and tonic power. Then, half-dreamily, he watched the little dog whom he had rescued and befriended, and presently found himself vaguely entertained by the graceful antics of the tiny creature which, despite its wounded paw, capered limpingly after its own shadow flung by the moonlight on the greensward, and attempted in its own playful way to attract the attention of its new master and wile him away from his mood of utter misery. Involuntarily he thought of the frenzied cry of Shakespeare's "Lear" over the dead body of Cordelia:--
"What! Shall a dog, a horse, a rat, have life And thou no breath at all!"
What curious caprice of destiny was it that saved the life of a dog, yet robbed a father of his child? Who could explain it? Why should a happy innocent little lad like Tom o' the Gleam's "Kiddie" have been hurled out of existence in a moment as it were by the mad speed of a motor's wheels,--and a fragile "toy" terrier, the mere whim of dog-breeders and plaything for fanciful women, be plucked from starvation and death as though the great forces of creation deemed it more worth cherishing than a human being! For the murder of Lord Wrotham, Helmsley found excuse,--for the death of Tom there was ample natural cause,--but for the wanton killing of a little child no reason could justly be assigned. Propping his elbows on his knees, and resting his aching head on his hands, he thought and thought,--till Thought became almost as a fire in his brain. What was the use of life? he asked himself. What definite plan or object could there possibly be in the perpetuation of the human race?
"To pace the same dull round On each recurring day, For seventy years or more Till strength and hope decay,-- To trust,--and be deceived,-- And standing,--fear to fall! To find no resting-place-- _Can this be all?_"
Beginning with hope and eagerness, and having confidence in the good faith of his fellow-men, had he not himself fought a hard fight in the world, setting before him a certain goal,--a goal which he had won and passed,--to what purpose? In youth he had been very poor,--and poverty had served him as a spur to ambition. In middle life he had become one of the richest men in the world. He had done all that rich and ambitious men set themselves out to do. He might have said with the Preacher:
"Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them,--I withheld not my heart from any joy, for my heart rejoiced in all my labour, and this was my portion of all my labour. Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do, and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun."
He had loved,--or rather, he had imagined he loved,--he had married, and his wife had dishonoured him. Sons had been born to him, who, with their mother's treacherous blood in their veins, had brought him to shame by their conduct,--and now all the kith and kin he had sought to surround himself with were dead, and he was alone--as alone as he had ever been at the very commencement of his career. Had his long life of toil led him only to this? With a sense of dull disappointment, his mind reverted to the plan he had half entertained of benefiting Tom o' the Gleam in some way and making him happy by prospering the fortunes of the child he loved so well,--though he was fully aware that perhaps he could not have done much in that direction, as it was more than likely that Tom would have resented the slightest hint of a rich man's patronage. Death, however, in its fiercest shape, had now put an abrupt end to any such benevolent scheme, whether or not it might have been feasible,--and, absorbed in a kind of lethargic reverie, he again and again asked himself what use he was in the world?--what could he do with the brief remaining portion of his life?--and how he could dispose, to his own satisfaction, of the vast wealth which, like a huge golden mill-stone, hung round his neck, dragging him down to the grave? Such poor people as he had met with during his tramp seemed fairly contented with their lot; he, at any rate, had heard no complaints of poverty from them. On the contrary, they had shown an independence of thought and freedom of life which was wholly incompatible with the mere desire of money. He could put a five-pound note in an envelope and post it anonymously to Matt Peke at the "Trusty Man" as a slight return for his kindness, but he was quite sure that though Matt might be pleased enough with the money he would equally be puzzled, and not entirely satisfied in his mind as to whether he was doing right to accept and use it. It would probably be put in a savings bank for a "rainy day."
"It is the hardest thing in the world to do good with money!" he mused, sorrowfully. "Of course if I were to say this to the unthinking majority, they would gape upon me and exclaim--'Hard to do good! Why, there's nothing so easy! There are thousands of poor,--there are the hospitals--the churches!' True,--but the thousands of _real_ poor are not so easily found! There are thousands, ay, millions of 'sham' poor. But the _real_ poor, who never ask for anything,--who would not know how to write a begging letter, and who would shrink from writing it even if they did know--who starve patiently, suffer uncomplainingly, and die resignedly--these are as difficult to meet with as diamonds in a coal mine. As for hospitals, do I not know how many of them pander to the barbarous inhumanity of vivisection!--and have I not experienced to the utmost dregs of bitterness, the melting of cash through the hands of secretaries and under-secretaries, and general Committee-ism, and Red Tape-ism, while every hundred thousand pounds bestowed on these necessary institutions turns out in the end to be a mere drop in the sea of incessant demand, though the donors may possibly purchase a knighthood, a baronetcy, or even a peerage, in return for their gifts! And the churches!--my God!--as Madame Roland said of Liberty, what crimes are committed in Thy Name!"
He looked up at the sky through the square opening of the shed, and saw the moon, now changed in appearance and surrounded by a curious luminous halo like the nimbus with which painters encircle the head of a saint. It was a delicate aureole of prismatic radiance, and seemed to have swept suddenly round the silver planet in companionship with a light mist from the sea,--a mist which was now creeping slowly upwards and covering the land with a glistening wetness as of dew. A few fleecy clouds, pale grey and white, were floating aloft in the western half of the heavens, evoked by some magic touch of the wind.
"It will soon be morning,"--thought Helmsley--"The sun will rise in its same old glorious way--with as measured and monotonous a circuit as it has made from the beginning. The Garden of Eden, the Deluge, the building of the Pyramids, the rise and fall of Rome, the conquests of Alexander, the death of Socrates, the murder of Cæsar, the crucifixion of Christ,--the sun has shone on all these things of beauty, triumph or horror with the same even radiance, always the generator of life and fruitfulness, itself indifferent as to what becomes of the atoms germinated under its prolific heat and vitality. The sun takes no heed whether a man dies or lives--neither does God!"
Yet with this idea came a sudden revulsion. Surely in the history of human events, there was ample proof that God, or the invisible Power we call by that name, did care? Crime was, and is, always followed by punishment, sooner or later. Who ordained,--who ordains that this shall be? Who is it that distinguishes between Right and Wrong, and adjusts the balance accordingly? Not Man,--for Man in a barbarous state is often incapable of understanding moral law, till he is trained to it by the evolution of his being and the ever-progressive working of the unseen spiritual forces. And the first process of his evolution is the awakening of conscience, and the struggle to rise from his mere Self to a higher ideal of life,--from material needs to intellectual development. Why is he thus invariably moved towards this higher ideal? If the instinct were a mistaken one, foredoomed to disappointment, it would not be allowed to exist. Nature does not endow us with any sense of which we do not stand in need, or any attribute which is useless to us in the shaping and unfolding of our destinies. True it is that we see many a man and woman who appear to have no souls, but we dare not infer from these exceptions that the soul does not exist. Soulless beings simply have no need of spirituality, just as the night-owl has no need of the sun,--they are bodies merely, and as bodies perish. As the angel said to the prophet Esdras:--"The Most High hath made this world for many, but the world to come for few. I will tell thee a similitude, Esdras; As when thou askest the earth, it shall say unto thee that it giveth much mould whereof earthern vessels are made, but little dust that gold cometh of, even so is the course of this present world!"
Weary of arguing with himself, Helmsley tried to reflect back on certain incidents of his youth, which now in his age came out like prominent pictures in the gallery of his brain. He remembered the pure and simple piety which distinguished his mother, who lived her life out as sweetly as a flower blooms,--thanking God every morning and night for His goodness to her, even at times when she was most sorrowful,--he thought of his little sister, dead in the springtime of her girlhood, who never had a doubt of the unfailing goodness and beneficence of her Creator, and who, when dying, smiled radiantly, and whispered with her last breath, "I wish you would not cry for me, Davie dear!--the next world is so beautiful!" Was this "next world" in her imagination, or was it a fact? Materialists would, of course, say it was imagination. But, in the light of present-day science and discovery, who can pin one's faith on Materialism?
"I have missed the talisman that would have made all the darkness of life clear to me," he said at last, half aloud; "and missing it, I have missed everything of real value. Pain, loss, old age, and death would have been nothing to me, if I had only won that magic glory of the world--Love!"
His eyes again wandered to the sky, and he noticed that the grey-and-white clouds in the west were rising still higher in fleecy pyramids, and were spreading with a wool-like thickness gradually over the whole heavens. The wind, too, had grown stronger, and its sighing sound had changed to a more strenuous moaning. The little dog, Charlie, tired of its master's gloomy absorption, jumped on his knee, and intimated by eloquent looks and wagging tail a readiness to be again nestled into some cosy corner. The shed was warm and comfortable, and after some brief consideration, he decided to try and sleep for an hour or so before again starting on his way. With this object in view, he arranged the packages of straw which filled one side of the shed into the form of an extemporary couch, which proved comfortable enough when he lay down with Charlie curled up beside him. He could not help thinking of the previous night, when he had seen the tall figure of Tom o' the Gleam approaching his bedside at the "Trusty Man," with the little "surprise" gift he had so stealthily laid upon his pillow,--and it was difficult to realise or to believe that the warm, impulsive heart had ceased to beat, and that all that splendid manhood was now but lifeless clay. He tried not to see the horribly haunting vision of the murdered Wrotham, with that terrible gash in his throat, and the blood pouring from it,--he strove to forget the pitiful picture of the little dead "Kiddie" in the arms of its maddened and broken-hearted father--but the impression was too recent and too ghastly for forgetfulness.
"And yet with it all," he mused, "Tom o' the Gleam had what I have never possessed--love! And perhaps it is better to die--even in the awful way he died--in the very strength and frenzy of love--rather than live loveless!"
Here Charlie heaved a small sigh, and nestled a soft silky head close against his breast. "I love you!" the little creature seemed to say--"I am only a dog--but I want to comfort you if I can!" And he murmured--"Poor Charlie! Poor wee Charlie!" and, patting the flossy coat of his foundling, was conscious of a certain consolation in the mere companionship of an animal that trusted to him for protection.
Presently he closed his eyes and tried to sleep. His brain was somewhat confused, and scraps of old songs and verses he had known in boyhood, were jumbled together without cause or sequence, varying in their turn with the events of his business, his financial "deals" and the general results of his life's work. He remembered quite suddenly and for no particular reason, a battle he had engaged in with certain directors of a company who had attempted to "better" him in a particularly important international trade transaction, and he recalled his own sweeping victory over them with a curious sense of disgust. What did it matter--now?--whether he had so many extra millions, or so many more degrees of power? Certain lines of Tennyson's seemed to contain greater truths than all the money-markets of the world could supply:--
"O let the solid earth Not fail beneath my feet, Before my life has found What some have found so sweet-- Then let come what come may, What matter if I go mad, I shall have had my day!
"Let the sweet heavens endure Not close and darken above me, Before I am quite, quite sure That there is one to love me; Then let come what come may To a life that has been so sad, I shall have had my day!"
He murmured this last verse over and over again till it made mere monotony in his mind, and till at last exhausted nature had its way and lulled his senses into a profound slumber. Strange to say, as soon as he was fast asleep, Charlie woke up. Perking his little ears sharply, he sat briskly erect on his tiny haunches, his forepaws well placed on his master's breast, his bright eyes watchfully fixed on the opening of the shed, and his whole attitude expressing that he considered himself "on guard." It was evident that had the least human footfall broken the stillness, he would have made the air ring with as much noise as he was capable of. He had a vibrating bark of his own, worthy of a much larger animal, and he appeared to be anxiously waiting for an opportunity to show off this special accomplishment. No such chance, however, offered itself; the minutes and hours went by in undisturbed order. Now and then a rabbit scampered across the field, or an owl flew through the trees with a plaintive cry,--otherwise, so far as the immediate surroundings of the visible land were concerned, everything was perfectly calm. But up in the sky there were signs of gathering trouble. The clouds had formed into woollier masses,--their grey had changed to black, their white to grey, and the moon, half hidden, appeared to be hurrying downward to the west in a flying scud of etheric foam. Some disturbance was brewing in the higher altitudes of air, and a low snarling murmur from the sea responded to what was, perchance, the outward gust of a fire-tempest in the sun. The small Charlie was, no doubt, quite ignorant of meteorological portents, nevertheless he kept himself wide awake, sniffing at empty space in a highly suspicious manner, his tiny black nose moist with aggressive excitement, and his whole miniature being prepared to make "much ado about nothing" on the smallest provocation.
The morning broke sullenly, in a dull haze, though here and there pale patches of blue, and flushes of rose-pink, showed how fair the day would willingly have made itself, had only the elements been propitious. Helmsley slept well on through the gradual unfolding of the dawn, and it was fully seven o'clock when he awoke with a start, scarcely knowing where he was. Charlie hailed his return to consciousness with marked enthusiasm, and dropping the sentry "Who goes there?" attitude, gambolled about him delightedly. Presently remembering his environment and the events which were a part of it, he quickly aroused himself, and carefully packing up all the bundles of straw in the shed, exactly as he had found them, he again went forth upon what he was disposed to consider now a penitential pilgrimage.
"In old times," he said to himself, as he bathed his face and hands in a little running stream by the roadside--"kings, when they found themselves miserable and did not know why they were so, went to the church for consolation, and were told by the priests that they had sinned--and that it was their sins that made them wretched. And a journey taken with fasting was prescribed--much in the way that our fashionable physicians prescribe change of air, a limited diet and plenty of exercise to the luxurious feeders of our social hive. And the weary potentates took off their crowns and their royal robes, and trudged along as they were told--became tramps for the nonce, like me. But I need no priest to command what I myself ordain!"
He resumed his onward way ploddingly and determinedly, though he was beginning to be conscious of an increasing weariness and lassitude which seemed to threaten him with a break-down ere long. But he would not think of this.
"Other men have no doubt felt just as weak," he thought. "There are many on the road as old as I am and even older. I ought to be able to do of my own choice what others do from necessity. And if the worst comes to the worst, and I am compelled to give up my project, I can always get back to London in a few hours!"
He was soon at Minehead, and found that quaint little watering-place fully astir; for so far as it could have a "season," that season was now on. A considerable number of tourists were about, and coaches and brakes were getting ready in the streets for those who were inclined to undertake the twenty miles drive from Minehead to Lynton. Seeing a baker's shop open he went in and asked the cheery-looking woman behind the counter if she would make him a cup of coffee, and let him have a saucer of milk for his little dog. She consented willingly, and showed him a little inner room, where she spread a clean white cloth on the table and asked him to sit down. He looked at her in some surprise.
"I'm only 'on the road,'" he said--"Don't put yourself out too much for me."
She smiled.
"You'll pay for what you've ordered, I suppose?"
"Certainly!"
"Then you'll get just what everybody gets for their money,"--and her smile broadened kindly--"We don't make any difference between poor and rich."
She retired, and he dropped into a chair, wearily. "We don't make any difference between poor and rich!" said this simple woman. How very simple she was! No difference between poor and rich! Where would "society" be if this axiom were followed! He almost laughed to think of it. A girl came in and brought his coffee with a plate of fresh bread-and-butter, a dish of Devonshire cream, a pot of jam, and a small round basket full of rosy apples,--also a saucer of milk which she set down on the floor for Charlie, patting him kindly as she did so, with many admiring comments on his beauty.
"You've brought me quite a breakfast!" said Helmsley. "How much?"
"Sixpence, please."
"Only sixpence?"
"That's all. It's a shilling with ham and eggs."
Helmsley paid the humble coin demanded, and wondered where the "starving poor" came in, at any rate in Somersetshire. Any beggar on the road, making sixpence a day, might consider himself well fed with such a meal. Just as he drew up his chair to the table, a sudden gust of wind swept round the house, shaking the whole building, and apparently hurling the weight of its fury on the roof, for it sounded as if a whole stack of chimney-pots had fallen.
"It's a squall,"--said the girl--"Father said there was a storm coming. It often blows pretty hard up this way."
She went out, and left Helmsley to himself. He ate his meal, and fed Charlie with as much bread and milk as that canine epicure could consume,--and then sat for a while, listening to the curious hissing of the wind, which was like a suppressed angry whisper in his ears.
"It will be rough weather,"--he thought--"Now shall I stay in Minehead, or go on?"
Somehow, his experience of vagabondage had bred in him a certain restlessness, and he did not care to linger in any one place. An inexplicable force urged him on. He was conscious that he entertained a most foolish, most forlorn secret hope,--that of finding some yet unknown consolation,--of receiving some yet unobtained heavenly benediction. And he repeated again the lines:--
"Let the sweet heavens endure, Not close and darken above me, Before I am quite, quite sure That there is one to love me!"
Surely a Divine Providence there was who could read his heart's desire, and who could see how sincerely in earnest he was to find some channel wherein the current of his accumulated wealth might flow after his own death, to fruitfulness and blessing for those who truly deserved it.
"Is it so much to ask of destiny--just one honest heart?" he inwardly demanded--"Is it so large a return to want from the world in which I have toiled so long--just one unselfish love? People would tell me I am too old to expect such a thing,--but I am not seeking the love of a lover,--that I know is impossible. But Love,--that most god-like of all emotions, has many phases, and a merely sexual attraction is the least and worst part of the divine passion. There is a higher form,--one far more lasting and perfect, in which Self has very little part,--and though I cannot give it a name, I am certain of its existence!"
Another gust of wind, more furious than the last, whistled overhead and through the crannies of the door. He rose, and tucking Charlie warmly under his coat as before, he went out, pausing on his way to thank the mistress of the little bakery for the excellent meal he had enjoyed.
"Well, you won't hurt on it," she said, smilingly; "it's plain, but it's wholesome. That's all we claim for it. Are you going on far?"
"Yes, I'm bound for a pretty long tramp,"--he replied. "I'm walking to find friends in Cornwall."
She opened her eyes in unfeigned wonder and compassion.
"Deary me!" she ejaculated--"You've a stiff road before you. And to-day I'm afraid you'll be in for a storm."
He glanced out through the shop-window.
"It's not raining,"--he said.
"Not yet,--but it's blowing hard,"--she replied--"And it's like to blow harder."
"Never mind, I must risk it!" And he lifted his cap; "Good-day!"
"Good-day! A safe journey to you!"
"Thank you!"
And, gratefully acknowledging the kindly woman's parting nod and smile, he stepped out of the shop into the street. There he found the wind had risen indeed. Showers of blinding dust were circling in the air, blotting out the view,--the sky was covered with masses of murky cloud drifting against each other in threatening confusion--and there was a dashing sound of the sea on the beach which seemed to be steadily increasing in volume and intensity. He paused for a moment under the shelter of an arched doorway, to place Charlie more comfortably under his arm and button his coat more securely, the while he watched the people in the principal thoroughfare struggling with the capricious attacks of the blast, which tore their hats off and sent them spinning across the road, and played mischievous havoc with women's skirts, blowing them up to the knees, and making a great exhibition of feet, few of which were worth looking at from any point of beauty or fitness. And then, all at once, amid the whirling of the gale, he heard a hoarse stentorian shouting--"Awful Murder! Local Crime! Murder of a Nobleman! Murder at Blue Anchor! Latest details!" and he started precipitately forward, walking hurriedly along with as much nervous horror as though he had been guiltily concerned in the deed with which the town was ringing. Two or three boys ran past him, with printed placards in their hands, which they waved in front of them, and on which in thick black letters could be seen:--"Murder of Lord Wrotham! Death of the Murderer! Appalling Tragedy at Blue Anchor!" And, for a few seconds, amid the confusion caused by the wind, and the wild clamour of the news-vendors, he felt as if every one were reeling pell-mell around him like persons on a ship at sea,--men with hats blown off,--women and children running aslant against the gale with hair streaming,--all eager to purchase the first papers which contained the account of a tragedy, enacted, as it were, at their very doors. Outside a little glass and china shop at the top of a rather hilly street a group of workingmen were standing, with the papers they had just bought in their hands, and Helmsley, as he trudged by, with stooping figure and bent head set against the wind, lingered near them a moment to hear them discuss the news.
"Ah, poor Tom!" exclaimed one--"Gone at last! I mind me well how he used to say he'd die a bad death!"
"What's a bad death?" queried another, gruffly--"And what's the truth about this here business anyhow? Newspapers is allus full o' lies. There's a lot about a lord that's killed, but precious little about Tom!"
"That's so!" said an old farmer, who with spectacles on was leaning his back against the wall of the shop near which they stood, to shelter himself a little from the force of the gale, while he read the paper he held--"See here,--this lord was driving his motor along by Cleeve, and ran over Tom's child,--why, that's the poor Kiddie we used to see Tom carrying for miles on his shoulder----"
"Ah, the poor lamb!" And a commiserating groan ran through the little group of attentive listeners.
"And then,"--continued the farmer--"from what I can make out of this paper, Tom picked up his baby quite dead. Then he started to run all the way after the fellow whose motor car had killed it. That's nat'ral enough!"
"Of course it is!" "I'd a' done it myself!" "Damn them motors!" muttered the chorus, fiercely.
"If so be the motor 'ad gone on, Tom couldn't never 'ave caught up with it, even if he'd run till he dropped," went on the farmer--"but as luck would 'ave it, the thing broke down nigh to Blue Anchor, and Tom got his chance. Which he took. And--he killed this Lord Wrotham, whoever he is,--stuck him in the throat with a knife as though he were a pig!"
There was a moment's horrified silence.
"So he wor!" said one man, emphatically--"A right-down reg'lar road-hog!"
"Then,"--proceeded the farmer, carefully studying the paper again--"Tom, 'avin' done all his best an' worst in this world, gives himself up to the police, but just 'afore goin' off, asks if he may kiss his dead baby,----"
A long pause here ensued. Tears stood in many of the men's eyes.
"And," continued the farmer, with a husky and trembling voice--"he takes the child in his arms, an' all sudden like falls down dead. God rest him!"
Another pause.
"And what does the paper say about it all?" enquired one of the group.
"It says--wait a minute!--it says--'Society will be plunged into mourning for Lord Wrotham, who was one of the most promising of our younger peers, and whose sporting tendencies made him a great favourite in Court circles.'"
"That's a bit o' bunkum paid for by the fam'ly!" said a great hulking drayman who had joined the little knot of bystanders, flicking his whip as he spoke,--"Sassiety plunged into mourning for the death of a precious raskill, is it? I 'xpect it's often got to mourn that way! Rort an' rubbish! Tell ye what!--Tom o' the Gleam was worth a dozen o' your motorin' lords!--an' the hull countryside through Quantocks, ay, an' even across Exmoor, 'ull 'ave tears for 'im an' 'is pretty little Kiddie what didn't do no 'arm to anybody more'n a lamb skippin' in the fields. Tom worn't known in their blessed 'Court circles,'--but, by the Lord!--he'd got a grip o' the people's heart about here, an' the people don't forget their friends in a hurry! Who the devil cares for Lord Wrotham!"
"Who indeed!" murmured the chorus.
"An' who'll say a bad word for Tom o' the Gleam?"
"Nobody!" "He wor a rare fine chap!" "We'll all miss him!" eagerly answered the chorus.
With a curious gesture, half of grief, half of defiance, the drayman tore a scrap of black lining from his coat, and tied it to his whip.
"Tom was pretty well known to be a terror to some folk,--specially liars an' raskills,"--he said--"An' I aint excusin' murder. But all the same I'm in mourning for Tom an' 'is little Kiddie, an' I don't care who knows it!"
He went off, and the group dispersed, partly driven asunder by the increasing fury of the wind, which was now sweeping through the streets in strong, steady gusts, hurling everything before it. But Helmsley set his face to the storm and toiled on. He must get out of Minehead. This he felt to be imperative. He could not stay in a town which now for many days would talk of nothing else but the tragic death of Tom o' the Gleam. His nerves were shaken, and he felt himself to be mentally, as well as physically, distressed by the strange chance which had associated him against his will with such a grim drama of passion and revenge. He remembered seeing the fateful motor swing down that precipitous road near Cleeve,--he recalled its narrow escape from a complete upset at the end of the declivity when it had swerved round the corner and rushed on,--how little he had dreamed that a child's life had just been torn away by its reckless wheels!--and that child the all-in-the-world to Tom o' the Gleam! Tom must have tracked the motor by following some side-lane or short cut known only to himself, otherwise Helmsley thought he would hardly have escaped seeing him. But, in any case, the slow and trudging movements of an old man must have lagged far, far behind those of the strong, fleet-footed gypsy to whom the wildest hills and dales, cliffs and sea caves were all familiar ground. Like a voice from the grave, the reply Tom had given to Matt Peke at the "Trusty Man," when Matt asked him where he had come from, rang back upon his ears--"From the caves of Cornwall! From picking up drift on the shore and tracking seals to their lair in the hollows of the rocks! All sport, Matt! I live like a gentleman born, keeping or killing at my pleasure!"
Shuddering at this recollection, Helmsley pressed on in the teeth of the blast, and a sudden shower of rain scudded by, stinging him in the face with the sharpness of needlepoints. The gale was so high, and the blown dust so thick on all sides, that he could scarcely see where he was going, but his chief effort was to get out of Minehead and away from all contact with human beings--for the time. In this he succeeded very soon. Once well beyond the town, he did not pause to make a choice of roads. He only sought to avoid the coast line, rightly judging that way to lie most open and exposed to the storm,--moreover the wind swooped in so fiercely from the sea, and the rising waves made such a terrific roaring, that, for the mere sake of greater quietness, he turned aside and followed a path which appeared to lead invitingly into some deep hollow of the hills. There seemed a slight chance of the weather clearing at noon, for though the wind was so high, the clouds were whitening under passing gleams of sunlight, and the scud of rain had passed. As he walked further and further he found himself entering a deep green valley--a cleft between high hills,--and though he had no idea which way it led him, he was pleased to have reached a comparatively sheltered spot where the force of the hurricane was not so fiercely felt, and where the angry argument of the sea was deadened by distance. There was a lovely perfume everywhere,--the dash of rain on the herbs and field flowers had brought out their scent, and the freshness of the stormy atmosphere was bracing and exhilarating. He put Charlie down on the grass, and was amused to see how obediently the tiny creature trotted after him, close at his heels, in the manner of a well-trained, well-taught lady's favourite. There was no danger of wheeled or motor traffic in this peaceful little glen, which appeared to be used solely by pedestrians. He rather wondered now and then whither it led, but was not very greatly concerned on the subject. What pleased him most was that he did not see a single human being anywhere or a sign of human habitation.
Presently the path began to ascend, and he followed it upward. The climb became gradually steep and wearisome, and the track grew smaller, almost vanishing altogether among masses of loose stones, which had rolled down from the summits of the hills, and he had again to carry Charlie, who very strenuously objected to the contact of sharp flints against his dainty little feet. The boisterous wind now met him full-faced,--but, struggling against it, he finally reached a wide plateau, commanding a view of the surrounding country and the sea. Not a house was in sight;--all around him extended a chain of hills, like a fortress set against invading ocean,--and straight away before his eyes ocean itself rose and fell in a chaos of billowy blackness. What a sight it was! Here, from this point, he could take some measure and form some idea of the storm, which so far from abating as he had imagined it might, when passing through the protected seclusion of the valley he had just left, was evidently gathering itself together for a still fiercer onslaught.
Breathless with his climbing exertions he stood watching the huge walls of water, built up almost solidly as it seemed, by one force and dashed down again by another,--it was as though great mountains lifted themselves over each other to peer at the sky and were driven back again to shapelessness and destruction. The spectacle was all the more grand and impressive to him, because where he now was he could not hear the full clamour of the rolling and retreating billows. The thunder of the surf was diminished to a sullen moan, which came along with the wind and clung to it like a concordant note in music, forming one sustained chord of wrath and desolation. Darkening steadily over the sea and densely over-spreading the whole sky, there were flying clouds of singular shape,--clouds tossed up into the momentary similitude of Titanesque human figures with threatening arms outstretched,--anon, to the filmly outlines of fabulous birds swooping downwards with jagged wings and ravenous beaks,--or twisting into columns and pyramids of vapour as though the showers of foam flung up by the waves had been caught in mid-air and suddenly frozen. Several sea-gulls were flying inland; two or three soared right over Helmsley's head with a plaintive cry. He turned to watch their graceful flight, and saw another phalanx of clouds coming up behind to meet and cope with those already hurrying in with the wind from the sea. The darkness of the sky was deepening every minute, and he began to feel a little uneasy. He realised that he had lost his way, and he looked on all sides for some glimpse of a main road, but could see none, and the path he had followed evidently terminated at the summit where he stood. To return to the valley he had left seemed futile, as it was only a way back to Minehead, which place he wished to avoid. There was a small sheep track winding down on the other side of the hill, and he thought it possible that this might lead to a farm-road, which again might take him out on some more direct highway. He therefore started to follow it. He could scarcely walk against the wind; it blew with such increasing fury. Charlie shivered away from its fierce breath and snuggled his tiny body more warmly under his protector's arm, withdrawing himself entirely from view. And now with a sudden hissing whirl, down came the rain. The two opposing forces of cloud met with a sudden rush, and emptied their pent-up torrents on the earth, while a low muttering noise, not of the wind, betokened thunder. The prolonged heat of the last month had been very great all over the country, and a suppressed volcano was smouldering in the heart of the heavens, ready to shoot forth fire. The roaring of the sea grew more distinct as Helmsley descended from the height and came nearer to the coast line,--and the mingled scream of the angry surf on the shore and the sword-like sweep of the rain, rang in his ears deafeningly, with a kind of monotonous horror. His head began to swim, and his eyes were half blinded by the sharp showers that whipped his face with blown drops as hard and cold as hail. On he went, however, more like a struggling dreamer in a dream, than with actual consciousness,--and darker and wilder grew the storm. A forked flash of lightning, running suddenly like melted lava down the sky, flung half a second's lurid blue glare athwart the deepening blackness,--and in less than two minutes it was followed by the first decisive peal of thunder rolling in deep reverberations from sea to land, from land to sea again. The war of the elements had begun in earnest. Amid their increasing giant wrath, Helmsley stumbled almost unseeingly along,--keeping his head down and leaning more heavily than was his usual wont upon the stout ash stick which was part of the workman's outfit he had purchased for himself in Bristol, and which now served him as his best support. In the gathering gloom, with his stooping thin figure, he looked more like a faded leaf fluttering in the gale than a man, and he was beginning now to realise with keen disappointment that his strength was not equal to the strain he had been putting upon it. The weight of his seventy years was pressing him down,--and a sudden thrill of nervous terror ran through him lest his whim for wandering should cost him his life.
"And if I were to die of exhaustion out here on the hills, what would be said of me?" he thought--"They would find my body--perhaps--after some days;--they would discover the money I carry in my vest lining, and a letter to Vesey which would declare my actual identity. Then I should be called a fool or a madman--most probably the latter. No one would know,--no one would guess--except Vesey--the real object with which I started on this wild goose chase after the impossible. It is a foolish quest! Perhaps after all I had better give it up, and return to the old wearisome life of luxury,--the old ways!--and die in my bed in the usual 'respectable' style of the rich, with expensive doctors, nurses and medicines set in order round me, and all arrangements getting ready for a 'first-class funeral'!"
He laughed drearily. Another flash of lightning, followed almost instantaneously by a terrific crash of thunder, brought him to a pause. He was now at the bottom of the hill which he had ascended from the other side, and perceived a distinct and well-trodden path which appeared to lead in a circuitous direction towards the sea. Here there seemed some chance of getting out of the labyrinth of hills into which he had incautiously wandered, and, summoning up his scattered forces, he pressed on. The path proved to be an interminable winding way,--first up--then down,--now showing glimpses of the raging ocean, now dipping over bare and desolate lengths of land,--and presently it turned abruptly into a deep thicket of trees. Drenched with rain and tired of fighting against the boisterous wind which almost tore his breath away, he entered this dark wood with a vague sense of relief,--it offered some sort of shelter, and if the trees attracted the lightning and he were struck dead beneath them, what did it matter after all! One way of dying was as good (or as bad) as another!
The over-arching boughs dripping with wet, closed over him and drew him, as it were, into their dense shadows,--the wind shrieked after him like a scolding fury, but its raging tone grew softer as he penetrated more deeply into the sable-green depths of heavily foliaged solitude. His weary feet trod gratefully on a thick carpet of pine needles and masses of the last year's fallen leaves,--and a strong sweet scent of mingled elderflower and sweetbriar was tossed to him on every gust of rain. Here the storm turned itself to music and revelled in a glorious symphony of sound.
"Oh ye Winds of God, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever!
"Oh ye Lightnings and Clouds, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and magnify Him for ever!"
In full chords of passionate praise the hurricane swept its grand anthem through the rustling, swaying trees, as though these were the strings of a giant harp on which some great Archangel played,--and the dash and roar of the sea came with it, rolling in the track of another mighty peal of thunder. Helmsley stopped and listened, seized by an overpowering enchantment and awe.
"This--this is Life!" he said, half aloud--"Our miserable human vanities--our petty schemes--our poor ambitions--what are they? Motes in a sunbeam!--gone as soon as realised! But Life,--the deep, self-contained divine Life of Nature--this is the only life that lives for ever, the Immortality of which we are a part!"
A fierce gust of wind here snapped asunder a great branch from a tree, and flung it straight across his path. Had he been a few inches nearer, it would have probably struck him down with it. Charlie peeped out from under his arm with a pitiful little whimper, and Helmsley's heart smote him.
"Poor wee Charlie!" he said, fondling the tiny head; "I know what you would say to me! You would say that if I want to risk my own life, I needn't risk yours! Is that it? Well!--I'll try to get you out of this if I can! I wish I I could see some sign of a house anywhere! I'd make for it and ask for shelter."
He trudged patiently onwards,--but he was beginning to feel unsteady in his limbs,--and every now and then he had to stop, overcome by a sickening sensation of giddiness. The tempest had now fully developed into a heavy thunderstorm, and the lightning quivered and gleamed through the trees incessantly, followed by huge claps of thunder which clashed down without a second's warning, afterwards rolling away in long thudding detonations echoing for miles and miles. It was difficult to walk at all in such a storm,--the youngest and strongest pedestrian might have given way under the combined onslaught of rain, wind, and the pattering shower of leaves which were literally torn, fresh and green, from their parent boughs and cast forth to whirl confusedly amid the troubled spaces of the air. And if the young and strong would have found it hard to brave such an uproar of the elements, how much harder was it for an old man, who, deeming himself stronger than he actually was, and buoyed up by sheer nerve and mental obstinacy, had, of his own choice, brought himself into this needless plight and danger. For now, in utter weariness of body and spirit, Helmsley began to reproach himself bitterly for his rashness. A mere caprice of the imagination,--a fancy that, perhaps, among the poor and lowly he might find a love or a friendship he had never met with among the rich and powerful, was all that had led him forth on this strange journey of which the end could but be disappointment and failure;--and at the present moment he felt so thoroughly conscious of his own folly, that he almost resolved on abandoning his enterprise as soon as he found himself once more on the main road.
"I will take the first vehicle that comes by,"--he said, "and make for the nearest railway station. And I'll end my days with a character for being 'hard as nails!'--that's the only way in which one can win the respectful consideration of one's fellows as a thoroughly 'sane and sensible' man!"
Just then, the path he was following started sharply up a steep acclivity, and there was no other choice left to him but still to continue in it, as the trees were closing in blindly intricate tangles about him, and the brushwood was becoming so thick that he could not have possibly forced a passage through it. His footing grew more difficult, for now, instead of soft pine-needles and leaves to tread upon, there were only loose stones, and the rain was blowing in downward squalls that almost by their very fury threw him backward on the ground. Up, still up, he went, however, panting painfully as he climbed,--his breath was short and uneasy--and all his body ached and shivered as with strong ague. At last,--dizzy and half fainting,--he arrived at the top of the tedious and troublesome ascent, and uttered an involuntary cry at the scene of beauty and grandeur stretched in front of him. How far he had walked he had no idea,--nor did he know how many hours he had taken in walking,--but he had somehow found his way to the summit of a rocky wooded height, from which he could survey the whole troubled expanse of wild sky and wilder sea,--while just below him the hills were split asunder into a huge cleft, or "coombe," running straight down to the very lip of ocean, with rampant foliage hanging about it on either side in lavish garlands of green, and big boulders piled up about it, from whose smooth surfaces the rain swept off in sleety sheets, leaving them shining like polished silver. What a wild Paradise was here disclosed!--what a matchless picture, called into shape and colour with all the forceful ease and perfection of Nature's handiwork! No glimpse of human habitation was anywhere visible; man seemed to have found no dwelling here; there was nothing--nothing, but Earth the Beautiful, and her Lover the Sea! Over these twain the lightnings leaped, and the thunder played in the sanctuary of heaven,--this hour of storm was all their own, and humanity was no more counted in their passionate intermingling of life than the insects on a leaf, or the grains of sand on the shore. For a moment or two Helmsley's eyes, straining and dim, gazed out on the marvellously bewitching landscape thus suddenly unrolled before him,--then all at once a sharp pain running through his heart caused him to flinch and tremble. It was a keen stab of anguish, as though a knife had been plunged into his body.
"My God!" he muttered--"What--what is this?"
Walking feebly to a great stone hard by, he sat down upon it, breathing with difficulty. The rain beat full upon him, but he did not heed it; he sought to recover from the shock of that horrible pain,--to overcome the creeping sick sensation of numbness which seemed to be slowly freezing him to death. With a violent effort he tried to shake the illness off;--he looked up at the sky--and was met by a blinding flash which tore the clouds asunder and revealed a white blaze of palpitating fire in the centre of the blackness--and at this he made some inarticulate sound, putting both his hands before his face to hide the angry mass of flame. In so doing he let the little Charlie escape, who, finding himself out of his warm shelter and on the wet grass, stood amazed, and shivering pitifully under the torrents of rain. But Helmsley was not conscious of his canine friend's distress. Another pang, cruel and prolonged, convulsed him,--a blood-red mist swam before his eyes, and he lost all hold on sense and memory. With a dull groan he fell forward, slipping from the stone on which he had been seated, in a helpless heap on the ground,--involuntarily he threw up his arms as a drowning man might do among great waves overwhelming him,--and so went down--down!--into silence and unconsciousness.
CHAPTER XII
The storm raged till sunset; and then exhausted by its own stress of fury, began to roll away in angry sobs across the sea. The wind sank suddenly; the rain as suddenly ceased. A wonderful flush of burning orange light cut the sky asunder, spreading gradually upward and paling into fairest rose. The sullen clouds caught brightness at their summits, and took upon themselves the semblance of Alpine heights touched by the mystic glory of the dawn, and a clear silver radiance flashed across the ocean for a second and then vanished, as though a flaming torch had just flared up to show the troublous heaving of the waters, and had then been instantly quenched. As the evening came on the weather steadily cleared;--and presently a pure, calm, dark-blue expanse of ether stretched balmily across the whole width of the waves, with the evening star--the Star of Love--glimmering faintly aloft like a delicate jewel hanging on the very heart of the air. Far away down in the depths of the "coombe," a church bell rang softly for some holy service,--and when David Helmsley awoke at last from his death-like swoon he found himself no longer alone. A woman knelt beside him, supporting him in her arms,--and when he looked up at her wonderingly, he saw two eyes bent upon him with such watchful tenderness that in his weak, half-conscious state he fancied he must be wandering somewhere through heaven if the stars were so near. He tried to speak--to move,--but was checked by a gentle pressure of the protecting arms about him.
"Better now, dearie?" murmured a low anxious voice. "That's right! Don't try to get up just yet--take time! Let the strength come back to you first!"
Who was it--who could it be, that spoke to him with such affectionate solicitude? He gazed and gazed and marvelled,--but it was too dark to see the features of his rescuer. As consciousness grew more vivid, he realised that he was leaning against her bosom like a helpless child,--that the wet grass was all about him,--and that he was cold,--very cold, with a coldness as of some enclosing grave. Sense and memory returned to him slowly with sharp stabs of physical pain, and presently he found utterance.
"You are very kind!" he muttered, feebly--"I begin to recollect now--I had walked a long way--and I was caught in the storm--I felt ill,--very ill!--I suppose I must have fallen down here----"
"That's it!" said the woman, gently--"Don't try to think about it! You'll be better presently."
He closed his eyes wearily,--then opened them again, struck by a sudden self-reproach and anxiety.
"The little dog?" he asked, trembling--"The little dog I had with me----?"
He saw, or thought he saw, a smile on the face in the darkness.
"The little dog's all right,--don't you worry about him!" said the woman--"He knows how to take care of himself and you too! It was just him that brought me along here where I found you. Bless the little soul! He made noise enough for six of his size!"
Helmsley gave a faint sigh of pleasure.
"Poor little Charlie! Where is he?"
"Oh, he's close by! He was almost drowned with the rain, like a poor mouse in a pail of water, but he went on barking all the same! I dried him as well as I could in my apron, and then wrapped him up in my cloak,--he's sitting right in it just now watching me."
"If--if I die,--please take care of him!" murmured Helmsley.
"Nonsense, dearie! I'm not going to let you die out here on the hills,--don't think it!" said the woman, cheerily,--"I want to get you up, and take you home with me. The storm's well overpast,--if you could manage to move----"
He raised himself a little, and tried to see her more closer.
"Do you live far from here?" he asked.
"Only just on the upper edge of the 'coombe'--not in the village,"--she answered--"It's quite a short way, but a bit steep going. If you lean on me, I won't let you slip,--I'm as strong as a man, and as men go nowadays, stronger than most!"
He struggled to rise, and she assisted him. By dint of sheer mental force and determination he got himself on his feet, but his limbs shook violently, and his head swam.
"I'm afraid"--he faltered--"I'm afraid I am very ill. I shall only be a trouble to you----"
"Don't talk of trouble? Wait till I fetch the doggie!" And, turning from him a moment, she ran to pick up Charlie, who, as she had said, was snugly ensconced in the folds of her cloak, which she had put for him under the shelter of a projecting boulder,--"Could you carry him, do you think?"
He nodded assent, and put the little animal under his coat as before, touched almost to weak tears to feel it trying to lick his hand. Meanwhile his unknown and scarcely visible protectress put an arm round him, holding him up as carefully as though he were a tottering infant.
"Don't hurry--just take an easy step at a time,"--she said--"The moon rises a bit late, and we'll have to see our way as best we can with the stars." And she gave a glance upward. "That's a bright one just over the coombe,--the girls about here call it 'Light o' Love.'"
Moving stiffly, and with great pain, Helmsley was nevertheless impelled, despite his suffering, to look, as she was looking, towards the heavens. There he saw the same star that had peered at him through the window of his study at Carlton House Terrace,--the same that had sparkled out in the sky the night that he and Matt Peke had trudged the road together, and which Matt had described as "the love-star, an' it'll be nowt else in these parts till the world-without-end-amen!" And she whose eyes were upturned to its silvery glory,--who was she? His sight was very dim, and in the deepening shadows he could only discern a figure of medium womanly height,--an uncovered head with the hair loosely knotted in a thick coil at the nape of the neck,--and the outline of a face which might be fair or plain,--he could not tell. He was conscious of the warm strength of the arm that supported him, for when he slipped once or twice, he was caught up tenderly, without hurt or haste, and held even more securely than before. Gradually, and by halting degrees, he made the descent of the hill, and, as his guide helped him carefully over a few loose stones in the path, he saw through a dark clump of foliage the glimmer of twinkling lights, and heard the rush of water. He paused, vaguely bewildered.
"Nearly home now!" said his guide, encouragingly; "Just a few steps more and we'll be there. My cottage is the last and the highest in the coombe. The other houses are all down closer to the sea."
Still he stood inert.
"The sea!" he echoed, faintly--"Where is it?"
With her disengaged hand she pointed outwards.
"Yonder! By and by, when the moon comes over the hill, it will be shining like a silver field with big daisies blowing and growing all over it. That's the way it often looks after a storm. The tops of the waves are just like great white flowers."
He glanced at her as she said this, and caught a closer glimpse of her face. Some faint mystical light in the sky illumined the outlines of her features, and showed him a calm and noble profile, such as may be found in early Greek sculpture, and which silently expresses the lines:
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know!"
He moved on with a quicker step, touched by a keen sense of expectation. Ill as he knew himself to be, he was eager to reach this woman's dwelling and to see her more closely. A soft laugh of pleasure broke from her lips as he tried to accelerate his pace.
"Oh, we're getting quite strong and bold now, aren't we!" she exclaimed, gaily--"But take care not to go too fast! There's a rough bit of bog and boulder coming."
This was true. They had arrived at the upper edge of a bank overlooking a hill stream which was pouring noisily down in a flood made turgid by the rain, and the "rough bit of bog and boulder" was a sort of natural bridge across the torrent, formed by heaps of earth and rock, out of which masses of wet fern and plumy meadow-sweet sprang in tall tufts and garlands, which though beautiful to the eyes in day-time, were apt to entangle the feet in walking, especially when there was only the uncertain glimmer of the stars by which to grope one's way. Helmsley's age and over-wrought condition made his movements nervous and faltering at this point, and nothing could exceed the firm care and delicate solicitude with which his guide helped him over this last difficulty of the road. She was indeed strong, as she had said,--she seemed capable of lifting him bodily, if need were--yet she was not a woman of large or robust frame. On the contrary, she appeared slightly built, and carried herself with that careless grace which betokens perfect form. Once safely across the bridge and on the other side of the coombe, she pointed to a tiny lattice window with a light behind it which gleamed out through the surrounding foliage like a glow-worm in the darkness.
"Here we are at home," she said,--"Just along this path--it's quite easy!--now under this tree--it's a big chestnut,--you'll love it!--now here's the garden gate--wait till I lift the latch--that's right!--the garden's quite small you see,--it goes straight up to the cottage--and here's the door! Come in!"
As in a dream, Helmsley was dimly conscious of the swishing rustle of wet leaves, and the fragrance of mignonette and roses mingling with the salty scent of the sea,--then he found himself in a small, low, oak-raftered kitchen, with a wide old-fashioned hearth and ingle-nook, warm with the glow of a sparkling fire. A quaintly carved comfortably cushioned armchair was set in the corner, and to this his guide conducted him, and gently made him sit down.
"Now give me the doggie!" she said, taking that little personage from his arms--"He'll be glad of his supper and a warm bed, poor little soul! And so will you!"
With a kindly caress she set Charlie down in front of the hearth, and proceeded to shut the cottage door, which had been left open as they entered,--and locking it, dropped an iron bar across it for the night. Then she threw off her cloak, and hung it up on a nail in the wall, and bending over a lamp which was burning low on the table, turned up its wick a little higher. Helmsley watched her in a kind of stupefied wonderment. As the lamplight flashed up on her features, he saw that she was not a girl, but a woman who seemed to have thought and suffered. Her face was pale, and the lines of her mouth were serious, though very sweet. He could hardly judge whether she had beauty or not, because he saw her at a disadvantage. He was too ill to appreciate details, and he could only gaze at her in the dim and troubled weariness of an old and helpless man, who for the time being was dependent on any kindly aid that might be offered to him. Once or twice the vague idea crossed his mind that he would tell her who he was, and assure her that he had plenty of money about him to reward her for her care and pains,--but he could not bring himself to the point of this confession. The surprise and sweetness of being received thus unquestioningly under the shelter of her roof as merely the poor way-worn tramp he seemed to be, were too great for him to relinquish. She, meanwhile, having trimmed the lamp, hurried into a neighboring room, and came in again with a bundle of woollen garments, and a thick flannel dressing gown on her arm.
"This was my father's," she said, as she brought it to him--"It's soft and cosy. Get off your wet clothes and slip into it, while I go and make your bed ready."
She spread the dressing gown before the fire to warm it, and was about to turn away again, when Helmsley laid a detaining hand on her arm.
"Wait--wait!" he said--"Do you know what you are doing?"
She laughed.
"Well, now that _is_ a question! Do I seem crazy?"
"Almost you do--to me!" And stirred into a sudden flicker of animation, he held her fast as he spoke--"Do you live alone here?"
"Yes,--quite alone."
"Then don't you see how foolish you are? You are taking into your house a mere tramp,--a beggar who is more likely to die than live! Do you realise how dangerous this is for you? I may be an escaped convict,--a thief--even a murderer! You cannot tell!"
She smiled and nodded at him as a nurse might nod and smile at a fanciful or querulous patient.
"I can't tell, certainly, and don't want to know!" she replied--"I go by what I see."
"And what do you see?"
She patted his thin cold hand kindly.
"I see a very old man--older than my own dear father was when he died--and I know he is too old and feeble to be out at night in the wet and stormy weather. I know that he is ill and weak, and suffering from exhaustion, and that he must rest and be well nourished for a few days till he gets strong again. And I am going to take care of him,"--here she gave a consoling little pressure to the hand she held. "I am indeed! And he must do as he is told, and take off his wet clothes and get ready for bed!"
Something in Helmsley's throat tightened like the contraction of a rising sob.
"You will risk all this trouble,"--he faltered--"for a stranger--who--who--cannot repay you--?----"
"Now, now! You mustn't hurt me!" she said, with a touch of reproach in her soft tones--"I don't want to be repaid in any way. You know WHO it was that said 'I was a stranger and ye took me in'? Well, He would wish me to take care of you."
She spoke quite simply, without any affectation of religious sentiment. Helmsley looked at her steadily.
"Is that why you shelter me?"
She smiled very sweetly, and he saw that her eyes were beautiful.
"That is one reason, certainly!"--she answered; "But there is another,--quite a selfish one! I loved my father, and when he died, I lost everything I cared for in the world. You remind me of him--just a little. Now will you do as I ask you, and take off your wet things?"
He let go her hand gently.
"I will,"--he said, unsteadily--for there were tears in his eyes--"I will do anything you wish. Only tell me your name!"
"My name? My name is Mary,--Mary Deane."
"Mary Deane!" he repeated softly--and yet again--"Mary Deane! A pretty name! Shall I tell you mine!"
"Not unless you like,"--she replied, quickly--"It doesn't matter!"
"Oh, you'd better know it!" he said--"I'm only old David--a man 'on the road' tramping it to Cornwall."
"That's a long way!" she murmured compassionately, as she took his weather-beaten hat and shook the wet from it--"And why do you want to tramp so far, you poor old David?"
"I'm looking for a friend,"--he answered--"And maybe it's no use trying,--but I should like to find that friend before I die."
"And so you will, I'm sure!" she declared, smiling at him, but with something of an anxious expression in her eyes, for Helmsley's face was very pinched and pallid, and every now and then he shivered violently as with an ague fit--"But you must pick up your strength first. Then you'll get on better and quicker. Now I'm going to leave you while you change. You'll find plenty of warm things with the dressing gown."
She went out as before into the next room, and Helmsley managed, though with considerable difficulty, to divest himself of his drenched clothes and get on the comfortable woollen garments she had put ready for him. When he took off his coat and vest, he spread them in front of the fire to dry instead of the dressing-gown which he now wore, and as soon as she returned he specially pointed out the vest to her.
"I should like you to put that away somewhere in your own safe keeping,"--he said. "It has a few letters and--and papers in it which I value,--and I don't want any stranger to see them. Will you take care of it for me?"
"Of course I will! Nobody shall touch it, be sure! Not a soul ever comes nigh me unless I ask for company!--so you can be quite easy in your mind. Now I'm going to give you a cup of hot soup, and then you'll go to bed, won't you?--and, please God, you'll be better in the morning!"
He nodded feebly, and forced a smile. He had sunk back in the armchair and his eyes were fixed on the warm-hearth, where the tiny dog, Charlie, whom he had rescued, and who in turn had rescued him, was curled up and snoozing peacefully. Now that the long physical and nervous strain of his journey and of his ghastly experience at Blue Anchor was past, he felt almost too weak to lift a hand, and the sudden change from the fierce buffetings of the storm to the homely tranquillity of this little cottage into which he had been welcomed just as though he had every right to be there, affected him with a strange sensation which he could not analyse. And once he murmured half unconsciously:
"Mary! Mary Deane!"
"Yes,--that's me!" she responded cheerfully, coming to his side at once--"I'm here!"
He lifted his head and looked at her.
"Yes, I know you are here,--Mary!" he said, his voice trembling a little as he uttered her name--"And I thank God for sending you to me in time! But how--how was it that you found me?"
"I was watching the storm,"--she replied--"I love wild weather!--I love to hear the wind among the trees and the pouring of the rain! I was standing at my door listening to the waves thudding into the hollow of the coombe, and all at once I heard the sharp barking of a dog on the hill just above here--and sometimes the bark changed to a pitiful little howl, as if the animal were in pain. So I put on my cloak and crossed the coombe up the bank--it's only a few minutes' scramble, though to you it seemed ever such a long way to-night,--and there I saw you lying on the grass with the little doggie running round and round you, and making all the noise he could to bring help. Wise little beastie!" And she stooped to pat the tiny object of her praise, who sighed comfortably and stretched his dainty paws out a little more luxuriously--"If it hadn't been for him you might have died!"
He said nothing, but watched her in a kind of morbid fascination as she went to the fire and removed a saucepan which she had set there some minutes previously. Taking a large old-fashioned Delft bowl from a cupboard at one side of the fire-place, she filled it with steaming soup which smelt deliciously savoury and appetising, and brought it to him with some daintily cut morsels of bread. He was too ill to feel much hunger, but to please her, he managed to sip it by slow degrees, talking to her between-whiles.
"You say you live alone here,"--he murmured--"But are you always alone?"
"Always,--ever since father died."
"How long is that ago?"
"Five years."
"You are not--you have not been--married?"
She laughed.
"No indeed! I'm an old maid!"
"Old?" And he raised his eyes to her face. "You are not old!"
"Well, I'm not young, as young people go,"--she declared--"I'm thirty-four. I was never married for myself in my youth,--and I shall certainly never be married for my money in my age!" Again her pretty laugh rang softly on the silence. "But I'm quite happy, all the same!"
He still looked at her intently,--and all suddenly it dawned upon him that she was a beautiful woman. He saw, as for the first time, the clear transparency of her skin, the soft brilliancy of her eyes, and the wonderful masses of her warm bronze brown hair. He noted the perfect poise of her figure, clad as it was in a cheap print gown,--the slimness of her waist, the fulness of her bosom, the white roundness of her throat. Then he smiled.
"So you are an old maid!" he said--"That's very strange!"
"Oh, I don't think so!" and she shook her head deprecatingly--"Many women are old maids by choice as well as by necessity. Marriage isn't always bliss, you know! And unless a woman loves a man very very much--so much that she can't possibly live her life without him, she'd better keep single. At least that's _my_ opinion. Now Mr. David, you must go to bed!"
He rose obediently--but trembled as he rose, and could scarcely stand from sheer weakness. Mary Deane put her arm through his to support him.
"I'm afraid,"--he faltered--"I'm afraid I shall be a burden to you! I don't think I shall be well enough to start again on my way to-morrow."
"You won't be allowed to do any such foolish thing!" she answered, with quick decision--"So you can just make up your mind on _that_ score! You must stay here as my guest."
"Not a paying one, I fear!" he said, with a pained smile, and a quick glance at her.
She gave a slight gesture of gentle reproach.
"I wouldn't have you on paying terms,"--she answered; "I don't take in lodgers."
"But--but--how do you live?"
He put the question hesitatingly, yet with keen curiosity.
"How do I live? You mean how do I work for a living? I am a lace mender, and a bit of a laundress too. I wash fine muslin gowns, and mend and clean valuable old lace. It's pretty work and pleasant enough in its way."
"Does it pay you well?"
"Oh, quite sufficiently for all my needs. I don't cost much to keep!" And she laughed--"I'm all by myself, and I was never money-hungry! Now come!--you mustn't talk any more. You know who I am and what I am,--and we'll have a good long chat to-morrow. It's bed-time!"
She led him, as though he were a child, into a little room,--one of the quaintest and prettiest he had ever seen,--with a sloping raftered ceiling, and one rather wide latticed window set in a deep embrasure and curtained with spotless white dimity. Here there was a plain old-fashioned oak bedstead, trimmed with the same white hangings, the bed itself being covered with a neat quilt of diamond-patterned silk patchwork. Everything was delicately clean, and fragrant with the odour of dried rose-leaves and lavender,--and it was with all the zealous care of an anxious housewife that Mary Deane assured her "guest" that the sheets were well-aired, and that there was not "a speck of damp" anywhere. A kind of instinct told him that this dainty little sleeping chamber, so fresh and pure, with not even a picture on its white-washed walls, and only a plain wooden cross hung up just opposite to the bed, must be Mary's own room, and he looked at her questioningly.
"Where do you sleep yourself?" he asked.
"Upstairs,"--she answered, at once--"Just above you. This is a two-storied cottage--quite large really! I have a parlour besides the kitchen,--oh, the parlour's very sweet!--it has a big window which my father built himself, and it looks out on a lovely view of the orchard and the stream,--then I have three more rooms, and a wash-house and cellar. It's almost too big a cottage for me, but father loved it, and he died here,--that's why I keep all his things about me and stay on in it. He planted all the roses in the orchard,--and I couldn't leave them!"
Helmsley said nothing in answer to this. She put an armchair for him near the bed.
"Now as soon as you're in bed, just call to me and I'll put out the light in the kitchen and go to bed myself,"--she said--"And I'll take the little doggie with me, and make him comfortable for the night. I'm leaving you a candle and matches, and if you feel badly at all, there's a handbell close by,--mind you ring it, and I'll come to you at once and do all I can for you."
He bent his eyes searchingly upon her in his old suspicious "business" way, his fuzzy grey eyebrows almost meeting in the intensity of his gaze.
"Tell me--why are you so good to me?" he asked.
She smiled.
"Don't ask nonsense questions, please, Mr. David! Haven't I told you already?--not why I am 'good,' because that's rubbish--but why I am trying to take care of you?"
"Yes--because I am old!" he said, with a sudden pang of self-contempt--"and--useless!"
"Good-night!" she answered, cheerfully--"Call to me when you are ready!"
She was gone before he could speak another word and he heard her talking to Charlie in petting playful terms of endearment. Judging from the sounds in the kitchen, he concluded, and rightly, that she was getting her own supper and that of the dog at the same time. For two or three minutes he sat inert, considering his strange and unique position. What would this present adventure lead to? Unless his new friend, Mary Deane, examined the vest he had asked her to take care of for him, she would not discover who he was or from whence he came. Would she examine it?--would she unrip the lining, just out of feminine curiosity, and sew it up again, pretending that she had not touched it, after the "usual way of women"? No! He was sure,--absolutely sure--of her integrity. What? In less than an hour's acquaintance with her, would he swear to her honesty? Yes, he would! Never could such eyes as hers, so softly, darkly blue and steadfast, mirror a falsehood, or deflect the fragment of a broken promise! And so, for the time being, in utter fatigue of both body and mind, he put away all thought, all care for the future, and resigned himself to the circumstances by which he was now surrounded. Undressing as quickly as he could in his weak and trembling condition, he got into the bed so comfortably prepared for him, and lay down in utter lassitude, thankful for rest. After he had lain so for a few minutes he called:
"Mary Deane!"
She came at once, and looked in, smiling.
"All cosy and comfortable?" she queried--"That's right!" Then entering the room, she showed him the very vest, the possible fate of which he had been considering.
"This is quite dry now,"--she said--"I've been thinking that perhaps as there are letters and papers inside, you'd like to have it near you,--so I'm just going to put it in here--see?" And she opened a small cupboard in the wall close to the bed--"There! Now I'll lock it up"--and she suited the action to the word--"Where shall I put the key?"
"Please keep it for me yourself!" he answered, earnestly,--"It will be safest with you!"
"Well, perhaps it will,"--she agreed. "Anyhow no one can get at your letters without _my_ consent! Now, are you quite easy?"
And, as she spoke, she came and smoothed the bedclothes over him, and patted one of his thin, worn hands which lay, almost unconsciously to himself, outside the quilt.
"Quite!" he said, faintly, "God bless you!"
"And you too!" she responded--"Good-night--David!"
"Good-night--Mary!"
She went away with a light step, softly closing the door behind her. Returning to the kitchen she took up the little dog Charlie in her arms, and nestled him against her bosom, where he was very well content to be, and stood for a moment looking meditatively into the fire.
"Poor old man!" she murmured--"I'm so glad I found him before it was too late! He would have died out there on the hills, I'm sure! He's very ill--and so worn out and feeble!"
Involuntarily her glance wandered to a framed photograph which stood on the mantelshelf, showing the likeness of a white-haired man standing among a group of full-flowering roses, with a smile upon his wrinkled face,--a smile expressing the quaintest and most complete satisfaction, as though he sought to illustrate the fact that though he was old, he was still a part of the youthful blossoming of the earth in summer-time.
"What would you have done, father dear, if you had been here to-night?"--she queried, addressing the portrait--"Ah, I need not ask! I know! You would have brought your suffering brother home, to share all you had;--you would have said to him 'Rest, and be thankful!' For you never turned the needy from your door, my dear old dad!--never!--no matter how much you were in need yourself!"
She wafted a kiss to the venerable face among the roses,--and then turning, extinguished the lamp on the table. The dying glow of the fire shone upon her for a moment, setting a red sparkle in her hair, and a silvery one on the silky head of the little dog she carried, and outlining her fine profile so that it gleamed with a pure soft pallor against the surrounding darkness,--and with one final look round to see that all was clear for the night, she went away noiselessly like a lovely ghost and disappeared, her step making no sound on the short wooden stairs that led to the upper room which she had hastily arranged for her own accommodation, in place of the one now occupied by the homeless wayfarer she had rescued.
There was no return of the storm. The heavens, with their mighty burden of stars, remained clear and tranquil,--the raging voice of ocean was gradually sinking into a gentle crooning song of sweet content,--and within the little cottage complete silence reigned, unbroken save for the dash of the stream outside, rushing down through the "coombe" to the sea.
CHAPTER XIII
The next morning Helmsley was too ill to move from his bed, or to be conscious of his surroundings. And there followed a long period which to him was well-nigh a blank. For weeks he lay helpless in the grasp of a fever which over and over again threatened to cut the last frail thread of his life asunder. Pain tortured every nerve and sinew in his body, and there were times of terrible collapse,--when he was conscious of nothing save an intense longing to sink into the grave and have done with all the sharp and cruel torment which kept him on the rack of existence. In a semi-delirious condition he tossed and moaned the hours away, hardly aware of his own identity. In certain brief pauses of the nights and days, when pain was momentarily dulled by stupor, he saw, or fancied he saw a woman always near him, with anxiety in her eyes and words of soothing consolation on her lips;--and then he found himself muttering, "Mary! Mary! God bless you!" over and over again. Once or twice he dimly realised that a small dark man came to his bedside and felt his pulse and looked at him very doubtfully, and that she, Mary, called this personage "doctor," and asked him questions in a whisper. But all within his own being was pain and bewilderment,--sometimes he felt as though he were one drop in a burning whirlpool of madness--and sometimes he seemed to himself to be spinning round and round in a haze of blinding rain, of which the drops were scalding hot, and heavy as lead,--and occasionally he found that he was trying to get out of bed, uttering cries of inexplicable anguish, while at such moments, something cool was placed on his forehead, and a gentle arm was passed round him till the paroxysm abated, and he fell down again among his pillows exhausted. Slowly, and as it were grudgingly, after many days, the crisis of the illness passed and ebbed away in dull throbs of agony,--and he sank into a weak lethargy that was almost like the comatose condition preceding death. He lay staring at the ceiling for hours, heedless as to whether he ever moved or spoke again. Some-one came and put spoonfuls of liquid nourishment between his lips, and he swallowed it mechanically without any sign of conscious appreciation. White as white marble, and aged by many years, he remained stretched in his rigid corpse-like attitude, his eyes always fixedly upturned, till one day he was roused from his deepening torpor by the sound of sobbing. With a violent effort he brought his gaze down from the ceiling, and saw a figure kneeling by his bed, and a mass of bronze brown hair falling over a face concealed by two shapely white hands through which the tears were falling. Feebly astonished, he stretched out his thin, trembling fingers to touch that wonderful bright mesh of waving tresses, and asked--
"What is this? Who--who is crying?"
The hidden face was uplifted, and two soft eyes, wet with weeping, looked up hopefully.
"It's Mary!" said a trembling voice--"You know me, don't you? Oh, dearie, if you would but try |
18449-8 | to rouse yourself, you'd get well even now!"
He gazed at her in a kind of childish admiration.
"It's Mary!" he echoed, faintly--"And who is Mary?"
"Don't you remember?" And rising from her knees, she dashed away her tears and smiled at him--"Or is it too hard for you to think at all about it just now? Didn't I find you out on the hills in the storm, and bring you home here?--and didn't I tell you that my name was Mary?"
He kept his eyes upon her wistful face,--and presently a wan smile crossed his lips.
"Yes!--so you did!" he answered--"I know you now, Mary! I've been ill, haven't I?"
She nodded at him--the tears were still wet on her lashes.
"Very ill!"
"Ill all night, I suppose?"
She nodded again.
"It's morning now?"
"Yes, it's morning!"
"I shall get up presently,"--he said, in his old gentle courteous way--"I am sorry to have given you so much trouble! I must not burden your hospitality--your kindness----"
His voice trailed away into silence,--his eyelids drooped--and fell into a sound slumber,--the first refreshing sleep he had enjoyed for many weary nights and days.
Mary Deane stood looking at him thoughtfully. The turn had come for the better, and she silently thanked God. Night after night, day after day, she had nursed him with unwearying patience and devotion, having no other help or guidance save her own womanly instinct, and the occasional advice of the village doctor, who, however, was not a qualified medical man, but merely a herbalist who prepared his own simples. This humble Gamaliel diagnosed Helmsley's case as one of rheumatic fever, complicated by heart trouble, as well as by the natural weakness of decaying vitality. Mary had explained to him Helmsley's presence in her cottage by a pious falsehood, which Heaven surely forgave her as soon as it was uttered. She had said that he was a friend of her late father's, who had sought her out in the hope that she might help him to find some light employment in his old age, and that not knowing the country at all, he had lost his way across the hills during the blinding fury of the storm. This story quickly ran through the little village, of which Mary's house was the last, at the summit of the "coombe," and many of its inhabitants came to inquire after "Mr. David," while he lay tossing and moaning between life and death, most of them seriously commiserating Mary herself for the "sight o' trouble" she had been put to,--"all for a trampin' stranger like!"
"Though,"--observed one rustic sage--"Bein' a lone woman as y' are, Mis' Deane, m'appen if he knew yer father 'twould be pleasant to talk to him when 'is 'ed comes clear, if clear it iver do come. For when we've put our owd folk under the daisies, it do cheer the 'art a bit to talk of 'em to those as knew 'em when they was a standin' upright, bold an' strong, for all they lays so low till last trumpet."
Mary smiled a grave assent, and with wise tact and careful forethought for the comfort and well-being of her unknown guest, quietly accepted the position she had brought upon herself as having given shelter and lodging to her "father's friend," thus smoothing all difficulties away for him, whether he recovered from his illness or not. Had he died, she would have borne the expenses of his burial without a word of other explanation than that which she had offered by way of appeasing the always greedy curiosity of any community of human beings who are gathered in one small town or village,--and if he recovered, she was prepared to treat him in very truth as her "father's friend."
"For,"--she argued with herself, quite simply--"I am sure father would have been kind to him, and when once _he_ was kind, it was impossible not to be his friend."
And, little by little, Helmsley struggled back to life,--life that was very weak and frail indeed, but still, life that contained the whole essence and elixir of being,--a new and growing interest. Little by little his brain cleared and recovered its poise,--once more he found himself thinking of things that had been done, and of things that were yet worth doing. Watching Mary Deane as she went softly to and fro in constant attendance on his needs, he was divided in his mind between admiration, gratitude, and--a lurking suspicion, of which he was ashamed. As a business man, he had been taught to look for interested motives lying at the back of every action, bad or good,--and as his health improved, and calm reason again asserted its sway, he found it difficult and well-nigh impossible to realise or to believe that this woman, to whom he was a perfect stranger, no more than a vagrant on the road, could have given him so much of her time, attention, and care, unless she had dimly supposed him to be something other than he had represented himself. Unable yet to leave his bed, he lay, to all appearances, quietly contented, acknowledging her gentle ministrations with equally gentle words of thanks, while all the time he was mentally tormenting himself with doubts and fears. He knew that during his illness he had been delirious,--surely in that delirium he might have raved and talked of many things that would have yielded the entire secret of his identity. This thought made him restless,--and one afternoon when Mary came in with the deliciously prepared cup of tea which she always gave him about four o'clock, he turned his eyes upon her with a sudden keen look which rather startled her by its piercing brightness suggesting, as it did, some return of fever.
"Tell me,"--he said--"Have I been ill long? More than a week?"
She smiled.
"A little more than a week,"--she answered, gently--"Don't worry!"
"I'm not worrying. Please tell me what day it is!"
"What day it is? Well, to-day is Sunday."
"Sunday! Yes--but what is the date of the month?"
She laughed softly, patting his hand.
"Oh, never mind! What does it matter?"
"It does matter,"--he protested, with a touch of petulance--"I know it is July, but what time of July?"
She laughed again.
"It's not July," she said.
"Not July!"
"No. Nor August!"
He raised himself on his pillow and stared at her in questioning amazement.
"Not July? Not August? Then----?"
She took his hand between her own kind warm palms, stroking it soothingly up and down.
"It's not July, and it's not August!" she repeated, nodding at him as though he were a worried and fractious child--"It's the second week in September. There!"
His eyes turned from right to left in utter bewilderment. "But how----" he murmured----
Then he suddenly caught her hands in the one she was holding.
"You mean to say that I have been ill all those weeks--a burden upon you?"
"You've been ill all those weeks--yes!" she answered "But you haven't been a burden. Don't you think it! You've--you've been a pleasure!" And her blue eyes filled with soft tears, which she quickly mastered and sent back to the tender source from which they sprang; "You have, really!"
He let go her hand and sank back on his pillows with a smothered groan.
"A pleasure!" he muttered--"I!" And his fuzzy eyebrows met in almost a frown as he again looked at her with one of the keen glances which those who knew him in business had learned to dread. "Mary Deane, do not tell me what is not and what cannot be true! A sick man--an old man--can be no 'pleasure' to anyone;--he is nothing but a bore and a trouble, and the sooner he dies the better!"
The smiling softness still lingered in her eyes.
"Ah well!"--she said--"You talk like that because you're not strong yet, and you just feel a bit cross and worried! You'll be better in another few days----"
"Another few days!" he interrupted her--"No--no--that cannot be--I must be up and tramping it again--I must not stay on here--I have already stayed too long."
A slight shadow crossed her face, but she was silent. He watched her narrowly.
"I've been off my head, haven't I?" he queried, affecting a certain brusqueness in his tone--"Talking a lot of nonsense, I suppose?"
"Yes--sometimes,"--she replied--"But only when you were _very_ bad."
"And what did I say?"
She hesitated a moment, and he grew impatient.
"Come, come!" he demanded, irritably--"What did I say?"
She looked at him candidly.
"You talked mostly about 'Tom o' the Gleam,'"--she answered--"That was a poor gypsy well known in these parts. He had just one little child left to him in the world--its mother was dead. Some rich lord driving a motor car down by Cleeve ran over the poor baby and killed it--and Tom----"
"Tom tracked the car to Blue Anchor, where he found the man who had run over his child and killed _him_!" said Helmsley, with grim satisfaction--"I saw it done!"
Mary shuddered.
"I saw it done!" repeated Helmsley--"And I think it was rightly done! But--I saw Tom himself die of grief and madness--with his dead child in his arms--and _that!_--that broke something in my heart and brain and made me think God was cruel!"
She bent over him, and arranged his pillows more comfortably.
"I knew Tom,"--she said, presently, in a soft voice--"He was a wild creature, but very kind and good for all that. Some folks said he had been born a gentleman, and that a quarrel with his family had made him take to the gypsy life--but that's only a story. Anyway his little child--'kiddie'--as it used to be called, was the dearest little fellow in the world--so playful and affectionate!--I don't wonder Tom went mad when his one joy was killed! And you saw it all, you say?"
"Yes, I saw it all!" And Helmsley, with a faint sigh half closed his eyes as he spoke--"I was tramping from Watchett,--and the motor passed me on my way, but I did not see the child run over. I meant to get a lodging at Blue Anchor--and while I was having my supper at the public house Tom came in,--and--and it was all over in less than fifteen minutes! A horrible sight--a horrible, horrible sight! I see it now!--I shall never forget it!"
"Enough to make you ill, poor dear!" said Mary, gently--"Don't think of it now! Try and sleep a little. You mustn't talk too much. Poor Tom is dead and buried now, and his little child with him--God rest them both! It's better he should have died than lived without anyone to love him in the world."
"That's true!" And opening his eyes widely again, he gazed full at her--"That's the worst fate of all--to live in the world without anyone to love you! Tell me--when I was delirious did I only talk of Tom o' the Gleam?"
"That's the only person whose name you seemed to have on your mind,"--she answered, smiling a little--"But you _did_ make a great noise about money!"
"Money?" he echoed--"I--I made a noise about money?"
"Yes!" And her smile deepened--"Often at night you quite startled me by shouting 'Money! Money!' I'm sure you've wanted it very badly!"
He moved restlessly and avoided her gaze. Presently he asked querulously:
"Where is my old vest with all my papers?"
"It's just where I put it the night you came,"--she answered--"I haven't touched it. Don't you remember you told me to keep the key of the cupboard which is right here close to your bed? I've got it quite safe."
He turned his head round on the pillow and looked at her with a sudden smile.
"Thank you! You are very kind to me, Mary! But you must let me work off all I owe you as soon as I'm well."
She put one finger meditatively on her lips and surveyed him with a whimsically indulgent air.
"Let you work it off? Well, I don't mind that at all! But a minute ago you were saying you must get up and go on the tramp again. Now, if you want to work for me, you must stay----"
"I will stay till I have paid you my debt somehow!" he said--"I'm old--but I can do a few useful things yet."
"I'm sure you can!" And she nodded cheerfully--"And you shall! Now rest a while, and don't fret!"
She went away from him then to fetch the little dog, Charlie, who, now that his master was on the fair road to complete recovery, was always brought in to amuse him after tea. Charlie was full of exuberant life, and his gambols over the bed where Helmsley lay, his comic interest in the feathery end of his own tail, and his general intense delight in the fact of his own existence, made him a merry and affectionate little playmate. He had taken immensely to his new home, and had attached himself to Mary Deane with singular devotion, trotting after her everywhere as close to her heels as possible. The fame of his beauty had gone through the village, and many a small boy and girl came timidly to the cottage door to try and "have a peep" at the smallest dog ever seen in the neighbourhood, and certainly the prettiest.
"That little dawg be wurth twenty pun!"--said one of the rustics to Mary, on one occasion when she was sitting in her little garden, carefully brushing and combing the silky coat of the little "toy"--"Th'owd man thee's been a' nussin' ought to give 'im to thee as a thank-offerin'."
"I wouldn't take him,"--Mary answered--"He's perhaps the only friend the poor old fellow has got in the world. It would be just selfish of me to want him."
And so the time went on till it was past mid-September, and there came a day, mild, warm, and full of the soft subdued light of deepening autumn, when Mary told her patient that he might get up, and sit in an armchair for a few hours in the kitchen. She gave him this news when she brought him his breakfast, and added--
"I'll wrap you up in father's dressing gown, and you'll be quite cosy and safe from chill. And after another week you'll be so strong that you'll be able to dress yourself and do without me altogether!"
This phrase struck curiously on his ears. "Do without her altogether!" That would be strange indeed--almost impossible! It was quite early in the morning when she thus spoke--about seven o'clock,--and he was not to get up till noon, "when the air was at its warmest," said Mary--so he lay very quietly, thinking over every detail of the position in which he found himself. He was now perfectly aware that it was a position which opened up great possibilities. His dream,--the vague indefinable longing which possessed him for love--pure, disinterested, unselfish love,--seemed on the verge of coming true. Yet he would not allow himself to hope too much,--he preferred to look on the darker side of probable disillusion. Meanwhile, he was conscious of a sweetness and comfort in his life such as he had never yet experienced. His thoughts dwelt with secret pleasure on the open frankness and calm beauty of the face that had bent over him with the watchfulness of a guardian angel through so many days and nights of pain, delirium, and dread of death,--and he noted with critically observant eyes the noiseless graceful movement of this humbly-born woman, whose instincts were so delicate and tender, whose voice was so gentle, and whose whole bearing expressed such unaffected dignity and purity of mind. On this particular morning she was busy ironing;--and she had left the door open between his bedroom and the kitchen, so that he might benefit by the inflow of fresh air from the garden, the cottage door itself being likewise thrown back to allow a full entrance of the invigorating influences of the light breeze from the sea and the odours of the flowers. From his bed he could see her slim back bent over the fine muslin frills she was pressing out with such patient precision, and he caught the glint of the sun on the rich twist of her bronze brown hair. Presently he heard some one talking to her,--a woman evidently, whose voice was pitched in a plaintive and almost querulous key.
"Well, Mis' Deane, say 'ow ye will an' what ye will,--there's a spider this very blessed instant a' crawlin' on the bottom of the ironin' blanket, which is a sure sign as 'ow yer washin' won't come to no good try iver so 'ard, for as we all knows--'See a spider at morn, An' ye'll wish ye wornt born: See a spider at night, An' yer wrongs'll come right!'"
Mary laughed; and Helmsley listened with a smile on his own lips. She had such a pretty laugh,--so low and soft and musical.
"Oh, never mind the poor spider, Mrs. Twitt!"--she said--"Let it climb up the ironing blanket if it likes! I see dozens of spiders 'at morn,' and I've never in my life wished I wasn't born! Why, if you go out in the garden early, you're bound to see spiders!"
"That's true--that's Testymen true!" And the individual addressed as Mrs. Twitt, heaved a profound sigh which was loud enough to flutter through the open door to Helmsley's ears--"Which, as I sez to Twitt often, shows as 'ow we shouldn't iver tempt Providence. Spiders there is, an' spiders there will be 'angin' on boughs an' 'edges, frequent too in September, but we aint called upon to look at 'em, only when the devil puts 'em out speshul to catch the hi, an' then they means mischief. An' that' just what 'as 'appened this present minit, Mis' Deane,--that spider on yer ironin' blanket 'as caught my hi."
"I'm so sorry!" said Mary, sweetly--"But as long as the spider doesn't bring _you_ any ill-luck, Mrs. Twitt, I don't mind for myself--I don't, really!"
Mrs. Twitt emitted an odd sound, much like the grunt of a small and discontented pig.
"It's a reckless foot as don't mind precipeges,"--she remarked, solemnly--"'Owsomever, I've given ye fair warnin'. An' 'ow's yer father's friend?"
"He's much better,--quite out of danger now,"--replied Mary--"He's going to get up to-day."
"David's 'is name, so I 'ears,"--continued Mrs. Twitt; "I've never myself knowed anyone called David, but it's a common name in some parts, speshul in Scripter. Is 'e older than yer father would 'a bin if so be the Lord 'ad carried 'im upright to this present?"
"He seems a little older than father was when he died,"--answered Mary, in slow, thoughtful accents--"But perhaps it is only trouble and illness that makes him look so. He's very gentle and kind. Indeed,"--here she paused for a second--then went on--"I don't know whether it's because I've been nursing him so long and have got accustomed to watch him and take care of him--but I've really grown quite fond of him!"
Mrs. Twitt gave a short laugh.
"That's nat'ral, seein' as ye're lone in life without 'usband or childer,"--she said--"There's a many wimmin as 'ud grow fond of an Aunt Sally on a pea-stick if they'd nothin' else to set their 'arts on. An' as the old chap was yer father's friend, there's bin a bit o' feelin' like in lookin' arter 'im. But I wouldn't take 'im on my back as a burgin, Mis' Deane, if I were you. Ye're far better off by yerself with the washin' an' lace-mendin' business."
Mary was silent.
"It's all very well,"--proceeded Mrs. Twitt--"for 'im to say 'e knew yer father, but arter all _that_ mayn't be true. The Lord knows whether 'e aint a 'scaped convick, or a man as is grown 'oary-'edded with 'is own wickedness. An' though 'e's feeble now an' wants all ye can give 'im, the day may come when, bein' strong again, 'e'll take a knife an' slit yer throat. Bein' a tramp like, it 'ud come easy to 'im an' not to be blamed, if we may go by what they sez in the 'a'penny noospapers. I mind me well on the night o' the storm, the very night ye went out on the 'ills an' found 'im, I was settin' at my door down shorewards watchin' the waves an' hearin' the wind cryin' like a babe for its mother, an' if ye'll believe me, there was a sea-gull as came and flopped down on a stone just in front o' me!--a thing no sea-gull ever did to me all the time I've lived 'ere, which is thirty years since I married Twitt. There it sat, drenched wi' the rain, an' Twitt came out in that slow, silly way 'e 'as, an' 'e sez--'Poor bird! 'Ungry, are ye? an' throws it a reg'lar full meal, which, if you believe me, it ate all up as cool as a cowcumber. An' then----"
"And then?" queried Mary, with a mirthful quiver in her voice.
"Then,--oh, well, then it flew away,"--and Mrs. Twitt seemed rather sorry for this commonplace end to what she imagined was a thrilling incident--"But the way that bird looked at me was somethin' awful! An' when I 'eerd as 'ow you'd found a friend o' yer father's a' trampin' an' wanderin' an' 'ad took 'im in to board an' lodge on trust, I sez to Twitt--'There you've got the meanin' o' that sea-gull! A stranger in the village bringin' no good to the 'and as feeds'im!'"
Mary's laughter rang out now like a little peal of bells.
"Dear Mrs. Twitt!" she said--"I know how good and kind you are--but you mustn't have any of your presentiments about me! I'm sure the poor sea-gull meant no harm! And I'm sure that poor old David won't ever hurt me----" Here she suddenly gave an exclamation--"Why, I forgot! The door of his room has been open all this time! He must have heard us talking!"
She made a hurried movement, and Helmsley diplomatically closed his eyes. She entered, and came softly up to his bedside, and he felt that she stood there looking at him intently. He could hardly forbear a smile;--but he managed to keep up a very creditable appearance of being fast asleep, and she stole away again, drawing the door to behind her. Thus, for the time being, he heard no more,--but he had gathered quite enough to know exactly how matters stood with regard to his presence in her little home.
"She has given out that I am an old friend of her father's!" he mused--"And she has done that in order to silence both inquiry and advice as to the propriety of her having taken me under her shelter and protection. Kind heart! Gentle soul! And--what else did she say? That she had 'really grown quite fond' of me! Can I--dare I--believe that? No!--it is a mere feminine phrase--spoken out of compassionate impulse. Fond of me! In my apparent condition of utter poverty,--old, ill and useless, who could or would be 'fond' of me!"
Yet he dwelt on the words with a kind of hope that nerved and invigorated him, and when at noon Mary came and assisted him to get up out of bed, he showed greater evidence of strength than she had imagined would be possible. True, his limbs ached sorely, and he was very feeble, for even with the aid of a stick and the careful support of her strong arm, his movements were tottering and uncertain, and the few steps between his bedroom and the kitchen seemed nearly a mile of exhausting distance. But the effort to walk did him good, and when he sank into the armchair which had been placed ready for him near the fire, he looked up with a smile and patted the gentle hand that had guided him along so surely and firmly.
"I'm an old bag of bones!" he said--"Not much good to myself or to any one else! You'd better bundle me out on the doorstep!"
For an answer she brought him a little cup of nourishing broth tastily prepared and bade him drink it--"every drop, mind!"--she told him with a little commanding nod. He obeyed her,--and when he gave her back the cup empty he said, with a keen glance:
"So I am your father's friend, am I, Mary?"
The blood rushed to her cheeks in a crimson tide,--she looked at him appealingly, and her lips trembled a little.
"You were so very ill!" she murmured--"I was afraid you might die,--and I had to send for the only doctor we have in the village--Mr. Bunce,--the boys call him Mr. Dunce, but that's their mischief, for he's really quite clever,--and I was bound to tell him something by way of introducing you and making him take care of you--even--even if what I said wasn't quite true! And--and--I made it out to myself this way--that if father had lived he would have done just all he could for you, and then you _would_ have been his friend--you couldn't have helped yourself!"
He kept his eyes upon her as she spoke. He liked to see the soft flitting of the colour to-and-fro in her face,--- her skin was so clear and transparent,--a physical reflection, he thought, of the clear transparency of her mind.
"And who was your father, Mary?" he asked, gently.
"He was a gardener and florist,"--she answered, and taking from the mantelshelf the photograph of the old man smiling serenely amid a collection of dwarf and standard roses, she showed it to him--"Here he is, just as he was taken after an exhibition where he won a prize. He was so proud when he heard that the first prize for a dwarf red rose had been awarded to James Deane of Barnstaple. My dear old dad! He was a good, good man--he was indeed! He loved the flowers--he used to say that they thought and dreamed and hoped, just as we do--and that they had their wishes and loves and ambitions just as we have. He had a very good business once in Barnstaple, and every one respected him, but somehow he could not keep up with the demands for new things--'social sensations in the way of flowers,' he used to call them, and he failed at last, through no fault of his own. We sold all we had to pay the creditors, and then we came away from Barnstaple into Somerset, and took this cottage. Father did a little business in the village, and for some of the big houses round about,--not much, of course--but I was always handy with my needle, and by degrees I got a number of customers for lace-mending and getting up ladies' fine lawn and muslin gowns. So between us we made quite enough to live on--till he died." Her voice sank--and she paused--then she added--"I've lived alone here ever since."
He listened attentively.
"And that is all your history, Mary? What of your mother?" he asked.
Mary's eyes softened and grew wistful.
"Mother died when I was ten,"--she said--"But though I was so little, I remember her well. She was pretty--oh, so very pretty! Her hair was quite gold like the sun,--and her eyes were blue--like the sea. Dad worshipped her, and he never would say that she was dead. He liked to think that she was always with him,--and I daresay she was. Indeed, I am sure she was, if true love can keep souls together."
He was silent.
"Are you tired, David?" she asked, with sudden anxiety,--"I'm afraid I'm talking too much!"
He raised a hand in protest.
"No--no! I--I love to hear you talk, Mary! You have been so good to me--so more than kind--that I'd like to know all about you. But I've no right to ask you any questions--you see I'm only an old, poor man, and I'm afraid I shall never be able to do much in the way of paying you back for all you've done for me. I used to be clever at office work--reading and writing and casting up accounts, but my sight is failing and my hands tremble,--so I'm no good in that line. But whatever I _can_ do for you, as soon as I'm able, I will!--you may depend upon that!"
She leaned towards him, smiling.
"I'll teach you basket-making,"--she said--"Shall I?"
His eyes lit up with a humorous sparkle.
"If I could learn it, should I be useful to you?" he asked.
"Why, of course you would! Ever so useful! Useful to me and useful to yourself at the same time!" And she clapped her hands with pleasure at having thought of something easy upon which he could try his energies; "Basket-making pays well here,--the farmers want baskets for their fruit, and the fishermen want baskets for their fish,--and its really quite easy work. As soon as you're a bit stronger, you shall begin--and you'll be able to earn quite a nice little penny!"
He looked stedfastly into her radiant face.
"I'd like to earn enough to pay you back all the expense you've been put to with me,"--he said, and his voice trembled--"But your patience and goodness--that--I can never hope to pay for--that's heavenly!--that's beyond all money's worth----"
He broke off and put his hand over his eyes. Mary feigned not to notice his profound emotion, and, taking up a paper parcel on the table, opened it, and unrolled a long piece of wonderful old lace, yellow with age, and fine as a cobweb.
"Do you mind my going on with my work?" she asked, cheerily--"I'm mending this for a Queen!" And as he took away his hand from his eyes, which were suspiciously moist, and looked at her wonderingly, she nodded at him in the most emphatic way. "Yes, truly, David!--for a Queen! Oh, it's not a Queen who is my direct employer--no Queen ever knows anything about me! It's a great firm in London that sends this to me to mend for a Queen--they trust me with it, because they know me. I've had lace worth thousands of pounds in my hands,--this piece is valued at eight hundred, apart from its history--it belonged to Marie Louise, second wife of Napoleon the First. It's a lovely bit!--but there are some cruel holes in it. Ah, dear me!" And, sitting down near the door, she bent her head closely over the costly fabric--"Queens don't think of the eyes that have gone out in blindness doing this beautiful work!--or the hands that have tired and the hearts that have broken over it! They would never run pins into it if they did!"
He watched her sitting as she now was in the sunlight that flooded the doorway, and tried to overcome the emotional weakness that moved him to stretch out his arms to her as though she were his daughter, to call her to his side, and lay his hands on her head in blessing, and to beg her to let him stay with her now and always until the end of his days,--an end which he instinctively felt could not be very long in coming. But he realised enough of her character to know that were he to give himself away, and declare his real identity and position in the world of men, she would probably not allow him to remain in her cottage for another twenty-four hours. She would look at him with her candid eyes, and express her honest regret that he had deceived her, but he was certain that she would not accept a penny of payment at his hands for anything she had done for him,--her simple familiar manner and way of speech would change--and he should lose her--lose her altogether. And he was nervously afraid just now to think of what her loss might mean to him. He mastered his thoughts by an effort, and presently, forcing a smile, said:
"You were ironing lace this morning, instead of mending it, weren't you, Mary?"
She looked up quickly.
"No, I wasn't ironing lace--lace must never be ironed, David! It must all be pulled out carefully with the fingers, and the pattern must be pricked out on a frame or a cushion, with fine steel pins, just as if it were in the making. I was ironing a beautiful muslin gown for a lady who buys all her washing dresses in Paris. She couldn't get any one in England to wash them properly till she found me. She used to send them all away to a woman in Brittany before. The French are wonderful washers,--we're not a patch on them over here. So you saw me ironing?"
"I could just catch a glimpse of you at work through the door," he answered--"and I heard you talking as well----"
"To Mrs. Twitt? Ah, I thought you did!" And she laughed. "Well, I wish you could have seen her, as well as heard her! She is the quaintest old soul! She's the wife of a stonemason who lives at the bottom of the village, near the shore. Almost everything that happens in the day or the night is a sign of good or bad luck with her. I expect it's because her husband makes so many tombstones that she gets morbid,--but, oh dear!--if God managed the world according to Mrs. Twitt's notions, what a funny world it would be!"
She laughed again,--then shook her finger archly at him.
"You _pretended_ to be asleep, then, when I came in to see if you heard us talking?"
He nodded a smiling assent.
"That was very wrong of you! You should never pretend to be what you are not!" He started nervously at this, and to cover his confusion called to the little dog, Charlie, who at once jumped up on his knees;--"You shouldn't, really! Should he, Charlie?" Charlie sat upright, and lolled a small red tongue out between two rows of tiny white teeth, by way of a laugh at the suggestion--"People--even dogs--are always found out when they do that!"
"What are those bright flowers out in your garden just beyond the door where you are sitting?" Helmsley asked, to change the conversation.
"Phloxes,"--she answered--"I've got all kinds and colours--crimson, white, mauve, pink, and magenta. Those which you can see from where you sit are the crimson ones--father's favourites. I wish you could get out and look at the Virginian creeper--it's lovely just now--quite a blaze of scarlet all over the cottage. And the Michaelmas daisies are coming on finely."
"Michaelmas!" he echoed--"How late in the year it is growing!"
"Ay, that's true!" she replied--"Michaelmas means that summer's past."
"And it was full summer when I started on my tramp to Cornwall!" he murmured.
"Never mind thinking about that just now," she said quickly--"You mustn't worry your head. Mr. Bunce says you mustn't on any account worry your head."
"Mr. Bunce!" he repeated wearily--"What does Mr. Bunce care?"
"Mr. Bunce _does_ care," averred Mary, warmly--"Mr. Bunce is a very good little man, and he says you are a very gentle patient to deal with. He's done all he possibly could for you, and he knows you've got no money to pay him, and that I'm a poor woman, too--but he's been in to see you nearly every day--so you must really think well of Mr. Bunce."
"I do think well of him--I am most grateful to him," said David humbly--"But all the same it's _you_, Mary! You even got me the attention of Mr. Bunce!"
She smiled happily.
"You're feeling better, David!" she declared--"There's a nice bright sparkle in your eyes! I should think you were quite a cheerful old boy when you're well!"
This suggestion amused him, and he laughed.
"I have tried to be cheerful in my time,"--he said--"though I've not had much to be cheerful about."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" she replied!--"Dad used to say that whatever little we had to be thankful for, we ought to make the most of it. It's easy to be glad when everything is gladness,--but when you've only got just a tiny bit of joy in a whole wilderness of trouble, then we can't be too grateful for that tiny bit of joy. At least, so I take it."
"Where did you learn your philosophy, Mary?" he asked, half whimsically--"I mean, who taught you to think?"
She paused in her lace-mending, needle in hand.
"Who taught me to think! Well, I don't know!--it come natural to me. But I'm not what is called 'educated' at all."
"Are you not?"
"No. I never learnt very much at school. I got the lessons into my head as long as I had to patter them off by heart like a parrot,--but the teachers were all so dull and prosy, and never took any real pains to explain things to me,--indeed, now when I come to think of it, I don't believe they _could_ explain!--they needed teaching themselves. Anyhow, as soon as I came away I forgot everything but reading and writing and sums--and began to learn all over again with Dad. Dad made me read to him every night--all sorts of books."
"Had you a Free Library at Barnstaple?"
"I don't know--I never asked,"--she said--"Father hated 'lent' books. He had a savings-box--he used to call it his 'book-box'--and he would always drop in every spare penny he had for books till he'd got a few shillings, and then he would buy what he called 'classics.' They're all so cheap, you see. And by degrees we got Shakespeare and Carlyle, and Emerson and Scott and Dickens, and nearly all the poets; when you go into the parlour you'll see quite a nice bookcase there, full of books. It's much better to have them like that for one's own, than wait turns at a Free Library. I've read all Shakespeare at least twenty times over." The garden-gate suddenly clicked open and she turned her head. "Here's Mr. Bunce come to see you."
Helmsley drew himself up a little in his chair as the village doctor entered, and after exchanging a brief "Good-morning!" with Mary, approached him. The situation was curious;--here was he,--a multi-millionaire, who could have paid the greatest specialists in the world for their medical skill and attendance,--under the supervision and scrutiny of this simple herbalist, who, standing opposite to him, bent a pair of kindly brown eyes enquiringly upon his face.
"Up to-day, are we?" said Mr. Bunce--"That is well; that's very well! Better in ourselves, too, are we? Better in ourselves?"
"I am much better,"--replied Helmsley--"Very much better!--thanks to you and Miss Deane. You--you have both been very good to me."
"That's well--that's very well!" And Mr. Bunce appeared to ruminate, while Helmsley studied his face and figure with greater appreciation than he had yet been able to do. He had often seen this small dark man in the pauses of his feverish delirium,--often he had tried to answer his gentle questions,--often in the dim light of early morning or late evening he had sought to discern his features, and yet could make nothing clear as to their actual form, save that their expression was kind. Now, as it seemed for the first time, he saw Mr. Bunce as he was,--small and wiry, with a thin, clean-shaven face, deeply furrowed, broad brows, and a pleasant look,--the eyes especially, deep sunk in the head though they were, had a steady tenderness in them such as one sees in the eyes of a brave St. Bernard dog who has saved many lives.
"We must,"--said Mr. Bunce, after a long pause--"be careful. We have got out of bed, but we must not walk much. The heart is weak--we must avoid any strain upon it. We must sit quiet."
Mary was listening attentively, and nodded her agreement to this pronouncement.
"We must,"--proceeded Mr. Bunce, laboriously--"sit quiet. We may get up every day now,--a little earlier each time, remaining up a little later each time,--but we must sit quiet."
Again Mary nodded gravely. Helmsley looked quickly from one to the other. A close observer might have seen the glimmer of a smile through his fuzzy grey-white beard,--for his thoughts were very busy. He saw in Bunce another subject whose disinterested honesty might be worth dissecting.
"But, doctor----" he began.
Mr. Bunce raised a hand.
"I'm not 'doctor,' my man!" he said--"have no degree--no qualification--no diploma--no anything whatever but just a little, a very little common sense,--yes! And I am simply Bunce,"--and here a smile spread out all the furrows in his face and lit up his eyes; "Or, as the small boys call me, Dunce!"
"That's all very well, but you're a doctor to me," said Helmsley--"And you've been as much as any other doctor could possibly be, I'm sure. But you tell me I must sit quiet--I don't see how I can do that. I was on the tramp till I broke down,--and I must go on the tramp again,--I can't be a burden on--on----"
He broke off, unable to find words to express himself. But his inward eagerness to test the character and attributes of the two human beings who had for the present constituted themselves as his guardians, made him tremble violently. And Mr. Bunce looked at him with the scrutinising air of a connoisseur in the ailments of all and sundry.
"We are nervous,"--he pronounced--"We are highly nervous. And we are therefore not sure of ourselves. We must be entirely sure of ourselves, unless we again wish to lose ourselves. Now we presume that when 'on the tramp' as we put it, we were looking for a friend. Is that not so?"
Helmsley nodded.
"We were trying to find the house of the late Mr. James Deane?"
Mary uttered a little sound that was half a sob and half a sigh. Helmsley glanced at her with a reassuring smile, and then replied steadily,--
"That was so!"
"Our friend, Mr. Deane, unfortunately died some five years since,"--proceeded Mr. Bunce,--"And we found his daughter, or rather, his daughter found us, instead. This we may put down to an act of Providence. Now the only thing we can do under the present circumstances is to remain with our late old friend's daughter, till we get well."
"But, doctor,"--exclaimed Helmsley, determined, if possible, to shake something selfish, commercial and commonplace out of this odd little man with the faithful canine eyes--"I can't be a burden on her! I've got no money--I can't pay you for all your care! What you do for me, you do for absolutely nothing--nothing--nothing! Don't you understand?"
His voice rang out with an almost rasping harshness, and Mr. Bunce tapped his own forehead gently, but significantly.
"We worry ourselves,"--he observed, placidly--"We imagine what does not exist. We think that Bunce is sending in his bill. We should wait till the bill comes, should we not, Miss Deane?" He smiled, and Mary gave a soft laugh of agreement--"And while we wait for Bunce's bill, we will also wait for Miss Deane's. And, in the meantime, we must sit quiet."
There was a moment's silence. Helmsley felt a smarting moisture at the back of his eyes. He longed to pour out all his history to these two simple unworldly souls,--to tell them that he was rich,--rich beyond the furthest dreams of their imagining,--rich enough to weigh down the light-hearted contentment of their lives with a burden of gold,--and yet--yet he knew that if he spoke thus and confessed himself, all the sweetness of the friendship which was now so disinterested would be embittered and lost. He thought, with a latent self-contempt and remorse, of certain moods in which he had sometimes indulged,--moods in which he had cynically presumed that he could buy everything in the world for money. Kings, thrones, governments, might be had for money, he knew, for he had often purchased their good-will--but Love was a jewel he had never found in any market--unpurchasable as God! And while he yet inwardly mused on his position, Bunce bent over him, and taking his thin wrinkled hand, patted it gently.
"Good-bye for the present, David!" he said, kindly--"We are on the mend--we are certainly on the mend! We hope the ways of nature will be remedial--and that we shall pick up our strength before the winter fairly sets in--yes, we hope--we certainly may hope for that----"
"Mr. Bunce," said Helmsley, with sudden energy--"God bless you!"
CHAPTER XIV
The time now went on peacefully, one day very much like another, and Helmsley steadily improved in health and strength, so far recovering some of his old vigour and alertness as to be able to take a slow and halting daily walk through the village, which, for present purposes shall be called Weircombe. The more he saw of the place, the more he loved it, and the more he was enchanted with its picturesque position. In itself it was a mere cluster of little houses, dotted about on either side of a great cleft in the rocks through which a clear mountain stream tumbled to the sea,--but the houses were covered from basement to roof with clambering plants and flowers, especially the wild fuschia, which, with one or two later kinds of clematis and "morning glory" convolvolus, were still in brilliant bloom when the mellow days of October began to close in to the month's end. All the cottages in the "coombe" were pretty, but to Helmsley's mind Mary Deane's was the prettiest, perched as it was on a height overlooking the whole village and near to the tiny church, which crowned the hill with a little tower rising heavenward. The view of the ocean from Weircombe was very wide and grand,--on sunny days it was like an endless plain of quivering turquoise-blue, with white foam-roses climbing up here and there to fall and vanish again,--and when the wind was high, it was like an onward sweeping array of Titanic shapes clothed in silver armour and crested with snowy plumes, all rushing in a wild charge against the shore, with such a clatter and roar as often echoed for miles inland. To make his way gradually down through the one little roughly cobbled street to the very edge of the sea, was one of Helmsley's greatest pleasures, and he soon got to know most of the Weircombe folk, while they in their turn, grew accustomed to seeing him about among them, and treated him with a kindly familiarity, almost as if he were one of themselves. And his new lease of life was, to himself, singularly happy. He enjoyed every moment of it,--every little incident was a novel experience, and he was never tired of studying the different characters he met,--especially and above all the character of the woman whose house was, for the time being, his home, and who treated with him all the care and solicitude that a daughter might show to her father. And--he was learning what might be called a trade or a craft,--which fact interested and amused him. He who had moved the great wheel of many trades at a mere touch of his finger, was now docilely studying the art of basket-making, and training his unaccustomed hands to the bending of withes and osiers,--he whose deftly-laid financial schemes had held the money-markets of the world in suspense, was now patiently mastering the technical business of forming a "slath," and fathoming the mysteries of "scalluming." Like an obedient child at school he implicitly followed the instructions of his teacher, Mary, who with the first basket he completed went out and effected a sale as she said "for fourpence," though really for twopence.
"And good pay, too!" she said, cheerfully--"It's not often one gets so much for a first make."
"That fourpence is yours," said Helmsley, smiling at her--"You've the right to all my earnings!"
She looked serious.
"Would you like me to keep it?" she asked--"I mean, would it please you if I did,--would you feel more content?"
"I should--you know I should!" he replied earnestly.
"All right, then! I'll check it off your account!" And laughing merrily, she patted his head as he sat bending over another specimen of his basket manufacture--"At any rate, you're not getting bald over your work, David! I never saw such beautiful white hair as yours!"
He glanced up at her.
"May I say, in answer to that, that I never saw such beautiful brown hair as yours?"
She nodded.
"Oh, yes, you may say it, because I know it's true. My hair is my one beauty,--see!"
And pulling out two small curved combs, she let the whole wealth of her tresses unwind and fall. Her hair dropped below her knees in a glorious mass of colour like that of a brown autumn leaf with the sun just glistening on it. She caught it up in one hand and knotted it all again at the back of her head in a minute.
"It's lovely, isn't it?"--she said, quite simply--"I should think it lovely if I saw it on anybody else's head, or cut off hanging in a hair-dresser's shop window. I don't admire it because it's mine, you know! I admire it as hair merely."
"Hair merely--yes, I see!" And he bent and twisted the osiers in his hands with a sudden vigour that almost snapped them. He was thinking of certain women he had known in London--women whose tresses, dyed, waved, crimped and rolled over fantastically shaped "frames," had moved him to positive repulsion,--so much so that he would rather have touched the skin of a dead rat than laid a finger on the tinted stuff called "hair" by these feminine hypocrites of fashion. He had so long been accustomed to shams that the open sincerity of the Weircombe villagers was almost confusing to his mind. Nobody seemed to have anything to conceal. Everybody knew, or seemed to know, all about everybody else's business. There were no bye-roads or corners in Weircombe. There was only one way out,--to the sea. Height at the one end,--width and depth at the other. It seemed useless to have any secrets. He, David Helmsley, felt himself to be singular and apart, in that he had his own hidden mystery. He often found himself getting restless under the quiet observation of Mr. Bunce's eye, yet Mr. Bunce had no suspicions of him whatever. Mr. Bunce merely watched him "professionally," and with the kindest intention. In fact, he and Bunce became great friends. Bunce had entirely accepted the story he told about himself to the effect that he had once been "in an office in the city," and looked upon him as a superannuated bank clerk, too old to be kept on in his former line of business. Questions that were put to him respecting his "late friend, James Deane," he answered with apparent good faith by saying that it was a long time since he had seen him, and that it was only as a "last forlorn hope" that he had set out to try and find him, "as he had always been helpful to those in need." Mary herself wished that this little fiction of her "father's friend" should be taken as fact by all the village, and a curious part of her character was that she never sought to ask Helmsley privately, for her own enlightenment, anything of his history. She seemed content to accept him as an old and infirm man, who must be taken care of simply because he was old and infirm, without further question or argument. Bunce was always very stedfast in his praise of her.
"She ought--yes--she ought possibly to have married,--" he said, in his slow, reflective way--"She would have made a good wife, and a still better mother. But an all-wise Providence has a remarkable habit--yes, I think we may call it quite a remarkable habit!--of persuading men generally to choose thriftless and flighty women for their wives, and to leave the capable ones single. That is so. Or in Miss Deane's case it may be an illustration of the statement that 'Mary hath chosen the better part.' Certainly when either men or women are happy in a state of single blessedness, a reference to the Seventh Chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, will strengthen their minds and considerably assist them to remain in that condition."
Thus Bunce would express himself, with a weighty air as of having given some vastly important and legal pronouncement. And when Helmsley suggested that it was possible Mary might yet marry, he shook his head in a strongly expressed negative.
"No, David--no!" he said--"She is what we call--yes, I think we call it--an old maid. This is not a kind term, perhaps, but it is a true one. She is, I believe, in her thirty-fifth year,--a settled and mature woman. No man would take her unless she had a little money--enough, let us say, to help him set up a farm. For if a man takes youth to his bosom, he does not always mind poverty,--but if he cannot have youth he always wants money. Always! There is no middle course. Now our good Miss Deane will never have any money. And, even if she had, we may take it--yes, I certainly _think_ we may take it--that she would not care to _buy_ a husband. No--no! Her marrying days are past."
"She is a beautiful woman!" said Helmsley, quietly.
"You think so? Well, well, David! We have got used to her in Weircombe,--she seems to be a part of the village. When one is familiar with a person, one often fails to perceive the beauty that is apparent to a stranger. I believe this to be so--I believe, in general, we may take it to be so."
And such was the impression that most of the Weircombe folks had about Mary--that she was just "a part of the village." During his slow ramblings about the little sequestered place, Helmsley talked to many of the cottagers, who all treated him with that good-humour and tolerance which they considered due to his age and feebleness. Young men gave him a ready hand if they saw him inclined to falter or to stumble over rough places in the stony street,--little children ran up to him with the flowers they had gathered on the hills, or the shells they had collected from the drift on the shore--women smiled at him from their open doors and windows--girls called to him the "Good morning!" or "Good-night!"--and by and by he was almost affectionately known as "Old David, who makes baskets up at Miss Deane's." One of his favourite haunts was the very end of the "coombe," which,--sharply cutting down to the shore,--seemed there to have split asunder with volcanic force, hurling itself apart to right and left in two great castellated rocks, which were piled up, fortress-like, to an altitude of about four hundred or more feet, and looked sheer down over the sea. When the tide was high the waves rushed swirlingly round the base of these natural towers, forming a deep blackish-purple pool in which the wash to and fro of pale rose and deep magenta seaweed, flecked with trails of pale grassy green, were like the colours of a stormy sunset reflected in a prism. The sounds made here by the inflowing and outgoing of the waves were curiously musical,--like the thudding of a great organ, with harp melodies floating above the stronger bass, while every now and then a sweet sonorous call, like that of a silver trumpet, swung from the cavernous depths into clear space and echoed high up in the air, dying lingeringly away across the hills. Near this split of the "coombe" stood the very last house at the bottom of the village, built of white stone and neatly thatched, with a garden running to the edge of the mountain stream, which at this point rattled its way down to the sea with that usual tendency to haste exhibited by everything in life and nature when coming to an end. A small square board nailed above the door bore the inscription legibly painted in plain black letters:--
ABEL TWITT, Stone Mason, N. B. Good Grave-Work Guaranteed.
The author of this device, and the owner of the dwelling, was a round, rosy-faced little man, with shrewd sparkling grey eyes, a pleasant smile, and a very sociable manner. He was the great "gossip" of the place; no old woman at a wash-tub or behind a tea-tray ever wagged her tongue more persistently over the concerns of he and she and you and they, than Abel Twitt. He had a leisurely way of talking,--a "slow and silly way" his wife called it,--but he managed to convey a good deal of information concerning everybody and everything, whether right or wrong, in a very few sentences. He was renowned in the village for his wonderful ability in the composition of epitaphs, and by some of his friends he was called "Weircombe's Pote Lorit." One of his most celebrated couplets was the following:--
"_This Life while I lived it, was Painful and seldom Victorious, I trust in the Lord that the next will be Pleasant and Glorious!_"
Everybody said that no one but Abel Twitt could have thought of such grand words and good rhymes. Abel himself was not altogether without a certain gentle consciousness that in this particular effort he had done well. But he had no literary vanity.
"It comes nat'ral to me,"--he modestly declared--"It's a God's gift which I takes thankful without pride."
Helmsley had become very intimate with both Mr. and Mrs. Twitt. In his every-day ramble down to the ocean end of the "coombe" he often took a rest of ten minutes or a quarter of an hour at Twitt's house before climbing up the stony street again to Mary Deane's cottage, and Mrs. Twitt, in her turn, was a constant caller on Mary, to whom she brought all the news of the village, all the latest remedies for every sort of ailment, and all the oddest superstitions and omens which she could either remember or invent concerning every incident that had occurred to her or to her neighbours within the last twenty-four hours. There was no real morbidity of character in Mrs. Twitt; she only had that peculiar turn of mind which is found quite as frequently in the educated as in the ignorant, and which perceives a divine or a devilish meaning in almost every trifling occurrence of daily life. A pin on the ground which was not picked up at the very instant it was perceived, meant terrible ill-luck to Mrs. Twitt,--if a cat sneezed, it was a sign that there was going to be sickness in the village,--and she always carried in her pocket "a bit of coffin" to keep away the cramp. She also had a limitless faith in the power of cursing, and she believed most implicitly in the fiendish abilities of a certain person, (whether male or female, she did not explain) whose address she gave vaguely as, "out on the hills," and who, if requested, and paid for the trouble, would put a stick into the ground, muttering a mysterious malison on any man or woman you chose to name as an enemy, with the pronounced guarantee:--
"As this stick rotteth to decay, So shall (Mr, Miss or Mrs So-and-so) rot away!"
But with the exception of these little weaknesses, Mrs. Twitt was a good sort of motherly old body, warm-hearted and cheerful, too, despite her belief in omens. She had taken quite a liking to "old David" as she called him, and used to watch his thin frail figure, now since his illness sadly bent, jogging slowly down the street towards the sea, with much kindly solicitude. For despite Mr. Bunce's recommendation that he should "sit quiet," Helmsley could not bring himself to the passively restful condition of weak and resigned old age. He had too much on his mind for that. He worked patiently every morning at basket-making, in which he was quickly becoming an adept; but in the afternoon he grew restless, and Mary, seeing it was better for him to walk as long as walking was possible to him, let him go out when he fancied it, though always with a little anxiety for him lest he should meet with some accident. In this anxiety, however, all the neighbours took a share, so that he was well watched, and more carefully guarded than he knew, on his way down to the shore and back again, Abel Twitt himself often giving him an arm on the upward climb home.
"You'll have to do some of that for me soon!" said Helmsley on one of these occasions, pointing up with his stick at the board over Twitt's door, which said "Good Grave-Work Guaranteed:"
Twitt rolled his eyes slowly up in the direction indicated, smiled, and rolled them down again.
"So I will,--so I will!" he replied cheerfully--"An I'll charge ye nothin' either. I'll make ye as pretty a little stone as iver ye saw--what'll last too!--ay, last till th' Almighty comes a' tearin' down in clouds o' glory. A stone well bedded in, ye unnerstan'?--one as'll stay upright--no slop work. An' if ye can't think of a hepitaph for yerself I'll write one for ye--there now! Bible texes is goin' out o' fashion--it's best to 'ave somethin' orig'nal--an' for originality I don't think I can be beat in these parts. I'll do ye yer hepitaph with pleasure!"
"That will be kind!" And Helmsley smiled a little sadly--"What will you say of me when I'm gone?"
Twitt looked at him thoughtfully, with his head very much on one side.
"Well, ye see, I don't know yer history,"--he said--"But I considers ye 'armless an' unfortunate. I'd 'ave to make it out in my own mind like. Now Timbs, the grocer an' 'aberdashery man, when 'is wife died, he wouldn't let me 'ave my own way about the moniment at all. 'Put 'er down,' sez 'e--'Put 'er down as the Dearly-Beloved Wife of Samuel Timbs.' 'Now, Timbs,' sez I--'don't ye go foolin' with 'ell-fire! Ye know she wor'nt yer Dearly Beloved, forbye that she used to throw wet dish-clouts at yer 'ed, screechin' at ye for all she was wuth, an' there ain't no Dearly Beloved in that. Why do ye want to put a lie on a stone for the Lord to read?' But 'e was as obst'nate as pigs. 'Dish-clouts or no dish-clouts,' sez 'e, 'I'll 'ave 'er fixed up proper as my Dearly-Beloved Wife for sight o' parson an' neighbours.' 'Ah, Sam!' sez I--'I've got ye! It's for parson an' neighbours ye want the hepitaph, an' not for the Lord at all! Well, I'll do it if so be yer wish it, but I won't take the 'sponsibility of it at the Day o' Judgment.' 'I don't want ye to'--sez 'e, quite peart. 'I'll take it myself.' An' if ye'll believe me, David, 'e sits down an' writes me what 'e calls a 'Memo' of what 'e wants put on the grave stone, an' it's the biggest whopper I've iver seen out o' the noospapers. I've got it 'ere--" And, referring to a much worn and battered old leather pocket-book, Twitt drew from it a soiled piece of paper, and read as follows--
Here lies All that is Mortal of CATHERINE TIMBS The Dearly Beloved Wife of Samuel Timbs of Weircombe. She Died At the Early Age of Forty-Nine Full of Virtues and Excellencies Which those who knew Her Deeply Deplore and NOW is in Heaven.
"And the only true thing about that hepitaph,"--continued Twitt, folding up the paper again and returning it to its former receptacle,--"is the words 'Here Lies.'"
Helmsley laughed, and Twitt laughed with him.
"Some folks 'as the curiousest ways o' wantin' theirselves remembered arter they're gone"--he went on--"An' others seems as if they don't care for no mem'ry at all 'cept in the 'arts o' their friends. Now there was Tom o' the Gleam, a kind o' gypsy rover in these parts, 'im as murdered a lord down at Blue Anchor this very year's July----"
Helmsley drew a quick breath.
"I know!" he said--"I was there!"
"So I've 'eerd say,"--responded Twitt sympathetically--"An' an awsome sight it must a' bin for ye! Mary Deane told us as 'ow ye'd bin ravin' about Tom--an' m'appen likely it give ye a turn towards yer long sickness."
"I was there,"--said Helmsley, shuddering at the recollection--"I had stopped on the road to try and get a cheap night's lodging at the very inn where the murder took place--but--but there were two murders that day, and the _first_ one was the worst!"
"That's what I said at the time, an' that's what I've allus thought!"--declared Twitt--"Why that little 'Kiddie' child o' Tom's was the playfullest, prettiest little rogue ye'd see in a hundred mile or more! 'Oldin' out a posy o' flowers to a motor-car, poor little innercent! It might as well 'ave 'eld out flowers to the devil!--though my own opinion is as the devil 'imself wouldn't 'a ridden down a child. But a motorin' lord o' these days is neither man nor beast nor devil,--'e's a somethin' altogether _on_human--_on_human out an' out,--a thing wi' goggles over his eyes an' no 'art in his body, which we aint iver seen in this poor old world afore. Thanks be to the Lord no motors can ever come into Weircombe,--they tears round an' round by another road, an' we neither sees, 'ears, nor smells 'em, for which I often sez to my wife--'O be joyful in the Lord all ye lands; serve the Lord with gladness an' come before His presence with a song!' An' she ups an' sez--'Don't be blaspheemous, Twitt,--I'll tell parson'--an' I sez--'Tell 'im, old 'ooman, if ye likes!' An' when she tells 'im, 'e smiles nice an' kind, an' sez--'It's quite lawful, Mrs. Twitt, to quote Scriptural thanksgiving on all _necessary_ occasions!' E's a good little chap, our parson, but 'e's that weak on his chest an' ailing that 'e's goin' away this year to Madeira for rest and warm--an' a blessid old Timp'rance raskill's coming to take dooty in 'is place. Ah!--none of us Weircombe folk 'ill be very reg'lar church-goers while Mr. Arbroath's here."
Helmsley started slightly.
"Arbroath? I've seen that man."
'Ave ye? Well, ye 'aven't seen no beauty!" And Twitt gave vent to a chuckling laugh--"'E'll be startin' 'is 'Igh Jink purcessions an' vestiments in our plain little church up yonder, an' by the Lord, 'e'll 'ave to purcess an' vestiment by 'isself, for Weircombe wont 'elp 'im. We aint none of us 'Igh Jink folks."
"Is that your name for High Church?" asked Helmsley, amused.
"It is so, an' a very good name it be," declared Twitt, stoutly--"For if all the bobbins' an' scrapins' an' crosses an' banners aint a sort o' jinkin' Lord Mayor's show, then what be they? It's fair oaffish to bob to the east as them 'Igh Jinkers does, for we aint never told in the Gospels that th' Almighty 'olds that partikler quarter o' the wind as a place o' residence. The Lord's everywhere,--east, west, north, south,--why he's with us at this very minute!"--and Twitt raised his eyes piously to the heavens--"He's 'elpin' you an' me to draw the breath through our lungs--for if He didn't 'elp, we couldn't do it, that's certain. An' if He makes the sun to rise in the east, He makes it to sink in the west, an' there's no choice either way, an' we sez our prayers simple both times o' day, not to the sun at all, but to the Maker o' the sun, an' of everything else as we sees. No, no!--no 'Igh Jinks for me!--I don't want to bow to no East when I sees the Lord's no more east than He's west, an' no more in either place than He is here, close to me an' doin' more for me than I could iver do for myself. 'Igh Jinks is unchristin,--as unchristin as cremation, an' nothin's more unchristin than that!"
"Why, what makes you think so?" asked Helmsley, surprised.
"What makes me think so?" And Twitt drew himself up with a kind of reproachful dignity--"Now, old David, don't go for to say as _you_ don't think so too?"
"Cremation unchristian? Well, I can't say I've ever thought of it in that light,--it's supposed to be the cleanest way of getting rid of the dead----"
"Gettin' rid of the dead!"--echoed Twitt, almost scornfully--"That's what ye can never do! They'se everywhere, all about us, if we only had strong eyes enough to see 'em. An' cremation aint Christin. I'll tell ye for why,"--here he bent forward and tapped his two middle fingers slowly on Helmsley's chest to give weight to his words--"Look y'ere! Supposin' our Lord's body 'ad been cremated, where would us all a' bin? Where would a' bin our 'sure an' certain 'ope' o' the resurrection?"
Helmsley was quite taken aback by this sudden proposition, which presented cremation in an entirely new light. But a moment's thought restored to him his old love of argument, and he at once replied:--
"Why, it would have been just the same as it is now, surely! If Christ was divine, he could have risen from burnt ashes as well as from a tomb."
"Out of a hurn?" demanded Twitt, persistently--"If our Lord's body 'ad bin burnt an' put in a hurn, an' the hurn 'ad bin took into the 'ouse o' Pontis Pilate, an' sealed, an' _kept till now_? Eh? What d'ye say to that? I tell ye, David, there wouldn't a bin no savin' grace o' Christ'anity at all! An' that's why I sez cremation is unchristin,--it's blaspheemous an' 'eethen. For our Lord plainly said to 'is disciples arter he came out o' the tomb--'Behold my hands and my feet,--handle me and see,'--an' to the doubtin' Thomas He said--'Reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless but believing.' David, you mark my words!--them as 'as their bodies burnt in crematorums is just as dirty in their souls as they can be, an' they 'opes to burn all the blackness o' theirselves into nothingness an' never to rise no more, 'cos they'se afraid! They don't want to be laid in good old mother earth, which is the warm forcin' place o' the Lord for raisin' up 'uman souls as He raises up the blossoms in spring, an' all other things which do give Him grateful praise an' thanksgivin'! They gits theirselves burnt to ashes 'cos they don't _want_ to be raised up,--they'se never praised the Lord 'ere, an' they wouldn't know 'ow to do it _there_! But, mercy me!" concluded Twitt ruminatingly,--"I've seen orful queer things bred out of ashes!--beetles an' sich like reptiles,--an' I wouldn't much care to see the spechul stock as raises itself from the burnt bits of a liar!"
Helmsley hardly knew whether to smile or to look serious,--such quaint propositions as this old stonemason put forward on the subject of cremation were utterly novel to his experience. And while he yet stood under the little porch of Twitt's cottage, there came shivering up through the quiet autumnal air a slow thud of breaking waves.
"Tide's comin' in,"--said Twitt, after listening a minute or two--"An' that minds me o' what I was goin' to tell ye about Tom o' the Gleam. After the inkwist, the gypsies came forward an' claimed the bodies o' Tom an' 'is Kiddie,--an' they was buried accordin' to Tom's own wish, which it seems 'e'd told one of 'is gypsy pals to see as was carried out whenever an' wheresoever 'e died. An' what sort of a buryin'd'ye think 'e 'ad?"
Helmsley shook his head in an expressed inability to imagine.
"'Twas out there,"--and Twitt pointed with one hand to the shining expanse of the ocean--"The gypsies put 'im an' is Kiddie in a basket coffin which they made theirselves, an' covered it all over wi' garlands o' flowers an' green boughs, an' then fastened four great lumps o' lead to the four corners, an' rowed it out in a boat to about four or five miles from the shore, right near to the place where the moon at full 'makes a hole in the middle o' the sea,' as the children sez, and there they dropped it into the water. Then they sang a funeral song--an' by the Lord!--the sound o' that song crept into yer veins an' made yer blood run cold!--'twas enough to break a man's 'art, let alone a woman's, to 'ear them gypsy voices all in a chorus wailin' a farewell to the man an' the child in the sea,--an' the song floated up an' about, 'ere an' there an' everywhere, all over the land from Cleeve Abbey onnards, an' at Blue Anchor, so they sez, it was so awsome an' eerie that the people got out o' their beds, shiverin', an' opened their windows to listen, an' when they listened they all fell a cryin' like children. An' it's no wonder the inn where poor Tom did his bad deed and died his bad death, is shut up for good, an' the people as kept it gone away--no one couldn't stay there arter that. Ay, ay!" and Twitt sighed profoundly--"Poor wild ne'er-do-weel Tom! He lies deep down enough now with the waves flowin' over 'im an' 'is little 'Kiddie' clasped tight in 'is arms. For they never separated 'em,--death 'ad locked 'em up too fast together for that. An' they're sleepin' peaceful,--an' there they'll sleep till--till 'the sea gives up its dead.'"
Helmsley could not speak,--he was too deeply moved. The sound of the in-coming tide grew fuller and more sonorous, and Twitt presently turned to look critically at the heaving waters.
"There's a cry in the sea to-day,"--he said,--"M'appen it'll be rough to-night."
They were silent again, till presently Helmsley roused himself from the brief melancholy abstraction into which he had been plunged by the story of Tom o' the Gleam's funeral.
"I think I'll go down on the shore for a bit,"--he said; "I like to get as close to the waves as I can when they're rolling in."
"Well, don't get too close,"--said Twitt, kindly--"We'll be havin' ye washed away if ye don't take care! There's onny an hour to tea-time, an' Mary Deane's a punctooal 'ooman!"
"I shall not keep her waiting--never fear!" and Helmsley smiled as he said good-day, and jogged slowly along his favourite accustomed path to the beach. The way though rough, was not very steep, and it was becoming quite easy and familiar to him. He soon found himself on the firm brown sand sprinkled with a fringe of seaweed and shells, and further adorned in various places with great rough boulders, picturesquely set up on end, like the naturally hewn memorials of great heroes passed away. Here, the ground being level, he could walk more quickly and with greater comfort than in the one little precipitous street of Weircombe, and he paced up and down, looking at the rising and falling hollows of the sea with wistful eyes that in their growing age and dimness had an intensely pathetic expression,--the expression one sometimes sees in the eyes of a dog who knows that its master is leaving it for an indefinite period.
"What a strange chaos of brain must be that of the suicide!" he thought--"Who, that can breathe the fresh air and watch the lights and shadows in the sky and on the waves, would really wish to leave the world, unless the mind had completely lost its balance! We have never seen anything more beautiful than this planet upon which we are born,--though there is a sub-consciousness in us which prophesies of yet greater beauty awaiting higher vision. The subconscious self! That is the scientist's new name for the Soul,--but the Soul is a better term. Now my subconscious self--my Soul,--is lamenting the fact that it must leave life when it has just begun to learn how to live! I should like to be here and see what Mary will do when--when I am gone! Yet how do I know but that in very truth I shall be here?--or in some way be made aware of her actions? She has a character such as I never thought to find in any mortal woman,--strong, pure, tender,--and sincere!--ah, that sincerity of hers is like the very sunlight!--so bright and warm, and clean of all ulterior motive! And measured by a worldly estimate only--what is she? The daughter of a humble florist,--herself a mere mender of lace, and laundress of fine ladies' linen! And her sweet and honest eyes have never looked upon that rag-fair of nonsense we call 'society';--she never thinks of riches;--and yet she has refined and artistic taste enough to love the lace she mends, just for pure admiration of its beauty,--not because she herself desires to wear it, but because it represents the work and lives of others, and because it is in itself a miracle of design. I wonder if she ever notices how closely I watch her! I could draw from memory the shapely outline of her hand,--a white, smooth, well-kept hand, never allowed to remain soiled by all her various forms of domestic labour,--an expressive hand, indicating health and sanity, with that deep curve at the wrist, and the delicately shaped fingers which hold the needle so lightly and guide it so deftly through the intricacies of the riven lace, weaving a web of such fairy-like stitches that the original texture seems never to have been broken. I have sat quiet for an hour or more studying her when she has thought me asleep in my chair by the fire,--and I have fancied that my life is something like the damaged fabric she is so carefully repairing,--holes and rents everywhere,--all the symmetry of design dropping to pieces,--the little garlands of roses and laurels snapped asunder,--and she, with her beautiful white hands is gently drawing the threads together and mending it,--for what purpose?--to what end?"
And here the involuntary action of some little brain-cell gave him the memory of certain lines in Browning's "Rabbi Ben Ezra":--
"Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage Life's struggle having so far reached its term; Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a god, though in the germ. And I shall thereupon Take rest ere I be gone Once more on my adventures brave and new-- Fearless--and unperplexed When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armour to indue!"
* * * * *
He turned his eyes again to the sea just as a lovely light, pale golden and clear as topaz, opened suddenly in the sky, shedding a shower of luminant reflections on the waves. He drew a deep breath, and unconsciously straightened himself.
"When death comes it shall find me ready!" he said, half aloud;--and then stood, confronting the ethereal glory. The waves rolled in slowly and majestically one after the other, and broke at his feet in long wreaths of creamy foam,--and presently one or two light gusts of a rather chill wind warned him that he had best be returning homeward. While he yet hesitated, a leaf of paper blew towards him, and danced about like a large erratic butterfly, finally dropping just where the stick on which he leaned made a hole in the sand. He stooped and picked it up. It was covered with fine small handwriting, and before he could make any attempt to read it, a man sprang up from behind one of the rocky boulders close by, and hurried forward, raising his cap as he came.
"That's mine!" he said, quickly, with a pleasant smile--"It's a loose page from my notebook. Thank-you so much for saving it!"
Helmsley gave him the paper at once, with a courteous inclination of the head.
"I've been scribbling down here all day,"--proceeded the new comer--"And there's not been much wind till now. But"--and he glanced up and about him critically; "I think we shall have a puff of sou'wester to-night."
Helmsley looked at him with interest. He was a man of distinctive appearance,--tall, well-knit, and muscular, with a fine intellectual face and keen clear grey eyes. Not a very young man;--he seemed about thirty-eight or forty, perhaps more, for his dark hair was fairly sprinkled with silver. But his manner was irresistibly bright and genial, and it was impossible to meet his frank, open, almost boyish gaze, without a desire to know more of him, and an inclination to like him.
"Do you make the seashore your study?" asked Helmsley, with a slight gesture towards the notebook into which the stranger was now carefully putting the strayed leaflet.
"Pretty much so!" and he laughed--"I've only got one room to live in--and it has to serve for both sleeping and eating--so I come out here to breathe and expand a bit." He paused, and then added gently--"May I give you my arm up to Miss Deane's cottage?"
"Why, how do you know I live there?" and Helmsley smiled as he put the question.
"Oh, well, all the village knows that!--and though I'm quite new to the village--I've only been here a week--I know it too. You're old David, the basket-maker, aren't you?"
"Yes." And Helmsley nodded emphatically--"That's me!"
"Then I know all about you! My name's Angus Reay. I'm a Scotchman,--I am, or rather, I _was_ a journalist, and as poor as Job! That's _me_! Come along!"
The cheery magnetism of his voice and look attracted Helmsley, and almost before he knew it he was leaning on this new friend's arm, chatting with him concerning the village, the scenery, and the weather, in the easiest way possible.
"I came on here from Minehead,"--said Reay--"That was too expensive a place for me!" And a bright smile flashed from lips to eyes with an irresistible sunny effect; "I've got just twenty pounds in the world, and I must make it last me a year. For room, food, fuel, clothes, drink and smoke! I've promptly cut off the last two!"
"And you're none the worse for it, I daresay!" rejoined Helmsley.
"Not a bit! A good deal the better. In Fleet Street the men drank and smoked pretty heavily, and I had to drink and smoke with them, if I wanted to keep in with the lot. I did want to keep in with them, and yet I didn't. It was a case of 'needs must when the devil drives!'"
"You say you were a journalist. Aren't you one now?"
"No. I'm 'kicked off'!" And Reay threw back his head and laughed joyously. "'Off you go!' said my editor, one fine morning, after I had slaved away for him for nearly two years--'We don't want any canting truth-tellers here!' Now mind that stone! You nearly slipped. Hold my arm tighter!"
Helmsley did as he was told, quite meekly, looking up with a good deal of curiosity at this tall athletic creature, with the handsome head and masterful manner. Reay caught his enquiring glance and laughed again.
"You look as if you wanted to know more about me, old David!" he said gaily--"So you shall! I've nothing to conceal! As I tell you I was 'kicked off' out of journalism--my fault being that I published a leaderette exposing a mean 'deal' on the part of a certain city plutocrat. I didn't know the rascal had shares in the paper. But he _had_--under an 'alias.' And he made the devil's own row about it with the editor, who nearly died of it, being inclined to apoplexy--and between the two of them I was 'dropped.' Then the word ran along the press wires that I was an 'unsafe' man. I could not get any post worth having--I had saved just twenty pounds--so I took it all and walked away from London--literally _walked_ away! I haven't spent a penny in other locomotion than my own legs since I left Fleet Street."
Helmsley listened with eager interest. Here was a man who had done the very thing which he himself had started to do;--"tramped" the road. But--with what a difference! Full manhood, physical strength, and activity on the one side,--decaying power, feebleness of limb and weariness on the other. They had entered the village street by this time, and were slowly walking up it together.
"You see,"--went on Reay,--"of course I could have taken the train--but twenty pounds is only twenty pounds--and it must last me twelve solid months. By that time I shall have finished my work."
"And what's that?" asked Helmsley.
"It's a book. A novel. And"--here he set his teeth hard--"I intend that it shall make me--famous!"
"The intention is good,"--said Helmsley, slowly--"But--there are so many novels!"
"No, there are not!" declared Reay, decisively--"There are plenty of rag-books _called_ novels--but they are not real 'novels.' There's nothing 'new' in them. There's no touch of real, suffering, palpitating humanity in them! The humanity of to-day is infinitely more complex than it was in the days of Scott or Dickens, but there's no Scott or Dickens to epitomise its character or delineate its temperament. I want to be the twentieth century Scott and Dickens rolled into one stupendous literary Titan!"
His mellow laughter was hearty and robust. Helmsley caught its infection and laughed too.
"But why,"--he asked--"do you want to write a novel? Why not write a real _book_?"
"What do you call a real book, old David?" demanded Reay, looking down upon him with a sudden piercing glance.
Helmsley was for a moment confused. He was thinking of such books as Carlyle's "Past and Present"--Emerson's "Essays" and the works of Ruskin. But he remembered in good time that for an old "basket-maker" to be familiar with such literary masterpieces might seem strange to a wide-awake "journalist," therefore he checked himself in time.
"Oh, I don't know! I believe I was thinking of 'Pilgrim's Progress'!" he said.
"'Pilgrim's Progress'? Ah! A fine book--a grand book! Twelve years and a half of imprisonment in Bedford Jail turned Bunyan out immortal! And here am I--_not_ in jail--but free to roam where I choose,--with twenty pounds! By Jove! I ought to be greater than Bunyan! Now 'Pilgrim's Progress' was a 'novel,' if you like!"
"I thought,"--submitted Helmsley, with the well-assumed air of a man who was not very conversant with literature--"that it was a religious book?"
"So it is. A religious novel. And a splendid one! But humanity's gone past that now--it wants a wider view--a bigger, broader outlook. Do you know--" and here he stopped in the middle of the rugged winding street, and looked earnestly at his companion--"do you know what I see men doing at the present day?--I see them rushing towards the verge--the very extreme edge of what they imagine to be the Actual--and from that edge getting ready to plunge--into Nothingness!"
Something thrilling in his voice touched a responsive chord in Helmsley's own heart.
"Why--that is where we all tend!" he said, with a quick sigh--"That is where _I_ am tending!--where _you_, in your time, must also tend--nothingness--or death!"
"No!" said Reay, almost loudly--"That's not true! That's just what I deny! For me there is no 'Nothingness'--no 'death'! Space is full of creative organisms. Dissolution means re-birth. It is all life--life:--glorious life! We live--we have always lived--we _shall_ always live!" He paused, flushing a little as though half ashamed of his own enthusiasm--then, dropping his voice to its normal tone he said--"You've got me on my hobby horse--I must come off it, or I shall gallop too far! We're just at the top of the street now. Shall I leave you here?"
"Please come on to the cottage,"--said Helmsley--"I'm sure Mary--Miss Deane--will give you a cup of tea."
Angus Reay smiled.
"I don't allow myself that luxury,"--he said.
"Not when you're invited to share it with others?"
"Oh yes, in that way I do--but I'm not overburdened with friends just now. A man must have more than twenty pounds to be 'asked out' anywhere!"
"Well, _I_ ask you out!"--said Helmsley, smiling--"Or rather, I ask you _in_. I'm sure Miss Deane will be glad to talk to you. She is very fond of books."
"I've seen her just once in the village,"--remarked Reay--"She seems to be very much respected here. And what a beautiful woman she is!"
"You think so?" and Helmsley's eyes lighted with pleasure--"Well, I think so, too--but they tell me that it's only because I'm old, and apt to see everyone beautiful who is kind to me. There's a good deal in that!--there's certainly a good deal in that!"
They could now see the garden gate of Mary's cottage through the boughs of the great chestnut tree, which at this season was nearly stripped of all its leaves, and which stood like a lonely forest king with some scanty red and yellow rags of woodland royalty about him, in solitary grandeur at the bending summit of the hill. And while they were yet walking the few steps which remained of the intervening distance, Mary herself came out to the gate, and, leaning one arm lightly across it, watched them approaching. She wore a pale lilac print gown, high to the neck and tidily finished off by a plain little muslin collar fastened with a coquettish knot of black velvet,--her head was uncovered, and the fitful gleams of the sinking sun shed a russet glow on her shining hair and reddened the pale clear transparency of her skin. In that restful waiting attitude, with a smile on her face, she made a perfect picture, and Helmsley stole a side-glance at his companion, to see if he seemed to be in any way impressed by her appearance. Angus Reay was certainly looking at her, but what he thought could hardly be guessed by his outward expression. They reached the gate, and she opened it.
"I was getting anxious about you, David!"--she said; "you aren't quite strong enough to be out in such a cold wind." Then she turned her eyes enquiringly on Reay, who lifted his cap while Helmsley explained his presence.
"This is a gentleman who is staying in the village--Mr. Reay,"--he said--"He's been very kind in helping me up the hill--and I said you would give him a cup of tea."
"Why, of course!"--and Mary smiled--"Please come in, sir!"
She led the way, and in another few minutes, all three of them were seated in her little kitchen round the table and Mary was busy pouring out the tea and dispensing the usual good things that are always found in the simplest Somersetshire cottage,--cream, preserved fruit, scones, home-made bread and fresh butter.
"So you met David on the seashore?" she said, turning her soft dark-blue eyes enquiringly on Reay, while gently checking with one hand the excited gambols of Charlie, who, as an epicurean dog, always gave himself up to the wildest enthusiasms at tea-time, owing to his partiality for a small saucer of cream which came to him at that hour--"I sometimes think he must expect to pick up a fortune down among the shells and seaweed, he's so fond of walking about there!"--And she smiled as she put Helmsley's cup of tea before him, and gently patted his wrinkled hand in the caressing fashion a daughter might show to a father whose health gave cause for anxiety.
"Well, _I_ certainly don't go down to the shore in any such expectation!" said Reay, laughing--"Fortunes are not so easily picked up, are they, David?"
"No, indeed!" replied Helmsley, and his old eyes sparkled up humorously under their cavernous brows; "fortunes take some time to make, and one doesn't meet millionaires every day!"
"Millionaires!" exclaimed Reay--"Don't speak of them! I hate them!"
Helmsley looked at him stedfastly.
"It's best not to hate anybody,"--he said--"Millionaires are often the loneliest and most miserable of men."
"They deserve to be!" declared Reay, hotly--"It isn't right--it isn't just that two or three, or let us say four or five men should be able to control the money-markets of the world. They generally get their wealth through some unscrupulous 'deal,' or through 'sweating' labour. I hate all 'cornering' systems. I believe in having enough to live upon, but not too much."
"It depends on what you call enough,"--said Helmsley, slowly--"We're told that some people never know when they _have_ enough."
"Why _this_ is enough!" said Reay, looking admiringly round the little kitchen in which they sat--"This sweet little cottage with this oak raftered ceiling, and all the dear old-fashioned crockery, and the ingle-nook over there,--who on earth wants more?"
Mary laughed.
"Oh dear me!" she murmured, gently--"You praise it too much!--it's only a very poor place, sir,----"
He interrupted her, the colour rushing to his brows.
"Please don't!"
She glanced at him in surprise.
"Don't--what?"
"Don't call me 'sir'! I'm only a poor chap,--my father was a shepherd, and I began life as a cowherd--I don't want any titles of courtesy."
She still kept her eyes upon him thoughtfully.
"But you're a gentleman, aren't you?" she asked.
"I hope so!" And he laughed. "Just as David is! But we neither of us wish the fact emphasised, do we, David? It goes without saying!"
Helmsley smiled. This Angus Reay was a man after his own heart.
"Of course it does!"--he said--"In the way you look at it! But you should tell Miss Deane all about yourself--she'll be interested."
"Would you really care to hear?" enquired Reay, suddenly, turning his clear grey eyes full on Mary's face.
"Why certainly I should!" she answered, frankly meeting his glance,--and then, from some sudden and inexplicable embarrassment, she blushed crimson, and her eyelids fell. And Reay thought what a clear, healthy skin she had, and how warmly the blood flowed under it.
"Well, after tea I'll hold forth!" he said--"But there isn't much to tell. Such as there is, you shall know, for I've no mysteries about me. Some fellows love a mystery--I cannot bear it! Everything must be fair, open and above board with me,--else I can't breathe! Pouf!" And he expanded his broad chest and took a great gulp of air in as he spoke--"I hate a man who tries to hide his own identity, don't you, David?"
"Yes--yes--certainly!" murmured Helmsley, absently, feigning to be absorbed in buttering a scone for his own eating--"It is often very awkward--for the man."
"I always say, and I always will maintain,"--went on Reay--"let a man be a man--a something or a nothing. If he is a criminal, let him say he is a criminal, and not pretend to be virtuous--if he is an atheist, let him say he is an atheist, and not pretend to be religious--if he's a beggar and can't help himself, let him admit the fact--if he's a millionaire, don't let him skulk round pretending he's as poor as Job--always let him be himself and no other!--eh?--what is it, David?"
For Helmsley was looking at him intently with eyes that were almost young in their sudden animation and brilliancy.
"Did you ever meet a millionaire who skulked round pretending he was as poor as Job?" he enquired, with a whimsical air--"_I_ never did!"
"Well no, I never did, either!" And Reay's mellow laughter was so loud and long that Mary was quite infected by it, and laughed with him--"But you see millionaires are all marked men. Everybody knows them. Their portraits are in all the newspapers--horrid-looking rascals most of them!--Nature doesn't seem to endow them with handsome features anyway. 'Keep your gold, and never mind your face,'--she seems to say--'_I'll_ take care of that!' And she does take care of it! O Lord! The only millionaire I ever saw in my life was ugly enough to frighten a baby into convulsions!"
"What was his name?" asked Helmsley.
"Well, it wouldn't be fair to tell his name now, after what I've said!" laughed Reay--"Besides, he lives in America, thank God! He's one of the few who have spared the old country his patronage!"
Here a diversion was created by the necessity of serving the tiny but autocratic Charlie with his usual "dish of cream," of which he partook on Mary's knee, while listening (as was evident from the attentive cocking of his silky ears) to the various compliments he was accustomed to receive on his beauty. This business over, they rose from the tea-table. The afternoon had darkened into twilight, and the autumnal wind was sighing through the crannies of the door. Mary stirred the fire into a brighter blaze, and drawing Helmsley's armchair close to its warm glow, stood by him till he was comfortably seated--then she placed another chair opposite for Reay, and sat down herself on a low oaken settle between the two.
"This is the pleasantest time of the day just now,"--she said--"And the best time for talking! I love the gloaming. My father loved it too."
"So did _my_ father!" and Reay's eyes softened as he bent them on the sparkling fire--"In winter evenings when the darkness fell down upon our wild Highland hills, he would come home to our shieling on the edge of the moor, shaking all the freshness of the wind and the scent of the dying heather out of his plaid as he threw it from his shoulders,--and he would toss fresh peat on the fire till it blazed red and golden, and he would lay his hand on my head and say to me: 'Come awa' bairnie! Now for a bogle story in the gloamin'!' Ah, those bogle stories! They are answerable for a good deal in my life! They made me want to write bogle stories myself!"
"And _do_ you write them?" asked Mary.
"Not exactly. Though perhaps all human life is only a bogle tale! Invented to amuse the angels!"
She smiled, and taking up a delicate piece of crochet lace, which she called her "spare time work," began to ply the glittering needle in and out fine intricacies of thread, her shapely hands gleaming like alabaster in the fire-light reflections.
"Well, now tell us your own bogle tale!" she said--"And David and I will play the angels!"
CHAPTER XV
He watched her working for a few minutes before he spoke again. And shading his eyes with one hand from the red glow of the fire, David Helmsley watched them both.
"Well, it's rather cool of me to take up your time talking about my own affairs,"--began Reay, at last--"But I've been pretty much by myself for a good while, and it's pleasant to have a chat with friendly people--man wasn't made to live alone, you know! In fact, neither man nor beast nor bird can stand it. Even a sea cormorant croaks to the wind!"
Mary laughed.
"But not for company's sake,"--she said--"It croaks when it's hungry."
"Oh, I've often croaked for that reason!" and Reay pushed from his forehead a wayward tuft of hair which threatened to drop over his eye in a thick silvery brown curl--"But it's wonderful how little a fellow can live upon in the way of what is called food. I know all sorts of dodges wherewith to satisfy the greedy cravings of the vulgar part of me."
Helmsley took his hand from his eyes, and fixed a keenly observant look upon the speaker. Mary said nothing, but her crochet needle moved more slowly.
"You see," went on Reay, "I've always been rather fortunate in having had very little to eat."
"You call it 'fortunate'?" queried Helmsley, abruptly.
"Why, of course! I've never had what the doctors call an 'overloaded system'--therefore I've no lading bill to pay. The million or so of cells of which I am composed are not at all anxious to throw any extra nourishment off,--sometimes they intimate a strong desire to take some extra nourishment in--but that is an uneducated tendency in them which I sternly repress. I tell all those small grovelling cells that extra nourishment would not be good for them. And they shrink back from my moral reproof ashamed of themselves--and become wiry instead of fatty. Which is as it should be."
"You're a queer chap!" said Helmsley, with a laugh.
"Think so? Well, I daresay I am--all Scotsmen are. There's always the buzzing of the bee in our bonnets. I come of an ancient Highland stock who were certainly 'queer' as modern ways go,--for they were famous for their pride, and still more famous for their poverty all the way through. As far back as I can go in the history of my family, and that's a pretty long way, we were always at our wit's end to live. From the days of the founder of our house, a glorious old chieftain who used to pillage his neighbour chieftain in the usual style of those glorious old times, we never had more than just enough for the bare necessities of life. My father, as I told you, was a shepherd--a strong, fine-looking man over six feet in height, and as broad-chested as a Hercules--he herded sheep on the mountains for a Glasgow dealer, as low-down a rascal as ever lived, a man who, so far as race and lineage went, wasn't fit to scrape mud off my father's boots. But we often see gentlemen of birth obliged to work for knaves of cash. That was the way it was with my father. As soon as I was old enough--about ten,--I helped him in his work--I used to tramp backwards and forwards to school in the nearest village, but after school hours I got an evening job of a shilling a week for bringing home eight Highland bull-heifers from pasture. The man who owned them valued them highly, but was afraid of them--wouldn't go near them for his life--and before I'd been with them a fortnight they all knew me. I was only a wee laddie, but they answered to my call like friendly dogs rather than the great powerful splendid beasts they were, with their rough coats shining like floss silk in the sunset, when I went to drive them home, singing as I came. And my father said to me one night--'Laddie, tell me the truth--are ye ever scared at the bulls!' 'No, father!' said I--'It's a bonnie boy I am to the bulls!' And he laughed--by Jove!--how he laughed! 'Ye're a wee raskell!' he said--'An' as full o' conceit as an egg's full o' meat!' I expect that was true too, for I always thought well of myself. You see, if I hadn't thought well of myself, no one would ever have thought well of _me_!"
"There's something in that!" said Helmsley, the smile still lingering in his eyes--"Courage and self-reliance have often conquered more than eight bulls!"
"Oh, I don't call it either courage or self-reliance--it was just that I thought myself of too much importance to be hurt by bulls or anything else,"--and Angus laughed,--then with a sudden knitting of his brows as though his thoughts were making hard knots in his brain, he added--"Even as a laddie I had an idea--and I have it now--that there was something in me which God had put there for a purpose of His own,--something that he would not and _could_ not destroy till His purpose had been fulfilled!"
Mary stopped working and looked at him earnestly. Her breath came and went quickly--her eyes shone dewily like stars in a summer haze,--she was deeply interested.
"That was--and _is_--a conceited notion, of course,"--went on Angus, reflectively--"And I don't excuse it. But I'm not one of the 'meek who shall inherit the earth.' I'm a robustious combustious sort of chap--if a fellow knocks me down, I jump up and give it him back with as jolly good interest as I can--and if anyone plays me a dirty trick I'll move all the mental and elemental forces of the universe to expose him. That's my way--unfortunately----"
"Why 'unfortunately'?" asked Helmsley.
Reay threw back his head and indulged in one of his mellow peals of laughter.
"Can you ask why? Oh David, good old David!--it's easy to see you don't know much of the world! If you did, you'd realise that the best way to 'get on' in the usual way of worldly progress, is to make up to all sorts of social villains and double-dyed millionaire-scoundrels, find out all their tricks and their miserable little vices and pamper them, David!--pamper them and flatter them up to the top of their bent till you've got them in your power--and then--then _use_ them--use them for everything you want. For once you know what blackguards they are, they'll give you anything not to tell!"
"I should be sorry to think that's true,"--murmured Mary.
"Don't think it, then,"--said Angus--"You needn't,--because millionaires are not likely to come in your way. Nor in mine--now. I've cut myself adrift from all chance of ever meeting them. But only a year ago I was on the road to making a good thing out of one or two of the so-called 'kings of finance'--then I suddenly took a 'scunner' as we Scots say, at the whole lot, and hated and despised myself for ever so much as thinking that it might serve my own ends to become their tool. So I just cast off ropes like a ship, and steamed out of harbour."
"Into the wide sea!" said Mary, looking at him with a smile that was lovely in its radiance and sympathy.
"Into the wide sea--yes!" he answered--"And sea that was pretty rough at first. But one can get accustomed to anything--even to the high rock-a-bye tossing of great billows that really don't want to put you to sleep so much as to knock you to pieces. But I'm galloping along too fast. From the time I made friends with young bulls to the time I began to scrape acquaintance with newspaper editors is a far cry--and in the interim my father died. I should have told you that I lost my mother when I was born--and I don't think that the great wound her death left in my father's heart ever really healed. He never seemed quite at one with the things of life--and his 'bogle tales' of which I was so fond, all turned on the spirits of the dead coming again to visit those whom they had loved, and from whom they had been taken--and he used to tell them with such passionate conviction that sometimes I trembled and wondered if any spirit were standing near us in the light of the peat fire, or if the shriek of the wind over our sheiling were the cry of some unhappy soul in torment. Well! When his time came, he was not allowed to suffer--one day in a great storm he was struck by lightning on the side of the mountain where he was herding in his flocks--and there he was found lying as though he were peacefully asleep. Death must have been swift and painless--and I always thank God for that!" He paused a moment--then went on--"When I found myself quite alone in the world, I hired myself out to a farmer for five years--and worked faithfully for him--worked so well that he raised my wages and would willingly have kept me on--but I had the 'bogle tales' in my head and could not rest. It was in the days before Andrew Carnegie started trying to rub out the memory of his 'Homestead' cruelty by planting 'free' libraries, (for which taxpayers are rated) all over the country--and pauperising Scottish University education by grants of money--I suppose he is a sort of little Pontiff unto himself, and thinks that money can pacify Heaven, and silence the cry of brothers' blood rising from the Homestead ground. In my boyhood a Scottish University education had to be earned by the would-be student himself--earned by hard work, hard living, patience, perseverance and _grit_. That's the one quality I had--grit--and it served me well in all I wanted. I entered at St. Andrews--graduated, and came out an M.A. That helped to give me my first chance with the press. But I'm sure I'm boring you by all this chatter about myself! David, _you_ stop me when you think Miss Deane has had enough!"
Helmsley looked at Mary's figure in its pale lilac gown touched here and there by the red sparkle of the fire, and noted the attentive poise of her head, and the passive quietude of her generally busy hands which now lay in her lap loosely folded over her lace work.
"Have we had enough, Mary, do you think?" he asked, with the glimmering of a tender little smile under his white moustache.
She glanced at him quickly in a startled way, as though she had been suddenly wakened from a reverie.
"Oh no!" she answered--"I love to hear of a brave man's fight with the world--it's the finest story anyone can listen to."
Reay coloured like a boy.
"I'm not a brave man,"--he said--"I hope I haven't given you that idea. I'm an awful funk at times."
"When are those times?" and Mary smiled demurely, as she put the question.
Again the warm blood rushed up to his brows.
"Well,--please don't laugh! I'm afraid--horribly afraid--of women!"
Helmsley's old eyes sparkled.
"Upon my word!" he exclaimed--"That's a funny thing for you to say!"
"It is, rather,"--and Angus looked meditatively into the fire--"It's not that I'm bashful, at all--no--I'm quite the other way, really,--only--only--ever since I was a lad I've made such an ideal of woman that I'm afraid of her when I meet her,--afraid lest she shouldn't come up to my ideal, and equally afraid lest I shouldn't come up to hers! It's all conceit again! Fear of anything or anybody is always born of self-consciousness. But I've been disappointed once----"
"In your ideal?" questioned Mary, raising her eyes and letting them rest observantly upon his face.
"Yes. I'll come to that presently. I was telling you how I graduated at St. Andrews, and came out with M.A. tacked to my name, but with no other fortune than those two letters. I had made a few friends, however, and one of them, a worthy old professor, gave me a letter of recommendation to a man in Glasgow, who was the proprietor of one of the newspapers there. He was a warm-hearted, kindly fellow, and gave me a berth at once. It was hard work for little pay, but I got into thorough harness, and learnt all the ins and outs of journalism. I can't say that I ever admired the general mechanism set up for gulling the public, but I had to learn how it was done, and I set myself to master the whole business. I had rather a happy time of it in Glasgow, for though it's the dirtiest, dingiest and most depressing city in the world, with its innumerable drunkards and low Scoto-Irish ne'er-do-weels loafing about the streets on Saturday nights, it has one great charm--you can get away from it into some of the loveliest scenery in the world. All my spare time was spent in taking the steamer up the Clyde, and sometimes going as far as Crinan and beyond it--or what I loved best of all, taking a trip to Arran, and there roaming about the hills to my heart's content. Glorious Arran! It was there I first began to feel my wings growing!"
"Was it a pleasant feeling?" enquired Helmsley, jocosely.
"Yes--it _was_!" replied Angus, clenching his right hand and bringing it down on his knee with emphasis; "whether they were goose wings or eagle wings didn't matter--the pricking of the budding quills was an _alive_ sensation! The mountains, the burns, the glens, all had something to say to me--or I thought they had--something new, vital and urgent. God Himself seemed to have some great command to impose upon me--and I was ready to hear and obey. I began to write--first verse--then prose--and by and by I got one or two things accepted here and there--not very much, but still enough to fire me to further endeavours. Then one summer, when I was taking a holiday at a little village near Loch Lomond, I got the final dig of the spur of fate--I fell in love."
Mary raised her eyes again and looked at him. A slow smile parted her lips.
"And did the girl fall in love with you?" she asked.
"For a time I believe she did,"--said Reay, and there was an under-tone of whimsical amusement in his voice as he spoke--"She was spending the summer in Scotland with her mother and father, and there wasn't anything for her to do. She didn't care for scenery very much--and I just came in as a sort of handy man to amuse her. She was a lovely creature in her teens,--I thought she was an angel--till--till I found her out."
"And then?" queried Helmsley.
"Oh well, then of course I was disillusioned. When I told her that I loved her more than anything else in the world, she laughed ever so sweetly, and said, 'I'm sure you do!' But when I asked her if she loved _me_, she laughed again, and said she didn't know what I was talking about--she didn't believe in love. 'What do you believe in?' I asked her. And she looked at me in the prettiest and most innocent way possible, and said quite calmly and slowly--'A rich marriage.' And my heart gave a great dunt in my side, for I knew it was all over. 'Then you won't marry _me_?'--I said--'for I'm only a poor journalist. But I mean to be famous some day!' 'Do you?' she said, and again that little laugh of hers rippled out like the tinkle of cold water--'Don't you think famous men are very tiresome? And they're always dreadfully poor!' Then I took hold of her hands, like the desperate fool I was, and kissed them, and said, 'Lucy, wait for me just a few years! Wait for me! You're so young'--for she was only seventeen, and still at school in Brighton somewhere--'You can afford to wait,--give me a chance!' And she looked down at the water--we were 'on the bonnie banks of Loch Lomond,' as the song says--in quite a picturesque little attitude of reflection, and sighed ever so prettily, and said--'I can't, Angus! You're very nice and kind!--and I like you very much!--but I am going to marry a millionaire!' Now you know why I hate millionaires."
"Did you say her name was Lucy?" asked Helmsley.
"Yes. Lucy Sorrel."
A bright flame leaped up in the fire and showed all three faces to one another--Mary's face, with its quietly absorbed expression of attentive interest--Reay's strongly moulded features, just now somewhat sternly shadowed by bitter memories--and Helmsley's thin, worn, delicately intellectual countenance, which in the brilliant rosy light flung upon it by the fire-glow, was like a fine waxen mask, impenetrable in its unmoved austerity and calm. Not so much as the faintest flicker of emotion crossed it at the mention of the name of the woman he knew so well,--the surprise he felt inwardly was not apparent outwardly, and he heard the remainder of Reay's narration with the most perfectly controlled imperturbability of demeanour.
"She told me then," proceeded Reay--"that her parents had spent nearly all they had upon her education, in order to fit her for a position as the wife of a rich man--and that she would have to do her best to 'catch'--that's the way she put it--to 'catch' this rich man as soon as she got a good opportunity. He was quite an old man, she said--old enough to be her grandfather. And when I asked her how she could reconcile it to her conscience to marry such a hoary-headed rascal----"
Here Helmsley interrupted him.
"Was he a hoary-headed rascal?"
"He must have been," replied Angus, warmly--"Don't you see he must?"
Helmsley smiled.
"Well--not exactly!" he submitted, with a gentle air of deference--"I think--perhaps--he might deserve a little pity for having to be 'caught' as you say just for his money's sake."
"Not a bit of it!" declared Reay--"Any old man who would marry a young girl like that condemns himself as a villain. An out-an-out, golden-dusted villain!"
"But _has_ he married her?" asked Mary.
Angus was rather taken aback at this question,--and rubbed his forehead perplexedly.
"Well, no, he hasn't--not yet--not that I know of, and I've watched the papers carefully too. Such a marriage couldn't take place without columns and columns of twaddle about it--all the dressmakers who made gowns for the bride would want a mention--and if they paid for it of course they'd get it. No--it hasn't come off yet--but it will. The venerable bridegroom that is to be has just gone abroad somewhere--so I see by one of the 'Society' rags,--probably to the States to make some more 'deals' in cash before his wedding."
"You know his name, then?"
"Oh yes! Everybody knows it, and knows him too! David Helmsley's too rich to hide his light under a bushel! They call him 'King David' in the city. Now your name's David--but, by Jove, what a difference in Davids!" And he laughed, adding quickly--"I prefer the David I see before me now, to the David I never saw!"
"Oh! You never saw the old rascal then?" murmured Helmsley, putting up one hand to stroke his moustache slowly down over the smile which he could not repress.
"Never--and don't want to! If I become famous--which I _will_ do,"--and here Angus set his teeth hard--"I'll make my bow at one of Mrs. Millionaire Helmsley's receptions one day! And how will she look then!"
"I should say she would look much the same as usual,"--said Helmsley, drily--"If she is the kind of young woman you describe, she is not likely to be overcome by the sight of a merely 'famous' man. You would have to be twice or three times as wealthy as herself to move her to any sense of respect for you. That is, if we are to judge by what our newspapers tell us of 'society' people. The newspapers are all we poor folk have got to go by."
"Yes--I've often thought of that!" and Angus rubbed his forehead again in a vigorous way as though he were trying to rub ideas out of it--"And I've pitied the poor folks from the bottom of my heart! They get pretty often misled--and on serious matters too."
"Oh, we're not all such fools as we seem,"--said Helmsley--"We can read between the lines as well as anyone--and we understand pretty clearly that it's only money which 'makes' the news. We read of 'society ladies' doing this, that and t' other thing, and we laugh at their doings--and when we read of a great lady conducting herself like an outcast, we feel a contempt for her such as we never visit on her poor sister of the streets. The newspapers may praise these women, but we 'common people' estimate them at their true worth--and that is--nothing! Now the girl you made an ideal of----"
"She was to be bought and sold,"--interrupted Reay; "I know that now. But I didn't know it then. She looked a sweet innocent angel,--with a pretty face and beautiful eyes--just the kind of creature we men fall in love with at first sight----"
"The kind of creature who, if you had married her, would have made you wretched for life,"--said Helmsley. "Be thankful you escaped her!"
"Oh, I'm thankful enough now!" and Reay pushed back his rebellious lock of hair again--"For when one has a great ambition in view, freedom is better than love----"
Helmsley raised his wrinkled, trembling hand.
"No, don't say that!" he murmured, gently--"Nothing--nothing in all the world is better than love!"
Involuntarily his eyes turned towards Mary with a strange wistfulness. There was an unspoken yearning in his face that was almost pain. Her quick instinctive sympathy responded to his thought, and rising, she went to him on the pretext of re-arranging the cushion in his chair, so that he might lean back more comfortably. Then she took his hand and patted it kindly.
"You're a sentimental old boy, aren't you, David!" she said, playfully--"You like being taken care of and fussed over! Of course you do! Was there ever a man that didn't!"
He was silent, but he pressed her caressing hand gratefully.
"No one has ever taken care of or fussed over _me_," said Reay--"I should rather like to try the experiment!"
Mary laughed good-humouredly.
"You must find yourself a wife,"--she said--"And then you'll see how you like it."
"But wives don't make any fuss over their husbands it seems to me," replied Reay--"At any rate in London, where I have lived for the past five years--husbands seem to be the last persons in the world whom their wives consider. I don't think I shall ever marry."
"I'm sure _I_ shan't,"--said Mary, smiling--and as she spoke, she bent over the fire, and threw a fresh log of wood on to keep up the bright glow which was all that illuminated the room, from which almost every pale glimmer of the twilight had now departed--"I'm an old maid. But I was an engaged girl once!"
Helmsley lifted up his head with sudden and animated interest.
"Were you, Mary?"
"Oh, yes!" And the smile deepened round her expressive mouth and played softly in her eyes--"Yes, David, really! I was engaged to a very good-looking young man in the electrical engineering business. And I was very fond of him. But when my father lost every penny, my good-looking young man went too. He said he couldn't possibly marry a girl with nothing but the clothes on her back. I cried very much at the time, and thought my heart was broken. But--it wasn't!"
"I should hope it wouldn't break for such a selfish rascal!" said Reay, warmly.
"Do you think he was more selfish than most?" queried Mary, thoughtfully--"There's a good many who would do as he did."
A silence followed. She sat down and resumed her work.
"Have you finished your story?" she asked Reay--"It has interested me so much that I'm hoping there's some more to tell."
As she spoke to him he started as if from a dream. He had been watching her so earnestly that he had almost forgotten what he had previously been talking about. He found himself studying the beautiful outline of her figure, and wondering why he had never before seen such gracious curves of neck and shoulder, waist and bosom as gave symmetrical perfection of shape to this simple woman born of the "common" people.
"More to tell?" he echoed, hastily,--"Well, there's a little--but not much. My love affair at Loch Lomond did one thing for me,--it made me work hard. I had a sort of desperate idea that I might wrest a fortune out of journalism by dint of sheer grinding at it--but I soon found out my mistake there. I toiled away so steadily and got such a firm hold of all the affairs of the newspaper office where I was employed, that one fine morning I was dismissed. My proprietor, genial and kindly as ever, said he found 'no fault'--but that he wanted 'a change.' I quite understood that. The fact is I knew too much--that's all. I had saved a bit, and so, with a few good letters of introduction, went on from Glasgow to London. There, in that great black ant-hill full of crawling sooty human life, I knocked about for a time from one newspaper office to another, doing any sort of work that turned up, just to keep body and soul together,--and at last I got a fairly good berth in the London branch of a big press syndicate. It was composed of three or four proprietors, ever so many editors, and an army of shareholders representing almost every class in Great Britain. Ah, those shareholders! There's the whole mischief of the press nowadays!"
"I suppose it's money again!" said Helmsley.
"Of course it is. Here's how the matter stands. A newspaper syndicate is like any other trading company, composed for the sole end and object of making as much profit out of the public as possible. The lion's portion naturally goes to the heads of the concern--then come the shareholders' dividends. The actual workers in the business, such as the 'editors,' are paid as little as their self-respect will allow them to take, and as for the other fellows _under_ the editors--well!--you can just imagine they get much less than the little their self-respect would claim, if they were not, most of them, so desperately poor, and so anxious for a foothold somewhere as to be ready to take anything. I took the first chance I could get, and hung on to it, not for the wretched pay, but for the experience, and for the insight it gave me into men and things. I witnessed the whole business;--the 'doctoring up' of social scandals,--the tampering with the news in order that certain items might not affect certain shares on the Stock Exchange,--the way 'discussions' of the most idiotic kind were started in the office just to fill up space, such as what was best to make the hair grow; what a baby ought to weigh at six months; what food authors write best on; and whether modern girls make as good wives as their mothers did, and so on. These things were generally got up by 'the fool of the office' as we called him--a man with a perpetual grin and an undyingly good opinion of himself. He was always put into harness when for some state or financial reason the actual facts had to be euphonised or even suppressed and the public 'let down gently.' For a time I was drafted off on the 'social' business--ugh?--how I hated it?"
"What did you have to do?" asked Mary, amused.
"Oh, I had to deal with a motley crowd of court flunkeys, Jews, tailors and dressmakers, and fearful-looking women catering for 'fashion,' who came with what they called 'news,' which was generally that 'Mrs. "Bunny" Bumpkin looked sweet in grey'--or that 'Miss "Toby" Tosspot was among the loveliest of the débutantes at Court.' Sometimes a son of Israel came along, all in a mortal funk, and said he 'didn't want it mentioned' that Mrs. So-and-So had dined with him at a certain public restaurant last night. Generally, he was a shareholder, and his orders had to be obeyed. The shareholders in fact had most to do with the 'society' news,--and they bored me nearly to death. The trifles they wanted 'mentioned' were innumerable--the other trifles they didn't want mentioned, were quite as endless. One day there was a regular row--a sort of earthquake in the place. Somebody had presumed to mention that the beautiful Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup had smoked several cigarettes with infinite gusto at a certain garden party,--now what are you laughing at, Miss Deane?"
"At the beautiful Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup!" and Mary's clear laughter rippled out in a silvery peal of purest merriment--"That's not her name surely!"
"Oh no, that's not her name!" and Angus laughed too--"It wouldn't do to give her real name!--but Ketchup's quite as good and high-sounding as the one she's got. And as I tell you, the whole 'staff' was convulsed. Three shareholders came down post haste to the office--one at full speed in a motor,--and said how _dare_ I mention Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup at all? It was like my presumption to notice that she had smoked! Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup's name must be kept out of the papers--she was a 'lady'! Oh, by Jove!--how I laughed!--I couldn't help myself! I just roared with laughter in the very faces of those shareholders! 'A lady!' said I--'Why, she's---- ' But I wasn't allowed to say what she was, for the shareholder who had arrived in the motor, fixed a deadly glance upon me and said--'If you value your po-seetion'--he was a Lowland Scot, with the Lowland accent--'if you value your po-seetion on this paper, you'll hold your tongue!' So I did hold my tongue then--but only because I meant to wag it more violently afterwards. I always devote Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup to the blue blazes, because I'm sure it was through her I lost my post. You see a shareholder in a paper has a good deal of influence, especially if he has as much as a hundred thousand shares. You'd be surprised if I told you the real names of some of the fellows who control newspaper syndicates!--you wouldn't believe it! Or at any rate, if you _did_ believe it, you'd never believe the newspapers!"
"I don't believe them now,"--said Helmsley--"They say one thing to-day and contradict it to-morrow."
"Oh, but that's like all news!" said Mary, placidly--"Even in our little village here, you never know quite what to believe. One morning you are told that Mrs. Badge's baby has fallen downstairs and broken its neck, and you've scarcely done being sorry for Mrs. Badge, when in comes Mrs. Badge herself, baby and all, quite well and smiling, and she says she 'never did hear such tales as there are in Wiercombe'!"
They all laughed.
"Well, there's the end of my story,"--said Angus--"I worked on the syndicate for two years, and then was given the sack. The cause of my dismissal was, as I told you, that I published a leading article exposing a mean and dirty financial trick on the part of a man who publicly assumed to be a world's benefactor--and he turned out to be a shareholder in the paper under an 'alias.' There was no hope for me after that--it was a worse affair than that of Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup. So I marched out of the office, and out of London--I meant to make for Exmoor, which is wild and solitary, because I thought I might find some cheap room in a cottage there, where I might live quietly on almost nothing and write my book--but I stumbled by chance on this place instead--and I rather like being so close to the sea."
"You are writing a book?" said Mary, her eyes resting upon him thoughtfully.
"Yes. I've got a room in the village for half-a-crown a week and 'board myself' as the good woman of the house says. And I'm perfectly happy!"
A long pause followed. The fire was dying down from a flame to a dull red glow, and a rush of wind against the kitchen window was accompanied by the light pattering of rain. Angus Reay rose.
"I must be going,"--he said--"I've made you quite a visitation! Old David is nearly asleep!"
Helmsley looked up.
"Not I!" and he smiled--"I'm very wide awake: I like your story, and I like _you_! Perhaps you'll come in again sometimes and have a chat with us?"
Reay glanced enquiringly at Mary, who had also risen from her chair, and was now lighting the lamp on the table.
"May I?" he asked hesitatingly.
"Why, of course!" And her eyes met his with hospitable frankness--"Come whenever you feel lonely!"
"I often do that!" he said.
"All the better!--then we shall often see you!"--she answered--"And you'll always be welcome!"
"Thank-you! I believe you mean it!"
Mary smiled.
"Why of course I do! I'm not a newspaper syndicate!"
"Nor a Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup!" put in Helmsley.
Angus threw back his head and gave one of his big joyous laughs.
"No! You're a long way off that!" he said--"Good-evening, David!"
And going up to the armchair where Helmsley sat he shook hands with him.
"Good-evening, Mr. Reay!" rejoined Helmsley, cheerily; "I'm very glad we met this afternoon!"
"So am I!" declared Angus, with energy--"I don't feel quite so much of a solitary bear as I did. I'm in a better temper altogether with the world in general!"
"That's right!" said Mary--"Whatever happens to you it's never the fault of the world, remember!--it's only the trying little ways of the people in it!"
She held out her hand in farewell, and he pressed it gently. Then he threw on his cap, and she opened her cottage door for him to pass out. A soft shower of rain blew full in their faces as they stood on the threshold.
"You'll get wet, I'm afraid!" said Mary.
"Oh, that's nothing!" And he buttoned his coat across his chest--"What's that lovely scent in the garden here, just close to the door?"
"It's the old sweetbriar bush,"--she replied--"It lasts in leaf till nearly Christmas and always smells so delicious. Shall I give you a bit of it?"
"It's too dark to find it now, surely!" said Angus.
"Oh, no! I can feel it!"
And stretching out her white hand into the raining darkness, she brought it back holding a delicate spray of odorous leaves.
"Isn't it sweet?" she said, as she gave it to him.
"It is indeed!" he placed the little sprig in his buttonhole. "Thank-you! Good-night!"
"Good-night!"
He lifted his hat and smiled into her eyes--then walked quickly through the tiny garden, opened the gate, shut it carefully behind him, and disappeared. Mary listened for a moment to the swish of the falling rain among the leaves, and the noise of the tumbling hill-torrent over its stony bed. Then she closed and barred the door.
"It's going to be a wet night, David!" she said, as she came back towards the fire--"And a bit rough, too, by the sound of the sea."
He did not answer immediately, but watched her attentively as she made up the fire, and cleared the table of the tea things, packing up the cups and plates and saucers in the neat and noiseless manner which was particularly her own, preparatory to carrying them all on a tray out to the little scullery adjoining the kitchen, which with its well polished saucepans, kettles, and crockery was quite a smart feature of her small establishment. Then--
"What do you think of him, Mary?" he asked suddenly.
"Of Mr. Reay?"
"Yes."
She hesitated a moment, looking intently at a small crack in one of the plates she was putting by.
"Well, I don't know, David!--it's rather difficult to say on such a short acquaintance--but he seems to me quite a good fellow."
"Quite a good fellow, yes!" repeated Helmsley, nodding gravely--"That's how he seems to me, too."
"I think,"--went on Mary, slowly--"that he's a thoroughly manly man,--don't you?" He nodded gravely again, and echoed her words----
"A thoroughly manly man!"
"And perhaps," she continued--"it would be pleasant for you, David, to have a chat with him now and then especially in the long winter evenings--wouldn't it?"
She had moved to his side, and now stood looking down upon him with such a wistful sweetness of expression, that he was content to merely watch her, without answering her question.
"Because those long winter evenings are sometimes very dull, you know!" she went on--"And I'm afraid I'm not very good company when I'm at work mending the lace--I have to take all my stitches so carefully that I dare not talk much lest I make a false knot."
He smiled.
"_You_ make a false knot!" he said--"You couldn't do it, if you tried! You'll never make a false knot--never!"--and his voice sank to an almost inaudible murmur--"Neither in your lace nor in your life!"
She looked at him a little anxiously.
"Are you tired, David?"
"No, my dear! Not tired--only thinking!"
"Well, you mustn't think too much,"--she said--"Thinking is weary work, sometimes!"
He raised his eyes and looked at her steadily.
"Mr. Reay was very frank and open in telling us all about himself, wasn't he, Mary?"
"Oh yes!" and she laughed--"But I think he is one of those men who couldn't possibly be anything else but frank and open."
"Oh, you do?"
"Yes."
"Don't you sometimes wonder,"--went on Helmsley slowly, keeping his gaze fixed on the fire--"why _I_ haven't told you all about myself?"
She met his eyes with a candid smile.
"No--I haven't thought about it!" she said.
"Why haven't you thought about it?" he persisted.
She laughed outright.
"Simply because I haven't! That's all!"
"Mary,"--he said, seriously--"You know I was not your 'father's friend'! You know I never saw your father!"
The smile still lingered in her eyes.
"Yes--I know that!"
"And yet you never ask me to give an account of myself!"
She thought he was worrying his mind needlessly, and bending over him took his hand in hers.
"No, David, I never ask impertinent questions!" she said--"I don't want to know anything more about you than you choose to tell. You seem to me like my dear father--not quite so strong as he was, perhaps--but I have taken care of you for so many weeks, that I almost feel as if you belonged to me! And I want to take care of you still, because I know you _must_ be taken care of. And I'm so well accustomed to you now that I shouldn't like to lose you, David--I shouldn't really! Because you've been so patient and gentle and grateful for the little I have been able to do for you, that I've got fond of you, David! Yes!--actually fond of you! What do you say to that?"
"Say to it!" he murmured, pressing the hand he held. "I don't know what to say to it, Mary!--except--God bless you!"
She was silent a minute--then she went on in a cheerfully rallying tone--
"So I don't want to know anything about you, you see! Now, as to Mr. Reay----"
"Ah, yes!" and Helmsley gave her a quick observant glance which she herself did not notice--"What about Mr. Reay?"
"Well it would be nice if we could cheer him up a little and make him bear his poor and lonely life more easily. Wouldn't it?"
"Cheer him up a little and make him bear his poor and lonely life more easily!" repeated Helmsley, slowly, "Yes. And do you think we can do that, Mary?"
"We can try!" she said, smiling--"At any rate, while he's living in Wiercombe, we can be friendly to him, and give him a bit of dinner now and then!"
"So we can!" agreed Helmsley--"Or rather, so _you_ can!"
"_We!_" corrected Mary--"_You're_ helping me to keep house now, David,--remember that!"
"Why I haven't paid half or a quarter of my debt to you yet!" he exclaimed.
"But you're paying it off every day,"--she answered; "Don't you fear! I mean to have every penny out of you that I can!"
She laughed gaily, and taking up the tray upon which she had packed all the tea-things, carried it out of the kitchen. Helmsley heard her singing softly to herself in the scullery, as she set to work to wash the cups and saucers. And bending his old eyes on the fire, he smiled,--and an indomitable expression of energetic resolve strengthened every line of his features.
"You mean to have every penny out of me that you can, my dear, do you!" he said, softly--"And so--if Love can find out the way--you will!"
CHAPTER XVI
The winter now closed in apace,--and though the foliage all about Weircombe was reluctant to fall, and kept its green, russet and gold tints well on into December, the high gales which blew in from the sea played havoc with the trembling leaves at last and brought them to the ground like the painted fragments of Summer's ruined temple. All the fishermen's boats were hauled up high and dry, and great stretches of coarse net like black webs, were spread out on the beach for drying and mending,--while through the tunnels scooped out of the tall castellated rocks which guarded either side of the little port, or "weir," the great billows dashed with a thunderous roar of melody, oftentimes throwing aloft fountains of spray well-nigh a hundred feet in height--spray which the wild wind caught and blew in pellets of salty foam far up the little village street. Helmsley was now kept a prisoner indoors,--he had not sufficient strength to buffet with a gale, or to stand any unusually sharp nip of cold,--so he remained very comfortably by the side of the fire, making baskets, which he was now able to turn out quickly with quite an admirable finish, owing to the zeal and earnestness with which he set himself to the work. Mary's business in the winter months was entirely confined to the lace-mending--she had no fine laundry work to do, and her time was passed in such household duties as kept her little cottage sweet and clean, in attentive guardianship and care of her "father's friend"--and in the delicate weaving of threads whereby the fine fabric which had once perchance been damaged and spoilt by flaunting pride, was made whole and beautiful again by simple patience. Helmsley was never tired of watching her. Whether she knelt down with a pail of suds, and scrubbed her cottage doorstep--or whether she sat quietly opposite to him, with the small "Charlie" snuggled on a rug between them, while she mended her lace, his eyes always rested upon her with deepening interest and tenderness. And he grew daily more conscious of a great peace and happiness--peace and happiness such as he had never known since his boyhood's days. He, who had found the ways of modern society dull to the last point of excruciating boredom, was not aware of any monotony in the daily round of the hours, which, laden with simple duties and pleasures, came and went softly and slowly like angel messengers stepping gently from one heaven to another. The world--or that which is called the world,--had receded from him altogether. Here, where he had found a shelter, there was no talk of finance--the claims of the perpetual "bridge" party had vanished like the misty confusion of a bad dream from the brain--the unutterably vulgar intrigues common to the so-called "better" class of twentieth century humanity could not intrude any claim on his attention or his time--the perpetual lending of money to perpetually dishonest borrowers was, for the present, a finished task--and he felt himself to be a free man--far freer than he had been for many years. And, to add to the interest of his days, he became engrossed in a scheme--a strange scheme which built itself up in his head like a fairy palace, wherein everything beautiful, graceful, noble, helpful and precious, found place and position, and grew from promise to fulfilment as easily as a perfect rosebud ripens to a perfect rose. But he said nothing of his thoughts. He hugged them, as it were, to himself, and toyed with them as though they were jewels,--precious jewels selected specially to be set in a crown of inestimable worth. Meanwhile his health kept fairly equable, though he was well aware within his own consciousness that he did not get stronger. But he was strong enough to be merry at times--and his kindly temper and cheery conversation made him a great favourite with the Weircombe folk, who were never tired of "looking in" as they termed it, on Mary, and "'avin' a bit of a jaw with old David."
Sociable evenings they had too, during that winter--evenings when Angus Reay came in to tea and stayed to supper, and after supper entertained them by singing in a deep baritone voice as soft as honey, the old Scotch songs now so hopelessly "out of fashion"--such as "My Nannie O"--"Ae fond kiss"--and "Highland Mary," in which last exquisite ballad he was always at his best. And Mary sang also, accompanying herself on a quaint old Hungarian zither, which she said had been left with her father as guarantee for ten shillings which he had lent to a street musician wandering about Barnstaple. The street musician disappeared and the ten shillings were never returned, so Mary took possession of the zither, and with the aid of a cheap instruction book, managed to learn enough of its somewhat puzzling technique to accompany her own voice with a few full, rich, plaintive chords. And it was in this fashion that Angus heard her first sing what she called "A song of the sea," running thus:
I heard the sea cry out in the night Like a fretful child-- Moaning under the pale moonlight In a passion wild-- And my heart cried out with the sea, in tears, For the sweet lost joys of my vanished years!
I heard the sea laugh out in the noon Like a girl at play-- All forgot was the mournful moon In the dawn of day! And my heart laughed out with the sea, in gladness, And I thought no more of bygone sadness.
I think the sea is a part of me With its gloom and glory-- What Has Been, and what yet Shall Be Is all its story; Rise up, O Heart, with the tidal flow, And drown the sorrows of Long Ago!
Something eerie and mystical there was in these words, sung as she sang them in a low, soft, contralto, sustained by the pathetic quiver of the zither strings throbbing under the pressure of her white fingers, and Angus asked her where she had learned the song.
"I found it,"--she answered, somewhat evasively.
"Did you compose it yourself?"
She flushed a little.
"How can you imagine such a thing?"
He was silent, but "imagined" the more. And after this he began to show her certain scenes and passages in the book he was writing, sometimes reading them aloud to her with all that eager eloquence which an author who loves and feels his work is bound to convey into the pronounced expression of it. And she listened, absorbed and often entranced, for there was no gain-saying the fact that Angus Reay was a man of genius. He was inclined to underrate rather than overestimate his own abilities, and often showed quite a pathetic mistrust of himself in his very best and most original conceptions.
"When I read to you,"--he said to her, one day--"You must tell me the instant you feel bored. That's a great point! Because if _you_ feel bored, other people who read the book will feel bored exactly as you do and at the very same passage. And you must criticise me mercilessly! Rend me to pieces--tear my sentences to rags, and pick holes in every detail, if you like! That will do me a world of good!"
Mary laughed.
"But why?" she asked, "Why do you want me to be so unkind to you?"
"It won't be unkind,"--he declared--"It will be very helpful. And I'll tell you why. There's no longer any real 'criticism' of literary work in the papers nowadays. There's only extravagant eulogium written up by an author's personal friends and wormed somehow into the press--or equally extravagant abuse, written and insinuated in similar fashion by an author's personal enemies. Well now, you can't live without having both friends and enemies--you generally have more of the latter than the former, particularly if you are successful. There's nothing a lazy man won't do to 'down' an industrious one,--nothing an unknown scrub won't attempt in the way of trying to injure a great fame. It's a delightful world for that sort of thing!--so truly 'Christian,' pleasant and charitable! But the consequence of all these mean and petty 'personal' views of life is, that sound, unbiased, honest literary criticism is a dead art. You can't get it anywhere. And yet if you could, there's nothing that would be so helpful, or so strengthening to a man's work. It would make him put his best foot foremost. I should like to think that my book when it comes out, would be 'reviewed' by a man who had no prejudices, no 'party' politics, no personal feeling for or against me,--but who simply and solely considered it from an impartial, thoughtful, just and generous point of view--taking it as a piece of work done honestly and from a deep sense of conviction. Criticism from fellows who just turn over the pages of a book to find fault casually wherever they can--(I've seen them at it in newspaper offices!) or to quote unfairly mere scraps of sentences without context,--or to fly off into a whirlwind of personal and scurrilous calumnies against an author whom they don't know, and perhaps never will know,--that sort of thing is quite useless to me. It neither encourages nor angers me. It is a mere flabby exhibition of incompetency--much as if a jelly-fish should try to fight a sea-gull! Now you,--if you criticise me,--your criticism will be valuable, because it will be quite honest--there will be no 'personal' feeling in it----"
She raised her eyes to his and smiled.
"No?"
Something warm and radiant in her glance flashed into his soul and thrilled it strangely. Vaguely startled by an impression which he did not try to analyse, he went on hastily--"No--because you see you are neither my friend nor my enemy, are you?"
She was quite silent.
"I mean,"--he continued, blundering along somewhat lamely,--"You don't hate me very much, and you don't like me very much. I'm just an ordinary man to you. Therefore you're bound to be perfectly impartial, because what I do is a matter of 'personal' indifference to you. That's why your criticism will be so helpful and valuable."
She bent her head closely over the lace she was mending for a minute or two, as though she were making a very intricate knot. Then she looked up again.
"Well, if you wish it, I'll tell you just what I think," she said, quietly--"But you mustn't call it criticism. I'm not clever enough to judge a book. I only know what pleases _me_,--and what pleases me may not please the world. I know very little about authors, and I've taught myself all that I do know. I love Shakespeare,--but I could not explain to you why I love him, because I'm not clever enough. I only feel his work,--I feel that it's all right and beautiful and wonderful--but I couldn't criticise it."
"No one can,--no one should!" said Reay, warmly--"Shakespeare is above all criticism!"
"But is he not always being criticised?" she asked.
"Yes. By little men who cannot understand greatness,"--he answered--"It gives a kind of 'scholarly importance' to the little men, but it leaves the great one unscathed."
This talk led to many others of a similar nature between them, and Reay's visits to Mary's cottage became more and more frequent. David Helmsley, weaving his baskets day by day, began to weave something more delicate and uncommon than the withes of willow,--a weaving which went on in his mind far more actively than the twisting and plaiting of the osiers in his hands. Sometimes in the evenings, when work was done, and he sat in his comfortable easy chair by the fire watching Mary at her sewing and Angus talking earnestly to her, he became so absorbed in his own thoughts that he scarcely heard their voices, and often when they spoke to him, he started from a profound reverie, unconscious of their words. But it was not the feebleness or weariness of age that made him seem at times indifferent to what was going on around him--it was the intensity and fervour of a great and growing idea of happiness in his soul,--an idea which he cherished so fondly and in such close secrecy, as to be almost afraid to whisper it to himself lest by some unhappy chance it should elude his grasp and vanish into nothingness.
And so the time went on to Christmas and New Year. Weircombe kept these festivals very quietly, yet not without cheerfulness. There was plenty of holly about, and the children, plunging into the thick of the woods at the summit of the "coombe" found mistletoe enough for the common need. The tiny Church was prettily decorated by the rector's wife and daughters, assisted by some of the girls of the village, and everybody attended service on Christmas morning, not only because it was Christmas, but because it was the last time their own parson would preach to them, before he went away for three months or more to a warm climate for the benefit of his health. But Helmsley did not join the little crowd of affectionate parishioners--he stayed at home while Mary went, as she said "to pray for him." He watched her from the open cottage door, as she ascended the higher part of the "coombe," dressed in a simple stuff gown of darkest blue, with a prim little "old maid's" bonnet, as she called it, tied neatly under her rounded white chin--and carrying in her hand a much worn "Book of Common Prayer" which she held with a certain delicate reverence not often shown to holy things by the church-going women of the time. Weircombe Church had a small but musical chime of bells, presented to it by a former rector--and the silvery sweetness of the peal just now ringing was intensified by the close proximity of the mountain stream, which, rendered somewhat turbulent by recent rains, swept along in a deep swift current, carrying the melody of the chimes along with it down to the sea and across the waves in broken pulsation, till they touched with a faint mysterious echo the masts of home-returning ships, and brought a smile to the faces of sailors on board who, recognising the sound, said "Weircombe bells, sure-_ly_!"
Helmsley stood listening, lost in meditation. To anyone who could have seen him then, a bent frail figure just within the cottage door, with his white hair, white beard, and general appearance of gentle and resigned old age, he would have seemed nothing more than a venerable peasant, quietly satisfied with his simple surroundings, and as far apart from every association of wealth, as the daisy in the grass is from the star in the sky. Yet, in actual fact, his brain was busy weighing millions of money,--the fate of an accumulated mass of wealth hung on the balance of his decision,--and he was mentally arranging his plans with all the clearness, precision and practicality which had distinguished him in his biggest financial schemes,--schemes which had from time to time amazed and convulsed the speculating world. A certain wistful sadness touched him as he looked on the quiet country landscape in the wintry sunlight of this Christmas morn,--some secret instinctive foreboding told him that it might be the last Christmas he should ever see. And a sudden wave of regret swept over his soul,--regret that he had not appreciated the sweet things of life more keenly when he had been able to enjoy their worth. So many simple joys missed!--so many gracious and helpful sentiments discarded!--all the best of his years given over to eager pursuit of gold,--not because he cared for gold really, but because, owing to a false social system which perverted the moral sense, it seemed necessary to happiness. Yet he had proved it to be the very last thing that could make a man happy. The more money, the less enjoyment of it--the greater the wealth, the less the content. Was this according to law?--the spiritual law of compensation, which works steadily behind every incident which we may elect to call good or evil? He thought it must be so. This very festival--Christmas--how thoroughly he had been accustomed by an effete and degenerate "social set" to regard it as a "bore,"--an exploded superstition--a saturnalia of beef and pudding--a something which merely served as an excuse for throwing away good money on mere stupid sentiment. "Stupid" sentiment? Had he ever thought true, tender, homely sentiment "stupid"? Yes,--perhaps he had, when in the bold carelessness of full manhood he had assumed that the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong--but now, when the shadows were falling--when, perhaps, he would never hear the Christmas bells again, or be troubled by the "silly superstitions" of loving, praying, hoping, believing humanity, he would have given much could he have gone back in fancy to every Christmas of his life and seen each one spent cheerily amid the warm associations of such "sentiments" as make friendship valuable and lasting. He looked up half vaguely at the sky, clear blue on this still frosty morning, and was conscious of tears that crept smartingly behind his eyes and for a moment dimmed his sight. And he murmured dreamily--
"Behold we know not anything; I can but trust that good shall fall At last--far off--at last, to all-- And every winter change to spring!"
A tall, athletic figure came between him and the light, and Angus Reay's voice addressed him--
"Hullo, David! A merry Christmas to you! Do you know you are standing out in the cold? What would Miss Mary say?"
"Miss Mary" was the compromise Angus hit upon between "Miss Deane" and "Mary,"--considering the first term too formal, and the last too familiar.
Helmsley smiled.
"Miss Mary has gone to church,"--he replied--"I thought you had gone too."
Reay gave a slight gesture of mingled regret and annoyance.
"No--I never go to church,"--he said--"But don't you think I despise the going. Not I. I wish I could go to church! I'd give anything to go as I used to do with my father every Sunday."
"And why can't you?"
"Because the church is not what it used to be,"--declared Reay--"Don't get me on that argument, David, or I shall never cease talking! Now, see here!--if you stand any longer at that open door you'll get a chill! You go inside the house and imitate Charlie's example--look at him!" And he pointed to the tiny toy terrier snuggled up as usual in a ball of silky comfort on the warm hearth--"Small epicure! Come back to your chair, David, and sit by the fire--your hands are quite cold."
Helmsley yielded to the persuasion, not because he felt cold, but because he was rather inclined to be alone with Reay for a little. They entered the house and shut the door.
"Doesn't it look a different place without her!" said Angus, glancing round the trim little kitchen--"As neat as a pin, of course, but all the life gone from it."
Helmsley smiled, but did not answer. Seating himself in his armchair, he spread out his thin old hands to the bright fire, and watched Reay as he stood near the hearth, leaning one arm easily against a rough beam which ran across the chimney piece.
"She is a wonderful woman!" went on Reay, musingly; "She has a power of which she is scarcely conscious."
"And what is that?" asked Helmsley, slowly rubbing his hands with quite an abstracted air.
Angus laughed lightly, though a touch of colour reddened his bronzed cheeks.
"The power that the old alchemists sought and never could find!" he answered--"The touch that transmutes common metals to fine gold, and changes the every-day prose of life to poetry."
Helmsley went on rubbing his hands slowly.
"It's so extraordinary, don't you think, David,"--he continued--"that there should be such a woman as Miss Mary alive at all?"
Helmsley looked up at him questioningly, but said nothing.
"I mean,"--and Angus threw out his hand with an impetuous gesture--"that considering all the abominable, farcical tricks women play nowadays, it is simply amazing to find one who is contented with a simple life like this, and who manages to make that simple life so gracious and beautiful!"
Still Helmsley was silent.
"Now, just think of that girl I've told you about--Lucy Sorrel,"--proceeded Angus--"Nothing would have contented her in all this world!"
"Not even her old millionaire?" suggested Helmsley, placidly.
"No, certainly not! Poor old devil! He'll soon find himself put on the shelf if he marries her. He won't be able to call his soul his own! If he gives her diamonds, she'll want more diamonds--if he covers her and stuffs her with money, she'll never have enough! She'll want all she can get out of him while he lives and everything he has ever possessed when he's dead."
Helmsley rubbed his hands more vigorously together.
"A very nice young lady," he murmured. "Very nice indeed! But if you judge her in this way now, why did you ever fall in love with her?"
"She was pretty, David!" and Reay smiled--"That's all! My passion for her was skin-deep! And hers for me didn't even touch the cuticle! She was pretty--as pretty as a wax-doll,--perfect eyes, perfect hair, perfect figure, perfect complexion--ugh! how I hate perfection!"
And taking up the poker, he gave a vigorous blow to a hard lump of coal in the grate, and split it into a blaze.
"I hate perfection!" he resumed--"Or rather, I hate what passes for perfection, for, as a matter of fact, there's nothing perfect. And I specially and emphatically hate the woman that considers herself a 'beauty,' that gets herself photographed as a 'beauty,' that the press reporter speaks of as a 'beauty,'--and that affronts you with her 'beauty' whenever you look at her, as though she were some sort of first-class goods for sale. Now Miss Mary is a beautiful woman--and she doesn't seem to know it."
"Her time for vanity is past,"--said Helmsley, sententiously--"She is an old maid."
"Old maid be shot!" exclaimed Angus, impetuously--"By Jove! Any man might be proud to marry her!"
A keen, sharp glance, as incisive as any that ever flashed up and down the lines of a business ledger, gleamed from under Helmsley's fuzzy brows.
"Would you?" he asked.
"Would I marry her?" And Angus reddened suddenly like a boy--"Dear old David, bless you! That's just what I want you to help me to do!"
For a moment such a great wave of triumph swept over Helmsley's soul that he could not speak. But he mastered his emotion by an effort.
"I'm afraid,"--he said--"I'm afraid I should be no use to you in such a business,--you'd much better speak to her yourself--"
"Why, of course I mean to speak to her myself,"--interrupted Reay, warmly--"Don't be dense, David! You don't suppose I want _you_ to speak for me, do you? Not a bit of it! Only before I speak, I do wish you could find out whether she likes me a little--because--because--I'm afraid she doesn't look upon me at all in _that_ light----"
"In what light?" queried Helmsley, gently.
"As a lover,"--replied Angus--"She's given up thinking of lovers."
Helmsley leaned back in his chair, and clasping his hands together so that the tips of his fingers met, looked over them in almost the same meditative businesslike way as he had looked at Lucy Sorrel when he had questioned her as to her ideas of her future.
"Well, naturally she has,"--he answered--"Lovers have given up thinking of _her_!"
"I hope they have!" said Angus, fervently--"I hope I have no rivals! For my love for her is a jealous love, David! I must be all in all to her, or nothing! I must be the very breath of her breath, the life of her life! I must!--or I am no use to her. And I want to be of use. I want to work for her, to look upon her as the central point of all my actions--the very core of ambition and endeavour,--so that everything I do may be well done enough to meet with her praise. If she does not like it, it will be worthless. For her soul is as pure as the sunlight and as full of great depths as the sea! Simplest and sweetest of women as she is, she has enough of God in her to make a man live up to the best that is in him!"
His voice thrilled with passion as he spoke--and Helmsley felt a strange contraction at his heart--a pang of sharp memory, desire and regret all in one, which moved him to a sense of yearning for this love which he had never known--this divine and wonderful emotion whose power could so transform a man as to make him seem a very king among men. For so Angus Reay looked just now, with his eyes flashing unutterable tenderness, and his whole aspect expressive of a great hope born of a great ideal. But he restrained the feeling that threatened to over-master him, and merely said very quietly, and with a smile--
"I see you are very much in love with her, Mr. Reay!"
"In love?" Angus laughed--"No, my dear old David! I'm not a bit 'in love.' I love her! That's love with a difference. But you know how it is with me. I haven't a penny in the world but just what I told you must last me for a year--and I don't know when I shall make any more. So that I wouldn't be such a cad as to speak to her about it yet. But--if I could only get a little hope,--if I could just find out whether she liked me a little, that would give me more energy in my work, don't you see? And that's where you could help me, David!"
Helmsley smiled ever so slightly.
"Tell me how,"--he said.
"Well, you might talk to her sometimes and ask her if she ever thinks of getting married--"
"I have done that,"--interrupted Helmsley--"and she has always said 'No.'"
"Never mind what she _has_ said--ask her again, David,"--persisted Angus--"And then lead her on little by little to talk about me--"
"Lead her on to talk about you--yes!" and Helmsley nodded his head sagaciously.
"David, my dear old man, you _will_ interrupt me,"--and Angus laughed like a boy--"Lead her on, I say,--and find out whether she likes me ever so little--and then----"
"And then?" queried Helmsley, his old eyes beginning to sparkle--"Must I sing your praises to her?"
"Sing my praises! No, by Jove!--there's nothing to praise in me. I don't want you to say a word, David. Let _her_ speak--hear what _she_ says--and then--and then tell _me_!"
"Then tell _you_--yes--yes, I see!" And Helmsley nodded again in a fashion that was somewhat trying to Reay's patience. "But, suppose she finds fault with you, and says you are not at all the style of man she likes--what then?"
"Then,"--said Reay, gloomily--"my book will never be finished!"
"Dear, dear!" Helmsley raised his hands with a very well acted gesture of timid concern--"So bad as all that!"
"So bad as all that!" echoed Reay, with a quick sigh; "Or rather so good as all that. I don't know how it has happened, David, but she has quite suddenly become the very life of my work. I don't think I could get on with a single page of it, if I didn't feel that I could go to her and ask her what she thinks of it."
"But,"--said Helmsley, in a gentle, argumentative way--"all this is very strange! She is not an educated woman."
Reay laughed lightly.
"No? What do you call an educated woman, David?"
Helmsley thought a moment. The situation was a little difficult, for he had to be careful not to say too much.
"Well, I mean,"--he said, at last--"She is not a lady."
Reay's eyes flashed sudden indignation.
"Not a lady!" he ejaculated--"Good God! Who is a lady then?"
Helmsley glanced at him covertly. How fine the man looked, with his tall, upright figure, strong, thoughtful face, and air of absolute determination!
"I'm afraid,"--he murmured, humbly--"I'm afraid I don't know how to express myself,--but what I want to say is that she is not what the world would call a lady,--just a simple lace-mender,--real 'ladies' would not ask her to their houses, or make a friend of her, perhaps--"
"She's a simple lace-mender,--I was a common cowherd,"--said Angus, grimly--"Do you think those whom the world calls 'ladies' would make a friend of _me_?"
Helmsley smiled.
"You're a man--and to women it doesn't matter what a man _was_, so long as he _is_ something. You were a cowherd, as you say--but you educated yourself at a University and got a degree. In that way you've raised yourself to the rank of a gentleman--"
"I was always that,"--declared Angus, boldly, "even as a cowherd! Your arguments won't hold with me, David! A gentleman is not made by a frock coat and top hat. And a lady is not a lady because she wears fine clothes and speaks one or two foreign languages very badly. For that's about all a 'lady's' education amounts to nowadays. According to Victorian annals, 'ladies' used to be fairly accomplished--they played and sang music well, and knew that it was necessary to keep up intelligent conversation and maintain graceful manners--but they've gone back to sheer barbarism in the frantic ugliness of their performances at hockey--and they've taken to the repulsive vices of Charles the Second's time in gambling and other immoralities. No, David! I don't take kindly to the 'ladies' who disport themselves under the benevolent dispensation of King Edward the Seventh."
Helmsley was silent. After a pause, Reay went on--
"You see, David, I'm a poor chap--poorer than Mary is. If I could get a hundred, or say, two hundred pounds for my book when it is finished, I could ask her to marry me then, because I could bring that money to her and do something to keep up the home. I never want anything sweeter or prettier than this little cottage to live in. If she would let me share it with her as her husband, we should live a perfectly happy life--a life that thousands would envy us! That is, of course, if she loved me."
"Ay!--that's a very important 'if,'" said Helmsley.
"I know it is. That's why I want you to help me to find out her mind, David--will you? Because, if you should discover that I am objectionable to her in any way, it would be better for me, I think, to go straight away from Weircombe, and fight my trouble out by myself. Then, you see, she would never know that I wanted to bother her with my life-long presence. Because she's very happy as she is,--her face has all the lovely beauty of perfect content--and I'd rather do anything than trouble her peace."
There followed a pause. The fire crackled and burned with a warm Christmas glow, and Charlie, uncurling his soft silky body, stretched out each one of his tiny paws separately, with slow movements expressive of intense comfort. If ever that little dog had known what it was to lie in the lap of luxury amid aristocratic surroundings, it was certain that he was conscious of being as well off in a poor cottage as in a palace of a king. And after a minute or two, Helmsley raised himself in his chair and held out his hand to Angus Reay, who grasped it warmly.
"I'll do my best,"--he said, quietly--"I know what you mean--and I think your feeling does you honour. Of course you know I'm only a kind of stranger here--just a poor old lonely man, very dependent on Miss Deane for her care of me, and trying my best to show that I'm not ungrateful to her for all her goodness--and I mustn't presume too far--but--I'll do my best. And I hope--I hope all will be well!" He paused--and pressed Reay's hand again--then glanced up at the quaint sheep-faced clock that ticked monotonously against the kitchen wall. "She will be coming back from church directly,"--he continued--"Won't you go and meet her?"
"Shall I?" And Reay's face brightened.
"Do!"
Another moment, and Helmsley was alone--save for the silent company of the little dog stretched out upon the hearth. And he lost himself in a profound reverie, the while he built a castle in the air of his own designing, in which Self had no part. How many airy fabrics of beauty and joy had he not raised one after the other in his mind, only to see them crumble into dust!--but this one, as he planned it in his thoughts, nobly uplifted above all petty limits, with all the light of a broad beneficence shining upon it, and a grand obliteration of his own personality serving as the very cornerstone of its foundation, seemed likely to be something resembling the house spoken of by Christ, which was built upon a rock--against which neither winds, nor rains, nor floods could prevail. And when Mary came back from Church, with Reay accompanying her, she found him looking very happy. In fact, she told him he had quite "a Christmas face."
"What is a Christmas face, Mary?" he asked, smiling.
"Don't you know? A face that looks glad because other people are glad,"--she replied, simply.
An expressive glance flashed from Reay's eyes,--a glance which Helmsley caught and understood in all its eloquent meaning.
"We had quite a touching little sermon this morning," she went on, untying her bonnet strings, and taking off that unassuming head-gear--"It was just a homely simple, kind talk. Our parson's sorry to be going away, but he hopes to be back with us at the beginning of April, fit and well again. He's looking badly, poor soul! I felt a bit like crying when he wished us all a bright Christmas and happy New Year, and said he hoped God would allow him to see us all again."
"Who is going to take charge of the parish in his absence?" asked Reay.
"A Mr. Arbroath. He isn't a very popular man in these parts, and I can't think why he has volunteered to come here, seeing he's got several parishes of his own on the other side of Dunster to attend to. But I'm told he also wants a change--so he's got some one to take his duties, and he is coming along to us. Of course, it's well known that he likes to try a new parish whenever he can."
"Has he any reason for that special taste?" enquired Reay.
"Oh yes!" answered Mary, quietly--"He's a great High Churchman, and he wants to introduce Mass vestments and the confessional whenever he can. Some people say that he receives an annual payment from Rome for doing this kind of work."
"Another form of the Papal secret service!" commented Reay, drily--"I understand! I've seen enough of it!"
Mary had taken a clean tablecloth from an oaken press, and was spreading it out for dinner.
"Well," she said, smilingly, "he won't find it very advantageous to him to take the duties here. For every man and woman in the village intends to keep away from Church altogether if he does not give us our services exactly as we have always been accustomed to them. And it won't be pleasant for him to read prayers and preach to empty seats, will it?"
"Scarcely!"
And Angus, standing near the fire, bent his brows with meditative sternness on the glowing flames. Then suddenly addressing Helmsley, he said--"You asked me a while ago, David, why I didn't go to Church. I told you I wished I could go, as I used to do with my father every Sunday. For, when I was a boy, our Sundays were real devotional days--our preachers _felt_ what they preached, and when they told us to worship the great Creator 'in spirit and in truth,' we knew they were in earnest about it. Now, religion is made a mere 'party' system--a form of struggle as to which sect can get the most money for its own purposes. Christ,--the grand, patient, long-suffering Ideal of all goodness, is gone from it! How can He remain with it while it is such a Sham! Our bishops in England truckle to Rome--and, Rome itself is employing every possible means to tamper with the integrity of the British constitution. The spies and emissaries of Rome are everywhere--both in our so-called 'national' Church and in our most distinctly _un_-national Press!"
Helmsley listened with keen interest. As a man of business, education, observation, and discernment, he knew that what Reay said was true,--but in his assumed rôle of a poor and superannuated old office clerk, who had been turned adrift from work by reason of age and infirmities, he had always to be on his guard against expressing his opinion too openly or frankly.
"I don't know much about the newspapers,"--he said, mildly--"I read those I can get, just for the news--but there isn't much news, it appears to me----"
"And what there is may be contradicted in an hour's time,"--said Angus--"I tell you, David, when I started working in journalism, I thought it was the finest profession going. It seemed to me to have all the responsibilities of the world on its back. I considered it a force with which to educate, help, and refine all peoples, and all classes. But I found it was only a money speculation after all. How much profit could be made out of it? That was the chief point of action. That was the mainspring of every political discussion--and in election times, one side had orders to abuse the other, merely to keep up the popular excitement. By Jove! I should like to take a select body of electors 'behind the scenes' of a newspaper office and show them how the whole business is run!"
"You know too much, evidently!" said Mary smiling--"I don't wonder you were dismissed!"
He laughed--then as suddenly frowned.
"I swear as I stand here," he said emphatically, "that the press is not serving the people well! Do you know--no, of course you don't!--but I can tell you for a fact that a short time ago an offer was made from America through certain financial powers in the city, to buy up several of the London dailies, and run them on American lines![1] Germany had a finger in the pie, too, through her German Jews!"
Helmsley looked at his indignant face with a slight imperceptible smile.
"Well!" he said, with a purposely miscomprehending air.
"Well! You say 'Well,' David, as if such a proposition contained nothing remarkable. That's because you don't understand! Imagine for a moment the British Press being run by America!"
Helmsley stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"I _can't_ imagine it,"--he said.
"No--of course you can't! But a few rascally city financiers _could_ imagine it, and more than that, were prepared to carry the thing through. Then, the British people would have been led, guided, advised, and controlled by a Yankee syndicate! And the worst of it is that this same British people would have been kept in ignorance of the 'deal.' They would actually have been paying their pennies to keep up the shares of a gang of unscrupulous rascals whose sole end and object was to get the British press into their power! Think of it!"
"But did they succeed?" asked Helmsley.
"No, they didn't. Somebody somewhere had a conscience. Somebody somewhere refused to 'swop' the nation's much boasted 'liberty of the press' for so much cash down. I believe the 'Times' is backed by the Rothschilds, and managed by American advertisers--I don't know whether it is so or not--but I _do_ know that the public ought to be put on their guard. If I were a powerful man and a powerful speaker I would call mass meetings everywhere, and urge the people not to purchase a single newspaper till each one published in its columns a full and honest list of the shareholders concerned in it. Then the public would have a chance of seeing where they are. At present they _don't_ know where they are."
"Well, you know very well where _you_ are!" said Mary, interrupting him at this juncture--"You are in my house,--it's Christmas Day, and dinner's ready!"
He laughed, and they all three sat down to table. It had been arranged for fully a week before that Angus should share his Christmas dinner with Mary and "old David"--and a very pleasant and merry meal they made of it. And in the afternoon and evening some of the villagers came in to gossip--and there was singing of songs, and one or two bashful attempts on the part of certain gawky lads to kiss equally gawky girls under the mistletoe. And Mary, as hostess of the haphazard little party, did her best to promote kindly feeling among them all, effacing herself so utterly, and playing the "old maid" with such sweet and placid loveliness that Angus became restless, and was moved by a feverish desire to possess himself of one of the little green twigs with white berries, which, looking so innocent, were apparently so provocative, and to try its effect by holding it suddenly above the glorious masses of her brown hair, which shone with the soft and shimmering hue of evening sunlight. But he dared not. Kissing under the mistletoe was all very well for boys and girls--but for a mature bachelor of thirty-nine and an "old maid" of thirty-five, these uncouth and calf-like gambollings lacked dignity. Moreover, when he looked at Mary's pure profile--the beautifully shaped eyes, classic mouth, and exquisite line of neck and shoulder, the very idea of touching those lips with a kiss given in mere lightness, seemed fraught with impertinence and irreverence. If ever he kissed Mary, he thought,--and then all the powers of his mind galloped off like wild horses let loose on a sun-baked ranch--if ever he kissed Mary! What a dream!--what a boldness unprecedented! But again--if ever he kissed her, it must be with the kiss of a lover, for whom such a token of endearment was the sign of a sacred betrothal. And he became so lost and abstracted in his musings that he almost forgot the simple village merriment around him, and only came back to himself a little when the party broke up altogether, and he himself had to say "good-night," and go with the rest. Mary, while giving him her hand in farewell, looked at him with a sisterly solicitude.
"You're tired, Mr. Reay,"--she said--"I'm afraid we've been too noisy for you, haven't we? But one can't keep boys and girls quiet!"
"I don't want them kept quiet,"--said Reay, holding her hand very hard--"And I'm not tired. I've only been thinking."
"Ah! Of your book?"
"Yes. Of my book."
He went then, and came no more to the cottage till a week later when it was New Year's Eve. This they celebrated very quietly--just they three alone. Mary thought it somewhat imprudent for "old David" to sit up till midnight in order to hear the bells "ring out the Old, ring in the New"--but he showed a sudden vigorous resolution about it which was not to be gainsaid.
"Let me have my way, my dear,"--he implored her--"I may never see another New Year!"
"Nonsense, David!" she said cheerily--"You will see many and many a one, please God!"
"Please God, I shall!" he answered, quietly--"But if it should not please God--then--"
"There!--you want to stay up, and you shall stay up!" she declared, smiling--"After all, as Mr. Reay is with us, the time won't perhaps seem so long for you."
"But for you,"--put in Angus--"it will seem very long won't it!"
"Oh, I always sit up for the coming-in of the New Year,"--she replied--"Father used to do it, and I like to keep up all father's ways. Only I thought David might feel too tired. You must sing to us, Mr. Reay, to pass the hours away."
"And so must you!" he replied.
And she did sing that night as she had never sung to them before, with a fuller voice and more passion than she had hitherto shown,--one little wild ballad in particular taking Reay's fancy so much that he asked her to sing it more than once. The song contained just three six-line stanzas, having little merit save in their suggestiveness.
Oh love, my love! I have giv'n you my heart Like a rose full-blown, With crimson petals trembling apart-- It is all your own-- What will you do with it. Dearest,--say? Keep it for ever or throw it away?
Oh love, my love! I have giv'n you my life, Like a ring of gold; Symbol of peace in a world of strife, To have and to hold. What will you do with it, Dearest,--say? Treasure it always, or throw it away?
Oh love, my love! Have all your will-- I am yours to the end; Be false or faithful--comfort or kill, Be lover or friend,-- Where gifts are given they must remain, I never shall ask for them back again!
"Do you know that you have a very beautiful voice, Miss Mary?" said Angus, after hearing this for the second time.
"Oh, I don't think so at all,"--she answered, quickly; "Father used to like to hear me sing--but I can only just give ballads their meaning, and pronounce the words carefully so the people may know what I am trying to sing about. I've no real voice."
"You have!" And Angus turned to Helmsley for his opinion--"Hasn't she, David?"
"Her voice is the sweetest _I_ ever heard,"--replied Helmsley--"But then I'm not much of a judge."
And his thoughts went roving back to certain entertainments in London which he had given for the benefit of his wealthy friends, when he had paid as much as five or six hundred guineas in fees to famous opera singers, that they might shriek or warble, as their respective talents dictated, to crowds of indifferent loungers in his rooms, who cared no more for music than they did for religion. He almost smiled as he recalled those nights, and contrasted them with this New Year's evening, when seated in an humble cottage, he had for his companions only a lowly-born poor woman, and an equally lowly-born poor man, both of whom evinced finer education, better manners, greater pride of spirit, and more resolute independence than nine-tenths of the "society" people who had fawned upon him and flattered him, simply because they knew he was a millionaire. And the charm of his present position was that these two, poor, lowly-born people were under the impression that even in their poverty and humility they were better off than he was, and that because fortune had been, as they considered, kind to them, they were bound to treat him in a way that should not remind him of his dependent and defenceless condition. It was impossible to imagine greater satisfaction than that which he enjoyed in the contemplation of his own actual situation as compared with that which he had impressed upon the minds of these two friends of his who had given him their friendship trustingly and frankly for himself alone. And he listened placidly, with folded hands and half shut eyes, while Angus, at Mary's request, trolled forth "The Standard on the Braes o' Mar" and "Sound the pibroch,"--varying those warlike ditties with "Jock o' Hazledean," and "Will ye no come back again,"--till all suddenly Mary rose from her chair, and with her finger to her lips said "Hark!" The church-bells were ringing out the Old Year, and glancing at the clock, they saw it wanted but ten minutes to midnight. Softly Mary stepped to the cottage door and opened it. The chime swung melodiously in, and Angus Reay went to the threshold, and stood beside Mary, listening. Had they glanced back that instant they would have seen Helmsley looking at them both, with an intensity of yearning in his pale face and sad old eyes that was pitiful and earnest beyond all expression--they would have seen his lips move, as he murmured--"God grant that I may make their lives beautiful! God give me this peace of mind before I die! God bless them!" But they were absorbed in listening--and presently with a deep clang the bells ceased. Mary turned her head.
"The Old Year's out, David!"
Then she went to him and knelt down beside him.
"It's been a kind old year!"--she said--"It brought you to me to take care of, and _me_ to you to take care of you--didn't it?"
He laid one hand on hers, tremblingly, but was silent. She turned up her kind, sweet face to his.
"You're not tired, are you?"
He shook his head.
"No, my dear, no!"
A rush and a clang of melody swept suddenly through the open door--the bells had begun again.
"A Happy New Year, Miss Mary!" said Angus, looking towards her from where he stood on the threshold--"And to you, David!"
With an irrepressible movement of tenderness Helmsley raised his trembling hands and laid them gently on Mary's head.
"Take an old man's blessing, my dear!" he said, softly, "And from a most grateful heart!"
She caught his hands as he lifted them again from her brow, and kissed them. There were tears in her eyes, but she brushed them quickly away.
"You talk just like father!" she said, smiling--"He was always grateful for nothing!"
And rising from her kneeling attitude by Helmsley's chair, she went again towards the open cottage door, holding out her two hands to Reay. Looking at her as she approached he seemed to see in her some gracious angel, advancing with all the best possibilities of life for him in her sole power and gift.
"A Happy New Year, Mr. Reay! And success to the book!"
He clasped the hands she extended.
"If you wish success for it, success is bound to come!" he answered in a low voice--"I believe in your good influence!"
She looked at him, and whatever answer rose to her lips was suddenly silenced by the eloquence of his eyes. She coloured hotly, and then grew very pale. They both stood on the threshold of the open door, silent and strangely embarrassed, while the bells swung and clanged musically through the frosty air, and the long low swish of the sea swept up like a harmonious bass set to the silvery voice of the chimes. They little guessed with what passionate hope, yearning, and affection, Helmsley watched them standing there!--they little knew that on them the last ambition of his life was set!--and that any discovery of sham or falsehood in their natures would make cruel havoc of his dearest dreams! They waited, looking out on the dark quiet space, and listening to the rush of the stream till the clamour of the bells ceased again, and sounded no more. In the deep stillness that followed Angus said softly--
"There's not a leaf left on the old sweetbriar bush now!"
"No,"--answered Mary, in the same soft tone--"But it will be the first thing to bud with the spring."
"I've kept the little sprig you gave me,"--he added, apparently by way of a casual after-thought.
"Have you?"
Silence fell again--and not another word passed between them save a gentle "Good-night" when, the New Year having fully come in, they parted.
[Footnote 1: A fact.]
CHAPTER XVII
The dreariest season of the year had now set in, but frost and cold were very seldom felt severely in Weircombe. The little village lay in a deep warm hollow, and was thoroughly protected at the back by the hills, while in the front its shores were washed by the sea, which had a warming as well as bracing effect on the atmosphere. To invalids requiring an equable temperature, it would have been a far more ideal winter resort than any corner of the much-vaunted Riviera, except indeed for the fact that feeding and gambling dens were not among its attractions. To "society" people it would have proved insufferably dull, because society people, lacking intelligence to do anything themselves, always want everything done for them. Weircombe folk would not have understood that method of living. To them it seemed proper and reasonable that men, and women too, should work for what they ate. The theory that only a few chosen persons, not by any means estimable either as to their characters or their abilities, should eat what others were starved for, would not have appealed to them. They were a small and unimportant community, but their ideas of justice and principles of conduct were very firmly established. They lived on the lines laid down by their forefathers, and held that a simple faith in God, coupled with honest hard labour, was sufficient to make life well worth living. And, on the whole they were made of that robust human material of which in the days gone by there was enough to compose and consolidate the greatness of Britain. They were kindly of heart, but plain in speech,--and their remarks on current events, persons and things, would have astonished and perhaps edified many a press man had he been among them, when on Saturday nights they "dropped in" at the one little public-house of the village, and argued politics and religion till closing-time. Angus Reay soon became a favourite with them all, though at first they had looked upon him with a little distrust as a "gentleman _tow_-rist"; but when he had mixed with them freely and familiarly, making no secret of the fact that he was poor, and that he was endeavouring to earn a livelihood like all the rest of them, only in a different way, they abandoned all reserve, and treated him as one of themselves. Moreover, when it was understood that "Mis' Deane," whose reputation stood very high in the village, considered him not unworthy of her friendship, he rose up several degrees in the popular estimation, and many a time those who were the self-elected wits and wise-acres of the place, would "look in" as they termed it, at Mary's cottage, and pass the evening talking with him and with "old David," who, if he did not say much, listened the more. Mr. Bunce, the doctor, and Mr. Twitt, the stonemason, were in particular profoundly impressed when they knew that Reay had worked for two years on a London newspaper.
"Ye must 'ave a ter'uble knowledge of the world, Mister!" said Twitt, thoughtfully--"Just ter'uble!"
"Yes, I should assume it must be so,"--murmured Bunce--"I should think it could hardly fail to be so?"
Reay gave a short laugh.
"Well, I don't know!" he said--"You may call it a knowledge of the world if you like--I call it an unpleasant glimpse into the shady side of life. I'd rather walk in the sunshine."
"And what would you call the sunshine, sir?" asked Bunce, with his head very much on one side like a meditative bird.
Honesty, truth, belief in God, belief in good!"--answered Angus, with some passion--"Not perpetual scheming, suspicion of motives, personal slander, and pettiness--O Lord!--such pettiness as can hardly be believed! Journalism is the most educational force in the world, but its power is being put to wrong uses."
"Well,--said Twitt, slowly--"I aint so blind but I can see through a wall when there's a chink in it. An' when I gets my 'Daily' down from Lunnun, an' sees harf a page given up to a kind o' poster about Pills, an' another harf a page praisin' up somethin' about Tonics, I often sez to myself: 'Look 'ere, Twitt! What are ye payin' yer pennies out for? For a Patent Pill or for News? For a Nervy Tonic or for the latest pol'tics?' An' myself--me--Twitt--answers an' sez--'Why ye're payin' for news an' pol'tics, of course!' Well then, I sez, 'Twitt, ye aint gettin' nothin' o' the sort!' An' t' other day, blow'd if I didn't see in my paper a long piece about ''Ow to be Beautiful'--an' that 'adn't nothin' to do wi' me nor no man, but was just mere gabble for fool women. ''Ow to be Beautiful,' aint news o' the world!"
"No,"--said Reay--"You're not intended to know the news of the world. News, real news, is the property of the Stock Exchange. It's chiefly intended for company gambling purposes. The People are not expected to know much about it. Modern Journalism seeks to play Pope and assert the doctrine of infallibility. What It does not authorise, isn't supposed to exist."
"Is that truly so?" asked Bunce, solemnly.
"Most assuredly!"
"You mean to say,"--said Helmsley, breaking in upon the conversation, and speaking in quiet unconcerned tones--"that the actual national affairs of the world are not told to the people as they should be, but are jealously guarded by a few whose private interests are at stake?"
"Yes. I certainly do mean that."
"I thought you did. You see," went on Helmsley--"when I was in regular office work in London, I used to hear a good deal concerning the business schemes of this, that and the other great house in the city,--and I often wondered what the people would say if they ever came to know!"
"Came to know what?" said Mr. Bunce, anxiously.
"Why, the names of the principal shareholders in the newspapers,"--said Reay, placidly--"_That_ might possibly open their eyes to the way their opinions are manufactured for them! There's very little 'liberty of the press' in Great Britain nowadays. The press is the property of a few rich men."
Mary, who was working very intently on a broad length of old lace she was mending, looked up at him--her eyes were brilliant and her cheeks softly flushed.
"I hope you will be brave enough to say that some day right out to the people as you say it to us,"--she observed.
"I will! Never fear about that! If I _am_ ever anything--if I ever _can_ be anything--I will do my level best to save my nation from being swallowed up by a horde of German-American Jews!" said Reay, hotly--"I would rather suffer anything myself than see the dear old country brought to shame."
"Right, very right!" said Mr. Bunce, approvingly--"And many--yes, I think we may certainly say many,--are of your spirit,--what do you think, David?"
Helmsley had raised himself in his chair, and was looking wonderfully alert. The conversation interested him.
"I quite agree,"--he said--"But Mr. Reay must remember that if he should ever want to make a clean sweep of German-American Jews and speculators as he says, and expose the way they tamper with British interests, he would require a great deal of money. A _very_ great deal of money!" he repeated, slowly,--"Now I wonder, Mr. Reay, what you would do with a million?--two millions?--three millions?--four millions?"--
"Stop, stop, old David!"--interrupted Twitt, suddenly holding up his hand--"Ye takes my breath away!"
They all laughed, Reay's hearty tones ringing above the rest.
"Oh, I should know what to do with them!"--he said; "but I wouldn't spend them on my own selfish pleasures--that I swear! For one thing, I'd run a daily newspaper on _honest_ lines----"
"It wouldn't sell!" observed Helmsley, drily.
"It would--it _should_!" declared Reay--"And I'd tell the people the truth of things,--I'd expose every financial fraud I could find----"
"And you'd live in the law-courts, I fear!" said Mr. Bunce, gravely shaking his head--"We may be perfectly certain, I think--may we not, David?--that the law-courts would be Mr. Reay's permanent address?"
They laughed again, and the conversation turned to other topics, though its tenor was not forgotten by anyone, least of all by Helmsley, who sat very silent for a long time afterwards, thinking deeply, and seeing in his thoughts various channels of usefulness to the world and the world's progress, which he had missed, but which others after him would find.
Meanwhile Weircombe suffered a kind of moral convulsion in the advent of the Reverend Mr. Arbroath, who arrived to "take duty" in the absence of its legitimate pastor. He descended upon the tiny place like an embodied black whirlwind, bringing his wife with him, a lady whose facial lineaments bore the strangest and most remarkable resemblance to those of a china cat; not a natural cat, because there is something soft and appealing about a real "pussy,"--whereas Mrs. Arbroath's countenance was cold and hard and shiny, like porcelain, and her smile was precisely that of the immovable and ruthless-looking animal designed long ago by old-time potters and named "Cheshire." Her eyes were similar to the eyes of that malevolent china creature--and when she spoke, her voice had the shrill tone which was but a few notes off the actual "_me-iau_" of an angry "Tom." Within a few days after their arrival, every cottage in the "coombe" had been "visited," and both Mr. and Mrs. Arbroath had made up their minds as to the neglected, wholly unspiritual and unregenerate nature of the little flock whom they had offered, for sake of their own health and advantage, to tend. The villagers had received them civilly, but without enthusiasm. When tackled on the subject of their religious opinions, most of them declined to answer, except Mr. Twitt, who, fixing a filmy eye sternly on the plain and gloomy face of Mr. Arbroath, said emphatically:
"We aint no 'Igh Jinks!"
"What do you mean, my man?" demanded Arbroath, with a dark smile.
"I mean what I sez"--rejoined Twitt--"I've been stonemason 'ere goin' on now for thirty odd years an' it's allus been the same 'ere--no 'Igh Jinks. Purcessin an' vestiments"--here Twitt spread out a broad dirty thumb and dumped it down with each word into the palm of his other hand--"candles, crosses, bobbins an' bowins--them's what we calls 'Igh Jinks, an' I make so bold as to say that if ye gets 'em up 'ere, Mr. Arbroath, ye'll be mighty sorry for yourself!"
"I shall conduct the services as I please!" said Arbroath. "You take too much upon yourself to speak to me in such a fashion! You should mind your own business!"
"So should you, Mister, so should you!" And Twitt chuckled contentedly--"An' if ye _don't_ mind it, there's those 'ere as'll _make_ ye!"
Arbroath departed in a huff, and the very next Sunday announced that "Matins" would be held at seven o'clock daily in the Church, and "Evensong" at six in the afternoon. Needless to say, the announcement was made in vain. Day after day passed, and no one attended. Smarting with rage, Arbroath sought to "work up" the village to a proper "'Igh Jink" pitch--but his efforts were wasted. And a visit to Mary Deane's cottage did not sweeten his temper, for the moment he caught sight of Helmsley sitting in his usual corner by the fire, he recognised him as the "old tramp" he had interviewed in the common room of the "Trusty Man."
"How did _you_ come here?" he demanded, abruptly.
Helmsley, who happened to be at work basket-making, looked up, but made no reply. Whereupon Arbroath turned upon Mary--
"Is this man a relative of yours?" he asked.
Mary had risen from her chair out of ordinary civility as the clergyman entered, and now replied quietly.
"No, sir."
"Oh! Then what is he doing here?"
"You can see what he is doing,"--she answered, with a slight smile--"He is making baskets."
"He is a tramp!" said Arbroath, pointing an inflexible finger at him--"I saw him last summer smoking and drinking with a gang of low ruffians at a roadside inn called 'The Trusty Man'!" And he advanced a step towards Helmsley--"Didn't I see you there?"
Helmsley looked straight at him.
"You did."
"You told me you were tramping to Cornwall."
"So I was."
"Then what are you doing here?"
"Earning a living."
Arbroath turned sharply on Mary.
"Is that true?"
"Of course it is true,"--she replied--"Why should he tell you a lie?"
"Does he lodge with you?"
"Yes."
Arbroath paused a moment, his little brown eyes sparkling vindictively.
"Well, you had better be careful he does not rob you!" he said. "For I can prove that he seemed to be very good friends with that notorious rascal Tom o' the Gleam who murdered a nobleman at Blue Anchor last summer, and who would have hung for his crime if he had not fortunately saved the expense of a rope by dying."
Helmsley, bending over his basket-weaving, suddenly straightened himself and looked the clergyman full in the face.
"I never knew Tom o' the Gleam till that night on which you saw me at 'The Trusty Man,'" he said--"But I know he had terrible provocation for the murder he committed. I saw that murder done!"
"You saw it done!" exclaimed Arbroath--"And you are here?"
"Why should I not be here?" demanded Helmsley--"Would you have expected me to stay _there_? I was only one of many witnesses to that terrible deed of vengeance--but, as God lives, it was a just vengeance!"
"Just? You call murder just!" and Arbroath gave a gesture of scorn and horror--"And you,"--he continued, turning to Mary indignantly--"can allow a ruffian like this to live in your house?"
"He is no ruffian,"--said Mary steadily,--"Nor was Tom o' the Gleam a ruffian either. He was well-known in these parts for many and many a deed of kindness. The real ruffian was the man who killed his little child. Indeed I think he was the chief murderer."
"Oh, you do, do you?" and Mr. Arbroath frowned heavily--"And you call yourself a respectable woman?"
Mary smiled, and resuming her seat, bent her head intently over her lace work.
Arbroath stood irresolute, gazing at her. He was a sensual man, and her physical beauty annoyed him. He would have liked to sit down alone with her and take her hand in his own and talk to her about her "soul" while gloating over her body. But in the "old tramp's" presence there was nothing to be done. So he assumed a high moral tone.
"Accidents will happen,"--he said, sententiously--"If a child gets into the way of a motor going at full speed, it is bound to be unfortunate--for the child. But Lord Wrotham was a rich man--and no doubt he would have paid a handsome sum down in compensation----"
"Compensation!" And Helmsley suddenly stood up, drawing his frail thin figure erect--"Compensation! Money! Money for a child's life--money for a child's love! Are you a minister of Christ, that you can talk of such a thing as possible? What is all the wealth of the world compared to the life of one beloved human creature! Reverend sir, I am an old poor man,--a tramp as you say, consorting with rogues and ruffians--but were I as rich as the richest millionaire that ever 'sweated' honest labour, I would rather shoot myself than offer money compensation to a father for the loss of a child whom my selfish pleasure had slain!"
He trembled from head to foot with the force of his own eloquence, and Arbroath stared at him dumb-foundered.
"You are a preacher,"--went on Helmsley--"You are a teacher of the Gospel. Do you find anything in the New Testament that gives men licence to ride rough-shod over the hearts and emotions of their fellow-men? Do you find there that selfishness is praised or callousness condoned? In those sacred pages are we told that a sparrow's life is valueless, or a child's prayer despised? Sir, if you are a Christian, teach Christianity as Christ taught it--_honestly_!"
Arbroath turned livid.
"How dare you--!" he began--when Mary quietly rose.
"I would advise you to be going, sir,"--she said, quite courteously--"The old man is not very strong, and he has a trouble of the heart. It is little use for persons to argue who feel so differently. We poor folk do not understand the ways of the gentry."
And she held open the door of her cottage for him to pass out. He pressed his slouch-hat more heavily over his eyes, and glared at her from under the shadow of its brim.
"You are harbouring a dangerous customer in your house!" he said--"A dangerous customer! It will be my duty to warn the parish against him!"
She smiled.
"You are very welcome to do so, sir! Good-morning!"
And as he tramped away through her tiny garden, she quickly shut and barred the door after him, and hurried to Helmsley in some anxiety, for he looked very pale, and his breath came and went somewhat rapidly.
"David dear, why did you excite yourself so much over that man!" she said, kneeling beside him as he sank back exhausted in his chair--"Was it worth while?"
He patted her head with a tremulous hand.
"Perhaps not!" And he smiled--"Perhaps not, Mary! But the cold-blooded way in which he said that a money compensation might have been offered to poor Tom o' the Gleam for his little child's life--my God! As if any sort of money could compare with love!"
He stroked her hair gently, and went on murmuring to himself--
"As if all the gold in the world could make up for the loss of one loving heart!"
Mary was silent. She saw that he was greatly agitated, and thought it better to let him speak out his whole mind rather than suppress his feelings.
"What can a man do with wealth!" he went on, speaking more to himself than to her--"He can buy everything that is to be bought, certainly--but if he has no one to share his goods with him, what then? Eh, Mary? What then?"
"Why then he'd be a very miserable man, David!" she answered, smiling--"He'd wish he were poor, with some one to love him!"
He looked at her, and his sunken eyes flashed with quite an eager light.
"That's true!" he said--"He'd wish he were poor with some one to love him! Mary, you've been so kind to me--promise me one thing!"
"What's that?" and she patted his hand soothingly.
"Just this--if I die on your hands don't let that man Arbroath bury me! I think my very bones would split at the sound of his rasping voice!"
Mary laughed.
"Don't you worry about that!" she said--"Mr. Arbroath won't have the chance to bury you, David! Besides, he never takes the burials of the very poor folk even in his own parishes. He wrote a letter in one of the countryside papers not very long ago, to complain of the smallness of the burial fees, and said it wasn't worth his while to bury paupers!" And she laughed again. "Poor, bitter-hearted man! He must be very wretched in himself to be so cantankerous to others."
"Well, don't let him bury _me_!" said Helmsley--"That's all I ask. I'd much rather Twitt dug a hole in the seashore and put my body into it himself, without any prayers at all, than have a prayer croaked over me by that clerical raven! Remember that!"
"I'll remember!" And Mary's face beamed with kindly tolerance and good-humour--"But you're really quite an angry old boy to-day, David! I never saw you in such a temper!"
Her playful tone brought a smile to his face at last.
"It was that horrible suggestion of money compensation for a child's life that angered me,"--he said, half apologetically--"The notion that pounds, shillings and pence could pay for the loss of love, got on my nerves. Why, love is the only good thing in the world!"
She had been half kneeling by his chair--but she now rose slowly, and stretched her arms out with a little gesture of sudden weariness.
"Do you think so, David?" and she sighed, almost unconsciously to herself--"I'm not so sure!"
He glanced at her in sudden uneasiness. Was she too going to say, like Lucy Sorrel, that she did not believe in love? He thought of Angus Reay, and wondered. She caught his look and smiled.
"I'm not so sure!" she repeated--"There's a great deal talked about love,--but it often seems as if there was more talk than deed. At least there is in what is generally called 'love.' I know there's a very real and beautiful love, like that which I had for my father, and which he had for me,--that was as near being perfect as anything could be in this world. But the love I had for the young man to whom I was once engaged was quite a different thing altogether."
"Of course it was!" said Helmsley--"And quite naturally, too. You loved your father as a daughter loves--and I suppose you loved the young man as a sweetheart loves--eh?"
"Sweetheart is a very pretty word,"--she answered, the smile still lingering about her lips--"It's quite old-fashioned too, and I love old-fashioned things. But I don't think I loved the young man exactly as a 'sweetheart.' It all came about in a very haphazard way. He took a fancy to me, and we used to go long walks together. He hadn't very much to say for himself--he smoked most of the time. But he was honest and respectable--and I got rather fond of him--so that when he asked me to marry him, I thought it would perhaps please father to see me provided for--and I said yes, without thinking very much about it. Then, when father failed in business and my man threw me over, I fretted a bit just for a day or two--mostly I think because we couldn't go any more Sunday walks together. I was in the early twenties, but now I'm getting on in the thirties. I know I didn't understand a bit about real love then. It was just fancy and the habit of seeing the one young man oftener than others. And, of course, that isn't love."
Helmsley listened to her every word, keenly interested. Surely, if he guided the conversation skilfully enough, he might now gain some useful hints which would speed the cause of Angus Reay?
"No--of course that isn't love,"--he echoed--"But what do you take to _be_ love?--Can you tell me?"
Her eyes filled with a dreamy light, and her lips quivered a little.
"Can I tell you? Not very well, perhaps--but I'll try. Of course it's all over for me now--and I can only just picture what I think it ought to be. I never had it. I mean I never had that kind of love I have dreamed about, and it seems silly for an old maid to even talk of such a thing. But love to my mind ought to be the everything of life! If I loved a man----" Here she suddenly paused, and a wave of colour flushed her cheeks. Helmsley never took his eyes off her face.
"Yes?" he said, tentatively--"Well!--go on--if you loved a man?----"
"If I loved a man, David,"--she continued, slowly, clasping her hands meditatively behind her back, and looking thoughtfully into the glowing centre of the fire--"I should love him so completely that I should never think of anything in which he had not the first and greatest share. I should see his kind looks in every ray of sunshine--I should hear his loving voice in every note of music,--if I were to read a book alone, I should wonder which sentence in it would please _him_ the most--if I plucked a flower, I should ask myself if he would like me to wear it,--I should live _through_ him and _for_ him--he would be my very eyes and heart and soul! The hours would seem empty without him----"
She broke off with a little sob, and her eyes brimmed over with tears.
"Why Mary! Mary, my dear!" murmured Helmsley, stretching out his hand to touch her--"Don't cry!"
"I'm not crying, David!" and a rainbow smile lighted her face--"I'm only just--_feeling_! It's like when I read a little verse of poetry that is very sad and sweet, I get tears into my eyes--and when I talk about love--especially now that I shall never know what it is, something rises in my throat and chokes me----"
"But you do know what it is,"--said Helmsley, powerfully moved by the touching simplicity of her confession of loneliness--"There isn't a more loving heart than yours in the world, I'm sure!"
She came and knelt down again beside him.
"Oh yes, I've a loving heart!" she said--"But that's just the worst of it! I can love, but no one loves or ever will love me--now. I'm past the age for it. No woman over thirty can expect to be loved by a lover, you know! Romance is all over--and one 'settles down,' as they say. I've never quite 'settled'--there's always something restless in me. You're such a dear old man, David, and so kind!--I can speak to you just as if you were my father--and I daresay you will not think it very wrong or selfish of me if I say I have longed to be loved sometimes! More than that, I've wished it had pleased God to send me a husband and children--I should have dearly liked to hold a baby in my arms, and soothe its little cries, and make it grow up to be happy and good, and a blessing to every one. Some women don't care for children--but I should have loved mine!"
She paused a moment, and Helmsley took her hand, and silently pressed it in his own.
"However,"--she went on, more lightly--"it's no good grieving over what cannot be helped. No man has ever really loved me--because, of course, the one I was engaged to wouldn't have thrown me over just because I was poor if he had cared very much about me. And I shall be thirty-five this year--so I must--I really _must_"--and she gave herself an admonitory little shake--"settle down! After all there are worse things in life than being an old maid. I don't mind it--it's only sometimes when I feel inclined to grizzle, that I think to myself what a lot of love I've got in my heart--all wasted!"
"Wasted?" echoed Helmsley, gently--"Do you think love is ever wasted?"
Her eyes grew serious and dreamy.
"Sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't"--she answered--"When I begin to like a person very much I often pull myself back and say 'Take care! Perhaps he doesn't like _you!_'"
"Oh! The person must be a 'he' then!" said Helmsley, smiling a little.
She coloured.
"Oh no--not exactly!--but I mean,--now, for instance,"--and she spoke rapidly as though to cover some deeper feeling--"I like _you_ very much--indeed I'm fond of you, David!--I've got to know you so well, and to understand all your ways--but I can't be sure that you like _me_ as much as I like _you_, can I?"
He looked at her kind and noble face with eyes full of tenderness and gratitude.
"If you can be sure of anything, you can be sure of that!"--he said--"To say I 'like' you would be a poor way of expressing myself. I owe my very life to you--and though I am only an old poor man, I would say I loved you if I dared!"
She smiled--and her whole face shone with the reflected sunshine of her soul.
"Say it, David dear! Do say it! I should like to hear it!"
He drew the hand he held to his lips, and gently kissed it.
"I love you, Mary!" he said--"As a father loves a daughter I love you, and bless you! You have been a good angel to me--and I only wish I were not so old and weak and dependent on your care. I can do nothing to show my affection for you--I'm only a burden upon your hands----"
She laid her fingers lightly across his lips.
"Sh-sh!" she said--"That's foolish talk, and I won't listen to it! I'm glad you're fond of me--it makes life so much pleasanter. Do you know, I sometimes think God must have sent you to me?"
"Do you? Why?"
"Well, I used to fret a little at being so much alone,--the days seemed so long, and it was hard to have to work only for one's wretched self, and see nothing in the future but just the same old round--and I missed my father always. I never could get accustomed to his empty chair. Then when I found you on the hills, lost and solitary, and ill, and brought you home to nurse and take care of, all the vacancy seemed filled--and I was quite glad to have some one to work for. I've been ever so much happier since you've been with me. We'll be like father and daughter to the end, won't we?"
She put one arm about him coaxingly. He did not answer.
"You won't go away from me now,--will you, David?" she urged--"Even when you've paid me back all you owe me as you wish by your own earnings, you won't go away?"
He lifted his head and looked at her as she bent over him.
"You mustn't ask me to promise anything,"--he said, "I will stay with you--as long as I can!"
She withdrew her arm from about him, and stood for a moment irresolute.
"Well--I shall be very miserable if you do go,"--she said--"And I'm sure no one will take more care of you than I will!"
"I'm sure of that, too, Mary!" and a smile that was almost youthful in its tenderness brightened his worn features--"I've never been so well taken care of in all my life before! Mr. Reay thinks I am a very lucky old fellow."
"Mr. Reay!" She echoed the name--and then, stooping abruptly towards the fire, began to make it up afresh. Helmsley watched her intently.
"Don't you like Mr. Reay?" he asked.
She turned a smiling face round upon him.
"Why, of course I like him!" she answered--"I think everyone in Weircombe likes him."
"I wonder if he'll ever marry?" pursued Helmsley, with a meditative air.
"Ah, I wonder! I hope if he does, he'll find some dear sweet little girl who will really love him and be proud of him! For he's going to be a great man, David!--a great and famous man some day!"
"You think so?"
"I'm sure of it!"
And she lifted her head proudly, while her blue eyes shone with enthusiastic fervour. Helmsley made a mental note of her expression, and wondered how he could proceed.
"And you'd like him to marry some 'dear sweet little girl'"--he went on, reflectively--"I'll tell him that you said so!"
She was silent, carefully piling one or two small logs on the fire.
"Dear sweet little girls are generally uncommonly vain of themselves," resumed Helmsley--"And in the strength of their dearness and sweetness they sometimes fail to appreciate love when they get it. Now Mr. Reay would love very deeply, I should imagine--and I don't think he could bear to be played with or slighted."
"But who would play with or slight such love as his?" asked Mary, with a warm flush on her face--"No woman that knew anything of his heart would wilfully throw it away!"
Helmsley stroked his beard thoughtfully.
"That story of his about a girl named Lucy Sorrel,"--he began.
"Oh, she was wicked--downright wicked!" declared Mary, with some passion--"Any girl who would plan and scheme to marry an old man for his money must be a worthless creature. I wish I had been in that Lucy Sorrel's place!"
"Ah! And what would you have done?" enquired Helmsley.
"Well, if I had been a pretty girl, in my teens, and I had been fortunate enough to win the heart of a splendid fellow like Angus Reay,"--said Mary, "I would have thanked God, as Shakespeare tells us to do, for a good man's love! And I would have waited for him years, if he had wished me to! I would have helped him all I could, and cheered him and encouraged him in every way I could think of--and when he had won his fame, I should have been prouder than a queen! Yes, I should!--I think any girl would have been lucky indeed to get such a man to care for her as Angus Reay!"
Thus spake Mary, with sparkling eyes and heaving bosom--and Helmsley heard her, showing no sign of any especial interest, the while he went on meditatively stroking his beard.
"It is a pity,"--he said, after a discreet pause--"that you are not a few years younger, Mary! You might have loved him yourself."
Her face grew suddenly scarlet, and she seemed about to utter an exclamation, but she repressed it. The colour faded from her cheeks as rapidly as it had flushed them, leaving her very pale.
"So I might!" she answered quietly,--and she smiled; "Indeed I think it would have been very likely! But that sort of thing is all over for me."
She turned away, and began busying herself with some of her household duties. Helmsley judged that he had said enough--and quietly exulted in his own mind at the discovery which he was confident he had made. All seemed clear and open sailing for Angus Reay--if--if she could be persuaded that it was for herself and herself alone that he loved her.
"Now if she were a rich woman, she would never believe in his love!" he thought--"There again comes in the curse of money! Suppose she were wealthy as women in her rank of life would consider it--suppose that she had a prosperous farm, and a reliable income of so much per annum, she would never flatter herself that a man loved her for her own good and beautiful self--especially a man in the situation of Reay, with only twenty pounds in the world to last him a year, and nothing beyond it save the dream of fame! She would think--and naturally too--that he sought to strengthen and improve his prospects by marrying a woman of some 'substance' as they call it. And even as it is the whole business requires careful handling. I myself must be on my guard. But I think I may give hope to Reay!--indeed I shall try and urge him to speak to her as soon as possible--before fortune comes to either of them! Love in its purest and most unselfish form, is such a rare blessing--such a glorious Angel of the kingdom of Heaven, that we should not hesitate to give it welcome, or delay in offering it reverence! It is all that makes life worth living--God knows how fully I have proved it!"
And that night in the quiet darkness of his own little room, he folded his worn hands and prayed--
"Oh God, before whom I appear as a wasted life, spent with toil in getting what is not worth the gaining, and that only seems as dross in Thy sight!--Give me sufficient time and strength to show my gratefulness to Thee for Thy mercy in permitting me to know the sweetness of Love at last, and in teaching me to understand, through Thy guidance, that those who may seem to us the unconsidered and lowly in this world, are often to be counted among Thy dearest creatures! Grant me but this, O God, and death when it comes, shall find me ready and resigned to Thy Will!"
Thus he murmured half aloud,--and in the wonderful restfulness which he obtained by the mere utterance of his thoughts to the Divine Source of all good, closed his eyes with a sense of abiding joy, and slept peacefully.
CHAPTER XVIII
And now by slow and beautiful degrees the cold and naked young year grew warm, and expanded from weeping, shivering infancy into the delighted consciousness of happy childhood. The first snowdrops, the earliest aconites, perked up their pretty heads in Mary's cottage garden, and throughout all nature there came that inexplicable, indefinite, soft pulsation of new life and new love which we call the spring. Tiny buds, rosy and shining with sap, began to gleam like rough jewels on every twig and tree--a colony of rooks which had abode in the elms surrounding Weircombe Church, started to make great ado about their housekeeping, and kept up as much jabber as though they were inaugurating an Irish night in the House of Commons,--and, over a more or less tranquil sea, the gulls poised lightly on the heaving waters in restful attitudes, as though conscious that the stress of winter was past. To look at Weircombe village as it lay peacefully aslant down the rocky "coombe," no one would have thought it likely to be a scene of silent, but none the less violent, internal feud; yet such nevertheless was the case, and all the trouble had arisen since the first Sunday of the first month of the Reverend Mr. Arbroath's "taking duty" in the parish. On that day six small choirboys had appeared in the Church, together with a tall lanky youth in a black gown and white surplice--and to the stupefied amazement of the congregation, the lanky youth had carried a gilt cross round the Church, followed by Arbroath himself and the six little boys, all chanting in a manner such as the Weircombe folk had never heard before. It was a deeply resented innovation, especially as the six little boys and the lanky cross-bearer, as well as the cross itself, had been mysteriously "hired" from somewhere by Mr. Arbroath, and were altogether strange to the village. Common civility, as well as deeply rooted notions of "decency and order," kept the parishioners in their seats during what they termed the "play-acting" which took place on this occasion, but when they left the Church and went their several ways, they all resolved on the course they meant to adopt with the undesired introduction of "'Igh Jinks" for the future. And from that date henceforward not one of the community attended Church. Sunday after Sunday, the bells rang in vain. Mr. Arbroath conducted the service solely for Mrs. Arbroath and for one ancient villager who acted the double part of sexton and verger, and whose duties therefore compelled him to remain attached to the sacred edifice. And the people read their morning prayers in their own houses every Sunday, and never stirred out on that day till after their dinners. In vain did both Mr. and Mrs. Arbroath run up and down the little village street, calling at every house, coaxing, cajoling, and promising,--they spoke to deaf ears. Nothing they could say or do made amends for the "insult" to which the parishioners considered they had been subjected, by the sudden appearance of six strange choirboys and the lanky youth in a black gown, who had carried a gilt cross round and round the tiny precincts of their simple little Church, which,--until the occurrence of this remarkable "mountebank" performance as they called it,--had been everything to them that was sacred in its devout simplicity. Finally, in despair, Mr. Arbroath wrote a long letter of complaint to the Bishop of the diocese, and after a considerable time of waiting, was informed by the secretary of that gentleman that the matter would be enquired into, but that in the meantime he had better conduct the Sunday services in the manner to which the parishioners had been accustomed. This order Arbroath flatly refused to obey, and there ensued a fierce polemical correspondence, during which the Church remained, as has been stated, empty of worshippers altogether. Casting about for reasons which should prove some contumacious spirit to be the leader of this rebellion, Arbroath attacked Mary Deane among others, and asked her if she was "a regular Communicant." To which she calmly replied--
"No, sir."
"And why are you not?" demanded the clergyman imperiously.
"Because I do not feel like it," she said; "I do not believe in going to Communion unless one really feels the spiritual wish and desire."
"Oh! Then that is to say that you are very seldom conscious of any spiritual wish or desire?"
She was silent.
"I am sorry for you!" And Arbroath shook his bullet head dismally. "You are one of the unregenerate, and if you do not amend your ways will be among the lost----"
"'I tell thee, churlish priest, A ministering angel shall my sister be, when thou liest howling!'" said Helmsley suddenly.
Arbroath turned upon him sharply.
"What's that?" he snarled.
"Shakespeare!" and Helmsley smiled.
"Shakespeare! Much you know about Shakespeare!" snapped out the irritated clergyman. "But atheists and ruffians always quote Shakespeare as glibly as they quote the New Testament!"
"It's lucky that atheists and ruffians have got such good authorities to quote from," said Helmsley placidly.
Arbroath gave an impatient exclamation, and again addressed Mary.
"Why don't you come to Church?" he asked.
She raised her calm blue eyes and regarded him steadfastly.
"I don't like the way you conduct the service, sir, and I don't take you altogether for a Christian."
"What!" And he stared at her so furiously that his little pig eyes grew almost large for the moment--"You don't take me--_me_--for a Christian?"
"No, sir,--not altogether. You are too hard and too proud. You are not careful of us poor folk, and you don't seem to mind whether you hurt our feelings or not. We're only very humble simple people here in Weircombe, but we're not accustomed to being ordered about as if we were children, or as if our parson was a Romish priest wanting to get us all under his thumb. We believe in God with all our hearts and souls, and we love the dear gentle Saviour who came to show us how to live and how to die,--but we like to pray as we've always been accustomed to pray, just without any show, as our Lord taught us to do, not using any 'vain repetitions.'"
Helmsley, who was bending some stiff osiers in his hands, paused to listen. Arbroath stared gloomily at the noble, thoughtful face on which there was just now an inspired expression of honesty and truth which almost shamed him.
"I think," went on Mary, speaking very gently and modestly--"that if we read the New Testament, we shall find that our Lord expressly forbade all shows and ceremonies,--and that He very much disliked them. Indeed, if we strictly obeyed all His orders, we should never be seen praying in public at all! Of course it is pleasant and human for people to meet together in some place and worship God--but I think such a meeting should be quite without any ostentation--and that all our prayers should be as simple as possible. Pray excuse me if I speak too boldly--but that is the spirit and feeling of most of the Weircombe folk, and they are really very good, honest people."
The Reverend Mr. Arbroath stood inert and silent for about two minutes, his eyes still fixed upon her,--then, without a word, he turned on his heel and left the cottage. And from that day he did his best to sow small seeds of scandal against her,--scattering half-implied innuendoes,--faint breathings of disparagement, coarse jests as to her "old maid" condition, and other mean and petty calumnies, which, however, were all so much wasted breath on his part, as the Weircombe villagers were as indifferent to his attempted mischief as Mary herself. Even with the feline assistance of Mrs. Arbroath, who came readily to her husband's aid in his capacity of "downing" a woman, especially as that woman was so much better-looking than herself, nothing of any importance was accomplished in the way of either shaking Mary's established position in the estimation of Weircombe, or of persuading the parishioners to a "'Igh Jink" view of religious matters. Indeed, on this point they were inflexible, and as Mrs. Twitt remarked on one occasion, with a pious rolling-up of the whites of her eyes--
"To see that little black man with the 'igh stomach a-walkin' about this village is enough to turn a baby's bottle sour! It don't seem nat'ral like--he's as different from our good old parson as a rat is from a bird, an' you'll own, Mis' Deane, as there's a mighty difference between they two sorts of insecks. An' that minds me, on the Saturday night afore they got the play-actin' on up in the Church, the wick o' my candle guttered down in a windin' sheet as long as long, an' I sez to Twitt--'There you are! Our own parson's gone an' died over in Madery, an' we'll never 'ave the likes of 'im no more! There's trouble comin' for the Church, you mark my words.' An' Twitt, 'e says, 'G'arn, old 'ooman, it's the draught blowin' in at the door as makes the candle gutter,'--but all the same my words 'as come true!"
"Why no, surely not!" said Mary, "Our parson isn't dead in Madeira at all! The Sunday-school mistress had a letter from him only yesterday saying how much better he felt, and that he hoped to be home again with us very soon."
Mrs. Twitt pursed her lips and shook her head.
"That may be!" she observed--"I aint a-sayin' nuthin' again it. I sez to Twitt, there's trouble comin' for the Church, an' so there is. An' the windin' sheet in the candle means a death for somebody somewhere!"
Mary laughed, though her eyes were a little sad and wistful.
"Well, of course, there's always somebody dying somewhere, they say!" And she sighed. "There's a good deal of grief in the world that nobody ever sees or hears of."
"True enough, Mis' Deane!--true enough!" And Mrs. Twitt shook her head again--"But ye're spared a deal o' worrit, seein' ye 'aven't a husband nor childer to drive ye silly. When I 'ad my three boys at 'ome I never know'd whether I was on my 'ed or my 'eels, they kept up such a racket an' torment, but the Lord be thanked they're all out an' doin' for theirselves in the world now--forbye the eldest is thinkin' o' marryin' a girl I've never seen, down in Cornwall, which is where 'e be a-workin' in tin mines, an' when I 'eerd as 'ow 'e was p'raps a-goin' to tie hisself up in the bonds o' matterimony, I stepped out in the garden just casual like, an' if you'll believe me, I sees a magpie! Now, Mis' Deane, magpies is total strangers on these coasts--no one as I've ever 'eard tell on 'as ever seen one--an' they's the unlikeliest and unluckiest birds to come across as ever the good God created. An' of course I knows if my boy marries that gel in Cornwall, it'll be the worst chance and change for 'im that 'e's 'ad ever since 'e was born! That magpie comed 'ere to warn me of it!"
Mary tried to look serious, but Helmsley was listening to the conversation, and she caught the mirthful glance of his eyes. So she laughed, and taking Mrs. Twitt by the shoulders, kissed her heartily on both cheeks.
"You're a dear!" she said--"And I'll believe in the magpie if you want me to! But all the same, I don't think any mischief is coming for your son or for you. I like to hope that everything happening in this world is for the best, and that the good God means kindly to all of us. Don't you think that's the right way to live?"
"It may be the right way to live," replied Mrs. Twitt with a doubtful air--"But there's ter'uble things allus 'appenin', an' I sez if warnings is sent to us even out o' the mouths o' babes and sucklings, let's accept 'em in good part. An' if so be a magpie is chose by the Lord as a messenger we'se fools if we despises the magpie. But that little paunchy Arbroath's worse than a whole flock o' magpies comin' together, an' 'e's actin' like a pestilence in keepin' decent folk away from their own Church. 'Owsomever, Twitt reads prayers every Sunday mornin', an' t'other day Mr. Reay came in an' 'eerd 'im. An' Mr. Reay sez--'Twitt, ye're better than any parson I ever 'eerd!' An' I believe 'e is--'e's got real 'art an' feelin' for Scripter texes, an' sez 'em just as solemn as though 'e was carvin' 'em on tombstones. It's powerful movin'!"
Mary kept a grave face, but said nothing.
"An' last Sunday," went on Mrs. Twitt, encouraged, "Mr. Reay hisself read us a chapter o' the New Tesymen, an' 'twas fine! Twitt an' me, we felt as if we could 'a served the Lord faithful to the end of the world! An' we 'ardly ever feels like that in Church. In Church they reads the words so sing-songy like, that, bein' tired, we goes to sleep wi' the soothin' drawl. But Mr. Reay, he kep' us wide awake an' starin'! An' there's one tex which sticks in my 'ed an' comforts me for myself an' for everybody in trouble as I ever 'eerd on----"
"And what's that, Mrs. Twitt?" asked Helmsley, turning round in his chair, that he might see her better.
"It's this, Mister David," and Mrs. Twitt drew a long breath in preparation before beginning the quotation,--"an' it's beautiful! 'If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you.' Now if that aint enuff to send us on our way rejoicin', I don't know what is! For Lord knows if the dear Christ was hated, we can put up wi' a bit o' the hate for ourselves!"
There was a pause.
"So Mr. Reay reads very well, does he?" asked Mary.
"Fine!" said Mrs. Twitt,--"'E's a lovely man with a lovely voice! If 'e'd bin a parson 'e'd 'a drawed thousands to 'ear 'im! 'E wouldn't 'a wanted crosses nor candles to show us as 'e was speakin' true. Twitt sez to 'im t'other day--'Why aint you a parson, Mr. Reay?' an' 'e sez, 'Cos I'm goin' to be a preacher!' An' we couldn't make this out nohow, till 'e showed us as 'ow 'e was a-goin' to tell people things as they ought to know in the book 'e's writin'. An' 'e sez it's the only way, cos the parsons is gettin' so uppish, an' the Pope 'as got 'old o' some o' the newspapers, so that there aint no truth told nowheres, unless a few writers o' books will take 'art o' grace an' speak out. An' 'e sez there's a many as 'll do it, an' he tells Twitt--'Twitt,' sez he, 'Pin your faith on brave books! Beware o' newspapers, an' fight off the priest! Read brave books--books that were written centuries ago to teach people courage--an' read brave books that are written now to keep courage goin'!' An' we sez, so we will--for books is cheap enuff, God knows!--an' only t'other day Twitt went over to Minehead an' bought a new book by Sir Walter Scott called _Guy Mannering_ for ninepence. It's a grand story! an' keeps us alive every evenin'! I'm just mad on that old woman in it--Meg Merrilies--she knew a good deal as goes on in the world, I'll warrant! All about signs an' omens too. It's just fine! I'd like to see Sir Walter Scott!"
"He's dead," said Mary, "dead long ago. But he was a good as well as a great man."
"'E must 'a bin," agreed Mrs. Twitt; "I'm right sorry 'e's dead. Some folks die as is bound to be missed, an' some folks lives on as one 'ud be glad to see in their long 'ome peaceful at rest, forbye their bein' born so grumblesome like. Twitt 'ud be at 'is best composin' a hepitaph for Mr. Arbroath now!"
As she said this the corners of her mouth, which usually drooped in somewhat lachrymose lines, went up in a whimsical smile. And feeling that she had launched a shaft of witticism which could not fail to reach its mark, she trotted off on further gossiping errands bent.
The tenor of her conversation was repeated to Angus Reay that afternoon when he arrived, as was often his custom, for what was ostensibly "a chat with old David," but what was really a silent, watchful worship of Mary.
"She is a dear old soul!" he said, "and Twitt is a rough diamond of British honesty. Such men as he keep the old country together and help to establish its reputation for integrity. But that man Arbroath ought to be kicked out of the Church! In fact, I as good as told him so!"
"You did!" And Helmsley's sunken eyes began to sparkle with sudden animation. "Upon my word, sir, you are very bold!"
"Bold? Why, what can he do to me?" demanded Angus. "I told him I had been for some years on the press, and that I knew the ins and outs of the Jesuit propaganda there. I told him he was false to the principles under which he had been ordained. I told him that he was assisting to introduce the Romish 'secret service' system into Great Britain, and that he was, with a shameless disregard of true patriotism, using such limited influence as he had to put our beloved free country under the tyranny of the Vatican. I said, that if ever I got a hearing with the British public, I meant to expose him, and all such similar wolves in sheep's clothing as himself."
"But--what did he say?" asked Mary eagerly.
"Oh, he turned livid, and then told me I was an atheist, adding that nearly all writers of books were of the same evil persuasion as myself. I said that if I believed that the Maker of Heaven and Earth took any pleasure in seeing him perambulate a church with a cross and six wretched little boys who didn't understand a bit what they were doing, I should be an atheist indeed. I furthermore told him I believed in God, who upheld this glorious Universe by the mere expressed power of His thought, and I said I believed in Christ, the Teacher who showed to men that the only way to obtain immortal life and happiness was by the conquest of Self. 'You may call that atheistical if you like,' I said,--'It's a firm faith that will help to keep _me_ straight, and that will hold me to the paths of right and truth without any crosses or candles.' Then I told him that this little village of Weircombe, in its desire for simplicity in forms of devotion, was nearer heaven than he was. And--and I think," concluded Angus, ruffling up his hair with one hand, "that's about all I told him!"
Helmsley gave a low laugh of intense enjoyment.
"All!" he echoed, "I should say it was enough!"
"I hope it was," said Angus seriously, "I meant it to be." And moving to Mary's side, he took up the end of a lace flounce on which she was at work. "What a creation in cobwebs!" he exclaimed--"Who does it belong to, Miss Mary?"
"To a very great lady," she replied, working busily with her needle and avoiding the glance of his eyes; "her name is often in the papers." And she gave it. "No doubt you know her?"
"Know her? Not I!" And he shrugged his shoulders disdainfully. "But she is very generally known--as a thoroughly bad woman! I _hate_ to see you working on anything for her!"
She looked up surprised, and the colour came and went in a delicate flush on her face.
"False to her husband, false to her children, and false to herself!" went on Angus hotly--"And disloyal to her king! And having turned on her own family and her own class, she seeks to truckle to the People under pretence of serving _them_, while all the time her sole object is to secure notoriety for herself! She is a shame to England!"
"You speak very hotly, sir!" said Helmsley, slowly. "Are you sure of your facts?"
"The facts are not concealed," returned Reay--"They are public property. That no one has the courage to denounce such women--women who openly flaunt their immoralities in our midst--is a bad sign of the times. Women are doing a great deal of mischief just now. Look at them fussing about Female Suffrage! Female Suffrage, quotha! Let them govern their homes properly, wisely, reasonably, and faithfully, and they will govern the nation!"
"That's true!" And Helmsley nodded gravely. "That's very true!"
"A woman who really loves a man," went on Angus, mechanically fingering the skeins of lace thread which lay on the table at Mary's side, ready for use--"governs him, unconsciously to herself, by the twin powers of sex and instinct. She was intended for his help-mate, to guide him in the right way by her finer forces. If she neglects to cultivate these finer forces--if she tramples on her own natural heritage, and seeks to 'best' him with his own weapons--she fails--she must fail--she deserves to fail! But as true wife and true mother, she is supreme!"
"But the ladies are not content with such a limited sphere," began Helmsley, with a little smile.
"Limited? Good God!--where does the limit come in?" demanded Reay. "It is because they are not sufficiently educated to understand their own privileges that women complain of limitations. An unthinking, unreasoning, unintelligent wife and mother is of course no higher than any other female of the animal species--but I do not uphold this class. I claim that the woman who _thinks_, and gives her intelligence full play--the woman who is physically sound and morally pure--the woman who devoutly studies the noblest side of life, and tries to bring herself into unison with the Divine intention of human progress towards the utmost good--she, as wife and mother, is the angel of the world. She _is_ the world!--she makes it, she rejuvenates it, she gives it strength! Why should she condescend to mix with the passing political squabbles of her slaves and children?--for men are no more than her slaves and children. Love is her weapon--one true touch of that, and the wildest heart that ever beat in a man's breast is tamed."
There was a silence. Suddenly Mary pushed aside her work, and going to the door opened it.
"It's so warm to-day, don't you think?" she asked, passing her hand a little wearily across her forehead. "One would think it was almost June."
"You are tired, Miss Mary!" said Reay, somewhat anxiously.
"No--I'm not tired--but"--here all at once her eyes filled with tears. "I've got a bit of a headache," she murmured, forcing a smile--"I think I'll go to my room and rest for half an hour. Good-bye, Mr. Reay!"
"Good-bye--for the moment!" he answered--and taking her hand he pressed it gently. "I hope the headache will soon pass."
She withdrew her hand from his quickly and left the kitchen. Angus watched her go, and when she had disappeared heaved an involuntary but most lover-like sigh. Helmsley looked at him with a certain whimsical amusement.
"Well!" he said.
Reay gave himself a kind of impatient shake.
"Well, old David!" he rejoined.
"Why don't you speak to her?"
"I dare not! I'm too poor!"
"Is she so rich?"
"She's richer than I am."
"It is quite possible," said Helmsley slowly, "that she will always be richer than you. Literary men must never expect to be millionaires."
"Don't tell me that--I know it!" and Angus laughed. "Besides, I don't want to be a millionaire--wouldn't be one for the world! By the way, you remember that man I told you about--the old chap my first love was going to marry--David Helmsley?"
Helmsley did not move a muscle.
"Yes--I remember!" he answered quietly.
"Well, the papers say he's dead."
"Oh! the papers say he's dead, do they?"
"Yes. It appeared that he went abroad last summer,--it is thought that he went to the States on some matters of business--and has not since been heard of."
Helmsley kept an immovable face.
"He may possibly have got murdered for his money," went on Angus reflectively--"though I don't see how such an act could benefit the murderer. Because his death wouldn't stop the accumulation of his millions, which would eventually go to his heir."
"Has he an heir?" enquired Helmsley placidly.
"Oh, he's sure to have left his vast fortune to somebody," replied Reay. "He had two sons, so I was told--but they're dead. It's possible he may have left everything to Lucy Sorrel."
"Ah yes! Quite possible!"
"Of course," went on Reay, "it's only the newspapers that say he's dead--and there never was a newspaper yet that could give an absolutely veracious account of anything. His lawyers--a famous firm, Vesey and Symonds,--have written a sort of circular letter to the press stating that the report of his death is erroneous--that he is travelling for health's sake, and on account of a desire for rest and privacy, does not wish his whereabouts to be made publicly known."
Helmsley smiled.
"I knew I might trust Vesey!" he thought. Aloud he said--
"Well, I should believe the gentleman's lawyers more than the newspaper reporters. Wouldn't you?"
"Of course. I shouldn't have taken the least interest in the rumour, if I hadn't been once upon a time in love with Lucy Sorrel. Because if the old man is really dead and has done nothing in the way of providing for her, I wonder what she will do?"
"Go out charing!" said Helmsley drily. "Many a better woman than you have described her to be, has had to come to that."
There was a silence. Presently Helmsley spoke again in a quiet voice--
"I think, Mr. Reay, you should tell all your mind to Miss Mary."
Angus started nervously.
"Do you, David? Why?"
"Why?--well--because--" Here Helmsley spoke very gently--"because I believe she loves you!"
The colour kindled in Reay's face.
"Ah, don't fool me, David!" he said--"you don't know what it would mean to me----"
"Fool you!" Helmsley sat upright in his chair and looked at him with an earnestness which left no room for doubt. "Do you think I would 'fool' you, or any man, on such a matter? Old as I am, and lonely and friendless as I _was_, before I met this dear woman, I know that love is the most sacred of all things--the most valuable of all things--better than gold--greater than power--the only treasure we can lay up in heaven 'where neither moth nor rust do corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal!' Do not"--and here his strong emotion threatened to get the better of him--"do not, sir, think that because I was tramping the road in search of a friend to help me, before Miss Mary found me and brought me home here and saved my life, God bless her!--do not think, I say, that I have no feeling! I feel very much--very strongly--" He broke off breathing quickly, and his hands trembled. Reay hastened to his side in some alarm, remembering what Mary had told him about the old man's heart.
"Dear old David, I know!" he said. "Don't worry! I know you feel it all--I'm sure you do! Now, for goodness' sake, don't excite yourself like this--she--she'll never forgive me!" and he shook up the cushion at the back of Helmsley's chair and made him lean upon it. "Only it would be such a joy to me--such a wonder--such a help--to know that she really loved me!--_loved_ me, David!--you understand--why, I think I could conquer the world!"
Helmsley smiled faintly. He was suffering physical anguish at the moment--the old sharp pain at his heart to which he had become more or less wearily accustomed, had dizzied his senses for a space, but as the spasm passed he took Reay's hand and pressed it gently.
"What does the Great Book tell us?" he muttered. "'If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned!' That's true! And I would never 'fool' or mislead you on a matter of such life and death to you, Mr. Reay. That's why I tell you to speak to Miss Mary as soon as you can find a good opportunity--for I am sure she loves you!"
"Sure, David?"
"Sure!"
Reay stood silent,--his eyes shining, and "the light that never was on sea or land" transfigured his features.
At that moment a tap came at the door. A hand, evidently accustomed to the outside management of the latch, lifted it, and Mr. Twitt entered, his rubicund face one broad smile.
"'Afternoon, David! 'Afternoon, Mister! Wheer's Mis' Deane?"
"She's resting a bit in her room," replied Helmsley.
"Ah, well! You can tell 'er the news when she comes in. Mr. Arbroath's away for 'is life wi' old Nick in full chase arter 'im! It don't do t'ave a fav'rite gel!"
Helmsley and Reay stared at him, and then at one another.
"Why, what's up?" demanded Reay.
"Oh, nuthin' much!" and Twitt's broad shoulders shook with internal laughter. "It's wot 'appens often in the fam'lies o' the haris-to-crazy, an' aint taken no notice of, forbye 'tis not so common among poor folk. Ye see Mr. Arbroath he--he--he--he--he--he----" and here the pronoun "he" developed into a long chuckle. "He's got a sweet'art on the sly, an'--an'--an'--_'is wife's found it out_! Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he! 'Is wife's found it out! That's the trouble! An' she's gone an' writ to the Bishop 'erself! Oh lor'! Never trust a woman wi' cat's eyes! She's writ to the Bishop, an' gone 'ome in a tearin' fit o' the rantin' 'igh-strikes,--an' Mister Arbroath 'e's follerd 'er, an' left us wi' a curate--a 'armless little chap wi' a bad cold in 'is 'ed, an' a powerful red nose--but 'onest an' 'omely like 'is own face. An' 'e'll take the services till our own vicar comes 'ome, which'll be, please God, this day fort_night_. But oh lor'!--to think o' that grey-'aired rascal Arbroath with a fav'rite gel on the sly! Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he! We'se be all mortal!" and Twitt shook his head with profound solemnity. "Ef I was a-goin' to carve a tombstone for that 'oly 'igh Churchman, I'd write on it the old 'ackneyed sayin', 'Man wants but little 'ere below, Nor wants that little long!' Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he!"
His round jolly face beamed with merriment, and Angus Reay caught infection from his mirth and laughed heartily.
"Twitt, you're an old rascal!" he exclaimed. "I really believe you enjoy showing up Mr. Arbroath's little weaknesses!"
"Not I--not I, Mister!" protested Twitt, his eyes twinkling. "I sez, be fair to all men! I sez, if a parson wants to chuck a gel under the chin, let 'im do so by all means, God willin'! But don't let 'im purtend as 'e _couldn't_ chuck 'er under the chin for the hull world! Don't let 'im go round lookin' as if 'e was vinegar gone bad, an' preach at the parish as if we was all mis'able sinners while 'e's the mis'ablest one hisself. But old Arbroath--damme!" and he gave a sounding slap to his leg in sheer ecstacy. "Caught in the act by 'is wife! Oh lor', oh lor'! 'Is wife! An' _aint_ she a tartar!"
"But how did all this happen?" asked Helmsley, amused.
"Why, this way, David--quite 'appy an' innocent like, Missis Arbroath, she opens a letter from 'ome, which 'avin' glanced at the envelope casual-like she thinks was beggin' or mothers' meetin', an' there she finds it all out. Vicar's fav'rite gel writin' for money or clothes or summat, an' endin' up 'Yer own darlin'!' Ha-ha-ha-he-he-he! Oh Lord! There was an earthquake up at the rect'ry this marnin'--the cook there sez she never 'eerd sich a row in all 'er life--an' Missis Arbroath she was a-shriekin' for a divorce at the top of 'er voice! It's a small place, Weircombe Rect'ry, an' a woman can't shriek an' 'owl in it without bein' 'eerd. So both the cook an' 'ousemaid worn't by no manner o' means surprised when Mister Arbroath packed 'is bag an' went off in a trap to Minehead--an' we'll be left with a cheap curate in charge of our pore souls! Ha-ha-ha! But 'e's a decent little chap,--an' there'll be no 'igh falutin' services with _'im_, so we can all go to Church next Sunday comfortable. An' as for old Arbroath, we'll be seein' big 'edlines in the papers by and by about 'Scandalous Conduck of a Clergyman with 'is Fav'rite Gel!'" Here he made an effort to pull a grave face, but it was no use,--his broad smile beamed out once more despite himself. "Arter all," he said, chuckling, "the two things does fit in nicely together an' nat'ral like--'Igh Jinks an' a fav'rite gel!"
It was impossible not to derive a sense of fun from his shining eyes and beaming countenance, and Angus Reay gave himself up to the enjoyment of the moment, and laughed again and again.
"So you think he's gone altogether, eh?" he said, when he could speak.
"Oh, 'e's gone all right!" rejoined Twitt placidly. "A man may do lots o' queer things in this world, an' so long as 'is old 'ooman don't find 'im out, it's pretty fair sailin'; but once a parson's wife gets 'er nose on to the parson's fav'rite, then all the fat's bound to be in the fire! An' quite right as it should be! I wouldn't bet on the fav'rite when it come to a neck-an'-neck race atween the two!"
He laughed again, and they all talked awhile longer on this unexpected event, which, to such a village as Weircombe, was one of startling importance and excitement, and then, as the afternoon was drawing in and Mary did not reappear, Angus Reay took his departure with Twitt, leaving Helmsley sitting alone in his chair by the fire. But he did not go without a parting word--a word which was only a whisper.
"You think you are _sure_, David!" he said--"Sure that she loves me! I wish you would make doubly, trebly sure!--for it seems much too good to be true!"
Helmsley smiled, but made no answer.
When he was left alone in the little kitchen to which he was now so accustomed, he sat for a space gazing into the red embers of the fire, and thinking deeply. He had attained what he never thought it would be possible to attain--a love which had been bestowed upon him for himself alone. He had found what he had judged would be impossible to find--two hearts which, so far as he personally was concerned, were utterly uninfluenced by considerations of self-interest. Both Mary Deane and Angus Reay looked upon him as a poor, frail old man, entirely defenceless and dependent on the kindness and care of such strangers as sympathised with his condition. Could they now be suddenly told that he was the millionaire, David Helmsley, they would certainly never believe it. And even if they were with difficulty brought to believe it, they would possibly resent the deception he had practised on them. Sometimes he asked himself whether it was quite fair or right to so deceive them? But then,--reviewing his whole life, and seeing how at every step of his career men, and women too, had flattered him and fawned upon him as well as fooled him for mere money's sake,--he decided that surely he had the right at the approaching end of that career to make a fair and free trial of the world as to whether any thing or any one purely honest could be found in it.
"For it makes me feel more at peace with God," he said--"to know and to realise that there _are_ unselfish loving hearts to be found, if only in the very lowliest walks of life! I,--who have seen Society,--the modern Juggernaut,--rolling its great wheels recklessly over the hopes and joys and confidences of thousands of human beings--I, who know that even kings, who should be above dishonesty, are tainted by their secret speculations in the money-markets of the world,--surely I may be permitted to rejoice for my few remaining days in the finding of two truthful and simple souls, who have no motive for their kindness to me,--who see nothing in me but age, feebleness and poverty,--and whom I have perhaps been the means, through God's guidance, of bringing together. For it was to me that Reay first spoke that day on the seashore--and it was at my request that he first entered Mary's home. Can this be the way in which Divine Wisdom has chosen to redeem me? I,--who have never been loved as I would have desired to be loved,--am I now instructed how,--leaving myself altogether out of the question,--I may prosper the love of others and make two noble lives happy? It may be so,--and that in the foundation of their joy, I shall win my own soul's peace! So--leaving my treasures on earth,--I shall find my treasure in heaven, 'where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal!'"
Still looking at the fire he watched the glowing embers, now reddening, now darkening--or leaping up into sparks of evanescent flame,--and presently stooping, picked up the little dog Charlie from his warm corner on the hearth and fondled him.
"You were the first to love me in my loneliness!" he said, stroking the tiny animal's soft ears--"And,--to be quite exact,--I owe my life and all my present surroundings to you, Charlie! What shall I leave you in my will, eh?"
Charlie yawned capaciously, showing very white teeth and a very red tongue, and winked one bright eye.
"You're only a dog, Charlie! You've no use for money! You rely entirely upon your own attractiveness and the kindness of human nature! And so far your confidence has not been misplaced. But your fidelity and affection are only additional proofs of the powerlessness of money. Money bought you, Charlie, no doubt, in the first place--but money failed to keep you! And now, though by your means Mary found me where I lay helpless and unconscious on the hills in the storm, I can neither make you richer nor happier, Charlie! You're only a dog!--and a millionaire is no more to you than any other man!"
Charlie yawned comfortably again. He seemed to be perfectly aware that his master was talking to him, but what it was about he evidently did not know, and still more evidently did not care. He liked to be petted and made much of--and presently curled himself up in a soft silken ball on Helmsley's knee, with his little black nose pointed towards the fire, and his eyes blinking lazily at the sparkle of the flames. And so Mary found them, when at last she came down from her room to prepare supper.
"Is the headache better, my dear?" asked Helmsley, as she entered.
"It's quite gone, David!" she answered cheerily--"Mending the lace often tries one's eyes--it was nothing but that."
He looked at her intently.
"But you've been crying!" he said, with real concern.
"Oh, David! Women always cry when they feel like it!"
"But did _you_ feel like it?"
"Yes. I often do."
"Why?"
She gave a playful gesture with her hands.
"Who can tell! I remember when I was quite a child, I cried when I saw the first primrose of the spring after a long winter. I knelt down and kissed it, too! That's me all over. I'm stupid, David! My heart's too big for me--and there's too much in it that never comes out!"
He took her hand gently.
"All shut up like a volcano, Mary! But the fire is there!"
She laughed, with a touch of embarrassment.
"Oh yes! The fire is there! It will take years to cool down!"
"May it never cool down!" said Helmsley--"I hope it will always burn, and make life warm for you! For without the fire that is in _your_ heart, my dear, Heaven itself would be cold!"
CHAPTER XIX
The scandal affecting the Reverend Mr. Arbroath's reputation which had been so graphically related by Twitt, turned out to be true in every respect, and though considerable efforts were made to hush it up, the outraged feelings of the reverend gentleman's wife were not to be silenced. Proceedings for divorce were commenced, and it was understood that there would be no defence. In due course the "big 'edlines" which announced to the world in general that one of the most imperious "High" Anglicans of the Church had not only slipped from moral rectitude, but had intensified that sin by his publicly aggressive assumption of hypocritical virtue, appeared in the newspapers, and the village of Weircombe for about a week was brought into a certain notoriety which was distinctly displeasing to itself. The arrival of the "dailies" became a terror to it, and a general feeling of devout thankfulness was experienced by the whole community, when the rightful spiritual shepherd of the little flock returned from his sojourn abroad to take up the reigns of government, and restore law and order to his tiny distracted commonwealth. Fortunately for the peace of Weircombe, the frantic rush of social events, and incidents in which actual "news" of interest has no part, is too persistent and overwhelming for any one occurrence out of the million to occupy more than a brief passing notice, which is in its turn soon forgotten, and the "Scandalous Conduck of a Clergyman," as Mr. Twitt had put it, was soon swept aside in other examples of "Scandalous Conduck" among all sorts and conditions of men and women, which, caught up by flying Rumour with her thousand false and blatant tongues, is the sort of useless and pernicious stuff which chiefly keeps the modern press alive. Even the fact that the Reverend Mr. Arbroath was summarily deprived of his living and informed by the Bishop in the usual way, that his services would no longer be required, created very little interest. Some months later a small journalistic flourish was heard on behalf of the discarded gentleman, upon the occasion of his being "received" into the Church of Rome, with all his sins forgiven,--but so far as Weircombe was concerned, the story of himself and his "fav'rite" was soon forgotten, and his very name ceased to be uttered. The little community resumed its normal habit of cheerful attendance at Church every Sunday, satisfied to have shown to the ecclesiastical powers that be, the fact that "'Igh Jinks" in religion would never be tolerated amongst them; and the life of Weircombe went on in the usual placid way, divided between work and prayer, and governed by the twin forces of peace and contentment.
Meantime, the secret spells of Mother Nature were silently at work in the development and manifestation of the Spring. The advent of April came like a revelation of divine beauty to the little village nestled in the "coombe," and garlanded it from summit to base with tangles of festal flowers. The little cottage gardens and higher orchards were smothered in the snow of plum and cherry-blossom,--primroses carpeted the woods which crowned the heights of the hills, and the long dark spikes of bluebells, ready to bud and blossom, thrust themselves through the masses of last year's dead leaves, side by side with the uncurling fronds of the bracken and fern. Thrushes and blackbirds piped with cheerful persistence among the greening boughs of the old chestnut which shaded Mary Deane's cottage, and children roaming over the grassy downs above the sea, brought news of the skylark's song and the cuckoo's call. Many a time in these lovely, fresh and sunny April days Angus Reay would persuade Mary away from her lace-mending to take long walks with him across the downs, or through the woods--and on each occasion when they started on these rambles together, David Helmsley would sit and watch for their return in a curious sort of timorous suspense--wondering, hoping, and fearing,--eager for the moment when Angus should speak his mind to the woman he loved, and yet always afraid lest that woman should, out of some super-sensitive feeling, put aside and reject that love, even though she might long to accept it. However, day after day passed and nothing happened. Either Angus hesitated, or else Mary was unapproachable--and Helmsley worried himself in vain. They, who did not know his secret, could not of course imagine the strained condition of mind in which their undeclared feelings kept him,--and and he found himself more perplexed and anxious over their apparent uncertainty than he had ever been over some of his greatest financial schemes. Facts and figures can to a certain extent be relied upon, but the fluctuating humours and vagaries of a man and woman in love with each other are beyond the most precise calculations of the skilled mathematician. For it often happens that when they seem to be coldest they are warmest--and cases have been known where they have taken the greatest pains to avoid each other at a time when they have most deeply longed to be always together. It was during this uncomfortable period of uneasiness and hesitation for Helmsley, that Angus and Mary were perhaps most supremely happy. Dimly, sweetly conscious that the gate of Heaven was open for them and that it was Love, the greatest angel of all God's mighty host, that waited for them there, they hovered round and round upon the threshold of the glory, eager, yet afraid to enter. Up in the primrose-carpeted woods together they talked, like good friends, of a thousand things,--of the weather, of the promise of fruit in the orchards, of the possibilities of a good fishing year, and of the general beauty of the scenery around Weircombe. Then, of course, there was the book which Angus was writing--a book now nearing completion. It was a very useful book, because it gave them a constant and safe topic of conversation. Many chapters were read and re-read--many passages written and re-written for Mary's hearing and criticism,--and it may at once be said that what had at first been merely clever, brilliant, and intellectual writing, was now becoming not so much a book as an artistic creation, through which the blood and colour of human life pulsed and flowed, giving it force and vitality. Sometimes they persuaded Helmsley to accompany them on some of their shorter rambles,--but he was not strong enough to walk far, and he often left them half-way up the "coombe," returning to the cottage alone. Mary had frequently expressed a great wish to take him to a favourite haunt of hers, which she called the "Giant's Castle"--but he was unable to make the steep ascent--so on one fine afternoon she took Angus there instead. "The Giant's Castle" had no recognised name among the Weircombe villagers save this one which Mary had bestowed upon it, and which the children repeated after her so often that it seemed highly probable that the title would stick to it for ever. "Up Giant's Castle way" was quite a familiar direction to any one ascending the "coombe," or following the precipitous and narrow path which wound along the edge of the cliffs to certain pastures where shepherds as well as sheep were in daily danger of landslips, and which to the ordinary pedestrian were signalled by a warning board as "Dangerous." But "Giant's Castle" itself was merely the larger and loftier of the two towering rocks which guarded the sea-front of Weircombe village. A tortuous grassy path led up to its very pinnacle, and from here, there was an unbroken descent as straight and smooth as a well-built wall, of several hundred feet sheer down into the sea, which at this point swirled round the rocky base in dark, deep, blackish-green eddies, sprinkled with trailing sprays of brown and crimson weed. It was a wonderful sight to look down upon this heaving mass of water, if it could be done without the head swimming and the eyes growing blind with the light of the sky striking sharp against the restless heaving of the waves, and Mary was one of the few who could stand fearlessly on almost the very brink of the parapet of the "Giant's Castle," and watch the sweep of the gulls as they flew under and above her, uttering their brief plaintive cries of gladness or anger as the wild wind bore them to and fro. When Reay first saw her run eagerly to the very edge, and stand there, a light, bold, beautiful figure, with the wind fluttering her garments and blowing loose a long rippling tress of her amber-brown hair, he could not refrain from an involuntary cry of terror, and an equally involuntary rush to her side with his arms outstretched. But as she turned her sweet face and grave blue eyes upon him there was something in the gentle dignity and purity of her look that held him back, abashed, and curiously afraid. She made him feel the power of her sex,--a power invincible when strengthened by modesty and reserve,--and the easy licence which modern women, particularly those of a degraded aristocracy, permit to men in both conversation and behaviour nowadays, would have found no opportunity of being exercised in her presence. So, though his impulse moved him to catch her round the waist and draw her with forcible tenderness away from the dizzy eminence on which she stood, he dared not presume so far, and merely contented himself with a bounding stride which brought him to the same point of danger as herself, and the breathless exclamation--
"Miss Mary! Take care!"
She smiled.
"Oh, there is nothing to be frightened of!" she said. "Often and often I have come here quite alone and looked down upon the sea in all weathers. Just after my father's death, this used to be the place I loved best, where I could feel that I was all by myself with God, who alone understood my sadness. At night, when the moon is at the full, it is very beautiful here. One looks down into the water and sees a world of waving light, and then, looking up to the sky, there is a heaven of stars!--and all the weary ways of life are forgotten! The angels seem so near!"
A silent agreement with this latter statement shone in Reay's eyes as he looked at her.
"It's good sometimes to find a woman who still believes in angels," he said.
"Don't _you_ believe in them?"
"Implicitly,--with all my heart and soul!" And again his eyes were eloquent.
A wave of rosy colour flitted over her face, and shading her eyes from the strong glare of the sun, she gazed across the sea.
"I wish dear old David could see this glorious sight!" she said. "But he's not strong--and I'm afraid--I hardly like to think it--that he's weaker than he knows."
"Poor old chap!" said Angus, gently. "Any way, you've done all you can for him, and he's very grateful. I hope he'll last a few years longer."
"I hope so too," she answered quickly. "For I should miss him very much. I've grown quite to love him."
"I think he feels that," and Angus seated himself on a jutting crag of the "Giant's Castle" and prepared for the utterance of something desperate. "Any one would, you know!"
She made no reply. Her gaze was fixed on the furthest silver gleaming line of the ocean horizon.
"Any one would be bound to feel it, if you loved--if you were fond of him," he went on in rather a rambling way. "It would make all the difference in the world----"
She turned towards him quickly with a smile. Her breathing was a little hurried.
"Shall we go back now?" she said.
"Certainly!--if--if you wish--but isn't it rather nice up here?" he pleaded.
"We'll come another day," and she ran lightly down the first half of the grassy path which had led them to the summit. "But I mustn't waste any more time this afternoon."
"Why? Any pressing demands for mended lace?" asked Angus, as he followed her.
"Oh no! Not particularly so. Only when the firm that employs me, sends any very specially valuable stuff worth five or six hundred pounds or so, I never like to keep it longer that I can help. And the piece I'm at work on is valued at a thousand guineas."
"Wouldn't you like to wear it yourself?" he asked suddenly, with a laugh.
"I? I wouldn't wear it for the world! Do you know, Mr. Reay, that I almost hate beautiful lace! I admire the work and design, of course--no one could help that--but every little flower and leaf in the fabric speaks to me of so many tired eyes growing blind over the intricate stitches--so many weary fingers, and so many aching hearts--all toiling for the merest pittance! For it is not the real makers of the lace who get good profit by their work, it is the merchants who sell it that have all the advantage. If I were a great lady and a rich one, I would refuse to buy any lace from the middleman,--I would seek out the actual poor workers, and give them my orders, and see that they were comfortably fed and housed as long as they worked for me."
"And it's just ten chances to one whether they would be grateful to you----" Angus began. She silenced him by a slight gesture.
"But I shouldn't care whether they were grateful or not," she said. "I should be content to know that I had done what was right and just to my fellow-creatures."
They had no more talk that day, and Helmsley, eagerly expectant, and watching them perhaps more intently than a criminal watches the face of a judge, was as usual disappointed. His inward excitement, always suppressed, made him somewhat feverish and irritable, and Mary, all unconscious of the cause, stayed in to "take care of him" as she said, and gave up her afternoon walks with Angus for a time altogether, which made the situation still more perplexing, and to Helmsley almost unbearable. Yet there was nothing to be done. He felt it would be unwise to speak of the matter in any way to her--she was a woman who would certainly find it difficult to believe that she had won, or could possibly win the love of a lover at her age;--she might even resent it,--no one could tell. And so the days of April paced softly on, in bloom and sunlight, till May came in with a blaze of colour and radiance, and the last whiff of cold wind blew itself away across the sea. The "biting nor'easter," concerning which the comic press gives itself up to senseless parrot-talk with each recurrence of the May month, no matter how warm and beautiful that month may be, was a "thing foregone and clean forgotten,"--and under the mild and beneficial influences of the mingled sea and moorland air, Helmsley gained a temporary rush of strength, and felt so much better, that he was able to walk down to the shore and back again once or twice a a day, without any assistance, scarcely needing even the aid of his stick to lean upon. The shore remained his favourite haunt; he was never tired of watching the long waves roll in, edged with gleaming ribbons of foam, and roll out again, with the musical clatter of drawn pebbles and shells following the wake of the backward sweeping ripple,--and he made friends with many of the Weircombe fisherfolk, who were always ready to chat with him concerning themselves and the difficulties and dangers of their trade. The children, too, were all eager to run after "old David," as they called him,--and many an afternoon he would sit in the sun, with a group of these hardy little creatures gathered about him, listening entranced, while he told them strange stories of foreign lands and far travels,--travels which men took "in search of gold"--as he would say, with a sad little smile--"gold, which is not nearly so much use as it seems to be."
"But can't us buy everything with plenty of money?" asked a seven-year-old urchin, on one of these occasions, looking solemnly up into his face with a pair of very round, big brown eyes.
"Not everything, my little man," he answered, smoothing the rough locks of the small inquirer with a very tender hand. "I could not buy _you_, for instance! Your mother wouldn't sell you!"
The child laughed.
"Oh, no! But I didn't mean me!"
"I know you didn't mean me!" and Helmsley smiled. "But suppose some one put a thousand golden sovereigns in a bag on one side, and you in your rough little torn clothes on the other, and asked your mother which she would like best to have--what do you think she would say?"
"She'd 'ave _me_!" and a smile of confident satisfaction beamed on the grinning little face like a ray of sunshine.
"Of course she would! The bag of sovereigns would be no use at all compared to you. So you see we cannot buy everything with money."
"But--most things?" queried the boy--"Eh?"
"Most things--perhaps," Helmsley answered, with a slight sigh. "But those 'most things' are not things of much value even when you get them. You can never buy love,--and that is the only real treasure,--the treasure of Heaven!"
The child looked at him, vaguely impressed by his sudden earnestness, but scarcely understanding his words.
"Wouldn't _you_ like a little money?" And the inquisitive young eyes fixed themselves on his face with an expression of tenderest pity. "You'se a very poor old man!"
Helmsley laughed, and again patted the little curly head.
"Yes--yes--a very poor old man!" he repeated. "But I don't want any more than I've got!"
One afternoon towards mid-May, a strong yet soft sou'wester gale blew across Weircombe, bringing with it light showers of rain, which, as they fell upon the flowering plants and trees, brought out all the perfume of the spring in such rich waves of sweetness, that, though as yet there were no roses, and the lilac was only just budding out, the whole countryside seemed full of the promised fragrance of the blossoms that were yet to be. The wind made scenery in the sky, heaping up snowy masses of cloud against the blue in picturesque groups resembling Alpine heights, and fantastic palaces of fairyland, and when,--after a glorious day of fresh and invigorating air which swept both sea and hillside, a sudden calm came with the approach of sunset, the lovely colours of earth and heaven, melting into one another, where so pure and brilliant, that Mary, always a lover of Nature, could not resist Angus Reay's earnest entreaty that she would accompany him to see the splendid departure of the orb of day, in all its imperial panoply of royal gold and purple.
"It will be a beautiful sunset," he said--"And from the 'Giant's Castle' rock, a sight worth seeing."
Helmsley looked at him as he spoke, and looking, smiled.
"Do go, my dear," he urged--"And come back and tell me all about it."
"I really think you want me out of your way, David!" she said laughingly. "You seem quite happy when I leave you!"
"You don't get enough fresh air," he answered evasively. "And this is just the season of the year when you most need it."
She made no more demur, and putting on the simple straw hat, which, plainly trimmed with a soft knot of navy-blue ribbon, was all her summer head-gear, she left the house with Reay. After a while, Helmsley also went out for his usual lonely ramble on the shore, from whence he could see the frowning rampart of the "Giant's Castle" above him, though it was impossible to discern any person who might be standing at its summit, on account of the perpendicular crags that intervened. From both shore and rocky height the scene was magnificent. The sun, dipping slowly down towards the sea, shot rays of glory around itself in an aureole of gold, which, darting far upwards, and spreading from north to south, pierced the drifting masses of floating fleecy cloud like arrows, and transfigured their whiteness to splendid hues of fiery rose and glowing amethyst, while just between the falling Star of Day and the ocean, a rift appeared of smooth and delicate watery green, touched here and there with flecks of palest pink and ardent violet. Up on the parapet of the "Giant's Castle," all this loyal panoply of festal colour was seen at its best, sweeping in widening waves across the whole surface of the Heavens; and there was a curious stillness everywhere, as though earth itself were conscious of a sudden and intense awe. Standing on the dizzy edge of her favourite point of vantage, Mary Deane gazed upon the sublime spectacle with eyes so passionately tender in their far-away expression, that, to Angus Reay, who watched those eyes with much more rapt admiration than he bestowed upon the splendour of the sunset, they looked like the eyes of some angel, who, seeing heaven all at once revealed, recognised her native home, and with the recognition, was prepared for immediate flight And on the impulse which gave him this fantastic thought, he said softly--
"Don't go away, Miss Mary! Stay with us--with me--as long as you can!"
She turned her head and looked at him, smiling.
"Why, what do you mean? I'm not going away anywhere--who told you that I was?"
"No one,"--and Angus drew a little nearer to her--"But just now you seemed so much a part of the sea and the sky, leaning forward and giving yourself entirely over to the glory of the moment, that I felt as if you might float away from me altogether." Here he paused--then added in a lower tone--"And I could not bear to lose you!"
She was silent. But her face grew pale, and her lips quivered. He saw the tremor pass over her, and inwardly rejoiced,--his own nerves thrilling as he realised that, after all, _if_--if she loved him, he was the master of her fate.
"We've been such good friends," he went on, dallying with his own desire to know the best or worst--"Haven't we?"
"Indeed, yes!" she answered, somewhat faintly. "And I hope we always will be."
"I hope so, too!" he answered in quite a matter-of-fact way. "You see I'm rather a clumsy chap with women----"
She smiled a little.
"Are you?"
"Yes,--I mean I never get on with them quite as well as other fellows do somehow--and--er--and--what I want to say, Miss Mary, is that I've never got on with any woman so well as I have with you--and----"
He paused. At no time in his life had he been at such a loss for language. His heart was thumping in the most extraordinary fashion, and he prodded the end of his walking-stick into the ground with quite a ferocious earnestness. She was still looking at him and still smiling.
"And," he went on ramblingly, "that's why I hope we shall always be good friends."
As he uttered this perfectly commonplace remark, he cursed himself for a fool. "What's the matter with me?" he inwardly demanded. "My tongue seems to be tied up!--or I'm going to have lockjaw! It's awful! Something better than this has got to come out of me somehow!" And acting on a brilliant flash of inspiration which suddenly seemed to have illumined his brain, he said--
"The fact is, I want to get married. I'm thinking about it."
How quiet she was! She seemed scarcely to breathe.
"Yes?" and the word, accentuated without surprise and merely as a question, was spoken very gently. "I do hope you have found some one who loves you with all her heart!"
She turned her head away, and Angus saw, or thought he saw, the bright tears brim up from under her lashes and slowly fall. Without another instant's pause he rushed upon his destiny, and in that rush grew strong.
"Yes, Mary!" he said, and moving to her side he caught her hand in his own--"I dare to think I have found that some one! I believe I have! I believe that a woman whom I love with all my heart, loves me in return! If I am mistaken, then I've lost the whole world! Tell me, Mary! Am I wrong?"
She could not speak,--the tears were thick in her eyes.
"Mary--dear, dearest Mary!" and he pressed the hand he held--"You know I love you!--you know----"
She turned her face towards him--a pale, wondering face,--and tried to smile.
"How do I know?" she murmured tremulously--"How can I believe? I'm past the time for love!"
For all answer he drew her into his arms.
"Ask Love itself about that, Mary!" he said. "Ask my heart, which beats for you,--ask my soul, which longs for you!--ask me, who worship you, you, best and dearest of women, about the time for love! That time for us is now, Mary!--now and always!"
Then came a silence--that eloquent silence which surpasses all speech. Love has no written or spoken language--it is incommunicable as God. And Mary, whose nature was open and pure as the daylight, would not have been the woman she was if she could have expressed in words the deep tenderness and passion which at that supreme moment silently responded to her lover's touch, her lover's embrace. And when,--lifting her face between his two hands, he gazed at it long and earnestly, a smile, shining between tears, brightened her sweet eyes.
"You are looking at me as if you never saw me before, Angus!" she said, her voice sinking softly, as she pronounced his name.
"Positively, I don't think I ever have!" he answered "Not as you are now, Mary! I have never seen you look so beautiful! I have never seen you before as my love! my wife!"
She drew herself a little away from him.
"But, are you sure you are doing right for yourself?" she asked--"You know you could marry anybody----"
He laughed, and threw one arm round her waist.
"Thanks!--I don't want to marry 'anybody'--I want to marry _you_! The question is, will you have me?"
She smiled.
"If I thought it would be for your good----"
Stooping quickly he kissed her.
"_That's_ very much for my good!" he declared. "And now that I've told you my mind, you must tell me yours. Do you love me, Mary?"
"I'm afraid you know that already too well!" she said, with a wistful radiance in her eyes.
"I don't!" he declared--"I'm not at all sure of you----"
She interrupted him.
"Are you sure of yourself?"
"Mary!"
"Ah, don't look so reproachful! It's only for you I'm thinking! You see I'm nothing but a poor working woman of what is called the lower classes--I'm not young, and I'm not clever. Now you've got genius; you'll be a great man some day, quite soon perhaps--you may even become rich as well as famous, and then perhaps you'll be sorry you ever met me----"
"In that case I'll call upon the public hangman and ask him to give me a quick despatch," he said promptly; "Though I shouldn't be worth the expense of a rope!"
"Angus, you won't be serious!"
"Serious? I never was more serious in my life! And I want my question answered."
"What question?"
"Do you love me? Yes or no!"
He held her close and looked her full in the face as he made this peremptory demand. Her cheeks grew crimson, but she met his searching gaze frankly.
"Ah, though you are a man, you are a spoilt child!" she said. "You know I love you more than I can say!--and yet you want me to tell you what can never be told!"
He caught her to his heart, and kissed her passionately.
"That's enough!" he said--"For if you love me, Mary, your love is love indeed!--it's no sham; and like all true and heavenly things, it will never change. I believe, if I turned out to be an utter wastrel, you'd love me still!"
"Of course I should!" she answered.
"Of course you would!" and he kissed her again. "Mary, _my_ Mary, if there were more women like you, there would be more men!--men in the real sense of the word--manly men, whose love and reverence for women would make them better and braver in the battle of life. Do you know, I can do anything now, with you to love me! I don't suppose,"--and here he unconsciously squared his shoulders--"I really don't suppose there is a single difficulty in my way that I won't conquer!"
She smiled, leaning against him.
"If you feel like that, I am very happy!" she said.
As she spoke, she raised her eyes to the sky, and uttered an involuntary exclamation.
"Look, look!" she cried--"How glorious!"
The heavens above them were glowing red,--forming a dome of burning rose, deepening in hue towards the sea, where the outer rim of the nearly vanished sun was slowly disappearing below the horizon--and in the centre of this ardent glory, a white cloud, shaped like a dove with outspread wings, hung almost motionless. The effect was marvellously beautiful, and Angus, full of his own joy, was more than ever conscious of the deep content of a spirit attuned to the infinite joy of nature.
"It is like the Holy Grail," he said, and, with one arm round the woman he loved, he softly quoted the lines:--
"And down the long beam stole the Holy Grail, Rose-red, with beatings in it as if alive!"
"That is Tennyson," she said.
"Yes--that is Tennyson--the last great poet England can boast," he answered. "The poet who hated hate and loved love."
"All poets are like that," she murmured.
"Not all, Mary! Some of the modern ones hate love and love hate!"
"Then they are not poets," she said. "They would not see any beauty in that lovely sky--and they would not understand----"
"Us!" finished Angus. "And I assure you, Mary at the present moment, we are worth understanding!"
She laughed softly.
"Do we understand ourselves?" she asked.
"Of course we don't! If we did, we should probably be miserable. It's just because we are mysterious one to another, that we are so happy. No human being should ever try to analyse the fact of existence. It's enough that we exist--and that we love each other. Isn't it, Mary?"
"Enough? It is too much,--too much happiness altogether for _me_, at any rate," she said. "I can't believe in it yet! I can't really, Angus! Why should you love me?"
"Why, indeed!" And his eyes grew dark and warm with tenderness--"Why should you love _me_?"
"Ah, there's so much to love in you!" and she made her heart's confession with a perfectly naïve candour. "I daresay you don't see it yourself, but I do!"
"And I assure you, Mary," he declared, with a whimsical solemnity, "that there's ever so much more to love in you! I know you don't see it for yourself, but I do!"
Then they laughed together like two children, and all constraint was at an end between them. Hand in hand they descended the grassy steep of the "Giant's Castle"--charmed with one another, and at every step of the way seeing some new delight which they seemed to have missed before. The crimson sunset burned about them like the widening petals of a rose in fullest bloom,--earth caught the fervent glory and reflected it back again in many varying tints of brilliant colour, shading from green to gold, from pink to amethyst--and as they walked through the splendid vaporous light, it was as though they were a living part of the glory of the hour.
"We must tell David," said Mary, as they reached the bottom of the hill. "Poor old dear! I think he will be glad."
"I know he will!" and Angus smiled confidently. "He's been waiting for this ever since Christmas Day!"
Mary's eyes opened in wonderment.
"Ever since Christmas Day?"
"Yes. I told him then that I loved you, Mary,--that I wanted to ask you to marry me,--but that I felt I was too poor----"
Her hand stole through his arm.
"Too poor, Angus! Am I not poor also?"
"Not as poor as I am," he answered, promptly possessing himself of the caressing hand. "In fact, you're quite rich compared to me. You've got a house, and you've got work, which brings you in enough to live upon,--now I haven't a roof to call my own, and my stock of money is rapidly coming to an end. I've nothing to depend upon but my book,--and if I can't sell that when it's finished, where am I? I'm nothing but a beggar--less well off than I was as a wee boy when I herded cattle. And I'm not going to marry you----"
She stopped in her walk and looked at him with a smile.
"Oh Angus! I thought you were!"
He kissed the hand he held.
"Don't make fun of me, Mary! I won't allow it! I _am_ going to marry you!--but I'm _not_ going to marry you till I've sold my book. I don't suppose I'll get more than a hundred pounds for it, but that will do to start housekeeping together on. Won't it?"
"I should think it would indeed!" and she lifted her head with quite a proud gesture--"It will be a fortune!"
"Of course," he went on, "the cottage is yours, and all that is in it. I can't add much to that, because to my mind, it's just perfect. I never want any sweeter, prettier little home. But I want to work _for_ you, Mary, so that you'll not have to work for yourself, you understand?"
She nodded her head gravely.
"I understand! You want me to sit with my hands folded in my lap, doing nothing at all, and getting lazy and bad-tempered."
"Now you know I don't!" he expostulated.
"Yes, you do, Angus! If you don't want me to work, you want me to be a perfectly useless and tiresome woman! Why, my dearest, now that you love me, I should like to work all the harder! If you think the cottage pretty, I shall try to make it even prettier. And I don't want to give up all my lace-mending. It's just as pleasant and interesting as the fancy-work which the rich ladies play with You must really let me go on working, Angus! I shall be a perfectly unbearable person if you don't!"
She looked so sweetly at him, that as they were at the moment passing under the convenient shadow of a tree he took her in his arms and kissed her.
"When _you_ become a perfectly unbearable person," he said, "then it will be time for another deluge, and a general renovation of human kind. You shall work if you like, my Mary, but you shall not work for _me_. See?"
A tender smile lingered in her eyes.
"I see!" and linking her arm through his again, she moved on with him over the thyme-scented grass, her dress gently sweeping across the stray clusters of golden cowslips that nodded here and there. "_I_ will work for myself, _you_ will work for _me_, and old David will work for both of us!"
They laughed joyously.
"Poor old David!" said Angus. "He's been wondering why I have not spoken to you before,--he declared he couldn't understand it. But then I wasn't quite sure whether you liked me at all----"
"Weren't you?" and her glance was eloquent.
"No--and I asked him to find out!"
She looked at him in a whimsical wonderment.
"You asked him to find out? And did he?"
"He seems to think so. At any rate, he gave me courage to speak."
Mary grew suddenly meditative.
"Do you know, Angus," she said, "I think old David was sent to me for a special purpose. Some great and good influence guided him to me--I am sure of it. You don't know all his history. Shall I tell it to you?"
"Yes--do tell me--but I think I know it. Was he not a former old friend of your father's?"
"No--that's a story I had to invent to satisfy the curiosity of the villagers. It would never have done to let them know that he was only an old tramp whom I found ill and nearly dying out on the hills during a great storm we had last summer. There had been heavy thunder and lightning all the afternoon, and when the storm ceased I went to my door to watch the clearing off of the clouds, and I heard a dog yelping pitifully on the hill just above the coombe. I went out to see what was the matter, and there I found an old man lying quite unconscious on the wet grass, looking as if he were dead, and a little dog--you know Charlie?--guarding him and barking as loudly as it could. Well, I brought him back to life, and took him home and nursed him--and--that's all. He told me his name was David--and that he had been 'on the tramp' to Cornwall to find a friend. You know the rest."
"Then he is really quite a stranger to you, Mary?" said Angus wonderingly.
"Quite. He never knew my father. But I am sure if Dad had been alive, he would have rescued him just as I did, and then he _would_ have been his 'friend,'--he could not have helped himself. That's the way I argued it out to my own heart and conscience."
Angus looked at her.
"You darling!" he said suddenly.
She laughed.
"That doesn't come in!" she said.
"It does come in! It comes in everywhere!" he declared. "There's no other woman in the world that would have done so much for a poor forlorn old tramp like that, adrift on the country roads. And you exposed yourself to some risk, too, Mary! He might have been a dangerous character!"
"Poor dear, he didn't look it," she said gently--"and he hasn't proved it. Everything has gone well for me since I did my best for him. It was even through him that you came to know me, Angus!--think of that! Blessings on the dear old man!--I'm sure he must be an angel in disguise!"
He smiled.
"Well, we never know!" he said. "Angels certainly don't come to us with all the celestial splendour which is supposed to belong to them--they may perhaps choose the most unlikely way in which to make their errands known. I have often--especially lately--thought that I have seen an angel looking at me out of the eyes of a woman!"
"You _will_ talk poetry!" protested Mary.
"I'm not talking it--I'm living it!" he answered.
There was nothing to be said to this. He was an incorrigible lover, and remonstrances were in vain.
"You must not tell David's real history to any of the villagers," said Mary presently, as they came in sight of her cottage--"I wouldn't like them to know it."
"They shall never know it so far as I am concerned," he answered. "He's been a good friend to me--and I wouldn't cause him a moment's trouble. I'd like to make him happier if I could!"
"I don't think that's possible,"--and her eyes were clouded for a moment with a shadow of melancholy--"You see he has no money, except the little he earns by basket-making, and he's very far from strong. We must be kind to him, Angus, as long as he needs kindness."
Angus agreed, with sundry ways of emphasis that need not here be narrated, as they composed a formula which could not be rendered into set language. Arriving at the cottage they found the door open, and no one in the kitchen,--but on the table lay two sprigs of sweetbriar. Angus caught sight of them at once.
"Mary! See! Don't you think he knows?"
She stood hesitating, with a lovely wavering colour in her cheeks.
"Don't you remember," he went on, "you gave me a bit of sweetbriar on the evening of the first day we ever met?"
"I remember!" and her voice was very soft and tremulous.
"I have that piece of sweetbriar still," he said; "I shall never part with it. And old David must have known all about it!"
He took up the little sprays set ready for them, and putting one in his own buttonhole, fastened the other in her bodice with a loving, lingering touch.
"It's a good emblem," he said, kissing her--"Sweet Briar--sweet Love!--not without thorns, which are the safety of the rose!"
A slow step sounded on the garden path, and they saw Helmsley approaching, with the tiny "Charlie" running at his heels. Pausing on the threshold of the open door, he looked at them with a questioning smile.
"Well, did you see the sunset?" he asked, "Or only each other?"
Mary ran to him, and impulsively threw her arms about his neck.
"Oh David!" she said. "Dear old David! I am so happy!"
He was silent,--her gentle embrace almost unmanned him. He stretched out a hand to Angus, who grasped it warmly.
"So it's all right!" he said, in a low voice that trembled a little. "You've settled it together?"
"Yes--we've settled it, David!" Angus answered cheerily. "Give us your blessing!"
"You have that--God knows you have that!"--and as Mary, in her usual kindly way, took his hat and stick from him, keeping her arm through his as he went to his accustomed chair by the fireside, he glanced at her tenderly. "You have it with all my heart and soul, Mr. Reay!--and as for this dear lady who is to be your wife, all I can say is that you have won a treasure--yes, a treasure of goodness and sweetness and patience, and most heavenly kindness----"
His voice failed him, and the quick tears sprang to Mary's eyes.
"Now, David, please stop!" she said, with a look between affection and remonstrance. "You are a terrible flatterer! You mustn't spoil me."
"Nothing will spoil you!" he answered, quietly. "Nothing could spoil you! All the joy in the world, all the prosperity in the world, could not change your nature, my dear! Mr. Reay knows that as well as I do,--and I'm sure he thanks God for it! You are all love and gentleness, as a woman should be,--as all women would be if they were wise!"
He paused a moment, and then, raising himself a little more uprightly in his chair, looked at them both earnestly.
"And now that you have made up your minds to share your lives together," he went on, "you must not think that I will be so selfish as to stay on here and be a burden to you both. I should like to see you married, but after that I will go away----"
"You will do nothing of the sort!" said Mary, dropping on her knees beside him and lifting her serene eyes to his face. "You don't want to make us unhappy, do you? This is your home, as long as it is ours, remember! We would not have you leave us on any account, would we, Angus?"
"Indeed no!" answered Reay, heartily. "David, what are you talking about? Aren't _you_ the cause of my knowing Mary? Didn't _you_ bring me to this dear little cottage first of all? Don't I owe all my happiness to _you_? And you talk about going away! It's pretty evident you don't know what's good for you! Look here! If I'm good for anything at all, I'm good for hard work--and for that matter I may as well go in for the basket-making trade as well as the book-making profession. We've got Mary to work for, David!--and we'll both work for her--together!"
Helmsley turned upon him a face in which the expression was difficult to define.
"You really mean that?" he said.
"Really mean it! Of course I do! Why shouldn't I mean it?"
There was a moment's silence, and Helmsley, looking down on Mary as she knelt beside him, laid his hand caressingly on her hair.
"I think," he said gently, "that you are both too kind-hearted and impulsive, and that you are undertaking a task which should not be imposed upon you. You offer me a continued home with you after your marriage--but who am I that I should accept such generosity from you? I am not getting younger. Every day robs me of some strength--and my work--such work as I can do--will be of very little use to you. I may suffer from illness, which will cause you trouble and expense,--death is closer to me than life--and why should I die on your hands? It can only mean trouble for you if I stay on,--and though I am grateful to you with all my heart--more grateful than I can say"--and his voice trembled--"I know I ought to be unselfish,--and that the truest and best way to thank you for all you have done for me is to go away and leave you in peace and happiness----"
"We should not be happy without you, David!" declared Mary. "Can't you, won't you understand that we are both fond of you?"
"Fond of me!" And he smiled. "Fond of a useless old wreck who can scarcely earn a day's wage!"
"That's rather wide of the mark, David!" said Reay. "Mary's not the woman--and I'm sure I'm not the man--to care for any one on account of the money he can make. We like you for yourself,--so don't spoil this happiest day of our lives by suggesting any separation between us. Do you hear?"
"I hear!"--and a sudden brightness flashed up in Helmsley's sunken eyes, making them look almost young--"And I understand! I understand that though I am poor and old, and a stranger to you,--you are giving me friendship such as rich men often seek for and never find!--and I will try,--yes, I will try, God helping me,--to be worthy of your trust! If I stay with you----"
"There must be no 'if' in the case, David!" said Mary, smiling up at him.
He stroked her bright hair caressingly.
"Well, then, I will put it not 'if,' but as long as I stay with you," he answered--"as long as I stay with you, I will do all I can to show you how grateful I am to you,--and--and--I will never give you cause"--here he spoke more slowly, and with deliberate emphasis--"I will never give you cause to regret your confidence in me! I want you both to be glad--not sorry--that you spared a lonely old man a little of your affection!"
"We _are_ glad, David!"--and Mary, as he lifted his hand from her head, caught it and kissed it lightly. "And we shall never be sorry! And here is Charlie"--and she picked up the little dog as she spoke and fondled it playfully,--"wondering why he is not included in the family party! For, after all, it is quite your affair, isn't it, Charlie? _You_ were the cause of my finding David out on the hills!--and David was the cause of my knowing Angus--so if it hadn't been for _you_, nothing would have happened at all, Charlie!--and I should have been a lonely old maid all the days of my life! And I can't do anything to show my gratitude to you, you quaint wee soul, but give you a saucer of cream!"
She laughed, and springing up, began to prepare the tea. While she was moving quickly to and fro on this household business, Helmsley beckoned Reay to come closer to him.
"Speak frankly, Mr. Reay!" he said. "As the master of her heart, you are the master of her home. I can easily slip away--and tramping is not such hard work in summer time. Shall I go?"
"If you go, I shall start out and bring you back again," replied Reay, shaking his head at him determinedly. "You won't get so far but that I shall be able to catch you up in an hour! Please consider that you belong to us,--and that we have no intention of parting with you!"
Tears rose in Helmsley's eyes, and for a moment he covered them with his hand. Angus saw that he was deeply moved, and to avoid noticing him, especially as he was somewhat affected himself by the touching gratefulness of this apparently poor and lonely old man, went after Mary with all the pleasant ease and familiarity of an accepted lover, to help her bring in the tea. The tiny "Charlie," meanwhile, sitting on the hearth in a vigilantly erect attitude, with quivering nose pointed in a creamward direction, waited for the approach of the expected afternoon refreshment, trembling from head to tail with nervous excitement. And Helmsley, left alone for those few moments, presently mastered the strong emotion which made him long to tell his true history to the two sincere souls who, out of his whole life's experience, had alone proved themselves faithful to the spirit of a friendship wherein the claims of cash had no part. Regaining full command of himself, and determining to act out the part he had elected to play to whatever end should most fittingly arrive,--an end he could not as yet foresee,--he sat quietly in his chair as usual, gazing into the fire with the meditative patience and calm of old age, and silently building up in a waking dream the last story of his House of Love,--which now promised to be like that house spoken of in the Divine Parable--"And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock." For as he knew,--and as we all must surely know,--the greatest rains and floods and winds of a world of sorrow, are powerless to destroy love, if love be true.
CHAPTER XX
Three days later, when the dawn was scarcely declared and the earliest notes of the waking birds trembled on the soft air with the faint sweetness of a far-off fluty piping, the door of Mary Deane's cottage opened stealthily, and David Helmsley, dressed ready for a journey, stepped noiselessly out into the little garden. He wore the same ordinary workman's outfit in which he had originally started on his intended " tramp," including the vest which he had lined with banknotes, and which he had not used once since his stay with Mary Deane. For she had insisted on his wearing the warmer and softer garments which had once belonged to her own father,--and all these he had now taken off and left behind him, carefully folded up on the bed in his room. He had examined his money and had found it just as he had placed it,--even the little "surprise packet" which poor Tom o' the Gleam had collected for his benefit in the "Trusty Man's" common room, was still in the side-pocket where he had himself put it. Unripping a corner of the vest lining, he took out two five-pound notes, and with these in a rough leather purse for immediate use, and his stout ash stick grasped firmly in his hand, he started out to walk to the top of the coombe where he knew the path brought him to the verge of the highroad leading to Minehead. As he moved almost on tip-toe through Mary's garden, now all fragrant with golden wall-flowers, lilac, and mayblossom, he paused a moment,--looking up at the picturesque gabled eaves and latticed windows. A sudden sense of loneliness affected him almost to tears. For now he had not even the little dog Charlie with him to console him--that canine friend slept in a cushioned basket in Mary's room, and was therefore all unaware that his master was leaving him.
"But, please God, I shall come back in a day or two!" he murmured. " Please God, I shall see this dear shrine of peace and love again before I die! Meanwhile--good-bye, Mary! Good-bye, dearest and kindest of women! God bless you!"
He turned away with an effort--and, lifting the latch of the garden gate, opened it and closed it softly behind him. Then he began the ascent of the coombe. Not a soul was in sight,--the actual day had not yet begun. The hill torrent flowed along with a subdued purling sound over the rough stones and pebbles,--there had been little rain of late and the water was shallow, though clear and bright enough to gleam like a wavering silver ribbon in the dimness of the early morning,--and as he followed it upward and finally reached a point from whence the open sea was visible he rested a moment, leaning on his stick and looking backward on the way he had come. Strangely beautiful and mystical was the scene his eyes dwelt upon,--or rather perhaps it should be said that he saw it in a somewhat strange and mystical fashion of his own. There, out beyond the furthest edge of land, lay the ocean, shadowed just now by a delicate dark grey mist, which, like a veil, covered its placid bosom,--a mist which presently the rising sun would scatter with its glorious rays of gold;--here at his feet nestled Weircombe,--a cluster of simple cottages, sweetly adorned by nature with her fairest garlanding of springtime flowers,--and behind him, just across a length of barren moor, was the common highroad leading to the wider, busier towns. And he thought as he stood alone,--a frail and solitary figure, gazing dreamily out of himself, as it were, to things altogether beyond himself,--that the dim and shadowy ocean was like the vast Unknown which we call Death,--which we look upon tremblingly,--afraid of its darkness, and unable to realise that the sun of Life will ever rise again to pierce its gloom with glory. And the little world--the only world that can be called a world,--namely, that special corner of the planet which holds the hearts that love us--a world which for him, the multi-millionaire, was just a tiny village with one sweet woman living in it--resembled a garland of flowers flung down from the rocks as though to soften their ruggedness,--a garland broken asunder at the shoreline, even as all earthly garlands must break and fade at the touch of the first cold wave of the Infinite. As for the further road in which he was about to turn and go, that, to his fancy, was a nearer similitude of an approach to hell than any scene ever portrayed in Dante's _Divine Comedy_. For it led to the crowded haunts of men--the hives of greedy business,--the smoky, suffocating centres where each human unit seeks to over-reach and outrival the other--where there is no time to be kind--no room to be courteous; where the passion for gain and the worship of self are so furious and inexhaustible, that all the old fair virtues which make nations great and lasting, are trampled down in the dust, and jeered at as things contemptible and of no value,--where, if a man is honourable, he is asked "What do you get by it?"--and where, if a woman would remain simple and chaste, she is told she is giving herself "no chance." In this whirl of avarice, egotism, and pushfulness, Helmsley had lived nearly all his life, always conscious of, and longing for, something better--something truer and more productive of peace and lasting good. Almost everything he had touched had turned to money,--while nothing he had ever gained had turned to love. Except now--now when the end was drawing nigh--when he must soon say farewell to the little earth, so replete with natural beauty--farewell to the lovely sky, which whether in storm or calm, ever shows itself as a visible reflex of divine majesty and power--farewell to the sweet birds, which for no thanks at all, charm the ear by their tender songs and graceful wingëd ways--farewell to the flowers, which, flourishing in the woods and fields without care, lift their cups to the sun, and fill the air with fragrance,--and above all, farewell to the affection which he had found so late!--to the heart whose truth he had tested--to the woman for whose sake, could he in some way have compassed her surer and greater happiness, he would gladly have lived half his life over again, working with every moment of it to add to her joy. But an instinctive premonition warned him that the sands in Time's hour-glass were for him running to an end,--there was no leisure left to him now for any new scheme or plan by which he could improve or strengthen that which he had already accomplished. He realised this fully, with a passing pang of regret which soon tempered itself into patient resignation,--and as the first arrowy beam of the rising sun shot upwards from the east, he slowly turned his back on the quiet hamlet where in a few months he had found what he had vainly sought for in many long and weary years, and plodded steadily across the moor to the highroad. Here he sat down on the bank to wait till some conveyance going to Minehead should pass by--for he knew he had not sufficient strength to walk far. "Tramping it" now was for him impossible,--moreover, his former thirst for adventure was satisfied; he had succeeded in his search for "a friend" without going so far as Cornwall. There was no longer any cause for him to endure unnecessary fatigue--so he waited patiently, listening to the first wild morning carol of a skylark, which, bounding up from its nest hard by, darted into the air with quivering wings beating against the dispersing vapours of the dawn, and sang aloud in the full rapture of a joy made perfect by innocence. And he thought of the lovely lines of George Herbert:--
"How fresh, O Lord, how sweet and clean Are Thy returns! Ev'n as the flowers in Spring, To which, besides their own demean, The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring; Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing.
"Who would have thought my shrivell'd heart Could have recover'd greenness? It was gone Quite under ground; as flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown, Where they together All the hard weather, Dead to the world, keep house unknown.
"These are Thy wonders, Lord of power, Killing and quick'ning, bringing down to Hell And up to Heaven in an hour; Making a chiming of a passing bell. We say amiss This or that is; Thy Word is all, if we could spell!"
"If we could spell!" he murmured, half aloud. "Ay, if we could learn even a quarter of the alphabet which would help us to understand the meaning of that 'Word!'--the Word which 'was in the beginning, and the word was with God, and the word _was_ God!' Then we should be wise indeed with a wisdom that would profit us,--we should have no fears and no forebodings,--we should know that all is, all _must_ be for the best!" And he raised his eyes to the slowly brightening sky. "Yet, after all, the attitude of simple faith is the right one for us, if we would call ourselves children of God--the faith which affirms--'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!'"
As he thus mused, a golden light began to spread around him,--the sun had risen above the horizon, and its cheerful radiance sparkled on every leaf and every blade of grass that bore a drop of dew. The morning mists rose hoveringly, paused awhile, and then lightly rolled away, disclosing one picture after another of exquisite sylvan beauty,--every living thing took up anew its burden of work and pleasure for the day, and "Now" was again declared the acceptable time. To enjoy the moment, and to make much of the moment while it lasts, is the very keynote of Nature's happiness, and David Helmsley found himself on this particular morning more or less in tune with the general sentiment. Certain sad thoughts oppressed him from time to time, but they were tempered and well-nigh overcome by the secret pleasure he felt within himself at having been given the means wherewith to ensure happiness for those whom he considered were more deserving of it than himself. And he sat patiently watching the landscape grow in glory as the sun rose higher and higher, till presently, struck by a sudden fear lest Mary Deane should get up earlier than usual, and missing him, should come out to seek for him, he left the bank by the roadside, and began to trudge slowly along in the direction of Minehead. He had not walked for a much longer time than about ten minutes, when he heard the crunching sound of heavy wheels behind him, and, looking back, saw a large mill waggon piled with sacks of flour and drawn by two sturdy horses, coming leisurely along. He waited till it drew near, and then called to the waggoner--
"Will you give me a lift to Minehead for half a crown?"
The waggoner, stout, red-faced, and jolly-looking, nodded an emphatic assent.
"I'd do it for 'arf the money!" he said. "Gi' us yer 'and, old gaffer!"
The "old gaffer" obeyed, and was soon comfortably seated between the projecting corners of two flour sacks, which in their way were as comfortable as cushions.
"'Old on there," said the waggoner, "an' ye'll be as safe as though ye was in Abram's bosom. Not that I knows much about Abram anyway. Wheer abouts d'ye want in Minehead?"
"The railway station."
"Right y' are! That's my ticket too. Tired o' trampin' it, I s'pose, aint ye?"
"A bit tired--yes. I've walked since daybreak."
The waggoner cracked his whip, and the horses plodded on. Their heavy hoofs on the dusty road, and the noise made by the grind of the cart wheels, checked any attempt at prolonged conversation, for which Helmsley was thankful. He considered himself lucky in having met with a total stranger, for the name of the owner of the waggon, which was duly displayed both on the vehicle itself and the sacks of flour it contained, was unknown to him, and the place from which it had come was an inland village several miles away from Weircombe. He was therefore safe--so far--from any chance of recognition. To be driven along in a heavy mill cart was a rumblesome, drowsy way of travelling, but it was restful, and when Minehead was at last reached, he did not feel himself at all tired. The waggoner had to get his cargo of flour off by rail, so there was no lingering in the town itself, which was as yet scarcely astir. They were in time for the first train going to Exeter, and Helmsley, changing one of his five-pound notes at the railway station, took a third-class ticket to that place. Then he paid the promised half-crown to his friendly driver, with an extra threepence for a morning "dram," whereat the waggoner chuckled.
"Thankee! I zee ye be no temp'rance man!"
Helmsley smiled.
"No. I'm a sober man, not a temperance man!"
"Ay! We'd a parzon in these 'ere parts as was temp'rance, but 'e took 'is zpirits different like! 'E zkorned 'is glass, but 'e loved 'is gel! Har--ar--ar! Ivir 'eerd o' Parzon Arbroath as woz put out o' the Church for 'avin' a fav'rite?"
"I saw something about it in the papers," said Helmsley.
"Ay, 'twoz in the papers. Har--ar--ar! 'E woz a temp'rance man. But wot I sez is, we'se all a bit o' devil in us, an' we can't be temp'rance ivry which way. An' zo, if not the glass, then the gel! Har--ar--ar! Good-day t' ye, an' thank ye kindly!"
He went off then, and a few minutes later the train came gliding in. The whirr and noise of the panting engine confused Helmsley's ears and dazed his brain, after his months of seclusion in such a quiet little spot as Weircombe,--and he was seized with quite a nervous terror and doubt as to whether he would be able, after all, to undertake the journey he had decided upon, alone. But an energetic porter put an end to his indecision by opening all the doors of the various compartments in the train and banging them to again, whereupon he made up his mind quickly, and managed, with some little difficulty, to clamber up the high step of a third-class carriage and get in before the aforesaid porter had the chance to push him in head foremost. In another few minutes the engine whistle set up a deafening scream, and the train ran swiftly out of the station. He was off;--the hills, the sea, were left behind--and Weircombe--restful, simple little Weircombe, seemed not only miles of distance, but ages of time away! Had he ever lived there, he hazily wondered? Would he ever go back? Was he "old David the basket-maker," or David Helmsley the millionaire? He hardly knew. It did not seem worth while to consider the problem of his own identity. One figure alone was real,--one face alone smiled out of the cloudy vista of thoughts and memories, with the true glory of an ineffable tenderness--the sweet, pure face of Mary, with her clear and candid eyes lighting every expression to new loveliness. On Angus Reay his mind did not dwell so much--Angus was a man--and as a man he regarded him with warm liking and sympathy--but it was as the future husband and protector of Mary that he thought of him most--as the one out of all the world who would care for her, when he, David Helmsley, was no more. Mary was the centre of his dreams--the pivot round which all his last ambitions in this world were gathered together in one focus,--without her there was, there could be nothing for him--nothing to give peace or comfort to his last days--nothing to satisfy him as to the future of all that his life had been spent to gain.
Meantime,--while the train bearing him to Exeter was rushing along through wide and ever-varying stretches of fair landscape,--there was amazement and consternation in the little cottage he had left behind him. Mary, rising from a sound night's sleep, and coming down to the kitchen as usual to light the fire and prepare breakfast, saw a letter on the table addressed to her, and opening, it read as follows:--
"MY DEAR MARY,--Do not be anxious this morning when you find that I am gone. I shall not be long away. I have an idea of getting some work to do, which may be more useful to you and Angus than my poor attempts at basket-making. At any rate I feel it would be wrong if I did not try to obtain some better paying employment, of a kind which I can do at home, so that I may be of greater assistance to you both when you marry and begin your double housekeeping. Old though I am and ailing, I want to feel less of a burden and more of a help. You will not think any the worse of me for wishing this. You have been so good and charitable to me in my need, that I should not die happy if I, in my turn, did not make an effort to give you some substantial proof of gratitude. This is Tuesday morning, and I shall hope to be home again with you before Sunday. In the meanwhile, do not worry at all about me, for I feel quite strong enough to do what I have in my mind. I leave Charlie with you. He is safest and happiest in your care. Good-bye for a little while, dear, kind friend, and God bless you! DAVID."
She read this with amazement and distress, the tears welling up in her eyes.
"Oh, David!" she exclaimed. "Poor, poor old man! What will he do all by himself, wandering about the country with no money! It's dreadful! How could he think of such a thing! He is so weak, too!--he can't possibly get very far!"
Here a sudden thought struck her, and picking up Charlie, who had followed her downstairs from her bedroom and was now trotting to and fro, sniffing the air in a somewhat disconsolate and dubious manner, she ran out of the house bareheaded, and hurried up to the top of the "coombe." There she paused, shading her eyes from the sun and looking all about her. It was a lovely morning, and the sea, calm and sparkling with sunbeams, shone like a blue glass flecked with gold. The sky was clear, and the landscape fresh and radiant with the tender green of the springtime verdure. But everything was quite solitary. Vainly her glance swept from left to right and from right to left again,--there was no figure in sight such as the one she sought and half-expected to discover. Putting Charlie down to follow at her heels, she walked quickly across the intervening breadth of moor to the highroad, and there paused, looking up and down its dusty length, hoping against hope that she might see David somewhere trudging slowly along on his lonely way, but there was not a human creature visible. Charlie, assuming a highly vigilant attitude, cocked his tiny ears and sniffed the air suspiciously, as though he scented the trail of his lost master, but no clue presented itself as likely to serve the purpose of tracking the way in which he had gone. Moved by a sudden loneliness and despondency, Mary slowly returned to the cottage, carrying the little dog in her arms, and was affected to tears again when she entered the kitchen, because it looked so empty. The bent figure, the patient aged face, on which for her there was ever a smile of grateful tenderness--these had composed a picture by her fireside to which she had grown affectionately accustomed,--and to see it no longer there made her feel almost desolate. She lit the fire listlessly and prepared her own breakfast without interest--it was a solitary meal and lacked flavour. She was glad when, after breakfast, Angus Reay came in, as was now his custom, to say good-morning, and to "gain inspiration,"--so he told her,--for his day's work. He was no less astonished than herself at David's sudden departure.
"Poor old chap! I believe he thinks he is in our way, Mary!" he said, as he read the letter of explanation which their missing friend had left behind him. "And yet he says quite plainly here that he will be back before Sunday. Perhaps he will. But where can he have gone to?"
"Not far, surely!" and Mary looked, as she felt, perplexed. "He has no money!"
"Not a penny?"
"Not a penny! He makes me take everything he earns to help pay for his keep and as something towards the cost of his illness last year. I don't want it--but it pleases him that I should have it----"
"Of course--I understand that,"--and Angus slipped an arm round her waist, while he read the letter through again. "But if he hasn't a penny, how can he get along?"
"He must be on the tramp again," said Mary. "But he isn't strong enough to tramp. I went up the coombe this morning and right out to the highroad, for I thought I might see him and catch up with him--because I know it would take him ever so long to walk a mile. But he had gone altogether."
Reay stood thinking.
"I tell you what, Mary," he said at last, "I'll take a brisk walk down the road towards Minehead. I should think that's the only place where he'd try for work. I daresay I shall overtake him."
Her eyes brightened.
"Yes, that's quite possible,"--and she was evidently pleased at the suggestion. "He's so old and feeble, and you're so strong and quick on your feet----"
"Quick with my lips, too," said Angus, promptly kissing her. "But I shall have to be on my best behaviour now you're all alone in the cottage, Mary! David has left you defenceless!"
He laughed, but as she raised her eyes questioningly to his face, grew serious.
"Yes, my Mary! You'll have to stay by your own sweet lonesome! Otherwise all the dear, kind, meddlesome old women in the village will talk! Mrs. Twitt will lead the chorus, with the best intentions, unless--and this is a dreadful alternative!--you can persuade her to come up and play propriety!"
The puzzled look left her face, and she smiled though a wave of colour flushed her cheeks.
"Oh! I see what you mean, Angus! But I'm too old to want looking after--I can look after myself."
"Can you?" And he took her into his arms and held her fast. "And how will you do it?"
She was silent a moment, looking into his eyes with a grave and musing tenderness. Then she said quietly--
"By trusting you, my love, now and always!"
Very gently he released her from his embrace--very reverently he kissed her.
"And you shall never regret your trust, you dear, sweet angel of a woman! Be sure of that! Now I'm off to look for David--I'll try and bring him back with me. By the way, Mary, I've told Mr. and Mrs. Twitt and good old Bunce that we are engaged--so the news is now the public property of the whole village. In fact, we might just as well have put up the banns and secured the parson!"
He laughed his bright, jovial laugh, and throwing on his cap went out, striding up the coombe with swift, easy steps, whistling joyously "My Nannie O" as he made the ascent. Twice he turned to wave his hand to Mary who stood watching him from her garden gate, and then he disappeared. She waited a moment among all the sweetly perfumed flowers in her little garden, looking at the bright glitter of the hill stream as it flowed equably by.
"How wonderful it is," she thought, "that God should have been so good to me! I have done nothing to deserve any love at all, and yet Angus loves me! It seems too beautiful to be real! I am not worthy of such happiness! Sometimes I dare not think too much of it lest it should all prove to be only a dream! For surely no one in the world could wish for a better life than we shall live--Angus and I--in this dear little cottage together,--he with his writing, which I know will some day move the world,--and I with my usual work, helping as much as I can to make his life sweet to him. For we have the great secret of all joy--we love each other!"
With her eyes full of the dreamy light of inward heart's content, she turned and went into the house. The sight of David's empty chair by the fire troubled her,--but she tried to believe that Angus would succeed in finding him on the highroad, and in persuading him to return at once. Towards noon Mrs. Twitt came in, somewhat out of breath, on account of having climbed the village street more rapidly than was her custom on such a warm day as it had turned out to be, and straightway began conversation.
"Wonders 'ull never cease, Mis' Deane, an' that's a fact!" she said, wiping her hot face with the corner of her apron--"An' while there's life there's 'ope! I'd as soon 'a thought o' Weircombe Church walkin' down to the shore an' turnin' itself into a fishin' smack, as that you'd a' got engaged to be married! I would, an' that's a Gospel truth! Ye seemed so steady like an' settled--lor' a mussy me!" And here, despite her effort to look serious, a broad smile got the better of her. "An' a fine man too you've got,--none o' your scallywag weaklings as one sees too much of nowadays, but a real upright sort o' chap wi' no nonsense about 'im. An' I wishes ye well, Mary, my dear,"--and the worthy soul took Mary's hand in hers and gave her a hearty kiss. "For it's never too late to mend, as the Scripter tells us, an' forbye ye're not in yer green gooseberry days there's those as thinks ripe fruit better than sour-growin' young codlings. An' ye may take 'art o' grace for one thing--them as marries young settles quickly old--an' to look at the skin an' the 'air an' the eyes of ye, you beat ivery gel I've ivir seen in the twenties, so there's good preservin' stuff in ye wot'll last. An' I bet you're more fond o' the man ye've got late than if ye'd caught 'im early!"
Mary laughed, but her eyes were full of wistful tenderness.
"I love him very dearly," she said simply--"And I know he's a great deal too good for me."
Mrs. Twitt sniffed meaningly.
"Well, I'm not in any way sure o' that," she observed. "When a man's too good for a woman it's what we may call a Testymen' miracle. For the worst wife as ivir lived is never so bad as a bad 'usband. There's a suthin' in a man wot's real devil-like when it gits the uppermost of 'im--an' 'e's that crafty born that I've known 'im to be singin' hymns one hour an' drinkin' 'isself silly the next. 'Owsomever, Mister Reay seems a decent chap, forbye 'e do give 'is time to writin' which don't appear to make 'is pot boil----"
"Ah, but he will be famous!" interrupted Mary exultantly. "I know he will!"
"An' what's the good o' that?" enquired Mrs. Twitt. "If bein' famous is bein' printed about in the noospapers, I'd rather do without it if I wos 'im. Parzon Arbroath got famous that way!" And she chuckled. "But the great pint is that you an' 'e is a-goin' to be man an' wife, an' I'm right glad to 'ear it, for it's a lonely life ye've been leadin' since yer father's death, forbye ye've got a bit o' company in old David. An' wot'll ye do with David when you're married?"
"He'll stay on with us, I hope," said Mary. "But this morning he has gone away--and we don't know where he can have gone to."
Mrs. Twitt raised her eyes and hands in astonishment.
"Gone away?"
"Yes." And Mary showed her the letter Helmsley had written, and explained how Angus Reay had started off to walk towards Minehead, in the hope of overtaking the wanderer.
"Well, I never!" And Mrs. Twitt gave a short gasp of wonder. "Wants to find employment, do 'e? The poor old innercent! Why, Twitt would 'a given 'im a job in the stoneyard if 'e'd 'a known. He'll never find a thing to do anywheres on the road at 'is age!"
And the news of David's sudden and lonely departure affected her more powerfully than the prospect of Mary's marriage, which had, in the first place, occupied all her mental faculties.
"An' that reminds me," she went on, "of 'ow the warnin' came to me yesterday when I was a-goin' out to my wash-tub an' I slipt on a bit o' potato peelin'. That's allus a sign of a partin' 'twixt friends. Put that together with the lump o' clinkers as flew out o' the fire last week and split in two in the middle of the kitchen, an' there ye 'ave it all writ plain. I sez to Twitt--'Suthin's goin' to 'appen'--an' 'e sez in 'is fool way--'G'arn, old woman, suthin's allus a-'appenin' somewheres'--then when Mister Reay looked in all smiles an' sez 'Good-mornin', Twitt! I'm goin' to marry Miss Mary Deane! Wish us joy!' Twitt, 'e up an' sez, 'There's your suthin', old gel! A marriage!' an' I sez, 'Not at all, Twitt--not at all, Mister Reay, if I may make so bold, but slippin' on peel don't mean marriage, nor yet clinkers, though two spoons in a saucer does convey 'ints o' the same, an' two spoons was in Twitt's saucer only this very mornin'. Which I wishes both man an' woman as runs the risk everlastin' joy!' An' Twitt, as is allus puttin' in 'is word where 'taint wanted, sez, 'Don't talk about everlastin' joy, mother, 'tis like a hepitaph'--which I answers quick an' sez, 'Your mind may run on hepitaphs, Twitt, seein' 'tis your livin', but mine don't do no such thing, an' when I sez everlastin' joy for man an' wife, I means it.' An' then Mister Reay comes an' pats me on the shoulder cosy like an' sez, 'Right you are, Mrs. Twitt!' an' 'e walks off laughin', an' Twitt 'e laughs too an' sez, 'Good luck to the bridegroom an' the bride,' which I aint denyin', but there was still the thought o' the potato peel an' the clinker, an' it's come clear to-day now I've 'eerd as 'ow poor old David's gone!" She paused to take breath, and shook her head solemnly. "It's my opinion 'e'll never come back no more!"
"Oh, don't say that!" exclaimed Mary, distressed. "Don't even think it!"
But Mrs. Twitt was not to be shaken in her pronouncement.
"'E'll never come back no more!" she said. "An' the children on the shore 'ull miss 'im badly, for 'e was a reg'lar Father Christmas to 'em, not givin' presents by any manner o' means, 'avin' none to give, but tellin' 'em stories as kep' 'em quiet an' out of 'arms way for 'ours,--an' mendin' their toys an' throwin' their balls an' spinnin' their tops like the 'armless old soul 'e was! I'm right sorry 'e's gone! Weircombe 'll miss 'im for sartin sure!"
And this was the general feeling of the whole village when the unexpected departure of "old David" became known. Angus Reay, returning in the afternoon, reported that he had walked half the way, and had driven the other half with a man who had given him a lift in his trap, right into Minehead, but had seen and heard nothing of the missing waif and stray. Coming back to Weircombe with the carrier's cart, he had questioned the carrier as to whether he had seen the old man anywhere along the road, but this inquiry likewise met with failure.
"So the only thing to do, Mary," said Angus, finally, "is to believe his own written word,--that he will be back with us before Sunday. I don't think he means to leave you altogether in such an abrupt way,--that would be churlish and ungrateful--and I'm sure he is neither."
"Oh, he's anything but churlish!" she answered quickly. "He has always b |
18449-8 | een most thoughtful and kind to me; and as for gratitude!--why, the poor old dear makes too much of it altogether--one would think I had given him a fortune instead of just taking common human care of him. I expect he must have worked in some very superior house of business, for though he's so poor, he has all the ways of a gentleman."
"What are the ways of a gentleman, my Mary?" demanded Angus, gaily. "Do you know? I mean, do you know what they are nowadays? To stick a cigar in one's mouth and smoke it all the time a woman is present--to keep one's hat on before her, and to talk to her in such a loose, free and easy fashion as might bring one's grandmother out of her grave and make her venerable hair curl! Those are the 'ways' of certain present-time 'gentlemen' who keep all the restaurants and music-halls of London going--and I don't rank good old David with these. I know what _you_ mean--you mean that he has all the fine feeling, delicacy and courtesy of a gentleman, as 'gentlemen' used to be before our press was degraded to its present level by certain clowns and jesters who make it their business to jeer at every "gentlemanly" feeling that ever inspired humanity--yes, I understand! He is a gentleman of the old school,--well,--I think he is--and I think he would always be that, if he tramped the road till he died. He must have seen better days."
"Oh yes, I'm sure of that!" said Mary. "So many really capable men get turned out of work because they are old----"
"Well, there's one advantage about my profession," interrupted Angus. "No one can turn _me_ out of literature either for young or old age, if I choose to make a name in it! Think of that, my Mary! The glorious independence of it! An author is a law unto himself, and if he succeeds, he is the master of his own fate. Publishers are his humble servants--waiting eagerly to snatch up his work that they may get all they can for themselves out of it,--and the public--the great public which, apart from all 'interested' critical bias, delivers its own verdict, is always ready to hearken and to applaud the writer of its choice. There is no more splendid and enviable life!--if I could only make a hundred pounds a year by it, I would rather be an author than a king! For if one has something in one's soul to say--something that is vital, true, and human as well as divine, the whole world will pause to listen. Yes, Mary! In all its toil and stress, its scheming for self-advantage, its political changes, its little temporary passing shows of empires and monarchies, the world will stop to hear what the Thinker and the Writer tells it! The words of old Socrates still ring down the ages--the thoughts of Shakespeare are still the basis of English literature!--what a grand life it is to be among the least of one of the writing band! I tell you, Mary, that even if I fail, I shall be proud to have at any rate _tried_ to succeed!"
"You will not fail!" she said, her eyes glowing with enthusiasm. "I shall see you win your triumph!"
"Well, if I cannot conquer everything with you by my side, I shall be but a poor and worthless devil!" he answered. "And now I must be off and endeavour to make up for my lost time this morning, running after David! Poor old chap! Don't worry about him, Mary. I think you may take his word for it that he means to be back before Sunday."
He left her then, and all the day and all the evening too she spent the time alone. It would have been impossible to her to express in words how greatly she missed the companionship of the gentle old man who had so long been the object of her care. There was a sense of desolate emptiness in the little cottage such as had not so deeply affected her for years--not indeed since the first months following immediately on her own father's death. That Angus Reay kept away was, she knew, care for her on his part. Solitary woman as she was, the villagers, like all people who live in very small, mentally restricted country places, would have idly gossiped away her reputation had she received her lover into her house alone. So she passed a very dismal time all by herself; and closing up the house early, took little Charlie in her arms and went to bed, where, much to her own abashment, she cried herself to sleep.
Meanwhile, David himself, for whom she fretted, had arrived in Exeter. The journey had fatigued him considerably, though he had been able to get fairly good food and a glass of wine at one of the junctions where he had changed _en route_. On leaving the Exeter railway station, he made his way towards the Cathedral, and happening to chance on a very small and unpretending "Temperance Hotel" in a side street, where a placard intimating that "Good Accommodation for Travellers" might be had within, he entered and asked for a bedroom. He obtained it at once, for his appearance was by no means against him, being that of a respectable old working man who was prepared to pay his way in a humble, but perfectly honest fashion. As soon as he had secured his room, which was a curious little three-cornered apartment, partially obscured by the shadows of the many buttresses of the Cathedral, his next care was to go out into the High Street and provide himself with a good stock of writing materials. These obtained, he returned to his temporary lodging, where, after supper, he went to bed early in order to rise early. With the morning light he was up and dressed, eager to be at work,--an inrush of his old business energy came back on him,--his brain was clear, his mental force keen and active. There happened to be an old-fashioned oak table in his room, and drawing this to the window, he sat down to write the document which his solicitor and friend, Sir Francis Vesey, had so often urged him to prepare--his Will. He knew what a number of legal technicalities might, or could be involved in this business, and was therefore careful to make it as short, clear, and concise as possible, leaving no chance anywhere open of doubt or discussion. And with a firm, unwavering pen, in his own particularly distinct and characteristic caligraphy, he disposed of everything of which he died possessed "absolutely and without any conditions whatsoever" to Mary Deane, spinster, at present residing in Weircombe, Somerset, adding the hope that she would, if she saw fit to do so, carry out certain requests of his, the testator's, as conveyed privately to her in a letter accompanying the Will. All the morning long he sat thoughtfully considering and weighing each word he used--till at last, when the document was finished to his satisfaction, he folded it up, and putting it in his pocket, started out to get his midday meal and find a lawyer's office. He was somewhat surprised at his own alertness and vigour as he walked through the streets of Exeter on this quest;--excitement buoyed him up to such a degree that be was not conscious of the slightest fatigue or lassitude--he felt almost young. He took his lunch at a small restaurant where he saw city clerks and others of that type going in, and afterwards, strolling up a dull little street which ended in a _cul de sac_, he spied a dingy archway, offering itself as an approach to a flight of equally dingy stairs. Here a brass plate, winking at the passer-by, stated that "Rowden and Owlett, Solicitors," would be found on the first floor. Helmsley paused, considering a moment--then, making up his mind that "Rowden and Owlett" would suit his purpose as well as any other equally unknown firm, he slowly climbed the steep and unwashed stair. Opening the first door at the top of the flight, he saw a small boy leaning both arms across a large desk, and watching the gyrations of two white mice in a revolving cage.
"Hullo!" said the boy sharply, "what d' ye want?"
"I want to see Mr. Rowden or Mr. Owlett," he replied.
"Right y' are!" and the boy promptly seized the cage containing the white mice and hid it in a cupboard. "You're our first caller to-day. Mr. Rowden's gone to Dawlish,--but Mr. Owlett's in. Wait a minute."
Helmsley obeyed, sitting down in a chair near the door, and smiling to himself at the evidences of slack business which the offices of Messrs. Rowden and Owlett presented. In about five minutes the boy returned, and gave him a confidential nod.
"You can go in now," he said; "Mr. Owlett was taking his after-dinner snooze, but he's jumped up at once, and he's washed his hands and face, so he's quite ready for business. This way, please!"
He beckoned with a rather dirty finger, and Helmsley followed him into a small apartment where Mr. Owlett, a comfortably stout, middle-aged gentleman, sat at a large bureau covered with papers, pretending to read. He looked up as his hoped-for client entered, and flushed redly in the face with suppressed vexation as he saw that it was only a working man after all--"Some fellow wanting a debt collected," he decided, pushing away his papers with a rather irritated movement. However, in times when legal work was so scarce, it did not serve any good purpose to show anger, so, smoothing his ruffled brow, he forced a reluctantly condescending smile, as his office-boy, having ushered in the visitor, left the room.
"Good afternoon, my man!" he said, with a patronising air. "What can I do for you?"
"Well, not so very much, sir," and Helmsley took off his hat deferentially, standing in an attitude of humility. "It's only a matter of making my Will,--I've written it out myself, and if you would be so good as to see whether it is all in order, I'm prepared to pay you for your trouble."
"Oh, certainly, certainly!" Here Mr. Owlett took off his spectacles and polished them. "I suppose you know it's not always a wise thing to draw up your own Will yourself? You should always let a lawyer draw it up for you."
"Yes, sir, I've heard that," answered Helmsley, with an air of respectful attention--"And that's why I've brought the paper to you, for if there's anything wrong with it, you can put it right, or draw it up again if you think proper. Only I'd rather not be put to more expense than I can help."
"Just so!" And the worthy solicitor sighed, as he realised that there were no "pickings" to be made out of his present visitor--"Have you brought the document with you?"
"Yes, sir!" Helmsley fumbled in his pocket, and drew out the paper with a well-assumed air of hesitation; "I'm leaving everything I've got to a woman who has been like a daughter to me in my old age--my wife and children are dead--and I've no one that has any blood claim on me--so I think the best thing I can do is to give everything I've got to the one that's been kind to me in my need."
"Very right--very proper!" murmured Mr. Owlett, as he took the offered document from Helmsley's hand and opened it--"Um--um!--let me see!----" Here he read aloud--"I, David Helmsley,--um--um!--Helmsley--Helmsley!--that's a name that I seem to have heard somewhere!--David Helmsley!--yes!--why that's the name of a multi-millionaire!--ha-ha-ha! A multi-millionaire! That's curious! Do you know, my man, that your name is the same as that of one of the richest men in the world?"
Helmsley permitted himself to smile.
"Really, sir? You don't say so!"
"Yes, yes!" And Mr. Owlett fixed his spectacles on his nose and beamed at his humble client through them condescendingly--"One of the richest men in the world!" And he smacked his lips as though he had just swallowed a savoury morsel--"Amazing! Now if you were he, your Will would be a world's affair--a positively world's affair!"
"Would it indeed?" And again Helmsley smiled.
"Everybody would talk of it," proceeded Owlett, lost in rapturous musing--"The disposal of a rich man's millions is always a most interesting subject of conversation! And you actually didn't know you had such a rich namesake?"
"No, sir, I did not."
"Ah well! I suppose you live in the country, and people in the country seldom hear of the names that are famous in towns. Now let me consider this Will again--'I, David Helmsley, being in sound health of mind and body, thanks be to God, do make this to be my Last Will and Testament, revoking all former Wills, Codicils and Testamentary Dispositions. First I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and believing, through the merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting'--Dear me, dear me!" and Mr. Owlett took off his spectacles. "You must be a very old-fashioned man! This sort of thing is not at all necessary nowadays!"
"Not necessary, perhaps," said Helmsley gently--"But there is no harm in putting it in, sir, I hope?"
"Oh, there's no harm! It doesn't affect the Will itself, of course,--but--but--it's odd--it's unusual! You see nobody minds what becomes of your Soul, or your Body either--the only question of importance to any one is what is to be done with your Money!"
"I see!" And Helmsley nodded his head and spoke with perfect mildness--"But I'm an old man, and I've lived long enough to be fonder of old-fashioned ways than new, and I should like, if you please, to let it be known that I died a Christian, which is, to me, not a member of any particular church or chapel, but just a Christian--a man who faithfully believes in the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ."
The attorney stared at him astonished, and moved by a curious sense of shame. There was something both pathetic and dignified in the aspect of this frail old "working man," who stood before him so respectfully with his venerable white hair uncovered, and his eyes full of an earnest resolution which was not to be gainsaid. Coughing a cough of nervous embarrassment, he again glanced at the document before him.
"Of course," he said--"if you wish it, there is not the slightest objection to your making this--this public statement as to your religious convictions. It does not affect the disposal of your worldly goods in any way. It used--yes, it used to be quite the ordinary way of beginning a Last Will and Testament--but we have got beyond any special commendation of our souls to God, you know----"
"Oh yes, I quite understand that," rejoined Helmsley. "Present-day people like to think that God takes no interest whatever in His own creation. It's a more comfortable doctrine to believe that He is indifferent rather than observant. But, so far as I'm concerned, I don't go with the time."
"No, I see you don't," and Mr. Owlett bent his attention anew on the Will--"And the religious preliminary being quite unimportant, you shall have it your own way. Apart from that, you've drawn it up quite correctly, and in very good form. I suppose you understand that you have in this Will left 'everything' to the named legatee, Mary Deane, spinster, that is to say, excluding no item whatsoever? That she becomes the possessor, in fact, of your whole estate?"
Helmsley bent his head in assent.
"That is what I wish, sir, and I hope I have made it clear."
"Yes, you have made it quite clear. There is no room for discussion on any point. You wish us to witness your signature?"
"If you please, sir."
And he advanced to the bureau ready to sign. Mr. Owlett rang a bell sharply twice. An angular man with a youngish face and a very elderly manner answered the summons.
"My confidential clerk," said Owlett, briefly introducing him. "Here, Prindle! I want you to be witness with me to this gentleman's Will."
Prindle bowed, and passed his hand across his mouth to hide a smile. Prindle was secretly amused to think that a working man had anything to leave worth the trouble of making a Will at all. Mr. Owlett dipped a pen in ink, and handed it to his client. Whereat, Helmsley wrote his signature in a clear, bold, unfaltering hand. Mr. Owlett appended his own name, and then Prindle stepped up to sign. As he saw the signature "David Helmsley," he paused and seemed astonished. Mr. Owlett gave a short laugh.
"We know that name, don't we, Prindle?"
"Well, sir, I should say all the world knew it!" replied Prindle.
"All the world--yes!--all except our friend here," said Owlett, nodding towards Helmsley. "You didn't know, my man, did you, that there was a multi-millionaire existing of the same name as yourself?"
"No, sir, I did not!" answered Helmsley. "I hope he's made his Will!"
"I hope he has!" laughed the attorney. "There'll be a big haul for the Crown if he hasn't!"
Prindle, meanwhile, was slowly writing "James George Prindle, Clerk to the aforesaid Robert Owlett" underneath his legal employer's signature.
"I should suggest," said Mr. Owlett, addressing David, jocosely, "that you go and make yourself known to the rich Mr. Helmsley as a namesake of his!"
"Would you, sir? And why?"
"Well, he might be interested. Men as rich as he is always want a new 'sensation' to amuse them. And he might, for all you know, make you a handsome present, or leave you a little legacy!"
Helmsley smiled--he very nearly laughed. But he carefully guarded his equanimity.
"Thank you for the hint, sir! I'll try and see him some day!"
"I hear he's dead," said Prindle, finishing the signing of his name and laying down his pen. "It was in the papers some time back."
"But it was contradicted," said Owlett quickly.
"Ah, but I think it was true all the same," and Prindle shook his head obstinately. "The papers ought to know."
"Oh yes, they ought to know, but in nine cases out of ten they _don't_ know," declared Owlett. "And if you contradict their lies, they're so savage at being put in the wrong that they'll blazon the lies all the more rather than confess them. That will do, Prindle! You can go."
Prindle, aware that his employer was not a man to be argued with, at once retired, and Owlett, folding up the Will, handed it to Helmsley.
"That's all right," he said, "I suppose you want to take it with you? You can leave it with us if you like."
"Thank you, but I'd rather have it about me," Helmsley answered. "You see I'm old and not very strong, and I might die at any time. I'd like to keep my Will on my own person."
"Well, take care of it, that's all," said the solicitor, smiling at what he thought his client's rustic _naïveté_. "No matter how little you've got to leave, it's just as well it should go where you want it to go without trouble or difficulty. And there's generally a quarrel over every Will."
"I hope there's no chance of any quarrel over mine," said Helmsley, with a touch of anxiety.
"Oh no! Not the least in the world! Even if you were as great a millionaire as the man who happens to bear the same name as yourself, the Will would hold good."
"Thank you!" And Helmsley placed on the lawyer's desk more than his rightful fee, which that respectable personage accepted without any hesitation. "I'm very much obliged to you. Good afternoon!"
"Good afternoon!" And Mr. Owlett leaned back in his chair, blandly surveying his visitor. "I suppose you quite understand that, having made your legatee, Mary Deane, your sole executrix likewise, you give her absolute control?"
"Oh yes, I quite understand that!" answered Helmsley. "That is what I wish her to have--the free and absolute control of all I die possessed of."
"Then you may be quite easy in your mind," said the lawyer. "You have made that perfectly clear."
Whereat Helmsley again said "Good afternoon," and again Mr. Owlett briefly responded, sweeping the money his client had paid him off his desk, and pocketing the same with that resigned air of injured virtue which was his natural expression whenever he thought of how little good hard cash a country solicitor could make in the space of twenty-four hours. Helmsley, on leaving the office, returned at once to his lodging under the shadow of the Cathedral and resumed his own work, which was that of writing several letters to various persons connected with his financial affairs, showing to each and all what a grip he held, even in absence, on the various turns of the wheel of fortune, and dating all his communications from Exeter, "at which interesting old town I am making a brief stay," he wrote, for the satisfaction of such curiosity as his correspondents might evince, as well as for the silencing of all rumours respecting his supposed death. Last of all he wrote to Sir Francis Vesey, as follows:--
"MY DEAR VESEY,--On this day, in the good old city of Exeter, I have done what you so often have asked me to do. I have made my Will. It is drawn up entirely in my own handwriting, and has been duly declared correct and valid by a legal firm here, Messrs. Rowden and Owlett. Mr. Owlett and Mr. Owlett's clerk were good enough to witness my signature. I wish you to consider this communication made to you in the most absolute confidence, and as I carry the said document, namely my 'Last Will and Testament,' upon my person, it will not reach your hands till I am no more. Then I trust you will see the business through without unnecessary trouble or worry to the person who, by my desire, will inherit all I have to leave.
"I have spent nearly a year of almost perfect happiness away from London and all the haunts of London men, and I have found what I sought, but what you probably doubted I could ever find--Love! The treasures of earth I possess and have seldom enjoyed--but the treasure of Heaven,--that pure, disinterested, tender affection, which bears the stress of poverty, sickness, and all other kindred ills,--I never had till now. And now the restless craving of my soul is pacified. I am happy,--moreover, I am perfectly at ease as regards the disposal of my wealth when I am gone. I know you will be glad to hear this, and that you will see that my last wishes and instructions are faithfully carried out in every respect--that is, if I should die before I see you again, which I hope may not be the case.
"It is my present intention to return to London shortly, and tell you personally the story of such adventures as have chanced to me since I left Carlton House Terrace last July, but 'man proposes, and God disposes,' and one can be certain of nothing. I need not ask you to keep all my affairs going as if I myself were on the scene of action, and also to inform the servants of my household to prepare for my return, as I may be back in town any day. I must thank you for your prompt and businesslike denial of the report of my death, which I understand has been circulated by the press. I am well--as well as a man of my age can expect to be, save for a troublesome heart-weakness, which threatens a brief and easy ending to my career. But for this, I should esteem myself stronger than some men who are still young. And one of the strongest feelings in me at the present moment (apart altogether from the deep affection and devout gratitude I have towards the one who under my Will is to inherit all I have spent my life to gain) is my friendship for you, my dear Vesey,--a friendship cemented by the experience of years, and which I trust may always be unbroken, even remaining in your mind as an unspoilt memory after I am gone where all who are weary, long, yet fear to go! Nevertheless, my faith is firm that the seeming darkness of death will prove but the veil which hides the light of a more perfect life, and I have learned, through the purity of a great and unselfish human love, to believe in the truth of the Love Divine.--Your friend always, DAVID HELMSLEY."
This letter finished, he went out and posted it with all the others he had written, and then passed the evening in listening to the organist practising grave anthems and voluntaries in the Cathedral. Every little item he could think of in his business affairs was carefully gone over during the three days he spent in Exeter,--nothing was left undone that could be so arranged as to leave his worldly concerns in perfect and unquestionable order--and when, as "Mr. David," he paid his last daily score at the little Temperance hotel where he had stayed since the Tuesday night, and started by the early train of Saturday morning on his return to Minehead, he was at peace with himself and all men. True it was that the making of his will had brought home to him the fact that it was not the same thing as when, being in the prime of life, he had made it in favour of his two sons, who were now dead,--it was really and truly a final winding-up of his temporal interests, and an admitted approach to the verge of the Eternal,--but he was not depressed by this consciousness. On the contrary, a happy sense of perfect calm pervaded his whole being, and as the train bore him swiftly through the quiet, lovely land back to Minehead, that sea-washed portal to the little village paradise which held the good angel of his life, he silently thanked God that he had done the work which he had started out to do, and that he had been spared to return and look again into the beloved face of the one woman in all the world who had given him a true affection without any "motive," or hope of reward. And he murmured again his favourite lines:--
"Let the sweet heavens endure, Not close nor darken above me, Before I am quite, quite sure That there is one to love me! Then let come what come may, To a life that has been so sad, I shall have had my day!"
"That is true!" he said--"And being 'quite, quite sure' beyond all doubt, that I have found 'one to love me' whose love is of the truest, holiest and purest, what more can I ask of Divine goodness!"
And his face was full of the light of a heart's content and peace, as the dimpled hill coast of Somerset came into view, and the warm spring sunshine danced upon the sea.
CHAPTER XXI
Arriving at Minehead, Helmsley passed out of the station unnoticed by any one, and made his way easily through the sunny little town. He was soon able to secure a "lift" towards Weircombe in a baker's cart going half the way; the rest of the distance he judged he could very well manage to walk, albeit slowly. A fluttering sense of happiness, like the scarcely suppressed excitement of a boy going home from school for the holidays, made him feel almost agile on his feet,--if he had only had a trifle more strength he thought he could have run the length of every mile stretching between him and the dear cottage in the coombe, which had now become the central interest of his life. The air was so pure, the sun so bright--the spring foliage was so fresh and green, the birds sang so joyously--all nature seemed to be in such perfect tune with the deep ease and satisfaction of his own soul, that every breath he took was more or less of a thanksgiving to God for having been spared to enjoy the beauty of such halcyon hours. By the willing away of all his millions to one whom he knew to be of a pure, noble, and incorruptible nature, a great load had been lifted from his mind,--he had done with world's work for ever; and by some inexplicable yet divine compensation it seemed as though the true meaning of the life to come had been suddenly disclosed to him, and that he was allowed to realise for the first time not only the possibility, but the certainty, that Death is not an End, but a new Beginning. And he felt himself to be a free man,--free of all earthly confusion and worry--free to recommence another cycle of nobler work in a higher and wider sphere of action, And he argued with himself thus:--
"A man is born into this world without his own knowledge or consent. Yet he finds himself--also without his own knowledge or consent--surrounded by natural beauty and perfect order--he finds nothing in the planet which can be accounted valueless--he learns that even a grain of dust has its appointed use, and that not a sparrow shall fall to the ground without 'Our Father.' Everything is ready to his hand to minister to his reasonable wants--and it is only when he misinterprets the mystic meaning of life, and puts God aside as an 'unknown quantity,' that things go wrong. His mission is that of progress and advancement--but not progress and advancement in base material needs and pleasures,--the progress and advancement required of him is primarily spiritual. For the spiritual, or Mind, is the only Real. Matter is merely the husk in which the seed of Spirit is enclosed--and Man's mistake is always that he attaches himself to the perishable husk instead of the ever germinating seed. He advances, but advances wrongly, and therefore has to go back upon his steps. He progresses in what he calls civilisation, which so long as it is purely self-aggrandisement, is but a common circle, bringing him back in due course to primitive savagery. Now I, for example, started in life to make money--I made it, and it brought me power, which I thought progress; but now, at the end of my tether, I see plainly that I have done no good in my career save such good as will come from my having placed all my foolish gainings under the control of a nature simpler and therefore stronger than my own. And I, leaving my dross behind me, must go forward and begin again--spiritually the wiser for my experience of this world, which may help me better to understand the next."
Thus he mused, as he slowly trudged along under the bright and burning sun--happy enough in his thoughts except that now and then a curious touch of foreboding fear came over him as to whether anything ill had happened to Mary in his absence.
"For one never knows!"--and a faint shudder came over him as he remembered Tom o' the Gleam, and the cruel, uncalled-for death of his child, the only human creature left to him in the world to care for. "One can never tell, whether in the scheme of creation there is such a being as a devil, who takes joy in running counter to the beneficent intentions of the Creator! Light exists--and Darkness. Good seems co-equal with Evil. It is all mystery! Now, suppose Mary were to die? Suppose she were, at this very moment, dead?"
Such a horror came over him as this idea presented itself to his mind that he trembled from head to foot, and his brain grew dizzy. He had walked for a longer time than he knew since the cart in which he had ridden part of the way had left him at about four miles away from Weircombe, and he felt that he must sit down on the roadside and rest for a bit before going further. How cruel, how fiendish it would be, he continued to imagine, if Mary were dead! It would be devil's work!--and he would have no more faith in God! He would have lost his last hope,--and he would fall into the grave a despairing atheist and blasphemer! Why, if Mary were dead, then the world was a snare, and heaven a delusion!--truth a trick, and goodness a lie! Then--was all the past, the present, and future hanging for him like a jewel on the finger of one woman? He was bound to admit that it was so. He was also bound to admit that all the past, present, and future had, for poor Tom o' the Gleam, been centred in one little child. And--God?--no, not God--but a devil, using as his tools devilish men,--had killed that child! Then, might not that devil kill Mary? His head swam, and a sickening sense of bafflement and incompetency came over him. He had made his will,--that was true!--but who could guarantee that she whom he had chosen as his heiress would live to inherit his wealth?
"I wish I did not think of such horrible things!" he said wearily--"Or I wish I could walk faster, and get home--home to the little cottage quickly, and see for myself that she is safe and well!"
Sitting among the long grass and field flowers by the roadside, he grasped his stick in one hand and leaned his head upon that support, closing his eyes in sheer fatigue and despondency. Suddenly a sound startled him, and he struggled to his feet, his eyes shining with an intent and eager look. That clear, tender voice!--that quick, sweet cry!
"David!"
He listened with a vague and dreamy sense of pleasure. The soft patter of feet across the grass--the swish of a dress against the leaves, and then--then--why, here was Mary herself, one tress of her lovely hair tumbling loose in the sun, her eyes bright and her cheeks crimson with running.
"Oh, David, dear old David! Here you are at last! Why _did_ you go away! We have missed you dreadfully! David, you look _so_ tired!--where have you been? Angus and I have been waiting for you ever so long,--you said in your letter you would be back by Sunday, and we thought you would likely choose to-day to come--oh, David?--you are quite worn out! Don't--don't give way!"
For with the longed-for sight of her, the world's multi-millionaire had become only a weak, over-wrought old man, and his tired heart had leaped in his breast with quite a poor and common human joy which brought the tears falling from his eyes despite himself. She was beside him in a moment, her arm thrown affectionately about his shoulders, and her sweet face turned up close to his, all aglow with sympathy and tenderness.
"Why did you leave us?" she went on with a gentle playfulness, though the tears were in her own eyes. "Whatever made you think of getting work out of Weircombe? Oh, you dissatisfied old boy! I thought you were quite happy with me!"
He took her hand and held it a moment, then pressed it to his lips.
"Happy!" he murmured. "My dear, I was _too_ happy!--and I felt that I owed you too much! I went away for a bit just to see if I could do something for you more profitable than basket-making----"
Mary nodded her head at him in wise-like fashion, just as if he were a spoilt child.
"I daresay you did!" she said, smiling. "And what's the end of it all, eh?"
He looked at her, and in the brightness of her smile, smiled also.
"Well, the end of it all is that I've come back to you in exactly the same condition in which I went away," he said. "No richer,--no poorer! I've got nothing to do. Nobody wants old people on their hands nowadays. It's a rough time of the world!"
"You'll always find the world rough on you if you turn your back on those that love you!" she said.
He lifted his head and gazed at her with such a pained and piteous appeal, that her heart smote her. He looked so very ill, and his worn face with the snow-white hair ruffled about it, was so pallid and thin.
"God forbid that I should do that!" he murmured tremulously. "God forbid! Mary, you don't think I would ever do that?"
"No--of course not!" she answered soothingly. "Because you see, you've come back again. But if you had gone away altogether----"
"You'd have thought me an ungrateful, worthless old rascal, wouldn't you?" And the smile again sparkled in his dim eyes. "And you and Angus Reay would have said--'Well, never mind him! He served one useful purpose at any rate--he brought us together!'"
"Now, David!" said Mary, holding up a warning finger, "You know we shouldn't have talked in such a way of you at all! Even if you had never come back, we should always have thought of you kindly--and I should have always loved you and prayed for you!"
He was silent, mentally pulling himself together. Then he put his arm gently through hers.
"Let us go home," he said. "I can walk now. Are we far from the coombe?"
"Not ten minutes off," she answered, glad to see him more cheerful and alert. "By the short cut it's just over the brow of the hill. Will you come that way?"
"Any way you like to take me," and leaning on her arm he walked bravely on. "Where is Angus?"
"I left him sitting under a tree at the top of the coombe near the Church," she replied. "He was busy with his writing, and I told him I would just run across the hill and see if you were coming. I had a sort of fancy you would be tramping home this morning! And where have you been all these days?"
"A good way," he answered evasively. "I'm rather a slow walker."
"I should think you were!" and she laughed good-humouredly. "You must have been pretty near us all the while!"
He made no answer, and together they paced slowly across the grass, sweet with the mixed perfume of thousands of tiny close-growing herbs and flowers which clung in unseen clumps to the soil. All at once the quaint little tower of Weircombe Church thrust its ivy-covered summit above the edge of the green slope which they were ascending, and another few steps showed the glittering reaches of the sunlit sea. Helmsley paused, and drew a deep breath.
"I am thankful to see it all again!" he said.
She waited, while leaning heavily on her arm he scanned the whole fair landscape with a look of eager love and longing. She saw that he was very tired and exhausted, and wondered what he had been doing with himself in his days of absence from her care, but she had too much delicacy and feeling for him to ask him any questions. And she was glad when a cheery "Hillo!" echoed over the hill and Angus appeared, striding across the grass and waving his cap in quite a jubilant fashion. As soon as he saw them plainly he exchanged his stride for a run and came up to them in a couple of minutes.
"Why, David!" he exclaimed. "How are you, old boy? Welcome back! So Mary is right as usual! She said she was sure you would be home to-day!"
Helmsley could not speak. He merely returned the pressure of Reay's warm, strong hand with all the friendly fervour of which he was capable. A glance from Mary's eyes warned Angus that the old man was sorely tired--and he at once offered him his arm.
"Lean on me, David," he said. "Strong as bonnie Mary is, I'm just a bit stronger. We'll be across the brae in no time! Charlie's at home keeping house!"
He laughed, and Helmsley smiled.
"Poor wee Charlie!" he said. "Did he miss me?"
"That he did!" answered Mary. "He's been quite lonesome, and not contented at all with only me. Every morning and every night he went into your room looking for you, and whined so pitifully at not finding you that I had quite a trouble to comfort him."
"More tender-hearted than many a human so-called 'friend'!" murmured Helmsley.
"Why yes, of course!" said Reay. "There's nothing more faithful on earth than a faithful dog--except"--and he smiled--"a faithful husband!"
Mary laughed.
"Or a faithful wife--which?" she playfully demanded. "How does the old rhyme go--
'A wife, a dog, and a walnut tree, The more you beat 'em, the better they be!'
Are you going to try that system when we are married, Angus?"
She laughed again, and without waiting for an answer, ran on a little in front, in order to be first across the natural bridge which separated them from the opposite side of the "coombe," and from the spot where the big chestnut-tree waved its fan-like green leaves and plumes of pinky white blossom over her garden gate. Another few steps made easily with the support of Reay's strong arm, and Helmsley found himself again in the simple little raftered cottage kitchen, with Charlie tearing madly round and round him in ecstasy, uttering short yelps of joy. Something struggled in his throat for utterance,--it seemed ages since he had last seen this little abode of peace and sweet content, and a curious impression was in his mind of having left one identity here to take up another less pleasing one elsewhere. A deep, unspeakable gratitude overwhelmed him,--he felt to the full the sympathetic environment of love,--that indescribable sense of security which satisfies the heart when it knows it is "dear to some one else."
"If I be dear to some one else, Then I should be to myself more dear."
For there is nothing in the whole strange symphony of human life, with its concordances and dissonances, that strikes out such a chord of perfect music as the consciousness of love. To feel that there is one at least in the world to whom you are more dear than to any other living being, is the very centralisation of life and the mainspring of action. For that one you will work and plan,--for that one you will seek to be noble and above the average in your motives and character--for that one you will, despite a multitude of drawbacks, agree to live. But without this melodious note in the chorus all the singing is in vain.
Led to his accustomed chair by the hearth, Helmsley sank into it restfully, and closed his eyes. He was so thoroughly tired out mentally and physically with the strain he had put upon himself in undertaking his journey, as well as in getting through the business he had set out to do, that he was only conscious of a great desire to sleep. So that when he shut his eyes for a moment, as he thought, he was quite unaware that he fell into a dead faint and so remained for nearly half an hour. When he came to himself again, Mary was kneeling beside him with a very pale face, and Angus was standing quite close to him, while no less a personage than Mr. Bunce was holding his hand and feeling his pulse.
"Better now?" said Mr. Bunce, in a voice of encouraging mildness. "We have done too much. We have walked too far. We must rest."
Helmsley smiled--the little group of three around him looked so troubled, while he himself felt nothing unusual.
"What's the matter?" he asked. "I'm all right--quite all right. Only just a little tired!"
"Exactly!" And Mr. Bunce nodded profoundly. "Just a little tired! We have taken a very unnecessary journey away from our friends, and we are suffering for it! We must now be very good; we must stay at home and keep quiet!"
Helmsley looked from one to the other questioningly.
"Do you think I'm ill?" he asked. "I'm not, really! I feel very well."
"That's all right, David, dear!" said Mary, patting his hand. "But you _are_ tired--you know you are!"
His eyes rested on her fondly.
"Yes, I'm tired," he confessed. "But that's nothing." He waited a minute, looking at them all. "That's nothing! Is it, Mr. Bunce?"
"When we are young it is nothing," replied Mr. Bunce cautiously. "But when we are old, we must be careful!"
Helmsley smiled.
"Shake hands, Bunce!" he said, suiting the action to the word. "I'll obey your orders, never fear! I'll sit quiet!"
And he showed so much cheerfulness, and chatted with them all so brightly, that, for the time, anxiety was dispelled. Mr. Bunce took his departure promptly, only pausing at the garden gate to give a hint to Angus Reay.
"He will require the greatest care. Don't alarm Miss Deane--but his heart was always weak, and it has grown perceptibly weaker. He needs complete repose."
Angus returned to the cottage somewhat depressed after this, and from that moment Helmsley found himself surrounded with evidences of tender forethought for his comfort such as no rich man could ever obtain for mere cash payment. The finest medical skill and the best trained nursing are, we know, to be had for money,--but the soothing touch of love,--the wordless sympathy which manifests itself in all the looks and movements of those by whom a life is really and truly held precious--these are neither to be bought nor sold. And David Helmsley in his assumed character of a man too old and too poor to have any so-called "useful" friends--a mere wayfarer on the road apparently without a home, or any prospect of obtaining one,--had, by the simplest, yet strangest chance in the world, found an affection such as he had never in his most successful and most brilliant days been able to win. He upon whom the society women of London and Paris had looked with greedy and speculative eyes, wondering how much they could manage to get out of him, was now being cared for by one simple-hearted sincere woman, who had no other motive for her affectionate solicitude save gentlest compassion and kindness;--he whom crafty kings had invited to dine with them because of his enormous wealth, and because is was possible that, for the "honour" of sitting at the same table with them he might tide them over a financial difficulty, was now tended with more than the duty and watchfulness of a son in the person of a poor journalist, kicked out of employment for telling the public certain important facts concerning financial "deals" on the part of persons of influence--a journalist, who for this very cause was likely never more to be a journalist, but rather a fighter against bitter storm and stress, for the fair wind of popular favour,--that being generally the true position of any independent author who has something new and out of the common to say to the world. Angus Reay, working steadily and hopefully on his gradually diminishing little stock of money, with all his energies bent on cutting a diamond of success out of the savagely hard rock of human circumstance, was more filial in his respect and thought for Helmsley than either of Helmsley's own sons had been; while his character was as far above the characters of those two ne'er-do-weel sprouts of their mother's treachery as light is above darkness. And the multi-millionaire was well content to rest in the little cottage where he had found a real home, watching the quiet course of events,--and waiting--waiting for something which he found himself disposed to expect--a something to which he could not give a name.
There was quite a little rejoicing in the village of Weircombe when it was known he had returned from his brief wanderings, and there was also a good deal of commiseration expressed for him when it was known that he was somewhat weakened in physical health by his efforts to find more paying work. Many of the children with whom he was a favourite came up to see him, bringing little knots of flowers, or curious trophies of weed and shells from the seashore--and now that the weather was settled fine and warm, he became accustomed to sit in his chair outside the cottage door in the garden, with the old sweetbriar bush shedding perfume around him, and a clambering rose breaking into voluptuous creamy pink blossom above his head. Here he would pursue his occupation of basket-making, and most of the villagers made it their habit to pass up and down at least once or twice a day in their turns, to see how he fared, or, as they themselves expressed it, "to keep old David going." His frail bent figure, his thin, intellectual face, with its composed expression of peace and resignation, his soft white hair, and his slow yet ever patiently working hands, made up a picture which, set in the delicate framework of leaf and blossom, was one to impress the imagination and haunt the memory. Mr. and Mrs. Twitt were constant visitors, and many were the would-be jocose remarks of the old stonemason on David's temporary truancy.
"Wanted more work, did ye?" And thrusting his hands deep in the pockets of his corduroys, Twitt looked at him with a whimsical complacency. "Well, why didn't ye come down to the stoneyard an' learn 'ow to cut a hepitaph? Nice chippy, easy work in its way, an' no 'arm in yer sittin' down to it. Why didn't ye, eh?"
"I've never had enough education for such work as that, Mr. Twitt," answered David mildly, with something of a humorous sparkle in his eyes. "I'm afraid I should spoil more than I could pay for. You want an artist--not an untrained clumsy old fellow like me."
"Oh, blow artists!" said Mr. Twitt irreverently. "They talks a lot--they talks yer 'ed off--but they doos onny 'arf the labour as they spends in waggin' their tongues. An' for a hepitaph, they none of 'em aint got an idee. It's allus Scripter texes with 'em,--they aint got no 'riginality. Now I'm a reg'lar Scripter reader, an' nowheres do I find it writ as we're to use the words o' God Himself to carve on tombstones for our speshul convenience, cos we aint no notions o' feelin' an' respect of our own. But artists can't think o' nothin', an' I never cares to employ 'em. Yet for all that there's not a sweeter, pruttier place than our little cemetery nowheres in all the world. There aint no tyranny in it, an' no pettifoggin' interference. Why, there's places in England where ye can't put what ye likes over the grave o' yer dead friends!--ye've got to 'submit' yer idee to the parzon, or wot's worse, the Corporation, if ser be yer last go-to-bed place is near a town. There's a town I know of," and here Mr. Twitt began to laugh,--"wheer ye can't 'ave a moniment put up to your dead folk without 'subjectin'' the design to the Town Council--an' we all knows the fine taste o' Town Councils! They'se 'artists,' an' no mistake! I've got the rules of the cemetery of that town for my own eddification. They runs like this--" And drawing a paper from his pocket, he read as follows:--
"'All gravestones, monuments, tombs, tablets, memorials, palisades, curbs, and inscriptions shall be subject to the approval of the Town Council; and a drawing, showing the form, materials, and dimensions of every gravestone, monument, tomb, tablet, memorial, palisades, or curb proposed to be erected or fixed, together with a copy of the inscription intended to be cut thereon (if any), on the form provided by the Town Council, must be left at the office of the Clerk at least ten days before the first Tuesday in any month. The Town Council reserve to themselves the right to remove or prevent the erection of any monument, tomb, tablet, memorial, etc., which shall not have previously received their sanction.' There! What d' ye think of that?"
Helmsley had listened in astonishment.
"Think? I think it is monstrous!" he said, with some indignation. "Such a Town Council as that is a sort of many-headed tyrant, resolved to persecute the unhappy townspeople into their very graves!"
"Right y' are!" said Twitt. "But there's a many on 'em! An' ye may thank yer stars ye're not anywheres under 'em. Now when _you_ goes the way o' all flesh----"
He paused, suddenly embarrassed, and conscious that he had perhaps touched on a sore subject. But Helmsley reassured him.
"Yes, Twitt? Don't stop!--what then?"
"Why, then," said Twitt, almost tenderly, "ye'll 'ave our good old parzon to see ye properly tucked under a daisy quilt, an' wotever ye wants put on yer tomb, or wotever's writ on it, can be yer own desire, if ye'll think about it afore ye goes. An' there'll be no expense at all--for I tell ye just the truth--I've grown to like ye that well that I'll carve ye the pruttiest little tombstone ye ever seed for nothin'!"
Helmsley smiled.
"Well, I shan't be able to thank you then, Mr. Twitt, so I thank you now," he said. "You know a good deed is always rewarded, if not in this world, then in the next."
"I b'leeve that," rejoined Twitt; "I b'leeve it true. And though I know Mis' Deane is that straight an' 'onest, she'd see ye properly mementoed an' paid for, I wouldn't take a penny from 'er--not on account of a kindly old gaffer like yerself. I'd do it all friendly."
"Of course you would!" and Helmsley shook his hand heartily; "And of course you _will_!"
This, and many other conversations he had with Twitt and a certain few of the villagers, showed him that the little community of Weircombe evidently thought of him as being not long for this world. He accepted the position quietly, and passed day after day peacefully enough, without feeling any particular illness, save a great weakness in his limbs. He was in himself particularly happy, for Mary was always with him, and Angus passed every evening with them both. Another great pleasure, too, he found in the occasional and entirely unobtrusive visits of the parson of the little parish--a weak and ailing man physically, but in soul and intellect exceptionally strong. As different from the Reverend Mr. Arbroath as an old-time Crusader would be from a modern jockey, he recognised the sacred character of his mission as an ordained minister of Christ, and performed that mission simply and faithfully. He would sit by Helmsley's chair of a summer afternoon and talk with him as friend to friend--it made no difference to him that to all appearances the old man was poor and dependent on Mary Deane's bounty, and that his former life was, to him, the clergyman, a sealed book; he was there to cheer and to comfort, not to inquire, reproach, or condemn. He was the cheeriest of companions, and the most hopeful of believers.
"If all clergymen were like you, sir," said Helmsley to him one day, "there would be no atheists!"
The good man reddened at the compliment, as though he had been accused of a crime.
"You think too kindly of my efforts," he said gently. "I only speak to you as I would wish others to speak to me."
"'For this is the Law and the Prophets!'" murmured Helmsley. "Sir, will you tell me one thing--are there many poor people in Weircombe?"
The clergyman looked a trifle surprised.
"Why, yes, to tell the exact truth, they are all poor people in Weircombe," he answered. "You see, it is really only a little fishing village. The rich people's places are situated all about it, here and there at various miles of distance, but no one with money lives in Weircombe itself."
"Yet every one seems happy," said Helmsley thoughtfully.
"Oh, yes, every one not only seems, but _is_ happy!" and the clergyman smiled. "They have the ordinary troubles that fall to the common lot, of course--but they are none of them discontented. There's very little drunkenness, and as a consequence, very little quarrelling. They are a good set of people--typically English of England!"
"If some millionaire were to leave every man, woman, and child a thousand or more pounds apiece, I wonder what would happen?" suggested Helmsley.
"Their joy would be turned to misery!" said the clergyman--"and their little heaven would become a hell! Fortunately for them, such a disaster is not likely to happen!"
Helmsley was silent; and after his kindly visitor had left him that day sat for a long time absorbed in thought, his hands resting idly on the osiers which he was gradually becoming too weak to bend.
It was now wearing on towards the middle of June, and on one fine morning when Mary was carefully spreading out on a mending-frame a wonderful old flounce of priceless _point d'Alençon_ lace, preparatory to examining the numerous repairs it needed, Helmsley turned towards her abruptly with the question--
"When are you and Angus going to be married, my dear?"
Mary smiled, and the soft colour flew over her face at the suggestion.
"Oh, not for a long time yet, David!" she replied. "Angus has not yet finished his book,--and even when it is all done, he has to get it published. He won't have the banns put up till the book is accepted."
"Won't he?" And Helmsley's eyes grew very wistful. "Why not?"
"Well, it's for quite a good reason, after all," she said. "He wants to feel perfectly independent. You see, if he could get even a hundred pounds down for his book he would be richer than I am, and it would be all right. He'd never marry me with nothing at all of his own."
"Yet _you_ would marry him?"
"I'm not sure that I would," and she lifted her hand with a prettily proud gesture. "You see, David, I really love him! And my love is too strong and deep for me to be so selfish as to wish to drag him down. I wouldn't have him lower his own self-respect for the world!"
"Love is greater than self-respect!" said Helmsley.
"Oh, David! You know better than that! There's no love _without_ self-respect--no real love, I mean. There are certain kinds of stupid fancies called love--but they've no 'wear' in them!" and she laughed. "They wouldn't last a month, let alone a lifetime!"
He sighed a little, and his lips trembled nervously.
"I'm afraid, my dear,--I'm afraid I shall not live to see you married!" he said.
She left her lace frame and came to his side.
"Don't say that, David! You mustn't think it for a moment. You're much better than you were--even Mr. Bunce says so!"
"Even Mr. Bunce!" And he took her hand in his own and studied its smooth whiteness and beautiful shape attentively--anon he patted it tenderly. "You have a pretty hand, Mary! It's a rare beauty!"
"Is it?" And she looked at her rosy palm meditatively. "I've never thought much about it--but I've noticed that Angus and you both have nice hands."
"Especially Angus!" said Helmsley, with a smile.
Her face reflected the smile.
"Yes. Especially Angus!"
After this little conversation Helmsley was very quiet and thoughtful. Often indeed he sat with eyes closed, pretending to sleep, in order inwardly to meditate on the plans he had most at heart. He saw no reason to alter them,--though the idea presented itself once or twice as to whether he should not reveal his actual identity to the clergyman who visited him so often, and who was, apart from his sacred calling, not only a thinking, feeling, humane creature, but a very perfect gentleman. But on due reflection he saw that this might possibly lead to awkward complications, so he still resolved to pursue the safer policy of silence.
One evening, when Angus Reay had come in as usual to sit awhile and chat with him before he went to bed, he could hardly control a slight nervous start when Reay observed casually--
"By the way, David, that old millionaire I told you about, Helmsley, isn't dead after all!"
"Oh--isn't he?" And Helmsley feigned to be affected with a troublesome cough which necessitated his looking away for a minute. "Has he turned up?"
"Yes--he's turned up. That is to say, that he's expected back in town for the 'season,' as the Cooing Column of the paper says."
"Why, what's the Cooing Column?" asked Mary, laughing.
"The fashionable intelligence corner," answered Angus, joining in her laughter. "I call it the Cooing Column, because it's the place where all the doves of society, soiled and clean, get their little grain of personal advertisement. They pay for it, of course. There it is that the disreputable Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup gets it announced that she wore a collar of diamonds at the Opera, and there the battered, dissipated Lord 'Jimmy' Jenkins has it proudly stated that his yacht is undergoing 'extensive alterations.' Who in the real work-a-day, sane world cares a button whether his lordship Jenkins sails in his yacht or sinks in it! And Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup's diamonds are only so much fresh fuel piled on the burning anguish of starving and suffering men,--anguish which results in anarchy. Any number of anarchists are bred from the Cooing Column!"
"What would you have rich men do?" asked Helmsley suddenly. "If all their business turns out much more successfully than they have ever expected, and they make millions almost despite their own desire, what would you have them do with their wealth?"
Angus thought a moment.
"It would be difficult to advise," he said at last. "For one thing I would not have them pauperise two of the finest things in this world and the best worth fighting for--Education and Literature. The man who has no struggle at all to get himself educated is only half a man. And literature which is handed to the people free of cost is shamed by being put at a lower level than beer and potatoes, for which every man has to _pay_. Andrew Carnegie I look upon as one of the world's big meddlers. A 'cute' meddler too, for he takes care to do nothing that hasn't got his name tacked on to it. However, I'm in great hopes that his pauperising of Scottish University education may in time wear itself out, and that Scotsmen will be sufficiently true to the spirit of Robert Burns to stick to the business of working and paying for what they get. I hate all things that are given _gratis_. There's always a smack of the advertising agent about them. God Himself gives nothing 'free'--you've got to pay with your very life for each gulp of air you breathe,--and rightly too! And if you try to get something out of His creation _without_ paying for it, the bill is presented in due course with compound interest!"
"I agree with you," said Helmsley. "But what, then, of the poor rich men? You don't approve of Carnegie's methods of disbursing wealth. What would you suggest?"
"The doing of private good," replied Angus promptly. "Good that is never heard of, never talked of, never mentioned in the Cooing Column. A rich man could perform acts of the most heavenly and helpful kindness if he would only go about personally and privately among the very poor, make friends with them, and himself assist them. But he will hardly ever do this. Now the millionaire who is going to marry my first love, Lucy Sorrel----"
"Oh, _is_ he going to marry her?" And Helmsley looked up with sudden interest.
"Well, I suppose he is!" And Angus threw back his head and laughed. "He's to be back in town for the 'season'--and you know what the London 'season' is!"
"I'm sure we don't!" said Mary, with an amused glance. "Tell us!"
"An endless round of lunches, dinners, balls, operas, theatres, card-parties, and inane jabber," he answered. "A mixture of various kinds of food which people eat recklessly with the natural results,--dyspepsia, inertia, mental vacuity, and general uselessness. A few Court 'functions,' some picture shows, and two or three great races--and--that's all. Some unfortunate marriages are usually the result of each year's motley."
"And you think the millionaire you speak of will be one of the unfortunate ones?" said Helmsley.
"Yes, David, I do! If he's going back to London for the season, Lucy Sorrel will never let him out of her sight again! She's made up her mind to be a Mrs. Millionaire, and she's not troubled by any over-sensitiveness or delicacy of sentiment."
"That I quite believe--from what you have told me,"--and Helmsley smiled. "But what do the papers--what does the Cooing Column say?"
"The Cooing Column says that one of the world's greatest millionaires, Mr. David Helmsley, who has been abroad for nearly a year for the benefit of his health, will return to his mansion in Carlton House Terrace this month for the 'season.'"
"Is that all?"
"That's all. Mary, my bonnie Mary,"--and Angus put an arm tenderly round the waist of his promised wife--"Your husband may, perhaps--only perhaps!--become famous--but you'll never, never be a Mrs. Millionaire!"
She laughed and blushed as he kissed her.
"I don't want ever to be rich," she said. "I'd rather be poor!"
They went out into the little garden then, with their arms entwined,--and Helmsley, seated in his chair under the rose-covered porch, watched them half in gladness, half in trouble. Was he doing well for them, he wondered? Or ill? Would the possession of wealth disturb the idyll of their contented lives, their perfect love? Almost he wished that he really were in very truth the forlorn and homeless wayfarer he had assumed to be,--wholly and irrevocably poor!
That night in his little room, when everything was quiet, and Mary was soundly sleeping in the attic above him, he rose quietly from his bed, and lighting a candle, took pen and ink and made a few additions to the letter of instructions which accompanied his will. Some evenings previously, when Mary and Angus had gone out for a walk together, he had taken the opportunity to disburden his "workman's coat" of all the banknotes contained in the lining, and, folding them up in one parcel, had put them in a sealed envelope, which envelope he marked in a certain fashion, enclosing it in the larger envelope which contained his will. In the same way he made a small, neatly sealed packet of the "collection" made for him at the "Trusty Man" by poor Tom o' the Gleam, marking that also. Now, on this particular night, feeling that he had done all he could think of to make business matters fairly easy to deal with, he packed up everything in one parcel, which he tied with a string and sealed securely, addressing it to Sir Francis Vesey. This parcel he again enclosed in another, equally tied up and sealed, the outer wrapper of which he addressed to one John Bulteel at certain offices in London, which were in truth the offices of Vesey and Symonds, Bulteel being their confidential clerk. The fact that Angus Reay knew the name of the firm which had been mentioned in the papers as connected with the famous millionaire, David Helmsley, caused him to avoid inscribing it on the packet which would have to be taken to its destination immediately after his death. As he had now arranged things, it would be conveyed to the office unsuspectingly, and Bulteel, opening the first wrapper, would see that the contents were for Sir Francis, and would take them to him at once. Locking the packet in the little cupboard in the wall which Mary had given him, as she playfully said, "to keep his treasures in"--he threw himself again on his bed, and, thoroughly exhausted, tried to sleep.
"It will be all right, I think!" he murmured to himself, as he closed his eyes wearily--"At any rate, so far as I am concerned, I have done with the world! God grant some good may come of my millions after I am dead! After I am dead! How strange it sounds! What will it seem like, I wonder,--to be dead?"
And he suddenly thought of a poem he had read some years back,--one of the finest and most daring thoughts ever expressed in verse, from the pen of a fine and much neglected poet, Robert Buchanan:--
"Master, if there be Doom, All men are bereaven! If in the Universe One Spirit receive the curse, Alas for Heaven! If there be Doom for one, Thou, Master, art undone! "Were I a Soul in Heaven, Afar from pain;-- Yea, on thy breast of snow, At the scream of one below, I should scream again-- Art Thou less piteous than The conception of a Man?"
"No, no, not less piteous!" he murmured--"But surely infinitely more pitiful!"
CHAPTER XXII
And now there came a wondrous week of perfect weather. All the lovely Somersetshire coast lay under the warmth and brilliance of a dazzling sun,--the sea was smooth,--and small sailing skiffs danced merrily up and down from Minehead to Weircombe and back again with the ease and security of seabirds, whose happiest resting-place is on the waves. A lovely calm environed the little village,--it was not a haunt of cheap "trippers,"--and summer-time was not only a working-time, but a playing time too with all the inhabitants, both young and old. The shore, with its fine golden sand, warm with the warmth of the cloudless sky, was a popular resort, and Helmsley, though his physical weakness perceptibly increased, was often able to go down there, assisted by Mary and Angus, one on each side supporting him and guarding his movements. It pleased him to sit under the shelter of the rocks and watch the long shining ripples of ocean roll forwards and backwards on the shore in silvery lines, edged with delicate, lace-like fringes of foam,--and the slow, monotonous murmur of the gathering and dispersing water soothed his nerves and hushed a certain inward fretfulness of spirit which teased him now and then, but to which he bravely strove not to give way. Sometimes--but only sometimes--he felt that it was hard to die. Hard to be old just as he was beginning to learn how to live,--hard to pass out of the beauty and wonder of this present life with all its best joys scarcely experienced, and exchange the consciousness of what little he knew for something concerning which no one could honestly give him any authentic information.
"Yet I might have said the same, had I been conscious, before I was born!" he thought. "In a former state of existence I might have said, 'Why send me from this that I know and enjoy, to something which I have not seen and therefore cannot believe in?' Perhaps, for all I can tell, I did say it. And yet God had His way with me and placed me here--for what? Only to learn a lesson! That is truly all I have done. For the making of money is as nothing in the sight of Eternal Law,--it is merely man's accumulation of perishable matter, which, like all perishable things, is swept away in due course, while he who accumulated it is of no more account as a mere corpse than his poverty-stricken brother. What a foolish striving it all is! What envyings, spites, meannesses and miserable pettinesses arise from this greed of money! Yes, I have learned my lesson! I wonder whether I shall now be permitted to pass into a higher standard, and begin again!"
These inner musings sometimes comforted and sometimes perplexed him, and often he was made suddenly aware of a strange and exhilarating impression of returning youthfulness--a buoyancy of feeling and a delightful ease, such as a man in full vigour experiences when, after ascending some glorious mountain summit, he sees the panorama of a world below him. His brain was very clear and active--and whenever he chose to talk, there were plenty of his humble friends ready to listen. One day the morning papers were full of great headlines announcing the assassination of one of the world's throned rulers, and the Weircombe fishermen, discussing the news, sought the opinion of "old David" concerning the matter. "Old David" was, however, somewhat slow to be drawn on so questionable a subject, but Angus Reay was not so reticent.
"Why should kings spend money recklessly on their often filthy vices and pleasures," he demanded, "while thousands, ay, millions of their subjects starve? As long as such a wretched state of things exists, so long will there be Anarchy. But I know the head and front of the offending! I know the Chief of all the Anarchists!"
"Lord bless us!" exclaimed Mrs. Twitt, who happened to be standing by. "Ye don't say so! Wot's' 'ee like?"
"He's all shapes and sizes--all colours too!" laughed Angus. "He's simply the Irresponsible Journalist!"
"As you were once!" suggested Helmsley, with a smile.
"No, I was never 'irresponsible,'" declared Reay, emphatically. "I may have been faulty in the following of my profession, but I never wrote a line that I thought might cause uneasiness in the minds of the million. What I mean is, that the Irresponsible Journalist who gives more prominence to the doings of kings and queens and stupid 'society' folk, than to the actual work, thought, and progress of the nation at large, is making a forcing-bed for the growth of Anarchy. Consider the feelings of a starving man who reads in a newspaper that certain people in London give dinners to their friends at a cost of Two Guineas a head! Consider the frenzied passion of a father who sees his children dying of want, when he reads that the mistress of a king wears diamonds worth forty thousand pounds round her throat! If the balance of material things is for the present thus set awry, and such vile and criminal anachronisms exist, the proprietors of newspapers should have better sense than to flaunt them before the public eye as though they deserved admiration. The Anarchist at any rate has an ideal. It may be a mistaken ideal, but whatever it is, it is a desperate effort to break down a system which anarchists imagine is at the root of all the bribery, corruption, flunkeyism and money-grubbing of the world. Moreover, the Anarchist carries his own life in his hand, and the risk he runs can scarcely be for his pleasure. Yet he braves everything for the 'ideal,' which he fancies, if realised, will release others from the yoke of injustice and tyranny. Few people have any 'ideals' at all nowadays;--what they want to do is to spend as much as they like, and eat as much as they can. And the newspapers that persist in chronicling the amount of their expenditure and the extent of their appetites, are the real breeders and encouragers of every form of anarchy under the sun!"
"You may be right," said Helmsley, slowly. "Indeed I fear you are! If one is to judge by old-time records, it was a kinder, simpler world when there was no daily press."
"Man is an imitative animal," continued Reay. "The deeds he hears of, whether good or bad, he seeks to emulate. In bygone ages crime existed, of course, but it was not blazoned in headlines to the public. Good and brave deeds were praised and recorded, and as a consequence--perhaps as a result of imitation--there were many heroes. In our times a good or brave deed is squeezed into an obscure paragraph,--while intellect and brilliant talent receive scarcely any acknowledgment--the silly doings of 'society' and the Court are the chief matter,--hence, possibly, the preponderance of dunces and flunkeys, again produced by sheer 'imitativeness.' Is it pleasant for a man with starvation at his door, to read that a king pays two thousand a year to his cook? That same two thousand comes out of the pockets of the nation--and the starving man thinks some of it ought to fall in _his_ way instead of providing for a cooker of royal victuals! There is no end to the mischief generated by the publication of such snobbish statements, whether true or false. This was the kind of irresponsible talk that set Jean-Jacques Rousseau thinking and writing, and kindling the first spark of the fire of the French Revolution. 'Royal-Flunkey' methods of journalism provoke deep resentment in the public mind,--for a king after all is only the paid servant of the people--he is not an idol or a deity to which an independent nation should for ever crook the knee. And from the smouldering anger of the million at what they conceive to be injustice and hypocrisy, springs Anarchy."
"All very well said,--but now suppose you were a wealthy man, what would you do with your money?" asked Helmsley.
Angus smiled.
"I don't know, David!--I've never realised the position yet. But I should try to serve others more than to serve myself."
The conversation ceased then, for Helmsley looked pale and exhausted. He had been on the seashore for the greater part of the afternoon, and it was now sunset. Yet he was very unwilling to return home, and it was only by gentle and oft-repeated persuasion that he at last agreed to leave his well-loved haunt, leaning as usual on Mary's arm, with Angus walking on the other side. Once or twice as he slowly ascended the village street he paused, and looked back at the tranquil loveliness of ocean, glimmering as with millions of rubies in the red glow of the sinking sun.
"'And there shall be no more sea!'" he quoted, dreamily--"I should be sorry if that were true! One would miss the beautiful sea!--even in heaven!"
He walked very feebly, and Mary exchanged one or two anxious glances with Angus. But on reaching the cottage again, his spirits revived. Seated in his accustomed chair, he smiled as the little dog, Charlie, jumped on his knee, and peered with a comically affectionate gravity into his face.
"Asking me how I am, aren't you, Charlie!" he said, cheerfully--"I'm all right, wee man!--all right!"
Apparently Charlie was not quite sure about it, for he declined to be removed from the position he had chosen, and snuggling close down on his master's lap, curled himself up in a silky ball and went to sleep, now and then opening a soft dark eye to show that his slumbers were not so profound as they seemed.
That evening when Angus had gone, after saying a prolonged good-night to Mary in the little scented garden under the lovely radiance of an almost full moon, Helmsley called her to his side.
"Mary!"
She came at once, and put her arm around him. He looked up at her, smiling.
"You think I'm very tired, I know," he said--"But I'm not. I--I want to say a word to you."
Still keeping her arm round him, she patted his shoulder gently.
"Yes, David! What is it?"
"It is just this. You know I told you I had some papers that I valued, locked away in the little cupboard in my room?"
"Yes. I know."
"Well now,--when--when I die--will you promise me to take these papers yourself to the address that is written on them? That's all I ask of you! Will you?"
"Of course I will!" she said, readily--"You know you've kept the key yourself since you got well from your bad fever last year----"
"There is the key," he said, drawing it from his pocket, and holding it up to her--"Take it now!"
"But why now----?" she began.
"Because I wish it!" he answered, with a slight touch of obstinacy--then, smiling rather wistfully, he added, "It will comfort me to know you have it in your own possession. And Mary--promise me that you will let no one--not even Angus--see or touch these papers!--that you will take the parcel just as you find it, straight to the person to whom it is addressed, and deliver it yourself to him! I don't want you to _swear_, but I want you to put your dear kind hand in mine, and say 'On my word of honour I will not open the packet old David has entrusted to me. When he dies I will take it my own self to the person to whom it is addressed, and wait till I am told that everything in it has been received and understood.' Will you, for my comfort, say these words after me, Mary?"
"Of course I will!"
And placing her hand in his, she repeated it slowly word for word. He watched her closely as she spoke, her eyes gazing candidly into his own. Then he heaved a deep sigh.
"Thank you, my dear! That will do. God bless you! And now to bed!"
He rose somewhat unsteadily, and she saw he was very weak.
"Don't you feel so well, David?" she asked, anxiously. "Would you like me to sit up with you?"
"No, no, my dear, no! All I want is a good sleep--a good long sleep. I'm only tired."
She saw him into his room, and, according to her usual custom, put a handbell on the small table which was at the side of his bed. Charlie, trotting at her heels, suddenly began to whimper. She stooped and picked the little creature up in her arms.
"Mind you ring if you want me," she said to Helmsley then,--"I'm just above you, and I can hear the least sound."
He looked at her earnestly. His eyes were almost young in their brightness.
"God bless you, Mary!" he said--"You've been a good angel to me! I never quite believed in Heaven, but looking at you I know there is such a place--the place where you were born!"
She smiled--but her eyes were soft with unshed tears.
"You think too well of me, David," she said. "I'm not an angel--I wish I were! I'm only a very poor, ordinary sort of woman."
"Are you?" he said, and smiled--"Well, think so, if it pleases you. Good-night--and again God bless you!"
He patted the tiny head of the small Charlie, whom she held nestling against her breast.
"Good-night, Charlie!"
The little dog licked his hand and looked at him wistfully.
"Don't part with him, Mary!" he said, suddenly--"Let him always have a home with you!"
"Now, David! You really are tired out and over-melancholy! As if I should ever part with him!" And she kissed Charlie's silky head--"We'll all keep together! Good-night, David!"
"Good-night!" he answered. He watched her as she went through the doorway, holding the dog in her arms and turning back to smile at him over her shoulder--anon he listened to her footfall ascending the stairway to her own room--then, to her gentle movements to and fro above his bed--till presently all was silent. Silence--except for the measured plash of the sea, which he heard distinctly echoing up through the coombe from the shore. A great loneliness environed him--touched by a great awe. He felt himself to be a solitary soul in the midst of some vast desert, yet not without the consciousness that a mystic joy, an undreamed-of glory, was drawing near that should make that desert "blossom like the rose." He moved slowly and feebly to the window--against one-half of the latticed pane leaned a bunch of white roses, shining with a soft pearl hue in the light of a lovely moon.
"It is a beautiful world!" he said, half aloud--"No one in his right mind could leave it without some regret!"
Then an inward voice seemed to whisper to him--
"You knew nothing of this world you call so beautiful before you entered it; may there not be another world still more beautiful of which you equally know nothing, but of which you are about to make an experience, all life being a process of continuous higher progress?"
And this idea now not only seemed to him possible but almost a certainty. For as our last Laureate expresses it:--
"Whatever crazy sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death. 'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, Oh life, not death, for which we pant-- More life, and fuller, that I want!"
His brain was so active and his memory so clear that he was somewhat surprised to feel his body so feeble and aching, when at last he undressed, and lay down to sleep. He thought of many things--of his boyhood's home out in Virginia--of the stress and excitement of his business career--of his extraordinary successes, piled one on the top of the other--and then of the emptiness of it all!
"I should have been happier and wiser," he said, "if I had lived the life of a student in some quiet home among the hills--where I should have seen less of men and learned more of God. But it is too late now--too late!"
And a curious sorrow and pity moved him for certain men he knew who were eating up the best time of their lives in a mad struggle for money, losing everything of real value in their scramble for what was, after all, so valueless,--sacrificing peace, honour, love, and a quiet mind, for what in the eternal countings is of no more consideration than the dust of the highroad. Not what a man _has_, but what he _is_,--this is the sole concern of Divine Equity. Earthly ideas of justice are in direct opposition to this law, but the finite can never overbalance the infinite. We may, if we so please, honour a king as king,--but with God there are no kings. There are only Souls, "made in His image." And whosoever defaces that Divine Image, whether he be base-born churl or crowned potentate, must answer for the wicked deed. How many of us view our social acquaintances from any higher standard than the extent of their cash accounts, or the "usefulness" of their influence? Yet the inexorable Law works silently on,--and day after day, century after century, shows us the vanity of riches, the fall of pride and power, the triumph of genius, the immutability of love! And we are still turning over the well-worn pages of the same old school-book which was set before Tyre and Sidon, Carthage and Babylon--the same, the very same, with one saving exception--that a Divine Teacher came to show us how to spell it and read it aright--and He was crucified! Doubtless were He to come again and once more try to help us, we should re-enact that old-time Jewish murder!
Lying quietly in his bed, Helmsley conversed with his inner self, as it were, reasoning with his own human perplexities and gradually unravelling them. After all, if his life had been, as he considered, only a lesson, was it not good for him that he had learned that lesson? A passing memory of Lucy Sorrel flitted across his brain--and he thought how singular it was that chance should have brought him into touch with the very man who would have given her that "rose of love" he desired she should wear, had she realised the value and beauty of that immortal flower. He, David Helmsley, had been apparently led by devious ways, not only to find an unselfish love for himself, but also to be the instrument of atoning to Angus Reay for his first love-disappointment, and uniting him to a woman whose exquisitely tender and faithful nature was bound to make the joy and sanctity of his life. In this, had not all things been ordered well? Did it not seem that, notwithstanding his, Helmsley's, self-admitted worthlessness, the Divine Power had used him for the happiness of others, to serve as a link of love between two deserving souls? He began to think that it was not by chance that he had been led to wander away from the centre of his business interests, and lose himself on the hills above Weircombe. Not accident, but a high design had been hidden in this incident--a design in which Self had been transformed to Selflessness, and loneliness to love. "I should like to believe in God--if I could!" This he had said to his friend Vesey, on the last night he had seen him. And now--did he believe? Yes!--for he had benefited by his first experience of what a truly God-like love may be--the love of a perfectly unselfish, tender, devout woman who, for no motive at all, but simply out of pure goodness and compassion for sorrow and suffering, had rescued one whom she judged to be in need of help. If therefore God could make one poor woman so divinely forbearing and gentle, it was certain that He, from whom all Love must emanate, was yet more merciful than the most merciful woman, as well as stronger than the strongest man. And he believed--believed implicitly;--lifted to the height of a perfect faith by the help of a perfect love. In the mirror of one sweet and simple human character he had seen the face of God--and he was of the same mind as the mighty musician who, when he was dying, cried out in rapture--"I believe I am only at the Beginning!"[2] He was conscious of a strange dual personality,--some spirit within him urgently expressed itself as being young, clamorous, inquisitive, eager, and impatient of restraint, while his natural bodily self was so weary and feeble that he felt as if he could scarcely move a hand. He listened for a little while to the ticking of the clock in the kitchen which was next to his room,--and by and by, being thoroughly drowsy, he sank into a heavy slumber. He did not know that Mary, anxious about him, had not gone to bed at all, but had resolved to sit up all night in case he should call her or want for anything. But the hours wore on peacefully for him till the moon began her downward course towards the west, and the tide having rolled in to its highest mark, began to ebb and flow out again. Then--all at once--he awoke--smitten by a shock of pain that seemed to crash through his heart and send his brain swirling into a blind chaos. Struggling for breath, he sprang up in his bed, and instinctively snatched the handbell at his side. He was hardly aware of ringing it, so great was his agony--but presently, regaining a glimmering sense of consciousness, he found Mary's arms round him, and saw Mary's eyes looking tenderly into his own.
"David, dear David!" And the sweet voice was shaken by tears. "David!--Oh, my poor dear, don't you know me?"
Know her? In the Valley of the Shadow what other Angel could there be so faithful or so tender! He sighed, leaning heavily against her bosom.
"Yes, dear--I know you!" he gasped, faintly. "But--I am very ill--dying, I think! Open the window--give me air!"
She laid his head gently back on the pillow, and ran quickly to throw open the lattice. In that same moment, the dog Charlie, who had followed her downstairs from her room, jumped on the bed, and finding his master's hand lying limp and pallid outside the coverlet, fawned upon it with a plaintive cry. The cool sea-air rushed in, and Helmsley's sinking strength revived. He turned his eyes gratefully towards the stream of silvery moonlight that poured through the open casement.
"'Angels ever bright and fair!'" he murmured--then as Mary came back to his side, he smiled vaguely; "I thought I heard my little sister singing!"
Slipping her arm again under his head, she carefully administered a dose of the cordial which had been made up for him as a calmative against his sudden heart attacks.
He swallowed it slowly and with difficulty.
"I'm--I'm all right," he said, feebly. "The pain has gone. I'm sorry to have wakened you up, Mary!--but you're always kind and patient----"
His voice broke--and a grey pallor began to steal almost imperceptibly upwards over his wasted features. She watched him, her heart beating fast with grief and terror,--the tears rushing to her eyes in spite of her efforts to restrain them. For she saw that he was dying. The solemnly musical plash of the sea sounded rhythmically upon the quiet air like the soothing murmur of a loving mother's lullaby, and the radiance of the moonlight flooded the little room with mystical glory. In her womanly tenderness she drew him more protectingly into the embrace of her kind arm, as though seeking to hold him back from the abyss of the Unknown, and held his head close against her breast. He opened his eyes and saw her thus bending over him. A smile brightened his face--a smile of youth, and hope, and confidence.
"The end is near, Mary!" he said in a clear, calm voice; "but--it's not difficult! There is no pain. And you are with me. That is enough!--that is more than I ever hoped for!--more than I deserve! God bless you always!"
He shut his eyes again--but opened them quickly in a sudden struggle for breath.
"The papers!" he gasped. "Mary--Mary--you won't forget--your promise!"
"No, David!--dear David!" she sobbed. "I won't forget!"
The paroxysm passed, and his hand wandered over the coverlet, where it encountered the soft, crouching head of the little dog who was lying close to him, shivering in every limb.
"Why, here's Charlie!" he whispered, weakly. "Poor wee Charlie! 'Take care of me' is written on his collar. Mary will take care of you, Charlie!--good-bye, little man!"
He lay quiet then, but his eyes were wide open, gazing not upward, but straight ahead, as though they saw some wondrous vision in the little room.
"Strange!--strange that I did not know all this before!" he murmured--and then was silent, still gazing straight before him. All at once a great shudder shook his body--and his thin features grew suddenly pinched and wan.
"It is almost morning!" he said, and his voice was like an echo of itself from very far away. "The sun will rise--but I shall not be here to see the sun or you, Mary!" and rallying his fast ebbing strength he turned towards her. "Keep your arms about me!--pray for me!--God will hear you--God must hear His own! Don't cry, dear! Kiss me!"
She kissed him, clasping his poor frail form to her heart as though he were a child, and tenderly smoothing back his venerable snow-white hair. A slumbrous look of perfect peace softened the piteousness of his dying eyes.
"The only treasure!" he murmured, faintly. "The treasure of Heaven--Love! God bless you for giving it to me, Mary!--good-bye, my dear!"
"Not good-bye, David!" she cried. "No--not good-bye!"
"Yes--good-bye!" he said,--and then, as another strong shudder convulsed him, he made a last feeble effort to lay his head against her bosom. "Don't let me go, Mary! Hold me!--closer!--closer! Your heart is warm, ah, so warm, Mary!--and death is cold--cold----!"
Another moment--and the moonlight, streaming through the open window, fell on the quiet face of a dead man. Then came silence--broken only by the gentle murmur of the sea, and the sound of a woman's weeping.
[Footnote 2: Beethoven.]
CHAPTER XXIII
Not often is the death of a man, who to all appearances was nothing more than a "tramp," attended by any demonstrations of sorrow. There are so many "poor" men! The roads are infested with them. It would seem, in fact, that they have no business to live at all, especially when they are old, and can do little or nothing to earn their bread. Such, generally and roughly speaking, is the opinion of the matter-of-fact world. Nevertheless, the death of "old David" created quite an atmosphere of mourning in Weircombe, though, had it been known that he was one of the world's famous millionaires, such kindly regret and compassion might have been lacking. As things were, he carried his triumph of love to the grave with him. Mary's grief for the loss of the gentle old man was deep and genuine, and Angus Reay shared it with her to the full.
"I shall miss him so much!" she sobbed, looking at the empty chair, which had been that of her own father. "He was always so kind and thoughtful for me--never wishing to give trouble!--poor dear old David!--and he did so hope to see us married, Angus!--you know it was through him that we knew each other!"
"I know!"--and Angus, profoundly moved, was not ashamed of the tears in his own eyes--"God bless him! He was a dear, good old fellow! But, Mary, you must not fret; he would not like to see your pretty eyes all red with weeping. This life was getting very difficult for him, remember,--he endured a good deal of pain. Bunce says he must have suffered acutely often without saying a word about it, lest you should be anxious. He is at rest now."
"Yes, he is at rest!"--and Mary struggled to repress her tears--"Come and see!"
Hand in hand they entered the little room where the dead man lay, covered with a snowy sheet, his waxen hands crossed peacefully outside it, and delicate clusters of white roses and myrtle laid here and there around him. His face was like a fine piece of sculptured marble in its still repose--the gravity and grandeur of death had hallowed the worn features of old age, and given them a great sweetness and majesty. The two lovers stood gazing at the corpse for a moment in silent awe--then Mary whispered softly--
"He seems only asleep! And he looks happy."
"He _is_ happy, dear!--he must be happy!"--and Angus drew her gently away. "Poor and helpless as he was, still he found a friend in you at the last, and now all his troubles are over. He has gone to Heaven with the help and blessing of your kind and tender heart, my Mary! I am sure of that!"
She sighed, and her eyes were clouded with sadness.
"Heaven seems very far away sometimes!" she said. "And--often I wonder--what _is_ Heaven?"
"Love!" he answered--"Love made perfect--Love that knows no change and no end! 'Nothing is sweeter than love; nothing stronger, nothing higher, nothing broader, nothing more pleasant, nothing fuller or better in heaven and in earth, for love is born of God, and can rest only in God above all things created.'"
He quoted the beautiful words from the _Imitation of Christ_ reverently and tenderly.
"Is that not true, my Mary?" he said, kissing her.
"Yes, Angus! For _us_ I know it is true!--I wish it were true for all the world!"
And then there came a lovely day, perfectly brilliant and intensely calm, on which "old David," was quietly buried in the picturesque little churchyard of Weircombe. Mary and Angus together had chosen his resting-place, a grassy knoll swept by the delicate shadows of a noble beech-tree, and facing the blue expanse of the ocean. Every man who had known and talked with him in the village offered to contribute to the expenses of his funeral, which, however, were very slight. The good Vicar would accept no burial fee, and all who knew the story of the old "tramp's" rescue from the storm by Mary Deane, and her gentle care of him afterwards, were anxious to prove that they too were not destitute of that pure and true charity which "suffereth long and is kind." Had David Helmsley been buried as David Helmsley the millionaire, it is more than likely that he might not have had one sincere mourner at his grave, with the exception of his friend, Sir Francis Vesey, and his valet Benson. There would have been a few "business" men,--and some empty carriages belonging to fashionable folk sent out of so-called "respect"; but of the many he had entertained, assisted and benefited, not one probably would have taken the trouble to pay him, so much as a last honour. As the poor tramping old basket-maker, whose failing strength would not allow him to earn much of a living, his simple funeral was attended by nearly a whole village,--honest men who stood respectfully bareheaded as the coffin was lowered into the grave--kind-hearted women who wept for "poor lonely soul"--as they expressed it,--and little children who threw knots of flowers into that mysterious dark hole in the ground "where people went to sleep for a little, and then came out again as angels"--as their parents told them. It was a simple ceremony, performed in a spirit of perfect piety, and without any hypocrisy or formality. And when it was all over, and the villagers had dispersed to their homes, Mr. Twitt on his way "down street," as he termed it, from the churchyard, paused at Mary Deane's cottage to unburden his mind of a weighty resolution.
"Ye see, Mis' Deane, it's like this," he said--"I as good as promised the poor old gaffer as I'd do 'im a tombstone for nuthin', an' I'm 'ere to say as I aint a-goin' back on that. But I must take my time on it. I'd like to think out a speshul hepitaph--an' doin' portry takes a bit of 'ard brain work. So when the earth's set down on 'is grave a bit, an' the daisies is a-growin' on the grass, I'll mebbe 'ave got an idea wot'll please ye. 'E aint left any mossel o' paper writ out like, with wot 'e'd like put on 'im, I s'pose?"
Mary felt the colour rush to her face.
"N--no! Not that I know of, Mr. Twitt," she said. "He has left a few papers which I promised him I would take to a friend of his, but I haven't even looked at them yet, and don't know to whom they are addressed. If I find anything I'll let you know."
"Ay, do so!" and Twitt rubbed his chin meditatively. "I wouldn't run agin' 'is wishes for anything if ser be I can carry 'em out. I considers as 'e wor a very fine sort--gentle as a lamb, an' grateful for all wot was done for 'im, an' I wants to be as friendly to 'im in 'is death as I wos in 'is life--ye understand?"
"Yes--I know--I quite understand," said Mary. "But there's plenty of time---"
"Yes, there's plenty of time!" agreed Twitt. "But, lor,' if you could only know what a pain it gives me in the 'ed to work the portry out of it, ye wouldn't wonder at my preparin' ye, as 'twere. Onny I wishes ye just to understand that it'll all be done for love--an' no charge."
Mary thanked him smiling, yet with tears in her eyes, and he strolled away down the street in his usual slow and somewhat casual manner.
That evening,--the evening of the day on which all that was mortal of "old David" had been committed to the gentle ground, Mary unlocked the cupboard of which he had given her the key on the last night of his life, and took out the bulky packet it contained. She read the superscription with some surprise and uneasiness. It was addressed to a Mr. Bulteel, in a certain street near Chancery Lane, London. Now Mary had never been to London in her life. The very idea of going to that vast unknown metropolis half scared her, and she sat for some minutes, with the sealed packet in her lap, quite confused and troubled.
"Yet I made the promise!" she said to herself--"And I dare not break it! I must go. And I must not tell Angus anything about it--that's the worst part of all!"
She gazed wistfully at the packet,--anon she turned it over and over. It was sealed in several places--but the seal had no graven impress, the wax having merely been pressed with the finger.
"I must go!" she repeated. "I'm bound to deliver it myself to the man for whom it is intended. But what a journey it will be! To London!"
Absorbed in thought, she started as a tap came at the cottage door,--and rising, she hurriedly put the package out of sight, just as Angus entered.
"Mary," he said, as he came towards her--"Do you know, I've been thinking we had better get quietly married as soon as possible?"
She smiled.
"Why? Is the book finished?" she asked.
"No, it isn't. I wish it was! But it will be finished in another month----"
"Then let us wait that other month," she said. "You will be happier, I know, if the work is off your mind."
"Yes--I shall be happier--but Mary, I can't bear to think of you all alone in this little cottage----"
She gently interrupted him.
"I was all alone for five years after my father died," she said. "And though I was sometimes a little sad, I was not dull, because I always had work to do. Dear old David was a good companion, and it was pleasant to take care of him--indeed, this last year has been quite a happy one for me, and I shan't find it hard to live alone in the cottage for just a month now. Don't worry about me, Angus!"
He stooped and picked up Charlie, who, since his master's death, had been very dispirited.
"You see, Mary," he said, as he fondled the little dog and stroked its silky hair--"nothing will alter the fact that you are richer than I am. You do regular work for which you get regular pay--now I have no settled work at all, and not much chance of pay, even for the book on which I've been spending nearly a year of my time. You've got a house which you can keep going--and very soon I shall not be able to afford so much as a room!--think of that! And yet--I have the impertinence to ask you to marry me! Forgive me, dear! It is, as you say, better to wait."
She came and entwined her arms about him.
"I'll wait a month," she said--"No longer, Angus! By that time, if you don't marry me, I shall summons you for breach of promise!"
She smiled--but he still remained thoughtful.
"Angus!" she said suddenly--"I want to tell you--I shall have to go away from Weircombe for a day--perhaps two days."
He looked surprised.
"Go away!" he echoed. "What for? Where to?"
She told him then of "old David's" last request to her, and of the duty she had undertaken to perform.
He listened gravely.
"You must do it, of course," he said. "But will you have to travel far?"
"Some distance from Weircombe," she answered, evasively.
"May I not go with you?" he asked.
She hesitated.
"I promised----" she began.
"And you shall not break your word," he said, kissing her. "You are so true, my Mary, that I wouldn't tempt you to change one word or even half a word of what you have said to any one, living or dead. When do you want to take this journey?"
"To-morrow, or the next day," she said. "I'll ask Mrs. Twitt to see to the house and look after Charlie, and I'll be back again as quickly as I can. Because, when I've given the papers over to David's friend, whoever he is, I shall have nothing more to do but just come home."
This being settled, it was afterwards determined that the next day but one would be the most convenient for her to go, as she could then avail herself of the carrier's cart to take her as far as Minehead. But she was not allowed to start on her unexpected travels without a burst of prophecy from Mrs. Twitt.
"As I've said an' allus thought," said that estimable lady--"Old David 'ad suthin' 'idden in 'is 'art wot 'e never giv' away to nobody. Mark my words, Mis' Deane!--'e 'ad a sin or a sorrer at the back of 'im, an' whichever it do turn out to be I'm not a-goin' to blame 'im either way, for bein' dead 'e's dead, an' them as sez unkind o' the dead is apt to be picked morsels for the devil's gridiron. But now that you've got a packet to take to old David's friends somewheres, you may take my word for 't, Mis' Deane, you'll find out as 'e was wot ye didn't expect. Onny last night, as I was a-sittin' afore the kitchen fire, for though bein' summer I'm that chilly that I feels the least change in the temper o' the sea,--as I was a-sittin', I say, out jumps a cinder as long as a pine cone, red an' glowin' like a candle at the end. An' I stares at the thing, an' I sez: 'That's either a purse o' money, or a journey with a coffin at the end'--an' the thing burns an' shines like a reg'lar spark of old Nick's cookin' stove, an' though I pokes an' pokes it, it won't go out, but lies on the 'erth, frizzlin' all the time. An' I do 'ope, Mis' Deane, as now yer goin' off to 'and over old David's effecks to the party interested, ye'll come back safe, for the poor old dear 'adn't a penny to bless 'isself with, so the cinder must mean the journey, an' bein' warned, ye'll guard agin the coffin at the end."
Mary smiled rather sadly.
"I'll take care!" she said. "But I don't think anything very serious is likely to happen. Poor old David had no friends,--and probably the few papers he has left are only for some relative who would not do anything for him while he was alive, but who, all the same, has to be told that he is dead."
"Maybe so!" and Mrs. Twitt nodded her head profoundly--"But that cinder worn't made in the fire for nowt! Such a shape as 'twas don't grow out of the flames twice in twenty year!"
And, with the conviction of the village prophetess she assumed to be, she was not to be shaken from the idea that strange discoveries were pending respecting "old David." Mary herself could not quite get rid of a vague misgiving and anxiety, which culminated at last in her determination to show Angus Reay the packet left in her charge, in order that he might see to whom it was addressed.
"For that can do no harm," she thought--"I feel that he really ought to know that I have to go all the way to London."
Angus, however, on reading the superscription, was fully as perplexed as she was. He was familiar with the street near Chancery Lane where the mysterious "Mr. Bulteel" lived, but the name of Bulteel as a resident in that street was altogether unknown to him. Presently a bright idea struck him.
"I have it!" he said. "Look here, Mary, didn't David say he used to be employed in office-work?"
"Yes," she answered,--"He had to give up his situation, so I understand, on account of old age."
"Then that makes it clear," Angus declared. "This Mr. Bulteel is probably a man who worked with him in the same office--perhaps the only link he had with his past life. I think you'll find that's the way it will turn out. But I hate to think of your travelling to London all alone!--for the first time in your life, too!"
"Oh well, that doesn't matter much!" she said, cheerfully,--"Now that you know where I am going, it's all right. You forget, Angus!--I'm quite old enough to take care of myself. How many times must I remind you that you are engaged to be married to an old maid of thirty-five? You treat me as if I were quite a young girl!"
"So I do--and so I will!" and his eyes rested upon her with a proud look of admiration. "For you _are_ young, Mary--young in your heart and soul and nature--younger than any so-called young girl I ever met, and twenty times more beautiful. So there!"
She smiled gravely.
"You are easily satisfied, Angus," she said--"But the world will not agree with you in your ideas of me. And when you become a famous man----"
"If I become a famous man----" he interrupted.
"No--not 'if'--I say 'when,'" she repeated. "When you become a famous man, people will say, 'what a pity he did not marry some one younger and more suited to his position----"
She could speak no more, for Angus silenced her with a kiss.
"Yes, what a pity it will be!" he echoed. "What a pity! When other men, less fortunate, see that I have won a beautiful and loving wife, whose heart is all my own,--who is pure and true as the sun in heaven,--'what a pity,' they will say, 'that we are not so lucky!' That's what the talk will be, Mary! For there's no man on earth who does not crave to be loved for himself alone--a selfish wish, perhaps--but it's implanted in every son of Adam. And a man's life is always more or less spoilt by lack of the love he needs."
She put her arms round his neck, and her true eyes looked straightly into his own.
"Your life will not be spoilt that way, dear!" she said. "Trust me for that!"
"Do I not know it!" he answered, passionately. "And would I not lose the whole world, with all its chances of fame and fortune, rather than lose _you_!"
And in their mutual exchange of tenderness and confidence they forgot all save
"The time and place And the loved one all together!"
It was a perfect summer's morning when Mary, for the first time in many years, left her little home in Weircombe and started upon a journey she had never taken and never had thought of taking--a journey which, to her unsophisticated mind, seemed fraught with strange possibilities of difficulty, even of peril. London had loomed upon her horizon through the medium of the daily newspaper, as a vast over-populated city where (if she might believe the press) humanity is more selfish than generous, more cruel than kind,--where bitter poverty and starvation are seen side by side with criminal extravagance and luxury,--and where, according to her simple notions, the people were forgetting or had forgotten God. It was with a certain lingering and wistful backward look that she left her little cottage embowered among roses, and waved farewell to Mrs. Twitt, who, standing at the garden gate with Charlie in her arms, waved hearty response, cheerfully calling out "Good Luck!" after her, and adding the further assurance--"Ye'll find everything as well an' straight as ye left it when ye comes 'ome, please God!"
Angus Reay accompanied her in the carrier's cart to Minehead, and there she caught the express to London. On enquiry, she found there was a midnight train which would bring her back from the metropolis at about nine o'clock the next morning, and she resolved to travel home by it.
"You will be so tired!" said Angus, regretfully. "And yet I would rather you did not stay away a moment longer than you can help!"
"Don't fear!" and she smiled. "You cannot be a bit more anxious for me to come back than I am to come back myself! Good-bye! It's only for a day!"
She waved her hand as the train steamed out of the station, and he watched her sweet face smiling at him to the very last, when the express, gathering speed, rushed away with her and whirled her into the far distance. A great depression fell upon his soul,--all the light seemed gone out of the landscape--all the joy out of his life--and he realised, as it were suddenly, what her love meant to him.
"It is everything!" he said. "I don't believe I could write a line without her!--in fact I know I wouldn't have the heart for it! She is so different to every woman I have ever known,--she seems to make the world all warm and kind by just smiling her own bonnie smile!"
And starting off to walk part of the way back to Weircombe, he sang softly under his breath as he went a verse of "Annie Laurie"--
"Like dew on the gowan lyin' Is the fa' o' her fairy feet; And like winds in simmer sighin' Her voice is low an' sweet Her voice is low an' sweet; An' she's a' the world to me; An' for bonnie Annie Laurie I'd lay me doun and dee!"
And all the beautiful influences of nature,--the bright sunshine, the wealth of June blossom, the clear skies and the singing of birds, seemed part of that enchanting old song, expressing the happiness which alone is made perfect by love.
Meanwhile, no adventures of a startling or remarkable kind occurred to Mary during her rather long and tedious journey. Various passengers got into her third-class compartment and got out again, but they were somewhat dull and commonplace folk, many of them being of that curiously unsociable type of human creature which apparently mistrusts its fellows. Contrary to her ingenuous expectation, no one seemed to think a journey to London was anything of a unique or thrilling experience. Once only, when she was nearing her destination, did she venture to ask a fellow-passenger, an elderly man with a kindly face, how she ought to go to Chancery Lane. He looked at her with a touch of curiosity.
"That's among the hornets' nests," he said.
She raised her pretty eyebrows with a little air of perplexity.
"Hornets' nests?"
"Yes. Where a good many lawyers live, or used to live."
"Oh, I see!" And she smiled responsively to what he evidently intended as a brilliant satirical joke. "But is it easy to get there?"
"Quite easy. Take a 'bus."
"From the station?"
"Of course!"
And he subsided into silence.
She asked no more questions, and on her arrival at Paddington confided her anxieties to a friendly porter, who, announcing that he was "from Somerset born himself and would see her through," gave her concise directions which she attentively followed; with the result that despite much bewilderment in getting in and getting out of omnibuses, and jostling against more people than she had ever seen in the course of her whole life, she found herself at last at the entrance of a rather obscure-looking smutty little passage, guarded by a couple of round columns, on which were painted in black letters a considerable number of names, among which were those of "Vesey and Symonds." The numeral inscribed above the entrance to this passage corresponded to the number on the address of the packet which she carried for "Mr. Bulteel"--but though she read all the names on the two columns, "Bulteel" was not among them. Nevertheless, she made her way perseveringly into what seemed nothing but a little blind alley leading nowhere, and as she did so, a small boy came running briskly down a flight of dark stairs, which were scarcely visible from the street, and nearly knocked her over.
"'Ullo! Beg pardon 'm! Which office d' ye want?"
"Is there," began Mary, in her gentle voice--"is there a Mr. Bulteel----?"
"Bulteel? Yes--straight up--second floor--third door--Vesey and Symonds!"
With these words jerked out of himself at lightning speed, the boy rushed past her and disappeared.
With a beating heart Mary cautiously climbed the dark staircase which he had just descended. When she reached the second floor, she paused. There were three doors all facing her,--on the first one was painted the name of "Sir Francis Vesey"--on the second "Mr. John Symonds"--and on the third "Mr. Bulteel." As soon as she saw this last, she heaved a little sigh of relief, and going straight up to it knocked timidly. It was opened at once by a young clerk who looked at her questioningly.
"Mr. Bulteel?" she asked, hesitatingly.
"Yes. Have you an appointment?"
"No. I am quite a stranger," she said. "I only wish to tell Mr. Bulteel of the death of some one he knows."
The clerk glanced at her and seemed dubious.
"Mr. Bulteel is very busy," he began--"and unless you have an appointment----"
"Oh, please let me see him!" And Mary's eyes almost filled with tears. "See!"--and she held up before him the packet she carried. "I've travelled all the way from Weircombe, in Somerset, to bring him this from his dead friend, and I promised to give it to him myself. Please, please do not turn me away!"
The clerk stared hard at the superscription on the packet, as he well might. For he had at once recognised the handwriting of David Helmsley. But he suppressed every outward sign of surprise, save such as might appear in a glance of unconcealed wonder at Mary herself. Then he said briefly--
"Come in!"
She obeyed, and was at once shut in a stuffy cupboard-like room which had no other furniture than an office desk and high stool.
"Name, please!" said the clerk.
She looked startled--then smiled.
"My name? Mary Deane."
"Miss or Mrs.?"
"'Miss,' if you please, sir," she answered, the colour flushing her cheeks with confusion at the sharpness of his manner.
The clerk gave her another up-and-down look, and opening a door behind his office desk vanished like a conjuror tricking himself through a hole.
She waited patiently for a couple of minutes--and then the clerk came back, with traces of excitement in his manner.
"Yes--Mr. Bulteel will see you. This way!"
She followed him with her usual quiet step and composed demeanour, and bent her head with a pretty air of respect as she found herself in the presence of an elderly man with iron-grey whiskers and a severely preoccupied air of business hardening his otherwise rather benevolent features. He adjusted his spectacles and looked keenly at her as she entered. She spoke at once.
"You are Mr. Bulteel?"
"Yes."
"Then this is for you," she said, approaching him, and handing him the packet she had brought. "They are some papers belonging to a poor old tramp named David, who lodged in my house for nearly a year--it will be a year come July. He was very weak and feeble and got lost in a storm on the hills above Weircombe--that's where I live--and I found him lying quite unconscious in the wet and cold, and took him home and nursed him. He got better and stayed on with me, making baskets for a living--he was too feeble to tramp any more--but he gave me no trouble, he was such a kind, good old man. I was very fond of him. And--and--last week he died"--here her sweet voice trembled. "He suffered great pain--but at the end he passed away quite peacefully--in my arms. He was very anxious that I should bring his papers to you myself--and I promised I would so----"
She paused, a little troubled by his silence. Surely he looked very strangely at her.
"I am sorry," she faltered, nervously--"if I have brought you any bad news;--poor David seemed to have no friends, but perhaps you were a friend to him once and may have a kind recollection of him----"
He was still quite silent. Slowly he broke the seals of the packet, and drawing out a slip of paper which came first to his hand, read what was written upon it. Then he rose from his chair.
"Kindly wait one moment," he said. "These--these papers and letters are not for me, but--but for--for another gentleman."
He hurried out of the room, taking the packet with him, and Mary remained alone for nearly a quarter of an hour, vaguely perplexed, and wondering how any "other gentleman" could possibly be concerned in the matter. Presently Mr. Bulteel returned, in an evident state of suppressed agitation.
"Will you please follow me, Miss Deane?" he said, with a singular air of deference. "Sir Francis is quite alone and will see you at once."
Mary's blue eyes opened in amazement.
"Sir Francis----!" she stammered. "I don't quite understand----"
"This way," said Mr. Bulteel, escorting her out of his own room along the passage to the door which she had before seen labelled with the name of "Sir Francis Vesey"--then catching the startled and appealing glance of her eyes, he added kindly: "Don't be alarmed! It's all right!"
Thereupon he opened the door and announced--
"Miss Deane, Sir Francis."
Mary looked up, and then curtsied with quite an "out-of-date" air of exquisite grace, as she found herself in the presence of a dignified white-haired old gentleman, who, standing near a large office desk on which the papers she had brought lay open, was wiping his spectacles, and looking very much as if he had been guilty of the womanish weakness of tears. He advanced to meet her.
"How do you do!" he said, uttering this commonplace with remarkable earnestness, and taking her hand kindly in his own. "You bring me sad news--very sad news! I had not expected the death of my old friend so suddenly--I had hoped to see him again--yes, I had hoped very much to see him again quite soon! And so you were with him at the last?"
Mary looked, as she felt, utterly bewildered.
"I think," she murmured--"I think there must be some mistake,--the papers I brought here were for Mr. Bulteel----"
"Yes--yes!" said Sir Francis. "That's quite right! Mr. Bulteel is my confidential clerk--and the packet was addressed to him. But a note inside requested that Mr. Bulteel should bring all the documents at once to me, which he has done. Everything is quite correct--quite in order. But--I forgot! You do not know! Please sit down--and I will endeavour to explain."
He drew up a chair for her near his desk so that she might lean her arm upon it, for she looked frightened. As a matter of fact he was frightened himself. Such a task as he had now to perform had never before been allotted to him. A letter addressed to him, and enclosed in the packet containing Helmsley's Last Will and Testament, had explained the whole situation, and had fully described, with simple fidelity, the life his old friend had led at Weircombe, and the affectionate care with which Mary had tended him,--while the conclusion of the letter was worded in terms of touching farewell.
"For," wrote Helmsley, "when you read this, I shall be dead and in my quiet grave at Weircombe. Let me rest there in peace,--for though my eyes will no more see the sun,--or the kindness in the eyes of the woman whose unselfish goodness has been more than the sunshine to me, I shall--or so I think and hope--be spiritually conscious that my mortal remains are buried where humble and simple folk think well of me. This last letter from my hand to you is one not of business so much as friendship--for I have learned that what we call 'business' counts for very little, while the ties of sympathy, confidence, and love between human beings are the only forces that assist in the betterment of the world. And so farewell! Let the beloved angel who brings you these last messages from me have all honour from you for my sake.--Yours,
David Helmsley."
* * * * *
And now, to Sir Francis Vesey's deep concern, the "beloved angel" thus spoken of sat opposite to him, moved by evident alarm,--her blue eyes full of tears, and her face pale and scared. How was he to begin telling her what she was bound to know?
"Yes--I will--I must endeavour to explain," he repeated, bending his brows upon her and regaining something of his self-control. "You, of course, were not aware--I mean my old friend never told you who he really was?"
Her anxious look grew more wistful.
"No, and indeed I never asked," she said. "He was so feeble when I took him to my home out of the storm, and for weeks afterwards he was so dangerously ill, that I thought questions might worry him. Besides it was not my business to bother about where he came from. He was just old and poor and friendless--that was enough for me."
"I hope--I do very much hope," said Sir Francis gently, "that you will not allow yourself to be too much startled--or--or overcome by what I have to tell you. David--he said his name was David, did he not?"
She made a sign of assent. A strange terror was creeping upon her, and she could not speak.
"David--yes!--that was quite right--David was his name," proceeded Sir Francis cautiously. "But he had another name--a surname which perhaps you may, or may not have heard. That name was Helmsley----"
She sprang up with a cry, remembering Angus Reay's story about his first love, Lucy Sorrel, and her millionaire.
"Helmsley! Not David Helmsley!"
"Yes,--David Helmsley! The 'poor old tramp' you sheltered in your home,--the friendless and penniless stranger you cared for so unselfishly and tenderly, was one of the richest men in the world!"
She stood amazed,--stricken as by a lightning shock.
"One of the richest men in the world!" she faltered. "One of the richest----" and here, with a little stifled sob, she wrung her hands together. "Oh no--no! That can't be true! He would never have deceived me!"
Sir Francis felt an uncomfortable tightness in his throat. The situation was embarrassing. He saw at once that she was not so much affected by the announcement of the supposed "poor" man's riches, as by the overwhelming thought that he could have represented himself to her as any other than he truly was.
"Sit down again, and let me tell you all," he said gently--"You will, I am sure, forgive him for the part he played when you know his history. David Helmsley--who was my friend as well as my client for more than twenty years--was a fortunate man in the way of material prosperity,--but he was very unfortunate in his experience of human nature. His vast wealth made it impossible for him to see much more of men and women than was just enough to show him their worst side. He was surrounded by people who sought to use him and his great influence for their own selfish ends,--and the emotions and sentiments of life, such as love, fidelity, kindness, and integrity, he seldom or never met with among either his so-called 'friends' or his acquaintances. His wife was false to him, and his two sons brought him nothing but shame and dishonour. They all three died--and then--then in his old age he found himself alone in the world without any one who loved him, or whom he loved--without any one to whom he could confidently leave his enormous fortune, knowing it would be wisely and nobly used. When I last saw him I urged upon him the necessity of making his Will. He said he could not make it, as there was no one living whom he cared to name as his heir. Then he left London,--ostensibly on a journey for his health." Here Sir Francis paused, looking anxiously at his listener. She was deadly pale, and every now and then her eyes brimmed over with tears. "You can guess the rest," he continued,--"He took no one into his confidence as to his intention,--not even me. I understood he had gone abroad--till the other day--a short time ago--when I had a letter from him telling me that he was passing through Exeter."
She clasped and unclasped her hands nervously.
"Ah! That was where he went when he told me he had gone in search of work!" she murmured--"Oh, David, David!"
"He informed me then," proceeded Sir Francis, "that he had made his Will. The Will is here,"--and he took up a document lying on his desk--"The manner of its execution coincides precisely with the letter of instructions received, as I say, from Exeter--of course it will have to be formally proved----"
She lifted her eyes wonderingly.
"What is it to me?" she said--"I have nothing to do with it. I have brought you the papers--but I am sorry--oh, so sorry to hear that he was not what he made himself out to be! I cannot think of him in the same way----"
Sir Francis drew his chair closer to hers.
"Is it possible," he said--"Is it possible, my dear Miss Deane, that you do not understand?"
She gazed at him candidly.
"Yes, of course I understand," she said--"I understand that he was a rich man who played the part of a poor one--to see if any one would care for him just for himself alone--and--I--I--did care--oh, I did care!--and now I feel as if I couldn't care any more----"
Her voice broke sobbingly, and Sir Francis Vesey grew desperate.
"Don't cry!" he said--"Please don't cry! I should not be able to bear it! You see I'm a business man"--here he took off his spectacles and rubbed them vigorously--"and my position is that of the late Mr. David Helmsley's solicitor. In that position I am bound to tell you the straight truth--because I'm afraid you don't grasp it at all. It is a very overwhelming thing for you,--but all the same, I am sure, quite sure, that my old friend had reason to rely confidently upon your strength of character--as well as upon your affection for him----"
She had checked her sobs and was looking at him steadily.
"And, therefore," he proceeded--"referring again to my own position--that of the late David Helmsley's solicitor, it is my duty to inform you that you, Mary Deane, are by his last Will and Testament, the late David Helmsley's sole heiress."
She started up in terror.
"Oh no, no!--not me!" she cried.
"Everything which the late David Helmsley died possessed of, is left to you absolutely and unconditionally," went on Sir Francis, speaking with slow and deliberate emphasis--"And--even as he was one of the richest men, so you are now one of the richest women in the world!"
She turned deathly white,--then suddenly, to his great alarm and confusion, dropped on her knees before him, clasping her hands in a passion of appeal.
"Oh, don't say that, sir!" she exclaimed--"Please, please don't say it! I cannot be rich--I would not! I should be miserable--I should indeed! Oh, David, dear old David! I'm sure he never wished to make me wretched--he was fond of me--he was, really! And we were so happy and peaceful in the cottage at home! There was so little money, but so much love! Don't say I'm rich, sir!--or, if I am, let me give it all away at once! Let me give it to the starving and sick people in this great city--or please give it to them for me,--but don't, don't say that I must keep it myself!--I could not bear it!--oh, I could not bear it! Help me, oh, do help me to give it all away and let me remain just as I am, quite, quite poor!"
CHAPTER XXIV
There was a moment's silence, broken only by the roar and din of the London city traffic outside, which sounded like the thunder of mighty wheels--the wheels of a rolling world. And then Sir Francis, gently taking Mary's hand in his own, raised her from the ground.
"My dear,"--he said, huskily--"You must not--you really must not give way! See,"--and he took up a sealed letter from among the documents on the desk, addressed "To Mary"--and handed it to her--"my late friend asks me in the last written words I have from him to give this to you. I will leave you alone to read it. You will be quite private in this room--and no one will enter till you ring. Here is the bell,"--and he indicated it--"I think--indeed I am sure, when you understand everything, you will accept the great responsibility which will now devolve upon you, in as noble a spirit as that in which you accepted the care of David Helmsley himself when you thought him no more than what in very truth he was--a lonely-hearted old man, searching for what few of us ever find--an unselfish love!"
He left her then--and like one in a dream, she opened and read the letter he had given her--a letter as beautiful and wise and tender as ever the fondest father could have written to the dearest of daughters. Everything was explained in it--everything made clear; and gradually she realised the natural, strong and pardonable craving of the rich, unloved man, to seek out for himself some means whereby he might leave all his world's gainings to one whose kindness to him had not been measured by any knowledge of his wealth, but which had been bestowed upon him solely for simple love's sake. Every line Helmsley had written to her in this last appeal to her tenderness, came from his very heart, and went to her own heart again, moving her to the utmost reverence, pity and affection. In his letter he enclosed a paper with a list of bequests which he left to her charge.
"I could not name them in my Will,"--he wrote--"as this would have disclosed my identity--but you, my dear, will be more exact than the law in the payment of what I have here set down as just. And, therefore, to you I leave this duty."
First among these legacies came one of Ten Thousand Pounds to "my old friend Sir Francis Vesey,"--and then followed a long list of legacies to servants, secretaries, and workpeople generally. The sum of Five Hundred Pounds was to be paid to Miss Tranter, hostess of "The Trusty Man,"--"for her kindness to me on the one night I passed under her hospitable roof,"--and sums of Two Hundred Pounds each were left to "Matthew Peke, Herb Gatherer," and Farmer Joltram, both these personages to be found through the aforesaid Miss Tranter. Likewise a sum of Two Hundred Pounds was to be paid to one "Meg Ross--believed to hold a farm near Watchett in Somerset." No one that had served the poor "tramp" was forgotten by the great millionaire;--a sum of Five Hundred Pounds was left to John Bunce, "with grateful and affectionate thanks for his constant care"--and a final charge to Mary was the placing of Fifty Thousand Pounds in trust for the benefit of Weircombe, its Church, and its aged poor. The money in bank notes, enclosed with the testator's last Will and Testament, was to be given to Mary for her own immediate use,--and then came the following earnest request;--"I desire that the sum of Half-a-crown, made up of coppers and one sixpence, which will be found with these effects, shall be enclosed in a casket of gold and inscribed with the words 'The "surprise gift" collected by "Tom o' the Gleam" for David Helmsley, when as a tramp on the road he seemed to be in need of the charity and sympathy of his fellow men and which to him was
MORE PRECIOUS THAN MANY MILLIONS.
And I request that the said casket containing these coins may be retained by Mary Deane as a valued possession in her family, to be handed down as a talisman and cornerstone of fortune for herself and her heirs in perpetuity."
Finally the list of bequests ended with one sufficiently unusual to be called eccentric. It ran thus:--"To Angus Reay I leave Mary Deane--and with Her, all that I value, and more than I have ever possessed!"
Gradually, very gradually, Mary, sitting alone in Sir Francis Vesey's office, realised the whole position,--gradually the trouble and excitation of her mind calmed down, and her naturally even temperament reasserted itself. She was rich,--but though she tried to realise the fact, she could not do so, till at last the thought of Angus and how she might be able now to help him on with his career, roused a sudden rush of energy within her--which, however, was not by any means actual happiness. A great weight seemed to have fallen on her life--and she was bowed down by its heaviness. Kissing David Helmsley's letter, she put it in her bosom,--he had asked that its contents might be held sacred, and that no eyes but her own should scan his last words, and to her that request of a dead man was more than the command of a living King. The list of bequests she held in her hand ready to show Sir Francis Vesey when he entered, which he did as soon as she touched the bell. He saw that, though very pale, she was now comparatively calm and collected, and as she raised her eyes and tried to smile at him, he realised what a beautiful woman she was.
"Please forgive me for troubling you so much,"--she said, gently--"I am very sorry! I understand it all now,--I have read David's letter,--I shall always call him David, I think!--and I quite see how it all happened. I can't help being sorry--very sorry, that he has left his money to me--because it will be so difficult to know how to dispose of it for the best. But surely a great deal of it will go in these legacies,"--and she handed him the paper she held--"You see he names you first."
Sir Francis stared at the document, fairly startled and overcome by his late friend's generosity, as well as by Mary's naïve candour.
"My dear Miss Deane,"--he began, with deep embarrassment.
"You will tell me how to do everything, will you not?" she interrupted him, with an air of pathetic entreaty--"I want to carry out all his wishes exactly as if he were beside me, watching me--I think--" and her voice sank a little--"he may be here--with us--even now!" She paused a moment. "And if he is, he knows that I do not want money for myself at all--but that if I can do good with it, for his sake and memory, I will. Is it a very great deal?"
"Is it a great deal of money, you mean?" he queried.
She nodded.
"I should say that at the very least my late friend's personal estate must be between six and seven millions of pounds sterling."
She clasped her hands in dismay.
"Oh! It is terrible!" she said, in a low strained voice--"Surely God never meant one man to have so much money!"
"It was fairly earned,"--said Sir Francis, quietly--"David Helmsley, to my own knowledge, never wronged or oppressed a single human being on his way to his own success. His money is clean! There's no brother's blood on the gold--and no 'sweated' labour at the back of it. That I can vouch for--that I can swear! No curse will rest on the fortune you inherit, Miss Deane--for it was made honestly!"
Tears stood in her eyes, and she wiped them away furtively.
"Poor David!" she murmured--"Poor lonely old man! With all that wealth and no one to care for him! Oh yes, the more I think of it the more I understand it! But now there is only one thing for me to do--I must get home as quickly as possible and tell Angus"--here she pointed to the last paragraph in Helmsley's list of bequests--"You see,"--she went on--"he leaves Mary Deane--that's me--to Angus Reay, 'and with Her all that I value.' I am engaged to be married to Mr. Reay--David wished very much to live till our wedding-day--"
She broke off, passing her hand across her brow and looking puzzled.
"Mr. Reay is very much to be congratulated!"--said Sir Francis, gently.
She smiled rather sadly.
"Oh, I'm not sure of that," she said--"He is a very clever man--he writes books, and he will be famous very soon--while I--" She paused again, then went on, looking very earnestly at Sir Francis--"May I--would you--write out something for me that I might sign before I go away to-day, to make it sure that if I die, all that I have--including this terrible, terrible fortune--shall come to Angus Reay? You see anything might happen to me--quite suddenly,--the very train I am going back in to-night might meet with some accident, and I might be killed--and then poor David's money would be lost, and his legacies never paid. Don't you see that?"
Sir Francis certainly saw it, but was not disposed to admit its possibility.
"There is really no necessity to anticipate evil," he began.
"There is perhaps no necessity--but I should like to be sure, quite sure, that in case of such evil all was right,"--she said, with great feeling--"And I know you could do it for me----"
"Why, of course, if you insist upon it, I can draw you up a form of Will in ten minutes,"--he said, smiling benevolently--"Would that satisfy you? You have only to sign it, and the thing is done."
It was wonderful to see how she rejoiced at this proposition,--the eager delight with which she contemplated the immediate disposal of the wealth she had not as yet touched, to the man she loved best in the world--and the swift change in her manner from depression to joy, when Sir Francis, just to put her mind at ease, drafted a concise form of Will for her in his own handwriting, in which form she, with the same precision as that of David Helmsley, left "everything of which she died possessed, absolutely and unconditionally," to her promised husband. With a smile on her face and sparkling eyes, she signed this document in the presence of two witnesses, clerks of the office called up for the purpose, who, if it had been their business to express astonishment, would undoubtedly have expressed it then.
"You will keep it here for me, won't you?" she said, when the clerks had retired and the business was concluded--"And I shall feel so much more at rest now! For when I have talked it over with Angus I shall realise everything more clearly--he will advise me what to do--he is so much wiser than I am! And you will write to me and tell me all that is needful for me to know--shall I leave this paper?"--and she held up the document in which the list of Helmsley's various legacies was written--"Surely you ought to keep it?"
Sir Francis smiled gravely.
"I think not!" he said--"I think I must urge you to retain that paper on which my name is so generously remembered, in your own possession, Miss Deane. You understand, I suppose, that you are not _by the law_ compelled to pay any of these legacies. They are left entirely to your own discretion. They merely represent the last purely personal wishes of my late friend, David Helmsley, and you must yourself decide whether you consider it practical to carry them out."
She looked surprised.
"But the personal wishes of the dead are more than any law" she exclaimed--"They are sacred. How could I"--and moved by a sudden impulse she laid her hand appealingly on his arm--"How could I neglect or fail to fulfil any one of them? It would be impossible!
Responding to her earnest look and womanly gentleness, Sir Francis who had not forgotten the old courtesies once practised by gentlemen to women whom they honoured, raised the hand that rested so lightly on his arm, and kissed it.
"I know" he said--"that it would be impossible for you to do what is not right and true and just! And you will need no advice from me save such as is purely legal and technical. Let me be your friend in these matters----"
"And in others too,"--said Mary, sweetly--"I do hope you will not dislike me!"
Dislike her? Well, well! If any mortal man, old or young, could "dislike" a woman with a face like hers and eyes so tender, such an one would have to be a criminal or a madman! In a little while they fell into conversation as naturally as if they had known each other for years: Sir Francis listening with profound interest to the story of his old friend's last days. And presently, despatching a telegram to his wife to say that he was detained in the city by pressing business, he took Mary out with him to a quiet little restaurant where he dined with her, and finally saw her off from Paddington station by the midnight train for Minehead. Nothing would induce her to stay in London,--her one aim and object in life now was to return to Weircombe and explain everything to Angus as quickly as possible. And when the train had gone, Sir Francis left the platform in a state of profound abstraction, and was driven home in his brougham feeling more like a sentimentalist than a lawyer.
"Extraordinary!" he ejaculated--"The most extraordinary thing I ever heard of in my life? But I knew--I felt that Helmsley would dispose of his wealth in quite an unexpected way! Now I wonder how the man--Mary Deane's lover--will take it? I wonder! But what a woman she is!--how beautiful!--how simple and honest--above all how purely womanly!--with all the sweet grace and gentleness which alone commands, and ever will command man's adoration! Helmsley must have been very much at peace and happy in his last days! Yes!--the sorrowful 'king' of many millions must have at last found the treasure he sought and which he considered more precious than all his money! For Solomon was right: 'If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned!'"
* * * * *
At Weircombe next day there was a stiff gale of wind blowing inland, and the village, with its garlands and pyramids of summer blossom, was swept from end to end by warm, swift, salty gusts, that bent the trees and shook the flowers in half savage, half tender sportiveness, while the sea, shaping itself by degrees into "wild horses" of blue water bridled with foam, raced into the shore with ever-increasing hurry and fury. But notwithstanding the strong wind, there was a bright sun, and a dazzling blue sky, scattered over with flying masses of cloud, like flocks of white birds soaring swiftly to some far-off region of rest. Everything in nature looked radiant and beautiful,--health and joy were exhaled from every breath of air--and yet in one place--one pretty rose-embowered cottage, where, until now, the spirit of content had held its happy habitation, a sudden gloom had fallen, and a dark cloud had blotted out all the sunshine. Mary's little "home sweet home" had been all at once deprived of sweetness,--and she sat within it like a mournful castaway, clinging to the wreck of that which had so long been her peace and safety. Tired out by her long night journey and lack of sleep, she looked very white and weary and ill--and Angus Reay, sitting opposite to her, looked scarcely less worn and weary than herself. He had met her on her return from London at the Minehead station, with all the ardour and eagerness of a lover and a boy,--and he had at once seen in her face that something unexpected had happened,--something that had deeply affected her--though she had told him nothing, till on their arrival home at the cottage, she was able to be quite alone with him. Then he learned all. Then he knew that "old David" had been no other than David Helmsley the millionaire,--the very man whom his first love, Lucy Sorrel, had schemed and hoped to marry. And he realised--and God alone knew with what a passion of despair he realised it!--that Mary--his bonnie Mary--his betrothed wife--had been chosen to inherit those very millions which had formerly stood between him and what he had then imagined to be his happiness. And listening to the strange story, he had sunk deeper and deeper into the Slough of Despond, and now sat rigidly silent, with all the light gone out of his features, and all the ardour quenched in his eyes. Mary looking at him, and reading every expression in that dark beloved face, felt the tears rising thickly in her throat, but bravely suppressed them, and tried to smile.
"I knew you would be sorry when you heard all about it, Angus,"--she said--"I felt sure you would! I wish it had happened differently--" Here she stopped, and taking up the little dog Charlie, settled him on her knee. He was whimpering to be caressed, and she bent over his small silky head to hide the burning drops that fell from her eyes despite herself. "If it could only be altered!--but it can't--and the only thing to do is to give the money away to those who need it as quickly as possible----"
"Give it away!" answered Angus, bitterly--"Good God! Why, to give away seven or eight millions of money in the right quarters would occupy one man's lifetime!"
His voice was harsh, and his hand clenched itself involuntarily as he spoke. She looked at him in a vague fear.
"No, Mary,"--he said--"You can't give it away--not as you imagine. Besides,--there is more than money--there is the millionaire's house--his priceless pictures, his books--his yacht--a thousand and one other things that he possessed, and which now belong to you. Oh Mary! I wish to God I had never seen him!"
She trembled.
"Then perhaps--you and I would never have met," she murmured.
"Better so!" and rising, he paced restlessly up and down the little kitchen--"Better that I should never have loved you, Mary, than be so parted from you! By money, too! The last thing that should ever have come between us! Money! Curse it! It has ruined my life!"
She lifted her tear-wet eyes to his.
"What do you mean, Angus?" she asked, gently--"Why do you talk of parting? The money makes no difference to our love!"
"No difference? No difference? Oh Mary, don't you see!" and he turned upon her a face white and drawn with his inward anguish--"Do you think--can you imagine that I would marry a woman with millions of money--I--a poor devil, with nothing in the world to call my own, and no means of livelihood save in my brain, which, after all, may turn out to be quite of a worthless quality! Do you think I would live on your bounty? Do you think I would accept money from you? Surely you know me better! Mary, I love you! I love you with my whole heart and soul!--but I love you as the poor working woman whose work I hoped to make easier, whose life it was my soul's purpose to make happy--but,--you have everything you want in the world now!--and I--I am no use to you! I can do nothing for you--nothing!--you are David Helmsley's heiress, and with such wealth as he has left you, you might marry a prince of the royal blood if you cared--for princes are to be bought,--like anything else in the world's market! But you are not of the world--you never were--and now--now--the world will take you! The world leaves nothing alone that has any gold upon it!"
She listened quietly to his passionate outburst. She was deadly pale, and she pressed Charlie close against her bosom,--the little dog, she thought half vaguely, would love her just as well whether she was rich or poor.
"How can the world take me, Angus?" she said--"Am I not yours?--all yours!--and what has the world to do with me? Do not speak in such a strange way--you hurt me----"
"I know I hurt you!" he said, stopping in his restless walk and facing her--"And I know I should always hurt you--now! If David Helmsley had never crossed our path, how happy we might have been----"
She raised her hand reproachfully.
"Do not blame the poor old man, even in a thought, Angus!" she said--"His dream--his last hope was that we two might be happy! He brought us together,--and I am sure, quite sure, that he hoped we would do good in the world with the money he has left us----"
"Us!" interrupted Angus, meaningly.
"Yes,--surely us! For am I not to be one with you? Oh Angus, be patient, be gentle! Think kindly of him who meant so much kindness to those whom he loved in his last days!" She smothered a rising sob, and went on entreatingly--"He has forgotten no one who was friendly to him--and--and--Angus--remember!--remember in that paper I have shown to you--that list of bequests, which he has entrusted me to pay, he has left me to you, Angus!--me--with all I possess----"
She broke off, startled by the sorrow in his eyes.
"It is a legacy I cannot accept!" he said, hoarsely, his voice trembling with suppressed emotion--"I cannot take it--even though you, the most precious part of it, are the dearest thing to me in the world! I cannot! This horrible money has parted us, Mary! More than that, it has robbed me of my energy for work--I cannot work without you--and I must give you up! Even if I could curb my pride and sink my independence, and take money which I have not earned, I should never be great as a writer--never be famous. For the need of patience and grit would be gone--I should have nothing to work for--no object in view--no goal to attain. Don't you see how it is with me? And so--as things have turned out--I must leave Weircombe at once--I must fight this business through by myself----"
"Angus!" and putting Charlie gently down, she rose from her chair and came towards him, trembling--"Do you mean--do you really mean that all is over between us?--that you will not marry me?"
He looked at her straightly.
"I cannot!" he said--"Not if I am true to myself as a man!"
"You cannot be true to _me_, as a woman?"
He caught her in his arms and held her there.
"Yes--I can be so true to you, Mary, that as long as I live I shall love you! No other woman shall ever rest on my heart--here--thus--as you are resting now! I will never kiss another woman's lips as I kiss yours now!" And he kissed her again and again--"But, at the same time, I will never live upon your wealth like a beggar on the bounty of a queen! I will never accept a penny at your hands! I will go away and work--and if possible, will make the fame I have dreamed of--but I will never marry you, Mary--never! That can never be!" He clasped her more closely and tenderly in his arms--"Don't--don't cry, dear! You are tired with your long journey--and--and--with all the excitement and trouble. Lie down and rest awhile--and--don't--don't worry about me! You deserve your fortune--you will be happy with it by and by, when you find out how much it can do for you, and what pleasures you can have with it--and life will be very bright for you--I'm sure it will! Mary--don't cling to me, darling!--it--it unmans me!--and I must be strong--strong for your sake and my own"--here he gently detached her arms from about his neck--"Good-bye, dear!--you must--you must let me go!--God bless you!"
As in a dream she felt him put her away from his embrace--the cottage door opened and closed--he was gone.
Vaguely she looked about her. There was a great sickness at her heart--her eyes ached, and her brain was giddy. She was tired,--very tired--and hardly knowing what she did, she crept like a beaten and wounded animal into the room which had formerly been her own, but which she had so long cheerfully resigned for Helmsley's occupation and better comfort,--and there she threw herself upon the bed where he had died, and lay for a long time in a kind of waking stupor.
"Oh, dear God, help me!" she prayed--"Help me to bear it! It is so hard--so hard!--to have won the greatest joy that life can give--and then--to lose it all!"
She closed her eyes,--they were hot and burning, and now no tears relieved the pressure on her brain. By and by she fell into a heavy slumber. As the afternoon wore slowly away, Mrs. Twitt, on neighbourly thoughts intent, came up to the cottage, eager to hear all the news concerning "old David"--but she found the kitchen deserted; and peeping into the bedroom adjoining, saw Mary lying there fast asleep, with Charlie curled up beside her.
"She's just dead beat and tired out for sure!" and Mrs. Twitt stole softly away again on tip-toe. "'Twould be real cruel to wake her. I'll put a bit on the kitchen fire to keep it going, and take myself off. There's plenty of time to hear all the news to-morrow."
So, being left undisturbed, Mary slept on and on--and when she at last awoke it was quite dark. Dark save for the glimmer of the moon which shone with a white vividness through the lattice window--shedding on the room something of the same ghostly light as on the night when Helmsley died. She sat up, pressing her hands to her throbbing temples,--for a moment she hardly knew where she was. Then, with a sudden rush of recollection, she realised her surroundings--and smiled. She was one of the richest women in the world!--and--without Angus--one of the poorest!
"But he does not need me so much as I need him!" she said aloud--"A man has so many thing to live for; but a woman has only one--love!"
She rose from the bed, trembling a little. She thought she saw "old David" standing near the door,--how pale and cold he seemed!--what a sorrow there was in his eyes! She stretched out her arms to the fancied phantom.
"Don't,--don't be unhappy, David dear!" she said--"You meant all for the best--I know--I know! But even you, old as you were, tried to find some one to care for you--and you see--surely in Heaven you see how hard it is for me to have found that some one, and then to lose him! But you must not grieve!--it will be all right!"
Mechanically she smoothed her tumbled hair--and taking up Charlie from the bed where he was anxiously watching her, she went into the kitchen. A small fire was burning low--and she lit the lamp and set it on the table. A gust of wind rushed round the house, shaking the door and the window, then swept away again with a plaintive cry,--and pausing to listen, she heard the low, thunderous boom of the sea. Moving about almost automatically, she prepared Charlie's supper and gave it to him, and slipping a length of ribbon through his collar, tied him securely to a chair. The little animal was intelligent enough to consider this an unusual proceeding on her part--and as a consequence of the impression it made upon his canine mind, refused to take his food. She saw this--but made no attempt to coax or persuade him. Opening a drawer in her oaken press, she took out pen, ink, and paper, and sitting down at the table wrote a letter. It was not a long letter--for it was finished, put in an envelope and sealed in less than ten minutes. Addressing it "To Angus"--she left it close under the lamp where the light might fall upon it. Then she looked around her. Everything was very quiet. Charlie alone was restless--and sat on his tiny haunches, trembling nervously, refusing to eat, and watching her every movement. She stooped suddenly and kissed him--then without hat or cloak, went out, closing the cottage door behind her.
What a night it was! What a scene of wild sky splendour! Overhead the moon, now at the full, raced through clouds of pearl-grey, lightening to milky whiteness, and the wind played among the trees as though with giant hands, bending them to and fro like reeds, and rustling through the foliage with a swishing sound like that of falling water. The ripple of the hill-torrent was almost inaudible, overwhelmed as it was by the roar of the gale and the low thunder of the sea--and Mary, going swiftly up the "coombe" to the churchyard, was caught by the blast like a leaf, and blown to and fro, till all her hair came tumbling about her face and almost blinded her eyes. But she scarcely heeded this. She was not conscious of the weather--she knew nothing of the hour. She saw the moon--the white, cold moon, staring at her now and then between pinnacles of cloud--and whenever it gleamed whitely upon her path, she thought of David Helmsley's dead face--its still smile--its peacefully closed eyelids. And with that face ever before her, she went to his grave. A humble grave--with the clods of earth still fresh and brown upon it--the chosen grave of "one of the richest men in the world!" She repeated this phrase over and over again to herself, not knowing why she did so. Then she knelt down and tried to pray, but could find no words--save "O God, bless my dear love, and make him happy!" It was foolish to say this so often,--God would be tired of it, she thought dreamily--but--after all--there was nothing else to pray for! She rose, and stood a moment--thinking--then she said aloud--"Good-night, David! Dear old David, you meant to make me so happy! Good-night! Sleep well!"
Something frightened her at this moment,--a sound--or a shadow on the grass--and she uttered a cry of terror. Then, turning, she rushed out of the churchyard, and away--away up the hills, towards the rocks that over-hung the sea.
Meanwhile, Angus Reay, feverish and miserable, had been shut up in his one humble little room for hours, wrestling with himself and trying to work out the way in which he could best master and overcome what he chose to consider the complete wreck of his life at what had promised to be its highest point of happiness. He could not shake himself free of the clinging touch of Mary's arms--her lovely, haunting blue eyes looked at him piteously out of the very air. Never had she been to him so dear--so unutterably beloved!--never had she seemed so beautiful as now when he felt that he must resign all claims of love upon her.
"For she will be sought after by many a better man than myself,"--he said--"Even rich men, who do not need her millions, are likely to admire her--and why should I stand in her way?--I, who haven't a penny to call my own! I should be a coward if I kept her to her promise. For she does not know yet--she does not see what the possession of Helmsley's millions will mean to her. And by and bye when she does know she will change--she will be grateful to me for setting her free----"
He paused, and the hot tears sprang to his eyes--"No--I am wrong! Nothing will change Mary! She will always be her sweet self--pure and faithful!--and she will do all the good with Helmsley's money that he believed and hoped she would. But I--I must leave her to it!"
Then the thought came to him that he had perhaps been rough in speech to her that day--abrupt in parting from her--even unkind in overwhelming her with the force of his abnegation, when she was so tired with her journey--so worn out--so weary looking. Acting on a sudden impulse, he threw on his cap.
"I will go and say good-night to her,"--he said--"For the last time!"
He strode swiftly up the village street and saw through the cottage window that the lamp was lighted on the table. He knocked at the door, but there was no answer save a tiny querulous bark from Charlie. He tried the latch; it was unfastened, and he entered. The first object he saw was Charlie, tied to a chair, with a small saucer of untasted food beside him. The little dog capered to the length of his ribbon, and mutely expressed the absence of his kind mistress, while Angus, bewildered, looked round the deserted dwelling in amazement. All at once his eyes caught sight of the letter addressed to him, and he tore it open. It was very brief, and ran thus--
"My Dearest,
"When you read this, I shall be gone from you. I am sorry, oh, so sorry, about the money--but it is not my fault that I did not know who old David was. I hope now that everything will be right, when I am out of the way. I did not tell you--but before I left London I asked the kind gentleman, Sir Francis Vesey, to let me make a will in case any accident happened to me on my way home. He arranged it all for me very quickly--so that everything I possess, including all the dreadful fortune that has parted you from me,--now belongs to you. And you will be a great and famous man; and I am sure you will get on much better without me than with me--for I am not clever, and I should not understand how to live in the world as the world likes to live. God bless you, darling! Thank you for loving me, who am so unworthy of your love! Be happy! David and I will perhaps be able to watch you from 'the other side,' and we shall be proud of all you do. For you will spend those terrible millions in good deeds that must benefit all the world, I am sure. That is what I hoped we might perhaps have done together--but I see quite plainly now that it is best you should be without me. My love, whom I love so much more than I have ever dared to, say!--Good-bye! MARY."
With a cry like that of a man in physical torture or despair, Angus rushed out of the house.
"Mary! Mary!" he cried to the tumbling stream and the moonlit sky. "Mary!"
He paused. Just then the clock in the little church tower struck ten. The village was asleep--and there was no sound of human life anywhere. The faint, subtle scent of sweetbriar stole on the air as he stood in a trance of desperate uncertainty--and as the delicate odour floated by, a rush of tears came to his eyes.
"Mary!" he called again--"Mary!"
Then all at once a fearful idea entered his brain that filled him as it were with a mad panic. Rushing up the coombe, he sprang across the torrent, and raced over the adjoining hill, as though racing for life. Soon in front of him towered the "Giant's Castle" Rock, and he ran up its steep ascent with an almost crazy speed. At the summit he halted abruptly, looking keenly from side to side. Was there any one there? No. There seemed to be no one. Chilled with a nameless horror, he stood watching--watching and listening to the crashing noise of the great billows as they broke against the rocks below. He raised his eyes to the heavens, and saw--almost unseeingly--a white cloud break asunder and show a dark blue space between,--just an azure setting for one brilliant star that shone out with a sudden flash like a signal. And then--then he caught sight of a dark crouching figure in the corner of the rocky platform over-hanging the sea,--a dear, familiar figure that even while he looked, rose up and advanced to the extreme edge with outstretched arms,--its lovely hair loosely flowing and flecked with glints of gold by the light of the moon. Nearer, nearer to the very edge of the dizzy height it moved--and Angus, breathless with terror, and fearing to utter a sound lest out of sudden alarm it should leap from its footing and be lost for ever, crept closer and ever closer. Closer still,--and he heard Mary's sweet voice murmuring plaintively--
"I wish I did not love him so dearly! I wish the world were not so beautiful! I wish I could stay--but I must go--I must go!--"Here there was a little sobbing cry--"You are so deep and cruel, you sea!--you have drowned so many brave men! You will not be long in drowning poor me, will you?--I don't want to struggle with you! Cover me up quickly--and let me forget--oh, no, no! Dear God, don't let me forget Angus!--I want to remember him always--always!"
She swayed towards the brink--one second more--and then, with a swift strong clasp and passionate cry Angus had caught her in her arms.
"Mary! Mary, my love! My wife! Anything but that, Mary! Anything but that!"
Heart to heart they stood, their arms entwined, clasping each other in a wild passion of tenderness,--Angus trembling in all his strong frame with the excitement and horror of the past moment, and Mary sobbing out all her weakness, weariness and gladness on his breast. Above their heads the bright star shone, pendant between the snowy wings of the dividing cloud, and the sound of the sea was as a sacred psalm of jubilation in their ears.
"Thank God I came in time! Thank God I have you safe!" and Angus drew her closer and yet closer into his fervent embrace--"Oh Mary, my darling!--sweetest of women! How could you think of leaving me? What should I have done without you! Poverty or riches--either or neither--I care not which! But I cannot lose _you_, Mary! I cannot let my heavenly treasure go! Nothing else matters in all the world--I only want love--and you!"
THE END
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Transcriber's Notes | | | | 1. Punctuation normalized to contemporary standards. | | | | 2. "Sorrel" was originally misspelled "Sorrell" on these pages: | | p. 15: "Mrs. Sorrel would be sorry" | | p. 15: "Matt Sorrel never did anything" | | p. 18: "Sorrel, I assure you!" | | p. 18: "Mrs. Sorrel peered at him" | | p. 19: "Mrs. Sorrel did not attempt" | | p. 20: "Mrs. Sorrel visibly swelled" | | | | 3. Individual spelling corrections and context: | | p. 30 pressent -> present ("always been present") | | p. 34 thresold -> threshold ("standing shyly on the thresold") | | p. 44 repudiatel -> repudiated ("firmly repudiated") | | p. 77 temprary -> temporary ("such temporary pleasures") | | p. 82 kitting -> knitting ("went on kitting rapidly") | | p. 85 Brush -> Bush ("and Bill Bush") | | p. 99 her -> he ("And he drew out") | | p. 92 undisguisel -> undisguised ("undisguised admiration") | | p. 116 a -> I ("if I can") | | p. 147 Wothram -> Wrotham ("answered Lord Wrotram") | | p. 157 scared -> scared ("scarred his vision") | | p. 184 sungly -> snugly ("was snugly ensconced") | | p. 190 mintes -> minutes ("A few minutes scramble") | | p. 255 must -> much ("dare not talk much") | | p. 270 acomplished -> accomplished ("fairly accomplished") | | p. 276 gentlemen -> gentleman ("rank of a gentleman") | | p. 335 me -> be ("There must be") | | p. 359 severel -> several ("writing several letters") | | p. 372 childred -> children ("sees his children") | | p. 396 troubed -> troubled ("quite confused and troubled") | | p. 399 addessed -> addressed ("to whom it was addressed") | | | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Treasure of Heaven, by Marie Corelli |
54506-0 | Produced by Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
_The_ BIRTH _and_ BABYHOOD OF THE TELEPHONE
_by_ Thomas A. Watson _Assistant to Alexander Graham Bell_
(An address delivered before the Third Annual Convention of the Telephone Pioneers of America at Chicago, October 17, 1913)
_Information Department_ AMERICAN TELEPHONE AND TELEGRAPH COMPANY
[Illustration: _Thomas A. Watson_ 1854-1934]
_Biography of THOMAS A. WATSON_
Thomas A. Watson was born on January 18, 1854, in Salem, Massachusetts, and died December 13, 1934, at more than four-score years. At the age of 13 he left school and went to work in a store. Always keenly interested in learning more and in making the most of all he learned, every new experience was to him, from his childhood on, an opening door into a larger, more beautiful and more wonderful world. This was the key to the continuous variety that gave interest to his life.
In 1874 he obtained employment in the electrical shop of Charles Williams, Jr., at 109 Court Street, Boston. Here he met Alexander Graham Bell, and the telephone chapter in his life began. This he has told in the little book herewith presented. In 1881, having well earned a rest from the unceasing struggle with the problems of early telephony, and being now a man of means, he resigned his position in the American Bell Telephone Company and spent a year in Europe. On his return he started a little machine shop for his own pleasure, at his place in East Braintree, Massachusetts. From this grew the Fore River Ship and Engine Company, which did its large share of building the U. S. Navy of the Spanish War. In 1904 he retired from active business.
When 40 years of age and widely known as a shipbuilder, he went to college, taking special courses in geology and biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the same time he specialized in literature. These studies dominated his later years, leading him in extensive travels all over the world, and at home extending to others the inspiration of a genial simplicity of life and of a love for science, literature and all that is fine in life.
The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone
_By_ Thomas A. Watson
I am to speak to you of the birth and babyhood of the telephone, and something of the events which preceded that important occasion. These are matters that must seem to you ancient history; in fact, they seem so to me, although the events all happened less than 40 years ago, in the years 1874 to 1880.
The occurrences of which I shall speak, lie in my mind as a splendid drama, in which it was my great privilege to play a part. I shall try to put myself back into that wonderful play, and tell you its story from the same attitude of mind I had then—the point of view of a mere boy, just out of his apprenticeship as an electro-mechanician, intensely interested in his work, and full of boyish hope and enthusiasm. Therefore, as it must be largely a personal narrative, I shall ask you to excuse my many “I’s” and “my’s” and to be indulgent if I show how proud and glad I am that I was chosen by the fates to be the associate of Alexander Graham Bell, to work side by side with him day and night through all these wonderful happenings that have meant so much to the world.
The Williams’ Electrical Workshop
I realize now what a lucky boy I was, when at 13 years of age I had to leave school and go to work for my living, although I didn’t think so at that time. I am not advising my young friends to leave school at this age, for they may not have the opportunity to enter college as I did at 40. There’s a “tide in the affairs of men,” you know, and that was the beginning of its flood in my life, for after trying several vocations—clerking, bookkeeping, carpentering, etc.—and finding them all unattractive, I at last found just the job that suited me in the electrical work-shop of Charles Williams, at 109 Court Street, Boston—one of the best men I have ever known. Better luck couldn’t befall a boy than to be brought so early in life under the influence of such a high-minded gentleman as Charles Williams.
I want to say a few words about my work there, not only to give you a picture of such a shop in the early ’70s, but also because in this shop the telephone had its birth and a good deal of its early development.
[Illustration: _Thomas A. Watson in 1874_]
I was first set to work on a hand lathe turning binding posts for $5 a week. The mechanics of to-day with their automatic screw machines, hardly know what it is to turn little rough castings with a hand tool. How the hot chips used to fly into our eyes! One day I had a fine idea. I bought a pair of 25-cent goggles, thinking the others would hail me as a benefactor of mankind and adopt my plan. But they laughed at me for being such a sissy boy and public opinion forced me back to the old time-honored plan of winking when I saw a chip coming. It was not an efficient plan, for the chip usually got there first. There was a liberal education in it for me in manual dexterity. There was no specializing in these shops at that time. Each workman built everything there was in the shop to build, and an apprentice also had a great variety of jobs, which kept him interested all the time, for his tools were poor and simple and it required lots of thought to get a job done right.
Studies and Experiments
There were few books on electricity published at that time. Williams had copies of most of them in his showcase, which we boys used to read noons, but the book that interested me most was Davis’ Manual of Magnetism, published in 1847, a copy of which I made mine for 25 cents. If you want to get a good idea of the state of the electrical art at that time, you should read that book. I found it very stimulating and that same old copy in all the dignity of its dilapidation has a place of honor on my book shelves to-day.
My promotion to higher work was rapid. Before two years had passed, I had tried my skill on about all the regular work of the establishment—call bells, annunciators, galvanometers, telegraph keys, sounders, relays, registers and printing telegraph instruments.
Individual initiative was the rule in Williams’ shop—we all did about as we pleased. Once I built a small steam engine for myself during working hours, when business was slack. No one objected. That steam engine, by the way, was the embryo of the biggest shipbuilding plant in the United States to-day, which I established some ten years later with telephone profits, and which now employs more than 4,000 men.
[Illustration: _Alexander Graham Bell in 1876_]
Such were the electrical shops of that day. Crude and small as they were, they were the forerunners of the great electrical works of to-day. In them were being trained the men who were among the leaders in the wonderful development of applied electricity which began soon after the time of which I am to speak. Williams, although he never had at that time more than 30 or 40 men working for him, had one of the largest and best fitted shops in the country. I think the Western Electric shop at Chicago was the only larger one. That was also undoubtedly better organized and did better work than Williams’. When a piece of machinery built by the Western Electric came into our shop for repairs, we boys always used to admire the superlative excellence of the workmanship.
Experience with Inventors
Besides the regular work at Williams’, there was a constant stream of wild-eyed inventors, with big ideas in their heads and little money in their pockets, coming to the shop to have their ideas tried out in brass and iron. Most of them had an “angel” whom they had hypnotized into paying the bills. My enthusiasm, and perhaps my sympathetic nature, made me a favorite workman with those men of visions, and in 1873-74 my work had become largely making experimental apparatus for such men. Few of their ideas ever amounted to anything, but I liked to do the work, as it kept me roaming in fresh fields and pastures new all the time. Had it not been, however, for my youthful enthusiasm—always one of my chief assets—I fear this experience would have made me so skeptical and cynical as to the value of electrical inventions that my future prospects might have been injured.
[Illustration: _Thomas Sanders in 1878, at the Time He Was the Sole Financial Backer of the Telephone_]
I remember one limber-tongued patriarch who had induced some men to subscribe $1,000 to build what he claimed to be an entirely new electric engine. I had made much of it for him. There was nothing new in the engine, but he intended to generate his electric current in a series of iron tanks the size of trunks, to be filled with nitric acid with the usual zinc plates suspended therein. When the engine was finished and the acid poured into the tanks for the first time, no one waited to see the engine run, for inventor, “angel,” and workmen all tried to see who could get out of the shop quickest. I won the race as I had the best start.
I suppose there is just such a crowd of crude minds still besieging the work-shops, men who seem incapable of finding out what has been already done, and so keep on, year after year, threshing old straw.
The “Harmonic Telegraph”
All the men I worked for at that time were not of that type. There were a few very different. Among them, dear old Moses G. Farmer, perhaps the leading practical electrician of that day. He was full of good ideas, which he was constantly bringing to Williams to have worked out. I did much of his work and learned from him more about electricity than ever before or since. He was electrician at that time for the United States Torpedo Station at Newport, Rhode Island, and in the early winter of 1874 I was making for him some experimental torpedo exploding apparatus. That apparatus will always be connected in my mind with the telephone, for one day when I was hard at work on it, a tall, slender, quick-motioned man with pale face, black side whiskers, and drooping mustache, big nose and high sloping forehead crowned with bushy, jet black hair, came rushing out of the office and over to my work bench. It was Alexander Graham Bell, whom I saw then for the first time. He was bringing to me a piece of mechanism which I had made for him under instructions from the office. It had not been made as he had directed and he had broken down the rudimentary discipline of the shop in coming directly to me to get it altered. It was a receiver and a transmitter of his “Harmonic Telegraph,” an invention of his with which he was then endeavoring to win fame and fortune. It was a simple affair by means of which, utilizing the law of sympathetic vibration, he expected to send six or eight Morse messages on a single wire at the same time, without interference.
[Illustration: _Home of Mrs. Mary Ann (Brown) Sanders, Salem, Mass., where Professor Bell carried on experiments for three years which led to the discovery of the principle of the telephone_]
Although most of you are probably familiar with the device, I must, to make my story clear, give you a brief description of the instruments, for though Bell never succeeded in perfecting his telegraph, his experimenting on it led to a discovery of the highest importance.
[Illustration: _The Birthplace of the Telephone, 109 Court Street, Boston.—On the top floor of this building, in 1875, Prof. Bell carried on his experiments and first succeeded in transmitting speech by electricity_]
The essential parts of both transmitter and receiver were an electro-magnet and a flattened piece of steel clock spring. The spring was clamped by one end to one pole of the magnet, and had its other end free to vibrate over the other pole. The transmitter had, besides this, make-and-break points like an ordinary vibrating bell which, when the current was on, kept the spring vibrating in a sor |
54506-0 | t of nasal whine, of a pitch corresponding to the pitch of the spring. When the signalling key was closed, an electrical copy of that whine passed through the wire and the distant receiver. There were, say, six transmitters with their springs tuned to six different pitches and six receivers with their springs tuned to correspond. Now, theoretically, when a transmitter sent its electrical whine into the line wire, its own faithful receiver spring at the distant station would wriggle sympathetically but all the others on the same line would remain coldly quiescent. Even when all the transmitters were whining at once through their entire gamut, making a row as if all the miseries this world of trouble ever produced were concentrated there, each receiver spring along the line would select its own from that sea of troubles and ignore all the others. Just see what a simple, sure-to-work invention this was; for just break up those various whines into the dots and dashes of Morse messages and one wire would do the work of six, and the “Duplex” telegraph that had just been invented would be beaten to a frazzle. Bell’s reward would be immediate and rich, for the “Duplex” had been bought by the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, giving them a great advantage over their only competitor, the Western Union Company, and the latter would, of course, buy Bell’s invention and his financial problems would be solved.
[Illustration: _The Garret, 109 Court St., Boston, where Bell Verified the Principle of Electrical Speech Transmission_]
All this was, as I have said, theoretical, and it was mighty lucky for Graham Bell that it was, for had his harmonic telegraph been a well behaved apparatus that always did what its parent wanted it to do, the speaking telephone might never have emerged from a certain marvelous conception, that had even then been surging back of Bell’s high forehead for two or three years. What that conception was, I soon learned, for he couldn’t help speaking about it, although his friends tried to hush it up. They didn’t like to have him get the reputation of being visionary, or—something worse.
To go on with my story; after Mr. Farmer’s peace-making machines were finished, I made half a dozen pairs of the harmonic instruments for Bell. He was surprised, when he tried them, to find that they didn’t work as well as he expected. The cynical Watson wasn’t at all surprised for he had never seen anything electrical yet that worked at first the way the inventor thought it would. Bell wasn’t discouraged in the least and a long course of experiments followed which gave me a steady job that winter and brought me into close contact with a wonderful personality that did more to mould my life rightly than anything else that ever came into it.
I became mightily tired of those “whiners” that winter. I called them by that name, perhaps, as an inadequate expression of my disgust with their persistent perversity, the struggle with which soon began to take all the joy out of my young life, not being endowed with the power of Macbeth’s weird sisters to
“Look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not.”
Let me say here, that I have always had a feeling of respect for Elisha Gray, who, a few years later, made that harmonic telegraph work, and vibrate well-behaved messages, that would go where they were sent without fooling with every receiver on the line.
Most of Bell’s early experimenting on the harmonic telegraph was done in Salem, at the home of Mrs. George Sanders, where he resided for several years, having charge of the instruction of her deaf nephew. The present Y. M. C. A. building is on the site of that house. I would occasionally work with Bell there, but most of his experimenting in which I took part was done in Boston.
Bell’s Theory of Transmitting Speech
Mr. Bell was very apt to do his experimenting at night, for he was busy during the day at the Boston University, where he was Professor of Vocal Physiology, especially teaching his father’s system of visible speech, by which a deaf mute might learn to talk—quite significant of what Bell was soon to do in making mute metal talk. For this reason I would often remain at the shop during the evening to help him test some improvement he had had me make on the instruments.
One evening when we were resting from our struggles with the apparatus, Bell said to me: “Watson, I want to tell you of another idea I have, which I think will surprise you.” I listened, I suspect, somewhat languidly, for I must have been working that day about sixteen hours, with only a short nutritive interval, and Bell had already given me, during the weeks we had worked together, more new ideas on a great variety of subjects, including visible speech, elocution and flying machines, than my brain could assimilate, but when he went on to say that he had an idea by which he believed it would be possible to talk by telegraph, my nervous system got such a shock that the tired feeling vanished. I have never forgotten his exact words; they have run in my mind ever since like a mathematical formula. “_If_,” he said, “_I could make a current of electricity vary in intensity, precisely as the air varies in density during the production of a sound, I should be able to transmit speech telegraphically_.” He then sketched for me an instrument that he thought would do this, and we discussed the possibility of constructing one. I did not make it; it was altogether too costly, and the chances of its working too uncertain to impress his financial backers—Mr. Gardiner G. Hubbard and Mr. Thomas Sanders—who were insisting that the wisest thing for Bell to do was to perfect the harmonic telegraph; then he would have money and leisure enough to build air castles like the telephone.
June 2, 1875
I must have done other work in the shop besides Bell’s during the winter and spring of 1875, but I cannot remember a single item of it. I do remember that when I was not working for Bell I was thinking of his ideas. All through my recollection of that period runs that nightmare—the harmonic telegraph, the ill working of which got on my conscience, for I blamed my lack of mechanical skill for the poor operation of an invention apparently so simple. Try our best, we could not make that thing work rightly, and Bell came as near to being discouraged as I ever knew him to be.
But this spring of 1875 was the dark hour just before the dawn.
If the exact time could be fixed, the date when the conception of the undulatory or speech-transmitting current took its perfect form in Bell’s mind would be the greatest day in the history of the telephone, but certainly June 2, 1875, must always rank next; for on that day the mocking fiend inhabiting that demonic telegraph apparatus, just as a now-you-see-it-and-now-you-don’t sort of satanic joke, opened the curtain that hides from man great Nature’s secrets and gave us a glimpse as quick as if it were through the shutter of a snap-shot camera, into that treasury of things not yet discovered. That imp didn’t do this in any kindly, helpful spirit—any inventor knows he isn’t that kind of a being—he just meant to tantalize and prove that a man is too stupid to grasp a secret, even if it is revealed to him. But he hadn’t properly estimated Bell, though he had probably sized me up all right. That glimpse was enough to let Bell see and seize the very thing he had been dreaming about and drag it out into the world of human affairs.
[Illustration: _Gardiner G. Hubbard in 1876_]
The Telephone Born
Coming back to earth, I’ll try and tell you what happened that day. In the experiments on the harmonic telegraph, Bell had found that the reason why the messages got mixed up was inaccuracy in the adjustment of the pitches of the receiver springs to those of the transmitter. Bell always had to do this tuning himself, as my sense of pitch and knowledge of music were quite lacking—a faculty (or lackulty) which you will hear later became quite useful. Mr. Bell was in the habit of observing the pitch of a spring by pressing it against his ear while the corresponding transmitter in a distant room was sending its intermittent current through the magnet of that receiver. He would then manipulate the tuning screw until that spring was tuned to accord with the pitch of the whine coming from the transmitter. All this experimenting was carried on in the upper story of the Williams building, where we had a wire connecting two rooms perhaps sixty feet apart looking out on Court Street.
[Illustration: _Prof. Bell’s Vibrating Reed—Used for a Receiver_]
Realization
On the afternoon of June 2, 1875, we were hard at work on the same old job, testing some modification of the instruments. Things were badly out of tune that afternoon in that hot garret, not only the instruments, but, I fancy, my enthusiasm and my temper, though Bell was as energetic as ever. I had charge of the transmitters as usual, setting them squealing one after the other, while Bell was retuning the receiver springs one by one, pressing them against his ear as I have described. One of the transmitter springs I was attending to stopped vibrating and I plucked it to start it again. It didn’t start and I kept on plucking it, when suddenly I heard a shout from Bell in the next room, and then out he came with a rush, demanding, “What did you do then? Don’t change anything. Let me see!” I showed him. It was very simple. The contact screw was screwed down so far that it made permanent contact with the spring, so that when I snapped the spring the circuit had remained unbroken while that strip of magnetized steel by its vibration over the pole of its magnet was generating that marvelous conception of Bell’s—a current of electricity that varied in intensity precisely as the air was varying in density within hearing distance of that spring. That undulatory current had passed through the connecting wire to the distant receiver which, fortunately, was a mechanism that could transform that current back into an extremely faint echo of the sound of the vibrating spring that had generated it, but what was still more fortunate, the right man had that mechanism at his ear during that fleeting moment, and instantly recognized the transcendent importance of that faint sound thus electrically transmitted. The shout I heard and his excited rush into my room were the result of that recognition. The speaking telephone was born at that moment. Bell knew perfectly well that the mechanism that could transmit all the complex vibrations of one sound could do the same for any sound, even that of speech. That experiment showed him that the complex apparatus he had thought would be needed to accomplish that long dreamed result was not at all necessary, for here was an extremely simple mechanism operating in a perfectly obvious way, that could do it perfectly. All the experimenting that followed that discovery, up to the time the telephone was put into practical use, was largely a matter of working out the details. We spent a few hours verifying the discovery, repeating it with all the differently tuned springs we had, and before we parted that night Bell gave me directions for making the first electric speaking telephone. I was to mount a small drumhead of gold-beater’s skin over one of the receivers, join the center of the drumhead to the free end of the receiver spring and arrange a mouthpiece over the drumhead to talk into. His idea was to force the steel spring to follow the vocal vibrations and generate a current of electricity that would vary in intensity as the air varies in density during the utterance of speech sounds. I followed these directions and had the instrument ready for its trial the very next day. I rushed it, for Bell’s excitement and enthusiasm over the discovery had aroused mine again, which had been sadly dampened during those last few weeks by the meagre results of the harmonic experiments. I made every part of that first telephone myself, but I didn’t realize while I was working on it what a tremendously important piece of work I was doing.
The First Telephone Line
The two rooms in the attic were too near together for the test, as our voices would be heard through the air, so I ran a wire especially for the trial from one of the rooms in the attic down two flights to the third floor where Williams’ main shop was, ending it near my work bench at the back of the building. That was the first telephone line. You can well imagine that both our hearts were beating above the normal rate while we were getting ready for the trial of the new instrument that evening. I got more satisfaction from the experiment than Mr. Bell did, for shout my best I could not make him hear me, but I could hear his voice and almost catch the words. I rushed downstairs and told him what I had heard. It was enough to show him that he was on the right track, and before he left that night he gave me directions for several improvements in the telephones I was to have ready for the next trial.
[Illustration: _Alexander Graham Bell’s First Telephone_]
I hope my pride in the fact that I made the first telephone, put up the first telephone wire and heard the first words ever uttered through a telephone, has never been too ostentatious and offensive to my friends, but I am sure that you will grant that a reasonable amount of that human weakness is excusable in me. My pride has been tempered to quite a bearable degree by my realization that the reason why I heard Bell in that first trial of the telephone and he did not hear me, was the vast superiority of his strong vibratory tones over any sound my undeveloped voice was then able to utter. My sense of hearing, however, has always been unusually acute, and that might have helped to determine this result.
The building where these first telephone experiments were made is still in existence. It is now used as a theater. The lower stories have been much altered, but that attic is still quite unchanged and a few weeks ago I stood on the very spot where I snapped those springs and helped test the first telephone thirty-seven years and seven months before.
(_Editor’s Note: The old building was finally replaced by new construction in 1931.)_
Mr. Watson Heard the First Sentence Ever Spoken Over the Telephone
Of course in our struggle to expel the imps from the invention, an immense amount of experimenting had to be done, but it wasn’t many days before we could talk back and forth and hear each other’s voice. It is, however, hard for me to realize now that it was not until the following March that I heard a complete and intelligible sentence. It made such an impression upon me that I wrote that first sentence in a book I have always preserved. The occasion had not been arranged and rehearsed as I suspect the sending of the first message over the Morse telegraph had been years before, for instead of that noble first telegraphic message—“What hath God wrought?” the first message of the telephone was: “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.” Perhaps, if Mr. Bell had realized that he was about to make a bit of history, he would have been prepared with a more sounding and interesting sentence.
Soon after the first telephones were made, Bell hired two rooms on the top floor of an inexpensive boarding house at No. 5 Exeter Place, Boston, since demolished to make room for mercantile buildings. He slept in one room; the other he fitted up as a laboratory. I ran a wire for him between the two rooms and after that time practically all his experimenting was done there. It was here one evening when I had gone there to help him test some improvement and to spend the night with him, that I heard the first complete sentence I have just told you about. Matters began to move more rapidly, and during the summer of 1876 the telephone was talking so well that one didn’t have to ask the other man to say it over again more than three or four times before one could understand quite well, if the sentences were simple.
The Centennial Exposition
This was the year of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, and Bell decided to make an exhibit there. I was still working for Williams, and one of the jobs I did for Bell was to construct a telephone of each form that had been devised up to that time. These were the first nicely finished instruments that had been made. There had been no money nor time to waste on polish or non-essentials. But these Centennial telephones were done up in the highest style of the art. You could see your face in them. These aristocratic telephones worked finely, in spite of their glitter, when Sir William Thompson tried them at Philadelphia that summer. I was as proud as Bell himself, when I read Sir William’s report, wherein he said after giving an account of the tests: “I need hardly say I was astonished and delighted, so were the others who witnessed the experiment and verified with their own ears the electric transmission of speech. This, perhaps, the greatest marvel hitherto achieved by electric telegraph, has been obtained by appliances of quite a homespun and rudimentary character.” I have never forgiven Sir William for that last line. Homespun!
Experimentation
However, I recovered from this blow, and soon after Mr. Gardiner G. Hubbard, afterwards Mr. Bell’s father-in-law, offered me an interest in Bell’s patents if I would give up my work at Williams’ and devote my time to the telephone. I accepted, although I wasn’t altogether sure it was a wise thing to do from a financial standpoint. My contract stipulated that I was to work under Mr. Bell’s directions, on the harmonic telegraph as well as on the speaking telephone, for the two men who were paying the bills still thought there was something in the former invention, although very little attention had been given to its vagaries after the June 2nd discovery.
[ |
54506-0 | Illustration: 1876 BELL TELEPHONE _Telephone Apparatus Patented in 1876 by Prof. Bell, Models Made from Figure 7 in Bell’s Original Patent_]
I moved my domicile from Salem to another room on the top floor at 5 Exeter Place, giving us the entire floor, and as Mr. Bell had lost most of his pupils by wasting so much of his time on telephones, he could devote nearly all his time to the experimenting. Then followed a period of hard and continuous work on the invention. I made telephones with every modification and combination of their essential parts that either of us could think of. I made and we tested telephones with all sizes of diaphragms made of all kinds of materials—diaphragms of boiler iron several feet in diameter, down to a miniature affair made of the bones and drum of a human ear, and found that the best results came from an iron diaphragm of about the same size and thickness as is used to-day. We tested electro magnets and permanent magnets of a multitude of sizes and shapes, with long cores and short cores, fat cores and thin cores, solid cores and cores of wire, with coils of many sizes, shapes and resistances, and mouthpieces of an infinite variety. Out of the hundreds of experiments there emerged practically the same telephone you take off the hook and listen with to-day, although it was then transmitter as well as receiver.
[Illustration: _Reprint from the Boston Advertiser describing the Telephone Talk between Boston and Cambridgeport, October 9, 1876_]
TELEPHONY.
AUDIBLE SPEECH CONVEYED TWO MILES BY TELEGRAPH.
PROFESSOR A. GRAHAM BELL’S DISCOVERY—SUCCESSFUL AND INTERESTING EXPERIMENTS—THE RECORD OF A CONVERSATION CARRIED ON BETWEEN BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGEPORT.
The following account of an experiment made on the evening of October 9 by Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson is interesting, as being the record of the first conversation ever carried on by word of mouth over a telegraph wire. Telephones placed at either end of a telegraph line owned by the Walworth Manufacturing Company, extending from their office in Boston to their factory in Cambridgeport, a distance of about two miles. The company’s battery, consisting of nine Daniels cells, was removed from the circuit and another of ten carbon elements substituted. Articulate conversation then took place through the wire. The sounds, at first faint and indistinct, became suddenly quite loud and intelligible. Mr. Bell in Boston and Mr. Watson in Cambridge then took notes of what was said and heard and the comparison of the two records is most interesting, as showing the accuracy of the electrical transmission:—
BOSTON RECORD.
Mr. Bell—What do you think was the matter with the instruments?
Mr. Watson—There was nothing the matter with
CAMBRIDGEPORT RECORD.
Mr. Bell—What do you think is the matter with the instruments?
Mr. Watson—There is nothing the matter with them.
“Talking” from Boston to Cambridge
Progress was rapid, and on October 9, 1876, we were ready to take the baby outdoors for the first time. We got permission from the Walworth Manufacturing Company to use their private wire running from Boston to Cambridge, about two miles long. I went to Cambridge that evening with one of our best telephones, and waited until Bell signalled from the Boston office on the Morse sounder. Then I cut out the sounder and connected in the telephone and listened. Not a murmur came through! Could it be that, although the thing worked all right in the house, it wouldn’t work under practical line conditions? I knew that we were using the most complex and delicate electric current that had ever been employed for a practical purpose and that it was extremely “intense,” for Bell had talked through a circuit composed of 20 or 30 human beings joined hand to hand. Could it be, I thought, that these high tension vibrations leaking off at each insulator along the line, had vanished completely before they reached the Charles River? That fear passed through my mind as I worked over the instrument, adjusting it and tightening the wires in the binding posts, without improving matters in the least. Then the thought struck me that perhaps there was another Morse sounder in some other room. I traced the wires from the place they entered the building and sure enough I found a relay with a high resistance coil in the circuit. I cut it out with a piece of wire across the binding posts and rushed back to my telephone and listened. That was the trouble. Plainly as one could wish came Bell’s “ahoy,” “ahoy!”[1] I ahoyed back, and the first long distance telephone conversation began. Skeptics had been objecting that the telephone could never compete with the telegraph as its messages would not be accurate. For this reason Bell had arranged that we should make a record of all we said and heard that night, if we succeeded in talking at all. We carried out this plan and the entire conversation was published in parallel columns in the next morning’s _Advertiser_, as the latest startling scientific achievement. Infatuated with the joy of talking over an actual telegraph wire, we kept up our conversation until long after midnight. It was a very happy boy that traveled back to Boston in the small hours with the telephone under his arm done up in a newspaper. Bell had taken his record to the newspaper office and was not at the laboratory when I arrived there, but when he came in there ensued a jubilation and war dance that elicited next morning from our landlady, who wasn’t at all scientific in her tastes, the remark that we’d have to vacate if we didn’t make less noise nights.
Tests on still longer telegraph lines soon followed—the success of each experiment being in rather exact accordance with the condition of the poor, rusty-joined wires we had to use. Talk about imps that baffle inventors! There was one of an especially vicious and malignant type in every unsoldered joint of the old wires. The genial Tom Doolittle hadn’t even thought of his hard-drawn copper wire then, with which he later eased the lot of the struggling telephone men.
Our Many Visitors
Meanwhile the fame of the invention had spread rapidly abroad and all sorts of people made pilgrimages to Bell’s laboratory to hear the telephone talk. A list of the scientists who came to the attic of that cheap boarding house to see the telephone would read like the roster of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. My old electrical mentor, Moses G. Farmer, called one day to see the latest improvements. He told me then with tears in his eyes when he first read a description of Bell’s telephone he couldn’t sleep for a week, he was so mad with himself for not discovering the thing years before. “Watson,” said he, “that thing has flaunted itself in my very face a dozen times within the last ten years and every time I was too blind to see it. But,” he continued, “if Bell had known anything about electricity he would never have invented the telephone.”
[Illustration: _Prof. Bell’s Original Centennial Magneto Transmitter_]
Two of our regular visitors were young Japanese pupils of Professor Bell—very polite, deferential, quiet, bright-eyed little men, who saw everything and made cryptic notes. They took huge delight in proving that the telephone could talk Japanese. A curious effect of the telephone I noticed at that time was its power to paralyze the tongues of men otherwise fluent enough by nature and profession. I remember a prominent lawyer who, when he heard my voice in the telephone making some such profound remark to him as “How do you do?” could only reply, after a long pause, “Rig a jig jig and away we go.”
A “Wireless Telephone”
Men of quite another sort came occasionally. Mr. Hubbard received a letter one day from a man who wrote that he could put us on the track of a secret that would enable us to talk any distance without a wire. This interested Mr. Hubbard and he made an appointment for the man to meet me. At the appointed time, a stout, rather unkempt man made his appearance. He didn’t take the least interest in the telephone; he said that was already a back number, and if we would hire him for a small sum per week we would soon learn how to telephone without any apparatus or any wires. He went on to tell in a most convincing way how two prominent theatrical men in New York, whom he had never seen, had got his brain so connected into their circuit that they could talk with him at any time, day or night, and make all sorts of fiendish suggestions to him. He didn’t know yet how they did it, but he was sure I could find out their secret, if I would just take the top off his head and examine his brain. It dawned on me then that I was dealing with an insane man. I got rid of him as soon as I could by promising to experiment on him when I could find time. The next I heard of the poor fellow he was in the violent ward of an insane asylum. Several similar cases of insanity attracted by the fa |
54506-0 | me of Bell’s occult (!) invention called on us or wrote to us within a year of that time.
[Illustration: _Prof. Bell’s Original Centennial Receiver_]
Telephone Installations
We began to get requests for telephone installations long before we were ready to supply them. In April, 1877, the first outdoor telephone line was run between Mr. Williams’ office at 109 Court Street and his house in Somerville. Professor Bell and I were present and participated in the important ceremony of opening the line and the event was a headliner in the next morning’s papers.
Financial Problems
At about this time Professor Bell’s financial problems had begun to press hard for solution. We were very much disappointed because the President of the Western Union Telegraph Company had refused, somewhat contemptuously, Mr. Hubbard’s offer to sell him all the Bell patents for the exorbitant sum of $100,000. It was an especially hard blow to me, for while the negotiations were pending I had had visions of a sumptuous office in the Western Union Building in New York, which I was expecting to occupy as Superintendent of the Telephone Department of the great telegraph company. However, we recovered even from that facer. Two years later the Western Union would gladly have bought those patents for $25,000,000.
[Illustration: _Original Box Telephone Introduced Commercially in 1877_]
But before that happy time there were lots of troubles of all the old and of several new varieties to be surmounted. Professor Bell’s particular trouble in the spring of 1877 arose from the fact that he had fallen in love with a most charming young lady. I had never been in love myself at that time and that was my first opportunity of observing what a serious matter it can be, especially when the father isn’t altogether enthusiastic. I rather suspected at that time that that shrewd but kind-hearted gentleman put obstacles in the course of that true love, in order to stimulate the young man to still greater exertion in perfecting his inventions. But he might have thought as Prospero did:
“They are both in either’s power; but this swift business I must uneasy make, lest too light winning Make the prize light.”
Bell’s immediate financial needs were solved, however, by the demand that began at this time for public lectures by him on the telephone. It is hard to realize to-day what an intense and widespread interest there was then in the telephone. I don’t believe any new invention could stir the public to-day as the telephone did then, surfeited as we are now with the wonderful things that have been invented since.
Leasing Instruments a Far-Sighted Policy
These lectures are important for another reason than that they solved a temporary money problem. They obviated the necessity of selling telephones outright, instead of leasing them so as to retain control—a policy Mr. Hubbard afterwards adopted which made possible the splendid universal service Mr. Vail with your help has given the Bell system to-day. Some of the ladies deeply interested in the immediate outcome were strenuously advocating at this critical juncture making and selling the telephones at once in the largest possible quantities—imperfect as they were. Fortunately, for the future of the business the returns from the lectures that began at this very time obviated this danger.
Telephone Lectures
Bell’s first lecture, as I have said, was given before a well-known scientific society—the Essex Institute—at Salem, Mass. They were especially interested in the telephone because Bell was living in Salem during the early telephone experiments. The first lecture was free to members of the society, but it packed the hall and created so much interest that Bell was requested to repeat it for an admission fee. This he did to an audience that again filled the house. Requests for lectures poured in upon Bell after that. Such men as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry W. Longfellow signed the request for the Boston lectures. The Salem lectures were soon followed by a lecture in Providence to an audience of 2,000, by a course of three lectures at the largest hall in Boston—all three packed—by three in Chickering Hall, New York, and by others in most of the large cities of New England. They all took place in the spring and early summer of 1877, during which time there was little opportunity for experimenting for either Bell or myself, which I think now was rather a good thing, for we had become quite stale and needed a change that would give us a new influx of ideas. My part in the lectures was important, although entirely invisible as far as the audience was concerned. I was always at the other end of the wire, generating and transmitting to the hall where Professor Bell was speaking, such telephonic phenomena as he needed to illustrate his lectures. I would have at my end circuit breakers—rheotomes, we called them—that would utter electric howls of various pitches, a lusty cornet player, sometimes a small brass band, and an electric organ with Edward Wilson to play on it, but the star performer was the young man who two years before didn’t have voice enough to let Bell hear his own telephone, but in whom that two years of strenuous shouting into mouthpieces of various sizes and shapes had developed a voice with the carrying capacity of a steam calliope. My special function in these lectures was to show the audience that the telephone could really talk. Not only that, I had to do all the singing, too, for which my musical deficiencies fitted me admirably.
[Illustration: _Facsimile of Flier Advertising Prof. Bell’s Lecture at Lawrence, Mass., Monday Evening, May 28, 1877_]
CITY HALL, LAWRENCE, MASS. Monday Evening, May 28 THE MIRACLE TELEPHONE WONDERFUL DISCOVERY OF THE AGE
Prof. A. Graham Bell, assisted by Mr. Frederic A. Gower, will give an exhibition of his wonderful and miraculous discovery The Telephone, before the people of Lawrence as above, when Boston and Lawrence will be connected via the Western Union Telegraph and vocal and instrumental music and conversation will be transmitted a distance of 27 miles and received by the audience in the City Hall.
Prof. Bell will give an explanatory lecture with this marvellous exhibition.
Cards of Admission, 35 cents Reserved Seats, 50 cents Sale of seats at Stratton’s will open at 9 o’clock.
My Telephone Entertainers
Professor Bell would have one telephone by his side on the stage, where he was speaking, and three or four others of the big box variety we used at that time would be suspended about the hall, all connected by means of a hired telegraph wire with the place where I was stationed, from five to twenty-five miles away. Bell would give the audience, first, the commonplace parts of the show and then would come the thrillers of the evening—my shouts and songs. I would shout such sentences as, “How do you do?” “Good evening,” “What do you think of the telephone?” which they could all hear, although the words issued from the mouthpieces rather badly marred by the defective talking powers of the telephones of that date. Then I would sing “Hold the Fort,” “Pull for the Shore,” “Yankee Doodle,” and as a delicate allusion to the Professor’s nationality, “Auld Lang Syne.” My sole sentimental song was “Do Not Trust Him, Gentle Lady.” This repertoire always brought down the house. After every song I would listen at my telephone for further directions from the lecturer, and always felt the artist’s joy when I heard in it the long applause that followed each of my efforts. I was always encored to the limit of my repertoire and sometimes had to sing it through twice.
I have always understood that Professor Bell was a fine platform speaker, but this is entirely hearsay on my part for, although I spoke at every one of his lectures, I have never yet had the pleasure of hearing him deliver an address.
First Sound-Proof Booth
In making the preparations for the New York lectures I incidentally invented the sound-proof booth, but as Mr. Lockwood was not then associated with us, and for other reasons, I never patented it. It happened thus: Bell thought he would like to astonish the New Yorkers by having his lecture illustrations sent all the way from Boston. To determine whether this was practicable, he made arrangements to test the telephone a few days before on one of the Atlantic and Pacific wires. The trial was to take place at midnight. Bell was at the New York end, I was in the Boston laboratory. Having vividly in mind the strained relations already existing with our landlady, and realizing the carrying power of my voice when I really let it go, as I knew I should have to that night, I cast about for some device to deaden the noise. Time was short and appliances scarce, so the best I could do was to take the blankets off our beds and arrange them in a sort of loose tunnel, with the telephone tied up in one end and the other end open for the operator to crawl into. Thus equipped I awaited the signal from New York announcing that Bell was ready. It came soon after midnight. Then I connected in the telephone, deposited myself in that cavity, and shouted and listened for two or three hours. It didn’t work as well as it might. It is a wonder some of my remarks didn’t burn holes in the blankets. We talked after a fashion but Bell decided it wasn’t safe to risk it with a New York audience. My sound-proof booth, however, was a complete success, as far as stopping the sound was concerned, for I found by cautious inquiry next day that nobody had heard my row. Later inventors improved my booth, making it more comfortable for a pampered public but not a bit more sound-proof.
[Illustration: _Box Telephone with Watson Hammer Signal_]
[Illustration: _Watson Type of Ringer_]
“The Supposititious Mr. Watson”
One of those New York lectures looms large in my memory on account of a novel experience I had at my end of the wire. After hearing me sing, the manager of the lectures decided that while I might satisfy a Boston audience I would never do for a New York congregation, so he engaged a fine baritone soloist—a powerful negro, who was to assume the singing part of my program. Being much better acquainted with the telephone than that manager was, I had doubts about the advisability of this change in the cast. I didn’t say anything, as I didn’t want to be accused of professional jealousy, and I knew my repertoire would be on the spot in case things went wrong. I was stationed that night at the telegraph office at New Brunswick, New Jersey, and I and the rest of the usual appliances of that end of the lecture went down in the afternoon to get things ready. I rehearsed my rival and found him a fine singer, but had difficulty in getting him to crowd his lips into the mouthpiece. He was handicapped for the telephone business by being musical, and he didn’t like the sound of his voice jammed up in that way. However, he promised to do what I wanted when it came to the actual work of the evening, and I went to supper. When I returned to the telegraph office, just before eight o’clock, I found to my horror that the young lady operator had invited six or eight of her dear friends to witness the interesting proceedings. Now, besides my musical deficiencies, I had another qualification as a telephone man—I was very modest; in fact, in the presence of ladies, extremely bashful. It didn’t trouble me in the least to talk or sing to a great audience, provided, of course, it was a few miles away, but when I saw those girls, the complacency with which I had been contemplating the probable failure of my fine singer was changed to painful apprehension. If he wasn’t successful a very bashful young man would have a new experience. I should be obliged to sing myself before those giggling, unscientific girls. This world would be a better place to live in if we all tried to help our fellow-men succeed, as I tried that night, when the first song was called for, to make my musical friend achieve a lyrical triumph on the Metropolitan stage. But he sang that song for the benefit of those girls, not for Chickering Hall, and it was with a heavy heart that I listened for Bell’s voice when he finished it. The blow fell. In his most delightful platform tones, Bell uttered the fatal words I had foreboded, “Mr. Watson, the audience could not hear that. Won’t you please sing?” Bell was always a kind-hearted man, but he didn’t know. However, I nerved myself with the thought that that New York audience, made skeptical by the failure of that song, might be thinking cynical things about my beloved leader and his telephone, so I turned my back on those girls and made that telephone rattle with the stirring strains of “Hold the Fort,” as it never had before. Then I listened again. Ah, the sweetness of appreciation! That New York audience was applauding vigorously. When it stopped, the same voice came with a new note of triumph in it. “Mr. Watson, the audience heard that perfectly and call for an encore.” I sang through my entire repertoire and began again on “Hold the Fort,” before that audience was satisfied. That experience did me good, I have never had stage fright since. But the “supposititious Mr. Watson,” as they called me then, had to do the singing at all of Bell’s subsequent lectures. Nobody else had a chance at the job; one experience was enough for Mr. Bell.
My baritone had his hat on his head and a cynical expression on his face, when I finished working on those songs. “Is that what you wanted?” he asked. “Yes.” “Well, boss, I couldn’t do that.” Of course he couldn’t.
An Exhibition in Lawrence
Another occasion is burnt into my memory that wasn’t such a triumph over difficulties. In these lectures we always had another trouble to contend with, besides the rusty joints in the wires; that was the operators cutting in, during the lectures, their highest resistance relays, which enabled them to hear some of the intermittent current effects I sent to the hall. Inductance, retardation, and all that sort of thing which you have so largely conquered since were invented long before the telephone was, and were awaiting her on earth all ready to slam it when Bell came along. Bell lectured at Lawrence, Massachusetts, one evening in May, and I prepared to furnish him with the usual program from the laboratory in Boston.
[Illustration: _Watson’s “Buzzer”_]
But the wire the company assigned us was the worst yet. It worked fairly well when we tried it in the afternoon, but in the evening every station on the line had evidently cut in its relay, and do my best I couldn’t get a sound through to the hall.
The local newspaper generally sent a reporter to my end of the wire to write up the occurrences there. This is the report of such an envoy as it appeared in the Lawrence paper the morning after Bell’s lecture there:
“Mr. Fisher returned this morning. He says that Watson, the organist and himself occupied the laboratory, sitting in their shirt sleeves with their collars off. Watson shouted his lungs into the telephone mouthpiece, ‘Hoy! Hoy! Hoy!’ and receiving no response, inquired of Fisher if he pardoned for a little ‘hamburg edging’ on his language. Mr. Fisher endeavored to transmit to his Lawrence townsman the tune of ‘Federal Street’ played upon the cornet, but the air was not distinguishable here. About 10 P.M., Watson discovered the ‘Northern Lights’ and found his wires alive with lightning, which was not included in the original scheme of the telephone. He says the loose electricity abroad in the world was too much for him.”
Waiting for Watson
The next morning a poem appeared in the Lawrence paper. The writer must have sat up all night to write it. It was entitled “Waiting for Watson,” and as I am very proud of the only poem I ever had written about me, I am going to ask your permission to read it. Please notice the great variety of human feeling the poet put into it. It even suggests missiles, though it flings none.
Lawrence, Mass., _Daily American_, Tuesday, May 29, 1877.
WAITING FOR WATSON
To the great hall we strayed, Fairly our fee we paid, Seven hundred there delayed, But, where was Watson?
Was he out on his beer? Walked he off on his ear? Something was wrong, ’tis clear. What was it, Watson?
Seven hundred souls were there, Waiting with stony stare, In that expectant air— Waiting for Watson.
Oh, how our ears we strained, How our hopes waxed and waned, Patience to dregs we drained, Yes, we did, Watson!
Softly the bandmen played, Rumbled the Night Brigade, For this our stamps we paid, Only this, Watson!
But, Hope’s by fruitage fed, Promise and Act should wed, Faith without works is dead, Is it not, Watson?
Give but one lusty groan, For bread we’ll take a stone, Ring your old telephone! Ring, brother Watson.
Doubtless ’tis very fine, When, all along the line, Things work most superfine— Doubtless ’tis Watson.
Let’s hear the thrills and thrums, That your skilled digit drums, Striking our tympanums— Music from Watson.
We know that, every day, Schemes laid to work and pay, Fail and “gang aft a-gley”— Often, friend Watson.
And we’ll not curse, or fling, But, next time, do the thing And we’ll all rise and sing, “Bully for Watson!”
Or, by the unseen powers, Hope in our bosom sours, No telephone in ours— “Please, Mr. Watson.”
[Illustration: _The First Telephone Advertisement, Used the Year Following the Issuance of the Original Patent, Offered to Furnish Telephones “for the Transmission of Articulate Speech Through Instruments Not More Than Twenty Miles Apart.”_]
The Telephone.
The proprietors of the Telephone, the invention of Alexander Graham Bell, for which patents have been issued by the United States and Great Britain, are now prepared to furnish Telephones for the transmission of articulate speech through instruments not more than twenty miles apart. Conversation can be easily carried on after slight practice and with the occasional repetition of a word or sentence. On first listening to the Telephone, though the sound is perfectly audible, the articulation seems to be indistinct; but after a few trials the ear becomes accustomed to the peculiar sound and finds little difficulty in understanding the words.
The Telephone should be set in a quiet place, where there is no noise which would interrupt ordinary conversation.
The advantages of the Telephone over the Telegraph for local business are
1st. That no skilled operator is required, but direct communication may be had by speech without the intervention of a third person.
2d. That the communication is much more rapid, the average number of words transmitted a minute by Morse Sounder being from fifteen to twenty, by Telephone from one to two hundred.
3d. That no expense is required either for its operation, maintenance, or repair. It needs no battery, and has no complicated machinery. It is unsurpassed for economy and simplicity.
The Terms for leasing two Telephones for social purposes connecting a dwelling-house with any other building will be $20 a year, for business purposes $40 a year, payable semiannually in advance, with the cost of expressage from Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, or San Francisco. The instruments will be kept in good working order by the lessors, free of expense, except from injuries resulting from great carelessness.
Several Telephones can be placed on the same line at an additional rental of $10 for each instrument; but the use of more than two on the some line where privacy is required is not advised. Any person within ordinary hearing distance can hear the voice calling through the Telephone. If a louder call is required one can be furnished for $5.
Telegraph lines will be constructed by the proprietors if desired. The price will vary from $100 to $150 a mile; any good mechanic can construct a line; No. 9 wire costs 8½ cents a pound, 320 pounds to the mile; 34 insulators at 25 cents each; the price of poles and setting varies in every locality; stringing wire $5 per mile; sundries $10 per mile.
Parties leasing the Telephones incur no expense beyond the annual rental and the repair of the line wire. On the following pages are extracts from the Press and other sources relating to the Telephone.
GARDINER G. HUBBARD.
Cambridge, Mass., May, 1877.
For further information and orders address
THOS. A. WATSON, 109 Court St., Boston.
My Last Public Appearance
But my vacation was about over. Besides raising the wind, the lectures had stirred up a great demand for telephone lines. The public was ready for the telephone long before we were ready for the public, and this pleasant artistic interlude had to stop; I was needed in the shop to build some telephones to satisfy the insistent demand. Fred Gower, a young newspaper man of Providence, had become interested with Mr. Bell in the lecture work. He had an unique scheme for a dual lecture with my illustrations sent from a central point to halls in two cities at the same time. I think my last appearance in public was one of these dualities. Bell lectured at New Haven and Gower gave the talk at Hartford, while I was in between at Middletown, Conn., with my apparatus, including my songs. It didn’t work very well. The two lecturers didn’t speak synchronously. Gower told me afterwards that I was giving him, “How do you do,” when he wanted “Hold the Fort,” and Bell said I made it awkward for him by singing “Do Not Trust Him, Gentle Lady,” when he needed the trombone solo.
The “Gower-Bell” Telephone
In the following August, Professor Bell married and went to England, taking with him a complete set of up-to-date telephones, with which he intended to start the trouble in that country. Fred Gower became so fascinated with lecturing on the telephone that he gave up an exclusive right Mr. Hubbard had granted him for renting telephones all over New England, for the exclusive privilege of using the telephone for lecture purposes all over the United States. But it wasn’t remunerative after Bell and I gave it up. The discriminating public preferred Mr. Bell as speaker—and I always felt that the singing never reached the early heights.
[Illustration: _Magneto Wall Set (Williams’ Coffin)_]
Gower went to England later. There he made some small modification of Bell’s telephone, called it the “Gower-Bell” telephone, and made a fortune out of his hyphenated atrocity. Later he married Lillian Nordica, although she soon separated from him. He became interested in ballooning. The last scene in his life before the curtain dropped showed a balloon over the waters of the English Channel. A fishing boat hails him, “Where are you bound?” Gower’s voice replies, “To London.” Then the balloon and its pilot drifted into the mist forever.
Developing a Calling Apparatus; the Watson “Buzzer”
[Illustration: _Francis Blake_]
As I said, I went back to work, and my next two years was a continuous performance. It began to dawn on us that people engaged in getting their living in the ordinary walks of life couldn’t be expected to keep the telephone at their ear all the time waiting for a call, especially as it weighed about ten pounds then and was as big as a small packing case, so it devolved on me to get up some sort of a call signal. Williams on his line used to call by thumping the diaphragm through the mouthpiece with the butt of a lead pencil. If there was someone close to the telephone at the other end, and it was very still, it did pretty well, but it seriously damaged the vitals of the machine and therefore I decided it wasn’t really practical for the general public; besides, we might have to supply a pencil with every telephone and that would be expensive. Then I rigged a little hammer inside the box with a button on the outside. When the button was thumped the hammer would hit the side of the diaphragm where it could not be damaged, the usual electrical transformation took place, and a much more modest but still unmistakable thump would issue from the telephone at the other end.
That was the first calling apparatus ever devised for use with the telephone, not counting Williams’ lead pencil, and several with that attachment were put into practical use. But the exacting public wanted something better, and I devised the Watson “Buzzer”—the only practical use we ever made of the harmonic telegraph relics. Many of these were sent out. It was a vast improvement on the Watson “Thumper,” but still it didn’t take the popular fancy. It made a sound quite like the horseradish grater automobile signal we are so familiar with nowadays, and aroused just the same feeling of resentment which that does. It brought me only a fleeting fame for I soon superseded it by a magneto-electric call bell that solved the problem, and was destined to make a long-suffering public turn cranks for the next fifteen years or so, as it never had before, or ever will hereafter.
[Illustration: _The Blake Transmitter_]
Perhaps I didn’t have any trouble with the plaguy thing! The generator part of it was only an adaptation of a magneto shocking machine I found in Davis’ Manual of Magnetism and worked well enough, but I was guilty of the jingling part of it. At any rate, I felt guilty when letters began to come from our agents reciting their woes with the thing, which they said had a trick of sticking and failing on the most important occasions to tinkle in response to the frantic crankings of the man who wanted you. But I soon got it so it behaved itself and it has been good ever since, for Chief Engineer Carty told me the other day that nothing better has ever been invented, that they have been manufactured by the millions all over the world, and that identical jingler to-day does practically all the world’s telephone calling.
“Williams’ Coffins”
For some reason, my usual good luck I presume, the magneto call bells didn’t get my name attached to them. I never regretted this, for the agents, who bought them from Williams, impressed by the long and narrow box in which the mechanism was placed, promptly christened them “Williams’ Coffins.” I always thought that a narrow escape for me!
The first few hundreds of these call bells were a continuous shock to me for other reasons than their failure to respond. I used on them a switch, that had to be thrown one way by hand, when the telephone was being used, and then thrown back by hand to put the bell in circuit again. But the average man or woman wouldn’t do this more than half the time, and I was obliged to try a series of devices, which culminated in that remarkable achievement of the human brain—the automatic switch—that only demanded of the public that it should hang up the telephone after it got through talking. This the public learned to do quite well after a few years of practice.
[Illustration: _The First Commercial Telephone Switchboard, Used in New Haven, Conn., in 1878 with Eight Lines and Twenty-one Subscribers_]
The Blake Transmitter
You wouldn’t believe me if I should tell you a tithe of the difficulties we got into by flexible cords breaking inside the covering, when we first began to use hand telephones!
Then they began to clamor for switchboards for the first centrals, and individual call bells began to keep me awake nights. The latter were very important then, for such luxuries as one station lines were scarce. Six to twenty stations on a wire was the rule, and we were trying hard to get a signal that would call one station without disturbing the whole town. All of these and many other things had to be done at once, and, as if this was not enough, it suddenly became necessary for me to devise a battery transmitter. The Western Union people had discovered that the telephone was not such a toy as they had thought, and as our $100,000 offer was no longer open for acceptance, they decided to get a share of the business for themselves, and Edison evolved for them his carbon-button transmitter. This was the hardest blow yet.
[Illustration: _Theodore N. Vail in 1878_]
We were still using the magneto transmitter, although Bell’s patent clearly covered the battery transmitter. Our transmitter was doing much to develop the American voice and lungs, making them powerful but not melodious. This was, by the way, the telephone epoch when they used to say that all the farmers waiting in a country grocery would rush out and hold their horses when they saw any one preparing to use the telephone. Edison’s transmitter talked louder than the magnetos we were using and our agents began to clamor for them, and I had to work nights to get up something just as good. Fortunately for my constitution, Frank Blake came along with his transmitter. We bought it and I got a little sleep for a few days. Then our little David of a corporation sued that big Goliath, the Western Union Company, for infringing the Bell patents, and I had to devote my leisure to testifying in that suit, and making reproductions of the earliest apparatus to prove to the court that they would really talk and were not a bluff, as our opponents were asserting.
Then I put in the rest of my leisure making trips among our agents this side of the Mississippi to bring them up to date and see what the enemy were up to. I kept a diary of those trips. It reads rather funnily to-day, but I won’t go into that. It would detract from the seriousness of this discourse.
Wire Troubles
Nor must I forget an occasional diversion in the way of a sleet storm which, combining with our wires then beginning to fill the air with house top lines and pole lines along the sidewalks, would make things extremely interesting for all concerned. I don’t remember ever going out to erect new poles and run wires after such a catastrophe. I think I must have done so, but such a trifling matter naturally would ha |
54506-0 | ve made but little impression upon me.
Is it any wonder that my memory of those two years seems like a combination of the Balkan war, the rush hours on the subway and a panic on the stock market?
[Illustration: _Location of the First Telephone Switchboard in Boston—Holmes Burglar Alarm Building_]
Memories
I was always glad I was not treasurer of the company, although I filled about all the other offices during those two years. Tom Sanders was our treasurer, and a mighty good one he made. Had it not been for his pluck and optimism, we might all of us have failed to attain the prosperity that came to us later. The preparation of this paper has aroused in me many delightful memories, but with them have been mixed sad thoughts, too, for friends who have gone. Jovial Tom Sanders! How everybody loved him! No matter how discouraging the outlook was the skies cleared whenever he came into the shop. I can hear his ringing laugh now!
It was a red-letter day for me when he hired the first bookkeeper the telephone business ever had—the keen, energetic, systematic Robert W. Devonshire. You must not forget “Dev.” I never shall, for after he came I didn’t have to keep the list of telephone leases in my head any more.
Then Thomas D. Lockwood was hired to take part of my engineering load, but he developed such an extraordinary faculty for comprehending the intricacies of patents and patent law, that our lawyers captured him very soon, and kept him at work until he practically captured their job. And how proud I was when the company could afford the extravagance of a clerk for me. He is still working for the company—Mr. George W. Pierce.
I suppose I did have some fun during this time, but the only diversion that lingers in my mind is arranging telephones in a diver’s helmet for the first time, and finding that the diver could not hear when he was under water, going down myself to see what the matter was. I still feel the pathos of the moment, when, arrayed for the descent, just before I disappeared beneath the limpid waters of Boston harbor, my usually undemonstrative assistant put his arm around my inflated neck and kissed me on the glass plate.
The Coming of Theodore N. Vail
But matters soon began to straighten out—the clouds gradually cleared away. The Western Union tornado ceased to rage, and David found to his delight that he had hit Goliath squarely in the forehead with a rock labelled Patent No. 174465. Then for the first time stock in the Bell Company began to be worth something on the stock market.
[Illustration: _Wooden Hand Telephone Used Commercially in 1877. It Resembles the Present Desk Telephone Receiver_]
Something else happened about that time fully as important. The Company awoke to the fact that the Watson generator was overloaded, and that it ought to get a new dynamo. Watson could still hold up the engineering end perhaps, but we must have a business manager. President Hubbard said he knew just the man for us—a thousand horsepower steam engine wasting his abilities in the United States Railway Mail Service, and he sent me down to Washington to investigate and report.
I must have been impressed, for I telegraphed to Mr. Hubbard to hire the man if he could raise money enough to pay his salary. He did so. This was one of the best things I ever helped to do. When the new manager came to work a short time later, he said to me: “Watson, I want my desk alongside of yours for a few months until I learn the ropes.” But the balance of the conceit that previous two years had not knocked out of me vanished, when in about a fortnight, I found he knew all I had learned, and that at the end of a month I was toddling along in the rear trying to catch up, which I never did. He has still quite an important position in the business. His name is Theodore N. Vail. May his light never dim for many and many a year!
(_Editor’s Note: Mr. Vail died Apr. 16, 1920._)
The Bell System
The needs of the new business attracted other men with good ideas who entered our service, such men as Emile Berliner and George L. Anders and many others. Every agency became a center of inventive activity, each with its special group of ingenious, thinking men—every one of whom contributed something, and sometimes a great deal to the improvement of apparatus or methods. I remember particularly Ed. Gilliland, of Indianapolis, an ingenious man and excellent mechanic, who improved the generator of my magneto call bell, shortening the box and making it less funereal.
He did much also for central office switchboards.
This was the beginning of the great wave of telephonic activity, not only in electrical and mechanical invention, but also in business and operative organization, which has been increasing in its force ever since, to which men in this audience have made and are making splendid contributions. To-day that wave has become a mighty flood on which the great Bell system floats majestically as it moves ever onward to new achievements.
Turning to Other Activities
My connection with the telephone business ceased in 1881. The strenuous years I had passed through had fixed in me a habit of not sleeping nights as much as I should, and a doctor man told me I would better go abroad for a year or two for a change. There was not the least need of this, but as it coincided exactly with my desires, and as the telephone business had become, I thought, merely a matter of routine, with nothing more to do except pay dividends and fight infringers, I resigned my position as General Inspector of the Company, and went over the ocean for the first time.
When I returned to this country a year or so later, I found the telephone business had not suffered in the least from my absence, but there were so many better men doing the work that I had been doing, that I didn’t care to go into it again.
I was looking for more trouble in life and so I went into shipbuilding, where I found all I needed.
Before Mr. Bell went to England on his bridal trip, we agreed that as soon as the telephone became a matter of routine business he and I would begin experimenting on flying machines, on which subject he was full of ideas at that early time. I never carried out this agreement. Bell did some notable work on airships later, but I turned my attention to battleships.
My Greatest Pride
Such is my very inadequate story of the earliest days of the telephone so far as they made part of my life. To-day when I go into a central office or talk over a long distance wire or read the annual report of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, filled with figures up in the millions and even billions, when I think of the growth of the business, and the marvelous improvements that have been made since the day I left it, thinking there was nothing more to do but routine, I must say that all that early work I have told you about seems to shrink into a very small measure, and, proud as I always shall be, that I had the opportunity of doing some of that earliest work myself, my greatest pride is that I am one of the great army of telephone men, every one of whom has played his part in making the Bell Telephone service what it is to-day.
I thank you.
Early Chronology of the Telephone
1847, March 3—Birth of Alexander Graham Bell at Edinburgh, Scotland. 1854, January 18—Birth of Thomas A. Watson at Salem, Mass. 1870, August 1—Bell moves to America with his parents, arriving in Canada on this date, and settling at Brantford, Ontario. 1872, October 1—Permanent residence in the United States taken up by Bell at 35 West Newton Street, Boston. 1875, February 27—Written agreement between Bell, Sanders, and Hubbard forming “Bell Patent Association” to promote inventor’s work in telegraph field. June 2—Bell completes the invention of the Telephone, electrically transmitting overtones for the first time and verifying his principle of the electrical transmission of speech at 109 Court Street, Boston. June 3—First telephone instrument constructed by Watson according to Bell’s specifications. September—Bell at Brantford begins writing specifications for a telephone patent. 1876, February 14—Application for telephone patent filed with U. S. Patent Office, Washington, D. C. March 7—U. S. Patent 174,465 issued to Bell, covering fundamental principles of the Electric Speaking Telephone. March 10—First complete sentence transmitted by telephone by Bell to Watson, “Mr. Watson, come here; I want you.” Between two rooms at 5 Exeter Place, Boston. June 25—Bell exhibits his Telephone to the Judges of the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, on which he is awarded the Exhibition’s medal. August 10—Experimental one-way talk—8 miles, Brantford to Paris, Ontario. September 1—Contract with Thomas A. Watson for one-half his time—the beginning of telephone research laboratories. October 9—First experimental two-way telephone conversation between different towns—2 miles, between Boston and Cambridgeport, Mass. November 26—Conversation over railroad telegraph wires—16 miles, Boston to Salem. 1877, February 12—Bell’s first public lecture and demonstration of his new invention given before the Essex Institute in Salem, where he had lived and had done some of his experimenting. April 4—First outdoor line for regular telephone use installed—Boston to Somerville. May 17—Telephone lines first interconnected by means of an experimental switchboard at 342 Washington Street, Boston. July 9—“Bell Telephone Co., Gardiner G. Hubbard, Trustee,” the first telephone organization, formed. August 1—First stock issue—5,000 shares—dividing interest in the business between seven original stockholders: A. G. Bell, Mrs. Bell, G. G. Hubbard, Mrs. Hubbard, C. E. Hubbard, Thomas Sanders and Thomas A. Watson. August 10—First Bell telephone employee hired in Boston—Robert W. Devonshire. 1878, January 28—Opening of first commercial telephone exchange at New Haven, Conn., serving 8 lines and 21 telephones. May 22—Theodore N. Vail accepts General Managership of Bell Telephone Company. 1879, March 13—Certificate of Incorporation filed in Boston for National Bell Telephone Company for purpose of unifying telephone development throughout the country. November 10—Agreement signed by Western Union Telegraph Co. admitting validity of Bell’s basic telephone patents. 1880, December 31—47,900 Bell telephones in the United States. 1881, January 1—First telephone dividend, inaugurating a continuous regular series of payments to stockholders. January 10—Formal opening of telephone service by overhead wire between Boston and Providence—45 miles. A metallic circuit was first successfully tried out on this route by J. J. Carty. 1882, April 16—Experimental laying of underground telephone cable—5 miles, Attleboro to West Mansfield, Mass. 1884, March 27—Telephone service opened experimentally between Boston and New York by overhead wires of hard-drawn copper—235 miles. 1885, March 3—Certificate of Incorporation filed in Albany, N. Y., for the American Telephone and Telegraph Company for the purpose of effecting intercommunication “with one or more points in each and every other city, town or place in said State, and in each and every other of the United States, and in Canada and Mexico—and also by cable and other appropriate means with the rest of the known world.”
Telephone Milestones
1892 Service opened between New York and Chicago, 900 miles. 1902 First long-distance underground cable in use, 10 miles—New York to Newark. 1915 First conversation from coast to coast, 3,650 miles—Boston to San Francisco. 1921 Opening of deep sea cable, 115 miles—Key West, Fla., to Havana, Cuba. 1927 Transatlantic telephone service opened between New York and London, 3,500 miles. First public demonstration of television by wire and radio. 1929 Ship-to-shore telephone service established. 1931 Teletypewriter exchange service inaugurated. 1935 First telephone call around the world. 1937 Connections possible to 93% of world’s telephones. 1938 Direct radio telephone circuit established between San Francisco and Australia.
[Illustration: _The map shows areas served generally by the principal telephone subsidiaries of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company; also areas served by The Southern New England Telephone Company and The Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone Company, which companies are not controlled but have license contract arrangements with the American Company. Other telephone companies also operate in nearly all of these areas and have connecting arrangements with Bell System companies._]
BELL SYSTEM STATISTICS
Dec. 31, 1920 Dec. 31, 1925 Dec. 31, 1930 Dec. 31, 1935 Dec. 31, 1938
Number of Telephones[2] 8,133,759 11,909,571 15,187,296 13,573,025 15,761,095 Number of Central 5,767 6,147 6,639 6,896 6,975 Offices Miles of Pole Lines 362,481 394,529 428,212 407,454 399,368 Miles of Wire: In Underground Cable 14,207,000 27,769,000 45,116,000 47,639,000 50,783,000 In Aerial Cable 6,945,000 12,835,000 23,777,000 26,425,000 28,072,000 Open Wire 3,711,000 4,339,000 5,231,000 4,562,000 4,590,000 Total 24,863,000 44,943,000 74,124,000 78,626,000 83,445,000 Per Cent Total Wire 85.1 90.3 92.9 94.2 94.5 Mileage in Cable Average Daily Telephone Conversations:[3] Exchange 31,818,000 48,051,000 61,150,000 58,066,000 67,400,000 Toll and Long 1,307,000 2,090,000 2,884,000 2,224,000 2,497,000 Distance Total 33,125,000 50,141,000 64,034,000 60,290,000 69,897,000 Total Plant $1,373,802,000 $2,566,809,000 $4,028,836,000 $4,187,790,000 $4,489,078,000 Number of Employees[4] 228,943 292,902 318,119 241,169 257,443 Number of A.T.&T. Co. 139,448 362,179 567,694 657,465 646,882 Stockholders
Footnotes
[1]“Ahoy!” was the first telephone shout, and was used during the experiments, but “hello!” superseded it when the telephone got into practical use.
[2]Excludes private line telephones numbering 79,612 on December 31, 1938. Including telephones of about 6,500 connecting companies and more than 25,000 connecting rural lines, the total number of telephones in the United States which can be interconnected is approximately 19,885,000.
[3]For year ending December 31.
[4]The employees of the Western Electric Company, Inc., and the Bell Telephone Laboratories, Inc., numbering 34,910 on December 31, 1938, are not included.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. 1-1-40
[Illustration: 109 Court Street, Boston, Where Bell Discovered the Principle of the Speaking Telephone]
Transcriber’s Notes
—Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.
—Silently corrected a few palpable typos.
—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Birth and Babyhood of the Telephone, by Thomas A. Watson |
54452-0 | Produced by Chris Curnow, Jwala Kumar Sista, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+Transcriber's Notes+
1. Typographical errors have been silently corrected.
2. Variations of spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.
3. The text version is coded for italics and the like mark-ups i.e., a) italics are indicated thus _italic_; b) small-caps are indicated thus CAPS; c) bold text is indicated thus =strong= d) Images in the book are indicated as [Illustration] at the respective place, between paragraphs.
THE BAB BALLADS
THE BAB BALLADS
WITH WHICH ARE INCLUDED
SONGS OF A SAVOYARD
BY
W. S. GILBERT
[Illustration]
WITH 350 ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR
LONDON
MACMILLAN & CO LTD
NEW YORK. ST MARTIN'S PRESS
_This book is copyright in all countries which are signatories to the Berne Convention_
_Transferred to Macmillan and Co. Ltd._, 1904 _Sixth Edition_ 1904 _Reprinted_ 1906, 1908, 1910, 1912, 1914, 1917, 1919 1920, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1932, 1953, 1960
MACMILLAN AND COMPANY LIMITED _London Bombay Calcutta Madras Melbourne_
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED _Toronto_
ST MARTIN'S PRESS INC _New York_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
AUTHOR'S NOTE
About thirty years since, several of "The Bab Ballads" (most of which had appeared, from time to time, in the pages of _Fun_) were collected by me, and published by Messrs. George Routledge and Sons. This volume passed through several editions, and, in due course, was followed by a second series under the title of "More Bab Ballads," which achieved a popularity equal to that of its predecessor. Subsequently, excerpts were made from these two volumes, and, under the title of "Fifty Bab Ballads," had a very considerable sale; but I soon discovered that in making the selection for this volume I had discarded certain Ballads that were greater favourites with my readers than with me. Nevertheless this issue was followed by many editions, English and American, of "Bab Ballads," "More Bab Ballads," and "Fifty Bab Ballads," to the no little bewilderment of such of the public as had been good enough to concern themselves with my verses. So it became desirable (for our own private ends) that this confusion should be definitely cleared up; and thus it came to pass that a reissue of the two earlier collections, in one volume, was decided upon.
Some seven years since, I collected the most popular of the songs and ballads which I had written for the series of light operas with which my name is associated, and published them under the title of "Songs of a Savoyard." It recently occurred to me that these songs had so much in common with "The Bab Ballads" that it might be advisable to weld the two books into one. This is, briefly, the history of the present volume.
I have always felt that many of the original illustrations to "The Bab Ballads" erred gravely in the direction of unnecessary extravagance. This defect I have endeavoured to correct through the medium of the two hundred new drawings which I have designed for this volume. I am afraid I cannot claim for them any other recommendation,
W. S. GILBERT.
GRIM'S DYKE, HARROW WEALD, _4th December 1897_.
CONTENTS
PAGE
CAPTAIN REECE 1
THE DARNED MOUNSEER 6
THE RIVAL CURATES 8
THE ENGLISHMAN 13
ONLY A DANCING GIRL 14
THE DISAGREEABLE MAN 16
GENERAL JOHN 18
THE COMING BY-AND-BY 22
TO A LITTLE MAID 24
THE HIGHLY RESPECTABLE GONDOLIER 26
JOHN AND FREDDY 28
THE FAIRY QUEEN'S SONG 32
SIR GUY THE CRUSADER 34
IS LIFE A BOON? 38
HAUNTED 39
THE MODERN MAJOR-GENERAL 42
THE BISHOP AND THE 'BUSMAN 44
THE HEAVY DRAGOON 49
THE TROUBADOUR 51
PROPER PRIDE 56
FERDINANDO AND ELVIRA; OR, THE GENTLE PIEMAN 58
THE POLICEMAN'S LOT 63
LORENZO DE LARDY 64
THE BAFFLED GRUMBLER 69
DISILLUSIONED 71
THE HOUSE OF PEERS 74
BABETTE'S LOVE 76
A MERRY MADRIGAL 81
TO MY BRIDE 82
THE DUKE AND THE DUCHESS 84
THE FOLLY OF BROWN 87
EHEU FUGACES--! 92
SIR MACKLIN 94
THEY'LL NONE OF 'EM BE MISSED 99
THE YARN OF THE "NANCY BELL" 101
GIRL GRADUATES 106
THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO 108
BRAID THE RAVEN HAIR 113
THE PRECOCIOUS BABY 114
THE WORKING MONARCH 119
TO PHŒBE 122
THE APE AND THE LADY 123
BAINES CAREW, GENTLEMAN 125
ONLY ROSES 130
THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM HANCE 131
THE ROVER'S APOLOGY 136
A DISCONTENTED SUGAR BROKER 138
AN APPEAL 143
THE PANTOMIME "SUPER" TO HIS MASK 144
THE REWARD OF MERIT 146
THE GHOST, THE GALLANT, THE GAEL, AND THE GOBLIN 148
THE MAGNET AND THE CHURN 153
KING BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO 155
THE FAMILY FOOL 161
THE PERIWINKLE GIRL 164
SANS SOUCI 169
THOMSON GREEN AND HARRIET HALE 171
A RECIPE 175
BOB POLTER 176
THE MERRYMAN AND HIS MAID 182
ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN 185
THE SUSCEPTIBLE CHANCELLOR 191
PETER THE WAG 193
WHEN A MERRY MAIDEN MARRIES 198
THE THREE KINGS OF CHICKERABOO 200
THE BRITISH TAR 204
GENTLE ALICE BROWN 205
A MAN WHO WOULD WOO A FAIR MAID 209
THE SORCERER'S SONG 211
THE BUMBOAT WOMAN'S STORY 214
THE FICKLE BREEZE 219
THE TWO OGRES 221
THE FIRST LORD'S SONG 227
LITTLE OLIVER 229
MISTER WILLIAM 235
WOULD YOU KNOW? 240
PASHA BAILEY BEN 242
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FLARE 248
SPECULATION 254
AH ME! 255
LOST MR. BLAKE 256
THE DUKE OF PLAZA-TORO 262
THE BABY'S VENGEANCE 265
THE ÆSTHETE 271
THE CAPTAIN AND THE MERMAIDS 273
SAID I TO MYSELF, SAID I 278
ANNIE PROTHEROE 280
SORRY HER LOT 286
AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS 287
THE CONTEMPLATIVE SENTRY 292
GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D. 294
THE PHILOSOPHIC PILL 299
THE KING OF CANOODLE-DUM 301
BLUE BLOOD 307
FIRST LOVE 309
THE JUDGE'S SONG 315
BRAVE ALUM BEY 317
WHEN I FIRST PUT THIS UNIFORM ON 322
SIR BARNABY BAMPTON BOO 324
SOLATIUM 329
THE MODEST COUPLE 330
A NIGHTMARE 335
THE MARTINET 338
DON'T FORGET! 345
THE SAILOR BOY TO HIS LASS 348
THE SUICIDE'S GRAVE 354
THE REVEREND SIMON MAGUS 356
HE AND SHE 361
DAMON _V._ PYTHIAS 363
THE MIGHTY MUST 367
MY DREAM 368
A MIRAGE 374
THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO AGAIN 376
THE GHOSTS' HIGH NOON 381
A WORM WILL TURN 383
THE HUMANE MIKADO 388
THE HAUGHTY ACTOR 391
WILLOW WALY! 397
THE TWO MAJORS 399
LIFE IS LOVELY ALL THE YEAR 403
EMILY, JOHN, JAMES, AND I 405
THE USHER'S CHARGE 411
THE PERILS OF INVISIBILITY 413
THE GREAT OAK TREE 418
OLD PAUL AND OLD TIM 420
KING GOODHEART 424
THE MYSTIC SELVAGEE 426
SLEEP ON! 431
THE CUNNING WOMAN 433
THE LOVE-SICK BOY 439
PHRENOLOGY 440
POETRY EVERYWHERE 445
THE FAIRY CURATE 446
HE LOVES! 453
THE WAY OF WOOING 454
TRUE DIFFIDENCE 458
HONGREE AND MAHRY 460
THE TANGLED SKEIN 466
THE REVEREND MICAH SOWLS 467
MY LADY 471
ONE AGAINST THE WORLD 473
THE FORCE OF ARGUMENT 475
PUT A PENNY IN THE SLOT 480
GOOD LITTLE GIRLS 482
THE PHANTOM CURATE 484
LIFE 487
LIMITED LIABILITY 490
THE SENSATION CAPTAIN 492
ANGLICISED UTOPIA 497
AN ENGLISH GIRL 499
TEMPORA MUTANTUR 501
A MANAGER'S PERPLEXITIES 504
OUT OF SORTS 506
AT A PANTOMIME 508
HOW IT'S DONE 512
A CLASSICAL REVIVAL 515
THE STORY OF PRINCE AGIB 518
THE PRACTICAL JOKER 523
THE NATIONAL ANTHEM 526
JOE GOLIGHTLY; OR, THE FIRST LORD'S DAUGHTER 528
HER TERMS 534
THE INDEPENDENT BEE 536
TO THE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE 539
ETIQUETTE 541
THE DISCONCERTED TENOR 547
BEN ALLAH ACHMET; OR, THE FATAL TUM 549
THE PLAYED-OUT HUMORIST 553
INDEX TO FIRST LINES 555
ALPHABETICAL INDEX TO TITLES 561
THE BAB BALLADS
[Illustration]
CAPTAIN REECE
Of all the ships upon the blue No ship contained a better crew Than that of worthy CAPTAIN REECE, Commanding of _The Mantelpiece_.
He was adored by all his men, For worthy CAPTAIN REECE, R.N., Did all that lay within him to Promote the comfort of his crew.
If ever they were dull or sad, Their captain danced to them like mad, Or told, to make the time pass by. Droll legends of his infancy.
[Illustration]
A feather bed had every man, Warm slippers and hot-water can, Brown Windsor from the captain's store, A valet, too, to every four.
Did they with thirst in summer burn? Lo, seltzogenes at every turn, And on all very sultry days Cream ices handed round on trays.
Then currant wine and ginger pops Stood handily on all the "tops"; And, also, with amusement rife, A "Zoetrope, or Wheel of Life."
New volumes came across the sea From MISTER MUDIE'S libraree; _The Times_ and _Saturday Review_ Beguiled the leisure of the crew.
Kind-hearted CAPTAIN REECE, R.N., Was quite devoted to his men; In point of fact, good CAPTAIN REECE Beatified _The Mantelpiece_.
One summer eve, at half-past ten, He said (addressing all his men): "Come, tell me, please, what I can do To please and gratify my crew?
"By any reasonable plan I'll make you happy, if I can; My own convenience count as _nil_; It is my duty, and I will."
Then up and answered WILLIAM LEE (The kindly captain's coxswain he, A nervous, shy, low-spoken man), He cleared his throat and thus began:
"You have a daughter, CAPTAIN REECE, Ten female cousins and a niece, A ma, if what I'm told is true, Six sisters, and an aunt or two.
"Now, somehow, sir, it seems to me, More friendly-like we all should be If you united of 'em to Unmarried members of the crew.
"If you'd ameliorate our life, Let each select from them a wife; And as for nervous me, old pal, Give me your own enchanting gal!"
Good CAPTAIN REECE, that worthy man, Debated on his coxswain's plan: "I quite agree," he said, "O BILL; It is my duty, and I will.
"My daughter, that enchanting gurl, Has just been promised to an earl, And all my other familee, To peers of various degree.
"But what are dukes and viscounts to The happiness of all my crew? The word I gave you I'll fulfil; It is my duty, and I will.
"As you desire it shall befall, I'll settle thousands on you all, And I shall be, despite my hoard, The only bachelor on board."
The boatswain of _The Mantelpiece_, He blushed and spoke to CAPTAIN REECE. "I beg your honour's leave," he said, "If you would wish to go and wed,
"I have a widowed mother who Would be the very thing for you-- She long has loved you from afar, She washes for you, CAPTAIN R."
The captain saw the dame that day-- Addressed her in his playful way-- "And did it want a wedding ring? It was a tempting ickle sing!
"Well, well, the chaplain I will seek, We'll all be married this day week-- At yonder church upon the hill; It is my duty, and I will!"
The sisters, cousins, aunts, and niece, And widowed ma of CAPTAIN REECE, Attended there as they were bid; It was their duty, and they did.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE DARNED MOUNSEER
I shipped, d'ye see, in a Revenue sloop, And, off Cape Finisteere, A merchantman we see, A Frenchman, going free, So we made for the bold Mounseer, D'ye see? We made for the bold Mounseer! But she proved to be a Frigate--and she up with her ports, And fires with a thirty-two! It come uncommon near, But we answered with a cheer, Which paralysed the Parley-voo, D'ye see? Which paralysed the Parley-voo!
Then our Captain he up and he says, says he, "That chap we need not fear,-- We can take her, if we like, She is sartin for to strike, For she's only a darned Mounseer, D'ye see? She's only a darned Mounseer! But to fight a French fal-lal--it's like hittin' of a gal-- It's a lubberly thing for to do; For we, with all our faults, Why, we're sturdy British salts, While she's but a Parley-voo, D'ye see? A miserable Parley-voo!"
So we up with our helm, and we scuds before the breeze, As we gives a compassionating cheer; Froggee answers with a shout As he sees us go about, Which was grateful of the poor Mounseer, D'ye see? Which was grateful of the poor Mounseer! And I'll wager in their joy they kissed each other's cheek (Which is what them furriners do), And they blessed their lucky stars We were hardy British tars Who had pity on a poor Parley-voo, D'ye see? Who had pity on a poor Parley-voo!
[Illustration]
THE RIVAL CURATES
List while the poet trolls Of MR. CLAYTON HOOPER, Who had a cure of souls At Spiffton-extra-Sooper.
He lived on curds and whey, And daily sang their praises, And then he'd go and play With buttercups and daisies.
Wild croquet HOOPER banned, And all the sports of Mammon, He warred with cribbage, and He exorcised backgammon.
His helmet was a glance That spoke of holy gladness; A saintly smile his lance, His shield a tear of sadness.
His Vicar smiled to see This armour on him buckled; With pardonable glee He blessed himself and chuckled:
"In mildness to abound My curate's sole design is, In all the country round There's none so mild as mine is!"
And HOOPER, disinclined His trumpet to be blowing. Yet didn't think you'd find A milder curate going.
A friend arrived one day At Spiffton-extra-Sooper, And in this shameful way He spoke to MR. HOOPER:
"You think your famous name For mildness can't be shaken. That none can blot your fame-- But, HOOPER, you're mistaken!
"Your mind is not as blank As that of HOPLEY PORTER, Who holds a curate's rank At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.
"_He_ plays the airy flute, And looks depressed and blighted, Doves round about him 'toot,' And lambkins dance delighted.
[Illustration]
"_He_ labours more than you At worsted work, and frames it; In old maids' albums, too, Sticks seaweed--yes, and names it!"
The tempter said his say, Which pierced him like a needle-- He summoned straight away His sexton and his beadle.
These men were men who could Hold liberal opinions: On Sundays they were good-- On week-days they were minions.
"To HOPLEY PORTER go, Your fare I will afford you-- Deal him a deadly blow, And blessings shall reward you.
"But stay--I do not like Undue assassination, And so, before you strike, Make this communication:
[Illustration]
"I'll give him this one chance-- If he'll more gaily bear him, Play croquet, smoke, and dance, I willingly will spare him."
They went, those minions true, To Assesmilk-cum-Worter, And told their errand to The REVEREND HOPLEY PORTER.
"What?" said that reverend gent, "Dance through my hours of leisure? Smoke?--bathe myself with scent?-- Play croquet? Oh, with pleasure!
"Wear all my hair in curl? Stand at my door, and wink--so-- At every passing girl? My brothers, I should think so!
[Illustration]
"For years I've longed for some Excuse for this revulsion: Now that excuse has come-- I do it on compulsion!!!"
He smoked and winked away-- This REVEREND HOPLEY PORTER-- The deuce there was to pay At Assesmilk-cum-Worter.
And HOOPER holds his ground, In mildness daily growing-- They think him, all around, The mildest curate going.
[Illustration]
THE ENGLISHMAN
He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman! For he might have been a Roosian, A French, or Turk, or Proosian, Or perhaps Itali-an! But in spite of all temptations, To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman! Hurrah! For the true-born Englishman!
[Illustration]
ONLY A DANCING GIRL
Only a dancing girl, With an unromantic style, With borrowed colour and curl, With fixed mechanical smile, With many a hackneyed wile, With ungrammatical lips, And corns that mar her trips!
Hung from the "flies" in air, She acts a palpable lie; She's as little a fairy there As unpoetical I! I hear you asking, Why-- Why in the world I sing This tawdry, tinselled thing?
No airy fairy she, As she hangs in arsenic green, From a highly impossible tree, In a highly impossible scene (Herself not over clean). For fays don't suffer, I'm told, From bunions, coughs, or cold.
And stately dames that bring Their daughters there to see, Pronounce the "dancing thing" No better than she should be. With her skirt at her shameful knee, And her painted, tainted phiz: Ah, matron, which of us is?
(And, in sooth, it oft occurs That while these matrons sigh, Their dresses are lower than hers, And sometimes half as high; And their hair is hair they buy. And they use their glasses, too, In a way she'd blush to do.)
But change her gold and green For a coarse merino gown, And see her upon the scene Of her home, when coaxing down Her drunken father's frown, In his squalid cheerless den: She's a fairy truly, then!
[Illustration]
THE DISAGREEABLE MAN
If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am: I'm a genuine philanthropist--all other kinds are sham. Each little fault of temper and each social defect In my erring fellow-creatures, I endeavour to correct. To all their little weaknesses I open people's eyes, And little plans to snub the self-sufficient I devise; I love my fellow-creatures--I do all the good I can-- Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! And I can't think why!
To compliments inflated I've a withering reply, And vanity I always do my best to mortify; A charitable action I can skilfully dissect; And interested motives I'm delighted to detect. I know everybody's income and what everybody earns, And I carefully compare it with the income-tax returns; But to benefit humanity however much I plan, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! And I can't think why!
I'm sure I'm no ascetic; I'm as pleasant as can be; You'll always find me ready with a crushing repartee; I've an irritating chuckle, I've a celebrated sneer, I've an entertaining snigger, I've a fascinating leer; To everybody's prejudice I know a thing or two; I can tell a woman's age in half a minute--and I do-- But although I try to make myself as pleasant as I can. Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man! And I can't think why!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
GENERAL JOHN
The bravest names for fire and flames And all that mortal durst, Were GENERAL JOHN and PRIVATE JAMES, Of the Sixty-seventy-first.
GENERAL JOHN was a soldier tried, A chief of warlike dons; A haughty stride and a withering pride Were MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN'S.
A sneer would play on his martial phiz, Superior birth to show; "Pish!" was a favourite word of his, And he often said "Ho! ho!"
FULL-PRIVATE JAMES described might be As a man of a mournful mind; No characteristic trait had he Of any distinctive kind.
From the ranks, one day, cried PRIVATE JAMES, "Oh! MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN, I've doubts of our respective names My mournful mind upon.
[Illustration]
"A glimmering thought occurs to me (Its source I can't unearth), But I've a kind of a notion we Were cruelly changed at birth.
"I've a strange idea that each other's names We've each of us here got on. Such things have been," said PRIVATE JAMES. "They have!" sneered GENERAL JOHN.
"My GENERAL JOHN, I swear upon My oath I think 'tis so----" "Pish!" proudly sneered his GENERAL JOHN And he also said "Ho! ho!"
"My GENERAL JOHN! my GENERAL JOHN! My GENERAL JOHN!" quoth he, "This aristocratical sneer upon Your face I blush to see!
"No truly great or generous cove Deserving of them names Would sneer at a fixed idea that's drove In the mind of a PRIVATE JAMES!"
[Illustration]
Said GENERAL JOHN, "Upon your claims No need your breath to waste; If this is a joke, FULL-PRIVATE JAMES, It's a joke of doubtful taste.
"But, being a man of doubtless worth, If you feel certain quite That we were probably changed at birth, I'll venture to say you're right."
So GENERAL JOHN as PRIVATE JAMES Fell in, parade upon; And PRIVATE JAMES, by change of names, Was MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN.
[Illustration]
THE COMING BY-AND-BY
Sad is that woman's lot who, year by year, Sees, one by one, her beauties disappear; As Time, grown weary of her heart-drawn sighs, Impatiently begins to "dim her eyes "!-- Herself compelled, in life's uncertain gloamings, To wreathe her wrinkled brow with well-saved "combings"-- Reduced, with rouge, lipsalve, and pearly grey, To "make up" for lost time, as best she may!
Silvered is the raven hair, Spreading is the parting straight, Mottled the complexion fair, Halting is the youthful gait,
Hollow is the laughter free, Spectacled the limpid eye, Little will be left of me, In the coming by-and-by!
Fading is the taper waist-- Shapeless grows the shapely limb, And although securely laced, Spreading is the figure trim! Stouter than I used to be, Still more corpulent grow I-- There will be too much of me In the coming by-and-by!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
TO A LITTLE MAID
BY A POLICEMAN
Come with me, little maid! Nay, shrink not, thus afraid-- I'll harm thee not! Fly not, my love, from me-- I have a home for thee-- A fairy grot, Where mortal eye Can rarely pry, There shall thy dwelling be!
List to me, while I tell The pleasures of that cell, Oh, little maid! What though its couch be rude-- Homely the only food Within its shade? No thought of care Can enter there, No vulgar swain intrude!
Come with me, little maid, Come to the rocky shade I love to sing; Live with us, maiden rare-- Come, for we "want" thee there, Thou elfin thing, To work thy spell, In some cool cell In stately Pentonville!
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THE HIGHLY RESPECTABLE GONDOLIER
I stole the Prince, and I brought him here, And left him, gaily prattling With a highly respectable Gondolier, Who promised the Royal babe to rear, And teach him the trade of a timoneer With his own beloved bratling.
Both of the babes were strong and stout, And, considering all things, clever. Of that there is no manner of doubt-- No probable, possible shadow of doubt-- No possible doubt whatever.
Time sped, and when at the end of a year I sought that infant cherished, That highly respectable Gondolier
Was lying a corpse on his humble bier-- I dropped a Grand Inquisitor's tear-- That Gondolier had perished!
A taste for drink, combined with gout, Had doubled him up for ever. Of _that_ there is no manner of doubt-- No probable, possible shadow of doubt-- No possible doubt whatever.
But owing, I'm much disposed to fear, To his terrible taste for tippling, That highly respectable Gondolier Could never declare with a mind sincere Which of the two was his offspring dear, And which the Royal stripling!
Which was which he could never make out, Despite his best endeavour. Of _that_ there is no manner of doubt-- No probable, possible shadow of doubt-- No possible doubt whatever.
The children followed his old career-- (This statement can't be parried) Of a highly respectable Gondolier: Well, one of the two (who will soon be here)-- But _which_ of the two is not quite clear-- Is the Royal Prince you married!
Search in and out and round about And you'll discover never A tale so free from every doubt-- All probable, possible shadow of doubt-- All possible doubt whatever!
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JOHN AND FREDDY
JOHN courted lovely MARY ANN, So likewise did his brother, FREDDY. FRED was a very soft young man, While JOHN, though quick, was most unsteady
FRED was a graceful kind of youth, But JOHN was very much the strongest. "Oh, dance away," said she, "in truth, I'll marry him who dances longest."
JOHN tries the maiden's taste to strike With gay, grotesque, outrageous dresses, And dances comically, like CLODOCHE AND CO., at the Princess's.
But FREDDY tries another style, He knows some graceful steps and does 'em-- A breathing Poem--Woman's smile-- A man all poesy and buzzem.
Now FREDDY'S operatic _pas_-- Now JOHNNY'S hornpipe seems entrapping: Now FREDDY'S graceful _entrechats_-- Now JOHNNY'S skilful "cellar-flapping."
For many hours--for many days-- For many weeks performed each brother, For each was active in his ways, And neither would give in to t'other.
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After a month of this, they say (The maid was getting bored and moody) A wandering curate passed that way And talked a lot of goody-goody.
"Oh my," said he, with solemn frown, "I tremble for each dancing _frater_, Like unregenerated clown And harlequin at some the-ayter."
He showed that men, in dancing, do Both impiously and absurdly, And proved his proposition true, With Firstly, Secondly, and Thirdly.
For months both JOHN and FREDDY danced, The curate's protests little heeding; For months the curate's words enhanced The sinfulness of their proceeding
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At length they bowed to Nature's rule-- Their steps grew feeble and unsteady, Till FREDDY fainted on a stool, And JOHNNY on the top of FREDDY.
"Decide!" quoth they, "let him be named, Who henceforth as his wife may rank you." "I've changed my views," the maiden said, "I only marry curates, thank you!"
Says FREDDY, "Here is goings on! To bust myself with rage I'm ready." "I'll be a curate!" whispers JOHN-- "And I," exclaimed poetic FREDDY.
But while they read for it, these chaps, The curate booked the maiden bonny-- And when she's buried him, perhaps, She'll marry FREDERICK or JOHNNY.
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THE FAIRY QUEEN'S SONG
Oh, foolish fay, Think you because Man's brave array My bosom thaws I'd disobey Our fairy laws? Because I fly In realms above, In tendency To fall in love Resemble I The amorous dove?
Oh, amorous dove! Type of Ovidius Naso! This heart of mine Is soft as thine, Although I dare not say so!
On fire that glows With heat intense I turn the hose Of Common Sense, And out it goes At small expense! We must maintain Our fairy law; That is the main On which to draw-- In that we gain A Captain Shaw.
Oh, Captain Shaw! Type of true love kept under! Could thy Brigade With cold cascade Quench my great love, I wonder!
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SIR GUY THE CRUSADER
SIR GUY was a doughty crusader, A muscular knight, Ever ready to fight, A very determined invader, And DICKEY DE LION'S delight.
LENORE was a Saracen maiden, Brunette, statuesque, The reverse of grotesque, Her pa was a bagman from Aden, Her mother she played in burlesque.
A _coryphée_, pretty and loyal, In amber and red The ballet she led; Her mother performed at the Royal, LENORE at the Saracen's Head.
Of face and of figure majestic, She dazzled the cits-- Ecstaticised pits;-- Her troubles were only domestic, But drove her half out of her wits.
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Her father incessantly lashed her, On water and bread She was grudgingly fed; Whenever her father he thrashed her Her mother sat down on her head.
GUY saw her, and loved her, with reason, For beauty so bright Sent him mad with delight; He purchased a stall for the season, And sat in it every night.
His views were exceedingly proper, He wanted to wed, So he called at her shed And saw her progenitor whop her-- Her mother sit down on her head.
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"So pretty," said he, "and so trusting! You brute of a dad, You unprincipled cad, Your conduct is really disgusting, Come, come, now admit it's too bad!
"You're a turbaned old Turk, and malignant-- Your daughter LENORE I intensely adore, And I cannot help feeling indignant. A fact that I hinted before;
"To see a fond father employing A deuce of a knout For to bang her about, To a sensitive lover's annoying." Said the bagman, "Crusader, get out."
Says GUY, "Shall a warrior laden With a big spiky knob, Sit in peace on his cob While a beautiful Saracen maiden Is whipped by a Saracen snob?
"To London I'll go from my charmer." Which he did, with his loot (Seven hats and a flute), And was nabbed for his Sydenham armour At MR. BEN-SAMUEL'S suit.
SIR GUY he was lodged in the Compter, Her pa, in a rage, Died (don't know his age), His daughter, she married the prompter, Grew bulky and quitted the stage.
IS LIFE A BOON
Is life a boon? If so, it must befall That Death, whene'er he call, Must call too soon. Though fourscore years he give, Yet one would pray to live Another moon! What kind of plaint have I, Who perish in July? I might have had to die Perchance in June!
Is life a thorn? Then count it not a whit! Man is well done with it: Soon as he's born He should all means essay To put the plague away; And I, war-worn, Poor captured fugitive, My life most gladly give-- I might have had to live Another morn!
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HAUNTED
Haunted? Ay, in a social way, By a body of ghosts in a dread array: But no conventional spectres they-- Appalling, grim, and tricky; I quail at mine as I'd never quail At a fine traditional spectre pale, With a turnip head and a ghostly wail, And a splash of blood on the dicky!
Mine are horrible social ghosts, Speeches and women and guests and hosts, Weddings and morning calls and toasts, In every bad variety: Ghosts that hover about the grave Of all that's manly, free, and brave: You'll find their names on the architrave Of that charnel-house, Society.
Black Monday--black as its schoolroom ink-- With its dismal boys that snivel and think Of nauseous messes to eat and drink, And a frozen tank to wash in. That was the first that brought me grief And made me weep, till I sought relief In an emblematical handkerchief, To choke such baby bosh in.
First and worst in the grim array-- Ghosts of ghosts that have gone their way, Which I wouldn't revive for a single day For all the wealth of PLUTUS-- Are the horrible ghosts that schooldays scared If the classical ghost that BRUTUS dared Was the ghost of his "Cæsar" unprepared, I'm sure I pity BRUTUS.
I pass to critical seventeen: The ghost of that terrible wedding scene, When an elderly colonel stole my queen, And woke my dream of heaven: No school-girl decked in her nursery curls Was my gushing innocent queen of pearls; If she wasn't a girl of a thousand girls. She was one of forty-seven!
I see the ghost of my first cigar-- Of the thence-arising family jar-- Of my maiden brief (I was at the Bar), When I called the judge "Your wushup"! Of reckless days and reckless nights, With wrenched-off knockers, extinguished lights, Unholy songs, and tipsy fights, Which I strove in vain to hush up.
Ghosts of fraudulent joint-stock banks, Ghosts of copy, "declined with thanks," Of novels returned in endless ranks, And thousands more, I suffer. The only line to fitly grace My humble tomb, when I've run my race, Is "Reader, this is the resting-place Of an unsuccessful duffer."
I've fought them all, these ghosts of mine, But the weapons I've used are sighs and brine, And now that I'm nearly forty-nine, Old age is my only bogy; For my hair is thinning away at the crown, And the silver fights with the worn-out brown; And a general verdict sets me down As an irreclaimable fogy.
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THE MODERN MAJOR-GENERAL
I am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral; I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical, From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical; About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, With interesting facts about the square of the hypotenuse. I'm very good at integral and differential calculus, I know the scientific names of beings animalculous. In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.
I know our mythic history--KING ARTHUR'S and SIR CARADOC'S, I answer hard acrostics, I've a pretty taste for paradox; I quote in elegiacs all the crimes of HELIOGABALUS, In conics I can floor peculiarities parabolous. I tell undoubted RAPHAELS from GERARD DOWS and ZOFFANIES, I know the croaking chorus from the "Frogs" of ARISTOPHANES; Then I can hum a fugue, of which I've heard the music's din afore, And whistle all the airs from that confounded nonsense "Pinafore." Then I can write a washing-bill in Babylonic cuneiform, And tell you every detail of CARACTACUS'S uniform. In short, in matters vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral.
In fact, when I know what is meant by "mamelon" and "ravelin," When I can tell at sight a Chassepot rifle from a javelin, When such affairs as _sorties_ and surprises I'm more wary at, And when I know precisely what is meant by Commissariat, When I have learnt what progress has been made in modern gunnery, When I know more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery, In short, when I've a smattering of elementary strategy, You'll say a better Major-Gener_al_ has never _sat_ a gee-- For my military knowledge, though I'm plucky and adventury, Has only been brought down to the beginning of the century. But still in learning vegetable, animal, and mineral, I am the very model of a modern Major-Gineral!
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THE BISHOP AND THE 'BUSMAN
It was a Bishop bold, And London was his see, He was short and stout and round about And zealous as could be.
It also was a Jew, Who drove a Putney 'bus-- For flesh of swine however fine He did not care a cuss.
His name was HASH BAZ BEN, And JEDEDIAH too, And SOLOMON and ZABULON--- This 'bus-directing Jew.
The Bishop said, said he, "I'll see what I can do To Christianise and make you wise, You poor benighted Jew."
So every blessed day That 'bus he rode outside, From Fulham town, both up and down, And loudly thus he cried:
"His name is HASH BAZ BEN, And JEDEDIAH too, And SOLOMON and ZABULON-- This 'bus-directing Jew."
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At first the 'busman smiled, And rather liked the fun-- He merely smiled, that Hebrew child, And said, "Eccentric one!"
And gay young dogs would wait To see the 'bus go by (These gay young dogs, in striking togs), To hear the Bishop cry:
"Observe his grisly beard, His race it clearly shows, He sticks no fork in ham or pork-- Observe, my friends, his nose.
"His name is HASH BAZ BEN, And JEDEDIAH too, And SOLOMON and ZABULON-- This 'bus-directing Jew."
But though at first amused, Yet after seven years, This Hebrew child got rather riled, And melted into tears.
He really almost feared To leave his poor abode, His nose, and name, and beard became A byword on that road.
At length he swore an oath, The reason he would know-- "I'll call and see why ever he Does persecute me so!"
The good old Bishop sat On his ancestral chair, The 'busman came, sent up his name, And laid his grievance bare.
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"Benighted Jew," he said (The good old Bishop did), "Be Christian, you, instead of Jew-- Become a Christian kid!
"I'll ne'er annoy you more." "Indeed?" replied the Jew; "Shall I be freed?" "You will, indeed!" Then "Done!" said he, "with you!"
The organ which, in man, Between the eyebrows grows, Fell from his face, and in its place He found a Christian nose.
His tangled Hebrew beard, Which to his waist came down. Was now a pair of whiskers fair-- His name ADOLPHUS BROWN!
He wedded in a year That prelate's daughter JANE, He's grown quite fair--has auburn hair-- His wife is far from plain.
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THE HEAVY DRAGOON
If you want a receipt for that popular mystery, Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon, Take all the remarkable people in history, Rattle them off to a popular tune! The pluck of LORD NELSON on board of the _Victory_-- Genius of BISMARCK devising a plan; The humour of FIELDING (which sounds contradictory)-- Coolness of PAGET about to trepan-- The grace of MOZART, that unparalleled musico-- Wit of MACAULAY, who wrote of QUEEN ANNE-- The pathos of PADDY, as rendered by BOUCICAULT-- Style of the BISHOP OF SODOR AND MAN-- The dash of a D'ORSAY, divested of quackery-- Narrative powers of DICKENS and THACKERAY--
VICTOR EMMANUEL--peak-haunting PEVERIL-- THOMAS AQUINAS, and DOCTOR SACHEVERELL-- TUPPER and TENNYSON--DANIEL DEFOE-- ANTHONY TROLLOPE and MISTER GUIZOT! Take of these elements all that is fusible, Melt 'em all down in a pipkin or crucible, Set 'em to simmer and take off the scum, And a Heavy Dragoon is the residuum!
If you want a receipt for this soldierlike paragon, Get at the wealth of the CZAR (if you can)-- The family pride of a Spaniard from Arragon-- Force of MEPHISTO pronouncing a ban-- A smack of LORD WATERFORD, reckless and rollicky-- Swagger of RODERICK, heading his clan-- The keen penetration of PADDINGTON POLLAKY-- Grace of an Odalisque on a divan-- The genius strategic of CÆSAR or HANNIBAL-- Skill of LORD WOLSELEY in thrashing a cannibal-- Flavour of HAMLET--the STRANGER, a touch of him-- Little of MANFRED (but not very much of him)-- Beadle of Burlington--RICHARDSON'S show-- MR. MICAWBER and MADAME TUSSAUD! Take of these elements all that is fusible-- Melt 'em all down in a pipkin or crucible-- Set 'em to simmer and take off the scum, And a Heavy Dragoon is the residuum!
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THE TROUBADOUR
A Troubadour he played Without a castle wall, Within, a hapless maid Responded to his call.
"Oh, willow, woe is me! Alack and well-a-day! If I were only free I'd hie me far away!"
Unknown her face and name, But this he knew right well, The maiden's wailing came From out a dungeon cell.
A hapless woman lay Within that prison grim-- That fact, I've heard him say, Was quite enough for him.
"I will not sit or lie, Or eat or drink, I vow, Till thou art free as I, Or I as pent as thou!"
Her tears then ceased to flow, Her wails no longer rang, And tuneful in her woe The prisoned maiden sang:
"Oh, stranger, as you play I recognise your touch; And all that I can say, Is thank you very much!"
He seized his clarion straight, And blew thereat, until A warder oped the gate, "Oh, what might be your will?"
"I've come, sir knave, to see The master of these halls: A maid unwillingly Lies prisoned in their walls."
With barely stifled sigh That porter drooped his head, With teardrops in his eye, "A many, sir," he said.
He stayed to hear no more, But pushed that porter by, And shortly stood before SIR HUGH DE PECKHAM RYE.
SIR HUGH he darkly frowned, "What would you, sir, with me?" The troubadour he downed Upon his bended knee.
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"I've come, DE PECKHAM RYE, To do a Christian task, You ask me what would I? It is not much I ask.
"Release these maidens, sir, Whom you dominion o'er-- Particularly her Upon the second floor!
"And if you don't, my lord"-- He here stood bolt upright. And tapped a tailor's sword-- "Come out at once and fight!"
SIR HUGH he called--and ran The warden from the gate, "Go, show this gentleman The maid in forty-eight."
By many a cell they passed And stopped at length before A portal, bolted fast: The man unlocked the door.
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He called inside the gate With coarse and brutal shout, "Come, step it, forty-eight!" And forty-eight stepped out.
"They gets it pretty hot, The maidens wot we cotch-- Two years this lady's got For collaring a wotch."
"Oh, ah!--indeed--I see," The troubadour exclaimed-- "If I may make so free, How is this castle named?"
The warden's eyelids fill, And, sighing, he replied, "Of gloomy Pentonville This is the Female Side!"
The minstrel did not wait The warden stout to thank, But recollected straight He'd business at the Bank.
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PROPER PRIDE
The Sun, whose rays Are all ablaze With ever-living glory, Will not deny His majesty-- He scorns to tell a story: He won't exclaim, "I blush for shame, So kindly be indulgent," But, fierce and bold, In fiery gold, He glories all effulgent!
I mean to rule the earth, As he the sky-- We really know our worth, The Sun and I!
Observe his flame, That placid dame, The Moon's Celestial Highness; There's not a trace Upon her face Of diffidence or shyness: She borrows light That, through the night, Mankind may all acclaim her! And, truth to tell, She lights up well, So I, for one, don't blame her!
Ah, pray make no mistake, We are not shy; We're very wide awake, The Moon and I!
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FERDINANDO AND ELVIRA OR, THE GENTLE PIEMAN
PART I
At a pleasant evening party I had taken down to supper One whom I will call ELVIRA, and we talked of love and TUPPER,
MR. TUPPER and the poets, very lightly with them dealing, For I've always been distinguished for a strong poetic feeling.
Then we let off paper crackers, each of which contained a motto, And she listened while I read them, till her mother told her not to.
Then she whispered, "To the ball-room we had better, dear, be walking; If we stop down here much longer, really people will be talking."
There were noblemen in coronets, and military cousins, There were captains by the hundred, there were baronets by dozens.
Yet she heeded not their offers, but dismissed them with a blessing; Then she let down all her back hair which had taken long in dressing.
Then she had convulsive sobbings in her agitated throttle, Then she wiped her pretty eyes and smelt her pretty smelling-bottle.
So I whispered, "Dear ELVIRA, say--what can the matter be with you? Does anything you've eaten, darling POPSY, disagree with you?"
But spite of all I said, her sobs grew more and more distressing, And she tore her pretty back hair, which had taken long in dressing.
Then she gazed upon the carpet, at the ceiling then above me, And she whispered, "FERDINANDO, do you really, _really_ love me?"
"Love you?" said I, then I sighed, and then I gazed upon her sweetly-- For I think I do this sort of thing particularly neatly--
"Send me to the Arctic regions, or illimitable azure, On a scientific goose-chase, with my COXWELL or my GLAISHER.
"Tell me whither I may hie me, tell me, dear one, that I _may_ know-- Is it up the highest Andes? down a horrible volcano?"
But she said, "It isn't polar bears, or hot volcanic grottoes, Only find out who it is that writes those lovely cracker mottoes!"
PART II
"Tell me, HENRY WADSWORTH, ALFRED, POET CLOSE, or MISTER TUPPER, Do you write the bonbon mottoes my Elvira pulls at supper?"
But HENRY WADSWORTH smiled, and said he had not had that honour; And ALFRED, too, disclaimed the words that told so much upon her.
"MISTER MARTIN TUPPER, POET CLOSE, I beg of you inform us"; But my question seemed to throw them both into a rage enormous.
MISTER CLOSE expressed a wish that he could only get anigh to me. And MISTER MARTIN TUPPER sent the following reply to me:--
"A fool is bent upon a twig, but wise men dread a bandit." Which I think must have been clever, for I didn't understand it.
Seven weary years I wandered--Patagonia, China, Norway, Till at last I sank exhausted at a pastrycook his doorway.
There were fuchsias and geraniums, and daffodils and myrtle, So I entered, and I ordered half a basin of mock turtle.
He was plump and he was chubby, he was smooth and he was rosy, And his little wife was pretty, and particularly cosy.
And he chirped and sang, and skipped about, and laughed with laughter hearty--
He was wonderfully active for so very stout a party.
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And I said, "Oh, gentle pieman, why so very, very merry? Is it purity of conscience, or your one-and-seven sherry?"
But he answered, "I'm so happy--no profession could be dearer-- If I am not humming 'Tra! la! la!' I'm singing, 'Tirer, lirer!'
"First I go and make the patties, and the puddings and the jellies, Then I make a sugar birdcage, which upon a table swell is;
"Then I polish all the silver, which a supper-table lacquers; Then I write the pretty mottoes which you find inside the crackers"--
"Found at last!" I madly shouted. "Gentle pieman, you astound me!" Then I waved the turtle soup enthusiastically round me.
And I shouted and I danced until he'd quite a crowd around him-- And I rushed away, exclaiming, "I have found him! I have found him!"
And I heard the gentle pieman in the road behind me trilling, "'Tira! lira!' stop him, stop him! 'Tra! la! la!' the soup's a shilling!"
But until I reached ELVIRA'S home, I never, never waited, And ELVIRA to her FERDINAND'S irrevocably mated!
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THE POLICEMAN'S LOT
When a felon's not engaged in his employment, Or maturing his felonious little plans, His capacity for innocent enjoyment Is just as great as any honest man's. Our feelings we with difficulty smother When constabulary duty's to be done: Ah, take one consideration with another, A policeman's lot is not a happy one!
When the enterprising burglar isn't burgling, When the cut-throat isn't occupied in crime, He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling, And listen to the merry village chime. When the coster's finished jumping on his mother, He loves to lie a-basking in the sun: Ah, take one consideration with another, The policeman's lot is not a happy one!
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LORENZO DE LARDY
DALILAH DE DARDY adored The very correctest of cards, LORENZO DE LARDY, a lord-- He was one of Her Majesty's Guards.
DALILAH DE DARDY was fat, DALILAH DE DARDY was old-- (No doubt in the world about that) But DALILAH DE DARDY had gold.
LORENZO DE LARDY was tall, The flower of maidenly pets, Young ladies would love at his call, But LORENZO DE LARDY had debts.
His money-position was queer, And one of his favourite freaks Was to hide himself three times a year, In Paris, for several weeks.
Many days didn't pass him before He fanned himself into a flame, For a beautiful "DAM DU COMPTWORE," And this was her singular name:
ALICE EULALIE CORALINE EUPHROSINE COLOMBINA THÉRÈSE JULIETTE STEPHANIE CELESTINE CHARLOTTE RUSSE DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE.
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She booked all the orders and tin, Accoutred in showy fal-lal, At a two-fifty Restaurant, in The glittering Palais Royal.
He'd gaze in her orbit of blue, Her hand he would tenderly squeeze, But the words of her tongue that he knew Were limited strictly to these:
"CORALINE CELESTINE EULALIE, Houp là! Je vous aime, oui, mossoo, Combien donnez moi aujourd'hui Bonjour, Mademoiselle, parlez voo."
MADEMOISELLE DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE Was a witty and beautiful miss, Extremely correct in her ways, But her English consisted of this:
"Oh my! pretty man, if you please, Blom boodin, biftek, currie lamb, Bouldogue, two franc half, quite ze cheese, Rosbif, me spik Angleesh, godam."
A waiter, for seasons before, Had basked in her beautiful gaze, And burnt to dismember MILOR, _He loved_ DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE.
He said to her, "Méchante THÉRÈSE, Avec désespoir tu m'accables. Penses-tu, DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE, Ses intentions sont honorables?
"Flirte toujours, ma belle, si tu oses-- Je me vengerai ainsi, ma chère, _Je lui dirai de quoi l'on compose Vol au vent à la Financière_!"
LORD LARDY knew nothing of this-- The waiter's devotion ignored, But he gazed on the beautiful miss, And never seemed weary or bored.
The waiter would screw up his nerve, His fingers he'd snap and he'd dance-- And LORD LARDY would smile and observe, "How strange are the customs of France!"
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Well, after delaying a space, His tradesmen no longer would wait: Returning to England apace, He yielded himself to his fate.
LORD LARDY espoused, with a groan, MISS DARDY'S developing charms, And agreed to tag on to his own Her name and her newly-found arms.
The waiter he knelt at the toes Of an ugly and thin coryphée, Who danced in the hindermost rows At the Théâtre des Variétés.
MADEMOISELLE DE LA SAUCE MAYONNAISE Didn't yield to a gnawing despair But married a soldier, and plays As a pretty and pert Vivandière.
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THE BAFFLED GRUMBLER
Whene'er I poke Sarcastic joke Replete with malice spiteful, The people vile Politely smile And vote me quite delightful! Now, when a wight Sits up all night Ill-natured jokes devising, And all his wiles Are met with smiles, It's hard, there's no disguising! Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at!
When German bands From music stands Play Wagner imper_fect_ly-- I bid them go-- They don't say no, But off they trot directly! The organ boys They stop their noise With readiness surprising, And grinning herds Of hurdy-gurds Retire apologising! Oh, don't the days seem lank and long When all goes right and nothing goes wrong, And isn't your life extremely flat With nothing whatever to grumble at!
I've offered gold, In sums untold, To all who'd contradict me-- I've said I'd pay A pound a day To any one who kicked me-- I've bribed with toys Great vulgar boys To utter something spiteful, But, bless you, no! They _will_ be so Confoundedly politeful! In short, these aggravating lads, They tickle my tastes, they feed my fads, They give me this and they give me that, And I've nothing whatever to grumble at!
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DISILLUSIONED
BY AN EX-ENTHUSIAST
Oh, that my soul its gods could see As years ago they seemed to me When first I painted them; Invested with the circumstance Of old conventional romance: Exploded theorem!
The bard who could, all men above, Inflame my soul with songs of love, And, with his verse, inspire The craven soul who feared to die With all the glow of chivalry And old heroic fire;
I found him in a beerhouse tap Awaking from a gin-born nap, With pipe and sloven dress; Amusing chums, who fooled his bent, With muddy, maudlin sentiment, And tipsy foolishness!
The novelist, whose painting pen To legions of fictitious men A real existence lends, Brain-people whom we rarely fail, Whene'er we hear their names, to hail As old and welcome friends;
I found in clumsy snuffy suit, In seedy glove, and blucher boot, Uncomfortably big. Particularly commonplace, With vulgar, coarse, stockbroking face, And spectacles and wig.
My favourite actor who, at will, With mimic woe my eyes could fill With unaccustomed brine: A being who appeared to me (Before I knew him well) to be A song incarnadine;
I found a coarse unpleasant man With speckled chin--unhealthy, wan-- Of self-importance full: Existing in an atmosphere That reeked of gin and pipes and beer-- Conceited, fractious, dull.
The warrior whose ennobled name Is woven with his country's fame, Triumphant over all, I found weak, palsied, bloated, blear; His province seemed to be, to leer At bonnets in Pall Mall.
Would that ye always shone, who write, Bathed in your own innate limelight, And ye who battles wage, Or that in darkness I had died Before my soul had ever sighed To see you off the stage!
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[Illustration]
THE HOUSE OF PEERS
When Britain really ruled the waves-- (In good Queen Bess's time) The House of Peers made no pretence To intellectual eminence, Or scholarship sublime; Yet Britain won her proudest bays In good Queen Bess's glorious days!
When Wellington thrashed Bonaparte, As every child can tell, The House of Peers, throughout the war, Did nothing in particular, And did it very well; Yet Britain set the world ablaze In good King George's glorious days!
And while the House of Peers withholds Its legislative hand, And noble statesmen do not itch To interfere with matters which They do not understand, As bright will shine Great Britain's rays, As in King George's glorious days!
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[Illustration]
BABETTE'S LOVE
BABETTE she was a fisher gal, With jupon striped and cap in crimps. She passed her days inside the Halle, Or catching little nimble shrimps. Yet she was sweet as flowers in May, With no professional bouquet.
JACOT was, of the Customs bold, An officer, at gay Boulogne, He loved BABETTE--his love he told, And sighed, "Oh, soyez vous my own!" But "Non!" said she, "JACOT, my pet, Vous êtes trop scraggy pour BABETTE.
"Of one alone I nightly dream, An able mariner is he, And gaily serves the Gen'ral Steam- Boat Navigation Companee. I'll marry him, if he but will-- His name, I rather think, is BILL.
"I see him when he's not aware, Upon our hospitable coast, Reclining with an easy air Upon the _Port_ against a post, A-thinking of, I'll dare to say, His native Chelsea far away!"
"Oh, mon!" exclaimed the Customs bold, "Mes yeux!" he said (which means "my eye"). "Oh, chère!" he also cried, I'm told, "Par Jove," he added, with a sigh. "Oh, mon! oh, chère! mes yeux! par Jove! Je n'aime pas cet enticing cove!"
The _Panther's_ captain stood hard by, He was a man of morals strict, If e'er a sailor winked his eye, Straightway he had that sailor licked, Mast-headed all (such was his code) Who dashed or jiggered, blessed or blowed.
He wept to think a tar of his Should lean so gracefully on posts, He sighed and sobbed to think of this, On foreign, French, and friendly coasts. "It's human natur', p'raps--if so, Oh, isn't human natur' low!"
He called his BILL, who pulled his curl, He said, "My BILL, I understand You've captivated some young gurl On this here French and foreign land. Her tender heart your beauties jog-- They do, you know they do, you dog.
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"You have a graceful way, I learn, Of leaning airily on posts, By which you've been and caused to burn A tender flame on these here coasts. A fisher gurl, I much regret,-- Her age, sixteen--her name, BABETTE.
"You'll marry her, you gentle tar-- Your union I myself will bless, And when you matr |
54452-0 | imonied are, I will appoint her stewardess." But WILLIAM hitched himself and sighed, And cleared his throat, and thus replied:
"Not so: unless you're fond of strife, You'd better mind your own affairs, I have an able-bodied wife Awaiting me at Wapping Stairs; If all this here to her I tell, She'll larrup you and me as well.
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"Skin-deep, and valued at a pin, Is beauty such as VENUS owns-- _Her_ beauty is beneath her skin, And lies in layers on her bones. The other sailors of the crew They always calls her 'Whopping Sue!'"
"Oho!" the Captain said, "I see! And is she then so very strong?" "She'd take your honour's scruff," said he, "And pitch you over to Bolong!" "I pardon you," the Captain said, "The fair BABETTE you needn't wed."
Perhaps the Customs had his will, And coaxed the scornful girl to wed, Perhaps the Captain and his BILL, And WILLIAM'S little wife are dead; Or p'raps they're all alive and well: I cannot, cannot, cannot tell.
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A MERRY MADRIGAL
Brightly dawns our wedding day; Joyous hour, we give thee greeting! Whither, whither art thou fleeting? Fickle moment, prithee stay! What though mortal joys be hollow? Pleasures come, if sorrows follow. Though the tocsin sound, ere long, Ding dong! Ding dong! Yet until the shadows fall Over one and over all, Sing a merry madrigal-- Fal la!
Let us dry the ready tear; Though the hours are surely creeping, Little need for woeful weeping Till the sad sundown is near. All must sip the cup of sorrow, I to-day and thou to-morrow: This the close of every song-- Ding dong! Ding dong! What though solemn shadows fall, Sooner, later, over all? Sing a merry madrigal-- Fal la!
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TO MY BRIDE
(WHOEVER SHE MAY BE)
Oh! little maid!--(I do not know your name, Or who you are, so, as a safe precaution I'll add)--Oh, buxom widow! married dame! (As one of these must be your present portion) Listen, while I unveil prophetic lore for you, And sing the fate that Fortune has in store for you.
You'll marry soon--within a year or twain-- A bachelor of _circa_ two-and-thirty, Tall, gentlemanly, but extremely plain, And, when you're intimate, you call him "BERTIE." Neat--dresses well; his temper has been classified As hasty; but he's very quickly pacified.
You'll find him working mildly at the Bar, After a touch at two or three professions, From easy affluence extremely far, A brief or two on Circuit--"soup" at Sessions; A pound or two from whist and backing horses, And, say, three hundred from his own resources.
Quiet in harness; free from serious vice, His faults are not particularly shady; You'll never find him "_shy_"--for, once or twice Already, he's been driven by a lady, Who parts with him--perhaps a poor excuse for him-- Because she hasn't any further use for him.
Oh! bride of mine--tall, dumpy, dark, or fair! Oh! widow--wife, maybe, or blushing maiden, I've told _your_ fortune: solved the gravest care With which _your_ mind has hitherto been laden. I've prophesied correctly, never doubt it; Now tell me mine--and please be quick about it!
You--only you--can tell me, an you will, To whom I'm destined shortly to be mated, Will she run up a heavy _modiste's_ bill? If so, I want to hear her income stated. (This is a point which interests me greatly), To quote the bard, "Oh! have I seen her lately?"
Say, must I wait till husband number one Is comfortably stowed away at Woking? How is her hair most usually done? And tell me, please, will she object to smoking? The colour of her eyes, too, you may mention: Come, Sibyl, prophesy--I'm all attention.
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THE DUKE AND THE DUCHESS
THE DUKE. Small titles and orders For Mayors and Recorders I get--and they're highly delighted. M.P.s baronetted, Sham Colonels gazetted, And second-rate Aldermen knighted. Foundation-stone laying I find very paying, It adds a large sum to my makings. At charity dinners The best of speech-spinners, I get ten per cent on the takings!
THE DUCHESS. I present any lady Whose conduct is shady Or smacking of doubtful propriety; When Virtue would quash her I take and whitewash her And launch her in first-rate society.
I recommend acres Of clumsy dressmakers-- Their fit and their finishing touches; A sum in addition They pay for permission To say that they make for the Duchess!
THE DUKE. Those pressing prevailers, The ready-made tailors, Quote me as their great double-barrel; I allow them to do so, Though ROBINSON CRUSOE Would jib at their wearing apparel! I sit, by selection, Upon the direction Of several Companies bubble; As soon as they're floated I'm freely bank-noted-- I'm pretty well paid for my trouble!
THE DUCHESS. At middle-class party I play at _écarté_-- And I'm by no means a beginner; To one of my station The remuneration-- Five guineas a night and my dinner. I write letters blatant On medicines patent-- And use any other you mustn't; And vow my complexion Derives its perfection From somebody's soap--which it doesn't.
THE DUKE. We're ready as witness To any one's fitness To fill any place or preferment; We're often in waiting At junket or _fêting_, And sometimes attend an interment. In short, if you'd kindle The spark of a swindle, Lure simpletons into your clutches, Or hoodwink a debtor, You cannot do better Than trot out a Duke or a Duchess!
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[Illustration]
THE FOLLY OF BROWN
BY A GENERAL AGENT
I knew a boor--a clownish card (His only friends were pigs and cows and The poultry of a small farmyard), Who came into two hundred thousand.
Good fortune worked no change in BROWN, Though she's a mighty social chymist; He was a clown--and by a clown I do not mean a pantomimist.
It left him quiet, calm, and cool, Though hardly knowing what a crown was-- You can't imagine what a fool Poor rich uneducated BROWN was!
He scouted all who wished to come And give him monetary schooling; And I propose to give you some Idea of his insensate fooling.
I formed a company or two-- (Of course I don't know what the rest meant, I formed them solely with a view To help him to a sound investment).
Their objects were--their only cares-- To justify their Boards in showing A handsome dividend on shares And keep their good promoter going.
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But no--the lout sticks to his brass, Though shares at par I freely proffer: Yet--will it be believed?--the ass Declines, with thanks, my well-meant offer!
He adds, with bumpkin's stolid grin (A weakly intellect denoting), He'd rather not invest it in A company of my promoting!
"You have two hundred 'thou' or more," Said I. "You'll waste it, lose it, lend it; Come, take my furnished second floor, I'll gladly show you how to spend it."
But will it be believed that he, With grin upon his face of poppy, Declined my aid, while thanking me For what he called my "philanthroppy"?
Some blind, suspicious fools rejoice In doubting friends who wouldn't harm them; They will not hear the charmer's voice, However wisely he may charm them!
I showed him that his coat, all dust, Top boots and cords provoked compassion, And proved that men of station must Conform to the decrees of fashion.
I showed him where to buy his hat, To coat him, trouser him, and boot him; But no--he wouldn't hear of that-- "He didn't think the style would suit him!"
I offered him a county seat, And made no end of an oration; I made it certainty complete, And introduced the deputation.
But no--the clown my prospect blights-- (The worth of birth it surely teaches!) "Why should I want to spend my nights In Parliament, a-making speeches?
"I haven't never been to school-- I ain't had not no eddication-- And I should surely be a fool To publish that to all the nation!"
I offered him a trotting horse-- No hack had ever trotted faster-- I also offered him, of course, A rare and curious "old master."
I offered to procure him weeds-- Wines fit for one in his position-- But, though an ass in all his deeds, He'd learnt the meaning of "commission."
He called me "thief" the other day, And daily from his door he thrusts me; Much more of this, and soon I may Begin to think that BROWN mistrusts me.
So deaf to all sound Reason's rule This poor uneducated clown is, You can_not_ fancy what a fool Poor rich uneducated BROWN is.
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[Illustration]
EHEU FUGACES--!
The air is charged with amatory numbers-- Soft madrigals, and dreamy lovers' lays. Peace, peace, old heart! Why waken from its slumbers The aching memory of the old, old days?
Time was when Love and I were well acquainted; Time was when we walked ever hand in hand; A saintly youth, with worldly thought untainted, None better loved than I in all the land! Time was, when maidens of the noblest station, Forsaking even military men, Would gaze upon me, rapt in adoration-- Ah me, I was a fair young curate then!
Had I a headache? sighed the maids assembled; Had I a cold? welled forth the silent tear; Did I look pale? then half a parish trembled; And when I coughed all thought the end was near! I had no care--no jealous doubts hung o'er me-- For I was loved beyond all other men. Fled gilded dukes and belted earls before me-- Ah me, I was a pale young curate then!
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[Illustration]
SIR MACKLIN
Of all the youths I ever saw None were so wicked, vain, or silly, So lost to shame and Sabbath law As worldly TOM, and BOB, and BILLY.
For every Sabbath day they walked (Such was their gay and thoughtless natur') In parks or gardens, where they talked From three to six, or even later.
SIR MACKLIN was a priest severe In conduct and in conversation, It did a sinner good to hear Him deal in ratiocination.
He could in every action show Some sin, and nobody could doubt him. He argued high, he argued low, He also argued round about him.
He wept to think each thoughtless youth Contained of wickedness a skinful, And burnt to teach the awful truth, That walking out on Sunday's sinful.
"Oh, youths," said he, "I grieve to find The course of life you've been and hit on-- Sit down," said he, "and never mind The pennies for the chairs you sit on.
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"My opening head is 'Kensington,' How walking there the sinner hardens; Which when I have enlarged upon, I go to 'Secondly'--its Gardens.
"My 'Thirdly' comprehendeth 'Hyde,' Of Secrecy the guilts and shameses; My 'Fourthly'--'Park'--its verdure wide-- My 'Fifthly' comprehends 'St. James's.'
"That matter settled I shall reach The 'Sixthly' in my solemn tether, And show that what is true of each, Is also true of all, together.
"Then I shall demonstrate to you, According to the rules of Whately. That what is true of all, is true Of each, considered separately."
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In lavish stream his accents flow, TOM, BOB, and BILLY dare not flout him; He argued high, he argued low, He also argued round about him.
"Ha, ha!" he said, "you loathe your ways, Repentance on your souls is dawning, In agony your hands you raise." (And so they did, for they were yawning.)
To "Twenty-firstly" on they go, The lads do not attempt to scout him; He argued high, he argued low, He also argued round about him.
"Ho, ho!" he cries, "you bow your crests-- My eloquence has set you weeping; In shame you bend upon your breasts!" (They bent their heads, for they were sleeping.)
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He proved them this--he proved them that-- This good but wearisome ascetic; He jumped and thumped upon his hat, He was so very energetic.
His bishop at this moment chanced To pass, and found the road encumbered; He noticed how the Churchman danced, And how his congregation slumbered.
The hundred and eleventh head The priest completed of his stricture; "Oh, bosh!" the worthy bishop said, And walked him off, as in the picture.
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[Illustration]
THEY'LL NONE OF 'EM BE MISSED
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found, I've got a little list--I've got a little list Of social offenders who might well be underground, And who never would be missed--who never would be missed! There's the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs-- All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs-- All children who are up in dates, and floor you with 'em flat-- All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like _that_-- And all third persons who on spoiling _tête-à-têtes_ insist-- They'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed!
There's the banjo serenader, and the others of his race, And the piano organist--I've got him on the list! And the people who eat peppermint and puff it in your face, They never would be missed--they never would be missed!
Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this, and every country but his own; And the lady from the provinces, who dresses like a guy, And who "doesn't think she waltzes, but would rather like to try"; And that _fin-de-siècle_ anomaly, the scorching motorist-- I don't think he'd be missed--I'm _sure_ he'd not be missed!
And that _Nisi Prius_ nuisance, who just now is rather rife, The Judicial humorist--I've got _him_ on the list! All funny fellows, comic men, and clowns of private life-- They'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed! And apologetic statesmen of the compromising kind, Such as--What-d'ye-call-him--Thing'em-Bob, and likewise--Never-mind, And 'St--'st--'st--and What's-his-name, and also--You-know-who-- (The task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to _you_!) But it really doesn't matter whom you put upon the list, For they'd none of 'em be missed--they'd none of 'em be missed!
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[Illustration]
THE YARN OF THE "NANCY BELL"
'Twas on the shores that round our coast From Deal to Ramsgate span, That I found alone on a piece of stone An elderly naval man.
His hair was weedy, his beard was long, And weedy and long was he, And I heard this wight on the shore recite, In a singular minor key:
"Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold, And the mate of the _Nancy_ brig, And a bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's gig."
And he shook his fists and he tore his hair, Till I really felt afraid, For I couldn't help thinking the man had been drinking, And so I simply said:
"Oh, elderly man, it's little I know Of the duties of men of the sea, But I'll eat my hand if I understand How you can possibly be
"At once a cook, and a captain bold, And the mate of the _Nancy_ brig, And a bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's gig."
Then he gave a hitch to his trousers, which Is a trick all seamen larn, And having got rid of a thumping quid, He spun this painful yarn:
"'Twas in the good ship _Nancy Bell_ That we sailed to the Indian sea, And there on a reef we come to grief, Which has often occurred to me.
"And pretty nigh all o' the crew was drowned (There was seventy-seven o' soul), And only ten of the _Nancy's_ men Said 'Here!' to the muster-roll.
"There was me and the cook and the captain bold, And the mate of the _Nancy_ brig, And the bo'sun tight, and a midshipmite, And the crew of the captain's gig.
"For a month we'd neither wittles nor drink, Till a-hungry we did feel, So we drawed a lot, and accordin' shot The captain for our meal.
"The next lot fell to the _Nancy's_ mate, And a delicate dish he made; Then our appetite with the midshipmite We seven survivors stayed.
"And then we murdered the bo'sun tight, And he much resembled pig; Then we wittled free, did the cook and me, On the crew of the captain's gig.
"Then only the cook and me was left, And the delicate question, 'Which Of us two goes to the kettle?' arose And we argued it out as sich.
"For I loved that cook as a brother, I did, And the cook he worshipped me; But we'd both be blowed if we'd either be stowed In the other chap's hold, you see.
"'I'll be eat if you dines off me,' says TOM, 'Yes, that,' says I, 'you'll be,'-- 'I'm boiled if I die, my friend,' quoth I, And 'Exactly so,' quoth he.
"Says he, 'DEAR JAMES, to murder me Were a foolish thing to do, For don't you see that you can't cook _me_, While I can--and will--cook _you_!'
"So he boils the water, and takes the salt And the pepper in portions true (Which he never forgot), and some chopped shalot, And some sage and parsley too.
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"'Come here,' says he, with a proper pride, Which his smiling features tell, ''Twill soothing be if I let you see, How extremely nice you'll smell.'
"And he stirred it round and round and round, And he sniffed at the foaming froth; When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals In the scum of the boiling broth.
"And I eat that cook in a week or less, And--as I eating be The last of his chops, why, I almost drops, For a wessel in sight I see!
* * * * *
"And I never grin, and I never smile, And I never larf nor play, But I sit and croak, and a single joke I have--which is to say:
"Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold, And the mate of the _Nancy_ brig, _And_ a bo'sun tight, _and_ a midshipmite, _And_ the crew of the captain's gig!"
[Illustration]
GIRL GRADUATES
They intend to send a wire To the moon; And they'll set the Thames on fire Very soon; Then they learn to make silk purses With their rigs From the ears of LADY CIRCE'S Piggy-wigs. And weasels at their slumbers They'll trepan; To get sunbeams from cu_cum_bers They've a plan. They've a firmly rooted notion They can cross the Polar Ocean, And they'll find Perpetual Motion If they can!
These are the phenomena That every pretty domina Hopes that we shall see At this Universitee!
As for fashion, they forswear it, So they say, And the circle--they will square it Some fine day; Then the little pigs they're teaching For to fly; And the niggers they'll be bleaching By-and-by! Each newly joined aspirant To the clan Must repudiate the tyrant Known as Man; They mock at him and flout him, For they do not care about him, And they're "going to do without him" If they can!
These are the phenomena That every pretty domina Hopes that we shall see At this Universitee!
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THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO
From east and south the holy clan Of Bishops gathered, to a man; To Synod, called Pan-Anglican, In flocking crowds they came. Among them was a Bishop, who Had lately been appointed to The balmy isle of Rum-ti-Foo, And PETER was his name.
His people--twenty-three in sum-- They played the eloquent tum-tum, And lived on scalps served up in rum-- The only sauce they knew. When first good Bishop PETER came (For PETER was that Bishop's name), To humour them, he did the same As they of Rum-ti-Foo.
His flock, I've often heard him tell, (His name was PETER) loved him well, And summoned by the sound of bell, In crowds together came. "Oh, massa, why you go away? Oh, Massa PETER, please to stay." (They called him PETER, people say, Because it was his name.)
He told them all good boys to be, And sailed away across the sea, At London Bridge that Bishop he Arrived one Tuesday night-- And as forthwith he homeward strode To his Pan-Anglican abode, He passed along the Borough Road And saw a gruesome sight.
He saw a crowd assembled round A person dancing on the ground, Who straight began to leap and bound With all his might and main. To see that dancing man he stopped, Who twirled and wriggled, skipped and hopped, Then down incontinently dropped, And then sprang up again.
The Bishop chuckled at the sight, "This style of dancing would delight A simple Rum-ti-Foozleite, I'll learn it if I can, To please the tribe when I get back." He begged the man to teach his knack. "Right Reverend Sir, in half a crack," Replied that dancing man.
The dancing man he worked away-- And taught the Bishop every day-- The dancer skipped like any fay-- Good PETER did the same. The Bishop buckled to his task With _battements_, cuts, and _pas de basque_ (I'll tell you, if you care to ask, That PETER was his name).
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"Come, walk like this," the dancer said, "Stick out your toes--stick in your head, Stalk on with quick, galvanic tread-- Your fingers thus extend; The attitude's considered quaint." The weary Bishop, feeling faint, Replied, "I do not say it ain't, But Time, my Christian friend."
"We now proceed to something new-- Dance as the PAYNES and LAURIS do, Like this--one, two--one, two--one, two." The Bishop, never proud,
But in an overwhelming heat (His name was PETER, I repeat) Performed the PAYNE and LAURI feat, And puffed his thanks aloud.
[Illustration]
Another game the dancer planned-- "Just take your ankle in your hand, And try, my lord, if you can stand-- Your body stiff and stark. If, when revisiting your see, You learnt to hop on shore--like me-- The novelty would striking be, And must attract remark."
"No," said the worthy Bishop, "No; That is a length to which, I trow, Colonial Bishops cannot go. You may express surprise At finding Bishops deal in pride-- But, if that trick I ever tried, I should appear undignified In Rum-ti-Foozle's eyes.
"The islanders of Rum-ti-Foo Are well-conducted persons, who Approve a joke as much as you, And laugh at it as such; But if they saw their Bishop land, His leg supported in his hand, The joke they wouldn't understand-- 'Twould pain them very much!"
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[Illustration]
BRAID THE RAVEN HAIR
Braid the raven hair, Weave the supple tress, Deck the maiden fair In her loveliness; Paint the pretty face, Dye the coral lip, Emphasise the grace Of her ladyship! Art and nature, thus allied, Go to make a pretty bride!
Sit with downcast eye, Let it brim with dew; Try if you can cry, We will do so, too. When you're summoned, start Like a frightened roe; Flutter, little heart, Colour, come and go! Modesty at marriage tide Well becomes a pretty bride!
[Illustration]
THE PRECOCIOUS BABY
A VERY TRUE TALE
(_To be sung to the Air of the "Whistling Oyster."_)
An elderly person--a prophet by trade-- With his quips and tips On withered old lips, He married a young and a beautiful maid; The cunning old blade, Though rather decayed, He married a beautiful, beautiful maid.
She was only eighteen, and as fair as could be. With her tempting smiles And maidenly wiles,
And he was a trifle of seventy-three: Now what she could see Is a puzzle to me, In a prophet of seventy--seventy-three!
Of all their acquaintances bidden (or bade) With their loud high jinks And underbred winks None thought they'd a family have--but they had; A singular lad Who drove 'em half mad, He proved such a horribly fast little cad.
For when he was born he astonished all by, With their "Law, dear me!" "Did ever you see?" He'd a weed in his mouth and a glass in his eye, A hat all awry-- An octagon tie, And a miniature--miniature glass in his eye.
He grumbled at wearing a frock and a cap, With his "Oh dear, no!" And his "Hang it! 'oo know!" And he turned up his nose at his excellent pap-- "My friends, it's a tap Dat is not worf a rap." (Now this was remarkably excellent pap.)
He'd chuck his nurse under the chin, and he'd say, With his "Fal, lal, lal"-- "'Oo doosed fine gal!"
This shocking precocity drove 'em away: "A month from to-day Is as long as I'll stay-- Then I'd wish, if you please, for to go, if I may."
His father, a simple old gentleman, he With nursery rhyme And "Once on a time," Would tell him the story of "Little Bo-P," "So pretty was she, So pretty and wee, As pretty, as pretty, as pretty could be."
But the babe, with a dig that would startle an ox, With his "C'ck! Oh my!-- Go along wiz 'oo, fie!" Would exclaim, "I'm afraid 'oo a socking ole fox." Now a father it shocks, And it whitens his locks When his little babe calls him a shocking old fox.
The name of his father he'd couple and pair (With his ill-bred laugh, And insolent chaff) With those of the nursery heroines rare; Virginia the fair, Or Good Goldenhair, Till the nuisance was more than a prophet could bear.
"There's Jill and White Cat" (said the bold little brat, With his loud, "Ha, ha!") "'Oo sly ickle pa!
Wiz 'oo Beauty, Bo-Peep, and 'oo Mrs. Jack Sprat! I've noticed 'oo pat _My_ pretty White Cat-- I sink dear mamma ought to know about dat!"
[Illustration]
He early determined to marry and wive, For better or worse With his elderly nurse-- Which the poor little boy didn't live to contrive: His health didn't thrive-- No longer alive, He died an enfeebled old dotard at five!
MORAL
Now elderly men of the bachelor crew, With wrinkled hose And spectacled nose, Don't marry at all--you may take it as true If ever you do The step you will rue, For your babes will be elderly--elderly too.
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[Illustration]
THE WORKING MONARCH
Rising early in the morning, We proceed to light the fire, Then our Majesty adorning In its work-a-day attire, We embark without delay On the duties of the day.
First, we polish off some batches Of political despatches, And foreign politicians circumvent; Then, if business isn't heavy, We may hold a Royal _levée_, Or ratify some Acts of Parliament: Then we probably review the household troops-- With the usual "Shalloo humps" and "Shalloo hoops!" Or receive with ceremonial and state An interesting Eastern Potentate. After that we generally Go and dress our private _valet_--
(It's a rather nervous duty--he a touchy little man)-- Write some letters literary For our private secretary-- (He is shaky in his spelling, so we help him if we can.) Then, in view of cravings inner, We go down and order dinner; Or we polish the Regalia and the Coronation Plate-- Spend an hour in titivating All our Gentlemen-in-Waiting; Or we run on little errands for the Ministers of State. Oh, philosophers may sing Of the troubles of a King, Yet the duties are delightful, and the privileges great; But the privilege and pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is to run on little errands for the Ministers of State!
After luncheon (making merry On a bun and glass of sherry), If we've nothing in particular to do, We may make a Proclamation, Or receive a Deputation-- Then we possibly create a Peer or two. Then we help a fellow-creature on his path With the Garter or the Thistle or the Bath: Or we dress and toddle off in semi-State To a festival, a function, or a _fête_. Then we go and stand as sentry At the Palace (private entry), Marching hither, marching thither, up and down and to and fro, While the warrior on duty Goes in search of beer and beauty (And it generally happens that he hasn't far to go). He relieves us, if he's able, Just in time to lay the table,
Then we dine and serve the coffee; and at half-past twelve or one, With a pleasure that's emphatic, Then we seek our little attic With the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done. Oh, philosophers may sing Of the troubles of a King, But of pleasures there are many and of troubles there are none; And the culminating pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done!
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[Illustration]
TO PHŒBE
"Gentle, modest, little flower, Sweet epitome of May, Love me but for half-an-hour, Love me, love me, little fay." Sentences so fiercely flaming In your tiny shell-like ear, I should always be exclaiming If I loved you, PHŒBE, dear.
"Smiles that thrill from any distance Shed upon me while I sing! Please ecstaticise existence, Love me, oh thou fairy thing!" Words like these, outpouring sadly. You'd perpetually hear, If I loved you, fondly, madly;-- But I do not, PHŒBE, dear.
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THE APE AND THE LADY
A lady fair, of lineage high, Was loved by an Ape, in the days gone by-- The Maid was radiant as the sun, The Ape was a most unsightly one-- So it would not do-- His scheme fell through; For the Maid, when his love took formal shape, Expressed such terror At his monstrous error, That he stammered an apology and made his 'scape, The picture of a disconcerted Ape.
With a view to rise in the social scale, He shaved his bristles, and he docked his tail, He grew moustachios, and he took his tub, And he paid a guinea to a toilet club. But it would not do, The scheme fell through-- For the Maid was Beauty's fairest Queen, With golden tresses, Like a real princess's, While the Ape, despite his razor keen, Was the apiest Ape that ever was seen!
He bought white ties, and he bought dress suits. He crammed his feet into bright tight boots. And to start his life on a brand-new plan, He christened himself Darwinian Man! But it would not do, The scheme fell through-- For the Maiden fair, whom the monkey craved, Was a radiant Being, With a brain far-seeing-- While a Man, however well-behaved, At best is only a monkey shaved!
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BAINES CAREW, GENTLEMAN
Of all the good attorneys who Have placed their names upon the roll, But few could equal BAINES CAREW For tender-heartedness and soul.
Whene'er he heard a tale of woe From client A or client B, His grief would overcome him so, He'd scarce have strength to take his fee.
It laid him up for many days, When duty led him to distrain; And serving writs, although it pays, Gave him excruciating pain.
He made out costs, distrained for rent, Foreclosed and sued, with moistened eye-- No bill of costs could represent The value of such sympathy.
No charges can approximate The worth of sympathy with woe;-- Although I think I ought to state He did his best to make them so.
Of all the many clients who Had mustered round his legal flag, No single client of the crew Was half so dear as CAPTAIN BAGG.
Now CAPTAIN BAGG had bowed him to A heavy matrimonial yoke: His wifey had of faults a few-- She never could resist a joke.
Her chaff at first he meekly bore, Till unendurable it grew. "To stop this persecution sore I will consult my friend CAREW.
"And when CAREW'S advice I've got, Divorce _a mensâ_ I shall try.'" (A legal separation--not A _vinculo conjugii_.)
"O BAINES CAREW, my woe I've kept A secret hitherto, you know;"-- (And BAINES CAREW, ESQUIRE, he wept To hear that BAGG had any woe).
"My case, indeed, is passing sad, My wife--whom I considered true-- With brutal conduct drives me mad." "I am appalled," said BAINES CAREW.
"What! sound the matrimonial knell Of worthy people such as these! Why was I an attorney? Well-- Go on to the _sævitia_, please."
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'Domestic bliss has proved my bane, A harder case you never heard, My wife (in other matters sane) Pretends that I'm a Dicky Bird!
"She makes me sing, 'Too-whit, too-wee!' And stand upon a rounded stick, And always introduces me To every one as 'Pretty Dick'!"
"Oh dear," said weeping BAINES CAREW, "This is the direst case I know"-- "I'm grieved," said BAGG, "at paining you, To COBB and POLTERTHWAITE I'll go.
"To COBB'S cold calculating ear My gruesome sorrows I'll impart"-- "No; stop," said BAINES, "I'll dry my tear And steel my sympathetic heart!"
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"She makes me perch upon a tree, Rewarding me with, 'Sweety--nice!' And threatens to exhibit me With four or five performing mice."
"Restrain my tears I wish I could" (Said BAINES), "I don't know what to do." Said CAPTAIN BAGG, "You're very good." "Oh, not at all," said BAINES CAREW,
"She makes me fire a gun," said BAGG; "And at a preconcerted word Climb up a ladder with a flag, Like any street-performing bird.
"She places sugar in my way-- In public places calls me 'Sweet!'-- She gives me groundsel every day, And hard canary seed to eat."
"Oh, woe! oh, sad! oh, dire to tell!" (Said BAINES), "Be good enough to stop." And senseless on the floor he fell With unpremeditated flop.
Said CAPTAIN BAGG, "Well, really I Am grieved to think it pains you so. I thank you for your sympathy; But, hang it--come--I say, you know!"
But BAINES lay flat upon the floor, Convulsed with sympathetic sob-- The Captain toddled off next door, And gave the case to Mr. Cobb.
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ONLY ROSES
To a garden full of posies Cometh one to gather flowers, And he wanders through its bowers Toying with the wanton roses, Who, uprising from their beds, Hold on high their shameless heads With their pretty lips a-pouting, Never doubting--never doubting That for Cytherean posies He would gather aught but roses.
In a nest of weeds and nettles, Lay a violet, half hidden; Hoping that his glance unbidden Yet might fall upon her petals. Though she lived alone, apart, Hope lay nestling at her heart, But, alas! the cruel awaking Set her little heart a-breaking, For he gathered for his posies Only roses--only roses!
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THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM HANCE
In all the towns and cities fair On Merry England's broad expanse, No swordsman ever could compare With THOMAS WINTERBOTTOM HANCE.
The dauntless lad could fairly hew A silken handkerchief in twain, Divide a leg of mutton, too-- And this without unwholesome strain.
On whole half-sheep, with cunning trick, His sabre sometimes he'd employ-- No bar of lead, however thick, Had terrors for the stalwart boy.
At Dover daily he'd prepare To hew and slash, behind, before-- Which aggravated MONSIEUR PIERRE, Who watched him from the Calais shore.
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It caused good PIERRE to swear and dance, The sight annoyed and vexed him so; He was the bravest man in France-- He said so, and he ought to know.
'Regardez, donc, ce cochon gros-- Ce polisson! Oh, sacré bleu! Son sabre, son plomb, et ses gigots! Comme cela m'ennuye, enfin, mon Dieu!
"Il sait que les foulards de soie Give no retaliating whack-- Les gigots morts n'ont pas de quoi-- Le plomb don't ever hit you back."
But every day the zealous lad Cut lead and mutton more and more; And every day, poor PIERRE, half mad, Shrieked loud defiance from his shore.
HANCE had a mother, poor and old, A simple, harmless village dame, Who crowed and clapped as people told Of WINTERBOTTOM'S rising fame.
She said, "I'll be upon the spot To see my TOMMY'S sabre-play"; And so she left her leafy cot, And walked to Dover in a day.
PIERRE had a doting mother, who Had heard of his defiant rage: _His_ ma was nearly eighty-two, And rather dressy for her age.
At HANCE'S doings every morn, With sheer delight _his_ mother cried; And MONSIEUR PIERRE'S contemptuous scorn Filled _his_ mamma with proper pride.
But HANCE'S powers began to fail-- His constitution was not strong-- And PIERRE, who once was stout and hale, Grew thin from shouting all day long.
Their mothers saw them pale and wan, Maternal anguish tore each breast, And so they met to find a plan To set their offsprings' minds at rest.
Said MRS. HANCE, "Of course I shrinks From bloodshed, ma'am, as you're aware, But still they'd better meet, I thinks." "Assurément!" said MADAME PIERRE.
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A sunny spot in sunny France Was hit upon for this affair; The ground was picked by MRS. HANCE, The stakes were pitched by MADAME PIERRE.
Said MRS. H., "Your work you see-- Go in, my noble boy, and win." "En garde, mon fils!" said MADAME P. "Allons!" "Go on!" "En garde!" "Begin!"
Loud sneered the doughty man of France, "Ho! ho! Ho! ho! Ha! ha! Ha! ha!" "The French for 'Pish!'" said THOMAS HANCE. Said PIERRE, "L'anglais, Monsieur, pour 'bah!'"
Said MRS. H., "Come, one! two! three!-- We're sittin' here to see all fair"; "C'est magnifique!" said MADAME P., "Mais, parbleu! ce n'est pas la guerre!"
[Illustration]
"Je scorn un foe si lâche que vous," Said PIERRE, the doughty son of France. "I fight not coward foe like you!" Said our undaunted TOMMY HANCE.
"The French for 'Pooh!'" our TOMMY cried. "L'anglais pour 'Va!'" the Frenchman crowed. And so, with undiminished pride, Each went on his respective road.
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THE ROVER'S APOLOGY
Oh, gentlemen, listen, I pray; Though I own that my heart has been ranging, Of nature the laws I obey, For nature is constantly changing. The moon in her phases is found, The time and the wind and the weather, The months in succession come round, And you don't find two Mondays together. Consider the moral, I pray, Nor bring a young fellow to sorrow, Who loves this young lady to-day, And loves that young lady to-morrow!
You cannot eat breakfast all day, Nor is it the act of a sinner, When breakfast is taken away, To turn your attention to dinner;
And it's not in the range of belief That you could hold him as a glutton, Who, when he is tired of beef, Determines to tackle the mutton. But this I am ready to say, If it will diminish their sorrow, I'll marry this lady to-day, And I'll marry that lady to-morrow!
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[Illustration]
A DISCONTENTED SUGAR BROKER
A gentleman of City fame Now claims your kind attention; West India broking was his game, His name I shall not mention; No one of finely pointed sense Would violate a confidence, And shall _I_ go And do it? No. His name I shall not mention.
He had a trusty wife and true, And very cosy quarters, A manager, a boy or two, Six clerks, and seven porters. A broker must be doing well (As any lunatic can tell) Who can employ An active boy, Six clerks, and seven porters.
His knocker advertised no dun, No losses made him sulky, He had one sorrow--only one-- He was extremely bulky. A man must be, I beg to state, Exceptionally fortunate Who owns his chief And only grief Is being very bulky.
"This load," he'd say, "I cannot bear, I'm nineteen stone or twenty! Henceforward I'll go in for air And exercise in plenty." Most people think that, should it come, They can reduce a bulging tum To measures fair By taking air And exercise in plenty.
In every weather, every day, Dry, muddy, wet, or gritty, He took to dancing all the way From Brompton to the City. You do not often get the chance Of seeing sugar-brokers dance From their abode In Fulham Road Through Brompton to the City.
He braved the gay and guileless laugh Of children with their nusses, The loud uneducated chaff Of clerks on omnibuses.
Against all minor things that rack A nicely balanced mind, I'll back The noisy chaff And ill-bred laugh Of clerks on omnibuses.
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His friends, who heard his money chink, And saw the house he rented, And knew his wife, could never think What made him discontented. It never struck their simple minds That fads are of eccentric kinds, Nor would they own That fat alone Could make one discontented.
"Your riches know no kind of pause, Your trade is fast advancing, You dance--but not for joy, because You weep as you are dancing.
To dance implies that man is glad, To weep implies that man is sad. But here are you Who do the two-- You weep as you are dancing!"
His mania soon got noised about And into all the papers-- His size increased beyond a doubt For all his reckless capers:
[Illustration]
It may seem singular to you, But all his friends admit it true-- The more he found His figure round, The more he cut his capers.
His bulk increased--no matter that-- He tried the more to toss it-- He never spoke of it as "fat" But "adipose deposit." Upon my word, it seems to me Unpardonable vanity (And worse than that) To call your fat An "adipose deposit."
At length his brawny knees gave way, And on the carpet sinking, Upon his shapeless back he lay And kicked away like winking. Instead of seeing in his state The finger of unswerving Fate, He laboured still To work his will, And kicked away like winking.
His friends, disgusted with him now, Away in silence wended-- I hardly like to tell you how This dreadful story ended. The shocking sequel to impart, I must employ the limner's art-- If you would know, This sketch will show How his exertions ended.
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MORAL
I hate to preach--I hate to prate-- I'm no fanatic croaker, But learn contentment from the fate Of this West India broker. He'd everything a man of taste Could ever want, except a waist: And discontent His size anent, And bootless perseverance blind, Completely wrecked the peace of mind Of this West India broker.
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AN APPEAL
Oh! is there not one maiden breast Which does not feel the moral beauty Of making worldly interest Subordinate to sense of duty? Who would not give up willingly All matrimonial ambition To rescue such a one as I From his unfortunate position?
Oh, is there not one maiden here, Whose homely face and bad complexion Have caused all hopes to disappear Of ever winning man's affection? To such a one, if such there be, I swear by heaven's arch above you, If you will cast your eyes on me,--- However plain you be--I'll love you!
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THE PANTOMIME "SUPER" TO HIS MASK
Vast, empty shell! Impertinent, preposterous abortion: With vacant stare, And ragged hair, And every feature out of all proportion! Embodiment of echoing inanity, Excellent type of simpering insanity, Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity, I ring thy knell!
To-night thou diest, Beast that destroy'st my heaven-born identity! Twelve weeks of nights Before the lights, Swamped in thine own preposterous nonentity, I've been ill-treated, cursed, and thrashed diurnally, Credited for the smile you wear externally-- I feel disposed to smash thy face, infernally, As there thou liest!
I've been thy brain: _I've_ been the brain that lit thy dull concavity! The human race Invest _my_ face With thine expression of unchecked depravity: Invested with a ghastly reciprocity, _I've_ been responsible for thy monstrosity, I, for thy wanton, blundering ferocity-- But not again!
'Tis time to toll Thy knell, and that of follies pantomimical: A twelve weeks' run, And thou hast done All thou canst do to make thyself inimical. Adieu, embodiment of all inanity! Excellent type of simpering insanity! Unwieldy, clumsy nightmare of humanity! Freed is thy soul!
(_The Mask respondeth._)
Oh! master mine, Look thou within thee, ere again ill-using me. Art thou aware Of nothing there Which might abuse thee, as thou art abusing me? A brain that mourns _thine_ unredeemed rascality? A soul that weeps at _thy_ threadbare morality? Both grieving that _their_ individuality Is merged in thine?
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THE REWARD OF MERIT
DR. BELVILLE was regarded as the CRICHTON of his age: His tragedies were reckoned much too thoughtful for the stage; His poems held a noble rank, although it's very true That, being very proper, they were read by very few. He was a famous Painter, too, and shone upon the "line," And even MR. RUSKIN came and worshipped at his shrine; But, alas, the school he followed was heroically high-- The kind of Art men rave about, but very seldom buy; And everybody said "How can he be repaid-- This very great--this very good--this very gifted man?" But nobody could hit upon a practicable plan!
He was a great Inventor, and discovered, all alone, A plan for making everybody's fortune but his own; For, in business, an Inventor's little better than a fool, And my highly-gifted friend was no exception to the rule. His poems--people read them in the Quarterly Reviews-- His pictures--they engraved them in the _Illustrated News_-- His inventions--they, perhaps, might have enriched him by degrees, But all his little income went in Patent Office fees; And everybody said "How can he be repaid-- This very great--this very good--this very gifted man?" But nobody could hit upon a practicable plan!
At last the point was given up in absolute despair, When a distant cousin died, and he became a millionaire, With a county seat in Parliament, a moor or two of grouse, And a taste for making inconvenient speeches in the House! _Then_ it flashed upon Britannia that the fittest of rewards Was, to take him from the Commons and to put him in the Lords! And who so fit to sit in it, deny it if you can, As this very great--this very good--this very gifted man? (Though I'm more than half afraid That it sometimes may be said That we never should have revelled in that source of proper pride, However great his merits--if his cousin hadn't died!)
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THE GHOST, THE GALLANT, THE GAEL, AND THE GOBLIN
O'er unreclaimed suburban clays Some years ago were hobblin' An elderly ghost of easy ways, And an influential goblin. The ghost was a sombre spectral shape, A fine old five-act fogy, The goblin imp, a lithe young ape, A fine low-comedy bogy.
And as they exercised their joints, Promoting quick digestion, They talked on several curious points, And raised this pregnant question: "Which of us two is Number One-- The ghostie, or the goblin?" And o'er the point they raised in fun They fairly fell a-squabblin'.
They'd barely speak, and each, in fine, Grew more and more reflective, Each thought his own particular line By far the more effective. At length they settled some one should By each of them be haunted, And so arranged that either could Exert his prowess vaunted.
"The Quaint against the Statuesque"-- By competition lawful-- The goblin backed the Quaint Grotesque, The ghost the Grandly Awful. "Now," said the goblin, "here's my plan-- In attitude commanding, I see a stalwart Englishman By yonder tailor's standing.
"The very fittest man on earth My influence to try on-- Of gentle, p'raps of noble birth, And dauntless as a lion! Now wrap yourself within your shroud-- Remain in easy hearing-- Observe--you'll hear him scream aloud When I begin appearing!"
The imp with yell unearthly--wild-- Threw off his dark enclosure: His dauntless victim looked and smiled With singular composure. For hours he tried to daunt the youth, For days, indeed, but vainly-- The stripling smiled!--to tell the truth, The stripling smiled inanely.
For weeks the goblin weird and wild, That noble stripling haunted; For weeks the stripling stood and smiled Unmoved and all undaunted. The sombre ghost exclaimed, "Your plan Has failed you, goblin, plainly: Now watch yon hardy Hieland man, So stalwart and ungainly.
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"These are the men who chase the roe, Whose footsteps never falter, Who bring with them where'er they go A smack of old SIR WALTER. Of such as he, the men sublime Who lead their troops victorious, Whose deeds go down to after-time, Enshrined in annals glorious!
"Of such as he the bard has said 'Hech thrawfu' raltie rawkie! Wi' thecht ta' croonie clapperhead And fash' wi' unco pawkie!' He'll faint away when I appear Upon his native heather; Or p'raps he'll only scream with fear, Or p'raps the two together."
[Illustration]
The spectre showed himself, alone, To do his ghostly battling, With curdling groan and dismal moan And lots of chains a-rattling! But no--the chiel's stout Gaelic stuff Withstood all ghostly harrying, His fingers closed upon the snuff Which upwards he was carrying.
For days that ghost declined to stir, A foggy, shapeless giant-- For weeks that splendid officer Stared back again defiant! Just as the Englishman returned The goblin's vulgar staring, Just so the Scotchman boldly spurned The ghost's unmannered scaring.
For several years the ghostly twain These Britons bold have haunted, But all their efforts are in vain-- Their victims stand undaunted. Unto this day the imp and ghost (Whose powers the imp derided) Stand each at his allotted post-- The bet is undecided.
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THE MAGNET AND THE CHURN
A Magnet hung in a hardware shop, And all around was a loving crop Of scissors and needles, nails and knives, Offering love for all their lives; But for iron the Magnet felt no whim, Though he charmed iron, it charmed not him, From needles and nails and knives he'd turn, For he'd set his love on a Silver Churn! His most æsthetic, Very magnetic Fancy took this turn-- "If I can wheedle A knife or needle, Why not a Silver Churn?"
And Iron and Steel expressed surprise, The needles opened their well-drilled eyes, The pen-knives felt "shut up," no doubt, The scissors declared themselves "cut out," The kettles they boiled with rage, 'tis said, While every nail went off its head, And hither and thither began to roam, Till a hammer came up--and drove it home. While this magnetic Peripatetic Lover he lived to learn, By no endeavour, Can Magnet ever Attract a Silver Churn!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
KING BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO
KING BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO Was a man-eating African swell; His sigh was a hullaballoo, His whisper a horrible yell-- A horrible, horrible yell!
Four subjects, and all of them male, To BORRIA doubled the knee, They were once on a far larger scale, But he'd eaten the balance, you see ("Scale" and "balance" is punning, you see).
There was haughty PISH-TUSH-POOH-BAH. There was lumbering DOODLE-DUM-DEH. Despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH, And good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH-- Exemplary TOOTLE-TUM-TEH.
One day there was grief in the crew, For they hadn't a morsel of meat, And BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO Was dying for something to eat-- "Come, provide me with something to eat!
"ALACK-A-DEY, famished I feel; Oh, good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH, Where on earth shall I look for a meal? For I haven't had dinner to-day!-- Not a morsel of dinner to-day!
[Illustration]
"Dear TOOTLE-TUM, what shall we do? Come, get us a meal, or in truth, If you don't we shall have to eat you, Oh, adorable friend of our youth! Thou beloved little friend of our youth!"
And he answered, "Oh, BUNGALEE BOO, For a moment I hope you will wait,-- TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO Is the Queen of a neighbouring state-- A remarkably neighbouring state.
"TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO, She would pickle deliciously cold-- And her four pretty Amazons, too, Are enticing, and not very old-- Twenty-seven is not very old.
"There is neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH, There is rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH, There is jocular WAGGETY-WEH, There is musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH-- There's the nightingale DOH-REH-MI-FAH!"
[Illustration]
So the forces of BUNGALEE BOO Marched forth in a terrible row, And the ladies who fought for QUEEN LOO Prepared to encounter the foe-- This dreadful insatiate foe!
But they sharpened no weapons at all, And they poisoned no arrows--not they! They made ready to conquer or fall In a totally different way-- A perfectly different way.
With a crimson and pearly-white dye They endeavoured to make themselves fair; With black they encircled each eye, And with yellow they painted their hair. (It was wool, but they thought it was hair.)
The warriors met in the field: And the men of KING BORRIA said, "Amazonians, immediately yield!" And their arrows they drew to the head-- Yes, drew them right up to the head.
But jocular WAGGETY-WEH Ogled DOODLE-DUM-DEH (which was wrong), And neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH Said, "TOOTLE-TUM, you go along! You naughty old dear, go along!"
And rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH Tapped ALACK-A-DEY-AH with her fan; And musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH Said, "Pish, go away, you bad man! Go away, you delightful young man!"
And the Amazons simpered and sighed, And they ogled, and giggled, and flushed, And they opened their pretty eyes wide, And they chuckled, and flirted, and blushed (At least, if they could, they'd have blushed).
But haughty PISH-TUSH-POOH-BAH Said, "ALACK-A-DEY, what does this mean?" And despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH Said, "They think us uncommonly green-- Ha! ha! most uncommonly green!"
Even blundering DOODLE-DUM-DEH Was insensible quite to their leers, And said good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH, "It's your blood that we're wanting, my dears-- We have come for our dinners, my dears!"
[Illustration]
And the Queen of the Amazons fell To BORRIA BUNGALEE BOO,-- In a mouthful he gulped, with a yell, TIPPY-WIPPITY TOL-THE-ROL-LOO-- The pretty QUEEN TOL-THE-ROL-LOO.
And neat little TITTY-FOL-LEH Was eaten by PISH-POOH-BAH, And light-hearted WAGGETY-WEH By dismal ALACK-A-DEY-AH-- Despairing ALACK-A-DEY-AH.
And rollicking TRAL-THE-RAL-LAH Was eaten by DOODLE-DUM-DEH, And musical DOH-REH-MI-FAH By good little TOOTLE-TUM-TEH--- Exemplary TOOTLE-TUM-TEH.
[Illustration]
THE FAMILY FOOL
Oh! a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon, If you listen to popular rumour; From morning to night he's so joyous and bright, And he bubbles with wit and good humour! He's so quaint and so terse, both in prose and in verse; Yet though people forgive his transgression, There are one or two rules that all Family Fools Must observe, if they love their profession. There are one or two rules, Half-a-dozen, maybe, That all family fools, Of whatever degree, Must observe if they love their profession.
If you wish to succeed as a jester, you'll need To consider each person's auricular: What is all right for B would quite scandalise C (For C is so very particular);
And D may be dull, and E's very thick skull Is as empty of brains as a ladle; While F is F sharp, and will cry with a carp, That he's known your best joke from his cradle! When your humour they flout, You can't let yourself go; And it _does_ put you out When a person says, "Oh! I have known that old joke from my cradle!"
If your master is surly, from getting up early (And tempers are short in the morning), An inopportune joke is enough to provoke Him to give you, at once, a month's warning. Then if you refrain, he is at you again, For he likes to get value for money: He'll ask then and there, with an insolent stare, "If you know that you're paid to be funny?" It adds to the tasks Of a merryman's place, When your principal asks, With a scowl on his face, If you know that you're paid to be funny?
Comes a Bishop, maybe, or a solemn D.D.-- Oh, beware of his anger provoking! Better not pull his hair--don't stick pins in his chair; He won't understand practical joking. If the jests that you crack have an orthodox smack, You may get a bland smile from these sages; But should it, by chance, be imported from France, Half-a-crown is stopped out of your wages! It's a general rule, Though your zeal it may quench, If the Family Fool Makes a joke that's _too_ French, Half-a-crown is stopped out of his wages!
Though your head it may rack with a bilious attack, And your senses with toothache you're losing, And you're mopy and flat--they don't fine you for that If you're properly quaint and amusing! Though your wife ran away with a soldier that day, And took with her your trifle of money; Bless your heart, they don't mind--they're exceedingly kind-- They don't blame you--as long as you're funny! It's a comfort to feel If your partner should flit, Though _you_ suffer a deal, _They_ don't mind it a bit-- They don't blame you--so long as you're funny!
[Illustration]
THE PERIWINKLE GIRL
I've often thought that headstrong youths Of decent education Determine all-important truths With strange precipitation.
The ever-ready victims they, Of logical illusions, And in a self-assertive way They jump at strange conclusions.
Now take my case: Ere sorrow could My ample forehead wrinkle, I had determined that I should Not care to be a winkle.
"A winkle," I would oft advance With readiness provoking, "Can seldom flirt, and never dance, Or soothe his mind by smoking."
In short, I spurned the shelly joy, And spoke with strange decision-- Men pointed to me as a boy Who held them in derision.
But I was young--too young, by far-- Or I had been more wary, I knew not then that winkles are The stock-in-trade of MARY.
I had not watched her sunlight blithe As o'er their shells it dances-- I've seen those winkles almost writhe Beneath her beaming glances.
Of slighting all the winkly brood I surely had been chary, If I had known they formed the food And stock-in-trade of MARY.
Both high and low and great and small Fell prostrate at her tootsies, They all were noblemen, and all Had balances at COUTTS'S.
Dukes with the lovely maiden dealt, DUKE BAILEY and DUKE HUMPHY, Who ate her winkles till they felt Exceedingly uncomfy.
[Illustration]
DUKE BAILEY greatest wealth computes, And sticks, they say, at no-thing, He wears a pair of golden boots And silver underclothing.
DUKE HUMPHY, as I understand, Though mentally acuter, His boots are only silver, and His underclothing pewter.
A third adorer had the girl, A man of lowly station-- A miserable grov'ling Earl Besought her approbation.
This humble cad she did refuse With much contempt and loathing, He wore a pair of leather shoes And cambric underclothing!
"Ha! ha!" she cried. "Upon my word! Well, really--come, I never! Oh, go along, it's too absurd! My goodness! Did you ever?
"Two Dukes would Mary make a bride, And from her foes defend her"-- "Well, not exactly that," they cried, "We offer guilty splendour.
"We do not offer marriage rite, So please dismiss the notion!" "Oh dear," said she, "that alters quite The state of my emotion."
The Earl he up and says, says he, "Dismiss them to their orgies, For I am game to marry thee Quite reg'lar at St. George's."
(He'd had, it happily befell, A decent education, His views would have befitted well A far superior station.)
His sterling worth had worked a cure, She never heard him grumble; She saw his soul was good and pure, Although his rank was humble.
[Illustration]
Her views of earldoms and their lot, All underwent expansion-- Come, Virtue in an earldom's cot! Go, Vice in ducal mansion!
[Illustration]
SANS SOUCI
I cannot tell what this love may be That cometh to all but not to me. It cannot be kind as they'd imply, Or why do these gentle ladies sigh? It cannot be joy and rapture deep, Or why do these gentle ladies weep? It cannot be blissful, as 'tis said, Or why are their eyes so wondrous red?
If love is a thorn, they show no wit Who foolishly hug and foster it. If love is a weed, how simple they Who gather and gather it, day by day! If love is a nettle that makes you smart, Why do you wear it next your heart? And if it be neither of these, say I, Why do you sit and sob and sigh?
[Illustration]
THOMSON GREEN AND HARRIET HALE
(_To be sung to the Air of "An 'Orrible Tale."_)
Oh list to this incredible tale Of THOMSON GREEN and HARRIET HALE; Its truth in one remark you'll sum-- "Twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twum!"
Oh, THOMSON GREEN was an auctioneer, And made three hundred pounds a year; And HARRIET HALE, most strange to say, Gave pianoforte lessons at a sovereign a day.
[Illustration]
Oh, THOMSON GREEN, I may remark, Met HARRIET HALE in Regent's Park, Where he, in a casual kind of way, Spoke of the extraordinary beauty of the day.
They met again, and strange, though true, He courted her for a month or two, Then to her pa he said, says he, "Old man, I love your daughter and your daughter worships me!"
Their names were regularly banned, The wedding day was settled, and I've ascertained by dint of search They were married on the quiet at St. Mary Abbot's Church.
Oh, list to this incredible tale Of THOMSON GREEN and HARRIET HALE, Its truth in one remark you'll sum-- "Twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twum!"
That very self-same afternoon They started on their honeymoon, And (oh, astonishment!) took flight To a pretty little cottage close to Shanklin, Isle of Wight.
But now--you'll doubt my word, I know-- In a month they both returned, and lo! Astounding fact! this happy pair Took a gentlemanly residence in Canonbury Square!
They led a weird and reckless life, They dined each day, this man and wife (Pray disbelieve it, if you please), On a joint of meat, a pudding, and a little bit of cheese.
In time came those maternal joys Which take the form of girls or boys, And strange to say of each they'd one-- A tiddy-iddy daughter, and a tiddy-iddy son!
Oh, list to this incredible tale Of THOMSON GREEN and HARRIET HALE, Its truth in one remark you'll sum-- "Twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twum!"
My name for truth, is gone, I fear, But, monstrous as it may appear, They let their drawing-room one day To an eligible person in the cotton-broking way.
[Illustration]
Whenever THOMSON GREEN fell sick His wife called in a doctor, quick, From whom some words like these would come-- _Fiat mist. sumendum haustus_, in a _cochleyareum_.
For thirty years this curious pair Hung out in Canonbury Square, And somehow, wonderful to say, They loved each other dearly in a quiet sort of way.
Well, THOMSON GREEN fell ill and died; For just a year his widow cried, And then her heart she gave away To the eligible lodger in the cotton-broking way.
Oh, list to this incredible tale Of THOMSON GREEN and HARRIET HALE, Its truth in one remark you'll sum-- "Twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twaddle twum!"
[Illustration]
A RECIPE
Take a pair of sparkling eyes, Hidden, ever and anon, In a merciful eclipse-- Do not heed their mild surprise-- Having passed the Rubicon, Take a pair of rosy lips; Take a figure trimly planned-- Such as admiration whets (Be particular in this); Take a tender little hand, Fringed with dainty fingerettes, Press it--in parenthesis;-- Take all these, you lucky man-- Take and keep them, if you can.
Take a pretty little cot-- Quite a miniature affair-- Hung about with trellised vine. Furnish it upon the spot With the treasures rich and rare I've endeavoured to define. Live to love and love to live-- You will ripen at your ease, Growing on the sunny side-- Fate has nothing more to give. You're a dainty man to please If you are not satisfied. Take my counsel, happy man: Act upon it, if you can!
[Illustration]
BOB POLTER
Bob Polter was a navvy, and His hands were coarse, and dirty too, His homely face was rough and tanned, His time of life was thirty-two.
He lived among a working clan (A wife he hadn't got at all), A decent, steady, sober man-- No saint, however--not at all
He smoked, but in a modest way, Because he thought he needed it; He drank a pot of beer a day, And sometimes he exceeded it.
At times he'd pass with other men A loud convivial night or two, With, very likely, now and then, On Saturdays, a fight or two.
But still he was a sober soul, A labour-never-shirking man, Who paid his way--upon the whole, A decent English working-man.
[Illustration]
One day, when at the Nelson's Head (For which he may be blamed of you), A holy man appeared and said, "Oh, ROBERT, I'm ashamed of you."
He laid his hand on ROBERT'S beer Before he could drink up any, And on the floor, with sigh and tear, He poured the pot of "thruppenny."
"Oh, ROBERT, at this very bar, A truth you'll be discovering, A good and evil genius are Around your noddle hovering.
"They both are here to bid you shun The other one's society, For Total Abstinence is one, The other, Inebriety."
He waved his hand--a vapour came-- A wizard, POLTER reckoned him: A bogy rose and called his name, And with his finger beckoned him.
The monster's salient points to sum, His breath was hot as cautery; His glowing nose suggested rum; His eyes were gin-and-watery.
His dress was torn--for dregs of ale And slops of gin had rusted it; His pimpled face was wan and pale, Where filth had not encrusted it.
"Come, POLTER," said the fiend, "begin, And keep the bowl a-flowing on-- A working-man needs pints of gin To keep his clockwork going on."
BOB shuddered: "Ah, you've made a miss, If you take me for one of you-- You filthy brute, get out of this-- BOB POLTER don't want none of you."
The demon gave a drunken shriek, And crept away in stealthiness, And lo, instead, a person sleek Who seemed to burst with healthiness.
[Illustration]
"In me, as your adviser hints, Of Abstinence you've got a type-- Of MR. TWEEDIE'S pretty prints I am the happy prototype.
"If you abjure the social toast, And pipes, and such frivolities, You possibly some day may boast My prepossessing qualities!"
BOB rubbed his eyes, and made 'em blink. "You almost make me tremble, you! If I abjure fermented drink, Shall I, indeed, resemble you?
"And will my whiskers curl so tight? My cheeks grow smug and muttony? My face become so pink and white? My coat so blue and buttony?
"Will trousers, such as yours, array Extremities inferior? Will chubbiness assert its sway All over my exterior?
"In this, my unenlightened state, To work in heavy boots I comes-- Will pumps henceforward decorate My tiddle toddle tootsicums?
"And shall I get so plump and fresh, And look no longer seedily? My skin will henceforth fit my flesh So tightly and so TWEEDIE-ly?"
The phantom said, "You'll have all this, You'll have no kind of huffiness, Your life will be one chubby bliss, One long unruffled puffiness!"
"Be off," said irritated BOB, "Why come you here to bother one? You pharisaical old snob, You're wuss, almost, than t'other one!
"I takes my pipe--I takes my pot, And drunk I'm never seen to be, I'm no teetotaller or sot, And as I am I mean to be!"
[Illustration]
THE MERRYMAN AND HIS MAID
HE. I have a song to sing, O! SHE. Sing me your song, O! HE. It is sung to the moon By a love-lorn loon, Who fled from the mocking throng, O! It's the song of a merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum, Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye. Heighdy! heighdy! Misery me--lackadaydee! He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
SHE. I have a song to sing, O! HE. Sing me your song, O! SHE. It is sung with the ring Of the song maids sing Who love with a love life-long, O!
It's the song of a merrymaid, peerly proud, Who loved a lord, and who laughed aloud At the moan of the merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sore, whose glance was glum, Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye! Heighdy! heighdy! Misery me--lackadaydee! He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
HE. I have a song to sing, O! SHE. Sing me your song, O! HE. It is sung to the knell Of a churchyard bell, And a doleful dirge, ding dong, O! It's a song of a popinjay, bravely born, Who turned up his noble nose with scorn At the humble merrymaid, peerly proud, Who loved that lord, and who laughed aloud At the moan of the merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum, Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye! Heighdy! heighdy! Misery me--lackadaydee! He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
SHE. I have a song to sing, O! HE. Sing me your song, O! SHE. It is sung with a sigh And a tear in the eye, For it tells of a righted wrong, O! It's a song of a merrymaid, once so gay, Who turned on her heel and tripped away
From the peacock popinjay, bravely born, Who turned up his noble nose with scorn At the humble heart that he did not prize; And it tells how she begged, with downcast eyes, For the love of a merryman, moping mum, Whose soul was sad, whose glance was glum, Who sipped no sup, and who craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye!
BOTH. Heighdy! heighdy! Misery me--lackadaydee! His pains were o'er, and he sighed no more, For he lived in the love of a ladye!
[Illustration]
ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN
MACPHAIRSON CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS M'CLAN Was the son of an elderly labouring man, You've guessed him a Scotchman, shrewd reader, at sight, And p'raps altogether, shrewd reader, you're right.
From the bonnie blue Forth to the hills of Deeside, Round by Dingwall and Wrath to the mouth of the Clyde. There wasn't a child or a woman or man Who could pipe with CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS M'CLAN.
No other could wake such detestable groans, With reed and with chaunter--with bag and with drones: All day and all night he delighted the chiels With sniggering pibrochs and jiggety reels.
He'd clamber a mountain and squat on the ground, And the neighbouring maidens would gather around To list to his pipes and to gaze in his e'en, Especially ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN.
All loved their M'CLAN, save a Sassenach brute, Who came to the Highlands to fish and to shoot; He dressed himself up in a Highlander way, Though his name it was PATTISON CORBY TORBAY.
TORBAY had incurred a good deal of expense To make him a Scotchman in every sense; But this is a matter, you'll readily own, That isn't a question of tailors alone.
A Sassenach chief may be bonily built, He may purchase a sporran, a bonnet, and kilt; Stick a skean in his hose--wear an acre of stripes-- But he cannot assume an affection for pipes.
CLONGLOCKETTY'S pipings all night and all day Quite frenzied poor PATTISON CORBY TORBAY; The girls were amused at his singular spleen, Especially ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN.
"MACPHAIRSON CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS, my lad, With pibrochs and reels you are driving me mad; If you really must play on that cursed affair, My goodness! play something resembling an air."
[Illustration]
Boiled over the blood of MACPHAIRSON M'CLAN-- The clan of Clonglocketty rose as one man; For all were enraged at the insult, I ween-- Especially ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN.
"Let's show," said M'CLAN, "to this Sassenach loon That the bagpipes can play him a regular tune. Let's see," said M'CLAN, as he thoughtfully sat, "'_In My Cottage_' is easy--I'll practise at that."
He blew at his "Cottage," and blew with a will, For a year, seven months, and a fortnight, until (You'll hardly believe it) M'CLAN, I declare, Elicited something resembling an air.
[Illustration]
It was wild--it was fitful--as wild as the breeze-- It wandered about into several keys; It was jerky, spasmodic, and harsh, I'm aware, But still it distinctly suggested an air.
The Sassenach screamed, and the Sassenach danced, He shrieked in his agony--bellowed and pranced; And the maidens who gathered rejoiced at the scene, Especially ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN.
"Hech gather, hech gather, hech gather around; And fill a' yer lugs wi' the exquisite sound. An air frae the bagpipes--beat that if ye can! Hurrah for CLONGLOCKETTY ANGUS M'CLAN!"
The fame of his piping spread over the land: Respectable widows proposed for his hand, And maidens came flocking to sit on the green-- Especially ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN.
One morning the fidgety Sassenach swore He'd stand it no longer--he drew his claymore, And (this was, I think, in extremely bad taste), Divided CLONGLOCKETTY close to the waist.
Oh! loud were the wailings for ANGUS M'CLAN-- Oh! deep was the grief for that excellent man-- The maids stood aghast at the horrible scene, Especially ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN.
It sorrowed poor PATTISON CORBY TORBAY To find them "take on" in this serious way, He pitied the poor little fluttering birds, And solaced their souls with the following words:--
"Oh, maidens," said PATTISON, touching his hat, "Don't snivel, my dears, for a fellow like that; Observe, I'm a very superior man, A much better fellow than ANGUS M'CLAN."
They smiled when he winked and addressed them as "dears," And they all of them vowed, as they dried up their tears, A pleasanter gentleman never was seen-- Especially ELLEN M'JONES ABERDEEN.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE SUSCEPTIBLE CHANCELLOR
The law is the true embodiment Of everything that's excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, And I, my lords, embody the Law. The constitutional guardian I Of pretty young Wards in Chancery, All very agreeable girls--and none Is over the age of twenty-one. A pleasant occupation for A rather susceptible Chancellor!
But though the compliment implied Inflates me with legitimate pride, It nevertheless can't be denied That it has its inconvenient side. For I'm not so old, and not so plain, And I'm quite prepared to marry again,
But there'd be the deuce to pay in the Lords If I fell in love with one of my Wards: Which rather tries my temper, for I'm _such_ a susceptible Chancellor!
And every one who'd marry a Ward Must come to me for my accord: So in my court I sit all day, Giving agreeable girls away, With one for him--and one for he-- And one for you--and one for ye-- And one for thou--and one for thee-- But never, oh never a one for me! Which is exasperating for A highly susceptible Chancellor!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PETER THE WAG
POLICEMAN PETER FORTH I drag From his obscure retreat: He was a merry, genial wag, Who loved a mad conceit. If he were asked the time of day By country bumpkins green, He not unfrequently would say, "A quarter past thirteen."
If ever you by word of mouth Enquired of MISTER FORTH The way to somewhere in the South, He always sent you North. With little boys his beat along He loved to stop and play; He loved to send old ladies wrong, And teach their feet to stray.
He would in frolic moments, when Such mischief bent upon, Take Bishops up as betting men-- Bid Ministers move on. Then all the worthy boys he knew He regularly licked, And always collared people who Had had their pockets picked.
He was not naturally bad, Or viciously inclined, But from his early youth he had A waggish turn of mind. The Men of London grimly scowled With indignation wild; The Men of London gruffly growled, But PETER calmly smiled.
Against this minion of the Crown The swelling murmurs grew-- From Camberwell to Kentish Town-- From Rotherhithe to Kew. Still humoured he his wagsome turn, And fed in various ways The coward rage that dared to burn But did not dare to blaze.
Still, Retribution has her day Although her flight is slow: _One day that Crusher lost his way Near Poland Street, Soho_. The haughty youth, too proud to ask, To find his way resolved, And in the tangle of his task Got more and more involved.
The Men of London, overjoyed, Came there to jeer their foe-- And flocking crowds completely cloyed The mazes of Soho. The news, on telegraphic wires, Sped swiftly o'er the lea-- Excursion trains from distant shires Brought myriads to see.
For weeks he trod his self-made beats Through Newport, Gerrard, Bear, Greek, Rupert, Frith, Dean, Poland Streets, And into Golden Square: But all, alas, in vain, for when He tried to learn the way Of little boys or grown-up men They none of them would say.
[Illustration]
Their eyes would flash--their teeth would grind-- Their lips would tightly curl-- They'd say, "Thy way thyself must find, Thou misdirecting churl!"
And, similarly, also, when He tried a foreign friend; Italians answered, "Il balen"-- The French, "No comprehend."
[Illustration]
The Russ would say with gleaming eye "Sevastopol!" and groan. The Greek said, "Τυπτω, τυπτομαι, Τυπτω, τυπτειν, τυπτων." To wander thus for many a year That Crusher never ceased-- The Men of London dropped a tear, Their anger was appeased.
At length exploring gangs were sent To find poor FORTH'S remains-- A handsome grant by Parliament Was voted for their pains.
To seek the poor policeman out Bold spirits volunteered, And when at length they solved the doubt The Men of London cheered.
And in a yard, dark, dank, and drear, They found him, on the floor-- (It leads from Richmond Buildings--near The Royalty stage-door.) With brandy cold and brandy hot They plied him, starved and wet, And made him sergeant on the spot-- The Men of London's pet!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
WHEN A MERRY MAIDEN MARRIES
When a merry maiden marries, Sorrow goes and pleasure tarries; Every sound becomes a song, All is right and nothing's wrong! From to-day and ever after Let your tears be tears of laughter-- Every sigh that finds a vent Be a sigh of sweet content! When you marry merry maiden, Then the air with love is laden; Every flower is a rose, Every goose becomes a swan, Every kind of trouble goes Where the last year's snows have gone; Sunlight takes the place of shade When you marry merry maid!
When a merry maiden marries Sorrow goes and pleasure tarries; Every sound becomes a song, All is right, and nothing's wrong. Gnawing Care and aching Sorrow, Get ye gone until to-morrow; Jealousies in grim array, Ye are things of yesterday! When you marry merry maiden, Then the air with joy is laden; All the corners of the earth Ring with music sweetly played, Worry is melodious mirth, Grief is joy in masquerade; Sullen night is laughing day-- All the year is merry May!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE THREE KINGS OF CHICKERABOO
There were three niggers of Chickeraboo-- PACIFICO, BANG-BANG, POPCHOP--who Exclaimed, one terribly sultry day, "Oh, let's be kings in a humble way."
The first was a highly-accomplished "bones," The next elicited banjo tones, The third was a quiet, retiring chap, Who danced an excellent break-down "flap."
"We niggers," said they, "have formed a plan By which, whenever we like, we can Extemporise kingdoms near the beach, And then we'll collar a kingdom each.
"Three casks, from somebody else's stores, Shall represent our island shores, Their sides the ocean wide shall lave, Their heads just topping the briny wave.
"Great Britain's navy scours the sea, And everywhere her ships they be; She'll recognise our rank, perhaps, When she discovers we're Royal Chaps.
"If to her skirts you want to cling, It's quite sufficient that you're a king; She does not push inquiry far To learn what sort of king you are."
A ship of several thousand tons, And mounting seventy-something guns, Ploughed, every year, the ocean blue, Discovering kings and countries new.
The brave REAR-ADMIRAL BAILEY PIP, Commanding that magnificent ship, Perceived one day, his glasses through, The kings that came from Chickeraboo.
"Dear eyes!" said ADMIRAL PIP, "I see Three flourishing islands on our lee. And, bless me! most remarkable thing! On every island stands a king!
"Come, lower the Admiral's gig," he cried, "And over the dancing waves I'll glide; That low obeisance I may do To those three kings of Chickeraboo!"
The Admiral pulled to the islands three; The kings saluted him gracious_lee_. The Admiral, pleased at his welcome warm, Unrolled a printed Alliance form.
[Illustration]
"Your Majesty, sign me this, I pray-- I come in a friendly kind of way-- I come, if you please, with the best intents, And QUEEN VICTORIA'S compliments."
The kings were pleased as they well could be; The most retiring of the three In a "cellar-flap" to his joy gave vent With a banjo-bones accompaniment.
The great REAR-ADMIRAL BAILEY PIP Embarked on board his jolly big ship, Blue Peter flew from his lofty fore, And off he sailed to his native shore.
ADMIRAL PIP directly went To the Lord at the head of the Government, Who made him, by a stroke of a quill, BARON DE PIPPE, OF PIPPETONNEVILLE.
The College of Heralds permission yield That he should quarter upon his shield Three islands, _vert_, on a field of blue, With the pregnant motto "Chickeraboo."
Ambassadors, yes, and attachés, too, Are going to sail for Chickeraboo. And, see, on the good ship's crowded deck, A bishop, who's going out there on spec.
And let us all hope that blissful things May come of alliance with darky kings. And, may we never, whatever we do, Declare a war with Chickeraboo!
[Illustration]
THE BRITISH TAR
A British tar is a soaring soul, As free as a mountain bird, His energetic fist should be ready to resist A dictatorial word. His nose should pant and his lip should curl, His cheeks should flame and his brow should furl, His bosom should heave and his heart should glow And his fist be ever ready for a knock-down blow.
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54452-0 | His eyes should flash with an inborn fire, His brow with scorn be wrung; He never should bow down to a domineering frown. Or the tang of a tyrant tongue. His foot should stamp and his throat should growl, His hair should twirl and his face should scowl; His eyes should flash and his breast protrude, And this should be his customary attitude!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
GENTLE ALICE BROWN
It was a robber's daughter, and her name was ALICE BROWN, Her father was the terror of a small Italian town; Her mother was a foolish, weak, but amiable old thing; But it isn't of her parents that I'm going for to sing.
As ALICE was a-sitting at her window-sill one day A beautiful young gentleman he chanced to pass that way; She cast her eyes upon him, and he looked so good and true, That she thought, "I could be happy with a gentleman like you!"
And every morning passed her house that cream of gentlemen, She knew she might expect him at a quarter unto ten, A sorter in the Custom-house, it was his daily road (The Custom-house was fifteen minutes' walk from her abode).
But ALICE was a pious girl, who knew it wasn't wise To look at strange young sorters with expressive purple eyes; So she sought the village priest to whom her family confessed-- The priest by whom their little sins were carefully assessed.
"Oh, holy father," ALICE said, "'twould grieve you, would it not? To discover that I was a most disreputable lot! Of all unhappy sinners I'm the most unhappy one!" The padre said, "Whatever have you been and gone and done?"
"I have helped mamma to steal a little kiddy from its dad, I've assisted dear papa in cutting up a little lad. I've planned a little burglary and forged a little cheque, And slain a little baby for the coral on its neck!"
The worthy pastor heaved a sigh, and dropped a silent tear-- And said, "You mustn't judge yourself too heavily, my dear-- It's wrong to murder babies, little corals for to fleece; But sins like these one expiates at half-a-crown apiece.
"Girls will be girls--you're very young, and flighty in your mind; Old heads upon young shoulders we must not expect to find: We mustn't be too hard upon these little girlish tricks-- Let's see--five crimes at half-a-crown--exactly twelve-and-six"
"Oh, father," little ALICE cried, "your kindness makes me weep, You do these little things for me so singularly cheap-- Your thoughtful liberality I never can forget; But oh, there is another crime I haven't mentioned yet!
"A pleasant-looking gentleman, with pretty purple eyes,-- I've noticed at my window, as I've sat a-catching flies; He passes by it every day as certain as can be-- I blush to say I've winked at him, and he has winked at me!"
[Illustration]
"For shame," said FATHER PAUL, "my erring daughter! On my word This is the most distressing news that I have ever heard. Why, naughty girl, your excellent papa has pledged your hand To a promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band!
"This dreadful piece of news will pain your worthy parents so! They are the most remunerative customers I know; For many many years they've kept starvation from my doors, I never knew so criminal a family as yours!
"The common country folk in this insipid neighbourhood Have nothing to confess, they're so ridiculously good; And if you marry any one respectable at all, Why, you'll reform, and what will then become of FATHER PAUL?"
The worthy priest, he up and drew his cowl upon his crown, And started off in haste to tell the news to ROBBER BROWN; To tell him how his daughter, who was now for marriage fit, Had winked upon a sorter, who reciprocated it.
Good ROBBER BROWN he muffled up his anger pretty well, He said, "I have a notion, and that notion I will tell; I will nab this gay young sorter, terrify him into fits, And get my gentle wife to chop him into little bits.
"I've studied human nature, and I know a thing or two; Though a girl may fondly love a living gent, as many do, A feeling of disgust upon her senses there will fall When she looks upon his body chopped particularly small."
He traced that gallant sorter to a still suburban square; He watched his opportunity and seized him unaware; He took a life-preserver and he hit him on the head, And MRS. BROWN dissected him before she went to bed.
And pretty little ALICE grew more settled in her mind, She never more was guilty of a weakness of the kind, Until at length good ROBBER BROWN bestowed her pretty hand On the promising young robber, the lieutenant of his band.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A MAN WHO WOULD WOO A FAIR MAID
A man who would woo a fair maid Should 'prentice himself to the trade; And study all day, In methodical way, How to flatter, cajole, and persuade. He should 'prentice himself at fourteen, And practise from morning to e'en; And when he's of age, If he will, I'll engage, He may capture the heart of a queen! It is purely a matter of skill, Which all may attain if they will: But every Jack He must study the knack If he wants to make sure of his Jill!
If he's made the best use of his time, His twig he'll so carefully lime That every bird Will come down at his word. Whatever its plumage or clime. He must learn that the thrill of a touch May mean little, or nothing, or much; It's an instrument rare, To be handled with care, And ought to be treated as such. It is purely a matter of skill, Which all may attain if they will: But every Jack, He must study the knack If he wants to make sure of his Jill!
Then a glance may be timid or free; It will vary in mighty degree, From an impudent stare To a look of despair That no maid without pity can see. And a glance of despair is no guide-- It may have its ridiculous side; It may draw you a tear Or a box on the ear; You can never be sure till you've tried. It is purely a matter of skill, Which all may attain if they will: But every Jack He must study the knack If he wants to make sure of his Jill!
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THE SORCERER'S SONG
Oh! my name is JOHN WELLINGTON WELLS-- I'm a dealer in magic and spells, In blessings and curses, And ever-filled purses, In prophecies, witches, and knells! If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"-- If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax-- You've but to look in On our resident Djinn, Number seventy, Simmery Axe.
We've a first-class assortment of magic; And for raising a posthumous shade With effects that are comic or tragic, There's no cheaper house in the trade.
Love-philtre--we've quantities of it; And for knowledge if any one burns, We keep an extremely small prophet, a prophet Who brings us unbounded returns: For he can prophesy With a wink _of_ his eye, Peep with security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident Djinn, Number seventy, Simmery Axe!
He can raise you hosts Of ghosts, And that without reflectors; And creepy things With wings, And gaunt and grisly spectres! He can fill you crowds Of shrouds, And horrify you vastly; He can rack your brains With chains,
And gibberings grim and ghastly. Then, if you plan it, he Changes organity With an urbanity Full of Satanity, Vexes humanity With an inanity Fatal to vanity-- Driving your foes to the verge of insanity. Barring tautology, In demonology, 'Lectro-biology, Mystic nosology, Spirit philology, High-class astrology, Such is his knowledge, he Isn't the man to require an apology! Oh! My name is JOHN WELLINGTON WELLS, I'm a dealer in magic and spells, In blessings and curses, And ever-filled purses-- In prophecies, witches, and knells. If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident Djinn, Number seventy, Simmery Axe!
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THE BUMBOAT WOMAN'S STORY
I'm old, my dears, and shrivelled with age, and work, and grief, My eyes are gone, and my teeth have been drawn by Time, the Thief! For terrible sights I've seen, and dangers great I've run-- I'm nearly seventy now, and my work is almost done!
Ah! I've been young in my time, and I've played the deuce with men! I'm speaking of ten years past--I was barely sixty then: My cheeks were mellow and soft, and my eyes were large and sweet, POLL PINEAPPLE'S eyes were the standing toast of the Royal Fleet!
A bumboat woman was I, and I faithfully served the ships With apples and cakes, and fowls and beer, and halfpenny dips, And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at nights, And fine fresh peppermint drops for the rollicking midshipmites.
Of all the kind commanders who anchored in Portsmouth Bay, By far the sweetest of all was kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE. LIEUTENANT BELAYE commanded the gunboat _Hot Cross Bun_, She was seven and seventy feet in length, and she carried a gun. With the laudable view of enhancing his country's naval pride, When people inquired her size, LIEUTENANT BELAYE replied, "Oh, my ship, my ship is the first of the Hundred and Twenty-ones!" Which meant her tonnage, but people imagined it meant her guns.
Whenever I went on board he would beckon me down below, "Come down, Little Buttercup, come" (for he loved to call me so), And he'd tell of the fights at sea in which he'd taken a part, And so LIEUTENANT BELAYE won poor POLL PINEAPPLE'S heart!
But at length his orders came, and he said one day, said he, "I'm ordered to sail with the _Hot Cross Bun_ to the German Sea." And the Portsmouth maidens wept when they learnt the evil day, For every Portsmouth maid loved good LIEUTENANT BELAYE.
And I went to a back back street, with plenty of cheap cheap shops, And I bought an oilskin hat, and a second-hand suit of slops, And I went to LIEUTENANT BELAYE (and he never suspected _me_!) And I entered myself as a chap as wanted to go to sea.
We sailed that afternoon at the mystic hour of one,-- Remarkably nice young men were the crew of the _Hot Cross Bun._ I'm sorry to say that I've heard that sailors sometimes swear, But I never yet heard a _Bun_ say anything wrong, I declare.
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When Jack Tars meet, they meet with a "Messmate, ho! What cheer?" But here, on the _Hot Cross Bun_, it was "How do you do, my dear?" When Jack Tars growl, I believe they growl with a big big D-- But the strongest oath of the _Hot Cross Buns_ was a mild "Dear me!"
Yet, though they were all well bred, you could scarcely call them slick: Whenever a sea was on, they were all extremely sick; And whenever the weather was calm, and the wind was light and fair, They spent more time than a sailor should on his back back hair.
They certainly shivered and shook when ordered aloft to run, And they screamed when LIEUTENANT BELAYE discharged his only gun. And as he was proud of his gun--such pride is hardly wrong-- The Lieutenant was blazing away at intervals all day long.
They all agreed very well, though at times you heard it said That BILL had a way of his own of making his lips look red-- That JOE looked quite his age--or somebody might declare That BARNACLE'S long pig-tail was never his own own hair.
BELAYE would admit that his men were of no great use to him, "But then," he would say, "there is little to do on a gunboat trim. I can hand, and reef, and steer, and fire my big gun too-- And it _is_ such a treat to sail with a gentle well-bred crew."
I saw him every day! How the happy moments sped! Reef topsails! Make all taut! There's dirty weather ahead! (I do not mean that tempests threatened the _Hot Cross Bun_: In _that_ case, I don't know whatever we _should_ have done!)
After a fortnight's cruise we put into port one day, And off on leave for a week went kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE, And after a long long week had passed (and it seemed like a life), LIEUTENANT BELAYE returned to his ship with a fair young wife!
He up, and he says, says he, "Oh, crew of the _Hot Cross Bun_, Here is the wife of my heart, for the Church has made us one!" And as he uttered the word, the crew went out of their wits, And all fell down in so many separate fainting fits.
And then their hair came down, or off, as the case might be, And lo! the rest of the crew were simple girls, like me, Who all had fled from their homes in a sailor's blue array, To follow the shifting fate of kind LIEUTENANT BELAYE!
It's strange to think that _I_ should ever have loved young men, But I'm speaking of ten years past--I was barely sixty then; And now my cheeks are furrowed with grief and age, I trow! And poor POLL PINEAPPLE'S eyes have lost their lustre now!
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[Illustration]
THE FICKLE BREEZE
Sighing softly to the river Comes the loving breeze, Setting nature all a-quiver, Rustling through the trees! And the brook in rippling measure Laughs for very love, While the poplars, in their pleasure, Wave their arms above! River, river, little river, May thy loving prosper ever. Heaven speed thee, poplar tree. May thy wooing happy be!
Yet, the breeze is but a rover, When he wings away, Brook and poplar mourn a lover! Sighing well-a-day!
Ah, the doing and undoing That the rogue could tell! When the breeze is out a-wooing, Who can woo so well? Pretty brook, thy dream is over For thy love is but a rover! Sad the lot of poplar trees, Courted by the fickle breeze!
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[Illustration]
THE TWO OGRES
Good children, list, if you're inclined, And wicked children too-- This pretty ballad is designed Especially for you.
Two ogres dwelt in Wickham Wold-- Each _traits_ distinctive had: The younger was as good as gold, The elder was as bad.
A wicked, disobedient son Was JAMES M'ALPINE, and A contrast to the elder one, Good APPLEBODY BLAND.
M'ALPINE--brutes like him are few-- In greediness delights, A melancholy victim to Unchastened appetites.
Good, well-bred children every day He ravenously ate,-- All boys were fish who found their way Into M'ALPINE'S net:
Boys whose good breeding is innate, Whose sums are always right; And boys who don't expostulate When sent to bed at night,
And kindly boys who never search The nests of birds of song; And serious boys for whom, in church, No sermon is too long.
Contrast with JAMES'S greedy haste And comprehensive hand, The nice discriminating taste Of APPLEBODY BLAND.
Bland only eats bad boys, who swear-- Who _can_ behave, but _don't_-- Disgraceful lads who say "don't care," And "shan't," and "can't," and "won't."
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Who wet their shoes and learn to box, And say what isn't true, Who bite their nails and jam their frocks, And make long noses too;
Who kick a nurse's aged shin, And sit in sulky mopes; And boys who twirl poor kittens in Distracting zoëtropes.
But JAMES, when he was quite a youth, Had often been to school, And though so bad, to tell the truth, He wasn't quite a fool.
At logic few with him could vie; To his peculiar sect He could propose a fallacy With singular effect.
So, when his Mentors said, "Expound-- Why eat good children--why?" Upon his Mentors he would round With this absurd reply:
"I have been taught to love the good-- The pure--the unalloyed-- And wicked boys, I've understood, I always should avoid.
"Why do I eat good children--why? Because I love them so!" (But this was empty sophistry, As your Papa can show.)
Now, though the learning of his friends Was truly not immense, They had a way of fitting ends By rule of common sense.
"Away, away!" his Mentors cried, "Thou uncongenial pest! A quirk's a thing we can't abide, A quibble we detest!
"A fallacy in your reply Our intellect descries, Although we don't pretend to spy Exactly where it lies.
"In misery and penal woes Must end a glutton's joys; And learn how ogres punish those Who dare to eat good boys.
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"Secured by fetter, cramp, and chain, And gagged securely--so-- You shall be placed in Drury Lane, Where only good lads go.
"Surrounded there by virtuous boys, You'll suffer torture wus Than that which constantly annoys Disgraceful TANTALUS.
("If you would learn the woes that vex Poor TANTALUS, down there, Pray borrow of Papa an ex- Purgated LEMPRIERE.)
"But as for BLAND who, as it seems, Eats only naughty boys, We've planned a recompense that teems With gastronomic joys.
"Where wicked youths in crowds are stowed He shall unquestioned rule, And have the run of Hackney Road Reformatory School!"
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[Illustration]
THE FIRST LORD'S SONG
When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to an Attorney's firm; I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so successfullee, That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
As office boy I made such a mark That they gave me the post of a junior clerk; I served the writs with a smile so bland, And I copied all the letters in a big round hand. I copied all the letters in a hand so free, That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
In serving writs I made such a name That an articled clerk I soon became; I wore clean collars and a brand-new suit For the Pass Examination at the Institute: And that Pass Examination did so well for me, That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
Of legal knowledge I acquired such a grip That they took me into the partnership, And that junior partnership, I ween, Was the only ship that I ever had seen: But that kind of ship so suited me, That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
I grew so rich that I was sent By a pocket borough into Parliament; I always voted at my Party's call, And I never thought of thinking for myself at all. I thought so little, they rewarded me, By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
Now, landsmen all, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree-- If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool, Be careful to be guided by this golden rule-- Stick close to your desks and _never go to sea_, And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navee!
[Illustration]
LITTLE OLIVER
EARL JOYCE he was a kind old party Whom nothing ever could put out, Though eighty-two, he still was hearty, Excepting as regarded gout.
He had one unexampled daughter, The LADY MINNIE-HAHA JOYCE, Fair MINNIE-HAHA, "Laughing Water," So called from her melodious voice.
By Nature planned for lover-capture, Her beauty every heart assailed; The good old nobleman with rapture Observed how widely she prevailed.
Aloof from all the lordly flockings Of titled swells who worshipped her, There stood, in pumps and cotton stockings, One humble lover--OLIVER.
He was no peer by Fortune petted, His name recalled no bygone age; He was no lordling coronetted-- Alas! he was a simple page!
With vain appeals he never bored her, But stood in silent sorrow by-- He knew how fondly he adored her, And knew, alas! how hopelessly!
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Well grounded by a village tutor In languages alive and past, He'd say unto himself, "Knee-suitor, Oh, do not go beyond your last!"
But though his name could boast no handle, He could not every hope resign; As moths will hover round a candle, So hovered he about her shrine.
The brilliant candle dazed the moth well: One day she sang to her Papa The air that MARIE sings with BOTHWELL In NIEDERMEYER'S opera.
(Therein a stable boy, it's stated, Devoutly loved a noble dame, Who ardently reciprocated His rather injudicious flame.)
And then, before the piano closing (He listened coyly at the door), She sang a song of her composing-- I give one verse from half a score:
BALLAD
_Why, pretty page, art ever sighing? Is sorrow in thy heartlet lying? Come, set a-ringing Thy laugh entrancing, And ever singing And ever dancing. Ever singing, Tra! la! la! Ever dancing, Tra! la! la! Ever singing, ever dancing, Ever singing, Tra! la! la!_
He skipped for joy like little muttons, He danced like Esmeralda's kid. (She did not mean a boy in buttons, Although he fancied that she did.)
Poor lad! convinced he thus would win her, He wore out many pairs of soles; He danced when taking down the dinner-- He danced when bringing up the coals.
He danced and sang (however laden) With his incessant "Tra! la! la!" Which much surprised the noble maiden, And puzzled even her Papa.
He nourished now his flame and fanned it, He even danced at work below. The upper servants wouldn't stand it, And BOWLES the butler told him so.
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At length on impulse acting blindly, His love he laid completely bare; The gentle Earl received him kindly And told the lad to take a chair.
"Oh, sir," the suitor uttered sadly, "Don't give your indignation vent; I fear you think I'm acting madly, Perhaps you think me insolent?"
The kindly Earl repelled the notion; His noble bosom heaved a sigh, His fingers trembled with emotion, A tear stood in his mild blue eye:
For, oh! the scene recalled too plainly The half-forgotten time when he, A boy of nine, had worshipped vainly A governess of forty-three!
"My boy," he said, in tone consoling, "Give up this idle fancy--do-- The song you heard my daughter trolling Did not, indeed, refer to you.
"I feel for you, poor boy, acutely; I would not wish to give you pain; Your pangs I estimate minutely,-- I, too, have loved, and loved in vain.
[Illustration]
"But still your humble rank and station For MINNIE surely are not meet"-- He said much more in conversation Which it were needless to repeat.
Now I'm prepared to bet a guinea, Were this a mere dramatic case, The page would have eloped with MINNIE. But, no--he only left his place.
The simple Truth is my detective, With me Sensation can't abide; The Likely beats the mere Effective, And Nature is my only guide.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
MISTER WILLIAM
Oh, listen to the tale of MISTER WILLIAM, if you please, Whom naughty, naughty judges sent away beyond the seas. He forged a party's will, which caused anxiety and strife, Resulting in his getting penal servitude for life.
He was a kindly goodly man, and naturally prone, Instead of taking others' gold, to give away his own. But he had heard of Vice, and longed for only once to strike-- To plan _one_ little wickedness--to see what it was like.
He argued with himself, and said, "A spotless man am I; I can't be more respectable, however hard I try; For six and thirty years I've always been as good as gold, And now for half-an-hour I'll deal in infamy untold!
"A baby who is wicked at the early age of one, And then reforms--and dies at thirty-six a spotless son, Is never, never saddled with his babyhood's defect, But earns from worthy men consideration and respect.
"So one who never revelled in discreditable tricks Until he reached the comfortable age of thirty-six, Is free for half-an-hour to perpetrate a deed of shame, Without incurring permanent disgrace, or even blame.
"That babies don't commit such crimes as forgery is true, But little sins develop, if you leave 'em to accrue; And he who shuns all vices as successive seasons roll, Should reap at length the benefit of so much self-control.
"The common sin of babyhood--objecting to be drest-- If you leave it to accumulate at compound interest, For anything you know, may represent, if you're alive, A burglary or murder at the age of thirty-five.
"Still, I wouldn't take advantage of this fact, but be content With some pardonable folly--it's a mere experiment. The greater the temptation to go wrong, the less the sin; So with something that's particularly tempting I'll begin.
"I would not steal a penny, for my income's very fair-- I do not want a penny--I have pennies and to spare-- And if I stole a penny from a money-bag or till, The sin would be enormous--the temptation being _nil_.
"But if I broke asunder all such pettifogging bounds, And forged a party's Will for (say) Five Hundred Thousand Pounds, With such an irresistible temptation to a haul, Of course the sin must be infinitesimally small.
"There's WILSON who is dying--he has wealth from Stock and rent-- If I divert his riches from their natural descent, I'm placed in a position to indulge each little whim." So he diverted them--and they, in turn, diverted him.
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Unfortunately, though, by some unpardonable flaw, Temptation isn't recognised by Britain's Common Law; Men found him out by some peculiarity of touch, And WILLIAM got a "lifer," which annoyed him very much.
For ah! he never reconciled himself to life in gaol, He fretted and he pined, and grew dispirited and pale; He was numbered like a cabman, too, which told upon him so, That his spirits, once so buoyant, grew uncomfortably low.
And sympathetic gaolers would remark, "It's very true, He ain't been brought up common, like the likes of me and you." So they took him into hospital, and gave him mutton chops, And chocolate, and arrowroot, and buns, and malt and hops.
[Illustration]
Kind clergymen, besides, grew interested in his fate, Affected by the details of his pitiable state. They waited on the Secretary, somewhere in Whitehall, Who said he would receive them any day they liked to call.
"Consider, sir, the hardship of this interesting case: A prison life brings with it something very like disgrace; It's telling on young WILLIAM, who's reduced to skin and bone-- Remember he's a gentleman, with money of his own.
"He had an ample income, and of course he stands in need Of sherry with his dinner, and his customary weed; No delicacies now can pass his gentlemanly lips-- He misses his sea-bathing and his continental trips.
"He says the other prisoners are commonplace and rude; He says he cannot relish the disgusting prison food, For when a boy they taught him to distinguish Good from Bad, And other educational advantages he's had.
"A burglar or garrotter, or, indeed, a common thief Is very glad to batten on potatoes and on beef, Or anything, in short, that prison kitchens can afford,-- A cut above the diet in a common workhouse ward.
"But beef and mutton-broth don't seem to suit our WILLIAM'S whim, A boon to other prisoners--a punishment to him: It never was intended that the discipline of gaol Should dash a convict's spirits, sir, or make him thin or pale."
"Good Gracious Me!" that sympathetic Secretary cried, "Suppose in prison fetters MISTER WILLIAM should have died! Dear me, of course! Imprisonment for _Life_ his sentence saith: I'm very glad you mentioned it--it might have been For Death!
"Release him with a ticket--he'll be better then, no doubt, And tell him I apologise." So MISTER WILLIAM'S out. I hope he will be careful in his manuscripts, I'm sure, And not begin experimentalising any more.
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[Illustration]
WOULD YOU KNOW?
Would you know the kind of maid Sets my heart a flame-a? Eyes must be downcast and staid, Cheeks must flush for shame-a! She may neither dance nor sing, But, demure in everything, Hang her head in modest way With pouting lips that seem to say, "Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, Though I die of shame-a!" Please you, that's the kind of maid Sets my heart a flame-a!
When a maid is bold and gay With a tongue goes clang-a, Flaunting it in brave array, Maiden may go hang-a! Sunflower gay and hollyhock Never shall my garden stock; Mine the blushing rose of May, With pouting lips that seem to say "Oh, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, Though I die for shame-a!" Please you, that's the kind of maid Sets my heart a flame-a!
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[Illustration]
PASHA BAILEY BEN
A proud Pasha was BAILEY BEN, His wives were three, his tails were ten; His form was dignified, but stout, Men called him "Little Roundabout."
_His Importance_
Pale Pilgrims came from o'er the sea To wait on PASHA BAILEY B., All bearing presents in a crowd, For B. was poor as well as proud.
_His Presents_
They brought him onions strung on ropes, And cold boiled beef, and telescopes, And balls of string, and shrimps, and guns, And chops, and tacks, and hats, and buns.
_More of them_
They brought him white kid gloves, and pails, And candlesticks, and potted quails, And capstan-bars, and scales and weights, And ornaments for empty grates.
_Why I mention these_
My tale is not of these--oh no! I only mention them to show The divers gifts that divers men Brought o'er the sea to BAILEY BEN.
_His Confidant_
A confidant had BAILEY B., A gay Mongolian dog was he; I am not good at Turkish names, And so I call him SIMPLE JAMES.
_His Confidant's Countenance_
A dreadful legend you might trace In SIMPLE JAMES'S honest face, For there you read, in Nature's print, "A Scoundrel of the Deepest Tint."
_His Character_
A deed of blood, or fire, or flames, Was meat and drink to SIMPLE JAMES: To hide his guilt he did not plan, But owned himself a bad young man.
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_The Author to his Reader_
And why on earth good BAILEY BEN (The wisest, noblest, best of men) Made SIMPLE JAMES his right-hand man Is quite beyond my mental span.
_The same, continued_
But there--enough of gruesome deeds! My heart, in thinking of them, bleeds; And so let SIMPLE JAMES take wing,-- 'Tis not of him I'm going to sing.
_The Pasha's Clerk_
Good PASHA BAILEY kept a clerk (For BAILEY only made his mark), His name was MATTHEW WYCOMBE COO, A man of nearly forty-two.
_His Accomplishments_
No person that I ever knew Could "yödel" half as well as COO, And Highlanders exclaimed, "Eh, weel!" When COO began to dance a reel.
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_His Kindness to the Pasha's Wives_
He used to dance and sing and play In such an unaffected way, He cheered the unexciting lives Of PASHA BAILEY'S lovely wives.
_The Author to his Reader_
But why should I encumber you With histories of MATTHEW COO? Let MATTHEW COO at once take wing.-- 'Tis not of COO I'm going to sing.
_The Author's Muse_
Let me recall my wandering Muse She _shall_ be steady if I choose-- She roves, instead of helping me To tell the deeds of BAILEY B.
_The Pasha's Visitor_
One morning knocked, at half-past eight, A tall Red Indian at his gate. In Turkey, as you're p'raps aware, Red Indians are extremely rare.
_The Visitor's Outfit_
Mocassins decked his graceful legs, His eyes were black, and round as eggs, And on his neck, instead of beads, Hung several Catawampous seeds.
_What the Visitor said_
"Ho, ho!" he said, "thou pale-faced one, Poor offspring of an Eastern sun, You've _never_ seen the Red Man skip Upon the banks of Mississip!"
_The Author's Moderation_
To say that BAILEY oped his eyes Would feebly paint his great surprise-- To say it almost made him die Would be to paint it much too high.
_The Author to his Reader_
But why should I ransack my head To tell you all that Indian said; We'll let the Indian man take wing,-- 'Tis not of him I'm going to sing.
_The Reader to the Author_
Come, come, I say, that's quite enough Of this absurd disjointed stuff; Now let's get on to that affair About LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FLARE.
[Illustration]
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL FLARE
The earth has armies plenty, And semi-warlike bands, I dare say there are twenty In European lands; But, oh! in no direction You'd find one to compare In brotherly affection With that of COLONEL FLARE.
His soldiers might be rated As military Pearls: As unsophisticated As pretty little girls!
They never smoked or ratted, Or talked of Sues or Polls; The Sergeant-Major tatted, The others nursed their dolls.
He spent his days in teaching These truly solemn facts; There's little use in preaching, Or circulating tracts. (The vainest plan invented For stifling other creeds, Unless it's supplemented With charitable _deeds_.)
He taught his soldiers kindly To give at Hunger's call: "Oh, better far give blindly Than never give at all! Though sympathy be kindled By Imposition's game, Oh, better far be swindled Than smother up its flame!"
His means were far from ample For pleasure or for dress, Yet note this bright example Of single-heartedness: Though ranking as a Colonel, His pay was but a groat, While their reward diurnal Was--each a five-pound note.
Moreover,--this evinces His kindness, you'll allow,-- He fed them all like princes, And lived himself on cow.
He set them all regaling On curious wines, and dear, While he would sit pale-ale-ing, Or quaffing ginger-beer.
[Illustration]
Then at his instigation (A pretty fancy this) Their daily pay and ration He'd take in change for his; They brought it to him weekly, And he without a groan Would take it from them meekly And give them all his own!
Though not exactly knighted As knights, of course, should be, Yet no one so delighted In harmless chivalry. If peasant girl or ladye Beneath misfortunes sank, Whate'er distinctions made he, They were not those of rank.
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No maiden young and comely Who wanted good advice (However poor or homely) Need ask him for it twice.
He'd wipe away the blindness That comes of teary dew; His sympathetic kindness No sort of limit knew.
He always hated dealing With men who schemed or planned; A person harsh--unfeeling-- The Colonel could not stand. He hated cold, suspecting, Official men in blue, Who pass their lives detecting The crimes that others do.
[Illustration]
For men who'd shoot a sparrow, Or immolate a worm Beneath a farmer's harrow, He could not find a term. Humanely, ay, and knightly He dealt with such an one; He took and tied him tightly, And blew him from a gun.
The earth has armies plenty, And semi-warlike bands, I'm certain there are twenty In European lands; But, oh! in no direction You'd find one to compare In brotherly affection With that of COLONEL FLARE.
[Illustration]
SPECULATION
Comes a train of little ladies From scholastic trammels free, Each a little bit afraid is, Wondering what the world can be!
Is it but a world of trouble-- Sadness set to song? Is its beauty but a bubble Bound to break ere long?
Are its palaces and pleasures Fantasies that fade? And the glory of its treasures Shadow of a shade?
Schoolgirls we, eighteen and under, From scholastic trammels free, And we wonder--how we wonder!-- What on earth the world can be!
AH ME!
When maiden loves, she sits and sighs She wanders to and fro; Unbidden tear-drops fill her eyes, And to all questions she replies With a sad heigho! 'Tis but a little word--"heigho!" So soft, 'tis scarcely heard--"heigho! An idle breath-- Yet life and death May hang upon a maid's "heigho!"
When maiden loves, she mopes apart, As owl mopes on a tree; Although she keenly feels the smart, She cannot tell what ails her heart, With its sad "Ah me!" 'Tis but a foolish sigh--"Ah me!" Born but to droop and die--"Ah me!" Yet all the sense Of eloquence Lies hidden in a maid's "Ah me!"
[Illustration]
LOST MR. BLAKE
MR. BLAKE was a regular out-and-out hardened sinner, Who was quite out of the pale of Christianity, so to speak: He was in the habit of smoking a long pipe and drinking a glass of grog on Sunday after dinner, And seldom thought of going to church more than twice (or if Good Friday or Christmas Day happened to come in it) three times a week.
He was quite indifferent as to the particular kinds of dresses That the clergyman wore at the church where he used to go to pray, And whatever he did in the way of relieving a chap's distresses, He always did in a nasty, sneaking, underhanded, hole- and-corner sort of way.
I have known him indulge in profane, ungentlemanly emphatics, When the Protestant Church has been divided on the subject of the width of a chasuble's hem; I have even known him to sneer at albs--and as for dalmatics, Words can't convey an idea of the contempt he expressed for _them_.
He didn't believe in persons who, not being well off them- selves, are obliged to confine their charitable exertions to collecting money from wealthier people, And looked upon individuals of the former class as ecclesiastical hawks; He used to say that he would no more think of interfering with his priest's robes than with his church or his steeple, And that he did not consider his soul imperilled because somebody over whom he had no influence whatever, chose to dress himself up like an ecclesiastical GUY FAWKES.
This shocking old vagabond was so unutterably shameless That he actually went a-courting a very respectable and pious middle-aged sister, by the name of BIGGS: She was a rather attractive widow whose life, as such, had always been particularly blameless; Her first husband had left her a secure but moderate competence owing to some fortunate speculations in the matter of figs.
She was an excellent person in every way--and won the respect even of MRS. GRUNDY, She was a good housewife, too, and wouldn't have wasted a penny if she had owned the Koh-i-noor;
She was just as strict as he was lax in her observance of Sunday, And being a good economist, and charitable besides, she took all the bones and cold potatoes and broken pie-crusts and candle-ends (when she had quite done with them), and made them into an excellent soup for the deserving poor.
I am sorry to say that she rather took to BLAKE--that outcast of society; And when respectable brothers who were fond of her began to look dubious and to cough, She would say, "Oh, my friends, it's because I hope to bring this poor benighted soul back to virtue and propriety" (And besides, the poor benighted soul, with all his faults, was uncommonly well off).
And when MR. BLAKE'S dissipated friends called his attention to the frown or the pout of her, Whenever he did anything which appeared to her to savour of an unmentionable place, He would say she would be a very decent old girl when all that nonsense was knocked out of her-- And his method of knocking it out of her is one that covered him with disgrace.
She was fond of going to church services four times every Sunday, and four or five times in the week, and never seemed to pall of them, So he hunted out all the churches within a convenient distance that had services at different hours, so to speak; And when he had married her he positively insisted upon their going to all of them, So they contrived to do about twelve churches every Sunday, and, if they had luck, from twenty-two to twenty-three in the course of the week.
She was fond of dropping his sovereigns ostentatiously into the plate, and she liked to see them stand out rather conspicuously against the commonplace half-crowns and shillings, So he took her to all the charity sermons, and if by any extraordinary chance there wasn't a charity sermon anywhere, he would drop a couple of sovereigns (one for him and one for her) into the poor-box at the door;
[Illustration]
And as he always deducted the sums thus given in charity from the housekeeping money, and the money he allowed her for her bonnets and frillings, She soon began to find that even charity, if you allow it to interfere with your personal luxuries, becomes an intolerable bore.
On Sundays she was always melancholy and anything but good society, For that day in her household was a day of sighings and sobbings and wringing of hands and shaking of heads: She wouldn't hear of a button being sewn on a glove, because it was a work neither of necessity nor of piety,
And strictly prohibited her servants from amusing themselves, or indeed doing anything at all except dusting the drawing-rooms, cleaning the boots and shoes, cooking the dinner, waiting generally on the family, and making the beds.
But BLAKE even went farther than that, and |
54452-0 | said that, on Sundays, people should do their own works of necessity, and not delegate them to persons in a menial situation, So he wouldn't allow his servants to do so much as even answer a bell. Here he is making his wife carry up the water for her bath to the second floor, much against her inclination,-- And why in the world the gentleman who illustrates these ballads has put him into a cocked hat is more than I can tell.
[Illustration]
After about three months of this sort of thing, taking the smooth with the rough of it (Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes was not her notion of connubial bliss), MRS. BLAKE began to find that she had pretty nearly had enough of it, And came, in course of time, to think that BLAKE'S own original line of conduct wasn't so much amiss.
And now that wicked person--that detestable sinner ("BELIAL BLAKE" his friends and well-wishers call him for his atrocities), And his poor deluded victim whom all her Christian brothers dislike and pity so, Go to the parish church only on Sunday morning and afternoon and occasionally on a week-day, and spend their evenings in connubial fondlings and affectionate reciprocities, And I should like to know where in the world (or rather, out of it) they expect to go!
[Illustration]
THE DUKE OF PLAZA-TORO
In enterprise of martial kind, When there was any fighting, He led his regiment from behind (He found it less exciting). But when away his regiment ran, His place was at the fore, O- That celebrated, Cultivated, Underrated Nobleman, The Duke of Plaza-Toro!
In the first and foremost flight, ha, ha! You always found that knight, ha, ha! That celebrated, Cultivated, Underrated Nobleman, The Duke of Plaza-Toro!
When, to evade Destruction's hand, To hide they all proceeded, No soldier in that gallant band Hid half as well as he did. He lay concealed throughout the war, And so preserved his gore, O! That unaffected, Undetected, Well connected Warrior, The Duke of Plaza-Toro! In every doughty deed, ha, ha! He always took the lead, ha, ha! That unaffected, Undetected, Well connected Warrior, The Duke of Plaza-Toro!
When told that they would all be shot Unless they left the service, That hero hesitated not, So marvellous his nerve is. He sent his resignation in, The first of all his corps, O!
That very knowing, Overflowing, Easy-going Paladin, The Duke of Plaza-Toro! To men of grosser clay, ha, ha! He always showed the way, ha, ha! That very knowing, Overflowing, Easy-going Paladin, The Duke of Plaza-Toro!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE BABY'S VENGEANCE
Weary at heart and extremely ill Was PALEY VOLLAIRE of Bromptonville, In a dirty lodging, with fever down, Close to the Polygon, Somers Town.
PALEY VOLLAIRE was an only son (For why? His mother had had but one), And PALEY herited gold and grounds Worth several hundred thousand pounds.
But he, like many a rich young man, Through this magnificent fortune ran, And nothing was left for his daily needs But duplicate copies of mortgage-deeds.
Shabby and sorry and sorely sick, He slept, and dreamt that the clock's "tick, tick" Was one of the Fates, with a long sharp knife, Snicking off bits of his shortened life.
He woke and counted the pips on the walls, The outdoor passengers' loud footfalls, And reckoned all over, and reckoned again, The little white tufts on his counterpane.
[Illustration]
A medical man to his bedside came (I can't remember that doctor's name), And said, "You'll die in a very short while If you don't set sail for Madeira's isle."
"Go to Madeira? goodness me! I haven't the money to pay your fee!" "Then, PALEY VOLLAIRE," said the leech, "good-bye; I'll come no more, for you're sure to die."
He sighed and he groaned and smote his breast; "Oh, send," said he, "for FREDERICK WEST, Ere senses fade or my eyes grow dim: I've a terrible tale to whisper him!"
Poor was FREDERICK'S lot in life,-- A dustman he with a fair young wife, A worthy man with a hard-earned store, A hundred and seventy pounds--or more.
[Illustration]
FREDERICK came, and he said, "Maybe You'll say what you happen to want with me?" "Wronged boy," said PALEY VOLLAIRE, "I will, But don't you fidget yourself--sit still.
* * * * *
"'Tis now some thirty-seven years ago Since first began the plot that I'm revealing. A fine young woman, wed ten years or so, Lived with her husband down in Drum Lane, Ealing, Herself by means of mangling reimbursing, And now and then (at intervals) wet-nursing.
"Two little babes dwelt in her humble cot: One was her own--the other only lent to her: _Her own she slighted._ Tempted by a lot Of gold and silver regularly sent to her, She ministered unto the little other In the capacity of foster-mother.
"_I was her own._ Oh! how I lay and sobbed In my poor cradle--deeply, deeply cursing The rich man's pampered bantling, who had robbed My only birthright--an attentive nursing! Sometimes, in hatred of my foster-brother, I gnashed my gums--which terrified my mother.
[Illustration]
One darksome day (I should have mentioned that We were alike in dress and baby feature) I _in_ MY cradle having placed the brat, Crept into his--the pampered little creature! It was imprudent--well, disgraceful maybe, For, oh! I was a bad, black-hearted baby!
"So rare a luxury was food, I think There was no wickedness I wouldn't try for it. _Now_ if I wanted anything to drink At any time, I only had to cry for it! _Once_, if I dared to weep, the bottle lacking, My blubbering involved a serious smacking!
"We grew up in the usual way--my friend, My foster-brother, daily growing thinner, While gradually I began to mend, And thrived amazingly on double dinner. And every one, besides my foster-mother, Believed that either of us was the other.
"I came into his wealth--I bore his name, I bear it still--his property I squandered-- I mortgaged everything--and now (oh, shame!) Into a Somers Town shake-down I've wandered! I am no PALEY--no VOLLAIRE--it's true, my boy! The only rightful PALEY V. is _you_, my boy!
"And all I have is yours--and yours is mine. I still may place you in your true position: Give me the pounds you've saved, and I'll resign My noble name, my rank, and my condition. So for my sin in fraudulently owning Your vasty wealth, I am at last atoning!"
* * * * *
FREDERICK he was a simple soul, He pulled from his pocket a bulky roll, And gave to PALEY his hard-earned store, A hundred and seventy pounds or more
[Illustration]
PALEY VOLLAIRE, with many a groan, Gave FREDERICK all that he'd called his own,-- Two shirts and a sock, and a vest of jean, A Wellington boot and a bamboo cane.
And FRED (entitled to all things there) He took the fever from MR. VOLLAIRE, Which killed poor FREDERICK WEST. Meanwhile VOLLAIRE sailed off to Madeira's isle.
[Illustration]
THE ÆSTHETE
If you're anxious for to shine in the high æsthetic line, as a man of culture rare, You must get up all the germs of the transcendental terms, and plant them everywhere. You must lie upon the daisies and discourse in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind (The meaning doesn't matter if it's only idle chatter of a transcendental kind). And every one will say, As you walk your mystic way, "If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for _me_, Why, what a very singularly deep young man this deep young man must be!"
Be eloquent in praise of the very dull old days which have long since passed away, And convince 'em, if you can, that the reign of good QUEEN ANNE was Culture's palmiest day. Of course you will pooh-pooh whatever's fresh and new, and declare it's crude and mean, And that Art stopped short in the cultivated court of the EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. And every one will say, As you walk your mystic way, "If that's not good enough for him which is good enough for _me_, Why, what a very cultivated kind of youth this kind of youth must be!"
Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment _à la_ Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean. Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high æsthetic band, If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your mediæval hand. And every one will say, As you walk your flowery way, "If he's content with a vegetable love which would certainly not suit _me_, Why, what a most particularly pure young man this pure young man must be!"
THE CAPTAIN AND THE MERMAIDS
I sing a legend of the sea, So hard-a-port upon your lee! A ship on starboard tack! She's bound upon a private cruise-- (This is the kind of spice I use To give a salt-sea smack).
Behold, on every afternoon (Save in a gale or strong monsoon) Great CAPTAIN CAPEL CLEGGS (Great morally, though rather short) Sat at an open weather-port And aired his shapely legs.
And Mermaids hung around in flocks, On cable chains and distant rocks, To gaze upon those limbs; For legs like his, of flesh and bone, Are things "not generally known" To any Merman TIMBS.
But Mermen didn't seem to care Much time (as far as I'm aware) With CLEGGS'S legs to spend; Though Mermaids swam around all day And gazed, exclaiming, "That's the way A gentleman should end!
"A pair of legs with well-cut knees And calves and ankles such as these Which we in rapture hail, Are far more eloquent, it's clear, When clothed in silk and kerseymere, Than any nasty tail."
[Illustration]
And CLEGGS--a worthy kind old boy-- Rejoiced to add to others' joy, And, though he scarce knew why (Perhaps to please the lookers-on), He sat there every day--though con- Stitutionally shy.
At first the Mermen sneered pooh-pooh, But finally they jealous grew, And sounded loud recalls; But vainly. So these fishy males Declared they too would clothe their tails In silken hose and smalls.
They set to work, these water-men, And made their nether robes--but when They drew with dainty touch The kerseymere upon their tails, They found it scraped against their scales, And hurt them very much.
The silk, besides, with which they chose To deck their tails, by way of hose (They never thought of shoon), For such a use was much too thin,-- It tore against the caudal fin And "went in ladders" soon.
So they designed another plan: They sent their most seductive man This note to CLEGGS to show-- "Our Monarch sends to CAPTAIN CLEGGS His humble compliments, and begs He'll join him down below;
"We've pleasant homes below the sea-- Besides, if CAPTAIN CLEGGS should be (As our advices say) A judge of Mermaids, he will find Our lady-fish of every kind Inspection will repay."
Good CAPEL sent a kind reply, For CAPEL thought he could descry An admirable plan To study all their ways and laws-- (But not their lady-fish, because He was a married man).
The Merman sank--the Captain too Jumped overboard, and dropped from view Like stone from catapult; And when he reached the Merman's lair He certainly was welcomed there, But, ah! with what result?
[Illustration]
They didn't let him learn their law, Or make a note of what he saw, Or interesting mem.: The lady-fish he couldn't find, But that, of course, he didn't mind-- He didn't come for them.
For though when CAPTAIN CAPEL sank The Mermen drawn in double rank Gave him a hearty hail; Yet when secure of CAPTAIN CLEGGS, They cut off both his lovely legs, And gave him _such_ a tail!
When CAPTAIN CLEGGS returned aboard, His blithesome crew convulsive roar'd, To see him altered so. The Admiralty did insist That he upon the Half-pay list Immediately should go.
In vain declared the poor old salt, "It's my misfortune--not my fault," With tear and trembling lip-- In vain poor CAPEL begged and begged-- "A man must be completely legged Who rules a British ship."
[Illustration]
So spake the stern First Lord aloud-- He was a wag, though very proud, And much rejoiced to say, "You're only half a captain now-- And so, my worthy friend, I vow You'll only get half-pay."
[Illustration]
SAID I TO MYSELF, SAID I
When I went to the Bar as a very young man (Said I to myself--said I), I'll work on a new and original plan (Said I to myself--said I), I'll never assume that a rogue or a thief Is a gentleman worthy implicit belief, Because his attorney has sent me a brief (Said I to myself--said I!)
I'll never throw dust in a juryman's eyes (Said I to myself--said I), Or hoodwink a judge who is not over-wise (Said I to myself--said I), Or assume that the witnesses summoned in force In Exchequer, Queen's Bench, Common Pleas, or Divorce, Have perjured themselves as a matter of course (Said I to myself--said I!)
Ere I go into court I will read my brief through (Said I to myself--said I), And I'll never take work I'm unable to do (Said I to myself--said I). My learned profession I'll never disgrace By taking a fee with a grin on my face, When I haven't been there to attend to the case (Said I to myself--said I!)
In other professions in which men engage (Said I to myself--said I), The Army, the Navy, the Church, and the Stage (Said I to myself--said I), Professional licence, if carried too far, Your chance of promotion will certainly mar-- And I fancy the rule might apply to the Bar (Said I to myself--said I!)
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
ANNIE PROTHEROE
A LEGEND OF STRATFORD-LE-BOW
Oh! listen to the tale of little ANNIE PROTHEROE, She kept a small post-office in the neighbourhood of BOW, She loved a skilled mechanic, who was famous in his day-- A gentle executioner whose name was GILBERT CLAY.
I think I hear you say, "A dreadful subject for your rhymes!" O reader, do not shrink--he didn't live in modern times! He lived so long ago (the sketch will show it at a glance) That all his actions glitter with the limelight of Romance.
In busy times he laboured at his gentle craft all day-- "No doubt you mean his Cal-craft" you amusingly will say-- But, no--he didn't operate with common bits of string, He was a Public Headsman, which is quite another thing.
And when his work was over, they would ramble o'er the lea, And sit beneath the frondage of an elderberry tree; And ANNIE'S simple prattle entertained him on his walk, For public executions formed the subject of her talk.
And sometimes he'd explain to her, which charmed her very much, How famous operators vary very much in touch, And then, perhaps, he'd show how he himself performed the trick, And illustrate his meaning with a poppy and a stick.
[Illustration]
Or, if it rained, the little maid would stop at home, and look At his favourable notices, all pasted in a book, And then her cheek would flush--her swimming eyes would dance with joy In a glow of admiration at the prowess of her boy.
One summer eve, at supper-time, the gentle GILBERT said (As he helped his pretty ANNIE to a slice of collared head), "This collared head reminds me that to-morrow is the day When I decapitate your former lover, PETER GRAY."
He saw his ANNIE tremble and he saw his ANNIE start, Her changing colour trumpeted the flutter at her heart; Young GILBERT'S manly bosom rose and sank with jealous fear, And he said, "O gentle ANNIE, what's the meaning of this here?"
[Illustration]
And ANNIE answered, blushing in an interesting way, "You think, no doubt, I'm sighing for that felon PETER GRAY: That I was his young woman is unquestionably true, But not since I began a-keeping company with you."
Then GILBERT, who was irritable, rose and loudly swore He'd know the reason why if she refused to tell him more; And she answered (all the woman in her flashing from her eyes), "You mustn't ask no questions, and you won't be told no lies!
"Few lovers have the privilege enjoyed, my dear, by you, Of chopping off a rival's head and quartering him too! Of vengeance, dear, to-morrow you will surely take your fill!" And GILBERT ground his molars as he answered her, "I will!"
Young GILBERT rose from table with a stern determined look, And, frowning, took an inexpensive hatchet from its hook; And ANNIE watched his movements with an interested air-- For the morrow--for the morrow he was going to prepare!
He chipped it with a hammer and he chopped it with a bill, He poured sulphuric acid on the edge of it, until This terrible Avenger of the Majesty of Law Was far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.
And ANNIE said, "O GILBERT, dear, I do not understand Why ever you are injuring that hatchet in your hand?" He said, "It is intended for to lacerate and flay The neck of that unmitigated villain PETER GRAY!"
"Now, GILBERT," ANNIE answered, "wicked headsman just beware-- I won't have PETER tortured with that horrible affair; If you attempt to flay him, you will surely rue the day." But Gilbert said, "Oh, shall I?" which was just his nasty way.
He saw a look of anger from her eyes distinctly dart, For ANNIE was a _woman_, and had pity in her heart! She wished him a good evening--he answered with a glare; She only said, "Remember, for your ANNIE will be there!"
* * * * *
The morrow Gilbert boldly on the scaffold took his stand, With a vizor on his face and with a hatchet in his hand, And all the people noticed that the Engine of the Law Was far less like a hatchet than a dissipated saw.
The felon very coolly loosed his collar and his stock, And placed his wicked head upon the handy little block-- The hatchet was uplifted for to settle PETER GRAY, When GILBERT plainly heard a woman's voice exclaiming, "Stay!"
[Illustration]
'Twas ANNIE, gentle ANNIE, as you'll easily believe-- "O GILBERT, you must spare him, for I bring him a reprieve, It came from our Home Secretary many weeks ago, And passed through that post-office which I used to keep at Bow.
"I loved you, loved you madly, and you know it, GILBERT CLAY, And having quite surrendered all idea of PETER GRAY, I quietly suppressed it, as you'll clearly understand, For I thought it might be awkward if he came and claimed my hand.
"In anger at my secret (which I could not tell before) To lacerate poor PETER GRAY vindictively you swore; I told you if you used that blunted axe you'd rue the day, And so you will, you monster, for I'll marry PETER GRAY!" [_And so she did._] [Illustration]
SORRY HER LOT
Sorry her lot who loves too well, Heavy the heart that hopes but vainly, Sad are the sighs that own the spell Uttered by eyes that speak too plainly; Heavy the sorrow that bows the head When Love is alive and Hope is dead!
Sad is the hour when sets the Sun-- Dark is the night to Earth's poor daughters, When to the ark the wearied one Flies from the empty waste of waters! Heavy the sorrow that bows the head When Love is alive and Hope is dead!
[Illustration]
AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS
I've painted SHAKESPEARE all my life-- "An infant" (even then at play), "A boy," with stage-ambition rife, Then "Married to ANN HATHAWAY."
"The bard's first ticket night" (or "ben.") His "First appearance on the stage," His "Call before the curtain"--then "Rejoicings when he came of age."
The bard play-writing in his room, The bard a humble lawyer's clerk, The bard a lawyer[1]--parson[2]--groom[3]-- The bard deer-stealing, after dark.
[Footnote 1: "Go with me to a notary--seal me there Your single bond." --_Merchant of Venice_, Act I., sc. 3.]
[Footnote 2: "And there she shall, at Friar Lawrence' cell, Be shrived and married." --_Romeo and Juliet_, Act II., sc. 4.]
[Footnote 3: "And give their fasting horses provender." --_Henry the Fifth_, Act IV., sc. 2.]
The bard a tradesman[4]--and a Jew[5]-- The bard a botanist[6]--a beak[7]-- The bard a skilled musician[8] too-- A sheriff[9] and a surgeon[10] eke!
Yet critics say (a friendly stock) That, though with all my skill I try, Yet even I can barely mock The glimmer of his wondrous eye!
One morning as a work I framed, There passed a person, walking hard; "My gracious goodness," I exclaimed, "How very like my dear old bard!
"Oh, what a model he would make!" I rushed outside--impulsive me!-- "Forgive the liberty I take, But you're so very"--"Stop!" said he.
"You needn't waste your breath or time,-- I know what you are going to say,-- That you're an artist, and that I'm Remarkably like SHAKESPEARE. Eh?
[Footnote 4: "Let us, like merchants, show our foulest wares." --_Troilus and Cressida_, Act I., sc. 3.]
[Footnote 5: "Then must the Jew be merciful." --_Merchant of Venice_, Act IV., sc. 1.]
[Footnote 6: "The spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries." --_Midsummer Night's Dream_, Act II., sc. 1.]
[Footnote 7: "In the county of Glo'ster, justice of the peace and _coram_." --_Merry Wives of Windsor_, Act I., sc. 1.]
[Footnote 8: "What lusty trumpet thus doth summon us?" --_King John_, Act V., sc. 2.]
[Footnote 9: "And I'll provide his executioner." --_Henry the Sixth_ (Second Part), Act III., sc. 1.]
[Footnote 10: "The lioness had torn some flesh away, Which all this while had bled." --_As You Like It_, Act IV., sc. 3.]
"You wish that I would sit to you?" I clasped him madly round the waist, And breathlessly replied, "I do!" "All right," said he, "but please make haste."
I led him by his hallowed sleeve, And worked away at him apace, I painted him till dewy eve,-- There never was a nobler face!
"Oh, sir," I said, "a fortune grand Is yours, by dint of merest chance,-- To sport _his_ brow at second-hand, To wear _his_ cast-off countenance!
"To rub _his_ eyes whene'er they ache-- To wear _his_ baldness ere you're old-- To clean _his_ teeth when you awake-- To blow _his_ nose when you've a cold!"
His eyeballs glistened in his eyes-- I sat and watched and smoked my pipe; "Bravo!" I said, "I recognise The phrensy of your prototype!"
His scanty hair he wildly tore: "That's right," said I, "it shows your breed." He danced--he stamped--he wildly swore-- "Bless me, that's very fine indeed!"
"Sir," said the grand Shakespearian boy (Continuing to blaze away), "You think my face a source of joy; That shows you know not what you say.
"Forgive these yells and cellar-flaps, I'm always thrown in some such state When on his face well-meaning chaps This wretched man congratulate.
"For, oh! this face--this pointed chin-- This nose--this brow--these eyeballs too, Have always been the origin Of all the woes I ever knew!
"If to the play my way I find, To see a grand Shakespearian piece, I have no rest, no ease of mind Until the author's puppets cease!
"Men nudge each other--thus--and say, 'This certainly is SHAKESPEARE'S son,' And merry wags (of course in play) Cry 'Author!' when the piece is done.
[Illustration]
"In church the people stare at me, Their soul the sermon never binds; I catch them looking round to see, And thoughts of SHAKESPEARE fill their minds.
"And sculptors, fraught with cunning wile, Who find it difficult to crown A bust with BROWN'S insipid smile, Or TOMKINS'S unmannered frown,
"Yet boldly make my face their own, When (oh, presumption!) they require To animate a paving-stone With SHAKESPEARE'S intellectual fire.
"At parties where young ladies gaze, And I attempt to speak my joy, 'Hush, pray,' some lovely creature says, 'The fond illusion don't destroy!'
"Whene'er I speak my soul is wrung With these or some such whisperings; ''Tis pity that a SHAKESPEARE'S tongue Should say such un-Shakespearian things!'
"I should not thus be criticised Had I a face of common wont: Don't envy me--now, be advised!" And, now I think of it, I don't!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE CONTEMPLATIVE SENTRY
When all night long a chap remains On sentry-go, to chase monotony He exercises of his brains, That is, assuming that he's got any. Though never nurtured in the lap Of luxury, yet I admonish you, I am an intellectual chap, And think of things that would astonish you. I often think it's comical How Nature always does contrive That every boy and every gal, That's born into the world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative! Fal lal la!
[Illustration]
When in that house M.P.'s divide, If they've a brain and cerebellum, too, They've got to leave that brain outside, And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to. But then the prospect of a lot Of statesmen, all in close proximity, A-thinking for themselves, is what No man can face with equanimity. Then let's rejoice with loud Fal lal That Nature wisely does contrive That every boy and every gal, That's born into the world alive, Is either a little Liberal, Or else a little Conservative! Fal lal la!
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GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D.
A leafy cot, where no dry rot Had ever been by tenant seen, Where ivy clung and wopses stung, Where beeses hummed and drummed and strummed, Where treeses grew and breezes blew-- A thatchy roof, quite waterproof, Where countless herds of dicky-birds Built twiggy beds to lay their heads (My mother begs I'll make it "eggs," But though it's true that dickies do Construct a nest with chirpy noise, With view to rest their eggy joys,
'Neath eavy sheds, yet eggs and beds, As I explain to her in vain Five hundred times, are faulty rhymes). 'Neath such a cot, built on a plot Of freehold land, dwelt MARY and Her worthy father, named by me GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D.
He knew no guile, this simple man, No worldly wile, or plot, or plan, Except that plot of freehold land That held the cot, and MARY, and Her worthy father, named by me GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D.
A grave and learned scholar he, Yet simple as a child could be. He'd shirk his meal to sit and cram A goodish deal of Eton Gram. No man alive could him nonplus With vocative of _filius_; No man alive more fully knew The passive of a verb or two; None better knew the worth than he Of words that end in _b_, _d_, _t_. Upon his green in early spring He might be seen endeavouring To understand the hooks and crooks Of HENRY and his Latin books; Or calling for his "Cæsar on The Gallic War," like any don; Or, p'raps, expounding unto all How mythic BALBUS built a wall. So lived the sage who's named by me GREGORY PARABLE, LL.D.
To him one autumn day there came A lovely youth of mystic name: He took a lodging in the house, And fell a-dodging snipe and grouse, For, oh! that mild scholastic one Let shooting for a single gun.
By three or four, when sport was o'er, The Mystic One laid by his gun, And made sheep's eyes of giant size,
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Till after tea, at MARY P. And MARY P. (so kind was she), She, too, made eyes of giant size, Whose every dart right through the heart Appeared to run that Mystic One. The Doctor's whim engrossing him, He did not know they flirted so. For, save at tea, "_musa musæ_," As I'm advised, monopolised And rendered blind his giant mind.
But looking up above his cup One afternoon, he saw them spoon. "Aha!" quoth he, "you naughty lass! As quaint old OVID says, 'Amas!'"
The Mystic Youth avowed the truth, And, claiming ruth, he said, "In sooth I love your daughter, aged man: Refuse to join us if you can. Treat not my offer, sir, with scorn, I'm wealthy though I'm lowly born." "Young sir," the aged scholar said, "I never thought you meant to wed: Engrossed completely with my books, I little noticed lovers' looks. I've lived so long away from man, I do not know of any plan By which to test a lover's worth, Except, perhaps, the test of birth. I've half forgotten in this wild A father's duty to his child. It is his place, I think it's said, To see his daughters richly wed To dignitaries of the earth-- If possible, of noble birth. If noble birth is not at hand, A father may, I understand (And this affords a chance for you), Be satisfied to wed her to A BOUCICAULT or BARING--which Means any one who's very rich. Now, there's an Earl who lives hard by,-- My child and I will go and try If he will make the maid his bride-- If not, to you she shall be tied."
They sought the Earl that very day; The Sage began to say his say.
The Earl (a very wicked man, Whose face bore Vice's blackest ban) Cut short the scholar's simple tale, And said in voice to make them quail, "Pooh! go along! you're drunk, no doubt-- Here, PETERS, turn these people out!"
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The Sage, rebuffed in mode uncouth, Returning, met the Mystic Youth. "My darling boy," the Scholar said, "Take MARY--blessings on your head!"
The Mystic Boy undid his vest, And took a parchment from his breast, And said, "Now, by that noble brow, I ne'er knew father such as thou! The sterling rule of common sense Now reaps its proper recompense. Rejoice, my soul's unequalled Queen, For I am DUKE OF GRETNA GREEN!"
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THE PHILOSOPHIC PILL
I've wisdom from the East and from the West, That's subject to no academic rule; You may find it in the jeering of a jest, Or distil it from the folly of a fool. I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind; I can trick you into learning with a laugh; Oh, winnow all my folly, and you'll find A grain or two of truth among the chaff!
I can set a braggart quailing with a quip, The upstart I can wither with a whim; He may wear a merry laugh upon his lip, But his laughter has an echo that is grim.
When they're offered to the world in merry guise, Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will-- For he who'd make his fellow-creatures wise Should always gild the philosophic pill!
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THE KING OF CANOODLE-DUM
The story of FREDERICK GOWLER, A mariner of the sea, Who quitted his ship, the _Howler_, A-sailing in Caribbee. For many a day he wandered, Till he met, in a state of rum, CALAMITY POP VON PEPPERMINT DROP. The King of Canoodle-Dum.
That monarch addressed him gaily, "Hum! Golly de do to-day? Hum! Lily-white Buckra Sailee"-- (You notice his playful way?)-- "What dickens you doin' here, sar? Why debbil you want to come? Hum! Picaninnee, dere isn't no sea In City Canoodle-Dum!"
And GOWLER he answered sadly, "Oh, mine is a doleful tale! They've treated me werry badly In Lunnon, from where I hail. I'm one of the Family Royal-- No common Jack Tar you see; I'm WILLIAM THE FOURTH, far up in the North, A King in my own countree!"
Bang-bang! How the tom-toms thundered! Bang-bang! How they thumped the gongs! Bang-bang! How the people wondered! Bang-bang! At it, hammer and tongs! Alliance with Kings of Europe Is an honour Canoodlers seek; Her monarchs don't stop with PEPPERMINT DROP Every day in the week!
FRED told them that he was _un_done, For his people all went insane, And fired the Tower of London, And Grinnidge's Naval Fane. And some of them racked St. James's, And vented their rage upon The Church of St. Paul, the Fishmongers' Hall, And the "Angel" at Islington.
CALAMITY POP implored him At Canoodle-Dum to remain Till those people of his restored him To power and rank again. CALAMITY POP he made him A Prince of Canoodle-Dum, With a couple of caves, some beautiful slaves, And the run of the royal rum.
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POP gave him his only daughter, HUM PICKETY WIMPLE TIP: FRED vowed that if over the water He went, in an English ship, He'd make her his Queen,--though truly, It is an unusual thing For a Caribbee brat who's as black as your hat To be wife of an English King.
And all the Canoodle-Dummers They copied his rolling walk, His method of draining rummers, His emblematical talk. For his dress and his graceful breeding, His delicate taste in rum, And his nautical way, were the talk of the day In the Court of Canoodle-Dum.
CALAMITY POP most wisely Determined in everything To model his Court precisely On that of the English King; And ordered that every lady And every lady's lord Should masticate jacky (a kind of tobaccy) And scatter its juice abroad.
They signified wonder roundly At any astounding yarn, By darning their dear eyes roundly ('Twas all that they had to darn). They "hoisted their slacks," adjusting Garments of plantain-leaves With nautical twitches (as if they wore--stitches. Instead of a dress like EVE'S!)
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They shivered their timbers proudly, At a phantom fore-lock dragged, And called for a hornpipe loudly Whenever amusement flagged.
"Hum! Golly! him POP resemble, Him Britisher sov'reign, hum! CALAMITY POP VON PEPPERMINT DROP, De King of Canoodle-Dum!"
The mariner's lively "Hollo!" Enlivened Canoodle's plain (For blessings unnumbered follow In Civilisation's train). But Fortune, who loves a bathos, A terrible ending planned, For ADMIRAL D. CHICKABIDDY, C.B., Placed foot on Canoodle land!
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That officer seized KING GOWLER; He threatened his royal brains, And put him aboard the _Howler_, And fastened him down with chains. The _Howler_ she weighed her anchor, With FREDERICK nicely nailed, And off to the North with WILLIAM THE FOURTH That Admiral slowly sailed.
CALAMITY said (with folly) "Hum! nebber want him again-- Him civilise all of us, golly! CALAMITY suck him brain!" The people, however, were pained when They saw him aboard the ship, But none of them wept for their FREDDY, except HUM PICKITY WIMPLE TIP.
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BLUE BLOOD
Spurn not the nobly born With love affected, Nor treat with virtuous scorn The well connected. High rank involves no shame-- We boast an equal claim With him of humble name To be respected! Blue blood! Blue blood! When virtuous love is sought, Thy power is naught, Though dating from the Flood, Blue blood!
Spare us the bitter pain Of stern denials, Nor with low-born disdain Augment our trials. Hearts just as pure and fair May beat in Belgrave Square As in the lowly air Of Seven Dials! Blue blood! Blue blood! Of what avail art thou To serve me now? Though dating from the Flood, Blue blood!
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FIRST LOVE
A CLERGYMAN in Berkshire dwelt, The REVEREND BERNARD POWLES, And in his church there weekly knelt At least a hundred souls.
There little ELLEN you might see, The modest rustic belle; In maidenly simplicity, She loved her BERNARD well.
Though ELLEN wore a plain silk gown Untrimmed with lace or fur, Yet not a husband in the town But wished his wife like her.
Though sterner memories might fade. You never could forget The child-form of that baby-maid, The Village Violet!
A simple frightened loveliness, Whose sacred spirit-part Shrank timidly from worldly stress, And nestled in your heart.
POWLES woo'd with every well-worn plan And all the usual wiles With which a well-schooled gentleman A simple heart beguiles.
The hackneyed compliments that bore World-folks like you and me, Appeared to her as if they wore The crown of Poesy.
His winking eyelid sang a song Her heart could understand, Eternity seemed scarce too long When BERNARD squeezed her hand.
He ordered down the martial crew Of GODFREY'S Grenadiers, And COOTE conspired with TINNEY to Ecstaticise her ears.
Beneath her window, veiled from eye, They nightly took their stand; On birthdays supplemented by The Covent Garden band.
And little ELLEN, all alone, Enraptured sat above, And thought how blest she was to own The wealth of POWLES'S love.
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I often, often wonder what Poor ELLEN saw in him; For calculated he was _not_ To please a woman's whim.
He wasn't good, despite the air An M.B. waistcoat gives; Indeed, his dearest friends declare No greater humbug lives.
No kind of virtue decked this priest, He'd nothing to allure; He wasn't handsome in the least,-- He wasn't even poor.
No--he was cursed with acres fat (A Christian's direst ban), And gold--yet, notwithstanding that, Poor ELLEN loved the man.
As unlike BERNARD as could be Was poor old AARON WOOD (Disgraceful BERNARD'S curate he): He was extremely good.
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A BAYARD in his moral pluck Without reproach or fear, A quiet venerable duck With fifty pounds a year.
No fault had he--no fad, except A tendency to strum, In mode at which you would have wept, A dull harmonium.
He had no gold with which to hire The minstrels who could best Convey a notion of the fire That raged within his breast.
And so, when COOTE and TINNEY'S Own Had tootled all they knew, And when the Guards, completely blown, Exhaustedly withdrew,
And NELL began to sleepy feel, Poor AARON then would come, And underneath her window wheel His plain harmonium.
He woke her every morn at two, And having gained her ear, In vivid colours AARON drew The sluggard's grim career.
He warbled Apiarian praise, And taught her in his chant To shun the dog's pugnacious ways, And imitate the ant.
Still NELL seemed not, how much he played, To love him out and out, Although the admirable maid Respected him, no doubt.
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She told him of her early vow, And said as BERNARD'S wife It might be hers to show him how To rectify his life.
"You are so pure, so kind, so true, Your goodness shines so bright, What use would ELLEN be to you? Believe me, you're all right."
She wished him happiness and health And flew on lightning wings To BERNARD with his dangerous wealth And all the woes it brings.
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THE JUDGE'S SONG
When I, good friends, was called to the Bar, I'd an appetite fresh and hearty, But I was, as many young barristers are, An impecunious party. I'd a swallow-tail coat of a beautiful blue-- A brief which was brought by a booby-- A couple of shirts and a collar or two, And a ring that looked like a ruby!
In Westminster Hall I danced a dance, Like a semi-despondent fury; For I thought I should never hit on a chance Of addressing a British Jury-- But I soon got tired of third-class journeys, And dinners of bread and water; So I fell in love with a rich attorney's Elderly, ugly daughter.
The rich attorney, he wiped his eyes, And replied to my fond professions: "You shall reap the reward of your enterprise, At the Bailey and Middlesex Sessions. You'll soon get used to her looks," said he, "And a very nice girl you'll find her-- She may very well pass for forty-three In the dusk, with a light behind her!"
The rich attorney was as good as his word: The briefs came trooping gaily, And every day my voice was heard At the Sessions or Ancient Bailey. All thieves who could my fees afford Relied on my orations, And many a burglar I've restored To his friends and his relations.
At length I became as rich as the GURNEYS-- An incubus then I thought her, So I threw over that rich attorney's Elderly, ugly daughter. The rich attorney my character high Tried vainly to disparage-- And now, if you please, I'm ready to try This Breach of Promise of Marriage!
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BRAVE ALUM BEY
Oh, big was the bosom of brave ALUM BEY, And also the region that under it lay, In safety and peril remarkably cool, And he dwelt on the banks of the river Stamboul.
Each morning he went to his garden, to cull A bunch of zenana or sprig of bul-bul, And offered the bouquet, in exquisite bloom, To BACKSHEESH, the daughter of RAHAT LAKOUM.
No maiden like BACKSHEESH could tastily cook A kettle of kismet or joint of tchibouk, As ALUM, brave fellow! sat pensively by, With a bright sympathetic ka-bob in his eye.
Stern duty compelled him to leave her one day-- (A ship's supercargo was brave ALUM BEY)-- To pretty young BACKSHEESH he made a salaam, And sailed to the isle of Seringapatam.
"O ALUM," said she, "think again, ere you go-- Hareems may arise and Moguls they may blow; You may strike on a fez, or be drowned, which is wuss!" But ALUM embraced her and spoke to her thus:
"Cease weeping, fair BACKSHEESH! I willingly swear Cork jackets and trousers I always will wear, And I also throw in a large number of oaths That I never--no, _never_--will take off my clothes!"
* * * * *
They left Madagascar away on their right, And made Clapham Common the following night, Then lay on their oars for a fortnight or two, Becalmed in the ocean of Honolulu.
One day ALUM saw, with alarm in his breast, A cloud on the nor-sow-sow-nor-sow-nor-west; The wind it arose, and the crew gave a scream, For they knew it--they knew it!--the dreaded Hareem!!
The mast it went over, and so did the sails, Brave ALUM threw over his casks and his bales; The billows arose as the weather grew thick, And all except ALUM were terribly sick.
The crew were but three, but they holloa'd for nine, They howled and they blubbered with wail and with whine: The skipper he fainted away in the fore, For he hadn't the heart for to skip any more.
"Ho, coward!" said ALUM, "with heart of a child! Thou son of a party whose grave is defiled! Is ALUM in terror? is ALUM afeard? Ho! ho! If you had one I'd laugh at your beard."
His eyeball it gleamed like a furnace of coke; He boldly inflated his clothes as he spoke; He daringly felt for the corks on his chest, And he recklessly tightened the belt at his breast.
For he knew, the brave ALUM, that, happen what might, With belts and cork-jacketing, _he_ was all right; Though others might sink, he was certain to swim,-- No Hareem whatever had terrors for him!
They begged him to spare from his personal store A single cork garment--they asked for no more; But he couldn't, because of the number of oaths That he never--no, never!--would take off his clothes.
The billows dash o'er them and topple around, They see they are pretty near sure to be drowned. A terrible wave o'er the quarter-deck breaks, And the vessel it sinks in a couple of shakes!
The dreadful Hareem, though it knows how to blow, Expends all its strength in a minute or so; When the vessel had foundered, as I have detailed, The tempest subsided, and quiet prevailed.
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One seized on a cork with a yelling "Ha! ha!" (Its bottle had 'prisoned a pint of Pacha)-- Another a toothpick--another a tray-- "Alas! it is useless!" said brave ALUM BEY.
"To holloa and kick is a very bad plan: Get it over, my tulips, as soon as you can; You'd better lay hold of a good lump of lead, And cling to it tightly until you are dead.
"Just raise your hands over your pretty heads--so-- Right down to the bottom you're certain to go. Ta! ta! I'm afraid we shall not meet again"-- For the truly courageous are truly humane.
Brave ALUM was picked up the very next day-- A man-o'-war sighted him smoking away; With hunger and cold he was ready to drop, So they sent him below and they gave him a chop.
O reader, or readress, whichever you be, You weep for the crew who have sunk in the sea? O reader, or readress, read farther, and dry The bright sympathetic ka-bob in your eye.
That ship had a grapple with three iron spikes,-- It's lowered, and, ha! on a something it strikes! They haul it aboard with a British "heave-ho!" And what it has fished up the drawing will show.
There was WILSON, and PARKER, and TOMLINSON, too-- (The first was the captain, the others the crew)-- As lively and spry as a Malabar ape, Quite pleased and surprised at their happy escape.
And ALUM, brave fellow, who stood in the fore, And never expected to look on them more, Was really delighted to see them again, For the truly courageous are truly humane.
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WHEN I FIRST PUT THIS UNIFORM ON
When I first put this uniform on, I said, as I looked in the glass, "It's one to a million That any civilian My figure and form will surpass. Gold lace has a charm for the fair, And I've plenty of that, and to spare. While a lover's professions, When uttered in Hessians, Are eloquent everywhere!" A fact that I counted upon, When I first put this uniform on!
I said, when I first put it on, "It is plain to the veriest dunce That every beauty Will feel it her duty To yield to its glamour at once. They will see that I'm freely gold-laced In a uniform handsome and chaste"-- But the peripatetics Of long-haired æsthetics, Are very much more to their taste-- Which I never counted upon When I first put this uniform on.
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[Illustration]
SIR BARNABY BAMPTON BOO
THIS is SIR BARNABY BAMPTON BOO Last of a noble race, BARNABY BAMPTON, coming to woo, All at a deuce of a pace. BARNABY BAMPTON BOO, Here is a health to you: Here is wishing you luck, you elderly buck-- BARNABY BAMPTON BOO!
The excellent women of Tuptonvee Knew SIR BARNABY BOO; One of them surely his bride would be, But dickens a soul knew who. Women of Tuptonvee, Here is a health to ye: For a Baronet, dears, you would cut off your ears, Women of Tuptonvee!
Here are old MR. and MRS. DE PLOW (PETER his Christian name), They kept seven oxen, a pig, and a cow-- Farming it was their game. Worthy old PETER DE PLOW, Here is a health to thou: Your race isn't run, though you're seventy-one, Worthy old PETER DE PLOW!
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To excellent MR. and MRS. DE PLOW Came SIR BARNABY BOO, He asked for their daughter, and told 'em as how He was as rich as a Jew. BARNABY BAMPTON'S wealth, Here is your jolly good health: I'd never repine if you came to be mine, BARNABY BAMPTON'S wealth!
"O great SIR BARNABY BAMPTON BOO" (Said Plow to that titled swell), "My missus has given me daughters two-- AMELIA and VOLATILE NELL!" AMELIA and VOLATILE NELL, I hope you're uncommonly well: You two pretty pearls--you extremely nice girls-- AMELIA and VOLATILE NELL!
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"AMELIA is passable only, in face, But, oh! she's a worthy girl; Superior morals like hers would grace The home of a belted Earl." Morality, heavenly link! To you I'll eternally drink: I'm awfully fond of that heavenly bond, Morality, heavenly link!
"Now NELLY'S the prettier, p'raps, of my gals, But, oh! she's a wayward chit; She dresses herself in her showy fal-lals, And doesn't read TUPPER a bit!" O TUPPER, philosopher true, How do you happen to do? A publisher looks with respect on your books, For they _do_ sell, philosopher true!
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The Bart. (I'll be hanged if I drink him again, Or care if he's ill or well), He sneered at the goodness of MILLY THE PLAIN, And cottoned to VOLATILE NELL! O VOLATILE NELLY DE P.! Be hanged if I'll empty to thee: I like worthy maids, not mere frivolous jades, VOLATILE NELLY DE P.!
They bolted, the Bart. and his frivolous dear, And MILLY was left to pout; For years they've got on very well, as I hear, But soon he will rue it, no doubt. O excellent MILLY DE PLOW, I really can't drink to you now; My head isn't strong, and the song has been long, Excellent MILLY DE PLOW!
SOLATIUM
Comes the broken flower-- Comes the cheated maid-- Though the tempest lower, Rain and cloud will fade! Take, O maid, these posies: Though thy beauty rare Shame the blushing roses, They are passing fair! Wear the flowers till they fade; Happy be thy life, O maid!
O'er the season vernal, Time may cast a shade; Sunshine, if eternal, Makes the roses fade: Time may do his duty; Let the thief alone-- Winter hath a beauty That is all his own. Fairest days are sun and shade: Happy be thy life, O maid!
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THE MODEST COUPLE
When man and maiden meet, I like to see a drooping eye, I always droop my own--I am the shyest of the shy. I'm also fond of bashfulness, and sitting down on thorns, For modesty's a quality that womankind adorns.
Whenever I am introduced to any pretty maid, My knees they knock together, just as if I were afraid; I flutter, and I stammer, and I turn a pleasing red, For to laugh, and flirt, and ogle I consider most ill-bred.
But still in all these matters, as in other things below, There is a proper medium, as I'm about to show. I do not recommend a newly-married pair to try To carry on as PETER carried on with SARAH BLIGH.
Betrothed they were when very young--before they'd learnt to speak (For SARAH was but six days old, and PETER was a week); Though little more than babies at those early ages, yet They bashfully would faint when they occasionally met.
They blushed, and flushed, and fainted, till they reached the age of nine, When PETER'S good papa (he was a Baron of the Rhine) Determined to endeavour some sound argument to find To bring these shy young people to a proper frame of mind.
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He told them that as SARAH was to be his PETER'S bride, They might at least consent to sit at table side by side; He begged that they would now and then shake hands, till he was hoarse, Which SARAH thought indelicate, and PETER very coarse.
And PETER in a tremble to the blushing maid would say, "You must excuse papa, MISS BLIGH,--it is his mountain way." Says SARAH, "His behaviour I'll endeavour to forget, But your papa's the coarsest person that I ever met.
"He plighted us without our leave, when we were very young, Before we had begun articulating with the tongue. His underbred suggestions fill your Sarah with alarm; Why, gracious me! he'll ask us next to walk out arm-in-arm!"
At length when SARAH reached the legal age of twenty-one, The Baron he determined to unite her to his son; And SARAH in a fainting-fit for weeks unconscious lay, And PETER blushed so hard you might have heard him miles away.
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And when the time arrived for taking SARAH to his heart, They were married in two churches half-a-dozen miles apart (Intending to escape all public ridicule and chaff), And the service was conducted by electric telegraph.
And when it was concluded, and the priest had said his say, Until the time arrived when they were both to drive away, They never spoke or offered for to fondle or to fawn, For _he_ waited in the attic, and _she_ waited on the lawn.
At length, when four o'clock arrived, and it was time to go, The carriage was announced, but decent SARAH answered "No! Upon my word, I'd rather sleep my everlasting nap, Than go and ride alone with MR. PETER in a trap."
And PETER'S over-sensitive and highly-polished mind Wouldn't suffer him to sanction a proceeding of the kind; And further, he declared he suffered overwhelming shocks At the bare idea of having any coachman on the box.
So PETER into one turn-out incontinently rushed, While SARAH in a second trap sat modestly and blushed; And MR. NEWMAN'S coachman, on authority I've heard, Drove away in gallant style upon the coach-box of a third.
Now, though this modest couple in the matter of the car Were very likely carrying a principle too far, I hold their shy behaviour was more laudable in them Than that of PETER'S brother with MISS SARAH'S sister EM.
Alphonso, who in cool assurance all creation licks, He up and said to Emmie (who had impudence for six), "MISS EMILY, I love you--will you marry? Say the word!" And EMILY said, "Certainly, ALPHONSO, like a bird!"
[Illustration]
I do not recommend a newly-married pair to try To carry on as PETER carried on with SARAH BLIGH, But still their shy behaviour was more laudable in them Than that of PETER'S brother with MISS SARAH'S sister EM.
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A NIGHTMARE
When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, I conceive you may use any language you choose to indulge in without impropriety; For your brain is on fire--the bedclothes conspire of usual slumber to plunder you: First your counterpane goes and uncovers your toes, and your sheet slips demurely from under you; Then the blanketing tickles--you feel like mixed pickles, so terribly sharp is the pricking, And you're hot, and you're cross, and you tumble and toss till there's nothing 'twixt you and the ticking.
Then the bedclothes all creep to the ground in a heap, and you pick 'em all up in a tangle; Next your pillow resigns and politely declines to remain at its usual angle! Well, you get some repose in the form of a doze, with hot eyeballs and head ever aching, But your slumbering teems with such horrible dreams that you'd very much better be waking; For you dream you are crossing the Channel, and tossing about in a steamer from Harwich, Which is something between a large bathing-machine and a very small second-class carriage; And you're giving a treat (penny ice and cold meat) to a party of friends and relations-- They're a ravenous horde--and they all came on board at Sloane Square and South Kensington Stations. And bound on that journey you find your attorney (who started that morning from Devon); He's a bit undersized, and you don't feel surprised when he tells you he's only eleven. Well, you're driving like mad with this singular lad (by the bye the ship's now a four-wheeler), And you're playing round games, and he calls you bad names when you tell him that "ties pay the dealer"; But this you can't stand, so you throw up your hand, and you find you're as cold as an icicle, In your shirt and your socks (the black silk with gold clocks), crossing Salisbury Plain on a bicycle: And he and the crew are on bicycles too--which they've somehow or other invested in-- And he's telling the tars all the particu_lars_ of a company he's interested in-- It's a scheme of devices to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to cables (Which tickled the sailors) by treating retailers as though they were all vege_ta_bles-- You get a good spadesman to plant a small tradesman (first take off his boots with a boot-tree),
And his legs will take root, and his fingers will shoot, and they'll blossom and bud like a fruit-tree-- From the greengrocer tree you get grapes and green pea, cauliflower, pineapple, and cranberries, While the pastry-cook plant cherry-brandy will grant--apple puffs, and three-corners, and banberries-- The shares are a penny, and ever so many are taken by ROTHSCHILD AND BARING, And just as a few are allotted to you, you awake with a shudder despairing-- You're a regular wreck, with a crick in your neck, and no wonder you snore, for your head's on the floor, and you've needles and pins from your soles to your shins, and your flesh is a-creep, for your left leg's asleep, and you've cramp in your toes, and a fly on your nose, and some fluff in your lung, and a feverish tongue, and a thirst that's intense, and a general sense that you haven't been sleeping in clover; But the darkness has passed, and it's daylight at last, and the night has been long--ditto, ditto my song--and thank goodness they're both of them over!
[Illustration]
THE MARTINET
Some time ago, in simple verse, I sang the story true Of CAPTAIN REECE, _The Mantelpiece_, And all her happy crew.
I showed how any captain may Attach his men to him, If he but heeds their smallest needs, And studies every whim.
Now mark how, by Draconic rule And _hauteur_ ill-advised, The noblest crew upon the blue May be demoralised.
When his ungrateful country placed Kind REECE upon half-pay, Without much claim SIR BERKELY came, And took command one day.
SIR BERKELY was a martinet-- A stern unyielding soul-- Who ruled his ship by dint of whip And horrible black-hole.
[Illustration]
A sailor who was overcome From having freely dined, And chanced to reel when at the wheel, He instantly confined!
And tars who, when an action raged, Appeared alarmed or scared, And those below who wished to go, He very seldom spared.
E'en he who smote his officer For punishment was booked, And mutinies upon the seas He rarely overlooked.
In short, the happy _Mantelpiece_ Where all had gone so well, Beneath that fool SIR BERKELY'S rule Became a floating hell.
When first SIR BERKELY came aboard He read a speech to all, And told them how he'd made a vow To act on duty's call.
Then WILLIAM LEE, he up and said (The captain's coxswain he): "We've heard the speech your honour's made, And werry pleased we be.
"We won't pretend, my lad, as how We're glad to lose our REECE; Urbane, polite, he suited quite The saucy _Mantelpiece_.
"But if your honour gives your mind To study all our ways, With dance and song we'll jog along As in those happy days.
"I like your honour's looks, and feel You're worthy of your sword. Your hand, my lad--I'm doosid glad To welcome you aboard!"
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SIR BERKELY looked amazed, as though He did not understand. "Don't shake your head," good WILLIAM said, "It is an honest hand.
"It's grasped a better hand than yourn-- Come, gov'nor, I insist!" The Captain stared--the coxswain glared-- The hand became a fist!
"Down, upstart!" said the hardy salt; But BERKELY dodged his aim, And made him go in chains below: The seamen murmured "Shame!"
He stopped all songs at 12 P.M., Stopped hornpipes when at sea, And swore his cot (or bunk) should not Be used by aught than he.
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He never joined their daily mess, Nor asked them to his own, But chaffed in gay and social way The officers alone.
His First Lieutenant, PETER, was As useless as could be, A helpless stick, and always sick When there was any sea.
This First Lieutenant proved to be His foster-sister MAY, Who went to sea for love of he, In masculine array.
And when he learnt the curious fact Did he emotion show, Or dry her tears, or end her fears By marrying her? No!
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Or did he even try to soothe This maiden in her teens? Oh no!--instead he made her wed The Sergeant of Marines!
Of course such Spartan discipline Would make an angel fret. They drew a lot, and straightway shot This fearful martinet.
The Admiralty saw how ill They'd treated CAPTAIN REECE; He was restored once more aboard The saucy _Mantelpiece_.
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DON'T FORGET!
Now, Marco, dear, My wishes hear: While you're away It's understood You will be good, And not too gay. To every trace Of maiden grace You will be blind. And will not glance By any chance On womankind! If you are wise, You'll shut your eyes Till we arrive,
And not address A lady less Than forty-five; You'll please to frown On every gown That you may see; And O, my pet, You won't forget You've married me!
O, my darling, O, my pet, Whatever else you may forget, In yonder isle beyond the sea, O, don't forget you've married me!
You'll lay your head Upon your bed At set of sun. You will not sing Of anything To any one: You'll sit and mope All day, I hope, And shed a tear Upon the life Your little wife Is passing here! And if so be You think of me, Please tell the moon; I'll read it all In rays that fall On the lagoon:
You'll be so kind As tell the wind How you may be, And send me words By little birds To comfort me!
And O, my darling, O, my pet, Whatever else you may forget, In yonder isle beyond the sea, O, don't forget you've married me!
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[Illustration]
THE SAILOR BOY TO HIS LASS
I go away, this blessed day, To sail across the sea, MATILDA! My vessel sails for various parts At twenty after three, MATILDA; I hardly know where we may go, Or if it's near or far, MATILDA, For CAPTAIN HYDE does not confide In any 'fore-mast tar, MATILDA!
Beneath my ban that mystic man Shall suffer, _coûte que coûte_, MATILDA! What right has he to keep from me The Admiralty route, MATILDA? Because, forsooth! I am a youth Of common sailors' lot, MATILDA! Am I a man on human plan Designed, or am I not, MATILDA?
But there, my lass, we'll let that pass! With anxious love I burn, MATILDA. I want to know if we shall go To church when I return, MATILDA? Your eyes are red, you bow your head; It's pretty clear you thirst, MATILDA, To name the day--What's that you say?-- "You'll see me further first," MATILDA?
I can't mistake the signs you make, Although you barely speak, MATILDA; Though pure and young, you thrust your tongue Right in your pretty cheek, MATILDA! My dear, I fear I hear you sneer-- I do--I'm sure I do, MATILDA-- With simple grace you make a face, Ejaculating, "Ugh!" MATILDA.
Oh, pause to think before you drink The dregs of Lethe's cup, MATILDA! Remember, do, what I've gone through, Before you give me up, MATILDA! Recall again the mental pain Of what I've had to do, MATILDA! And be assured that I've endured It, all along of you, MATILDA!
Do you forget, my blithesome pet, How once with jealous rage, MATILDA, I watched you walk and gaily talk With some one thrice your age, MATILDA? You squatted free upon his knee, A sight that made me sad, MATILDA? You pinched his cheek with friendly tweak, Which almost drove me mad, MATILDA!
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I knew him not, but thought to spot Some man you wished to wed, MATILDA! I took a gun, my darling one, And shot him through the head, MATILDA! I'm made of stuff that's rough and gruff Enough, I own; but, ah, MATILDA! It _did_ annoy your poor old boy To find it was your pa, MATILDA!
I've passed a life of toil and strife, And disappointments deep, MATILDA; I've lain awake with dental ache Until I fell asleep, MATILDA; At times again I've missed a train, Or p'raps run short of tin, MATILDA, And worn a boot on corns that shoot, Or, shaving, cut my chin, MATILDA!
But, oh! no trains--no dental pains-- Believe me when I say, MATILDA, No corns that shoot--no pinching boot Upon a summer day, MATILDA-- It's my belief, could cause such grief As that I've suffered for, MATILDA, My having shot in vital spot Your old progenitor, MATILDA!
Bethink you how I've kept the vow I made one winter day, MATILDA-- That, come what could, I never would Remain too long away, MATILDA. And, oh! the crimes with which, at times, I've charged my gentle mind, MATILDA, To keep the vow I made--and now You treat me so unkind, MATILDA!
For when at sea off Caribbee, I felt my passion burn, MATILDA; By impulse egged, I went and begged The captain to return, MATILDA; And when, my pet, I couldn't get That captain to agree, MATILDA, Right through a sort of open port I pitched him in the sea, MATILDA!
[Illustration]
Remember, too, how all the crew, With indignation blind, MATILDA, Distinctly swore they ne'er before Had thought me so unkind, MATILDA; And how they'd shun me one by one-- An unforgiving group, MATILDA-- I stopped their howls and sulky scowls By pizening their soup, MATILDA!
So pause to think, before you drink The dregs of Lethe's cup, MATILDA; Remember, do, what I've gone through, Before you give me up, MATILDA.
Recall again the mental pain Of what I've had to do, MATILDA, And be assured that I've endured It, all along of you, MATILDA!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE SUICIDE'S GRAVE
On a tree by a river a little tomtit Sang "Willow, titwillow, titwillow!" And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit Singing 'Willow, titwillow, titwillow'? Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?" I cried, "Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?" With a shake of his poor little head he replied, "Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
He slapped at his chest, as he sat on that bough, Singing "Willow, titwillow, titwillow!" And a cold perspiration bespangled his brow, Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!
He sobbed and he sighed, and a gurgle he gave, Then he threw himself into the billowy wave, And an echo arose from the suicide's grave-- "Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
Now I feel just as sure as I'm sure that my name Isn't Willow, titwillow, titwillow, That 'twas blighted affection that made him exclaim, "Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!" And if you remain callous and obdurate, I Shall perish as he did, and you will know why, Though I probably shall not exclaim as I die, "Oh, willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
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[Illustration]
THE REVEREND SIMON MAGUS
A rich advowson, highly prized, For private sale was advertised; And many a parson made a bid; The REVEREND SIMON MAGUS did.
He sought the agent's: "Agent, I Have come prepared at once to buy (If your demand is not too big) The Cure of Otium-cum-Digge."
"Ah!" said the agent, "_there's_ a berth-- The snuggest vicarage on earth; No sort of duty (so I hear), And fifteen hundred pounds a year!
"If on the price we should agree, The living soon will vacant be: The good incumbent's ninety-five, And cannot very long survive.
"See--here's his photograph--you see, He's in his dotage." "Ah, dear me! Poor soul!" said Simon. "His decease Would be a merciful release!"
The agent laughed--the agent blinked-- The agent blew his nose and winked And poked the parson's ribs in play-- It was that agent's vulgar way.
The REVEREND SIMON frowned: "I grieve This light demeanour to perceive; It's scarcely _comme il faut_, I think: Now--pray oblige me--do not wink.
"Don't dig my waistcoat into holes-- Your mission is to sell the souls Of human sheep and human kids To that divine who highest bids.
"Do well in this, and on your head Unnumbered honours will be shed." The agent said, "Well, truth to tell, I _have_ been doing pretty well."
"You should," said SIMON, "at your age; But now about the parsonage. How many rooms does it contain? Show me the photograph again.
"A poor apostle's humble house Must not be too luxurious; No stately halls with oaken floor-- It should be decent and no more.
"No billiard-rooms--no stately trees-- No croquet-grounds or pineries." "Ah!" sighed the agent, "very true: This property won't do for you.
"All these about the house you'll find"-- "Well," said the parson, "never mind; I'll manage to submit to these Luxurious superfluities.
"A clergyman who does not shirk The various calls of Christian work, Will have no leisure to employ These 'common forms' of worldly joy.
"To preach three times on Sabbath days-- To wean the lost from wicked ways-- The sick to soothe--the sane to wed-- The poor to feed with meat and bread;
"These are the various wholesome ways In which I'll spend my nights and days: My zeal will have no time to cool At croquet, archery, or pool."
The agent said, "From what I hear, This living will not suit, I fear-- There are no poor, no sick at all; For services there is no call."
[Illustration]
The reverend gent looked grave. "Dear me! Then there is _no_ 'society'?-- I mean, of course, no sinners there Whose souls will be my special care?"
The cunning agent shook his head, "No, none--except"--(the agent said)-- "The DUKE OF A., the EARL OF B., The MARQUIS C., and VISCOUNT D.
"But you will not be quite alone, For, though they've chaplains of their own, Of course this noble well-bred clan Receive the parish clergyman."
"Oh, silence, sir!" said SIMON M., "Dukes--earls! What should I care for them? These worldly ranks I scorn and flout!" "Of course," the agent said, "no doubt."
"Yet I might show these men of birth The hollowness of rank on earth." The agent answered, "Very true-- But I should not, if I were you."
"Who sells this rich advowson, pray?" The agent winked--it was his way-- "His name is HART; 'twixt me and you, He is, I'm griev'd to say, a Jew!"
"A Jew?" said SIMON, "happy find! I purchase this advowson, mind. My life shall be devoted to Converting that unhappy Jew!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
HE AND SHE
HE. I know a youth who loves a little maid-- (Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!) Silent is he, for he's modest and afraid-- (Hey, but he's timid as a youth can be!) SHE. I know a maid who loves a gallant youth-- (Hey, but she sickens as the days go by!) _She_ cannot tell him all the sad, sad truth-- (Hey, but I think that little maid will die!) BOTH. Now tell me pray, and tell me true, What in the world should the poor soul do?
HE. He cannot eat and he cannot sleep-- (Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!) Daily he goes for to wail--for to weep-- (Hey, but he's wretched as a youth can be!)
SHE. She's very thin and she's very pale-- (Hey, but she sickens as the days go by!) Daily she goes for to weep--for to wail-- (Hey, but I think that little maid will die!) BOTH. Now tell me pray, and tell me true, What in the world should the poor soul do?
SHE. If I were the youth I should offer her my name-- (Hey, but her face is a sight for to see!) HE. If I were the maid I should fan his honest flame-- (Hey, but he's bashful as a youth can be!) SHE. If I were the youth I should speak to her to-day-- (Hey, but she sickens as the days go by!) HE. If I were the maid I should meet the lad half way-- (For I really do believe that timid youth will die!) BOTH. I thank you much for your counsel true; I've learnt what that poor soul ought to do!
[Illustration]
DAMON _v._ PYTHIAS
Two better friends you wouldn't pass Throughout a summer's day, Than DAMON and his PYTHIAS,-- Two merchant princes they.
At school together they contrived All sorts of boyish larks; And, later on, together thrived As merry merchants' clerks.
And then, when many years had flown, They rose together till They bought a business of their own-- And they conduct it still.
They loved each other all their lives, Dissent they never knew, And, stranger still, their very wives Were rather friendly too.
Perhaps you think, to serve my ends, These statements I refute, When I admit that these dear friends Were parties to a suit?
But 'twas a friendly action, for Good PYTHIAS, as you see, Fought merely as executor, And DAMON as trustee.
They laughed to think, as through the throng Of suitors sad they passed, That they, who'd lived and loved so long, Should go to law at last.
The junior briefs they kindly let Two sucking counsel hold; These learned persons never yet Had fingered suitors' gold.
[Illustration]
But though the happy suitors two Were friendly as could be,
Not so the junior counsel who Were earning maiden fee.
They too, till then, were friends. At school They'd done each other's sums, And under Oxford's gentle rule Had been the closest chums.
But now they met with scowl and grin In every public place, And often snapped their fingers in Each other's learned face.
It almost ended in a fight When they on path or stair Met face to face. They made it quite A personal affair.
And when at length the case was called (It came on rather late), Spectators really were appalled To see their deadly hate.
One junior rose--with eyeballs tense, And swollen frontal veins: To all his powers of eloquence He gave the fullest reins.
His argument was novel--for A verdict he relied On blackening the junior Upon the other side.
"Oh," said the Judge, in robe and fur, "The matter in dispute To arbitration pray refer-- This is a friendly suit."
And PYTHIAS, in merry mood, Digged DAMON in the side; And DAMON, tickled with the feud, With other digs replied.
But oh! those deadly counsel twain, Who were such friends before, Were never reconciled again---- They quarrelled more and more.
At length it happened that they met On Alpine heights one day, And thus they paid each one his debt, Their fury had its way--
They seized each other in a trice, With scorn and hatred filled, And, falling from a precipice, They, both of them, were killed.
[Illustration]
THE MIGHTY MUST
Come, mighty Must! Inevitable Shall! In thee I trust. Time weaves my coronal! Go, mocking Is! Go, disappointing Was! That I am this Ye are the cursed cause! Yet humble Second shall be First, I ween; And dead and buried be the curst Has Been!
Oh, weak Might Be! Oh, May, Might, Could, Would, Should! How powerless ye For evil or for good! In every sense Your moods I cheerless call, Whate'er your tense Ye are Imperfect, all! Ye have deceived the trust I've shown In ye! Away! The Mighty Must alone Shall be!
[Illustration]
MY DREAM
The other night, from cares exempt, I slept--and what d'you think I dreamt? I dreamt that somehow I had come To dwell in Topsy-Turveydom!--
Where vice is virtue--virtue, vice: Where nice is nasty--nasty, nice: Where right is wrong and wrong is right-- Where white is black and black is white.
Where babies, much to their surprise, Are born astonishingly wise; With every Science on their lips, And Art at all their finger-tips.
For, as their nurses dandle them, They crow binomial theorem, With views (it seems absurd to us) On differential calculus.
But though a babe, as I have said, Is born with learning in his head, He must forget it, if he can, Before he calls himself a man.
For that which we call folly here, Is wisdom in that favoured sphere; The wisdom we so highly prize Is blatant folly in their eyes.
A boy, if he would push his way, Must learn some nonsense every day; And cut, to carry out this view, His wisdom teeth and wisdom too.
Historians burn their midnight oils, Intent on giant-killers' toils; And sages close their aged eyes To other sages' lullabies.
_Our_ magistrates, in duty bound, Commit all robbers who are found; But there the beaks (so people said) Commit all robberies instead.
_Our_ judges, pure and wise in tone, Know crime from theory alone. And glean the motives of a thief From books and popular belief.
But there, a judge who wants to prime His mind with true ideas of crime, Derives them from the common sense Of practical experience.
[Illustration]
Policemen march all folks away Who practise virtue every day-- Of course, I mean to say, you know, What we call virtue here below.
For only scoundrels dare to do What we consider just and true, And only good men do, in fact, What we should think a dirty act.
But strangest of these social twirls, The girls are boys--the boys are girls! The men are women, too--but then _Per contra_, women all are men.
To one who to tradition clings This seems an awkward state of things, But if to think it out you try, It doesn't really signify.
[Illustration]
With them, as surely as can be, A sailor should be sick at sea, And not a passenger may sail Who cannot smoke right through a gale.
A soldier (save by rarest luck) Is always shot for showing pluck-- That is, if others can be found With pluck enough to fire a round.
"How strange," I said to one I saw, "You quite upset our every law. However can you get along So systematically wrong?"
[Illustration]
"Dear me," my mad informant said, "Have you no eyes within your head? You sneer when you your hat should doff: Why, we begin where you leave off!
"Your wisest men are very far Less learned than our babies are!" I mused awhile--and then, oh me! I framed this brilliant repartee:
"Although your babes are wiser far Than our most valued sages are, Your sages, with their toys and cots, Are duller than our idiots!"
But this remark, I grieve to state, Came just a little bit too late; For as I framed it in my head, I woke and found myself in bed.
Still I could wish that, 'stead of here, My lot were in that favoured sphere!-- Where greatest fools bear off the bell I ought to do extremely well.
[Illustration]
A MIRAGE
Were I thy bride, Then the whole world beside Were not too wide To hold my wealth of love-- Were I thy bride! Upon thy breast My loving head would rest, As on her nest The tender turtle-dove-- Were I thy bride!
This heart of mine Would be one heart with thine, And in that shrine Our happiness would dwell-- Were I thy bride!
And all day long Our lives should be a song: No grief, no wrong Should make my heart rebel-- Were I thy bride!
The silvery flute, The melancholy lute, Were night-owl's hoot To my low-whispered coo-- Were I thy bride! The skylark's trill Were but discordance shrill To the soft thrill Of wooing as I'd woo-- Were I thy bride!
The rose's sigh Were as a carrion's cry To lullaby Such as I'd sing to thee-- Were I thy bride! A feather's press Were leaden heaviness To my caress. But then, unhappily, I'm not thy bride!
[Illustration]
THE BISHOP OF RUM-TI-FOO AGAIN
I often wonder whether you Think sometimes of that Bishop, who From black but balmy Rum-ti-foo Last summer twelvemonth came. Unto your mind I p'raps may bring Remembrance of the man I sing To-day, by simply mentioning That PETER was his name.
Remember now that holy man Came with the great Colonial clan To Synod, called Pan-Anglican; And kindly recollect
How, having crossed the ocean wide, To please his flock all means he tried Consistent with a proper pride And manly self-respect.
He only, of the reverend pack Who minister to Christians black, Brought any useful knowledge back To his Colonial fold. In consequence a place I claim For "PETER" on the scroll of Fame (For PETER was that Bishop's name, As I've already told).
He carried Art, he often said, To places where that timid maid (Save by Colonial Bishops' aid) Could never hope to roam. The Payne-cum-Lauri feat he taught As he had learnt it; for he thought The choicest fruits of Progress ought To bless the Negro's home.
And he had other work to do, For, while he tossed upon the blue, The islanders of Rum-ti-foo Forgot their kindly friend. Their decent clothes they learnt to tear-- They learnt to say, "I do not care," Though they, of course, were well aware How folks, who say so, end.
Some sailors whom he did not know, Had landed there not long ago, And taught them "Bother!" also "Blow!" (Of wickedness the germs.)
No need to use a casuist's pen To prove that they were merchantmen; No sailor of the Royal N. Would use such awful terms.
And so, when Bishop PETER came (That was the kindly Bishop's name), He heard these dreadful oaths with shame, And chid their want of dress. (Except a shell--a bangle rare-- A feather here--a feather there-- The South Pacific negroes wear Their native nothingness.)
[Illustration]
He taught them that a Bishop loathes To listen to unseemly oaths, He gave them all his left-off clothes-- They bent them to his will.
The Bishop's gift spreads quickly round; In PETER'S left-off clothes they bound (His three-and-twenty suits they found In fair condition still).
The Bishop's eyes with water fill, Quite overjoyed to find them still Obedient to his sovereign will, And said, "Good Rum-ti-foo! Half-way to meet you I'll prepare: I'll dress myself in cowries rare, And fasten feathers in my hair, And dance the 'Cutch-chi-boo'!"
[Illustration]
And to conciliate his see He married PICCADILLILLEE, The youngest of his twenty-three, Tall--neither fat nor thin. (And though the dress he made her don Looks awkwardly a girl upon, It was a great improvement on The one he found her in.)
The Bishop in his gay canoe (His wife, of course, went with him too), To some adjacent island flew, To spend his honeymoon. Some day in sunny Rum-ti-foo A little PETER'll be on view; And that (if people tell me true) Is like to happen soon.
[Illustration]
THE GHOSTS' HIGH NOON
When the night wind howls in the chimney cowls, and the bat in the moonlight flies, And inky clouds, like funeral shrouds, sail over the midnight skies-- When the footpads quail at the night-bird's wail, and black dogs bay the moon, Then is the spectres' holiday--then is the ghosts' high noon!
As the sob of the breeze sweeps over the trees, and the mists lie low on the fen, From grey tombstones are gathered the bones that once were women and men, And away they go, with a mop and a mow, to the revel that ends too soon, For cockcrow limits our holiday--the dead of the night's high noon!
And then each ghost with his ladye-toast to their churchyard beds take flight, With a kiss, perhaps, on her lantern chaps, and a grisly grim "good night"; Till the welcome knell of the midnight bell rings forth its jolliest tune, And ushers our next high holiday--the dead of the night's high noon!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A WORM WILL TURN
I love a man who'll smile and joke When with misfortune crowned; Who'll pun beneath a pauper's yoke, And as he breaks his daily toke, Conundrums gay propound.
Just such a man was BERNARD JUPP, He scoffed at Fortune's frown; He gaily drained his bitter cup-- Though Fortune often threw him up, It never cast him down.
Though years their share of sorrow bring, We know that far above All other griefs, are griefs that spring From some misfortune happening To those we really love.
E'en sorrow for another's woe Our BERNARD failed to quell; Though by this special form of blow No person ever suffered so, Or bore his grief so well.
His father, wealthy and well clad, And owning house and park. Lost every halfpenny he had, And then became (extremely sad!) A poor attorney's clerk.
All sons it surely would appal, Except the passing meek, To see a father lose his all, And from an independence fall To one pound ten a week!
But JUPP shook off this sorrow's weight And, like a Christian son, Proved Poverty a happy fate-- Proved Wealth to be a devil's bait, To lure poor sinners on.
With other sorrows BERNARD coped, For sorrows came in packs; His cousins with their housemaids sloped-- His uncles forged--his aunts eloped-- His sisters married blacks.
[Illustration]
But BERNARD, far from murmuring (Exemplar, friends, to us), Determined to his faith to cling,-- He made the best of everything, And argued softly thus:
"'Twere harsh my uncles' forging knack Too rudely to condemn-- My aunts, repentant, may come back, And blacks are nothing like as black As people colour them!"
Still Fate, with many a sorrow rife, Maintained relentless fight: His grandmamma next lost her life, Then died the mother of his wife, But still he seemed all right.
His brother fond (the only link To life that bound him now) One morning, overcome by drink, He broke his leg (the right, I think) In some disgraceful row.
But did my BERNARD swear and curse? Oh no--to murmur loth, He only said, "Go, get a nurse: Be thankful that it isn't worse; You might have broken both!"
But worms who watch without concern The cockchafer on thorns, Or beetles smashed, themselves will turn If, walking through the slippery fern, You tread upon their corns.
One night as BERNARD made his track Through Brompton home to bed, A footpad, with a vizor black, Took watch and purse, and dealt a crack On BERNARD'S saint-like head.
It was too much--his spirit rose, He looked extremely cross. Men thought him steeled to mortal foes, But no--he bowed to countless blows, But kicked against this loss.
He finally made up his mind Upon his friends to call; Subscription lists were largely signed, For men were really glad to find Him mortal, after all!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE HUMANE MIKADO
A more humane Mikado never Did in Japan exist; To nobody second, I'm certainly reckoned A true philanthropist. It is my very humane endeavour To make, to some extent, Each evil liver A running river Of harmless merriment.
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time-- To let the punishment fit the crime-- The punishment fit the crime:
And make each prisoner pent Unwillingly represent A source of innocent merriment-- Of innocent merriment!
All prosy dull society sinners, Who chatter and bleat and bore, Are sent to hear sermons From mystical Germans Who preach from ten to four: The amateur tenor, whose vocal villainies All desire to shirk, Shall, during off-hours, Exhibit his powers To Madame Tussaud's waxwork: The lady who dyes a chemical yellow, Or stains her grey hair puce, Or pinches her figger, Is painted with vigour And permanent walnut juice: The idiot who, in railway carriages, Scribbles on window panes, We only suffer To ride on a buffer In Parliamentary trains.
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time-- To let the punishment fit the crime-- The punishment fit the crime; And make each prisoner pent Unwillingly represent A source of innocent merriment-- Of innocent merriment!
The advertising quack who wearies With tales of countless cures, His teeth, I've enacted, Shall all be extracted By terrified amateurs: The music-hall singer attends a series Of masses and fugues and "ops" By Bach, interwoven With Spohr and Beethoven, At classical Monday Pops: The billiard sharp whom any one catches, His doom's extremely hard-- He's made to dwell In a dungeon cell On a spot that's always barred; And there he plays extravagant matches In fitless finger-stalls, On a cloth untrue, With a twisted cue And elliptical billiard balls!
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time-- To let the punishment fit the crime-- The punishment fit the crime; And make each prisoner pent Unwillingly represent A source of innocent merriment, Of innocent merriment!
[Illustration]
THE HAUGHTY ACTOR
An actor--GIBBS, of Drury Lane-- Of very decent station, Once happened in a part to gain Excessive approbation; It sometimes turns a fellow's brain And makes him singularly vain When he believes that he receives Tremendous approbation.
His great success half drove him mad, But no one seemed to mind him; Well, in another piece he had Another part assigned him.
This part was smaller, by a bit, Than that in which he made a hit. So, much ill-used, he straight refused To play the part assigned him.
* * * * *
_That night that actor slept, and I'll attempt To tell you of the vivid dream he dreamt:_
THE DREAM
In fighting with a robber band (A thing he loved sincerely) A sword struck GIBBS upon the hand And wounded it severely. At first he didn't heed it much, He thought it was a simple touch, But soon he found the weapon's bound Had wounded him severely.
To Surgeon COBB he made a trip, Who'd just effected featly An amputation at the hip Particularly neatly. A rising man was Surgeon COBB, But this extremely ticklish job He had achieved (as he believed) Particularly neatly.
The actor rang the surgeon's bell. "Observe my wounded finger: Be good enough to strap it well, And prithee do not linger, That I, dear sir, may fill again The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane This very night I have to fight-- So prithee do not linger."
"I don't strap fingers up for doles," Replied the haughty surgeon; "To use your cant, I don't play _rôles_ 'Utility' that verge on. 'First amputation'--nothing less-- That is my line of business: We surgeon nobs despise all jobs Utility that verge on.
"When in your hip there lurks disease" (So dreamt this lively dreamer), "Or devastating _caries_ In _humerus_ or _femur_, If you can pay a handsome fee, Oh, then you may remember me, With joy elate I'll amputate Your _humerus_ or _femur_."
The disconcerted actor ceased The haughty leech to pester, But when the wound in size increased, And then began to fester, He sought a learned Counsel's lair, And told that Counsel, then and there, How COBB'S neglect of his defect Had made his finger fester.
"Oh, bring my action, if you please, The case I pray you urge on, And win me thumping damages From COBB, that haughty surgeon. He culpably neglected me Although I proffered him his fee, So pray come down, in wig and gown, On COBB that haughty surgeon!"
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That Counsel, learned in the laws, With passion almost trembled, He just had gained a mighty cause Before the Peers assembled! Said he, "How dare you have the face To come with Common Jury case To one who wings rhetoric flings Before the Peers assembled?"
Dispirited became our friend-- Depressed his moral pecker-- "But stay! a thought! I'll gain my end, And save my poor exchequer. I won't be placed upon the shelf, I'll take it into Court myself, And legal lore display before The Court of the Exchequer."
He found a Baron--one of those Who with our laws supply us-- In wig and silken gown and hose, As if at _Nisi Prius_. But he'd just given, off the reel, A famous judgment on Appeal: It scarce became his heightened fame To sit at _Nisi Prius_.
[Illustration]
Our friend began, with easy wit, That half concealed his terror: "Pooh!" said the Judge, "I only sit In _Banco_ or in Error. Can you suppose, my man, that I'd O'er _Nisi Prius_ Courts preside, Or condescend my time to spend On anything but Error?"
"Too bad," said GIBBS, "my case to shirk! You must be bad innately, To save your skill for mighty work Because it's valued greatly!" But here he woke, with sudden start.
* * * * *
He wrote to say he'd play the part. I've but to tell he played it well-- The author's words--his native wit Combined, achieved a perfect "hit"-- The papers praised him greatly.
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[Illustration]
WILLOW WALY!
HE. PRITHEE, pretty maiden--prithee, tell me true (Hey, but I'm doleful, willow, willow waly!) Have you e'er a lover a-dangling after you? Hey, willow waly O! I would fain discover If you have a lover? Hey, willow waly O!
SHE. Gentle sir, my heart is frolicsome and free-- (Hey, but he's doleful, willow, willow waly!) Nobody I care for comes a-courting me-- Hey, willow waly O! Nobody I care for Comes a-courting--therefore, Hey, willow waly O!
HE. Prithee, pretty maiden, will you marry me? (Hey, but I'm hopeful, willow, willow waly!) I may say, at once, I'm a man of propertee-- Hey, willow waly O! Money, I despise it, But many people prize it, Hey, willow waly O!
SHE. Gentle sir, although to marry I design-- (Hey, but he's hopeful, willow, willow waly!) As yet I do not know you, and so I must decline. Hey, willow waly O! To other maidens go you-- As yet I do not know you, Hey, willow waly O!
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[Illustration]
THE TWO MAJORS
An excellent soldier who's worthy the name, Loves officers dashing and strict: When good, he's content with escaping all blame, When naughty, he likes to be licked.
He likes for a fault to be bullied and stormed, Or imprisoned for several days; And hates, for a duty correctly performed, To be slavered with sickening praise.
No officer sickened with praises his corps So little as MAJOR LA GUERRE-- No officers swore at his warriors more Than MAJOR MAKREDI PREPERE.
Their soldiers adored them, and every grade Delighted to hear them abuse; Though whenever these officers came on parade, They shivered and shook in their shoes.
"No doubt we deserve it--no mercy we crave-- Go on--you're conferring a boon; We would rather be slanged by a warrior brave Than praised by a wretched poltroon!"
MAKREDI would say that in battle's fierce rage True happiness only was met: Poor MAJOR MAKREDI, though fifty his age, Had never known happiness yet!
LA GUERRE would declare, "With the blood of a foe No tipple is worthy to clink." Poor fellow! he hadn't, though sixty or so, Yet tasted his favourite drink!
They agreed at their mess--they agreed in the glass-- They agreed in the choice of their "set," And they also agreed in adoring, alas! The Vivandière, pretty FILLETTE.
Agreement, we know, may be carried too far, And after agreeing all round For years--in this soldierly "maid of the bar," A bone of contention they found.
"On the day that you marry her," muttered PREPERE (With a pistol he quietly played), "I'll scatter the brains in your noddle, I swear, All over the stony parade!"
"I cannot do _that_ to you," answered LA GUERRE, "Whatever events may befall; But this _I can_ do--if you wed her, _mon cher_! I'll eat you, moustachios and all!
[Illustration]
The rivals, although they would never engage, Yet quarrelled whenever they met; They met in a fury and left in a rage, But neither took pretty FILLETTE.
"I am not afraid," thought MAKREDI PREPERE: "For my country I'm ready to fall; But nobody wants, for a mere Vivandière, To be eaten, moustachios and all!
"Besides, though LA GUERRE has his faults, I'll allow He's one of the bravest of men: My goodness! if I disagree with him now, I might disagree with him then!"
"No coward am I," said LA GUERRE, "as you guess-- I sneer at an enemy's blade; But I don't want PREPERE to get into a mess For splashing the stony parade!"
One day on parade to PREPERE and LA GUERRE Came CORPORAL JACOT DEBETTE, And, trembling all over, he prayed of them there To give him the pretty FILLETTE.
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"You see, I am willing to marry my bride Until you've arranged this affair; I will blow out my brains when your honours decide Which marries the sweet Vivandière!"
"Well, take her," said both of them in a duet (A favourite form of reply), "But when I am ready to marry FILLETTE, Remember you've promised to die!"
He married her then: from the flowery plains Of existence the roses they cull: He lived and he died with his wife; and his brains Are reposing in peace in his skull.
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LIFE IS LOVELY ALL THE YEAR
When the buds are blossoming, Smiling welcome to the spring, Lovers choose a wedding day-- Life is love in merry May!
Spring is green--Fal lal la! Summer's rose--Fal lal la! It is sad when Summer goes, Fal la! Autumn's gold--Fal lal la! Winter's grey--Fal lal la! Winter still is far away-- Fal la! Leaves in Autumn fade and fall; Winter is the end of all. Spring and summer teem with glee: Spring and summer, then, for me! Fal la!
In the Spring-time seed is sown: In the Summer grass is mown: In the Autumn you may reap: Winter is the time for sleep.
Spring is hope--Fal lal la! Summer's joy--Fal lal la! Spring and Summer never cloy, Fal la! Autumn, toil--Fal lal la! Winter, rest--Fal lal la! Winter, after all, is best-- Fal la! Spring and summer pleasure you, Autumn, ay, and winter, too-- Every season has its cheer; Life is lovely all the year! Fal la!
[Illustration]
EMILY, JOHN, JAMES, AND I
A DERBY LEGEND
EMILY JANE was a nursery maid-- JAMES was a bold Life Guard, And JOHN was a constable, poorly paid (And I am a doggerel bard).
A very good girl was EMILY JANE, JIMMY was good and true, And JOHN was a very good man in the main (And I am a good man, too).
Rivals for EMMIE were JOHNNY and JAMES, Though EMILY liked them both; She couldn't tell which had the strongest claims (And _I_ couldn't take my oath).
But sooner or later you're certain to find Your sentiments can't lie hid-- JANE thought it was time that she made up her mind (And I think it was time she did).
[Illustration]
Said JANE, with a smirk, and a blush on her face, "I'll promise to wed the boy Who takes me to-morrow to Epsom Race!" (Which _I_ would have done, with joy.)
From JOHNNY escaped an expression of pain, But JIMMY said, "Done with you! I'll take you with pleasure, my EMILY JANE" (And I would have said so too).
JOHN lay on the ground, and he roared like mad (For JOHNNY was sore perplexed), And he kicked very hard at a very small lad (Which _I_ often do, when vexed).
[Illustration]
For JOHN was on duty next day with the Force, To punish all Epsom crimes; Some people _will_ cross, when they're clearing the course (I do it myself, sometimes).
* * * * *
The Derby Day sun glittered gaily on cads, On maidens with gamboge hair, On sharpers and pickpockets, swindlers and pads (For I, with my harp, was there).
And JIMMY went down with his JANE that day, And JOHN by the collar or nape Seized everybody who came in his way (And _I_ had a narrow escape).
He noticed his EMILY JANE with JIM, And envied the well-made elf; And people remarked that he muttered "Oh, dim!" (I often say "dim!" myself.)
JOHN dogged them all day, without asking their leaves: For his sergeant he told, aside, That JIMMY and JANE were notorious thieves (And I think he was justified).
But JAMES wouldn't dream of abstracting a fork, And JENNY would blush with shame At stealing so much as a bottle or cork (A bottle I think fair game).
[Illustration]
But, ah! there's another more serious crime! They wickedly strayed upon The course, at a critical moment of time (I pointed them out to JOHN).
The crusher came down on the pair in a crack-- And then, with a demon smile, _Let JENNY cross over, but sent JIMMY back_ (I played on my harp the while).
Stern JOHNNY their agony loud derides With a very triumphant sneer-- They weep and they wail from the opposite sides (And _I_ shed a silent tear).
And JENNY is crying away like mad, And JIMMY is swearing hard; And JOHNNY is looking uncommonly glad (And I am a doggerel bard).
[Illustration]
But JIMMY he ventured on crossing again The scenes of our Isthmian Games-- JOHN caught him, and collared him, giving him pain (I felt very much for JAMES).
JOHN led him away with a victor's hand, And JIMMY was shortly seen In the station-house under the grand Grand Stand (As many a time _I've_ been).
And JIMMY, bad boy, was imprisoned for life, Though EMILY pleaded hard; And JOHNNY had EMILY JANE to wife (And I am a doggerel bard).
[Illustration]
THE USHER'S CHARGE
Now, Jurymen, hear my advice-- All kinds of vulgar prejudice I pray you set aside: With stern judicial frame of mind-- From bias free of every kind, This trial must be tried!
Oh, listen to the plaintiff's case: Observe the features of her face-- The broken-hearted bride! Condole with her distress of mind-- From bias free of every kind, This trial must be tried!
And when amid the plaintiff's shrieks, The ruffianly defendant speaks-- Upon the other side; What _he_ may say you need not mind-- From bias free of every kind, This trial must be tried!
[Illustration]
THE PERILS OF INVISIBILITY
Old PETER led a wretched life-- Old PETER had a furious wife; Old PETER, too, was truly stout, He measured several yards about.
The little fairy PICKLEKIN One summer afternoon looked in, And said, "Old PETER, how-de-do? Can I do anything for you?
[Illustration]
"I have three gifts--the first will give Unbounded riches while you live; The second, health where'er you be; The third, invisibility."
"O, little fairy PICKLEKIN," Old PETER answered, with a grin, "To hesitate would be absurd,-- Undoubtedly I choose the third."
"'Tis yours," the fairy said; "be quite Invisible to mortal sight Whene'er you please. Remember me Most kindly, pray, to MRS. P."
Old MRS. PETER overheard Wee PICKLEKIN'S concluding word, And, jealous of her girlhood's choice, Said, "That was some young woman's voice!"
Old PETER let her scold and swear-- Old PETER, bless him, didn't care. "My dear, your rage is wasted quite-- Observe, I disappear from sight!"
A well-bred fairy (so I've heard) Is always faithful to her word: Old PETER vanished like a shot, But then--_his suit of clothes did not_.
For when conferred the fairy slim Invisibility on him, She popped away on fairy wings, Without referring to his "things."
So there remained a coat of blue, A vest and double eyeglass too, His tail, his shoes, his socks as well, His pair of--no, I must not tell.
Old MRS. PETER soon began To see the failure of his plan, And then resolved (I quote the bard) To "hoist him with his own petard."
Old PETER woke next day and dressed, Put on his coat and shoes and vest, His shirt and stock--_but could not find His only pair of_--never mind!
[Illustration]
Old PETER was a decent man, And though he twigged his lady's plan, Yet, hearing her approaching, he Resumed invisibility.
"Dear MRS. P., my only joy," Exclaimed the horrified old boy; "Now give them up, I beg of you-- You know what I'm referring to!"
But no; the cross old lady swore She'd keep his--what I said before-- To make him publicly absurd; And MRS. PETER kept her word.
The poor old fellow had no rest; His coat, his stock, his shoes, his vest, Were all that now met mortal eye-- The rest, invisibility!
"Now, madam, give them up, I beg-- I've bad rheumatics in my leg; Besides, until you do, it's plain I cannot come to sight again!
"For though some mirth it might afford To see my clothes without their lord, Yet there would rise indignant oaths If he were seen without his clothes!"
But no; resolved to have her quiz, The lady held her own--and his-- And PETER left his humble cot To find a pair of--you know what.
But--here's the worst of this affair--- Whene'er he came across a pair Already placed for him to don, He was too stout to get them on!
So he resolved at once to train, And walked and walked with all his main; For years he paced this mortal earth, To bring himself to decent girth.
At night, when all around is still, You'll find him pounding up a hill; And shrieking peasants whom he meets, Fall down in terror on the peats!
Old PETER walks through wind and rain Resolved to train, and train, and train, Until he weighs twelve stone or so-- And when he does, I'll let you know.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE GREAT OAK TREE
There grew a little flower 'Neath a great oak tree: When the tempest 'gan to lower Little heeded she: No need had she to cower, For she dreaded not its power-- She was happy in the bower Of her great oak tree! Sing hey, Lackaday! Let the tears fall free For the pretty little flower and the great oak tree!
When she found that he was fickle, Was that great oak tree, She was in a pretty pickle, As she well might be--
But his gallantries were mickle, For Death followed with his sickle, And her tears began to trickle For her great oak tree! Sing hey, Lackaday! Let the tears fall free For the pretty little flower and the great oak tree!
Said she, "He loved me never, Did that great oak tree, But I'm neither rich nor clever, And so why should he? But though fate our fortunes sever, To be constant I'll endeavour, Ay, for ever and for ever, To my great oak tree!" Sing hey, Lackaday! Let the tears fall free For the pretty little flower and the great oak tree!
[Illustration]
OLD PAUL AND OLD TIM
When rival adorers come courting a maid, There's something or other may often be said, Why _he_ should be pitched upon rather than _him_. This wasn't the case with Old PAUL and Old TIM.
No soul could discover a reason at all For marrying TIMOTHY rather than PAUL; Though all could have offered good reasons, on oath, Against marrying either--or marrying both.
They were equally wealthy and equally old, They were equally timid and equally bold; They were equally tall as they stood in their shoes-- Between them, in fact, there was nothing to choose.
Had I been young EMILY, I should have said, "You're both much too old for a pretty young maid, Threescore at the least you are verging upon"; But I wasn't young EMILY. Let us get on.
No coward's blood ran in young EMILY'S veins, Her martial old father loved bloody campaigns; At the rumours of battles all over the globe He pricked up his ears like the war-horse in "Job."
He chuckled to hear of a sudden surprise-- Of soldiers, compelled, through an enemy's spies, Without any knapsacks or shakos to flee-- For an eminent army-contractor was he.
So when her two lovers, whose patience was tried, Implored her between them at once to decide, She told them she'd marry whichever might bring Good proofs of his doing the pluckiest thing.
They both went away with a qualified joy: That coward, Old PAUL, chose a very small boy, And when no one was looking, in spite of his fears, He set to work boxing that little boy's ears.
[Illustration]
The little boy struggled and tugged at his hair, But the lion was roused, and Old PAUL didn't care; He smacked him, and whacked him, and boxed him, and kicked Till the poor little beggar was royally licked.
Old TIM knew a trick worth a dozen of that, So he called for his stick and he called for his hat. "I'll cover myself with cheap glory--I'll go And wallop the Frenchmen who live in Soho!
"The German invader is ravaging France With infantry rifle and cavalry lance, And beautiful Paris is fighting her best To shake herself free from her terrible guest.
"The Frenchmen in London, in craven alarms, Have all run away from the summons to arms; They haven't the pluck of a pigeon--I'll go And wallop the Frenchmen who skulk in Soho!"
Old TIMOTHY tried it and found it succeed: That day he caused many French noses to bleed; Through foggy Soho he spread fear and dismay, And Frenchmen all round him in agony lay.
[Illustration]
He took care to abstain from employing his fist On the old and the crippled, for they might resist; A crippled old man may have pluck in his breast, But the young and the strong ones are cowards confest.
Old TIM and Old PAUL, with the list of their foes, Prostrated themselves at their EMILY'S toes: "Oh, which of us two is the pluckier blade?" And EMILY answered and EMILY said:
"Old TIM has thrashed runaway Frenchmen in scores Who ought to be guarding their cities and shores; Old PAUL has made little chaps' noses to bleed-- Old PAUL has accomplished the pluckier deed!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
KING GOODHEART
There lived a King, as I've been told In the wonder-working days of old, When hearts were twice as good as gold, And twenty times as mellow. Good temper triumphed in his face, And in his heart he found a place For all the erring human race And every wretched fellow. When he had Rhenish wine to drink It made him very sad to think That some, at junket or at jink, Must be content with toddy: He wished all men as rich as he (And he was rich as rich could be), So to the top of every tree Promoted everybody.
Ambassadors cropped up like hay, Prime Ministers and such as they Grew like asparagus in May, And Dukes were three a penny: Lord Chancellors were cheap as sprats, And Bishops in their shovel hats Were plentiful as tabby cats-- If possible, too many. On every side Field-Marshals gleamed, Small beer were Lords-Lieutenant deemed, With Admirals the ocean teemed, All round his wide dominions; And Party Leaders you might meet In twos and threes in every street Maintaining, with no little heat, Their various opinions.
That King, although no one denies, His heart was of abnormal size, Yet he'd have acted otherwise If he had been acuter. The end is easily foretold, When every blessed thing you hold Is made of silver, or of gold, You long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear But cloth of gold and satins rare, For cloth of gold you cease to care-- Up goes the price of shoddy: In short, whoever you may be, To this conclusion you'll agree, When every one is somebody, Then no one's anybody!
[Illustration]
THE MYSTIC SELVAGEE
Perhaps already you may know SIR BLENNERHASSET PORTICO? A Captain in the Navy, he-- A Baronet and K.C.B. You do? I thought so! It was that captain's favourite whim (A notion not confined to him) That RODNEY was the greatest tar Who ever wielded capstan-bar. He had been taught so.
"BENBOW? CORNWALLIS? HOOD?--Belay! Compared with RODNEY"--he would say-- "No other tar is worth a rap; The great LORD RODNEY was the chap The French to polish!
"Though, mind you, I respect LORD HOOD; CORNWALLIS, too, was rather good; BENBOW could enemies repel; LORD NELSON, too, was pretty well-- That is, tol-lol-ish!"
SIR BLENNERHASSET spent his days In learning RODNEY'S little ways, And closely imitated, too, His mode of talking to his crew-- His port and paces. An ancient tar he tried to catch Who'd served in RODNEY'S famous batch; But since his time long years have fled, And RODNEY'S tars are mostly dead: _Eheu fugaces!_
But after searching near and far, At last he found an ancient tar Who served with RODNEY and his crew Against the French in 'eighty-two (That gained the peerage) He gave him fifty pounds a year, His rum, his baccy, and his beer; And had a comfortable den Rigged up in what, by merchantmen, Is called the steerage.
"Now, JASPER"--'twas that sailor's name-- "Don't fear that you'll incur my blame By saying, when it seems to you, That there is anything I do That RODNEY wouldn't."
The ancient sailor turned his quid, Prepared to do as he was bid: "Ay, ay, yer honour; to begin, You've done away with 'swifting in'-- Well, sir, you shouldn't!
"Upon your spars I see you've clapped Peak-halliard blocks, all iron-capped; I would not christen that a crime, But 'twas not done in RODNEY'S time. It looks half-witted! Upon your maintop-stay, I see, You always clap a selvagee; Your stays, I see, are equalised-- No vessel, such as RODNEY prized, Would thus be fitted.
"And RODNEY, honoured sir, would grin To see you turning deadeyes in, Not _up_, as in the ancient way, But downwards, like a cutter's stay-- You didn't oughter! Besides, in seizing shrouds on board, Breast backstays you have quite ignored; Great RODNEY kept unto the last Breast backstays on topgallant mast-- They make it tauter."
SIR BLENNERHASSET "swifted in," Turned deadeyes up, and lent a fin To strip (as told by JASPER KNOX) The iron capping from his blocks, Where there was any.
SIR BLENNERHASSET does away With selvagees from maintop-stay; And though it makes his sailors stare, He rigs breast backstays everywhere-- In fact, too many.
[Illustration]
One morning, when the saucy craft Lay calmed, old JASPER toddled aft. "My mind misgives me, sir, that we Were wrong about that selvagee-- I should restore it." "Good," said the captain, and that day Restored it to the maintop-stay. Well-practised sailors often make A much more serious mistake, And then ignore it.
Next day old JASPER came once more. "I think, sir, I was right before." Well, up the mast the sailors skipped, The selvagee was soon unshipped, And all were merry. Again a day, and JASPER came: "I p'raps deserve your honour's blame, I can't make up my mind," said he, "About that cursed selvagee-- It's foolish--very.
"On Monday night I could have sworn That maintop-stay it should adorn, On Tuesday morning I could swear That selvagee should not be there. The knot's a rasper!" "Oh, you be hanged!" said CAPTAIN P., "Here, go ashore at Caribbee, Get out--good-bye--shove off--all right!" Old JASPER soon was out of sight-- Farewell, old JASPER!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
SLEEP ON!
Fear no unlicensed entry, Heed no bombastic talk, While guards the British Sentry Pall Mall and Birdcage Walk. Let European thunders Occasion no alarms, Though diplomatic blunders May cause a cry "To arms!" Sleep on, ye pale civilians; All thunder-clouds defy: On Europe's countless millions The Sentry keeps his eye!
Should foreign-born rapscallions In London dare to show Their overgrown battalions, Be sure I'll let you know.
Should Russians or Norwegians Pollute our favoured clime With rough barbaric legions, I'll mention it in time. So sleep in peace, civilians, The Continent defy; While on its countless millions The Sentry keeps his eye!
[Illustration]
THE CUNNING WOMAN
On all Arcadia's sunny plain, On all Arcadia's hill, None were so blithe as BILL and JANE, So blithe as JANE and BILL.
No social earthquake e'er occurred To rack their common mind: To them a Panic was a word-- A Crisis, empty wind.
No Stock Exchange disturbed the lad With overwhelming shocks-- BILL ploughed with all the shares he had, JANE planted all her stocks.
And learn in what a simple way Their pleasures they enhanced-- JANE danced like any lamb all day, BILL piped as well as danced.
Surrounded by a twittling crew, Of linnet, lark, and thrush, BILL treated his young lady to This sentimental gush:
"Oh, JANE, how true I am to you! How true you are to me! And how we woo, and how we coo! So fond a pair are we!
"To think, dear JANE, that anyways, Your chiefest end and aim Is, one of these fine summer days, To bear my humble name!"
Quoth JANE, "Well, as you put the case, I'm true enough, no doubt, But then, you see, in this here place There's none to cut you out.
"But, oh! if anybody came-- A Lord or any such-- I do not think your humble name Would fascinate me much.
"For though your mates, you often boast You distance out-and-out; Still, in the abstract, you're a most Uncompromising lout!"
[Illustration]
Poor BILL, he gave a heavy sigh, He tried in vain to speak-- A fat tear started to each eye And coursed adown each cheek.
For, oh! right well in truth he knew That very self-same day, The LORD DE JACOB PILLALOO Was coming there to stay!
The LORD DE JACOB PILLALOO All proper maidens shun-- He loves all women, it is true, But never marries one.
Now JANE, with all her mad self-will, Was no coquette--oh no! She really loved her faithful BILL, And thus she tuned her woe:
"Oh, willow, willow, o'er the lea! And willow once again! The Peer will fall in love with me! Why wasn't I made plain?"
* * * * *
A cunning woman lived hard by, A sorceressing dame, MACCATACOMB DE SALMON-EYE Was her uncommon name.
To her good JANE, with kindly yearn For BILL'S increasing pain, Repaired in secrecy to learn How best to make her plain.
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"Oh, JANE," the worthy woman said, "This mystic phial keep, And rub its liquor in your head Before you go to sleep.
"When you awake next day, I trow, You'll look in form and hue To others just as you do now--But not to PILLALOO!
"When you approach him, you will find He'll think you coarse--unkempt-- And rudely bid you get behind, With undisguised contempt."
The LORD DE PILLALOO arrived With his expensive train, And when in state serenely hived, He sent for BILL and JANE.
"Oh, spare her, LORD OF PILLALOO! (Said BILL) if wed you be, There's anything _I'd_ rather do Than flirt with LADY P."
The Lord he gazed in Jenny's eyes, He looked her through and through: The cunning woman's prophecies Were clearly coming true.
LORD PILLALOO, the Rustic's Bane (Bad person he, and proud), _He laughed Ha! ha! at pretty_ JANE, _And sneered at her aloud!_
He bade her get behind him then, And seek her mother's stye-- Yet to her native countrymen She was as fair as aye!
MACCATACOMB, continue green! Grow, SALMON-EYE, in might, Except for you, there might have been The deuce's own delight!
[Illustration]
THE LOVE-SICK BOY
When first my old, old love I knew, My bosom welled with joy; My riches at her feet I threw; I was a love-sick boy! No terms seemed too extravagant Upon her to employ-- I used to mope, and sigh, and pant, Just like a love-sick boy!
But joy incessant palls the sense; And love unchanged will cloy, And she became a bore intense Unto her love-sick boy? With fitful glimmer burnt my flame. And I grew cold and coy, At last, one morning, I became Another's love-sick boy!
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PHRENOLOGY
"Come, collar this bad man-- Around the throat he knotted me Till I to choke began-- In point of fact, garrotted me!"
So spake SIR HERBERT WHITE To JAMES, Policeman Thirty-two-- All ruffled with his fight SIR HERBERT was, and dirty too.
Policeman nothing said (Though he had much to say on it), But from the bad man's head He took the cap that lay on it.
"No, great SIR HERBERT WHITE-- Impossible to take him up. This man is honest quite-- Wherever did you rake him up?
"For Burglars, Thieves, and Co., Indeed I'm no apologist; But I, some years ago, Assisted a Phrenologist.
"Observe his various bumps, His head as I uncover it; His morals lie in lumps All round about and over it."
"Now take him," said SIR WHITE, "Or you will soon be rueing it; Bless me! I must be right,-- I caught the fellow doing it!"
Policeman calmly smiled, "Indeed you are mistaken, sir, You're agitated--riled-- And very badly shaken, sir.
"Sit down, and I'll explain My system of Phrenology, A second, please, remain"-- (A second is horology).
Policeman left his beat-- (The Bart., no longer furious, Sat down upon a seat, Observing, "This is curious!")
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"Oh, surely here are signs Should soften your rigidity, This gentleman combines Politeness with timidity.
"Of Shyness here's a lump-- A hole for Animosity-- And like my fist his bump Of Generenerosity.
"Just here the bump appears Of Innocent Hilarity, And just behind his ear Are Faith, and Hope, and Charity.
"He of true Christian ways As bright example sent us is-- This maxim he obeys, '_Sorte tuâ contentus sis_.'
"There, let him go his ways, He needs no stern admonishing." The Bart., in blank amaze, Exclaimed, "This is astonishing!
"I _must_ have made a mull, This matter I've been blind in it: Examine, please, _my_ skull, And tell me what you find in it."
Policeman looked, and said, With unimpaired urbanity, "SIR HERBERT, you've a head That teems with inhumanity.
"Here's Murder, Envy, Strife (Propensity to kill any), And Lies as large as life, And heaps of Social Villainy:
"Here's Love of Bran New Clothes, Embezzling--Arson--Deism-- A taste for Slang and Oaths, And Fraudulent Trusteeism.
"Here's Love of Groundless Charge-- Here's Malice, too, and Trickery, Unusually large Your bump of Pocket-Pickery----"
"Stop!" said the Bart., "my cup Is full--I'm worse than him in all-- Policeman, take me up-- No doubt I am some criminal!"
That Policeman's scorn grew large (Phrenology had nettled it), He took that Bart. in charge-- I don't know how they settled it.
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POETRY EVERYWHERE
What time the poet hath hymned The writhing maid, lithe-limbed, Quivering on amaranthine asphodel, How can he paint her woes, Knowing, as well he knows, That all can be set right with calomel?
When from the poet's plinth The amorous colocynth Yearns for the aloe, faint with rapturous thrills, How can he hymn their throes Knowing, as well he knows, That they are only uncompounded pills?
Is it, and can it be, Nature hath this decree, Nothing poetic in the world shall dwell? Or that in all her works Something poetic lurks, Even in colocynth and calomel?
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THE FAIRY CURATE
Once a fairy Light and airy Married with a mortal; Men, however, Never, never Pass the fairy portal. Slyly stealing, She to Ealing Made a daily journey; There she found him, Clients round him (He was an attorney).
Long they tarried, Then they married. When the ceremony Once was ended, Off they wended On their moon of honey.
Twelvemonth, maybe, Saw a baby (Friends performed an orgie) Much they prized him, And baptized him By the name of GEORGIE.
GEORGIE grew up; Then he flew up To his fairy mother. Happy meeting Pleasant greeting-- Kissing one another. "Choose a calling Most enthralling, I sincerely urge ye." "Mother," said he (Rev'rence made he), "I would join the clergy"
"Give permission In addition-- Pa will let me do it: There's a living In his giving, He'll appoint me to it. Dreams of coff'ring Easter off'ring, Tithe and rent and pew-rate, So inflame me (Do not blame me), That I'll be a curate."
She, with pleasure, Said, "My treasure, Tis my wish precisely.
Do your duty, There's a beauty; You have chosen wisely. Tell your father I would rather As a churchman rank you.
[Illustration]
You, in clover, I'll watch over." GEORGIE said, "Oh, thank you!"
GEORGIE scudded, Went and studied, Made all preparations, And with credit (Though he said it) Passed examinations. (Do not quarrel) With him, moral Scrupulous digestions-- But his mother, And no other, Answered all the questions.
Time proceeded; Little needed GEORGIE admonition: He, elated, Vindicated Clergyman's position. People round him Always found him Plain and unpretending; Kindly teaching, Plainly preaching-- All his money lending.
So the fairy, Wise and wary, Felt no sorrow rising-- No occasion For persuasion, Warning, or advising. He, resuming Fairy pluming (That's not English, is it?)
Oft would fly up, To the sky up, Pay mamma a visit.
* * * * *
Time progressing, GEORGIE'S blessing Grew more Ritualistic-- Popish scandals, Tonsures--sandals-- Genuflections mystic; Gushing meetings-- Bosom-beatings-- Heavenly ecstatics-- Broidered spencers-- Copes and censers-- Rochets and dalmatics.
This quandary Vexed the fairy-- Flew she down to Ealing. "GEORGIE, stop it! Pray you, drop it; Hark to my appealing: To this foolish Papal rule-ish Twaddle put an ending; This a swerve is From our Service Plain and unpretending."
He, replying, Answered, sighing, Hawing, hemming, humming,
"It's a pity-- They're so pritty; Yet in mode becoming, Mother tender, I'll surrender-- I'll be unaffected--" Then his Bishop Into _his_ shop Entered unexpected:
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"Who is this, sir,-- Ballet miss, sir?" Said the Bishop coldly. "'Tis my mother, And no other," GEORGIE answered boldly.
"Go along, sir! You are wrong, sir, You have years in plenty; While this hussy (Gracious mussy!) Isn't two-and-twenty!"
(Fairies clever Never, never Grow in visage older; And the fairy, All unwary, Leant upon his shoulder!) Bishop grieved him, Disbelieved him, GEORGE the point grew warm on; Changed religion, Like a pigeon,[11] And became a Mormon.
[Footnote 11: "Like a Bird."]
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HE LOVES!
He loves! If in the bygone years Thine eyes have ever shed Tears--bitter, unavailing tears, For one untimely dead-- If in the eventide of life Sad thoughts of her arise, Then let the memory of thy wife Plead for my boy--he dies!
He dies! If fondly laid aside In some old cabinet, Memorials of thy long-dead bride Lie, dearly treasured yet, Then let her hallowed bridal dress-- Her little dainty gloves-- Her withered flowers--her faded tress-- Plead for my boy--he loves!
[Illustration]
THE WAY OF WOOING
A maiden sat at her window wide, Pretty enough for a prince's bride, Yet nobody came to claim her. She sat like a beautiful picture there, With pretty bluebells and roses fair, And jasmine leaves to frame her. And why she sat there nobody knows; But thus she sang as she plucked a rose, The leaves around her strewing: "I've time to lose and power to choose; 'Tis not so much the gallant who woos As the gallant's way of wooing!"
A lover came riding by awhile, A wealthy lover was he, whose smile Some maids would value greatly-- A formal lover, who bowed and bent, With many a high-flown compliment, And cold demeanour stately.
[Illustration]
"You've still," said she to her suitor stern, "The 'prentice-work of your craft to learn. If thus you come a-cooing. I've time to lose and power to choose; 'Tis not so much the gallant who woos As the gallant's way of wooing!"
[Illustration]
A second lover came ambling by-- A timid lad with a frightened eye And a colour mantling highly. He muttered the errand on which he'd come, Then only chuckled and bit his thumb, And simpered, simpered shyly. "No," said the maiden, "go your way, You dare but think what a man would say, Yet dare come a-suing! I've time to lose and power to choose; 'Tis not so much the gallant who woos As the gallant's way of wooing!"
A third rode up at a startling pace-- A suitor poor, with a homely face-- No doubts appeared to bind him. He kissed her lips and he pressed her waist, And off he rode with the maiden, placed On a pillion safe behind him.
And she heard the suitor bold confide This golden hint to the priest who tied The knot there's no undoing: "With pretty young maidens who can choose "Tis not so much the gallant who woos As the gallant's way of wooing!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
TRUE DIFFIDENCE
My boy, you may take it from me, That of all the afflictions accurst With which a man's saddled And hampered and addled, A diffident nature's the worst. Though clever as clever can be-- A Crichton of early romance-- You must stir it and stump it, And blow your own trumpet, Or, trust me, you haven't a chance.
Now take, for example, _my_ case: I've a bright intellectual brain--- In all London city There's no one so witty-- I've thought so again and again.
I've a highly intelligent face-- My features can not be denied-- But, whatever I try, sir, I fail in--and why, sir? I'm modesty personified!
As a poet, I'm tender and quaint-- I've passion and fervour and grace-- From Ovid and Horace To Swinburne and Morris, They all of them take a back place. Then I sing and I play and I paint; Though none are accomplished as I To say so were treason: You ask me the reason? I'm diffident, modest, and shy!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
HONGREE AND MAHRY
A RICHARDSONIAN MELODRAMA
The sun was setting in its wonted west, When HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Met MAHRY DAUBIGNY, the Village Rose, Under the Wizard's Oak--old trysting-place Of those who loved in rosy Aquitaine.
They thought themselves unwatched, but they were not For HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Found in LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC A rival, envious and unscrupulous, Who thought it not foul scorn to dog his steps, And listen, unperceived, to all that passed Between the simple little Village Rose And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.
A clumsy barrack-bully was DUBOSC, Quite unfamiliar with the well-bred tact That actuates a proper gentleman In dealing with a girl of humble rank. You'll understand his coarseness when I say He would have married MAHRY DAUBIGNY, And dragged the unsophisticated girl Into the whirl of fashionable life, For which her singularly rustic ways, Her breeding (moral, but extremely rude), Her language (chaste, but ungrammatical), Would absolutely have unfitted her. No such intention lurked within the breast Of HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores!
Contemporary with the incident Related in our opening paragraph, Was that sad war 'twixt Gallia and ourselves That followed on the treaty signed at Troyes; And so LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC (Brave soldier, he, with all his faults of style) And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Were sent by CHARLES of France against the lines Of our Sixth HENRY (Fourteen twenty-nine), To drive his legions out of Aquitaine.
When HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Returned (suspecting nothing) to his camp, After his meeting with the Village Rose, He found inside his barrack letter-box A note from the commanding-officer, Requiring his attendance at headquarters.
He went, and found LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES. "Young HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, This night we shall attack the English camp: Be the 'forlorn hope' yours--you'll lead it sir,
And lead it too with credit, I've no doubt" (These last words with a cruelly obvious sneer). "As every soul must certainly be killed (For you are twenty 'gainst two thousand men), It is not likely that you will return; But what of that? you'll have the benefit Of knowing that you die a soldier's death."
[Illustration]
Obedience was young HONGREE'S strongest point, But he imagined that he only owed Allegiance to his MAHRY and his King. "If MAHRY bade me lead these fated men, I'd lead them--but I do not think she would. If CHARLES, my King, said, 'Go, my son, and die,' I'd go, of course--my duty would be clear. But MAHRY is in bed asleep (I hope), And CHARLES, my King, a hundred leagues from this, As for LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOOLES DUBOSC,
How know I that our monarch would approve The order he has given me to-night? My King I've sworn in all things to obey-- I'll only take my orders from my King!" Thus HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Interpreted the terms of his commission.
And HONGREE, who was wise as he was good, Disguised himself that night in ample cloak, Round flapping hat, and visor mask of black, And made, unnoticed, for the English camp. He passed the unsuspecting sentinels (Who little thought a man in this disguise Could be a proper object of suspicion), And ere the curfew-bell had boomed "lights out," He found in audience Bedford's haughty Duke.
[Illustration]
"Your Grace," he said, "start not--be not alarmed, Although a Frenchman stands before your eyes. I'm HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores. My colonel will attack your camp to-night, And orders me to lead the hope forlorn. Now I am sure our excellent KING CHARLES Would not approve of this; but he's away A hundred leagues, and rather more than that. So, utterly devoted to my King, Blinded by my attachment to the throne, And having but its interest at heart, I feel it is my duty to disclose All schemes that emanate from COLONEL JOOLES, If I believe that they are not the kind Of schemes that our good monarch could approve." "But how," said Bedford's Duke, "do you propose
[Illustration]
That we should overthrow your colonel's scheme?" And HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores, Replied at once with never-failing tact: "Oh, sir, I know this cursed country well. Entrust yourself and all your host to me; I'll lead you safely by a secret path Into the heart of COLONEL JOOLES' array, And you can then attack them unprepared, And slay my fellow-countrymen unarmed."
The thing was done. The DUKE OF BEDFORD gave The order, and two thousand fighting-men Crept silently into the Gallic camp, And killed the Frenchmen as they lay asleep; And Bedford's haughty Duke slew COLONEL JOOLES, And married MAHRY, pride of Aquitaine, To HONGREE, Sub-Lieutenant of Chassoores.
[Illustration]
THE TANGLED SKEIN
Try we life-long, we can never Straighten out life's tangled skein, Why should we, in vain endeavour, Guess and guess and guess again? Life's a pudding full of plums, Care's a canker that benumbs, Wherefore waste our elocution On impossible solution? Life's a pleasant institution, Let us take it as it comes!
Set aside the dull enigma, We shall guess it all too soon; Failure brings no kind of stigma-- Dance we to another tune! String the lyre and fill the cup, Lest on sorrow we should sup; Hop and skip to Fancy's fiddle, Hands across and down the middle-- Life's perhaps the only riddle That we shrink from giving up!
[Illustration]
THE REVEREND MICAH SOWLS
The REVEREND MICAH SOWLS, He shouts and yells and howls, He screams, he mouths, he bumps, He foams, he rants, he thumps.
His armour he has buckled on, to wage The regulation war against the Stage; And warns his congregation all to shun "The Presence-Chamber of the Evil One."
The subject's sad enough To make him rant and puff, And fortunately, too, His Bishop's in a pew.
So REVEREND MICAH claps on extra steam, His eyes are flashing with superior gleam, He is as energetic as can be, For there are fatter livings in that see.
The Bishop, when it's o'er, Goes through the vestry door, Where MICAH, very red, Is mopping of his head.
[Illustration]
"Pardon, my Lord, your SOWLS' excessive zeal, It is a theme on which I strongly feel." (The sermon somebody had sent him down From London, at a charge of half-a-crown.)
The Bishop bowed his head, And, acquiescing, said, "I've heard your well-meant rage Against the Modern Stage.
"A modern Theatre, as I heard you say, Sows seeds of evil broadcast--well it may; But let me ask you, my respected son, Pray, have you ever ventured into one?"
"My Lord," said MICAH, "no! I never, never go! What! Go and see a play? My goodness gracious, nay!"
The worthy Bishop said, "My friend, no doubt The Stage may be the place you make it out; But if, my REVEREND SOWLS, you never go, I don't quite understand how you're to know."
"Well, really," MICAH said, "I've often heard and read, But never go--do you?" The Bishop said, "I do."
"That proves me wrong," said MICAH, in a trice; "I thought it all frivolity and vice." The Bishop handed him a printed card; "Go to a theatre where they play our Bard."
The Bishop took his leave, Rejoicing in his sleeve. The next ensuing day SOWLS went and heard a play.
He saw a dreary person on the stage, Who mouthed and mugged in simulated rage, Who growled and spluttered in a mode absurd, And spoke an English SOWLS had never heard.
For "gaunt" was spoken "garnt," And "haunt" transformed to "harnt," And "wrath" pronounced as "rath," And "death" was changed to "dath."
For hours and hours that dismal actor walked, And talked, and talked, and talked, and talked, Till lethargy upon the parson crept, And sleepy MICAH SOWLS serenely slept.
[Illustration]
He slept away until The farce that closed the bill Had warned him not to stay, And then he went away.
"I thought _my_ gait ridiculous," said he-- "_My_ elocution faulty as could be; I thought _I_ mumbled on a matchless plan-- I had not seen our great Tragedian!
"Forgive me, if you can, O great Tragedian! I own it with a sigh-- You're drearier than I!"
[Illustration]
MY LADY
Bedecked in fashion trim, With every curl a-quiver; Or leaping, light of limb, O'er rivulet and river; Or skipping o'er the lea On daffodil and daisy; Or stretched beneath a tree, All languishing and lazy; Whatever be her mood-- Be she demurely prude Or languishingly lazy-- My lady drives me crazy! In vain her heart is wooed, Whatever be her mood!
What profit should I gain Suppose she loved me dearly? Her coldness turns my brain To _verge_ of madness merely. Her kiss--though, Heaven knows, To dream of it were treason-- Would tend, as I suppose, To utter loss of reason! My state is not amiss; I would not have a kiss Which, in or out of season, Might tend to loss of reason: What profit in such bliss? A fig for such a kiss!
[Illustration]
ONE AGAINST THE WORLD
It's my opinion--though I own In thinking so I'm quite alone-- In some respects I'm but a fright. _You_ like my f |
54452-0 | eatures, I suppose? _I'm_ disappointed with my nose: Some rave about it--perhaps they're right. My figure just sets off a fit; But when they say it's exquisite (And they _do_ say so), that's too strong. I hope I'm not what people call Opinionated! After all, I'm but a goose, and may be wrong!
When charms enthral There's some excuse For measures strong; And after all I'm but a goose, And may be wrong!
My teeth are very neat, no doubt; But after all they _may_ fall out: _I_ think they will--some think they won't. My hands are small, as you may see, But not as small as they might be, At least, _I_ think so--others don't. But there, a girl may preach and prate From morning six to evening eight, And never stop to dine, When all the world, although misled, Is quite agreed on any head-- And it is quite agreed on mine!
All said and done, It's little I Against a throng. I'm only one, And possibly I may be wrong!
[Illustration]
THE FORCE OF ARGUMENT
LORD B. was a nobleman bold Who came of illustrious stocks, He was thirty or forty years old, And several feet in his socks.
To Turniptopville-by-the-Sea This elegant nobleman went, For that was a borough that he Was anxious to rep-per-re-sent.
At local assemblies he danced Until he felt thoroughly ill; He waltzed, and he galoped, and lanced, And threaded the mazy quadrille.
The maidens of Turniptopville Were simple--ingenuous--pure-- And they all worked away with a will The nobleman's heart to secure.
Two maidens all others beyond Endeavoured his cares to dispel-- The one was the lively ANN POND, The other sad MARY MORELL.
ANN POND had determined to try And carry the Earl with a rush; Her principal feature was eye, Her greatest accomplishment--gush.
And MARY chose this for her play: Whenever he looked in her eye She'd blush and turn quickly away, And flitter, and flutter, and sigh.
It was noticed he constantly sighed As she worked out the scheme she had planned, A fact he endeavoured to hide With his aristocratical hand.
Old POND was a farmer, they say, And so was old TOMMY MORELL. In a humble and pottering way They were doing exceedingly well.
They both of them carried by vote The Earl was a dangerous man; So nervously clearing his throat, One morning old TOMMY began:
"My darter's no pratty young doll-- I'm a plain-spoken Zommerzet man-- Now what do 'ee mean by my POLL, And what do 'ee mean by his ANN?"
Said B., "I will give you my bond I mean them uncommonly well, Believe me, my excellent POND, And credit me, worthy MORELL.
[Illustration]
"It's quite indisputable, for I'll prove it with singular ease,-- You shall have it in 'Barbara' or 'Celarent'--whichever you please.
'You see, when an anchorite bows To the yoke of intentional sin, If the state of the country allows, Homogeny always steps in--
"It's a highly æsthetical bond, As any mere ploughboy can tell----" "Of course," replied puzzled old POND. "I see," said old TOMMY MORELL.
"Very good, then," continued the lord; "When it's fooled to the top of its bent, With a sweep of a Damocles sword The web of intention is rent.
"That's patent to all of us here, As any mere schoolboy can tell." POND answered, "Of course it's quite clear"; And so did that humbug MORELL.
"Its tone's esoteric in force-- I trust that I make myself clear?" MORELL only answered, "Of course," While POND slowly muttered, "Hear, hear."
"Volition--celestial prize, Pellucid as porphyry cell-- Is based on a principle wise." "Quite so," exclaimed POND and MORELL.
"From what I have said you will see That I couldn't wed either--in fine, By Nature's unchanging decree _Your_ daughters could never be _mine_.
"Go home to your pigs and your ricks, My hands of the matter I've rinsed." So they take up their hats and their sticks, And _exeunt ambo_, convinced.
[Illustration]
PUT A PENNY IN THE SLOT
If my action's stiff and crude, Do not laugh, because it's rude. If my gestures promise larks, Do not make unkind remarks. Clockwork figures may be found Everywhere and all around. Ten to one, if I but knew, You are clockwork figures too. And the motto of the lot, "Put a penny in the slot!"
Usurer, for money lent, Making out his cent per cent-- Widow plump or maiden rare, Deaf and dumb to suitor's prayer-- Tax collectors, whom in vain You implore to "call again"-- Cautious voter, whom you find Slow in making up his mind-- If you'd move them on the spot, Put a penny in the slot!
Bland reporters in the courts, Who suppress police reports-- Sheriff's yeoman, pen in fist, Making out a jury list-- Stern policemen, tall and spare, Acting all "upon the square"-- (Which in words that plainer fall, Means that you can square them all)-- If you want to move the lot, Put a penny in the slot!
[Illustration]
GOOD LITTLE GIRLS
Although of native maids the cream, We're brought up on the English scheme-- The best of all For great and small Who modesty adore. For English girls are good as gold, Extremely modest (so we're told), Demurely coy--divinely cold-- And we are that--and more. To please papa, who argues thus-- All girls should mould themselves on us, Because we are, By furlongs far,
The best of all the bunch; We show ourselves to loud applause From ten to four without a pause-- Which is an awkward time because It cuts into our lunch.
Oh, maids of high and low degree, Whose social code is rather free, Please look at us and you will see What good young ladies ought to be!
And as we stand, like clockwork toys, A lecturer papa employs To puff and praise Our modest ways And guileless character-- Our well-known blush--our downcast eyes-- Our famous look of mild surprise (Which competition still defies)-- Our celebrated "Sir!!!" Then all the crowd take down our looks In pocket memorandum books. To diagnose Our modest pose The kodaks do their best: If evidence you would possess Of what is maiden bashfulness, You only need a button press-- And _we_ do all the rest.
[Illustration]
THE PHANTOM CURATE
A FABLE
A bishop once--I will not name his see-- Annoyed his clergy in the mode conventional; From pulpit shackles never set them free, And found a sin where sin was unintentional. All pleasures ended in abuse auricular-- That Bishop was so terribly particular.
Though, on the whole, a wise and upright man, He sought to make of human pleasures clearances, And form his priests on that much-lauded plan Which pays undue attention to appearances. He couldn't do good deeds without a psalm in 'em, Although, in truth, he bore away the palm in 'em.
Enraged to find a deacon at a dance, Or catch a curate at some mild frivolity, He sought by open censure to enhance Their dread of joining harmless social jollity; Yet he enjoyed (a fact of notoriety) The ordinary pleasures of society.
One evening, sitting at a pantomime (Forbidden treat to those who stood in fear of him), Roaring at jokes _sans_ metre, sense, or rhyme, He turned, and saw immediately in rear of him-- His peace of mind upsetting, and annoying it-- A curate, also heartily enjoying it.
Again, 'twas Christmas Eve, and to enhance His children's pleasure in their harmless rollicking, He, like a good old fellow, stood to dance; When something checked the current of his frolicking: That curate, with a maid he treated loverly, Stood up and figured with him in the "Coverley"!
Once, yielding to an universal choice (The company's demand was an emphatic one, For the old Bishop had a glorious voice), In a quartet he joined--an operatic one-- Harmless enough, though ne'er a word of grace in it; When, lo! that curate came and took the bass in it!
One day, when passing through a quiet street, He stopped awhile and joined a Punch's gathering, And chuckled more than solemn folk think meet To see that gentleman his Judy lathering; And heard, as Punch was being treated penally, That phantom curate laughing all hyænally!
Now at a picnic, 'mid fair golden curls, Bright eyes, straw hats, _bottines_ that fit amazingly, A croquet-bout is planned by all the girls, And he, consenting, speaks of croquet praisingly; But suddenly declines to play at all in it-- The curate fiend has come to take a ball in it!
Next, when at quiet seaside village, freed From cares episcopal and ties monarchical, He grows his beard, and smokes his fragrant weed, In manner anything but hierarchical-- He sees--and fixes an unearthly stare on it-- That curate's face, with half a yard of hair on it!
At length he gave a charge, and spake this word: "Vicars, your curates to enjoyment urge ye may. To check their harmless pleasuring's absurd; What laymen do without reproach, my clergy may." He spake, and lo! at this concluding word of him, The curate vanished--no one since has heard of him.
[Illustration]
LIFE
First you're born--and I'll be bound you Find a dozen strangers round you. "Hallo," cries the new-born baby, "Where's my parents? which may they be?" Awkward silence--no reply-- Puzzled baby wonders why! Father rises, bows politely-- Mother smiles (but not too brightly)-- Doctor mumbles like a dumb thing-- Nurse is busy mixing something.-- Every symptom tends to show You're decidedly _de trop_-- Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! Time's teetotum, If you spin it, Give its quotum Once a minute: I'll go bail You hit the nail, And if you fail The deuce is in it!
You grow up, and you discover What it is to be a lover. Some young lady is selected-- Poor, perhaps, but well-connected, Whom you hail (for Love is blind) As the Queen of Fairy-kind. Though she's plain--perhaps unsightly, Makes her face up--laces tightly, In her form your fancy traces All the gifts of all the graces. Rivals none the maiden woo, So you take her and she takes you! Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! Joke beginning, Never ceases, Till your inning Time releases; On your way You blindly stray, And day by day The joke increases!
* * * * *
Ten years later--Time progresses-- Sours your temper--thins your tresses; Fancy, then, her chain relaxes; Rates are facts and so are taxes. Fairy Queen's no longer young-- Fairy Queen has such a tongue! Twins have probably intruded-- Quite unbidden--just as you did; They're a source of care and trouble-- Just as you were--only double. Comes at last the final stroke-- Time has had his little joke!
Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! Daily driven (Wife as drover) Ill you've thriven-- Ne'er in clover: Lastly, when Threescore and ten (And not till then), The joke is over! Ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! ho! Then--and then The joke is over!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LIMITED LIABILITY
Some seven men form an Association (If possible, all Peers and Baronets), They start off with a public declaration To what extent they mean to pay their debts. That's called their Capital: if they are wary They will not quote it at a sum immense. The figure's immaterial--it may vary From eighteen million down to eighteenpence. _I_ should put it rather low; The good sense of doing so Will be evident at once to any debtor. When it's left to you to say What amount you mean to pay, Why, the lower you can put it at, the better.
They then proceed to trade with all who'll trust 'em, Quite irrespective of their capital (It's shady, but it's sanctified by custom); Bank, Railway, Loan, or Panama Canal. You can't embark on trading too tremendous-- It's strictly fair, and based on common sense-- If you succeed, your profits are stupendous-- And if you fail, pop goes your eighteenpence. Make the money-spinner spin! For you only stand to win, And you'll never with dishonesty be twitted. For nobody can know, To a million or so, To what extent your capital's committed!
If you come to grief, and creditors are craving (For nothing that is planned by mortal head Is certain in this Vale of Sorrow--saving That one's Liability is Limited),-- Do you suppose that signifies perdition? If so you're but a monetary dunce-- You merely file a Winding-Up Petition, And start another Company at once! Though a Rothschild you may be In your own capacity, As a Company you've come to utter sorrow-- But the Liquidators say, "Never mind--you needn't pay," So you start another Company to-morrow!
[Illustration]
THE SENSATION CAPTAIN
No nobler captain ever trod Than CAPTAIN PARKLEBURY TODD, So good--so wise--so brave, he! But still, as all his friends would own, He had one folly--one alone-- This Captain in the Navy.
I do not think I ever knew A man so wholly given to Creating a sensation; Or p'raps I should in justice say-- To what in an Adelphi play Is known as "situation."
He passed his time designing traps To flurry unsuspicious chaps-- The taste was his innately; He couldn't walk into a room Without ejaculating "Boom!" Which startled ladies greatly.
He'd wear a mask and muffling cloak, Not, you will understand, in joke, As some assume disguises; He did it, actuated by A simple love of mystery And fondness for surprises.
I need not say he loved a maid-- His eloquence threw into shade All others who adored her. The maid, though pleased at first, I know, Found, after several years or so, Her startling lover bored her.
So, when his orders came to sail, She did not faint or scream or wail, Or with her tears anoint him: She shook his hand, and said "Good-bye," With laughter dancing in her eye-- Which seemed to disappoint him.
But ere he went aboard his boat, He placed around her little throat A ribbon, blue and yellow, On which he hung a double tooth-- A simple token this, in sooth-- 'Twas all he had, poor fellow!
"I often wonder," he would say, When very, very far away, "If ANGELINA wears it? A plan has entered in my head: I will pretend that I am dead, And see how ANGY bears it."
The news he made a messmate tell. His ANGELINA bore it well, No sign gave she of crazing; But, steady as the Inchcape Rock, His ANGELINA stood the shock With fortitude amazing.
She said, "Some one I must elect Poor ANGELINA to protect From all who wish to harm her-- Since worthy CAPTAIN TODD is dead, I rather feel inclined to wed A comfortable farmer."
[Illustration]
A comfortable farmer came (BASSANIO TYLER was his name), Who had no end of treasure. He said, "My noble gal, be mine!" The noble gal did not decline, But simply said. "With pleasure."
When this was told to CAPTAIN TODD, At first he thought it rather odd, And felt some perturbation; But very long he did not grieve, He thought he could a way perceive To _such_ a situation!
"I'll not reveal myself," said he, "Till they are both in the Ecclesiastical arena; Then suddenly I will appear, And paralysing them with fear, Demand my ANGELINA!"
[Illustration]
At length arrived the wedding day; Accoutred in the usual way Appeared the bridal body; The worthy clergyman began, When in the gallant Captain ran And cried, "Behold your TODDY!"
The bridegroom, p'raps, was terrified, And also possibly the bride-- The bridesmaids _were_ affrighted; But ANGELINA, noble soul, Contrived her feelings to control, And really seemed delighted.
"My bride!" said gallant CAPTAIN TODD, "She's mine, uninteresting clod! My own, my darling charmer!" "Oh dear," said she, "you're just too late-- I'm married to, I beg to state, This comfortable farmer!"
"Indeed," the farmer said, "she's mine; You've been and cut it far too fine!" "I see," said TODD, "I'm beaten." And so he went to sea once more, "Sensation" he for aye forswore, And married on her native shore A lady whom he'd met before-- A lovely Otaheitan.
[Illustration]
ANGLICISED UTOPIA
Society has quite forsaken all her wicked courses, Which empties our police courts, and abolishes divorces. (Divorce is nearly obsolete in England.) No tolerance we show to undeserving rank and splendour; For the higher his position is, the greater the offender. (That's a maxim that is prevalent in England.) No Peeress at our Drawing-Room before the Presence passes Who wouldn't be accepted by the lower-middle classes; Each shady dame, whatever be her rank, is bowed out neatly. In short, this happy country has been Anglicised completely! It really is surprising What a thorough Anglicising We've brought about--Utopia's quite another land; In her enterprising movements, She is England--with improvements, Which we dutifully offer to our mother-land!
Our city we have beautified--we've done it willy-nilly-- And all that isn't Belgrave Square is Strand and Piccadilly. (They haven't any slummeries in England.) We have solved the labour question with discrimination polished, So poverty is obsolete and hunger is abolished-- (They are going to abolish it in England.) The Chamberlain our native stage has purged, beyond a question, Of "risky" situation and indelicate suggestion; No piece is tolerated if it's costumed indiscreetly-- In short, this happy country has been Anglicised completely! It really is surprising What a thorough Anglicising We've brought about--Utopia's quite another land; In her enterprising movements, She is England--with improvements, Which we dutifully offer to our mother-land!
Our Peerage we've remodelled on an intellectual basis, Which certainly is rough on our hereditary races-- (They are going to remodel it in England.) The Brewers and the Cotton Lords no longer seek admission, And Literary Merit meets with proper recognition-- (As Literary Merit does in England!) Who knows but we may count among our intellectual chickens Like them an Earl of Thackeray and p'raps a Duke of Dickens-- Lord Fildes and Viscount Millais (when they come) we'll welcome sweetly-- And then, this happy country will be Anglicised completely! It really is surprising What a thorough Anglicising We've brought about--Utopia's quite another land; In her enterprising movements, She is England--with improvements, Which we dutifully offer to our mother-land!
[Illustration]
AN ENGLISH GIRL
A WONDERFUL joy our eyes to bless, In her magnificent comeliness, Is an English girl of eleven stone two, And five foot ten in her dancing shoe! She follows the hounds, and on she pounds-- The "field" tails off and the muffs diminish-- Over the hedges and brooks she bounds-- Straight as a crow, from find to finish. At cricket, her kin will lose or win-- She and her maids, on grass and clover, Eleven maids out--eleven maids in-- (And perhaps an occasional "maiden over"). Go search the world and search the sea, Then come you home and sing with me There's no such gold and no such pearl As a bright and beautiful English girl!
With a ten-mile spin she stretches her limbs, She golfs, she punts, she rows, she swims-- She plays, she sings, she dances, too, From ten or eleven till all is blue! At ball or drum, till small hours come (Chaperon's fan conceals her yawning), She'll waltz away like a teetotum, And never go home till daylight's dawning. Lawn tennis may share her favours fair-- Her eyes a-dance and her cheeks a-glowing-- Down comes her hair, but what does she care? It's all her own and it's worth the showing! Go search the world and search the sea, Then come you home and sing with me There's no such gold and no such pearl As a bright and beautiful English girl!
Her soul is sweet as the ocean air, For prudery knows no haven there; To find mock-modesty, please apply To the conscious blush and the downcast eye. Rich in the things contentment brings, In every pure enjoyment wealthy, Blithe as a beautiful bird she sings, For body and mind are hale and healthy. Her eyes they thrill with right goodwill-- Her heart is light as a floating feather-- As pure and bright as the mountain rill That leaps and laughs in the Highland heather! Go search the world and search the sea, Then come you home and sing with me There's no such gold and no such pearl As a bright and beautiful English girl!
[Illustration]
TEMPORA MUTANTUR
Letters, letters, letters, letters! Some that please and some that bore, Some that threaten prison fetters (Metaphorically, fetters Such as bind insolvent debtors)-- Invitations by the score.
One from COGSON, WILES, and RAILER, My attorneys, off the Strand; One from COPPERBLOCK, my tailor-- My unreasonable tailor-- One in FLAGG'S disgusting hand.
One from EPHRAIM and MOSES, Wanting coin without a doubt, I should like to pull their noses-- Their uncompromising noses; One from ALICE with the roses--- Ah, I know what that's about!
Time was when I waited, waited For the missives that she wrote, Humble postmen execrated-- Loudly, deeply execrated-- When I heard I wasn't fated To be gladdened with a note!
Time was when I'd not have bartered Of her little pen a dip For a peerage duly gartered-- For a peerage starred and gartered-- With a palace-office chartered, Or a Secretaryship.
But the time for that is over, And I wish we'd never met. I'm afraid I've proved a rover-- I'm afraid a heartless rover-- Quarters in a place like Dover Tend to make a man forget.
Bills for carriages and horses, Bills for wine and light cigar, Matters that concern the Forces-- News that may affect the Forces-- News affecting my resources, Much more interesting are!
And the tiny little paper, With the words that seem to run From her little fingers taper (They are very small and taper), By the tailor and the draper Are in interest outdone.
And unopened it's remaining! I can read her gentle hope-- Her entreaties, uncomplaining (She was always uncomplaining), Her devotion never waning-- Through the little envelope!
[Illustration]
A MANAGER'S PERPLEXITIES
Were I a king in very truth, And had a son--a guileless youth-- In probable succession; To teach him patience, teach him tact, How promptly in a fix to act, He should adopt, in point of fact, A manager's profession. To that condition he should stoop (Despite a too fond mother), With eight or ten "stars" in his troupe, All jealous of each other! Oh, the man who can rule a theatrical crew, Each member a genius (and some of them two), And manage to humour them, little and great, Can govern a tuppenny-ha'penny State!
Both A and B rehearsal slight-- They say they'll be "all right at night" (They've both to go to school yet); C in each act _must_ change her dress, D _will_ attempt to "square the press"; E won't play Romeo unless His grandmother plays Juliet; F claims all hoydens as her rights (She's played them thirty seasons); And G must show herself in tights For two convincing reasons-- Two very well-shaped reasons! Oh, the man who can drive a theatrical team, With wheelers and leaders in order supreme, Can govern and rule, with a wave of his fin, All Europe and Asia--with Ireland thrown in!
[Illustration]
OUT OF SORTS
When you find you're a broken-down critter, Who is all of a trimmle and twitter, With your palate unpleasantly bitter, As if you'd just bitten a pill-- When your legs are as thin as dividers, And you're plagued with unruly insiders, And your spine is all creepy with spiders, And you're highly gamboge in the gill-- When you've got a beehive in your head, And a sewing machine in each ear, And you feel that you've eaten your bed, And you've got a bad headache _down here_-- When such facts are about, And these symptoms you find In your body or crown-- Well, it's time to look out, You may make up your mind You had better lie down!
When your lips are all smeary--like tallow, And your tongue is decidedly yallow, With a pint of warm oil in your sw_a_llow, And a pound of tin-tacks in your chest-- When you're down in the mouth with the vapours, And all over your new Morris papers Black-beetles are cutting their capers, And crawly things never at rest-- When you doubt if your head is your own, And you jump when an open door slams-- Then you've got to a state which is known To the medical world as "jim-jams." If such symptoms you find In your body or head, They're not easy to quell-- You may make up your mind You are better in bed, For you're not at all well!
[Illustration]
AT A PANTOMIME
BY A BILIOUS ONE
An actor sits in doubtful gloom, His stock-in-trade unfurled, In a damp funereal dressing-room In the Theatre Royal, World.
He comes to town at Christmas-time And braves its icy breath, To play in that favourite pantomime. _Harlequin Life and Death_.
A hoary flowing wig his weird, Unearthly cranium caps; He hangs a long benevolent beard On a pair of empty chaps.
To smooth his ghastly features down The actor's art he cribs; A long and a flowing padded gown Bedecks his rattling ribs.
He cries, "Go on--begin, begin! Turn on the light of lime; I'm dressed for jolly Old Christmas in A favourite pantomime!"
The curtain's up--the stage all black-- Time and the Year nigh sped-- (Time as an advertising quack) The Old Year nearly dead.
The wand of Time is waved, and lo! Revealed Old Christmas stands, And little children chuckle and crow, And laugh and clap their hands.
The cruel old scoundrel brightens up At the death of the Olden Year, And he waves a gorgeous golden cup, And bids the world good cheer.
The little ones hail the festive King-- No thought can make them sad; Their laughter comes with a sounding ring. They clap and crow like mad!
They only see in the humbug old A holiday every year, And handsome gifts, and joys untold, And unaccustomed cheer.
[Illustration]
The old ones, palsied, blear, and hoar, Their breasts in anguish beat-- They've seen him seventy times before, How well they know the cheat!
They've seen that ghastly pantomime, They've felt its blighting breath, They know that rollicking Christmas-time Meant cold and want and death--
Starvation--Poor Law Union fare, And deadly cramps and chills, And illness--illness everywhere-- And crime, and Christmas bills.
They know Old Christmas well, I ween, Those men of ripened age; They've often, often, often seen That actor off the stage.
They see in his gay rotundity A clumsy stuffed-out dress; They see in the cup he waves on high A tinselled emptiness.
Those aged men so lean and wan, They've seen it all before; They know they'll see the charlatan But twice or three times more.
And so they bear with dance and song, And crimson foil and green; They wearily sit, and grimly long For the Transformation Scene.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
HOW IT'S DONE
Bold-faced ranger (Perfect stranger) Meets two well-behaved young ladies. He's attractive, Young and active-- Each a little bit afraid is. Youth advances, At his glances To their danger they awaken; They repel him As they tell him He is very much mistaken. Though they speak to him politely, Please observe they're sneering slightly, Just to show he's acting vainly. This is Virtue saying plainly, "Go away, young bachelor, We are not what you take us for!"
(When addressed impertinently, English ladies answer gently, "Go away, young bachelor, We are not what you take us for!")
As he gazes, Hat he raises, Enters into conversation. Makes excuses-- This produces Interesting agitation. He, with daring, Undespairing, Gives his card--his rank discloses-- Little heeding This proceeding, They turn up their little noses. Pray observe this lesson vital-- When a man of rank and title His position first discloses, Always cock your little noses. When at home, let all the class Try this in the looking-glass. (English girls of well-bred notions Shun all unrehearsed emotions, English girls of highest class Practise them before the glass.)
His intentions Then he mentions, Something definite to go on-- Makes recitals Of his titles, Hints at settlements, and so on. Smiling sweetly, They, discreetly,
Ask for further evidences: Thus invited, He, delighted, Gives the usual references. This is business. Each is fluttered When the offer's fairly uttered. "Which of them has his affection?" He declines to make selection. Do they quarrel for his dross? Not a bit of it--they toss! Please observe this cogent moral-- English ladies never quarrel. When a doubt they come across, English ladies always toss.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A CLASSICAL REVIVAL
At the outset I may mention it's my sovereign intention To revive the classic memories of Athens at its best, For my company possesses all the necessary dresses, And a course of quiet cramming will supply us with the rest. We've a choir hyporchematic (that is, ballet-operatic) Who respond to the _choreutae_ of that cultivated age, And our clever chorus-master, all but captious criticaster Would accept as the _choregus_ of the early Attic stage. This return to classic ages is considered in their wages, Which are always calculated by the day or by the week-- And I'll pay 'em (if they'll back me) all in _oboloi_ and _drachmae_, Which they'll get (if they prefer it) at the Kalends that are Greek!
(At this juncture I may mention That this erudition sham Is but classical pretension, The result of steady "cram.":
Periphrastic methods spurning, To my readers all discerning I admit this show of learning Is the fruit of steady "cram."!)
In the period Socratic every dining-room was Attic (Which suggests an architecture of a topsy-turvy kind), There they'd satisfy their twist on a _recherché_ cold ἄριστον, Which is what they called their lunch--and so may you, if you're inclined. As they gradually got on, they'd τρέπεσθαι πρὸς τὸν πότον (Which is Attic for a steady and a conscientious drink). But they mixed their wine with water--which I'm sure they didn't oughter-- And we Anglo-Saxons know a trick worth two of that, I think! Then came rather risky dances (under certain circumstances) Which would shock that worthy gentleman, the Licenser of Plays, Corybantian mani_ac_ kick--Dionysiac or Bacchic-- And the Dithyrambic revels of those indecorous days.
(And perhaps I'd better mention Lest alarming you I am, That it isn't our intention To perform a Dithyramb-- It displays a lot of stocking, Which is always very shocking, And of course I'm only mocking At the prevalence of "cram.")
Yes, on reconsideration, there are customs of that nation Which are not in strict accordance with the habits of our day, And when I come to codify, their rules I mean to modify, Or Mrs. Grundy, p'r'aps, may have a word or two to say: For they hadn't macintoshes or umbrellas or goloshes--
And a shower with their dresses must have played the very deuce, And it must have been unpleasing when they caught a fit of sneezing, For, it seems, of pocket-handkerchiefs they didn't know the use. They wore little underclothing--scarcely anything--or no-thing-- And their dress of Coan silk was quite transparent in design-- Well, in fact, in summer weather, something like the "altogether." And it's _there_, I rather fancy, I shall have to draw the line!
(And again I wish to mention) That this erudition sham Is but classical pretension, The result of steady "cram." Yet my classic lore aggressive, If you'll pardon the possessive, Is exceedingly impressive When you're passing an exam.
[Illustration]
THE STORY OF PRINCE AGIB
Strike the concertina's melancholy string! Blow the spirit-stirring harp like anything! Let the piano's martial blast Rouse the echoes of the past, For of AGIB, Prince of Tartary, I sing!
Of AGIB, who, amid Tartaric scenes, Wrote a lot of ballet-music in his teens: His gentle spirit rolls In the melody of souls-- Which is pretty, but I don't know what it means.
Of AGIB, who could readily, at sight, Strum a march upon the loud Theodolite. He would diligently play On the Zoetrope all day, And blow the gay Pantechnicon all night.
One winter--I am shaky in my dates-- Came two starving Tartar minstrels to his gates; Oh, Allah be obeyed, How infernally they played! I remember that they called themselves the "Oüaits."
Oh! that day of sorrow, misery, and rage, I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age, Photographically lined On the tablet of my mind, When a yesterday has faded from its page!
Alas! PRINCE AGIB went and asked them in; Gave them beer, and eggs, and sweets, and scent, and tin And when (as snobs would say) They had "put it all away," He requested them to tune up and begin.
Though its icy horror chill you to the core, I will tell you what I never told before-- The consequences true Of that awful interview, _For I listened at the keyhole in the door!_
They played him a sonata--let me see! "_Medulla oblongata_"--key of G. Then they began to sing That extremely lovely thing, "_Scherzando! ma non troppo, ppp._"
He gave them money, more than they could count, Scent from a most ingenious little fount, More beer in little kegs, Many dozen hard-boiled eggs, And goodies to a fabulous amount.
[Illustration]
Now follows the dim horror of my tale, And I feel I'm growing gradually pale; For even at this day, Though its sting has passed away, When I venture to remember it, I quail!
The elder of the brothers gave a squeal, All-overish it made me for to feel. "O Prince," he says, says he, "_If a Prince indeed you be_, I've a mystery I'm going to reveal!
"Oh, listen, if you'd shun a horrid death, To what the gent who's speaking to you saith: No 'Oüaits' in truth are we, As you fancy that we be, For (ter-remble!) I am ALECK--this is BETH!"
[Illustration]
Said AGIB, "Oh! accursed of your kind, I have heard that ye are men of evil mind!" BETH gave a dreadful shriek-- But before he'd time to speak I was mercilessly collared from behind.
In number ten or twelve, or even more, They fastened me, full length, upon the floor. On my face extended flat, I was walloped with a cat, For listening at the keyhole of a door.
Oh! the horror of that agonising thrill! (I can feel the place in frosty weather still.) For a week from ten to four I was fastened to the floor, While a mercenary wopped me with a will!
They branded me and broke me on a wheel, And they left me in an hospital to heal; And, upon my solemn word, I have never, never heard What those Tartars had determined to reveal.
But that day of sorrow, misery, and rage, I shall carry to the Catacombs of Age, Photographically lined On the tablet of my mind, When a yesterday has faded from its page!
[Illustration]
THE PRACTICAL JOKER
Oh what a fund of joy jocund lies hid in harmless hoaxes. What keen enjoyment springs From cheap and simple things! What deep delight from sources trite inventive humour coaxes, That pain and trouble brew For every one but you! Gunpowder placed inside its waist improves a mild Havanah, Its unexpected flash Burns eyebrows and moustache; When people dine no kind of wine beats ipecacuanha, But common sense suggests You keep it for your guests-- Then naught annoys the organ boys like throwing red-hot coppers, And much amusement bides In common butter-slides: And stringy snares across the stairs cause unexpected croppers.
Coal scuttles, recollect, Produce the same effect. A man possessed Of common sense Need not invest At great expense-- It does not call For pocket deep, These jokes are all Extremely cheap. If you commence with eighteenpence (it's all you'll have to pay), You may command a pleasant and a most instructive day.
[Illustration]
A good spring gun breeds endless fun, and makes men jump like rockets, And turnip-heads on posts Make very decent ghosts: Then hornets sting like anything, when placed in waistcoat pockets-- Burnt cork and walnut juice Are not without their use.
No fun compares with easy chairs whose seats are stuffed with needles-- Live shrimps their patience tax When put down people's backs-- Surprising, too, what one can do with fifty fat black beedles-- And treacle on a chair Will make a Quaker swear! Then sharp tin tacks And pocket squirts-- And cobblers' wax For ladies' skirts-- And slimy slugs On bedroom floors-- And water jugs On open doors-- Prepared with these cheap properties, amusing tricks to play, Upon a friend a man may spend a most delightful day!
[Illustration]
THE NATIONAL ANTHEM
A monarch is pestered with cares, Though, no doubt, he can often trepan them; But one comes in a shape he can never escape-- The implacable National Anthem! Though for quiet and rest he may yearn, It pursues him at every turn-- No chance of forsaking Its _rococo_ numbers; They haunt him when waking-- They poison his slumbers-- Like the Banbury Lady, whom every one knows, He's cursed with its music wherever he goes! Though its words but imperfectly rhyme, And the devil himself couldn't scan them; With composure polite he endures day and night That illiterate National Anthem!
It serves a good purpose, I own: Its strains are devout and impressive-- Its heart-stirring notes raise a lump in our throats As we burn with devotion excessive: But the King, who's been bored by that song From his cradle--each day--all day long-- Who's heard it loud-shouted By throats operatic, And loyally spouted By courtiers emphatic-- By soldier--by sailor--by drum and by fife-- Small blame if he thinks it the plague of his life! While his subjects sing loudly and long, Their King--who would willingly ban them-- Sits, worry disguising, anathematising That Bogie, the National Anthem!
[Illustration]
JOE GOLIGHTLY
OR, THE FIRST LORD'S DAUGHTER
A tar, but poorly prized, Long, shambling, and unsightly, Thrashed, bullied, and despised, Was wretched JOE GOLIGHTLY.
He bore a workhouse brand; No Pa or Ma had claimed him, The Beadle found him, and The Board of Guardians named him.
P'r'aps some Princess's son-- A beggar p'r'aps his mother. _He_ rather thought the one, _I_ rather think the other.
He liked his ship at sea, He loved the salt sea-water, He worshipped junk, and he Adored the First Lord's daughter.
The First Lord's daughter, proud, Snubbed Earls and Viscounts nightly; She sneered at Barts, aloud, And spurned poor Joe Golightly.
Whene'er he sailed afar Upon a Channel cruise, he Unpacked his light guitar And sang this ballad (Boosey):
Ballad
The moon is on the sea, Willow! The wind blows towards the lee, Willow! But though I sigh and sob and cry, No Lady Jane for me, Willow!
She says, "'Twere folly quite, Willow! For me to wed a wight, Willow! Whose lot is cast before the mast"; And possibly she's right, Willow!
His skipper (CAPTAIN JOYCE), He gave him many a rating, And almost lost his voice From thus expostulating:
[Illustration]
"Lay aft, you lubber, do! What's come to that young man, JOE? Belay!--'vast heaving! you! Do kindly stop that banjo!
"I wish, I do--O lor'!-- You'd shipped aboard a trader: _Are_ you a sailor or A negro serenader?"
But still the stricken lad, Aloft or on his pillow, Howled forth in accents sad His aggravating "Willow!"
Stern love of duty had Been JOYCE'S chiefest beauty; Says he, "I love that lad, But duty, damme! duty!
"Twelve months' black-hole, I say, Where daylight never flashes; And always twice a day A good six dozen lashes!"
But JOSEPH had a mate, A sailor stout and lusty, A man of low estate, But singularly trusty.
Says he, "Cheer hup, young JOE! I'll tell you what I'm arter-- To that Fust Lord I'll go And ax him for his darter.
[Illustration]
"To that Fust Lord I'll go And say you love her dearly." And JOE said (weeping low), "I wish you would, sincerely!"
That sailor to that Lord Went, soon as he had landed, And of his own accord An interview demanded.
Says he, with seaman's roll, "My Captain (wot's a Tartar) Guv JOE twelve months' black-hole, For lovering your darter.
"He loves MISS LADY JANE (I own she is his betters), But if you'll jine them twain, They'll free him from his fetters.
"And if so be as how You'll let her come aboard ship, I'll take her with me now." "Get out!" remarked his Lordship.
[Illustration]
That honest tar repaired To JOE upon the billow, And told him how he'd fared. JOE only whispered, "Willow!"
And for that dreadful crime (Young sailors, learn to shun it) He's working out his time; In six months he'll have done it.
HER TERMS
My wedded life Must every pleasure bring On scale extensive! If I'm your wife I must have everything That's most expensive-- A lady's-maid-- (My hair alone to do I am not able)-- And I'm afraid I've been accustomed to A first-rate table. These things one must consider when one marries-- And everything I wear must come from Paris! Oh, think of that! Oh, think of that! I can't wear anything that's not from Paris! From top to toes Quite Frenchified I am, If you examine. And then--who knows?-- Perhaps some day a fam-- Perhaps a famine! My argument's correct, if you examine, What should we do, if there should come a f-famine!
Though in green pea Yourself you needn't stint In July sunny, In Januaree It really costs a mint-- A mint of money!
No lamb for us-- House lamb at Christmas sells At prices handsome: Asparagus, In winter, parallels A Monarch's ransom: When purse to bread and butter barely reaches, What is your wife to do for hot-house peaches? Ah! tell me that! Ah! tell me that! What _is_ your wife to do for hot-house peaches? Your heart and hand Though at my feet you lay, All others scorning! As matters stand, There's nothing now to say Except--good morning! Though virtue be a husband's best adorning, That won't pay rates and taxes--so, good morning!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE INDEPENDENT BEE
A hive of bees, as I've heard say, Said to their Queen one sultry day, "Please your Majesty's high position, The hive is full and the weather is warm, We rather think, with a due submission, The time has come when we ought to swarm." Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Up spake their Queen and thus spake she-- "This is a matter that rests with me, Who dares opinions thus to form? _I'll_ tell you when it is time to swarm!" Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Her Majesty wore an angry frown, In fact, her Majesty's foot was down-- Her Majesty sulked--declined to sup-- In short, her Majesty's back was up. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Her foot was down and her back was up!
That hive contained one obstinate bee (His name was Peter), and thus spake he-- "Though every bee has shown white feather, To bow to tyranny I'm not prone-- Why should a hive swarm all together? Surely a bee can swarm alone?" Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Upside down and inside out, Backwards, forwards, round about, Twirling here and twisting there, Topsy-turvily everywhere-- Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Pitiful sight it was to see Respectable elderly high-class bee, Who kicked the beam at sixteen stone, Trying his best to swarm alone! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Trying his best to swarm alone!
The hive were shocked to see their chum (A strict teetotaller) teetotum-- The Queen exclaimed, "How terrible, very! It's perfectly clear to all the throng Peter's been at the old brown sherry. Old brown sherry is much too strong-- Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. Of all who thus themselves degrade, A stern example must be made,
To Coventry go, you tipsy bee!" So off to Coventry town went he. Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. There, classed with all who misbehave, Both plausible rogue and noisome knave. In dismal dumps he lived to own The folly of trying to swarm alone! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz. All came of trying to swarm alone.
[Illustration]
TO THE TERRESTRIAL GLOBE
BY A MISERABLE WRETCH
Roll on, thou ball, roll on! Through pathless realms of Space Roll on! What though I'm in a sorry case? What though I cannot meet my bills? What though I suffer toothache's ills? What though I swallow countless pills? Never _you_ mind! Roll on!
Roll on, thou ball, roll on! Through seas of inky air Roll on! It's true I have no shirts to wear;
It's true my butcher's bill is due; It's true my prospects all look blue-- But don't let that unsettle you: Never _you_ mind! Roll on! [_It rolls on._]
[Illustration]
ETIQUETTE[12]
The _Ballyshannon_ foundered off the coast of Cariboo, And down in fathoms many went the captain and the crew; Down went the owners--greedy men whom hope of gain allured: Oh, dry the starting tear, for they were heavily insured.
Besides the captain and the mate, the owners and the crew, The passengers were also drowned excepting only two: Young PETER GRAY, who tasted teas for BAKER, CROOP, AND CO., And SOMERS, who from Eastern shores imported indigo.
[Footnote 12: Reprinted from the _Graphic_, by permission of the proprietors.]
These passengers, by reason of their clinging to a mast, Upon a desert island were eventually cast. They hunted for their meals, as ALEXANDER SELKIRK used, But they couldn't chat together--they had not been introduced.
For PETER GRAY, and SOMERS too, though certainly in trade, Were properly particular about the friends they made; And somehow thus they settled it without a word of mouth-- That GRAY should take the northern half, while SOMERS took the south.
On PETER'S portion oysters grew--a delicacy rare, But oysters were a delicacy PETER couldn't bear. On SOMERS' side was turtle, on the shingle lying thick, Which SOMERS couldn't eat, because it always made him sick.
GRAY gnashed his teeth with envy as he saw a mighty store Of turtle unmolested on his fellow-creature's shore: The oysters at his feet aside impatiently he shoved, For turtle and his mother were the only things he loved.
And SOMERS sighed in sorrow as he settled in the south, For the thought of PETER'S oysters brought the water to his mouth. He longed to lay him down upon the shelly bed, and stuff: He had often eaten oysters, but had never had enough.
How they wished an introduction to each other they had had When on board the _Ballyshannon_! And it drove them nearly mad To think how very friendly with each other they might get, If it wasn't for the arbitrary rule of etiquette!
One day, when out a-hunting for the _mus ridiculus_, GRAY overheard his fellow-man soliloquising thus: "I wonder how the playmates of my youth are getting on, M'CONNELL, S. B. WALTERS, PADDY BYLES, and ROBINSON?"
[Illustration]
These simple words made PETER as delighted as could be, Old chummies at the Charterhouse were ROBINSON and he! He walked straight up to SOMERS, then he turned extremely red, Hesitated, hummed and hawed a bit, then cleared his throat, and said:
"I beg your pardon--pray forgive me if I seem too bold, But you have breathed a name I knew familiarly of old. You spoke aloud of ROBINSON--I happened to be by-- You know him?" "Yes, extremely well." "Allow me--so do I!"
It was enough: they felt they could more sociably get on, For (ah, the magic of the fact!) they each knew ROBINSON! And MR. SOMERS' turtle was at PETER'S service quite, And MR. SOMERS punished PETER'S oyster-beds all night.
They soon became like brothers from community of wrongs: They wrote each other little odes and sang each other songs; They told each other anecdotes disparaging their wives; On several occasions, too, they saved each other's lives.
They felt quite melancholy when they parted for the night, And got up in the morning soon as ever it was light; Each other's pleasant company they reckoned so upon, And all because it happened that they both knew ROBINSON!
They lived for many years on that inhospitable shore, And day by day they learned to love each other more and more. At last, to their astonishment, on getting up one day, They saw a vessel anchored in the offing of the bay!
To PETER an idea occurred. "Suppose we cross the main? So good an opportunity may not occur again." And SOMERS thought a minute, then ejaculated, "Done! I wonder how my business in the City's getting on?"
"But stay," said MR. PETER: "when in England, as you know, I earned a living tasting teas for BAKER, CROOP, AND CO., I may be superseded--my employers think me dead!" "Then come with me," said SOMERS, "and taste indigo instead."
But all their plans were scattered in a moment when they found The vessel was a convict ship from Portland, outward bound! When a boat came off to fetch them, though they felt it very kind, To go on board they firmly but respectfully declined.
[Illustration]
As both the happy settlers roared with laughter at the joke, They recognised an unattractive fellow pulling stroke:
'Twas ROBINSON--a convict, in an unbecoming frock! Condemned to seven years for misappropriating stock!!!
They laughed no more, for SOMERS thought he had been rather rash In knowing one whose friend had misappropriated cash; And PETER thought a foolish tack he must have gone upon In making the acquaintance of a friend of ROBINSON.
At first they didn't quarrel very openly, I've heard; They nodded when they met, and now and then exchanged a word: The word grew rare, and rarer still the nodding of the head, And when they meet each other now, they cut each other dead.
To allocate the island they agreed by word of mouth, And PETER takes the north again, and SOMERS takes the south; And PETER has the oysters, which he loathes with horror grim, And SOMERS has the turtle--turtle disagrees with him.
[Illustration]
THE DISCONCERTED TENOR
A tenor, all singers above (This doesn't admit of a question), Should keep himself quiet, Attend to his diet, And carefully nurse his digestion. But when he is madly in love, It's certain to tell on his singing-- You can't do chromatics With proper emphatics When anguish your bosom is wringing! When distracted with worries in plenty, And his pulse is a hundred and twenty, And his fluttering bosom the slave of mistrust is, A tenor can't do himself justice. Now observe--(_sings a high note_)-- You see, I can't do myself justice!
I could sing, if my fervour were mock, It's easy enough if you're acting; But when one's emotion Is born of devotion, You mustn't be over-exacting. One ought to be firm as a rock To venture a shake in _vibrato_; When fervour's expected, Keep cool and collected, Or never attempt _agitato_. But, of course, when his tongue is of leather. And his lips appear pasted together, And his sensitive palate as dry as a crust is, A tenor can't do himself justice. Now observe--(_sings a cadence_)-- It's no use--I can't do myself justice!
[Illustration]
BEN ALLAH ACHMET;
OR, THE FATAL TUM
I once did know a Turkish man Whom I upon a two-pair-back met, His name it was EFFENDI KHAN BACKSHEESH PASHA BEN ALLAH ACHMET.
A DOCTOR BROWN I also knew-- I've often eaten of his bounty; The Turk and he they lived at Hooe, In Sussex, that delightful county!
I knew a nice young lady there, Her name was EMILY MACPHERSON, And though she wore another's hair, She was an interesting person.
The Turk adored the maid of Hooe (Although his harem would have shocked her). But BROWN adored that maiden too: He was a most seductive doctor.
They'd follow her where'er she'd go-- A course of action most improper; She neither knew by sight, and so For neither of them cared a copper.
BROWN did not know that Turkish male, He might have been his sainted mother: The people in this simple tale Are total strangers to each other.
One day that Turk he sickened sore, And suffered agonies oppressive; He threw himself upon the floor And rolled about in pain excessive.
It made him moan, it made him groan, And almost wore him to a mummy. Why should I hesitate to own That pain was in his little tummy?
At length a doctor came, and rung (As ALLAH ACHMET had desired), Who felt his pulse, looked up his tongue, And hemmed and hawed, and then inquired:
"Where is the pain that long has preyed Upon you in so sad a way, sir?" The Turk he giggled, blushed, and said: "I don't exactly like to say, sir."
"Come, nonsense!" said good DOCTOR BROWN. "So this is Turkish coyness, is it? You must contrive to fight it down-- Come, come, sir, please to be explicit."
The Turk he shyly bit his thumb, And coyly blushed like one half-witted, "The pain is in my little tum," He, whispering, at length admitted.
"Then take you this, and take you that-- Your blood flows sluggish in its channel-- You must get rid of all this fat, And wear my medicated flannel.
"You'll send for me when you're in need-- My name is BROWN--your life I've saved it. "My rival!" shrieked the invalid, And drew a mighty sword and waved it:
"This to thy weazand, Christian pest!" Aloud the Turk in frenzy yelled it, And drove right through the doctor's chest The sabre and the hand that held it.
[Illustration]
The blow was a decisive one, And DOCTOR BROWN grew deadly pasty, "Now see the mischief that you've done-- You Turks are so extremely hasty.
"There are two DOCTOR BROWNS in Hooe-- _He's_ short and stout, _I'm_ tall and wizen; You've been and run the wrong one through, That's how the error has arisen."
The accident was thus explained, Apologies were only heard now: "At my mistake I'm really pained-- I am, indeed--upon my word now.
"With me, sir, you shall be interred, A mausoleum grand awaits me." "Oh, pray don't say another word, I'm sure that more than compensates me.
"But p'r'aps, kind Turk, you're full inside?" "There's room," said he, "for any number," And so they laid them down and died. In proud Stamboul they sleep their slumber.
[Illustration]
THE PLAYED-OUT HUMORIST
Quixotic is his enterprise, and hopeless his adventure is, Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said. The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries, And every joke that's possible has long ago been made. I started as a humorist with lots of mental fizziness, But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse; For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures, and the goodwill of the business No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse. And if anybody choose He may circulate the news That no reasonable offer I'm likely to refuse.
Oh happy was that humorist--the first that made a pun at all-- Who when a joke occurred to him, however poor and mean, Was absolutely certain that it never had been done at all-- How popular at dinners must that humorist have been!
Oh the days when some stepfather for the query held a handle out, The door-mat from the scraper, is it distant very far? And when no one knew where Moses was when Aaron blew the candle out, And no one had discovered that a door could be a-jar! But your modern hearers are In their tastes particular, And they sneer if you inform them that a door can be a-jar!
In search of quip and quiddity, I've sat all day, alone, apart-- And all that I could hit on as a problem was--to find Analogy between a scrag of mutton and a Bony-part, Which offers slight employment to the speculative mind: For you cannot call it very good, however great your charity-- It's not the sort of humour that is greeted with a shout-- And I've come to the conclusion that my mine of jocularity. In present Anno Domini, is worked completely out! Though the notion you may scout, I can prove beyond a doubt That my mine of jocularity is utterly worked out!
[Illustration]
INDEX TO FIRST LINES
PAGE A Bishop once--I will not name his see, 484
A British tar is a soaring soul, 204
A clergyman in Berkshire dwelt, 309
A gentleman of City fame, 138
A hive of bees, as I've heard say, 536
A lady fair, of lineage high, 123
A leafy cot, where no dry rot, 294
Although of native maids the cream, 482
A magnet hung in a hardware shop, 153
A maiden sat at her window wide, 454
A man who would woo a fair maid, 209
A monarch is pestered with cares, 526
A more humane Mikado never, 388
An actor--GIBBS, of Drury Lane, 391
An actor sits in doubtful gloom, 508
An elderly person--a prophet by trade, 114
An excellent soldier who's worthy the name, 399
A proud Pasha was BAILEY BEN, 242
A rich advowson, highly prized, 356
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found, 99
At a pleasant evening party I had taken down to supper, 58
A tar, but poorly prized, 528
A tenor, all singers above, 547
A Troubadour he played, 51
At the outset I may mention it's my sovereign intention, 515
A wonderful joy our eyes to bless, 499
Babette she was a fisher gal, 76
Bedecked in fashion trim, 471
Bob Polter was a navvy, and, 176
Bold-faced ranger, 512
Braid the raven hair, 113
Brightly dawns our wedding day, 81
Come, collar this bad man, 440
Come mighty Must!, 367
Come with me, little maid!, 24
Comes a train of little ladies, 254
Comes the broken flower, 329
Dalilah de Dardy adored, 64
Dr. Belville was regarded as the CRICHTON of his age, 146
Earl Joyce he was a kind old party, 229
Emily Jane was a nursery maid, 405
Fear no unlicensed entry, 431
First you're born--and I'll be bound you, 487
From east and south the holy clan, 108
Gentle, modest, little flower, 122
Good children, list, if you're inclined, 221
Haunted? Ay, in a social way, 39
He is an Englishman!, 13
He loves! If in the bygone years, 453
I am the very pattern of a modern Major-Gineral, 42
I cannot tell what this love may be, 169
If my action's stiff and crude, 480
If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am, 16
If you're anxious to shine in the high æsthetic line, as a man of culture rare, 271
If you want a receipt for that popular mystery, 49
I go away, this blessed day, 348
I have a song to sing, O! 182
I knew a boor--a clownish card, 87
I know a youth who loves a little maid, 361
I love a man who'll smile and joke, 383
I'm old, my dears, and shrivelled with age, and work, and grief, 214
In all the towns and cities fair, 131
In enterprise of martial kind, 262
I often wonder whether you, 376
I once did know a Turkish man, 549
I shipped, d'ye see, in a Revenue sloop, 6
I sing a legend of the sea, 273
Is life a boon? 38
I stole the Prince, and I brought him here, 26
It's my opinion--though I own, 473
It was a Bishop bold, 44
It was a robber's daughter, and her name was ALICE BROWN, 205
I've often thought that headstrong youths, 164
I've painted SHAKESPEARE all my life, 287
I've wisdom from the East and from the West, 299
John courted lovely MARY ANN, 28
King Borria Bungalee Boo, 155
Letters, letters, letters, letters! 501
List while the poet trolls, 8
Lord B. was a nobleman bold, 475
Macphairson Clonglocketty Angus M'Clan, 185
Mr. Blake was a regular out-and-out hardened sinner, 256
My boy, you may take it from me, 458
My wedded life, 534
No nobler captain ever trod, 492
Now, Jurymen, hear my advice, 411
Now, Marco, dear, 345
O'er unreclaimed suburban clays, 148
Of all the good attorneys who, 125
Of all the ships upon the blue, 1
Of all the youths I ever saw, 94
Oh! a private buffoon is a light-hearted loon, 161
Oh, big was the bosom of brave ALUM BEY, 317
Oh, foolish fay, 32
Oh, gentlemen, listen, I pray, 136
Oh! is there not one maiden breast, 143
Oh! listen to the tale of little ANNIE PROTHEROE, 280
Oh, listen to the tale of MISTER WILLIAM, if you please, 235
Oh, list to this incredible tale, 171
Oh! little maid!--(I do not know your name), 82
Oh! my name is JOHN WELLINGTON WELLS, 211
Oh, that my soul its gods could see, 71
Oh, what a fund of joy jocund lies hid in harmless hoaxes! 523
Old PETER led a wretched life, 413
On all Arcadia's sunny plain, 433
On a tree by a river a little tomtit, 354
Once a fairy, 446
Only a dancing girl, 14
Perhaps already you may know, 426
Policeman Peter Forth I drag, 193
Prithee, pretty maiden--prithee, tell me true, 397
Quixotic is his enterprise, and hopeless his adventure is 553
Rising early in the morning, 119
Roll on, thou ball, roll on! 539
Sad is that woman's lot who, year by year, 22
Sighing softly to the river, 219
Sir Guy was a doughty crusader, 34
Small titles and orders, 84
Society has quite forsaken all her wicked courses, 497
Some seven men form an Association, 490
Some time ago, in simple verse, 338
Sorry her lot who loves too well, 286
Spurn not the nobly born, 307
Strike the concertina's melancholy string, 518
Take a pair of sparkling eyes, 175
The air is charged with amatory numbers, 92
The _Ballyshannon_ foundered off the coast of Cariboo, 541
The bravest names for fire and flames, 18
The earth has armies plenty, 248
The law is the true embodiment, 191
The other night, from cares exempt, 368
There grew a little flower, 418
There lived a King, as I've been told, 424
The REVEREND MICAH SOWLS, 467
There were three niggers of Chickeraboo, 200
The story of FREDERICK GOWLER, 301
The sun was setting in its wonted west, 460
The Sun, whose rays, 56
They intend to send a wire, 106
This is SIR BARNABY BAMPTON BOO, 324
To a garden full of posies, 130
Try we life-long, we can never, 466
'Twas on the shores that round our coast, 101
Two better friends you wouldn't pass, 363
Vast, empty shell! 144
Weary at heart and extremely ill, 265
Were I a king in very truth, 504
Were I thy bride, 374
What time the poet hath hymned, 445
When a felon's not engaged in his employment, 63
When all night long a chap remains, 292
When a merry maiden marries, 198
When Britain really ruled the waves, 74
Whene'er I poke sarcastic joke, 69
When first my old, old love I knew, 439
When I first put this uniform on, 322
When I, good friends, was called to the Bar, 315
When I was a lad I served a term, 227
When I went to the Bar as a very young man, 278
When maiden loves, she sits and sighs, 255
When man and maiden meet, I like to see a drooping eye, 330
When rival adorers come courting a maid, 420
When the buds are blossoming, 403
When the night wind howls in the chimney cowl, and the bat in the moonlight flies, 381
When you find you're a broken-down critter, 506
When you're lying awake with a dismal headache, and repose is taboo'd by anxiety, 335
Would you know the kind of maid, 240
ALPHABETICAL INDEX TO TITLES
PAGE Æsthete, The, 271
Ah Me!, 255
Anglicised Utopia, 497
Annie Protheroe, 280
Ape and the Lady, The, 123
Appeal, An, 143
At a Pantomime, 508
A Worm will Turn, 383
Babette's Love, 76
Baby's Vengeance, The, 265
Baffled Grumbler, The, 69
Baines Carew, Gentleman, 125
Ben Allah Achmet; or, the Fatal Tum, 549
Bishop and the 'Busman, The, 44
Bishop of Rum-ti-Foo, The, 108
Bishop of Rum-ti-Foo Again, The, 376
Blue Blood, 307
Bob Polter, 176
Braid the Raven Hair, 113
Brave Alum Bey, 317
British Tar, The, 204
Bumboat Woman's Story, The, 214
Captain and the Mermaids, The, 273
Captain Reece, 1
Classical Revival, A, 515
Coming By-and-By, The, 22
Contemplative Sentry, The, 292
Cunning Woman, The, 433
Damon _v._ Pythias, 363
Darned Mounseer, The, 6
Disagreeable Man, The, 16
Disconcerted Tenor, The, 547
Discontented Sugar Broker, A, 138
Disillusioned, 71
Don't Forget!, 345
Duke and the Duchess, The, 84
Duke of Plaza-Toro, The, 262
Eheu Fugaces--!, 92
Ellen M'Jones Aberdeen, 185
Emily, John, James, and I, 405
English Girl, An, 499
Englishman, The, 13
Etiquette, 541
Fairy Curate, The, 446
Fairy Queen's Song, The, 32
Family Fool, The, 161
Ferdinando and Elvira; or, the Gentle Pieman, 58
Fickle Breeze, The, 219
First Lord's Song, The, 227
First Love, 309
Folly of "Brown, The, 87
Force of Argument, The, 475
General John, 18
Gentle Alice Brown, 205
Ghosts' High Noon, The, 381
Ghost, the Gallant, the Gael, and the Goblin, The, 148
Girl Graduates, 106
Good Little Girls, 482
Great Oak Tree, The, 418
Gregory Parable, LL.D. 294
Haughty Actor, The, 391
Haunted, 39
He and She, 361
Heavy Dragoon, The, 49
He Loves! 453
Her Terms, 534
Highly Respectable Gondolier, The, 26
Hongree and Mahry, 460
House of Peers, The, 74
How it's Done, 512
Humane Mikado, The, 388
Independent Bee, The, 536
Is Life a Boon? 38
Joe Golightly; or, the First Lord's Daughter, 528
John and Freddy, 28
Judge's Song, The, 315
King Borria Bungalee Boo, 155
King Goodheart, 424
King of Canoodle-dum, The, 301
Lieutenant-Colonel Flare, 248
Life, 487
Life is Lovely all the Year, 403
Limited Liability, 490
Little Oliver, 229
Lorenzo de Lardy, 64
Lost Mr. Blake, 256
Love-sick Boy, The, 439
Magnet and the Churn, The, 153
Manager's Perplexities, A, 504
Man who would Woo a Fair Maid, A, 209
Martinet, The, 338
Merry Madrigal, A, 81
Merryman and his Maid, The, 182
Mighty Must, The, 367
Mirage, A, 374
Mister William, 235
Modern Major-General, The, 42
Modest Couple, The, 330
My Dream, 368
My Lady, 471
Mystic Selvagee, The, 426
National Anthem, The, 526
Nightmare, A, 335
Old Paul and Old Tim, 420
One against the World, 473
Only a Dancing Girl, 14
Only Roses, 130
Out of Sorts, 506
Pantomime "Super" to his Mask, The, 144
Pasha Bailey Ben, 242
Perils of Invisibility, The, 413
Periwinkle Girl, The, 164
Peter the Wag, 193
Phantom Curate, The, 484
Philosophic Pill, The, 299
Phrenology, 440
Played-out Humorist, The, 553
Poetry Everywhere, 445
Policeman's Lot, The, 63
Practical Joker, The, 523
Precocious Baby, The, 114
Proper Pride, 56
Put a Penny in the Slot, 480
Recipe, A, 175
Reverend Micah Sowls, The, 467
Reverend Simon Magus, The, 356
Reward of Merit, The, 146
Rival Curates, The, 8
Rover's Apology, The, 136
Said I to Myself, Said I, 278
Sailor Boy to his Lass, The, 348
Sans Souci, 169
Sensation Captain, The, 492
Sir Barnaby Bampton Boo, 324
Sir Guy the Crusader, 34
Sir Macklin, 94
Sleep on! 431
Solatium, 329
Sorcerer's Song, The, 211
Sorry her Lot, 286
Speculation, 254
Story of Prince Agib, The, 518
Suicide's Grave, The, 354
Susceptible Chancellor, The, 191
Tangled Skein, The, 466
Tempora Mutantur, 501
They'll None of 'em be Missed, 99
Thomas Winterbottom Hance, 131
Thomson Green and Harriet Hale, 171
Three Kings of Chickeraboo, The, 200
To a Little Maid, 24
To my Bride, 82
To Phœbe, 122
To the Terrestrial Globe, 539
Troubadour, The, 51
True Diffidence, 458
Two Majors, The, 399
Two Ogres, The, 221
Unfortunate Likeness, An, 287
Usher's Charge, The, 411
Way of Wooing, The, 454
When a Merry Maiden Marries, 198
When I First Put this Uniform On, 322
Willow Waly! 397
Working Monarch, The, 119
Would you Know? 240
Yarn of the "Nancy Bell," The, 101
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Bab Ballads, by William Schwenck Gilbert |
36297-8 | Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.)
VISUAL ILLUSIONS
_THEIR CAUSES, CHARACTERISTICS AND APPLICATIONS_
BY M. LUCKIESH
DIRECTOR OF APPLIED SCIENCE, NELA RESEARCH LABORATORIES, NATIONAL LAMP WORKS OF GENERAL ELECTRIC CO.
AUTHOR OF "COLOR AND ITS APPLICATIONS," "LIGHT AND SHADE AND THEIR APPLICATIONS," "THE LIGHTING ART," "THE LANGUAGE OF COLOR," "ARTIFICIAL LIGHT--ITS INFLUENCE UPON CIVILIZATION," "LIGHTING THE HOME," ETC.
100 ILLUSTRATIONS
NEW YORK D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY EIGHT WARREN STREET 1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY D. VAN NOSTRAND COMPANY
PREFACE
Eventually one of the results of application to the analysis and measurement of the phenomena of light, color, lighting, and vision is a firmly entrenched conviction of the inadequacy of physical measurements as a means for representing what is perceived. Physical measurements have supplied much of the foundation of knowledge and it is not a reflection upon their great usefulness to state that often they differ from the results of intellectual appraisal through the visual sense. In other words, there are numberless so-called visual illusions which must be taken into account. All are of interest; many can be utilized; and some must be suppressed.
Scientific literature yields a great many valuable discussions from theoretical and experimental viewpoints but much of the material is controversial. The practical aspects of visual illusions have been quite generally passed by and, inasmuch as there does not appear to be a volume available which treats the subject in a condensed manner but with a broad scope, this small volume is contributed toward filling the gap.
The extreme complexity of the subject is recognized, but an attempt toward simplicity of treatment has been made by confining the discussion chiefly to static visual illusions, by suppressing minor details, and by subordinating theory. In other words, the intent has been to emphasize experimental facts. Even these are so numerous that only the merest glimpses of various aspects can be given in order to limit the text to a small volume. Some theoretical aspects of the subject are still extremely controversial, so they are introduced only occasionally and then chiefly for the purpose of illustrating the complexities and the trends of attempted explanations. Space does not even admit many qualifications which may be necessary in order to escape criticism entirely.
The visual illusions discussed are chiefly of the static type, although a few others have been introduced. Some of the latter border upon motion, others upon hallucinations, and still others produced by external optical media are illusions only by extension of the term. These exceptions are included for the purpose of providing glimpses into the borderlands.
It is hoped that this condensed discussion, which is ambitious only in scope, will be of interest to the general reader, to painters, decorators, and architects, to lighting experts, and to all interested in light, color, and vision. It is an essential supplement to certain previous works.
M. LUCKIESH
November, 1920.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Introduction 1
II. The eye 13
III. Vision 29
IV. Some types of geometrical illusions 44
V. Equivocal figures 64
VI. The influence of angles 76
VII. Illusions of depth and of distance 102
VIII. Irradiation and brightness-contrast 114
IX. Color 124
X. Lighting 144
XI. Nature 164
XII. Painting and decoration 179
XIII. Architecture 195
XIV. Mirror Magic 205
XV. Camouflage 210
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FIGURE PAGE
1. Principal parts of the eye 14
2. Stereoscopic pictures for combining by converging or diverging the optical axes 41
3. Stereoscopic pictures 41
4. The vertical line appears longer than the equal horizontal line in each case 46
5. The vertical dimension is equal to the horizontal one, but the former appears greater 47
6. The divided or filled space on the left appears longer than the equal space on the right 49
7. The three lines are of equal length 50
8. The distance between the two circles on the left is equal to the distance between the outside edges of the two circles on the right 50
9. Three squares of equal dimensions which appear different in area and dimension 51
10. The vertical distance between the upper circle and the left-hand one of the group is equal to the overall length of the group of three circles 52
11. Two equal semi-circles 53
12. Arcs of the same circle 53
13. Three incomplete but equal squares 53
14. Middle sections of the two lines are equal 54
15. An effect of contrasting areas (Baldwin's figure) 54
16. An illusion of contrast 55
17. Equal circles which appear unequal due to contrast (Ebbinghaus' figure) 56
18. Equal circles appearing unequal owing to contrasting concentric circles 56
19. Circles influenced by position within an angle 57
20. Contrasting angles 57
21. Owing to perspective the right angles appear oblique and vice versa 58
22. Two equal diagonals which appear unequal 58
23. Apparent variations in the distance between two parallel lines 59
24. A striking illusion of perspective 60
25. Distortion of a square due to superposed lines 61
26. Distortion of a circle due to superposed lines 62
27. Illustrating fluctuation of attention 65
28. The grouping of the circles fluctuates 66
29. Crossed lines which may be interpreted in two ways 67
30. Reversible cubes 68
31. The reversible "open book" (after Mach) 69
32. A reversible tetrahedron 69
33. Reversible perspective of a group of rings or of a tube 70
34. Schröder's reversible staircase 70
35. Thiéry's figure 71
36. Illustrating certain influences upon the apparent direction of vision.
By covering all but the eyes the latter appear to be drawn alike in both sketches 73
37. Zöllner's illusion of direction 77
38. Parallel lines which do not appear so 79
39. Wundt's illusion of direction 79
40. Hering's illusion of direction 80
41. Simple effect of angles 81
42. The effect of two angles in tilting the horizontal lines 83
43. The effect of crossed lines upon their respective apparent directions 83
44. Another step toward the Zöllner illusion 84
45. The two diagonals would meet on the left vertical line 85
46. Poggendorff's illusion. Which oblique line on the right is the prolongation of the oblique line on the left? 85
47. A straight line appears to sag 86
48. Distortions of contour due to contact with other contours 87
49. An illusion of direction 88
50. "Twisted-cord" illusion. These are straight cords 89
51. "Twisted-cord" illusion. These are concentric circles 89
52. A spiral when rotated appears to expand or contract, depending upon direction of rotation 90
53. Angles affect the apparent length of lines 91
54. The horizontal line appears to tilt downward toward the ends 92
55. The horizontal line appears to sag in the middle 92
56. The Müller-Lyer illusion 93
57. Combined influence of angles and contrasting lengths 95
58. Two equal oblique lines appear unequal because of their different positions 95
59. An illusion of area 96
60. Five equal areas showing the influence of contour upon judgment of area 97
61. Showing the effect of directing the attention 98
62. Simple apparatus for demonstrating the remarkable effects of contrasts in brightness and color 115
63. Illustrating brightness-contrast 117
64. An effect of brightness-contrast. Note the darkening of the intersections of the white strips 118
65. The phenomenon of irradiation 121
66. An excellent pattern for demonstrating color-contrast 126
67. By rotating this Mason (black and white) disk color-sensations are produced 133
68. For demonstrating retiring and advancing colors 137
69. By combining these stereoscopically the effect of metallic lustre (similar to graphite in this case) is obtained 141
70. A bas-relief lighted from above 146
71. An intaglio lighted from above 147
72. A bas-relief lighted from the left 148
73. An intaglio lighted from the left 149
74a. A disk (above) and a sphere (below) lighted from overhead 145
b. A disk and a sphere lighted by perfectly diffused light 145
75. A concave hemispherical cup on the left and a convex hemisphere on the right lighted by a light-source of large angle such as a window 150
76. The same as Fig. 75, but lighted by a very small light-source 151
77. Apparent ending of a searchlight beam 161
78. An accurate tracing from a photograph (continual exposure) of the moon rising 171
79. Accurate tracings from a photograph (short exposures at intervals) of the sun setting 172
80. Explanation offered by Smith of the apparent enlargement of heavenly bodies near the horizon 174
81. Explanation of a common mirage 176
82. Illustrating the apparent distortion of a picture frame in which the grain of the wood is visible 190
83. Another example similar to Fig. 82 191
84. From actual photographs of the end-grain of a board 192
85. Exaggerated illusions in architecture 198
86. Illustrating the influence of visual angle upon apparent vertical height 199
87. Irradiation in architecture 200
88. Some simple geometrical-optical illusions in architecture 201
89. By decreasing the exposed length of shingles toward the top a greater apparent expanse is obtained 202
90. An example of a mirror "illusion" 207
91. Another example of "mirror magic" 208
92. A primary stage in the evolution of the use of geometrical-optical illusions on ships 226
93 and 94. Attempts at distortion of outline which preceded the adoption of geometrical-optical illusions 228
95 and 96. Illustrating the use of models by the Navy Department in developing the geometrical-optical illusion for ships 229
97 and 98. Examples of the geometrical-optical illusion as finally applied 231
99. Representative earth backgrounds for an airplane (uncamouflaged) as viewed from above 235
100. Illustrating the study of pattern for airplanes. The photograph was taken from an altitude of 10,000 feet. The insert shows the relative lengths (vertical scale) of an airplane of 50-foot spread at various distances below the observer 239
VISUAL ILLUSIONS
I
INTRODUCTION
Seeing is deceiving. Thus a familiar epigram may be challenged in order to indicate the trend of this book which aims to treat certain phases of visual illusions. In general, we do not see things as they are or as they are related to each other; that is, the intellect does not correctly interpret the deliverances of the visual sense, although sometimes the optical mechanism of the eyes is directly responsible for the illusion. In other words, none of our conceptions and perceptions are quite adequate, but fortunately most of them are satisfactory for practical purposes. Only a part of what is perceived comes through the senses from the object; the remainder always comes from within. In fact, it is the visual sense or the intellect which is responsible for illusions of the various types to be discussed in the following chapters. Our past experiences, associations, desires, demands, imaginings, and other more or less obscure influences create illusions.
An illusion does not generally exist physically but it is difficult in some cases to explain the cause. Certainly there are many cases of errors of judgment. A mistaken estimate of the distance of a mountain is due to an error of judgment but the perception of a piece of white paper as pink on a green background is an error of sense. It is realized that the foregoing comparison leads directly to one of the most controversial questions in psychology, but there is no intention on the author's part to cling dogmatically to the opinions expressed. In fact, discussions of the psychological judgment involved in the presentations of the visual sense are not introduced with the hope of stating the final word but to give the reader an idea of the inner process of perception. The final word will be left to the psychologists but it appears possible that it may never be formulated.
In general, a tree appears of greater length when standing than when lying upon the ground. Lines, areas, and masses are not perceived in their actual physical relations. The appearance of a colored object varies considerably with its environment. The sky is not perceived as infinite space nor as a hemispherical dome, but as a flattened vault. The moon apparently diminishes in size as it rises toward the zenith. A bright object appears larger than a dark object of the same physical dimensions. Flat areas may appear to have a third dimension of depth. And so on.
Illusions are so numerous and varied that they have long challenged the interest of the scientist. They may be so useful or even so disastrous that they have been utilized or counteracted by the skilled artist or artisan. The architect and painter have used or avoided them. The stage-artist employs them to carry the audience in its imagination to other environments or to far countries. The magician has employed them in his entertainments and the camoufleur used them to advantage in the practice of deception during the recent war. They are vastly entertaining, useful, deceiving, or disastrous, depending upon the viewpoint.
Incidentally, a few so-called illusions will be discussed which are not due strictly to errors of the visual sense or of the intellect. Examples of these are the mirage and certain optical effects employed by the magician. In such cases neither the visual sense nor the intellect errs. In the case of the mirage rays of light coming from the object to the eye are bent from their usual straight-line course and the object appears to be where it really is not. However, with these few exceptions, which are introduced for their specific interest and for the emphasis they give to the "true" illusion, it will be understood that illusions in general as hereinafter discussed will mean those due to the visual mechanism or to errors of judgment or intellect. For the sake of brevity we might say that they are those due to errors of visual perception. Furthermore, only those of a "static" type will be considered; that is, the vast complexities due to motion are not of interest from the viewpoint of the aims of this book.
There are two well-known types of misleading perceptions, namely illusions and hallucinations. If, for example, two lines appear of equal length and are not, the error in judgment is responsible for what is termed an "illusion." If the perceptual consciousness of an object appears although the object is not present, the result is termed an "hallucination." For example, if something is seen which does not exist, the essential factors are supplied by the imagination. Shadows are often wrought by the imagination into animals and even human beings bent upon evil purpose. Ghosts are created in this manner. Hallucinations depend largely upon the recency, frequency, and vividness of past experience. A consideration of this type of misleading perception does not advance the aims of this book and therefore will be omitted.
The connection between the material and mental in vision is incomprehensible and apparently must ever remain so. Objects emit or reflect light and the optical mechanism known as the eye focuses images of the objects upon the retina. Messages are then carried to the brain where certain molecular vibrations take place. The physiologist records certain physical and chemical effects in the muscles, nerves, and brain and behold! there appears consciousness, sensations, thoughts, desires, and volitions. How? and, Why? are questions which may never be answered.
It is dangerous to use the word _never_, but the ultimate answers to those questions appear to be so remote that it discourages one from proceeding far over the hazy course which leads toward them. In fact, it does not appreciably further the aims of this book to devote much space to efforts toward explanation. In covering this vast and complex field there are multitudes of facts, many hypotheses, and numerous theories from which to choose. Judgment dictates that of the limited space most of it be given to the presentation of representative facts. This is the reasoning which led to the formulation of the outline of chapters.
Owing to the vast complex beyond the physical phenomena, physical measurements upon objects and space which have done so much toward building a solid foundation for scientific knowledge fail ultimately to provide an exact mathematical picture of that which is perceived. Much of the author's previous work has been devoted to the physical realities but the ever-present differences between physical and perceptive realities have emphasized the need for considering the latter as well.
Illusions are legion. They greet the careful observer on every hand. They play a prominent part in our appreciation of the physical world. Sometimes they must be avoided, but often they may be put to work in various arts. Their widespread existence and their forcefulness make visual perception the final judge in decoration, in painting, in architecture, in landscaping, in lighting, and in other activities. The ultimate limitation of measurements with physical instruments leaves this responsibility to the intellect. The mental being is impressed with things as perceived, not with things as they are. It is believed that this intellectual or judiciary phase which plays such a part in visual perception will be best brought out by examples of various types of static illusions coupled with certain facts pertaining to the eye and to the visual process as a whole.
In special simple cases it is not difficult to determine when or how nearly a perception is true but in general, agreement among normal persons is necessary owing to the absence of any definite measuring device which will span the gap between the perception and the objective reality. Illusions are sometimes called "errors of sense" and some of them are such, but often they are errors of the intellect. The senses may deliver correctly but error may arise from imagination, inexperience, false assumptions, and incorrect associations, and the recency, frequency, and vividness of past experience. The gifts of sight are augmented by the mind with judgments based upon experience with these gifts.
The direct data delivered by the visual sense are light, intensity, color, direction. These may be considered as simple or elemental sensations because they cannot be further simplified or analyzed. At this point it is hoped that no controversy with the psychologist will be provoked. In the space available it appears unfruitful to introduce the many qualifications necessary to satisfy the, as yet uncertain or at least conflicting, definitions and theories underlying the science of psychology. If it is necessary to add darkness to the foregoing group of elemental visual sensations, this will gladly be agreed to.
The perceptions of outline-form and surface-contents perhaps rank next in simplicity; however, they may be analyzed into directions. The perception of these is so direct and so certain that it may be considered to be immediate. A ring of points is apparently very simple and it might be considered a direct sense-perception, but it consists of a number of elemental directions.
The perception of solid-form is far more complex than outline-form and therefore more liable to error. It is judged partially by binocular vision or perspective and partly by the distribution of light and shade. Colors may help to mold form and even to give depth to flat surfaces. For example, it is well known that some colors are "advancing" and others are "retiring."
Perhaps of still greater complexity are the judgments of size and of distance. Many comparisons enter such judgments. The unconscious acts of the muscles of the eye and various external conditions such as the clearness of the atmosphere play prominent parts in influencing judgment. Upon these are superposed the numerous psycho-physiological phenomena of color, irradiation, etc.
In vision judgments are quickly made and the process apparently is largely outside of consciousness. Higher and more complex visual judgments pass into still higher and more complex intellectual judgments. All these may appear to be primary, immediate, innate, or instinctive and therefore, certain, but the fruits of studies of the psychology of vision have shown that these visual judgments may be analyzed into simpler elements. Therefore, they are liable to error.
That the ancients sensed the existence or possibility of illusions is evidenced by the fact that they tried to draw and to paint although their inability to observe carefully is indicated by the absence of true shading. The architecture of ancient Greece reveals a knowledge of certain illusions in the efforts to overcome them. However, the study of illusions did not engage the attention of scientists until a comparatively recent period. Notwithstanding this belated attention there is a vast scientific literature pertaining to the multitudinous phases of the subject; however, most of it is fragmentary and much of it is controversial. Some of it deals with theory for a particular and often a very simple case. In life complex illusions are met but at present it would be futile to attempt to explain them in detail. Furthermore, there have been few attempts to generalize and to group examples of typical phenomena in such a manner as to enable a general reader to see the complex fabric as a whole. Finally, the occurrence and application of illusions in various arts and the prominence of illusions on every hand have not been especially treated. It is the hope that this will be realized in the following chapters in so far as brevity of treatment makes this possible.
Doubtless thoughtful observers ages ago noticed visual illusions, especially those found in nature and in architecture. When it is considered that geometrical figures are very commonly of an illusory character it appears improbable that optical illusions could have escaped the keenness of Euclid. The apparent enlargement of the moon near the horizon and the apparent flattened vault of the sky were noticed at least a thousand years ago and literature yields several hundred memoirs on these subjects. One of the oldest dissertations upon the apparent form of the sky was published by Alhazen, an Arab astronomer of the tenth century. Kepler in 1618 wrote upon the subject.
Philosophers of the past centuries prepared the way toward an understanding of many complexities of today. They molded thought into correct form and established fundamental concepts and principles. Their chief tool was philosophy, the experimental attack being left to the scientists of the modern age. However, they established philosophically such principles as "space and time are not realities of the phenomenal world but the modes under which we see things apart." As science became organized during the present experimental era, measurements were applied and there began to appear analytical discussions of various subjects including optical illusions. One of the earliest investigations of the modern type was made by Oppel, an account of which appeared in 1854. Since that time scientific literature has received thousands of worthy contributions dealing with visual illusions.
There are many facts affecting vision regarding which no theory is necessary. They speak for themselves. There are many equally obvious facts which are not satisfactorily explained but the lack of explanation does not prevent their recognition. In fact, only the scientist needs to worry over systematic explanations and theoretical generalizations. He needs these in order to invade and to explore the other unknowns where he will add to his storehouse of knowledge. A long step toward understanding is made by becoming acquainted with certain physical, physiological, and psychological facts of light, color, and lighting. Furthermore, acquaintance with the visual process and with the structure of the eye aids materially. For this reason the next two chapters have been added even at the risk of discouraging some readers.
In a broad sense, any visual perception which does not harmonize with physical measurements may be termed an "illusion." Therefore, the term could include those physical illusions obtained by means of prisms, lenses, and mirrors and such illusions as the mirage. It could also include the physiological illusions of light and color such as after-images, irradiation, and contrast, and the psycho-physiological illusions of space and the character of objects. In fact, the scope of the following chapters is arbitrarily extended to include all these aspects, but confines consideration only to "static" illusions.
In a more common sense attention is usually restricted to the last group; that is, to the psycho-physiological illusions attending the perception of space and the character of objects although motion is often included. It should be obvious that no simple or even single theory can cover the vast range of illusions considered in the broad sense because there are so many different kinds of factors involved. For this reason explanations will be presented wherever feasible in connection with specific illusions. However, in closing this chapter it appears of interest to touch upon the more generally exploited theories of illusions of the type considered in the foregoing restricted sense. Hypotheses pertaining to illusions are generally lacking in agreement, but for the special case of what might be more safely termed "geometrical-optical illusions" two different theories, by Lipps and by Wundt respectively, are conspicuous. In fact, most theories are variants of these two systematic "explanations" of illusions (in the restricted sense).
Lipps proposed the principle of mechanical-esthetic unity, according to which we unconsciously give to every space-form a living personality and unconsciously consider certain mechanical forces acting. Our judgments are therefore modified by this anthropomorphic attitude. For example, we regard the circle as being the result of the action of tangential and radial forces in which the latter appear to triumph. According to Lipps' theory the circle has a centripetal character and these radial forces toward the center, which apparently have overcome the tangential forces during the process of creating the circle, lead to underestimation of its size as compared with a square of the same height and breadth. By drawing a circle and square side by side, with the diameter of the former equal to the length of a side of the latter, this illusion is readily demonstrated. Of course, the square has a greater area than the circle and it is difficult to determine the effect of this disparity in area. Figure 60 where the areas of the circle and square are equal and consequently the height of the former is considerably greater than the latter, is of interest in this connection. By experimenting with a series of pairs consisting of a circle and a square, varying in dimensions from equal heights to equal areas, an idea of the "shrinking" character of the circle becomes quite apparent.
Wundt does not attribute the illusion to a deception or error of judgment but to direct perception. According to his explanation, the laws of retinal image (fixation) and eye-movement are responsible. For example, vertical distances appear greater than horizontal ones because the effort or expenditure of energy is greater in raising the eyes than in turning them through an equal angle in a horizontal plane. Unconscious or involuntary eye-movements also appear to play a part in many linear or more accurately, angular illusions, but certainly Wundt's explanation does not suffice for all illusions although it may explain many geometrical illusions. It may be said to be of the "perceptive" class and Lipps' theory to be of the "judgment" or "higher-process" class. As already stated, most of the other proposed explanations of geometrical illusions may be regarded as being related to one of these two theories. There is the "indistinct vision" theory of Einthoven; the "perspective" theory of Hering, Guye, Thiéry, and others; the "contrast" theory of Helmholtz, Loeb, and Heyman; and the "contrast-_confluxion_" theory of Müller-Lyer. In order not to discourage the reader at the outset, theories as such will be passed by with this brief glimpse. However, more or less qualified explanations are presented occasionally in some of the chapters which follow in order to indicate or to suggest a train of thought should the reader desire to attempt to understand some of the numerous interesting illusions.
II
THE EYE
Helmholtz, who contributed so much toward our knowledge of the visual process, in referring to the eye, once stated that he could make a much better optical instrument but not a better eye. In other words, the eye is far from an ideal optical instrument but as an eye it is wonderful. Its range of sensitiveness and its adaptability to the extreme variety of demands upon it are truly marvelous when compared with instruments devised by mankind. Obviously, the eye is the connecting link between objective reality and visual perception and, therefore, it plays an important part in illusions. In fact, sometimes it is solely responsible for the illusion. The process of vision may be divided into several steps such as (1) the lighting, color, character, and disposition of objects; (2) the mechanism by which the image is formed upon the retina; (3) various optical defects of this mechanism; (4) the sensitiveness of the parts of the retina to light and color; (5) the structure of the retina; (6) the parts played by monocular and binocular vision; and (7) the various events which follow the formation of the image upon the retina.
The mechanism of the eye makes it possible to see not only light but objects. Elementary eyes of the lowest animals perceive light but cannot see objects. These eyes are merely specialized nerves. In the human eye the optic nerve spreads to form the retina and the latter is a specialized nerve. Nature has accompanied this evolution by developing an instrument the--eye--for intensifying and defining and the whole is the visual sense-organ. The latter contains the most highly specialized nerve and the most refined physiological mechanism, the result being the highest sense-organ.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.--Principal parts of the eye.
A, Conjunctiva; B, Retina; C, Choroid; D, Sclera; E, Fovea; F, Blind Spot; G, Optic Nerve; H, Ciliary Muscle; I, Iris; J, Cornea; K, Ligament.]
The eye is approximately a spherical shell transparent at the front portion and opaque (or nearly so) over the remaining eighty per cent of its surface. The optical path consists of a series of transparent liquids and solids. The chief details of the structure of the eye are represented in Fig. 1. Beginning with the exterior and proceeding toward the retina we find in succession the cornea, the anterior chamber containing the aqueous humor, the iris, the lens, the large chamber containing the vitreous humor, and finally the retina. Certain muscles alter the position of the eye and consequently the optical axis, and focusing (accommodation) is accomplished by altering the thickness and shape, and consequently the focal length, of the lens.
The iris is a shutter which automatically controls to some degree the amount of light reaching the retina, thereby tending to protect the latter from too much light. It also has some influence upon the definition of the image; that is, upon what is termed "visual acuity" or the ability to distinguish fine detail. It is interesting to compare the eye with the camera. In the case of the camera and the photographic process, we have (1) an inverted light-image, a facsimile of the object usually diminished in size; (2) an invisible image in the photographic emulsion consisting of molecular changes due to light; and (3) a visible image developed on the plate. In the case of the eye and the visual process we have (1) an inverted light-image, a facsimile of the object diminished in size; (2) the invisible image in the retinal substances probably consisting of molecular changes due to light; and (3) an _external_ visible image. It will be noted that in the case of vision the final image is projected outward--it is external. The more we think of this outward projection the more interesting and marvelous vision becomes. For example, it appears certain that if a photographic plate could see or feel, it would see or feel the silver image upon itself but not out in space. However, this point is discussed further in the next chapter.
In the camera and photographic process we trace mechanism, physics, and chemistry throughout. In the eye and visual process we are able to trace these factors only to a certain point, where we encounter the super-physical and super-chemical. Here molecular change is replaced by sensation, perception, thought, and emotion. Our exploration takes us from the physical world into another, wholly different, where there reigns another order of phenomena. We have passed from the material into the mental world.
The eye as an optical mechanism is reducible to a single lens and therefore the image focused upon the retina is inverted. However, there is no way for the observer to be conscious of this and therefore the inverted image causes no difficulty in seeing. The images of objects in the right half of the field of view are focused upon the left half of the retina. Similarly, the left half of the field of view corresponds to the right half of the retina; the upper half of the former to the lower half of the latter; and so on. When a ray of light from an object strikes the retina the impression is referred back along the ray-line into the original place in space. This is interestingly demonstrated in a simple manner. Punch a pin-hole in a card and hold it about four inches from the eye and at the same time hold a pin-head as close to the cornea as possible. The background for the pin-hole should be the sky or other bright surface. After a brief trial an inverted image of the pin-head is seen _in the hole_. Punch several holes in the card and in each will be seen an inverted image of the pin-head.
The explanation of the foregoing is not difficult. The pin-head is so close to the eye that the image cannot be focused upon the retina; however, it is in a very favorable position to cast a shadow upon the retina, the light-source being the pin-hole with a bright background. Light streaming through the pin-hole into the eye casts an erect shadow of the pin-head upon the retina, and this erect image is projected into space and inverted in the process by the effect of the lens. The latter is not operative during the casting of the shadow because the pin-head is too close to the lens, as already stated. It is further proved to be outward projection of the retinal image (the shadow) because by multiplying the number of pin-holes (the light-sources) there are also a corresponding number of shadows.
The foregoing not only illustrates the inversion of the image but again emphasizes the fact that we do not see retinal images. Even the "stars" which we see on pressing the eye-lid or on receiving a blow on the eye are projected into space. The "motes" which we see in the visual field while gazing at the sky are defects in the eye-media, and these images are projected into space. We do not see anything in the eye. The retinal image impresses the retina in some definite manner and the impression is carried to the brain by the optic nerve. The intellect then refers or projects this impression outward into space as an external image. The latter would be a facsimile of the physical object if there were no illusions but the fact that there are illusions indicates that errors are introduced somewhere along the path from and to the object.
It is interesting to speculate whether the first visual impression of a new-born babe is "projected outward" or is perceived as in the eye. It is equally futile to conjecture in this manner because there is no indication that the time will come when the baby can answer us immediately upon experiencing its first visual impression. The period of infancy increases with progress up the scale of animal life and this lengthening is doubtless responsible and perhaps necessary for the development of highly specialized sense-organs. Incidentally, suppose a blind person to be absolutely uneducated by transferred experience and that he suddenly became a normal adult and able to see. What would he say about his first visual impression? Apparently such a subject is unobtainable. The nearest that such a case had been approached is the case of a person born blind, whose sight has been restored. This person has acquired much experience with the external world through other senses. It has been recorded that such a person, after sight was restored, appeared to think that external objects "touched" the eyes. Only through visual experience is this error in judgment rectified.
Man studies his kind too much apart from other animals and perhaps either underestimates or overestimates the amount of inherited, innate, instinctive qualities. A new-born chick in a few minutes will walk straight to an object and seize it. Apparently this implies perception of distance and direction and a coördination of muscles for walking and moving the eyes. It appears reasonable to conclude that a certain amount of the wealth of capacities possessed by the individual is partly inherited, and in man the acquired predominates. But all capacities are acquired, for even the inherited was acquired in ancestral experience. Even instinct (whatever that may be) must involve inherited experience. These glimpses of the depths to which one must dig if he is to unearth the complete explanations of visual perception--and consequently of illusions--indicate the futility of treating the theories in the available space without encroaching unduly upon the aims of this volume.
Certain defects of the optical system of the eye must contribute toward causing illusions. Any perfect lens of homogeneous material has at least two defects, known as spherical and chromatic aberration. The former manifests itself by the bending of straight lines and is usually demonstrated by forming an image of an object such as a wire mesh or checkerboard; the outer lines of the image are found to be very much bent. This defect in the eye-lens is somewhat counteracted by a variable optical density, increasing from the outer to the central portion. This results in an increase in refractive-index as the center of the lens is approached and tends to diminish its spherical aberration. The eye commonly possesses abnormalities such as astigmatism and eccentricity of the optical elements. All these contribute toward the creation of illusions.
White light consists of rays of light of various colors and these are separated by means of a prism because the refractive-index of the prism differs for lights of different color or wave-length. This causes the blue rays, for example, to be bent more than the red rays when traversing a prism. It is in this manner that the spectrum of light may be obtained. A lens may be considered to be a prism of revolution and it thus becomes evident that the blue rays will be brought to a focus at a lesser distance than the red rays; that is, the former are bent more from their original path than the latter. This defect of lenses is known as chromatic aberration and is quite obvious in the eye. It may be demonstrated by any simple lens, for the image of the sun, for example, will appear to have a colored fringe. A purple filter which transmits only the violet and red rays is useful for this demonstration. By looking at a lamp-filament or candle-flame some distance away the object will appear to have a violet halo, but the color of the fringe will vary with accommodation. On looking through a pin-hole at the edge of an object silhouetted against the bright sky the edge will appear red if the light from the pin-hole enters the pupil near its periphery. This optical defect of the eye makes objects appear more sharply defined when viewed in monochromatic light. In fact, this is quite obvious when using yellow glasses. The defect is also demonstrated by viewing a line-spectrum focused on a ground glass. The blue and red lines cannot be seen distinctly at the same distance. The blue lines can be focused at a much less distance than the red lines. Chromatic aberration can account for such an illusion as the familiar "advancing" and "retiring" colors and doubtless it plays a part in many illusions.
The structure of the retina plays a very important part in vision and accounts for various illusions and many interesting visual phenomena. The optic nerve spreads out to form the retina which constitutes the inner portion of the spherical shell of the eye with the exception of the front part. Referring again to Fig. 1, the outer coating of the shell is called the sclerotic. This consists of dense fibrous tissue known as the "white of the eye." Inside this coating is a layer of black pigment cells termed the choroid. Next is the bacillary layer which lines about five-sixths of the interior surface of the eye. This is formed by closely packed "rods" and "cones," which play a dominant role in the visual process. A light-sensitive liquid (visual purple) and cellular and fibrous layers complete the retinal structure.
The place where the optic nerve enters the eye-ball and begins to spread out is blind. Objects whose images fall on this spot are invisible. This blind-spot is not particularly of interest here, but it may be of interest to note its effect. This is easily done by closing one eye and looking directly at one of two small black circles about two inches apart on white paper at a distance of about a foot from the eye. By moving the objects about until the image of the circle not directly looked at falls upon the blind-spot, this circle will disappear. A three-foot circle at a distance of 36 feet will completely disappear if its image falls directly upon the blind-spot. At a distance of 42 inches the invisible area is about 12 inches from the point of sight and about 3 to 4 inches in diameter. At 300 feet the area is about 8 feet in diameter. The actual size of the retinal blind-spot is about 0.05 inch in diameter or nearly 5 degrees. Binocular vision overcomes any annoyance due to the blind-spots because they do not overlap in the visual field. A one-eyed person is really totally blind for this portion of the retina or of the visual field.
The bacillary layer consists of so-called rods and cones. Only the rods function under very low intensities of illumination of the order of moonlight. The cones are sensitive to color and function only at intensities greater than what may be termed twilight intensities. These elements are very small but the fact that they appear to be connecting links between the retinal image and visual perception, acuity or discrimination of fine detail is limited inasmuch as the elements are of finite dimensions. The smallest image which will produce a visual impression is the size of the end of a cone. The smallest distance between two points which is visible at five inches is about 0.001 inch. Two cones must be stimulated in such a case. Fine lines may appear crooked because of the irregular disposition of these elemental light-sensitive points. This apparent crookedness of lines is an illusion which is directly due to the limitations of retinal elements of finite size.
The distribution of rods and cones over the retina is very important. In the fovea centralis--the point of the retina on the optical axis of the eye--is a slight depression much thinner than the remainder of the retina and this is inhabited chiefly by cones. It is this spot which provides visual acuteness. It is easily demonstrated that fine detail cannot be seen well defined outside this central portion of the visual field. When we desire to see an object distinctly we habitually turn the head so that the image of the object falls upon the fovea of each eye. Helmholtz has compared the foveal and lateral images with a finished drawing and a rough sketch respectively.
The fovea also contains a yellow pigmentation which makes this area of the retina selective as to color-vision. On viewing certain colors a difference in color of this central portion of the field is often very evident. In the outlying regions of the retina, rods predominate and in the intermediate zone both rods and cones are found. Inasmuch as rods are not sensitive to color and cones do not function at low intensities of illumination it is obvious that visual impressions should vary, depending upon the area of the retina stimulated. In fact, many interesting illusions are accounted for in this manner, some of which are discussed later.
It is well known that a faint star is seen best by averted vision. It may be quite invisible when the eye is directed toward it, that is, when its image falls upon the rod-free fovea. However, by averting the line of sight slightly, the image is caused to fall on a retinal area containing rods (sensitive to feeble light) and the star may be readily recognized. The fovea is the point of distinct focus. It is necessary for fixed thoughtful attention. It exists in the retina of man and of higher monkeys but it quickly disappears as we pass down the scale of animal life. It may be necessary for the safety of the lower animals that they see equally well over a large field; however, it appears advantageous that man give fixed and undivided attention to the object looked at. Man does not need to trust solely to his senses to protect himself from dangers. He uses his intellect to invent and to construct artificial defenses. Without the highly specialized fovea we might see equally well over the whole retina but could not look attentively at anything, and therefore could not observe thoughtfully.
When an image of a bright object exists upon the retina for a time there results a partial exhaustion or fatigue of the retinal processes with a result that an after-image is seen. This after-image may be bright for a time owing to the fact that it takes time for the retinal process to die out. Then there comes a reaction which is apparent when the eye is directed toward illuminated surfaces. The part of the retina which has been fatigued does not respond as fully as the fresher areas, with the result that the fatigued area contributes a darker area in the visual field. This is known as an after-image and there are many interesting variations.
The after-image usually undergoes a series of changes in color as well as in brightness as the retinal process readjusts itself. An after-image of a colored object may often appear of a color complementary to the color of the object. This is generally accounted for by fatigue of the retinal process. There are many conflicting theories of color-vision but they are not as conflicting in respect to the aspect of fatigue as in some other aspects. If the eye is directed toward a green surface for a time and then turned toward a white surface, the fatigue to green light diminishes the extent of response to the green rays in the light reflected by the white surface. The result is the perception of a certain area of the white surface (corresponding to the portion of the field fatigued by green light) as of a color equal to white minus some green--the result of which is pink or purple. This is easily understood by referring to the principles of color-mixture. Red, green, and blue (or violet) mixed in proper proportions will produce any color or tint and even white. Thus these may be considered to be the components of white light. Hence if the retina through fatigue is unable to respond fully to the green component, the result may be expressed mathematically as red plus blue plus reduced green, or synthetically a purplish white or pink. When fatigued to red light the after-image on a white surface is blue-green. When fatigued to blue light it is yellowish.
Further m |
36297-8 | ixtures may be obtained by directing the after-image upon colored surfaces. In this manner many of the interesting visual phenomena and illusions associated with the viewing of colors are accounted for. The influence of a colored environment upon a colored object is really very great. This is known as simultaneous contrast. The influence of the immediately previous history of the retina upon the perception of colored surfaces is also very striking. This is called successive contrast. It is interesting to note that an after-image produced by looking at a bright light-source, for example, is projected into space even with the eyes closed. It is instructive to study after-images and this may be done at any moment. On gazing at the sun for an instant and then looking away, an after-image is seen which passes in color from green, blue, purple, etc., and finally fades. For a time it is brighter than the background which may conveniently be the sky. On closing the eyes and placing the hands over them the background now is dark and the appearance of the after-image changes markedly. There are many kinds, effects, and variations of after-images, some of which are discussed in other chapters.
As the intensity of illumination of a landscape, for example, decreases toward twilight, the retina diminishes in sensibility to the rays of longer wave-lengths such as yellow, orange, and red. Therefore, it becomes relatively more sensitive to the rays of shorter wave-length such as green, blue, and violet. The effects of this Purkinje phenomenon (named after the discoverer) may be added to the class of illusions treated in this book. It is interesting to note in this connection that moonlight is represented on some paintings and especially on the stage as greenish blue in color, notwithstanding that physical measurements show it to be approximately the color of sunlight. In fact, it is sunlight reflected by dead, frigid, and practically colorless matter.
Some illusions may be directly traced to the structure of the eye under unusual lighting conditions. For example, in a dark room hold a lamp obliquely outward but near one eye (the other being closed and shielded) and forward sufficiently for the retina to be strongly illuminated. Move the lamp gently while gazing at a plain dark surface such as the wall. Finally the visual field appears dark, due to the intense illumination of the retina and there will appear, apparently projected upon the wall, an image resembling a branching leafless tree. These are really shadows of the blood vessels in the retina. The experiment is more successful if an image of a bright light-source is focused on the sclerotic near the cornea. If this image of the light-source is moved, the tree-like image seen in the visual field will also move.
The rate of growth and decay of various color-sensations varies considerably. By taking advantage of this fact many illusions can be produced. In fact, the careful observer will encounter many illusions which may be readily accounted for in this manner.
It may be said that in general the eyes are never at rest. Involuntary eye-movements are taking place all the time, at least during consciousness. Some have given this restlessness a major part in the process of vision but aside from the correctness of theories involving eye-movements, it is a fact that they are responsible for certain illusions. On a star-lit night if one lies down and looks up at a star the latter will be seen to appear to be swimming about more or less jerkily. On viewing a rapidly revolving wheel of an automobile as it proceeds down the street, occasionally it will be seen to cease revolving momentarily. These apparently are accounted for by involuntary eye-movements which take place regardless of the effort made to fixate vision.
If the eyelids are almost closed, streamers appear to radiate in various directions from a light-source. Movements of the eyelids when nearly closed sometimes cause objects to appear to move. These may be accounted for perhaps by the distortion of the moist film which covers the cornea.
The foregoing are only a few of the many visual phenomena due largely to the structure of the eye. The effects of these and many others enter into visual illusions, as will be seen here and there throughout the chapters which follow.
III
VISION
A description of the eye by no means suffices to clarify the visual process. Even the descriptions of various phenomena in the preceding chapter accomplish little more than to acquaint the reader with the operation of a mechanism, although they suggest the trend of the explanations of many illusions. At best only monocular vision has been treated, and it does not exist normally for human beings. A person capable only of monocular vision would be like Cyclops Polyphemus. We might have two eyes, or even, like Argus, possess a hundred eyes and still not experience the wonderful advantages of binocular vision, for each eye might see independently. The phenomena of binocular vision are far less physical than those of monocular vision. They are much more obscure, illusory, and perplexing because they are more complexly interwoven with or allied to psychological phenomena.
The sense of sight differs considerably from the other senses. The sense of touch requires solid contact (usually); taste involves liquid contact; smell, gaseous contact; and hearing depends upon a relay of vibrations from an object through another medium (usually air), resulting finally in contact. However, we perceive things at a distance through vibration (electromagnetic waves called light) conveyed by a subtle, intangible, universal medium which is unrecognizable excepting as a hypothetically necessary bearer of light-waves or, more generally, radiant energy.
It also is interesting to compare the subjectiveness and objectiveness of sensations. The sensation of taste is subjective; it is in us, not in the body tasted. In smell we perceive the sensation in the nose and by experience refer it to an object at a distance. The sensation of hearing is objective; that is, we refer the cause to an object so completely that there is practically no consciousness of sensation in the ear. In sight the impression is so completely projected outward into space and there is so little consciousness of any occurrence in the eye that it is extremely difficult to convince ourselves that it is essentially a subjective sensation. The foregoing order represents the sense-organs in increasing specialization and refinement. In the two higher senses--sight and hearing--there is no direct contact with the object and an intricate mechanism is placed in front of the specialized nerve to define and to intensify the impression. In the case of vision this highly developed instrument makes it possible to see not only _light_ but _objects_.
As we go up the scale of vertebrate animals we find that there is a gradual change of the position of the eyes from the sides to the front of the head and a change of the inclination of the optical axes of the two eyes from 180 degrees to parallel. There is also evident a gradual increase in the fineness of the bacillary layer of the retina from the margins toward the center, and, therefore, an increasing accuracy in the perception of form. This finally results in a highly organized central spot or fovea which is possessed only by man and the higher monkeys. Proceeding up the scale we also find an increasing ability to converge the optic axes on a near point so that the images of the point may coincide with the central spots of both retinas. These changes and others are closely associated with each other and especially with the development of the higher faculties of the mind.
Binocular vision in man and in the higher animals is the last result of the gradual improvement of the most refined sense-organ, adapting it to meet the requirements of highly complex organisms. It cannot exist in some animals, such as birds and fishes, because they cannot converge their two optical axes upon a near point. When a chicken wishes to look intently at an object it turns its head and looks with one eye. Such an animal sees with two eyes independently and possibly moves them independently. The normal position of the axes of human eyes is convergent or parallel but it is possible to diverge the axes. In fact, with practice it is possible to diverge the axes sufficiently to look at a point near the back of the head, although, of course, we do not see the point.
The movement of the eyes is rather complex. When they move together to one side or the other or up and down in a vertical plane there is no rotation of the optical axes; that is, no torsion. When the visual plane is elevated and the eyes move to the right they rotate to the right; when they move to the left they rotate to the left. When the visual plane is depressed and the eyes move to the right they rotate to the left; when they move to the left they rotate to the right. Through experience we unconsciously evaluate the muscular stresses, efforts, and movements accompanying the motion of the eyes and thereby interpret much through visual perception in regard to such aspects of the external world as size, shape, and distance of objects. Even this brief glimpse of the principal movements of the eyes indicates a complexity which suggests the intricacy of the explanations of certain visual phenomena.
At this point it appears advantageous to set down the principal modes by which we perceive the third dimension of space and of objects and other aspects of the external world. They are as follows: (1) extent; (2) clearness of brightness and color as affected by distance; (3) interference of near objects with those more distant; (4) elevation of objects; (5) variation of light and shade on objects; (6) cast shadows; (7) perspective; (8) variation of the visor angle in proportion to distance; (9) muscular effort attending accommodation of the eye; (10) stereoscopic vision; (11) muscular effort attending convergence of the axes of the eyes. It will be recognized that only the last two are necessarily concerned with binocular vision. These varieties of experiences may be combined in almost an infinite variety of proportions.
Wundt in his attempt to explain visual perception considered chiefly three factors: (1) the retinal image of the eye at rest; (2) the influence of the movements of one eye; and, (3) the additional data furnished by the two eyes functioning together. There are three fields of vision corresponding to the foregoing. These are the retinal field of vision, the monocular field, and the binocular field. The retinal field of vision is that of an eye at rest as compared with the monocular field, which is all that can be seen with one eye in its entire range of movement and therefore of experience. The retinal field has no clearly defined boundaries because it finally fades at its indefinite periphery into a region where sensation ceases.
It might be tiresome to follow detailed analyses of the many modes by which visual perception is attained, so only a few generalizations will be presented. For every voluntary act of sight there are two adjustments of the eyes, namely, focal and axial. In the former case the ciliary muscle adjusts the lens in order to produce a defined image upon the retina. In axial adjustments the two eyes are turned by certain muscles so that their axes meet on the object looked at and the images of the object fall on the central-spots of the retina. These take place together without distinct volition for each but by the single voluntary act of _looking_. Through experience the intellect has acquired a wonderful capacity to interpret such factors as size, form, and distance in terms of the muscular movements in general without the observer being conscious of such interpretations.
Binocular vision is easily recognized by holding a finger before the eyes and looking at a point beyond it. The result is two apparently transparent fingers. An object is seen single when the two retinal images fall on corresponding points. Direction is a primary datum of sense. The property of corresponding points of the two retinas (binocular vision) and consequently of identical spatial points in the two visual fields is not so simple. It is still a question whether corresponding points (that is, the existence of a corresponding point in one retina for each point in the other retina) are innate, instinctive, and are antecedent of experience or are "paired" as the result of experience. The one view results in the _nativistic_, the other in the _empiristic_ theory. Inasmuch as some scientists are arrayed on one side and some on the other, it appears futile to dwell further upon this aspect. It must suffice to state that binocular vision, which consists of two retinas and consequently two fields of view absolutely coördinated in some manner in the brain, yields extensive information concerning space and its contents.
After noting after-images, motes floating in the field of view (caused by defects in the eye-media) and various other things, it is evident that what we call the field of view is the external projection into space of retinal states. All the variations of the latter, such as images and shadows which are produced in the external field of one eye, are faithfully reproduced in the external field of the other eye. This sense of an external visual field is ineradicable. Even when the eyes are closed the external field is still there; the imagination or intellect projects it outward. Objects at different distances cannot be seen distinctly at the same time but by interpreting the eye-movements as the point of sight is run backward and forward (varying convergence of the axes) the intellect practically automatically appraises the size, form, and distance of each object. Obviously, experience is a prominent factor. The perception of the third dimension, depth or relative distance, whether in a single object or a group of objects, is the result of the successive combination of the different parts of two dissimilar images of the object or group.
As already stated, the perception of distance, size, and form is based partly upon monocular and partly upon binocular vision, and the simple elements upon which judgments of these are based are light, shade, color, intensity, and direction. Although the interpretation of muscular adjustments plays a prominent part in the formation of judgments, the influences of mathematical perspective, light, shade, color, and intensity are more direct. Judgments based upon focal adjustment (monocular) are fairly accurate at distances from five inches to several yards. Those founded upon axial adjustment (convergence of the two axes in binocular vision) are less in error than the preceding ones. They are reliable to a distance of about 1000 feet. Judgments involving mathematical perspective are of relatively great accuracy without limits. Those arrived at by interpreting aerial perspective (haziness of atmosphere, reduction in color due to atmospheric absorption, etc.) are merely estimates liable to large errors, the accuracy depending largely upon experience with local conditions.
The measuring power of the eye is more liable to error when the distances or the objects compared lie in different directions. A special case is the comparison of a vertical distance with a horizontal one. It is not uncommon to estimate a vertical distance as much as 25 per cent greater than an actually equal horizontal distance. In general, estimates of direction and distance are comparatively inaccurate when only one eye is used although a one-eyed person acquires unusual ability through a keener experience whetted by necessity. A vertical line drawn perpendicular to a horizontal one is likely to appear bent when viewed with one eye. Its apparent inclination is variable but has been found to vary from one to three degrees. Monocular vision is likely to cause straight lines to appear crooked, although the "crookedness" may seem to be more or less unstable.
The error in the estimate of size is in reality an error in the estimation of distance except in those cases where the estimate is based directly upon a comparison with an object of supposedly known size. An amusing incident is told of an old negro who was hunting for squirrels. He shot several times at what he supposed to be a squirrel upon a tree-trunk and his failure to make a kill was beginning to weaken his rather ample opinion of his skill as a marksman. A complete shattering of his faith in his skill was only escaped by the discovery that the "squirrel" was a louse upon his eyebrow. Similarly, a gnat in the air might appear to be an airplane under certain favorable circumstances. It is interesting to note that the estimated size of the disk of the sun or moon varies from the size of a saucer to that of the end of a barrel, although a pine tree at the horizon-line may be estimated as 25 feet across despite the fact that it may be entirely included in the disk of the sun setting behind it.
Double images play an important part in the comparison of distances of objects. The "doubling" of objects is only equal to the interocular distance. Suppose two horizontal wires or clotheslines about fifty feet away and one a few feet beyond the other. On looking at these no double images are visible and it is difficult or even impossible to see which is the nearer when the points of attachment of the ends are screened from view. However, if the head is turned to one side and downward (90 degrees) so that the interocular line is now at right angles (vertical) to the horizontal lines, the relative distances of the latter are brought out distinctly. Double images become visible in the latter case.
According to Brücke's theory the eyes are continuously in motion and the observer by alternately increasing or decreasing the convergence of the axes of the eyes, combines successively the different parts of the two scenes as seen by the two eyes and by running the point of sight back and forth by trial obtains a distinct perception of binocular perspective or relief or depth of space. It may be assumed that experience has made the observer proficient in this appraisal which he arrives at almost unconsciously, although it may be just as easy to accept Wheatstone's explanation. In fact, some experiences with the stereoscope appear to support the latter theory.
Wheatstone discovered that the dissimilar pictures of an object or scene, when united by means of optical systems, produce a visual effect similar to that produced by the actual solid object or scene provided the dissimilarity is the same as that between two retinal images of the solid object or scene. This is the principle upon which the familiar stereoscope is founded. Wheatstone formulated a theory which may be briefly stated as follows: In viewing a solid object or a scene two slightly dissimilar retinal images are formed in the two eyes respectively, but the mind completely fuses them into one "mental" image. When this mental fusion of the two really dissimilar retinal images is complete in this way, it is obvious that there cannot exist a mathematical coincidence. The result is a perception of depth of space, of solidity, of relief. In fact the third dimension is perceived. A stereoscope accomplishes this in essentially the same manner, for two pictures, taken from two different positions respectively corresponding to the positions of the eyes, are combined by means of optical systems into one image.
Lack of correct size and position of the individual elements of stereoscopic pictures are easily detected on combining them. That is, their dissimilarity must exactly correspond to that between two views of an object or scene from the positions of the two eyes respectively (Fig. 2). This fact has been made use of in detecting counterfeit notes. If two notes made from the same plate are viewed in a stereoscope and the identical figures are combined, the combination is perfect and the plane of the combined images is perfectly flat. If the notes are not made from the same plate but one of them is counterfeit, slight variations in the latter are unavoidable. Such variations will show themselves in a wavy surface.
The unwillingness of the visual sense to combine the two retinal images, if they are dissimilar to the extent of belonging to two different objects, is emphasized by means of colors. For example, if a green glass is placed over one eye and a red glass over the other, the colors are not mixed by the visual sense. The addition of these two colors results normally in yellow, with little or no suggestion of the components--red and green. But in the foregoing case the visual field does not appear of a uniform yellow. It appears alternately red and green, as though the colors were rivaling each other for complete mastery. In fact, this phenomenon has been termed "retinal rivalry."
The lenses of the stereoscope supplement eye-lenses and project on the retina two perfect images of a near object, although the eyes are looking at a distant object and are therefore not accommodated for the near one (the photographs). The lenses enlarge the images similar to the action of a perspective glass. This completes the illusion of an object or of a scene. There is a remarkable distinctness of the perception of depth of space and therefore a wonderful resemblance to the actual object or scene. It is interesting to note the effect of taking the two original photographs from distances separated by several feet. The effect is apparently to magnify depth. It is noteworthy that two pictures taken from an airplane at points fifty feet or so apart, when combined in the stereoscope, so magnify the depth that certain enemy-works can be more advantageously detected than from ordinary photographs.
Stereoscopic images such as represented in Fig. 2 may be combined without the aid of the stereoscope if the optical axes of the eye can be sufficiently converged or diverged. Such images or pictures are usually upon a card and are intended to be combined beyond the plane of the card, for it is in this position that the object or scene can be perceived in natural perspective, of natural size, of natural form, and at natural distance. But in combining them the eyes are looking at a distant object and the axes are parallel or nearly so. Therefore, the eyes are focally adjusted for a distant object but the light comes from a very near object--the pictures on the card. Myopic eyes do not experience this difficulty and it appears that normal vision may be trained to overcome it. Normal eyes are aided by using slightly convex lenses. Such glasses supplement the lenses of the eye, making possible a clear vision of a near object while the eyes are really looking far away or, in other words, making possible a clear image of a near object upon the retina of the unadjusted eye. Stereoscopic pictures are usually so mounted that "identical points" on the two pictures are farther apart than the interocular distance and therefore the two images cannot be combined when the optical axes of the eyes are parallel or nearly so, which is the condition when looking at a distant object. In such a case the two pictures must be brought closer together.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.--Stereoscopic pictures for combining by converging or diverging the optical axes.]
[Illustration: Fig. 3.--Stereoscopic pictures.]
In Figs. 2 and 3 are found "dissimilar" drawings of the correct dissimilarity of stereoscopic pictures. It is interesting and instructive to practice combining these with the unaided eyes. If Fig. 2 is held at an arm's length and the eyes are focused upon a point several inches distant, the axes will be sufficiently converged so that the two images are superposed. It may help to focus the eyes upon the tip of a finger until the stereoscopic images are combined. In this case of converging axes the final combined result will be the appearance of a hollow tube or of a shell of a truncated cone, apparently possessing the third dimension and being perceived as apparently smaller than the actual pictures in the background at arm's length. If the two stereoscopic pictures are combined by looking at a point far beyond the actual position of Fig. 2, the combined effect is a solid truncated cone but perceived as of about the same size and at about the same distance from the eye as the actual diagrams. In the latter case the smaller end of the apparent solid appears to be nearer than the larger end, but in the former case the reverse is true, that is, the smaller end appears to be at a greater distance. The same experiments may be performed for Fig. 3 with similar results excepting that this appears to be a shell under the same circumstances that Fig. 2 appears to be a solid and vice versa. A few patient trials should be rewarded by success, and if so the reader can gain much more understanding from the actual experiences than from description.
The foregoing discussion of vision should indicate the complexity of the visual and mental activities involved in the discrimination, association, and interpretation of the data obtained through the eye. The psychology of visual perception is still a much controverted domain but it is believed that the glimpses of the process of vision which have been afforded are sufficient to enable the reader to understand many illusions and at least to appreciate more fully those whose explanations remain in doubt. Certainly these glimpses and a knowledge of the information which visual perception actually supplies to us at any moment should convince us that the visual sense has acquired an incomparable facility for interpreting the objective world for us. Clearness of vision is confined to a small area about the point of sight, and it rapidly diminishes away from this point, images becoming dim and double. We sweep this point of sight backward and forward and over an extensive field of view, gathering all the distinct impressions into one mental image. In doing this the unconscious interpretation of the muscular activity attending accommodation and convergence of the eyes aids in giving to this mental picture the appearance of depth by establishing relative distances of various objects. Certainly the acquired facility is remarkable.
IV
SOME TYPES OF GEOMETRICAL ILLUSIONS
No simple classification of illusions is ample or satisfactory, for there are many factors interwoven. For this reason no claims are made for the various divisions of the subject represented by and in these chapters excepting that of convenience. Obviously, some divisions are necessary in order that the variegated subject may be presentable. The classification used appears to be logical but very evidently it cannot be perfectly so when the "logic" is not wholly available, owing to the disagreement found among the explanations offered by psychologists. It may be argued that the "geometrical" type of illusion should include many illusions which are discussed in other chapters. Indeed, this is perhaps true. However, it appears to suit the present purpose to introduce this phase of this book by a group of illusions which involve plane geometrical figures. If some of the latter appear in other chapters, it is because they seem to border upon or to include other factors beyond those apparently involved in the simple geometrical type. The presentation which follows begins (for the sake of clearness) with a few representative geometrical illusions of various types.
_The Effect of the Location in the Visual Field._--One of the most common illusions is found in the letter "S" or figure "8." Ordinarily we are not strongly conscious of a difference in the size of the upper and lower parts of these characters; however, if we invert them (8888 SSSS) the difference is seen to be large. The question arises, Is the difference due fundamentally to the locations of the two parts in the visual field? It scarcely seems credible that visual perception innately appraises the upper part larger than the lower, or the lower smaller than the upper part when these small characters are seen in their accustomed position. It appears to be possible that here we have examples of the effect of learning or experience and that our adaptive visual sense has become accustomed to overlook the actual difference. That is, for some reason through being confronted with this difference so many times, the intellect has become adapted to it and, therefore, has grown to ignore it. Regardless of the explanation, the illusion exists and this is the point of chief interest. For the same reason the curvature of the retina does not appear to account for illusion through distortion of the image, because the training due to experience has caused greater difficulties than this to disappear. We must not overlook the tremendous "corrective" influence of experience upon which visual perception for the adult is founded. If we have learned to "correct" in some cases, why not in all cases which we have encountered quite generally?
[Illustration: Fig. 4.--The vertical line appears longer than the equal horizontal line in each case.]
This type of illusion persists in geometrical figures and may be found on every hand. A perfect square when viewed vertically appears too high, although the illusion does not appear to exist in the circle. In Fig. 4 the vertical line appears longer than the horizontal line of the same length. This may be readily demonstrated by the reader by means of a variety of figures. A striking case is found in Fig. 5, where the height and the width of the diagram of a silk hat are equal. Despite the actual equality the height appears to be much greater than the width. A pole or a tree is generally appraised as of greater length when it is standing than when it lies on the ground. This illusion may be demonstrated by placing a black dot an inch or so above another on a white paper. Now, at right angles to the original dot place another at a horizontal distance which appears equal to the vertical distance of the first dot above the original. On turning the paper through ninety degrees or by actual measurement, the extent of the illusion will become apparent. By doing this several times, using various distances, this type of illusion becomes convincing.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.--The vertical dimension is equal to the horizontal one, but the former appears greater.]
The explanation accepted by some is that more effort is required to raise the eyes, or point of sight, through a certain vertical distance than through an equal horizontal distance. Perhaps we unconsciously appraise effort of this sort in terms of distance, but is it not logical to inquire why we have not through experience learned to sense the difference between the relation of effort to horizontal distance and that of effort to vertical distance through which the point of sight is moved? We are doing this continuously, so why do we not learn to distinguish; furthermore, we have overcome other great obstacles in developing our visual sense. In this complex field of physiological psychology questions are not only annoying, but often disruptive.
As has been pointed out in Chapter II, images of objects lying near the periphery of the visual field are more or less distorted, owing to the structure and to certain defects of parts of the eye. For example, a checkerboard viewed at a proper distance with respect to its size appears quite distorted in its outer regions. Cheap cameras are likely to cause similar errors in the images fixed upon the photographic plate. Photographs are interesting in connection with visual illusions, because of certain distortions and of the magnification of such aspects as perspective. Incidentally in looking for illusions, difficulty is sometimes experienced in seeing them when the actual physical truths are known; that is, in distinguishing between what is actually seen and what actually exists. The ability to make this separation grows with practice but where the difficulty is obstinate, it is well for the reader to try observers who do not suspect the truth.
_Illusions of Interrupted Extent._--Distance and area appear to vary in extent, depending upon whether they are filled or empty or are only partially filled. For example, a series of dots will generally appear longer overall than an equal distance between two points. This may be easily demonstrated by arranging three dots in a straight line on paper, the two intervening spaces being of equal extent, say about one or two inches long. If in one of the spaces a series of a dozen dots is placed, this space will appear longer than the empty space. However, if only one dot is placed in the middle of one of the empty spaces, this space now is likely to appear of less extent than the empty space. (See Fig. 7.) A specific example of this type of illusion is shown in Fig. 6. The filled or divided space generally appears greater than the empty or undivided space, but certain qualifications of this statement are necessary. In _a_ the divided space unquestionably appears greater than the empty space. Apparently the filled or empty space is more important than the amount of light which is received from the clear spaces, for a black line on white paper appears longer than a white space between two points separated a distance equal to the length of the black line. Furthermore, apparently the spacing which is the most obtrusive is most influential in causing the divided space to appear greater for _a_ than for _b_. The illusion still persists in _c_.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.--The divided or filled space on the left appears longer than the equal space on the right.]
An idea of the magnitude may be gained from certain experiments by Aubert. He used a figure similar to _a_ Fig. 6 containing a total of five short lines. Four of them were equally spaced over a distance of 100 mm. corresponding to the left half of _a_, Fig. 6. The remaining line was placed at the extreme right and defined the limit of an empty space also 100 mm. long. In all cases, the length of the empty space appeared about ten per cent less than that of the space occupied by the four lines equally spaced. Various experimenters obtain different results, and it seems reasonable that the differences may be accounted for, partially at least, by different degrees of unconscious correction of the illusion. This emphasizes the desirability of using subjects for such experiments who have no knowledge pertaining to the illusion.
[Illustration: Fig. 7.--The three lines are of equal length.]
[Illustration: Fig. 8.--The distance between the two circles on the left is equal to the distance between the outside edges of the two circles on the right.]
As already stated there are apparent exceptions to any simple rule, for, as in the case of dots cited in a preceding paragraph, the illusion depends upon the manner in which the division is made. For example, in Fig. 7, _a_ and _c_ are as likely to appear shorter than _b_ as equal to it. It has been concluded by certain investigators that when subdivision of a line causes it to appear longer, the parts into which it is divided or some of them are likely to appear shorter than isolated lines of the same length. The reverse of this statement also appears to hold. For example in Fig. 7, _a_ appears shorter than _b_ and the central part appears lengthened, although the total line appears shortened. This illusion is intensified by leaving the central section blank. A figure of this sort can be readily drawn by the reader by using short straight lines in place of the circles in Fig. 8. In this figure the space between the inside edges of the two circles on the left appears larger than the overall distance between the outside edges of the two circles on the right, despite the fact that these distances are equal. It appears that mere intensity of retinal stimulation does not account for these illusions, but rather the figures which we see.
[Illustration: Fig. 9.--Three squares of equal dimensions which appear different in area and dimension.]
In Fig. 9 the three squares are equal in dimensions but the different characters of the divisions cause them to appear not only unequal, but no longer squares. In Fig. 10 the distance between the outside edges of the three circles arranged horizontally appears greater than the empty space between the upper circle and the left-hand circle of the group.
[Illustration: Fig. 10.--The vertical distance between the upper circle and the left-hand one of the group is equal to the overall length of the group of three circles.]
_Illusions of Contour._--The illusions of this type, or exhibiting this influence, are quite numerous. In Fig. 11 there are two semicircles, one closed by a diameter, the other unclosed. The latter appears somewhat flatter and of slightly greater radius than the closed one. Similarly in Fig. 12 the shorter portion of the interrupted circumference of a circle appears flatter and of greater radius of curvature than the greater portions. In Fig. 13 the length of the middle space and of the open-sided squares are equal. In fact there are two uncompleted squares and an empty "square" between, the three of which are of equal dimensions. However the middle space appears slightly too high and narrow; the other two appear slightly too low and broad. These figures are related to the well-known Müller-Lyer illusion illustrated in Fig. 56. Some of the illusions presented later will be seen to involve the influence of contour. Examples of these are Figs. 55 and 60. In the former, the horizontal base line appears to sag; in the latter, the areas appear unequal, but they are equal.
[Illustration: Fig. 11.--Two equal semicircles.]
[Illustration: Fig. 12.--Arcs of the same circle.]
[Illustration: Fig. 13.--Three incomplete but equal squares.]
_Illusions of Contrast._--Those illusions due to brightness contrast are not included in this group, for "contrast" here refers to lines, angles and areas of different sizes. In general, parts adjacent to large extents appear smaller and those adjacent to small extents appear larger. A simple case is shown in Fig. 14, where the middle sections of the two lines are equal, but that of the shorter line appears longer than that of the longer line. In Fig. 15 the two parts of the connecting line are equal, but they do not appear so. This illusion is not as positive as the preceding one and, in fact, the position of the short vertical dividing line may appear to fluctuate considerably.
[Illustration: Fig. 14.--Middle sections of the two lines are equal.]
[Illustration: Fig. 15.--An effect of contrasting areas (Baldwin's figure).]
Fig. 16 might be considered to be an illusion of contour, but the length of the top horizontal line of the lower figure being apparently less than that of the top line of the upper figure is due largely to contrasting the two figures. Incidentally, it is difficult to believe that the maximum horizontal width of the lower figure is as great as the maximum height of the figure. At this point it is of interest to refer to other contrast illusions such as Figs. 20, 57, and 59.
[Illustration: Fig. 16.--An illusion of contrast.]
A striking illusion of contrast is shown in Fig. 17, where the central circles of the two figures are equal, although the one surrounded by the large circles appears much smaller than the other. Similarly, in Fig. 18 the inner circles of _b_ and _c_ are equal but that of _b_ appears the larger. The inner circle of _a_ appears larger than the outer circle of _b_, despite their actual equality.
[Illustration: Fig. 17.--Equal circles which appear unequal due to contrast (Ebbinghaus' figure).]
[Illustration: Fig. 18.--Equal circles appearing unequal owing to contrasting concentric circles.]
In Fig. 19 the circle nearer the apex of the angle appears larger than the other. This has been presented as one reason why the sun and moon appear larger at the horizon than when at higher altitudes. This explanation must be based upon the assumption that we interpret the "vault" of the sky to meet at the horizon in a manner somewhat similar to the angle but it is difficult to imagine such an angle made by the vault of the sky and the earth's horizon. If there were one in reality, it would not be seen in profile.
[Illustration: Fig. 19.--Circles influenced by position within an angle.]
[Illustration: Fig. 20.--Contrasting angles.]
If two angles of equal size are bounded by small and large angles respectively, the apex in each case being common to the inner and two bounding angles, the effect of contrast is very apparent, as seen in Fig. 20. In Fig. 57 are found examples of effects of lines contrasted as to length.
[Illustration: Fig. 21.--Owing to perspective the right angles appear oblique and vice versa.]
The reader may readily construct an extensive variety of illusions of contrast; in fact, contrast plays a part in most geometrical-optical illusions. The contrasts may be between existing lines, areas, etc., or the imagination may supply some of them.
[Illustration: Fig. 22.--Two equal diagonals which appear unequal.]
_Illusions of Perspective._--As the complexity of figures is increased the number of possible illusions is multiplied. In perspective we have the influences of various factors such as lines, angles, and sometimes contour and contrast. In Fig. 21 the suggestion due to the perspective of the cube causes right angles to appear oblique and oblique angles to appear to be right angles. This figure is particularly illusive. It is interesting to note that even an after-image of a right-angle cross when projected upon a wall drawn in perspective in a painting will appear oblique.
[Illustration: Fig. 23.--Apparent variations in the distance between two parallel lines.]
A striking illusion involving perspective, or at least the influence of angles, is shown in Fig. 22. Here the diagonals of the two parallelograms are of equal length but the one on the right appears much smaller. That _AX_ is equal in length to _AY_ is readily demonstrated by describing a circle from the center _A_ and with a radius equal to _AX_. It will be found to pass through the point _Y_. Obviously, geometry abounds in geometrical-optical illusions.
[Illustration: Fig. 24.--A striking illusion of perspective.]
The effect of contrast is seen in _a_ in Fig. 23; that is, the short parallel lines appear further apart than the pair of long ones. By adding the oblique lines at the ends of the lower pair in _b_, these parallel lines now appear further apart than the horizontal parallel lines of the small rectangle.
The influence of perspective is particularly apparent in Fig. 24, where natural perspective lines are drawn to suggest a scene. The square columns are of the same size but the further one, for example, being apparently the most distant and of the same physical dimensions, actually appears much larger. Here is a case where experience, allowing for a diminution of size with increasing distance, actually causes the column on the right to appear larger than it really is. The artist will find this illusion even more striking if he draws three human figures of the same size but similarly disposed in respect to perspective lines. Apparently converging lines influence these equal figures in proportion as they suggest perspective.
[Illustration: Fig. 25.--Distortion of a square due to superposed lines.]
Although they are not necessarily illusions of perspective, Figs. 25 and 26 are presented here because they involve similar influences. In Fig. 25 the hollow square is superposed upon groups of oblique lines so arranged as to apparently distort the square. In Fig. 26 distortions of the circumference of a circle are obtained in a similar manner.
[Illustration: Fig. 26.--Distortion of a circle due to superposed lines.]
It is interesting to note that we are not particularly conscious of perspective, but it is seen that it has been a factor in the development of our visual perception. In proof of this we might recall the first time as children we were asked to draw a railroad track trailing off in the distance. Doubtless, most of us drew two parallel lines instead of converging ones. A person approaching us is not sensibly perceived to grow. He is more likely to be perceived all the time as of normal size. The finger held at some distance may more than cover the object such as a distant person, but the finger is not ordinarily perceived as larger than the person. Of course, when we think of it we are conscious of perspective and of the increase in size of an approaching object. When a locomotive or automobile approaches very rapidly, this "growth" is likely to be so striking as to be generally noticeable. The reader may find it of interest at this point to turn to illustrations in other chapters.
The foregoing are a few geometrical illusions of representative types. These are not all the types of illusions by any means and they are only a few of an almost numberless host. These have been presented in a brief classification in order that the reader might not be overwhelmed by the apparent chaos. Various special and miscellaneous geometrical illusions are presented in later chapters.
V
EQUIVOCAL FIGURES
Many figures apparently change in appearance owing to fluctuations in attention and in associations. A human profile in intaglio (Figs. 72 and 73) may appear as a bas-relief. Crease a card in the middle to form an angle and hold it at an arm's length. When viewed with one eye it can be made to appear open in one way or the other; that is, the angle may be made to appear pointing toward the observer or away from him. The more distant part of an object may be made to appear nearer than the remaining part. Plane diagrams may seem to be solids. Deception of this character is quite easy if the light-source and other extraneous factors are concealed from the observer. It is very interesting to study these fluctuating figures and to note the various extraneous data which lead us to judge correctly. Furthermore, it becomes obvious that often we see what we expect to see. For example, we more commonly encounter relief than intaglio; therefore, we are likely to think that we are looking at the former.
Proper consideration of the position of the dominant light-source and of the shadows will usually provide the data for a correct conclusion. However, habit and probability are factors whose influence is difficult to overcome. Our perception is strongly associated with accustomed ways of seeing objects and when the object is once suggested it grasps our mind completely in its stereotyped form. Stairs, glasses, rings, cubes, and intaglios are among the objects commonly used to illustrate this type of illusion. In connection with this type, it is well to realize how tenaciously we cling to our perception of the real shapes of objects. For example, a cube thrown into the air in such a manner that it presents many aspects toward us is throughout its course a cube.
[Illustration: Fig. 27.--Illustrating fluctuation of attention.]
The figures which exhibit these illusions are obviously those which are capable of two or more spatial relations. The double interpretation is more readily accomplished by monocular than by binocular vision. Fig. 27 consists of identical patterns in black and white. By gazing upon this steadily it will appear to fluctuate in appearance from a white pattern upon a black background to a black pattern upon a white background. Sometimes fluctuation of attention apparently accounts for the change and, in fact, this can be tested by willfully altering the attention from a white pattern to a black one. Incidentally one investigator found that the maximum rate of fluctuation was approximately equal to the pulse rate, although no connection between the two was claimed. It has also been found that inversion is accompanied by a change in refraction of the eye.
[Illustration: Fig. 28.--The grouping of the circles fluctuates.]
Another example is shown in Fig. 28. This may appear to be white circles upon a black background or a black mesh upon a white background. However, the more striking phenomenon is the change in the grouping of the circles as attention fluctuates. We may be conscious of hollow diamonds of circles, one inside the other, and then suddenly the pattern may change to groups of diamonds consisting of four circles each. Perhaps we may be momentarily conscious of individual circles; then the pattern may change to a hexagonal one, each "hexagon" consisting of seven circles--six surrounding a central one. The pattern also changes into parallel strings of circles, triangles, etc.
[Illustration: Fig. 29.--Crossed lines which may be interpreted in two ways.]
The crossed lines in Fig. 29 can be seen as right angles in perspective with two different spatial arrangements of one or both lines. In fact there is quite a tendency to see such crossed lines as right angles in perspective. The two groups on the right represent a simplified Zöllner's illusion (Fig. 37). The reader may find it interesting to spend some time viewing these figures and in exercising his ability to fluctuate his attention. In fact, he must call upon his imagination in these cases. Sometimes the changes are rapid and easy to bring about. At other moments he will encounter an aggravating stubbornness. Occasionally there may appear a conflict of two appearances simultaneously in the same figure. The latter may be observed occasionally in Fig. 30. Eye-movements are brought forward by some to aid in explaining the changes.
[Illustration: Fig. 30.--Reversible cubes.]
In Fig. 30 a reversal of the aspect of the individual cubes or of their perspective is very apparent. At rare moments the effect of perspective may be completely vanquished and the figure be made to appear as a plane crossed by strings of white diamonds and zigzag black strips.
The illusion of the bent card or partially open book is seen in Fig. 31. The tetrahedron in Fig. 32 may appear either as erect on its base or as leaning backward with its base seen from underneath.
[Illustration: Fig. 31.--The reversible "open book" (after Mach).]
[Illustration: Fig. 32.--A reversible tetrahedron.]
The series of rings in Fig. 33 may be imagined to form a tube such as a sheet-metal pipe with its axis lying in either of two directions. Sometimes by closing one eye the two changes in this type of illusion are more readily brought about. It is also interesting to close and open each eye alternately, at the same time trying to note just where the attention is fixed.
The familiar staircase is represented in Fig. 34. It is likely to appear in its usual position and then suddenly to invert. It may aid in bringing about the reversal to insist that one end of a step is first nearer than the other and then farther away. By focusing the attention in this manner the fluctuation becomes an easy matter to obtain.
[Illustration: Fig. 33.--Reversible perspective of a group of rings or of a tube.]
[Illustration: Fig. 34.--Schröder's reversible staircase.]
In Fig. 35 is a similar example. First one part will appear solid and the other an empty corner, then suddenly both are reversed. However, it is striking to note one half changes while the other remains unchanged, thus producing momentarily a rather peculiar figure consisting of two solids, for example, attached by necessarily warped surfaces.
[Illustration: Fig. 35.--Thiéry's figure.]
Perhaps the reader has often witnessed the striking illusion of some portraits which were made of subjects looking directly at the camera or painter. Regardless of the position of the observer the eyes of the portrait appear to be directed toward him. In fact, as the observer moves, the eyes in the picture follow him so relentlessly as to provoke even a feeling of uncanniness. This fact is accounted for by the absence of a third dimension, for a sculptured model of a head does not exhibit this feature. Perspective plays a part in some manner, but no attempt toward explanation will be made.
In Fig. 36 are two sketches of a face. One appears to be looking at the observer, but the other does not. If the reader will cover the lower parts of the two figures, leaving only the two pairs of eyes showing, both pairs will eventually appear to be looking at the observer. Perhaps the reader will be conscious of mental effort and the lapse of a few moments before the eyes on the left are made to appear to be looking directly at him. Although it is not claimed that this illusion is caused by the same conditions as those immediately preceding, it involves attention. At least, it is fluctuating in appearance and therefore is equivocal. It is interesting to note the influence of the other features (below the eyes). The perspective of these is a powerful influence in "directing" the eyes of the sketch.
In the foregoing only definite illusions have been presented which are universally witnessed by normal persons. There are no hallucinatory phases in the conditions or causes. It is difficult to divide these with definiteness from certain illusions of depth as discussed in Chapter VII. The latter undoubtedly are sometimes entwined to some extent with hallucinatory phases; in fact, it is doubtful if they are not always hallucinations to some degree. Hallucinations are not of interest from the viewpoint of this book, but illusions of depth are treated because they are of interest. They are either hallucinations or are on the border-line between hallucinations and those illusions which are almost universally experienced by normal persons under similar conditions. The latter statement does not hold for illusions of depth in which objects may be seen alternately near and far, large and small, etc., although they are not necessarily pure hallucinations as distinguished from the types of illusions regarding which there is general perceptual agreement.
[Illustration: Fig. 36.--Illustrating certain influences upon the apparent direction of vision. By covering all but the eyes the latter appear to be drawn alike in both sketches.]
In explanation of the illusory phenomena pertaining to such geometrical figures as are discussed in the foregoing paragraphs, chiefly two different kinds of hypotheses have been offered. They are respectively psychological and physiological, although there is more or less of a mixture of the two in most attempts toward explanation. The psychological hypotheses introduce such factors as attention, imagination, judgment, and will. Hering and also Helmholtz claim that the kind of inversion which occurs is largely a matter of chance or of volition. The latter holds that the perception of perspective figures is influenced by imagination or the images of memory. That is, if one form of the figure is vividly imagined the perception of it is imminent. Helmholtz has stated that, "Glancing at a figure we observe spontaneously one or the other form of perspective and usually the one that is associated in our memory with the greatest number of images."
The physiological hypotheses depend largely upon such factors as accommodation and eye-movement. Necker held to the former as the chief cause. He has stated that the part of the figure whose image lies near the fovea is estimated as nearer than those portions in the peripheral regions of the visual field. This hypothesis is open to serious objections. Wundt contends that the inversion is caused by changes in the points and lines of fixation. He says, "The image of the retina ought to have a determined position if a perspective illusion is to appear; but the form of this illusion is entirely dependent on motion and direction." Some hypotheses interweave the known facts of the nervous system with psychological facts but some of these are examples of a common anomaly in theorization, for facts plus facts do not necessarily result in a correct theory. That is, two sets of facts interwoven do not necessarily yield an explanation which is correct.
VI
THE INFLUENCE OF ANGLES
As previously stated, no satisfactory classification of visual illusions exists, but in order to cover the subject, divisions are necessary. For this reason the reader is introduced in this chapter to the effects attending the presence of angles. By no means does it follow that this group represents another type, for it really includes many illusions of several types. The reason for this grouping is that angles play an important part, directly or indirectly, in the production of illusions. For a long time many geometrical illusions were accounted for by "overestimation" or "underestimation" of angles, but this view has often been found to be inadequate. However, it cannot be denied that many illusions are due at least to the presence of angles.
Apparently Zöllner was the first to describe an illusion which is illustrated in simple form in Fig. 29 and more elaborately in Figs. 37 to 40. The two figures at the right of Fig. 29 were drawn for another purpose and are not designed favorably for the effect, although it may be detected when the figure is held at a distance. Zöllner accidentally noticed the illusion on a pattern designed for a print for dress-goods. The illusion is but slightly noticeable in Fig. 29, but by multiplying the number of lines (and angles) the long parallel lines appear to diverge in the direction that the crossing lines converge. Zöllner studied the case thoroughly and established various facts. He found that the illusion is greatest when the long parallel lines are inclined about 45 degrees to the horizontal. This may be accomplished for Fig. 37, by turning the page (held in a vertical plane) through an angle of 45 degrees from normal. The illusion vanishes when held too far from the eye to distinguish the short crossing lines, and its strength varies with the inclination of the oblique lines to the main parallels. The most effective angle between the short crossing lines and the main parallels appears to be approximately 30 degrees. In Fig. 37 there are two illusions of direction. The parallel vertical strips appear unparallel and the right and left portions of the oblique cross-lines appear to be shifted vertically. It is interesting to note that steady fixation diminishes and even destroys the illusion.
[Illustration: Fig. 37.--Zöllner's illusion of direction.]
The maximum effectiveness of the illusion, when the figure is held so that the main parallel lines are at an inclination of about 45 degrees to the horizontal was accounted for by Zöllner as the result of less visual experience in oblique directions. He insisted that it takes less time and is easier to infer divergence or convergence than parallelism. This explanation appears to be disproved by a figure in which slightly divergent lines are used instead of parallel ones. Owing to the effect of the oblique crossing lines, the diverging lines may be made to appear parallel. Furthermore it is difficult to attach much importance to Zöllner's explanation because the illusion is visible under the extremely brief illumination provided by one electric spark. Of course, the duration of the physiological reaction is doubtless greater than that of the spark, but at best the time is very short. Hering explained the Zöllner illusion as due to the curvature of the retina, and the resulting difference in the retinal images, and held that acute angles appear relatively too large and obtuse ones too small. The latter has been found to have limitations in the explanation of certain illusions.
This Zöllner illusion is very striking and may be constructed in a variety of forms. In Fig. 37 the effect is quite apparent and it is interesting to view the figure at various angles. For example, hold the figure so that the broad parallel lines are vertical. The illusion is very pronounced in this position; however, on tilting the page backward the illusion finally disappears. In Fig. 38 the short oblique lines do not cross the long parallel lines and to make the illusion more striking, the obliquity of the short lines is reversed at the middle of the long parallel lines. Variations of this figure are presented in Figs. 39 and 40. In this case by steady fixation the perspective effect is increased but there is a tendency for the parallel lines to appear more nearly truly parallel than when the point of sight is permitted to roam over the figures.
[Illustration: Fig. 38.--Parallel lines which do not appear so.]
[Illustration: Fig. 39.--Wundt's illusion of direction.]
[Illustration: Fig. 40.--Hering's illusion of direction.]
Many investigations of the Zöllner illusion are recorded in the literature. From these it is obvious that the result is due to the additive effects of many simple illusions of angle. In order to give an idea of the manner in which such an illusion may be built up the reasoning of Jastrow[1] will be presented in condensed form. When two straight lines such as _A_ and _B_ in Fig. 41 are separated by a space it is usually possible to connect the two mentally and to determine whether or not, if connected, they would lie on a straight line. However, if another line is connected to one, thus forming an angle as _C_ does with _A_, the lines which appeared to be continuous (as _A_ and _B_ originally) no longer appear so. The converse is also true, for lines which are not in the same straight line may be made to appear to be by the addition of another line forming a proper angle. All these variations cannot be shown in a single figure, but the reader will find it interesting to draw them. Furthermore, the letters used on the diagram in order to make the description clearer may be confusing and these can be eliminated by redrawing the figure. In Fig. 41 the obtuse angle _AC_ tends to tilt _A_ downward, so apparently if _A_ were prolonged it would fall below _B_. Similarly, _C_ appears to fall to the right of _D_.
[Illustration: Fig. 41.--Simple effect of angles.]
This illusion apparently is due to the presence of the angle and the effect is produced by the presence of right and acute angles to a less degree. The illusion decreases or increases in general as the angle decreases or increases respectively.
Although it is not safe to present simple statements in a field so complex as that of visual illusion where explanations are still controversial, it is perhaps possible to generalize as Jastrow did in the foregoing case as follows: If the direction of an angle is that of the line bisecting it and pointing toward the apex, the direction of the sides of an angle will apparently be deviated toward the direction of the angle. The deviation apparently is greater with obtuse than with acute angles, and when obtuse and acute angles are so placed in a figure as to give rise to opposite deviations, the greater angle will be the dominant influence.
Although the illusion in such simple cases as Fig. 41 is slight, it is quite noticeable. The effect of the addition of many of these slight individual influences is obvious in accompanying figures of greater complexity. These individual effects can be so multiplied and combined that many illusory figures may be devised.
In Fig. 42 the oblique lines are added to both horizontal lines in such a manner that _A_ is tilted downward at the angle and _B_ is tilted upward at the angle (the letters corresponding to similar lines in Fig. 41). In this manner they appear to be deviated considerably out of their true straight line. If the reader will draw a straight line nearly parallel to _D_ in Fig. 41 and to the right, he will find it helpful. This line should be drawn to appear to be a continuation of _C_ when the page is held so _D_ is approximately horizontal. This is a simple and effective means of testing the magnitude of the illusion, for it is measured by the degree of apparent deviation between _D_ and the line drawn adjacent to it, which the eye will tolerate. Another method of obtaining such a measurement is to begin with only the angle and to draw the apparent continuation of one of its lines with a space intervening. This deviation from the true continuation may then be readily determined.
[Illustration: Fig. 42. The effect of two angles in tilting the horizontal lines.]
[Illustration: Fig. 43. The effect of crossed lines upon their respective apparent directions.]
A more complex case is found in Fig. 43 where the effect of an obtuse angle _ACD_ is to make the continuation of _AB_ apparently fall below _FG_ and the effect of the acute angle is the reverse. However, the net result is that due to the preponderance of the effect of the larger angle over that of the smaller. The line _EC_ adds nothing, for it merely introduces two angles which reinforce those above _AB_. The line _BC_ may be omitted or covered without appreciably affecting the illusion.
[Illustration: Fig. 44.--Another step toward the Zöllner illusion.]
In Fig. 44 two obtuse angles are arranged so that their effects are additive, with the result that the horizontal lines apparently deviate maximally for such a simple case. Thus it is seen that the tendency of the sides of an angle to be apparently deviated toward the direction of the angle may result in an apparent divergence from parallelism as well as in making continuous lines appear discontinuous. The illusion in Fig. 44 may be strengthened by adding more lines parallel to the oblique lines. This is demonstrated in Fig. 38 and in other illustrations. In this manner striking illusions are built up.
[Illustration: Fig. 45.--The two diagonals would meet on the left vertical line.]
[Illustration: Fig. 46.--Poggendorff's illusion. Which oblique line on the right is the prolongation of the oblique line on the left?]
If oblique lines are extended across vertical ones, as in Figs. 45 and 46, the illusion is seen to be very striking. In Fig. 45 the oblique line on the right if extended would meet the upper end of the oblique line on the left; however, the apparent point of intersection is somewhat lower than it is in reality. In Fig. 46 the oblique line on the left is in the same straight line with the lower oblique line on the right. The line drawn parallel to the latter furnishes an idea of the extent of the illusion. This is the well-known Poggendorff illusion. The upper oblique line on the right actually appears to be approximately the continuation of the upper oblique line on the right. The explanation of this illusion on the simple basis of underestimation or overestimation of angles is open to criticism. If Fig. 46 is held so that the intercepted line is horizontal or vertical, the illusion disappears or at least is greatly reduced. It is difficult to reconcile this disappearance of the illusion for certain positions of the figure with the theory that the illusion is due to an incorrect appraisal of the angles.
[Illustration: Fig. 47.--A straight line appears to sag.]
According to Judd,[2] those portions of the parallels lying on the obtuse-angle side of the intercepted line will be overestimated when horizontal or vertical distances along the parallel lines are the subjects of attention, as they are in the usual positions of the Poggendorff figure. He holds further that the overestimation of this distance along the parallels (the two vertical lines) and the underestimation of the oblique distance across the interval are sufficient to provide a full explanation of the illusion. The disappearance and appearance of the illusion, as the position of the figure is varied appears to demonstrate the fact that lines produce illusions only when they have a direct influence on the direction in which the attention is turned. That is, when this Poggendorff figure is in such a position that the intercepted line is horizontal, the incorrect estimation of distance along the parallels has no direct bearing on the distance to which the attention is directed. In this case Judd holds that the entire influence of the parallels is absorbed in aiding the intercepted line in carrying the eye across the interval. For a detailed account the reader is referred to the original paper.
Some other illusions are now presented to demonstrate further the effect of the presence of angles. Doubtless, in some of these, other causes contribute more or less to the total result. In Fig. 47 a series of concentric arcs of circles end in a straight line. The result is that the straight line appears to sag perceptibly. Incidentally, it may be interesting for the reader to ascertain whether or not there is any doubt in his mind as to the arcs appearing to belong to circles. To the author the arcs appear distorted from those of true circles.
[Illustration: Fig. 48.--Distortions of contour due to contact with other contours.]
In Fig. 48 the bounding figure is a true circle but it appears to be distorted or dented inward where the angles of the hexagon meet it. Similarly, the sides of the hexagon appear to sag inward where the corners of the rectangle meet them.
The influences which have been emphasized apparently are responsible for the illusions in Figs. 49, 50 and 51. It is interesting to note the disappearance of the illusion, as the plane of Fig. 49 is varied from vertical toward the horizontal. That is, it is very apparent when viewed perpendicularly to the plane of the page, the latter being held vertically, but as the page is tilted backward the illusion decreases and finally disappears.
[Illustration: Fig. 49.--An illusion of direction.]
[Illustration: Fig. 50.--"Twisted-cord" illusion. These are straight cords.]
[Illustration: Fig. 51.--"Twisted-cord" illusion. These are concentric circles.]
The illusions in Figs. 50 and 51 are commonly termed "twisted cord" effects. A cord may be made by twisting two strands which are white and black (or any dark color) respectively. This may be superposed upon various backgrounds with striking results. In Fig. 50 the straight "cords" appear bent in the middle, owing to a reversal of the "twist." Such a figure may be easily made by using cord and a checkered cloth. In Fig. 51 it is difficult to convince the intellect that the "cords" are not arranged in the form of concentric circles, but this becomes evident when one of them is traced out. The influence of the illusion is so powerful that it is even difficult to follow one of the circles with the point of a pencil around its entire circumference. The cord appears to form a spiral or a helix seen in perspective.
[Illustration: Fig. 52.--A spiral when rotated appears to expand or contract, depending upon direction of rotation.]
A striking illusion is obtained by revolving the spiral shown in Fig. 52 about its center. This may be considered as an effect of angles because the curvature and consequently the angle of the spiral is continually changing. There is a peculiar movement or progression toward the center when revolved in one direction. When the direction of rotation is reversed the movement is toward the exterior of the figure; that is, there is a seeming expansion.
Angles appear to modify our judgments of the length of lines as well as of their direction. Of course, it must be admitted that some of these illusions might be classified under those of "contrast" and others. In fact, it has been stated that classification is difficult but it appears logical to discuss the effect of angles in this chapter apart from the divisions presented in the preceding chapters. This decision was reached because the effect of angles could be seen in many of the illusions which would more logically be grouped under the classification presented in the preceding chapters.
[Illustration: Fig. 53.--Angles affect the apparent length of lines.]
In Fig. 53 the three horizontal lines are of equal length but they appear unequal. This must be due primarily to the size of the angles made by the lines at the ends. Within certain limits, the greater the angle the greater is the apparent elongation of the central horizontal portion. This generalization appears to apply even when the angle is less than a right angle, although there appears to be less strength to the illusions with these smaller angles than with the larger angles. Other factors which contribute to the extent of the illusion are the positions of the figures, the distance between them, and the juxtaposition of certain lines. The illusion still exists if the horizontal lines are removed and also if the figures are cut out of paper after joining the lower ends of the short lines in each case.
[Illustration: Fig. 54.--The horizontal line appears to tilt downward towa |
36297-8 | rd the ends.]
[Illustration: Fig. 55.--The horizontal line appears to sag in the middle.]
In Fig. 54 the horizontal straight line appears to consist of two lines tilting slightly upward toward the center. This will be seen to be in agreement with the general proposition that the sides of an angle are deviated in the direction of the angle. In this case it should be noted that one of the obtuse angles to be considered is _ABC_ and that the effect of this is to tilt the line _BD_ downward from the center. In Fig. 55 the horizontal line appears to tilt upward toward its extremities or to sag in the middle. The explanation in order to harmonize with the foregoing must be based upon the assumption that our judgments may be influenced by things not present but imagined. In this case only one side of each obtuse angle is present, the other side being formed by continuing the horizontal line both ways by means of the imagination. That we do this unconsciously is attested to by many experiences. For example, we often find ourselves imagining a horizontal, a vertical, or a center upon which to base a pending judgment.
A discussion of the influence of angles must include a reference to the well-known Müller-Lyer illusion presented in Fig. 56. It is obvious in _a_ that the horizontal part on the left appears considerably longer than that part in the right half of the diagram. The influence of angles in this illusion can be easily tested by varying the direction of the lines at the ends of the two portions.
[Illustration: Fig. 56.--The Müller-Lyer illusion.]
In all these figures the influence of angles is obvious. This does not mean that they are always solely or even primarily responsible for the illusion. In fact, the illusion of Poggendorff (Fig. 46) may be due to the incorrect estimation of certain linear distances, but the angles make this erroneous judgment possible, or at least contribute toward it. Many discussions of the theories or explanations of these figures are available in scientific literature of which one by Judd[2] may be taken as representative. He holds that the false estimation of angles in the Poggendorff figure is merely a secondary effect, not always present, and in no case the source of the illusion; furthermore, that the illusion may be explained as due to the incorrect linear distances, and may be reduced to the type of illusion found in the Müller-Lyer figure. Certainly there are grave dangers in explaining an illusion on the basis of an apparently simple operation.
In Fig. 56, _b_ is made up of the two parts of the Müller-Lyer illusion. A small dot may be placed equally distant from the inside extremities of the horizontal lines. It is interesting to note that overestimation of distance within the figure is accompanied with underestimation outside the figure and, conversely, overestimation within the figure is accompanied by underestimation in the neighboring space. If the small dot is objected to as providing an additional Müller-Lyer figure of the empty space, this dot may be omitted. As a substitute an observer may try to locate a point midway between the inside extremities of the horizontal lines. The error in locating this point will show that the illusion is present in this empty space.
In this connection it is interesting to note some other illusions. In Fig. 57 the influence of several factors are evident. Two obviously important ones are (1) the angles made by the short lines at the extremities of the exterior lines parallel to the sides of the large triangle, and (2) the influence of contrast of the pairs of adjacent parallel lines. The effect shown in Fig. 53 is seen to be augmented by the addition of contrast of adjacent lines of unequal length.
An interesting variation of the effect of the presence of angles is seen in Fig. 58. The two lines forming angles with the horizontal are of equal length but due to their relative positions, they do not appear so. It would be quite misleading to say that this illusion is merely due to angles. Obviously, it is due to the presence of the two oblique lines. It is of interest to turn to Figs. 25, 26 and various illusions of perspective.
[Illustration: Fig. 57.--Combined influence of angles and contrasting lengths.]
[Illustration: Fig. 58.--Two equal oblique lines appear unequal because of their different positions.]
At this point a digression appears to be necessary and, therefore, Fig. 59 is introduced. Here the areas of the two figures are equal. The judgment of area is likely to be influenced by juxtaposed lines and therefore, as in this case, the lower appears larger than the upper one. Similarly two trapezoids of equal dimensions and areas may be constructed. If each is constructed so that it rests upon its longer parallel and one figure is above the other and only slightly separated, the mind is tempted to be influenced by comparing the juxtaposed base of the upper with the top of the lower trapezoid. The former dimension being greater than the latter, the lower figure appears smaller than the upper one. Angles must necessarily play a part in these illusions, although it is admitted that other factors may be prominent or even dominant.
[Illustration: Fig. 59.--An illusion of area.]
This appears to be a convenient place to insert an illusion of area based, doubtless, upon form, but angles must play a part in the illusions; at least they are responsible for the form. In Fig. 60 the five figures are constructed so as to be approximately equal in area. However, they appear unequal in this respect. In comparing areas, we cannot escape the influence of the length and directions of lines which bound these areas, and also, the effect of contrasts in lengths and directions. Angles play a part in all these, although very indirectly in some cases.
[Illustration: Fig. 60.--Five equal areas showing the influence of angles and contrasting lengths.]
To some extent the foregoing is a digression from the main intent of this chapter, but it appears worth while to introduce these indirect effects of the presence of angles (real or imaginary) in order to emphasize the complexity of influences and their subtleness. Direction is in the last analysis an effect of angle; that is, the direction of a line is measured by the angle it makes with some reference line, the latter being real or imaginary. In Fig. 61, the effect of diverting or directing attention by some subtle force, such as suggestion, is demonstrated. This "force" appears to contract or expand an area. The circle on the left appears smaller than the other. Of course there is the effect of empty space compared with partially filled space, but this cannot be avoided in this case. However, it can be shown that the suggestions produced by the arrows tend to produce apparent reduction or expansion of areas. Note the use of arrows in advertisements.
[Illustration: Fig. 61.--Showing the effect of directing the attention.]
Although theory is subordinated to facts in this book, a glimpse here and there should be interesting and helpful. After having been introduced to various types and influences, perhaps the reader may better grasp the trend of theories. The perspective theory assumes, and correctly so, that simple diagrams often suggest objects in three dimensions, and that the introduction of an imaginary third dimension effects changes in the appearance of lines and angles. That is, lengths and directions of lines are apparently altered by the influence of lines and angles, which do not actually exist. That this is true may be proved in various cases. In fact the reader has doubtless been convinced of this in connection with some of the illusions already discussed. Vertical lines often represent lines extending away from the observer, who sees them foreshortened and therefore they may seem longer than horizontal lines of equal length, which are not subject to foreshortening. This could explain such illusions as seen in Figs. 4 and 5. However this theory is not as easily applied to many illusions.
According to Thiéry's perspective theory a line that appears nearer is seen as smaller and a line that seems to be further away is perceived as longer. If the left portion of _b_, Fig. 56, be reproduced with longer oblique lines at the ends but with the same length of horizontal lines, it will appear closer and the horizontal lines will be judged as shorter. The reader will find it interesting to draw a number of these portions of the Müller-Lyer figure with the horizontal line in each case of the same length but with longer and longer obliques at the ends.
The dynamic theory of Lipps gives an important role to the inner activity of the observer, which is not necessarily separated from the objects viewed, but may be felt as being in the objects. That is, in viewing a figure the observer unconsciously separates it from surrounding space and therefore creates something definite in the latter, as a limiting activity. These two things, one real (the object) and one imaginary, are balanced against each other. A vertical line may suggest a necessary resistance against gravitational force, with the result that the line appears longer than a horizontal one resting in peace. The difficulty with this theory is that it allows too much opportunity for purely philosophical explanations, which are likely to run to the fanciful. It has the doubtful advantage of being able to explain illusions equally well if they are actually reversed from what they are. For example, gravity could either contract or elongate the vertical line, depending upon the choice of viewpoint.
The confusion theory depends upon attention and begins with the difficulty of isolating from illusory figures the portions to be judged. Amid the complexity of the figure the attention cannot easily be fixed on the portions to be judged. This results in confusion. For example, if areas of different shapes such as those in Fig. 60 are to be compared, it is difficult to become oblivious of form or of compactness. In trying to see the two chief parallel lines in Fig. 38, in their true parallelism the attention is being subjected to diversion, by the short oblique parallels with a compromising result. Surely this theory explains some illusions successfully, but it is not so successful with some of the illusions of contrast. The fact that practice in making judgments in such cases as Figs. 45 and 56 reduces the illusion even to ultimate disappearance, argues in favor of the confusion theory. Perhaps the observer devotes himself more or less consciously to isolating the particular feature to be judged and finally attains the ability to do so. According to Auerbach's indirect-vision theory the eyes in judging the two halves of the horizontal line in _a_, Fig. 56, involuntarily draw imaginary lines parallel to this line but above or below it. Obviously the two parts of such lines are unequal in the same manner as the horizontal line in the Müller-Lyer figure appears divided into two unequal parts.
Somewhat analogous to this in some cases is Brunot's mean-distance theory. According to this we establish "centers of gravity" in figures and these influence our judgments.
These are glimpses of certain trends of theories. None is a complete success or failure. Each explains some illusions satisfactorily, but not necessarily exclusively. For the present, we will be content with these glimpses of the purely theoretical aspects of visual illusions.
VII
ILLUSIONS OF DEPTH AND OF DISTANCE
Besides the so-called geometrical illusions discussed in the preceding chapters, there is an interesting group in which the perception of the third dimension is in error. When any of the ordinary criteria of relief or of distance are apparently modified, illusions of this kind are possible. There are many illusions of this sort, such as the looming of objects in a fog; the apparent enlargement of the sun and moon near the horizon; the flattening of the "vault" of the sky; the intaglio seen as relief; the alteration of relief with lighting; and various changes in the landscape when regarded with the head inverted.
Although some of the criteria for the perception of depth or of distance have already been pointed out, especially in Chapter III, these will be mentioned again. Distance or depth is indicated by the distribution of light and shade, and an unusual object like an intaglio is likely to be mistaken for relief which is more common. An analysis of the lighting will usually reveal the real form of the object. (See Figs. 70, 71, 72, 73, 76 and 77.) In this connection it is interesting to compare photographic negatives with their corresponding positive prints.
Distance is often estimated by the definition and color of objects seen through great depths of air (aerial perspective). These distant objects are "blurred" by the irregular refraction of the light-rays through non-homogeneous atmosphere. They are obscured to some degree by the veil of brightness due to the illuminated dust, smoke, etc., in the atmosphere. They are also tinted (apparently) by the superposition of a tinted atmosphere. Thus we have "dim distance," "blue peaks," "azure depths of sky," etc., represented in photographs, paintings, and writings. Incidentally, the sky above is blue for the same general reasons that the atmosphere, intervening between the observer and a distant horizon, is bluish. The ludicrous errors made in estimating distances in such regions as the Rockies is usually accounted for by the rare clearness and homogeneity of the atmosphere. However, is the latter a full explanation? To some extent we judge unknown size by estimated distance, and unknown distance by estimated size. When a person is viewing a great mountain peak for the first time, is he not likely to assume it to be comparable in size to the hills with which he has been familiar? Even by allowing considerable, is he not likely to greatly underestimate the size of the mountain and, as a direct consequence, to underestimate the distance proportionately? This incorrect judgment would naturally be facilitated by the absence of "dimness" and "blueness" due to the atmospheric haze.
Angular perspective, which apparently varies the forms of angles and produces the divergence of lines, contributes much information in regard to relative and absolute distances from the eye of the various objects or the parts of an object. For example, a rectangle may appear as a rhomboid. It is obvious that certain data pertaining to the objects viewed must be assumed, and if the assumptions are incorrect, illusions will result. These judgments also involve, as most judgments do, other data external to the objects viewed. Perhaps these incorrect judgments are delusions rather than illusions, because visual perception has been deluded by misinformation supplied by the intellect.
Size or linear perspective is a factor in the perception of depth or of distance. As has been stated, if we know the size experience determines the distance; and conversely, if we know the distance we may estimate the size. Obviously estimates are involved and these when incorrect lead to false perception or interpretation.
As an object approaches, the axes of the eyes converge more and more and the eye-lens must be thickened more and more to keep the object in focus. As stated in Chapter III, we have learned to interpret these accompanying sensations of muscular adjustment. This may be demonstrated by holding an object at an arm's length and then bringing it rapidly toward the eyes, keeping it in focus all the time. The sensations of convergence and accommodation are quite intense.
The two eyes look at a scene from two different points of view respectively and their images do not perfectly agree, as has been shown in Figs. 2 and 3. This binocular disparity is responsible to some degree for the perception of depth, as the stereoscope has demonstrated. If two spheres of the same size are suspended on invisible strings, one at six feet, the other at seven feet away, one eye sees the two balls in the same plane, but one appears larger than the other. With binocular vision the balls appear at different distances, but judgment appraises them as of approximately equal size. At that distance the focal adjustment is not much different for both balls, so that the muscular movement, due to focusing the eye, plays a small part in the estimation of the relative distance. Binocular disparity and convergence are the primary factors.
Some have held that the perception of depth, that is, of a relative distance, arises from the process of unconsciously running the point of sight back and forth. However, this view, unmodified, appears untenable when it is considered that a scene illuminated by a lightning flash (of the order of magnitude of a thousandth of a second) is seen even in this brief moment to have depth. Objects are seen in relief, in actual relation as to distance and in normal perspective, even under the extremely brief illumination of an electric spark (of the order of magnitude of one twenty-thousandth of a second). This can also be demonstrated by viewing stereoscopic pictures with a stereoscope, the illumination being furnished by an electric spark. Under these circumstances relief and perspective are quite satisfactory. Surely in these brief intervals the point of sight cannot do much surveying of a scene.
Parallax aids in the perception of depth or distance. If the head be moved laterally the view or scene changes slightly. Objects or portions of objects previously hidden by others may now become visible. Objects at various distances appear to move nearer or further apart. We have come to interpret these apparent movements of objects in a scene in terms of relative distances; that is, the relative amount of parallactic displacement is a measure of the relative distances of the objects.
The relative distances or depth locations of different parts of an object can be perceived as fluctuating or even reversing. This is due to fluctuations in attention, and illusions of reversible perspective are of this class. It is quite impossible for one to fix his attention in perfect continuity upon any object. There are many involuntary eye-movements which cannot be overcome and under normal conditions certain details are likely to occupy the focus of attention alternately or successively. This applies equally well to the auditory sense and perhaps to the other senses. Emotional coloring has much to do with the fixation of attention; that which we admire, desire, love, hate, etc., is likely to dwell more in the focus of attention than that which stirs our emotions less.
A slight suggestion of forward and backward movements can be produced by successively intercepting the vision of one eye by an opaque card or other convenient object. It has been suggested that the illusion is due to the consequent variations in the tension of convergence. Third dimensional movements may be produced for binocular or monocular vision during eye-closure. They are also produced by opening the eyes as widely as possible, by pressure on the eye-balls, and by stressing the eyelids. However, these are not important and are merely mentioned in passing.
An increase in the brightness of an object is accompanied by an apparent movement toward the observer, and conversely a decrease in brightness produces an apparent movement in the opposite direction. These effects may be witnessed upon viewing the glowing end of a cigar which is being smoked by some one a few yards away in the darkness. Rapidly moving thin clouds may produce such an effect by varying the brightness of the moon. Some peculiar impressions of this nature may be felt while watching the flashing light of some light-houses or of other signaling stations. It has been suggested that we naturally appraise brighter objects as nearer than objects less bright. However, is it not interesting to attribute the apparent movement to irradiation? (See Chapter VIII.) A bright object appears larger than a dark object of the same size and at the same distance. When the same object varies in brightness it remains in consciousness the same object and therefore of constant size; however, the apparent increase in size as it becomes brighter must be accounted for in some manner and there is only one way open. It must be attributed a lesser distance than formerly and therefore the sudden increase in brightness mediates a consciousness of a movement forward, that is, toward the observer.
If two similar objects, such as the points of a compass, are viewed binocularly and their lateral distance apart is altered, the observer is conscious of a third dimensional movement. Inasmuch as the accommodation is unaltered but convergence must be varied as the lateral distance between the two, the explanation of the illusion must consider the latter. The pair of compass-points are very convenient for making a demonstration of this pronounced illusion. The relation of size and distance easily accounts for the illusion.
Obviously this type of illusion cannot be illustrated effectively by means of diagrams, so the reader must be content to watch for them himself. Some persons are able voluntarily to produce illusory movements in the third dimension, but such persons are rare. Many persons have experienced involuntary illusions of depth. Carr found, in a series of classes comprising 350 students, 58 persons who had experienced involuntary depth illusions at some time in their lives. Five of these also possessed complete voluntary control over the phenomenon. The circumstances attending visual illusions of depth are not the same for various cases, and the illusions vary widely in their features.
Like other phases of the subject, this has been treated in many papers, but of these only one will be specifically mentioned, for it will suffice. Carr[3] has studied this type of illusion comparatively recently and apparently quite generally, and his work will be drawn upon for examples of this type. Apparently they may be divided into four classes: (1) Those of pure distance; that is, an object may appear to be located at varying distances from the observer, but no movement is perceived. For example, a person might be seen first at the true distance; he might be seen next very close in front of the eyes; then he might suddenly appear to be quite remote; (2) illusions of pure motion; that is, objects are perceived as moving in a certain direction without any apparent change in location. In other words, they appear to move, but they do not appear to traverse space; (3) illusions of movement which include a change in location. This appears to be the most common illusion of depth; (4) those including a combination of the first and third classes. For example, the object might first appear to move away from its true location and is perceived at some remote place. Shortly it may appear in its true original position, but this change in location does not involve any sense of motion.
These peculiar illusions of depth are not as generally experienced as those described in preceding chapters. A geometrical illusion, especially if it is pronounced, is likely to be perceived quite universally, but these illusions of depth are either more difficult to notice or more dependent upon psychological peculiarities far from universal among people. It is interesting to note the percentages computed from Carr's statistics obtained upon interrogating 350 students. Of these, 17 per cent had experienced depth-illusions and between one and two per cent had voluntary control of the phenomenon. Of the 48 who had experienced illusions of this type and were able to submit detailed descriptions, 25 per cent belonged to class (1) of those described in the preceding paragraph; 4 per cent to class (2); 52 per cent to class (3); and 17 per cent to class (4).
Usually the illusion involves all objects in the visual field but with some subjects the field is contracted or the objects in the periphery of the field are unaffected. For most persons these illusions involve normal perceptual objects, although it appears that they are phases of hallucinatory origin.
Inasmuch as these illusions cannot be illustrated diagrammatically we can do no better than to condense some of the descriptions obtained and reported by Carr.[3]
A case in which the peripheral objects remain visible and stationary at their true positions while the central portion of the field participates in the illusion is as follows:
The observer on a clear day was gazing down a street which ended a block away, a row of houses forming the background at the end of the street. The observer was talking to and looking directly at a companion only a short distance away. Soon this person (apparently) began to move down the street, until she reached the background of houses at the end, and then slowly came back to her original position. The movement in both directions was distinctly perceived. During the illusory movement there was no vagueness of outline or contour, no blurring or confusion of features; the person observed, seemed distinct and substantial in character during the illusion. The perceived object moved in relation to surrounding objects; there was no movement of the visual field as a whole. The person decreased in size during the backward movement and increased in size during the forward return movement.
With many persons who experience illusions of depth, the objects appear to move to, or appear at, some definite position and remain there until the illusion is voluntarily overcome, or until it disappears without voluntary action. A condensation of a typical description of this general type presented by Carr is as follows:
All visual objects suddenly recede to the apparent distance of the horizon and remain in that position several minutes, returning at the end of this period to their original positions. This return movement is very slow at the beginning, but the latter phase of the movement is quite rapid. If the subject closes her eyes while the objects appear at their distant position she cannot even _imagine_ those objects located anywhere except at their apparent distant position.
In all cases (encountered by Carr) the motion in both directions is an actual experience reality and the subject was helpless as to initiating, stopping, or modifying the course of the illusion in any way. Objects and even visual images (which are subject to the same illusions) decrease in size in proportion to the amount of backward movement and grow larger again on their return movement. The objects are always clearly defined as if in good focus. In this particular case the illusion occurred about twice a year, under a variety of conditions of illumination, at various times of the day, but apparently under conditions of a rather pronounced fatigue.
In regard to the variation in the size of objects, many who have experienced these illusions of depth testify that the size seems to change in proportion to the apparent distance, according to the law of perspective. Some persons appear in doubt as to this change and a few have experienced the peculiar anomaly of decreasing size as the objects apparently approached.
Many persons who have experienced these peculiar illusions report no change in the distinctness of objects; almost as many are uncertain regarding this point; and as many report a change in distinctness. Apparently there are phases of hallucinatory origin so that there is a wide variety of experiences among those subject to this type of illusion.
According to Carr's investigation internal conditions alone are responsible for the illusion with more persons than those due to external conditions alone. With some persons a combination of internal and external conditions seem to be a necessity. Fixation of vision appears to be an essential objective condition for many observers. That is, the illusion appeared while fixating a speaker or singer in a church or a theater. With others the illusion occurs while reading. Some reported that fixation upon checkered or other regularly patterned objects was an essential condition. Among the subjective conditions reported as essential are steady fixation, concentration of attention, complete mental absorption, dreamy mental abstraction, and fatigue.
Ocular defects do not appear to be essential, for the illusions have been experienced by many whose eyes were known to be free from any abnormalities.
Period of life does not appear to have any primary influence, for those who are subject to these peculiar illusions often have experienced them throughout many years. In some cases it is evident that the illusions occur during a constrained eye position, while lying down, immediately upon arising from bed in the morning, and upon opening the eyes after having had them closed for some time. However, the necessity for these conditions are exceptional.
The control of these illusions of depth, that is, the ability to create or to destroy them, appears to be totally lacking for most of those who have experienced them. Some can influence them, a few can destroy them, a few can indirectly initiate them, but those who can both create and destroy them appear to be rare.
It may seem to the reader that the latter part of this chapter departs from the main trend of this book, for most of these illusions of depth are to a degree of hallucinatory origin. Furthermore it has been the intention to discuss only those types of illusions which are experienced quite uniformly and universally. The digression of this chapter is excused on the basis of affording a glimpse along the borderland of those groups of illusions which are nearly universally experienced. Many other phases of depth illusions have been recorded in scientific literature. The excellent records presented by Carr could be drawn upon for further glimpses, but it appears that no more space should be given to this exceptional type. The reader should be sufficiently forewarned of this type and should be able to take it into account if peculiarities in other types appear to be explainable in this manner. However, in closing it is well to emphasize the fact that the hallucinatory aspect of depth illusions is practically absent in types of illusions to which attention is confined in other chapters.
VIII
IRRADIATION AND BRIGHTNESS-CONTRAST
Many interesting and striking illusions owe their existence to contrasts in brightness. The visual phenomenon of irradiation does not strictly belong to this group, but it is so closely related to it and so dependent upon brightness-contrast that it is included. A dark line or spot will appear darker in general as the brightness of its environment is increased; or conversely, a white spot surrounded by a dark environment will appear brighter as the latter is darkened. In other words, black and white, when juxtaposed, mutually reinforce each other. Black print on a white page appears much darker than it really is. This may be proved by punching a hole in a black velvet cloth and laying this hole over a "black" portion of a large letter. The ink which appeared so black in the print, when the latter was surrounded by the white paper, now appears only a dark gray. Incidentally a hole in a box lined with black velvet is much darker than a piece of the black velvet surrounding the hole.
The effects of brightness-contrast are particularly striking when demonstrated by means of lighting, a simple apparatus being illustrated diagrammatically in Fig. 62. For example, if a hole _H_ is cut in an opaque white blotting paper and a large piece of the white blotting paper is placed at _C_, the eye when placed before the opening at the right will see the opening at _H_ filled with the background _C_. The hole _H_ may be cut in thin metal, painted a dull white, and may be of the shape of a star. This shape provides an intimacy between the hole and its environment which tends to augment the effects of contrasts. _R_ and _F_ are respectively the rear and front lamps. That is, the lamps _R_ illuminate _C_, which "fills" the hole and apparently is the hole; and the lamps _F_ illuminate the diffusing white environment _E_. The two sets of lamps may be controlled by separate rheostats, but if the latter are unavailable the lamps (several in each set) may be arranged so that by turning each one off or on, a range of contrasts in brightness between _E_ and _H_ (in reality _C_) may be obtained. (By using colored lamps and colored papers as discussed in Chapter IX the marvelous effects of color-contrast may be superposed upon those of brightness-contrast.)
[Illustration: Fig. 62.--Simple apparatus for demonstrating the remarkable effects of contrasts in brightness and color.]
If, for example, _C_ is very feebly illuminated and _E_ is very bright, _C_ will be pronounced black; but when the lamps _F_ are extinguished and no light is permitted to reach _E_, the contrast is reversed, and _C_ may actually appear "white." Of course, it is obvious that white and black are relative terms as encountered in such a case. In fact in brightness-contrasts relative and not absolute values of brightness are usually the more important. In order to minimize the stray light which emerges from _H_, it is well to paint the inside of both compartments black with the exception of sufficiently large areas of _C_ and _E_. The use of black velvet instead of black paint is sometimes advisable. It is also well to screen the lamps as suggested in the diagram. This simple apparatus will demonstrate some very striking effects of contrasts in brightness and will serve, also, to demonstrate even more interesting effects of contrasts in color.
Two opposite contrasts obtainable by means of a simple apparatus illustrated in Fig. 62 may be shown simultaneously by means of white, black, and gray papers arranged as in Fig. 63. In this figure the gray is represented by the partially black _V_s, each of which contains equal amounts of black and of white. When held at some distance this serves as a gray and the same effect is apparent as is described for the case of actually gray _V_s. An excellent demonstration may be made by the reader by using two _V_s, cut from the same sheet of gray paper, and pasted respectively upon white and black backgrounds, as in Fig. 63. It will be apparent that the one amid the black environment appears much brighter than the one (same gray) amid the white environment. This can be demonstrated easily to an audience by means of a figure two feet long. It is interesting to carry the experiment further and place a _V_ of much darker gray on the black background than the _V_ on the white background. The persistency of the illusion is found to be remarkable, for it will exist even when the one _V_ is actually a much darker gray than the other. To become convinced that the two grays are of the same brightness in Fig. 63, it is only necessary to punch two holes in a white or gray card at such a distance apart that they will lie respectively over portions of the two _V_s when the card is laid upon Fig. 63. The grays in the holes should now appear alike because their environments are similar.
[Illustration: Fig. 63.--Illustrating brightness-contrast.]
The importance of contrasts in brightness and in color cannot be overemphasized, and it appears certain that no one can fully realize their effectiveness without witnessing it in a manner similar to that suggested in Fig. 62.
[Illustration: Fig. 64.--An effect of brightness-contrast. Note the darkening of the intersections of the white strips.]
Many illusions of brightness-contrast are visible on every hand. For example, the point at which the mullions of a window cross will be seen to appear brighter than the remaining portions of them when viewed against a bright sky. Conversely, in Fig. 64, dark spots appear where the white bars cross. This is purely an illusion and the same type may be witnessed by the observant many times a day. In Fig. 64 it is of interest to note that the illusion is weak for the crossing upon which the point of sight rests, but by averted vision the illusion is prominent for the other crossings. This is one of the effects which depends upon the location in the visual field.
No brightness-contrasts are seen corre |
36297-8 | ctly and often the illusions are very striking. If a series of gray papers is arranged from black to white, with the successive pieces overlapped or otherwise juxtaposed, a series of steps of uniform brightness is not seen. An instrument would determine the brightness of each as uniform, but to the eye the series would appear somewhat "fluted." That is, where a light gray joined a darker gray the edge of the former would appear lighter than its actual brightness, and the edge of the darker gray would appear darker than it should. This may also be demonstrated by laying a dozen pieces of white tissue paper in a pile in such a manner that a series of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., thickness would be produced. On viewing this by transmitted light a series of grays is seen, and the effect of contrast is quite apparent. Such a pattern can be made photographically by rotating before a photographic plate a disk with openings arranged properly in steps.
Many demonstrations of the chief illusion of brightness-contrast are visible at night under glaring lighting conditions. It is difficult or impossible to see objects beyond automobile headlights, and adjacent to them, in the visual field. Objects similarly located in respect to any surface sufficiently bright are more or less obscured. Characters written upon a blackboard, placed between two windows, may be invisible if the surfaces seen through the window are quite bright, unless a sufficient quantity of light reaches the blackboard from other sources. Stage-settings have been changed in perfect obscurity before an audience by turning on a row of bright lights at the edge of the stage-opening. The term "blinding light" owes its origin to this effect of brightness-contrast.
The line of juncture between a bright and a dark surface may not be seen as a sharp line, but as a narrow band of gray. When this is true it is possible that an undue amount of area is credited to the white. In preceding paragraphs we have seen the peculiar effect at the border-lines of a series of grays. This may have something to do with the estimate; however, irradiation may be due to excitation of retinal rods and cones adjacent to, but not actually within the bright image.
A remarkable effect which may be partially attributable to irradiation can be produced by crossing a grating of parallel black lines with an oblique black line. At the actual crossings the black appears to run up the narrow angle somewhat like ink would under the influence of surface tension. This is particularly striking when two gratings or even two ordinary fly-screens are superposed. The effect is visible when passing two picket-fences, one beyond the other. If a dark object is held so that a straight edge appears to cross a candle-flame or other light-source, at this portion the straight edge will appear to have a notch in it.
Irradiation in general has been defined as the lateral diffusion of nervous stimuli beyond the actual stimulus. It is not confined to the visual sense but irradiation for this sense is a term applied to the apparent enlargement of bright surfaces at the expense of adjacent darker surfaces. The crescent of the new moon appears larger in radius than the faint outline of the darker portion which is feebly illuminated chiefly by light reflected from the earth's surface. A filament of a lamp appears to grow in size as the current through it is slowly increased from a zero value; that is, as it increases in brightness. In Fig. 65 the small inner squares are of the same size but the white square appears larger than the black one. It seems that this apparent increase is made at the expense of the adjacent dark area. This phenomenon or illusion is strongest when the brightness is most intense, and is said to be greatest when the accommodation is imperfect. A very intense light-source may appear many times larger than its actual physical size.
[Illustration: Fig. 65.--The phenomenon of irradiation.]
Doubtless a number of factors may play a part in this phenomenon. It appears possible that there is a rapid spreading of the excitation over the retina extending quite beyond the border of the more intensely stimulated region, but this must be practically instantaneous in order to satisfy results of experiments. Eye-movements may play some part for, despite the most serious efforts to fixate the point of sight, a fringe will appear on the borders of images which is certainly due to involuntary eye-movements.
Irradiation has also been ascribed to spherical aberration in the eye-lens and to diffraction of light at the pupil. Printed type appears considerably reduced in size when the pupil is dilated with atropin and is restored to normal appearance when a small artificial pupil is placed before the dilated pupil. It has been suggested that chromatic aberration in the eye-lens is a contributory cause, but this cannot be very important, for the illusion is visible with monochromatic light which eliminates chromatic aberration. The experimental evidence appears to indicate that the phenomenon is of a physical nature.
There are variations in the effects attributable to radiation, and it is difficult to reduce them to simple terms. Perhaps it may aid the reader to have before him the classification presented by Boswell.[4] He describes the varieties of irradiation as follows:
1. Very rapid spreading of the excitation over the retina extending far beyond the border of the stimulated region and occurring immediately upon impact of the stimulating light.
2. Irradiation within the stimulated portion of the retina after the form of a figure becomes distinctly perceptible.
3. Emanations of decreasing intensity extend themselves outward and backward from a moving image until lost in the darkness of the background.
4. A well known form of irradiation which occurs when a surface of greater intensity enlarges itself at the expense of one of less intensity.
5. A form having many of the characteristics of the first type, but occurring only after long periods of stimulation, of the magnitude of 30 to 60 seconds or more.
IX
COLOR
In order to simplify the presentation of the general subject, discussions of color have been omitted in so far as possible from the preceding chapters. There are almost numberless phenomena involving color, many of which are illusions, or seemingly so. It will be obvious that many are errors of sense; some are errors of judgment; others are errors due to defects of the optical system of the eye; and many may be ascribed to certain characteristics of the visual process. It is not the intention to cover the entire field in detail; indeed, this could not be done within the confines of a large volume. However, substantial glimpses of the more important phases of color as related to illusions are presented in this chapter. In the early chapters pertaining to the eye and to vision some of the following points were necessarily touched upon, but the repetition in the paragraphs which follow is avoided as much as possible.
_Simultaneous Contrast._--That the life of color is due to contrast is demonstrable in many ways. If a room is illuminated by deep red light, at first this color is very vivid in consciousness; however, gradually it becomes less saturated. After a half hour the color is apparently a much faded red but upon emerging from the room into one normally lighted, the latter appears very markedly greenish in tint. The reason that the pure red light does not appear as strongly colored as it really is, is due to the lack of contrast. In a similar manner at night we see white objects as white even under the yellowish artificial light. The latter appears very yellow in color when it is first turned on as daylight wanes but as darkness falls and time elapses it gradually assumes a colorless appearance.
An apparatus constructed after the plan of Fig. 62 is very effective for demonstrating the remarkable effects of color-contrast but some additions will add considerably to its convenience. If the lamps _F_ are divided into three circuits, each emitting, respectively, red, green, and blue primary colors, it is possible by means of controlling rheostats to illuminate _E_, the environment, with light of any hue (including purple), of any saturation, and of a wide range of intensities or resulting brightnesses. Thus we have a very simple apparatus for quickly providing almost numberless environments for _H_. The same scheme can be applied to lamps _R_, with the result that a vast array of colors may be seen through the hole _H_. If the hole is the shape of the star in Fig. 66 it will be found very effective. The observer will actually see a star of any desired color amid an environment of any desired color. Care should be taken to have the star cut in very thin material in order to eliminate conspicuous boundary lines. It is quite satisfactory to use a series of colored papers on a slide at _C_ and ordinary clear lamps at _R_. By means of this apparatus both contrasts--hue and brightness--may be demonstrated. Of course, for black and white only brightness-contrast is present; but in general where there is color-contrast there is also brightness-contrast. The latter may be reduced or even eliminated if the brightness of the star and of its surroundings are made equal, but it is difficult to make a satisfactory balance in this respect. Assuming, however, that brightness-contrast is eliminated, we have left only hue and saturation contrast, or what will be termed (rather loosely, it is admitted) color-contrast.
[Illustration: Fig. 66.--An excellent pattern for demonstrating color-contrast.]
If the surroundings are dark and, for example, an orange star is seen alone, it does not appear very colorful. However, if the surroundings are now made bright with white light, the star appears quite saturated. With blue or green light the orange star appears even more intensely orange, but when the color-contrast is reduced, as in the case of yellow or red surroundings, the vividness of the orange star again decreases. This may be summarized by stating that two widely different colors viewed in this manner will mutually affect each other so that they appear still more different in hue. If their hues are close together spectrally this effect is not as apparent. For example, if orange and green are contrasted, the orange will appear reddish in hue and the green will appear bluish.
Let us now assume the star to be white, and that the surroundings are of any color of approximately the same brightness. The star which is really white will now appear decidedly tinted and of a hue approximately complementary to that of the surroundings. When the latter are of a green color the white star will assume a purplish tinge; when red the white star will appear of a blue-green tint; when yellow the white star will appear bluish. This is an illusion in any sense of the term.
The strength of this illusion caused by simultaneous contrast is very remarkable. For example, if a grayish purple star is viewed amid intense green surroundings it will appear richly purple, but when the surroundings are changed to a rich purple the grayish purple star will even appear greenish. The apparent change of a color to its complementary by merely altering its environment is really a remarkable illusion.
The importance of simultaneous contrast is easily demonstrated upon a painting by isolating any colored object from its surroundings by means of a hole in a gray card. For example, an orange flower-pot amid the green foliage of its surroundings will appear decidedly different in color and brightness than when viewed through a hole in a white, black, or gray cardboard. By means of colored papers the same color may be placed in many different environments and the various contrasts may be viewed simultaneously. The extent of the illusion is very evident when revealed in this simple manner. However, too much emphasis cannot be given to Figs. 62 and 66 as a powerful means for realizing the greatest effects.
_After-images._--After looking at bright objects we see after-images of the same size and form which vary more or less in color. These after-images are due to persistence or fatigue of the visual process, depending upon conditions. After looking at the sun for a moment a very bright after-image is seen. Undoubtedly this at first is due to a persistence of the visual process, but as it decays it continuously changes color and finally its presence is due to fatigue.
After-images may be seen after looking intently at any object and then directing the eyes toward a blank surface such as a wall. A picture-frame will be seen as a rectangular after-image; a checkered pattern will be seen as a checkered after-image. When these after-images are projected upon other objects it is obvious that the appearance of the latter is apparently altered especially when the observer is not conscious of the after-image. The effects are seen in paintings and many peculiar phenomena in the various arts are directly traceable to after-images.
It appears unnecessary to detail the many effects for the explanations or at least the general principles of after-images are so simple that the reader should easily render an analysis of any given case.
Let us assume that vision is fixed upon a green square upon a gray or white background. Despite the utmost effort on the part of the observer to gaze fixedly upon this green square, the latter will begin to appear fringed with a pinkish border. This is due to the after-image of the green square and it is displaced slightly due to involuntary eye-movements. After gazing as steadily as possible for a half minute, or even less, if the point of sight is turned to the white paper a pink square is seen upon it. Furthermore, this pink square moves over the field with the point of sight. This is the type most generally noticed.
After-images have been classified as positive and negative. The former are those in which the distribution of light and shade is the same as in the original object. Those in which this distribution is reversed, as in the photographic negative, are termed "negative." After-images undergo a variety of changes in color but in general there are two important states. In one the color is the same as in the original object and in the other it is approximately complementary to the original color. In general the negative after-image is approximately complementary in color to the color of the original object.
After-images are best observed when the eyes are well rested, as in the morning upon awakening. With a little practice in giving attention to them, they can be seen floating in the air, in the indefinite field of the closed eyes, upon a wall, or elsewhere, and the changes in the brightness and color can be readily followed. Negative after-images are sometimes very persistent and therefore are more commonly noticed than positive ones. The positive after-image is due to retinal inertia, that is, to the persistency of the visual process after the actual stimulus has been removed. It is of relatively brief duration. If an after-image of a window is projected on a white area it is likely to appear as a "negative" when projected upon a white background, and as a "positive" upon a dark background, such as is readily provided by closing the eyes. It may be of interest for the reader to obtain an after-image of a bright surface of a light-source and study its color changes with the eye closed. Upon repeating the experiment the progression of colors will be found to be always the same for the same conditions. The duration of the after-image will be found to vary with the brightness and period of fixation of the object.
It is interesting to note that an after-image is seen with difficulty when the eyes are in motion, but it becomes quite conspicuous when the eyes are brought to rest.
An after-image due to the stimulation of only one eye sometimes seems to be seen by the other eye. Naturally this has given rise to the suggestion that the seat of after-images is central rather than peripheral; that is, in the brain rather than at the retina. However, this is not generally the case and the experimental evidence weighs heavily against this conclusion.
If Fig. 52 is revolved about its center and fixated for some time striking effects are obtained upon looking away suddenly upon any object. The latter will appear to shrink if the spiral has seemed to run outward, or to expand if the spiral has seemed to run inward. These are clearly after-images of motion.
As stated elsewhere, we may have illusions of after-images as well as of the original images. For example, if a clearly defined plane geometrical figure such as a cross or square is bright enough to produce a strong after-image, the latter when projected upon a perspective drawing will appear distorted; that is, it is likely to appear in perspective.
A simple way of demonstrating after-images and their duration is to move the object producing them. For example, extinguish a match and move the glowing end. If observed carefully without moving the eye a bluish after-image will be seen to follow the glowing end of the match. In this case the eyes should be directed straight ahead while the stimulus is moving and the observation must be made by averted or indirect vision.
_Growth and Decay of Sensation._--Although many after-images may not be considered to be illusions in the sense in which the term is used here, there are many illusions in which they at least play a part. Furthermore, it is the intention throughout these chapters to adhere to a discussion of "static" illusions, it is difficult to avoid touching occasionally upon motion. The eyes are in motion most of the time, hence, certain effects of an illusory nature may be superposed upon stationary objects.
The persistence of vision has been demonstrated by every small boy as he waved a glowing stick seized from a bonfire. Fireworks owe much of their beauty to this phenomenon. A rapidly revolving spoked wheel may appear to be a more or less transparent disk, but occasionally when a rapid eye-movement moves the point of sight with sufficient speed in the direction of motion, the spokes reappear momentarily. Motion-pictures owe their success to this visual property--the persistence of vision. If a lantern-slide picture be focused upon black velvet or upon a dark doorway, the projected image will not be seen. However, if a white rod be moved rapidly enough in the plane of the image, the latter may be seen in its entirety. The mixture of colors, by rotating them on disks, owes its possibility to the persistence of the color-sensations beyond the period of actual stimulation. The fact that it takes time for sensations of light to grow and decay is not as important here as the fact that the rates of growth, and also of decay, vary for different colors. In general, the growth and the decay are not of similar or uniform rates. Furthermore, the sensation often initially "overshoots" its final steady value, the amount of "overshooting" depending upon the intensity and color of the stimulus. These effects may be witnessed in their extensive variety by rotating disks so constructed that black and various colors stimulate the retina in definite orders.
An interesting case of this kind may be demonstrated by rotating the disk shown in Fig. 67. Notwithstanding the fact that these are only black and white stimuli, a series of colored rings is seen varying from a reddish chocolate to a blue-green. Experiment will determine the best speed, which is rather slow under a moderate intensity of illumination. The reddish rings will be outermost and the blue-green rings innermost when the disk is rotated in one direction. Upon reversing the direction of rotation the positions of these colored rings will be reversed. By using various colors, such as red and green for the white and black respectively, other colors will be produced, some of which are very striking. The complete explanation of the phenomenon is not clear, owing to the doubt which exists concerning many of the phenomena of color-vision, but it appears certain that the difference in the rates of growth and decay of the various color-sensations (the white stimulus includes all the spectral hues of the illuminant) is at least partially, if not wholly, responsible.
[Illustration: Fig. 67.--By rotating this Mason (black and white) disk color-sensations are produced.]
An interesting effect, perhaps due wholly or in part to the differences in the rates of growth and decay of color-sensations, may be observed when a colored pattern is moved under a low intensity of illumination, the eyes remaining focused upon a point in space at about the same distance as the object. A square of red paper pasted in the center of a larger piece of blue-green paper is a satisfactory object. On moving this object gently, keeping the point of sight fixed in its plane of movement, the central red square will appear to shake like jelly and a decided trail of color will appear to cling to the lagging edge of the central square. Perhaps chromatic aberration plays some part in making this effect so conspicuous.
A similar case will be noted in a photographic dark-room illuminated by red light upon observing the self-luminous dial of a watch or clock. When the latter is moved in the plane of the dial, the greenish luminous figures appear separated from the red dial and seem to lag behind during the movement. For such demonstrations it is well to experiment somewhat by varying the intensity of the illumination and the speed of movement. Relatively low values of each appear to be best.
Although the various color-sensations grow and decay at different rates, the latter depend upon conditions. It appears that blue-sensation rises very rapidly and greatly overshoots its final steady value for a given stimulus. Red ranks next and green third in this respect. The overshooting appears to be greater for the greater intensity of the stimulus. The time required for the sensation to reach a steady value depends both upon the spectral character and the brightness of the color but is usually less than a second.
_Chromatic Aberration._--It is well known that the eye focuses different spectral colors at different points. This is true of any simple lens and the defect is overcome in the manufacture of optical instruments by combining two lenses consisting respectively of glasses differing considerably in refractive index. If a white object is viewed by the eye, it should appear with a purplish fringe; however, the effect is observed more readily by viewing a light-source through a purple filter which transmits only violet and red light. The light-source will have a red or a violet fringe, depending upon the accommodation or focus of the eye.
This effect is perhaps best witnessed on viewing a line spectrum such as that of the mercury arc, focused upon a ground glass. The violet and blue lines are not seen in good focus when the eyes are focused upon the green and yellow lines. Furthermore, the former can be seen in excellent focus at a distance too short for accommodating the eyes to the green and the yellow lines. This experiment shows that the focal length of the optical system of the eye is considerably shorter for the spectral hues of shorter wave-length (violet, blue) than for those of longer wave-length (such as yellow). Narrow slits covered with diffusing glass and illuminated respectively by fairly pure blue, green, yellow, and red lights may be substituted.
The effect may be demonstrated by trying to focus fine detail such as print when two adjacent areas are illuminated by blue and red lights respectively. It is also observed when fine detail such as black lines are held close to the eye for colored fringes are seen. This optical defect is responsible for certain visual illusions.
An excellent demonstration of chromatic aberration in the eye is found by viewing fine detail through a purple filter. Now if a red filter be superposed on the purple one only the red light is transmitted. Notwithstanding the decrease in illumination or rather of light reaching the eye, measurement shows that finer detail can be discriminated than in the first case. A similar result is found on superposing a blue filter upon the purple one.
_Retiring and Advancing Colors._--For years the artist and the decorator have felt that certain colors seem to advance nearer than others or that the latter seem to retire more than the former. The author[5] obtained actual measurements of this phenomenon, but the evidence also indicated that the effects were not the same for all persons. The phenomenon is very noticeable in the case of the image of a colored lantern-slide projected upon a screen and is readily observed when the image consists of letters of various colors. In the case of red and green letters, for example, the former appear (to most persons) to be considerably nearer the observer than the green letters. It has appeared to the writer that the illusion is apparent even for white letters upon a dark background. In general, the colors whose dominant hues are of the shorter wave-lengths (violet, blue, blue-green, green) are retiring and those whose dominant hues are of the longer wave-lengths (yellow, orange, red) are advancing.
[Illustration: Fig. 68.--For demonstrating retiring and advancing colors.]
In order to obtain experimental measurements two light-tight boxes, each containing a light-source, were arranged to run independently upon tracks. Over the front end of each a diaphragm was placed so that the observer saw two characters as in Fig. 68. A saturated red filter was placed over one and a saturated blue filter over the other. In a dark room the observer saw a blue _E_ and a red _H_ standing out in the darkness. One of these boxes was fastened so as to be immovable and the observer moved the other to and fro by means of a cord over pulleys until the two characters appeared equi-distant from him. This was done for a series of distances of the stationary box from the observer's eye. Nearly all the observers (without being acquainted with the positions) were obliged to set the red _H_ further behind the blue _E_ in order that both appeared at the same distance. This added distance for the red _H_ was as much as 2.4 feet when the blue _E_ was at a distance of 24 feet. In other words the difference in the positions of the two was as much as 10 per cent of the total distance in this case.
Many other interesting data were obtained but most of these are not particularly of interest here. Some of the experiments tended to show the effect of certain optical defects in the eye and the variations and even reversal of the effect for some persons were accounted for by differences in the curvatures, etc., of certain eye-media for the observers. These details are not of interest here but it may be of interest to know that the phenomenon may be accounted for by the chromatic aberration in the eye. This may not be the true explanation, or it may be only partially correct. Perhaps some of the illusion is purely psychological in origin. Certainly the illusion is very apparent to most careful observers.
_Color-sensibility of the Retina._--This aspect was touched upon in Chapter III, but the differences in the sensibility of various areas of the retina to various colors are of sufficient importance to be discussed further. The ability to distinguish light and color gradually fades or decreases at the periphery of the visual field, but the actual areas of the fields of perception vary considerably, depending upon the hue or spectral character of the light reaching the retina. The extreme peripheral region of the visual field is "color-blind"; that is, color ceases to be perceived before brightness-perception vanishes in the outskirts of the visual field. These fields for various colors depend in size and contour not only upon the hue or spectral character of the light-stimuli but also upon the intensity and perhaps upon the size of the stimuli. There is some disagreement as to the relative sizes of these fields but it appears that they increase in size in the following order: green, red, blue, white (colorless). The performances of after-images, and the rates of growth and decay of sensation vary for different colors and for different areas of the retina, but it would be tedious to peruse the many details of these aspects of vision. They are mentioned in order that the reader may take them into account in any specific case.
As already stated, the central part of the visual field--the fovea upon which we depend for acute vision--contains a yellowish pigmentation, which is responsible for the term "yellow spot." This operates as a yellow filter for this central area and modifies the appearance of visual fields quite the same as if a similar yellow filter was placed in the central position of the field of vision. The effect of the selectivity of the "yellow spot" is noticeable in viewing certain colors.
_Purkinje Effect._--The relative sensibility of the retina varies for different colors with a change in brightness; or it may be better to state that the relative sensations for various colors alters as the brightness values are reduced to a low intensity. For example, if a reddish purple (consisting of red and blue or violet rays) be illuminated in such a manner that the intensity of illumination, and consequently its brightness, may be reduced from normal to a low value (approximating moonlight conditions), it will be seen to vary from reddish purple to violet. In doing this its appearance changes through the range of purples from reddish to violet. This can be accomplished by orientation of the purple surface throughout various angles with respect to the direction of light or by reducing the illumination by means of screens.
In general the Purkinje effect may be described as an increasing sensibility of the retina for light of shorter wave-lengths (violet, blue, green) as the brightness decreases, or a corresponding decreasing sensibility for light of longer wave-lengths (yellow, orange, red). The effect may be seen on any colored surfaces at twilight illumination. A blue and a red flower, which appear of the same brightness before sunset will begin to appear unequal in this respect as twilight deepens. The red will become darker more rapidly than the blue if there are no appreciable changes in the color of the daylight. Finally all color disappears. It is better to perform this experiment under artificial light, in order that the spectral character of the illuminant may be certain to remain constant. In this case rheostats must not be used for dimming the light because of the attendant changes in color or quality of the light.
The Purkinje effect may be noticed by the careful observer and it is responsible for certain illusions. Apparently it cannot operate over one portion of the retina, while the remainder is stimulated by normal intensities of light.
_Retinal Rivalry._--Many curious effects may be obtained by stimulating the two retinas with lights, respectively different in color. For example, it is interesting to place a blue glass before one eye and a yellow or red one before the other. The two independent monocular fields strive for supremacy and this rivalry is quite impressive. For a moment the whole field may appear of one color and then suddenly it will appear of the other color. Apparently the fluctuation of attention is a factor. Usually it does not seem to be possible to reach a quiescent state or a perfect mixture of the two colors in this manner. The dependence of one monocular field upon the other, and also their independence, are emphasized by this experiment. It is of interest to consider the illusions of reversible perspective and others in Chapter V in this connection.
[Illustration: Fig. 69.--By combining these stereoscopically the effect of metallic lustre (similar to graphite in this case) is obtained.]
One of the interesting results of retinal rivalry is found in combining two stereoscopic pictures in black and white with the black and white reversed in one of them. The apparently solid object will appear to possess lustre. The experiment may be tried with Fig. 69 by combining the two stereoscopic pictures by converging or diverging the axes of the eyes as described in connection with Figs. 2 and 3.
It will be noted that in order for two stereoscopic pictures, when combined, to produce a perfect effect of three dimensions their dissimilarity must be no more than that existing between the two views from the two eyes respectively. The dissimilarity in Fig. 69 is correct as to perspective, but the reversal of white and black in one of them produces an effect beyond that of true third dimension. When the colors are so arranged in such pictures as to be quite different in the two the effects are striking. There is, in such cases, an effect beyond that of perfect binocular combination.
By means of the stereoscope it is possible to attain binocular mixture of colors but this is usually difficult to accomplish. The difficulty decreases as the brightness and saturation of the colors decrease and is less for colors which do not differ much in hue and in brightness. These effects may be studied at any moment, for it is only necessary to throw the eyes out of focus for any object and to note the results. Many simple experiments may be arranged for a stereoscope, using black and white, and various combinations of colors. For example, Fig. 65 may be combined by means of double images (produced by converging or diverging the optical axes) so that the two inner squares are coincident. Actual observation is much more satisfactory than a detailed description.
_Miscellaneous._--There are many interesting effects due to diffraction of light by edges of objects, by meshes such as a wire screen or a handkerchief, by the eye-media, etc. On looking at a very bright small light-source it may be seen to be surrounded by many colors.
Streamers of light appear to radiate from brilliant sources and all bright areas colored or colorless, when viewed amid dark surroundings, appear to be surrounded by diffuse brushes of light. These brushes are likely to be of a bluish tint.
Many of these phenomena are readily explained, but this cannot be done safely without knowing or recognizing all conditions. Many are not easily explained, especially when reported by others, who may not recognize certain important conditions. For example, authentic observers have reported that black letters on white paper appeared vivid red on a white background, under certain conditions. Of the latter, the apparently important one was "sun's rays falling aslant the forehead." When the eyes were shaded with the hand the letters immediately appeared black as they should.
The influence of the color of an object upon its apparent weight is relatively slight, but there is evidence of a tendency to judge a red or black object to be slightly heavier than a yellow or blue object of the same weight. It appears that hue is a minor factor in influencing the judgment and that there is no correlation between the affective quality of a color and its influence upon apparent weight. Although the scanty evidence available attributes but a slight influence to color in this respect, it is of interest in passing as a reminder of the many subtle factors which are at work modifying our judgments.
X
LIGHTING
It should be obvious by this time that the lighting of objects or of a scene can alone produce an illusion, and that it can in still more cases contribute toward an illusion. Furthermore, there are many cases of illusions in lighting due to brightness and color. Many effects of lighting have been described elsewhere with detailed analyses of the underlying principles, but a condensed survey applying particularly to illusions will be presented here.
The comparison of intaglio with low relief has been mentioned several times in preceding chapters. Examples of these as related to lighting are found in Figs. 70 to 73. Fig. 70 represents a bas-relief lighted from above and Fig. 71 would ordinarily be taken to represent a bas-relief lighted from below. However, the latter was made from a photograph of the mold (intaglio) from which the bas-relief was made and Fig. 71 really represents an intaglio lighted from above.
Similarly Fig. 72 represents the bas-relief lighted from the left and Fig. 73 ordinarily would be taken to be a bas-relief lighted from the right. However, Fig. 73 was made from a photograph of an intaglio lighted from the left. These amply demonstrate the effect of lighting as an influence upon the appearance of objects and they indicate the importance of correct assumptions in arriving at a correct judgment. In these cases the concealment of the light-source and the commonness of bas-relief as compared with intaglio are the causes for the illusion or the error in judgment. Certainly in these cases the visual sense delivers its data correctly.
[Illustration: Fig. 70.--A bas-relief lighted from above.]
[Illustration: Fig. 71.--An intaglio lighted from above.]
[Illustration: Fig. 72.--A bas-relief lighted from the left.]
[Illustration: Fig. 73.--An intaglio lighted from the left.]
[Illustration: Fig. 74.--_a._ A disk (above) and a sphere (below) lighted from overhead. _b._ A disk and a sphere lighted by perfectly diffused light.]
In Fig. 74 the upper object is a disk and the lower is a sphere. In _a_ Fig. 74 the lighting is due to a source of light of rather small physical dimensions directly above the objects. The same objects illuminated by means of highly diffused light (that is, light from many directions and of uniform intensity) appear as in _b_. Both objects now appear as disks. It is obvious that under appropriate lighting a disk might be taken for a sphere and vice versa, depending upon which dominates the judgment or upon the formulation of the attendant assumptions. Incidentally an appearance quite similar to that of _a_, Fig. 74 is obtained when the light-source is near the observer; that is, when it lies near the line of sight.
[Illustration: Fig. 75.--A concave hemispherical cup on the left and a convex hemisphere on the right lighted by a light-source of large angle such as a window.]
Somewhat similar to the confusion of intaglio with bas-relief is the confusion of the two hemispherical objects illustrated in Fig. 75. The one on the left is concave toward the observer. In other words, both could be hemispherical shells--one a mold for the other. Under the lighting which existed when the original photographs were made they could both be taken for hemispheres. The lighting was due to a large light-source at the left, but if the object on the left is assumed (incorrectly) to be a hemisphere convex toward the observer or a sphere, it must be considered to be lighted from the right, which is also an incorrect assumption. Obviously, if the direction of the dominant light is clear to the observer, he is not likely to make the error in judgment. Incidentally the object on the right might be assumed to be a sphere because a sphere is more commonly encountered than a hemisphere.
[Illustration: Fig. 76.--The same as Fig. 75, but lighted by a very small light-source.]
The same objects are represented in Fig. 76 lighted from the left by means of a light-source of relatively small dimensions; that is, a source subtending a relatively small solid-angle at the objects. In this case the sharp shadow due to the edge of the hemispherical cup (on the left) is likely to cause the observer to inquire further before submitting his judgment. The more gradual modulation of light and shade as in the case of a sphere or a hemisphere convex toward the observer is not present in the case of the cup. This should be sufficient information for the careful observer to guide him, or at least to prevent him from arriving at the definite conclusion that the left-hand object is a hemisphere with its convex side toward him. Furthermore it should be noted that we often jump at the conclusion that an object is a sphere even though we see with one eye practically only a hemisphere and with two eyes hardly enough more to justify such a conclusion. However, spheres are more commonly encountered than hemispheres, so we take a chance without really admitting or even recognizing that we do.
The foregoing figures illustrate several phases which influence our judgments and the wonder is that we do not make more errors than we do. Of course, experience plays a large part and fortunately experience can be depended upon in most cases; however, in the other cases it leads us astray to a greater extent than if we had less of it.
The photographer, perhaps, recognizes more than anyone else the pitfalls of lighting but it is unfortunate that he is not better acquainted with the fundamentals underlying the control of light. Improper lighting does produce apparent incongruous effects but adequately controlled it is a powerful medium whose potentiality has not been fully realized. The photographer aims to illuminate and to pose the subject with respect to the source or sources of light so that undesirable features are suppressed and desirable results are obtained.
Finally his work must be accepted by others and the latter, being human, possess (unadmittedly of course) a desire to be "good looking." Lighting may be a powerful flatterer when well controlled and may be a base revealer or even a creator of ugliness.
Incidentally, the photographer is always under the handicap of supplying a "likeness" to an individual who perhaps never sees this same "likeness" in a mirror. In other words, the image which a person sees of himself in a mirror is not the same in general that the photographer supplies him in the photographic portrait. The portrait can be a true likeness but the mirrored image in general cannot be. In the mirror there is a reversal of the parts from right to left. For example, a scar on the right cheek of the actual face appears on the left cheek in the mirror. Faces are not usually symmetrical and this reversal causes an individual to be familiar with his own facial characteristics in this reversed form. This influence is very marked in some cases. For example, suppose the left side of a companion's face to be somewhat paralyzed on one side due to illness. We have become more or less oblivious to the altered expression of the left side by seeing it so often. However, if we catch a glimpse of this companion's face in the mirror and the altered expression of the left side now appears upon the right side of the face, the contrast makes the fact very conspicuous. Perhaps this accounts for the difference which exists between the opinions of the photographer (or friends) and of the subject of the portrait.
All the illusions of brightness-contrast may be produced by lighting. Surfaces and details may appear larger or smaller, harsh or almost obliterated, heavy or light; in fact, lighting plays an important part in influencing the mood or expression of a room. A ceiling may be "lifted" by light or it may hang low and threatening when dark, due to relatively little light reaching it. Columns may appear dark on a light background or vice versa, and these illustrate the effects of irradiation. A given room may be given a variety of moods or expressions by varying the lighting and inasmuch as the room and its physical characteristics have not been altered, the various moods may be considered to be illusions. It should be obvious that lighting is a potent factor.
In connection with lighting it should be noted that contrasts play a prominent rôle as they always do. These have been discussed in other chapters, but it appears advantageous to recall some of the chief features. The effect of contrast is always in the direction of still greater contrast. That is, black tends to make its surroundings white; red tends to make its surroundings blue-green (complementary), etc. The contrast-effect is greatest when the two surfaces are juxtaposed and the elimination of boundary lines of other colors (including black or white) increases its magnitude. The contrast-effect of colors is most conspicuous when there is no brightness-contrast, that is, when the two surfaces are of equal brightness and therefore differ chiefly in hue. This effect is also greatest for saturated colors. It has been stated that cold colors produce stronger contrast-effects than warm colors, but experimental evidence is not sufficiently plentiful and dependable to verify this statement.
As the intensity of illumination increases, colors appear to become less saturated. For example, a pure red object under the noonday sun is likely to be painted an orange red by the artist because it does not appear as saturated as it would under a much lower intensity of illumination. In general, black and white are the final appearances of colors for respectively very low and very high brightness. As the intensity of illumination decreases, hue finally disappears and with continued decrease the color approaches black. Conversely, as the intensity of illumination increases, a color becomes apparently less and less saturated and tends toward white. For example, on viewing the sun through a colored glass the sun appears of a much less saturated color than the haze near the sun or a white object illuminated by sunlight.
Visual adaptation also plays a prominent part, and it may be stated that all sensations of light tend toward a middle gray and all sensations of color tend toward neutrality or a complete disappearance of hue. The tendency of sensations of light toward a middle gray is not as easily recognized as changes in color but various facts support this conclusion. In lighting it is important to recognize the tendency of color toward neutrality. For example, a warm yellow light soon disappears as a hue and only its subtle influence is left; however, a yellow vase still appears yellow because it is contrasted with objects of other colors. In the case of colored light the light falls upon everything visible, and if there is no other light-source of another color with which to contrast it, its color appears gradually to fade. This is an excellent example of the tremendous power and importance of contrast. It is the life of color and it must be fully appreciated if the potentiality of lighting is to be drawn upon as it should be.
Physical measurements are as essential in lighting as in other phases of human endeavor for forming a solid foundation, but in all these activities where visual perception plays an important part judgment is finally the means for appraisal. Wherever the psychological aspect is prominent physical measurements are likely to be misleading if they do not agree with mental appraisals. Of course the physical measurements should be made and accumulated but they should be considered not alone but in connection with psychological effects.
The photometer may show a very adequate intensity of illumination; nevertheless seeing may be unsatisfactory or even impossible. An illumination of a few foot-candles under proper conditions at a given surface is quite adequate for reading; however, this surface may appear quite dark if the surroundings are bright enough. In such a case the photometer yielded results quite likely to be misinterpreted as satisfactory. It should be obvious that many illusions discussed in preceding chapters are of interest in this connection.
An interesting example of the illusion of color may be easily demonstrated by means of a yellow filter. For this purpose a canary glass is quite satisfactory. When such a filter is placed before the eyes a daytime scene outdoors, for example, is likely to appear to be illuminated to a greater intensity than when the eyes are not looking through the filter. This is true for a glass used by the author notwithstanding the fact that the filter transmits only about one-half as much light as a perfectly clear colorless glass. In other words, the brightnesses of objects in the scene are reduced on the average about fifty per cent, still the subject is impressed with an apparent _increase_ in the intensity of illumination (and in brightness) when the filter is placed before the eyes. Of course, the actual reduction in brightness depends upon the color of the object.
In such a case as the foregoing, true explanations are likely to involve many factors. For this reason explanations are usually tedious if they are to be sufficiently qualified to be reasonably near completeness. In this case it appears that the yellow filter may cause one to appraise the intensity of illumination as having increased, by associating such an influence as the sun coming out from behind a cloud. If we look into the depths where light and color accumulated their psychological powers, we are confronted on every hand by associations many of which are more or less obscure, and therefore are subtly influential.
The psychological powers of colors could have been discussed more generally in the preceding chapter, but inasmuch as they can be demonstrated more effectively by lighting (and after all the effect is one of light in any case) they will be discussed briefly here. They have been presented more at length elsewhere.
It is well known that the artist, decorator, and others speak of warm and cold colors, and these effects have a firm psychological foundation. For example, if a certain room be illuminated by means of blue light, it does seem colder. A theater illuminated by means of bluish light seems considerably cooler to the audience than is indicated by the thermometer. If this lighting is resorted to in the summer time the theater will be more inviting and, after all, in such a case it makes little difference what the thermometer indicates. The "cold" light has produced an illusion of coolness. Similarly "warm" light, such as yellow or orange, is responsible for the opposite feeling and it is easily demonstrated that an illusion of higher temperature may be produced by its use. As already stated, color-schemes in the decorations and furnishings produce similar effects but in general they are more powerful when the primary light is colored. In the latter case no object is overlooked for even the hands and faces of the beings in the room are colored by the light. In the case of color-schemes not all objects are tinged with the desired "warm" or "cold" color.
In the foregoing, associations play a prominent rôle. The sky has been blue throughout the numberless centuries during which the human organism evolved. The blue-sky during all these centuries has tinged the shadows outdoors a bluish color. That shade is relatively cool we know by experience and perhaps we associate coolness or cold with the aerial realm. These are glimpses of influences which have coöperated toward creating the psychological effect of coldness in the case of bluish light. By contrast with skylight, sunlight is yellowish, and a place in the sun is relatively warm. South rooms are usually warmer than north rooms in this hemisphere when artificial heat is absent and the psychological effect of warmth has naturally grown out of these and similar influences.
We could go further into the psychology of light and color and conjecture regarding effects directly attributable to color, such as excitement, depression, and tranquillity. In so doing we would be led far astray from illusions in the sense of the term as used here. Although this term as used here is still somewhat restricted, it is broader in scope than in its usual applications. However, it is not broad enough to lead far into the many devious highways and byways of light and color. If we did make these excursions we would find associations almost universally answering the questions. The question would arise as to innate powers of colors and we would find ourselves wondering if all these powers were acquired (through associations) and whether or not some were innate. And after many interesting views of the intricate subject we would likely conclude that the question of the innateness of some of the powers of color must be left unanswered.
As an example let us take the case of the restfulness or depression due to blue. We note that the blue sky is quite serene or tranquil and we find that the delicate sensibilities of poets verify this impression. This association could account for the impression or feeling of tranquillity associated with blue. On proceeding further, we would find nature's solitudes often tinged with the blue skylight, for these solitudes are usually in the shade. Thus their restfulness or even depressiveness may be accounted for--partially at least. These brief glimpses are presented in order that they may suggest to the reader another trend of thought when certain illusions of light and color are held up for analysis. Besides these our individual experiences which have molded our likes and dislikes must be taken into account. This phase of light and color has been treated elsewhere.[6]
A very unusual kind of optical illusion is illustrated by the phenomenon of the apparent ending of a searchlight beam which has attracted much attention in connection with the powerful searchlights used for locating aeroplanes (Fig. 77). For years the apparent ending has more or less carelessly been attributed to the diminution of the density of atmospheric fog or haze, but recently Karrer[13] has suggested what appears to be the correct explanation.
When the beam of light from a powerful searchlight is directed into space, its path is visible owing to the scattering of some of the light by dust and moisture particles and the molecules of the air itself. While obviously the beam itself must go on indefinitely, its luminous path appears to end abruptly at no very great distance from the source. This is true whether the beam is photographed or viewed with the naked eye.
[Illustration: Fig. 77.--Apparent ending of a searchlight beam.]
The fact that the appearance of the beam is no different when it is directed horizontally than when directed vertically proved that the common assumption pertaining to the ending of the haze or fog is untenable. Furthermore, photometric measurements on the different portions of the beam as seen from a position near the searchlight show that the beam is actually brighter at its outer termination than near its origin. Again, the apparent length of the beam varies with the position of the observer, and bears a direct ratio to his distance from the searchlight.
The fact is, that the luminous path of the beam has no definite ending, and extends to a very great distance--practically to infinity. It appears to be sharply cut off for the same reason that the boundary between earth and sky in a flat landscape is a sharp line. Just as the horizon recedes when the landscape is viewed from an elevation, so the beam appears longer when one's distance from it is increased. The outer portion appears brighter, because here the line of sight pierces it to great depth.
That the ending of the beam appears _close at hand_ is no doubt partly due to the brightness distribution, but is also a matter of perspective arising from the manner in which the beam is adjusted. Searchlight operators in the army were instructed to adjust the light to throw a parallel beam. Accordingly, the adjustments were so made that the beam appeared the same width at its outer extremity as at its base. The result seems to be a short parallel shaft of light, but is really a divergent cone of infinite extent, its angle of divergence being such as exactly to offset the effects of perspective.
If the beam were a truly parallel one it would seem to come to a point, just as the edges of a long straight stretch of country road seem to meet at the horizon. If the sides of the road were not parallel, but diverged from the observer's eye at exactly the rate at which they ordinarily would appear to converge, then the road would seem to be as wide where it passed out at the horizon as at the observer's feet. If there were no other means in the landscape of judging the distance of the horizon than by the perspective afforded by the road, it would likely be inferred that the road only extended a short distance on the level, and then went down a hill, that is, passed abruptly from the observer's view.
These conditions obtain ideally in the case of the searchlight beam. There is no other means of judging the position in space of the "end" of an unobstructed searchlight beam than by the perspective of the beam itself, and the operator in adjusting it to appear parallel eliminates the perspective.
The angle at which the beam must diverge to appear parallel to an observer depends upon the distance of the observer from the searchlight. A beam which seems parallel to a person close to it will not appear so at a distance. This fact probably accounts for the difficulties encountered during "searchlight drill" in the army in getting a beam which satisfied both the private operating the lamp and the officer down the field as to its parallelity.
To summarize, the apparent abrupt ending of a searchlight beam is purely an optical illusion. It really has no ending; it extends to infinity.
XI
NATURE
Visual illusions abound everywhere, and there are a number of special interest in nature. Inasmuch as these are representative of a wide range of conditions and are usually within the possible experience of nearly everyone daily, they appear worthy of special consideration. Some of these have been casually mentioned in other chapters but further data may be of interest. No agreement has been reached in some cases in the many suggested explanations and little or no attempt of this character will be made in the following paragraphs. Many illusions which may be seen in nature will be passed by because their existence should be obvious after reading the preceding chapters. For example, a tree appears longer when standing than after it has been felled for the same reason that we overestimate vertical lines in comparison with horizontal ones. The apparent movement of the sun, moon, and stars, when clouds are floating past, is a powerful, though commonplace, illusion but we are more specifically interested in static illusions. However, it is of interest to recall the effect of involuntary eye-movements or of fluctuation in fixation because this factor in vision is important in many illusions. It is demonstrated by lying face upward on a starlit night and fixing the gaze upon a star. The latter appears to move more or less jerkily over its dark background. The magnitude and involuntary nature of these eye-movements is demonstrated in this manner very effectively.
The effect sometimes known as aerial perspective has been mentioned heretofore. The atmosphere is not perfectly transparent or colorless and is not homogeneous from an optical standpoint. It scatters rays of the shorter wave-lengths more than those of the longer wave-lengths. Hence it appears of a bluish tint and anything seen through great distances of it tends toward a reddish color. The blue sky and the redness of the setting sun are results of this cause. Distant signal-lights are reddened, due to the decrease in the rays of shorter wave-length by scattering. Apparently we have come to estimate distance to some extent through the amount of blurring and tinting superposed upon the distant scene.
In the high Rockies where the atmosphere is unusually clear, stretches of fifty miles of atmosphere lying between the observer and the distant peaks will show very little haze. A person inexperienced in the region is likely to construe this absence of haze as a shorter distance than the reality and many amusing incidents and ludicrous mistakes are charged against the tenderfoot in the Rockies. After misjudging distance so often to his own discomfiture a tourist is said to have been found disrobing preparatory to swimming across an irrigation ditch. He had lost confidence in his judgment of distance and was going to assume the risk of jumping across what appeared to be a ditch but what might be a broad river. Of course, this story might not be true but it serves as well as any to emphasize the illusion which arises when the familiar haze is not present in strange territory.
It is a common experience that things "loom in a fog," that is, that they appear larger than they really are. An explanation which has been offered is that of an "excess of aerial perspective" which causes us to overestimate distance and therefore to overestimate size. If this explanation is correct, it is quite in the same manner that in clear atmosphere in the mountains we underestimate distance and, consequently, size. However, another factor may enter in the latter case, for the illusion is confined chiefly to newcomers; that is, in time one learns to judge correctly. On entering a region of real mountains the first time, the newcomer's previous experience with these formations is confined to hills relatively much smaller. Even allowing considerably for a greater size when viewing the majestic peaks for the first time, he cannot be expected to think in terms of peaks many times larger than his familiar hills. Thus underestimating the size of the great peaks, he underestimates the distance. The rarity of the atmospheric haze aids him in making this mistake. This is not offered as a substitute for aerial perspective as the primary cause of the illusion but it appears to the author that it is a cause which must be taken into account.
The apparent form of the sky has attracted the attention of many scientific investigators for centuries. There are many conflicting opinions as to the causes of this appearance of form, but there is general agreement that the sky appears usually as a flattened vault. The sky is bright, due to scattering of light by actual particles of solid matter and moisture and possibly by molecules of gas. Lack of optical homogeneity due to varying refractive index is likely to be partially responsible. Usually a prominent layer of haze about a mile in thickness (although this varies considerably) lies next to the earth's surface. The top of this haze is fairly well defined as aerial travelers know, but the sky above is still far from black, indicating scattered light and illuminated particles still higher. As one continues to ascend, thereby leaving more and more of the luminous haze behind, the sky becomes darker and darker. Often at altitudes of four or five miles the sky is very dark and the sun is piercingly bright. Usually there is little or no bright haze adjacent to the sun at these high altitudes as is commonly seen from the earth's surface. At these high altitudes the author is not conscious of a flattened vault as at the earth's surface but the illusion of a hemispherical dome still persists.
There is some agreement that the dome of the sky appears less depressed at the zenith by night than by day. This is in accord with the author's observation at very high altitudes on occasions when the sky was much darker than when viewed from the earth's surface. Dember and Uibe assumed the apparent shape as a part of a sphere (justifying this assumption to their satisfaction) and obtained estimates of the apparent depression at the zenith. They estimated the middle point of the arc from the zenith to the horizon and then measured the angular altitude of that point. They found that the degree of clearness of the sky has considerable influence upon the apparent height and they state that the sky appears higher in the sub-tropics than in Germany. On very clear moonless nights they found that the shape of the sky-dome differs little from that of a hemisphere. They concluded that the phenomenon is apparently due to optical conditions of the atmosphere which have not been determined.
It is of interest to note the appearance of the sky when cumulus clouds are present. The bases of these vary in height, but are found at altitudes from three to five thousand feet. They appear to form a flat roof of clouds bending downward at the horizon, thus giving the appearance of a vaulted but flattened dome. This apparent shape does not differ much in clear weather, perhaps due largely to the accustomedness of the eye and to the degradation of color from blue to gray toward the horizon. Furthermore the lower sky is usually much brighter than the zenith and the latter being darker appears to hang lower. It is of interest to note how persistent is the illusion of a flattened dome, for when one rises rapidly in the air and, within a few minutes, is on the level with the clouds or the dense low-lying haze, he is mildly surprised to find these are levels and not vaulted roofs. Despite the fact that by many previous experiences he has learned what to expect, the feeling of mild surprise is born each time on ascending rapidly.
The appearance of the flattened vault of the sky is held by some to account for the apparent enlargement of the sun, moon, and the constellations at the horizon. That is, they appear more distant at the horizon and we instinctively appraise them as being larger than when they are at higher altitudes. It is certain that these heavenly bodies do appear much larger when they are rising or setting than when they are nearer the zenith. In fact, this is one of the most remarkable and surprising illusions which exist. Furthermore this apparent enlargement has been noted universally, still many persons have attributed it to an actual optical magnification. Although we are more familiar with this enlargement in connection with the sun and moon, it still persists with the constellations. For example, Orion is apparently very large; in fact, this is the origin of the name. That this enlargement is an illusion can be shown in several ways but that it is solely due to the influence of the apparent flattened form of the sky may be doubted. Certainly the moon appears greatly enlarged while near the horizon, even when there is doubt as to an appreciable appearance of flattening of the sky-dome.
Many peculiar conditions and prejudices must be taken into account. For example, if various persons are asked to give an idea of how large is the disk of the sun or moon, their answers would vary usually with the head of a barrel as the maximum. However, the size of a tree at a distant sky-line might unhesitatingly be given as thirty feet. At the horizon we instinctively compare the size of the sun, moon, and constellations with hills, trees, houses, and other objects, but when the former are high toward the zenith in the empty sky we may judge them in their isolated position to be nearer, hence smaller.
Normally the retinal image grows larger as the object approaches, but this same sensation also arises when an object grows in size without altering its distance. If the moon be viewed through field-glasses the image is larger than in the case of the unaided eyes, but it is quite common for observers to state that it appears smaller. The enlargement may be interpreted as approach and inasmuch as we, through habit, allow for enlargement as an object approaches, we also must reduce it in our imagination to its natural size. Perhaps in this case we overdo this reduction.
James states that the increased apparent size of the moon near the horizon "is a result of association and probability. It is seen through vaporous air and looks dimmer and duskier than when it rides on high; and it is seen over fields, trees, hedges, streams, and the like, which break up the intervening space and makes us the better realize the latter's extent." Both these causes may make the moon seem more distant when it is at low altitudes and as its visual angle grows less, we may think that it must be a larger body and we so perceive it. Certainly it looks particularly large when a well-known object is silhouetted against its disk.
Before proceeding further with explanations, it may be of interest to turn to Fig. 78 which is an accurate tracing of the path of the moon's image across a photographic plate. The camera was placed in a fixed position and the image of the moon's disk on rising was accurately focused on a panchromatic plate. A dense red filter was maintained over the lens throughout in order to eliminate the effect of selective absorption of the atmosphere. But the slightest enlargement was detected in the width of the path near the horizon as compared with that at the highest altitude. This copy was made because it was thought better for reproduction than the photograph which would require a half-tone. This is positive evidence that the phenomenon is an illusion.
[Illustration: Fig. 78.--An accurate tracing from a photograph (continual exposure) of the moon rising.]
Similarly Fig. 79 is a copy of a negative of several exposures of the sun. Owing to the greater brightness, continuous exposure was not considered feasible. A panchromatic plate and red filter was used as in the case of the moon. The various exposures were made without otherwise adjusting the camera. Again no enlargement at the horizon was found.
[Illustration: Fig. 79.--Accurate tracings from a photograph (short exposures at intervals) of the sun setting.]
Although the foregoing is conclusive evidence of the illusory character of the enlargement there are other ways of making measurements. On viewing the sun at the horizon a bright after-image is obtained. This may now be projected upon the sky as a background at any desired altitude. It will appear much smaller at the zenith than the sun appears at the horizon. Certainly this is a simple and conclusive demonstration of the illusion. In this case the after-image of the sun or the sun itself will usually appear at least twice as large as the after-image at the zenith.
If the variation in the position of the eyes is held to account for the illusion, this explanation may be supported by using a horizontal telescope with adjustable cross-hairs, and a mirror. By varying the position of the latter the disk of the sun may be measured at any altitude without varying the position of the eye. When everything is eliminated from the field but the moon's disk, it is found to be constant in size. However, this is not conclusive evidence that the variation in the position of the line of sight accounts for the illusion.
As a demonstration of the absence of enlargement of the size of the moon near the horizon some have brought forward measurements of the lunar circles and similar phenomena. These are said to be unaffected by the altitude of the moon except for refraction. But even this does not change the horizontal diameter and actually diminishes the vertical one. The moon is further away when near the horizon than when at the zenith, the maximum increase in distance being one-half the diameter of the earth. This would make the moon appear about one-sixtieth, or one-half minute of arc smaller at the horizon than at the zenith. This is not only in the wrong direction to aid in accounting for the apparent enlargement, but it is so slight as to be imperceptible to the unaided eye.
Nearly two centuries ago Robert Smith and his colleagues concluded that the sky appears about three times as far away at the horizon as at the zenith. They found that the relative apparent diameters of the sun and of the moon varied with altitude as follows:
Altitude Relative apparent diameter
0 deg. (horizon) 100 15 " 68 30 " 50 45 " 40 60 " 34 75 " 31 90 " (zenith) 30
[Illustration: Fig. 80.--Explanation offered by Smith of the apparent enlargement of heavenly bodies near the horizon.]
They also found a similar relation between the altitude and the apparent size of constellations. Fig. 80 is a reproduction of a diagram which Smith submitted as illustrating the cause of the illusion of apparent enlargement of heavenly bodies near the horizon. If the sky seems to be a flattened vault, the reason for the apparent decrease in the size of the sun, the moon, or the constellations, as they approach the zenith, is suggested by the diagram.
It has also been suggested that such illusions as those shown in Figs. 10 and 19 are associated with that of apparent enlargement of heavenly bodies near the horizon. It will be left to the reader to decide whether or not there is any similarity or relation.
Zoth appears to have proved, to his own satisfaction at least, that the chief factors are not aerial perspective, the apparent curvature or form of the sky, and the comparison of the sun or moon with objects of known size. He maintained that the illusion of apparent decrease in size as these bodies increase in altitude is due to the necessary elevation of the eye. No available experimental evidence seems to refute his statement. In fact, Guttman's experiments seem to confirm it to some extent. The latter found that there was an apparent diminution in the size of objects of several per cent, in objects slightly more than a foot distant from the eyes, as they were raised so that the line of vision changed from horizontal to an angle of forty degrees. The magnitude of this diminution is not sufficient to promote the acceptance of elevation of the eyes as a primary cause of the illusion in respect to the heavenly bodies.
Notwithstanding arguments to the contrary, it is difficult to eliminate aerial perspective and the apparent form of the sky as important factors. That no explanation of this illusion has been generally accepted indicates the complexity of the causes. Certainly the reddish coloration of the sun and moon near the horizon and the contrast with the misty atmosphere combined with the general vague aspect of the atmosphere contribute something if no more than a deepening of the mystery. Variations in the transparency and brightness of the air must play some part.
In discussing the great illusions of nature, it appears appropriate to introduce the mirage. This is not due to an error of sense of judgment. The eye sees what is presented but the inversions and other peculiar effects are due to variations in the refractive index of the atmosphere. These variations account for the appearance of "lakes" in arid deserts, of the inverted images of ships and icebergs on the sea and of "pools of water" on pavements. The refractive index of the atmosphere is continually changing, but the changes are chiefly of two types: (1) those due to irregular heating and (2) those due to normal variation with altitude. The former type are particularly responsible for mirages.
[Illustration: Fig. 81.--Explanation of a common mirage.]
A common type of mirage is illustrated in Fig. 81. This is often visible on deserts where the hot sand causes the adjacent layer of air to expand and therefore, the refractive index to increase. This layer of air then may be considered to operate like an inverted prism. The rays of light close to the earth are bent convex to the earth and the curvature of those higher up may be reversed. The reason that an object may appear double, or as if mirrored by the surface of a nearby pond, is clearly shown in the illustration.
Similar atmospheric conditions are found sometimes over pavements and over bodies of water. As one rides along in an automobile ascending an incline, if he closely observes at the moment the line of sight is just on the level of the pavement, he will often be rewarded by the sight of a mirage. An approaching pedestrian may have no feet (they are replaced by a bit of sky) and the distant pavement will appear to contain pools of water on its surface.
Sometimes on deserts, over ice fields, or on northern seas, mirages are of the inverted type. A horseman or ship may appear suspended in the air in an inverted position. When the density of the air is great enough so that only the upper rays reach the eye, the object will be seen inverted and far above the surface upon which nothing is seen. Many modifications of these types are possible through variations in the refractive indices of various strata of air. Sometimes the air is stratified horizontally and even vertically, which results in magnification as well as other peculiar effects.
As one rides over the desert in a rapidly moving train or automobile these vagaries of nature are sometimes very striking, because the speed of motion will make the effects of the varying refractive indices more marked. A distant foothill may appear to float in the air or to change its shape very rapidly. An island surrounded by quiet air and water may appear like a huge mushroom barely supported by a stem.
Arctic mirages are no less wonderful than those of the hot barren deserts. While traveling along over the ice and snow distant white peaks may assume the most fantastic shapes. At first they may appear flattened like a table-land and then suddenly they may stretch upward like spires. They may shrink then spread like huge mushrooms supported by the stalk-like bases and stretching out laterally. Suddenly they may shoot upward into another series of pinnacles as if another range had suddenly arisen. Such antics may go on for hours as one travels along a frozen valley. Even a change of position of the eyes accompanying a change from erect to lying down may cause remarkable contortions of the distant mountains and one is reminded of the psalmist's query, "Why hop ye so, ye hills?"
Although not an illusion but a physical reality, it is of interest in passing to note the colored halo or aureole surrounding the shadows of objects cast by the sun against a cloud, fog, or jet of steam. The most wonderful effects are seen by the aerial traveler over a bank of clouds when the upper sky is clear. For example, the shadow of the aircraft cast by the sun upon a dense layer of clouds is surrounded by a halo or aureole of the colors of the rainbow. The phenomenon is purely optical, involving diffraction of light. A well-known example of this is the "Spectre of the Brocken."
XII
PAINTING AND DECORATION
In the arts where colors, brightnesses, contrasts, lines, forms, and perspectives mean so much, it is obvious that visual illusions are important. Sometimes they are evils which must be suppressed; in some cases they are boons to the artist if he is equal to the task of harnessing them. Ofttimes they appear unheralded and unexpected. The existence of visual illusions is sufficient to justify the artist's pride in his "eye" and his dependence upon his visual judgment rather than upon what he knows to be true. However true this may be, knowledge is as useful to the artist as to anyone else. The artist, if he is to produce art, is confronted with the tremendous task of perfecting an imperfect nature and he is handicapped with tools inferior to those which nature has at her disposal. He must deal with reflected lights from earthly materials. Nature has these besides the great primary light-sources--the sun, the moon, the stars, and, we might say, the sky. She also has the advantage of overwhelming magnitudes.
These are only a few of the disadvantages under which the artist works, but they indicate that he must grasp any advantage here and there which he may. Knowledge cannot fail him; still, if he fears that it will take him out of his "dream world" and taint him with earthliness, let him ponder over da Vinci, Rembrandt, and such men. These men _knew_ many things. They possessed much knowledge and, after all, the latter is nothing more nor less than science when its facts are arranged in an orderly manner. If the arts are to speak "a noble and expressive language" despite the handicaps of the artist, knowledge cannot be drawn upon too deeply.
Perhaps in no other art are the workmen as little acquainted with their handicaps and with the scientific facts which would aid them as in painting. Painters, of course, may not agree as to this statement, but if they wish to see how much of the science of light, color, lighting, and vision they are unacquainted with, let them invade the book-shelves. If they think they know the facts of nature let them paint a given scene and then inquire of the scientist regarding the relative values (brightnesses) in the actual scene. They will usually be amazed to learn that they cannot paint the lights and shadows of nature excepting in the feeblest manner. The range of contrast represented by their entire palette is many thousand times less than the range of values in nature. In fact exclusive of nature's primary light-sources, such as the sun, she sometimes exhibits a range of brightness in a landscape a million times greater than the painter can produce with black and white pigments. This suggests that the artist is justified in using any available means for overcoming the handicap and among his tools, visual illusions are perhaps the most powerful.
A painting in the broadest sense is an illusion, for it strives to present the three-dimensional world upon plane areas of two dimensions. Through representation or imitation it creates an illusion. If the artist's sensibility has been capable of adequate selection, his art will transmit, by means of and through the truths of science, from the region of perception to the region of emotion. Science consists of knowing; art consists of doing. If the artist is familiar with the facts of light, color, lighting, and vision, he will possess knowledge that can aid him in overcoming the great obstacles which are ever-present. A glimpse of visual illusions should strengthen him in his resolution to depend upon visual perception, but he can utilize these very illusions. He can find a use for facts as well as anyone. Facts as well as experience will prepare him to do his work best.
The artist may suggest brilliant sunlight by means of deep shadow. The old painters gained color at the expense of light and therefore lowered the scale of color in their representations of nature. It is interesting to see how increasing knowledge, as centuries passed, directed painters as it did others onward toward the truth. Turner was one of the first to abandon the older methods in an attempt to raise the scale of his paintings toward a brilliance more resembling nature. By doing this he was able to put color in shadows as well as in lights. Gradually paintings became more brilliant. Monet, Claude, and others worked toward this goal until the brightnesses of paintings reached the limits of pigments. The impressionists, in their desire to paint nature's light, introduced something which was nothing more nor less than science. All this time the true creative artist was introducing science--in fact, illusions--to produce the perfect illusion which was his goal. A survey of any representative paintings' gallery shows the result of the application of more and more knowledge, as the art of painting progressed through the centuries. Surely we cannot go back to the brown shadows and sombre landscapes of the past.
In the earliest art, in the efforts of children, in the wall-paintings of the Egyptians, and in Japanese representation of nature, the process is selective and not imitative. Certain things are chosen and everything else is discarded. In such art selection is carried to the extreme. Much of this simplicity was due to a lack of knowledge. Light and shade, or shading, was not introduced until science discovered and organized its facts. Quite in the same manner linear and aerial perspective made their appearances until in our present art the process of selection is complex. In our paintings of today objects are modeled by light and shade; they are related by perspective; backgrounds and surroundings are carefully considered; the proper emphasis of light, shade and color are given to certain details. The present complexity provides unprecedented opportunities for the application of knowledge pertaining to illusions but it should be understood that this application tends only toward realism of external things. Idealism in art and realism of character and expression are accomplished by the same tools--pigments and brushes--as realism of objective details is attained and there is nothing mysterious in the masterpieces of this kind. Mystery in art as in other activities is merely lack of understanding due to inadequate knowledge. Mysteries of today become facts tomorrow. Science moves with certainty into the unknown, reaping and binding the facts and dropping them behind where they may be utilized by those who will.
The painter can imitate aerial perspective although many centuries elapsed before mankind was keen enough to note its presence in nature. The atmospheric haze diminishes the brightness of very bright objects and increases that of dark objects. It blurs the distant details and adds a tinge of blue or violet to the distance. In painting it is a powerful illusion which the painter has learned to employ.
The painter can accurately imitate mathematical or linear perspective but the art of early centuries does not exhibit this feature. In a painting a tremendously powerful illusion of the third dimension is obtained by diminishing the size of objects as they are represented in the distance. Converging lines and the other manifold details of perspective are aiding the artist in his efforts toward the production of the great illusion of painting.
The painter cannot imitate focal perspective or binocular perspective. He can try to imitate the definition in the central portion of the visual field and the increased blurring toward the periphery. Focal perspective is not of much importance in painting, because it is scarcely perceptible at the distances at which paintings are usually viewed. However the absence of binocular perspective in painting does decrease the effectiveness of the illusion very markedly. For this reason a painting is a more successful illusion when viewed with one eye than with two eyes. Of course, in one of nature's scenes the converse is true because when viewing it with both eyes all the forms of perspective coöperate to the final end--the true impression of three dimensions.
The painter may imitate the light and shade of solid forms and thereby apparently model them. In this respect a remarkable illusion of solid form or of depth may be obtained. For example, a painted column may be made to appear circular in cross-section or a circle when properly shaded will appear to be a sphere. Both of these, of course, are pure illusions. Some stage paintings are remarkable illusions of depth, and their success depends chiefly upon linear perspective and shadows. However, the illusion which was so complete at a distance quite disappears at close range.
The inadequate range of brightnesses or values obtainable by means of pigments has already been discussed. The sky in a landscape may be thousands of times brighter than a deep shadow or a hole in the ground. A cumulus cloud in the sky may be a hundred thousand times brighter than the deepest shadow. However, the artist must represent a landscape by means of a palette whose white is only about thirty times brighter than its black. If the sun is considered we may have in a landscape a range of brightness represented by millions.
This illustrates the pitiable weakness of pigments alone as representative media. Will not light _transmitted_ through media some day be utilized to overcome this inherent handicap of reflecting media? To what extent is the success of stained glass windows due to a lessening of this handicap? The range of brightness in this case may be represented by a black (non-transmitting) portion to the brightness of the background (artificial or sky) as seen through an area of clear glass. Transparencies have an inherent advantage over ordinary paintings in this respect and many effective results may be obtained with them even in photography.
It is interesting to study the effect of greatly increasing the range of values or brightnesses in paintings by utilizing non-uniform distributions of light. Let us take a given landscape painting. If a light-source be so placed that it is close to the brighter areas (perhaps clouds and sky near the sun) it will illuminate this brighter portion several times more intensely than the more distant darker portions of the picture (foreground of trees, underbrush, deep shadows, etc.). The addition to the effectiveness of the illusion is quite perceptible. This effect of non-uniform lighting may be carried to the extreme for a painting by making a positive lantern-slide (rather contrasty) of the painting and projecting this slide upon the painting in accurate superposition. Now if the painting is illuminated solely by the "lantern-slide" the range of contrast or brightness will be enormously increased. The lightest portions of the picture will now be illuminated by light passing through the almost totally transparent portions of the slide and the darkest portions by light greatly reduced by passing through the nearly opaque portions of the slide. The original range of contrast in the painting, perhaps twenty to one, is now increased perhaps to more than a thousand to one. This demonstration will be surprising to anyone and will emphasize a very important point to the painter.
The painter has at his disposal all the scientific facts of light, color, and vision. Many of these have been presented elsewhere,[9] and those pertaining to illusions have been discussed in preceding chapters. These need not be repeated here excepting a few for the purpose of reminding the reader of the wealth of material available to the painter and decorator. Many tricks may be interjected into the foreground for their effect upon the background and vice versa. For example, a branch of a tree drooping in the foreground apparently close to the observer, if done well, will give a remarkable depth to a painting. Modeling of form may be effected to some extent by a judicious use of the "retiring" and "advancing" colors. This is one way to obtain the illusion of depth.
After-images play many subtle parts in painting. For example, in a painting where a gray-blue sky meets the horizon of a blue-green body of water, the involuntary eye-movements may produce a pinkish line just above the horizon. This is the after-image of the blue-green water creeping upward by eye-movements. Many vivid illusions of this character may be deliberately obtained by the artist. Some of the peculiar restless effects obtained in impressionistic painting (stippling of small areas with relatively pure hues) are due to contrasts and after-images.
A painting came to the author's notice in which several after-images of the sun, besides the image of the sun itself, were disposed in various positions. Their colors varied in the same manner as the after-image of the sun. Doubtless the painter strove to give the impression which one has on gazing at the sun. Whether or not this attempt was successful does not matter but it was gratifying to see the attempt made.
There are many interesting effects obtainable by judicious experimentation. For example, if a gray medium be sprayed upon a landscape in such a manner that the material dries in a very rough or diffusing surface some remarkable effects of fog and haze may be produced. While experimenting in this manner a very finely etched clear glass was placed over a landscape and the combined effect of diffusely reflected light and of the slight blurring was remarkable. By separating the etched glass from the painting a slight distance, a very good imitation "porcelain" was produced. The optical properties of varnishes vary and their effect varies considerably, depending upon the mode of application. These and many other details are available to the painter and decorator. An interesting example among many is a cellulose lacquer dyed with an ordinary yellow dye. The solution appears yellow by transmitted light or it will color a surface yellow. By spraying this solution on a metallic object such as a nickel-plated piece, in a manner that leaves the medium rough or diffusing, the effect is no longer merely a yellow but a remarkable lustre resembling gilt. Quite in the same manner many effects of richness, depth of color, haziness, etc., are obtainable by the artist who is striving to produce a great illusion.
All the means for success which the painter possesses are also available to the decorator; however, the latter may utilize some of the illusions of line, form, irradiation, etc., which the architect encounters. The decorator's field may be considered to include almost all of the painter's and much of the architect's. This being the case, little space will be given to this phase of the subject because painting and architecture are separately treated. The decorator should begin to realize more fully the great potentiality of lighting in creating moods or in giving expression to an interior. The psychology of light and the use of lighting as a mode of expression have barely been drawn upon by the decorator. Lighting has already been discussed so it will be passed by at this point.
The practice of hanging pictures on walls which are brilliantly colored is open to criticism. There are galleries in existence where paintings are hung on brilliant green or rose walls. The changes in the appearance of the object due to these highly colored environments are easily demonstrated by viewing a piece of white paper pinned upon the wall. On the green wall, the white paper appears pinkish; on the rose wall, it appears bluish or greenish. A portrait or a picture in which there are areas of white or delicate tints is subject to considerable distortions in the appearance of its colors. Similarly, if a woman must have a colored background, it is well to choose one which will induce the more desirable tints in her appearance. The designer of gowns certainly must recognize these illusions of color which may be desirable or undesirable.
The lighting of a picture has already been mentioned, but the discussion was confined solely to distribution of light. The quality of the light (its spectral character) may have an enormous influence upon the painting. In fact with the same painting many illusions may be produced by lighting. In general, paintings are painted in daylight and they are not the same in appearance under ordinary artificial light. For this reason the artist is usually entitled to the preservation of the illusion as he completed it. By using artificial daylight which has been available for some years, the painting appears as the artist gave it his last touch. Of course, it is quite legitimate to vary the quality of light in case the owner desires to do so, but the purpose here is to emphasize the fact that the quality of light is a powerful influence upon the appearance of the painting. The influence is not generally enough recognized and its magnitude is appreciated by relatively few persons.
All other considerations aside, a painting is best hung upon a colorless background and black velvet for this purpose yields remarkable results. Gray velvet is better, when the appearance of the room is taken into consideration, as it must be. However, the influence of dark surroundings toward enhancing the illusion is well worth recognizing. In the case of a special picture or a special occasion, a painting may be exhibited in a booth--a huge shadow-box not unlike a show-window in which the light-sources are concealed. Such experiments yield many interesting data pertaining to the illusions which the painter strives to obtain.
[Illustration: Fig. 82.--Illustrating the apparent distortion of a picture frame in which the grain of the wood is visible.]
Incidentally on viewing some picture frames in which the grain of the wood was noticeable, the frames did not appear to be strictly rectangular. The illusions were so strong that only by measuring the frames could one be convinced that they were truly rectangular and possessed straight sides. Two of these are represented in Figs. 82 and 83. In the former, the horizontal sides appear bent upward in the middle and the two vertical sides appear bowed toward the right. In Fig. 83, the frame appears considerably narrower at the left end than at the right. Both these frames were represented in the original drawings by true rectangles.
Many illusions are to be seen in furniture and in other woodwork in which the grain is conspicuous. This appears to the author to be an objection in general to this kind of finish. In Fig. 84 there is reproduced a photograph of the end of a board which was plane or straight notwithstanding its warped, or bowed, appearance. The original photographs were placed so as to be related as shown in the figure. Various degrees of the illusion are evident. The reader will perhaps find it necessary to convince himself of the straightness of the horizontal edges by applying a straight edge. These are examples of the same illusion as shown in Figs. 37 to 40.
[Illustration: Fig. 83.--Another example similar to Fig. 82.]
[Illustration: Fig. 84.--From actual photographs of the end-grain of a board.]
Perhaps a brief statement regarding the modern _isms_ in art may be of interest. In considering some of the extreme examples, we must revise our idea that art is or should be always beautiful. The many definitions of art would lead us too far afield to discuss them here but in its most extended and popular sense, art may be considered to mean everything which we distinguish from nature. Certainly art need not be beautiful, although it does seem that the world would welcome the beautiful and would get along contentedly without art that is ugly or repulsive. The modern _isms_ must be viewed with consideration, for there are many impostors concealing their inabilities by flocking to these less understood fields. However, there are many sincere workers--research artists--in the modern _isms_ and their works may best be described at present as experiments in the psychology of light, shade, and color. They have cast aside or reduced in importance some of the more familiar components such as realism and are striving more deeply to utilize the psychology of light and color. Some of them admit that they strive to paint through child's eyes and mind--free from experience, prejudice, and imitation. These need all the scientific knowledge which is available--and maybe more.
In closing this chapter, it appears necessary to remind the artist and others that it is far from the author's intention to subordinate the artist's sensibility to the scientific facts or tools. Art cannot be manufactured by means of formulae. This would not be true if we knew a great deal more than we do pertaining to the science of light, color, and vision. The artist's fine sensibility will always be the dominating necessity in the production of art. He must possess the ability to compose exquisitely; he must be able to look at nature through a special temperament; he must be gifted in eye and in hand; he must be master of unusual visual and intellectual processes. But knowledge will aid him as well as those in other activities. A superior acquaintance with scientific facts lifted past masters above their fellows and what helped Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Turner, Claude, Monet, and other masters will help artists of today. What would not those past masters have accomplished if they had available in their time the greater knowledge of the present!
XIII
ARCHITECTURE
Many illusions are found in architecture and, strangely enough, many of these were recognized long before painting developed beyond its primitive stages. The architecture of classic Greece displays a highly developed knowledge of many geometrical illusions and the architects of those far-off centuries carefully worked out details for counteracting them. Drawings reveal many illusions to the architect, but many are not predicted by them. The ever-changing relations of lines and forms in architecture as we vary our viewpoint introduce many illusions which may appear and disappear. No view of a group of buildings or of the components of a single structure can be free from optical illusions. We never see in the reality the same relations of lines, forms, colors, and brightnesses as indicated by the drawings or blue-prints. Perhaps this is one of the best reasons for justifying the construction of expensive models of our more pretentious structures.
No detailed account of the many architectural illusions will be attempted, for it is easy for the reader to see many of the possibilities suggested by preceding chapters. However, a few will be touched upon to reveal the magnitude of the illusory effect and to aid the observer in looking for or recognizing them, or purely for historical interest. In architecture the eye cannot be wholly satisfied by such tools as the level, the square, and the plumb-line. The eye is satisfied only when the _appearance_ is satisfactory. For the purpose of showing the extent of certain architectural illusions, the compensatory measures applied by the Greeks are excellent examples. These also reveal the remarkable application of science to architecture as compared with the scanty application in painting of the same period.
During the best period of Grecian art many refinements were applied in order to correct optical illusions. It would be interesting to know to what extent the magnitude of the illusions as they appeared to many persons were actually studied. The Parthenon of Athens affords an excellent example of the magnitude of the corrections which the designer thought necessary in order to satisfy the eye. The long lines of the architrave--the beam which surmounts the columns or extends from column to column--would appear to sag if it were actually straight. This is also true of the stylobate, or substructure of a colonnade, and of pediments and other features. These lines were often convex instead of being straight as the eye desires to see them.
In the Parthenon, the stylobate has an upward curvature of more than four inches on the sides of the edifice and of more than two and a half inches on the east and west fronts. Vertical features were made to incline inward in order to correct the common appearance of leaning outward at the top. In the Parthenon, the axes of the columns are not vertical, but they are inclined inward nearly three inches. They are said also to be inclined toward each other to such a degree that they would meet at an altitude of one mile above the ground. The eleven-foot frieze and architrave is inclined inward about one and one-half inches.
In Fig. 85, _a_ represents the front of a temple as it should appear; _b_ represents its appearance (exaggerated) if it were actually built like _a_ without compensations for optical illusions; _c_ represents it as built and showing the physical corrections (exaggerated) in order that it may appear to the eye as _a_ does.
Tall columns if they are actually straight are likely to appear somewhat shrunken in the middle; therefore they are sometimes made slightly swollen in order to appear straight. This outward curvature of the profile is termed an entasis and in the Parthenon column, which is thirty-four feet in height, amounted to about three-fourths of an inch. In some early Grecian works, it is said that this correction was overdone but that its omission entirely is quite unsatisfactory. Some authorities appear to believe that an excellent compromise is found in the Parthenon columns.
[Illustration: Fig. 85.--Exaggerated illusions in architecture.]
One of the conditions which is responsible for certain illusions and has been compensated for on occasions is represented in Fig. 86. On the left are a series of squares of equal size placed in a vertical row. If these are large so that they might represent stories in a building they will appear to decrease in size from the bottom upward, because of the decreasing projection at the eye. This is obvious if the eye is considered to be at the point where the inclined lines meet. In order to compensate for the variation in visual angle, there must be a series of rectangles increasing considerably in height toward the top. The correction is shown in the illustration. It is stated that an inscription on an ancient temple was written in letters arranged vertically, and in order to make them appear of equal size they were actually increased in size toward the top according to the law represented in Fig. 86. Obviously a given correction would be correct only for one distance in a given plane.
[Illustration: Fig. 86.--Illustrating the influence of visual angle upon apparent vertical height.]
In Chapter VIII the phenomenon of irradiation was discussed and various examples were presented. It exerts its influence in the arts as elsewhere. Columns viewed against a background of white sky appear of smaller diameter than when they are viewed against a dark background. This is illustrated in Fig. 87 where the white and the black columns are supposed to be equal in diameter.
The careful observer will find numberless optical illusions and occasionally he will recognize an attempt on the part of the architect to apply an illusory effect to his advantage. In Fig. 88 some commonplace illusions are presented, not for what they are worth, but to suggest how prevalent they may be. Where the pole or column intersects the arches or circle, there is an apparent change in the direction of the curved lines. The different types of arches show different degrees of the illusion. It may be of interest for the reader to refer to preceding chapters and to ascertain what types of illusions are involved.
[Illustration: Fig. 87.--Irradiation in architecture.]
If a high wall ends in a series of long horizontal steps at a slightly inclined sidewalk, the steps are not likely to appear horizontal.
Some remarkable illusions of depth or of solid form are given to flat surfaces when snow is driven against them so as to adhere in decreasing amounts similar to shading.
A suggestion of augmented height may be given to a low tower by decreasing the size of its successive portions more rapidly than demanded by perspective alone. The same principal can be applied in many ways. For example, in Fig. 89 the roof appears quite extensive when viewed so that the end-walls of the structure are not seen. Such illusions find applications in the moving-picture studio where extensive interiors, great fortresses, and even villages must be erected within small areas. Incidentally the camera aids to create the illusion of magnitude in photographs because it usually magnifies perspective, thereby causing scenes to appear more extensive in the photographs than in the reality.
[Illustration: Fig. 88.--Some simple geometrical-optical illusions in architecture.]
Balance in architecture is subject to illusions and might be considered an illusion itself. For example, our judgment of balance is based largely upon mechanical laws. A composition must appear to be stable; that is, a large component such as a tower must not be situated too far from what we take as a center of gravity, to appear capable of tipping the remainder of the structure. In physics we would apply the term "moment." Each mass may be multiplied by its distance from the center of gravity, thus determining its moment. For a building or other composition to appear stable the sum of these moments must be zero; that is, those tending to turn the figure in one direction must be counterbalanced by those tending to turn it in another direction. In appraising a composition, our intellect summates the effects of different parts somewhat in this manner and if satisfactory, balance is considered to have been attained. The colors of the various components exert an influence in this respect, so it is seen that illusions may have much to do with the satisfactoriness of architectural compositions.
[Illustration: Fig. 89.--By decreasing the exposed length of shingles toward the top a greater apparent expanse is obtained.]
Various illusions of height, of ceiling, composedness, etc., may be obtained by the color of the ceiling. A dark cornice in an interior may appear to be unsupported if the walls below are light in color, without any apparent vertical supports for the cornice. We are then subjected to the illusion of instability or incongruity. Dark beams of ceilings are not so obtrusive because our intellect tells us that they are supports passing over the top of the walls and are therefore able to support themselves. Color and brightness in such cases are very important.
The architectural details on exteriors evolved under daylighting outdoors so that their form has been determined by the shadows desired. The architect leads his lights and shadows around the building modeling it as he desires. An offset here and a depression there models the exterior in light and shade. The forms must be powerful enough to resist the obliterating effect of overcast skies but notwithstanding all precautions the expression of an exterior varies considerably with nature's lighting. Indoors the architect has a powerful controllable medium in artificial light which he may draw upon for producing various expressions or moods in rooms. The effect of shadows is interesting when viewing some structures flood-lighted at night. In those cases where the light is directed upward there is a reversal of shadows which is sometimes very unsatisfactory.
It is interesting to experiment with various ornamental objects lighted from various directions. For example, a Corinthian capital lighted from below may produce an unpleasant impression upon the observer. We do not like to have the dominant light from below, perhaps because it is annoying to the eyes. Possibly this is an instinct acquired by experience in snow-fields or on the desert, or it may be a heritage of ancestral experience gained under these glaring conditions. This dislike manifests itself when we appraise shadow-effects and therefore our final impression is tempered by it.
All sculptured objects depend for their appearance upon the lighting, and they are greatly influenced by it. In sculpture, in a strict sense, illusions play a lesser part than in other arts. Perhaps in those of very large proportions various corrections have been applied. A minor detail of interest is the small cavity in the eye, corresponding to a reversed cornea. This depression catches a shadow which gives considerable expression to the eye.
XIV
MIRROR MAGIC
Strictly speaking there are fewer illusions found in the practice of the magician than is generally supposed; that is, the eye usually delivers correctly to the intellect, but the judgment errs for various reasons. The "illusion" is due to false assumptions, to the distracting words, to unduly accented superfluous movements of the magician; or in general to downright trickery. Much of the magician's success is due to glibness of tongue and deftness of fingers, but many of the more notable "tricks" were those involving the use of mirrors and the control of light. Black curtains, blackened assistants, and controlled light have played prominent parts in the older magic, but the principles of these are easily understood. However, the mirror perhaps has done more to astound the audience than any other device employed by the magician. For this reason, and because its effects are commonly termed illusions, some representative examples will be presented.
In a previous chapter attention was called to the simple but usually overlooked fact that, for example, the image of a face in a mirror is reversed as to right and left. When this fact is overlooked we may be astonished at the changed expression of an intimate friend as we view the face (reversed) in the mirror. Similarly our own features are reversed as to right and left and we are acquainted with this reversed image rather than the appearance of our face as it is. Inasmuch as faces are not accurately symmetrical and many are quite unsymmetrical the effects of the mirror are sometimes startling. It might be of interest for the reader to study his face in the mirror and note that the right ear is the left ear of the image which he sees. He will also find it of interest to compare the face of a friend as viewed directly with the appearance of its image in the mirror. If he desires to see himself as others see him, he can arrange two mirrors vertically almost at a right-angle. By a little research he will find an image of his own face, which is not reversed; that is, an image whose right ear is really his right ear.
A famous "illusion" which astounded audiences was the sphinx illustrated in Fig. 90. The box was placed upon a table and when opened there was revealed a Sphinxian head, but why it was called a Sphinx is clothed in mystery because upon some occasions it talked. As a matter of fact it belonged to a body which extended downward from the table-top and this kneeling human being was concealed from the audience by two very clean plate-glass mirrors _M_ shown in the accompanying diagram. The table actually appeared to have three legs but the audience if it noticed this at all assumed the fourth leg was obscured by the foremost leg. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the box-like recess in which the table was placed were covered with the same material. It is seen by the diagram that the mirrors _M_ reflected images of the side walls _W_ and these images were taken by the audience to be portions of the rear wall _W_. Thus the table appeared to be open underneath and the possibilities of the apparatus are evident.
[Illustration: Fig. 90.--An example of a "mirror" illusion.]
The magician with a fine flow of language could dwell at length upon the coming to life of the head of an ancient statue which he had in the box in his hand. Walking to the table he could place the box over a trap-door and by the time he had unlatched the door of the box, the assistant kneeling under the table could have his head thrust upward through the trap-door of the table-top into the box. After a few impressive words, supposed to be Hindoo but in reality were Hoodoo, presto! and the Sphinx was revealed. It conversed after a period of silence extending back to the days of Rameses when a wrathful god condemned an unfortunate king to imprisonment in the stone statue. The original trick awed audiences for many nights and defied explanation until one night a keen observer noted finger-prints on what proved to be a mirror. Doubtless a careless accomplice lost his job, but the damage had been done, for the trick was revealed. This "illusion" is so effective that it, or variations of it, are still in use.
[Illustration: Fig. 91.--Another example of "mirror magic."]
Another simple case is illustrated in Fig. 91. A large plate-glass mirror _M_ was placed at an angle of approximately 45 degrees from the floor. Through a hole in it an assistant's head and shoulders projected and the edge of the opening was covered with a draped cloth. The audience saw the image of the ceiling _C_ of the alcove reflected by the mirror but being ignorant of the presence of the mirror, assumed this image to be the rear wall. This trick was effective for many years. Obviously the mirrors must be spotlessly clean and the illuminations of the walls, ceiling, and in some cases, the floor must be very uniform. Furthermore, no large conspicuous pattern could be used for lining the box-like recess.
The foregoing examples illustrate the principles involved in the appearance of ghosts on the stage and of a skeleton or other gruesome object in place of a human being. The possibilities of mirrors in such fields are endless and they can be studied on a small scale by anyone interested. The pseudoscope which produces effects opposite to those of the stereoscope is an interesting device.
The foregoing is the faintest glimpse of the use of the mirror, but it does not appear advisable to dwell further upon its use, for after all the results are not visual illusions in the sense of the term as usually employed throughout this book.
XV
CAMOUFLAGE
Illusions played many roles in the science and art of deception during the World War, but they served most prominently in the later stages of the war upon the sea. Inasmuch as the story of the science of camouflage is not generally available, it appears worth while to present it briefly. Besides being of interest, it will reveal to the reader the part that the science of light, color, lighting, and vision played in deception. Furthermore, the reader will sense the numberless illusions which are woven into camouflage as developed in nature, and in human activities. The word _camouflage_ by origin does not include all kinds of deception; however, by extension it may and will here signify almost the entire art and science of deception as found in nature and as practiced in the World War.
_Terrestrial Camouflage._--Camouflage is an art which is the natural outgrowth of our instinct for concealment and deception when pitting our wits against those of a crafty prey or enemy. It is an art older than the human race, for its beginnings may be traced back to the obscurity of the early ages of the evolution of animal life. The name was coined by the French to apply to a definite art which developed during the Great War to a high state, as many other arts developed by drawing deeply upon the resources of scientific knowledge. With the introduction of this specific word to cover a vast field of activity in scientifically concealing and deceiving, many are led to believe that this is a new art, but such is not the case. However, like many other arts, such as that of flying, the exigencies of modern warfare have provided an impetus which has resulted in a highly developed art.
Scientists have recognized for many years, and perhaps more or less vaguely for centuries, that Nature exhibits wonderful examples of concealment and deception. The survival of the fittest, as Darwin expressed his doctrine, included those individuals of a species who were best fitted by their markings and perhaps by peculiar habits to survive in the environment in which they lived. Naturally, markings, habits, and environment became more and more adapted to each other until the species became in equilibrium with Nature sufficiently to insure its perpetuity. If we look about us upon animal life we see on every hand examples of concealing coloration and attitudes designed to deceive the prey or enemy. The rabbit is mottled because Nature's infinite variety of highlights, shadows, and hues demand variety in the markings of an animal if the latter is to be securely hidden. Solid color does not exist in Nature's landscapes in large areas. The rabbit is lighter underneath to compensate for the lower intensity of illumination received on these portions. As winter approaches, animals in rigorous climates need warmer coats, and the hairs grow longer. In many cases the color of the hairs changes to gray or white, providing a better coating for the winter environment.
Animals are known to mimic inanimate objects for the sake of safety. For example, the bittern will stand rigid with its bill pointed skyward for many minutes if it suspects an enemy. Non-poisonous snakes resemble poisonous ones in general characteristics and get along in the world on the reputation of their harmful relatives. The drone-bee has no sting, but to the casual observer it is a bee and bees generally sting. Some animals have very contrasting patterns which are conspicuous in shape, yet these very features disguise the fact that they are animals. Close observation of fishes in their natural environment provides striking examples of concealing coloration. Vast works have been written on this subject by scientists, so it will only be touched upon here.
There are many examples of "mobile" camouflage to be found in Nature. Seasonal changes have been cited in a foregoing paragraph. The chameleon changes its color from moment to moment. The flounder changes its color and _pattern_ to suit its environment. It will even strive to imitate a black and white checkerboard.
In looking at a bird, animal, insect, or other living thing it is necessary to place it in its natural environment at least in the imagination, before analyzing its coloration. For example, a male mallard duck hanging in the market is a very gaudy object, but place it in the pond among the weeds, the green leaves, the highlights, and the shadows, and it is surprisingly inconspicuous. The zebra in the zoo appears to be marked for the purpose of heralding its presence anywhere in the range of vision, but in its reedy, bushy, grassy environment it is sufficiently inconspicuous for the species to survive in Nature's continuous warfare.
Thus studies of Nature reveal the importance of general hue, the necessity for broken color or pattern, the fact that black spots simulate shadows or voids, the compensation for lower illumination by counter-shading, and many other facts. The artist has aided in the development of camouflag |
36297-8 | e, but the definite and working basis of all branches of camouflage are the laws and facts of light, color, and vision as the scientist knows them.
Just as lower animal life has unconsciously survived or evolved by being fitted to do so, mankind has consciously, or at least instinctively, applied camouflage of various kinds to fool his prey or his enemy. Many of us in hunting ducks have concealed the bow of our sneak-boat with mud and weeds, or in the season of floating ice, with a white cloth. In our quest of water fowl we use decoys and grass suits. The Esquimau stalks his game behind a piece of ice. In fact, on every hand we find evidences of this natural instinct. The Indian painted his face and body in a variety of colors and patterns. Did he do this merely to be hideous? It seems very possible that the same instinct which made him the supreme master of wood-craft caused him to reap some of the advantages of concealment due to the painting of his face and body.
In past wars there is plenty of evidence that concealment and deception were practiced to the full extent justifiable by the advantages or necessity. In the World War the advent of the airplane placed the third dimension in reconnaissance and called for the application of science in the greatly extended necessity for concealment and deception. With the advent of the airplane, aerial photography became a more important factor than visual observation in much of the reconnaissance. This necessitated that camouflage in order to be successful had to meet the requirements of the photographic eye, as well as that of the human eye. In other words, the special characteristics of the colors used had to be similar to those of Nature's colors. For example, chlorophyl, the green coloring matter of vegetation, is a peculiar green as compared with green pigments. When examined with a spectroscope it is seen to reflect a band of deep red light not reflected by ordinary pigments. In considering this aspect it is well to bear in mind that the eye is a synthetic apparatus; that is does not analyze color in a spectral sense. An artist who views color subjectively and is rarely familiar with the spectral basis may match a green leaf perfectly with a mixture of pigments. A photographic plate, a visual filter, or a spectroscope will reveal a difference which the unaided eye does not.
Some time before the Great War began, it occurred to the writer that colored filters could be utilized in aiding vision by increasing the contrast of the object to be viewed against its surroundings.[9] Studies were made of various filters, made with the object of the experiment in mind, in viewing the uniforms of various armies. Further developments were made by applying the same principles to colored lights and painted pictures. Many of these have been described elsewhere. With the development of the science of camouflage, filters came into use for the detection of camouflage. As a result of the demand for avoiding detection by photographic plates and by various colored filters, some paints provided for the camoufleur were developed according to the spectral requirements. Many other applications of science were developed so that camouflage can now be called an art based upon sound scientific principles.
Natural lighting is so variable that it is often impossible to provide camouflage which will remain satisfactory from day to day; therefore, a broad knowledge of Nature's lighting is necessary in order to provide the best compromise. There are two sources of light in the daytime, namely, the sun and the sky. The relative amounts of light contributed by these two sources is continually changing. The sky on cloudless days contributes from one-tenth to one-third of the total light received by a horizontal surface at noon. Light from the sky and light reflected from the surroundings illuminate the shadows. These shadows are different in color than highlights, although these finer distinctions may be ignored in most camouflage because color becomes less conspicuous as the distance of observation increases. In general, the distribution of brightness or light and shade is the most important aspect to be considered.
The camoufleur worries over shadows more than any other aspect generally. On overcast days camouflage is generally much more successful than on sunny days. Obviously, counter-shading is resorted to in order to eliminate shadows, and where this is unsuccessful confusion is resorted to by making more shadows. The shape and orientation of a building is very important to those charged with the problem of rendering it inconspicuous to the enemy, but little attention has been paid to these aspects. For example, a hangar painted a very satisfactory dull green will be distinguishable by its shape as indicated by its shadow and shaded sides. In this zone a hangar, for example, would be more readily concealed if its length lay north and south. Its sides could be brought with a gradual curve to the ground and its rear, which is during most of the day in shadow, could be effectively treated to conceal the shadow. A little thought will convince the reader of the importance of shape and orientation.
Broken color or pattern is another fundamental of camouflage which, of course, must be adapted to its environment. For our trucks, cannon, and many other implements of war, dark green, yellow, dark blue, light gray, and other colors have been used in a jumble of large patterns. A final refinement is that of the blending of these colors at a distance, where the eye no longer resolves the individual patches, to a color which simulates the general hue of the surroundings. For example, red and green patches at a distance blend to yellow; yellow and blue patches blend to a neutral gray if suitably balanced, but if not, to a yellow-gray or a blue-gray; red, green, and blue if properly balanced will blend to a gray; black, white and green patches will blend to a green shade, and so on. These facts are simple to those who are familiar with the science of light and color, but the artist, whose knowledge is based upon the mixture of pigments, sometimes errs in considering this aspect of color-blending by distance. For example, it is not uncommon for him to state that at a distance yellow and blue patches blend to make green, but the addition of lights or of juxtaposed colors is quite different in result from the addition of pigments by intimately mixing them.
In constructing such a pattern of various colors it is also desirable to have the final mean brightness approximate that of the general surroundings. This problem can be solved by means of the photometer and a formula provided, which states, for example, that a certain percentage of the total area be painted in gray, another percentage in green, and so on. The photometer has played an important rôle in establishing the scientific basis of camouflage. The size of the pattern must be governed by the distance at which it is to be viewed, for obviously if too small the effect is that of solid color, and if too large it will render the object conspicuous, which is a disadvantage ranking next to recognizable.
Where the artist is concerned with a background which does not include the sky, that is, where he deals only with _illuminated_ objects on the earth, his trained eye is valuable provided the colors used meet the demands made by photographic plates and visual color-filters. In other words, the sky as a background gives trouble to all who are unfamiliar with scientific measurements. The brightnesses of sky and clouds are outside the scale of brightnesses ordinarily encountered in a landscape. Many interesting instances of the artist's mistakes in dealing with these backgrounds could be presented; however, the artist's trained eye has been a great aid in constructing patterns and various other types of camouflage. One of the most conspicuous aspects of the earth's surface is its texture. From great heights it appears flat, that is, rolling land is ironed out and the general contour of the ground is flattened. However, the element of texture always remains. This is the chief reason for the extensive use of netting on which dyed raffia, foliage, pieces of colored cloth, etc., are tied. Such network has concealed many guns, headquarters, ammunition dumps, communication trenches, roadways, etc. When this has been well done the concealment is perfect.
One of the greatest annoyances to the camoufleur is the lack of dullness or "flatness" of the paints, fabrics, and some of the other media used. When viewed at some angles the glint of highlights due to specular reflection renders the work very conspicuous. For this reason natural foliage or such material as dyed raffia has been very successful.
Systems of network and vertical screens have been extensively employed on roadways near the front, not for the purpose of concealing from the enemy the fact that the roadways exist, but to make it necessary to shell the entire roadway continually if it is hoped to prevent its use.
Although the camoufleur is provided with a vast amount of material for his work, many of his requirements are met by the material at hand. Obviously, the most convenient method of providing concealment for a given environment is to use the materials of the environment. Hence, rubbish from ruined buildings or villages supplies camouflage for guns, huts, etc., in that environment. In woods the material to simulate the woods is at hand. Many of these aspects are so obvious to the reader that space will not be given to their consideration. The color of the soil is important, for if it is conspicuous the camoufleur must provide screens of natural turf.
In this great game of hocus-pocus many deceptions are resorted to. Replicas of large guns and trenches are made; dummy soldiers are used to foil the sniper and to make him reveal his location, and papier-maché horses, trees, and other objects conceal snipers and observers and afford listening posts. Gunners have been dressed in summer in green flowing robes. In winter white robes have been utilized. How far away from modern warriors are all the usual glitter and glamour of military impedimenta in the past parades of peace time! The armies now dig in for concealment. The artillery is no longer invisible behind yonder hill, for the eyes of the aerial observer of the camera reveal its position unless camouflaged for the third dimension.
In the foregoing only the highlights of a vast art have been viewed, but the art is still vaster, for it extends into other fields. Sound must sometimes be camouflaged and this can only be done by using the same medium--sound. In these days of scientific warfare it is to be expected that the positions of enemy guns would be detected by other means than employed in the past. A notable method is the use of velocity of sound. Records are made at various stations of the firing of a gun and the explosion of the shell. By trigonometric laws the position of the gun is ascertained. It is said that the Germans fired a number of guns simultaneously with the "75-mile" gun in order to camouflage its location. The airplane and submarine would gladly employ sound camouflage in order to foil the sound detector if practicable solutions were proposed.
The foregoing is a brief statement of some of the fundamental principles of land camouflage. Let us now briefly consider the eyes of the enemy. Of course, much concealment and deception is devised to foil the observer who is on the ground and fairly close. The procedure is obvious to the average imagination; however, the reader may not be acquainted with the aerial eyes from which concealment is very important. As one ascends in an airplane to view a landscape he is impressed with the inadequacy of the eyes to observe the vast number of details and of the mind to retain them. Field glasses cannot be used as satisfactorily in an airplane as on solid ground, owing to vibration and other movements. The difference is not as great in the huge flying boats as it is in the ordinary airplane. The camera can record many details with higher accuracy than the eye. At an altitude of one mile the lens can be used at full aperture and thus very short exposures are possible. This tends to avoid the difficulty due to vibration. When the plates are developed for detail and enlargements are made, many minute details are distinguishable. Furthermore, owing to the fact that the spectral sensibilities of photographic emulsions differ from that of the eye, contrasts are brought out which the eye would not see. This applies also to camouflage which is devised merely to suit the eye. Individual footprints have been distinguished on prints made from negatives exposed at an altitude of 6000 feet. By means of photography, daily records can be made if desired and these can be compared. A slight change is readily noted by such comparison by skilled interpreters of aerial photographs. The disappearance of a tree from a clump of trees may arouse suspicion. Sometimes a wilted tree has been noted on a photograph which naturally attracts attention to this position. It has been said that the belligerents resorted to transplanting trees a short distance at a time from day to day in order to provide clearance for newly placed guns. By paths converging toward a certain point, it may be concluded from the photographs that an ammunition dump or headquarters is located there even though the position itself was well camouflaged. Continuous photographic records may reveal disturbances of turf and lead to a more careful inspection of the region for sapping operations, etc. By these few details it is obvious that the airplane is responsible for much of the development of camouflage on land, owing to the necessity which it created for a much more extensive concealment. The entire story of land camouflage would overflow the confines of a volume, but it is hoped that the foregoing will aid the reader in visualizing the magnitude of the art and the scientific basis upon which terrestial camouflage is founded.
_Marine Camouflage._--At the time of the Spanish-American war, our battleships were painted white, apparently with little thought of attaining low visibility. Later the so-called "battleship gray" was adopted, but it has been apparent to close observers that this gray is in general too dark. Apparently it is a mixture of black and white. The ships of the British navy were at one time painted black, but preceding the Great War their coats were of a warm dark gray. Germany adopted dark gray before the close of the last century and Austria adopted the German gray at the outbreak of the war. The French and Italian fleets were also painted a warm gray. This development toward gray was the result of an aim toward attaining low visibility. Other changes were necessitated by submarine warfare which will be discussed later.
In the early days of unrestricted submarine warfare many schemes for modifying the appearance of vessels were submitted. Many of these were merely wild fancies with no established reasoning behind them. Here again science came to the rescue and through research and consultation, finally straightened out matters. The question of low visibility for vessels could be thoroughly studied on a laboratory scale, because the seascape and natural lighting conditions could be reproduced very closely. Even the general weather conditions could be simulated, although, of course, the experiments could be prosecuted outdoors with small models, as indeed they were. Mr. L. A. Jones[10] carried out an investigation on the shore of Lake Ontario, and laboratory experiments were conducted by others with the result that much light was shed on the questions of marine camouflage. This work confirmed the conclusion of the author and others that our battleship gray was too dark. Of course, the color best adapted is that which is the best compromise for the extreme variety in lighting and weather conditions. These vary in different parts of the world, so naturally those in the war zone were of primary importance. All camouflage generally must aim to be a compromise best suited for average or dominating conditions. For example, in foggy weather a certain paint may render a ship of low visibility, but on a sunny day the ship might be plainly visible. However, if ships are rendered of low visibility for even a portion of the time it is obvious that an advantage has been gained. Cloudiness increases generally from the equator northward, as indicated by meteorological annals.
In order to study low visibility a scale of visibility must be established, and it is essential to begin with the fundamentals of vision. We distinguish objects by contrasts in brightness and in color and we recognize objects by these contrasts which mold their forms. In researches in vision it is customary to devise methods by which these contrasts can be varied. This is done by increasing or decreasing a veil of luminosity over the object and its surroundings and by other means. Much work has been done in past years in studying the minimum perceptible contrast, and it has been found to vary with hue, with the magnitude of brightness, and with the size of the image, that is, with the distance of an object of given size. In such problems as this one much scientific work can be drawn upon. A simple, though rough, scale of visibility may be made by using a series of photographic screens of different densities. A photographic screen is slightly diffusing, still the object can be viewed through it very well. Such methods have been employed by various investigators in the study of visibility.
Owing to the curvature of the earth, the distance at which a vessel can be seen on a clear day is limited by the height of the observer and of the ship's superstructure. For an observer in a certain position the visibility range varies as the square root of the distance of the object from him. Such data are easily available, so they will not be given here. So far we have considered the ship itself when, as a matter of fact, on clear days the smoke cloud emitted by the ship is usually visible long before a ship's superstructure appears on the horizon. This led to the prevention of smoke by better combustion, by using smokeless fuels, etc.
The irregular skyline of a ship is perhaps one of the most influential factors which tend to increase its visibility. Many suggestions pertaining to the modification of the superstructure have been made, but these are generally impracticable. False work suffers in heavy seas and high winds.
After adopting a suitable gray as, a "low-visibility" paint for ships, perhaps the next refinement was counter shading; that is, shadows were painted a lighter color, or even white. The superstructure was painted in some cases a light blue, with the hope that it would fade into the distant horizon. However, the effectiveness of the submarine demanded new expedients because within its range of effectiveness no ingenuity could render its intended prey invisible. The effective gun-fire from submarines is several miles and torpedoes can be effective at these distances. However, the submarine prefers to discharge the torpedo at ranges within a mile. It is obvious that, in average weather, low visibility ceases to be very effective against the submarine. The movement of a target is of much less importance in the case of gun-fire than in the case of the torpedo with its relatively low velocity. The submarine gunner must have the range, speed, and course of the target in order to fire a torpedo with any hope of a hit. Therefore, any uncertainties that could be introduced pertaining to these factors would be to the advantage of the submarine's prey. For example, low visibility gave way to confusibility in the discussions of defence against the submarine and the slogan, "A miss is as good as a mile" was adopted. The foregoing factors cannot be determined ordinarily with high accuracy, so that it appeared possible to add somewhat to the difficulties of the submarine commander.
Many optical illusions have been devised and studied by scientists. In fact, some of these tricks are well known to the general reader. Straight lines may appear broken, convergent, or divergent by providing certain patterns or lines intermingled with them. Many of these were applied to models in laboratory experiments and it has been shown that confusion results as to the course of the vessel. The application of these on vessels has resulted in the grotesque patterns to be seen on ships during the latter stage of the war. It is well known that these illusions are most effective when the greatest contrasts are used, hence black and white patterns are common. Color has not been utilized as definitely as pattern in confusibility, although there is a secondary aim of obtaining low visibility at a great distance by properly balancing the black, white, and other colors so that a blue-gray results at distances too great for the individual patterns to be resolved by the eye. Color could be used for the purpose of increasing the conclusion by apparently altering the perspective. For example, blue and red patterns on the same surface do not usually appear at the same distance, the red appearing closer than the blue.
[Illustration: Fig. 92.--A primary stage in the evolution of the use of geometrical-optical illusions on ships.]
Such apparently grotesque patterns aimed to distort the lines of the ship and to warp the perspective by which the course is estimated. This was the final type of marine camouflage at the close of the war. Besides relying upon these illusions, ships zigzagged on being attacked and aimed in other ways to confuse the enemy. No general attempt was made to disguise the bow, because the bow-wave was generally visible. However, attempts have been made to increase it apparently and even to provide one at the stern. In fact, ingenuity was heavily drawn upon and many expedients were tried.
After low-visibility was abandoned in favor of the optical illusion for frustrating the torpedo-attack by the submarine, there was a period during which merely a mottled pattern was used for vessels. Gradually this evolved toward such patterns as shown in Fig. 92. In this illustration it is seen that the optical-illusion idea has taken definite form. During the period of uncertainty as to the course the pattern should take, a regularity of pattern was tried, such as illustrated in Figs. 93 and 94. Finally, when it dawned more or less simultaneously upon various scientific men, who were studying the problems of protecting vessels upon the seas, that the geometrical-optical illusion in its well-known forms was directly adaptable, renewed impetus was given to investigation. The scientific literature yielded many facts but the problems were also studied directly by means of models. The latter study is illustrated by Figs. 95 and 96, the originals having been furnished by Mr. E. L. Warner,[11] who among others prosecuted a study of the application of illusions to vessels. The final results were gratifying, as shown to some extent in Figs. 97 and 98, also kindly furnished by Mr. Warner. It is seen that these patterns are really deceiving as to the course of the vessel.
[Illustration: Figs. 93 and 94.--Attempts at distortion of outline which preceded the adoption of geometrical-optical illusions for ships.]
[Illustration: Figs. 95 and 96.--Illustrating the use of models by the Navy Department in developing the geometrical-illusion for ships.]
The convoy system is well known to the reader. This saved many vessels from destruction. Vessels of the same speed were grouped together and steamed in flocks across the Atlantic. Anyone who has had the extreme pleasure of looking down from an airplane upon these convoys led by destroyers and attended by chasers is strongly impressed with the old adage, "In unity there is strength."
Before the war began, a Brazilian battleship launched in this country was provided with a system of blue lights for use when near the enemy at night. Blue was adopted doubtless for its low range compared with light of other colors. We know that the setting sun is red because the atmospheric dust, smoke, and moisture have scattered and absorbed the blue and green rays more than the red and yellow rays. In other words the penetrating power of the red and yellow is greater than that of the blue rays. This country made use of this expedient to some extent. Of course, all other lights were extinguished and portholes were closed in ocean travel during the submarine menace.
[Illustration: Figs. 97 and 98.--Examples of the geometrical-optical illusion as finally applied.]
Naturally smoke-screens were adopted as a defensive measure on sea as well as on land. Destroyers belch dense smoke from their stacks in order to screen battleships. Many types of smoke-boxes have been devised or suggested. The smoke from these is produced chemically and the apparatus must be simple and safe. If a merchantman were attacked by a submarine immediately smoke-boxes would be dumped overboard or some which were installed on deck would be put into operation and the ship would be steered in a zigzag course. These expedients were likely to render shell-fire and observations inaccurate. This mode of defense is obviously best suited to unarmed vessels. In the use of smoke-boxes the direction and velocity of the wind must be considered. The writer is unacquainted with any attempts made to camouflage submarines under water, but that this can be done is evident from aerial observations. When looking over the water from a point not far above it, as on a pier, we are unable to see into the water except at points near us where our direction of vision is not very oblique to the surface of the water. The brightness of the surface of water is due to mirrored sky and clouds ordinarily. For a perfectly smooth surface of water, the reflection factor is 2 per cent for perpendicular incidence. This increases only slightly as the obliquity increases to an angle of about 60 degrees. From this point the reflection-factor of the surface rapidly increases, becoming 100 per cent at 90 degrees incidence. This accounts for the ease with which we can see into the water from a position directly overhead and hence the airplane has been an effective hunter of submerged submarines. The depth at which an object can be seen in water depends, of course, upon its clarity. It may be surprising to many to learn that the brightness of water, such as rivers, bays, and oceans, as viewed perpendicularly to its surface, is largely due to light diffused within it. This point became strikingly evident during the progress of work in aerial photometry.
A submerged submarine may be invisible for two reasons: (1) It may be deep enough to be effectively veiled by the luminosity of the mass of water above it (including the surface brightness) or, (2) It may be of the proper brightness and color to simulate the brightness and color of the water. It is obvious that if it were white it would have to attain concealment by submerging deeply. If it were a fairly dark greenish-blue it would be invisible at very small depths. In fact, it would be of very low visibility just below the surface of the water. By the use of the writer's data on hues and reflection-factors of earth and water areas it would be easy to camouflage submarines effectively from enemies overhead. The visibility of submarines is well exemplified by viewing large fish such as sharks from airships at low altitudes. They appear as miniature submarines dark gray or almost black amid greenish-blue surroundings. Incidentally, the color of water varies considerably from the dirty yellowish-green of shallow inland waters containing much suspended matter to the greenish-blue of deep clear ocean waters. The latter as viewed vertically are about one-half the brightness of the former under the same conditions and are decidedly bluer.
_The Visibility of Airplanes._--In the Great War the airplane made its début in warfare and in a short time made a wonderful record, yet when hostilities ceased aerial camouflage had not been put on a scientific basis. No nation had developed this general aspect of camouflage systematically or to an extent comparable with the developments on land and sea. One of the chief difficulties was that scientific data which were applicable were lacking. During the author's activities as Chairman of the Committee on Camouflage of the National Research Council he completed an extensive investigation[12] of the fundamentals upon which the attainment of low visibility for airplanes must be based. Solutions of the problems encountered in rendering airplanes of low visibility resulted and various recommendations were made, but the experiences and data will be drawn upon here only in a general way. In this general review details would consume too much space, for the intention has been to present a broad view of the subject of camouflage.
The visibility of airplanes presents some of the most interesting problems to be found in the development of the scientific basis for camouflage. The general problem may be subdivided according to the type of airplane, its field of operation, and its activity. For example, patrol craft which fly low over our own lines would primarily be camouflaged for low visibility as viewed by enemies above. (See Fig. 99.) High-flying craft would be rendered of low visibility as viewed primarily by the enemy below. Airplanes for night use present other problems and the visibility of seaplanes is a distinct problem, owing to the fact that the important background is the water, because seaplanes are not ordinarily high-flying craft. In all these considerations it will be noted that the activity of the airplanes is of primary importance, because it determines the lines of procedure in rendering the craft of low visibility. This aspect is too complicated to discuss thoroughly in a brief résumé.
[Illustration: Fig. 99.--Representative earth backgrounds for an airplane (uncamouflaged) as viewed from above.]
The same fundamentals of light, color, and vision apply in this field as in other fields of camouflage, but different data are required. When viewing aircraft from above, the earth is the background of most importance. Cumulus clouds on sunny days are generally at altitudes of 4000 to 7000 feet. Clouds are not always present and besides they are of such a different order of brightness from that of the earth that they cannot be considered in camouflage designed for low visibility from above. In other words, the compromise in this case is to accept the earth as a background and to work on this basis. We are confronted with seasonal changes of landscape, but inasmuch as the summer landscape was of greatest importance generally, it was the dominating factor in considering low visibility from above.
On looking down upon the earth one is impressed with the definite types of areas such as cultivated fields, woods, barren ground and water. Different landscapes contain these areas in various proportions, which fact must be considered. Many thousand determinations of reflection-factor and of approximate hue were made for these types of areas, and upon the mean values camouflage for low visibility as viewed from above was developed. A few values are given in the accompanying table, but a more comprehensive presentation will be found elsewhere.[12]
_Mean Reflection-Factors_
(From thousands of measurements made by viewing vertically downward during summer and fall from various altitudes.)
Per Cent
Woods 4.3 Barren ground 13.0 Fields (grazing land and growing crops) 6.8 Inland water (rivers and bays) 6.8 Deep ocean water 3.5 Dense clouds 78.0
Wooded areas are the darkest general areas in a landscape and possess a very low reflection-factor. From above one sees the deep shadows interspersed among the highlights. These shadows and the trapping of light are largely responsible for the low brightness or apparent reflection-factor. This is best illustrated by means of black velvet. If a piece of cardboard is dyed with the same black dye as that used to dye the velvet, it will diffusely reflect 2 or 3 per cent of the incident light, but the black velvet will reflect no more than 0.5 per cent. The velvet fibers provide many light traps and cast many shadows which reduce the relative brightness or reflection-factor far below that of the flat cardboard. Cultivated fields on which there are growing crops are nearly twice as bright as wooded areas, depending, of course, upon the denseness of the vegetation. Barren sunbaked lands are generally the brightest large areas in a landscape, the brightness depending upon the character of the soil. Wet soil is darker than dry soil, owing to the fact that the pores are filled with water, thus reducing the reflection-factor of the small particles of soil. A dry white blotting paper which reflects 75 per cent of the incident light will reflect only about 55 per cent when wet.
Inland waters which contain much suspended matter are about as bright as grazing land and cultivated fields. Shallow water partakes somewhat of the color and brightness of the bed, and deep ocean water is somewhat darker than wooded areas. Quiet stagnant pools or small lakes are sometimes exceedingly dark; in fact, they appear like pools of ink, owing to the fact that their brightness as viewed vertically is almost entirely due to surface reflection. If it is due entirely to reflection at the surface, the brightness will be about 2 per cent of the brightness of the zenith sky. That is, when viewing such a body of water vertically one sees an image of the zenith sky reduced in brightness to about 2 per cent.
The earth patterns were extensively studied with the result that definite conclusions were formulated pertaining to the best patterns to be used. Although it is out of the question to present a detailed discussion of this important phase in this résumé, attention will be called to the manner in which the earth patterns diminish with increasing altitude. The insert in Fig. 100 shows the actual size of an image of a 50-foot airplane from 0 to 16,000 feet below the observer as compared with corresponding images (to the same scale) of objects and areas on the earth's surface 10,000 feet below the observer.
For simplicity assume a camera lens to have a focal length equal to 10 inches, then the length _x_ of the image of an object 100 feet long will be related to the altitude _h_ in this manner:
_x_ 100 ----- = ----- or _xh_ = 1000 10 _h_
By substituting the values of altitude _h_ in the equation the values of the length _x_ of the image are found. The following values illustrate the change in size of the image with altitude:
Altitude _h_ in feet Size of image _x_ in inches
1,000 1.00 2,000 0.50 3,000 0.33 4,000 0.25 10,000 0.10 20,000 0.05
It is seen that the image diminishes less rapidly in size as the altitude increases. For example, going from 1000 feet to 2000 feet the image is reduced to one-half. The same reduction takes place in ascending from 10,000 to 20,000 feet. By taking a series of photographs and knowing the reduction-factor of the lens it is a simple matter to study pattern. An airplane of known dimensions can be placed in the imagination at any altitude on a photograph taken at a known altitude and the futility of certain patterns and the advantages of others are at once evident.
[Illustration: Fig. 100.--Illustrating the study of pattern for airplanes. The photograph was taken from an altitude of 10,000 feet. The insert shows the relative lengths (vertical scale) of an airplane of 50-foot spread at various distances below the observer.]
It is impracticable to present colored illustrations in this résumé and values expressed in numbers are meaningless to most persons, so a few general remarks will be made in closing the discussion of low visibility as viewed from above in spring, summer and fall. A black craft is of much lower visibility than a white one. White should not be used. The paints should be very dark shades. The hues are approximately the same for the earth areas as seen at the earth's surface. Inland waters are a dirty blue-green or bluish-green, and deep ocean water is a greenish-blue when viewed vertically, or nearly so. Mean hues of these were determined approximately.
Before considering other aspects of camouflage it is well to consider such features as haze, clouds and sky. There appear to be two kinds of haze which the writer will arbitrarily call earth and high haze, respectively. The former consists chiefly of dust and smoke and usually extends to an altitude of about one mile, although it occasionally extends much higher. Its upper limit is very distinct, as seen by the "false" horizon. This horizon is used more by the pilot when flying at certain altitudes than the true horizon. At the top of this haze cumulus clouds are commonly seen to be poking out like nearly submerged icebergs. The upper haze appears somewhat whiter in color and appears to extend sometimes to altitudes of several or even many miles. The fact that the "earth" haze may be seen to end usually at about 5000 to 6000 feet and the upper haze to persist even beyond 20,000 feet has led the author to apply different names for convenience. The upper limit of the "earth" haze is determined by the height of diurnal atmospheric convection. Haze aids in lowering the visibility of airplanes by providing a luminous veil, but it also operates at some altitudes to increase the brightness of the sky, which is the background in this case.
The sky generally decreases considerably in brightness as the observer ascends. The brightness of the sky is due to scattered light, that is, to light being reflected by particles of dust, smoke, thinly diffused clouds, etc. By making a series of measurements of the brightness of the zenith sky for various altitudes, the altitude where the earth haze ends is usually plainly distinguishable. Many observations of this character were accumulated. In some extreme cases the sky was found to be only one-tenth as bright when observed at high altitudes of 15,000 to 20,000 feet as seen from the earth's surface. This accounts partly for the decrease in the visibility of an airplane as it ascends. At 20,000 feet the sky was found to contribute as little as 4 per cent of the total light on a horizontal plane and the extreme harshness of the lighting is very noticeable when the upper sky is cloudless and clear.
Doubtless, it has been commonly noted that airplanes are generally very dark objects as viewed from below against the sky. Even when painted white they are usually much darker than the sky. As they ascend the sky above them becomes darker, although to the observer on the ground the sky remains constant in brightness. However, in ascending, the airplane is leaving below it more and more luminous haze which acts as a veil in aiding to screen it until, when it reaches a high altitude, the combination of dark sky behind it and luminous haze between it and the observer on the ground, it becomes of much lower visibility. Another factor which contributes somewhat is its diminishing size as viewed from a fixed position at the earth. The minimum perceptible contrast becomes larger as the size of the contrasting patch diminishes.
Inasmuch as there is not enough light reflected upward from the earth to illuminate the lower side of an opaque surface sufficiently to make it as bright as the sky ordinarily, excepting at very high altitudes for very clear skies, it is necessary, in order to attain low visibility for airplanes as viewed from below, to supply some additional illumination to the lower surfaces. Computations have shown that artificial lighting is impracticable, but measurements on undoped airplane fabrics indicate that on sunny days a sufficient brightness can be obtained from direct sunlight diffused by the fabric to increase the brightness to the order of magnitude of the brightness of the sky. On overcast days an airplane will nearly always appear very much darker than the sky. That is, the brightness of the lower sides can in no other manner be made equal to that of the sky. However, low visibility can be obtained on sunny days which is an advantage over high visibility at all times, as is the case with airplanes now in use. Many observations and computations of these and other factors have been made, so that it is possible to predict results. Transparent media have obvious advantages, but no satisfactory ones are available at present.
Having considered low visibility of aircraft as viewed from above and from below, respectively, it is of interest to discuss briefly the possibility of attaining both of these simultaneously with a given airplane. Frankly, it is not practicable to do this. An airplane to be of low visibility against the earth background must be painted or dyed very dark shades of appropriate color and pattern. This renders it almost opaque and it will be a very dark object when viewed against the sky. If the lower surfaces of the airplane are painted as white as possible the airplane still remains a dark object against the blue sky and a very dark object against an overcast sky, except at high altitudes. In the latter cases the contrast is not as great as already explained. A practicable method of decreasing the visibility of airplanes at present as viewed from below is to increase the brightness by the diffuse transmission of direct sun-light on clear days. On overcast days clouds and haze must be depended upon to screen the craft.
In considering these aspects it is well to recall that the two sources of light are the sun and the sky. Assuming the sun to contribute 80 per cent of the total light which reaches the upper side of an opaque horizontal diffusing surface at midday at the earth and assuming the sky to be cloudless and uniform in brightness, then the brightness of the horizontal upper surface will equal 5 _RB_, where _R_ is the reflection-factor of the surface and _B_ is the brightness (different in the two cases) of the sky. On a uniformly overcast day the brightness of the surface would be equal to _RB_. Now assuming _R{e}_ to be the mean reflection-factor of the earth, then the lower side of a horizontal opaque surface suspended in the air would receive light in proportion to _R{e}B_. If this lower surface were a perfect mirror or a perfectly reflecting and diffusing surface its brightness would equal 5 _R{e}B_ on the sunny day and _R{e}B_ on the overcast day where _B_ is the value (different in the two cases) of the brightness of the uniform sky. The surface can never be a perfect reflector, so on an overcast day its brightness will be a fraction (_RR{e}_) of the brightness _B_ of the uniform sky. Inasmuch as _R{e}_ is a very small value it is seen that low visibility of airplanes as viewed from below generally cannot be attained on an overcast day. It can be approached on a sunny day and even realized by adopting the expedient already mentioned. Further computations are to be found elsewhere.[12]
Seasonable changes present no difficulties, for from a practical standpoint only summer and winter need be generally considered. If the earth is covered with snow an airplane covered completely with white or gray paint would be fairly satisfactory as viewed from above, and if a certain shade of a blue tint be applied to the lower surfaces, low visibility as viewed from below would result. The white paint would possess a reflection-factor about equal to that of snow, thus providing low visibility from above. Inasmuch as the reflection-factor of snow is very high, the white lower sides of an airplane would receive a great deal more light in winter than they would in summer. Obviously, a blue tint is necessary for low visibility against the sky, but color has not been primarily considered in the preceding paragraphs because the chief difficulty in achieving low visibility from below lies in obtaining brightness of the proper order of magnitude. In winter the barren ground would be approximately of the same color and reflection-factor as in summer, so it would not be difficult to take this into consideration.
Seaplanes whose backgrounds generally consist of water would be painted of the color and brightness of water with perhaps a slight mottling. The color would generally be a very dark shade, approximating blue-green in hue.
Aircraft for night use would be treated in the same manner as aircraft for day use, if the moonlight is to be considered a dominant factor. This is one of the cases where the judgment must be based on actual experience. It appears that the great enemy of night raiders is the searchlight. If this is true the obvious expedient is to paint the craft a dull jet black. Experiments indicate that it is more difficult to pick up a black craft than a gray or white one and also it is more difficult to hold it in the beam of the searchlight. This can be readily proved by the use of black, gray, and white cards in the beam of an automobile head-light. The white card can be seen in the outskirts of the beam where the gray or black cannot be seen, and the gray can be picked up where the black one is invisible. The science of vision accounts for this as it does for many other questions which arise in the consideration of camouflage or low visibility.
Some attempts have been made to apply the principle of confusibility to airplanes as finally developed for vessels to circumvent the submarine, but the folly of this appears to be evident. Air battles are conducted at terrific speeds and with skillful maneuvering. Triggers are pulled without computations and the whole activity is almost lightning-like. To expect to confuse an opponent as to the course and position of the airplane is folly.
The camouflage of observation balloons has not been developed, though experiments were being considered in this direction as the war closed. Inasmuch as they are low-altitude crafts it appears that they would be best camouflaged for the earth as a background. Their enemies pounce down upon them from the sky so that low visibility from above seems to be the better choice.
In the foregoing it has been aimed to give the reader the general underlying principles of camouflage and low visibility, but at best this is only a résumé. In the following references will be found more extensive discussions of various phases of the subject.
REFERENCES
1. A Study of Zöllner's Figures and Other Related Figures, J. Jastrow, Amer. Jour. of Psych. 1891, 4, p. 381.
2. A Study of Geometrical Illusions, C. H. Judd, Psych. Rev. 1899, 6, p. 241.
3. Visual Illusions of Depth, H. A. Carr, Psych. Rev. 1909, 16, p. 219.
4. Irradiation of Light, F. P. Boswell, Psych. Bul. 1905, 2, p. 200.
5. Retiring and Advancing Colors, M. Luckiesh, Amer. Jour. Psych. 1918, 29, p. 182.
6. The Language of Color, 1918, M. Luckiesh.
7. Apparent Form of the Dome of the Sky, Ann. d. Physik, 1918, 55, p. 387; Sci. Abs. 1918, No. 1147.
8. Course on Optics, 1738, Robert Smith.
9. Color and Its Applications, 1915 and 1921; Light and Shade and Their Applications, 1916, M. Luckiesh.
10. Report of The Submarine Defense Association, L. T. Bates and L. A. Jones.
11. Marine Camouflage Design, E. L. Warner, Trans. I. E. S. 1919, 14, p. 215.
12. The Visibility of Airplanes, M. Luckiesh, Jour. Frank. Inst. March and April, 1919; also Aerial Photometry, Astrophys. Jour. 1919, 49, p. 108.
13. Jour. Amer. Opt. Soc., E. Karrer, 1921.
The foregoing are only a few references indicated in the text. Hundreds of references are available and obviously it is impracticable to include such a list. The most fruitful sources of references are the general works on psychology. E. B. Titchener's Experimental Psychology (vol. 1) contains an excellent list. A chapter on Space in William James' Principles of Psychology (vol. II) will be found of interest to those who wish to delve deeper into visual perception. Other general references are Elements of Physiological Psychology by Ladd and Woodworth; the works of Helmholtz; a contribution by Hering in Hermann's Handb. d. Phys. Bk. III, part 1; Physiological Psychology by Wundt; E. B. Delabarre, Amer. Jour. Psych. 1898, 9, p. 573; W. Wundt, Täuschungen, p. 157 and Philos. Stud. 1898, 14, p. 1; T. Lipps, Raumaesthetik and Zeit. f. Psych. 1896, 12, 39.
INDEX
Aberration, 19 spherical, 122 chromatic, 135
Aerial perspective, 165, 183
After-images, 24, 25, 59, 128, 186 positive and negative, 129
Airplanes, visibility of, 233 camouflage for different types, 234 size of image at various altitudes, 238 camouflage for various conditions, 240
Alhazen, 8
Angles, influence of, 76 various effects of, 81 contours and, 87 apparent effect on length, 91 theories, 98
Animals, protective coloration, 211
Architecture, 195 balance in, 201
Arcs, circular, illusions due to, 86
Areas, juxtaposed, illusions of, 96
Artist, 179
Attention, fluctuation of, 65, 106, 141, 164
Aubert, 49
Auerbach's indirect vision theory, 100
Aureole, 178
Balance in architecture, 201
Bas-relief, 143
Battleships, 222
Binocular disparity, 105
Binocular vision, 29, 31
Blending of colors in camouflage, 216
Blind spot, 21
Blue light on war-vessels, 230
Boswell, varieties of irradiation, 122
Brightness, illusions due to variations in, 107 and color contrasts, 114 apparatus, 115 and hue, 125 sky, 241
Brucke's theory, 37
Brunot's mean distance theory, 101
Camouflage, 210 terrestrial, 210 detection of, 215 marine, 222 airplane, 234
Carr, observations on distance illusions, 108
Chromatic aberration, 19, 135
Chlorophyl, 214
Circle, 11 arcs of, illusion, 86 contracting and expanding illusion, 98
Clouds, 235
Color, 124 after-images, 128 blending in camouflage, 216 contrasts and brightness, 114 growth and decay of sensation, 131 illusions of, 156 retiring and advancing, 138 saturation, 154 sensibility of retina, 138 warm and cold, 158
Confusability, 226
Confusion theory of angular illusions, 100
Contour, illusions of, 52 and angles, illusions, 87
Contracting and expanding circles, illusion of, 98
Contrasts, illusions of, 53 simultaneous, 124, 154 apparatus for, 115, 125 color, 114, 154, 188 brightness, 114
Convergence, illusions of, 108, 191
Cord, twisted, illusion, 88
Daylight, artificial, 189
Decoration, painting and, 179
Decorator, 188
Dember, 167
Depth and distance, illusions, 102
Direction, illusions of Zöllner's, 76 Wundt's, 79 Hering's, 80
Disk, Mason, 132
Distance and depth, illusions, 102 and size, 35, 104, 166
Distance illusions, Carr's observations, 108
Double images, 37
Dynamic theory of angular illusions, 99
Enlargement of sun and moon at horizon, apparent, 169
Equivocal figures, 64
Euclid, 8
Extent, interrupted, illusions of, 48
External image, 15, 17, 34
Eye, physiology, 13 position, 30 adjustments, 33 defects, 19
Fatigue, 128
Field, visual, effect of location in, 44
Figures, equivocal, 64
Filters, color, 214
Fluctuation of attention, 65, 106, 141, 164
Focusing, 14
Form of sky, apparent, 166
Fovea centralis, 22, 23, 139
Frames, picture, effect of wood grain, 190
Geometrical illusions, 44
Glare, 119
Grain of wood, apparent distortions due to, 190
Grecian art, 196
Growth and decay of color sensation, 131
Guttman, 175
Hallucination, 4, 72
Halo, 178
Haze, illusions, etc., 103, 166, 183 earth and high, 240
Helmholtz, 13, 74
Hering, 74 illusion of direction, 80
Hue and brightness, 125
Illusions, geometrical, 44 equivocal figures, 64 influence of angles, 76 of depth and distance, 102 irradiation and brightness contrast, 114 color, 124 light and shadows, 144 in nature, 164 in painting and decoration, 179 mirror, 205 camouflage, 210
Image after-, 24, 25, 59, 128, 129, 186 double, 37 external, 15, 17, 34 retinal, inversion of, 16 of airplane, size at various altitudes, 238
Indirect vision theory, Auerbach's, 100
Intaglio, 143
Interrupted extent, illusions of, 48
Iris, 15
Irradiation, 120 and brightness contrast, 114 varieties of (Boswell), 122 in architecture, 199
James, 170
Jastrow, 80
Jones, L. A., 223
Judd, 86, 93
Judgment, 1
Karrer, 160
Kepler, 8
Light, effect of spectral character, 189
Lighting, illusions of depth and distance due to, 102 contrasts, 154 diffusion, effect of, 145 direction, effect of, 144, 151 ending of searchlight beam, 160 warm and cold colors, 158
Lipps, 10, 11 dynamic theory of, 99
Location in visual field, effect, 44
Mean distance theory, Brunot's, 101
Mechanical, esthetic unity, 11
Magician, 3
Magic, mirror, 205
Marine camouflage, 222
Mason disk, 132
Mirage, 3, 176
Mirror magic, 205
Miscellaneous color effects, 140
Moon, apparent size at horizon, 8, 36, 169 theories of, 173 apparent radius of crescent, 121
Müller-Lyer illusion, 53, 93
National Research Council, Committee on Camouflage, 234
Nature, 164
Necker, 74
Oppel, 9
Painting and decoration, 179
Painter, 2, 179, 186
Parallax, 105
Parthenon of Athens, 196
Persistence of vision, 131
Perspective, 58 in architecture, 198 aerial 165, 183 theory, 98
Photographer, 152
Photography, use in detection of camouflage, 220
Photometer, 156, 217
Pigments, 184
Poggendorff illusion, 85
Protective coloration, animals, 211
Psychology, 2, 6, 157 of light, 193
Purkinje phenomenon, 26, 139
Reflection-factors, 236
Retina, 14, 20 inertia, 130 color sensibility, 138
Retinal rivalry, 140
Retiring and advancing colors, 136
Reversal of mirror image, 205
Rods and cones, 21
Schröder's staircase, 70
Sculpture, 204
Searchlight beam, ending of, 160
Sensation, color, growth and decay, 131
Sense, 1
Shading, counter, for vessels, 224
Shadows, importance in camouflage, 215
Size and distance, 35, 36 illusions of, 104, 166
Sky apparent form of, 166 brightness, 241
Skylight and sunlight, relative proportions of, 215, 243
Smith, Robert, 173
Smoke-screens, 230
Spectral character of light, 189
Sphere, illusions, 145, 150, 151
Spherical aberration, 19
Sphinx illusion, 206
Spiral illusions, 90
Spraying, paint, 187
Stereoscope, 39, 142
Stereoscopic vision, 38, 41, 141
Submarines, 225 camouflage for, 232
Sun, apparent enlargement at horizon, 169
Sunlight and skylight, relative proportions in nature, 215, 243
Terrestrial camouflage, 210
Theory of influence of angles, 98 perspective, 98 dynamic, 99 confusion, 100 indirect vision, 100 mean distance, 101
Thiéry's figure, 71
Thiéry's perspective theory, 99
Transparencies, 185
Twisted cord illusions, 88
Uibe, 167
Vertical vs. horizontal distances, 11, 36, 46
Visibility, low, for vessels, 222 of airplanes, 233
Vision, 29 persistence of, 131 stereoscopic, 38
Visual perception, 32, 33
Warm and cold colors, 158
Warner, E. L., 227
Wheatstone, 37
Wood grain, illusions caused by, 191
World War, 213
Wundt, 10, 11, 32, 74 illusion of direction, 79
Yellow spot, 139
Zöllner's illusion, 67, 76
Zoth, 175
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Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Subscripted characters are indicated by {subscript}.
The following misprints have been corrected: "imgaes" corrected to "images" (page 128) "bove" corrected to "above" (page 177) "verticle" corrected to "vertical" (page 239) "colo" corrected to "color" (Index)
Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.
The inverted "8" and "S" characters at the top of page 45 cannot be properly represented in this text version.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Visual Illusions, by Matthew Luckiesh |
23892-0 | Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: "_HARRY’S BLOOD WAS UP._" p. 12]
CARRIED OFF
_A STORY OF PIRATE TIMES_
BY ESMÉ STUART
AUTHOR OF ’FOR HALF-A-CROWN’ ’THE LAST HOPE’ ’THE WHITE CHAPEL’ ETC.
_WITH FOUR FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS_
LONDON NATIONAL SOCIETY’S DEPOSITORY BROAD SANCTUARY, WESTMINSTER NEW YORK: THOMAS WHITTAKER, 2 & 3 BIBLE HOUSE 1888
_TO_ _CLARISSA AND JOHN_
_I dedicate this story, knowing they are already fond of travelling. They may be glad to hear that the chief events in it are true, and are taken out of an old book written more than two hundred years ago. Yet they may now safely visit the West Indies without fear of being made prisoners by the much dreaded Buccaneers._
_E.S._
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE SACRIFICE II. CAPTURED III. A BEAUTIFUL ISLAND IV. THE PIRATES ARE COMING V. THE SCOUTS VI. HATCHING A PLOT VII. TREACHERY VIII. A BRAVE DEFENCE IX. IMPRISONED X. A FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN XI. THE SECRET PASSAGE XII. A NEW EXPEDITION XIII. THE ESCAPE XIV. DEFENCE TILL DEATH XV. IN THE WOODS XVI. WAITING FOR LUCK XVII. DISCOVERED XVIII. HUNTING A FUGITIVE XIX. IN A LONELY SPOT XX. SAVED XXI. A BAG OF GOLD
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
’HARRY’S BLOOD WAS UP’
CARLO REFUSED ADMISSION (missing from book)
CARLO BEFORE CAPTAIN MORGAN
’SHALL WE LAND?’ (missing from book)
CARRIED OFF.
CHAPTER I.
THE SACRIFICE.
It was a beautiful warm spring evening, and as the sun sank slowly in the west it illuminated with quivering golden light the calm waters that surrounded green, marshy Canvey Island, which lies opposite South Benfleet, in the estuary of the Thames.
Harry Fenn had just come out of church, and, as was often his wont, he ran up a slight hill, and, shading his eyes, looked intently out towards Canvey and then yet more to his left, where Father Thames clasps hands with the ocean.
The eminence on which young fair-haired Harry stood was the site of a strong castle, built long ago by Hæsten, the Danish rover, in which he stowed away Saxon spoil and Saxon prisoners, till King Alfred came down upon him, pulled down the rover’s fortress, seized his wife and his two sons, and relieved the neighbourhood of this Danish scourge. How often, indeed, had the peaceful inhabitants trembled at the sight of the sea robber’s narrow war-vessels creeping up the creek in search of plunder!
Harry, however, was not thinking of those ancient days; his whole soul and mind was in the present, in vague longings for action; full, too, of young inquisitiveness as to the future, especially his own future, so that he forgot why he had come to this spot, and did not even hear the approach of the Rev. Mr. Aylett, who, having been listening to a tale of distress from one of his parishioners at the end of the evening service, had now come to enjoy the view from Hæsten’s hill. As he walked slowly towards the immovable form of the boy, he could not help being struck by the lad’s graceful outline; the lithe, yet strongly built figure, the well-balanced head, now thrown back as the eyes sought the distant horizon; whilst the curly fair locks appeared to have been dashed impatiently aside, and now were just slightly lifted by the evening breeze; for Harry Fenn held his cap in his hand as he folded his arms across his chest. He might have stood for the model of a young Apollo had any artist been by, but art and artists were unknown things in South Benfleet at that time.
Mr. Aylett shook his head as he walked towards the lad, even though a smile of pleasure parted his lips as he noted the comeliness of his young parishioner, whom he now addressed.
’Well, Harry, my boy, what may be the thoughts which are keeping you so unusually still?’ Harry started and blushed like a girl, and yet his action was simple enough.
’Indeed, sir, I did not hear you. I--I came here to have a look at our cows down on the marsh. Father----’
Mr. Aylett laughed good-humouredly.
’Am I to believe that that earnest look is all on account of the cattle, Harry?’ Harry felt at this moment as if he had told a lie, and had been found out by Mr. Aylett, who was so good and clever that he could almost, nay, sometimes did, tell one’s thoughts.
’No, sir;’ then, with a winning smile, the lad added, ’in truth I had forgotten all about the cattle. I was dreaming of----’
’Of the future, Harry. Listen, did not those same thoughts run thus? That it is dull work staying at home on the farm; that some of thy relations in past days had famous times in our civil wars, and went to battle and fought for the King, and that some even had been settlers in the old days of Queen Bess, and that, when all is said and done, it wants a great deal of self-denial to stay as thou art now doing, cheering the declining years of thy good father and mother. Some such thought I fancied I could read in your face, boy, when singing in the choir just now. Was it so? I would have you use candour with me.’
Harry turned his cap round and round slowly in his hands. Mr. Aylett was certainly a diviner of thoughts; but Harry was far too honest, and of too good principle, to deny the truth. It was his honesty, as well as his pluck and courage, that made him so dear to the clergyman, who had taught the boy a great deal more learning than usually fell to the lot of a yeoman’s son in those days, even though Mr. Fenn farmed his own land, was well-to-do, and could, had he so willed, have sent his son to Oxford; but he himself had been reared on Pitsea Farm, had married there, and there he had watched his little ones carried to the grave, all but Harry. Yes, Harry was his all, his mother’s darling, his father’s pride; the parson was welcome to teach him his duty to his Church, his King and his country, and what more he liked, but no one must part the yeoman from his only child.
And Harry knew this, and yet often and often his soul was moved with that terribly strong desire for change and for a larger horizon, which, so long as the world lasts, will take possession of high-spirited boys. However, the lad was as good as he was brave; he knew that he must crush down his desire, or at least that he must not show it to his parents; but he did not try to resist the pleasure of indulging in thoughts of a larger life, thoughts which Mr. Aylett guessed very easily, but which would have made his father’s hair stand on end. This evening Mr. Aylett’s face looked so kind that Harry’s boyish reserve gave way, and with rising colour he exclaimed:
’Oh, sir, I can’t deny it; it is all true, that, and much more; just now I had such dreadful thoughts. I felt that I must go out yonder, away and away, and learn what the world is like; I felt that even father’s sorrow and mother’s tears would not grieve me much, and that I must break loose from here or die. I know it was wicked, and I will conquer the feeling, but it seems as if the devil himself tempts me to forget my duty; and worse,’ added poor Harry, who having begun his confession thought he would make a clean breast of it, ’I feel as if I must go straight to my father and tell him I will not spend my life in minding cattle and seeing after the labourers, and that after telling him, I would work my way out into the big world without asking him for a penny. Sir, would that be possible?’
Harry looked up with trembling eagerness, as if on this one frail chance of Mr. Aylett’s agreement depended his life’s happiness; but the clergyman did not give him a moment’s hope.
’No, Harry, that is not possible, my lad. You are an only child. On you depends the happiness of your parents. This sacrifice is asked of you by God, and is it too hard a matter to give up your own will? Look you, my dear Harry, I am not over-blaming you, nor am I thinking that the crushing of this desire is not a difficult matter, but we who lived through the late troublous times see farther than young heads, who are easily persuaded to cozen their conscience according to their wishes. And if you travelled, Harry, temptations and trials would follow too, and be but troublesome companions; and further, there would be always a worm gnawing at your heart when you thought of the childless old folks at home. Believe me, Harry, even out in "the golden yonder," as some one calls it, you would not find what you expect; there would be no joy for you who had deprived those dependent on you of it. Take my advice, boy, wait for God’s own good time, and do not fall into strong distemper of mind.’
Mr. Aylett paused and put a kind hand on the boy’s shoulder. Harry did not answer at once, but slowly his eyes turned away from the waters and the golden sun, slowly they were bent upon the marshes where the cattle were grazing, and then nearer yet to where Pitsea Manor Farm raised its head above a plantation of elms and oaks. Then a great struggle went on in the boy’s mind; he remembered he was but sixteen years old, and that many a year must most likely elapse before he became the owner of Pitsea Farm and could do as he pleased, and that those years must be filled with dull routine labour, where little room was left for any adventure beyond fishing in the creek, or going over to Canvey Island to watch when the high waves broke over the new embankments made by Joas Croppenburg, the Dutchman, whose son still owned a third of the rich marshland of the island as a recompense for his father’s sea walls. But young Joas used to tell tales of great Dutch sea fights and exploits, which, if Harry made the sacrifice Mr. Aylett was asking him to make, would but probe the wound of his desire, and so Croppenburg’s stories must also be given up.
Harry’s courage, however, was not merely nominal, it was of the right sort. The sacrifice he was asked to make was none the less great because it was one not seen of men. He was to give up his will, the hardest thing a man or a boy can do; but it needed only Mr. Aylett’s firm answer to show Harry that his duty was very plain, and that God required this of him.
It was like taking a plunge into cold water, where it is the first resolution that is the worst part of the action; suddenly, with a quick lifting of his head, and a new hopeful light in his blue eyes very different from the unsatisfied longing gaze of ten minutes ago, Harry spoke, and as he did so his clenched hands and his whole demeanour told plainly that the boy meant what he said.
’I will give it up, sir; as it is, the wishing brings me no happiness, so I will even put the wishing to flight.’
Mr. Aylett grasped the lad’s hand warmly.
’God bless you, Harry, you are a brave fellow. I am proud of you. Come to me to-morrow, and I will show you a new book a friend has sent me; or, better, walk back with me to the Vicarage.’
’I would willingly, sir,’ said Harry quietly, ’but father bade me go to the meadow and see if White Star should be driven in under shelter to-night. Our man Fiske has met with an accident, so I promised to see after White Star before sundown. She was a little sick this morning.’
’To-morrow will do well enough,’ said Mr. Aylett, glad to see that Harry was beginning already to turn his mind steadily to home matters, ’and if you have time we will go to St. Catherine’s Church on Canvey. There is a young clergyman come there to see if he will accept the cure, and I know you will row me over.’ Harry promised gladly, and then Mr. Aylett with another shake of the hand turned his face homeward. When he was gone Harry flung himself on the ground to think over the promise he had just given. He would--yes, he would keep his word.
CHAPTER II.
CAPTURED.
How long he lay there, Harry never could recollect afterwards, but feeling a chilliness creeping over him he suddenly remembered his duty. He must make haste, for the sun was setting, and if White Star did not seem to be better she must be led home from the damp marsh meadows that bordered the water. Though Harry was feeling intensely sad, he had a secret feeling of satisfaction at having conquered in a very hard struggle, and this perhaps made him look more at the things he was passing than, as he was wont to do, at the distant sea. This evening everything was calm and quiet, both on the darkening waters and on the green meadows. Harry noted a gate that needed repairing, and made up his mind to tell his father that it must be seen to, or the cattle would be straying; then he glanced at the little cart-horse foal that promised to be a rival of its mother. The Pitsea Farm cart-horses were deservedly famous, and Harry’s father, George Fenn, was as good a breeder of horses as he was a staunch Churchman and opposed to the Puritan element only now quieting down.
At last Harry reached the meadow where White Star was grazing and where some thirty sheep were sharing the pasture. He went up to examine the gentle creature, and she knew well enough the young master’s voice and touch, so that she hardly stopped chewing the cud to give him a kindly stare.
’White Star seems not so bad,’ thought Harry. ’I’ll tell father to give her another day in the meadow, she is not too ill to enjoy this sweet grass.’
Harry had been so much engaged in attending to White Star that he did not hear the soft splash of some oars at the bottom of the meadow he was in, nor did he see that four strong, rough-looking men in seafaring attire had quietly moored their long-boat to an old willow stump, and that two of them were hastily scanning the sheep and cattle that were only a few yards away.
’Zounds!’ muttered the first who stepped up the bank, ’what have we here? a lad in this very field. I’faith, I saw no one from the creek.’
’A mere sapling,’ laughed the other, ’take no heed of him, and he will soon take to his heels at the sight of us. Now, quick’s the word, the captain is impatient to be off with the tide.’
In another instant the men had begun their work. They had come for the purpose of carrying off some sheep and cattle, and having waited till this late hour they had not expected to find a witness to their robbery. Quietly and stealthily as they had landed, however, their intentions could not be carried out without some disturbance, and Harry was first made aware of their presence by the sudden helter-skelter of the sheep and the immediate curiosity expressed by poor White Star, whose evening meal was to be so violently disturbed.
In a moment more Harry had seized the situation, which indeed it was not difficult to do, as he now beheld one of his father’s sheep suddenly captured by the clever expedient of an extemporised lasso, and when the poor animal had been dragged towards its captor the robber made short work of tying his victim’s legs together, and leaving it to bleat beside him whilst he proceeded to capture another in the same manner, before dragging them to the long-boat.
All the fierce courage of the hardy yeoman’s son rose to its height as he beheld this daring robbery carried on under his very eyes. Nay, when the strongest and foremost man began unconcernedly to make his way towards White Star herself, the boy’s indignation knew no bounds.
’How now?’ he cried indignantly. ’What do you mean, you rascals, by coming here? this is our field and our cattle; away at once, and unloose the sheep, or, by’r laykin! it will be worse for you. I will call for help, and you will soon be treated in such a manner as you deserve.’
This fierce speech had not, however, the desired effect. The man laughed ironically as if Harry were a mere baby, and approaching White Star he swiftly threw the lasso over the animal’s sleek head.
’Out of the way, young blusterer, or it will be the worse for thee. Our master, the captain, requires these cattle to victual our ship before sailing; come, off with thee! and don’t halloo all the breath out of thy body.’
But Harry’s blood was up. Enraged at the man’s daring and effrontery, he seized a stout stick from the hedge-row and sprang upon the intruder with the fury of a young lion. He never considered the inequality of the struggle or the folly of his engaging single-handed with a ruffian of this description; he only thought of saving his father’s property and avenging the insult. Nor were his well-directed blows mere make-believe, and as the man before him was suddenly aware of a sharp stinging pain across his forehead, he let go the lasso and sprang on to the boy with a fierce oath.
[Illustration: "_HARRY’S BLOOD WAS UP_"]
’What, you young viper, you dare to strike me? Well, take that. Here, Jim, this way, bring the rope here; I’ll teach this churl to bethump me.’
As he spoke he wrenched away poor Harry’s stick, and with a well-directed blow he laid the boy on the ground. Harry felt a terrible pain in his head, his brain seemed to reel; bright, blood-red flashes blotted out the familiar fields, and then with a groan of pain he stretched out his right arm to grasp at some support, after which he remembered no more.
The man appealed to as Jim had now run up, and laughed as he saw Harry fall insensible on the dewy grass.
’Bravo! the lad fell in fair fight, Joseph; but i’fecks! who would have thought of seeing you engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with such a stripling? Hast done for him, comrade?’ he added with curiosity, in which was mingled neither pity nor fear. And yet the sight of Harry Fenn might have softened even a hard heart, one would have thought, as he lay there in the twilight on the dewy grass, whilst a slow trickling line of red blood fell from his forehead over his fair curling hair.
’Here, make haste,’ said the first man, whom his friend addressed as Coxon, ’the captain’s orders were that we must lose no time; there’ll be several more trips this evening, and he means to run down the Channel before morning.’
’Then we’d best not leave the lad here. What say you, Coxon, shall I despatch him for fear of his waking up and telling tales before we return?’
Coxon looked down on the brave lad, and decided, he knew not why, to act more mercifully.
’Let him be, or wait--tie his legs and throw him in the long-boat; on our ship he’ll tell no tales, and when we cast anchor we can drop him somewhere, or give him a seaman’s burial if he’s dead, for, to tell the truth, it was a good whack that I dealt him. Now, Jim, quick, for fear some of those land dolts come down upon us, and deafen us with their complaints.’
After this quick certainly was the word. Harry was tied, much after the fashion of his own sheep, and cast with little ceremony into the long-boat; further booty was secured, till no more could be carried during this trip, and then, as silently as it had come, the boat was rowed swiftly down the creek till they reached their destination, namely, the good ship ’Scorpion,’ a privateer bound for the West Indies, after having lately made a very successful bargain with the cargo it had safely brought home.
How long Harry remained unconscious he never knew: when he came to himself it was some time before he could collect any sequence in his thoughts. He felt, however, that he was in a cramped and confined place, and so put out his hands to make more room, as it were, for his limbs; but he could give no explanation to himself of his whereabouts, though he half realised that the night air was blowing in his face, and that something like sea spray now and then seemed to be dashed on his head. His hands were free, but what of his legs? He experienced a sharp cutting pain above his ankles, and with some difficulty he reached down to the seat of pain with one of his hands. Yes, there was a rope tied round his legs; who had done this, and where was he? He remembered standing on Hæsten’s mound looking longingly at the sea, and he also recalled Mr. Aylett’s words and his own fierce struggle against his strong inclinations, and then--what had followed?
Here for a long time his mind remained a blank, till a decided lurch forced the conviction upon him that he was certainly in a ship, not on the green marsh meadow at home.
Home! He must make haste and get home; his father would wonder what kept him so long, it was quite dark; how anxious his fond mother would be. He must at once get rid of that horrid thing that prevented his rising, and he must run as fast as he could back to Pitsea Farm. But what of White Star? White Star, the meadow, the--the----
All at once the scene of his conflict flashed into his mind, and the awful truth burst upon him. He was a prisoner in some enemy’s ship--or could it be in one of those dreadful privateers, whose ravages were often spoken of, and whom Mr. Aylett had said ought to be put down by Government with a firm hand? Ay, and those ruffians who had treated him with such brutality, they must be no other than some of those dreaded buccaneers, whose atrocities in the West Indies made the blood of peaceable people run cold, and wonder why God’s judgments did not descend on all who abetted such crimes. Harry, as we know, was very brave, and yet he shuddered as the truth forced itself on his mind; it was not so much from a feeling of fear, but because, to the boy’s weak, fevered brain, the terrible calamity that had overtaken him seemed to be, as it were, a punishment for his old and secret longings, and his discontent at the dull home life.
Then followed a period of great mental pain for the boy, and after having vainly tried to free himself, he lay back utterly spent with the exertion, and with the feeling that perhaps he was reserved for worse tortures. Harry had heard many and many a terrible story of the doings of these buccaneers, who plundered, without distinction, the ships of all nations, and amassed treasures in the West Indies and the Spanish Main, and whose inhuman conduct to their prisoners was not much better than that experienced by the unfortunate Christian prisoners from the pirates of Algiers. Harry’s courage was nearly giving way at these thoughts, and as no one was by to see him a few bitter tears rolled down his cheeks; but as he put up his hand to brush them away he suddenly felt ashamed of his weakness.
’God helping me,’ thought he, ’whatever these rascals call themselves they shall not see me in tears, be the pretence never so great; it were a pretty story to take back to my father and good Mr. Aylett, that I was found weeping like a girl; but all the same I wish they would give me something to eat. In truth I could devour very willingly a sirloin of beef if it were offered me.’
Hunger is but a melancholy companion, and as the time still passed on and no one came near him, though Harry could hear the tramp of feet above him distinctly enough, the boy began to fear he should be left to die of slow starvation; and though this idea was very fearful to a growing lad, yet he determined that even this suffering should not make him cry out, and, clenching his teeth together, he lay down again and tried to say a few mental prayers. Evidently he must have dozed off, for the next thing he remembered was the sound of a rough voice telling him to get up; at the same time the rope that tied his feet was hastily cut and he felt himself led along a dark passage and pushed up a hatchway, feeling too dazed and weak to notice anything till he was thrust through the door of a small cabin.
By this time Harry’s spirit had returned; he forgot his pain and his hunger, and, straightening himself, tried to wrench his arm away from the iron grasp of the sailor that led him.
’What right have you fellows to keep me prisoner here?’ cried Harry. ’But as we are upon the high seas it’s not likely I can escape, so you need not pinion me down in this fashion.’
At this moment a tall, powerful, and very handsome man entered the cabin, and, hearing Harry’s words, burst into a loud and cheerful laugh.
’What, Mings! is this the boy you spoke of? By my faith, you have caged a little eaglet! But we can soon cut his claws and stop his pretty prating. How now, boy: answer truly, and tell me thy name; for we are no lovers of ill-manners and insolence.’
Harry Fenn had been struck dumb by the appearance of the new comer, so that he had ceased struggling with Mings, and now gazed at the courtly-looking man, whose whole bearing spoke of a certain rough refinement and assured courage, such as Harry had believed attainable only by a gentleman of birth and breeding. Evidently the man before him was the captain of the crew, but he was no mere rough sailor such as Harry had often seen at home; on the contrary, his dress was both rich and elegant; he wore his hair in flowing locks just below his neck; a cravat of muslin edged with rich lace was round his throat, and the ends of the bow hung over his thick doublet, which was embroidered in a running pattern. His scarf, thrown over one shoulder and tied at his waist, was heavy with gold embroidery and fringe, and the sword that dangled at his side was evidently of Spanish make, and richly chased. As to his countenance, the more Harry gazed the less he could believe this man had anything to do with the buccaneers of the West Indies he had heard so much about, for the Captain’s expression was open, and even pleasant. His eyes were of a pale blue, shaded by soft and reddish eyebrows; his nose straight and well formed; and though his mouth was somewhat full and coarse, yet there was nothing bad-tempered about it; and the curling moustache and small tuft of hair on his chin reminded one of a jolly cavalier more than of a dreaded sea-captain. Yes, Harry fancied he might be mistaken, and that this gentleman was in truth a loyal captain of His Majesty’s Navy, and that his own capture was all some terrible mistake. This idea gave him courage, and, shaking himself free from his jailor, he advanced boldly towards the handsome-looking man, who surely must be the soul of honour, and no enemy to the public.
’Oh, sir, I fancied I had fallen into the hands of evil men; but surely I am mistaken, and you will see justice done me. I am a yeoman’s son. My name is Harry Fenn, and my father owns a farm at South Benfleet. I had but gone down to see after one of our cows who had been sick, when suddenly your men waylaid me when I defended our cattle, and used me in a brutish manner. Had they wanted to buy cattle, my father could have directed them to those willing to sell. I did but my duty in defending my father’s property, and I doubt not that they gave you quite a wrong tale of my behaviour; but indeed, sir, it was not true, and though I have been treated very roughly I beg you to see justice done to me, and to have me landed on our English coast; for my parents will be sadly put about on account of my disappearance, and very solicitous about my safety.’
Harry paused, expecting the handsome captain to express his regret at what had happened. Instead of this, his words were received with a loud laugh by Mings; and apparently they also much tickled the fancy of the Captain, for he joined in the merriment, though he looked with kindly eyes on the handsome youth, who, in spite of his being a good deal bespattered with mud and blood stains, was yet a very pleasant picture of a bold, fearless English boy.
’Thou art over-bold, young fellow,’ said Mings when he had laughed heartily. ’Doubtless our captain will teach thee how to mind thy speech. Shall I stow the lad away, sir, in the hold? I take it he will come forth in a humbler frame of mind, and with less zeal for defending cattle.’
’Nay, Mings, leave him to me; such a home bird is an uncommon sight, and having fallen on deck for want of a stronger wing, he must needs stay aboard. Go and attend to the guns, and tell the watch to keep a sharp look-out for any strange sail, and I’ll see to the boy.’
Mings appeared a little sulky at this order, and took the opportunity of roughly grasping Harry’s shoulder as he went by, with the remark:
’Keep a civil tongue in thy head, young scarecrow, or Captain Henry Morgan will soon teach thee to wag it less glibly. It would want but a small gun to blow thee back to the English shore if thou art so anxious to get back--eh, Captain?’
The Captain frowned instead of answering, and Mings made off as quickly as possible; but by this time Harry had recovered from his surprise.
’Then it’s true,’ he said quickly; ’you are in truth the infamous Henry Morgan the buccaneer, whose name is a terror to all honest folk. I only hope one of His Majesty’s men-of-war will give chase, and I will do all in my power to give information. It is a dastardly act that you have done, for you have stolen our property and allowed your men shamefully to ill-use me.’
Harry never stayed to think how unwise his words were: he was so angry at having made a mistake and having fancied this courtly man was an honest gentleman, that he cared nothing at the moment about the consequences of his violent language; indeed, he was all the more furious when he noticed that Captain Morgan seemed only amused by his burst of indignation.
’Thou art a brave lad, and I like to see thy spirit. Tell me thy name. I wager it is an honest one.’
’Ay, truly. Harry Fenn is my name--an honest English yeoman’s son, and one that will receive no favours from a buccaneer,’ answered Harry, crossing his arms.
’Then thou art my namesake, lad, i’ fecks! See, I’ll forgive thy hasty words, and take thee for my godson. As for thy parents, well, they must take the chances of war as others do, for there can be no putting back to land now. We had to be very crafty to avoid a large three-decker of sixty-four guns that, I fancy, had scent of my poor frigate; but we ran up the French flag, and so got off; and now we are making a very fair journey towards Jamaica. Art hungry, lad? There’s no use lying about thy stomach, for it’s a hard taskmaster, and, now I come to think of it, no one has heeded thee or thy wants since the cutter put thee aboard.’
Hunger was indeed a very hard taskmaster for at this moment Harry Fenn felt a dizziness which he could hardly control, and he half fell on a bench which was beside him, and against which he had been leaning. Captain Morgan continued:
’Come, Harry Fenn, you’re a brave lad, and we’ll strike a bargain. I’ve taken a fancy to you, my boy, and I’ll try and protect you from the sailors. We are rough people at times, but not so bad as we’re painted; so if you’ll work like the rest, I’ll warrant you good provender and as merry a life as we sea-folk know how to lead.’
’I will not work for such as you,’ said Harry boldly; ’my father brought me up in honest ways. I would rather die than join hands with such men as your crew.’
’By my troth, boy, you are ignorant of our good deeds, I well see,’ said Captain Morgan. ’Many of those in power are glad enough of our inroads on the Spanish Settlements, for those rogues get only their deserts if we make them discharge a little of their gold. Hast never heard of our worthy predecessors? The authorities were less squeamish in those days, and called the deeds of bold men by fine names, whereas now, in truth, it is convenient to dub us buccaneers. There was Sir Thomas Seymour, and before him there were fine doings by Clarke’s squadron. By St. George, he was a lucky man! and after six weeks’ cruise he brought back a prize of 50,000*l.* taken from the Spaniards. And how about Drake, Hawkins, and Cavendish? There were no ugly names hurled at them, and yet methinks they and we go much on the same lines. In truth we have done good service also against those rascally Dutch, and for that alone we deserve better treatment than we get.’
Captain Morgan now noticed that Harry had become deadly pale, and, hastily rising, the buccaneer opened a locker and took from it a black bottle, the contents of which he poured into a glass.
’Here, lad, thou art faint; this will revive thy courage. But first swear that thou wilt be one of us.’
Harry had eagerly stretched forth his hand to take the glass, but at these words he drew back.
’Nay, but I will not swear; if God wills, I can die, but I will not sully my father’s name.’
Captain Morgan frowned angrily, and, striding up to Harry, took hold of his arm with his left hand, and with his right seized the hilt of his sword as he exclaimed--
’Swear, boy, or it will be worse for thee.’ Harry Fenn made one last great effort and staggered to his feet; then with his right hand he struck the glass with as much strength as he possessed, and saw the red wine spurt out upon the floor and upon the Captain’s doublet.
’God helping me, I will not swear,’ he cried; but the words were barely audible, as he fell fainting on the floor.
’As brave a lad as I ever cast eyes on!’ said the Captain, losing his stern expression, and, stooping down, he poured a few drops of the wine into Harry’s mouth; then, calling for the cook, he bade him tend the boy till he should have regained his strength.
’Harry Fenn shall be under my protection,’ said the Captain to himself, ’but in time he must be one of us.’
CHAPTER III.
A BEAUTIFUL ISLAND.
It is the beginning of December 1670 in the beautiful little Island of St. Catherine, one of the West Indian Islands, which were at this time the rich treasure-house of most of the European nations, where Spaniards, French, English, and Dutch all hoped to make their fortunes in some way or other, and where, alas! the idle and good-for-nothing men of the Old World attempted by unlawful means to win fame and fortune, which, when achieved, as often as not brought them neither happiness nor profit.
Though it is December, in St. Catherine there is nothing cold or disagreeable in the weather, and all around the beauty of the scene delights the eye. The mountains, though of no great height, are wooded with the loveliest tropical vegetation; the well-watered valleys are little Gardens of Eden; whilst in some portions, not yet cleared by either natives, Spaniards, or Englishmen, the original forests rise up like giants of nature whom no hand of man has laid low. In these forests are endless varieties of birds--parrots, pigeons, and hummingbirds of every colour. Here, too, can be found land-crabs which much resemble sea-crabs in shape and manner of walking; but instead of finding a home under rocks and boulders, these crabs burrow in the forests, and once a year form themselves into a regiment and march down to the sea-coast for the purpose of depositing their young in the waters. This regiment has only one line of march; it never diverges from it, but whatever comes in its way is climbed over--straight over it go the crabs; and such a noise they make that you can hear the clattering of their claws for a considerable distance.
We must not now stop to describe this West Indian island, which is full of beauty and curious plants and trees; but if you come to the wood that leads to the great Spanish fortress of Santa Teresa, you will find a steep path through the luxurious forest, leading over a drawbridge to the castle. What a view can be seen from thence over the port! But it was not the view that the Governor’s children were thinking of as they walked together in the garden which sloped down towards the sea, and which was especially reserved for the Governor and his family.
Felipa del Campo was a tall dark girl of about fourteen years of age, but she looked older, and there was a sad expression on her face as she gazed up to her brother, a noble-looking fellow a year older, with the long, grave-looking countenance of the Spanish nobility. He was dressed, after the fashion of that time, in embroidered doublet, short velvet tunic, and trunk hose; whilst his well-shaped limbs were displayed to perfection in silk stockings. His shoes had buckles set with diamonds, and his tall Spanish hat was plumed.
Felipa, on her side, had a long silver-embroidered skirt, beneath which her dainty feet hardly appeared; a small stomacher sewn with seed pearls set off her lithe figure, whilst her pretty, dark hair strayed from beneath a rich black lace kerchief.
’Where is my father, Carlo?’ asked Felipa. ’Old Catalina says he has been down to-day to give orders about the repair of the bridge between the two islands. Do you think he is expecting any danger? Surely the forts are well protected; but what can make him so busy?’
’I don’t know what to think,’ said Carlo sadly, ’our father is so strange of late. I have been trying to speak to you about it, Felipa, for several days, but sometimes I fancy he seems to watch me as if he suspected me; though of what I cannot imagine. And then--have you noticed?--he cannot make up his mind to anything; he orders something one day, and the next he has altered his mind. He promised me the command of the little fort of Santa Cruz when I should be fifteen; but this morning when I reminded him of this he spoke quite roughly, and told me I was fit for nothing but playing with girls.’
Carlo’s colour heightened at the very idea of this rebuke; for if there was one virtue the boy admired more than any other it was courage. These two children had been early left motherless; but old Catalina, a faithful servant, had done all she could to make their lives happy since she had brought them here from Spain, after the Marquis Don Estevan del Campo had been made Governor of St. Catherine.
’Catalina says that our father is not the same man he was when our mother first married him,’ said Felipa thoughtfully. ’The many worries he has have made the change. But never mind, Carlo, this mood will pass by, and we shall be happy again. When our brave uncle, Don Alvarez, comes with dear Aunt Elena, then they will advise our father, and he always takes Uncle Alvarez’s opinion. He always does, because uncle speaks so decidedly.’
The two children spoke in Spanish, but, strangely enough, they often put in English words and whole English phrases; and the reason of this was soon apparent, for at this moment a pretty, fair girl was seen running towards them with nimble feet down the slope, and, picking her way among the gorgeous flower-beds, she cried out in pure English, though with a slightly foreign accent:
’Dear Felipa, what do you think! There is a trading-vessel in the port, and the merchant has just come to offer us some beautiful cloth, and silver buckles! Catalina dares not send him away till you have seen him.’
Carlo smiled as he looked at the English girl’s beautiful fair hair, rosy cheeks, and active limbs. To him she appeared like some angel, for he was accustomed to seeing only dark people, and the Spanish women in the island were anything but beautiful. Felipa shook her head as she answered:
’Tell Catalina to say I want nothing.’ The Governor’s daughter spoke with just that tone of command which showed she was accustomed to be first, even though her gentle manner and sad face plainly indicated that her real nature was rather yielding than imperious.
’I can see Etta admired the silver buckles,’ said Carlo kindly. ’Come, Mistress Englishwoman, I will buy you a pair; for, with the dislike to long petticoats that comes from your English blood, the pretty buckles are more necessary for you than for Felipa.’
’Oh, dear Carlo, will you really!’ said Etta, her face beaming with pleasure. ’How good you are to me!’ All at once, however, the smile died away, and, sitting down on a seat near Felipa, the English girl added, with tears in her blue eyes:
’But no, Carlo, I will not accept your buckles: a prisoner has no right to wear pretty things.’
’A prisoner! Oh, Etta!’ said Felipa, throwing her arms round Etta’s neck, ’why do you say that? Do we not love you dearly? Am I not a sister to you? and Carlo a dear brother? Do I not share all my things with you? And when Catalina is cross to you I make her sorry.’
’And my father has almost forgotten you are not one of his own,’ added Carlo, standing behind Etta and taking one of the fair curls in his hand; for he dearly loved this English sister, as he called Etta Allison.
’Yes, yes, it is all true, and Santa Teresa is a lovely home; but I cannot forget I am English, and that I am really a prisoner. I once asked Don Estevan to send me back to England by one of the big ships, and he refused; and yet my mother’s last words were that I was not to forget my own land.’
At the thought of her mother Etta’s tears came fast; but at this moment the Governor of St. Catherine himself appeared in the garden, and Etta, being afraid to be seen crying, dried her tears and stooped down to play with Felipa’s little dog, so as not to show her red eyes. When she looked up again the sunshine had returned to her bonnie-looking face.
The Marquis Don Estevan del Campo was a small thin-looking man, who had long suffered from a liver complaint, and in consequence his whole nature seemed to be changed. From a determined, clever administrator he had become peevish, undecided, and ill-tempered; and the men under him hardly knew how to obey his orders, which were often very contradictory.
To-day he walked towards Carlo, with a troubled expression on his face, and on the way he took occasion to find fault with a slave who was watering the flower-beds. The slave trembled, as he was bidden in a very imperious fashion to be quicker about his work.
Carlo came to meet his father, doffing his hat in the courtly fashion of a young Spanish noble.
’What are you doing here, children?’ the Marquis said. ’Is not this your hour of study?’
’You have forgotten, my father, that it is a holiday to-day; and I was coming to ask if Felipa and Etta might not come down to the bay with me and have a row in my canoe.’
The Marquis looked up quickly.
’No, no: there must be no rowing to-day; I have set workmen to repair the bridge, and you had best keep at home.’
’Then we will go to the Orange Grove,’ said Felipa, coming up and putting her hand on her father’s arm, ’and Etta and I will pick some of the sweetest fruit for your dessert this evening.’
’As you like, Felipa; but do not go far, and take Catalina and some of the slaves with you, for I hear several of the wild dogs have been seen in this neighbourhood. Anyhow, you will not have very long before sunset.’
’I will let the girls go alone, then,’ said Carlo, ’and come with you, father.’ And so saying the Marquis and his son walked away, whilst the girls with an escort of slaves entered the forest and went down the mountain side. This forest was not, however, such a one as could be found in England. Here the pleasant breeze played among the leaves of a huge fan palm with leaf-stalks ten feet long and fans twelve feet broad; next to it might be found a groo-groo or coco palm, and bananas and plantains; and below these giant trees of the tropics were lovely shrubs, covered with flowers of every hue and shape, round which flitted great orange butterflies larger than any we can see in our colder climate; and Etta with her English blood and active nature was never tired of chasing them, though now and then a little afraid of meeting with snakes.
A great deal of this forest had not been cleared; but close by the path the Governor had had much of the undergrowth cut away, and lower down he had planted a grove of orange-trees, whose green fruit Etta and Felipa loved to pick; and round about was a lovely wild garden where grew sensitive plants and scarlet-flowered balisiers and climbing ferns, over which twined convolvuli of every colour, whilst the bees buzzed about these honeycups, never caring to fly up to the great cotton-trees so far above them, because they found enough beauty and sweetness in the flowers below.
Felipa and Etta did not know the names of even half the beautiful flowers they gathered that evening; but they invented fancy names for many of them, and arranged with good taste a bunch of roses they picked from a bush twenty feet high, glad that a few were within their reach, and longing for Carlo, so that he might pull down some more for them.
Of course there were drawbacks even in this lovely place, for there were the wasps and the spiders to avoid, and centipedes and ants, too; though Etta was never tired of watching the ’parasol ants’ who walk in procession, each carrying a bit of green leaf over its head, on which were to be found now and then baby ants, having a ride home in their elegant carriage.
Ah, it was a beautiful and wonderful home these young Spaniards had on this Santa Teresa hill; but at that time even the children in West Indian homes knew there were dangers that might come upon them, and St. Catherine had already been the scene of disasters which Etta could just remember, but which Felipa had seen nothing of as yet, having only been brought from Spain when the Marquis was firmly established as Governor of the island.
After the girls had gathered as big nosegays as they could carry they began to ascend the hill again, for darkness would soon come upon them, there being no twilight in this lovely region, and even with their escort of slaves they were not allowed to be out after sunset.
’Dear Etta,’ said Felipa, putting her arm round her friend’s neck, ’promise me you will never again call yourself a prisoner. You would not care to leave me and beautiful Santa Teresa to go back to that dreadfully cold, foggy England? Surely you have not found us such cruel Spaniards as your people talk of; and Carlo loves you better than he loves me, I think.’
Etta smiled and kissed her friend, but she answered:
’I love you and Carlo very, very much, Felipa; but my dear mother told me before she died that I was never to part with the letters she gave me, and that some day I must go home and find my relations; for in my country I come from an honourable family, but here I am only an English prisoner.’
Felipa was going to argue the question again, when Carlo came running down to meet them.
’Make haste, Felipa and Etta: my father has suddenly made up his mind to go to the other island this evening; he means to sleep at the Fort St. Jerome, and he says we may accompany him.’ The girls, always ready for a little journey, as they seldom left Santa Teresa, clapped their hands in joy and ran up the narrow path to the entrance of the castle, in high glee at the unexpected pleasure.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PIRATES ARE COMING.
St. Catherine is composed of two islan |
23892-0 | ds, but so small was the space between them that the Marquis had had a secure bridge built across the tiny strait, and the two islands were always reckoned as one. The children were quite ignorant of the reason of their sudden trip to the greater island, and indeed they only thought of enjoying the fun of going to a new residence; for close to St. Jerome was the Governor’s house, near a battery called the Platform, and in sight of the Bay of Aquada Grande. A river ran from the Platform to the sea, and the Marquis had wished to assure himself of the forts being in good order, as the captain of a friendly ship touching lately at St. Catherine had sent a message to him that there were rumours of some attempt on Panama being set on foot by the pirates, and that the Governor of Panama begged Don Estevan del Campo to keep a sharp look-out at St. Catherine, for that island had once been in the hands of the English pirates, and it was known that since the great buccaneer Mansfelt had died and the island had been re-taken by the Spaniards great hopes were entertained by several bands of English pirates that this little island might once more belong to them. It was for this reason that the Spaniards had constructed many forts on the island, especially on the lesser St. Catherine, which was not quite so well provided with natural defences as was the larger island.
It was the receipt of this news that had so greatly disturbed the much-worn-out Marquis, and his nerves were indeed hardly equal to the difficult duties entrusted to him. Pirates had increased terribly of late years. Jamaica, though it had a Governor supposed to be engaged in suppressing them, was yet quite a nest of these bold outlaws, who, taking advantage of the English jealousy of Spain, cared not what outrage they committed on Spanish towns and Spanish islands; though, in truth, other nations fared but little better at their hands.
The Marquis had examined the fortresses in the lesser island, and was much troubled at the few men that were at his disposal for manning them, and for the defence of the island generally; and now, having come to St. Jerome, he determined to send a boat down the river this very evening in order to ask for help and advice from the Governor of Costa Rica, Don John Perez de Guzman, who had five years before so ably retaken the island. But all this amount of thought and anxiety had quite unnerved the poor Marquis, who scolded every one about him, found fault with the garrison, and severely punished some negro slaves for their idleness in the plantations of the Platform; but, as the negroes were always idle, they considered their punishment very unfair.
The next evening Carlo went into the pretty sitting-room of the girls, which looked upon the river and out towards the beautiful bay; but when Felipa, who was very musical, and could sing in French, Spanish, and English, took up her lute, begging him to join in, he shook his head and surprised her by his answer.
’Felipa, don’t ask me to sing; I am sure something is the matter with our father. He has got into a passion with Espada, and has put him in irons. It is very unwise, for Espada is a revengeful man, and he has great influence with the other men in the fort, some of whom were once outlaws from Puerto Velo. I wish I were a man and that my father would consult me. His Catholic Majesty ought to give my father a pension and let us all go back to Spain, for I am sure this place does not agree with him.’
Etta listened sadly to Carlo’s words; when he was troubled about his father she was very sorry, for the boy was one whom nobody could help loving and admiring.
’Dear Carlo, if the King of Spain knew you he would, I am sure, make you Governor of beautiful St. Catherine, and then the poor negroes would not be oppressed, nor the gentle Indians hunted with dogs as you say they are sometimes. My father used to tell me of the dreadful cruelties used towards those poor people in past days. In England such things would not be allowed.’ And, so saying, Etta raised her head proudly, feeling that an Englishman was better than a Spaniard.
Felipa passed her hands over the lute, saying, as the sweet tones were wafted through the room:
’Do not talk of such things, Etta. I am sure our Indians are not unhappy. Andreas loves us clearly; and we make the negroes, not the Indians, work on the marshes. Now I shall sing to drive away your ugly fancies.’
And she sang softly an evening hymn in Spanish, and Carlo and Etta joined in too, so that the sound of the young voices floated over the clear waters of the river, whilst the scent of sweet spice plants was wafted in. Surely Felipa was right: it was not suitable to talk of human miseries when all around nature was so exquisite. Old Catalina soon came in with the evening supper, saying the Marquis had gone out and would sup alone; and very early the girls retired to bed; Carlo told them not to dream of troubles, because he should be next door to them in case they were frightened. He felt that his sister was under his charge now that their father the Marquis was so little able to see after her.
Old Catalina counted her beads and muttered her prayers long after the two girls were sleeping soundly; and as she stooped over Etta’s bed and noticed how fair the girl was, she murmured: ’It is a pity this pretty child is a Protestant; but I hope when she is older she will be one with us; for otherwise the Marquis will thrust her out and not let her come home with us to Spain, and my darling Felipa will break her heart, for she loves her English playfellow dearly.’
But the night was not to pass as quietly and peacefully as it had begun. Catalina lay on a mattress in her young mistress’s room; but, being a heavy sleeper, she did not hear a hasty knock at the door, and the repeated call of ’Catalina! Felipa! quick! open the door! Why do you all sleep so soundly!’
Etta was the first to awake, and, throwing a coloured shawl about her, she ran to the door and opened it.
’What is up, Carlo?’ she said rather sleepily.
’Wake Catalina and Felipa, and make haste and dress yourselves. My father says we must fly from here at once: the pirates are outside the bay. They will land early to-morrow, perhaps opposite this very fort. I beseech you, make all haste you can.’ In a few minutes the frightened girl had shaken Catalina, and was trying to explain to Felipa what the danger was which threatened them.
’Oh, Felipa, the pirates are coming! Quick! quick! make haste and dress, for the Marquis says we must go back to Santa Teresa at once.’
Catalina began wringing her hands as poor Felipa turned deadly pale.
’We shall all be killed! May the saints protect us! Ah, my poor lamb! who could have believed those wicked wretches would have dared to show themselves here again, and in your father’s lifetime. Alas! alas! make haste, sweetheart, and let us fly!’
Felipa was so frightened that she could hardly dress herself; and poor Etta, who knew more about the dreaded sea-robbers than did Felipa, tried to be brave in order not to increase the Spanish girl’s terror. Etta was brave, and in many ways fearless in all ordinary affairs; but the cry ’The pirates are coming!’ was one of the most dreaded in the West Indies--a cry which had often taken the spirit out of the heart of a bold sea-captain, who knew the desperate courage and reckless indifference to life exhibited by the men who infested these seas.
When Catalina and the girls were dressed they stepped forth, to find the Marquis and Carlo waiting for them. The former was walking up and down the hall of the house discussing the terrible news with some Spanish officers.
’Your Excellency knows that this fort cannot long resist a fierce assault,’ said one of them. ’Were it not better to evacuate the Platform and concentrate our forces on the lesser island batteries? The fortresses there are strongly built, and with our men we could put them in a better state of resistance.’
’They will not land to-night,’ said the wretched Marquis, looking the picture of an undecided man. ’If you think, Don Francisco, that flight would be the best plan, give orders to your men. Ah, here are the children. Are the horses ready? We have no time to waste; and yet what say you? Perhaps these wretches will think better of it, and leave Port St. Catherine in peace. Were it not better after all to stay here?’
’Let us stay, father,’ put in Carlo. ’If you will let me fight, I am sure I shall be able to defend this place. Do not let this handful of rascals believe we fear them.’
’Give your opinion, Carlo, when you are asked, and not before. Are the horses ready? Now, Felipa, wrap your scarf well round you; we have a long way to go. Yes, I think it is better to go than to stay.’
’We shall be safe at Santa Teresa, father, are you sure?’ sobbed Felipa; whilst Etta, looking at Carlo’s fearless expression of face, determined to say nothing, for he had once said girls were always afraid.
It was a very anxious and silent cavalcade that made its way back towards the small island that night, and contrasted strangely with that which had come hither but quite lately, laughing and chatting to their hearts’ content.
Carlo, however, managed to ride near Etta occasionally when the ground was clearer so as to allow their horses to walk abreast. Felipa kept close to her father, as if near him she would be quite safe from the dreaded foes. Every now and then she looked back into the darkness towards the little village at the foot of the Platform; where, however, all was at present still and quiet.
’Is it really true?’ whispered Etta to Carlo, as if she could be heard from this distance; ’have they been seen?’
’I think so. José the one-eyed, who, they say, was once a pirate himself, noticed the ships creeping round towards the bay just before sundown, and he came all the way from San Salvador to give the news, hearing my father was here. However, of course they may think better of attacking us. José believes he recognises one of Mansfelt’s old ships; but I think terror gives him double sight, For all that, I wish my father would have stayed and driven off the rascals on their first landing. It looks as if we feared them, and that will make them bolder.’
Not much more was said, and the cavalcade rode through the dark forest, and then emerged on the sea coast, for towards the north of the island the cliffs became lower, and before reaching the bridge there was a good stretch of open country.
’God be praised, and all his saints!’ said Catalina, ’I can see the crest of Santa Teresa. We shall now soon be in safety. The rascals cannot climb our mountain; and if they come we can hurl them down into the sea. I wouldn’t mind helping to do that with my own hands.’
The Marquis had already sent on a messenger to collect several officers at the Castle of Santa Teresa, which, with its thick walls, its great moat, its impregnable cliff on the sea-side, and its difficult ascent towards the land, was a secure retreat, where the Governor could hold a council of war, and decide what course to take as to repulsing the enemy should he land on the shores of St. Catherine.
’I wish my father would take his own counsel,’ thought Carlo for the hundredth time, ’and then he would at least know his own mind. However, now there is real danger, he cannot prevent my helping to defend my sister and my home.’ And this feeling made the proud, brave boy forget that fighting does not always mean victory, and caused him not to be altogether sorry that he should have a chance of distinguishing himself, and perhaps--who knew?--the King of Spain would hear of it. Carlo had read of the deeds of brave knights and of their wonderful exploits, and was eager to begin also his own career of fame; but reality is often, alas, very unlike our dreams.
All nature was fully awake when the Governor reached Santa Teresa; and the girls, once more safely surrounded by habitual sights and sounds, forgot their fears, and, after a little rest and refreshment, began, as before, running happily about the gardens within the enclosure. The guards were, however, at once doubled, and the negro slaves posted in the wood.
’Here we shall not see the pirates land,’ said Felipa, now almost disappointed, ’nor the punishment our people will give them. I am sure Carlo would have been able to defeat them with the help of a few men. Don’t you think so, Etta?’
’I do not know; but, Felipa, let us say our prayers, and then we shall be sure they will not hurt us. Do you know that, in the excitement of the journey, I forgot mine this morning; and I promised my mother never to leave them out.’
’So did I,’ exclaimed Felipa, ’but I shall tell Padre Augustine and he will forgive me.’ Etta had no such comfort, for she had been early imbued by her parents with a great disbelief in the religion of the Spanish settlers; but from living with Felipa, and being kindly treated by her captors, she had begun to take Felipa’s opinions as a matter of course; though now and then the girls had little differences as to the various merits of their Churches. Had Etta not been of a very determined character, most likely she would have forgotten her own faith; but early troubles had made her old in ideas, and passionate love for her dead parents kept all their wishes in her mind. She would sooner have died than have become a Roman Catholic, and at present the Marquis had not taken the trouble to inquire into the matter. Had Felipa not wanted a companion, Etta’s fate might have been a sad one; as it was, she enjoyed all the privileges of the Governor’s little daughter. But often the English girl would steal away to read over some of her precious letters, or to kiss the few relics she possessed of the gentle mother who had died at St. Catherine. In these days many sad stories might have been told of the sufferings of the wives of the merchants or Governors who had to live away from their country, or who for some reason crossed the seas to come to the West Indies. The prisons of Algeria and the haunts of the West Indian pirates could have revealed, and did reveal, many a sad story of captivity and ill-treatment.
But the day was not to pass without news of the enemy; for in the afternoon Carlo, who had been round the fort with his father, ran in to tell the girls that a messenger had just arrived from the other island.
’The saints protect us! And what does he say? Have they made dried meat of them already?’ said Catalina, referring to the meaning of the word buccaneer.
’The enemy has landed below the Platform; they are about a thousand strong, and their leader is no other than the terrible Captain Morgan the Englishman,’ said Carlo, much excited.
’A thousand strong!’ exclaimed Felipa. ’Then we shall need all our men. But they cannot reach us here. What does our father say?’
Carlo shrugged his shoulders.
’He will give no positive orders, but the rascals are really marching through the woods towards us. I wonder at their rashness, for here we are so well prepared to receive them that they will find it too warm for them. We are to have a council of war this evening. Now, if I were Governor I would starve them out.’
’Will father let you attend the council?’ asked Felipa, looking upon her brother as already a knight of renown.
’Nay, but he must. I can use a sword as well as any one. Etta, you shall tie my scarf, and I will wear your colours on my scabbard.’
Etta shook her head sadly.
’The pirates are from my country. Your father will be angry with me, Carlo; and yet my father was none of them. He was a brave and honest merchant.’
’No one shall blame thee, dear Etta,’ said the boy, ’or if they do, I will offer single combat.’ And Carlo went through his military exercises with great show and laughter, till Catalina and some slaves arrived, and desired the young people to come and help with the defence of the castle by taking away all the valuables and hiding them in the dungeons below or in a well under the flags of the inner courtyard.
Carlo was very angry at this order of his father’s: it seemed to presuppose the taking of Santa Teresa.
’As if the pirates would ever enter this stronghold!’ he said impatiently. ’If I may be allowed to speak, I will offer to lead out a party from Santa Teresa, and the robbers will see something worth seeing then. I must go and find my father and persuade him.’
In spite of his objection, however, Carlo, as well as every one else, had to work with a will within the walls of Santa Teresa; whilst the Marquis, hardly able to hide his fears, paced restlessly up and down without the castle, often sending negro scouts on all sides to ascertain the real truth; but he got such contradictory answers that he half feared the negroes were too much afraid to venture near enough to the advancing enemy to ascertain how matters stood.
CHAPTER V.
THE SCOUTS.
The council of war presided over by the Marquis took place late that afternoon; and Carlo, bent on proving his capabilities as a soldier, slipped in with the officers and various Spaniards in authority who had been able to leave their several stations to join in the discussion. The Marquis was so much disturbed and troubled that he took no heed of his son, for as the officers entered the private room of the Governor the sound of cannon was distinctly heard in the distance, much to the dismay of many present.
’Those are the guns of St. Jerome,’ said one of the officers. ’The enemy must have reached the bridge, and we may expect them here by sunset. Shall we give the order for all the neighbouring guns to fire, sir.’
’That will not be necessary,’ answered the Marquis, testily. ’How many guns are there at St. Jerome? Surely enough to drive these robbers back to their boats?’
’We have eight, Señor, at St. Jerome, and those will play freely on them; they will be caught in a trap.’
’Well, then, that will settle them. We know they cannot advance up the river below this hill.’
’Only a canoe could reach us here, and that would hold but a few men,’ said Don Francisco.
’The blacks declare that Captain Morgan has only four hundred men with him; if so, there will be no great difficulty.’
’Nay, but the Indian Andreas,’ said Carlo, ’has just told me they are more like a thousand strong. I believe Andreas is the only scout who gets near enough to know.’
Carlo had an especial liking for Andreas, who often accompanied him out into the woods to kill the birds. He was a very sharp fellow, and knew every turn and winding in the islands.
’A thousand strong! What nonsense, Carlo! Your opinion was not asked, boy, and silence is your best course,’ said the Marquis, angrily.
Carlo blushed, but all the same he knew he was right, and was terribly annoyed at hearing his father ask counsel first of one and then of another, without coming to any decision. He saw several of the officers looking evidently anxious, and when the council of war broke up--having decided nothing but that a scout should be sent to St. Jerome for news, and that there should be another meeting next morning--Carlo went up to an officer and said hastily:
’Why do we not collect a force of men and go out to meet them in the marshes?--for that is surely the way they will advance.’
’The Marquis thinks otherwise, Señorito; and he may be right, for they may find themselves in a sad fix in some of the swamps in the low ground or in the woods, and then they may think it better to return without trying to take a fortress. Besides, we do not know how much powder they may have brought, and we must not waste our own ammunition.’
This was all the consolation Carlo could get, and he went back to his sister’s room looking very crestfallen and anxious. So to her eager questioning he answered:
’I wish father would let Don Francisco de Paratta take the command; he himself is quite unable to take it. I could see by Don Francisco’s face that he thinks we are doing wrong. We have not even got true information yet as to their number. I have a great mind----’ Carlo paused, for a sudden idea now entered his head.
’What are you thinking of?’ said Felipa, turning pale. ’Oh, Carlo, do not do anything rash. What should we do without you?’
’Oh, you are safe enough here at Santa Teresa; it would be impossible to take this place by storm with a thousand men, or even double that number, so you need not be afraid, dear Felipa.’
’I know you mean to go and see for yourself,’ said Etta. ’I wish I were a boy and I could go with you. To stay still makes one imagine many impossible things.’
’Hush! don’t tell any one, especially Catalina,’ said Carlo, looking round and seeing they were alone; ’she chatters so much. My plan is this: I will slip outside presently before the gate is shut and run down the hill to the river. There Andreas has a canoe safely hidden in the bushes, and he will paddle me down to the mangrove swamps, and from there we may get near to them and see for ourselves how the pirates are situated.’
’But you will get killed,’ sobbed Felipa. ’These wicked English pirates are worse than cannibals; Catalina says that they roast their prisoners alive, and----’
’Nonsense! Dry your tears, little sister, and believe me, Andreas is too clever a fellow to let us get eaten. I shall be back before very late, and I know the only breach that can be climbed.’
Seeing her brother so cheerful, Felipa dried her tears, and hung a little coin round his neck, which, she said, would keep him from harm; and then she and Etta determined to sit up till he should come back, for when he was once gone they would not mind telling Catalina.
In the meantime all was bustle within the fort. The Spaniards had found out now that the Governor had entirely lost his nerve, and this increased the panic of the garrison. The men on watch amused themselves by telling thrilling and horrible stories of the various tortures inflicted by the pirates on their prisoners, and speculated as to the fate of the garrison of St. Jerome, whose fire had ceased when the sun went down. However, every one knew that Santa Teresa was safe enough, and that even if some bold spirits climbed up the steep path on the land side no great number could come on at the same time and so carry the place by assault.
At nightfall, Carlo, unseen by any one, slipped out of the fort; and, plunging into the wood, he was soon joined by the Indian Andreas, who was a fine fellow, a Christian, and, moreover, devotedly fond of the young Spaniard, who had always treated him with kindness. Andreas spoke fluent Spanish, from having been early taught by the Spanish priests, who had brought him up after his father’s death.
’That’s right, Andreas,’ said Carlo, when he saw him. ’Now make haste and show me your path down to the river; the other one is watched by the slaves, and they might set the dogs on us by mistake. I reckon we can reach the swamps in two hours with your canoe, and you tell me that you are sure the enemy is encamped near there.’
’Yes, Señorito, that is the truth; my little boy brought me word. And I believe they are in great distress for want of food; but we shall see. Look, noble Carlo: I have brought my arrows; and woe to any one that tries to touch us!’
After some very difficult walking in the mazes of the forest, through which no one but an Indian could have steered, the two at last reached the river, which ran far below Santa Teresa; and though this stream was only navigable for canoes, it was often used by the Indians and Spaniards when in haste to reach the sea, instead of taking the longer journey by the land road. Andreas had powers of sight which appeared quite extraordinary to Carlo; and when the two were seated in the frail canoe, it was wonderful how the Indian paddled the boat, swiftly and surely, avoiding the rocks as if it were broad daylight, and never mistaking the many bends. Had Carlo been alone he would have grounded the boat half a dozen times, and not have reached his destination before daylight; but as it was, in two hours the boat glided swiftly into the midst of the mangrove swamp through which the river here made its way. All was quiet at first; the canoe did not even disturb the herons and pelicans which slept near by on the interlaced roots of the mangroves.
’If the pirates could have got into this swamp,’ whispered Andreas, ’there would be no need of our cannon; but they are too crafty for that. They have doubtless seized a good guide who would not dare to betray them; otherwise they never could have reached Guana’s Creek, where, I hear, they have encamped to-night.’
They drew up the canoe near to a great stump standing out in the water, and, mooring it there, Andreas stepped on to a dry piece of ground; then, stooping down, he listened intently, till like a stealthy animal he returned to Carlo.
’I am sure, Señorito, that I can hear the sound of the enemy. I must creep up through the grove and get to the higher ground; then I will return with news, if you will wait. I dare not let you come till I have seen how the land lies. Lie down in the canoe, and I will make haste. But cover yourself up, for the air is bad here, Señor; indeed you must chew this root, and then you will feel no harm.’ And so saying, Andreas drew a dark-looking bit of root from his pocket, which was a secret remedy against the swamp malaria, known only to the Indians; then, walking quickly towards the jungle, he disappeared into the darkness.
Carlo had to wait what seemed to him a long time before Andreas came back; and what made it worse for him was the rain, which began to fall heavily. At last, when he was beginning to think his Indian friend had been caught by the pirates, he was startled by hearing a little splash in the water beside him, and in another moment Andreas himself was in the canoe.
’The young Señor did not hear me,’ said the Indian, smiling at the start Carlo gave. ’It was to show him how well Andreas can walk in silence that I came so quietly.’
’Did you see them, good Andreas? Tell me quickly, shall I come now, or must we go back?’
’Yes, yes, Señor, I saw them. They are many--a thousand, I fancy, or about that number; but they are in a bad position; they have no food, and no fire to cook it with. I went up quite close and saw the Captain.’
’Captain Morgan! Oh, Andreas, did he look a wicked man? Tell me what he looked like.’
’A tall, fair Englishman, Señor, but not evil-looking; only some of his followers had the bad countenances of wicked men. I could see that they were discontented; and I heard some discussing if they should go back to their ships. Look now, Señor Carlo: if you can persuade the noble Governor to send a hundred well-armed soldiers to-night against these same men, we shall have no more trouble with them. We could drive them into the swamp, and then the swamp would do the rest. Why, they were badly off: some had naked feet like the poor Indians, and some had but ragged clothes, and very few had firearms. They were angry with the Captain at being led into the marsh, and they huddled together when the rain began to fall, cursing their misfortunes.’
’It will go on raining all night, I fancy,’ said Carlo. ’I have been nicely sheltered here; but out where they are camped there are but few trees. How could you see all this, good Andreas, for it is still dark?’
’Well enough, Señor, for the rascals had pulled down some of the Indian huts that lie up above, and had made a fire of them. Captain Morgan was trying to make himself comfortable; and I saw a young lad about your size and your age, Señorito, in the Captain’s rude tent. I thought he must be his son; but he looked sad and dejected, and not like one of the pirates. Perhaps some young prisoner they have taken. He was busy making up the fire, but I noticed that another fellow watched him pretty closely whenever he strayed a little. Yes, I am sure he was a prisoner.’
This did not interest Carlo so much as Andreas’ idea about the hundred men being sent out against the pirates.
’Andreas, you are right. Quick, let us make haste home, and I will do my best to persuade my father to send a body of soldiers here by daybreak. If only he will believe us! Are you tired? Let me row a little.’
But Andreas laughed.
’The Señorito would stick us in the mud at the next bend,’ he said, and, taking up his paddle, he sent the frail boat into mid-stream, and as silently as they had come they returned towards Santa Teresa. During the journey Carlo hardly spoke; he was planning the morning’s expedition in his own mind; and already he had cleared the whole island of the dreaded horde, and covered the name of Estevan del Campo with glory and honour.
By the time the canoe shot into a tiny cove at the foot of Santa Teresa, Carlo was glad enough to jump up and follow his leader through the forest by an Indian path; and with Andreas’ help the wall was scaled, and both entered the enclosure unperceived.
’It is to be hoped the pirates do not know this path,’ he said to Andreas; ’but, even if they did, not more than a single file of men could get up here. Do the guides here know of it, Andreas?’
Andreas shook his head.
’Hush, young master, tell no one of it. It is known only to the Indians of my tribe, and there are but few of us now. Good-night, Señorito; I will be ready in the morning if you want another guide.’
Carlo warmly shook the faithful Indian’s hand as he bade him good-bye. Before the Spanish occupation Andreas had been a chief’s son; but his father had long ago been killed by the white men, and the tribe was broken up. The boy had been educated by the missionaries, but had never altogether forgotten his childhood; and but for his love of Carlo del Campo some said he would ere this have run away from the Governor’s estate, where he was forced to tend the gardens and to see his children brought up as something not much better than mere slaves, whilst his gentle wife was expected to help Catalina in household duties, cook the food for the black slaves, and wait on the young ladies.
Carlo was able to creep upstairs unheard by any one; and, seeing a light in his sister’s sitting-room, he knocked softly. Catalina opened the door, and the girls, who had fallen asleep on a couch, jumped up eagerly.
’Carlo, there you are! Tell us the news! How glad I am you are safe home!’
’I dreamt you were drawn and quartered by the pirates. My poor lamb,’ cried Catalina, ’how we prayed for you, till we fell asleep and forgot to finish the Litany of Danger!’
’Nonsense! there was no danger at all; the pirates are in a bad way, and it is raining hard. But tell me where my father is. We have only to send out men and we are saved. Andreas knows exactly where they are encamped.’
’The noble Marquis was in the guard-room below when I came up,’ said Catalina. ’No one has gone to bed this night.’
Carlo hastened away cheerfully. He was some time absent; but when he returned his young face was clouded over with deep disappointment.
’It is of no use; my father will not believe me. He refuses to do anything till there can be another council, and then it may be too late. Why am I not a man!’
’Never mind, dear Carlo,’ whispered Etta softly; ’the council may believe you, and then----’
But Carlo shook his head, and, tired out, he went to his own bed and fell asleep from sheer fatigue.
CHAPTER VI.
HATCHING A PLOT.
The next morning the rain stopped, and the sun shone out brightly and powerfully over the beautiful wood which clothed the steep sides of Santa Teresa. The cocoa-nut trees and the various kinds of palms softly waved their beautiful heads in the morning breeze; the sulphur and black butterflies flew hither and thither about the crimson, yellow, and green pods of the cocoa, and on the orchids that hung from the giant stems. All this and much more beauty was unheeded by the people in Santa Teresa, for before the council of war could meet Andreas came running into the courtyard, where Carlo had just come down to hear what news he could, too angry to seek out his father after his disappointment of the previous night.
’Young master, where is the noble Marquis? Has he sent no one? No? Ah, Señorito, now it is too late, for a canoe is coming up the river, and it is not a mile distant. The pirates have sent a messenger, and the young English boy I told you of is with him. They are flying a white flag; that means, the pirate captain has sent them to parley. They have recovered their courage this morning, or they would not have come to treat. It will be too late to attack them now, and you see the rain has stopped.’
Andreas wrung his hands in a manner peculiar to the gentle Indian race to which he belonged; whilst Carlo, much excited by the news, impatiently drew him forward towards the Marquis’s room.
’Come and tell my father, Andreas. I cannot persuade him you really saw the men. He says that you were mistaken last night, and that the pirates are armed to the teeth.’
’The great Governor will not believe! And yet I could have even brought something away from the vultures’ tent,’ added Andreas with a smile.
Alas! it was only too true. Instead of being surprised at the arrival of a pirate messenger, Don Estevan del Campo seemed greatly relieved. He had up to this hour decided on nothing, and was more excited and more unfit to issue commands than he had been even the day before. Carlo appealed to Don Francisco; but this officer was powerless without the sanction of the Governor, and the more the latter was urged to fight the less he seemed inclined to do so.
The Marquis listened to the news the Indian brought, and then ordered some soldiers to go down to the river and conduct the messengers into the castle. They were to be well guarded, and to have their eyes bandaged for fear of discovering any secrets, such as taking notes of the path up the steep hill of Santa Terea.
Great was the excitement in the castle when it was known that the pirates had been bold enough to send an envoy. Some suggested that these heralds of robbers should not be received; others, that they should be sent back with threats; others, that hanging was too good for them; whilst Don Francisco declared plainly that a garrison of His Catholic Majesty of Spain had no business to parley with English rascals; but Don Estevan, going from one to the other, listened to all the contradictory advice, merely saying at the end:
’No, no, good sirs, but we must hear what they say. Most likely this herald brings us an unconditional surrender, in which case we shall have trapped the rats without wasting our powder.’ But Don Francisco answered:
’That is not very likely, noble Marquis; there seems no doubt it is Henry Morgan who himself leads the band, and he was never known to surrender. Andreas swears there are a great number of them. If so, they will surely attack us.’
The surmises were at length set at rest by the entrance of the soldiers, who brought with them a short, thick-set man, whose determined face spoke of dauntless courage and daring. With him was a tall fair youth, with a noble but sad and care-worn expression of face.
From the windows of their dwelling-room Felipa and Etta had watched the entrance of the new arrivals; and Carlo, who had rushed in to do the same, could not help an exclamation of surprise at the sight of the lad, who was about his own age and size. As for Etta, her admiration found vent in words.
’Look, Felipa, that is an English boy! How handsome he is! He does not look wicked, does he? Perhaps he is Henry Morgan’s son. How I wish these were not wicked pirates! I would talk to them of England, and perhaps they might know my relations and would some day take me back. But the man looks every inch of him like an evil buccaneer.’
’Etta, what nonsense you are talking!’ said Carlo; ’the youth is most likely as wicked as the rest. Andreas saw him last night. Yes, he must be the Captain’s son. Now I shall go and hear their propositions. If I had had my way there would have been no messengers alive by this hour to suggest any terms. One should give no quarter to such foes.’
After Carlo had gone, the two girls, who were busy over some beautiful Spanish embroidery, still sat by the window hoping to see the pirates go back blindfolded. Such excitement had not before fallen to the lot of Felipa; for during the five years she had been in this beautiful and peaceful island home, nothing more exciting had occurred than a few expeditions to the other island, or a row on the lagoon. The Marquis, her father, had been much blamed by his Spanish kindred for having sent for his daughter from Spain; but his reasons had been, besides his natural affection for her, a fear that after her mother’s death her uncles might marry the young girl to one of their own friends and pass it off as an order of the King. Till now Del Campo had certainly not regretted the step, for he wished to keep Felipa with him till she should marry a man of his own choosing. In those days young girls were promised in marriage to men whom they had never seen, and very often their lovers were old and unattractive, though they were of course wealthy or had some other recommendation in the eyes of the parents of the high-born Spanish maidens.
Felipa quite believed Carlo when he assured her and Etta that Santa Teresa was much too strong and well-fortified to be taken by even such a large number of pirates as had now landed; so the fears of the maidens were, in consequence, much diminished, and a good deal of curiosity mingled with their sympathy at Carlo’s disappointment.
’After all,’ said Felipa, who was not naturally brave, ’if Carlo had gone out to fight the pirates he might have been killed, so it is just as well our father waited for daylight, and to hear what Captain Morgan had to say. Don’t you think so, Etta?’
’Brave soldiers never think whether they shall be killed or not,’ said Etta. ’I am sure the Captain’s son is brave; he walked in with his head thrown back, and looked so handsome.’
’Oh, Etta, if any one is an Englishman you think he must be perfect,’ said Felipa, crossly. ’I tell you these pirates are all wicked, and make war on defenceless women and children. That is unworthy of any great nation.’ But Etta retorted:
’Nay, but the Spaniards are more cruel than the English.’ They might have gone on disputing over their nationalities had not Carlo reappeared, carrying with him a document which he was trying to decipher.
’Etta, here, quick. This is crabbed English writing, and the Marquis said that you were to help me to read it, and to write it out in fair Spanish, so that the council may deliberate on it. The boy who has accompanied the messenger cannot speak many words of Spanish, and will do nothing but shake his head. If I had my wish I would have both man and boy hung up on the tallest prickly palm of the estate.’
Etta in the meanwhile was deciphering the words, which had been written on the rind of the fruit of the cabbage-palm, which rind looked very much like a piece of parchment, and was indeed often used instead of it in the West Indies.
The writing ran thus, though it took all the three some time to make it out--
’To the Spanish Governor of the Island of St. Catherine.
’Hereby I, the world-wide famous Captain Henry Morgan, make known that if within a few hours you deliver not yourself and all your men into my hands, I do by my messenger swear unto you and all those that are in your company that I shall most certainly put you and them all to the sword, without granting quarter to any.’
Carlo flushed red with indignation when at last these words were made out and translated, then hurried away to his father and the officers, to give the writing into their hands.
’These words are an insult to our great country, my father. I hope you will give them a fitting answer. Such vile caitiffs deserve no pity.’
’We must have two hours to deliberate on this paper, gentlemen,’ said the Governor, uneasily; ’for I hear there is great panic on the island, and that the people are leaving their homes and flocking to the fortresses. If so, a worse enemy than the pirates may trouble us, and that will be famine. Go, Carlo, and tell the messengers to return to him who sent them, and say that my answer shall be taken to Henry Morgan by my own trustworthy messengers, but that they must be promised a safe-conduct.’
Carlo had nothing to do but to obey. He found the man and the boy in the courtyard surrounded by a strong guard of Spaniards. He proudly gave his father’s message, but, thinking of Etta’s words, he could not help being struck with the noble bearing of the fair-haired youth, who appeared to be much disturbed by the rude looks and taunts of the soldiers about him, for he scarcely lifted his head till Carlo had done speaking, when he suddenly looked up at him, as if he were going to say something; but, evidently thinking better of it, he remained silent.
’Marry, then, in two hours our Captain will expect your answer,’ said the pirate, ’and it were best not to trifle with him, as he is sure to keep his word. ’Tis no time to dally.’
’_Perros! nos veremos,_’ exclaimed a soldier after Carlo had turned away in silence--which words mean in English, ’Dogs, we shall meet you,’ and were accompanied by some insulting dumb show at the departing messengers.
After this the boy went back to the council-room; but what was his surprise at finding it barred and bolted, whilst a soldier, who was guarding it, said respectfully that the Governor’s orders were that no one might enter.
’That does not include me,’ said Carlo, angrily.
’Pardon, noble Señor Carlo; the Marquis said, "Not even my son."’
[Illustration: _CARLO REFUSED ADMISSION_ (missing from book)]
Carlo turned away, too indignant to say anything in answer; and then he went sorrowfully upstairs to get some comfort where he knew he should always find it. He told the girls what had just happened, adding:
’It is very unjust of my father.’ Then, as Felipa blushed with sorrow, he added: ’No, I ought not to say that, for I fancy he did not mean to exclude me, only that stupid Luis wished to show his importance and invented the order.’
’Tell me, dear Carlo,’ put in Etta, eagerly, ’did you speak to the English boy? I saw the soldier escort him and his fellow down the hill; and how I wished I could have had a few words with him!’
’What! with a pirate, Etta? But would that I could go into the council-room! If my father decides to despatch several hundred men, he must give me the command of at least a little band. You should see how well I could command.’
’Your noble father only meant, Señorito, that you must not disturb the meeting,’ said Catalina, joining in; ’and I know there is a door at the other end, which is made but of light bamboos, and you can hear well enough there all that goes on.’ Catalina spoke with so much certainty that it seemed as if she had herself been eavesdropping.
Carlo was delighted with the idea. ’Is that so, Catalina? The saints reward you, you dear old woman! I will give you a silk kerchief worked in gold thread the next time a merchant ship comes here from Panama. Ah, Etta, I am afraid you will never see your fair English boy again, so do not expect it, unless we take him prisoner; then I will spare him for your sake. That is a bargain. Now, Catalina, come and show me your secret way.’ And delighted that he should not be quite excluded from hearing the plans of defence, the eager Carlo followed Catalina, quite believing that after all it was not his father but the stupid guard Luis who had prevented him from joining in the council of war. He was, however, soon to be undeceived.
CHAPTER VII.
TREACHERY.
An hour later, when the Governor came out of the council-chamber and was entering his own private room, he looked ten years older. At this moment Carlo rushed into the room and threw himself at his father’s feet.
Don Estevan looked much surprised, and the papers he held in his hand shook visibly.
’Father, you cannot mean it!’ cried the Governor’s only son, ’say it is not true! There is yet time: the messengers have not yet started. I beseech you think better of it. I heard everything.’
’You heard everything? What do you mean, you insolent boy!’ cried the Marquis, angrily; ’you were not in the council-chamber. Get up, Carlo; what is done is done for the best.’
’No, no, it cannot be for the best to betray this island. The stratagem you have suggested is unworthy of you; it cannot be true that Don Estevan del Campo will allow those villains to take this fortress without so much as a blow!’
Poor Carlo was beside himself with grief; he had indeed heard only too much from his hiding-place. The Governor had entirely lost his head, and was unable to make up his mind to fight the dreaded buccaneers; and now that he had found out their real number, and the number of their ships, he could think of nothing but temporising with them. He had forced the council to agree to send two messengers to Henry Morgan with these terms: They were to say that, feeling himself quite unable to hold the island against such a body of desperate men as Captain Morgan had with him, the Marquis begged the Captain to use a certain stratagem of war in order to make it appear to the people that the place was taken in honest fight. Captain Morgan was, according to this plan, to come at night to the bridge which divided the two islands, and here he was to attack Fort St. Jerome. In the meanwhile the pirate ships were to approach as near as possible to Santa Teresa and attack it from the sea; also at the same time to land a body of men at a place hard by, called St. Matthew. Here the Governor was to be intercepted on his way to Fort Jerome, taken prisoner, and forced to give up the keys of the castles of Santa Teresa and St. Jerome, and the possession of these two strong places would virtually mean that of the whole island. There was to be a feint, much firing on both sides, but no bullets were to be used; moreover, they were to fire in the air, to make sure of no one being killed on either side.
This was the shameful plan of surrender that Carlo had heard his father propose, and not only propose but enforce on the majority of the men composing the council; though Don Francisco de Paratta and a few others had firmly refused to give their consent to such a base affair.
The Marquis also knew that Carlo, young as he was, was too bold and fearless ever to give in his obedience to this idea, and for this reason he had had him shut out from the deliberations. He was therefore all the more indignant and angry when Carlo declared he had heard everything, and his burst of indignation was terrible to witness.
’You forget your position and mine,’ said the unhappy Marquis in a passion. ’What can you know, Carlo, of the defences of the island? How can I consent to a general massacre of my garrisons, when by this simple means we shall avoid all loss? And in a few days these wild robbers will leave the island for other more profitable fields, and--but why should I explain my reasons to you? What business had you to be eavesdropping? Is that the conduct to be expected from my son?’
Carlo did not seem to hear his father’s personal abuse; his mind was bent on averting the terrible blot which, if this plan were carried out, must come on his father’s name. However secret these negotiations might now be kept, sooner or later they would become known, and the name Carlo was so proud to bear would be for ever dishonoured.
’Let me go and stop the canoe; or if it is gone, Andreas can easily overtake the messengers. Father, be angry with me, do anything; but do not let us sell our honour!’
The Marquis was now in a worse passion than ever with his son who dared to speak the truth to him.
’Carlo, you shall not speak so! you forget yourself. Go from my presence at once, sir, and consider yourself a prisoner on parole. Do not leave your sister’s dwelling-room till I give you leave; and remember, if you disobey I shall have to show my son that he cannot break my rules with impunity.’
Carlo turned away, convinced now that his father could only be obstinate and firm in the wrong place. Covering his face with his hands, the brave boy sobbed as if his heart would break. He had dreamt of honour and glorious deeds, and these dreams had only ended in a story of shame. Going to his own room, he gazed down on the glorious tropical gardens and woods of his beloved home, and caught sight of the Governor’s canoe starting off with two men in her carrying the fatal message. The clock struck; the two hours allowed by the pirates were sped, and the Island of St. Catherine was as good as taken by Henry Morgan and his thousand men.
How long Carlo remained sunk in deep despondency, with now and then interludes of sudden impotent rage, he did not heed. He knew that the sham attack would not take place till night, for evil deeds hate daylight, and there was a long time yet before sundown. But, alas! all the need for exertion was gone, all the motive for brave resistance was taken away.
’I will not be included in the treaty, however,’ he thought suddenly. ’I have spoken against it, and I will use my bullets and my sword as a good and honourable soldier should do.’ Then, suddenly, the idea of danger for his sister and Etta entered his head. Tales of captivity endured by women and children when they fell into the pirates’ hands crowded into his head. How could he trust his father now? Certainly he must be losing his mind: this was the only charitable way of looking at his conduct. If this were the case, the welfare of Felipa was his duty, and, slowly rising, he tried to wash away traces of tears which might perhaps seem unmanly to those who did not know the reason.
When he entered the room to which he had been sent as a prisoner, the girls at once noticed the expression of his face.
’Carlo, what is the matter?’
’Surely all will be well now,’ added Etta. ’We saw the canoe start with the answer. Ah, those robbers will understand we cannot be taken in brave Santa Teresa, whatever they may do.’
’I should think not!’ said Catalina. ’Those infidels don’t understand that the saints protect us. So you heard the deliberations, Señor Carlo?’
’Yes, well enough; but look, Catalina: suppose these pirates should get the better of us--for they are reported to be very strong--is there any place where you and the girls might hide? My father is so busy giving orders that he has not time to attend to all these matters.’
’No need to prepare for the impossible,’ said Catalina; ’José told me that if Santa Teresa were besieged for a year it would be of no use; we have fleet Indians who can pass through the forest, and could bring in food unseen by any horde of pirates. So, Señorito, do not disturb yourself about us.’
’But impossible things, as we call them, do happen, Catalina, and it is best to be prepared. Well, anyhow, I shall go out to fight to-night; for it is then the attack is expected, and then I will win a right to my knighthood.’
’There is the great cupboard in this chamber,’ said Catalina, ’into which opens the secret staircase. Few of the men know it, but the Marquis told me of it. That is safe enough. If any steps are heard without we can easily run down the stairs, and a door there leads to the dungeons below. Never fear, Señor Carlo; old Catalina doesn’t mean to be taken by men who would think nothing of murdering me unless they wanted a wife.’
’Dear Catalina, you must never marry,’ said Felipa, kissing her old nurse, ’at least not a pirate: I could not spare you. But do leave off talking of danger, Carlo, when there is none. You frighten us for nothing. Look how lovely the garden is after last night’s rain: the tamarind has spread out all its leaves to show us it is fine again. How I long to go out and have a game this morning!’
’And did you hear that Andreas killed a fer-de-lance snake this morning?’ added Etta. ’He says it is bad luck and an evil sign, but I told him it was a good thing to kill those wicked, poisonous creatures.’
Carlo hardly listened to these remarks; he was thinking only of the coming calamity; and though the affection of two girls comforted him he could not join in their laughter. They no longer feared the terrible pirates, and were anxious now to be allowed to go out into the wood. But as the only gate Santa Teresa possessed was closed, with strict orders to let no one in or out, they had to content themselves with sitting at the open window whilst the sounds of soldiers’ clashing armour and noisy drill, mingled with loud orders shouted hither and thither, only increased their excitement.
Then the sun went down on the beautiful island and darkness fell on the exquisite landscape. Carlo dared not leave the room till he knew his father had gone forth with his band of men towards St. Matthew, which was but a little further down the coast, and was not difficult of access by the sea-shore.
As time went on the confusion increased, and no one seemed inclined to go to bed. At last the Marquis collected his men; and though Carlo could not see much from his position, yet as he looked down from the window and saw the torch-light fall on his father’s face he would hardly have known him, so changed was he. Carlo knew now that there was no help for it; he must only be thankful that he had heard of the treachery and that he was not himself starting out on this mock expedition as he might otherwise have been doing. This fact surprised the girls much.
’I cannot think why you are not going, Carlo,’ said Felipa, very much disappointed at all the fine words of her brother ending in his merely gazing out of the window; ’and is it not strange father has not come to wish us good-bye? Catalina says he told her it was not worth while, as he would be home again so soon. But he might have let you go with him if there is so little danger.’
Etta said nothing, but Carlo saw that she also was much disappointed. Yet, for all this, he dared not betray his father: it was better to be thought a coward himself than to bring blame and discredit on the famous old name of Del Campo.
So the boy walked up and down the room, whilst the girls told each other stories in order to keep awake--so anxious were they to hear the first news of the defeat of the rebels. Then after a time the guns of St. Jerome were heard booming through the night air, and all rushed to the window--to see, however, nothing but the darkness. At the same moment there was a whisper heard through the keyhole, and they recognised the voice of Andreas.
’Señorito Carlo, are you here? Come quickly, in the name of Heaven and Santa Teresa! Do not be afraid; it is I--Andreas. Open the door.’
Carlo rushed to the door and seized the faithful Indian’s hand.
’What is it, Andreas? Speak quickly.’
’There must be some treachery, Señor, for a party of pirates are climbing up towards the castle, and the guards below have disappeared from the walls.’
CHAPTER VIII.
A BRAVE DEFENCE.
When Carlo rushed away, an impulse to follow and see what was taking place seized the three whom he left behind. A strange silence had come over the castle. The moon was just rising and throwing a faint light over the forest; but nothing could be seen save the tall palms and the luxurious undergrowth in dark masses against the clear sky.
’Señorita, come here!’ cried Catalina, hurrying to another window which looked on the sea side of the castle; and as the two girls hurried after her they beheld the bay below; not silent and calm as usual, but with the pirate boats busily plying backwards and forwards towards the shore lower down.
’What does all this mean, Catalina?’ said Felipa, clinging to her nurse. ’Where is my father? And what did Andreas mean by coming to fetch Carlo? What shall we do? Etta, are you frightened?’
Etta was braver than Felipa, but at the same time she understood better the dangers of this attack; and yet she had heard so decidedly, and felt sure Carlo also believed, that Santa Teresa was too well fortified to be taken by assault, that this sudden call from Andreas was a mystery to her.
’I don’t understand what can be the matter. Catalina, let me run down to the courtyard: I will be but a few minutes, and I shall find some one there who will tell me. Pedro is always kind to me, and he will tell me all he knows.’
’But the pirates,’ cried Felipa--’if they come they will kill you! No, no; stay with us. Come away, Catalina, and let us bolt ourselves into our room.’ And the girl tried to drag her nurse away from the window.
But Etta smiled.
’I tell you, Felipa, the pirates cannot come into this place. It would take months to force a passage through the walls, and the gate is too well guarded. I will run down and ask Pedro what Andreas meant.’
Catalina would have liked to go herself, but did not know how to leave Felipa, who was sobbing from fear of she knew not what horrors. Yet poor Felipa, as she crouched near the window with her hand in that of her nurse, could not help admiring the courage of her English playfellow.
’Carlo admires Etta because she is brave,’ she said to Catalina; ’she never thinks of danger for herself. I would so gladly not be afraid, but I cannot help it.’
’Never mind about being brave, my darling; that is for men and not for girls. What would the men have to do if we women were as bold as they are themselves? You see, the Señora Etta is English, and the people in her country are not as civilised as we Spanish folk. Dry your beautiful eyes, dearie, and don’t be frightened. The noble Marquis will soon be returning, and then we shall find out that he has trapped all these wicked robbers, and that not one remains alive.’
Thus comforting her much-loved young lady, Catalina soon forgot her own fears till quite five minutes had passed away without the reappearance of Etta. What could the girl be doing? And why was there suddenly such a silence about the place? Catalina would not have been so brave had she known the truth or witnessed the assault that was now taking place at the gate of the outer wall.
When Etta ran down she was surprised to notice how few of the garrison could be seen. The loopholes from which poisoned arrows could be shot were deserted; the entrance to the council-room and the arsenal also remained unguarded. She could make nothing of it, so she had wrapped her dark mantle round her head and shoulders hoping to escape notice; but, to her great astonishment, none of the usual servants seemed to be about. She now hastened to the door that led into the courtyard. It stood open and the soft night air blew in.
’Pedro!’ she called softly; but no porter answered. Even the Indian slaves were gone. Etta’s curiosity was now fairly awakened. It could not be possible that the castle was deserted, and that she and Felipa were forgotten by every one!
’Carlo!’ she cried louder, ’Andreas! Pedro!’ No answer, and the girl stepped out into the courtyard and walked a little way down to the second gate. Then sounds indeed reached her ears: the clashing of swords, the loud tones of angry voices, the waving of torches, and the shrill whoops of Indians, mingled with many fierce English oaths.
There was no longer any doubt: the enemy, by some means, which of course Etta could not understand, had forced the passage leading over the ditch to the great gate, and were now between that and the inner courtyard, where, as Etta knew, no one remained to defend the gate of the castle itself. Her first impulse was to rush back and fly to some safer place; but so frightened was she that she felt hardly able to move; and at that moment, gazing at the small mass of struggling beings, she saw Carlo at the head of some dozen Indians barring the way before a far larger number of the enemy. This glance showed her also the form of the English lad; so much slighter and so much fairer of face than any about him that she could not mistake him as the torchlight fell on him.
’Carlo! Carlo!’ she cried in her agony. No sound came back in answer but the yells and cries of the two parties; and with the instinct of helping her dear Felipa she at last found strength to turn away from the terrible sight and to fly back to the gate and so up the stairs, and as she ran she called out, ’Shut the gates: they are coming! They will soon overpower our people. Quick, make haste! Pedro, where are you?’
And still repeating these words, Etta dashed into the dwelling-room, looking so excited and pale that there was no longer any doubt that the worst had happened, as she exclaimed, ’We are lost! The castle will be taken! What can we do?’
Nor had brave Etta been mistaken. When Andreas had come to fetch Carlo, the faithful Indian had just discovered that the path known only to Don Estevan del Campo and a few of those in authority had been betrayed. Before he could do more than collect the few slaves and soldiers left in the castle, and station them at the entrance to the weakest portion of the wall, fetch Carlo as described, and with the mere handful of men then available make a brave stand, the chief gate of the castle was really taken. Andreas little knew that all his valour was useless; but it was otherwise with Carlo, who, as he threw himself into the _mêlée_, was conscious that no bravery could really be of any use. Indeed the attack on this side was but a ruse, for another body of men were quietly making their way to the principal gate of Santa Teresa, and were now being let in by one of the Marquis’s officers, whom he had easily persuaded that a desperate encounter with these pirates would only result in their all being taken prisoners, and most likely killed.
It was Andreas who suddenly discovered the treachery, and, not understanding the real meaning of the extraordinary events which were taking place, now shouted to those about him that there was yet time to stop the entrance of those rascals.
In this rush Carlo was accidentally thrown down, and in falling his knee struck against a rocky projection, so that for a few seconds he lost consciousness. When he came to himself he tried hard to struggle to his feet, for he beheld at this moment a boy suddenly spring over the wall and come hastily towards him. Carlo heard the confused noise of the assailants and defenders, who had passed on and left him, so that he now found himself alone with a lad of about his own age, whom he had previously seen, and who was doubtless Henry Morgan’s son.
Clenching his teeth, and grasping his sword, he tottered to his feet.
’Rascal! infidel! son of a pirate!’ cried poor Carlo, not caring what names he bestowed. ’You may kill me, but I will sell my life dearly. You at least shall not come further. Go and tell your father that Carlo del Campo will not be a party to any treachery.’
Carlo threw himself on the tall fair Englishman, and would have dealt him a blow which would have been serious had not his injured knee proved at this minute so painful that he missed his aim, and once again fell on the ground. In a moment the supposed son of Henry Morgan was kneeling by the brave Spanish lad.
’Hold, sir,’ he said, surprised at some English words that had fallen from Carlo, ’you are mistaking me. I am no pirate, and will never draw my sword in such an unlawful business. I am but a poor prisoner, though kindly treated, and my name is Harry Fenn.’
As he said these words Harry stooped down to pick up Carlo’s sword, which had rolled away from him as he fell, and gently gave it back to the brave youth, who once more struggled to his feet, still blind with rage and disappointment.
’How can I believe you? That is a false story, some new treachery; no one who is with these robbers can be trusted. Stand to it, fellow, or yield to mercy; for you go no farther!’ And, regardless of Harry’s explanation, Carlo once again prepared to attack his enemy; but he was made more furious at seeing that his supposed foe was not even trying to defend himself.
’Stand to it, base scoundrel, and draw your sword if you have any spirit at all; or, by St. Teresa, I must fall upon you!’
Still Harry Fenn remained motionless. ’If you will not believe, it is no fault of mine. I have vowed to use no weapon during my captivity--at least in an unlawful cause.’
Carlo dropped his hands, for this speech spoke more than weapons. A true knight could not fall upon an unresisting foe; but it was a deep disappointment to find Harry was no pirate.
’But, indeed, Señor, let me help you back to the castle. Captain Morgan’s men are by no means particular, and might unintentionally hurt you, though they have sworn to use no violence nor to fire at any one this night.’
’It is true, then, and you know it?’ said Carlo, blushing with shame. ’This attack is all a farce, and our men are even now letting the pirates into the castle--is it not so? Tell me all you know.’
’It was the suggestion of the Governor; but I pray you make haste from hence, or you may repent of it,’ said Harry, wishing the young Spaniard would retreat into the castle now, for he certainly was in considerable danger.
’And I am Don Estevan del Campo’s son,’ murmured the unhappy boy. ’Is it true that you are none of them? If so, I will accept your help; for my knee hurts me much, and I must get back to my sister.’
With some unwillingness Carlo put his hand on Harry Fenn’s arm, and in spite of what had just taken place a sudden wave of sympathy seemed to flow between them; each felt that among the crowd of fierce men they seemed to be both of them sadly out of place.
The central gate was now deserted; the pirates and the defenders had both disappeared; so the two lads found no difficulty in entering unperceived by a side door into the castle itself.
’You are witness that I have never surrendered,’ repeated Carlo several times, afraid, in spite of Harry’s kindness, that a trap was being laid for him.
Harry almost smiled as he answered in the affirmative, adding:
’But how is it you talk English, Señor? Yesterday I could not make myself understood; and had I known you understood my language I would have spoken out.’
’My father wished us to learn it. Here, this way; follow me, sir. I do not know what has happened to the garrison, but I fear I cannot fight with this horrid pain. Our men have outrun their fears.’
The two now crept silently up a back way, avoiding the entrance-hall, where, from the sounds that rose toward them, it was not difficult to guess that the pirates were intent on refreshing themselves with what good things Santa Teresa could provide, and making up for the privations of the previous day and night by a carousal.
When Carlo limped up to his sister’s door, he found it strongly barricaded within, and it was some time before Catalina could be persuaded to open it and admit him. Then her exclamations knew no end.
’Señorito! where have you been? And who is this young serpent?’ she added, looking at Harry; but as she spoke in Spanish he did not understand her, though he noticed her look of disgust.
’Hush! Catalina, where is my sister? and Etta? Have you heard no news? Everything is lost, and this place is in the hands of the pirates. This youth was the same one Etta saw. He is a prisoner, he says. If so, he is a fellow-sufferer; and just now he behaved with much courtesy.’
’Come in, then, and let me bar the door once more. Oh, the noise those wretches have been making. It is as if all the demons were walking below. My poor Felipa is well hidden in that cupboard, and I made Etta go there too. Alas, alas, that I should be alive to hear such things! But, anyhow, they must kill me before they touch her. My _cara_ Felipa! I believe she will die of fright.’
Harry Fenn stood by during this conversation, much perplexed at all he saw; for he did not understand that the Marquis had not acquainted his son with his treacherous surrender. His surprise was still greater when in another moment Etta, hearing Carlo’s voice, appeared out of the dark cupboard where Catalina had insisted Felipa and Etta should hide, when on the return of the latter she had understood that something extraordinary was happening.
’Carlo, tell us--but, oh, who is this? The English lad? Are you Captain Morgan’s son? No--it cannot be; for then you would not be here, nor would you look so kind.’
’You were right, Etta; this English lad is a prisoner, and has kindly helped me up here; otherwise I should be still lying under the wall, or perhaps I might now be killed by those wretches.’
Harry Fenn was delighted at finding himself face to face with a countrywoman of his own. It seemed almost a miracle to be in a room again--a room which spoke of civilised and refined life, and which contained an English girl; for there was no mistaking her nationality, though she immediately informed him of the fact.
’I knew you were no robber when I saw you come to the castle. I am an English girl, and a prisoner here.’
’Etta, what foolish talk!’ said Carlo. ’As long as I am here you are no prisoner.’
’But tell me how you came to be with that dreadful Henry Morgan,’ cried Etta, much excited.
By this time Catalina, having gathered that Harry was no enemy, thought that he might be hungry, and brought out some bread fr |
23892-0 | om a cupboard; and the poor fellow fell upon it with such evident hunger that Etta’s heart was touched, and she continued to talk to Harry.
’Those wicked men have, then, starved you?’ she asked, as Carlo, having had his knee bandaged by Catalina, went into the large cupboard and tried to persuade Felipa to come out, for at present there was no visible danger.
’Not more than were all the others; the men all share and share alike; and when we were on the marsh, with the rain falling upon us, we were in such a bad plight that the men began to grumble finely at Captain Morgan; indeed, if a body of Spaniards had appeared at that moment we should never have reached this place. I can tell you Captain Morgan was glad enough to get the Governor’s letter; but he laughed in his sleeve when he found his threats had been taken in earnest, for they were but bravado.’
’Oh, hush! don’t tell Carlo all this,’ said Etta quickly; ’he is so brave and good, and wished to go out this morning against them. But the place must have been betrayed, I think, for all said it could never be taken.’
’Ay, so it was, young mistress; and, now I see it contained such brave people and one of my own countrywomen, I am sorry enough; but before, I was right glad, for we suffered a great deal. Yet I ought to be used to suffering, for all this is nothing to the grief I had when these men kidnapped me from my home. And never a word have I been able to send to my parents that I am alive and well; for they take care I get no chance to speak with any passing ship.’
’But mine were killed,’ said Etta, feeling as if she had known Harry a long time. ’It is five years since I have been a captive here. You do not know, I dare say, that this island was in the hands of pirates at that time. There was a Sieur Simon ruling it for the pirate Mansfelt, who was, they said, never happy except at sea. But the Governor of Costa Rica determined to take back Saint Catherine, and when the pirates heard this they sent to ask help of the English Governor of Jamaica, for he was said to sympathise with them. He refused, and pretended to have nothing to say to them; but he hired a merchant ship, as if for honest trade, and fitted it with stores, and put in some of the pirates that found shelter in Jamaica, and gave them and the captain private instructions. My father, who was an honest merchant, never knew of this; and, wishing to take my mother and me to Costa Rica, took passage in this same ship, but on nearing the island the Sieur Simon came aboard and begged the crew to sail into harbour. Yet it was all a wicked device, for the Spaniards had already possession of the island; so that when we landed we were all seized and taken prisoners. My father and some of the others defended themselves bravely, but they were outnumbered before our eyes, and were killed. Mother and myself were brought to one of Don Estevan del Campo’s fortresses, and she died of grief there after some weeks. Then the Marquis said I was to be treated well, for he wished me to become the playfellow to his daughter and son who were coming here shortly, so that I might teach them English. Before her death my mother gave me letters and directions, telling me if ever I could get back to my relations in England I was to do so. But how can I? We are indeed both alike prisoners, and I see no chance of getting away.’
Harry listened to Etta’s story with much surprise; it made him see that after all he was not the only English sufferer even in these distant islands, and that others had had a much worse fate--for he had been well treated.
’But they are kind to you?’ he asked, glancing at Carlo, who, having persuaded Felipa to come forth from her hiding-place, was sitting with his arm round her near the window and telling her of his meeting with the English youth.
’Kind? Ah, yes. I love Carlo and Felipa dearly, and old Catalina is not harsh; but I am afraid of the Marquis; I can never love him, for he looks upon me as one of his slaves.’
’He must be a false Spaniard, a feeble scoundrel, and no true gentleman,’ said Harry decidedly, and then in a few words he told his own story, and how, in spite of being such a favourite with Captain Morgan, he had sometimes much to bear from the rough men. At this moment, however, Carlo jumped up and exclaimed:
’There is my father returning, and, gracious saints, he is a prisoner!’
CHAPTER IX.
IMPRISONED.
Before anything further could be said on this matter Pedro’s voice was heard at the door, and when Catalina was assured that he was alone she let him in, being herself very curious to know the ins and outs of the occupation, and, as the Marquis had really returned, what was expected of her and her charges.
’Thank heaven, Pedro, that you have come up! Tell me what all this means, and are we to be roasted and eaten alive by those cannibals, who are, I suppose, gobbling up all our stores?’
Pedro’s face was doleful in the extreme, and not at all reassuring.
’In truth, Captain Morgan is our master now; and so I suppose we must make the best we can of the matter. He is very angry at the death of one or two of his men, and says we have broken our engagement. As if one could make engagements with such paltry ragamuffins! It seems we were never meant to resist, but I said it was by your orders, Señorito. You remember that you would insist on taking us out to the walls, though our orders were to do nothing. Anyhow, Captain Morgan wishes you, Señor Carlo, to come and deliver up your sword to him at once. He was going to send some of his drunken fellows to fetch you; but, thinking of the ladies, I interfered, and I said you would prefer to come of your own accord.’
’Let me come with you, Señorito,’ said Harry Fenn, thinking that he could perhaps soften the Captain’s wrath, which, he had learnt by this time, was not to be despised, especially by a Spaniard, who would find but little favour in the English pirate’s eyes.
Felipa, pale and utterly miserable, tried to dissuade her brother from going down below, but in vain. Carlo did not know the meaning of the word fear.
’No, no, dear Felipa; that would be the action of a coward. Besides, you might suffer for my refusal. This captain shall see that I am not afraid of his threats.’
’You will petition Captain Morgan for Carlo, will you not?’ asked Etta, turning towards Harry. ’How is it that he lets you have your own way?’
’I know not. He took a fancy for me and calls me his godson, which is a title very little fitting. I often think that if my poor father could see me, and kind Mr. Aylett, they would indeed be astonished; and yet I have tried to do my duty and not forget my God and country in the midst of this godless crew. But trust me, even if I did not like this bold young Spaniard, I would do my best for your sake, young Mistress Allison. You should have seen how he scorned to budge a step.’
Etta smiled at these words, and then said impulsively, ’Call me Etta, and I will call you Harry Fenn. Seeing you is almost as if I were at home among my relations, who, my mother used to say, would love me dearly and would not let me want.’
But there was no time now for more words, even though the young people seemed to have much to say to each other. Carlo followed Pedro and Harry, feeling altogether angry and ashamed of his position. He was, too, a little jealous of Etta’s evident happiness at talking to one from her own country; and besides, he could not bear to feel that he was himself virtually a prisoner in his own house; and yet, thought he, ’I have never delivered up my sword, and I have never owned myself defeated.’ As for his father, he could not bear to think of him as a traitor to his king and country.
When they entered the hall Carlo was dismayed by a sight such as he had never expected to see in Santa Teresa.
Some long wooden planks had been laid on trestles and placed in two rows down the hall, and round them sat some forty or fifty of Captain Morgan’s chief men eating and drinking voraciously. A dozen or more of the negro slaves waited on them, filling up their goblets when empty--a duty which was by no means light or infrequent. At a smaller table at the upper end of the hall Captain Henry Morgan was also enjoying what he considered a well-earned breakfast; for daylight was beginning to flood the hall, showing that the long night of anxiety was over. In the sky beautiful clouds tinged with every conceivable shade of crimson and gold were making lovely backgrounds for the tall palm-trees and the other forest giants; but of all this beauty the soldiers and the buccaneers thought nothing. Henry Morgan was anxious, now that he was in possession of the island, to secure it permanently for future need, and, as soon as he could, to send on some of his men in search of still more booty, the thirst for gold in these pirates being quite unquenchable. After a moment’s pause Carlo walked proudly up to the top table, bent on showing no fear; yet what made the deepest impression upon him was, not the sight of the much-dreaded sea-robber, but that of his own father seated opposite to the foe, and being treated apparently, not as a prisoner, but as a friend, by the man whom Carlo hated as being both a buccaneer and an Englishman.
The poor Marquis, however, could not be said to look happy; he carefully turned away from Morgan, and now and then rose hastily from his chair and paced nervously up and down the small platform, muttering audibly, ’I did it for the best. There has been no massacre of the people. Who will dare to blame me? How could I do otherwise? Why has Don Francisco left me, and where is my son?’
’Marry! here comes the culprit!’ cried Captain Morgan, seeing Carlo approaching. ’Señor Governor, I suppose this young sprig is your son, and the one who led the assault before sunrise? The young scoundrel has a puissant sword and despiteful ire.’
’My son knew nothing of our plans,’ said the poor Marquis, who in spite of his own conduct could not help feeling proud of his boy.
’Then, i’fecks, you should have told him. Some one is answerable for the death of two of my men and the wounds of several more.’
’Here, young sirrah! What’s your name, and what do you mean by having gone out to prevent the entrance of my skirmishing party, when they held a pass from the Governor himself? Speak out, silly coxcomb, and tell me who set your thoughts agog in this manner.’
’I knew nothing of the pass,’ said Carlo haughtily, ’and I was bound to fight in the defence of the castle. We give no quarter to our foes.’
’Marry! proud as a strutting peacock, eh? Ah, well, we’ll soon teach you better. How now, Harry--what hast thou been about? Thou shouldst have taught this young pate more wisdom. I’ll have no jesting from such a stripling.’
Harry did not answer, thinking silence the wisest course. The curious fancy which Captain Morgan had taken for the kidnapped lad was apparently without rhyme or reason; for Harry, though respectful enough, had never yet been made to act against his will and his conscience; and when some of the men would have liked to use brute force, and shake what they called the young fool’s stubborn will out of him, Captain Morgan always interfered; he would not have the lad touched, he said, and whoever did it would have to answer personally to him.
Carlo, the Spaniard, however, touched no chord of sympathy in the Captain’s breast. He heartily despised the Governor, who had been such a weak tool in his hands, and was rather glad to punish him through his son, as he had given a sort of promise that his person would be safe from insults.
’Ignorance is a very convenient excuse, young Señor. By my faith, you are answerable for the death of two of my men, and should by rights be hanged on one of your own bananas; but, considering your youth, I will merely imprison you in your own castle. Deliver up your sword to me, sirrah! and, marry, you may thank me for dealing so leniently with you; ’tis more than you deserve.’
Henry Morgan spoke fluent Spanish, having had to mix much with the various traders of the West Indies. Harry Fenn, who could not well understand the language, though he could see the angry frown on the Captain’s face, looked from the latter to Carlo, wondering what was being said. Then he suddenly saw the young Spaniard angrily lift his head and clasp his right hand upon the hilt of his sword as he exclaimed:
’I did but my duty, Señor Captain, and I will never deliver my sword to any man, least of all to such rascals as you are.’
’Carlo, it is best to obey; pray do not anger the Captain,’ called out his father anxiously. ’Silly boy! what can you do against all these men? If you persist you must abide by the consequences.’
At these words Carlo hung his head, but he did not answer, nor did he look at all as if he meant to give way; so that now Harry Fenn clearly understood what was taking place, and secretly much admired the Spanish boy; but he knew only too well that in the end he would have to yield. As well try to bend a full-grown oak as turn the iron will of Henry Morgan.
’And what good will that toy blade do for you?’ asked the pirate captain, laughing scornfully; and when he laughed he was more to be dreaded than when he swore. ’It is no tried steel, young jackanapes, but a somewhat spick-and-span new plaything.’
’I demand a free pass for myself, for my father, and the women in this house,’ said Carlo, not daunted, but flushing with anger; ’for it is a shame to remain under the same roof with such as you.’
’A shame! Come, enough of thy vapouring and huffing! We’ll see whose shame it will be. Here, Cross, Simon, Watkins: seize that young scorpion and fling him into the dungeons here; for I guess there are some down below in which brave Englishmen have before now groaned away their lives. "A tooth for a tooth" is no bad saying, and in the dark thou mayest learn that "haste makes waste."’
’Prithee, Captain,’ said Harry, rushing between Carlo and the advancing men, ’spare this young Spaniard: he was as brave as a lion under the walls, and bravery ought to find favour with you--he rallied a mere handful of men when there was no hope for him.’
’Pshaw, Harry! away, boy, and mind thine own business. I hear there are girls here, and that one is an English prisoner or slave: go and tell them to come here--that is work more befitting thee--and leave this boy alone.’
[Illustration: _CARLO BEFORE CAPTAIN MORGAN_.]
In a moment Carlo was seized by the three strong, lusty men; his sword was wrenched from him; and with two long Spanish scarves his arms were bound tightly behind him, and in this helpless state he was dragged from the hall; whilst the Marquis, rising to his feet, protested in vain against the outrage to his son. The truth was that Captain Morgan wished to make an example of some one, and Carlo, being the Governor’s son, would satisfy any murmurs his men might be inclined to raise at the death of their comrades.
All was now noise and confusion, for the men began loudly to make all kinds of requests to the Captain; and, seeing nothing would be got out of them in the way of going to seek for cattle and provisions in the island till they had finished their feast, Captain Morgan (who was a very abstemious man himself) left the hall, begging the Marquis somewhat roughly to show him over the place and to give him all the keys of the stores. Harry Fenn was also commanded to be of the company, which request he was glad enough to comply with, so as to get away from the sight of the carouse and the sound of the rude jokes and laughter.
In the meanwhile Carlo, struggling bravely to the last against his fate, and angry and indignant at his treatment, was carried down to the dungeon below, old Pedro being forced to show the way. Presently, after passing through dark passages, the porter opened the door of a cell-like chamber where no light was visible, and which looked most unfit for a living being, much less for the delicately nurtured Carlo.
’This is the only dungeon I know of,’ grumbled Pedro; ’and many a pirate has made acquaintance with it,’ he added in a low voice. ’Would that I could lock up many more!’
’I fancy this will be good enough,’ said Simon in a French accent. ’Here, fellow, give me the key and let me lock it myself; there’s no treachery these Spaniards are not equal to. Bum! that will do; the silly boy is safe enough.’
’Take it, then,’ growled Pedro, ’it locks well enough;’ but as he delivered up the key he thought with a smile on his face, ’but there’s sometimes more doors than one even in a dungeon.’
CHAPTER X.
A FELLOW-COUNTRYMAN.
The Indian slaves, who had been scattered like thistle-down in a wind during this memorable night, now began to creep back to their various stations and occupations at Santa Teresa; and from them poor Catalina learnt, with more or less exaggeration, all that had taken place during the memorable night, and that it was the Marquis himself who had really betrayed them into the enemy’s hands.
The faithful servant would not abuse her master; but, taking Felipa’s head in her arms, she sobbed over her as if this shower of tears would make matters better; at the same time pouring out all her information, which was no comfort to the poor girl. Etta meanwhile stood by, pale and calm, quickly trying to form some plan which would comfort gentle Felipa.
But when all at once the bad news reached them that Carlo had been thrown into a dungeon, and that the pirates had the keys, and, further, that Captain Morgan was on his way to pay the young ladies a visit, Etta could not help feeling afraid, though she made up her mind that she would not show it. She felt very proud of Carlo, and was somewhat comforted by the idea that kind Harry Fenn would help him if he possibly could.
Etta possessed one of those natures which troubles only strengthen. Her captivity, kind though it had proved for her, had not made her forget her religion and her country; yet now she was anxious to do her utmost to return gentle, timid Felipa’s love; so she did her best to cheer her with hopeful words, and not to give way herself to fear.
’Do not be afraid, Felipa darling. Captain Morgan cannot eat us, you know, and he will not dare to do us any bodily harm, for your father, the Marquis, is still a free man. Besides, the pirates want food, Pedro says, and when they have that they will most likely go away. Why could we not send Andreas to warn your uncle of this assault? He is a good man, and would send us help.’
’Well, Señorita, that is a good idea, which never entered my head,’ cried Catalina; ’but where, in the name of all the saints, shall we find Andreas? The Indians are terribly afraid of the pirates, and are trying to hide in the woods; for I have heard they were very cruel to them the last time they were here.’
’You know, Felipa, that Carlo has taught me the peculiar whistle which will bring Andreas to the foot of the south window,’ said Etta. ’If he is still in the neighbourhood he will hear it, and he would take his canoe to the mainland and warn your uncle, the Governor of Chagres--I am sure he would.’
’But how could he leave his own castle?’ answered Felipa. ’Dear Etta, you are so hopeful and clever! If this could really come to pass! Poor father would be glad, I am sure; for he must already be sorry all these horrid men are in our hall. Yet he did it for the best.’
This talk was now interrupted by the tread of footsteps without. The girls had not been to bed, and were still in the sitting-room. Felipa turned pale, and tremblingly clung to Catalina till she recognised her father’s voice in the passage, though the tones were sadly changed.
The sun this morning shone gloriously in upon the frightened group as the unhappy Marquis and Captain Morgan entered. Felipa at once ran up to her father and put her hand into his, asking in this mute way for his protection; but Etta, who was never at her ease with the Spanish Governor, stood alone by the window. Yet, in spite of her inward fears, she could not help feeling some curiosity at the sight of the dreaded pirate about whom she had heard so much.
After all, the buccaneer was not as dreadful as she had expected; and, even if his appearance were somewhat strange, yet Etta felt she was in the presence of one of her own countrymen; and her fears were further dispelled by the sight of her new friend, Harry Fenn, close behind the Captain. As for Catalina, she turned her face to the wall and audibly muttered her prayers, or perhaps they were curses, on the intruder.
’This, Captain, is my daughter,’ said the Marquis, speaking in a very nervous manner, ’and this other maiden is the English girl I mentioned. Her father was an English merchant, and was killed here in fair fight; she will tell you she has been very kindly treated.’
’Thou canst speak thine own tongue, I hope?’ said Captain Morgan; ’if so, tell me thy name, little countrywoman. I trust thou hast not altogether forgotten the speech of merrie England.’
’My name is Henrietta Allison, and my mother told me our family was from Kent; but oh, Sir Captain, will you release Carlo? Do not take his words amiss, for he is as brave as any Englishman, and I should be loth that my countrymen did him any harm.’ Etta spoke with vehemence; her love for Carlo made her bold, and she altogether forgot her fears.
Captain Morgan frowned a little as he said, ’Marry! An overbold English girl, I see. That young ragamuffin has only got his deserts, for it always goes ill with a son who does not follow his father’s footsteps. But I like a wench that is fearless. Speak up, girl, and tell me if thou hast any other boon to ask.’
’If you will not grant me this one, I will have no other,’ replied Etta, her flashing eyes saying far more than mere words.
’Marry! That is showing a fine spirit! Nay, nay, Mistress Henrietta Allison, keep your angry looks for those who will be distressed by them. Eh, Harry, hast made friends with your countrywoman? Stay here, boy, and learn the courtly manners of the Spaniards, which, by my troth, our rough fellows sadly lack. Now, please you, Señor, we will finish our inspection of the castle; for as soon as my men have become rational creatures again we must proceed to business. I fear I must disarm all the inhabitants, and for mere form’s sake I shall need to examine a few prisoners. I must find, moreover, several bold spirits who will faithfully show me the way to Panama; for I’ve sworn to take that city, and "St. Catherine" shall serve as the war-cry of Morgan’s men. Adieu, fair maids; and do not distress yourselves about your companion; a few days on bread and water will kill no lusty knight who has been routed in battle.’
So saying, he led the way out, and intimated with a wave of the hand that the Marquis was to be his guide. Don Estevan del Campo staggered out, feeling now, at last, that he had indeed made a mistake. Rather would he have perished sword in hand than have heard that the inhabitants were to be made prisoners, and examined, most likely, under torture. His peace had, indeed, been bought dearly!
’Do not be unhappy about your brother,’ said Harry kindly, approaching Felipa; ’he will be safe enough so long as the Captain is within this place, and so long, too, as he bears his captivity patiently. That is Captain Morgan’s way; he cannot bear to be thwarted; yet I have known him do kind deeds when he was in the humour for it.’
’But I have a plan, bold Harry Fenn,’ said Etta, now all eagerness to carry out her ideas, ’only--may we trust you? You will not betray us.’
’You forget what I have told you. I take no part in the affairs of the buccaneers; I do not betray their secrets, because that would not be honourable, but far less would I betray yours. I work enough for them--work that pays for my victuals; but I will not help in their robberies.’
’Forgive me, Harry,’ said Etta frankly. ’We are afraid of every one now; yet we heard truly how you defended Carlo. Felipa, where is the parchment? You must write to your uncle at once, and let the writing be very small, for Andreas must carry it in his mouth; he says that is the only safe hiding-place.’
Felipa sat down to write a few words to her uncle Don Alvarez, Governor of Chagres Castle; whilst Catalina, who could not write at all, looked on, giving her advice freely. Etta in the meanwhile told Harry of her plan, but she did not notice the start he gave as she mentioned that Don Alvarez was Governor of the castle of La Chagres, and a noble and brave gentleman who had sometimes paid them a visit at Santa Teresa.
When the note was at last written hopeful Etta went softly out of the room to the end of a long passage. Opening a little window, she imitated the peculiar whistle which Carlo had taught her, and which was his signal between Andreas and himself. Harry had accompanied her, and he seemed as anxious as she was about the arrival of the faithful Indian.
’Did the Señorita Felipa,’ he asked, ’say in what distress you were, and what was the reason of your needing help?’
’Nay; she said merely, "We are in great sorrow: come at once," and then something more about her poor father,’ said Etta; and Harry could not help admiring the golden hair and sunny face of his new friend.
But though Etta repeated her whistle no one appeared for a long time, but just as she was giving up in despair all hope of seeing the Indian, she noticed Andreas below creeping towards the verandah which he was accustomed to climb in order to get within hearing of Carlo. Now, however, he merely shook his head and whistled softly a few notes which meant ’Come here at sunset’; and with this she was obliged to be contented, knowing that only real danger would keep him away.
’I fancy he is watched,’ said Harry; ’to-night he had better escape, if he is wise.’ And then, very sorrowfully, the girl led the way back to the sitting-room.
The girls dared not step out of their own chamber all the morning--indeed Catalina kept good guard over them, so that it was some comfort to listen to Harry Fenn’s adventures and to hear what he liked best to talk of--the account of his home life. Felipa could not quite understand how he could be so clever, being neither a noble’s son nor a young priest; but Etta had English ideas, imbibed from her parents, and her love of England made her listen eagerly to Harry’s talk of the old church on the hill and of the learned and kind Mr. Aylett, who had taught him so much and whom she hoped to see some day. And, further, as misfortune draws hearts together, he told Etta of that last day at home, and how he had made the effort of renouncing his roving wishes, and yet how he had been forced to cross the ocean and see strange new sights in spite of himself.
’I have had it often on my conscience that God was punishing me for my many discontented thoughts,’ said the boy; ’and yet I think Mr. Aylett would not put it so. He must have told my parents that I was willing to stay.’
’No, no; he could not blame you,’ said Etta, clasping her hands, ’for then you would have also to say that God is punishing me for having been often in a passion when I was but ten years old. We must always be friends now, Harry, for our stories are much alike; but some day you will get back home, and you will tell your parents all you went through and of all your adventures, and then you will remember me and send some good merchant to take me away from St. Catherine to my uncle’s house in Kent. I will show you the letters I have some time.’
’If an English man-of-war was to touch here, then I would run away,’ said Harry. ’I have never given my word not to escape.’
’And did you really always say your prayers?’ said Etta under her breath, who looked upon Harry as a very saintly hero. ’For sometimes I have forgotten them when nobody reminded me; and you must have found it very difficult.’
’Nay, but without them I think I should have despaired entirely.’
Catalina now broke in upon their talk by saying, ’Come, young Englishman, if you are as friendly as you pretend, why can you not get my poor Carlo out of that dungeon? He will die there, for I am sure those ruffians will give him no food.’
’I will do my best,’ said Harry, ’and anyhow I will bring you news later in the day; and I will go now and see if I can do aught with the Captain for him.’
When he was gone, Felipa and Etta fell fast asleep on a low couch, being quite wearied out with the events of the long night and morning, and so for a little while they forgot their troubles.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SECRET PASSAGE.
Etta’s courage came back with new energy after her long rest; the presence of Harry Fenn in the castle seemed to lessen the dangers which now evidently surrounded the little party; and, at all events, so long as he was here they would not be left in uncertainty. But it was nearly sunset before any one came to break their solitude in the sitting-room. At last there was a sound.
’Hish! Open: it is Harry Fenn. Have no fears.’
Etta ran to the door and let him in. He had a basket in his hands full of fruit, and also some bread, on which Catalina seized with joy.
’I knew you must be hungry,’ said Harry, ’so I took these when no one was looking. All the slaves are working with unusual activity. In truth, the Captain has enough to do, and the Marquis has been sent to San Salvador to make the garrison deliver up all the guns that are there. It is sad to see him so cast down.’
’But what other news is there? Can we soon go out of this room? It is so cool under the trees, whilst here we are so hot, and everything is miserable,’ said poor Felipa, who felt the burden of her life greater than she could bear now her father was away and Carlo in prison, and she herself was not far removed from being a prisoner.
’I fancy, Señorita, that in a few days Captain Morgan will have decided something. He found great difficulty to-day in preventing his men scattering themselves after booty. All the main forts are in his hands, and he is busy ordering the removal of guns and ammunition to the fleet; and those who will show him hidden treasure get a title to his favour. You can see some of the ships from the windows of this castle. As soon as he can finish this work, I expect he will set sail. He does say he will not leave a musket in the island; but I fancy some of the negroes have already hidden away powder and muskets, for the men are inclined to handle them too roughly.’
’They may take all the guns they like,’ said Catalina impatiently, ’if they will release the Señorito Carlo to me. I wish I could hang up these villains on our tall groogroos!’
’Unfortunately the man who has the key of the Señorito’s dungeon has gone away to the other island,’ said Harry, ’but as I passed by the gate just now an old man asked me if I would tell the nurse Catalina that the young Señor was not so fast locked but that she could get at him if she so wished. I know not what he meant, but I thanked him for his good offices.’
At this Catalina clapped her hands, saying that Pedro was more cunning than he seemed to be, and that Carlo need not now starve; but no one understood her.
’It is close on sunset,’ said Harry to Etta, ’and if you are going to keep your appointment with the Indian, I would like to come with you. I suppose you are sure he is to be trusted, for some of these Indians are none too brave, our men say, and fly like crows when they smell powder.’
’Andreas! Yes, indeed, he loves Carlo as his own son. They often have gone hunting together.’
So the two returned softly to the place of meeting at the window above the verandah, and, after waiting till the sun had sunk and darkness had suddenly come on, they heard the sound of soft whistling, and in another moment Andreas had swung himself over the balcony and stood by their side.
Etta seized his hand.
’Good Andreas, do you know all our misfortunes? Señor Carlo is still in the dungeon, the Marquis has gone to deliver up some guns, and if it were not for this kind friend we should be almost forsaken.’
Andreas made a low salutation, but, all the same, eyed Harry rather suspiciously.
’Do not be afraid,’ continued Etta; ’he is a prisoner as we are, and will help us. Look, Andreas, could you manage to escape and take this note of the Señorita Felipa to her uncle at the Castle of Chagres? He would bring us help if he knew how badly we wanted it.’
Andreas shook his head.
’It is impossible, I fear. I am only at liberty because I can be useful with the cattle and the horses in the compound.’
’But, good Andreas, you cannot know how important it is that this Spanish gentleman should know that Captain Morgan has taken St. Catherine,’ said Harry quickly. ’If you cannot go, could you find some one else? Surely we have had enough horrors here and elsewhere,’ he added, half to himself.
’The blacks cannot be trusted, and none of my tribe would care to go. However, give it me, Señora; if I cannot go no one shall take the writing from me.’ And with this Etta had to be satisfied; but she added in English:
’If Andreas says no, it means no; for he is the cleverest and bravest Indian there is in all the island.’
’When do you think the pirates will go, Andreas?’ she asked anxiously.
’The Captain is asking for men who know the roads on the mainland. I believe they intend to attack Panama; and yet that is a big rich city, and is not badly defended, so that I can hardly believe that such is really their intention.’
After this, Andreas said he must not stay longer, as he was obliged to go back to the compound, but that he would come the next day at sundown to the same place, if in the meanwhile he were unable to escape from the vigilance of his new masters in order to go to the mainland, where, some short distance down the Chagres River, stood the castle of that name, strongly garrisoned by Spanish soldiers.
As Harry and Etta returned towards the sitting-room the former promised he would come back early the next morning and bring what food he could find, only begging that the Señorita and Etta would not dream of showing themselves below stairs; for indeed the scenes that went on--the drinking, swearing, and quarrelling--were no fit sight for them--’or, indeed, for any Christian man,’ added Harry. ’They will soon fall to and begin to cross their cudgels, fancying they are full of wit and valour; though, indeed, there are many who have only joined them because misfortunes have come upon them in the old country, and they fancy this wild life is better than starving. Some, too, were trained to fight in the late wars, and say that life i |
23892-0 | s naught without a sword and a war-cry; yet I know that many of them disapprove of the cruel deeds they see.’
’But you would escape if you could?’ asked Etta.
’Yes, indeed; but Captain Morgan knows that, and I feel sure I am often watched. Good-night, Mistress Etta. I will do my best to free you out of this distress.’
Etta found on her return that everything looked more cheerful, and indeed Felipa ran towards her friend and began kissing her as she laughed and cried alternately.
’What is the matter? what has happened?’ said Etta; for Catalina looked just as happy, and was praising all the saints in the calendar.
’Catalina is so clever and so good! Fancy! she has seen Carlo, and, look, he has shared our supper!’
’Where is he? have they freed him?’
’No, no--hush!--but it was good Pedro’s doing; they made him show them the way to the dungeons, and he got him locked up in the cell that has another door into it, and we can get at it from here. You know that nasty dirty little staircase which we were always afraid of? Well, that leads to his cell. In former times, Catalina says, they used to go down from here and try to get the secrets out of the prisoners by making them false promises. That is why there are two doors in it.’
’And have you seen him? Oh, Catalina, let me go down at once and speak to dear Carlo! He will know now we are going to send a message to Don Alvarez, for Andreas will try hard to get away.’
’No, no, Señorita, you must not go now. I crept down like a snake, and found my poor boy crouched in a corner quite faint for want of food. How he started up when I pushed back the sliding panel! and, in truth, he was ready to fight me, fancying I was a pirate come to murder him. And when he saw it was only old Catalina he nearly cried; though he laughed, too, afterwards. He knew I could not see the tears, mind you, in that dark hole. Well, he ate the bread and fruit in a very short time, and asked no end of questions, poor boy, and sent an especial message to you to tell you he was not so badly off now he could hear news of us. It was as good as any feast, he said.’
’But, Catalina, why did you not bring him here? We could hide him, I am sure we could; and if not, he could escape by the balcony.’
’I suggested it to him, but he was wiser. "My jailors may come at any moment," he said, "and then, seeing me gone, they would soon search and discover the door, and no one can tell what they might then do." Ah, he is a brave youth; it is a pity his father is not like him.’
It was indeed a great comfort to feel that their Carlo was so near to them, and at all events would not die of starvation, as there was before much chance of his doing if left to the tender mercies of his captors, who were now beginning to recover from their carousal, and were being sent to all parts of the two islands with orders to drive the harmless inhabitants in to the various fortresses as if they had been cattle, and to treat all who resisted the appropriation of their goods as if they were rebels.
It was decided that Carlo could not be visited again till a late hour the next morning, for fear of any one being discovered in the cell. Etta, as more agile than Catalina, was then to visit the dungeon; and, much comforted, the three this evening knelt down to pray together that God would deliver them from their sad plight and take care of their own dear Carlo and the Marquis.
Felipa was very fond of her father in spite of being a little afraid of him; he had always been indulgent to her, and she fretted at seeing nothing of him. The truth was, that the Governor preferred even looking after the betrayed fortresses to seeing the sorrow of his children; and he was much afraid Felipa would reproach him for having allowed Carlo to be imprisoned.
As the girls would not leave the sitting-room, through which alone they could get at Carlo, Catalina spread some mattresses on the floor for them; and this evening they slept soundly in spite of their many misfortunes.
They were up at sunrise, and were all impatience for the first tidings which Harry had promised to bring them; but when at last they heard his voice, and let him in, he was not in a very cheerful mood.
’When is Captain Morgan going away?’ asked Etta, whose sweet face and golden hair made Harry hunger all the more for his home, in order that he might send or fetch her. ’Make haste and tell us good news. I have a lovely plan for saving you from these people, Harry Fenn, but I dare not tell it yet I would dearly love to hear their hue and cry after you. How they would boggle at finding you gone!’
’You need not make plans for me, Mistress Etta: the Captain has even just now told me that he wishes me to go aboard one of his ships. He knows I will not fight, but he would fain make me act spy on the others. But see, this is all I could find for you, Catalina. Here are some yams and bananas and bread. I wanted to bring you a cooked fowl, but one of the men was angry at what he called my huge appetite. They think that as I will not do all their work I must not eat the good things, and that I am not worth my provender, as they put it.’
’But when shall you go?’ asked Felipa, who looked so much more cheerful this morning that Harry could not help noticing it.
’No, no: you must not go!’ said Etta, seizing his hand. ’Stay with us, and we will send you back to England. The Señora Felipa will ask her father, and when the pirates are gone----’
’Thank you for your kind good offices; but your plan is impossible, for Captain Morgan does not mean to leave Santa Teresa just yet; he is sending out four ships and a boat to try how he gets on in those parts.’
’Where?’
’That I durst not say, Señora; it was only by accident that I overheard it; but I know that, in the future, the Captain’s mind is set upon taking the great town of Panama.’
’He will never do that,’ said Felipa, tossing her head. ’There is a strong garrison there, and His Catholic Majesty would never forgive them if they allowed it to be taken by such needy gallants as your crew.’
’That is what I think too, Señora. However, I dare say our ships will come back from this lesser expedition somewhat humbled and crestfallen. At present their pride knows no bounds. But, dear ladies, I am sorry to say that I am the bringer of evil news, which it goes against me to tell; but it is best to know the worst. I heard Captain Morgan say that the Señorito Carlo was to be released this morning and to be taken on this expedition, because----’
’Oh, how dreadful! Carlo to go with all those wicked men! Nay, I know he will never consent,’ cried Felipa.
’But in truth he will be less likely to get harm than in those damp dungeons below. I reminded the Captain that the Señor had had no food, and that men would cry shame on himself if the Señor were to come to harm.’
’Thank you, Sir Harry, for your kind intentions,’ said Felipa in her somewhat quaint English, ’but indeed I had rather my brother were in the dungeon than out at sea with such knaves as these buccaneers. Cannot you obtain this boon from your captain for us; for if my brother goes what shall we do?’
Harry would not tell her he had no power; so, promising to do his best, he hurried away, not daring to stay longer.
CHAPTER XII.
A NEW EXPEDITION.
The hours wore away very, very slowly for poor Carlo, who in his damp dark cell reflected with bitter shame on the departed glory of his name. Moreover, it was hard to bear this terrible confinement; and now and then the thought would pass through his mind that he had been a fool for his pains, for his resistance had done no good to any one, and had put him into a very luckless place and a miserable condition. But Catalina’s visit and the discovery of the secret door, though it opened only from the outside of the cell into the narrow secret passage, took away all the feeling of loneliness, which is almost unbearable to the young. Now all was different. Upstairs and not far from him there were those who cared for him; and, to say the truth, the food Catalina had brought very much contributed to his more cheerful spirits. When first imprisoned there had been no time to do more than thrust the boy into the cell, so he was free to walk the two steps which were all that the width of the place allowed; but it was a comfort to feel with his fingers for the slight marks of the secret door, and to place his ear against it, listening intently for coming footsteps.
This morning, however, it was in the outside passage that he first heard sounds; and presently the key creaked in the lock, the bolts were drawn back, and a rough voice called out with a seasoning of oaths:
’Here, young cub, take this loaf; it’s none of the newest, but good enough for young teeth; and here’s water to wash it down with; for, ay, marry, it’s all you’ll get till to-night, when the Captain has ordered your release. Maybe by then you’ll have learnt to cudgel less and show less paltry spite.’
Carlo’s heart beat fast, for the very idea of once more seeing the sun and enjoying the lovely sights and sounds of the tropical world made him happy. No, he did not now regret his conduct: he had vindicated his honour, and the price was not too great. He longed to know more, but of course he would not ask this fellow for any news, so he received his communication in silence. In consequence of this he was favoured with another volley of opprobrious titles, which he bore with patience, as beneath the notice of a nobly born Spaniard.
When this visit was over, Carlo set himself again to listen for more welcome footsteps; but it was only after an hour had elapsed that he was rewarded by hearing, not Catalina’s heavy tread, but a gentle well-known footfall. It was Etta, who after some difficulty managed to slide back the secret door; and, peering into the darkness without at first seeing anything, she exclaimed:
’Carlo, are you there? Oh, how dreadful! Here, dear Carlo, take this bread, and a fresh banana; for you must be very hungry. How glad I am that you will not be here much longer! And yet----’
’How do you know, Etta? Was it Harry Fenn that told you? Will they give me back my sword? and where is my father?’
’We know hardly anything; for though of course we are not in this horrid hole, yet we are as much prisoners as you are, my poor Carlo; and if it were not for Harry Fenn we should have had to go down to the hall amongst those rough men and beg for bread. Even Catalina dare not do that, for she cannot abide their rude jestings.’
’Never mind: when I am released I shall teach those ruffians manners and see that you are not neglected,’ said Carlo, still a little jealous of the doings of this new Harry.
’But, Carlo, did they not tell you? You are to be put aboard one of the pirate ships and to show them the way somewhere; and indeed you must put a good face on the matter for fear they should handle you roughly.’
Carlo was struck dumb at this news; but at last he burst forth with--
’The rascals! What! do they think they are going to use me as a guide to some other unfortunate Spanish settlement? That they never shall. They may tear my limbs, but for such knaves----’
’Hush, hush, Carlo! What if they heard you! But Harry Fenn is to go too. He knows nothing of your father or of what has happened to him; and, alack! poor Felipa, who was so glad and happy yesterday, is now all-sorrowful again. Dear Carlo, when you are aboard try and bear their raillery and stuff your ears, and---- But I dare not stay longer, Catalina is so frightened lest I should be discovered here, or for fear we should receive a visit from the Captain upstairs, and he would assuredly ask what had become of me; so good-bye, dear Carlo! Do not be rash; for, in truth, they may put you on the ship, but they cannot make you speak, and you do not know the roads of the mainland, so you can easily baffle these boors. Ah, now, I was forgetting to tell you that Felipa wanted to come with me, but Catalina would not let her. She sent you all her true love.’
So these two took leave, and Etta, drawing back the tiny door and replacing the bolts, ran lightly upstairs, having put Catalina in a great fright; for hardly had the door of the dark cupboard out of which the turret stairs descended been shut when voices were heard close to the door of the dwelling-room. The old woman was much excited as she exclaimed--
’St. Teresa save us! Etta mi! What heart-palpitations you have given me! Quick, child! lie down on the couch and hide all the cobwebs and dust which are on your petticoat.’
Etta did so, trying to conceal her smiles; and Catalina threw a lace shawl over her, Spanish fashion; so that when Captain Henry Morgan entered, followed by a gentle-looking Frenchman, only the most natural sight in the world met their eyes.
’Marry! see you, Sieur Maintenon, here is the dovecot I mentioned; but the dovelets are not so young but that they can coo. Prithee here, my English maid, and tell me anything thou canst of the mainland. Was thy merchant father wont to trade there? If so, he must often have landed at Panama, where rich stuffs are much _à la mode_ and prized.’
Etta was forced to get up; but Catalina, pretending to help her, privately shook as much dirt as she could from her petticoat.
’No, Sir Captain, my father was an honest merchant who traded among the English isles, Jamaica chiefly, and took trips to England, but he never meddled with the Spanish settlements.’
’Was it so? My experience is that merchants are glad to trudge wherever they can get gold coins. But you, Señorita, you have sometimes left this island? Speak plainly, for I like not capricious or saucy maidens,’ said the Frenchman in soft Spanish tones to Felipa.
’Never, Señor, except to go a visit to my uncle, the noble Don Alvarez, Governor of the Castle of St. Lawrence, which some call the Castle of Chagres because of the river of that name; and I wish heartily that I could let him know now of our distress.’
’Marry! pretty dove, do not have the doleful dumps on that score, for such a message will not be difficult to deliver,’ laughed Captain Morgan; ’the little Señorita can give it to that valiant warrior her brother, for I purpose despatching four of my ships there this very evening.’
Felipa and Catalina lifted up their heads in horror, and the former burst into tears as she exclaimed, ’You will go to Chagres and attack the great Don Alvarez! That cannot be!’
’Why not? Before the whole cheese is taken one must taste a little bit of it and see if it is good. From Chagres we can easily cross the narrow neck of land, but we want good guides to traverse that marshy region. Know you any such?’
’I will send and warn my uncle,’ said Felipa proudly, drying her tears; ’he is better armed than we were here, and he will receive you in a manner you will not like--that I can well foreknow.’
Captain Morgan nodded to his companion.
’So said I, pretty maid. Mark you, Maintenon, I will tell Captain Brodely to keep the ships well together; I hear from that vile caitiff Espada that the mouth of the river is dangerous, and that there are several gunboats stationed there.’
’And if it were not,’ put in Felipa incautiously, ’the castle is on the top of the mountain and can never be taken. My uncle Don Alvarez will not be deceived by your tricks as was my father, and your fair promises will be laughed to scorn by him, for he will fight to the death.’
’Thank you, pretty Señorita, for your advice. I will not forget to tell my men what kind of brave gentlemen they will have to meet; an we are worsted we must yield on honourable terms. But, doubtless, your brother will tell us more. I’faith, Maintenon, I must see that the ships are well manned and victualled: it does not do to trust any one but oneself when there is much risk in an enterprise, and, for all we know, a mortal crisis and some mangling of Christian bones.’
So saying, the Captain moved away, and smiled as he noticed old Catalina in her corner busily muttering her usual imprecations against him. When not thwarted Henry Morgan was an agreeable man with much sense of humour; and it was partly this that had enabled him to keep his heterogeneous horde together, though quarrels were frequent enough, and led, as he said, to bangs and knocks sufficient to harden any softer fists.
There was much indignation and many exclamations of despair from the girls and their old nurse when they were once more alone, which were only calmed when Felipa indignantly remarked:
’My uncle Don Alvarez will never be conquered by such people, and dear Carlo will see him and tell him, when he has routed these knaves, to come to our help. If only I could see my brother!’
But it was not thought prudent to descend again after the narrow escape Etta had had, for they could not tell at what hour Carlo might be released.
’May the good God take care of my dear boy!’ sighed poor Catalina, much depressed. She was feeling that her responsibilities were almost too great, and she heartily wished the Marquis would come back and take care of his children. Happily, till now Felipa had not fretted too much, though the poor girl was beginning to show signs of fatigue and anxiety. She was far more delicate than sturdy English Etta, whose spirits soon reasserted themselves and made her inclined to forget the dangers that still existed.
In the meanwhile Carlo waited impatiently in his cell for the time when he should hear the steps of a pirate coming to release him; for now, having thought the question out, he had come to the conclusion that he had best take the matter quietly. Not being a prisoner on parole, he was free to escape, and perhaps he should soon find some opportunity of doing so. Once free, he believed that the faithful Andreas could hide him in the woods till such time as peace was restored. He had leisure now to make many reflections as to the future; but at last he heard footsteps in the passage outside. His heart beat fast, though he tried to appear cool. He could not guess the time of day, but he felt sure it was not far off sunset, when at last his door was hastily opened and a man told him roughly to get up and follow him. Carlo did so. He was a little stiff, and almost blinded by the light; but it seemed like a new life to be breathing once more the fresh air, and to feel the warm glow of the sunshine through his chilled veins. At the end of the passage he found several other men awaiting him; but they did not pinion him as before--an insult Carlo would have found it difficult to forgive.
’Quick, young Señor, this way; we have no time to waste. We want no idle vermin among our crew.’
It was fortunate for Carlo that Etta had prepared him for this new bondage, or he might have refused to follow the buccaneers out of Santa Teresa. As it was, however, he would not obey quite silently or without protest.
’Where are you conducting me?’ he asked, ’I demand to be taken to my father.’
’Very likely, sirrah; but those are not our orders. Marry! it’s best to ask no questions when one is Captain Morgan’s prisoner, else some inquisitive knaves have learnt what it means "to swing like a skipper."’
Carlo thought this advice wise, and followed it.
Presently he saw that the men were joined by a fellow he knew well, Espada, who had evidently turned traitor. Carlo had seen him last at the Platform, and he was horrified to hear him say he was prepared to guide the men by a narrow path which led down the face of the steep cliff, and which they could not have found unassisted. It was by no means a pleasant descent, but it saved a few miles of walking, and, once at the bottom, they found a canoe awaiting them. With a heavy heart Carlo saw the massive walls of Santa Teresa disappearing. After a short row the boat he was in was moored alongside one of the pirate ships stationed just outside the bay, and he was bidden to scramble up a very rude rope ladder on to the deck of the ship, which, he found, was called ’The Falcon.’
’Is Captain Brodely on board?’ asked the escort, ’for here is the son of that craven-hearted Governor. By my faith! a valuable cargo, I take it; for he’s to serve as guide, and to be hostage for the Marquis’s good conduct in the future. Now then, young sir, on with you this way. And best budge quickly; for there’s to be no tricks here, remember, or it will be the worse for you.’
Poor Carlo! his Spanish pride inwardly rebelled; but, true to his resolution, he replied nothing to all these taunts. The Captain was too busy to attend to him, so he was presently locked up in a small cabin where the spirits stolen from Santa Teresa were stored; still he could see the dancing waves through the tiny port-hole, and, compared to the dungeon he had just left, this place was indeed like a palace, though the only pieces of furniture were barrels of wine and spirit-kegs, in which the Dutch carried on a brisk trade, and which therefore received the name of Hollands.
When darkness fell over the beautiful shore the noise on board in no way diminished, and such a shouting and holloaing was heard that it was easy to see the pirates were in high spirits, and thought themselves invincible and able to do as they liked.
After a time Carlo fell asleep, and was awakened only by feeling himself gently shaken. He started up, and saw by the help of the moonlight the kind face of Harry Fenn bending over him.
’You here! Thank God!’ exclaimed Carlo. ’At all events these wretches will not murder me without some one knowing of it and reporting the crime!’
Harry laughed at Carlo’s somewhat moody ideas.
’Oh, Señor, in truth you are safe enough now we have started, and I am bidden to ask you to come and sup in the Captain’s own cabin. He is under strict orders to treat you well when once we are out at sea. And, look you, Señor: these men have not been told that you can understand English, so prithee keep the secret. They all come from the bigger island, and were not at Santa Teresa. Later on we may find it convenient to understand each other in English whispers. At present, remember, I only know very few Spanish words.’
Carlo nodded, and with new hope followed the English boy into the Captain’s cabin.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ESCAPE.
Captain Morgan had done wisely in thinking that it was quite necessary for him to have some base of operations on the mainland before crossing the narrow neck of land which separated him from the coveted prize, the city of Panama. It was for this reason that the expedition under Captain Brodely was sent out, whilst he detained the rest of his ships at safe anchor at St. Catherine, and also kept his men in good temper by letting them do as they pleased and ransack the two fair Spanish islands of this name.
Captain Brodely was a daring seaman, who had seen before now the inside of Spanish prisons, and knew the ground round about Panama pretty accurately; but the Castle of Chagres was on the opposite side of the isthmus, and the river Chagres, which flowed at the foot of the hill on which stood the castle, was difficult to navigate, and great care would therefore be needed to steer the ships into safe anchorage. The Captain had been told that the Marquis’s son knew well the castle and its surroundings; but when Harry Fenn entered his cabin accompanied by Carlo, the sturdy rover looked with scorn on the slight stripling whom Captain Morgan had sent him for guide. As hostage he might be all very well, but for aught else the Englishman preferred trusting his own good sense to the doubtful information abstracted from an unwilling prisoner whose Spanish blood prevented him, in the eyes of Captain Brodely at least, from having any regard for truth.
Carlo found himself, therefore, treated with silent contempt rather than with severity by his new jailor, and as the ’Falcon’ bounded over the water he could not help feeling happier than in his dungeon, wondering much how it was that he had appreciated liberty so little until now.
After the first interview he received no special orders, nor was he expected to do anything; so, wishing to be alone, he retired for the night under a bale of goods stolen from one of the fortresses in St. Catherine. Harry Fenn, however, soon joined him, and the two spent the rest of the night by no means unpleasantly under this shelter, which had the merit of being out of the way of the crew. The next morning land was dimly in sight, and they expected to strike it in the afternoon; so before this time the Captain had several confabulations with his men. They knew that their ships were certain to be seen, so that it was hopeless to attempt to creep up in the dark unperceived, as their own safety required them to use the daylight.
Chagres, as has been said, was built on a high hill close to the river; it was surrounded by strong palisades buttressed with earth, and a ditch thirty feet deep defended its near approach. It had but one entry, and that reached by a drawbridge over the said ditch. Four bastions looked landward and two seaward. On the north side ran the river, and on the south the hill was too steep for any invader to climb. At the foot of the mountain was another fort with eight guns commanding the river, and two other batteries were placed a little lower down. This, then, was the well-fortified place which the pirates were now determined to possess themselves of; and no wonder that Carlo spoke rather scornfully to Harry of the expedition as an impossible and rash dream.
’My uncle, Don Alvarez, is as wise and brave a man as can be found in all the dominions of the King of Spain,’ he whispered to his companion, when the two were left alone, unnoticed by the excited sailors.
’I have seen enough of these men, Señorito, to make me disbelieve in nothing. They will leap down headlong into danger, and get up unhurt. But I see they are not making straight for the mouth of the river; doubtless we shall land a little way off, so as to avoid the fire from the fort.’
’If I could but warn my uncle!’ said Carlo earnestly. ’Look you, Master Harry Fenn, I will give you a handsome reward if----’
Harry tossed back his fair hair even as a young colt who is galloping before the wind, as he answered:
’You forget, Señor, that though I may be among thieves, yet I am an honest Englishman, and I take no reward for doing what I can. I am no knave that gripes after a reward.’
Carlo saw that he had insulted the boy who had saved his life, and with his usual impetuous generosity he apologised fully.
’Indeed, indeed, I meant no harm. I am sorely troubled; but you at least will forgive me. This luckless affair has made me foolish.’
Harry was easily pacified, and he himself at once suggested a plan by which Carlo might accomplish his purpose.
’Look now, Señor Carlo: when our ships come to anchor, they will put more than half the men ashore in order to carry the castle by assault, and they will not trouble themselves much about us, I see. If we could escape then, and go faster than the attacking party, we might do some good in warning Don Alvarez.’
’Yes, that is indeed a first-rate idea, and that also reminds me that, close by the landing at the foot of the castle, there is a small steep staircase cut out of the solid rock. I have often climbed up by it for quickness when I have been staying with my uncle and was late for supper. If we could somehow get there, trust me to distance them. What think you of this possibility?’
Harry’s smile showed that he appreciated the idea, so they were soon deep in ways and means; for they could not help entering into the spirit of the attack, now that they were planning a counter-expedition of their own. Very soon there was more than enough excitement, however. Their ships had been discovered, and the pirates seeing the enemy’s guns begin to play upon them, Captain Brodely clearly understood it was useless attempting to enter the river, so the ships bore down on a small port about three miles from Chagres, and when the sun went down they lay at anchor. There was to be no rest for any one that night. All was bustle and confusion, some of the crew declaring they would land, some that they would find it easy to run the gauntlet of the forts; and among all this discord the Captain had more than enough to do to keep the peace, and some show of authority.
’Now, Señor, here’s our time,’ said Harry, with eagerness, for some of his fresh ardour and adventurous spirit was returning now that he could lawfully indulge it. ’We can take a small boat from our masters; or if not, perhaps we can swim to shore from here and walk along the coast, if that is possible in the darkness.’
’Yes, for the tide is low; but the moon will soon be up, and then trust me for the rest. But how shall we baffle the men?’
’The men are too busy to notice us. I can let myself down by a rope. Or wait--I will hold the rope for you, and when you are in the boat, which is moored below, I will let myself down. But cut the rope as soon as you are in, for I can swim out to you.’
’But the sharks--are you not afraid of them?’ asked Carlo, who knew that these dreaded enemies had always to be taken into account.
’They are less likely to be about at this time,’ said Harry, cheerfully; ’but of course I must chance them. "Nothing venture, nothing have," is an English proverb which the buccaneers certainly act upon.’
In truth, Harry’s plan was very cleverly thought out. The pirates, aware that no enemy would dare to come and attack them after dark, had let down their small boats and canoes, and were busily preparing everything for an early start.
Carlo now nimbly scrambled down, helped by Harry’s steady hand, and safely descended into a canoe which was tied to the ship, and which was ordinarily used for running up narrow creeks in the islands. Then he crouched down and waited breathlessly for Harry to follow; but, to his horror, he suddenly heard voices above, and distinctly caught Harry’s words, evidently meant for him to hear--
’I shall stay here as long as I choose: don’t wait for me. Off with you: your business brooks no delay.’
A gruff voice answered:
’Marry! but you’ll come with me too, young Pug-robin; the Captain says there’s a good deal to do in stowing away the provision for to-morrow, and idle hands are not wanted here. Those that won’t work can filch no booty.’
Then came the sound of retreating footsteps, and Carlo knew that all was up as far as Harry was concerned; so, cutting the rope, and not caring much whether he were discovered or not, so desperate had he become, he took the oars, and as silently as possible he shot off into the darkness, going, as far as he was able to judge, straight for the shore.
No one, however, seemed to have discovered his escape, for he heard no hue and cry raised, nor sound of pursuers; and this fact, after a time, raised his spirits. Happily, his expeditions with Andreas had made him a skilful oarsman, and when the moon rose he was able to see that he had got well forward and was out of sight of the pirates, having turned round a projecting cliff, and being now well in sight of the river’s mouth.
If only Harry had been with him Carlo would have thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. He was so sure that, once in Chagres Castle, he should be safe and free, that he was all eagerness to push on.
’I shall save my uncle, and be ready to fight for him,’ thought he. ’Ah, if only my father had not been so deluded, perhaps Chagres would not now have to defend itself against this fierce horde.’
With these thoughts mingled ideas of the praise he should receive, and also sad remembrances of the desolation of his own home, and of the terrible story which he should have to tell his uncle; but he had immense faith in Don Alvarez, and longed for his advice and kind sympathy. As he neared the shore he saw that great excitement prevailed there, the authorities fancying he was a pirate ambassador come to parley; for the arrival of the ships was known, and a strict look-out was kept. A boat full of soldiers was immediately dispatched, and was soon alongside of him; and the astonishment was great when the men saw, on close inspection, that the boat contained only a young fellow rowing himself to shore. At last Carlo, by dint of showing he had nothing with him but food, and that he was in reality only the son of Don Estevan del Campo, was allowed to land. Then, fearful of some ruse, the soldiers surrounded him, and took him before the officer who was now on guard at the lower fort. Fortunately, this latter had once seen Carlo, and then all were intensely eager to hear the news. After hastily telling the bare facts, Carlo hastened up the rocky stairs, accompanied by a soldier, who took the precaution of bringing a safe-conduct, signed by the superior officer, for the edification of the porter; otherwise there might have been some difficulty in entering the castle, so watchful and so suspicious had every one become on hearing of the approach of the dreaded pirates; for the name of Henry Morgan was sufficient to cause almost a panic in a Spanish garrison.
The surprise and pleasure of Don Alvarez and his gentle wife, Doña Elena, can easily be imagined when they saw their nephew, and heard of his marvellous escape from the pirates’ ship; but the outline only of the events which had taken place at St. Catherine could be now discussed, Don Alvarez being so busy and eager to do everything in his power to repulse the enemy.
’From what you say, Carlo,’ said Don Alvarez, ’the buccaneers cannot be here till the afternoon, for the roads hither from the bay are almost impassable since the rain. That will give us some few hours before sunset to rout them. I doubt much if there will be any left. For my part, I call it a most impudent assault; but I shall use every precaution, and not fall into the error of my poor brother-in-law; for, in truth, to parley with such fellows is to disgrace the Spanish flag.’
Carlo retired to rest, kindly tended by his aunt, who rubbed sweet ointments into his blistered hands and provided him with clean linen and a new doublet of sturdy buff; for, in truth, Carlo was hardly recognisable after all he had gone through, and his clothes were much torn and soiled.
’God has indeed taken care of you, my brave Carlo; you have the true Alvarez blood in your veins. Your uncle will not forget your brave conduct; and directly we are delivered from these men, he will go over to St. Catherine with sufficient force to restore order and to give back the island to its proper masters. My heart grieves sore for my poor little Felipa.’
’They will indeed be glad to see him, and you too, Aunt Elena; but Felipa and the English Etta have been civilly treated. Only, it seems to me that these pirates think that so long as they have enough to eat it does not matter if others starve. If it had not been for Harry Fenn--him I told you of--the girls would have fared badly enough. But I am as sleepy as a porpoise. Do not forget to wake me early, and you will see how I will fight these jailors of mine, and pay them back their cudgelling with interest.’
CHAPTER XIV.
DEFENCE TILL DEATH.
It was two o’clock before the look-out from the castle discerned the approach of the pirates, and then all was activity. Carlo, having no fears, and being, besides, well rested and fed, was all eagerness for the first encounter. But Doña Elena had asked him to accompany her into the church built within the palisade; and there, kneeling down, both begged for a blessing on the Spanish arms. Carlo thought too of his own desolate home, and this rather calmed his spirits. He wondered much what had become of Harry Fenn, and whether he had been left behind or forced to march to the attack. On the face of it, nothing could have been more foolhardy than this expedition; and so thought the pirates themselves as they at last, after a dreadful journey through mire and mud, came in sight of the strongly fortified castle. Many a stout heart wished at that moment that the owner thereof had not been quite so clamorous in insisting on being chosen as one of the storming party; but no one dared to put these thoughts into words, for to turn tail now and receive the gibes and scorn of those they had left behind was not to be thought of for a moment. They were now in an open space at the foot of Chagres. The enemy at once opened fire upon them with more or less effect, and to pause at that moment was only to get into greater danger, so, without waiting for rest, they daringly began to ascend the hill in order, if possible, to get close up to the walls. But though there was no lack of pluck, the danger was too great, the task impossible; and so they reluctantly beat a retreat, followed by shouts of joy and derision from the walls of the castle, and many uncomplimentary titles, ’English dogs’ and ’Enemies of God and our King’ being the mildest.
Within the castle precincts, Don Alvarez was here, there, and everywhere; and though Carlo was not allowed to go into the most dangerous places for fear of some stray shot or arrow, he was, however, ready for every opening which promised a source of honour. He loaded muskets, carried ammunition, dashed water over the heated gun-barrels, and made himself very useful.
’They are repulsed!’ rang through the castle as the men so long on watch now bethought themselves of their supper; and the women, coming out of the church, where they had been placed for safety, were soon busy serving the heroes. Carlo’s bright eyes were sparkling with eagerness; he felt that he was serving under a brave, honourable man who would die rather than give in, and that he was wiping out his own disgrace.
But after sunset it appeared evident that the dauntless spirits of the buccaneers were not yet crushed, and that they meant to try again. The small army advanced in a compact square, the foremost line carrying fire-balls to throw at the palisades. Up they dashed, heedless of shots and arrows, which had fatal effect in thinning the ranks; but at first the assailants were quite impotent to effect any harm. The walls were well manned, and it was difficult to get near enough to throw in the fire-balls.
Again there was a thought of retreat, when a curious accident caused the fight to be no longer advantageous only on one side. One of the pirates was wounded with an arrow, which, striking him in the back, pierced his body to the other side. With Spartan fortitude the man pulled it out, and, taking a little cotton, he wound it round the arrow, and, putting it in his musket, shot it back into the castle. This caused one of the smaller houses within the precincts to catch fire, which, being thatched with palm-leaves, easily ignited; and so eager was the fight that this was not at once perceived, till suddenly the flame shot upwards, sending a dull, lurid glow over the combatants.
Unfortunately, the house was not far from the powder-magazine, and a smoking leaf was carried by the night wind towards this spot. In a few moments more both the besieged and besiegers paused in their work, for with a noise of terrific explosion the powder-magazine blew up, scattering destruction within the walls, and, what was even worse, shattering a large portion of the bank which protected the palisade.
At this moment Carlo, who had been engaged in reloading a number of muskets, saw a sight which made him turn sick with fear. The fire was gaining ground; the flames, like hungry furies, appeared to leap from stake to stake of the strong palisade, and, further loosening the earth round the breaches made by the explosion, allowed great masses of earth to topple over into the ditch.
’Put out the fire! fetch water! hoist the bucket from the well!’ shouted Don Alvarez, frantically rushing from post to post. ’Keep up your spirits, my men; don’t fall back; hurl the first pirate who scales the ditch headlong down the cliff!’
These and many like orders were passed on; but from below came a desperate cheer from the pirates, who saw how the fire had done the hardest part of the work for them, and with renewed courage dashed once more forward.
It was, indeed, a terrible sight; the fire that raged round the palisade was awful in its effects. The Spanish soldiers on one side struggled bravely to stand to their posts; while the pirates, still more determined, crawled along over the scorching earth, or literally ran the gauntlet of the fire, in order to pass into the enclosure; and a shout of triumph here and there told plainly where they had succeeded.
On his side, Don Alvarez worked wonders. He never flinched from his duty, and seemed not to notice any personal danger; but when daylight came the situation looked most depressing. Yet nothing could make him give the order to forsake the various posts where the soldiers were stationed.
Carlo saw now that most likely the pirates would conquer, and he could have cried with shame and vexation. What should he say after all his boasting? But one look at his uncle’s stern, noble face made him toil on at his work without pausing to think, till at last he was aware of an unusual disturbance on the opposite side of the castle, a deafening shout, and a furious firing. At this moment Don Alvarez reappeared at his side.
’Carlo, here boy, quick: there is not a moment to spare. Take this note, climb down by the rock stairs, and deliver it safely to Don Meliros, the officer at the entrance fort--him you saw yesterday. If we are undone, don’t let him waste any more precious lives. It is my duty to hold out till death, but his to save his garrison. Do you hear, boy? And, if you see him again, bid good-bye to your father. Tell him--nay, nothing more. But listen, Carlo: there is much danger in carrying this message, my boy; but do it fearlessly: it may prevent greater misfortunes for thee at least.’
Carlo did not hesitate a moment.
’Trust me, uncle: I will be as quick as possible, and come back to your side. Where shall I find you?’
’In the Corps du Garde, boy. Good heavens! the men on the north are giving way; that is our only strong point. Quick, boy: don’t linger a moment!’
Don Alvarez hurried away, and Carlo ran straight for the church, which still remained untouched by the fire, and where the women and children were huddled together repeating a Litany aloud, not at all realising how great was their danger. Carlo knew that behind the church there was a piece of wall which he could scale, and which was not yet guarded by the pirates, all of whom were now concentrating their forces on the opposite side. From this spot Carlo could climb round the parapet, and reach the rocky stairs with his precious missive.
Being over-eager, however, Carlo found his task more difficult than he had expected; in his case haste made waste, for twice he fell back, and twice, being undaunted, he tried again. He heard a deafening shout behind him; alas! Carlo knew it was not the Spanish war-cry, and at last, in desperation, he made a final effort to lower himself to a ledge below without losing his balance, which would have caused him to be hurled down the face of the cliff; then, clinging like a goat, he crept along till he reached the stairs.
At this moment, when, feeling that he had already wasted much precious time, he was about to hurry down, a familiar voice close behind called him by name.
’Señor Carlo, wait a moment. How I have looked for you!’ And then Harry Fenn, with greater skill than Carlo deemed possible, scrambled down from a point above him, and having joined him whispered anxiously, seizing him by the arm--
’Now, Señor, don’t waste a moment: it is your only chance of safety. They know you have been fighting, and the castle and all the ammunition are now in the hands of the pirates.’
Carlo said nothing till both had reached the bottom; then, showing Harry his letter, he said his uncle had bade him deliver it. Before reaching the fort, however, they both saw that any message was now useless, for the Spaniards were already scrambling for the boats in order to fly up the river into the interior.
’Then I must return to my uncle, Harry,’ said Carlo. ’I promised to go to the Corps du Garde after I had given up my letter; but do not wait for me, for now is your chance of escape.’
’He does not want you now, Señor Carlo: he died at his post as a brave soldier should. I will tell you about it presently, for now we have not a moment to waste: if you are found, or indeed if I am found helping you, we shall both be shot without more ado, for the men are in wild excitement.’
Carlo was speechless. The whole events of the last twelve hours seemed too terrible to believe, and he followed Harry in total silence. The latter, having now reached the bank of the river, was looking eagerly about for a boat.
’Where can we go if you find a boat?’ said Carlo at last very sadly. ’It would be better for me to stay and die with my uncle.’
’No; indeed, I am sure he meant you to be saved by his sending you down here; he must have known when he did so that all was lost, and the letter to the officer was an excuse to induce you to leave him.’
’But my Aunt Elena--what will become of her? Alack! Heaven is altogether against us!’
’Do not distress yourself about her: she is of too great importance to come to any harm; they will make her pay a heavy ransom--and, anyhow, they will treat her well till Captain Morgan comes. Look, Señor, there is a small boat with one Indian in it. Have you any gold about you? We might perhaps bribe him.’
But Carlo was penniless; only, being able to make himself understood, he began trying to strike a bargain for the canoe, which appeared now their only chance of safety.
The fort was quite evacuated, and so terrified were the Spaniards now escaping up the river, that, in spite of signals from Carlo, not one would return. So, after some delay, during which Harry became every minute more impatient, knowing how great the danger was, the boys squeezed themselves into the small canoe, and, crouching down, bade the Indian paddle out to sea.
For a long time Carlo lay there too much distressed to speak; but happily Harry had all his senses about him, and had seized a pair of small oars left behind by the fugitives. Very soon he noticed that they had drifted too near the pirate ships, and that they were discovered, for Harry’s keen eyes at once noticed a slight stir on board.
’Señor Carlo, get up and row: we must make the best of our way towards St. Catherine, if we cannot get up greater speed than this we may be lost.’ And Carlo, thinking of his father and sister and his home, at last roused himself and rowed with a will.
’But what is the use of our getting back to St. Catherine?’ he said; ’Captain Morgan will not be more lenient to me than his men would have been.’
’He will come off at once on hearing of this victory, I am sure, for he will want his share of the spoil. My hope is that we may escape him in that way.’
’But he will never forgive you for helping me,’ said poor Carlo, feeling that he had brought misfortune on the noble English boy, who cared as much as he did himself for freedom.
’That is of no consequence--I can risk that; indeed, if he would, he would never dare forgive me now; his men would not let him. Ah, Señor, what is the matter? The sun is too powerful; and indeed you have gone through enough to make you feel ill.’
’Nay, I will not give way,’ said Carlo; but he felt so sick and giddy, that in a few moments he had to give up his oar and lie down in the boat; whilst Harry, seeing now that all danger from the pirate boats was over, intimated to the Indian that they must make the best of their way to St. Catherine.
Happily the Indian had some bananas and oranges on board which he had been bringing down to the fort for sale, when the general exodus of the Spaniards had prevented him landing. This was the only food they had to depend upon, and the distance was great for such a small craft. But necessity knows no impossibility, and now Harry felt, for the moment at least, that he was really free; though he would, on landing, probably fall again into the hands of his enemies; and if so, then he knew what he must expect--a death which would most likely be accompanied by torture.
’Mr. Aylett would say I had done well,’ was his consolation, and Etta Allison would, perhaps, through his means, also be able to get her freedom. So, humming one of the old hymns he had sung as a choir-boy at home, he took courage and determined to reach St. Catherine or die in the attempt. ’Anyhow, Señor Carlo will be no worse off in dying of hunger than in dying through torture. They would have been sure to imagine he knew where Don Alvarez hid his treasure. I am free, free, and the air seems fresher, and the sea smells sweeter; so, God helping me, I will save him and myself.’
Whilst these events were taking place at Chagres the inhabitants of Santa Teresa were by no means happy. Deprived of even the slight protection of Harry Fenn, the girls and Catalina found themselves in no enviable position. After the departure of the expedition, Captain Morgan determined to settle as far as possible the affairs of the island, so that directly he should hear of the success or failure of the enterprise against Chagres Castle he should be free to go about other business. If the attack failed he must again unite his fleet--for the greater number of ships were in the bay--and take counsel with his chief officers; but if it succeeded, then all hands and all heads would be needed for the attack on Panama, which was, in truth, the height of their ambition. For these reasons Captain Morgan still made Santa Teresa his headquarters, but was full of occupation elsewhere; and, to make the poor Don Estevan del Campo’s task harder, he required his daily attendance upon him. The Captain was bent on demolishing all the strong castles of St. Catherine, meaning to leave only Santa Teresa standing for his own future use. He thus made Don Estevan assist at this wholesale destruction, treating him outwardly with consideration, but implying that the Spaniard was himself glad to help in the destruction of the forts it had been his duty to look after. The Marquis suffered much more torment than if he had died as a soldier, and every day he became more gloomy, more miserable, and so curious in his behaviour that many said he must be losing his mind, and shunned him accordingly. He was, in fact, tormented with terrible regrets, and these were ten-fold increased when he heard that his son had been sent with the expedition against his brother-in-law. To make things worse, Captain Morgan had forbidden the Marquis to enter Santa Teresa, saying that it would be too severe a tax on the loyalty of the Indians and the negroes, who, for convenience’ sake, were kept in their old places; but in truth it was to make the Marquis feel he was in reality now simply a prisoner and nothing more. So he lodged at St. Jerome, and was narrowly watched, for fear he should take it into his head to escape; and this did not add to his comfort or his peace of mind.
Felipa was thus left to the care of old Catalina, and Captain Morgan troubled himself very little about them, meaning in the near future to make the Marquis ransom his own child from supposed captivity.
Though glad enough to be left alone, the trio were yet much puzzled as to how they were to get enough daily food. Andreas no longer came to the balcony in answer to Etta’s soft whistling, so they concluded that he must have either escaped or been killed. The guards placed below were all rough men of various nationalities whom Catalina dared not ask for food; and she and her charges began to understand that they were as much prisoners as if they had been in the dungeons below. Catalina had been able to secrete a small quantity of Indian corn and to bake some cakes with it; but now this was finished, what was to be done?
One day, when all the food was gone, Etta, creeping out into the passage once more to see if Andreas would come or answer her whistling, heard the loud tones of Captain Morgan giving some order. Forgetting Catalina’s strict injunctions not to go below, forgetting everything but that Felipa was crying from hunger, and that she herself was only restrained by her English pride from doing the same, she ran down as quickly as she could to the hall where some twenty men were tramping about bringing in the evening meal, and Captain Morgan was listening to a messenger who had just entered.
Etta was quite reckless now, even though the men raised a shout at her appearance, crying out, ’Here comes the little English wench,’ and one said: ’Ay, but she’s got bonnie golden hair and looks ready for a gambol.’ But the girl took no heed, and, running up to Captain Morgan, insisted this time on being heard.
’Captain Morgan, prithee, will you let us starve up there? We are all so very, very hungry! It is cruel of you; and meseems it is very unlike an Englishman to starve his prisoners.’
The Captain received this burst of eloquence with loud laughter; and, turning to the messenger, said:
’Marry! good Smith, do you hear the maid? She says it is not right that any one should starve in this place; and, by my faith, when you bring me such good news I think she is right. We will give a feast to-day to every soul in the castle. But in truth, bold maid, I bade that lame fellow see after your provender, and now, methinks, he has gone to Chagres and forgotten all about you. Here, Mings, send up a royal feast to the fair ladies, and a few bottles of good wine besides to drink our health in. And mind you, little cinder witch, to tell your Spanish friends that it is all in honour of the taking of Chagres. By the way, Smith, what has become of my godson and of the young Spaniard?’
Etta stood speechless as she heard the terrible news. Where was Carlo, and what would he do?
’By my troth, Captain, I know only that neither of them has been seen since the taking of the castle; so either they were killed in the skirmish or they have hidden themselves somewhere.’
Captain Morgan frowned.
’Brodely will have to answer for the safety of both lads. If they have escaped we shall soon catch them, and then---- And how many men did we lose? I would such valiant fellows were cudgel-proof.’
’A hundred bodies were counted before I left; and as to the wounded, that will add another seventy; but we have taken much rich stuff, and ammunition enough to serve for our next expedition, not to mention Don Alvarez’s lady, whose ransom will be a fortune.’
’That will be my affair,’ said the Captain grandly. ’Will they send the prisoners here at once?’
Etta waited to hear no more; but though her expedition had procured them a dinner such as they had not enjoyed for a long time, yet they could not help shedding many tears over it. Their grand hopes as to Don Alvarez were crushed; and, worse still, what had become of Carlo? Not a ray of hope seemed now left to them.
CHAPTER XV.
IN THE WOODS.
But as when the night is darkest the dawn is near at hand, so the sorrowful prisoners were not left altogether without comfort for long, even though this comfort was in itself a sad one. One evening, three days after Etta had heard the news in the hall, Felipa lay wearily on the couch beside the open window, vainly longing to get out and breathe the pure air in what had once been her lovely garden, but which was now sadly trampled over.
The poor girl looked much changed, and it was all Catalina and Etta could do to keep her from spending most of her time in weeping silently. She would not touch her guitar, and seemed to be fretting her life away. These three days had also made a great difference in her appearance. She kept constantly asking where Carlo was, what could have become of him; and patient Etta, with ready invention, tried to find answers for her friend which might calm her for a little while. As to Catalina, she could only moan and bewail their evil fortune, and wish every bad thing she could imagine to overtake the pirates.
’If I could but go out,’ sighed Felipa, ’I could find Carlo. I am sure he must be hidden away in the forest. But come quickly, Etta: see, who is coming in; some of the soldiers? Yes, yes; they are Spanish soldiers, and they are certainly coming to save us.’
’Hush, dear Felipa; don’t you see that they are themselves guarded? no, these must be the prisoners from Chagres, and--oh, yes--here are some women and---- Surely--yes, it is Doña Elena!’
Felipa clapped her hands for joy, causing the lady to look up; and then the sight of her aunt’s sad face made the girl suddenly draw back. In truth it was Doña Elena; but how changed she was! The face that looked out from beneath her black veil was hardly recognisable.
In spite of this, Felipa was all excitement to know if her aunt would be allowed to come up to see them. Was she going to be left here, or what?
These questions were soon answered, for in a few minutes Doña Elena was escorted to the sitting-room, and Felipa was soon sobbing on the motherly breast of her aunt, who, sad as she was herself, was shocked at the change in her little niece, whom she had last seen a merry, blooming girl running races with Etta and Carlo down the lovely green slopes of the tropical garden.
’My poor darling! Ah, what sad troubles we have all been through! I can hardly believe it even now; but my dear husband died like a brave soldier. He was so noble, so true! Alas that such as he should be sacrificed! But as to our poor Carlo, I cannot find out what has become of him, though I have asked every one I came near. That terrible Captain has named such a price for my ransom that I must write to Spain for the money. My poor brother! When last did you see your father, Felipa? He has not been here, I am told; but they say he is at St. Jerome.’
’You will stay with us, will you not, dear Aunt Elena? At least they will leave us this one comfort of being together. But where is Carlo? If only we could find out, I should be less unhappy. It is quite true that our father has not come here for days.’
Doña Elena now told the party all she knew of Carlo and of his brave escape from the pirate boats in order to give his uncle warning. So that even though their talk was not cheerful the presence of the elder lady was a great comfort to the girls, and also to Catalina, who, good and faithful as she was, could not think out many difficult problems.
That evening they had a last visit from Captain Morgan. He had finished his work of destruction, or had seen it well in train, and was now going off in great haste to Chagres to see for himself the treasures found there.
’Now, Madam,’ he said in Spanish to Doña Elena, ’you will stay here and await my return. I have named the sum that will give you your liberty, but till every piece of eight is paid you must consider yourself a prisoner. I am taking your brother Don Estevan del Campo and many of the people here away with me--for change of air,’ he added, laughing, ’but he too will get his liberty when his ransom has been paid. As for his son, I hear now he escaped as no gentleman ought to do, and so----’
’Carlo never gave his word,’ said Etta, indignantly; ’he told us he felt free to escape if he could.’
’Well, well, you are over-bold, mistress, and it cannot be hunger now that forces you to plain-speaking. Prithee, courageous elf, have they brought you enough to eat since your foraging expedition?’
Etta proudly muttered, ’Yes, Sir Captain, I was but defending the absent.’ And evidently Captain Morgan admired her spirit, for he laughed all the more, as if she had said something very witty.
’Marry, that may be; but mark you, if you know where the boy is hiding, tell him that every avenue of the castle will be watched during my absence, and none will enter or go forth from this island without the knowledge of my trusty men. My boy, young Harry Fenn, has disappeared, and yet I treated the lad as kindly as if he had been my own son; and, in faith, when they are found they will be taught to make less free use of their young legs. I beg to take my leave of you, ladies, and I have left orders for a good supply of food to be brought; but it were best to keep indoors, as I cannot answer for accidents. Some of my men are but foolish rangers, and know nothing of good manners beyond such as Dame Nature taught ’em.’
’But prithee, Sir Captain, let me say good-bye to my father,’ cried Felipa; and Doña Elena joined in the petition, adding rather bitterly--
’My poor brother will long ago have found how wrong he was to trust you, bold Captain, and if you are taking him prisoner, at least let him bid farewell to his sister and his child.’
The Captain had no time, however, to waste on farewells; he declared this boon was impossible to grant, as the Marquis had already been rowed out to the ship; but he assured the ladies that he hoped soon to be back, and that then they should hear great news. With this he went away as hastily as he had come, and the only comfort that could be extracted from this visit was the pleasure of seeing the Captain hurry forth from the great gate of Santa Teresa.
Catalina’s muttered farewell did not seem like blessings; but, though the chief was gone, there were yet many jailors left behind. The guards were doubled without, although so few were now left within the walls, every man that could be spared having been taken off to join the great and long-planned expedition to Panama. The Captain had considered that a score of men would be well able to guard two women and two girls. He was, however, more vexed than he cared to show at the disappearance of Carlo and Harry, and meant to make Captain Brodely pay dearly for his carelessness; even such a powerful man as the great buccaneer was not without his share of troubles, for it was only by keeping his men constantly employed in plunder or adventure that he could prevent mutiny and discontent.
The sitting-room and the other rooms on the same floor were left to the ladies, the prisoners having been all taken elsewhere; so that Etta, utterly tired of the confinement of the two rooms, often crept out to the window above the balcony, where she could catch a sight of the bay, and from whence she saw the departure of the fleet. Every time she went she softly whistled the Indian notes, especially just before sundown, hoping to see Andreas.
To-day, just as the last sound died away among the great rose bushes, Etta fancied she heard a very faint echo of her last note. She paused, straining her ears, then repeated the air again. There was the same echo. Surely it was, it must be, Andreas! She determined to return after sunset, but till then she would not mention her ideas, for fear of having been mistaken.
Catalina was happier now that she was allowed the wherewithal to cook her meals, and she was never weary of trying to concoct some new dish out of the ordinary fare provided, in order to tempt poor Felipa, whose appetite was failing, though she had revived much since her aunt’s arrival.
Etta had been right. Soon after darkness had fallen, suddenly, on the lovely landscape, she heard the faint rustle of leaves below, and Andreas crept on to the balcony, looking somewhat like a brown snake.
’Señorita, Heaven be praised that you have come! I wanted to tell you the news. The noble Señor Carlo is here in St. Catherine--he and the young Englishman who came with the pirates.’
Etta hardly stifled a cry of joy.
’Where are they? Quick, tell me, Andreas! But do they know the castle is watched, and that they will be taken if they are found?’
’Yes, yes, but the Señor Carlo cannot come--in fact he is ill, very ill, Señorita; he has the fever. But we will cure him; the white man does not know the medicines the Indians use for the fever--these never fail.’
’But how did they come here?’
’I know not much of the story, for the English Señor cannot talk much Spanish, but they came by night; there was an Indian with them, or they would have been seen, but the Indians can see in the dark.’
’How glad I am, dear Andreas! Do you want food, and where have you been all this time? I have been here so often hoping you would come.’
’The English captain sent me to fetch horses and cattle. He watched me so that I could not come; but now they forget to keep watch. I will come again to-morrow, Señorita, at sunset. If the noble Señor Carlo gets better quickly, well; if not, then he must come into the castle.’
’That would be impossible, Andreas,’ said Etta; but Andreas smiled as he disappeared into the darkness.
’But what is the use?’ said Felipa, when she heard the wonderful news of her brother’s return. ’Carlo will die if he has only an Indian to nurse him; and if he gets well Captain Morgan will come and take him prisoner.’
’That is not trusting the good God, Felipa darling,’ said the noble Doña Elena. ’He will save our dear Carlo if he sees fit. Since my great trouble I have learnt more than ever to be resigned, and also to trust Him. Let us get a little bundle of linen ready, Catalina, to send it to Carlo by Andreas. Wherever they are, poor fellows, they will need that; and then let us hope for the best; we can do no more for them.’
The next evening Doña Elena accompanied Etta to the balcony; and when Andreas understood whom she was he explained that Carlo was better, but still very ill, and that the English Señorito was very anxious to get him removed to the castle, for they were in the thickest part of the forest, in a deserted Indian hut, and they had not enough good things for the sick Carlo.
’If you could hide him I could bring him here to-morrow, noble lady: the guards watch the wrong places, and now that the whip is not visible the dogs keep but bad guard.’
’We must chance it,’ said Doña Elena, decidedly; ’my poor Carlo must not die. We are never visited, except twice a day--certainly never after sunset, for the soldiers are afraid of this half-deserted house. They fancy it is haunted.’
The two then went back to tell Catalina and Felipa the joyful news that Carlo was better and would come to them to be nursed. Then they discussed plans, and at last settled that they would put some blankets in the cupboard and only bring him out when the visits of the soldiers and the negroes were over.
’If we must soon be separated, at least let us enjoy each other’s company as long as possible,’ said the brave Spanish lady; and Felipa looked up brightly and smiled more happily than she had done since her imprisonment.
CHAPTER XVI.
WAITING FOR LUCK.
Without Andreas Carlo never could have been carried safely into Santa Teresa; but the faithful Indian was wonderfully clever in warding off detection. The dogs had a harmless powder given to them, which stupefied them for the time being, and, the night being very dark, with Harry’s help Carlo was lifted bodily on to the balcony and then carried to the ladies’ room. Here kind, tender hands were ready with as many alleviations as were at their disposal.
The soldiers were busy drinking and gambling below in the hall, and never imagined what was going on above, the evening visit of inspection having been paid. Carlo seemed to recognise his friends as Harry and Andreas laid him gently on the mattress, for he smiled and began to say something; but the effort caused him to become light-headed again, and Catalina and Doña Elena made every one leave the patient to their nursing. Etta had a great deal to say to Harry; she wanted to hear how he had been able to save Carlo from the clutches of the pirates, and how they had managed to land.
’I can hardly understand myself how it was,’ said Harry, simply. ’We nearly died of thirst, and had it not been for the Indian we could never have reached this place alive. Señor Carlo was often light-headed, and fancied he was still at Chagres, trying to repulse the attack, and I could only make the Indian understand me by signs. It was not easy to tell him that we must not land by daylight, and that our enemies would pounce upon us if they caught us, but that we had friends if only we could reach them. Luckily we did manage it, and the first person who discovered us was this faithful Andreas, and after that you should have heard how the two Indians did discuss us! We have hidden the canoe and the Indian, for I was obliged to defer the promised reward till we had seen you, Señorita.’
’My father hid a great deal of treasure in the woods,’ said Felipa, ’so we can easily pay the Indian. Andreas knows the hiding-place, for my father recognised how trustworthy he is.’ Felipa soon explained to Andreas how much of the money he was to get; only, great precautions must be taken so as not to be seen or followed by the dogs, which the English pirates would most likely set on the track if they had the least suspicion of hidden treasure.
’But you, Harry, what can you do?’ asked Etta, who did indeed feel proud of her countryman, for she guessed that, though he made light of his adventures, he had gone through much suffering for the sake of a stranger.
’I mean to hide in these woods till I get a chance of escaping; after what has happened I can never go back to Captain Morgan. Andreas is so grateful for what I have been able to do for the Señor Carlo that he says I may stay in the hut. If a ship were to touch here, I would work my passage back to Europe; but that _if_ is doubtful, Mistress Etta.’
’But you will take me too if the Captain will let me come on board?’ asked Etta. ’Now Felipa has her aunt she would let me go back to my own country, for the pirates have taken the Marquis, and so I need not ask him. In England, I shall never again be in dire terror of my life.’
Harry did not like to explain to the eager girl that there was but little probability of his being able to take her on board. The idea was so delightful to Etta that she hardly knew how to contain her joy.
’And you will see your home again, and your father and mother; and you will ask them to let me stay with them till I hear from my uncle. Mr. Aylett will write for me--I seem to know him already from all you have said of him.’
Harry took a small prayer-book from his pocket.
’Look, Mistress Etta: this book has often reminded me of my dear master; I have had it with me all the time. I happened to have it with me on the evening when I was taken prisoner--I was to learn the Gospel for the next Sunday to repeat to Mr. Aylett. I little thought then how precious the book would appear to me. Do you ever read the Psalms of David and the Gospels, Mistress Etta?’
Etta shook her head.
’On Sundays I go to church with Felipa; I once told the Padre I was no Papist, but he said I had better pray to God with Felipa, and that in time I should be shown the right way. Then I cannot read English very easily, for we have no English books here, only I read the precious letters left me by my mother, till I know them all by heart. In truth I will never be a Papist, nor forget that I am English.’
Etta turned over the leaves of Harry’s book with great care and admiration, whilst he read over the collect to her which began ’Lord of all power and might,’ which Etta, much delighted, said she could remember.
’Without this I should sometimes have forgotten when Sunday came round,’ added Harry, smiling; ’for Captain Morgan’s men made but little difference between week-days or the Lord’s Day, save now and then they had extra rations and more spirits. Good-night, Mistress Etta. I see Andreas wishes me to go with him, but I will come again to unloose my tongue, as my speech will be limited in the woods, and mayhap I shall turn into a wild man such as our sailors speak of; but Andreas says he will teach me how to shoot with poisonous arrows.’
From this time there was much less dulness up in the dwelling-room at Santa Teresa, and if they might have gone out, the girls would not have been very unhappy, except as to Carlo’s state of health. For many days he hovered between life and death, and Etta had to act as sentinel, being most quick at hearing the distant steps of the soldier who brought them their daily portion of food. There was no more starvation now, the point being to keep the prisoners in good health; for death would have deprived their jailors of the much-expected ransoms.
How eagerly every morning the little party inquired for news, which the soldier was not loth to give! Captain Morgan was on his way to Panama; he had twelve hundred men with him; they had scarce victuals, and had sent back a boat to St. Catherine for more maize and Indian corn; the men were only allowed one pipe of tobacco; the Captain was determined to take the town, but he was in sore straits about victuals; they must conquer or starve; and so on.
The little party hoped much that the pirates never would reach Panama, and that other misfortunes might befal them; only, not knowing if the Marquis were with them, it was difficult to wish they might all die of hunger.
In the evening Harry would come and amuse Carlo, for as the days passed slowly on the boy gradually began to mend. He would tell him of his hunting with Andreas, and how sometimes they had near escapes of being discovered; but that the men left behind had enough to do to guard the few fortresses remaining, and thought, besides, more about watching the bays for possible enemies than of hunting the forest. One day the Doña Elena herself asked Harry to tell her all he knew of her brave husband’s last hours, and he recounted simply what he had seen. Carlo was sitting up, propped with pillows, looking pale, but far different from what he had been a fortnight before; and he joined in the request, saying:
’When I last saw my dear uncle he was just starting to help some twenty men who were defending an important post.’
’Yes, and that was where I saw him,’ added Harry. ’I was bent on gaining an entrance into the castle, so that I might, if possible, save you and your uncle. I had tried to pass over some portions of burning wall, for I had seen the pirates rush through, regardless of the danger; but though I tried twice, the flames drove me back each time; so, at last, climbing along the side of the mountain, I caught sight of the men making a dash for this special breach. I could not help admiring their pluck, though the cause was bad enough. I came up just as they carried the position, in spite of the fierce resistance they met. Following them through the breach, I saw that this last effort would most likely end in the capture of the castle; for I noticed several Spanish soldiers throw themselves over the parapet rather than fall into the pirates’ hands alive. They would not ask for quarter--indeed, it would not have been granted. Just then I met a fellow who was badly wounded, and I asked him if he knew whether the Governor were taken, or what had become of him. This man told me Don Alvarez had retired to the Corps-du-Garde, and was defending it like a lion. So, never thinking of danger, I hastened in the direction to which he pointed, and beheld a scene I shall never forget. Don Alvarez was standing at the head of a flight of steps, and round him and below him were some thirty men. The pirates had double the number of men, and saw it was only a question of time, and that a short one. I was looking everywhere for you, Señor Carlo, and, not seeing you, I was just going to hurry away, when I heard a sharp report, and then a yell of anger; and, looking back, I saw the noble Don Alvarez fall forward, struck through the heart with a musket-shot. I knew that I had not then a moment to lose; and, meeting a fugitive Spaniard, I asked him to tell me where the young nephew of the Governor had last been seen, for I was none of the enemy. He hardly believed me; but pointed to some spot behind the church; and the rest you know, Señor Carlo.’
’If it had not been for you, Harry Fenn, I must have been caught at last, or else died of that fever. I wish my uncle had lived to hear of it and to reward you, but when my----’ Poor Carlo paused; he, could not appeal to his father, for all that history was one he could not bear to think about; so he added, ’When I am a man I will give you whatever you like to ask of me.’
’There is nothing to thank me for,’ said Harry, laughing; ’in running away with you I was but doing what I had planned for a long time. You see, I promised Mistress Etta to help her back to her own country; and to do that I must e’en get back first myself.’
’And you, Aunt Elena,’ said Felipa, ’shall you really have to pay the large ransom? It does seem hard to be deprived of one’s home and then have to pay the wicked men who have made one unhappy and miserable.’
’We must not complain, Felipa, for nothing would be allowed to happen unless God saw that it was for our good. If I could have seen my poor brother I should have taken counsel with him; but I must resign myself to a long captivity till the money can come from Spain.’
’Then why should you not go and fetch it yourself, noble lady?’ said Harry. ’If I were you, I would not stay here longer than I could help; for if Captain Morgan were killed the pirates might choose another captain who would not treat you as civilly as he does.’
’But there is little chance of one of our ships being able to come into port here,’ said Carlo. ’Andreas told me that the bays were very closely watched.’
’What I most fear is the return of the victorious pirates,’ said Harry, thoughtfully. ’If we hear news of the taking of the city of Panama, I think we must try and escape, or at all events get to some Spanish settlement whence they will send us on.’
So they talked and planned, but could do nothing at present except wait patiently, Harry promising to keep a sharp look-out for any ship flying the Spanish colours, adding:
’I fancy the Captain will certainly take the rich city if it is at all possible, and after seeing the attack on Chagres I can believe these bold men capable of taking even a large place, especially when driven to great straits by hunger. I was by when the Captain made all his men sign the articles of common agreement between them, and in that they bound themselves to obey him and to do their utmost to carry out all his plans.’
’The selfish robbers!’ cried Catalina, indignantly. ’Heard you anything else of importance, young Englishman?’
’But very little,’ answered Harry, rubbing his forehead and trying to recall what had passed on the pirate vessel. ’Every captain was to have the share of eight men; the surgeon, besides his pay, was to have two hundred pieces of eight for his chest of medicaments, and other officers in some such-like proportion. But I remember that for the loss of both legs in battle the unfortunate buccaneer was to receive fifteen hundred pieces of eight, and he was to get still more for the loss of both hands.’
’All these ravages should be put an end to by the sovereigns who own these people. All nations of Europe have joined in it; and it is high time it were stopped,’ said Doña Elena Alvarez. ’But now, kind Harry, it is time you went away, for Carlo is tired and must go to bed.’
’It is so dark to-night that I wonder how you will find your way to the hut,’ said Etta.
’I have been making a store of candles from the Bois-de-Chandel. Andreas showed me how the Indians prepare it. Truly, how my parents would laugh to see me in an Indian hut! But I have to be careful of shading my light, for Andreas says we must not trust the negroes, and they often wander at night when the fancy seizes them.’
With this Harry slipped away; and Etta went with him so as to close the window and secure it when he had let himself down from the balcony.
CHAPTER XVII.
DISCOVERED.
At last, after what seemed to him a long, weary time, Carlo began to feel stronger, so that the difficulty to conceal him became much greater, the high-spirited boy finding confinement quite unbearable. His aunt and Catalina now suffered much anxiety on account of his rashness, and as contact with danger soon makes people forget it Carlo would often slip out even before sunset and go off to the woods to find Harry. He used to get over at the old spot, which was not now guarded, and then, following the Indian trail, he and Harry managed to amuse themselves in the woods. True, he would slip back again, looking more rosy and more cheerful; but Catalina was always saying that some day the rash boy would repent of his want of prudence. As it was, if it had not been for the vigilance of Andreas even the lazy guards must have had their suspicions aroused. One day Andreas arrived at the Indian hut just as the two, who were now fast friends, were preparing their arrows to go hunting for pigeons, which Carlo took home to Catalina to cook so as to make a change in their bill of fare.
’There you are, Andreas! You are just in time to go with us,’ exclaimed Carlo.
’No, Señor, I must be back at the compound in half an hour; but I have just heard much news, and I came to tell you. The Frenchman Simon has just landed, and brings tidings from Chagres, where men have arrived telling of the taking of Panama. The Frenchman has brought several officers with him who were wounded, but are now better; and I fear these guards will have their eyes opened wider than the men now in charge.’
’Have they really taken Panama?’ exclaimed Harry and Carlo; and the latter added, ’That is indeed a feat I had not expected--though you did, Harry. But did you hear any particulars, Andreas?’
’They are very full of all sorts of stories, but I fancy they are not all true--how in one place they boiled leathern bags to eat and were at death’s door for want of food. After ten days of incredible hardships they came in sight of the city, and there they engaged in very severe fighting. But the terror of their name did more for them than even their valour, for they were but a handful compared with the Spaniards.’
’But what of the poor city?’ said Harry, when Carlo had translated the news to him.
’The city was set fire to, which must have been a great and sad sight. I was once there--when Padre Pietro took me as a boy--and I saw the great merchants’ houses, those belonging to the Genoese being the finest; and as for the convents and the private dwellings, the churches--ah, they could not be numbered.’
’But the pirates will have enough gold and to spare,’ said Carlo; ’perhaps they will now let my father go free.’
’The thirst for gold seems never satisfied,’ answered Harry, ’and the worst is when they divide the spoil; there is a great deal of quarrelling over it, and I have seen them fight to the death over a few pieces of eight.’
’The Frenchman Simon declares that they have taken a great deal of gold and many slaves, and that when the Captain has settled everything he will return here and make it so strong that no enemy will ever be able to retake it. The orders are that the work is to begin at once, and that the ladies are to be taken great care of, as he will settle the final ransom when he comes back. That makes me tremble for your safety, Señorito; it would, perhaps, be more prudent to hide in the secret passage.’
’Then I may as well be taken by the pirates, Andreas. I was stifled before in that odious hole. No, no; let me keep my liberty as long as I can. I promise I will keep a sharp look-out for this Simon. Now let us have a little fun; we try so hard to shoot the arrows as you do, Andreas, but we have had as yet but poor success.’
’The Señorito was not born an Indian,’ said Andreas, a little sadly. ’Before the white man came all these forests were our hunting-grounds; but there came good as well as evil with the strangers.’ Then after a pause he added:
’If you will follow me I can show you a spot that few know how to reach.’
The boys were only too glad to comply, and Andreas took out of a hiding-place in the hut a curious blow-pipe, which was a reed from ten to eleven feet in length.
’You will take my bow, Señor, and we shall see who will shoot the farthest.’
Harry examined this new kind of weapon with great curiosity. There was no appearance of knot or joint in it; only the end which was to be applied to the mouth was tied round with small silk grass cord. The arrows which Andreas next produced for his blow-pipe were nine or ten inches long, made out of the leaf of a palm-tree, and as sharp as a needle.
’An inch of the pointed end is poisoned, whilst the opposite end is burned to make it hard,’ said Andreas, exhibiting these beautifully made arrows; ’and this white stuff is the wild cotton. See, this quiver will hold five hundred such. Now come, but you must tread softly as a cat.’
He led through an intricate path in the midst of the dense forest. Harry would never have expected to find any human being able to thread through such a tangled mass; but Carlo knew what were the powers of Andreas in this respect. Then suddenly the Indian stopped; he looked up into the tall branches above him, and, putting his blow-pipe to his mouth, he collected his breath for the fatal puff. Two feet from the end of the tube two teeth of the acouri were fastened, and these served Andreas for a sight. As Andreas lifted the pipe the boys waited in breathless silence; then, suddenly and swiftly, the arrow flew unerringly upwards. Had it missed? Harry thought so at first; but no: there was a flutter, and then a pajui, an excellent game-bird, came falling heavily to the ground.
’Capital!’ cried Harry; ’I don’t believe I could do that.’ He was going to pick up the bird, but Andreas stopped him, and Carlo cried out:
’Take care, Harry. Andreas will know how to handle the bird; you might touch the poisoned point. This wourali is such a strange thing, though it does not hurt the flesh of the bird in the least.’
Andreas smiled to see Harry’s astonishment, and, handing him the blow-pipe, told him to try what he could do, as he himself had to return to the compound; but, as can be easily imagined, Harry’s breath was not equal to sending an arrow three hundred feet into the air; he would require many years of practice before he could rival the Indian’s dexterity.
After much excitement the two returned to the hut, Carlo thinking it safer to stay some time in the wood after nightfall to make sure the coast would be clear before his return to Santa Teresa.
By the light of their one candle the young Spaniard usually gave Harry lessons in Spanish out of a book he had brought from the castle; and Harry, having heard a great deal of that tongue spoken by the pirates, was an apt pupil. After the lesson they fell to talking about the chances Harry had of finding an English ship, and Carlo a Spanish one. Certainly the effort ought to be made before the chance of Captain Morgan’s return; but how was it to be done? For Andreas’ canoe was too slight to trust on the sea, and was, moreover, much in need of repair. This evening after their discussion Carlo added:
’I have been talking to Andreas about the caves which lie on the bigger island; but how are we to get the girls and my aunt to them, not to mention dear old Catalina, whom we could not leave behind? The bridge is well guarded, and we have no boat to go by water; besides, we should be sure to be taken by one of the pirate ships. Whichever way I look, escape seems impossible. Then, too, the thought of my father makes me sad; he has suffered so much that I cannot feel angry with him now as I did at first.’
’Never say die, Señor; that is English advice, and it serves the purpose of making one feel ashamed of giving way to despair. I know there is little chance for any of us, and yet I do go on hoping still. God has allowed me to escape so far, and I mean to keep up a brave heart. At night I dream of my home, and actually the other evening I woke up telling my father about the capture of Chagres Castle. I was deeply disappointed to find myself alone in this hut, I assure you. But prithee, Señor Carlo, it is time you returned; the Señora will be anxious about you, and will fancy you are in danger of new horrors.’
Carlo agreed, though he was sorry to leave Harry in such uncomfortable quarters; but the latter answered, laughing:
’I am hardy by nature, and I have learnt now to be able to sleep on any bed, even Mother Earth’s hardest mattress; and besides, Señor Carlo, I feel more secure here than if I were in your gruesome hole in the castle. Give my duty to my countrywoman, and tell her I am carving her a whistle to wear at her girdle when she is once more free to flit hither and thither at her pleasure.’
Carlo made his way very cautiously out of the forest for fear of meeting any stray dogs that might be prowling round. But all was quiet and silent as he crept up to the breach, which the pirates had never yet taken the trouble to repair. Whether Andreas’ warnings had made him more nervous, or whether he were trying to be more watchful, he could not tell; but as he approached the verandah he fancied he heard a slight noise among the bushes. He paused, and the sound ceased; then he made a few steps forward, and, hearing nothing more, he cautiously climbed up the verandah and swung himself as usual over the low balcony. The window was left open, and before closing it he looked down into the bushes. Once again he fancied he heard a soft stir, but the darkness prevented him seeing anything more than a slight waving motion among the great rose-bushes.
In the sitting-room everything looked as usual. Felipa was bending over some embroidery as if she were still the little mistress of Santa Teresa, and Etta’s face looked flushed with excitement as she fixed her blue eyes intently on a palm-leaf basket she was weaving, which work Andreas had taught her long ago.
’Carlo, look!’ she cried. ’I have had a mishap with two baskets, but this one shall succeed. How have you fared to-day, and did Harry Fenn have good sport?’
’Andreas gave him a lesson on the blow-pipe, and I can tell you your Englishman opened his eyes wide. But what of the Frenchman, Señora? Have you seen him?’
’No; but we heard a bustle in the hall, and the soldier who came this evening said we should have a visitor to-morrow.’
’Has Harry Fenn heard of any ship in our neighbourhood?’ said Doña Elena, anxiously. ’Catalina says this Frenchman has a bad name, and that she fears you will be discovered if they set a stronger guard; so do be careful, my poor Carlo.’
Carlo thought of the noise he had heard in the bushes, and wondered if he had already been seen and betrayed; but he deemed it wiser not to mention this.
’One thing I swear,’ he said suddenly: ’they shall not separate us again. Felipa, say you will follow where I lead, little sister. If we must die, let us at least die together.’
’Indeed I will, Carlo, for I am weary of being a prisoner,’ she answered with a sigh; and Doña Elena, looking up, saw a strange look of pain and sadness pass over the girl’s face.
Suddenly Etta sprang from the low couch on which she was sitting and put her finger on her lips.
’Carlo! Carlo!’ she whispered, ’hide quickly! Catalina, help him--I hear steps. Make haste, prithee, make haste!’
Carlo listened, but heard nothing, only Etta’s hand pushed him towards the cupboard door, and to please her he retreated. Poor much-tried Doña Elena turned pale, whilst Felipa drew near to her; for now all of them heard distinctly the steps. In two more minutes, after an impatient knock, the expected Frenchman entered, and his quick glances took in the party as he made a profound bow, and said:
’Good! the Señora and the Doña Elena Alvarez, the nurse and the English girl--that was as the Captain said. Good-evening, ladies. I suppose you have not heard that the young Señor Carlo has returned to the island, and that he is now secreted in the wood?’
’My nephew is not likely to keep in the woods when we are here,’ said Doña Elena, with great presence of mind.
’That may or may not be; but Captain Morgan is coming back in a few days, Madame, and he sent word that you would all be ransomed or sold as slaves. The young Señor was especially to be well cared for if he landed here. And I fancy I have heard something of such an event.’ Then he added: ’Perhaps that old Spanish woman could tell something about him if we were to ask her questions below.’
Doña Elena rose to her full height.
’You must first kill me before you touch our faithful Catalina. Leave my presence, Monsieur.’
’Well, well, don’t be angry, Doña Elena: to-morrow is time enough. As for to-night, we will have a hunt with the dogs in the forest and see for ourselves. Good-night, ladies.’
CHAPTER XVIII.
HUNTING A FUGITIVE.
When Carlo was gone Harry went on with his lesson; and then, feeling somewhat weary after his expedition, he prepared his bed, which preparation consisted merely in fastening up an Indian hammock that Andreas had made for him. And as he did so he could not help thinking of his comfortable bed at home, and of the love which had been his from childhood till the day he was kidnapped. The thought of his parents was always a very sorrowful one to Harry. Ah, if only he could escape! and then, once in England, he would hunt up Etta Allison’s uncle and make him send for his niece. But the ’if’ was not likely to be fulfilled.
Next, Harry cooked his supper, and this was also a very simple affair; he lit a tiny fire in a space within the hut between a few bricks, and allowed the smoke to find its way out by a small hole at the side of the hut. After baking his maize cake he quickly extinguished his fire, as smoke was a real element of danger even in this thick forest.
As he now ate his very modest meal, thinking over the plenteous fare in the home-farm, he could not help dwelling on the thought of bright-eyed Etta.
’She has the sweetest face I ever clapt eyes on,’ he thought, ’and her hair is like golden light on a thistle-down. How my mother would be made glad with her sweet speecheries! Nay, but when I get back--if God wills I ever do get back--then I will e’en come here again and fetch her away, if so be her uncle will not do it. In truth I will; and then I will ask her to be my wife, and she will be the comforting of the old people, for she has such brave, sweet, winning ways, and has far more courage than the pretty Spanish girl, who could be turned about whichever way the wind blew, and has, besides, no pretty witcheries.’
Harry, having thus settled his own future, took out his little prayer-book and read a gospel, thinking as he did so of Mr. Aylett, and wondering, as he had done many and many a time, what his friend had thought when he had heard of his disappearance. Now and then he half feared whether he had fancied that he had gone willingly with the freebooters; and this idea troubled him; but at other times he put it away as impossible.
Harry was about to kneel down to say his prayers--which worship seemed only natural in the midst of this beautiful forest with the spreading palms, and the Bois Chataigne opening its petals in the darkness and the many other forest giants--when suddenly he heard Andreas’ very faint whistle, although in the deep silence of solitude he had not noticed his approach--indeed nothing around him but well-known sounds, such as distant notes of a few birds.
Harry started up, and would have called out, but remembered caution, so that he even put out his light before he opened the door. He was glad enough now that Carlo’s lessons helped him to understand Andreas’ meaning, if not quite all his words.
’Quick, Señor, and quiet; this place is no longer safe: they are going to beat through the forest with the dogs to-night. They fancy you are the Señorito; but, thank God, he is safe, at least for to-night. Follow quickly, but first take everything away from the hut.’
With quick dexterity the Indian unswung the hammock and rolled up in it the few properties that were in the hut; then, placing this on his head, he led the way forward, plunging yet deeper into the wood. Harry followed as best he could, enduring patiently many a scratch from sharp prickles and thorns, and many a bruise and tumble. ’Wait a moment, Señor,’ said Andreas after a time; ’I will put this bundle in this stream and drag it down some way; the dogs will then lose the scent. Give me your hand: we must wade up this streamlet. Ah, Señor, it is a cruel sport, hunting the human being with fierce dogs. In the old days the Spaniards hunted down the poor Indians--when I was a boy I have seen them--and now the white men hunt each other.’ Then, with a low chuckle, Andreas added, ’I have made the dogs stupid with my powder; they will be very slow; but I dared not stupefy them altogether for fear of discovery. Now, Señor here is your hiding-place; I know you can climb. This big trunk would shelter many men, but it is a secret few know of. The Indians made the retreat long ago, and many a poor hunted being has found safety here.’
Harry did as he was bid, and with a good deal of help, which he would have despised had it been light, he found himself half-way up a great trunk, now hollow in parts, and showing that decay had set its hand there. When they had reached this position Andreas crept through a tiny aperture, and the two found themselves in a small room in the huge hollow tree. The hand of man had made a floor and roofed it in, so that there was a hollow tree above and a hollow tree below. It was so beautifully contrived that when the door was opened it could be fastened from within and leave no mark of its being a door on the outside, whilst a hole in the ceiling would let in air and a small amount of light. Andreas smiled at Harry’s exclamations of surprise and admiration.
’The Señor will be safe here if the dogs do not pick up the scent again; if they do, see, here is a bow and arrow and some big stones. Don’t let any one climb up, but do not open the door unless you are sure you are discovered; they will look up the hollow tree but will see nothing.’
Andreas did not wait to be thanked, and, with another warning not to open the door, he slipped down, and was soon purposely making a false scent to another hiding-place known to some of the Indians who might be employed by the pirates to scour the forest for Carlo.
Andreas crept back to the castle an hour later, just as the party organised by Sieur Simon was about to start, and, pretending he was awakened by the noise, he crept out of his hut near the compound and offered to join the party. His services would most likely have been accepted had not a negro told the Frenchman that Andreas was very fond of the young Señor and that he would be of no use.
Simon, always on the look-out for treachery, told Andreas to go back to his compound, and that when Captain Morgan returned it would then be seen if the Indian knew anything of the runaway Carlo.
It was an awful procession which Andreas watched issuing out of the gate of Santa Teresa. The dusky forms of the negroes with their black woolly heads, their thick lips grinning at the idea of an exciting chase, holding in the fierce baying dogs with long leashes, and accompanying by blows their unearthly howling, and behind these again some ruffianly-looking pirates taking their orders from the slight, crafty-looking Frenchman.
Then at last all was ready, and with another long howl of cruel eagerness both men and dogs rushed down the steep mountain-side.
Faithful Andreas had still some work to do; he knew how anxious Doña Elena would be, and that in truth even Carlo was in great danger. The Indian sat by his hut for some time, thinking of some plan of escape, knowing well that Captain Henry Morgan, once back, would make short work of any fugitives hidden in the woods. Not arriving at any satisfactory solution, Andreas climbed up to the balcony, and, unfastening the window, he stole softly to the door of the ladies’ room.
As he had expected, there was still a light burning. The ladies had been too much afraid of what was going to happen to have the heart to go to bed; besides, their presence in the chamber guarded Carlo’s hiding-place. Suppose the dogs should trace him to the castle and into their very presence? The idea made them shudder. Carlo was still crouching on the top step of the secret staircase, and was not at all enjoying the situation, when Etta recognised Andreas’ whistle and opened the door carefully to him.
’What news, Andreas?’ she said. ’Oh, it was dreadful! We heard the dogs baying; it made our blood run cold. Make haste and tell us all you know.’
’But the Señor Carlo is safe?’
’Yes, yes; but Harry Fenn--oh, will they find him?’ exclaimed Etta, almost crying.
’I hope not, Señorita; but there is much danger for all of you. If the noble Doña Alvarez will allow me, I will take counsel with the Señor for a few moments at least.’
’Are you sure that dreadful Frenchman will not come back, Andreas? He made us tremble, for he looked so evil.’
’At all events, not till the dogs return. As for the English Señor, he is safely hidden, if there can be any place safe from those beasts. Had he been in the hut, they would have had him in a very short time.’
Carlo had now been let out by Catalina, and he and Andreas were soon deep in a quick, low-toned conversation. The danger for himself and Harry was great; most likely the pirates would not spare their lives after all that had happened; and still no ship was yet in sight.
’I know but one way, Señor Carlo: there is a small desert island which is out of the track of the ships, and if we could steal a boat I could take you and the Señor Harry to it. If we could prepare everything we might start to-morrow at sunset. I will take care to keep back enough dried meat from the store and take a skin of water.’
’But, Andreas, on your return you would be found out; and how could I leave my aunt and sister?’
’The ladies will be safe if the ransoms can be paid; and as for myself, Andreas is cleverer than the Englishmen.’ A sweet smile parted the faithful Indian’s lips, and Carlo, who had often experienced this same boasted cleverness, believed him. ’And when Andreas returns he will look after the ladies; but for yourself, Señorito, there is great danger. They are bent upon finding you, and Coca the negro saw you, and betrayed you to the Frenchman for a sum of money.’
This plan seemed the only one that could suggest itself to the two bold spirits. Harry Fenn’s retreat could not long be kept a secret, as he must have food taken to him, and every visit to the tree of refuge made the discovery either by dogs or men more probable. What Andreas did not reveal, however, to Carlo was that for him this expedition was almost sure to lead to harm. His absence was certain to be discovered or betrayed, even though he meant to arrange during his absence for the well-being of the cattle under his charge; and if discovered Andreas knew that his life would be taken. He had faced the question, and had accepted the danger, for his love for Carlo was stronger than any fear of death.
Carlo explained what had been decided upon, and though Felipa and Catalina both cried at the idea of the separation, Doña Elena saw that this plan was the only one which gave her nephew a chance of safety.
’Ah, Andreas, God will reward you,’ she said, taking the Indian’s hand in hers; ’for we poor captives can but give you thanks.’
Etta, who had been listening to all this, now added anxiously:
’But, dear Carlo, suppose Andreas does not return, how can we ever find you or Harry?’
’I will tell you, Señora,’ said Andreas. ’You are right to ask, for the island has no name for the white men, and I never myself knew of a ship that stopped there. Give me some paper.’
Taking the parchment-like pith, which was all the prisoners could procure to write on, Andreas roughly marked out with a thorn the position of the island with regard to its distance from St. Catherine, making clever indications to show where dangerous rocks were to be found, and on which side the island could be approached.
’Keep that by you, Señorita, and if you can get away in a big ship, the Captain will understand where to find the Señor Carlo.’ He then made his Indian salutation and departed, saying he had much to do before the next sunset, and that if all were well he would come and fetch the Señor Carlo the next evening; but, till then, he advised great care, for fear of discovery.
It was, indeed, a very anxious day the family spent, but also a busy one. Felipa made a little needle-book for her brother; Etta plaited him a basket; and Catalina did up two blankets in as small a bundle as was possible: whilst Doña Elena unsewed some gold pieces she had secreted about her, and made a belt for Carlo, in which she hid this money, in case they sighted a ship and needed provisions or passage-money. Then, lastly, when the soldier’s visit was over, and they had heard from him that the dog-hunt had not been successful, for the animals had lost the scent: but they meant to go again when the moon rose, being sure the young rascal was hidden somewhere in the woods, for a negro had seen him with his own eyes--then at last Carlo came out of his dismal hiding-place, and all together the prisoners earnestly prayed for a safe journey, and that God would save them out of the hands of their enemies. Felipa cried much as she kissed her brother, feeling sure she would never see him again; and Etta sent messages to Harry, saying he was not to forget her if he went home to England, and to tell her uncle of her; and, lastly, Catalina invoked every blessing which every saint could give on her dear foster-child. Then came Andreas’ call; he had done wonders, having procured a boat, which he had hidden in a creek right at the foot of Santa Teresa, and where Harry now was awaiting them, hardly daring to move for fear of making the slightest noise and so attracting the guards. And thus once more, the friends were scattered.
CHAPTER XIX.
IN A LONELY SPOT.
The dark night happily favoured them; and what was also in their favour was the fact that Sieur Simon’s boat lay at anchor, and his hoys had been plying backwards and forwards all the afternoon, making the men on guard pay but little attention to the gentle plash of the oars as Andreas and Harry sent the long boat shooting off into the bay. One thought distressed the faithful Andreas: he had done his best to lay in a store of food, but he knew it was a very inadequate provision if the boys were to be left long in the desert island.
No one spoke for some time; then, when they had safely passed the ship, and were well out to sea, they had plenty to say to each other. Harry told how he had heard the baying of the dogs from his hiding-place; how they had come nearer and nearer, and he had felt a strange horror, which nothing else had ever given him before, at the idea of being torn in pieces by those blood-thirsty animals; then how the sounds had told him the dogs were close at hand, the shouting and yelling negroes urging them on, and the pirates mingling oaths with these cries as they were entangled in the scrub or the mangrove branches. Yes, and at last they had come close by, up to the foot of the tree, and had paused there as the baying dogs rushed round and round undecided, till one of them had evidently scented out the trail made by Andreas, and the negroes had hunted the dogs forward. Harry’s face as he told the story still bore traces of the terrible ordeal he had passed through during those few moments of intense suspense.
’I fancied before that I was brave, but I only know that when I heard those evil beasts I had no more courage left in me than a zany at a village fair; and when they had passed by, I lay on the floor of my hiding-place as if I were already dead. I have never before been in such dire terror of my life; but in truth such barbarous ways are not honest warfare.’
’Yet I saw my father hunted down by wild dogs,’ said Andreas, on whom this fact had made a lasting impression; and Carlo looked grave, for he knew well enough that his people it was who had perpetrated such cruelties on the gentle Indians, and that Spain would ever have to bear the shame of the first cruelties in the New World--cruelties which other nations had not been slow to adopt; till the black plague-spot had spread all over the fair lands and the newly discovered islands.
All night they rowed hard, and when daylight came, and with it all the glory of the tropical sunrise, St. Catherine was no longer in sight; and unless any other knew the secret of the desert island and betrayed the knowledge to Sieur Simon, they were saved. Each in his own heart thanked God.
Harry’s face began to recover its more cheerful expression: he was not leaving his loved ones as was Carlo; but was this journey bringing him much nearer his own home?
’When shall we sight this place?’ asked Carlo wearily, when the sun beating down on their heads reminded him that he was now not nearly as strong as before his illness; ’and what do you call it, Andreas? It seems as if we were going to a land of nowhere.’
’It has no name known to the white men, Señor; but my father, who took me there when I was a boy, always called it by an Indian name which meant "Queen of the Water," because of the one tall Jagua palm-tree which stands high and solitary on it, and can be seen from a long distance.’
’Then we are already in sight,’ said Harry suddenly. ’Look, Andreas, there, right ahead! You have come straight as an arrow.’
This welcome news gave them fresh courage, and on they sped. Nearer and nearer they came; they could now discern the wild scrub bordering the sand on which the surf painted a long line of white foam; they could see the motion of the leaves as the soft breeze disturbed the luxuriant undergrowth; but suddenly Andreas, standing up, dropped his oar from sheer surprise.
’Queen of the Water is not a desert island now!’ he said. ’Look, Señor!’
The boys also gazed now at the shore; and there, sure enough, on a small rock that jutted out into the sea, they saw a weird-looking figure walking slowly up and down, and waving long thin arms as if to warn off the intruders. The man, who hardly looked human even from this distance, appeared to be intent only on this one action; and so strange did it seem, that the three looked at each other with the same question expressed on their faces, and this was, ’Shall we land?’
[Illustration: "_SHALL WE LAND?_" (missing from book)]
’If there is one man there may be more,’ said Carlo, in despair; ’but I can row no more. We may as well be killed here as go on to another island and die by the way.’
’He is no Indian, but a white man,’ remarked Andreas, again scanning the rock; ’his beard is long, and his hair too. He either wishes us ill, or wishes to warn us from some danger; and yet I never heard of any one living here. This is indeed a misfortune.’
’Well, we must risk it,’ said Harry, seeing Carlo was looking terribly white and done up; ’and I think if we run the boat in here, at our right hand, that old fellow will not come up with us till we are well landed, for he will have nigh upon a mile to walk. If I’m not right, you may call me an ass for my pains, Carlo.’
Andreas approved, and presently they were obliged to keep all their wits sharp in order to enter the semicircular harbour, for there was some danger in getting the boat through the tumbling surf. But the Indian was too well accustomed to landing a boat to come to grief, and very soon the three stood on firm land; and after dragging up the boat out of reach of the waves, they looked anxiously around their new home. Near them, above the low cliff, was a clearing made by nature, where grew bananas, cacao, and bois-immortel, among which could also be seen a few orange-trees and Avocado pears; so that there was no fear of dying of thirst. But what interested them most was the strange weird figure, who, instead of following them, still kept on the same rock, and still waved his arms as if warding off some visible enemy. Andreas gazed a few minutes in silence; then all at once his eyes lighted up.
’It is no enemy: it must be a poor man whom the pirates have brought here. That is their fashion. I have heard them speak of it. They land some one who has offended them, and leave him to die alone; though often they will give him a musket and a little powder.’
’Then I should say that poor man is mad,’ said Harry. ’If so, he may be more dangerous than a pirate. But look, Andreas; if the pirates have been once they may come again.’
’No, not for many a long day; they must have sighted this desert island by chance, and landed this poor man here, knowing it was uninhabited.’
’Well, I will go and see what I can make of him,’ said Harry, ’whilst you get a rest, Carlo; for you must not be ill here, and Andreas will begin unloading the boat.’
’Take care, Harry,’ cried Carlo; ’nay, wait: I will come with you--I can’t bear you to run the risk alone.’
’I have been through so many perilous scrapes that one more or less makes but little difference. Still, come along, Señorito, we may perhaps make the poor man forget his troubles.’
So the two walked slowly along the shore till they came within a few yards of the weird figure; and Harry, wishing to attract his attention, called out to him and asked him what he did there. Then the figure paused, and gazed at the new-comers as if they were an unfamiliar sight, and began muttering through his long grey beard Spanish words of no meaning.
’Señor Carlo, this poor fellow is a Spaniard; but I see no sign of a musket. Speak to him, and ask him where he sleeps, and why he is here.’
Carlo began very courteously to inquire how the stranger had reached the island, as no boat was in sight; but suddenly he stopped short in his sentence, and clung wildly to Harry.
’Harry, Harry Fenn, look again, that man is--can you not see? It is my father; and yet I hardly knew him. See the ring on his finger?’ Harry would certainly not have recognised the Marquis, whom he had seen but little of; but in his astonishment he called out his name.
’The Señor Estevan del Campo! Surely it cannot be! Gracious Heaven!’
’Yes, yes,’ said the poor man, ’that is my name. Who called me? Yes, yes, Estevan del Campo!’
’Oh, sir, here is your son,’ said Harry; and then Carlo, summoning up his courage, rushed toward his poor father and knelt by his side.
’Father, father, do you not know me? I am Carlo, your son. Forgive me if I ever spoke harshly, father.’
’Carlo my son? No, no, I have no son, no country. Don’t let any one come here to find out my hiding-place; I warn them off. The pirates left me here; that was the kindest thing they did for me. I have no name, no titles. Don’t tell any one where I am. What do they call it?--marooning--they marooned me, left me to die alone. It was their kindness; I bear them no grudge for doing that. No name, no country!’
’No, no,’ cried Carlo; ’we will take care of you, father; you shall not die alone.’ And turning his arm round the poor thin arm of his father, Carlo dragged him forward; and Harry, following behind, wiped away a few tears from his eyes; for it was indeed a sight to have touched the hardest heart. But evidently the poor Marquis was out of his mind and had not much longer to live.
The sound of human voices seemed to soothe him after a time; and when they reached the shade of the grove where Andreas had set out some food for the travellers, he was no l |
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